WEBVTT 00:01.800 --> 00:03.500 252. 00:22.100 --> 00:25.900 Let's start with page 252, wider than snow. 00:25.900 --> 00:27.600 Wider than snow. 01:27.800 --> 01:29.400 Wait, bless it. 01:31.600 --> 01:33.100 crucified 02:03.000 --> 02:09.440 For Jesus thou seest, I patiently wait. 02:09.440 --> 02:11.500 Come now and wait. 02:17.000 --> 02:22.000 Those who have sought thee thou ever said no 02:25.900 --> 02:27.800 Where shall we find... 02:30.400 --> 02:30.900 Bye! 02:45.900 --> 02:48.900 If you do not have a bulletin, Enrique, you can pass them out. 02:48.900 --> 02:52.900 Welcome to Sprint Crest, our evening service. 02:52.900 --> 02:54.900 Today is July 5th. 02:54.900 --> 02:56.900 Our Sunday morning service is 10.30am. 02:56.900 --> 02:58.900 Sunday evening 4.38pm. 02:58.900 --> 03:00.900 Wednesday service is 5.30pm. 03:00.900 --> 03:02.900 And our sole waiting time is 2pm. 03:02.900 --> 03:07.900 And then, if I can get those numbers, I got two. 03:07.900 --> 03:11.900 Anybody? Then you got two, right, Sister Sylvia? 03:11.900 --> 03:13.400 Sister Gina one. 03:13.900 --> 03:15.100 Daniel 3 03:17.300 --> 03:18.800 And did you guys get any? 03:18.800 --> 03:20.800 Oh brother, Jerry won. 03:21.800 --> 03:23.800 And you guys how? Megan? 03:23.800 --> 03:25.800 Did you guys get any? You got one? 03:25.800 --> 03:26.800 Okay. 03:26.800 --> 03:28.800 So... 03:33.400 --> 03:35.200 Yeah, we got 10 more. 03:35.200 --> 03:36.500 Amen. 03:36.500 --> 03:39.960 So we're at 700 and plus 3. 03:39.960 --> 03:42.400 We're at 713. 03:42.400 --> 03:46.400 The 10 plus this morning, I got an update on a couple of. 03:46.400 --> 03:50.320 So 703 plus 10. 03:50.320 --> 03:52.200 Yeah, 713. 03:52.200 --> 03:54.640 And then one more week on Philippians 130. 03:54.640 --> 03:56.600 So if anybody needs to quote that, let me know. 03:56.600 --> 03:59.640 Because next Sunday, I'll start a new chapter. 04:00.600 --> 04:02.960 Just a reminder, we are a family integrated church. 04:02.960 --> 04:05.040 We have a mother-baby room in the back. 04:05.040 --> 04:08.000 Specifically, that's what it is, a mother-baby room. 04:08.000 --> 04:10.440 And then we have all the birthdays that are coming up. 04:10.440 --> 04:11.840 I already went through that this morning. 04:11.840 --> 04:13.480 As you can see, it's a lot of them. 04:13.480 --> 04:17.400 But if you have a chance, wish Gina and Daniel 04:17.400 --> 04:18.240 a happy birthday. 04:18.240 --> 04:20.320 I feel bad for Chloe, 04:20.320 --> 04:22.400 because she's just like the odd one out in her family. 04:22.400 --> 04:24.900 Everybody has a birthday in July except Chloe, so. 04:25.200 --> 04:31.040 I feel bad for her for that respect, but I feel really good for her because she just like solo celebrated her birthday 04:31.040 --> 04:37.280 Everybody else has to share her birthday. So I got two in November and you know, it's like one after another and then Lucy's all by herself 04:37.440 --> 04:42.760 So and then we have the anniversary and then just a reminder pastor Shelley will be here July 19th 04:42.760 --> 04:48.040 And then we have the baby shower for Christian Rogers the 24th and then I think I got to confirm 04:48.040 --> 04:52.360 I thought I was gonna see him this morning, but brother Mike. I have to take a business trip 04:53.000 --> 04:58.440 that weekend and I was trying to get back for Sunday but I think I'm gonna have Pastor Cobb and 04:59.560 --> 05:06.200 Brother Mike preach because it's in Idaho and I didn't realize it's just so hard to get to Idaho 05:06.200 --> 05:12.200 and then get back like it's out there it's kind of a hassle so we're just I think that's what 05:12.200 --> 05:17.240 we're gonna do so I'll put that on the bulletin and then we'll set up another soul winning marathon 05:18.600 --> 05:23.600 Probably in August only because this month I've got all that stuff going on 05:24.480 --> 05:29.200 And we'll probably set up the workday then God willing we'll just turn the corner into the fall 05:29.480 --> 05:32.040 And maybe it won't be that bad of a fault who knows 05:33.480 --> 05:39.360 As far as heat is concerned and I appreciate all the visitors brother how thank you for business from first works 05:40.000 --> 05:44.000 And I just want to say thank you for toughen out the heat because I know California is not like that. 05:44.000 --> 05:48.000 I felt bad for him. I was like, man, that's a rude awakening. 05:48.000 --> 05:51.000 But he's been in the military. He's had to rough it out. 05:51.000 --> 05:55.000 And I want to thank Brother Freeman and his wife, Sister Freeman. 05:55.000 --> 05:58.000 They went out. Now they know what they're dealing with because they're from Texas. 05:58.000 --> 06:02.000 They're just down the road from in Corpus. So that's not too shabby. 06:02.000 --> 06:04.000 And then the prayer request is updated there in the back. 06:04.000 --> 06:07.000 Just pray for Chris, who's the only one that we added. 06:07.400 --> 06:12.400 And if nothing else, let's turn our hymnals over to page 207. 06:12.400 --> 06:13.960 I kind of know this one. 06:13.960 --> 06:18.760 I haven't sang in a long time, so help me belt this out. 06:18.760 --> 06:22.000 We should be fine, but if not, you know me. 06:22.000 --> 06:25.000 I'm just going to do it anyways. 06:25.000 --> 06:26.200 If I butcher, I butcher. 06:26.200 --> 06:27.200 I butcher them all. 06:27.200 --> 06:28.200 Don't worry about it. 06:28.200 --> 06:31.200 Only a center on the first. 06:46.300 --> 06:51.100 Raise happy sodas and die happily 06:51.100 --> 06:54.300 Bowsheen excluded from 07:23.300 --> 07:32.900 I was foolish and sin ruled my heart, Causing my footsteps from God to depart. 07:32.900 --> 07:43.300 Jesus has found me, happy my case. I'm not a sinner, saved by grace. 07:43.300 --> 07:47.300 Only a sinner, saved by grace. 07:50.500 --> 07:51.780 Say bye! 08:00.800 --> 08:01.300 Say it 08:09.500 --> 08:13.980 He had saved me or else I must die. 08:13.980 --> 08:18.780 Sin had alarmed me, fearing God's face. 08:18.780 --> 08:24.300 But now I'm a sinner, saved by grace. 08:24.300 --> 08:25.060 Oh- 08:27.400 --> 08:28.540 ... Am I great? 08:40.900 --> 08:49.540 sinner, saved by grace. Suffer a sinner whose heart overflows. 08:56.400 --> 08:57.600 More to tell it 09:28.000 --> 09:31.000 Turn your Bibles over to 1 Corinthians 5. 09:34.700 --> 09:42.140 What brother Matt Reed said is that if brother Jerry could take up the tides of the offerings, 09:43.820 --> 09:45.020 I would appreciate it. 10:04.000 --> 10:10.080 1 Corinthians chapter number five. 1 Corinthians chapter five. 10:17.700 --> 10:23.060 1 Corinthians 5 verse 1 the Bible reads, It is reported commonly that there is fornication 10:23.060 --> 10:28.660 among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have 10:28.660 --> 10:35.780 his father's wife. And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this 10:35.780 --> 10:42.660 deed might be taken away from among you. For I verily as absent in body, but present in spirit, 10:42.660 --> 10:44.260 have judged already. 10:44.500 --> 10:51.780 as though I were present concerning him that hath so done this deed. In the name of our Lord 10:51.780 --> 10:57.460 Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together in my spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ 10:57.460 --> 11:02.980 to deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may 11:02.980 --> 11:05.860 be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. 11:06.400 --> 11:08.960 Your glorying is not good. 11:08.960 --> 11:12.480 Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? 11:12.480 --> 11:14.800 Purge out therefore the old leaven, 11:14.800 --> 11:18.160 that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. 11:18.160 --> 11:22.240 For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. 11:22.240 --> 11:25.840 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, 11:25.840 --> 11:28.560 neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, 11:28.560 --> 11:32.240 but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. 11:32.400 --> 11:37.760 I wrote unto you an epistle not to accompany with fornicators, yet not all together with the 11:37.760 --> 11:45.120 fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters, for then must 11:45.120 --> 11:51.440 ye needs go out of the world. Now I have written unto you not to keep company with any man that 11:51.440 --> 11:58.480 is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railler, or a drunkard, 11:58.480 --> 11:59.800 or an extortioner. 11:59.900 --> 12:06.540 with such a one know not to eat but what have I to do to judge them also that are without 12:07.340 --> 12:14.060 do not ye judge them that are within but them that are without god judge it therefore put away 12:14.060 --> 12:18.940 from among you from among yourselves that wicked person let's bow our heads and go to the lord in 12:18.940 --> 12:23.740 prayer father thank you once again for gathering us here this evening thank you for your word 12:23.740 --> 12:25.900 Thank you for this church. 12:26.100 --> 12:31.660 Lord, we pray that you give us ears to hear and hearts to understand so that we can take 12:31.660 --> 12:35.820 the message and apply it to our lives and become more effective servants for you. 12:35.820 --> 12:40.200 Lord, please fill Pastor Reyes with your Holy Spirit and allow him to preach the message 12:40.200 --> 12:42.500 boldly and it's in Jesus' name we pray. 12:42.500 --> 12:43.000 Amen. 12:45.600 --> 12:46.360 All right, we're there. 12:46.360 --> 12:48.000 1 Corinthians 5. 12:48.000 --> 12:59.000 And God willing, we will be done with this this year, 12:59.000 --> 13:04.680 going through the different forms of church discipline, 13:04.680 --> 13:05.960 things that get you kicked out. 13:05.960 --> 13:06.100 you 13:06.200 --> 13:11.400 Now this is the most exhaustive list. There are a couple other things that you need to be kicked out for. 13:11.400 --> 13:15.240 We will address that at another time. But I want to get through 1 Corinthians 5 because obviously 13:15.240 --> 13:21.640 it's the most clear of all the scripture as far as like what gets you kicked out of church. 13:21.640 --> 13:25.400 But not only that, it's not just church discipline getting someone kicked out of church. 13:25.900 --> 13:32.140 but also the fact that you shouldn't have any fellowship with those individuals 13:32.140 --> 13:34.140 until they repent and clean that up. 13:34.500 --> 13:39.500 And the title of the sermon this afternoon is the leaven of extortion. 13:39.500 --> 13:42.000 The leaven of extortion. Now extortion is not a common... 13:42.000 --> 13:46.000 We hear this word, I mean I'm pretty sure at some point in your life you've heard it. 13:46.000 --> 13:52.000 I guess what I want to say is it's not commonly just talked about in church or just in circles. 13:52.000 --> 13:54.500 It's not like a thing that we commonly address, right? 13:54.500 --> 13:59.500 People are very familiar with like fornication, covetousness... 13:59.800 --> 14:08.160 Idolatry, railing, these are things that we hear, drunkards, which are all on the list, 14:08.160 --> 14:12.320 but extortioner is not one that we commonly associate with church discipline. 14:12.320 --> 14:16.680 A couple of things before I even get started is just because we're not very familiar with 14:16.680 --> 14:17.200 it. 14:17.400 --> 14:19.800 Doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. That's number one 14:19.800 --> 14:26.440 But number two if Jesus Christ of God here is using Paul to talk about this to the Church of Corinth 14:26.440 --> 14:32.600 Then it is something that happens on a regular basis and you'll see by the end of this that actually we need to be careful 14:32.600 --> 14:38.060 It's probably something that's more common than we think about we just might not call it extortion by its word 14:38.240 --> 14:41.720 But there are other variants that will lead us to the same conclusion 14:42.500 --> 14:47.700 Once we're done with this, I'll bring a sermon on idolatry and drunkenness. 14:48.900 --> 14:51.460 And I almost didn't bring it just because it's just kind of this... 14:52.900 --> 14:56.500 It's just not something that we grow up around dealing with all the time. 14:57.140 --> 15:02.500 But it is interesting because it is something that probably does happen more than we think. 15:02.900 --> 15:07.060 And it just happens, there's varying levels of it. 15:07.060 --> 15:09.540 And so I'm going to give you today, I mean, it's like a, 15:09.540 --> 15:11.540 obviously we're going to address it from the Bible, 15:11.540 --> 15:14.260 but I'm also basically going to give you an education on 15:14.260 --> 15:18.180 the word extortion and really extortion itself. 15:18.180 --> 15:21.740 So as a way of definition, extortion 15:21.740 --> 15:23.860 is an act or instance of extorting. 15:23.860 --> 15:27.300 And if you look up that word, extortion, like I like doing 15:27.300 --> 15:30.820 etymology research, you know, just the 15:30.900 --> 15:36.900 study of the root words or the study of words, it stems from the Latin extortio, right, or 15:36.900 --> 15:43.380 twisting out. So this comes from, like, the past participle stem of extorquere, a combination 15:43.380 --> 15:48.540 of X, which means out, and torquere, to twist, which, if you know, we, that's the word where 15:48.540 --> 15:55.540 we get torque, you know, especially for you, like, you know, engine heads, right? And so 15:55.540 --> 15:57.140 It just means to twist out. 15:57.600 --> 16:01.760 to force out. So you would think of it like a good way to... 16:03.000 --> 16:08.560 Act to give you like a carnal or a physical example is in you know today 16:08.840 --> 16:14.780 Maybe when we were growing up MMA or jiu-jitsu or grappling or wrestling wasn't as popular 16:14.800 --> 16:17.480 But now it's super popular so a lot of people are very familiar with it 16:17.480 --> 16:22.520 And what is it you're basically wrestling or you're twisting out and the way that would think about is you're sorting how? 16:22.520 --> 16:28.980 How does someone tap out is because they're feeling you know happiness and elation or they're feeling pain. They're feeling pain, right? 16:28.980 --> 16:30.980 That's what causes them to tap out. It's by 16:31.000 --> 16:36.760 force that they're giving up not because they want to but because it's by force. So actually that's 16:36.760 --> 16:41.400 I think that's a really clear example of what extortion is as far as like the way it works in 16:41.400 --> 16:45.640 church and stuff. It's you're forcing someone to do something they don't want to but basically 16:45.640 --> 16:52.200 they're tapping out so that they can remove whatever pain or thing that you're lording over them, right? 16:52.200 --> 16:53.200 And so 16:53.600 --> 17:00.200 Synonym of that is like blackmail and blackmail is probably something we're more familiar with right where you hold something over somebody 17:00.400 --> 17:04.860 in exchange for money or favors or whatnot right so you know if 17:05.720 --> 17:10.060 you know we were out soul winning and brother John was asking for money and 17:10.480 --> 17:14.240 You know he said if you don't get saved I need you know you're not I'm just kidding 17:14.240 --> 17:19.360 But it was just really funny. We're out soul winning. I've never heard that he's dressed in a suit 17:19.360 --> 17:21.360 He's not even dressed like a bum 17:21.600 --> 17:24.520 And he's like, hey, can I leave you with one verse? 17:24.520 --> 17:26.320 And the lady's like, we don't have any money. 17:26.320 --> 17:28.040 I was like, what? 17:28.040 --> 17:29.080 What in the world? 17:29.080 --> 17:31.600 But I mean, all joking aside, if he were to take it, 17:31.600 --> 17:33.360 and these things actually do happen, right? 17:33.360 --> 17:36.360 If he were to try to force something out of him 17:36.360 --> 17:37.640 with the money situation, then that 17:37.640 --> 17:38.760 would be a form of extortion. 17:38.760 --> 17:40.160 Now, he's not doing that. 17:40.160 --> 17:41.160 I just thought it was funny. 17:41.160 --> 17:42.100 And I said, I'm going to. 17:42.200 --> 17:46.440 figure out a way to make it work in the sermon. I have just never heard anybody say, 17:46.440 --> 17:50.360 we don't have any money. I don't even know where they got that idea because he was dealing with 17:50.360 --> 17:55.640 that. But that would be like a form, like forms of blackmail or right. Like I have something on your 17:55.640 --> 18:01.880 family, right? As a pastor, I would probably be the most, uh, prone to be able, if I was susceptible 18:01.880 --> 18:07.080 to that sin, I could use it against people. Cause as a pastor, people come to me and tell me stuff 18:07.080 --> 18:08.680 that's only between me and them. 18:09.000 --> 18:09.920 quote unquote, right? 18:09.920 --> 18:11.880 I mean, that's the right way to do it, 18:11.880 --> 18:14.160 but I could use that to my advantage and be like, 18:14.160 --> 18:18.060 hey, you know, brother John, I know you like money 18:18.060 --> 18:20.020 and I know you like taking it from people, 18:20.020 --> 18:22.740 but as long as you give me some of that money, 18:22.740 --> 18:25.100 like, you know, I won't let anybody know. 18:26.000 --> 18:27.960 And you'd be like, no, I'm not gonna give you any money. 18:27.960 --> 18:30.400 Okay, well then you see this paper right here, 18:30.400 --> 18:32.000 I'm gonna print up a thousand of these, 18:32.000 --> 18:33.000 and next time we're in church, 18:33.000 --> 18:34.500 I'm just gonna put them in every pew. 18:34.700 --> 18:40.600 And so all of a sudden now he's really stressed about like, what do I do with this situation? 18:40.600 --> 18:44.360 Even if he was in the wrong, the fact that I'm now holding this bad thing over him would 18:44.360 --> 18:46.200 be even worse or vice versa. 18:46.200 --> 18:49.580 So these are just little things that you could use. 18:49.580 --> 18:53.140 And it's actually a crime, a very serious crime. 18:53.140 --> 18:56.100 And there's a big law in the books. 18:56.100 --> 18:57.140 I didn't want to go into it. 18:57.140 --> 18:59.900 for this type of activity. 19:00.200 --> 19:05.760 The crime of obtaining money or something of value by the abuse of one's office or authority 19:06.600 --> 19:08.400 Oppressive or illegal? 19:08.400 --> 19:14.800 Exaction as of excessive price or interest interest so anything exhorted exhort it 19:15.440 --> 19:17.440 the act of securing money 19:17.800 --> 19:23.520 favors by intimidation or violence or blackmail, you know, so 19:24.500 --> 19:28.980 Even though when we're reading 1 Corinthians 5, we recognize all these, but then all of a sudden, 19:28.980 --> 19:31.860 extortion is like in there, and you're like, what? 19:31.860 --> 19:34.980 But this is something, and if you think about it, this is stuff that happens in churches. 19:34.980 --> 19:38.580 The best example you can think of is like maybe the Catholic Church, right? 19:38.900 --> 19:46.100 They basically always try to like shut up like the whistleblowers, the people that are coming out about all the abuse. 19:46.100 --> 19:57.700 I mean, there's still, I mean, we could, I could have just pulled up story after story of people that just been, you know, the church comes and they try to tell them, hey, we're going to pay you off or we'll settle or we want to silence you by paying you off. 19:57.700 --> 20:04.000 A couple of weeks ago I did a story, a sermon on Michael Jackson and how he paid and he 20:04.000 --> 20:06.900 settled so that none of that information would ever come out, right? 20:06.900 --> 20:11.240 That's extortion. Maybe even on a legal form. It's still a form of extortion, right? 20:11.940 --> 20:16.660 And I know I'm gonna repeat myself, but I really want to drive this point home so we can think about it, right? 20:16.660 --> 20:20.060 It's using force, fear, intimidation, 20:20.880 --> 20:22.220 authority, 20:22.220 --> 20:24.960 manipulation, coercion to obtain money, 20:25.740 --> 20:27.640 influence, silence, 20:27.640 --> 20:29.140 property, 20:29.140 --> 20:31.980 or compliance from another person. 20:32.400 --> 20:36.960 And if you think about even just the cults and the false religions that are out there, 20:36.960 --> 20:41.520 a lot of them use extortion, right? I mean that is like a common thread of like 20:41.520 --> 20:46.080 the Church of Latter-day Saints. The Mormons are known for that. I mean I've preached on that. 20:46.960 --> 20:51.600 You know, you've got major religions and even false religions that do this. Of course, 20:51.600 --> 20:55.520 the more corrupt or the further away they are from God, the worse they're going to be, right? 20:56.160 --> 20:58.960 And so it's a pretty serious thing. 21:00.100 --> 21:07.100 And I just want to go, yeah, I have here a couple of forms of like what the world considers extortion, right? 21:07.100 --> 21:10.100 Extortion is the act of obtaining money. I've already gone through that. 21:10.100 --> 21:14.100 While it always involves forcing a victim to comply against their will, 21:15.100 --> 21:18.300 So it's interesting, it ties with what I was talking about this morning, right? 21:18.300 --> 21:22.700 That's what liberty is, is the laws that help us avoid this type of activity. 21:22.700 --> 21:27.020 Well, where do we get that? From the Bible. This is a form of freedom, right? We shouldn't 21:27.020 --> 21:33.420 just lord over people and then not only that, but then coerce people to do things against their will 21:33.420 --> 21:38.300 just because we have some kind of power, authority, or influence over them, right? And this says, 21:39.400 --> 21:46.900 The exact methods, leverage, and targets used by the perpetrators vary widely across different legal and criminal categories. 21:46.900 --> 21:53.400 Common types of extortion include blackmail, which is the most well-known. 21:53.400 --> 22:03.400 Blackmail involves threatening to reveal embarrassing scandals or highly sensitive information about the victim to the public or employers unless a financial or personal demand is met. 22:03.400 --> 22:05.000 You have cyber extortion. 22:05.300 --> 22:07.900 Right? Using digital tactics to demand payment. 22:07.900 --> 22:11.900 The most common forms include ransomware or attacks on the system. 22:11.900 --> 22:15.000 And that's, I mean, I've literally heard stories. 22:15.000 --> 22:17.500 Brother Matt, you've been in the, in software development. 22:17.500 --> 22:20.300 You've probably heard stories where they just hijack a system and they're like, 22:20.300 --> 22:24.300 you need to send 100,000, 200, and then you get access back to your. 22:24.700 --> 22:32.220 thing, extortion of like the loo type, extortion, sorry, under control of official right. This 22:32.220 --> 22:36.540 occurs when a public official or person in a position of authority uses their job title 22:37.100 --> 22:43.100 unlawfully to demand money, property, or services to which they are entitled. Man, I would say that 22:43.100 --> 22:49.740 basically all politicians at some point or another probably, and if not all, I would say 90% plus 22:49.740 --> 22:51.100 have 22:51.100 --> 22:54.100 probably engaged in this type of activity. 22:54.100 --> 22:58.100 They take bribes or some form of 22:58.100 --> 23:02.100 licensing or contract deal. 23:02.100 --> 23:07.100 Protection records, common in organized crime. This involves groups intimidating 23:07.100 --> 23:09.100 a business owner and paying a fee. 23:09.100 --> 23:13.100 In exchange, the criminal offers protection against damages, thefts, vandalisms. 23:13.100 --> 23:17.100 And this might not be so common here, but in Mexico, that's very common. 23:17.600 --> 23:21.480 It's actually really scary because if you're in the smaller towns, usually those towns 23:21.480 --> 23:22.720 are controlled by the mafia. 23:22.720 --> 23:27.880 I mean, there's actually a real famous documentary where a town rose up against the mafia and 23:27.880 --> 23:32.240 then they took over the town and they wouldn't even let the Mexican government come in. 23:32.240 --> 23:37.240 That's why they made it like an American group of people went and did the documentary because 23:37.240 --> 23:41.600 they were just tired of being taken advantage of, you know, where people would come in and 23:41.600 --> 23:45.600 kill them or beat them or commit violence or threaten their family members. 23:45.600 --> 23:47.600 that kind of stuff. 23:47.600 --> 23:52.260 Economic extortion, threatening a business or individual with financial harm or reputational 23:52.260 --> 23:57.040 damage such as boycotting, interfering with operations or spreading damaging rumors unless 23:57.040 --> 24:00.420 specific business or financial concessions are made. 24:00.420 --> 24:06.040 Labor extortion, forcing individuals to work or provide services against their will through 24:06.040 --> 24:10.680 the use of threat, violence or legal repercussions. 24:11.400 --> 24:13.320 And then coercion by threat of violence. 24:13.320 --> 24:15.800 They direct a severe form of extortion 24:15.800 --> 24:18.360 where perpetrators directly threaten physical harm 24:18.360 --> 24:20.920 or death to the victim, their family members, 24:20.920 --> 24:23.280 or property force compliance. 24:23.280 --> 24:26.340 And this is a really severe offense. 24:26.340 --> 24:27.600 And it's the Hobbs Act. 24:27.600 --> 24:29.560 That's what I did have it here. 24:29.560 --> 24:32.160 So this is under the Hobbs Act, which 24:32.160 --> 24:34.840 targets activities that impact interstate 24:34.840 --> 24:36.040 and foreign commerce. 24:36.040 --> 24:36.400 Thanks for watching! 24:36.500 --> 24:40.020 And then I try to look up, but they were just kind of vague, like stuff that you wouldn't know. 24:40.020 --> 24:44.900 Probably the most famous one was some guy that worked for David Letterman, tried to extort him 24:44.900 --> 24:52.340 for two million dollars for, you know, exposing basically his affair with another woman. 24:52.900 --> 24:57.940 And he actually got convicted. And so I don't, I didn't even know. But if you know of it, 24:57.940 --> 24:58.900 those things happened. 24:59.500 --> 25:03.140 I thought this was interesting. So I looked up famous religious 25:03.640 --> 25:08.620 extortion cases and I'm not gonna go through all of them, but the one that I really thought was interesting is 25:09.260 --> 25:14.240 Orthodox Jewish divorce extortion and it's not just because they're Jewish 25:14.240 --> 25:19.020 But this is how wild you the Jews are like I didn't even know that this was possible 25:19.020 --> 25:26.180 I had to like research it. It says the FBI investigated and successfully prosecuted a ring of Orthodox 25:26.700 --> 25:28.460 It's funny, but it's scary. 25:28.700 --> 25:32.700 Just so you can see how bad, uh, you know, well, I mean, any religion 25:32.700 --> 25:34.200 can get real bad, but these guys are just bad. 25:34.200 --> 25:38.100 It says cooperated kidnapping and extortion scheme. 25:38.640 --> 25:44.580 The group violently extorted recalcitrant husbands using tactics 25:44.580 --> 25:46.920 like cattle prods and karate. 25:46.940 --> 25:48.900 That's why I thought it was funny because it's like, what 25:52.400 --> 25:57.160 Cattle prods it will say kidnap these guys and they're like you have to sign this document 25:57.160 --> 25:59.680 They're like cattle prodding them or you know like oh 26:00.680 --> 26:02.480 That's all I imagine 26:02.480 --> 26:10.840 It's like no, but I literally that's what it says here karate to force them into granting a religious divorce 26:10.840 --> 26:12.840 It's called the get G E T T 26:13.800 --> 26:15.240 And I'll explain here in a second. 26:15.240 --> 26:16.960 It says victims' families were often 26:16.960 --> 26:20.400 extorted for tens of thousands of dollars 26:20.400 --> 26:22.360 to pay these services. 26:22.360 --> 26:26.220 So I didn't know this, but in Jewish, I just learned this. 26:26.220 --> 26:29.140 In Jewish homes, traditional Jewish homes, 26:29.140 --> 26:31.860 if they get married and then they get divorced, 26:31.860 --> 26:34.540 well, the wife still has to get a get, 26:34.540 --> 26:37.680 which is a formal Jewish. 26:38.500 --> 26:43.500 like Bill of Divorcement written in Aramaic by a trained rabbi 26:43.500 --> 26:47.200 and once she gets that signed by the husband 26:47.200 --> 26:50.980 then she's officially released from the law 26:50.980 --> 26:54.820 of the like the Torah I guess or the Talmud or whatever you know weird 26:54.820 --> 26:58.940 law they made up because it's just so weird so 26:58.940 --> 27:02.320 they don't recognize the civil lawsuit I mean 27:02.320 --> 27:03.300 the civil 27:03.800 --> 27:11.260 Divorced they only recognize this thing and husbands in order to get back at the wives like out of spite won't sign the document 27:11.260 --> 27:17.400 So technically they're not divorced so the wives would pay these guys these Orthodox Jews 27:17.840 --> 27:22.640 to go and kidnap their ex-husbands and beat them up with karate and 27:23.160 --> 27:28.400 Cattle prods and force them to sign these documents and then extort them for money 27:28.400 --> 27:30.840 I mean, this is the kind of stuff that just 27:31.300 --> 27:34.740 It's wild. I mean, this is actually it was an FBI case. 27:34.740 --> 27:37.540 Some guy actually got killed because he was investigating it. 27:37.540 --> 27:39.780 Like he showed like they murdered him in Florida. 27:39.780 --> 27:41.540 It's a whole thing. I'm not gonna. 27:41.540 --> 27:44.420 But you know, and obviously there's other ones like I talked about, 27:44.420 --> 27:48.740 especially sex cover-ups or child abuse or just abuse in general cover-ups. 27:48.740 --> 27:52.980 Those are forms of extortion where usually the it whether it's someone in leadership 27:52.980 --> 27:57.460 or even like the pastors or the clergy are just trying to cover stuff up. 27:57.460 --> 27:59.140 So they're paying off family members or. 27:59.300 --> 28:01.540 threatening and different things like that. 28:01.540 --> 28:03.540 And so this is the kind of stuff we see. 28:03.540 --> 28:06.380 So today we're just going to go again, I'm going to illiterate. 28:06.380 --> 28:09.060 But the first point I have for you, you're there first, 28:09.060 --> 28:12.500 Corinthians is the character of an extortioner. 28:12.500 --> 28:14.420 And this is actually a really wicked sin 28:14.420 --> 28:17.780 because it can be manifest in so many different ways. 28:18.900 --> 28:24.660 I mean, you think about just kind of like the way that the attack recently, and you 28:24.660 --> 28:26.460 say, why do you keep bringing this up? 28:26.460 --> 28:27.500 Because that could happen to anybody. 28:27.500 --> 28:30.820 You think about the attack like on Pastor Anderson and his family, right? 28:31.500 --> 28:37.500 They keep trying to say that, you know, if he would just step down, if he would have just stepped down, none of this would have happened. 28:37.500 --> 28:42.000 Well, the fact that they're exposing stuff, whether it's real or not, is a form of extortion, right? 28:42.000 --> 28:47.500 They were basically, if he would have done what they said, they would have withheld this stuff, right? 28:47.500 --> 28:52.000 They were lording it over him and his family. Otherwise, we're going to expose you. 28:52.000 --> 28:56.500 Well, whether, you know, the fact that he didn't cave is a good thing, but they still went through with it, 28:56.500 --> 28:59.500 well, then they're still extorting him, right? They're still exposing this stuff. 28:59.500 --> 29:01.500 because he didn't do what they said. 29:01.500 --> 29:04.000 Right? And I mean, you could think about it in this scenario, 29:04.000 --> 29:06.000 like, you know, someone could come up to me and just be like, 29:06.000 --> 29:08.000 hey, if you don't, if we don't like what you're saying, 29:08.000 --> 29:10.000 or preaching or whatnot, we're going to remove that. 29:10.000 --> 29:12.000 You think about, like, deacon boards. 29:12.700 --> 29:14.700 They control what the pastors preach. 29:14.700 --> 29:16.700 And they're like, if you don't preach what we say, 29:16.700 --> 29:18.700 well, you're going to get fired, or you could remove your... 29:18.700 --> 29:20.700 Well, that's a form of extortion, right? 29:20.700 --> 29:22.700 They're not letting him work out freely. 29:22.700 --> 29:24.700 So it's not always so violent 29:24.700 --> 29:26.700 and so aggressive, but it does 29:26.700 --> 29:28.700 affect people like that. 29:28.700 --> 29:30.700 And I know that this stuff happens, because 29:30.700 --> 29:32.700 my wife has a... 29:32.700 --> 29:34.700 It's not like a good friend, but a friend 29:34.700 --> 29:36.700 who apparently, the husband 29:36.700 --> 29:38.700 was part of these bigger churches, 29:38.700 --> 29:40.700 and he was a pastor, and things... 29:40.700 --> 29:44.180 He didn't, basically just because they didn't like the way he was doing things, 29:44.180 --> 29:45.620 you know, they kind of let him go. 29:45.620 --> 29:48.700 And, you know, the guy that was his boss was kind of a big jerk. 29:48.700 --> 29:51.300 And now he's having to move to another state because of that. 29:51.300 --> 29:53.780 So, I mean, we hear stories like that all the time. 29:53.780 --> 29:59.660 I had a family member who left second Baptist because all they wanted to do is get 29:59.660 --> 30:02.820 clarity on the money and they started getting targeted. 30:02.820 --> 30:07.020 Like, they started getting a lot of pressure because they were just asking financial questions. 30:07.600 --> 30:11.000 Now, I'm going to tell you, and you guys know I've been really transparent, I'm not going 30:11.000 --> 30:14.600 to just tell everybody our business, but if you're a church member... 30:15.000 --> 30:19.560 I have no problem, you know, I'm pretty open about the way we do things and what we're doing. 30:20.200 --> 30:24.360 I think Brother Kevin was asking me stuff last week and I was like, well, here's how much we spent 30:24.360 --> 30:30.040 on this, here's how much this is. We went through it. I'm not trying to hide anything from anybody 30:30.040 --> 30:33.560 or anything like that. Of course, we're not just going to open our part. I'm not going to be like 30:33.560 --> 30:37.560 King Azekai who just opened up everything to everybody, right? He showed them everything. 30:37.560 --> 30:42.840 But the first point I have for you, you're there in 1 Corinthians 5, is the character of... 30:43.000 --> 30:47.640 an extortioner, right? So we see first of all, it's not a good thing because he says, 30:47.640 --> 30:54.840 but now I've written unto you not to keep company if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator 30:55.880 --> 31:02.120 or covetous or an idolater or a railler or a drunker or an extortioner with such and one 31:02.120 --> 31:07.240 no-knot eat. So this is not someone who just steals, you know, they didn't stick their money in 31:07.240 --> 31:09.880 in the offering plate, it took the money back or whatever. 31:10.500 --> 31:13.700 This is someone who's basically looking for power. 31:13.700 --> 31:15.260 It's a power play. 31:15.260 --> 31:19.260 It's someone who wants someone else to surrender to their will. 31:19.260 --> 31:21.980 They're actually, it's what we were talking about earlier this morning, 31:21.980 --> 31:26.940 they want to impose their will on that individual for whatever wicked person. 31:26.940 --> 31:28.700 For whatever wicked, I, 31:28.700 --> 31:29.400 Yeah. 31:29.400 --> 31:34.600 Purpose that is but secondly, it's not just like a lost or reprobate 31:34.600 --> 31:41.320 it's a safe person who just is backs lidden and now decided that he's gonna be he or she you're gonna be big jerks in the 31:41.320 --> 31:42.500 church and 31:42.500 --> 31:49.120 What ends up happening is usually extortion cases like that people nobody knows how to keep their mouths shut right like 31:49.560 --> 31:52.800 That's like a given for the most part and I'm talking in a big group 31:53.120 --> 31:55.440 Like if someone says I can keep a secret 31:56.600 --> 31:58.600 Usually probably they can't right it 31:59.360 --> 32:03.440 Gossip happens. I mean it's something that shouldn't happen, but it's gonna spread well 32:03.960 --> 32:09.120 In order to keep things quiet if it starts getting out of hand you're gonna start trying to be 32:09.840 --> 32:14.460 Coercive so not just the person that you initially started with but maybe people that got wind of it 32:14.800 --> 32:19.120 Or they might know, you might start extorting everybody, or vice versa. 32:19.120 --> 32:21.320 Everybody starts teaming up against people. 32:21.320 --> 32:23.040 It can get really out of hand. 32:23.040 --> 32:25.160 I mean, you think about... 32:26.000 --> 32:29.360 just like different scenarios and different churches you hear about in the past. 32:29.360 --> 32:32.800 And I'm not saying that it happens all the time, but I'm pretty sure you could think of like 32:33.840 --> 32:38.400 explicit moments where you're just like, oh, that was a form of extortion. This was happening. 32:38.400 --> 32:42.640 They didn't want to talk about the money or this was being spent the wrong way or there's a 32:42.640 --> 32:47.040 building fund and nothing ever got built. Who's ever been at, I remember when I was growing up, 32:47.040 --> 32:51.600 we went to Christian church and to this day, my wife's driven by there. She knows the church, 32:51.600 --> 32:53.600 the 32:54.000 --> 33:00.180 private school I went to and in front is this like big lot with like the beginnings of a 33:00.180 --> 33:01.820 church. 33:01.820 --> 33:08.260 That church has been like that in the beginnings of that church since I was like in 10th grade. 33:08.260 --> 33:11.540 It's like 30 years that they're almost going to build the church. 33:11.540 --> 33:14.200 It's like where's all the money you've been raising, you know? 33:14.200 --> 33:16.340 So there's different forms of this. 33:16.340 --> 33:19.800 Let's go over to Luke 19, but I'm going to give you some examples, right? 33:20.500 --> 33:26.500 And the weapons they may use, we already touched on it, but it just is a good review, is violence. 33:26.500 --> 33:30.500 God willing, I mean, that's like the most extreme, but they can use violence. 33:30.500 --> 33:32.100 Probably the most common is fear. 33:32.200 --> 33:39.040 Right? Just scaring people into exposing them for something and those people not having the ability to just think things through. 33:39.040 --> 33:44.380 Reputation, like ruining someone's reputation or authority. 33:44.380 --> 33:49.520 Legal pressure, right? That's why the Bible says if we were to keep reading in Corinthians, 33:49.520 --> 33:52.480 it also addresses we shouldn't take a brother to law. 33:52.480 --> 33:55.920 Right? Because you can extort them that way. 33:55.920 --> 33:58.600 Manipulation, confidential information. 33:58.800 --> 34:02.480 So, the common denominator is coercion. 34:02.480 --> 34:09.360 We have there in Luke 19 the story of Zacchaeus, and Zacchaeus, of course, comes to Jesus and 34:09.360 --> 34:18.600 he gets saved, but in a way, you know, we can surmise or, you know, come to the conclusion 34:18.600 --> 34:22.680 that at some point, because of the way he's talking, that he just abused his authority, 34:22.680 --> 34:23.000 right? 34:23.100 --> 34:27.820 In Luke 19 verse 1, and by the way, I'm not dogmatic on this if you want to fight with me 34:27.900 --> 34:33.240 But it's clear if we were to read the Gospels the tax collectors are not always you know 34:33.240 --> 34:36.980 They're the ones with the false balances, right? They kind of take advantage of people 34:37.620 --> 34:40.120 You know, we use the term today coin clippers 34:40.140 --> 34:41.100 That's what you know 34:41.100 --> 34:46.820 Those are the people that are clipping coins that are messing with balances that are putting weights underneath where you can't see it 34:46.820 --> 34:51.100 So that you know, it works in their favor stuff like that. We see there in Luke 19 verse 34:51.100 --> 34:55.400 when Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. 34:55.400 --> 34:57.140 And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, 34:57.140 --> 35:00.900 which was the chief among the publicans, and he was rich. 35:00.900 --> 35:06.220 And he sought to see Jesus who he was and could not. 35:06.800 --> 35:20.480 pressed because he was little stature and he ran before and climbed up into the sycamore tree to see him for he was to pass that way when jesus came to the place he looked up and saw him and said to him zekias make haste and come down for today i must abide at thy house 35:20.480 --> 35:25.520 and he made haste and came down received him joyfully and when they saw it they all murmured saying 35:25.800 --> 35:29.160 that he was going to be the guest with the man that is the sinner. 35:29.160 --> 35:32.360 So obviously the people know that he's not on the up and up, right? 35:32.360 --> 35:36.360 Everybody, I mean, this is like normal human behavior, right? 35:36.360 --> 35:40.840 Someone that's not, oh, you know, the president's going to go meet with this guy or remember, 35:40.840 --> 35:44.920 or Pastor Solosos hanging out with this heretic or whatever, you know, you can, 35:44.920 --> 35:46.360 you can get the idea, right? 35:46.360 --> 35:48.600 It says, and Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, 35:49.200 --> 35:54.720 Behold Lord the half of my goods I give to the poor and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation 35:55.200 --> 35:57.200 I restored him fourfold 35:57.440 --> 36:00.320 Now when people give you a report 36:01.840 --> 36:04.880 Without you requesting it it's because they're the ones that are guilty 36:05.360 --> 36:07.360 Who's ever walked in on their kids? 36:07.680 --> 36:14.000 And you just walked in you're just looking at them. They're like I wasn't doing anything. I was just trying to fix 36:15.200 --> 36:16.600 I didn't ask you for anything 36:17.000 --> 36:22.960 I mean now I want to know what is the thing that you weren't doing that you think that I thought you were doing 36:22.960 --> 36:26.480 Because now I need to know right and I've had this even in business where all 36:27.000 --> 36:33.020 Like have a meeting to address something completely different and all of a sudden the person is just like giving up all the stuff 36:33.120 --> 36:35.800 They're like, oh, you know, I just want to let you know that you know, I don't 36:36.360 --> 36:39.940 This is not what you think was happening. Actually what was going on was this is like 36:40.400 --> 36:42.740 Well, I wasn't even calling about that like now 36:42.740 --> 36:48.080 I'm a little curious as to what you're talking about the kids does the same thing here like as soon as he stood up 36:48.080 --> 36:50.080 He's like and he said I said Lord 36:50.200 --> 36:55.000 Behold the half of my goods I give to the poor and I've taken I have not and if I 36:55.000 --> 36:58.840 I've taken anything from any man by false accusation. 36:58.840 --> 37:00.120 I restored him fourfold. 37:00.120 --> 37:02.840 So he's admitting that he's done this bad stuff. 37:02.840 --> 37:05.500 He's like, hey, but I fixed it, right? 37:05.800 --> 37:13.000 And Jesus said unto him, this day salvation come to this house for as much as he also is the son of Abraham, 37:13.000 --> 37:16.200 for the son of Man is to seek and to save that which was lost. 37:16.200 --> 37:19.960 Now, one of the things we can learn is we just we need to show grace, right? 37:19.960 --> 37:26.360 If someone's being sincere with their confession, then we need to learn to forgive and forget. 37:26.360 --> 37:30.200 I mean, we learn the story from 1st Corinthians 5 and also from here, 37:30.760 --> 37:33.720 but it is telling that if someone's just giving themselves 37:33.800 --> 37:37.840 away especially in front of an authority that we already know something's up 37:37.840 --> 37:42.480 right that was just an extra just especially for those of you have kids or 37:42.480 --> 37:47.480 will have kids one day if your kids given it away it's because they're 37:47.480 --> 37:51.360 guilty right especially when you walk in and you didn't even ask anything you're 37:51.360 --> 37:54.200 probably going up there and invite them to go have a treat now you're like now I 37:54.200 --> 37:58.700 got a point sure this is great go over to Luke 3 go over to Luke 3 38:00.100 --> 38:02.580 Give you a second and get there because we're in the book of Luke. 38:04.020 --> 38:06.420 And in verse 12 the Bible says, then came also 38:07.460 --> 38:12.500 publicans to be baptized and said unto him, Master, what shall we do? And they're talking to John the 38:12.500 --> 38:18.020 Baptist here. This is when John started ministry and he said to them, exact, interesting what 38:18.020 --> 38:21.460 John said to them. They said, hey, what shall we do? 38:22.000 --> 38:27.760 The publicans came to be baptized, Paul started out, he's calling them out, and he said to them, 38:27.760 --> 38:34.400 exact, no more than that which is appointed to you. Don't take advantage of people. Don't overcharge 38:34.400 --> 38:41.440 them, don't charge them interest, don't lie to them. And the soldier likewise demanded of him saying, 38:41.440 --> 38:48.640 what shall we do? And he said unto them, do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, and 38:49.300 --> 38:51.700 Be content with your wages. 38:51.700 --> 38:55.300 So right, the coercion problem is there's a greed problem. 38:55.300 --> 38:59.140 There's an issue with the personality. 38:59.140 --> 39:00.340 It's probably the door. 39:00.340 --> 39:01.300 Sorry about that. 39:01.300 --> 39:02.900 That door's a little broken over there. 39:02.900 --> 39:06.580 Somebody got scared, but, or startled, not scared. 39:06.580 --> 39:09.460 Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, 39:09.460 --> 39:12.020 and be content with your wages. 39:12.020 --> 39:14.580 I was watching, I watch a lot of sales training. 39:15.300 --> 39:18.980 I'm always keeping my sharpness in that. 39:18.980 --> 39:20.740 I've been in sales all my life. 39:20.740 --> 39:21.820 And I saw this clip of this guy. 39:21.820 --> 39:25.300 He's like, oh man, as soon as I change my call call strategies, 39:25.300 --> 39:27.660 I do 300 to 400 phone calls. 39:27.660 --> 39:30.620 And he's like, I started just making a ton of money. 39:30.620 --> 39:31.860 And I'm like, oh, that's awesome. 39:31.860 --> 39:33.420 Let me see what he's saying. 39:33.420 --> 39:38.100 And he's like, I just started asking these business owners 39:38.100 --> 39:41.180 if they remembered the job they did for so-and-so. 39:41.180 --> 39:41.780 And he's like, 39:41.780 --> 39:41.800 you 39:42.000 --> 39:45.520 Basically, I'm lying because I don't know what jobs they've done. I'm just making it up 39:45.800 --> 39:49.280 But because they feel you know compelled to give me this information 39:49.680 --> 39:54.280 Then they open up about other things and then he basically he's like this is a script 39:54.280 --> 39:58.940 I'm lying the whole time, but I've been getting a lot more sales. You know what that's extortion 39:58.940 --> 40:03.880 You're taking advantage of someone right like I would never just for the sake of money 40:03.880 --> 40:06.120 I would never do something like that, but people do that all the time 40:06.800 --> 40:11.360 It's called in business, especially in the financial services, who's familiar with the 40:11.360 --> 40:13.600 term boiler room. 40:13.600 --> 40:14.880 You've never heard that? 40:14.880 --> 40:18.720 the room comes from the high. 40:19.300 --> 40:24.500 talking high pressure sales guys in New York that would call all over the country to sell them stocks. 40:24.500 --> 40:29.860 This is back in like the 80s and 70s and they would basically rent out rooms, you know, New York small. 40:29.860 --> 40:32.900 Everybody has like, who's ever seen those videos where they have these tiny apartments? They're like, 40:32.900 --> 40:39.700 hey come to my apartment. It's like a closet. I'm like, I pay $750. This is my room. I have to share a bathroom with 25 other people. 40:40.700 --> 40:43.980 But so people would rent these places because it was cheaper and they're in the boiler room. 40:43.980 --> 40:47.020 They're just making phone calls. So it's called boiler room and they're like, hey, 40:47.020 --> 40:50.780 and they're making stuff up. That's how they taught them to sell, right? Hey, 40:50.780 --> 40:55.980 this stock is going to go up. I'm the VP of such and such company. And if you just invest 40:55.980 --> 40:59.660 thousands of dollars with me, it's going to be great. And, you know, this has happened for, 40:59.660 --> 41:05.180 this is still happening to this day. It's just now digital. So go over to Matthew 23. 41:05.180 --> 41:06.940 So we have to be careful with this stuff. 41:07.500 --> 41:12.700 And the Bible says that we as Christians are dumb as sheep. 41:12.700 --> 41:17.740 But the Bible also tells us to be wise as serpents, but gentle as doves. 41:17.740 --> 41:21.140 You see that those two things don't add up. 41:21.140 --> 41:25.300 Well we're dumb as sheep because we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and we're a target 41:25.300 --> 41:30.060 and we're not supposed to know all the ways of the world, but the wisdom comes from reading 41:30.060 --> 41:32.700 our Bibles and being able to pick up on these red flags. 41:33.000 --> 41:39.320 Right and not being just like these bleeding hearts for for clear signs that something is going on 41:39.560 --> 41:42.880 Go to Matthew 23 right there in 20 in verse 23 says woe 41:43.880 --> 41:46.760 Unto you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites 41:47.300 --> 41:55.140 For ye pay tithes of mint and anise and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. 41:55.140 --> 42:02.420 These ought ye have done, and not leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. 42:02.420 --> 42:13.780 Then he says, Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you may clean the outside of the cup and the platter, but within they are full of extortion. 42:14.000 --> 42:17.880 and excess. See what happens with the churches, 42:17.880 --> 42:21.080 the people that are in power will either do things 42:21.080 --> 42:24.880 by the book, and I'm talking about God's book, right, the Bible, 42:24.880 --> 42:29.920 or they'll just take matters into their own hands. And if they do take matters into their own hands, 42:29.920 --> 42:33.880 you can just count on it. If they're not following the Bible, 42:33.880 --> 42:36.600 something will go wrong because we're all sinners. 42:36.700 --> 42:43.700 Right? And it usually, if you're not, if you don't have transparency, you're going to get in trouble. 42:43.700 --> 42:48.700 And that's what he says, they are full of extortion and excess. 42:48.700 --> 42:54.700 Says, thou blind Pharisees, clean that first, first that which is within the cup and platter. 42:55.300 --> 42:59.460 then that the outside of them may also be clean. 42:59.460 --> 43:01.500 And I mean, this is all the walls we could go here, 43:01.500 --> 43:04.860 but you know, he says, hey, they're within, 43:04.860 --> 43:08.740 they are full of extortion and excess. 43:08.740 --> 43:10.580 So let's break this down. 43:10.580 --> 43:12.300 If he said in the first one, 43:12.300 --> 43:17.300 they've omitted the law and judgment and mercy and faith, 43:17.620 --> 43:18.460 then... 43:18.700 --> 43:24.860 They're full of extortion and exes and what is it also they may clean the outside of the club in a platter 43:25.420 --> 43:30.460 So when we're looking at other churches or other people that might or might not associate with us 43:30.660 --> 43:36.300 And we just look at what they're doing if they're omitting these things and they're more concerned about you know 43:36.300 --> 43:38.300 How they come off or how they perceive? 43:38.740 --> 43:42.380 More than likely you can count on it. They're full of extortion and 43:42.940 --> 43:43.700 exes 43:44.100 --> 43:48.220 And you say, yeah, but I don't see any other tall-tale signs 43:48.220 --> 43:49.700 or nothing's been exposed. 43:49.700 --> 43:52.340 Well, you don't have to say anything. 43:52.340 --> 43:53.620 Don't falsely accuse anybody. 43:53.620 --> 43:54.980 But just know that that's what God said. 43:54.980 --> 43:55.620 And you know what? 43:55.620 --> 43:57.980 I'm just going to stay away from that. 43:57.980 --> 43:59.620 Right? 43:59.620 --> 44:00.580 People that are 44:00.580 --> 44:00.600 you 44:03.700 --> 44:10.340 You know right now you have Pastor Tommy McMurtry and Paul Widenberger making movies based on 44:10.340 --> 44:15.460 pure lies. Well they've omitted law because the law says hey you got to focus on truth. 44:15.460 --> 44:20.020 If you're going to judge you have to do you know proper inquisition. 44:20.900 --> 44:28.020 Mercy hey if you're gonna have mercy if someone just you just move on if there's nothing to talk about and faith meaning 44:28.020 --> 44:29.620 We're gonna trust God to avenge us 44:29.620 --> 44:34.940 I mean if it's so egregious to you really the Bible says the vengeance is of the Lord to leave things alone 44:34.940 --> 44:37.100 You know how many people have wronged me in my life 44:37.100 --> 44:43.540 I mean how many people have wronged you in your life, and you just got to move on that's life as a matter of fact 44:44.260 --> 44:46.260 We were talking to 44:46.300 --> 44:48.200 Right now we're out so Anin 44:48.600 --> 44:51.880 Think oh, yeah, the brother John was with me and the young lady 44:51.880 --> 44:56.480 I was leading to the Lord like the husband that you know, I'm not the husband the boyfriend comes out and of course 44:56.480 --> 45:01.360 You know, it's a Hispanic boyfriend. He's like hey, what's going on? And it's like but I mean I grew up around this stuff 45:01.360 --> 45:05.660 So it's like I mean, I know it's all bark. No bite. He's like, hey you okay, you know 45:06.200 --> 45:09.920 I'm like bro. We're giving her the gospel. You want me to give you the gospel cuz I already know he's not gonna 45:10.400 --> 45:14.400 uh... whatever you want to do baby because he's afraid of his girlfriend 45:14.400 --> 45:17.280 they're not even married i already know he's afraid of his girlfriend he's acting 45:17.280 --> 45:18.360 all tough but 45:18.360 --> 45:21.140 you know he didn't put his foot down 45:21.140 --> 45:22.840 you know then 45:22.840 --> 45:26.120 i don't even know where i was going with that where was i going with that because 45:26.120 --> 45:29.120 the guy just made me angry but 45:29.120 --> 45:32.100 it'll come back to me we're talking about extortion 45:32.200 --> 45:36.840 Mercy, oh yeah, like if he would have done something wrong to me like he's oh she was worried 45:36.840 --> 45:40.880 That's where I was going with that. She was worried that he might offend us. She's like, oh, I'm sorry 45:41.280 --> 45:45.480 You know, he's like I said you don't have to apologize for us. We're thick-skinned like we don't care 45:45.480 --> 45:51.040 I said people treat I said this is actually light affliction compared to some of the stuff that there's some people have done 45:51.040 --> 45:53.040 I mean brother Jerry was with me last year 45:53.040 --> 45:57.840 When some guy slammed the door so hard that he set off the car alarms and the guys next door neighbor 45:57.840 --> 45:59.840 I mean seriously like it's not even an exaggeration 46:00.200 --> 46:01.120 We didn't even say it. 46:01.120 --> 46:02.920 We hadn't even gotten, we were just like, 46:02.920 --> 46:05.080 I think we said like, are you 100%? 46:05.080 --> 46:05.880 Whack. 46:05.880 --> 46:08.120 I mean, it rattled his house. 46:08.120 --> 46:09.840 And then the next door neighbor had, I guess, 46:09.840 --> 46:10.840 an old school alarm. 46:10.840 --> 46:12.400 Like, what is this, 1995? 46:12.400 --> 46:14.320 And it was like, woo woo woo woo. 46:14.320 --> 46:14.920 Remember that? 46:14.920 --> 46:16.560 You couldn't even get in your car. 46:16.560 --> 46:17.920 Who remembers getting in your car? 46:17.920 --> 46:20.040 And it's like, this car is protected by it. 46:20.040 --> 46:22.760 I'm like, whoa, calm down, bro. 46:22.760 --> 46:25.840 It's not that big of a deal. 46:25.840 --> 46:27.840 But you know. 46:27.840 --> 46:28.000 you 46:28.400 --> 46:35.240 It's almost like a mafia mentality right the mafia narcos right the the drug cartels 46:35.780 --> 46:38.540 They don't ask politely right they just do things 46:39.020 --> 46:46.240 Yeah, and if you and if you say no what's gonna happen you're gonna suffer the consequences right it should never be like that 46:46.400 --> 46:52.680 You know it's almost like a light form of bullying, but there's more to that right and so 46:53.500 --> 46:56.500 We've got to be careful not to treat people in that way. 46:56.500 --> 47:00.300 Or if we see those signs, we need to either address them 47:00.300 --> 47:01.340 or separate from them. 47:01.340 --> 47:02.720 If they're not in our church, but it's 47:02.720 --> 47:04.420 people that might be of influence to us, 47:04.420 --> 47:07.940 we need to just separate from that quickly. 47:07.940 --> 47:11.780 So that's the first point, which was the character. 47:11.780 --> 47:16.980 Now the second thing is the conduct of an extortioner. 47:16.980 --> 47:18.940 And turn over to Ezekiel 22. 47:18.940 --> 47:21.220 This is a really clear picture of something like this. 47:21.600 --> 47:25.280 the conduct of an extortion or extortion is almost 47:25.280 --> 47:28.840 always attached to another sin 47:28.840 --> 47:32.600 so the Bible is constantly connecting it 47:32.600 --> 47:36.900 with like greed, right, dishonest game 47:39.300 --> 47:47.700 oppression, corruption, abuse of authority, which is, you know, just like the Pharisees, 47:47.700 --> 47:54.420 the Sadducees, most false religions today, I mean, if you just go deep into them, they have some kind 47:54.420 --> 48:00.020 of weird thing. I mean, even the ones that are lighter, there's always some form of corruption. 48:00.020 --> 48:05.620 When my wife and I watched the documentary, Shining Happy People, about the Bill Gothard 48:06.400 --> 48:10.880 I don't know if it's necessarily a cult, but like the movement that had some cultish 48:13.600 --> 48:19.280 attributes, the thing that really stood out to me the most was it was interesting how it was all 48:19.280 --> 48:27.600 about money. Like they had properties all over the world and they had like not only like land, 48:27.600 --> 48:32.080 they had literal properties all over the world. You know, this guy's flying on like 48:32.500 --> 48:35.940 You know, hi, he's flying all over the world to every single location. 48:35.940 --> 48:37.140 I mean, money's being funneled. 48:37.140 --> 48:40.100 I think he had like this one estate that was like super beautiful. 48:40.700 --> 48:45.640 How was he getting that it was through money and it was a bunch of like hush hush about different 48:45.640 --> 48:50.600 You know if anybody had an issue or especially when the the young girls he now he was not 48:51.240 --> 48:56.200 Abusive like he didn't abuse them physically, but he was kind of touchy 48:56.200 --> 48:59.200 He was used kind of like oogly he was a little bit of a creep 48:59.200 --> 49:04.000 You know just kind of like oogling through and all that and made them uncomfortable whenever that was brought up 49:04.000 --> 49:08.560 It was always like hush hush or just move them here and there. I mean, that's the the the MO 49:08.700 --> 49:10.220 of this type of mentality. 49:10.220 --> 49:13.020 Go to Ezekiel 22 right there, verse 27. 49:13.020 --> 49:14.740 Now we're gonna come back to Ezekiel 22, 49:14.740 --> 49:16.340 so just keep your finger there, 49:16.340 --> 49:18.580 because later on we'll see how extortion 49:18.580 --> 49:19.900 is used in this chapter, 49:19.900 --> 49:24.740 but here we see the conduct, right? 49:24.740 --> 49:26.900 So it's expounding this. 49:26.900 --> 49:29.540 In verse 25 of Ezekiel 22 says, 49:29.540 --> 49:33.180 there is a conspiracy of our prophets 49:33.180 --> 49:35.100 in the midst thereof. 49:35.300 --> 49:39.940 like a roaring lion ravening the prey. What does that remind you of? Second Peter, where it says, 49:39.940 --> 49:45.620 right? The devil is like a roaring lion. So it has, you know, satanic roots. It says they have 49:45.620 --> 49:53.620 devoured souls. They have taken the treasure and precious things. They have made her many widows 49:53.620 --> 49:54.660 in the midst thereof. 49:55.400 --> 50:00.600 Her priests have violated my law and have profaned mine holy things. 50:00.600 --> 50:04.200 They have put no difference between the holy and the profane. 50:04.400 --> 50:10.000 Neither have they showed difference between the unclean and the clean and have hid their eyes for my Sabbaths 50:10.000 --> 50:15.340 And I am profaned among them her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves 50:16.120 --> 50:22.100 Ravening the prey to shed blood and to destroy souls and to get dishonest gain 50:22.100 --> 50:25.280 Now Ezekiel 22 is talking about woe to the bloody city, right? 50:25.280 --> 50:32.360 And it says here in verse 28 and her prophets have daubed with them with untempered mortar meaning 50:32.400 --> 50:38.200 It's not solid. It's not a foundation that's gonna last seeing vanity and dividing 50:38.200 --> 50:43.560 I mean dividing lies unto them saying thus saith the Lord God when the Lord hath not spoken 50:44.000 --> 50:46.640 the people of the land have used oppression and 50:47.040 --> 50:53.960 exercised robbery and have vexed the poor and needy yay, they have oppressed the stranger 50:54.560 --> 50:56.920 Law, what is it wrongfully? 50:57.900 --> 51:05.100 What are they doing? They oppress, they rob, they vex, and then they oppress the stranger wrongfully. 51:06.460 --> 51:14.060 I'm old enough to remember the Branch Davidian, you know, in Waco. Remember? It was a big deal. 51:14.300 --> 51:18.760 But I remember when they came out with like the mini series or whatever, one of the things 51:18.760 --> 51:23.300 that they really emphasized was how David Koresh would take the wives of these other 51:23.300 --> 51:24.300 men. 51:24.300 --> 51:28.500 He would coerce his power to then be able to abuse them, right? 51:28.500 --> 51:30.140 Like abuse the other. 51:30.140 --> 51:31.940 And then of course, I mean, there's a lot wrong with... 51:33.300 --> 51:38.420 David Koresh and the Branch Davidian. Other than also the fact that they were Seventh-day Adventists. 51:38.420 --> 51:42.740 I don't know if many people know that. The Seventh-day Adventists won't claim them, but they were. 51:42.740 --> 51:47.380 But that's a whole other thing. But that's what I think about when I see this, right? They just take 51:47.380 --> 51:51.460 advantage. They're robbing. They're oppressing. They're vexing. 51:52.600 --> 51:57.440 They're just greedy and they prey upon people. 51:57.440 --> 52:02.500 Someone who's looking to the weak to take advantage of them is someone who's very dangerous 52:02.500 --> 52:05.400 and we should definitely stay away from them. 52:05.400 --> 52:09.440 That's why when people are saying all the stuff that they're saying right now about 52:09.440 --> 52:11.160 McMurtry being trashed, yeah it is. 52:11.600 --> 52:17.920 Because that's a dangerous person who's trying to just manipulate the masses without any 52:17.920 --> 52:21.120 substantiated truths. 52:21.120 --> 52:24.160 You know, I'm all for calling people out, but it should be under truth. 52:24.160 --> 52:25.160 It should be truthful. 52:25.160 --> 52:26.160 It should be evident. 52:26.160 --> 52:28.160 It should be right. 52:28.160 --> 52:29.600 Right? 52:29.600 --> 52:35.500 So we see, the Bible clearly shows that like government officials, religious leaders, 52:35.700 --> 52:37.900 You know, there's dishonest businessmen, corrupt judges. 52:37.900 --> 52:38.900 I mean, we see this. 52:38.900 --> 52:39.900 Go to Amos 8. 52:39.900 --> 52:40.900 I'm going to give you a few examples here. 52:40.900 --> 52:41.900 Amos 8. 52:41.900 --> 52:46.540 So you, the Bible is very like, once you see this, like it's kind of hard to unsee. 52:46.540 --> 52:50.660 It's kind of like when you learn about the Jews in the Bible, it's kind of hard to unsee, 52:50.660 --> 52:51.660 right? 52:51.660 --> 52:54.100 Or when you learn about the pre-trip rapture versus the post-trip rapture. 52:54.100 --> 52:57.380 Once you see it, it's really hard to unsee, right? 52:57.380 --> 53:01.740 Once you're exposed to the truth, there's no more, you know, the best example is like 53:01.740 --> 53:02.100 Bye. 53:02.600 --> 53:06.600 We never grew up like that, but my cousin was like, 53:06.600 --> 53:10.480 my aunt really wanted him to believe in Santa. 53:10.480 --> 53:13.000 Who's ever met those people that, oh, you know, 53:13.920 --> 53:17.040 Santa's real and they'll throw the rocks in the roof. 53:17.040 --> 53:19.880 I mean, they did that like, oh, the reindeer here. 53:19.880 --> 53:21.180 We went through all that. 53:21.180 --> 53:22.560 And my brother and I always looked at each other 53:22.560 --> 53:24.320 and was like, we know it's rocks. 53:24.320 --> 53:26.480 Like, you know, my aunt. 53:26.600 --> 53:32.620 Probably to this day still hates me because he's in hell now. He was my uncle's like 53:33.280 --> 53:39.160 Quote-quote on friend. He was my uncle's friend, but they were all queer, but he was fat art art right now 53:39.160 --> 53:45.320 I'll never forget he was real fat. So he got he got to play Santa during Christmas. He's always at all our Christmases 53:45.800 --> 53:48.560 I'm like, man, my parents, we just like, 53:48.560 --> 53:50.320 what the heck was going on? 53:50.320 --> 53:53.320 But, and he showed up and they threw the rocks 53:53.320 --> 53:55.080 and we were all in the back room and he's just like, 53:55.080 --> 53:57.000 oh, you know, we have to play along 53:57.000 --> 53:58.340 because my aunt would get mad. 53:58.340 --> 53:59.800 But I've never been wanting to play along. 53:59.800 --> 54:02.120 And so he came in and I could see his hair 54:02.120 --> 54:04.200 and I could see his face and I'm like, no, that's art. 54:04.600 --> 54:06.680 And my dad, I mean, I'm like calling him out. 54:06.680 --> 54:09.960 I'm like, Arturo, hey, Arturo, that's Arturo. 54:09.960 --> 54:10.800 You know, that's art. 54:10.800 --> 54:12.320 And my aunt lost it. 54:12.320 --> 54:14.320 And I thank God my dad's always been really blunt 54:14.320 --> 54:16.880 and he's like, cheeky, he's like, 54:16.880 --> 54:19.120 you're wasting your time, like, that's art. 54:19.120 --> 54:20.380 My son knows that's art. 54:20.380 --> 54:22.180 Santa doesn't, he's not real. 54:22.180 --> 54:23.880 But the minute you find out Santa's not real, 54:23.880 --> 54:26.240 like, it's not like you can never go back, right? 54:26.240 --> 54:28.080 So you're just being, you're lying to yourself 54:28.080 --> 54:28.920 and you're lying to other people 54:28.920 --> 54:30.400 if you still believe in Santa, right? 54:30.700 --> 54:32.740 By the way, Santa's not real in case you didn't know that. 54:32.740 --> 54:35.540 If I ruined it for you today, tough cookies, right? 54:35.540 --> 54:39.900 So go to Amos 8, right there in verse number 4. 54:39.900 --> 54:43.980 We see here cheating customers, we see false balances, 54:43.980 --> 54:45.340 we see the exploiting of the poor. 54:45.340 --> 54:50.420 It says, hear this in verse 4, oh ye that swallow up the needy, 54:50.420 --> 54:53.900 even to make the poor of the land to fail, saying, 54:53.900 --> 54:54.200 see. 54:54.300 --> 55:00.780 When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn, and the Sabbath that we may set forth wheat, 55:00.780 --> 55:07.100 making the Ipah small and the Shechal great, and falsifying the balances by deceit, 55:07.740 --> 55:12.140 that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes, 55:12.140 --> 55:17.820 yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat. And so here we see the examples. You 55:17.820 --> 55:20.100 You know what's a great example of extortion? 55:20.100 --> 55:21.300 Payday loans. 55:21.800 --> 55:27.660 I mean that's that's why they're illegal and they're horrible right a payday. Have you ever done the interest math on a payday loan? 55:28.120 --> 55:33.800 You'll never get out of it. They're like, oh, we'll say we'll we'll we'll pay you, you know, how much do you make a week? 55:33.800 --> 55:39.240 Oh, you know a thousand dollars a week. Oh perfect. I'll add it to you right now and you need to pay us back 55:39.360 --> 55:44.340 You know five hundred dollars a week for the next six weeks. You know, maybe what? 55:45.000 --> 55:46.460 I mean, that's how it is. 55:46.460 --> 55:48.840 It's like 40%, 50% interest. 55:48.840 --> 55:50.540 And if you don't do the interest, then they 55:50.540 --> 55:53.780 keep adding daily interest to the penalties on top of penalties. 55:53.780 --> 55:56.040 By the time you know it, it's like 100%. 55:56.040 --> 55:57.700 That's why people hate. 55:57.700 --> 55:59.980 By the way, who runs most of those payday loans? 55:59.980 --> 56:01.900 If you don't know, just take a guess. 56:01.900 --> 56:03.020 Go to James 5. 56:03.020 --> 56:05.620 Go to James 5. 56:05.620 --> 56:09.500 We see here about rich men holding back wages. 56:12.500 --> 56:16.660 is a form of extortion. It says go in verse James 5 verse 1 it says, 56:16.660 --> 56:21.940 go to now you rich men weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. 56:24.020 --> 56:30.820 Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered 56:30.820 --> 56:34.180 and the rust of them shall be a witness against you and 56:35.400 --> 56:41.400 She'll eat your flesh as it were fire, ye have heaped treasures together for the last days. 56:41.400 --> 56:47.560 Behold the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by 56:47.560 --> 56:54.200 fraud, cryeth, and the cries of them which reaped are entered into the years of the Lord of Sabaoth. 56:55.080 --> 56:58.440 Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth and been wanton, 56:58.440 --> 57:01.720 ye have nourished your hearts as in the day of slaughter. 57:02.400 --> 57:07.280 And how often do you see, maybe because of the circles I run in and the things that I 57:07.280 --> 57:12.160 watch, but every few months I see like these articles or these things of like, oh, we need 57:12.160 --> 57:16.240 to watch what the rich are doing because they're all going to their private islands. 57:16.240 --> 57:19.080 There's going to be a big crash or big corruption. 57:19.080 --> 57:19.600 But the... 57:19.700 --> 57:22.620 I don't care about that, the Lord's going to take care of us, but the fact that they 57:22.620 --> 57:26.140 have like hideaways, they have places, you know, they're relying on it. 57:26.140 --> 57:30.900 And how did they make it on the backs of the poor, on the backs of the needy, right? 57:30.900 --> 57:34.940 They're taking advantage of people, you know, as a matter of fact, one of the things that 57:34.940 --> 57:41.780 the tall tale sign that I know our country's headed down a bad road is that the salary 57:41.780 --> 57:43.660 gap has become so wide. 57:43.660 --> 57:45.500 You know, we were famous. 57:45.700 --> 57:51.140 America has always been known for what? The middle class, right? Where you have the rich, 57:51.140 --> 57:55.700 you have the poor, but you have the middle class. And today, the disparity or the gap 57:55.700 --> 58:01.660 is so wide that the middle class is disappearing, which is a tall tale sign of a country that's 58:01.660 --> 58:06.020 just going to be oppressive, run by a dictator, probably socialist or communist. Because go 58:06.020 --> 58:10.300 to any country that's run by a communist or socialist regime, and what do you find? 58:10.600 --> 58:15.320 wage gap right you have the super rich and the super poor go to Mexico and 58:16.200 --> 58:21.400 There's no middle ground you either have the super rich or the super poor even people that just have like 58:22.160 --> 58:29.500 Education doctors lawyers if they're not connected. They're just basically scraping by while the corrupt. They're just you know living high on the hog 58:30.200 --> 58:35.640 You know president the jewish female president was living high got high on the hog because she's basically 58:36.280 --> 58:41.880 Tied to the cartels. I mean it's not even a thing anymore. It's like out there go to first samuel go to first samuel 58:42.920 --> 58:47.720 To we'll go through these very quickly and i've got two more points for you and we'll be done here 58:49.880 --> 58:55.000 I'm gonna first samuel and right there verse uh first samuel two, sorry 58:56.440 --> 58:57.800 Eli sons 58:58.400 --> 59:02.960 were sons of Belial and they took things by force. Right? In verse 12 it says, 59:02.960 --> 59:08.400 now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial, they knew not the Lord. And the priest's custom 59:09.520 --> 59:13.840 with the people was that when any man offered sacrifice, the priest servant came 59:13.840 --> 59:18.240 while the flesh was in seething with a flesh hook of three teeth in his hand, 59:18.240 --> 59:21.600 and he struck it into the pan or kettle or cauldron or pot. 59:22.700 --> 59:28.540 of all that flesh hook brought up the priest took to himself. So they did in Shiloh unto all the 59:28.540 --> 59:33.340 Israelites that came thither. Also before they burnt the fat, the priest's servants came and said 59:33.340 --> 59:38.860 to the man that sacrificed, give flesh to roast for the priest and he will not have sodden flesh 59:38.860 --> 59:40.000 of the eat but raw. 59:40.100 --> 59:44.900 And if any man said unto him, Let them not fail to burn the fat presently, 59:44.900 --> 59:50.580 and then take as much as I so desire, then he would answer him, Nay, but thou shalt give it to me now. 59:51.380 --> 59:56.020 And if not, I will take it by force. 59:57.460 --> 01:00:04.260 Wherefore the sin of the young men was very great before the Lord, for men abhorred the offering of 01:00:04.260 --> 01:00:05.260 of the Lord. 01:00:05.260 --> 01:00:06.260 And notice a couple of things. 01:00:06.260 --> 01:00:07.900 They're going to take it by force. 01:00:08.200 --> 01:00:11.160 There's nepotism, but also what happened? 01:00:11.160 --> 01:00:14.140 The people are discouraged from serving the Lord. 01:00:14.140 --> 01:00:17.920 That's why we need to remove them, because I mean people are just influenced. 01:00:17.920 --> 01:00:22.120 Not everybody has the mentality to say, you know what, I'm just going to keep trucking 01:00:22.120 --> 01:00:24.380 on, keep fighting the good fight. 01:00:24.380 --> 01:00:29.160 And even if you're that strong, there's times where you just feel like giving up. 01:00:29.160 --> 01:00:31.240 And having that kind of influence is not helpful, right? 01:00:31.240 --> 01:00:32.680 You're like, what's it all for? 01:00:33.300 --> 01:00:37.100 You don't know what level of maturity, Christian maturity someone's in. 01:00:37.100 --> 01:00:40.500 And so someone might be like, that's it, I'm calling it. 01:00:40.500 --> 01:00:43.700 I mean, I've seen posts where people are like, oh, because of this bad church, 01:00:43.700 --> 01:00:45.200 I just don't even go to church at all. 01:00:45.200 --> 01:00:48.700 Who's ever run into people that are like, oh, I don't go to church because I was abused 01:00:48.700 --> 01:00:50.700 or I was mistreated in this other church. 01:00:50.700 --> 01:00:53.200 Look, you're going to get mistreated in any church. 01:00:53.200 --> 01:00:56.300 Just take it for a fact that this church will... 01:00:56.500 --> 01:00:58.500 If I don't fail you, someone's gonna fail you. 01:00:58.500 --> 01:01:00.500 Someone's gonna backstab you, someone's gonna do something. 01:01:00.500 --> 01:01:02.500 If you're gonna quit on that, you might as well just quit now. 01:01:02.500 --> 01:01:04.500 I'm gonna just tell you right now. 01:01:06.500 --> 01:01:10.500 It's fun to serve in the ministry, but it's also no fun to serve in the ministry. 01:01:10.500 --> 01:01:11.500 It goes both ways. 01:01:11.500 --> 01:01:15.500 Go to Samuel A. Just a couple pages over, we also see the same thing with Samuel. 01:01:15.500 --> 01:01:17.500 Right? Samuel... 01:01:18.100 --> 01:01:24.020 was great. He was better than Eli, but the only thing he didn't learn from Eli was nepotism, right? 01:01:24.020 --> 01:01:31.220 Nepotism is actually really bad. It says here Samuel, well Samuel 8 in verse 1, Samuel's sons 01:01:31.220 --> 01:01:34.980 pervert judgment, right? They're going to pervert it for money. It says, it came to pass when Samuel 01:01:34.980 --> 01:01:40.420 was old that he made his sons judges over Israel. Now the name of the firstborn was Joel in the name 01:01:40.420 --> 01:01:43.620 of the second Abaya, they were the judges in Brasheba. 01:01:44.000 --> 01:01:51.000 And the sons walked not in the ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment." 01:01:51.000 --> 01:01:52.000 Well, that's extortion. 01:01:53.000 --> 01:01:54.000 Right? 01:01:54.000 --> 01:01:57.000 Which, by the way, I mean, just as a side note, it affects other things. 01:01:57.000 --> 01:01:59.000 That's why we have to be careful. 01:01:59.000 --> 01:02:02.000 I tell my kids all the time, I'm like, you're not special in church. 01:02:02.000 --> 01:02:04.000 Just because Dad's the pastor doesn't mean... 01:02:04.000 --> 01:02:07.000 I don't do this, you know, when we had... 01:02:07.100 --> 01:02:11.820 And by the way, if I've seen it done in other churches, this is just my personal belief. This is our church. 01:02:12.380 --> 01:02:17.980 Like, I mean, I guess if we got so big, maybe I would set aside a place but like I don't 01:02:18.380 --> 01:02:23.580 Our pew where we sit regularly people have their pews that they sit, but when we've had visitors i'm like guys 01:02:23.660 --> 01:02:25.100 We're going to show up later 01:02:25.100 --> 01:02:27.700 We're not, there is no our pew. 01:02:27.700 --> 01:02:29.740 Like people, this is God's church. 01:02:29.740 --> 01:02:30.980 We sit wherever we need to sit. 01:02:30.980 --> 01:02:32.900 Like I'm not going to do this game where, 01:02:32.900 --> 01:02:34.540 oh, we're special or anything like that. 01:02:34.540 --> 01:02:37.080 Now, of course, if we grew to the point where maybe we needed 01:02:37.080 --> 01:02:41.020 that for, if we had a bigger family or that's different, 01:02:41.020 --> 01:02:43.100 but for the most part, it hasn't been an issue. 01:02:43.100 --> 01:02:45.980 My kids, like my, my kid came up to me on Wednesday. 01:02:45.980 --> 01:02:46.900 He's like, Hey, can I have a Coke? 01:02:46.900 --> 01:02:48.140 I was like, Coke's for soul winners. 01:02:48.140 --> 01:02:50.600 We haven't gone so many, like we're not doing that stuff 01:02:50.600 --> 01:02:53.100 because I don't want to think that they're special. 01:02:53.100 --> 01:02:57.480 you say that it might seem like a small thing but all of that starts to take 01:02:57.480 --> 01:03:02.480 over and they don't even need it I mean kids will take advantage anyways my kids 01:03:02.480 --> 01:03:05.920 know that I'm the pastor like they already I mean I knew my dad was the 01:03:05.920 --> 01:03:10.660 doctor we loved going places in Mexico because we were treated like royalty one 01:03:10.660 --> 01:03:13.080 of the reasons I want to become a doctor was just because I love the way people 01:03:13.080 --> 01:03:14.200 treated my dad 01:03:14.300 --> 01:03:19.400 Everywhere he walked. Oh doctor como esta aqui tomas su asiento. Oh los hijos del doctor 01:03:19.800 --> 01:03:24.260 Sientense aqui. You know we'd go to restaurants and it was just like oh the chef would come out como esta doctor 01:03:24.260 --> 01:03:26.900 What do you want us to make for you? Oh my dad would order 01:03:26.900 --> 01:03:33.160 Oh and the kids and we would get all this privilege not because of us but because of my dad right like and then we thought 01:03:33.160 --> 01:03:37.720 We were some kind of special hot stuff and it wasn't even us it was my dad right same thing here 01:03:37.720 --> 01:03:42.040 We shouldn't think we're any just because you might be closer to the some guy in church or they have it 01:03:42.300 --> 01:03:43.600 No, we don't do that. 01:03:43.600 --> 01:03:45.440 Like, we're not gonna take advantage of people. 01:03:45.440 --> 01:03:46.920 Go back to Ezekiel 22. 01:03:48.200 --> 01:03:49.840 I got a couple minutes, I wanna close this thing out 01:03:49.840 --> 01:03:52.280 because I've got 10 minutes 01:03:52.280 --> 01:03:53.920 and I wanna get to the final point. 01:03:53.920 --> 01:03:55.080 But I really wanna touch on this point. 01:03:55.080 --> 01:03:56.440 Go back to Ezekiel 22. 01:03:59.000 --> 01:04:03.480 By the way, we'll rush through some of this stuff because I've already basically covered the main thing. 01:04:03.480 --> 01:04:04.760 I just really wanted to give you examples. 01:04:04.760 --> 01:04:07.400 But in Ezekiel 22 right there in verse 1, the Bible says, 01:04:07.400 --> 01:04:12.040 so we saw the end, right? Kind of the conduct, the character of all that. 01:04:12.040 --> 01:04:13.880 But we get to Ezekiel 22 in verse 1, it says, 01:04:13.880 --> 01:04:16.280 Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, 01:04:16.280 --> 01:04:20.120 Now thou son of man, wilt thou judge, 01:04:20.120 --> 01:04:24.840 wilt thou judge the bloody city, yet thou shalt show her all her abominations? 01:04:25.600 --> 01:04:29.440 Then say thou, thus saith the Lord God, the city shedeth blood in the midst of it, 01:04:29.440 --> 01:04:34.160 that her time may come and make it idols against herself to defile herself. 01:04:34.160 --> 01:04:40.960 Thou art become guilty in thy blood that thou hast shed, and hast defiled thyself in thine idols 01:04:40.960 --> 01:04:46.640 which thou hast made, and thou hast caused thy days to draw near and are come even unto thy years. 01:04:46.640 --> 01:04:52.080 Therefore have I made thee a reproach unto the heathen and a mocking to all countries. 01:04:53.700 --> 01:04:58.740 Those that bear, that be near, and those that be far from thee, shall mock thee, 01:04:58.740 --> 01:05:04.500 which are infamous and much vexed. Behold, the princes of Israel, every one, 01:05:05.620 --> 01:05:12.900 every one wherein thee to their power to shed, to shed blood. In thee have they said, lied by the 01:05:12.900 --> 01:05:16.900 father and mother, in the midst of thee have they dealt by oppression with 01:05:17.800 --> 01:05:24.760 uh the stranger in thee have they vexed the fatherless and the widow and what's pure religion to care for the 01:05:24.760 --> 01:05:30.600 followers in the widow right thou has despised mine whole despise mine holy things and has profaned 01:05:31.320 --> 01:05:38.520 my sabbath in thee are men that carry tails to shed blood and in thee they eat up the mountains 01:05:38.520 --> 01:05:40.600 in the midst of thee they commit lewdness 01:05:41.100 --> 01:05:44.100 In thee have they discovered their father's nakedness, 01:05:44.100 --> 01:05:48.100 in thee have they humbled her that was set apart for pollution, 01:05:48.100 --> 01:05:51.600 and one hath committed abomination with his neighbor's wife, 01:05:51.600 --> 01:05:54.600 and another hath lewdly defiled his daughter-in-law, 01:05:54.600 --> 01:05:59.100 and another in thee hath humbled his sister, his father's daughter. 01:05:59.100 --> 01:06:02.600 In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood, 01:06:02.600 --> 01:06:04.100 that was taking usury. 01:06:04.400 --> 01:06:11.040 increase and thou has greedily gained of thy neighbors by extortion and has 01:06:11.040 --> 01:06:16.760 forgotten me saith the Lord God." I mean it's pretty serious like that's a big 01:06:16.760 --> 01:06:22.140 fall all of a sudden there's adultery there's like you know what if 1st 01:06:22.140 --> 01:06:26.120 Corinthians what does it start out hey it's commonly reported among you that 01:06:26.120 --> 01:06:27.600 you've taken your father's wife 01:06:28.200 --> 01:06:29.200 This is not what they're doing. 01:06:29.200 --> 01:06:30.840 They're seeking their nakedness. 01:06:30.840 --> 01:06:32.880 There's lewdness. 01:06:32.880 --> 01:06:34.840 Those that are set aside for pollution. 01:06:34.840 --> 01:06:37.880 I mean, they're just like, we don't care anymore. 01:06:37.880 --> 01:06:40.520 And we're taking money so that we can basically, 01:06:40.520 --> 01:06:41.640 they're hit men. 01:06:41.640 --> 01:06:43.160 Or they're like those Jews that are like, hey, 01:06:43.160 --> 01:06:46.040 you need to sign this or we're going to beat you up. 01:06:46.040 --> 01:06:47.320 By cattle prod or karate. 01:06:47.320 --> 01:06:50.720 That's probably the funniest set of lines I've ever seen. 01:06:50.720 --> 01:06:51.220 But. 01:06:51.500 --> 01:06:53.340 We don't want that to creep into our church. 01:06:53.340 --> 01:06:56.300 Now, I don't really, I mean, I don't think that's a challenge in our church. 01:06:56.300 --> 01:06:57.460 I've never heard of it. 01:06:57.460 --> 01:06:59.220 Like, it's even kind of weird to preach on it, but 01:06:59.220 --> 01:07:01.380 we're gonna preach everything that's in the word of God. 01:07:01.380 --> 01:07:02.260 But you know what? 01:07:02.260 --> 01:07:03.140 We need to be aware of it. 01:07:04.300 --> 01:07:06.940 Because we do run in circles. 01:07:06.940 --> 01:07:11.940 Our world is smaller because of digital media, because of social media. 01:07:11.940 --> 01:07:14.900 So it could come from someone that we might be, you know. 01:07:15.200 --> 01:07:18.840 friends with or anything like that we need to be careful about that stuff and 01:07:18.840 --> 01:07:23.400 we need to stand up for the needy and the oppressed and call that stuff out 01:07:23.400 --> 01:07:29.960 so let's go ahead and close this thing out let me see I'll read for you Rick 01:07:29.960 --> 01:07:32.600 with Micah 3 11 the Bible says the heads of the 01:07:32.800 --> 01:07:37.280 thereof judge for reward and the priests thereof teach to hire and the prophets 01:07:37.280 --> 01:07:41.720 therefore divine for money yet they will lean upon the Lord and say is not the 01:07:41.720 --> 01:07:45.600 Lord among us none evil can come upon us and by the way I should have made that 01:07:45.600 --> 01:07:47.400 point earlier because we saw another one 01:07:48.200 --> 01:07:54.680 The other way you coerce people also sometimes for money and for acts that aren't righteous and stuff like that. 01:07:54.680 --> 01:07:58.840 It's called grooming, right? Especially when they're going to take advantage of them. 01:07:58.840 --> 01:08:04.360 And sometimes they do it under the guise of God. You know, Will, this is, you're doing this for the glory of God. 01:08:04.360 --> 01:08:12.600 I mean David Koresh was actually accused of that where he said that these husbands needed to give up their wives because he was, you know, like a chosen one of God. 01:08:12.600 --> 01:08:14.360 And that they were doing God's work. 01:08:14.900 --> 01:08:18.020 That's a form of coercion, a form of extortion. 01:08:18.020 --> 01:08:20.020 So we need to be careful with that. 01:08:20.020 --> 01:08:21.300 Proverbs 11.1 says, 01:08:21.300 --> 01:08:23.780 a false balance is an abomination to the Lord, 01:08:23.780 --> 01:08:25.220 but a just weight. 01:08:28.100 --> 01:08:29.220 is his delight. 01:08:31.600 --> 01:08:34.960 You know, it's not always with violence, right? 01:08:34.960 --> 01:08:38.080 Probably the most common we'll see in our lifetime 01:08:38.080 --> 01:08:42.640 is fear and guilt and influence and position and leverage. 01:08:42.640 --> 01:08:45.120 Those are the things that we have to be more careful with. 01:08:45.120 --> 01:08:50.160 Violence would be very evident in a, usually you see that in a more corrupt 01:08:50.160 --> 01:08:53.280 country or somewhere where the law is not as stringent. 01:08:53.280 --> 01:08:56.320 Like in Mexico, extortion is by violence. 01:08:56.320 --> 01:08:58.160 Like that's just, you know. 01:08:58.600 --> 01:09:00.600 par for the course. 01:09:01.720 --> 01:09:03.720 So let's see, where was I? 01:09:04.080 --> 01:09:10.200 I've got five minutes. The corruption of an extortioner. So I just want to address a couple things here. 01:09:10.560 --> 01:09:15.420 Modern or ways that we would see extortion. Blackmail, right? 01:09:16.400 --> 01:09:18.400 Threatening exposure to gain compliance. 01:09:20.320 --> 01:09:25.640 Using confidential information as leverage. Spiritual intimidation, right? 01:09:26.500 --> 01:09:29.060 Don't do that to your wives and wives don't do that to your husbands where you're like, 01:09:29.060 --> 01:09:33.540 well if you don't do this, you know, the Bible says wives must submit to their husbands, right? 01:09:33.540 --> 01:09:40.180 Of course we want to do things within God's law, right? Even in a home, the kids and the wives, 01:09:40.180 --> 01:09:44.180 especially, like they shouldn't be forced to do something if it goes against God. 01:09:45.220 --> 01:09:50.180 I mean that's just, if I have to explain that to someone, you know, you really need to read your Bible. 01:09:50.400 --> 01:09:54.560 I mean my wife needs to submit to me and she needs to do everything I say 01:09:54.560 --> 01:09:57.600 as long as I'm leading her in the fear and admonition of the Lord. 01:09:57.600 --> 01:09:59.920 If I'm asking her to do something against God's will, 01:09:59.920 --> 01:10:02.400 she does have the right to just say, 01:10:02.400 --> 01:10:04.480 well I'd rather obey God than you. 01:10:04.480 --> 01:10:09.440 But that's a really extreme example, 01:10:09.440 --> 01:10:11.440 but I want to point that out. 01:10:12.500 --> 01:10:17.020 Pastora authority where they they abuse their position right? This is a big one for me 01:10:17.020 --> 01:10:23.660 I mean, that's why I believe in accountability. I'm nobody special, you know people shouldn't I don't as a matter of fact 01:10:23.660 --> 01:10:27.060 I mean, I appreciate you guys calling me pastor and I believe that's the proper way 01:10:27.100 --> 01:10:30.980 I'm not gonna correct that and you know, because obviously it's biblical 01:10:31.500 --> 01:10:35.900 But I mean, if someone goes from pastor to brother, brother to pastor, I'm not, oh, you 01:10:35.900 --> 01:10:36.900 gotta call me pastor. 01:10:36.900 --> 01:10:43.500 That's not, you know, I know why you're doing it, but I'm also not, you know, like, if you 01:10:43.500 --> 01:10:46.780 start like that, all of a sudden you're just gonna start holding people. 01:10:46.780 --> 01:10:48.100 Brother Matt, I made a joke with him earlier. 01:10:48.100 --> 01:10:49.460 He was listening to Pastor Anderson. 01:10:49.460 --> 01:10:51.260 I said, I don't want you listening to those guys. 01:10:51.260 --> 01:10:52.380 You know, because isn't that true? 01:10:52.380 --> 01:10:53.620 That's how some of these guys are. 01:10:53.620 --> 01:10:54.620 I don't care. 01:10:54.620 --> 01:10:56.100 Listen to whoever you need to listen to. 01:10:56.100 --> 01:10:58.660 You know, I honestly, if people be like... 01:10:59.300 --> 01:11:01.020 They're like, well, we might leave. 01:11:01.020 --> 01:11:01.740 Leave. 01:11:01.740 --> 01:11:03.740 As long as you leave to go serve at a church, 01:11:03.740 --> 01:11:07.820 and you're going to actually do it better, you should leave. 01:11:07.820 --> 01:11:11.700 If you've got to go to First Works and leave, then leave. 01:11:11.700 --> 01:11:12.940 I'm just kidding. 01:11:12.940 --> 01:11:15.380 And you know who I'm talking about. 01:11:15.380 --> 01:11:17.460 First Works is a great church, and Pastor Mekhina 01:11:17.460 --> 01:11:18.540 is a great pastor. 01:11:18.540 --> 01:11:20.260 I really enjoy him. 01:11:20.260 --> 01:11:23.380 Financial manipulation, course of leadership. 01:11:24.600 --> 01:11:27.960 In 1 Corinthians 6, we see that we shouldn't take a brother to law. 01:11:27.960 --> 01:11:32.200 That's a form of coercion in Psalm 107. But let's just close this thing out. 01:11:32.840 --> 01:11:37.800 How do we respond to it? I've already kind of preached this sermon. I'm going to re-preach it 01:11:37.800 --> 01:11:41.320 every time I bring up these points about church discipline. We got to kick them out. 01:11:42.040 --> 01:11:47.480 We got to kick them out. And if someone is still talking to them, either I'll address it with you 01:11:47.480 --> 01:11:51.240 guys, or if you want to be friends with them, then you go be friends with them. I'll kick you out too. 01:11:51.700 --> 01:11:55.500 It's very clear the Bible says have no fellowship with them. 01:11:55.500 --> 01:11:59.700 And so I mean, I've addressed this the one time, the first time I addressed it, I was 01:11:59.700 --> 01:12:02.820 pretty strict because I was actually dealing with it. 01:12:02.820 --> 01:12:06.420 Nothing is triggered right now, but I'm going to remind you that, you know, I think I'm 01:12:06.420 --> 01:12:07.420 pretty cool. 01:12:07.420 --> 01:12:10.340 I think I'm pretty relaxed, but I'm going to do what God says. 01:12:10.340 --> 01:12:13.420 You know, and I'd rather not have those conversations, but I will. 01:12:13.800 --> 01:12:18.120 And if you're messing around with anything like this, I will kick you out of church. 01:12:18.120 --> 01:12:21.880 And if you think you need to be friends with those people, then you might as well just go with them. 01:12:21.880 --> 01:12:26.440 And I'd rather just preach to... I've done it before. Pastor Cobb is my witness. I've 01:12:26.440 --> 01:12:32.280 preached to just one person in this church for months on end. I am not afraid to do it again. 01:12:32.280 --> 01:12:36.200 I will preach to one person and one person alone if that's all it takes. 01:12:36.200 --> 01:12:40.120 I'd rather just preach to one person that's faithful than 50 people that are unfaithful. 01:12:40.120 --> 01:12:40.680 Well, I am just. 01:12:41.000 --> 01:12:43.380 So I'm not afraid to do it because I've already done it. 01:12:43.380 --> 01:12:46.600 You know, my wife couldn't always be here at times when we had her first child. 01:12:46.600 --> 01:12:50.780 But so the church's response, but I did want to point one thing out that was really interesting 01:12:50.780 --> 01:12:52.180 because you guys already know all the verses. 01:12:52.180 --> 01:12:58.380 If you want to go second to Salonius talks about it, Titus 3, but go to Romans 109, which 01:12:58.380 --> 01:13:04.440 Romans 109 is what the most famous of all the imprecatory prayers, right? 01:13:04.800 --> 01:13:09.520 And the one thing that we want we also need to realize is we want to stay away from them 01:13:09.920 --> 01:13:14.240 Because what is the one of the most common ways that god avenges and punishes? 01:13:14.960 --> 01:13:16.400 the people that 01:13:16.400 --> 01:13:18.320 That attack god's people 01:13:18.320 --> 01:13:19.760 He uses 01:13:19.760 --> 01:13:22.260 Their own snare and their own pit 01:13:22.600 --> 01:13:29.080 right and in this prayer we see that word extortion and we see how it's used and in here the psalmist 01:13:29.080 --> 01:13:35.560 is talking he says in verse one hold not thy peace oh god of my praise for the mouth of the wicked 01:13:35.560 --> 01:13:41.000 and the mouth of the deceitful or opened up against me they have spoken against me with lying tongue 01:13:41.000 --> 01:13:46.760 they compass compass me about also with words of hatred and fought against me without a cause 01:13:47.500 --> 01:13:51.580 for my love they are my adversaries but I give myself unto prayer 01:13:52.460 --> 01:13:55.340 by we're not reading the whole thing we're just reading a couple of verses this 01:13:55.340 --> 01:14:03.580 and they have rewarded me evil for good and hatred for my love set thou a wicked man over him 01:14:03.800 --> 01:14:08.680 and let Satan stand at his right hand, when he shall be judged, let him be condemned, 01:14:08.680 --> 01:14:13.880 let his prayer become sin, let his days be few, and let another take his office, 01:14:13.880 --> 01:14:17.480 let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow." Which, by the way, this is pretty 01:14:17.480 --> 01:14:18.600 strong language. 01:14:18.900 --> 01:14:22.180 Let his children be continually bag of bonds and beg. 01:14:22.180 --> 01:14:25.380 Let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places. 01:14:25.380 --> 01:14:26.580 And then what does it say? 01:14:26.580 --> 01:14:30.340 Let the extortioner catch all that he hath, 01:14:30.340 --> 01:14:33.300 and let the stranger spoil his labor. 01:14:33.300 --> 01:14:36.260 Let there be none to extend mercy unto him, 01:14:36.260 --> 01:14:40.500 neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children. 01:14:41.140 --> 01:14:44.180 So God uses this sin to punish people. 01:14:45.300 --> 01:14:49.540 If we don't do anything about it, you might fall prey to it because you turned a blind 01:14:49.540 --> 01:14:49.800 eye. 01:14:50.600 --> 01:14:54.200 And oftentimes that's how it is, right? What you do to others will be done unto you. 01:14:54.200 --> 01:14:58.680 So let's just be really careful about this. I know it was probably not like the most, 01:14:58.680 --> 01:15:02.360 you know, it's not something you talk about all the time, but you know, the Bible talks about it. 01:15:02.360 --> 01:15:05.320 So we need to address it. Let's close in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, Lord, 01:15:05.320 --> 01:15:09.400 thank you so much for today. Thank you for your blessings, Lord. Thank you for just another great 01:15:09.400 --> 01:15:14.280 Sunday. Thank you for the heat. Thank you for the liberty to just preach. 01:15:14.400 --> 01:15:20.400 and knock on doors and have people be receptive to what we have to say. 01:15:20.400 --> 01:15:24.480 And Lord, I just pray that you would just bless the rest of this week, be with all those here. 01:15:24.480 --> 01:15:27.440 Thank you for the visitors and as they travel back, Lord, 01:15:28.800 --> 01:15:32.720 give them safe traveling mercies. And we have people coming from all over the place 01:15:32.720 --> 01:15:35.040 and we're really grateful and appreciative. 01:15:35.400 --> 01:15:42.120 that you would take notice on us and that you would consider us someone to be visited. 01:15:42.120 --> 01:15:44.120 And so Lord just thank you for all that you do. 01:15:44.120 --> 01:15:45.000 Bless this week. 01:15:45.000 --> 01:15:47.400 Bless our activities. 01:15:47.400 --> 01:15:48.200 In Jesus name we pray. 01:15:48.200 --> 01:15:48.920 Amen. 01:15:51.600 --> 01:15:54.640 Let's turn our handles over to page 169. 01:15:57.000 --> 01:15:59.000 169. 01:16:11.800 --> 01:16:12.640 Bum-Bum-Bum. 01:16:29.700 --> 01:16:30.900 169.