Now the part of the chapter that I want to focus on is the early part of the chapter where this story is told about Jesus Christ.
He gets into the ship, he goes across the Sea of Galilee, and he's going out of Judea,
and he's going into this other foreign country, as it were, of the Gadarenes.
And it says in verse 2,
When he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit,
who had his dwelling among the tombs, and no man could bind him, no, not with chains,
because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains,
and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces.
Neither could any man tame him.
And always night and day he was in the mountains and in the tombs,
crying and cutting himself with stones.
So here's a man who's demon-possessed, and he has an unclean spirit, the Bible says.
He's hanging around in the graveyard, he's cutting himself, he's naked.
If we read other parts of the Bible, it talks about how he's very fierce and violent.
And we see this man coming and meeting Jesus, and it says in verse 6,
But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him, and cried with a loud voice,
and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou son of the most high God?
I adjure thee by God that thou torment me not.
For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.
So this guy isn't even the one doing the talking.
It's the demons in this guy, the devils in this man that are doing the talking.
And it says in verse number 10,
And he besought him much, that he would not send them away out of the country.
I'm sorry, I skipped verse 9.
And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered saying, My name is Legion, for we are many.
He's basically saying, my name, there's thousands of us.
A legion is six thousand. We don't know how many exactly devils have possessed this man,
but we get an idea just a little later in the story, where it says in verse 11,
Now there was nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding,
and all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them.
And forthwith Jesus gave them leave, and the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine.
And the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea.
They were about two thousand, and were choked in the sea.
And they that fed the swine fled and told it in the city and in the country,
and they went out to see what it was that was done.
And they came to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil,
and had the legion sitting and clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid.
Now, what I want to preach about this morning, I'm going to show you some other stories as well.
This is one story we're going to look at.
The title of my story is this, The Value of a Human Being.
The value of one human being.
Now Jesus Christ here heals this man, gives the gospel to this man.
This man gets saved, he's clothed, he's in his right mind.
He becomes a man who goes around, and if you look later in the passage, it says in verse 19 and 20,
that he basically went out and preached the gospel everywhere he went, in that whole country.
He basically gave the gospel to all the people who lived in Gadara, in the land of the Gadarenes.
He spread the news about Jesus everywhere he went.
He became a great man.
Now, you notice here that the people, when they heard about what Jesus did for this man,
instead of getting excited about it, instead of being happy and glorifying God, saying,
here's a guy who's had a messed up life, he's actually been terrorizing us,
because if you read in Matthew chapter 8, it describes the fact that people couldn't even pass by that way.
They had to go way around this guy because he was so fierce and violent.
And so this guy that was healed, you'd think they would have been happy about it.
You'd think they would have been excited and praising God, and thinking to themselves,
wow, this guy is a miracle, first of all, and also we're rid of this guy.
Now he's actually a good guy.
But notice what it says in verse number 16.
It says, and they that saw it told them how it befell to him that was possessed with the devil,
and also concerning the swine, and they began to pray him to depart out of their coast.
Basically, they want Jesus to leave.
When everybody hears about what happened, because the keepers of the swine,
and you have to stop and think about this story, there are 2,000 pigs,
and there are men who are paid to feed the pigs, to take care of the pigs.
You see, in the nation of Israel at this time, they were not eating pigs, but this is another country.
And of course, pigs produce great meat, great food, and who likes to eat pig meat?
All right, anyway, now I've actually slaughtered a pig in Hungary with my father-in-law,
and so I know a little bit about this, and I'm going to allude to that, but 2,000 pigs are being fed.
Now, my thought was, how much is the value of one pig?
You know, because my son was called the value of a human being. What is the value of a pig?
So I did some research on this, and basically, if I wanted to buy a pig in Arizona right now,
and I'm talking about just the living pig, and I would just, the guy said that we talked to,
that we could shoot the pig ourselves, and then bring it home, but we would have to butcher it ourselves.
We'd have to have somebody else. So this is just for the animal, a full-grown pig that had been raised.
The price was $300 if it's less than 300 pounds. If it's above 300 pounds, the price becomes $350.
When I was in Hungary and we butchered that pig, that pig weighed 329 pounds.
So these are big animals, and you have to stop and think about it.
You can't use every ounce of that pig for meat, but a very large quantity of that 329 pounds,
you're going to be able to eat. You're going to be able to make food with it.
And how much do you pay for meat?
So you have to stop and think about how realistic a $300 price tag on a pig is,
because that would be only, you know, $1 a pound, okay?
And you're getting all this fresh meat that I'm sure was grass-fed, you know, if you read the story.
And so this is good stuff.
Think about this. 2,000 pigs, $300 each, that is $600,000 of property.
You say, oh, the price were different back then. No, they weren't.
Currencies and values of dollars and currencies fluctuate.
But the basic necessities of life cost the same in every generation.
A pig is a pig, a cow is a cow.
And in their terms of money, it would be equivalent to what $600,000 would be today.
And so you have to understand that Jesus sent a half a million dollars of someone else's property
sailing over a cliff and destroyed it.
This is why they sent him away. This is why they said, depart out of our coast.
But you see, these people didn't understand that Jesus healing this man and getting one person saved
was worth more to him than $600,000 of someone's property.
Now the people keeping the pigs were not the owners.
They were hired men. I mean, this was obviously some wealthy person, some investor, some businessman
owned all these pigs. You remember how Job had great herds of cattle?
And the Bible lists these very wealthy and then he had thousands of sheep and thousands of goats
and thousands of oxen. This was the measure of wealth in these days.
And these pigs represented money for somebody.
$600,000 over a half a million dollars that Jesus destroyed.
And I think Jesus trying to show us here, and they didn't get it, but I hope you get it this morning,
that getting one person saved is worth more than $600,000.
It's worth more than any kind of money or property or an animal.
Today people worship animals. They worship and serve the creature more than the creator.
And we have people today who will sacrifice a human being to save the life of an animal, literally.
But you see, an animal has no soul. Jesus Christ did not die on the cross for an animal.
An animal was taken from the dust and will die and go back to the dust where it came from.
But every human being is an individual with a real soul and spirit
created in the image of God. We need to read this story and understand the value
that God puts on a human being. We live in a society where we value things
and we're very materialistic and it's all about houses and cars and money and business.
And yet Jesus Christ said, hey, I'll just say one word. In Matthew chapter 8 he just said the word, go.
And sent these legion of devils into the swine and with one word he sent $600,000 off a cliff.
And he expected people to be happy about it because it was worth it to get this guy saved.
But they didn't get it. They didn't see it. Look at Mark chapter 2.
Actually, I'm sorry, let's read down this a little further. It says in verse number...
Let me find the verse here that I wanted to point out.
Let's look at verse number 18 where it says, and when he was come into the ship,
he that had been possessed with the devil prayed him that he might be with him,
albeit Jesus suffered him not and saith unto him, go home to thy friends
and tell them how great things the Lord had done for thee.
And look at the last phrase, and that had compassion on thee.
Now often when you're reading the four Gospels you'll see Jesus come into contact with people
and it'll say, you know, Jesus beholding him loved him.
Or Jesus looked upon him and had compassion on him.
Over and over again you'll see his love and compassion for an animal, no, for a human being.
For an eternal soul of a person. For money? For things? For buildings? No.
Jesus' concern was with people, human beings.
And you see, as a church, this is where our emphasis ought to be.
Look at verse 20, and he departed and began to publish into Capitalist how great things Jesus had done for him,
and all men did marvel. Look at Mark chapter 2, it's just a few pages back in your Bible.
You see, this is where our emphasis should be as a church.
You see, some people have their emphasis on the material,
and a church can sometimes be more concerned with a building than on winning souls to Christ.
They'll measure their church. The measuring stake will be by the fancy building or the stained glass windows
or how much money is in the account, and they'll brag about it.
I remember I've seen churches so many times where I'll drive down the road and you'll see the advertisement for the church,
and I'm thinking of an independent fundamental Baptist church.
They decided to rent billboards all over the county that their church was in,
and on that billboard was a picture of the empty inside of their auditorium.
That was the billboard. An empty auditorium.
Now is that the greatest thing about that church when nobody's there?
When everybody's gone and the janitor is mopping the floor and it's just completely empty?
It's not about the building.
Come to our building. Come sit in our cool chairs. Come see our art and stained glass windows.
No, come here and be with people who love God, people who believe the Bible,
people who preach the gospel to every creature, people who meditate upon God's word day and night,
people who will lift up their voice and sing out and praise God.
A human being sitting at the piano playing it, not a machine, not a recording, not a cassette tape,
not a synthesizer, not canned music, but a real human being praising the Lord on a stringed instrument.
That's what we need in church, and we need you to lift up your voice and sing out a human being,
not a building, not a machine.
You see, we need to get our priorities as a church and say it's about people, it's about winning souls,
not about material, not about money, not about buildings that we can build or shrines that we can build.
Let's look at Mark chapter 2. Here's a similar story, I think,
only this time it wasn't Jesus that was destroying the property, it was his followers.
Look at verse number 1 of Mark chapter 2. It says,
And again he entered into Capernaum after some days, and it was noise that he was in the house.
And straightway many were gathered together, in so much that there was no room to receive them,
no, not so much as about the door. And he preached the word of them.
So he didn't quite have the right building program. He just jammed everybody in and just preached to them.
I've never seen any place in the Bible where Jesus was really that worried about what building he was in.
It seems like whenever he's preaching, he gets in a boat, pushes it out from the shore,
lets the water carry the sound of his voice, and everybody sits on the seashore.
He's on a hillside, or he's in somebody's house, and they just pack the place out.
And it says here in verse number 3, and of course it was packed with people, he preached God's word to them.
In verse 3 it says,
And they come unto him, bringing one sick of the palsy, which was born of four.
And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the room.
And that was not the reporters that were out front, but that would be if we were at Faithful Word.
No, I'm just kidding. But anyway.
It says, bringing one sick of the palsy, which was born of four.
And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was.
And watch the next phrase.
When they had broken it up, they let down the bed where the sick of the palsy lay.
When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.
You see, these men wanted to get this guy to Jesus.
And they couldn't get to him.
The place was packed.
The doors were jammed up.
They couldn't even peek in through the doors because the doors were filled with people.
And so they had an idea.
They climbed up on the roof.
They carried this guy in his bed.
They carried some kind of a cot or stretcher or bed or whatever type of bed.
They got it somehow up onto the roof.
Then they started to rip out the tiles off the roof.
Right above where Jesus is preaching, they tear a hole in the roof.
And then they have ropes and they lower this guy's bed.
So here's Jesus preaching the Bible.
And all of a sudden this guy just comes lowering down in front of him.
Now that's a strange thing to do.
Now, I'm sure that if you were one of those four people, there's probably one who was more the instigator and the other one's like, are you sure that we should be doing this?
But I guarantee you, it took some faith to do that.
It took some faith to destroy that roof.
And they probably had to pay for it when they were done.
I mean, they're the ones who tore it apart.
They probably had to pay for this person's roof.
They had to come up with the idea.
They had to use the brute strength and force to lift a grown man in his bed onto a roof.
They had to lower it down with the ropes.
They had to do all this, but they did it all because they believed that if they could get him to Jesus, he'd be healed.
And they loved that man so much and they went through that much that they got him to Jesus. They succeeded.
And it says when Jesus saw their faith, see, he didn't heal him right away.
First of all, he dealt with the spiritual first, the most important.
He said, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.
But there were certain of the scribes sitting there and reasoning in their hearts, why did this man speak blasphemies?
So they're not even speaking this out loud. Just in their mind they're thinking, Jesus is blasphemous.
Why does this man speak blasphemies?
And then he says in verse number seven, who can forgive sins but God only?
And they were right about that, but of course Jesus Christ was God in the flesh.
It says in verse eight, and immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he said unto them,
Why reason ye these things in your hearts?
Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say arise and take up thy bed and walk?
And the obvious answer to the question is it's easier to tell them to get up and walk.
It's easier to heal the body.
But he says, but that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins.
He saith to the sick of the palsy, I say unto thee, arise and take up thy bed and go thy way into thine house.
You see, do we think that people are that important?
Do we think that one person is that important?
I mean, Jesus was already preaching to a multitude, that should already be enough, right?
No.
It didn't matter that Jesus was speaking to a multitude, it mattered to one person that wasn't hearing, that needed to get there.
And so that's how we ought to feel about people.
We ought to express concern for the individual, like Jesus did all throughout the Bible.
We could go out all day showing Jesus talking to one person at a time, two people at a time.
And so many times we just want the big crowd or the big number.
Oh, we've got to get on TV and do a big TV thing or a billboard or radio or this.
No, what we need to do is just take our Bible and give one person the gospel.
That's what we ought to do.
That's worth more than $600,000.
That's worth more than a $1,000 roofing repair or the work that it would take to get them there.
One person has that kind of value in the eyes of Jesus Christ and they ought to have that kind of value to us.
Every human being is a real person made in the image of God, not just a statistic or a number or just another body in the building.
No, they matter as an individual.
He said in verse 12,
And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all,
insomuch that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying,
We never saw it on this fashion.
And he went forth again by the seaside, and all the multitude resorted unto him, and he taught them.
And as he passed by, he saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the receipt of custom, and said unto him,
Follow me, and he arose and followed him.
Notice this, verse 14.
Jesus sees what? Just one man.
I mean, he's thronged with crowds. There's multitudes everywhere.
So much that people couldn't even get in to hear him preach.
And yet when Jesus walks by, it says, verse 14,
And as he passed by, he saw Levi.
He sees one person. He's looking at the individual.
Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the receipt of custom, and he said unto him,
Follow me, and he arose and followed him.
And it came to pass that as Jesus sat at meat in his house,
many publicans and sinners sat also together with Jesus and his disciples,
for there were many, and they followed him.
You see, according to verse 15, when you reach the one, that's how you reach the many.
That's how you reach the crowd, by reaching one.
That's how you get the multitude of publicans and sinners.
By finding one publican and sinner,
Levi, the son of Alphaeus, getting him saved, and then that's how you reach the multitude.
How did Jesus reach the multitude of the Kabbalists?
By reaching one man, and then that man went and spread it abroad.
You see, God's plan is for us to reach the individual.
And by reaching the individual, we reach the group.
We don't set out to reach the group.
Then we're not going to reach anybody.
We need to use God's methods that work here of taking the Bible,
and instead of just trying to throw a bunch of pieces of paper out of a helicopter or something,
some mass message,
we need to do it God's way with the Holy Spirit and compassion and love in our heart,
talking to someone one-on-one, giving them the Gospel,
understanding their value as an individual.
What if you as a Christian spent your whole life going to church three times a week,
you read your Bible daily, you prayed daily,
you did the things that you were supposed to do to the best of your ability,
and after 70 years of life, you passed away and you had had one person saved.
Let me tell you something. Your life mattered.
You did something with your life. Your life had value.
Now, if you get 30 people saved or 60 people saved, so much the better.
But guess how you get 60 people saved?
You get one person saved, then a second person, then a third person.
It's a marathon. It's not a sprint.
Christianity is not measured in years. It's measured in decades.
And so you've got to be in it for the long haul and look at people as human beings.
Don't be out soul winning and you're in such a hurry to get to the next.
You just do what you need to do at that door and get that one person saved
because that's a real human being.
You get these people out there who try to do some kind of a mass-produced soul winning.
You know what I mean? And I'll tell you what it is.
It's perverse to sit there and have this idea that you're just going to blow through it or something.
Just, yeah, let's go to the next. No.
That's a real person. And here's what I always say to people.
Why don't you give the gospel to that person as if it was your mother?
What if you have one chance to give the gospel to your unsaved mother
and this was the only time she was going to listen?
How thorough would you be? That's how thorough you ought to be at every door.
Amen.
You ought to be as thorough as if that's your best friend who just came to you and said,
What must I do to be saved?
That's how thorough you ought to be and make sure that they really understand the gospel,
not just saying words that they don't understand.
Hey, take the time necessary to make sure that they understand the gospel
and eternal security of the believer and that it's by grace through faith
and that it's not a work that's being managed through both.
Take the time necessary.
And if you only get one saved, praise God that you got one saved.
You see, it says here that a roof being destroyed was worth it to get a guy saved.
Jesus loved it. He saw their faith.
He praised the four men who brought him for their faith.
Six thousand swine over a cliff? Who cares? So what?
What if they become endangered?
And by the way, let me tell you something.
Have you ever noticed that the animals that are eaten the most
are in the least danger of becoming extinct?
Have you ever noticed that?
I don't think that cows are on the endangered species list.
I don't think that pigs or chickens are on the endangered species list.
Maybe we just need to start eating these animals.
I'm serious.
But anyway, let's go to Genesis chapter 14.
You see, Genesis chapter 14.
You see, it's amazing how, you know, I'm being facetious,
but it's amazing how when man uses animals,
you know, then they end up actually having value
and there's a reason to multiply them.
But anyway, in Genesis 14, and by the way,
I don't think that people should be starving in Africa
because they're not allowed to kill an animal.
They need to kill that thing and eat it
and then get some meat on their flesh, you know,
get some meat on their bones.
And then, you know, hurt them and raise them and multiply them.
You know, obviously, that's the way people have been doing it.
But anyway, in Genesis 14, I'm going to give you this story
because I want to express to you the fact that, you know,
Jesus Christ, we saw, he knew the importance of a person, didn't he?
He knew the importance of a man, one person.
And then we saw that Jesus' disciples and his followers
and the early Christians there, they knew the value
of people over property, didn't they?
They destroyed that roof because they valued the people more.
But you know who else understands this? The devil.
The devil understands this concept.
Now, unfortunately, many Christians today don't understand this.
But Jesus understood it, his disciples understood it,
and even the devil understood it.
Let me give you a story in Genesis 14 to illustrate this.
It says in verse 14,
and when Abraham heard that his brother was taken captive,
this is Genesis 14, 14,
he armed his trained servants born in his own house,
318, and pursued them on the dance.
So Abraham was a very wealthy man,
and he had these servants born in his house.
He also trained them how to fight, how to use weapons,
because of the fact that, you know, they didn't have a police force
and an army.
I mean, back then, people took care of their own situations,
and so he had his own security force, basically.
And basically what happened was, and I'll just give you the background.
Basically, there were these multiplicity of kings
that were kind of kings of little city-states.
You know, these aren't nations, but basically city-states.
There were four kings versus five kings, this war that took place.
And on the one side was Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboam, and Zohar,
these five cities.
And then on the other side, there were four other kings,
Kedorlaomer, and Astereth, and the Zuzims,
and all these other people that we haven't really heard of, okay?
The four kings versus five get in a war.
Now, the Bible said in Genesis 13 that the men of Sodom
were wicked sinners before the Lord exceedingly.
And if you remember, Lot pitched his tent towards Sodom.
Next thing you know, he's living in Sodom.
And so now that this war takes place,
and Sodom and Gomorrah lose this battle,
and they're all taken captive,
Lot and his family are taken captive.
Now, Abraham hears about this, and he doesn't care about,
you know, Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboam,
but he hears about his nephew, Lot,
is one of the POWs with all his family,
all of his money, everything had been taken.
He decides to take his 318 trained servants
and go rescue his nephew and defeat these people.
Now, it says in verse number 15,
and he divided himself against them,
he and his servants by night and smote them
and pursued them unto Hobah,
which is on the left of Damascus.
And he brought back all the goods
and also brought back again his brother Lot
and his goods and the women also and the people.
And the king of Sodom went out to meet him
after his return from the slaughter of Kedorlaomer
and of the kings that were with him
at the valley of Shaveh, which is the king's dale.
And Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine,
and he was the priest of the Most High God,
and he blessed him and said,
Blessed be Abraham of the Most High God,
possessor of heaven and earth,
and blessed be the Most High God,
which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand,
and he gave them tithes of all.
Watch what the king of Sodom says.
Now, the priest Melchizedek, obviously, you know, Jesus Christ, okay,
but the king of Sodom here, look what he says.
And the king of Sodom said unto Abraham,
Give me the persons and take the goods to thyself.
Now, the king of Sodom, obviously, an extremely wicked man,
according to the Bible.
He represents Satan here in the struggle here
between, you know, you've got Jesus Christ on one side
with Melchizedek, and you've got the king of Sodom, Satan.
And Abraham is between these two men here.
They both come.
And it says here, give me the persons
and take the goods to thyself.
And Abraham said to the king of Sodom,
I have left up my hand unto the Lord, the Most High God,
the possessor of heaven and earth,
that I will not take from a thread even to a shoe latchet,
and that I will not take anything that is thine,
lest thou shouldst say, I have made Abraham rich.
And so we see here that the devil's offer to you
is still open, I believe.
And the reason I believe that is because thousands of years later,
Jesus was told the same thing by Satan.
Well, I'll just read it for you.
I don't have to turn there, but in Matthew 4,
he said to Jesus, all these things will I give thee
if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
He said in Luke chapter 4,
all this power will I give thee,
and he showed him all the kingdoms of the world
and the glory of them.
Satan told Jesus, all these power will I give thee
and the glory of them, for it is delivered unto me,
and whosoever I will, I give it.
If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.
You see, the devil is making an offer to you.
Yeah, go ahead, take the goods.
Just give me the persons.
He understood that the people were the valuable thing,
not things.
But you see, so many times, we will fall into the devil's plan
of worshiping things, worshiping money.
The Bible says, no man can serve two masters,
for either he will hate the one and love the other,
or else he will hold to the one and despise the other.
Listen, you cannot serve God and mammon,
and mammon is money.
It says you can't serve God and mammon.
And you see, the devil would love for you to make that trade-off
of sacrificing the people for the things,
sacrificing the souls that you could win to Christ,
the people that you could reach with the gospel,
the people whose lives could be changed,
like the wild man of Gadara,
like the sick of the palsy that was lowered in the bank.
He wants you to be more concerned with goods than people,
more concerned with things than people, than human beings.
You see, today, and there's so many applications with it.
Look at Job, too.
Turn to Job. You're in Genesis. Look at Job.
The very dead sinner of the Bible is the book of Psalms,
and right before Psalms, the book of Job.
Look at Job chapter 2.
You see, the devil understands what the value of a person is.
He'd rather take a soul to hell,
and he'll give you all the money you want.
He'll give you all the fame and power.
And by the way, I believe that many of the most wealthy people today
have literally sold their soul to the devil.
Now, you can believe that or not believe it,
but I believe that the most wealthy people today...
I'm not talking about just rich people who work hard and run businesses.
I'm talking about some of the most evil, wealthy people,
the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds and the Ted Turners
and these people who basically fund a lot of the wickedness in the world today
and fund a lot of horrible things.
They fund a lot of wickedness.
I believe they've sold their soul.
I believe that many of the Hollywood actors and rock stars
have literally sold their souls to the devil
to gain the fame and the prestige.
It's not just that they're good at music.
I know a lot of people who are very talented musicians,
but you know what?
You're not going to succeed in that musical world.
You're not going to succeed in that Hollywood world
unless you bow down and worship Satan.
That's the truth.
I mean, I've seen all kinds of talented musicians.
I've seen extremely talented actors and models and different people,
and they can't make it in that world.
I've known Christians who went into modeling,
and they had to get out of it because they said,
that world is so evil and wicked.
It's filthy and disgusting.
My cousin was a successful model.
I mean, we'd see him on TV.
We'd see him on the newspaper ads.
We'd see him in magazines.
I mean, he's very successful,
but then it came time that his sister was being recruited,
and he said, no, I don't want her to come into this world that I'm in,
and he got out of it.
You know, he didn't like it either.
He said it was disgusting and filthy and vile.
You must sell your soul to Satan to make it in many of these industries.
It's true.
Job 2-4 says this.
This is Satan speaking.
I mean, this gives us into the mind of Satan here.
Satan answered the Lord and said,
skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.
You see, he understood that the life of a human being
has worked more than any possessions.
I mean, the most wealthy people today
would give all their money to live forever.
And the devil knows that.
Jesus knows that.
And Christians ought to know that,
that it's people that matter, not things.
In 2 Peter 3, toward the very end of the Bible,
2 Peter, just a few books before Revelation,
2 Peter 3, let me give you another scripture,
Luke 12-15, and he said unto them,
take heed and beware of covetousness.
Covetousness is the desire for things that belong to someone else,
greed of money and things.
Take heed and beware of covetousness, Jesus said,
for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things which he possesses.
See, that's not what life is about.
It's not about things.
It's not about wealth and money and possessions and goods.
The devil knows that. Jesus knows that.
Look what it says in 2 Peter 3, 10.
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night,
in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise,
and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.
The earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up.
Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved,
what manner of persons ought ye to be
in all holy conversation and godliness?
Looking for and hastening unto the coming of the day of God,
wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved,
and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.
Nevertheless, we, according to his promise,
look for new heavens and a new earth where it dwelleth righteousness.
He says, in light of the fact that your car will one day be burned up,
in light of the fact that your house will one day be burned up,
in light of the fact that your wardrobe will one day be burned up,
in light of the fact that your shoe collection, ladies,
will one day be burned up,
in light of the fact that everything that you own and possess
will one day be gone and dissolved, literally.
He says, what manner of persons do you think that you ought to be?
The type that are just always grasping for more?
The type that are too busy to serve God,
too busy to attend church because they're out trying to get more, more, more?
We ought to understand that people's souls are more important
than what we possess or what we own or having nice things.
You know, not only that, but just on a more practical note,
the Bible's clear that children, the Bible says, are a heritage of the Lord,
and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth, the Bible says.
Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.
They shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.
You see, if we viewed children as a blessing from God the way that the Bible says it,
you know, a lot of people wouldn't be making the trade-off that they make right now where they say this.
They say, oh, you know, we can't afford to have children.
And so that human being that could have existed,
that child that could have been born and could have been brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,
could have been a great soul-winning Christian, could have been a great preacher,
could have been a great Christian, a great father, a great man, a great woman.
That person who could have been a great leader will never exist
because you thought that it was more valuable to drive the SUV or drive the fancy sports car
or to have the big fancy house, and you just couldn't afford to bring children into this world.
And so basically you're going to have to stand back and say, it's more important to me to live in comfort and wealth.
See, I'm not going to make that trade-off. I'd rather trade-off the goods for the persons.
And see, the devil wants you to trade-off. He'll say, wait, no, no, no.
You take the goods, just give me the persons, you filthy sodomite.
You know, that's what the King of Sodom did. Give me the persons.
You take all the goods. I just want the people. And that's the devil's cry today.
And I'll say, no, you have the goods, devil. You take all the goods to yourself, Satan.
You take all your junk. I'll say to Abraham, I'm not going to take from you a thread or a shoe latchet.
He said, I'm not going to take one shoelace from you.
He said, I don't want what you have, King of Sodom. I don't want what you have to offer.
I don't want your goods. I don't want your things. Hey, I just want to reach people.
That's what we ought to say with our life.
You see, we need to stop being brainwashed that having children is somehow a bad thing.
And that's what people think. People are almost apologetic for having children.
Because they're overpopulating the world.
You know what, whoever thinks the world's overpopulated needs to come to work with me.
Because Scott and I, for example, just drove, we drove 3,250 miles in 71 hours, literally.
We left church on Wednesday night at 8 p.m.
And we got back last night at 7 p.m., 71 hours later.
And we drove 3,250 miles and did five jobs.
So we worked for about probably nine hours.
And then we drove 3,250 miles.
You say, when did you sleep? That's a good question.
Well, we traded off.
I mean, that car, that car was just running.
I mean, the car stopped only a couple times.
You know, we stayed in a hotel one night and got a good night's sleep.
Another time we pulled over into a rest area for less than three hours.
Other than that, we did not stop. We worked and we drove nonstop.
And Scott learned a valuable lesson.
That California is empty.
And it's the most populated state in America.
Was it pretty empty, Scott?
I mean, it looked like just rolling green hills and farms.
It's empty. I mean, you've got a few mega cities that are packed with people.
But I mean, that whole state, I mean, from Sacramento and upward,
there are basically two small towns.
You've got Eureka and you've got Reading.
Probably both about the size of Flagstaff in size, each of them.
Other than that, I mean, you've just got beautiful forests.
I mean, there's nothing.
And then from about Sacramento down to the grapevine,
you've got nothing but farms, just farmland.
Farms, farms, from coast to border.
Just farms, farms, farm, vineyards, all kinds of farms.
Then, you know, you get down below the grapevine and you've just got an empty desert
that, you know, looks a lot like Arizona in ways.
Just a lot of just desert, just desolate wilderness.
And that state is empty.
And you know what? That's the most populated state.
Try New Mexico. Try Texas. Good night.
Texas is empty.
And even the East Coast, which you think, oh, really populated area,
which it is a populated area.
But drive the East Coast.
Drive from Baltimore to New York to Boston.
It's empty.
There's all kinds of space. There's all kinds of room.
It's a big lie to get you to think that the world's overpopulated,
that it can't handle it.
No, it's just certain places are overpopulated
and people are being abused by abusive government
and wicked policy that's starving their people to death.
It has nothing to do with the fact that there's not enough space
and not enough resources.
People say, oh, don't use up the water. We're going to run out of water.
Where's it going to go? Have you ever seen that chart?
Where it goes down the mountain, through the rivers, into the sea,
and then it evaporates off the sea, forms clouds, comes over here,
rains down again, and it's a cycle.
And it's cleansed in that cycle.
All the salt and all the minerals and things stay in the ocean,
and it's evaporated just in the form of H2O, cleansed through the process.
God knows what he's doing.
God said be fruitful and multiply.
God never said, but woe there, tiger, when you get to a certain point.
The Bible said God gave unto he-man fourteen sons and three daughters.
God gave unto he-man fourteen sons and three daughters.
And praise God for it.
Now, maybe God only gives you one, two, three children.
But to sit there and say, well, I'm not going to have children because I can't afford it,
what you're really saying is you can't afford to live like a king and have children.
And what you're really saying is things are more important to me than people.
You see, I would not trade any of my five children for any gadget or fancy car or fancy house or vacation.
I wouldn't trade any of them.
And you know what I say to people when people act like I have too many kids?
I only have five, which I don't think that's even a lot.
I'm only 28 years old and I have five and I don't think that's a lot.
But you know what I always say to people?
I say, okay, well, which of my children should I have not had?
Which one do you want me to get rid of?
Oh, I like them all.
Oh, well, so do I.
That's why I had them all.
You know?
In fact, you know, I think I'll have more because I like them so much.
Because I think that they're valuable.
Because they have great value to me.
Because I love them and because they're more important to me than money.
You say, oh, how are you going to feed them all?
God will supply all my need according to his riches and glory.
And also I might have to drive 3,250 miles in 71 hours every once in a while.
You know, that's part of the end of the bargain.
But the point is, you know, we need to get our priorities right.
And not let this materialism that basically is the God of America also dominate our thinking.
And not let the God of environmentalism dominate our thinking.
The God of worldliness and money and covetousness, mammon.
We can't serve God and mammon.
We need to decide people are what matters, not animals, not things.
And you know what?
If I believed that there was no God and all this evolution and spontaneous generation and the Big Bang
and animals just came from nowhere and then they evolved, you know.
If I believed in all that, then I guess I'd be an environmentalist too.
Because I'd have to be, I'd have to substitute for the God that they say doesn't exist.
So I'd have to step in and, you know, run the environment.
But you know, I believe in God.
And the Bible says in Genesis chapter 8 that until Jesus Christ comes again,
there will be sea time, harvest, morning, evening, winter, summer, all the way until the end.
That's what he said.
He runs it. He controls it.
And you know, all the animals have come back in the new heaven and the new earth.
And you say, well, we've got to preserve the species.
It's going to be burned up, my friend.
That species will be burned up and dissolved.
It's going to be burned up and dissolved.
And I don't think we should be trashing things.
I mean, you know, it makes me sick when people throw trash out the window.
You know, I'm not talking about just being a slob, you know,
or dumping a bunch of toxic chemicals, you know, where somebody lives.
I mean, that's wrong to harm someone with your waste and your toxins and your garbage.
That's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about this worship.
And by the way, you know, and I'm getting way off on a tangent on this political rant that I'm on right now.
But you know what? The government is the biggest polluter in America anyway.
The U.S. government does more polluting than any private business, any private individual.
You know, and it's their policies that cause the most pollution
because they set limits and they allow people to pollute.
They allow people to pollute and make their neighbors smell all this disgusting smell.
When if we had a real legal system, it would be,
hey, if this is my property, I shouldn't smell your junk from my house
and it shouldn't be creeping onto my property
or you can't dump it into a river that goes through my property.
You know, we got it all wrong.
And it's a religion today where people, instead of worshiping God,
instead of right and wrong being, hey, I'm going to live a clean life,
I'm going to keep myself pure, I'm going to keep my mind pure,
I'm not going to lie, I'm not going to steal, I'm not going to commit adultery,
I'm not going to look upon a woman to lust after her in my heart,
I'm going to read my Bible and pray and worship the true God.
Instead of that being morality, morality is I'm going to turn off the water when I brush my teeth.
It's like a substitute for God's morality.
I'm going to be good to animals.
I knocked on the door of somebody and said,
do you know for sure if you die today, you go to heaven?
They said, yes, because I care for animals.
Who's been told that before? Put up your hand.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven people have been told that.
I have taken in 11 stray cats. I know I'm going to heaven.
This is the warped society that we live in,
where people say that when the canine dog of the police officer dies,
they say a police officer died.
They say a police officer was killed in the line of duty.
It's an animal.
And they don't care about people, they care about animals.
They worship animals.
They think that morality is being good to animals,
people for the ethical treatment of animals.
People, you know, we need to love animals and take care of animals.
No, we need to love people.
Give people to God. Don't save the whales.
Save people. Save souls.
Whales do not have a soul. People do.
And so we need to get off that.
And you say, well, you know, I have offended.
You think you're going to tell me that an animal is more important than a person?
You know, I think it's my brother who said, you know,
he said he didn't like the fact that they were ripping the beaks off of chickens or something.
But he said, you know what, he said, you know,
or that they lived in a box where they couldn't even move around
and they were in the dark 24 hours a day.
You know, they're like these tortured chickens or whatever that you eat at KFC.
Kentucky Fried Cruelty or something. I saw Billboard about it.
But you know what, you know what, this is what my brother said, though.
He said, why don't we solve all the injustices to humanity, though?
You know what I mean? Before we start worrying about a tortured chicken,
why don't we stop humans from being tortured?
You know what I mean? That'd be a good place to start.
Instead of worrying about an animal.
I'll close with this.
Jesus Christ said to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
Compassion and love for man is what motivates us.
Yes, we want to obey God's commands.
But really the reason that I'm going to be out soul winning and not need doors
is truly because I have compassion and love for the individual that I'm talking to at that moment.
That's what motivates me to keep going.
You may have things that motivate you, and there are all kinds of good motivations
to go out and serve God.
One of those motivations is the fact that God will bless you.
And that's a good motivation.
I mean, that's a righteous motivation to go out and say, I want God to bless me. I'm going to obey God.
But another thing that automotivates you is love and compassion for the individual.
You see, I never get tired of soul winning.
Wouldn't you think soul winning would get boring?
Telling the same story to people, preaching a lot of the same verses over and over again.
I mean, how many thousands of times every week for the last 11 years have I gone out and not doors, not doors, not doors.
But you know why it's never getting boring?
Because it's a different person at every door. That's why.
That's what keeps it new. That's what keeps it fresh.
That's what keeps it alive is when you view people as real people, not just, here we go again, here's another door.
Nope. If you get it in your heart, hey, this is a living, breathing, flesh and blood human being that Jesus Christ died on the cross for.
That's worth more than $600,000.
If I had to sacrifice $600,000 to get them saved, I would do it.
And so the Bible is teaching us that we have a love and a compassion on the individual.
Every human being that's created and fashioned by God in his mother's womb.
Don't just look at them and say, oh, they're ugly. Oh, they're stupid.
No. Love that, but get them saved.
God created them. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we love you and thank you so much for these great stories that we can read.
And get an insight into how you feel about these things, dear God.
I just want to praise God right now for that guy who got saved, dear God.
I know that those people in that town didn't really get it, but I get it.
And so thank you for doing that miracle, dear God. I'm glad I could read about it.
And thank you for healing the man that was sick of the palsy as well.
And thank you for saving his soul, which is more important.
And help us, dear God, to get our values in line with your values, dear God.
Even the devil gets it. He's been around a long time.
Help us to get it, dear God, and understand it's not the goods and the things about it, it's the people.
And we love you and thank you for everything you do for us.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.