Man, the title of my sermon this morning is The Right Vocabulary.
The right vocabulary. The words that we use are important
and different words are kind of charged with different meaning
or different connotation, and the Bible has a lot to say about
which words we should use. I'm going to give you three points on this,
but first of all, number one, we want to use the words
which the Holy Ghost teaches, not the words which man's wisdom
teaches. Look down at your Bible there in verse number 13 it says which things also we speak
not in the words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Ghost teaches comparing spiritual
things with spiritual. Now the words that the Holy Ghost teaches would obviously be a reference to
wording that is found in the Bible right because the Bible is inspired by the Holy Ghost and so when
biblical terminology, that's always going to be the best terminology that we can count on
to communicate God's truth most effectively. So, let me give you some examples of this
when we talk about salvation.
We should avoid using these confusing, misleading, and unbiblical terms that we hear all the time out there in the world, right?
Things like, hey, make a commitment to Christ.
Right? Where does the Bible use that kind of terminology about salvation?
Or, give your life to Christ.
Last time I checked, Jesus Christ gave his life for us.
It's not about us giving our life to him.
Have a relationship with Jesus and again, you know, these things could have a good meaning or they could have a bad meaning
We don't know what they mean because they're not in the Bible
They're not clear and they can often be misleading, you know, if you would have talked to me when I was a teenager
And you would have asked me, what does it take to be saved?
What does it take to go to heaven?
I would have said, a relationship with Jesus.
Okay, but here's what I thought that that meant.
Because I was actually saved,
and I actually believed that salvation was by faith,
not of works, let's say any man should boast.
I thought that a relationship with Jesus means that you have to be related to Jesus,
like He's your personal Savior, like God is your Father and you're His Son.
Like that's what I thought that it meant.
But a lot of people, when they say relationship with Jesus,
here's what they mean.
Like a daily thing of constantly talking to Him and living for Him and serving Him
and walking with Him.
That is works.
If that's what it takes to be saved, then salvation is by works.
And salvation is not of works, listen to what the man should boast.
Salvation is a free gift, paid for by the blood of Jesus.
And a lot of times, I'll use this illustration with people.
When I'm out soul winning and they come at me with this relationship with Jesus,
thinking that it's like a daily thing that they have to maintain every day,
I'll use the illustration of marriage, okay?
So my wife and I are married.
Why are we married?
The reason that we're married is because we got married at some point, right?
We actually went down and made vows and signed a marriage certificate,
and we are legally and spiritually and socially married.
Why are we married? Is it because we have a relationship?
No, we're married because we got married.
Does everybody understand?
Just like people that are saved are saved because they got saved.
Not because they have a relationship.
With the Lord on a daily basis because here's the thing my wife and I we could have a great relationship or a bad relationship
We're still married
We could have little or no relationship and still be married. Why cuz we got married and
Marriage is permanent. It's till death do us part
And so here's the thing, if I don't talk to my wife and my wife doesn't talk to me
and we don't spend time together and we don't take care of each other
and we don't hang out together, we're not going to have much of a relationship, are we?
But are we still married?
Absolutely we're still married, right?
You might say that we have a bad relationship
or no relationship, but we're still married, right?
Whereas if I'm constantly spending time with my wife,
talking to her, we're spending time together,
we're helping each other out,
we're doing favors for one another,
we're having quality time,
well now we have a relationship, we're talking,
we're spending time together.
Either way, this does not affect our status
as being single or married.
The relationship is just going to determine how good that marriage is, okay?
What's the same thing with the Lord Jesus Christ?
If we believe on Christ, we're saved.
Amen.
Now, if we don't talk to the Lord in prayer,
if we don't listen to the Lord through reading our Bibles,
if we're not singing praises to God,
if we're not attending church,
if we're not doing good works,
we're not going to have a good relationship with the Lord, are we?
But yet we're still gonna be saved. We're still his children. We could be the black sheep of the family, but we're still his
children. And so this term
relationship with Jesus as a way of salvation is
confusing, misleading, and I feel like 99% of people who are using this are probably using it wrongly.
to mean something that's wrong, but we don't know what they mean necessarily.
So it's better to stick with really good biblical terms. Here's a good term.
Believe. Believe on Jesus Christ.
Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Here's another good term.
Faith. Faith alone. Faith in Christ.
Trusting Christ. There's another good biblical term from Ephesians chapter 1 verse 11.
I trusted Christ as my Savior. That's great terminology. That's biblical.
I trusted Christ. I believed on Christ. I put my faith in Christ.
I put my faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. I got saved.
I am a born-again Christian.
These are great biblical terms that have good meanings that we can actually derive from Scripture
as opposed to commitment to Christ, give your life to Christ, have a relationship with Jesus.
And then you wonder why the churches that use this terminology,
when we go and knock on the doors of their church members, often the people are confused about salvation.
And we ask them, do you know for sure you're going to heaven?
Well, I hope so. I'm trying.
Well, I like to think I'm a pretty good person and this kind of stuff shows that they're not even saved
because they're not getting a clear gospel message from the pulpit that's using
simple clear language and that's using the words that the Holy Ghost teaches, right?
All throughout the Bible, 90 times in the book of John alone.
And by the way, the book of John is the book that claims to be the book
written so that people will get saved.
It literally says at the end of the book of John,
these things are written that you might believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ and that believing you might have life through His name,
that you believe on the Son of God.
So John claims to be the book written to get you saved
and 90 times in the book of John it says, believe.
Sounds like a pretty good word to use.
Sounds like pretty good terminology,
but I can't find any verse where Jesus is like,
verily verily I say unto thee, make a commitment to Christ.
Verily, verily I say unto you, if you give your life to Christ, you shall have eternal life.
I can't find that verse.
I can't find the one that says, verily I say unto you, have a relationship with me in order
to get into heaven.
That's not in the Bible.
We should use the words that the Holy Ghost teaches.
Here's another good term, Christian.
That's a term that's in the Bible, Christian.
Now what's wrong with that term? It's a great term, right?
But now all the little trendy skinny jeans soy latte type of churches
Now they instead of talking about being a Christian. They talk about being a Jesus follower
I'm a Jesus fall and you know as soon as I hear somebody say Jesus follower. I'm just thinking to myself. It's some kind of a little
pansy
Wimp
So I lot a church
You know why not just use the words that the Holy Ghost teaches Christian?
You know, it is good enough for the Bible. It's good enough for me
Flip over if you would to the book of Jude. This is right before Revelation second to last book in the Bible Jude
Because here's another thing that holier than thou's like to take issue with
Because remember we want to use the words the Holy Ghost teaches right using biblical terms for things especially when it comes to something as important as salvation
But holier than thou's, we'll take issue with terms like five saved.
Ten, we got ten saved.
Or hey, I got that guy saved.
And here's what holier than thou, phonies will say.
Well, we don't save anyone.
It's Jesus who does this.
We don't save anyone.
Well, speak for yourself, non-soul-winning sucker.
Look what Jude says in verse 23 it says and others save with fear
So if we don't save anyone then explain to me why God is commanding us in the Bible to save people
Others save with fear pulling them out of the fire
hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.
Here's another one, Romans 11 verse 14,
if by any means I may provoke to emulation
then which are my flesh and I might save some of them.
So why is the Apostle Paul saying,
hey, I want to save some people,
I want to get some people saved
and then you got the holier than that,
oh no, no, no, you shouldn't say that.
We don't save people.
And here's what I do,
I'll show people these verses from the Bible.
Like how about this one first Corinthian 716 for what knowest thou oh wife whether thou shalt save thy husband or
How knowest thou oh man whether thou shalt save thy wife and I'll show them these verses
Here's what I say. Well, that's not what the Apostle Paul meant and here's what I say. Well, that's not what I meant either
And they're like, what did you mean? I'm like, I meant whatever the Apostle Paul meant
So what's funny is if I say I got someone saved people are like, whoa, you're you're prideful you're arrogant
You shouldn't say that but then I show Paul saying the exact same thing and here's they say, but that's not what he meant
I didn't mean that either
Whatever that is. I don't know what this that is like like like like I guess by saying that we got people saved
They think we're trying to like replace Jesus or something
No, I just meant whatever Paul meant. I'm just talking like the Bible
Here's another one, and this is one of the most famous verses amongst liberal Christians.
And this is what's so funny is that these same liberal Christians that are criticizing us for getting people saved or saving people,
they love this verse.
And it's 1 Corinthians chapter 9, verse 22.
To the week became I as weak, that I might gain the weak, I am made all things to all men that I might by all means save some.
So they're always talking about becoming all things to all men.
But if you actually look at the famous Become All Things to All Men verse, it says,
I'm become all things to all men that I might by all means save some, so that I can save some.
And what's funny is that we got these people that are becoming all things to all men, but they're not saving anybody.
So what's even the point of becoming all things to all men if you're not going to do the saving?
That's the whole point is the soul-saving part. That's where it even has meaning and
So it's just kind of a holier than thou thing to say. Oh, it's Jesus who does of course
We know that Jesus does the saving of course
We know that Jesus is our Savior nothing can replace the Lord Jesus Christ
But here's thing if we point people to the Savior we're saving them by pointing them to the guy who's going to save them
And so, it's kind of a two-man job, isn't it?
Because, you know, basically, we point them to Jesus,
and then Jesus saves them.
High five, you know, we are getting the assist.
Right? Isn't that what it's called in basketball?
You know, hey, it doesn't matter whether we scored the point.
We're racking up assists all day long and twice on Sunday.
And so, if you would, flip over to Hosea chapter 2.
Hosea chapter number 2.
So we said number one, we should use the words that the Holy Ghost teaches when it comes to salvation. Let's use clear
Biblical terms rather than kind of the worldly trendy modern terms
They could be confusing or misleading and people walk away not really knowing what salvation is or what that even means
And we need to get back to emphasizing getting saved
You know instead of people just think it's just a process or that they're just born saved or automatically saved or kind of just
Gradually gets it. No you get saved. It's sort of like getting married isn't a process
It's not like well, what's your wedding anniversary? Well, it's kind of like I don't know kind of like mid-July through mid-August
It's kind of like when I kind of got married
No, it's a it's like it's August 13th
It's when I got married, right?
Getting saved is the same way, okay?
And you can have a wonderful marriage,
or you can have a terrible marriage,
but you're still married.
Why are you married?
Is it because you talk to each other so much?
Because I could talk to somebody all day long
that wouldn't make that person my wife, would it?
And I could go weeks without talking to my wife,
and she'd still be my wife, okay?
And I'm not gonna do that, but I'm saying,
if I did, she'd still be my wife.
So, we want to use clear Biblical terms.
Don't let people get down on you for saying what the Bible says.
What the Bible says can never be wrong and it can never be heresy because it's what the Bible says.
So, if the Bible says, hey, I'm going to go save people, I'm going to get people saved,
I'm going to pull people out of the fire, save them with fear, save your husband, save your wife, right?
Become all things to all men to save some, well then that terminology could never be wrong
because it's directly from the Bible.
What are we talking about this morning?
What's the sermon about?
It's about the right vocabulary.
Using the right vocabulary.
These are the words that should be in your mouth.
Believe, saved, born again, Christian, biblical terms.
But here's another thing.
We should avoid words that have a connotation
of being associated with a false religion.
Okay, so we should avoid using terms that have a connotation that connects them to a false religion
And I'm going to give you some biblical proof for that look at Hosea chapter 2 verse 16
It says and it shall be at that day say at the Lord
That that shall call me ish I and shall call me no more Baalai
For I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth and they shall no more be remembered by their name now
This warrants a little bit of explanation
Unless you know the Bible super well, you know this might go over your head a little bit because this is kind of a tough
Verse, but the idea here is that the word Baal in and of itself did not start out as being a bad word
Because the word Baal in and of itself simply means Lord
master or husband, okay?
This is what the word just in its original form,
that's just what it means.
And even to this day, if you're speaking Hebrew,
that's the word, you would use this word, bali,
you would say bali to say my husband, okay?
So that, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be
this false God bail.
Does everybody understand what I'm saying?
It's just a word.
That means Lord or master or husband.
A long time ago, before the bad kind of Baal Zeebub and Baal Ekron and these bad false gods went by the name of Baal,
the term Baal could have been used about God.
For example, you have Saul naming one of his children Ish Baal, which means like man of Baal.
Okay, well, here's the thing about that.
It's not that Saul is trying to be super blasphemous
and hey, I'm gonna name my kid Son of Satan or something.
That's not what he's doing.
He's doing that at a time when that word
still was okay or made sense, right?
But God is saying at this point in Hosea,
he's saying, look, don't call me Baal anymore.
Don't ever use the word bail about me because the term bail had become associated with a false God.
And so you can say, well, I'm just calling him Lord, I'm just calling him master, I'm just calling him husband.
Hey, that word had become associated with false religion, and so he's saying, don't use it anymore.
Use this other word, ishi, which means the same thing.
That is the other word for my husband.
Again, same in modern Hebrew, you could say ishi or bali,
and they would both mean the same thing.
But what is he saying?
Use the one that's not associated with false religion,
because he says,
I'll take away the names of Balaam out of her mouth.
We don't want to even have that word in our mouth.
So here's a perfect example of this, Allah.
The word Allah in and of itself is not a bad word because the word Allah
Literally just means God in Arabic and in fact if you're reading the book of Daniel or the book of Ezra
Parts of it are written in Aramaic and in Aramaic. It will say Allah
About God in the Bible. It will call him Allah, but in
2026 would I ever get up and say hey worshiping Allah?
Because if I did that, it would be super misleading, it would be wicked, because it would sound like I'm promoting Islam, which is a wicked religion.
So if I'm speaking English and I say Allah or Allah, people are going to automatically think I'm talking about Islam and I should avoid that word,
because the word Allah has come to designate a false God in 2025. Am I right?
just like Baal could have at a previous time been a legitimate way to refer to God
way back when, like before the Bible's written,
yet by the time the Bible is being pinned down in Hosea chapter 2, he's saying,
don't call me that.
And that's why when you have Christians that would use the word,
Allah, to try to bridge the gap between them and Muslims,
this would be like an Israelite calling God Baal,
just to sort of reach out to the Canaanites
and find some common ground with the ones
who are practicing in Phantasy to Mollach
and these false gods and everything.
So we don't want to use words
that are associated with a false religion.
So we're not going to use the word Baal.
We're not going to use the word Allah.
How about this?
We shouldn't use the term mass.
We're not going to say,
hey, we're going to mass at 10.30 a.m. on Sundays
because what does everybody think
when they hear the word mass?
They think we're going to a Catholic church.
How about the word rabbi?
You know, we shouldn't use the term rabbi because everybody's automatically going to be thinking of a Jewish rabbi, which is a Christ-rejecting religion.
Same reason why we wouldn't call our assembly a synagogue.
Even though the word synagogue, I think Pastor Mahia touched on this on Wednesday night briefly,
about the fact that the word synagogue just intrinsically just means like a gathering or an assembly.
There's nothing bad about the word in and of itself, but it's associated with a wicked religion.
Now it's called the synagogue of Satan.
And so we don't want to use that term.
Or how about this word, Shekinah?
You know, you go to Christian churches and you'll have pastors get up and talk about the Shekinah glory of God.
Here's the thing about that.
The word Shekinah is never found in the Bible.
Okay, it's not found in the Hebrew Bible.
You say, oh, it's a Hebrew word.
Yeah, but it's not in the Hebrew Bible.
That word shechina comes from after the Jews rejected the Lord Jesus Christ and founded their Christ-rejecting Judaism religion.
After 70 A.D., they use that term and they talk about it as being the, quote, feminine side of God or the feminine aspect of God, which is, of course, absurd.
Because God is not feminine, God is masculine.
He's got the father. He's got the son not God the mother God the daughter. You're never gonna find that in scripture and
Here's what's so dumb about this thing of oh sheikhina. That's the feminine aspect of God
What it has to do with is just people especially in America because we speak English they don't understand grammatical gender
So like ooh, it's a feminine word. Oh, you know they're saying like in Spanish like tables feminine
Chair is feminine. You don't have to read into that like oh man. I'm trying to figure out like what's feminine about a chair
You know what's I mean? I could figure out what's feminine about like the washing machine
Grammatical gender has nothing to do with biological gender or any other kind of gender.
Grammatical gender is a grammatical thing, and if you only speak English, you're like,
what the heck?
How could these words have gender?
Just don't worry about it, okay?
But don't try to say God's feminine or something, just because, oh, the word spirit, you know,
in some of these languages is feminine or something like that.
You know, it doesn't matter.
because grammatical gender has nothing to do with actual gender, you know, or like in Spanish you have the word la Palabra
La Palabra means the word, but it's feminine la Palabra, okay?
Whereas, you know, some Bible translations in Spanish talking about the Lord Jesus Christ will say in the beginning and
El principio era la Palabra. Does that mean Jesus is feminine now? That's absurd and wrong
You know, some of them will translate it as,
en el principio era el verbo,
just because they want to use a less common word for word,
because they like it to be masculine, el verbo.
But at the end of the day, grammatical gender is meaningless,
and reading doctrines into things like that
is this sort of, like, kind of esoteric,
kind of, like, cabala way of reading the Bible
and its garbage, okay?
So why would a Christian get up and use a term from Judaism?
That's not in the Bible, that has nothing to do with Christianity.
Why would they get up and say,
oh, that's Shekinah glory of God?
And I can't even count how many times I've been in an independent,
fundamental Baptist church preaching a King James Bible
and had the pastor talk about the Shekinah glory of God.
Who's heard it before and you've heard?
Yeah, all over the bill, of course.
Why though? It doesn't make any sense.
Let's use the right vocabulary, man.
Let's not use words that are associated with a false religion.
Let's use good words that are Christian words.
So number one, we want to use the words
that the Holy Ghost teaches.
But number two, go through it to 1 Corinthians chapter 14.
We want to use words that are easy to be understood.
Easy to be understood, right?
We don't want to use words that are hard to understand
because the purpose of speech is to communicate.
Right if the reason I'm up here talking right now is to try to communicate to you
This isn't some kind of an artistic performance piece that I'm doing spoken word performance piece up here where you know
I don't really want you to listen to what I'm saying. I just want you to kind of hear the sounds
They're coming out of my mouth and just kind of feel the sounds wash over you oh
No, the the purpose of speech is to communicate
Okay, and by the way, this is why you know, I speak a lot of foreign languages, but I don't sound good at any of them
Okay, because here's why because I didn't start learning foreign languages until I was like 16 17 years old
And so even languages that I'm totally fluent in I still sound like a gringo
Right why because of the fact that I started learning later in life
And so I'm never gonna sound like a native
But here's why I don't care because my goal is to communicate and if I walk up to somebody and speak that language
And they understood everything that I said mission accomplished. Well, you didn't sound like a native. Well
Neither do a lot of people when they speak English
But I still understand what they're saying
because the purpose of speech is to communicate and so we should speak in
words that are easy to be understood whatever gets the clearest meaning across
that's what we should speak. Look at 1st Corinthians 14 verse 7 it says
and even things without life giving sound whether pipe or harp except they
give a distinction
in the sounds, how shall it be known what is piped or harped?
So the idea here is with a pipe or an organ or a harp,
you want it to be in tune and giving a really clear note.
You know, you want it to be just an A or a B-flat or a C,
like a clear note, not just kind of like,
nuh-uh, and you're just like, what was that?
You know it's just kind of all over the place. You want it to be clear sharp notes. You can tell what's being piped or harped
For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound
Who shall prepare himself to the battle right?
Sounding a trumpet is a way to signal that the battle is gonna begin and so you want to do it with confidence like
Charge!
Right, and then everybody knows what to do.
Whereas, let's say you're on the battlefield,
you're a soldier, and you've been told,
hey, when you hear the trumpet blow,
that's when you go for it.
What if you heard like this kind of weak,
halfway trumpet blow, and it's going like,
oooooh, and you're kind of like, was that it?
Was that not it?
Do we go?
Do we not go?
Right, you don't want that to be an uncertain sound.
The trumpet is also symbolic in the Bible of preaching.
You know, the Bible says that the preacher is to lift up his voice like a trumpet.
And so we don't want preaching to give an uncertain sound where people walk out of the
sermon and say, I don't really know where this church stands.
I don't really know where this preacher stands.
I don't really know what I'm supposed to do.
I don't really know what we believe as a church because the pastor is all over the place.
It's confusing.
So we want a clear sound so that people will be able to prepare themselves for the battle.
clear marching orders, right?
Look what the Bible says in verse 9,
so likewise ye accept the utter by the tongue
words easy to be understood,
how shall it be known what is spoken,
for ye shall speak into the air.
So the Bible is saying, look, you've got to speak clear words
that are easy to understand,
otherwise you're just talking into the air,
you're just kind of a big bag of hot air,
is what he's saying, is blah, blah, blah.
Because you're not being clear. You're not easy to understand and look
We've all sat in a church service or a lecture or seen a video where it went over our head
And what do we do? We just tune out. We just stop listening right and a lot of people said oh math is really boring
Oh science is really boring. Usually it's because the fact it's going over our heads
You know what I mean like if you watch a math video that's actually kind of meeting you where you're at
And it's not too easy, but it's not too hard, it could be engaging to learn math.
But if math is all just going over your head, it might as well be Chinese to you,
then you're going to get bored pretty fast, aren't you?
If things are too easy, you get bored.
If things are too hard, you get bored.
If you speak in words that are difficult to understand
or impossible to understand, you're talking into the air,
nobody's listening, nobody can follow you.
What is the point?
Now, why would someone get up and use
a bunch of difficult words that no one understands?
It's really just to puff themselves up sometimes.
Just, hey, guys, I'm on another level.
look at me, I'm way smarter, and so let me just snow you with a bunch of fancy words,
and you just walk away saying, man, that guy's smart. You have no idea what was said.
No one is edified. No one is built up. No one grows from that, right? And every trade has its
jargon, right? There's legal jargon. A lot of times lawyers will use Latin terms that are kind
to lawyers and they drop a bunch of Latin terms and it kind of makes them in a special club.
Okay. Well, you have a lot of people that do this, especially amongst the Calvinists,
kind of reform Presbyterian type, where they love to use a lot of theological jargon just to sort
of lock other people out and make it seem like they're real smart. Now, here's what's funny.
If you look for a list of all these really difficult, arcane theological terms,
You know at the end of the day, it's really only like probably 50 or 100 vocabulary words that you have to learn
So these bozos just basically memorize like 50 or 100 vocabulary words
And then they can just kind of spend the rest of their lives
Just you know for that effort of learning those 50 words now
They can just kind of flex on everybody else for the rest of their lives and sound super smart
Even though you know what I find is that these Calvinists are usually pseudo intellectuals
They are not as smart as they want you to think that they are
And they have all these books on their shelves, and they love to pose in front of giant bookshelves with so many books.
But you know what, if you go to their libraries and start pulling those books off the shelf, you know what you're going to find is that they're all brand new.
They're all brand new.
You know how books are when they're brand new. They haven't been touched.
They're not falling apart. They're not marked up, dog-eared.
Because here's the thing, and Calvinists will even joke about how they just love to collect all these books that they don't even read.
Hey, look how smart we are look how many books I own and whatever
It's sort of like when James White we were calling out James White in a stupid pseudo intellectual fake Greek
And he's like, you know past Pastor Anderson and and and these guys are talking about you know
You know reading the Greek Septuagint and stuff and he's like he's like I own the Greek Septuagint
He pulls it off the shelf. I own it. He says pulls it off the shelf holds it up the camera, bro
He's never read it
But he owns it
So you can hold up to the camera hold up. So hey look at me. I own this book
Yeah, there's people who own the book and then there's people who read it cover to cover
And so don't be snowed or fooled by these Calvinist pseudo-intellectuals
Using difficult words that no one understands doesn't make you smart. It just makes you a blow hard
It just makes you arrogant and full of yourself because again as a preacher your goal is to communicate
And so guess what I want to do? I want to take that which is complicated and make it easy.
In fact, what is the essence of a good teacher?
Not even a Bible teacher, just any kind of teacher. I don't care if it's math,
science, history, English. This is what it means to be a good teacher.
You take something complicated and you make it easy.
Then you have people who take something easy and make it complicated.
using a bunch of big words just for the sake
of using big words and making it complicated.
Folks, we want to have simple preaching.
We wanna have stuff that's so simple
that even a theologian can understand what we're saying.
So here's some theological jargon
that people love to drop.
I'm not saying all these words are horrible
or that they don't have their place
when they could be appropriate in a certain situation,
but just a lot of these terms,
people just love to use this term like hermeneutics.
The proper hermeneutic, soteriology, proto-evangelium, hypostasis, canosis, apophatic, perichoresis,
hesychasm, consubstantiality, filiocue.
That's a good Latin word that they like to talk about, the filiocue clause.
Imago dei.
You know instead instead of just saying like the image of God. It's like in my go day
And by the way, not only do people like to use these arcane
Theological terms and that's just a sampling like I said
There's like 50 or 100 that we could go through
How about these other Hebrew words that people like to drop in order to like sound smart or to make their doctrine sound exotic?
You know like the Hebrew roots types love to say shalom
When they could just say peace
They love to say Yeshua, instead of just saying Jesus, right?
They love to say Yahweh, instead of saying the Lord.
Now, there's the thing, Yahweh is not even a real word.
By the way, it's a made-up word that just, it just came out like 30 years ago,
as far as being in popular culture and being well-known.
Now you go to churches and you can't stop hearing about Yahweh, songs about Yahweh.
Those of you that are older, my age or older, you know that when we were growing up,
Right, but now all of a sudden it's your way and you say well the tetragrammaton
You know four letter name of God well guess what the four letter name of God
No one knows how to pronounce it and it's four consonants
And, you know, I'm not claiming to be a Hebrew expert but I do know a lot of Hebrew and I think that the pronunciation Yahweh is absurd and impossible based on my knowledge of Hebrew.
But, you know, that's what they do, right? At least Yeshua is a real word. Yeshua is a real word in modern Hebrew.
And, hey, if you're speaking modern Hebrew, if I were speaking modern Hebrew, I would say Yeshua. If I were speaking Spanish, I'd say Jesus.
So we're going to say Jesus.
But people love to pepper in the chesed love of God.
They like to talk about the mitzvah and the barit.
And here's everybody's favorite, the nephilim.
Because it doesn't sound as fancy to just say giants.
So it's the nephilim.
Or how about this one?
Torah-observing Christians.
You know why they say that they're Torah-observing Christians?
Because if they just used the English word and said,
law-observing,
then there'd be a lot of New Testament verses
that would debunk that, wouldn't there?
All kinds of New Testament verses
that would run into that doctrine.
So instead of law-observing Christians,
it sounds cooler and more exotic and fresh
to be a Torah-observing.
But Torah simply means law.
It's just another language.
That's it.
You know we need to use words that are easy to understand. We need to speak English. Amen
Use English words speak English. Here's a good English word hell
Hell everybody knows what hell means right? We go out walk down the street ask people what hell means. They all know what it means
But what do the modern churches and the trendies and the modern versions say Hades?
Gehenna these words are misleading
Right because the word Hades is misleading because Hades is typically associated with Greek mythology and
It's the underworld and Greek mythology and it's not the same as it's similar to hell in a lot of ways
And he said well that's the underlying Greek word. We're not speaking Greek if you're speaking Greek and use that word
It's gonna make sense in that context when you bring it into English sometimes bringing a word from one language to another brings a different connotation
Right if we said a law in Arabic it might just mean God, but when we say Allah in English
We're talking about the God of Islam specifically
And when you say Hades in Greek it could just mean dark scary underworld or whatever
And it could be a word that could be used to describe hell
But when you say it in English if I say Hades people are thinking what they're thinking Zeus and they're thinking
You know Artemis and all these false gods and they're just thinking of the wrong thing
So use the clear word. So we said number one use the words that the Holy Ghost teaches biblical words
Number two use words that are easy to understand so that you can communicate clearly
But number three we want to use words. Well before I get to number three actually flip over to Galatians
Galatians chapter number five
Because I want to kind of just park it and kind of get on these like so-called Torah observing Christians
I want to get on these Judaizers for a minute, okay?
Because, you know, I was just going about my business this week.
I went on a mission strip this week.
And on the mission strip, we had a great time.
We went to Nassau, Bahamas, super receptive.
Myself, my daughter Anna and brother Kenton
spent the day soul winning on the university campus,
just talking to student after student after student.
And we ended up having 29 people saved in one day,
which is incredible, you know,
because I mean, it's just so receptive.
I mean, I've never seen these kind of numbers in my life.
until going to the Caribbean and just finding these really receptive college campuses and other places.
So we went and had this great day and then the next day we went soul winning in Freeport.
And we ended up being able to meet up with some local online listeners,
people who listened to the preaching for years, but they'd never been soul winning.
And so we got to take them out soul winning and kind of show them the ropes of soul winning.
So I took this guy as my silent partner and then Anna took his mother as her silent partner.
We split into two teams.
went through the neighborhoods, knocking doors,
winning souls, we had five people saved in Freeport
with some brand new soul winners.
So it's an awesome trip, you know,
and we're excited and everything.
But what's, you know, we're doing this on the cruise ship
and obviously a big part of the cruise ship
is the unlimited food, the free food.
So I, like I posted the most harmless, innocent post
to my ex account.
which is formerly known as Twitter.
But I posted to my ex account just like,
hey, this is my dinner that I got.
And I thought it was just the most benign post
that I've ever done.
And I was just joking around like,
oh man, I had to double up on the dinner
because I liked both things so much
because the thing about the cruise is all the food's free
so you can get double appetizer, double dinner,
you know, double the dessert or whatever,
you know, I would never do that, but.
So you know on the menu the menu changes every night, and so you know we've done we did all the soul winning
We show up back on the ship. I was pretty hungry, and I'm looking at the menu
There's just two things I really liked one of them was the jumbo shrimp and fish cake
Okay
And then the other one was the vegetable lasagna.
And I was thinking like, oh man,
these are both two of my favorite items.
Cause this isn't my first rodeo.
I have pretty much had the menu
on Carnival Cruise memorized at this point.
I've pretty much tried everything so I know what's good.
So I'm just like, dog on it, I'm getting both of them, you know?
So I just took a picture like smiling
with two big plates of food.
Like, oh, I had to double up here.
And then this is what people are getting mad about.
First of all, the Judaizers are mad about the shrimp.
Oh, it's not kosher, you're eating shellfish.
And these are so-called Christians
condemning me for eating shrimp.
Then everybody was blowing a gasket
about the vegetable lasagna
because they're kind of just panicked
by any dish that's vegetarian.
So they're like panicking even though I had fish like right here or a shrimp like right over here
Even though I had like two giant cheeseburgers for lunch
You know they're just I guess they're just scared that I went vegan for like five minutes or something
You know when I eat that and I kind of go through the same thing every time I go out to eat with my wife
I'm always you know if I ever order a vegetarian dish she panics
And she thinks that I'm not a real man anymore or something.
And I'm just like, I'm like, honey, give me a bite of your,
I usually have to take a bite of her meat.
Just approved or like, I'm not going vegan or anything.
Like, I just really like vegetable lasagna.
I just really like spinach lasagna.
It's good, you know?
So I posted this picture and all these Judaizers are you know getting all mad
So then it just became like a challenge to just eat the most like non kosher stuff and just post pictures of it to X
Like for the rest of the week
You know I was just posted, you know it reminded me of that dumb quote by St. Francis the sissy or whatever his name is
St. Francis of Assisi. He said like you know preach the gospel at all times if necessary use words
Well, bro, it's always necessary to use words when you're preaching the Gospel, right?
We're not into lifestyle evangelism.
We're into opening our mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the Gospel.
You gotta preach the Gospel.
But so I thought about, I thought of a new quote instead of, you know,
preach the Gospel at all times if necessary, use words as, you know,
rebuke the Judaizers at all times if necessary, use words.
You know, because I'm just kind of rebuking the Judaizers
just by my choices of meal.
So everything was shell fished up.
I was like, okay, let's go.
Linguinean clams.
That's what I had the next night.
Linguinean with clams.
And then I got the vegetarian Indian food
just to go with it.
Just to freak people out, man.
Just trolling hard, just rage baiting with my meals.
But you know what's funny is, I noticed that the Judaizers were trying to redefine what the word Judaize means.
Okay, so I'm going to show you what the word Judaize means. I'm going to show you where it comes from and what it means.
But first let's look at Galatians chapter 5 verse 2. It says,
Behold, I, Paul, say unto you that if you be circumcised,
Christ shall profit you nothing. But does it seem like the New Testament wants you to do the old rituals of the Mosaic Law?
If he's telling you, don't get circumcised.
If you get circumcised, Christ shall profit you, nothing.
Look, obviously, many of us are circumcised
because our parents didn't ask us
when we were eight days old or one day old or whatever.
And I screamed and cried and they kept going.
Okay, I wasn't asked my permission
before I got circumcised.
And so, you know, but here's the thing,
we don't circumcise our children.
You shouldn't circumcise your children, you know,
because we're in the New Testament.
But what the Bible is saying here when it says if you be circumcised Christ shall profit you nothing the idea
Here is if you go out and get circumcised because you think that that's part of
getting saved or becoming the people of God because you're trusting Jesus plus works,
Jesus plus circumcision, Jesus plus rituals, or Jesus plus Torah observing,
he's saying Christ is of no effect unto you.
And then he explains why in verse 3, he says,
for I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he's a debtor to do the whole law.
He's saying, look, if you go out and get circumcised and say,
oh, well, just to be safe, I'm just going to go out and get circumcised,
he's like, okay, well, then you've got to do everything else in the law.
How can you just pick and choose?
You know, either we're under the law or we're not.
Now obviously the morals of the law still stand,
but the rituals of the law, the meat, the drink,
the carnal, fleshly ordinances, those are done away in Christ.
We don't observe them.
We don't observe the Sabbath.
We don't circumcise.
We eat whatever, cheeseburgers or shrimp or clams
or whatever we want, amen?
Christ has become of no effect unto you,
whosoever of you are justified by the law,
you've fallen from grace,
for we through the spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.
According to the Bible, righteousness comes by faith in Jesus Christ.
And if you are justified by the law," then Christ is of no effect unto you.
Sounds like you're not saved if you're trying to be justified by works, justified by the law.
Flip back if you would to chapter 2 and I'm going to show you where the word Judeaise comes from, okay?
Because I grew up with this word.
I don't know about you, but I like this word.
I think it's a good word.
And this morning we're talking about using the right vocabulary.
This is a good vocabulary word, Judeaiser.
And I grew up with this word, growing up in church,
you'd hear preaching against Judaizers.
And what were they preaching against?
They were preaching against people
like the Seventh-day Adventists,
who are telling you that you have to go
by the dietary laws of the Old Testament.
They're called Judaizers.
Or now it's more like the Hebrew roots crowd
or these other different Judaizing groups now,
Torah observing Christians or whatever.
Now, the word Judaizer is a transliteration, not a translation, but a transliteration.
This is when you take a word directly from one language to another, okay?
It's a transliteration of a Greek word in Galatians chapter 2 verse 14.
Look at the context beginning of verse 11.
It says, But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was
to be blamed.
For before that certain came from James, watch this, he did eat with the Gentiles.
He's eating with the Gentiles and I did a whole sermon on this called eating with the Gentiles and I proved from scripture
This is talking about eating with the Gentiles
what they eat, not like, oh, I'm just sitting next to a Gentile and eating my own little kosher meal.
That's not what the Bible is talking about. I already proved that in my hour-long sermon. Acts chapter 10 makes it crystal clear
where Peter is flat-out told to eat meats that are not kosher.
He's commanded by God to eat meats that are not on the approved list.
But then we got these Judaizers today telling us we're wrong for doing that.
So Peter he got that lesson in Acts chapter 10
He's told to eat these quote-unquote non kosher foods
then he goes and
Stays at the Gentiles house eats with the Gentiles hangs out with the Gentiles because God taught him that that was okay
And here's the thing about that is that he didn't show up at Cornelius's house
Hey, God we gave me this vision about eating unclean bees now make sure to serve me a separate meal from what everybody else is eating
Make sure I get my kosher meal. That's stupid and wrong and again
I'm not going to repreach that sermon because I already proved that in that sermon
But Peter is
Eating with the Gentiles, but then when the James crowd from Jerusalem shows up
He is embarrassed and so all of a sudden he switches to you know be in kosher
And he separates himself fearing them which were of the circumcision
Because notice that the circumcision and the kosher eating go hand-in-hand.
Look at verse 13, and the other Jews likewise dissembled with him,
and so much that Barnabas was also carried away with their dissimulation.
But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel,
I said unto Peter before them all,
If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles—
No, no, let me ask you this.
If Peter is supposedly eating kosher food, but just sitting next to Gentiles,
then why would Paul say,
you're living after the manner of the Gentiles?
Is anybody listening?
Paul's like, bro, before James's crowd showed up,
you were living after the manner of the Gentiles.
You were eating with the Gentiles.
You were eating that jumbo shrimp and fish cake before they showed up.
You're living after the manner of the Gentiles and not as do the Jews
So why are you compelling the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? It says in verse 14, right?
So where does the word Judaize come in? If you were reading this in Greek the part that is translated as
Live as do the Jews
So you see that last part of verse 14 why compel stuff the Gentiles this part this phrase right here to live as do the Jews
That whole phrase live as do the Jews is from the Greek word
Judea eyes he's saying why are you compelling the Gentiles to Judea eyes now the King James translators instead of
transliterating this word and saying Judea eyes they did what they translated it. What does it mean?
So what does Judea eyes mean? Judea eyes means to live as do the Jews
Everybody understand what I'm saying and what's the context getting circumcised and eating kosher food?
That's the context. Does everybody understand and so I actually I already knew this just from reading because because I was just reading
My Greek New Testament and saw the word you guys in and I was like whoa, that's cool. That's where we get Judea eyes
And I'm just like underlining it and thinking that it was cool, but then so then I typed into an AI this morning
which
Grock is the AI that I use which is the grock is the AI that's built into X
So I typed into grock, and I just said where is the word judaeis come from and what does it mean?
Okay, and this is what grock said the term judaeis are originates from early Christianity particularly in the first century CE
AD, for those of us who are normal, during debates within the early church about the
role of Jewish law and Christian practice.
It derives from the Greek word yudhaizin, meaning to live like a Jew, which is exactly
how the King James translated it.
or to adopt Jewish customs.
The term appears in the New Testament,
notably in Galatians 2.14,
where Paul criticizes Peter
for compelling the Gentiles to Judei eyes
by following Jewish dietary laws and circumcision.
So we can see here that Grock agrees with me 100%,
that that's what it means,
that's how it was always used when I was growing up.
That's how the Greek word is being used in Galatians 2.14. That's how I've always used it
That's what grok says it's mean, but but whenever I posted these pictures of my non kosher feasting
This is what people are saying. Oh, no, that's not what judae eyes means judae eyes is when you make them live by the oral Torah
But telling people to live by the written Torah. That's just Bible
That's the Bible doctrine, it's only having them live by these other rabbinical oral terms.
No man, that's not what it means because there's no oral rabbinical thing in view here in Galatians 2.14.
We're talking about circumcision and diet is what we're talking about.
circumcision and diet. It's exactly what Grock said.
That's the kind of stuff that it was always used about when I was growing up.
And so beware of the Judaizers. My parents
I can picture my dad's face saying this to me 30 years ago.
Beware of the Judaizers, right?
That's a good word. And here's the thing.
We should be patient with people that are vegetarians and vegans.
Because obviously, it's not biblical.
Being vegetarian or vegan is not biblical.
It also doesn't make sense.
Also, virtually everyone I've ever known who went vegan,
you know, their health did not improve.
They typically just started looking a lot puffier, okay?
But here's the thing.
I have patience with the vegetarians because what does the apostle Paul say?
The apostle Paul says, hey, you know, one man believeth that he may eat all things,
another who is weak eateth herbs.
You know, so some people are vegetarian and he's saying, hey, don't just go around
offending people or pissing people off.
I would rather just skip meat than to, you know,
fend people and piss people off.
And seriously, the thing about that is that, you know,
whenever I'm out to eat with someone who is a vegetarian
or a vegan or something, you know,
I'll typically help them order.
Like, oh, here, let's go to this place
where you can find something that works for your diet
or whatever.
And, you know, now we got people that are the opposite,
where they're these radical carnivores
that are super offended by my vegetarian lasagna.
You know and so you know you got both ends of the spectrum and here's the thing
Hey, I'm cool with the carnivores because I usually just eat their bun eat their fries eat everything they leave behind anyway
So so here's the thing is like hey, I'm patient with the carnivores. I'm patient with the vegans
I'm patient with the vegetarians. Hey, I'm cool with the vegans cool with the vegetarians cool with the carnivores
You know what? I'm not cool with I'm not cool with Judy isers
Judy ising is a wicked false doctrine
Needs to be rebuked if necessary use words
But I'm serious because here's the thing, you know the apostle Paul he's saying hey man
Be patient with people who have different views on things, but you know what he wasn't patient with Judaizers
He's like man. I didn't put up with these people's crap for one second
I got up and rebuked Peter in front of everybody
Because Judaizing isn't cool kids
All right, let's move on
I gotta hurry. Oh man, I'm out of time and I got another point. I'm gonna go real fast on this point
Number three, we should use words that make sin exceeding sinful. What are we talking about the right vocabulary?
Here's the right vocabulary
adultery
wrong vocabulary an affair
Right vocabulary for an occasion
Wrong vocabulary, sexual immorality, whatever that means.
Right vocabulary, drunkenness.
Wrong vocabulary, alcoholism.
Right vocabulary, whore, harlot.
Wrong vocabulary, promiscuous.
Right vocabulary, whoremonger.
Okay, right vocabulary, concubine, wrong vocabulary, common law wife, that's not your
wife if you're not married, it's not your common law wife, it's your concubine.
You know, and here's the thing that really drives me nuts is this term partner, eugh.
Some guy, you know, me and Daniel were on the cruise ship.
We were soul-witting on the cruise ship,
and we're at dinner time,
and sometimes they sit you with strangers at dinner,
and this guy is sitting with us,
and he said something about his partner,
and me and Daniel are like, what the, you know?
And, you know, our first thought is this guy's a faggot,
and I'm thinking, bro, you better own an LLC
if you're talking about your partner.
Is that a business partner?
What the heck is that? But what's funny is that sometimes even straight people
Will sometimes refer to their significant other as their partner. So I just told Daniel
Hey, let's just let's just hope that you know, let's give this guy the benefit of the doubt
That he's just calling his girlfriend his partner, you know what I mean, or maybe he's just a cowboy
He's just like howdy partner or something
And then Daniel's like well he's got kind of a little bit of a list though and I'm like yeah
But bro is drunk and that's what he's slurring his speech because he's drunk Daniel
And what we don't know can't hurt us so let's pretend like he's straight so we can enjoy our dinner without throwing up
Especially because it's easy to throw up
when you're mixing vegetable lasagna and shrimp cakes
and two desserts.
Oh, by the way, on the last night of the cruise,
I didn't even end up posting this to X.
I ended up having four appetizers.
I did the quadruple appetizer, if you can,
because I told my daughter, I'm like,
I'm like, that's it, I've been eating too much.
I'm like, one entree tonight, only one.
And then I only did one entree.
But I had four appetizers and the dessert all right. I'm I'm I'm weak. I'm human
Here's a good word sodomite
But sometimes that's not easy enough to understand so that's where we get the word faggot easier to understand
Everybody knows exactly what you're talking about. Here's words. We don't like gay
Gay means happy Don we now are gay apparel have a yabba-dabba do time have a gay old time
Here's terms. I don't use the LGBT community. You know the BLT is a sandwich
I'm turning it into some alternative lifestyle queerdom. That's another good word queerdom
So all that to say this, we want to use the right vocabulary, amen?
We want to use the right words, we want to use words that are number one, biblical, right?
Biblical words are always the best words.
But we can't only speak in biblical words because the Bible doesn't talk about everything.
So sometimes we're going to have to use words outside the Bible.
So if we're going to use words outside the Bible, great!
But let's use words that are easy to understand.
Sometimes non-biblical words can be helpful if they're clear and if they illustrate biblical truth clearly.
So number one, use biblical words. Number two, use easy-to-understand words.
And number three, use words that make sin exceeding sinful, not euphemisms that soften sin and make it sound like it's not that bad.
Like, oh, he had an affair. She had an affair. What is that? That's trying to soften up the sin.
and make it sound like it's not that bad.
No, use the words that make sin exceeding sinful.
Adultery, whoremonger, whore, harlot, right?
These are good Bible words.
Sodomites, queers, fags.
You know, it's funny, we were out soul winning
in the Bahamas this week.
And we're talking to this guy, and he's talking about the sissies.
But I didn't know what he meant, but I guess that's what they call them there in Bahamas.
He said something sissies, and sometimes, you know, they have an accent, you know, some of it's going over your head.
But this guy's talking about the sissies, and then he's like, the faggots!
And I'm like, and he's like, oh man, I'm sorry, I shouldn't use that word.
I'm like, no, go ahead, you're fine.
I'm like, you're among friends.
And then as you know we tried to give him the gospel he wasn't interested in the gospel
He's only into politics as we were walking away that we was he was last heard screaming
That was the last thing we heard from bro as we were walking away, but look want to use the right words
Biblical words words that are clear and easy to understand and words that don't soften sin
Words that make sin exceeding sinful, you know an ugly sin deserves an ugly word
Not some little pretty smooth little word that makes us sound better because it's not, it's not good
Inspired to have word of prayer father. We thank you so much for your word
We thank you so much for this church and Lord God
Thank you for all the great works that you've done in and through us over the last few months of
2025 please help us to continue the momentum that we have right now Lord and and continue
evangelizing and winning souls and preaching the gospel to every creature.
Lord, help us all in our personal lives to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
and help us to continue having our greatest year ever.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.