We'll be back in a minute, we'll be back in a minute.
We really like the singing, we might do a couple extra songs, but who wants to lead a song tonight?
Brandon, you're going to be number one.
If anybody else wants to lead a song, can anyone lead one?
Anybody else want to lead one?
Sam, you want to do one?
I just want to make sure I get everybody that wants to lead one.
Anybody else want to lead a song tonight?
No? Do we need one more?
You can do the last one. I'm going to lead a couple songs too.
It's just going to be a song leader's choice.
So we have that little tonight so you can do whatever one you want.
I want to do 162, so let's just turn to 162.
I'm just going to leave a couple extra ones and then we'll just go to Brandon.
We'll do Tanner, then Samuel, and then we'll go our Bible reading because somebody
Brother Joe, what chapter are we doing?
1st and 15th.
162, 2, God be the glory.
On the 1st, 2, God be the glory.
Great victory.
But I'm going to give them some extra questions, but thanks to everybody who participated.
And of course our purple heart goes to Pastor Reyes.
He's still here, he's still kicking, and he's the strongest of us all.
He's still willing to practice tonight.
Thank you for him and thanks for coming out here.
We appreciate your fellowship and your friendship.
See he is
Potentially needing if someone is willing to go down with them on he's to just a drive down with them tomorrow morning
And then I'll pay to fly you back. I'll give you money for
You know gas and food and everything like that if any of you see you guys are gonna be one of you guys
Want to do that just approach me right up to the service
Is it like to get that lined up when I get you a fly?
Someone can help out pass or is that would be a big blessing
So, we're going to just go ahead and do our normal service for the brand that's going to lead,
then for the Tanner, then for the Sam, then Joe, you're going to read verse 15 for us,
and then after the service, you'll lead the last song.
We'll probably take a five-minute break or so, and then we'll do, like, a few-day opportunity this evening as well.
Go ahead, Brandon, come on down, and I can leave this in over here.
Turn to page 402, our best.
Pastor Reyes is giving you the best.
Page 402, our best.
All right, all the first.
Hear ye the master's call.
Amalek did to Israel how he laid weight for him in the way when he came up from the street.
Now go and smite Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have and spare them not,
but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ox.
And Saul gathered the people together and numbered them into lamb,
200,000 footmen and 10,000 men of Judah.
And Saul said unto the Kenites, go depart, get you down from among the Amalekites,
lest I destroy you with them. For ye showed kindness to all the children of Israel when they came up out of Egypt.
So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites. And Saul spoke the Amalekites from Abila until
thou comest assured that it is over against Egypt. And he took Agakim of the Amalekites alive,
But Saul and the people spared Agai, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the batlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, that would not early destroy them, but everything that was vile and refused, that they destroyed utterly.
Then came the work of the Lord unto Samuel, saying, It repented me that I had set up Saul to be king.
And when Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning, it was told Samuel the same.
Saul came to Carmel, and behold, he set him up a place, and is gone about, and passed on, and gone down to Gilgall.
And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou, the Lord, I have performed the commandment of the Lord.
And Samuel said, What needed then is bleeding of the sheep in my ears, and the loudening of the oxen which I hear.
And Saul said, they have brought them from the Amalekites
for the peoples.
They are the vest of the sheep and of the oxen,
to sacrifice them for the Lord thy God,
and the rest of them are to be destroyed.
Then Samuel set up a saw, stayed,
and I will tell thee what the Lord had said to me this night.
And he said unto him, say on him, and Samuel said,
when thou wast little in thy own sight,
wast thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel,
and the Lord and none can be king over Israel.
And the Lord sent thee on a journey and said,
Go and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites,
and fight against them until they be consumed.
Wherefore, then, disdain not obey the voice of the Lord,
but disly upon the spoil, and disevil in the sight of the Lord.
And Saul sent out to Samuel, yeah,
I have obeyed the voice of the Lord,
and have done the way which Lord sent me,
and have brought aid out in the kingdom of Melod,
and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites.
But the people took of the spoiled sheep and oxen,
the chiefs of the things which should have been
only destroyed, the sacrifice of the Lord,
like God and Gilgail.
And Samuel said,
Hath the Lord has great delight in burnt offerings
and sacrifices as it obeyed the voice of the Lord?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice
and to harken within the fathom rams.
For rebellion is as a sin of witchcraft
and stubbornness is as an equally and idolatry.
Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord,
he hath also rejected thee.
from being king.
And so I'll sit on sandal, I have sinned,
I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord
and I worked because I feared evil and obeyed their voice.
Now therefore I've ready pardoned my sin
and turn again with me that I worship the Lord.
And Samuel said unto Saul, I will not return with thee, for thou has rejected the work of the Lord, and the Lord hath rejected thee from being king over Israel.
And as Samuel turned about to go away, he laid hold upon the skirt of his mantle in a rent, and Samuel said unto him, the Lord hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbor of mine, that is better than thou.
Also the strength of Israel will not lie or repent, for he is not a man that he should repent.
Then he said, I have sinned, that honor me now I have created you before the elders of my people,
and before Israel, and turn again with me, that I may worship the Lord that I got.
So Samuel turned again with after Saul, and Saul worshiped the Lord.
Then said Samuel, bring ye hither to me Agat, the king of the Amalekites,
and Agat came unto him delicately, and Agat said, surely the bitterness of death is as
And Samuel said, as thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women.
And Samuel hewed egg-eyed pieces before the Lord and gilded out.
Then Samuel went to Ramam and saw what up to his house and give the other saw.
And Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death.
Nevertheless, Samuel mourned for Saul, and the Lord repented that he had made Saul king over Israel.
you for Pastor Rahab Lord, pray to fill them with your Holy Spirit.
It features your word, Lord, to help us to listen and be attentive.
In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
Amen.
I got it. Thanks.
So normally I have a clock and I try to stay at it an hour.
Thanks, man.
I was sitting right there next to Brother Billy and I saw that Pastor Shelley went well over the hour
And I was like man, it's nice when you can preach a long hour because I literally I can see the faces in some of our congregation
I'm like, I'm almost done. Don't worry about it
But getting an hour serving is actually really really hard. So
You know, it is what it is
But a couple of things before I get started first of all I want to say thank you to Pastor Shelley and actually steadfast in general for
Just being so warm and kind and, you know, just welcoming, it's a great brotherhood you guys have here.
I heard about the Mighty Man's Conference for years.
Pastor Thompson invited me twice and then he was so busy starting churches that he never got me the info.
So it was, you know, I finally got the invite directly from Pastor Shelley.
Pastor Thompson, when I went up in like 2021,
brother Brandon, you remember,
we were playing flag football and I fell on this shoulder
and I dislocated the rib,
but they popped it back into place,
but this one's gonna require a lot more work.
So maybe I need to stop playing sports
at any of these events where I go to.
I just gotta hang up my cleats.
We were talking about Michael Jordan and he never got hurt.
You know, just, you know, not like that.
So,
Anyways, but the couple of things, yesterday Pastor Shelly preached a sermon, and a couple of things really stood out to me and that's the reason I'm actually here right now, you know, I know you guys would have been well, you guys would have replaced, you know, the preaching, it's not about me, but just like that hymn that you picked, we've got to give our best to the Lord, right?
I mean, this is a light affliction for what we're going to, you know, have in glory.
And I learned a long time ago, the only way that I learned to say what you were actually
saying yesterday, I just wanted to give it to you because it's easy for me to remember,
is my mentor at business many, many years ago always said there's only two things you
can control.
because you know when you're young you try to you tend to get in your head and he's like your
attitude and your activity. I can't control the circumstances of my life. I can't even control
like that I tripped over and basically ruptured my clavicle, but what I can do is control the
fact that I'm here right now, right? Those are the things and the activity I'm going to do like I
can sit and you know I know I'm kind of playing on that but I could have sat there and moped and
believe me like when you guys were all gone it was quiet in here I had plenty of opportunity to
You don't want it to suck.
I could just go in the restroom and just cry my eye out.
And the temptation is always there.
I mean, we're human.
We're flesh.
But the Lord's given us a plan. He's given us a purpose and we have to fulfill it and it's not Joel Steve's purpose
Just I just want to make sure that I don't know who was making in a reference to that
But what I want to focus on today is right here in first Samuel 15 the title of my sermon is called
Hue him down and it's just about the fact that that word really some like a word that just stands out to me
You know, I don't know maybe I was talking to a couple of brothers last night
It's hard to believe but English is my second language and on occasion it still is my second language
You know, I do sometimes have to like look at a word and then look it up and then I'll go to my wife
She's white and I'll be like honey. What does this word really mean?
Like you know better than I do and all this stuff
But the reason I brought this is I don't I didn't really know what I was gonna preach when I was invited and then brother Phillip
Came to visit our church
Hmm
Like a couple months ago, and we're I took him out to dinner and we were we were talking to dinner
And I said hey brother Philip. I'm gonna be at the the measure treat
And he said, so it's your fault if this is the way it is.
Because I probably would not have preached something like this,
but I had to mull it over and over and over.
Because he's like, well, you better bring a really good sermon.
You better bring a hard one.
And I was like, great.
Now the pressure's really on.
So in a way, maybe that's why the Lord distracted me,
because then I wouldn't be so nervous.
And then the other thing, where did I put my phone?
Oh, I put it up here.
Is that one of the things that's actually really hard
The trials, the way that I ended up becoming a preacher and the way that I ended up latching
on to the new IFB in a way like wanting a friendship and fellowship with like-minded
believers is not, I was never directly involved with like Faithful Word Baptist or
Sher Foundation or at the time, like I just watched from the outside in like many of you have
before you actually became part of a member of a church at Steadfast or any of the other churches,
And so then the other thing that makes it difficult
sometimes to come in a city like this is how do you relate?
You know, I don't have the battles you guys have.
You mean I've had battles,
I just might have been way more private.
I know what I've dealt with, my wife, my family,
some of my closest friends.
But mine's not as visible, right?
Nobody's protesting our church right now.
Nobody's like blowing us up like Pastor Mejia
or whatever else people do.
On occasion we'll get like a meme.
Facebook post or YouTube comment, but nothing like, you know,
some of the voicemails that pastor Oz has played, it just hasn't escalated to that.
Not from lack of trying. I mean, we preach the word of God unequivocally.
It's just, you know, that's where the Lord has led it. And.
Maybe the Lord, I'm just trying to find the positive
and everything, right?
The Bible says, a friend loveth at all times
and a brother's born of adversity.
Well, at least now I have a battle scar with you guys, right?
So, you know, we can relate on something.
And at the end of the day, that's what we're here for, right?
We want strong men.
We want strong men to lead.
And one of the reasons that I am actually preaching,
regardless of how uncomfortable I am,
is because I have a son.
My son knows I'm hurt and he's watching right now and I want him to know that hey, there's no excuses
You show up no matter what right? You got to do the job
And if you're not willing to do the job then you better figure it out right because we're men
So a couple of things we're really gonna focus here the longest part
I do have a long intro and then the points will just come
But we're gonna focus on that word hue and my four points come from the definition of the word hue or hued
Hue down it's used quite a bit in the Bible
in different contexts. But I mean, I really love what Samuel does there, right? He hues down
agag. Like, he doesn't let them get away and hewing down right there in that context. He's
chopping them up. Like, that's pretty gruesome, right? For a preacher, you know, we were talking
earlier, Pastor Oz got a lot of flak for preaching that sermon, right? Where he said,
I mean, imagine if he would have been like,
I'm just gonna take this axe and chop him up
and then send him all across the country
so that everybody knows what not to do
with this automite, right?
That's really our heritage.
That's where we come from, right?
If we're men of God, if we're preachers,
God wants us to do the most extreme.
Now,
I know people are watching. I'm not telling you to go grab an ox, and this is a spiritual battle now, right?
So we need to get a spiritual axe, the spiritual sword, and then we need to hew down, and there's a couple applications for that.
But going there in the intro, you're there in first Samuel, before I get into this section right here.
Go to 1 Samuel and we're there in verse in chapter go to chapter 8
I want to set up a couple of things before we do this because this actually came to me just
Yesterday or the day before
The bad thing about writing a sermon
Before you get here is if you're driving don't don't write a sermon four hours before you get on a car
Because then you have four hours to think about all the things that you want to change on it
So then a lot of things have changed right but in first Samuel 8 if you'll go there in first Samuel 8 and verse 5
It says and and said unto him
Behold thou are old so the elders of the city are coming to
Samuel right this is where they're asking for a king and they're calling on and said and said unto him behold
Thou are old and thy sons walk not in thy ways now make us a king to judges like all the nations
But the thing displeased Samuel now Samuel took it personally, which you know, I mean that makes sense, right?
He's a human
and but he also took it personally because he knows what it means to the Lord like he really
loved the Lord and it says and when they said give us a king to judge us and Samuel prayed unto the
Lord and the Lord said unto Samuel harken unto the voice of the people and all that they say
unto thee for they have not rejected thee
but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.
According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt,
even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me and served other gods, so do they also unto thee.
Now therefore, hearken unto their voice, how be it, yet protest solemnly unto them,
and show them the manner of the king that shall reign over them."
So he's like, hey, give in.
but just remind them, in other words, preach hard
about how stupid they're being, right?
It's like protest and let them know
there's a bunch of morons
and that they shouldn't be doing that.
And we know obviously if you read through the chronicles
and kings, it didn't end well for them, right?
I mean, even though you had some good kings
like Josiah and Asa, it just was a precipitous decline
all the way through, right?
And what it made me think of is, you know,
Pastor Shelley, Stetfast, you guys have been through a lot.
I mean, I've only heard snippets, I don't talk to,
I know, contrary to popular belief in my circle,
people think that I'm best friends
with like Pastor Anderson and Pastor Shelley
and that I can just show up to their house unannounced
and you know, go in their pantry.
I mean, I've literally had weird conversations like that.
I'm like, you know how little I talk to these guys?
Like every blue moon, you know, there's a random text.
Sometimes it will text and then not answer each other
for, you know, months at a time.
It's just, you know, life is happening, right?
Samuel's rejected, but what who do they really reject? They rejected God, right?
And like the way that I saw this progression is you guys have been, you know
You guys are mad because a lot of people have rejected God, right?
And it started out when Pastor Shelley moved
To steadfast who rejected Fannin and you know some other people we won't name and then later on he the first church was handed over
to a church that is in Florida somewhere,
you know, boiling them, and what happened?
They reject it, right?
Even though they're doing their thing,
they're lying, they're rejecting the heart truths of life.
Look, there's a lot of Baptist out there
that preach the truth.
but then they don't preach everything in the truth, right?
I don't have a challenge with the sad part about why we don't associate with other Baptists
isn't the gospel message, it's the fact that they're not willing to preach the entire Council of God, right?
I mean, one of the main points yesterday was that our conversation should be on the Word of God.
It's our words that matter, right?
People get all up in arms because someone might say, let's go, Brandon, I'm not gonna...
That's not my style, right?
But...
You're only offended. Yeah, but you're only offended because you've not read the Bible
I mean honestly if you've read the but look English is my second language
And I've read this enough to know that you're an idiot if you get offended when someone preaches the word of God
Hard right like it's it's basic English like even someone like myself can understand it like I mean come on
You know, it's not like I'm doing some PhD
Dissertation on the molecular structure of the world and giving you like protons and whatever. It's just basic English
Yeah, I mean, are there some parts that are difficult to understand?
Maybe, yes, you know, but not everything in the Bible is difficult.
Now, go over to 1 Samuel 11, and we start to see this progression here with the kings.
You know, it starts out really, I mean, Samuel, I mean, Saul starts out good,
but he quickly just messes up. Like, it didn't even take him that long, right?
Go to 1 Samuel 11, and right there in verse 15, at the end of 1 Samuel says,
They made Saul king before the Lord, before the Lord in Gilgog, and there they sacrificed
the sacrifices of peace, the peace offering before the Lord.
And there Saul and all the men of Israel rejoiced greatly.
So remember, there's a, basically there's going to be an attack
and the people are like, hey, give us seven days.
Saul gets wind of this and he's like, hey, that's funny
because he hues down what an oxen and sends it out.
And he says, hey, whoever doesn't come to our aid,
me and Samuel, what I just did to this oxen,
I'm going to do
to you like that's your punishment which is interesting because that's the end of 1 Samuel 15
and then go to verse 1 of chapter 12 it says in Samuel said unto all Israel behold I have
hearkened unto your voice in all that ye said unto me and have made a king over you and so we see
Who what ends up ultimately disobeying who God we just saw that right rebellious is a sin of witchcraft
And what does that make you think of right?
Pure words we have a lot of the members that came over from pure words immediately you anointed
Pastor who and right and he's no longer around because
Sometimes it's quick if you look the progression is very very quick and I didn't mean a title
I mean honestly that was I have a whole other thing
But as I was thinking about it, you know, there is an application to be made there
Sometimes you just annoyed people and they're just not the ones, you know
Sometimes you're gonna get friendships that you you lead someone to Christ. They show up to church
They're zealous and you know in my day we used to call them a flash in the pan
They're in one day and they're gone the next.
And it's what I was telling Pastor Shelley.
I agree with what he says.
You just got to get used to the fact that human nature is human nature.
And people are by nature sinners.
And so more likely than not, they're going to let you down.
That's why the group gets smaller, but it also gets tighter, right?
It's just part of life.
And then go over to 1 Samuel 16 before we go back to Samuel 15.
The Bible says,
And he sent and brought him.
Now he was rooty and withal of a beautiful countenance
and goodly to look on.
And the Lord said,
Arise, anoint him, for this is he.
Then Samuel
Took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brethren and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David
From that day forward so Samuel rose up and went to Ramon
This is of course the anointing of David
But what I love here and I just preached on this over I'm going over through the book of Ecclesiastes
But we see there it says but the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul
And an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him, and Saul's servant sent him behold now an evil spirit from God troubleeth thee.
And it's interesting how the Lord sometimes takes the things that you don't like and he punishes you with those things, right?
He was jealous of, not, well before he was even jealous of David, he's just rebellious.
He's got an evil spirit, meaning he's just not doing the things that he's supposed to do.
And there's a couple examples we'll look at, and what does that make you think of?
Hey, you can't quit anointing people, and you can't quit doing the job, God doesn't do that.
Right? He's like, well, Samuel, I mean, Saul's gone.
Next right and who who do we have now pastor Oz who's just a great preacher?
I mean he's got they're doing great
I'm like man
I wish I would have come up with some of this stuff because then if you do it
You're just kind of stealing ideas. He did the SWAT thing, you know who's seen that right where if there's if Houston's like
Crime City, and so you're like do I do it or do I not because then you know it's a copycat of course
We want a variation of that, but it's good to get good ideas like that, right?
And if you ever listen to Pastor Oz, he's you know, he really is a fun preacher to listen to he's got really
He's really good with his words, but he's also really good with his doctrine
So even though there's been a lot of loss there's been a lot of gay right and that wasn't that's not the sermon
But I figured might as well just touch on that a little bit
And what I see here, when we're there in verse 15,
you know, what happens in verse 15,
he chops up Agag, and then the Lord still has to get onto him
because he's doing what he's mourning Saul, right?
And I'm not saying that you guys mourned a long time,
but you probably mourned.
But this is why these are here in the Bible, right?
Because the Bible tells us God doesn't, God's like, hey,
We got stuff to do like we ain't got time to mope around right it's kind of the like with a message yesterday
You can go to your room and cry about it, but tough cookies
I mean I feel like man. This is horrible right the next couple months. I mean I have a long journey ahead of me
It's probably six months to a year before I fully recover
I could mope about it, but you know who's not moping about it God
It's not like the world's gonna stop because somebody broke their shoulder or has cancer
And I mean I don't wish that on anybody
But we've got to keep fighting the good fight because things happen in life, right?
This is nothing you guys have your own issues. You guys got things that you're dealing with we got to keep going, right?
And sometimes
What happens though what the encouragement here is that sometimes, you know, we're swinging wildly after the fact, right?
And so the we're blunting that blade
He chops up and he hues down Agag and then he immediately goes into mourning and what God does is God's the one that sharpens the strike.
when we're at a loss, you know, it makes me think of, like, Elijah.
I mean, Elijah, remember, he kills the prophets and then immediately he runs away from a woman.
You know, talk about sometimes letting women get in your life. He's like,
hey, he's making fun of them. He chops them all up. And then,
Jezebel's like, I'm going to kill you and he has to run away. Who restores them? The Lord Jesus
Christ, right? God said, hey, stop mourning Saul. Like, I've already replaced them. We've
right? And that's really kind of the lesson that I want to point out here.
So let's go back to first Samuel 11. We're going to be here for a little bit
and then I'll give you the four points, but in first Samuel 11,
a couple of things we see in verse 7.
We see there and it says and he took a yoke of oxen and he hewed them into pieces and sent them throughout all the
Coast of Israel by the hands of messengers saying whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel
So it shall be done unto his oxen and the fear of the Lord fell on the people and they came out with one consent
Hey at one point he was actually being right and he was preaching hard and people feared the Lord
You know, a lot of people get offended with heart preaching, but the one thing that heart preaching does is it reminds you that you need to fear the Lord.
That's right.
Right? I mean, I've even gone, you know, sometimes reading in Bible is not always like...
It's beneficial, but it's not beneficial in the short term because God does prick at the heart, right?
I mean like as soon as this thing happened. I'm like Lord, you know your instincts like did I do something wrong?
I'm and I know that Lord doesn't work like that
But you always want to be in the will of the Lord and so then you sometimes
Overanalyze some of the things that are happening in your life
But what you got to remember is if you're in the will of the Lord stuff's gonna happen in life
You just got to keep going. I mean it's just part of life to be honest with you. I probably had nothing to do with that
It's just
Life has to happen, people break bones, people get hurt, people die, people are born, you know, these things happen.
But then go over to Judges 19 real quick.
This is an example in the Bible, and what do you know, obviously the Old Testament gives us a lot of clear application currently that we can apply spiritually, right?
I know Pastor Shelley says it a different way, I don't know how he says it, but it's the truth.
And if you go over to Judges, the book of Judges 19,
We know the famous story. We're not going to go through that.
Although the way that Pastor Shelley preached yesterday, I could go through that and we'll just preach two sermons, right?
But in Judges 19, right at the end, right, he says,
And he was coming to his house and he took a knife and laid whole on his concubine and divided her
together with her bones into 12 pieces and sent her to all the coasts of Israel.
And it was so that all that was said, that all that saw it said,
There was no such deed done nor seen from all
the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt
unto this day. Consider of it, take advice
and speak your minds and then we know of course that the war broke out.
Well we don't have, I mean...
Remember, they didn't have social media, they didn't have streaming, they didn't have preaching
like we do today.
What do we call that now?
It's called the NIFB drama or just drama in general.
That's how you chop it up and spread it and disseminate it, right?
You make a YouTube video and you're like, hey, so-and-so has been kicked out.
They're a reprobate.
Let me just chop this up and send it out to all the coasts of the land.
Now people take it the wrong way today, but this is a pattern from the Bible.
I mean, this is the way they used to send messages.
I'm actually glad that at least it's a YouTube video
and it's not like Pastor Shelley,
you with a butcher knife just chopping things up
and being like, hey, Brother Tanner, go, go to Texas
and you go to California and you show up
with like a lamb of some sort and stripping.
I mean, that's what we're seeing here, right?
I mean, I'm not even trying to be gruesome.
This is the picture that's in the Bible, right?
Then in a, and so I really believe in first Samuel 15,
Taking care of Agat because he's obedient to the Lord, but he's also making a point to Saul
He's like now now it's your turn to fear remember to fear the Lord
I mean, of course he never saw him again
Saul ends up, you know not doing the things he was supposed to do but right there in first Samuel 13
In verse 8 it says
This is the first instance, right? Right away Saul's giving given instructions of the Lord and instead of listening
What does he do? He disobeys and really the focus of using that word hue is that we need to chop up our lives
Into the fat into pieces or you know, they say men compartmentalize
We have a disobedience problem in America and I'm not talking just
Like obeying the Lord
because he says to obey like you obey your parents, but we have to willfully obey the Lord.
We have a problem where people are just not willing to submit to the things of God, right?
And or admit that they're not submitting to the things of God. Well, you know, look,
one thing is a mistake, the Lord forgives. The other thing is doubling down, which is what Saul
Every time I read this, I'm just thinking,
Saul, just shut up, like don't stop, right?
Cause it says,
and he tarried seven days according to the said time
that Samuel had appointed,
but Samuel came not to Gilgag
and the people were scattered from him.
And Saul said,
bring me hither a burnt offering to me and peace offering.
And he offered the burnt offering.
And haven't there been people that laughed
and got self ordained?
They just took matters into their own hands instead of listening to the Lord.
I mean, that's just what people do.
And it says,
And it came to pass as soon as he had made an end of offering, the burn offering.
Behold, Samuel came and Saul went out to meet him that he might salute him.
And Samuel said, what has that done?
Hey, you need someone to slap you upside the head.
and say, why did you do this?
Like, why are you being disobedient?
Why are you not showing up to church?
Why are you not reading your Bible?
Why are you not soul winning?
You know, I know you got excuses,
but that's what they are, is excuses.
Excuses are like belly buttons, right?
Everybody's got one.
And where was I?
First, Samuel 13, verse eight, and,
all right, and he said, what have you done?
And Saul said, because I saw the people were scared from me, and now came it's not within the days appointed,
and that the Philistines gathered themselves together at McMash, and we're there in a...
verse 12 says, therefore said I, the fillest things will come down now upon me to gilgag, and I have not made
supplication unto the Lord. I forced myself, therefore, and offered burnt offering. And Samuel said to Saul,
Thou hast done foolishly. Thou hast not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God, which he commanded thee for now.
Would the Lord have established thy kingdom upon Israel forever, but now thy kingdom shall not continue
The Lord had sought him a man after his own heart and the Lord hath commanded him to be captain over his people
Because thou has not kept that which the Lord commanded it look
You're not in the priestly, you know, you're not a royal priest
You're not a royal like a spiritual king because we did something great
It's because of God's grace and then our duty is not only that but to obey the Lord
I mean, that's the biggest, I mean, seriously,
the more I look, and sometimes I feel like
I'm still looking from the outside in.
It's an obedience problem. It's a submission problem. Everybody wants excuses.
Look, we can pick on the contemporary Christian churches, we can pick on the false religions,
but we know they're going to do their thing. That's their human nature.
The problem is the people that get taken with every wind of doctrine because they're not obeying the Lord.
And one of the reasons that people are just confused about a lot of the stuff that happens in our circles
is just because they're not reading their Bible.
If you just read your Bible, it's really not that difficult, guys.
And if you're disobeying, you know, just admit it.
Don't be like Saul, where he's like, well, I had to, I forced myself.
Pastor Shelley, you didn't show up at 1030.
So I just started preaching, you know, I mean, can you imagine that?
Like all of you guys would be like, dude, get off behind the pulpit.
But basically that's what he did, right?
He's trying to take the reins of that, right?
First Samuel 15 verse 22, we have the same thing,
the same pattern says in Samuel said,
have the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings
and sacrifices in obeying the voice of the Lord.
And we know these verses, right?
These are very famous verses.
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice
and to hearken the fat of rams for rebellion
is as a sin of witchcraft and stubbornness
is as an iniquity and idolatry
because thou has rejected the word of the Lord.
He hath also rejected thee from being king.
And the thing is, you don't want to get rejected of the Lord.
You know, we love talking to reprobate doctrine, but that word reprobate just means reject.
Now I'm not saying you're reprobate, I'm just saying you don't want to be rejected spiritually of the Lord,
and then just go up to heaven and be the least in the kingdom.
Like, how pathetic to...
I mean, I know everything probably will be erased like there's no more pain or more sorrow
But I don't I just don't want to think about it here
I'm gonna do as much as I can for the Lord here good or bad
You know, I'm just gonna try to give my all I got saved later in life
You know, I you were saying we if we get to 80 we got another 40 years
I got to live two lifetimes at least the second lifetime
I want to leave everything on the on the field for the Lord, right? Hey, why did we go out hard?
Why did I fall because I'm competitive
I just need to remember that I'm 45, I shouldn't be competing, but that's really why I fell, right?
I'm competitive. I wanted to win. You're like, but it's a stupid price. Well, I mean the Lord's given us victory
That's how he's trained us. Like he's given us the spirit to win, right? Now. We just got to pick our battle, right?
Don't don't fall on the grass and crack your clavicle
Because then that stuff affects everything, but you know at the end of the day
My biggest frustration right now is it's not
like work and you know, the family, my wife's great.
She's gonna take care of me, my kids will do this.
I mean, they're all worried about me.
As a matter of fact, I told them just let them watch daddy
because they keep asking her questions about stuff.
My biggest frustration is like, okay,
what do I need to do to keep soul winning going
and the church going and the preaching going?
I've already reached out to the pastor.
I'm like, look, if I can't preach a certain day,
maybe if you guys can send guys,
because that's what matters the most, right?
All the other stuff is irrelevant.
It's all wood, hay, and stubble.
And I mean, that's really the application.
So I'm going to just go to the four points.
I don't think my intro was as long as Pastor Shelley,
but I gave it a go guys.
So, but let's focus right there
into the actual sermon, right?
And verse 33 of first Samuel 15, it says,
and Samuel said,
as thy sword hath made women childless,
so shall thy mother be childless among women.
And Samuel hewed agag in pieces before the Lord.
Look.
know that not everybody is like as tough or as hardcore some other preachers
you know or some people are better at calling other people out but if it's
not in you to do it a certain way figure out how to do it your way but you got
to figure it out because basically what Saul's saying is why I'm not as good of
a preacher's you Samuel and I that's why I can't obey the Lord like you did and
he tried to turn it around right he's like hey we kept the good spoil
And we did all it, but the Lord's command wasn't to keep the good spoil.
The Lord's command was to destroy it all.
I think it's an interesting term.
I don't know if somebody can find it for me.
It's fine, but if not, it's not a big deal where he says,
hey, we got rid of the vile and the refuse things, right?
In the chapter, you guys read that from our perspective.
That's true.
They might have actually physically gotten rid of the nastier things.
That means there was good stuff there, but God wasn't interested in any of it.
He's like, get rid of it all.
You know a bad church might have some good members, but when God wants to get rid of a bad church
He's like I'm just getting rid of it all
That's why you want to associate in the right places. That's why we say hey find the best church in your area
It's not necessarily just for the good preaching and the good doctrine. You don't want to just get taken in with that lump
I mean that the God said take them all out women children
And I know you know the the apologetic state that stuff, but that's God, right? He's gonna take everybody out
And you don't want to be caught in that thing.
So right here, let's just recap, Saul disobeys God.
He spares Agag.
And then he makes the worst excuses.
He's like, Samuel, come here, buddy, look.
Oh, I did this all for you, God.
And Samuel's like, that's not what God wanted.
As a matter of fact, I'm not even going to talk to you
ever again.
Oh, you shouldn't cut people off that quickly.
I mean, I'm not, I don't normally scream from the pulpit,
you might not see me jump,
but I may be soft spoken sometimes,
but my wife will tell you,
I'll cut off anybody quickly.
I don't care who you are.
Like, I just won't deal with it.
I mean, that's a clear fact.
As a matter of fact,
when I went to the people that came over from PureWord,
I didn't know who was who, and there was a guy there.
that it turns out he was a flat earther.
I won't even tell you his name, because it's not worth it.
But immediately, I had this 30 minute conversation
with a guy, and it was the same question.
It was like, hey, can I serve here,
even though I don't believe that Jesus burned in hell?
I was like, well, you're wrong.
You can serve here, because I don't know you.
But when I do get to know you, if it's bad,
I'm going to kick you out.
But I was so clear that he just never returned.
It was clear, because I didn't scream at him or anything,
but just like, look, that's not...
you're not going to convince me, like we're not changing our doctrine, I know what you think,
or you've made it clear, but that's just because you've not read your Bible enough,
and so if you want to come here, you can serve, but don't be spewing that stuff out,
don't be talking about that to any of the church members, none of that stuff, and of course you
Now, I'm not, it wasn't in this public, but still,
the threat was there, like we just gotta cut it off, right?
So, let's go look at the definition of hue.
And that definition, just meet, there's four definitions
that we have from dictionary.com, right?
This is to strike forcibly with an axe or a sword
or other cutting instrument to chop or hack.
These are my points, that's what I'm giving them to you, right?
Number two is to make or shape or smooth.
which is what the Lord also can do to us, right? He's shaping us, right? He's purging our sin,
he's cleaning us up, he's getting rid of stuff in our life, or to sever apart from a hole
by means of cutting blows, right? The Bible says, hey, if the eye of Fendi cut it off, it better
be going to heaven with one eye than not getting in at all, right? Better go in with one, your left
arm than not at all, right? And then the last one is to uphold
Follow closely or conform to code or principle usually with it too, right?
So you to hold closely to what the doctrines of the Lord Jesus Christ to the word of God?
Like, what dictates my life is a matter of fact, I'm such a people-pleaser that I purposely
over-analyze my relationships and my friends, because what I don't want to do is get caught
up with someone that I think is cool, or they've got some notoriety, and then I'm not following
the Word of God.
Right, and maybe that's why you guys have never heard that much from me directly or you know
Because I'll go places and people are like, oh, I didn't know you were a pastor. I'm like, yeah
I'm a pastor of things and they're like, oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to call your brother
I'm like, I don't know it doesn't matter and they're like, where do you preach?
I'm like in spring Christ. Oh, how long have you been a pastor 10 years?
Oh, I didn't know you know and stuff like it, but it's just because that's not the goal
The goal is to preach the word of God
Right, why do I like Pastor Shelley's and why do I like Pastor Anderson and Pastor Thompson?
They're they're friendly, but that wasn't the first thing what I like is the heart preaching look we all need it
I mean I read my Bible. I like preaching heart, but you know what? I need to be preached at heart, too
That sermon yesterday like I went to bed and I was like man
I need to fix some stuff in my life, and it's not like anything agreed like as a matter of fact
I was like yeah check
Check, yeah, I love my wife, check.
I tell her she's pretty all the time, check.
I hold her hand when we're like hanging out in bed,
just chilling.
I'm always holding her hand.
As a matter of fact, I tell her I love you every day.
I literally, I'm like, honey, I love you.
You're the best thing that's ever happened to me.
Check, check, check, and then I'm like,
well, maybe I just need to still do it, right?
That's the lesson.
Maybe I just, let me not forget.
It's a good reminder not to forget
to take your wife for granted.
I need somebody to tell me that,
because life happens.
right? You get caught up in the thing. So let's go to the first point. Go there to Colossians 3
verse 5. I mean Colossians 3. And that first definition, what is it? To strike forcibly
with an axe or sword, right? Samuel struck Agag down because Saul wouldn't. And what,
I mean that's, maybe it's the theme, but what's the whole point of what we're doing is we need
The the the movements will grow and then they'll diminish and the ones that stay back
They're the only ones that are speaking up. You need to say what others aren't willing to say
I mean, I think that's the definition of the leadership, right and
spiritually we must strike sin down
And it has to be without hesitation.
Like, you know, one of the things in my house,
I don't have, I'm actually pretty lax with my kids.
You know, they say you're an older parent or something.
Maybe that's what it is.
But I don't mess around with like lying
and not getting ready for church.
I mean, if my kids lie, it's some serious consequences.
And I know they're gonna lie,
but I don't want them to get into the habit of lying.
Cause then what ends up happening is you end up meeting
people, like you said, right?
Habitual liars.
Who who's ever met a habitual liar? They lie so good. They believe all their lies. They're like
I know it was a lie, but let me tell you why it's not a lie, right?
You know, I know LeBron James was holding a purse, but he's not really holding a purse.
I'm just picking on you because Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan, because Michael Jordan kissing
another guy is pretty gross, too.
I'm not excusing it.
See, the thing is, we got to tell the truth.
He showed a bit, earlier this morning, he was showing a video about how Michael Jordan
is not the greatest of all time, and Michael Jordan gives, like I guess, his coach at the
time in the 1980s a kiss on the cheek, and it looks kind of queer.
And then he's like, see, that's why Michael Jordan is not the greatest of all time.
And I'm like, LeBron literally wears a purse, bro.
Like, that's pretty rough, like, that's pretty rough, right?
Somebody's got to say it.
Like, he's like, oh, well, he promotes it.
I don't care what you do, you do not wear a purse, right?
Like, it's so sorry, bro.
You got to be fired up this morning.
Maybe it's also the pain meds, whatever.
I get excused, right?
So like a woodsman striking down a tree that's dead or diseased, we got to clean it up.
Right you're there in Colossians 3 verse 5 it says if ye then be risen with Christ
Seek those things which are above where Christ siteth on the right hand of God
Right set your affection on things above not on things on earth for you're dead
And your life is hid with Christ and God when Christ who is our life shall appear then ye shall also appear with him in glory
mortify
cut off
Therefore, your members, which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, inordinate
affection, evil concupices, and covetousness, which is idolatry, hey, you've got to cut
this stuff off.
I mean, it hasn't been the theme like, you need to stop this stuff.
Why is that the preaching lately?
Because lately, the former influences in our lives are now trying to convince you that
that's okay.
And that's not biblical.
I mean, that's what I'm trying to say,
like how can you read this
and extract something completely different
than what it says?
I mean, it's pretty clear.
Don't fornicate.
Don't be unclean. Don't be inordinate, you know with your affections. Don't do evil cumcupuses and don't covet other people
Don't we all do it, you know, sometimes I'll be out
I mean, I have still a lot of college friends from back in the day and some of them are doing really well financially
And I'll see something like man that could have been me
But I'm also preaching the gospel and it doesn't matter because they're both going to go to the grave just like you know
I'm going through the book of Ecclesiastes and Solomon's like you guys like basically saying how frustrated he's like this fool and
Me who has all this wisdom our demise is the same. We're gonna die and go to the grave
And what he's literally saying at the end of it all right is that what's the the conclusion of the one matters that we love the Lord Jesus
Christ and it's not just like a lip service. Hey, I love you Lord like some of these contemporary people
Hey, if you love the Lord you keep his commandments
If you love the Lord you obey him right and he go over to Luke 3 go over to Luke 3, but in Hebrews 12
Verse four, you don't have to go there. I'll just read that for you says you have not resisted unto blood
Striving against sin, right? I mean sin is a thing in our
sin is ever-present
right, I preached the sermon many many years ago and
I've I've tried to clip it, but it wasn't it was before we had it
I might just preach that section again, but I did a diagram because
When I meant just to give you guys a little bit of background when
When I started listening like Pastor Anderson and you know a lot of the pastors back in the day even now
Like I didn't come in like some of the stories you guys have you know where you're like hey
I was looking for answers and then I got saved. I was saved
What I liked was that I found someone that thought like me and you know in my arrogance
I was like oh, you know at least somebody's as smart as I am like that's great
You know I found this guy
But there was two things that I that I just really threw me off at night and it was lack of experience
Number one was whenever I would hear snippets about repent of your sins. It just didn't
Didn't do anything for me. I was like, why is this guy harping on repenting your sins all the time?
Like what does this have to do with anything because in Spanish we say oh me repenti. Oops
Me repento. And so for us, it's clear that it's a change of mind
So it was never an issue until I started door-to-door soul winning and you run into this thing of people who think they can repent
Your sins, right? And I was like, oh, okay, that makes that makes sense. I was like, okay, that's great. And so
don't remember where I was going with that but I do remember give me a second
I'll get my thought because I've got too many thoughts going but also what ends
up happening is I preach the sermon the way that I
That I got it together my mind was how do you repent of all your sins?
Like how do you repent of all your sins and so I took like
Revelation 21a and I just made a little like cardboard piece and I put all the eight
You know like the abominable and the fearful and bought
Hormongers and idolaters, you know and all liars and I put it like in a circle and remember I took a like a little
Nutcracker doll that I had my wife had at the house and I put in the middle
Because when you repent of your sin, you're walking towards one sin and you're like,
I'm not going to do this anymore, but you're only to run into a wall of a bunch of other sins.
Like, it's not like, how do you repent of all your sins? Because every time I clean this one up,
there's only like a bunch of other ones waiting behind the door, right? That's why you're constantly
renewing your mind daily. The only way to really clean up the sin is to look to Christ, right?
Because you're surrounded by sin. And that's the problem that we have here is that we have to cut
Soul-winning has that desired effect on preaching the gospel, right?
Because you're pricking people to the heart of salvation,
and you're cutting to the heart, exposing those that reject God to hell.
And what do I mean by that?
And we'll go there.
In Acts 5 and in Acts 9, we have a contrast of being pricked at the heart
versus cut at the heart, right?
But in Luke 3 verse 9,
And I don't think it's verse nine. I mean, it might be verse seven. It's verse seven. Sorry
Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him
Oh generation of vipers who have warned you to flee from the wrath to come bring forth therefore
fruits worthy of repentance and
Begin not to say with your set within yourselves. We have Abraham our to our father for I sense you that God is able of
these stones to raise up children to Abraham and now
also is the ax laid unto the root of the trees.
Every tree, therefore, with spring is not forth.
Good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire."
And what's interesting is obviously this contrast,
we're looking at someone who's rejected,
but this also applies to the saved, right?
In the sense that the people who are hewn down,
like, Lord's just gonna get rid of the reprobate.
We know that.
I mean, he's given them the reward and all that stuff,
but...
We're the ones that the only way we could prove our fruit is by winning souls to Christ
But we're not winning souls to Christ. We can also be a bad tree. It doesn't mean where you don't have fruit to give
It just means we're not
We're not what is it? We're not giving fruit. I forget the term. What is it?
We're not producing when it's just not producing fruits. Yeah, I told you English was my second language
Yeah, we're not producing fruit and what does God do? Well, he just might not use you
That didn't mean you're not safe. You're not gonna lose your salvation, but you're just not producing fruit
And sometimes you need to take an axe and chop that stuff up.
But I'd rather come to the Lord and say, you know what, don't, don't take the axe.
How about you just purge me?
How about you clean up and prune me a little bit
so that the next time branches come out,
some fruit's coming out.
And that's what's happened over my life, right?
Over the years that I started soul winning,
the first time I went soul winning door to door,
like the traditional way,
because nobody had showed me that was in like
2016 or 60, I don't remember.
Pastor Anderson was my soul winning partner.
And then since then, I've been consistently soul winning.
Now it hasn't been perfect,
but you know what, I just try to get better every time.
And you guys do too, right?
And life gets in the way and you're just like,
I'm not gonna go sewing this week.
I've got too much work.
Hey, prune that.
Chop it up, hewn it down, like get rid of it, right?
Or, you know, the kids are too busy
or just not getting enough sleep.
By the way, if you have kids,
you're just not gonna get enough sleep.
So if you're complaining about the lack of sleep
and you are a father, stop.
It's like, just stop.
Like it's never gonna, you're just never gonna sleep.
Just forget about it.
But go over to Acts 5, go over to Acts 5, and then we'll be in Acts 9.
And in Acts 5, we see that contrast, right, of cutting versus pricking.
I don't want the Lord to chop me up.
I don't want him to hew me down.
Because I really think that's what he did to Saul, right?
Samuel was literally giving him an example of what happened to him.
He chopped up Agag.
No, Samuel was there when the ox was hewed down.
I don't think it's a coincidence, you know, just a few chapters before you see that and then later on Samuel shows up
He's like, oh, you didn't do the job. Let me show you how it's done
Right you're there in Acts 5 and verse 20 says saying did we not straightly remember for the sake of time
We're not going through all the stories, but
The Jews are mad at at the preaching of the gospel, you know, that's exactly what's happening today
Right and he's saying saying did we not straightly command you that you should not teach in his name?
And behold, you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine and intend to bring this man's blood upon us.
Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, we ought to obey God rather than men.
The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom ye slew and hanged on a tree.
him hath got exalted with his right hand to be a prince and a savior
for to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sin.
And we are his witnesses of these things and so is also the Holy Ghost whom God
hath given to them that obey him when they heard
that they were cut to the heart and took counsel to slay him.
Well, they were done.
And I mean, we just were to skip a few chapters later,
the same preaching, the gospel gets Stephen martyred, right?
One of my favorite stories in the Bible,
because how cool would it be?
That would be a much cooler story
to preach the gospel and get stoned,
and then Lord Jesus stands up to receive you, right?
This is not a cool battle scar.
Like, you know, hey, I was running, and then I chopped,
and then, you know, I preached, right?
That's the way, if I wanted to go down,
Painfully that's a great way to go. I'm not saying I want to go down that way
But if we had to that's actually a great way to go go to x9. I just have one verse for you
But I still want you to go there it in contrast
When Saul is on the road to Damascus, right in verse 5 he said and he said who art thou Lord and the Lord said
I am Jesus whom thou persecuted is it is hard for the the
To kick against the pricks. I'd rather have that all my life
Just, hey, remind me, goad me back into submission.
Man, I'm tempted, just goad me back into submission.
You know, Pastor Shelley is something really interesting,
which I thought was true.
He's like, I'm giving you all these tips
and a lot of people might not do them, right?
I'm telling you how to avoid the sins
that men love to engage in.
And most of you probably didn't take notes
and won't do it.
I'm just being, you know, we could do that exercise.
Look to your left, look to your right.
And then the person standing next to you is the one,
you know, that does that, I'm not gonna do that,
but let's go to the second point.
that when you're hewing something, you can shape it with sharpness.
You can whittle something down, you're hewing it down, right?
It's an application of what we are the clay, he's the potter.
That means a very basic application, but it's to make or shape or smooth by cutting below.
So it's not always the instrument, it's not always a chopping instrument,
sometimes it's a slicing instrument.
I'm actually gonna have to go under the knife. They're not gonna use an axe. They're gonna take a scalpel
You know, and it's gonna be really sharp and it's gonna give me a nice incision
I'm gonna be under so it'll be all fine, right?
But God doesn't want us to just cut people up. He also wants this to shape it, right?
That's how we need to treat sometimes we need to get in someone's face. Hey, brother. You're screwing up
Let me chop you up a little bit.
Other times it's more like, hey, I noticed something.
Let me just, it's just an observation.
I just, let me show you this verse that I see
about the things that you're doing
and let me just kind of refine it.
And that's what preaching does, right?
That's why you go to church
so that you don't have to get chopped up.
Because what preaching is,
it's actually just pricking and refining.
You come to church and the pastor preaches it against you even though it wasn't necessarily against you
But you know, that's how we all feel at times and then you're like, okay
Well, I need to clean that up. Hopefully that's that your idea not hey
Was that Pat was that sermon against me, right?
Because I already know what pastor shows you to tell you because I've heard him say it many times, right?
Proverbs 27 verse 17 says iron sharpeneth iron
So man sharpen at the count of a friend and I'm actually glad I didn't do it
But I was actually gonna bring an axe and you know kind of chop some stuff up because that's the way that I learned
It's a very visual thing, you know, I love who loves a good knife like I have a big knife collection in my house
I have like my Chet this like samurai shape machete
I'm not kidding like I have a work sharp sharpener, then I have a tungsten
Sharpener because it's the sharp, you know, it's the hardest metal. It's the only one that can really sharpen stuff
I love sharpening stuff, right? And so I understand the concept iron sharpens iron
It's not a smooth process sparks fly
Things are going so you can take the attitude of someone coming to you and sharpening you or you just be a
I mean, I guess I'm with Pastor Shelly or you can just be a pussy about it, right?
I mean, I'm just saying don't do that like nobody likes that
I mean, I just oh you guys have been talking sports all day now you got me in a sports mode, right?
Because isn't that what the coach would tell you when you're playing football stop, you know, you're getting beat up Marcel
And you're like, but the guy's just bigger than me.
Tough cookies, I mean, am I even kidding?
You played college football.
I'm guarantee those coaches were not.
Like, well, I hope everything's okay.
Is your toe okay, Marcel?
Is your, do you need it?
Do you need it?
He wasn't doing that, right?
As a matter of fact, you were like,
I just hope the coach doesn't even look at me
while I'm doing this,
because you don't want the coach to just rip you a new one.
Go to Isaiah 51.
Go to Isaiah 51 and like I said, we're just looking at these verses Bible says hearken to me in verse one
Yee that follow after righteousness yee that seek the Lord look unto the rock
whence ye are hewn and to the whole of the pit whence you're dig
The rock that was hewned is Jesus Christ. I mean if he can get hewn we can get hewn
It please the Lord to bruise him the Bible says
Sometimes I know people you know one of the things that annoys me and I'm like hey the Jesus get left as an example
Oh, I am not Jesus. Of course. Nobody's Jesus, but he left as an example. He said I leave you an example
So if Jesus can do it we can do it
The only thing we can't do is be God and be perfect on this earth
Well, then that's but that's obvious, but he was human and he gave us examples of how to overcome our humanity
Right? I'm not those people that are like, oh well just because you're human just this. No, we can fix it. It can get better
I've met old
Preachers I remember I went to
Like this podonk little church out in the woods in East Texas one time my wife and I when we're looking for a church
We're actually willing to drive out to this podonk
I mean it was literally in the woods that a camp it was like this and
And I don't remember the sermon, but I just remember the preacher saying in my life
the Lord's done things where there's things that I've perfected and he wasn't
and he was being like it was actually a really good sermon where he was just
like I'm not perfect I'm a sinner but there's just things where he's allowed
me to work on them that I've been able to perfect right like don't don't poo
poo on your life you know don't you just have this poor little like a plum
mentality right poor little old me instead what do I need to chop up and
clean up
As a matter of fact, I've been, the Bible is just so great,
even for things like what happened,
I thought my shoulder was dislocated,
and I told the brother, Samson, I was like, you record it.
I was like, I was like, Lord,
I know they're gonna pop it in,
like just give me the strength to not cry,
because you know, I've heard that's really painful.
But I wanted that badge of honor because we're men.
We want to know that we went through the tough time.
Look, nobody that does anything great in life does it,
because it was soft and pretty.
right? It's tough. Life is really tough.
You toughen up, right? You just show up. Don't do it.
Let's go to the point number three. Go over to First Kings five.
Go over to First Kings five. And then you have
right, the Bible speaks of the hewers of wood. Like workers
who are set apart, you know, they're doing the tough labor.
We see that in the Bible. Solomon had hewers. They, you know, they built the temple.
So, we are tools in the hand of God, right?
Samuel was a tool of God.
God didn't chop up Agag, Samuel did.
I mean, technically Saul should have done it,
but it was gonna get done.
See, God's gonna get the job done
whether you're willing to do it or not, first of all.
And for me, that hits close to home
because all my life I've had FOMO,
fear of missing out.
That's why I didn't leave because I'm not gonna I'm not gonna miss out
I want to be there for anything right but and but the Bible also reminds you the reason you should have fear of missing
I was cuz God doesn't eat you. I'm gonna just let me just
He'll just replace you
He does need you. It's a paradox, but if you're not willing to do what he says, you'll just replace you, right?
You could be the best church member. You could be like his right-hand man. You can I'm not
I'm just saying anybody you could be the right-hand man
You could be showing up doing all the things if you mess up God just replace you somebody else might step in and might
Even do a better job. It might be better at what you were doing and just
Then you just be really sad looking from the outside in and then that's where that envy and jealousy and all the weird stuff comes out
Right, but go over to you're there first Kings
And in this one the way that I think about it is that we need to labor correctly. There's a
Parable like it's an old-school parable. I learned a long time ago. It's not a biblical one
It's just a worldly one, but it applies
I'm gonna give you guys like the the short version even though I am not looking at my clock
so I appreciate Pastor Shelly setting the tone and
In the parable it's just a competition
About two guys that are gonna chop down trees. They're woodcutters
And if you've heard it, just bear with me.
I'm not gonna keep it real short.
And there's a young guy and he's strong
and he's chopping the wood and he knows he's kicking it.
Cause he can hear the old man chopping wood
and the old man stops.
And so he thinks in his mind that guy's old.
He can't chop wood like I'm being like, I haven't stopped.
And boom, boom, boom, and they get to the end of the thing
and the judges come and he's looking at his all his work
and he's really just impressed at all he did.
And they're like, the winner is the old man.
And he's like kind of turns and he's like,
what the, how did I lose?
Like I never stopped.
Like I just been chomping and chomping and chomping.
He's like, what happened?
He's like, well, you know, I've just learned in life,
you got to sharpen the saw.
He's like, so every few trees, I just take time
to sharpen the stop, right?
We can't just be like chop, chop, chop, chop, chop,
which is what young zealous Christians do,
whether they're young in age
or just young in spiritual, right?
They get excited.
They're like, hey, have you heard of the pre-trip rapture?
You know, and the post-trip rapture,
and you know you're wrong.
And have you heard of like the Jews or bad people
and that you know that the Bible,
the King James is the only word of God.
And you know, basically if you're not doing any of that,
like you're just a horrible Christian,
you're like, whoa.
And so then people are turned off, right?
I was one of those guys.
I remember calling him one guy and I'm like,
dude, I just learned about the Jews.
He's like, what do you mean about the Jews?
I'm not even kidding you.
This is like in 2014 or 2012, I call him for his birthday.
And you don't know the guy, so it doesn't matter.
I'm like, Rex, I let this guy to the Lord before soul waiting.
I just let him to the Lord many years before.
And so he was kind of like my disciple.
This is when I was more of the contemporary stuff.
And I'm like, Rex, bro, open your Bible in Revelation 2.9.
And read Revelation 3.9, the Jews are heartless,
like, I don't know what you're talking about.
Let me ask you, when was the last time he spoke to me?
That was the last time.
And the poorest part is now the church that he's serving at
just stopped using the King James Bible.
They were an independent, fundamental Baptist church
called LaVon Drive Baptist Church, where I met my wife.
Because she grew up under the tutelage of a preacher that preached hard
Like my wife doesn't get spooked by my preaching because she's heard it all her life
And now this church when they pass the torch
They got a dull knife and just I mean this is I was just with one of the
Members because we were up visiting family and she said oh, yeah
They just updated the bylaws and they're no longer King James only
They're like this is a really nice sword, but I want to go to Hollywood
This sort looks like that sword, but it's not real. You know, this is just the prop. That's what they're doing, right?
Go to you're there in first Kings
But in in Joshua 9 verse 27 says in Joshua made them that day hewers of wood and
Drawers of water for the congregation and for the altar of the Lord even until this day in the place
Which he should choose for me. That's the way I try to approach the ministry
is that sometimes I'd rather just be like,
I'd just rather be the janitor to the church
as long as I get to serve at the church.
The position is irrelevant.
The Lord needs everybody, right?
If you're cleaning the church
or you're preaching behind the pulpit,
God's the one that's noticing your work.
You know who you need to please?
The Lord Jesus Christ.
You know who needs to take notice the lurches. Oh, I do all this at the church. I don't nobody pastor Shelley never even
Acknowledges me. I don't know if that's true or not. I'm just saying that's how people get then don't do it
Because I show up for God. I've told people all the time. I've told them before
You know, we have great numbers now compared to what we had in the past
But I've been saying it when we had less numbers. I don't show up and preach for you guys
I show up and preach for the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm not doing this as a badge of honor
I didn't show up to preach today because you guys because I this was a great story. Although it's a great story
I'm preaching because God's asked me to preach
He said how you know in Isaiah 6 he says how long Lord and he says till the streets be desolate and there be no man
That's kind of weird, right? You're like, so you're saying just preach to an empty room now
Don't be a YouTube preacher, but you he's led to the same just go out in the streets and nobody's around you're gonna
Have me preach in zombie land. Yeah, because his word doesn't return void if you're doing it under God's guidance, right?
You're there first Kings and verse 15 says in Solomon at three score in 10,000 that bear burdens and four score thousands
Four score thousand hewers in the mountain besides the chief of Solomon officers, which were over the work
3300 which ruled over the people that wrought in the work and the king commanded and they brought great stones costly stones and huge stones
To lay the foundation of the house and Solomon's builders and herem's builders did hew them in the stone squares
So they prepared
Timber and stones to build the house now who got the credit Solomon technically David, right?
But you can't build the temple just one person. We're not an island you need everybody
Right, that's what I when I look at them like that's great
God gave all these God gave Solomon all these skillful people to do skillful things
You know, one of the blessings of having people in your church is just that you can delegate
stuff to.
Right?
When I looked at other churches, I wasn't like, oh, they're so big.
I wish I had a big church because they're big and we're small.
No.
I actually was like, oh, they're so big.
I just wish I had people that just help out so we could do more work for the Lord.
All I care about is just doing more work for the Lord.
Just more results, more trips, more anything that we can do, but as long as it's for the
Lord Jesus Christ.
So don't look at where you are. Look at how can you just do more work for the Lord?
How can I hew down more trees for you, Pastor Shelley? How much more wood do you need,
you know, Brother Tanner? How much more, you know, whatever stones do you need me to bring
so we can just be ready for the enemy? Spiritually, I mean, and that's what you need to do, right?
Memorize your Bible. And I think it's great. I love having friends that know more Bible than I do.
It's encouraged me. I carry an app. I'm just really transparent with people sometimes to a fault, you know
I I never grew up memorizing scripture, so I forced myself
I have the Bible memory app and now they did this really cool thing where like they give you insights on a cool graph
And it tells me all the verses I'm working on right right now currently individual verses
I've got like 56 that I that I've worked on
You're like, oh, well, you know so-and-so has memorized a hundred chapters. Good for him. Thank you for being my encouragement
I'm just saying I don't look at it like oh that guy who has way more. I'm just not worthy. No, I got to start somewhere
Right. They started with one. I can start with one, right? They started with two. I can start with two
I'm at 56. Maybe next year. I'll be at 126. By the way, the first ones are always harder
It starts the compound. It just gets really fast, right? So I just know how it works
Go over 2nd Corinthians 6 verse 14 verse 14
I can see what you're saying about I don't know if it's this whatever is going on here
But you get a lot of cotton mouth. I don't usually get cotton mouth preaching. It's like maybe the humidity. I don't know
Right there says verse 14 says be ye not equally yoked together with unbelievers
For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness, and what communication hath light with darkness?
And what concord hath Christ with Belial?
And what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?
And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?
For ye are the temple of the living God as God has said I will dwell in them and walk in them
And I will be their God and they shall be my people
Wherefore come out from among them and be separate sayeth the Lord and touch not the unclean thing
And I will receive you and I will be a father unto you and he shall be my sons and daughters sayeth the Lord Almighty
Yeah, I'm not picking anything. You've not heard before hopefully
This seems to be like pretty rudimentary, elementary Bible verses but sometimes it's the ones that we take for granted that we need to apply in our lives.
People are complaining because you're separating. I mean, that's biblical.
Well, I don't like that you call people out.
God says be not equally yoked together with unbelievers, right?
Like don't just be friends with people who are like devils and I mean what wasn't it that one of the things that really pissed me off
Wasn't it that like other churches were coming to the aid of all the sodomites when you guys were getting
protested this you read this verse and you're like that's why I'm mad
I don't even know I was like I didn't even know I was mad then I read 14
I'm like now I'm mad right like don't do that what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness
Right what communion has light with darkness
But you walk in darkness and then you get annoyed when someone put shines a light on you
When it should be all like thank you for exposing me. Don't be Saul where he's like hey you weren't around so I had to preach
I mean, I'm just giving, I know what he did,
but it's the equivalent of art today, right?
You weren't around, so I started my own church.
The church without walls isn't that usually the people that start their own church start weird churches, right?
That's the four-square church. I've heard all the weird names right four square church without walls
And then I think one of them I met a guy that said well
We go to church where there's no pastor like we just all sit around and and somebody takes the banner like okay
You do what you got to do go to 1st Corinthians 12 go to 1st Corinthians 12 right there verse 1 says now concerning spiritual gifts
Brother and I would not have you ignorant
You know that you were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as you were led.
Wherefore, I give you to understand that no man speaking by the Spirit of God called Jesus a curse.
And that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.
Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.
And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.
And there are diversities of operations, but it's the same God which worketh in all.
Might not chop anybody up the way the pastor shall I mean I really he just preaches way harder than I do
Let's just be honest and what I mean by that is he's just like louder. He's in your face
I love the way he just accents at the end of like a point
I'm not even gonna try to mimic it because it doesn't come out
But when there's diversities we all what it's the same God
right so then
Not just be happy with the gift God's giving me, but I'm also going to be like hey when he's chopping up
I'm gonna just cheer him on
And if God says, hey, I need to chop him up,
well, then I'll just take a,
he likes a chainsaw, I like an axe.
Yeah, that's that's kind of how bastard Shelley preaches in my opinion, right where I'm like more like hey come here
Let me just I don't like what you're saying. Let me just okay now. We're done. You're still gonna get cut up
I'm just like I'm just not taking a chainsaw to you, right?
But I'm also not gonna stop the guy who's got the chainsaw or try to you know, you know play that down
God's not doing that, right? He's not
Sammy and Samuel only killed a gag
Elijah killed like 400 prophets, right? It's not like one was better than the other. They're both doing the work
The Lord just said hey, you need to get the job done
Let's go to the final point and we'll close this thing out
The continual action towards obedience, right? That's like the fourth point that it's to conform or follow closely, right?
It's a principle to hew
The reason that you hew down is because you actually have to have a method. You can't even when you're chopping like if you're chopping up a
carcass
Let's not talk about a body. But if you're just chopping up like a deer, you know
They call it dressing a deer because you have to have a method you can't just you know
Samson's been talking about all the he's like you ever read rabbit. He's like you got to cut it up a certain way
I'm like whoa
He's like and what is it quail and and all these other things that he's done
But I'm pretty sure he's not just getting in there going like, you know, you're chopping it up
I like to cook fajitas, like, you know, I take my time taking off all the fat,
making sure that it's all cut, and then every once in a while you need a cleaver just to cut through things,
but it's not without a, there's a principle to it, right?
People go to school to become chefs, and what the first thing they do is teach you how to hold a knife,
how to sharpen a knife.
I remember I sold cut-co, who's ever...
I sold Cutco in 1988.
As a matter of fact, I love it so much
that if I ever needed to, I'd go back to selling Cutco.
They're the best knives, which is by the way,
if you want one, I'm just kidding.
I'm just kidding, but they are good.
But one of the things was that they told us,
one of the sales process was you would ask the wife
to bring one of their knives, right?
And you're like, ma'am, I'm 18.
I'm like, can we borrow, can I,
you bring one of your kitchen knives?
And then we carried around remember, I don't think that they're that popular anymore, but remember the the old school rope like the made of like
We call them in Spanish Soga. I don't know what it's called in in English
It's not it was made of like material like woody material like the brownish
rope that's threaded together that frays real bad it's not like now it's all
synthetic you know twine like twine but the thicker twine and we would carry
that around with us and we take our knife and we chop it up but at first
take her knife and be like I can't get through this thing and then we take our
knife and chop it up and the thing that the point we were making was that a
sharp knife is safer than a blunt knife
You're safer in a sharp church with a sharp pastor than you are at a blunt church
Because you're just more susceptible to sin and disobedience. I mean, it's just gonna happen, right?
So you just got to be careful
go to Proverbs 10 go to Proverbs 10 you want to
Make this like a lifestyle that you meet this Michelin chefs. They live for
slicing and chopping stuff up
the correct way you know they can they have names for the type the way they
chop right you go to like a blacksmith or someone and they have their their
technique there's a principle to it our principle is the sort of of the word
right God's word right there in Proverbs 10 verse 16 the Bible says the
labor of the righteous tendeth to life but the fruit of the wicked to sin he
but he that refuses, reproof, errant.
The instruction is the slicing up.
It's the cleaning up.
You're getting rid of the fat, right?
You've got to labor in the work of the Lord, right?
If I look at my life, the trajectory of my life
since I got saved, what really changed?
The reason that I don't preach my salvation message
because it's a really, you know, it's a unique one
and I don't want people to confuse that with works.
Because I didn't change because I got saved I changed because I started reading my Bible
I changed because I started going to church right I changed because I started soul winning the right way
I didn't know how to so win the right way. I always wanted to so when I had people that I led to the Lord
It was like one a year or two a year what changed that I just was like well Lord
Just cut up the things that you need to cut up. I mean I have lost I
Mean at this point. I can't even it's probably
In the millions, maybe not multiple millions, but I've lost a lot of money in just making changes for the Lord
Because every time you get tougher on things, even if you're not telling people like Pastor Shelly
You're not you don't have to tell people you're a Christian. The light's already shining on you. The target's on your back
It's just the way you are if you're doing the things of the Lord. I'm not talking about lifestyle evangelism
I'm just talking living for God people take notice
It's weird, because I know this is a group that doesn't believe in cuss words.
I'm okay with that.
I'm just saying, but have you ever been around in your work environment and someone drops
an F-bomb and then they know you're in the room and you've never told them that you're
a Christian and they're like, oh, I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to cuss.
And you're kind of like, well, I didn't say anything.
they just never really heard it from you or they just know that you go to church three times a week
and all of a sudden they're apologizing. Why are you apologizing to me? If you think it's bad,
if you think it's actual sin, apologize to God. I mean I, I don't, I have no, you can
cuss all you want around me. I don't care. Like if you think it's a problem, you know,
to every day, every man is seeming at the day to himself, you take it up with God.
Hey, I'm not your God and never will be, right? Matthew seven, go to Matthew seven.
And it's not, when you're doing a cutting process,
it's not just one time, right?
I mean, you're working at it.
It's very rare that you can chop something up
with just one swing.
You can break something apart,
but if you're doing the work,
there's a lot of work to be done, right?
That's the daily renewing of our lives, right?
And my whole goal is to just give you another visual
to the things that you already know.
Right another application when I see those words, and I know I may joke, but I'm being serious when I see words like that
Maybe the reason they stand out is because I actually have to go deep
Go find out the definition all that so then it becomes a visual thing and then just stays in my mind
It just sticks there that I'm doing something stupid. I'm like, well, let me not have the Lord chop me up
Or you know, I see something let me let me chop this guy up
You know those that's the way I kind of look at things right go to Matthew 7 verse 24 says therefore
Who's whoever here at these sayings of mine?
And doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which buildeth his house upon a rock.
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock.
And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which buildeth his house upon the sand.
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.
There's nothing to me more satisfying than just repetitively reminding myself of verses like this
You know, I think sometimes people either try to get away and I'm I agree we should preach everything
But we also just need to come back to the basics
Right the rock is Jesus Christ
We get hewned by the rock
We right we need to be sharpened by iron. Sometimes you need to sharpen a
Knife with what a rock if you don't have the nice tools
You need to be sharpened all the time.
Why do you do an event like this to come get sharpened,
to get away from the missus?
I know we love our wives,
but our wives don't understand the way we think, right?
They don't understand why I'm tougher on my son
than I am on my daughters.
I'm not saying my wife fights me on it.
I'm just saying they don't understand it.
My wife submits to it.
I guarantee you she doesn't understand it.
She's a mom.
She's a boy mom, right? They're gonna baby their their boys and I'm like sometimes I'm like I'll get on to my son
I'm like don't touch them. Don't talk to him. Don't look at him. Don't do anything to him, but
Don't do it
Because you don't only other men understand men
It doesn't matter what level of manliness we all carry.
I can't grow a beard or whatever.
We all know what men are, right?
Like, we're, I just can't.
I tried, but it's never going to happen.
Go to James 1.
This is where we're going to start close out.
We'll close there.
But in conclusion, we need a hue agag, right?
Because if we don't do it, somebody's going to do it.
Right
People get annoyed because they're like well you might make someone uncomfortable with your preaching and I'm not necessarily talking about myself
But those are conversations I've had
Somebody's got to make you uncomfortable with the preaching. I mean it has to happen
Because we're all men I
The one thing I hated about going to church was when nobody would finish the good part of the Bible, right?
The preacher gets up there and he's reading 1st Samuel 15 and he's telling you that sin is his wit is the sinner
You know what is it? Rebellion is the sin of witchcraft. You're like good and he's getting down to the last verses
I think he's like let's close in a word of prayer. I'm like chop the guy up
Like I wanted to tell me about it give me an application show me some blood
Why do we I grew up in the 80s and 90s?
I mean now when I look back it's kind of queer
But we thought it was cool right Arnold Schwarzenegger's running around without a shirt
Kelly and everybody with one machine gun and a knife remember Rambo who whoever bought the Rambo knife
I mean come on right it had the little compass and you know that your little flint
Why do we like that? Because we are men, right? Why do we play sports? Because we're men.
So I think this is a great application because everybody understands the concept of a knife.
Everybody carries one around. My son has his knife now.
I mean, he's eight years old and he loves carrying his knife. You know, he's like,
Daddy, I'm taking care of it. This is my knife now.
But how many of us did that with our parents right dad?
Thank you for my my dad gave me a Swiss army knife man
I took care of that when it got destroyed by my little sister
It was one of the most devastating days of my life because it was cool
Remember the Swiss army knife had the little laser remember that and the pen it was just a special edition
It was the little key chain Swiss army knife. They it's hard to probably find now
But I had a little red laser and at the pen and I was like that was the coolest knife and anyways
We all have siblings that happens. I'm not gonna right
But you don't want your sin to fester to where you fail the Lord Jesus Christ
Right. I mean really the whole point of this is that you want to take these instruments of sharpness from the Lord whether it's
Good preaching or men of God or just you know
You understand your role in the process or you just know that there's a principle behind it
You want to add it so that you avoid the sin in your life
Right, I mean I of course we're all gonna sin, but we all know what we're talking about when we preach up here about sin
I'm talking about presumptuous sinning sin that you're doing
Knowing the Lord's gonna punish you and you're just like it's okay because I kept all the good spoil
You know a gag is not dead, but I was kind of negotiate for you God on your behalf
Instead of me was like bring me a gag so I can kill him right and modern Christianity just doesn't do that
They're cutting you with a fake knife
I mean, I saw, I'm not gonna belabor too much.
I think somebody else also, it goes around.
But I mean, I not went to that church one time.
Ed Young Jr.'s church in Dallas.
And at that time, is it fellowship?
At that time, he brought out his $3,000 poodles,
his labored poodles, and he made some stupid application.
I thought, this is insane.
It's only gotten worse.
I think he's using roller coasters now
and full basketball courts like.
Like, I'm not kidding, the video is, he's in a rollercoaster and then he gets down and
he's like, the ups and downs of life, I'm like, bro, bro, like, and the people are
clapping and like loving this stuff, right?
It's just, I don't know, anyways, but what gets us in trouble, laziness, lust, pride,
I'm not going to preach Pastor Shelley, he already preached yesterday, but those are
Right, you need to work hard because you're gonna get in trouble
You need to love your wife because you're gonna get in trouble
Right, you need to just be grateful with what you have because you're gonna get in trouble
Because you'll show up to church and you're like oh brother Joe got a new truck. I don't know if you own a truck or have it
Joe's a very common like sermon name. I was actually not even thinking about you know, and then all of a sudden you're like
Well, I don't know. He what is he doing? Why can't I have a truck?
It's the little things it's the little things that you know
I learned a long time ago what you don't inspect don't expect like do not let's go there James one
It says where for my beloved brother and let every man be swift to hear
What was Saul's problem? He wasn't swift to hear the Lord said God said take out the Amalekites and what he heard was
Do whatever I want. I mean in one year out the other who has that problem with their kids
What did I tell you to do?
Take out the trash. Is that what I told you to do?
I don't know.
Well, what was, which one is it, right? Who's ever had that conversation with your kids, right?
Go put the dishes in the dishwasher.
Son, the dishes aren't in the dishwasher.
Oh, I didn't know you told me to put the di- Son!
Right? Be swift to hear.
Slow to speak, slow to wrath.
Now you can get mad just be slow to it
Says for the wrath of man work is not the righteousness of God. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and
Superfluity of naughtiness and receive with meekness that engrafted word. How do you engrave something?
You got to get in there. I
Don't do any engraving, but if you do the leather engraving my dad loves, you know, twiddling stuff
He has all this leather and you got to cut it up
You gotta hew it, right?
Which is able to save your souls,
and we know the application is not just salvation.
I'm talking about the soul here, right?
I could take a look at what happened today,
and then I know, I mean, it's what happened.
This is what I'm, and I could be like,
cause they asked me all this questions,
I didn't even think about it.
They're like, did you lose consciousness?
Did you, you know, were you dizzy?
Did you faint?
All that stuff.
Thank the Lord I didn't die.
Freak accidents happen all the time.
People just walk out their house
and the car runs them over, right?
We wanna be doing the things of God
for the saving of our souls.
But you've heard it before,
I'm gonna just say it again,
be doers of the word.
Not here's only,
because then you deceive your own self.
And that's what Saul did ultimately.
All the examples I gave you,
he just kept lying to himself.
He's like, I just didn't want people to leave,
sacrificed. But that was in the command. The command was to wait for me. Then what's
going on? Why do I hear bleeding and lowing of cows? He's like, well, you know,
we got the good stuff for the Lord, but was that the command? The command is the
command, period. And that's the problem people have. You know, a lot of the stuff
that happened, and I'm not gonna rehash it, but just a lot of the stuff that
It's just been because people are not listening or they're listening to what they want to hear
Right
They're like oh well, you know
You spank too hard
How do you spank too hard? What is that? I mean seriously? What's the do you put? Did you like put a pressure gauge?
I'm not even being facetious. How do you determine that?
Because I remember being hard headed at 15 my parents tell me all the time
They're like you were our most obedient child, but you were also the one that got spanked the most
Which is kind of weird right but because I have a little I'm just have a loud mouth you guys have been around me
I love to talk I got whoop a lot
What level of whooping would have been like how do I gauge was it too much or too little because I never shut up
So apparently it wasn't enough
I mean that literally was the problem in my house was that my dad would say all right
You've made your point and I'm like, but you don't understand dad
You know, you know, I had the self-righteous and remember you don't get it. You know, he's like shut up
No, no, no, you're not gonna and you don't get it. No, no, no at one time. He like I'm in his face and he just slaps me
Everybody would say that's abuse. You know what?
I remember it vividly, I was just like, thank you.
I needed, because he needed to snap me out of it.
So what level, like, every child is different.
I mean, seriously, he, and my mom freaked.
She was like.
She thought like it was and I I didn't even react. I just went to my room
I was like I probably I remember thinking I was like, okay
I needed that like I needed to shut up like because you get in your own like I just needed that like it kind of
Actually set me back. I was like, oh that was good
Calm down
Because my dad's a big guy even today. He probably kicked my you know rear end, but the point is
Be hewers of the word and then we need to hew down
That's a great word, look it up, apply it in your life and let's just close in a word of prayer.
Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you so much for today. Thank you for your blessings, Lord.
Thank you for all those here in attendance today. Lord, I'm really appreciative, not only that
they've been so kind and generous and inviting and everybody's been really kind about the injury,
but I also like that they didn't stop. All right, and then there's no special treatment
I wanna be surrounded with men who are not gonna pity
somebody else into all kinds of stupid stuff.
I'd rather just be like,
told, hey, get off your butt and go do the work.
Yeah, but my arm hurts, no excuses.
But whatever, no excuses, Lord.
And we appreciate men like Pastor Shelley.
I appreciate Steadfast.
I appreciate all the men here.
You know, one of the things that's really encouraging
today and yesterday was just listening
I love women's voices and it's great and a choir, but sometimes you just need to hear a battle cry.
That's why we love a good battle cry Lord and thank you for the word and being able to sing your Psalms and being able to sing your hymns
But more importantly being able to just listen to the word and I just pray that everybody would enjoy the rest of the weekend
Then we would hear some leather lung preaching tomorrow
by the men that are going to be doing that and
Just give me safe traveling mercies and help me to heal quickly so we could get back to doing the work
That we need to do and in the process help me to find out what work I need to do
to continue doing the work.
In Jesus' name I pray, amen.
Amen.
Is there, there's one more hymn, right?
Okay.
I didn't mean to pick on you bro, but it just came out.
I know you can handle it.
I probably shut it down.
Redeem through His homeland in mercy, His child and forever I am.
Redeem, redeemed, redeemed by the blood of a lamb.
Redeem, redeemed, His child and forever I am.
raster can tell. I know that the light of his presence with me doth continually dwell.
Redeem, redeem, Redeem by the blood of the Lamb. Redeem, redeem, his child and poor
Redeemer, I think of Him all the day long.
I sing for I cannot be silent.
His love is the theme of my song.
Redeem, redeem, redeem by the blood of the Lamb.
Redeem, redeem.
forever I am. I know I shall see it is beauty, the king in whose law I be lied, who's amingly
guarded by footsteps and giving...
I'll be forever I am.
Perfect Q&A real quick.
I don't think we'll go like super long necessarily.
Thanks again, Pastor Reyes, for coming out here,
being tough.
I appreciate it.
Not only one thing to just be our friend,
but get injured and still be our friend.
So there you go.
It takes a lot to run me off.
So we just open it up if anybody who wants to ask any kind of a question and we and it can be to both one or whatever
But for the studio
Yeah, I mean we just it's part of our regular modern vernacular like we we say
We know what repent means, which is like oops, you know, like I changed my mind
We just use it regularly like if you, you know, Diego can attest to like as a kid if we would get in trouble with something like let's say I was, let's say I'm just working on something and then I'm like, I changed my mind, I'd be like oh I'm at repenti, I don't want to do it anymore, like I was doing something I didn't want to do anymore.
So we just grew up as that's part of our normal, like we use it regularly.
As a child, that was a regular, my mom would be like,
me repiento de ver tenerlos.
I repent of having my children.
We'd hear stuff like that all the time,
like when we'd bake her agrips.
So it's a very just, it's kind of like saying,
I changed my mind.
I would say it's the equivalent.
That's why also the translations can't be literal
because it doesn't carry the same way.
Yeah, I haven't so I've gone through like then the purificada and obviously the reina valera
And then I want to get the octopla which is so I can read them all but I just think the reina
Valera Gomez is solid
I like the purificada, but it just doesn't read in Spanish.
It doesn't read like the Bible.
Forget the King James, it just doesn't read like the Bible.
And I know the comparison we make is the King James,
and people have, I think, the issues.
They're like, oh, you try to make it like the King James.
But the King James is the Word of God, right?
So, personally, I would stick with it.
I mean, honestly, it reads spiritual.
Like, I think we were at the King James Conference
and you guys were talking about that.
Like, a lot of the preaching was about the fact
that you just know you're reading the Word of God.
I wouldn't say that necessarily that's a bad version.
I just, some of the translation choices they made
are just not, they don't carry the same weight.
But it is still a good version.
I would not knock it if you read it.
I just...
Personally, I don't, it's not as enjoyable.
It's like, I guess, reading like the Matthews
or the Wycliffe or something,
you might not enjoy it as much as reading the King James.
Jameson?
So, I know with Spanish Bible translations,
there's been, like, progression towards,
like, beginning more and more refined.
Like, I know in the past, there was the RVR,
and then now we have the RBG.
Do you perceive like a perfect, purified Word of God
has been, and do you see that happening one day?
Or if you do, please?
Oh, you can go first.
Because you've talked to Pastor Gomez as well.
I mean, it's obviously possible in theory.
I think when you look at the King James itself,
there was a huge appetite of people
to actually want to purify the text in English.
Language is about the appetite because why can't we do that for French German or any in any in all languages?
We could in theory. It's just more about the appetite
Obviously, I think the King James is special because God knew that English is gonna be the lingua franca of the world
so I think it's probably unlikely they'll ever be another foreign translation that'll be as
as like on par with the King James, but
I'm not opposed to people refining any any Bible translation or like the Spanish and making it better, but to me like if
If there's not even an appetite for people to read the reign of the Lerogomus 2010,
like that version, why would God want to then give them an even better version?
Like to me, you know, if people aren't already just like zealous about the Bibles
and reading it and wanting to use it, then I don't think God's going to necessarily
hand down an even better version. That's just kind of my opinion on this.
He said, the reason that you don't have a better version,
I was there when somebody asked him like a year ago.
He said, because the Hispanic people don't want it.
Because I mean, even, and by the way,
he's done a great job, so it's not just in continuance.
Like, I did an interview with him last year, I think,
with some of the brothers.
I think you were on that one, right Diego?
With Eliud?
And he said, like they asked him the same question.
For him,
His work is completed, so somebody else would have to take the torch.
Like, he's not going to, he's making small minute edits, which I think are great,
but he's not no longer doing the long work of it.
Yeah, brother Alberto?
So, I have a question about, like, in the bible of the Spanish writer, Reynabular Gomez.
So, you know how the King James, the assistant general of one in the beginning, was the work?
So, I don't have a sharp knowledge of the word verbal, but is that supposed to be verb?
Well, because, again, in Spanish it carries different.
So like the way that I, the way I explain is like, you know, like a guy who's trying to hit on women,
you know, he's good with his work, right?
In Spanish, that's a very common term, like, oh, tiene mucho verbal.
Like he's got he's got good words, so it doesn't carry the same way. It's like it's just not just an action word
It actually does and if you go the interview I did with Pastor Gomez back in like 2018 or 2019
It's still it's like the one that has the most views on our channel
He explains you know deeper in there, but when he explained it, and then I just kind of you know, you think about it
It's it's not a big deal to us like it's not a big deal to the Hispanic people
Nobody like in in as a matter of fact any Spanish-speaking person like oh, well, why is this you know like a verb?
Then that's not how they look at it. They they understand it's the word
I mean, I go soul-winning, I use it all the time.
Like, nobody's like, oh, that's weird.
It's just, so that's what I'm saying, it's not,
I don't think it's a, like Pastor Anderson has said,
it doesn't change the doctrine of the verse.
So it's not a big deal in my opinion, yeah.
And it does sound weird when you say Palabra.
Not because of the feminine, it just sounds weird.
I don't know how to explain it.
I wish I did.
Yeah, Jorge.
Bible verses leading up to it, that there wasn't necessarily anything wrong with them.
But it was just like, in James, it was just the best.
I think, you know, going off of what Pastor Sheldon was saying too,
Yeah, I mean you don't all the fights against pastor Gomez. I think you've talked to him at length. It's all from Americans
I mean, I don't and if it's any like Hispanics Mexicans or other
It seems to fall like they're just following their leader. It's there's nobody
saying yeah, we're reina balleragomas 1960 Mexicanos, you know, or whatever another whereas like, you know
We're fighting the King James like you've got a lot of people on a different camps. You might be the
That pastor Phil Stringer. There's a lot of good people fighting for the King James to this day like it's it's a coal other
Ballgame you don't see that in Latin America
at all
Yeah, brother Jimmy
curious about how in like culturally America we're like we want to go to
ghetto it's gonna be more receptive generally you know if we don't want to
go here do you find that in the Spanish culture like you're like oh this is the
like the cowboy Mexicans let's say and they're not
perspective and this is the rich Mexicans and they are whatever the
equivalent of that is because I don't really know the intricacies of it but do you
find that same type of thing?
Maybe. I don't know. We've done just the little soul winning I've done in Mexico
Because all the soul winning here is to lower income
Hispanic so they're super receptive. Yeah, but it just seems to be the same across the board
I I'm guessing if we went into like the nicer neighborhoods in Mexico. I think it'd be the same way
They're elitist Mexicans are real elitist and they're know-it-alls. So
That's the their form of racism is elitism. So if you're not at their level if they perceive you lower
It doesn't matter. They probably just rejected it.
It does carry.
I lived in Mexico and went to the LFP trip to Mexico.
We used to go to the forest neighborhood to a fault.
We used to just hit and knock it, and knock it, and knock it.
Visitation to a degree where everybody hit her already.
Not that we wouldn't get anybody saved.
But there was so many, so much false doctrine in that neighborhood.
We just didn't never hit new neighborhoods.
and we just focused on the absolute
forest. A lot of them would even say,
oh yeah, I used to go to church and you know your band just picked it up and
then we didn't see it.
It's like, what in the world?
They used to come to my church years ago,
and you're not safe, and you're like,
you're just getting saved now?
I'm like, how do I tell you that nobody got you saved
years ago, and you didn't even get used to come?
It's because they do like big events,
and they just invite people,
they don't even preach on the gospel at times.
But yeah, it does scare you.
And I even went to preach at Ridge neighborhoods,
and it's like, no, they get mad when you preach.
I just went to a park, and I was like, put the hell out of there.
What are you doing here?
The leaders people are the same everywhere.
Jacob, you had a question?
I want to know what your first date with your wife was and how did it go?
Yeah, my first date.
It's kind of a tricky answer just because our first date wasn't even necessarily a date
Like I didn't ask her on an official date or anything like that
We were just kind of friends and then I just said hey
Do you want to go get dinner and she was like sure so I took her to Olive Garden and then I
Ended up paying which to her was like oh, this is a date
and so like you know and
then we went to a movie with some friends
and stuff like that.
I don't remember what movie we watched.
I think it was Stupid probably, but I don't know.
I mean it wasn't really that momentous,
but like Olive Garden was kind of special to us
just because like that was like our first time
to go on a date together and we both liked
eating Italian food and stuff like that.
But really, I mean the thing that me and my wife
was special is just we just liked to talk to each other.
We just had a good conversation and it flowed
and it felt easy and it wasn't like.
awkward or forced like I've been on dates before where it's like you kind of feel like you just ran out of stuff to say or you just
Kind of it's kind of awkward
So and to me if you're gonna be stuck with someone for us your life like
Conversations a pretty big pretty big deal. So yeah
Yeah, my first date was with her best friend and her out of the ice rink
Because I had a lot of opposition before I got married her nobody and her family liked me
What I love them now we get along so I'm not knocking on my throne device just
So I kind of finagle
This is like group outing
But I we both knew it was a date. She remembers it finally like that was our first date
Yeah, just figure it out. I had to do it in a group setting
But I did it
Yeah
So I was talking about I don't know that I ever had like this like calling or whatever people call it I
Just I just knew I wanted to and I didn't have the
You know, I've heard other preachers say like they read stand in the gap and they they've had this
feeling
But I just right around probably 20
12 was I was my wife and I just recently married. I just was frustrated with church
I was like man, I wish I could just be the one I wish I could like I said earlier
I just wish I could finish the story. So I just kind of around that time
I just knew that if somebody ever gave me an opportunity I would I would try to do
Justice to the the scripture not necessarily. I'm not I don't know if I'm a dynamic or not
but just do justice to the word and then
And then it just kind of went away and then I met Pastor Cobb
And we went to breakfast when I first joined the church.
He invited my wife and I to breakfast.
And I mentioned to him, I said, hey, you know,
I have a desire to preach.
I didn't really have a defined thing, but I'm not going to go to like Bible college.
I knew enough to not do that.
That was it.
I never, like he didn't put me in a program or anything, just one day he's just like
a couple years later he's like, hey, I'm going to ordain you to be an evangelist or
license you.
I was like, okay.
And then he just let me preach a little bit more and then about a year later he's like,
okay, I'm going to ordain you to be a preacher.
I was like, I didn't even know I was in the running, but that's cool, thanks.
And then it just still took a long time for me to even get the full leadership.
Like I just stayed under his tutelage for a long time and
tried to pick up what I could.
But like to answer your question, I don't know.
It was probably around that time.
A lot of the good preaching online helped, but I don't know that,
I don't know what exactly influenced it.
And there was a lot of influence.
Was there a group transition, or did you used to use the RV-60 for that church?
No, I've always used, like, so I had a friend of mine give me a rena valera antigua, which I know is not the best,
but I always wanted, because of my King James background, we grew up King James.
Like, I went to the Seventh-day Adventist Church, it was Spanish only,
and there's two Bibles in there, it was the King James, and I'm assuming now that it was probably the 1960,
But I just, I remember looking for the buy one,
I would look for specific verses,
and if it didn't match what I like,
I just didn't want to get it.
So I don't even know if I've ever owned it.
Personally, my mom has, I've never owned a 1960.
I just, it just kind of, it was never.
I have the Antigua, I think I have like the,
No, yeah, like the 1569 the dozo and then now I have the renavala de Gomez and then I apparently there's a new one
We just found out right you know the 2023 then where they fixed that verse before the presence of the Lord, you know, so
That's a cool verse
Marcel
Man, I don't know, like secretly recording me and uploading it to the internet.
That's what you like the most, isn't it?
Yeah, no.
Yeah.
I don't it's probably impossible for me to answer like the absolute like most or something just on the fly, but
Yeah, I
Guess I guess to me like I
Just like to see people making a spiritual change in their life like from
Something that I'm like like wanting them to do or encouraging them to do or whatever you see them make that step
Like whether that's going soul-winning for the first time or taking their family out soul-winning or like start coming to church more
Or whatever, but honestly
you know
Just seeing people at church is probably the thing that I just like the most
Because I honestly, I really do think about virtually every person and I look for them
at church when I show up and I'm disappointed when I don't see them.
So, you know, I just like seeing people at church and like it's disappointing because sometimes you you're preaching sermons
You're like, oh, this would be good for this person or this would be helpful
And then you're like you're kind of disappointed when you don't see them or for me
Every almost every single person that's ever left our church has never told me
So when I just like even if you just let you just got sick or something
I don't know if that was literally the last time like I'll never see you ever again
so it's it's kind of like
It's just kind of like one of those things that like when someone's not there
You just have that quick second thought like are they are they done with me forever or like, you know
What happened?
And so, you know, that's just kind of a thing.
I mean, the bad stuff, that's an endless list of things.
You know, I don't know.
But just, that's my quick answers.
No, I second that motion.
I think we all became, we like preaching to people.
And we actually, I mean, at least the people I know,
like, we love, I love the church members that showed up.
I love the church members that have been there.
Kind of annoys me when they get a little hurt
on something you didn't do on purpose.
I think that's maybe the one that bothers me the most when they're like,
oh, you know, you forgot to mention me about my birthday or you forgot to do this.
And I'm like, just tell me, I would have, I mean, I would have done it.
I'd actually feel really bad because I'm like,
that's not the intent is to push anybody away.
We love, I love every one of them, even the ones that might annoy you.
I love them all.
Like I really do.
don't know that there's one like you I think it's the moment if you ask me
whatever's going on at that time that's probably the thing I hate the most
whatever they're bugging me about that day or that week I'll give you one more
thing that I hate okay and this is of people that actually still stick around
our church is I'll make a comment and a sermon about something that you shouldn't
do
and then someone will come up to me and do it to me
and then pretend like they're joking.
And it sometimes makes me want to get physically violent
like when the chains hit me.
But yeah, I mean, I'm a pretty sarcastic person.
I like to joke a lot, but for me,
that just rubs me the wrong way, those kind of jokes.
So.
Okay, another question. I'm sorry if I've ever done that
So forgive me
That's somebody that God can bless and help grow the church.
But for you, has your vision changed or has anything changed in the past year?
I mean, where do you see your church going?
I preach two sermons when we were running 17 or whatever at the time.
And one was, and I didn't preach that one too,
just only to the church, and I kept it.
It was like everything I wanted to accomplish in the church.
And then the other one was the best church in your area.
And I think I just wanna keep focused on,
like I said, pleasing the Lord.
I want the church to grow, I think it should,
but I'm also...
I think if you don't learn from the mistakes of others,
and I'm not saying they're all a mistake,
I'm just saying if you don't learn from watching
faithful words split like 25 times and then grow again,
instead fast split and you know,
and then people that you would never think would leave,
right, and they would disassociate like,
and I'm not talking about someone who wants to forget
physically violent with you like Joe Jones,
I'm just saying, I'm talking about people that we,
everybody was like, this guy,
was someone that I looked up to, changed my life,
and they're no longer associated,
I just wanna keep myself in check,
like meaning, what I ask for the Lord is just keep me in check.
Don't let it go to your head if people come great if people don't come
Just keep doing the same thing you were doing before because that's really what we did it
I didn't do anything special of Pastor Shelly called me and said hey
Is it okay if some people go to your church to be honest with you?
He didn't say what he was doing because it was the conversation was is it okay if some people go to church?
I was like yeah, and I hung up didn't think anything of it
I showed up the next Sunday and all but all the sudden the church is filled and I was like well
This is great with that came all this work
But I just tell my wife, just remind me, it's not about the work.
Like, if they're there, I want to serve them.
If they're not there, then I'm still going to serve them, you know, whoever I can.
I really pray for me because that is, I think, the danger.
You get high.
I was telling them, I always try to be careful to associate with the new FB and not want
to write coattails for the wrong reasons.
that's what's happened with a lot of the churches, right? They wanted the
notoriety and all of a sudden other channels getting subscribers and people
are showing up to church. We've had visitors every week, but if that's why
I'm doing it then I might as well just quit. I mean seriously.
Well, and I want to I do want to say this I know I've said it before but I'm really grateful to all of you guys
You guys have been a blessing Pastor Shelley when you guys showed up
I mean it was like
Like what I that vision when you guys showed up and if you filled up the church
I was like that that'll be the church and in one day in the near future
That'll be the church actually that was the most inspirational thing of the year was like
I'm looking now and I'm like a hundred people. We have an overflow. Pastor Shelley's like,
you can't fit 200 people in here. I was like, not in the sanctuary.
In the building. That's what I meant. I was like, how many chairs can we get in here?
I answer that. It's a 200. I'm like, uh-oh. Yeah, you're right.
It's okay. FBBF will be work. So.
So.
You know, I mean, I'm always trying to create vision, but like I feel like every few years
It's completely different than what I actually envisioned. So I've tried I've tried really hard to be more like
malleable and just more like whatever God wants us to do. I
Don't know. I feel like we're out of crossroads and I don't know exactly what God wants to do with our church because it's like
we have more people than building and
it's like
Do we I mean, I'm not against growing and I think that that's fine
But I don't really personally care to grow to me
I just felt like I just didn't want to get in the way of growth like if God wants us to grow that I'm just
I'm enabling I'm not enabling that like I'm not setting aside either the money or the time or the effort or energy to
Allow that to happen, but at the same time I don't want to get like I
Just never want to put myself in a position where
I'm concerned with growth or I'm like trying to get an expensive building or something
And then we have all this money and debt and problems and yeah
There's temptations for compromise and church splits are scary and all this stuff like
to me like
You know one of the questions is asked like did you know when did you want to become a pastor?
I don't know that I ever wanted to be a pastor. I wanted to just preach the Bible
So like but the thing is is like part of you know
That comes with like becoming a pastor and like for me like becoming a pastor was not something
I necessarily wanted to do is more like preaching the Bible. I
like preaching and
I like soul winning and I had a hard time finding a church
So it's preaching the Bible and going soul winning and I said if well stinking no one will do it
guess I'm willing to do it but it wasn't that I necessarily really wanted to do
it and even today I don't want to do it but I'm willing to do it you know but
here's the thing if that's what I want to do if I want to preach what the Bible
says and I want to make sure that people want to go so on and go so on to me
that's the only vision that I really care about our church so no matter what
decisions I make for the future or whatever we do I don't want to cause
us or myself to get into a position where I'm not willing to say whatever needs to be said
or that we're not prioritizing soul winning. And so, you know, I really don't know where
we're going to go. I don't know how we're going to, what's headed in the future. Our church has
grown a lot. I think that, I mean, honestly, I think that there's potential for us to grow
Because we're like a prize fighter in our church right now
We've really cut a lot of the fat and we we have a lot of really good core people in our church
but I also know that like
Things can turn quickly and crazy things can happen. So
You know, I'm just right now. I'm trying to cast a vision of like hey
Let's try to set aside some money and try to get a building, but not right now. It's like right now
It's like FBBF. That's I'm only looking like one step at a time right now
But I was gonna not do very much stuff this year
I had planned to make 2025 be an extremely conservative year where we didn't spend very much money and didn't do very many things
but when we had our drama in October
I noticed like, man, we're just losing people like crazy.
I mean, we lost like 30, 40 people.
And it seemed like as possible could be more.
And I'm thinking like, well, why am I in the world?
Am I so worried about getting another building
if we're just gonna lose, you know,
half the church over stupid crap like this?
Like, I'm fine, I'm fine with the building we're in.
Like, I don't need another building.
It's just that we run out of parking spots and seats
and, you know, I'm just trying to look towards the future.
So I said, okay, why am I gonna spend money,
you know, put in a savings account?
Why don't we just spend all the money that we have?
and some on all the stuff we want to do this year.
Let's just do everything that I would want to do.
It's like we're gonna go on every missions trip,
we're gonna do the Bahamas,
we're gonna have a gang buster conference,
we're gonna do the FPVF or whatever.
And I mean, this year we've had the best soul winning
numbers we've ever had.
And God's like sent a lot more people,
like we've grown like a lot.
And it's just like, okay, you know, that's...
That seemed to be the right decision, but you know, I probably will you know the next few years maybe consider being a little more conservative and trying to build for the future, but
If things change, I mean, if our church split and we lost half the people, then it's like who cares about a building?
Like let's just keep going soul-winning and doing whatever. So I'm willing to adjust at any time, you know?
If you ever, if you get it like a billionaire saved and he wants to buy us a building, you know, then we'll move into a new building, you know?
But I mean, it's like
I'm kind of, I think when it comes to the church, like I like to have goals and I like to have vision, but
I just really don't know what to think.
I don't know if this church can grow to be 500 or 1,000
or 10,000 or it's gonna be,
we're already at our peak attendance wise.
I have no idea.
But to me, it's more important that it's just like,
I'm gonna keep preaching whatever I need to preach
and we're gonna keep doing the soul winning
and we're gonna grow if God wants us to grow
by doing the right thing.
And if we're not, then okay.
And
I'm not willing to grow for the sake of compromise and I think that churches and most pastors
in this world are only concerned with growth.
And I think God's blessed me that I'm worked in the secular world for a long time and had
a really highly skilled position so that I could make good money so that I'm not tempted
to preach things for money because I can make my own money if I really have to.
You know what I mean?
Like I'm just not interested in that, I'm just interested in just being a leader.
You know what I mean?
You know, I think steadfast is a bright future.
I think we genuinely could run thousands.
I mean, DFW is, in my opinion,
like probably the greatest place
to build a church in the world.
Because we have such a giant population and we have the fourth largest metro
I believe in the United States and when you look at the ones that are bigger
It's New York City Chicago and LA and there it's not like those aren't great opportunities to do works for God
But you know
Dallas war is a lot more conservative a lot more Baptist heritage a lot more Baptist history, and I've noticed like places that have been Baptist
Strongholds in the past often are easily converted into a Baptist stronghold of the future
Plus we the Dallas fourth area is growing crazy. The economy is good. Good jobs
We already have a good movement like of people like we have a I think we have the best core of any new
IB church like we just have
fun people, diverse people, people that are dedicated,
people that are just not your average church member,
and whenever you kind of have that momentum,
people like to join that kind of stuff.
People like to attach themselves to those things.
And so, you know, I just think that the sky is the limit,
but at the end of the day,
even if none of that happens,
and I can't predict the future,
it's like, again, I just want to stick to,
I'm gonna preach whatever the Bible says,
Keep doing so and I mean at the end of the day
I've already preached every radical thing that's gonna happen. Everybody kind of knows like I'm pretty abrasive
Can can like most people think I'm pretty abrasive and like whatever, but that's purposeful
Because I just right now when we're in a crossroads. I don't want us to be filled with a bunch of fluff. I
Want us to be
Pretty close to our kind of like prize fight weight
I want to be weighing in at what we think that we're going to be at so that if we do grow
It's real. It's not like fake. Does that kind of make sense?
Which I think he knows when we are, we're not big enough, but is it possible that we can gain so much attention that it doesn't have to be good, that they just can't get the worst anymore?
They can't pretend like we're not here. You think that's possible?
Yes and no. The thing is, I don't really care about the attention, number one, but obviously Jack Hiles, you can't ignore Jack Hiles.
You can't, you can't, but here's the thing,
you can't ignore Jeremiah,
but Jeremiah has a congregation of one.
It's Jeremiah.
And I think to me like,
I'm not trying to win a popularity contest,
but I think like as a preacher,
people are looking for people like the new IFB pastors.
Just their opinion when things happen.
whether they like them or hate them, it doesn't matter.
They just want to hear what their opinion is.
It's just kind of like that king.
He just wants to hear Micaiah, you know, get up and say,
he says, I just want to hear what God
would have to say about this subject.
I just want to hear what the man of God
would actually say about this subject,
even though it's never really positive about me,
you know, or whatever.
And I think, you know, to me, that would be the goal.
It's like, hey, we want to be a church
that people can look to.
Like if they want to know what the Bible really says,
Hey, that's the church that'll tell you what it really says.
But it doesn't really matter if it's running 200, 500, 1,000.
They'll never respect us.
They'll always hate us.
And it doesn't really, to me, the numbers game
doesn't really matter.
But I do think when you have a church of 1,000 or 2,000,
you can do things that a church of 50 can't.
You could support more missionaries 100% financially in multiple parts of the world.
You can have the really nice choirs and you can have all the different programs and you
can really reach out to different areas.
You can have a soul-winning stinking army.
You can have epic conferences and you can do things that smaller churches just can't
do.
Not only that, you can help other churches.
You can help smaller churches.
the next generation and send out pastors and preachers.
So like, and when you have a stronghold like that,
it's harder to destroy in some ways.
It's, obviously things can be destroyed,
but you know, if you build something that's important,
you know, really big, like look at Kyle's church,
it's still here and it's still running, I think like 1500.
Is it in its glory days?
No, but how many churches have been started by
Hiles Anderson or or first Baptist Church Lancaster, they made a big splash in the world and
Might as well go big or go home
I mean, hey, I prayed that I'd get a double portion of Pastor Anderson spirit and I still want that
I don't want to do the works. He did I want to do double the works
He did if I could have if God would use me to do that
Cuz why wouldn't I but at the end of the day like I don't know what the Lord wills
I do want to do whatever he wants me to do
I think we should be sensitive to that.
I think just taking one step at a time.
I don't think that Moses knew everything he was gonna do
in his life or even every single prophet.
So, but at the end of the day,
like I think our church is in a really good position right now
and we are financially sound and we have good people
and we're doing good progress.
I don't wanna disrupt that.
I wanna make sure that we're staying that course.
And to me, I think our names are really important.
We're named steadfast.
And I think our church needs to be steadfast.
We need some church, and we need some pastor,
and we need some group of people to actually represent that
so that people can see that example.
I like it.
We'll take like a couple more questions that we can in.
Carlos?
That's where he's building on Bill's question.
within all that, in the future,
do you envision your church growing
and would you, I guess, invest in Houston
or do you think you would maybe invest
in your old stomping grounds in the valley?
It's very receptive.
We have Mexico, it's growing rapidly.
Is that something you want to do from your heart?
So initially, I mean, I wanted to do a church panel
in the valley for many, many years.
That's kind of disappeared.
The valley's a little bit liberal
and they're not receptive.
Actually, I'm just gonna be, for the little I've done,
It's not been like an area. It's almost like God's pushed me away from it. I wanted it
You know our GB 956 all the way baby, but they just they just don't get it
I've got salt winning over there, and it's actually
Houston's way better so waiting than the valley
The vision is the same. I mean, I'm just parrot that, but I kept that paper in there, you know, we want programs, I want start churches, we want soul-winning programs, like I wanted where the finances go to, you know, all the soul-winning efforts and all that stuff.
I pray the Lord keep me, you know, this is, my stress is not about the church, it's about I want to be able to make my own money too, so I don't have to worry or ever depend on the church.
And if I do that it's just big enough so but the valley
No, really my focus is the Spanish ministry
I was telling Diego and I'm being did really serious and by the way you guys
All the Spanish people like there's no content
And I know we're not content like we're not social media influencers
There's nothing like it's still a barren wasteland of that idiot that would chop his head off if the Mark of the Beast came, I forget his name.
What's his name?
Robert Breaker.
Yeah, except he's nearing a million subscribers to the Spanish-speaking world.
He speaks Spanish.
He's called La Iglesia en la Nube.
Oh man.
He preaches in Spanish on his channel
and he has millions of views
about his stupid dispensational.
I mean, I hate that guy because
it's not just in the English that he does the combo.
It's also in the Spanish.
And but like that, there's like all these,
it's weird, the Hispanic influence
or like the church leaders or whatever they get.
when they get millions and millions of views.
And it's not the views, people are listening
because they're searching and they think
these guys have something to say.
So I would much rather, you know, I'm older,
I just have to admit it, I'm older.
But I want to just, if I can.
blaze a small path and then get guys like maybe a Diego or Jorge or someone like that to pick up that torch in in the Spanish speaking
English is the lingua franca, but Spanish people don't want to learn English like
Koreans and Chinese and Filipinos do they want to speak Spanish and there's not anything good out there
There isn't there's no good. I mean other than steadfast. I'm talking
I just don't, I look, I do the search regularly.
I cannot find it.
I mean, Diego got 10,000 views on his John MacArthur sermon.
I know, I think it's great.
On his John MacArthur, 10,000, and that's right.
He start the pot, because you know what?
There's a lot of Hispanics that love John MacArthur.
Did it? Okay. I don't know. Yeah, I know they dubbed it at one point, right?
But yeah, that so the vision would just be like just to serve the Lord and then if he gives me
The ability with a big church and stuff great
It did I mean I will pair it that it is nice when you have more people
Because then more people are tithing and you can do more for the work of the Lord, right?
But but only for that. I don't care if they tithing so I can buy a plane or anything
That's not my just a helicopter. Just a helicopter
Just a reasonable play. Well, I mean Ed Young senior used to have a helicopter for all the campuses and used to
Those guys that's a whole other
But yeah, so I hope that did answer your question, but the valley needs work
Anybody have another one Jameson
He ruined his relationship with Samuel,
and in many ways he ruined his relationship with God.
God took away his ability to become king.
He gave him the evil spirit.
How could he, like, what could he have done
to gotten right with God?
And then do you think it would have ever been possible
that he could have gotten right with Samuel?
I mean, I think it was pretty evident in the sermon,
like just obey.
Samuel cried all night when the when he when the Lord said I've removed
Saul in that in that chapter and then that was it. I think just that's the point. We're not obeying
As evidence of why you guys are here and all the things that have happened over the last five years
If you want a pinpoint to something it's disobedience. You can call it envy. You can call it whatever. They're just not listening to the Lord
He's not obeying though. That's the pattern that he that's why he stands out. You know, I don't want to disobey the Lord
That's actually a really scary thought so personally
Dad answer your question
Do me if you mean I would say like you know to me with Saul like when he's he's told he's like rejected his king
And then he's gonna replace him with someone that's better than him
And, you know, some decisions he could have made
is he could have just accepted that.
Like Jonathan strips himself
and kind of gives his garments unto David.
And it's kind of like him just accepting like,
hey, my future's changed.
And I think whenever we make bad decisions
or maybe we do something that causes us
to not go down a certain path, then we just accept that.
We just say, hey, that's just not my path now.
Or I have to live a different life than what was anticipated.
Obviously, the children of Israel,
we're going to go on the Promised Land.
Now they can't, well, OK, make the best
of the wilderness that you're in.
With King Saul, it's like he should have gotten
on David's program, in a sense, and just champion David.
And what you can really see is I kind of almost think that,
in some ways, it's like how the old IFB is kind of like Saul
And instead of just like getting on board with some things that are better that the new IFB is doing,
you know, some of them are just trying to attack it and try to just like go down in flames.
And they would actually probably be better off if they would just embrace it and just kind of get on board.
I think a lot of them are going to basically just slowly die out when the baby boomer generation dies out
and they're not reaching the youth and they're...
they're kind of just stuck in their ways.
And not all of them, I don't think they'll go away completely,
but I'm just saying like a lot of churches
that aren't gonna adapt, aren't gonna adjust,
make changes, accept that they've been wrong
about certain things,
that they're gonna suffer a lot of those consequences.
And we should learn from that, from ourselves,
that hey, sometimes we have to adjust, course correct,
or just accept the reality of whatever decisions
that we've made.
And just say, okay, that's...
Who I am, this is the difficult, you know, path that I have to walk down, but that's the path God wants me to walk down.
I mean, unfortunately, America's messed up, man, and most people are messed up.
People have all kinds of baggage in their lives, whether they...
aren't married and they're past like being young or they got divorced or they
Committed grievous sin or they have all these bad life circumstances and sometimes they come to you and they want to hear like
Hey, what do I do with my life? And it's like well
Here's what you do with your life, but Saul doesn't want to hear step down as king and let David reign
But that was the right decision.
And I think for all of us, we just have to say,
okay, if God asked me to do something hard
or walk down an alternate path of my life,
would I be willing to do it?
But you know what, if you get on David's team,
would Jonathan have died?
I mean, I think that's a fair question.
Would Saul's son Jonathan have died in battle with Saul,
if Saul had not been chasing after David
and trying to kill him,
he may not have gone down in flames.
He may have actually been successful in a campaign,
because if David was the leader
in going out and the Lord was with him,
Jonathan may not have died in battle.
And so he caused a lot of pain to his own family
and his heritage and his legacy and to himself.
And so I think for some of us,
at times and say, hey, I've made these mistakes.
This is what the God wants me to do.
But if Saul actually had that attitude,
he may not have been replaced.
So it's kind of a tricky question.
What kind of situation where he's blessed with 50 more years?
You know, I mean, you can read that story
in a couple different ways because I think, you know,
he says like truth, or what is it?
Goodness and truth will be in my days.
Like, some people look at that as like, oh, that's a bad attitude, but it's not even necessarily
a bad attitude because God could have just said, well, you're going to die tomorrow or
you're going to have no good life.
And it's not necessarily has a kias fault that the next generation's going to suck or
make mistakes.
And he's just saying, if God says, hey, I'm going to give you 15 good years, when should
you say thank you?
And so like him even having that attitude,
you could look at it in a negative light,
but you could also look at it in a positive light
and say, well, he's actually kind of having
a positive attitude about the fact
that God's gonna give him a good next 15 years.
I mean, it's like, hey, we always have this uncertainty
about Kamala being president or some other weird thing.
If God literally came down and said, hey,
the next 15 years are gonna be really good
for you in America, you'd probably be like, well, great.
But does that mean that I hate my children or hate their future? No.
I would just say like thanks God for at least giving us another 15 years because ultimately I can't stop the
the insanity that is America and where we're headed inevitably, but if God were to say how I'm gonna delay just
Nuking y'all and going into the end times for 15 years and be like, okay great. Let's let's knock out the next 15 years or something
so
I think you just kind of have to look at whatever God wants you to do, you just have to do it.
That's the whole theme of the Bible, like he said.
You just got to obey whatever it looks like, and sometimes it's not what we want to do.
Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.
I think that's how I would answer that.
We'll take one more question. Someone's got one.
Yep
I mean lifting weights helps
You know to me like I
I think that the number one reason why people get out of our church and people have big
problems and all these things is just they have a bad marriage or marriage problems.
I think marriage is like what I've noticed is like the most common thing and it's not
the only thing but I just feel like that's a big deal and I mean I've seen, I've seen
it in all kinds of ways.
I've seen young single guys are really zealous then they get married and then they're gone
You know, they just, all kinds of just various scenarios.
And it's just like marriage is just,
it's such an important relationship.
And it's the thing you have to live with the most.
And there's so many people that don't go to steadfast
because their spouse doesn't wanna go to steadfast.
And it's like, it's such a major impact.
And so like my sermon that I preached,
it's really important to me.
It's like, you should lead
a spiritual way in your household and in your family because if y'all are equally yoked and if y'all are
growing together then
You know
Y'all are be happier your kids will be happier and when you're just when y'all are in sync
It just every other area of your life just is so much better
And so like to me, you don't even necessarily have to worry about all these other people like making sure that you guys are good
Focusing on your wife taking care of what you know, he's already given you. I think to me is like
Really really great and I think
That really helps because when especially you know in our movement
Let's just be honest, a lot of guys can handle it and take it and whatever, but the women struggle more and there's more temptation and more attacks and more persecution and more drama and their lives are hard.
I mean, I can't imagine happening to be so countercultural.
only wearing dresses and skirts and popping out babies all the stinking time and having to put
up with y'all and like making sandwiches and doing all this stuff and like it is the it is
the better version of their life it's the best version of their life it's what god wants them to
do but it's not like it's easy it's still super hard super difficult a lot of demands and they
don't get any of the like attention and recognition um like that men do
They don't get that and they're hated of their family
because they don't act like their family
and they're not the boss babe
and there's so much feminism in the world.
And so it's just like, if you're not the one
really connecting with your wife and encouraging her
and making her feel special and whatever,
it's just so easy for her to get burnt out
and just turned off and frustrated and not like things.
They can't handle the hard preaching as well as men can.
you know, men sometimes, they just want the F word to be said, you know, and it's just like,
women, they don't like, they don't want to hear about Bible prophecy. Like, they're not,
after church, they're not sitting in a circle discussing, you know, Daniel's 70th week.
They're not sitting in a circle discussing the finer points of Jeremiah and all this stuff.
But does that mean that they don't, aren't spiritual? No, they're just spiritual in their own ways.
And so we just have to understand that them as the weaker vessel,
we have to be strong for them and bear their burdens and we need to love them.
And you know I think in the last four or five years it's really hard because
inflation kicked our ass.
and a lot of us are working overtime, working hard,
putting in extra hours, doing all this stuff,
but who ends up taking a lot of that sacrifice
and sometimes are wise because we're not giving them
as much attention, time, effort, energy,
and when that starts to fall apart,
your whole life falls apart.
And I've seen guys,
Not even necessarily to enter a church, but I've seen a lot of guys where they made bad decisions and they've wrecked their marriage
And they tell me I'll do anything to fix it
Is that all you know, I'll I'll pay a half a million dollars. I'll give up all of my money
I'll give up all of my health. I'll give up all of my time
I'll do all these things just to have my marriage back or to have that relationship back and it's like well
Where were you you know two years ago? You didn't even have to give all that up
But they're willing to now that it's gone.
And it's like, you know, you just need to realize,
like, hey, this is important.
I need to put the work in, I need to put the effort in,
I need to put the energy.
And let me tell you something,
when you have a bunch of happy couples all to end church,
it's just gonna make a huge, huge difference.
That's gonna make a strong, healthy church.
When every marriage is on the rocks, it's bad.
And divorces happen in pairs, what people say.
Bad things happen, like when you get one disgruntled woman,
it can spread like a wildfire.
You get men doing stupid things and dragging people down.
I mean, it just, everything rises and falls on leadership
and that starts with all of us and we gotta lead our homes.
And I'm just saying, like to me,
having great marriages is like awesome.
Because people show up and they look at your example and they they want to follow it too
Because not everybody's gonna look at me and my wife and want to follow us. They're gonna follow you guys
They're gonna follow what example you're doing and how you're leading they hang out with y'all more and then y'all's home more
And they're around y'all's wives and it's like
Here's the one thing that would be annoying,
and it does happen, but it's like you go to steadfast,
and then people hang out with you at your home,
and you don't do anything that the pastor says
or the preacher says or the church says,
and it's way different.
They're like, oh, okay, they take liberties,
and they're a pillar of the church.
They're a core member of our church.
Well, then I guess I don't need to do any of the stuff
the pastor says or the church says,
or whatever, treat my wife nice or kind,
or do any of these things.
You know, it's a major, major thing.
You know, the single guys, they're unreliable.
We can't trust them, you know?
They're gonna come and go, I mean, if they meet a girl
that they really like, that lives somewhere else,
they'll just move, they'll just drop us like a bad habit,
you know?
But the people that are married and have roots,
they're gonna be the ones that are gonna stick with us
more likely, and so that's, to me,
that's like really important to have.
You know, those type of people just like really locked in.
and you know we're trying to get them wives you know you guys hey we're gonna
have a singles event we're trying to you know bring the women to you to get you
locked down okay we're gonna get you on the chain but yeah
I mean, there's been people that came to the FBBF,
didn't even really like each other,
and then got married later, so, you know.
There you go, so it's happened.
We have that.
But yeah, I think there's a lot of things we could do
to improve, but to me, that's a really important thing,
something I think about a lot.
Most marriage counselors there
are counseling people divorce, and it's just,
it's an epidemic.
I hate it, it's really ugly.
But just think about it.
Just think about people that you know
that have left our church, or disgruntled,
or are not doing good in our church,
and then think about that person's marriage.
And it's like,
Wow, okay, most of them don't have what I would think is a really ideal situation. They have a lot of problems.
They're not, you know, unified, typically.
And so, you know, the people that are really unified usually are a lot more loyal, faithful to the things of God.
So it's really, really important.
Do you have a do you have a suggestion? My only suggestion is love your wife. I love my wife
She's not better against her. I think that's I really appreciate the sermon history because I mean that's like the greatest thing
that could have happened to me be after salvation is
She really is like amazing. So I don't know that I could say anything bad about her
and she
It's it's great. I love being married. It's it does get better all the time
so
And I think it does help with the church.
Pastor Cobb just celebrated 50 years of marriage.
I don't think the church is doing what it's doing just because I showed up.
I mean, he put in the work in the church and in his family.
And he was excited.
He got her hair done and he was driving her around town.
It was really endearing to see because...
They went to dinner and then we celebrated with them.
So I think your correlation is spot on.
I don't even have to use my example.
50 years of just loving each other.
They're inseparable.
They're always together.
They chat all day.
Because my dad told me one time a long time ago,
he said, the problem with old people,
you ever look, you look at them,
they don't talk to each other.
Because they've already said everything they wanted to say.
But that was from a worldly perspective.
From a Christian perspective,
If you guys go visit pay attention to pastor comments, and they're like they're like
Everywhere, it's just like one unit
Everywhere they go, so that's all that's the only thing I would say
Alright, we can break. Thanks guys for coming. Tomorrow morning, 9 a.m., we'll have a service.
I'll probably just do like one song and then we'll do a men's popcorn preaching. Five minutes.
Um, I will critique them with a chainsaw apparently.
That's great, so...
If you're...
Yeah.
Oh, okay, alright.
You know what?
We're gonna get up a chainsaw, you know, very fast.
If you preach heresy, the chainsaw comes out.
But, yeah.
I'll give some criticism, so if you're faint of heart, don't bring a sermon.
But other than that, you're good to go.
Have a good night, thanks.
Thanks guys, yeah.