Hallelujah, by the glory, revive us again.
Oh, glory and praise to the Lamb that was slain,
who has borne all our sins and has bled every stain.
Hallelujah, by the glory, hallelujah, amen.
Hallelujah, by the glory, revive us again.
Revive us again, fill his heart with thy love.
May his soul be rekindled with fire from above.
Hallelujah, by the glory, hallelujah, amen.
Hallelujah, by the glory, revive us again.
Praise him, praise him, Jesus our blessed Redeemer.
Sing, O Earth, his wonderful love proclaim.
Hail, hail, hail, hail, highest of angels in glory.
Strength and honor give to his holy name.
Like a shepherd, Jesus will guard his children.
In his arms he carries them all in awe.
Praise him, praise him, jealous his excellent greatest.
Praise him, praise him, ever in joyful song.
Praise him, praise him, Jesus our blessed Redeemer.
For our sins he suffered and bled and died.
He our God, hope of eternal salvation.
Hail, hail, hail him, Jesus and crucified.
Sound his praises, Jesus, you bore our sorrows.
Love, love, love him, wonderful, deep, and strong.
Praise him, praise him, jealous his excellent greatest.
Praise him, praise him, ever in joyful song.
Praise him, praise him, Jesus our blessed Redeemer.
Heavenly portals, loud with rose and a scream.
Jesus, Savior, reign in forever and ever.
Round him, round him, prophet and priest and king.
Christ is coming over the world victorious.
Power and glory unto the Lord beloved.
Praise him, praise him, jealous his excellent greatest.
Praise him, praise him, ever in joyful song.
I am thine own, I am mine on,
I am only one, I am not too many.
I will want to rise in the arms of the king.
I will be closer, I will come to thee.
I'll be there, I'll be there, I'll be there,
I'll be here, I'll be there, I'll be there,
I'll be there, I'll be there, I'll be here.
Hear her, blessed Lord
To thy precious, fleeting sound
Hark, sing greatly now to thy service, Lord
Like the power of grace divine
Like my soul, Lord God, with its steadfast hope
And my will be lost in time
Draw me near, hear her, blessed Lord
To the cross that thou hast done
Draw me near, hear her, blessed Lord
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Steadfast Baptist Church.
It's awesome to see everybody here today.
If we can go ahead and find our seats, we will get started.
And once you have found a seat, go ahead and find a hymnal,
and we will go to song number 210 for this morning's Service First song.
Song number 210.
Wonderful Grace of Jesus.
Song number 210.
Wonderful Grace of Jesus.
Sing it out loudly. Let's get started this morning.
Song number 210.
Wonderful Grace of Jesus.
Greater than all my sin.
How shall my tongue describe it?
Where shall His praise begin?
Taking away my burden.
Setting my spirit free.
For the wonderful grace of Jesus reaches me.
Wonderful, the matchless grace of Jesus.
Deeper than the mighty rolling sea.
Higher than the mountains.
Sparkling like a mountain.
Oh, sufficient grace for even me.
Rotter than the scope of my transgressions.
Greater far than all my sin and shame.
O magnify the precious name of Jesus.
Praise His name.
Wonderful grace of Jesus.
Reaching to all the lost.
By it I have been pardoned.
Saved to the uttermost.
Chains have been torn asunder.
Giving me liberty.
For the wonderful grace of Jesus.
Reaches me.
Wonderful, the matchless grace of Jesus.
Deeper than the mighty rolling sea.
Higher than the mountains.
Sparkling like a mountain.
Oh, sufficient grace for even me.
Rotter than the scope of my transgressions.
Greater far than all my sin and shame.
O magnify the precious name of Jesus.
Praise His name.
Wonderful grace of Jesus.
Reaching the most divine.
By its transforming power.
Making Him God's dear child.
Purchasing peace and heaven.
For all eternity.
And the wonderful grace of Jesus.
Reaches me.
Wonderful, the matchless grace of Jesus.
Deeper than the mighty rolling sea.
Higher than the mountains.
Sparkling like a mountain.
Oh, sufficient grace for even me.
Rotter than the scope of my transgressions.
Greater far than all my sin and shame.
O magnify the precious name of Jesus.
Praise His name.
Great singing everybody. Let's open up the service now with a word of prayer.
Lord, we love you and just thank you so much for this church. Thank you for the ability to gather here and hear great preaching and singing, Lord, and be able to do all these things unto you.
We love you and just ask that you fill this room with your spirit and bless this church and it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Alright, for our next song, let's go to song number 211.
The very next song.
Sorry, 211.
Whosoever meaneth me.
Song number 211.
I am happy today and the sun shines bright.
The clouds have been rolled away.
For the Savior said, Whosoever will,
Come with me to stay.
Whosoever surely meaneth me.
Surely meaneth me.
Oh, surely meaneth me.
Whosoever surely meaneth me.
Whosoever meaneth me.
All my hopes have been raised.
Oh, His name be praised.
His glory has filled my soul.
I've been lifted up and from sin set free.
His blood hath made me whole.
Whosoever surely meaneth me.
Surely meaneth me.
Oh, surely meaneth me.
Whosoever surely meaneth me.
Whosoever meaneth me.
Oh, what wonderful love of what grace divine,
That Jesus should die for me.
I was lost in sin for the world I find,
But now I am set free.
Whosoever surely meaneth me.
Surely meaneth me.
Oh, surely meaneth me.
Whosoever surely meaneth me.
Whosoever meaneth me.
Also, if you can chat, do the whole chapter to a non-family member,
there's a special prize that we give out when we finish that.
Inside, we have a couple things. I'm going to wait to get to those.
Our bulletin does have our service and soul-winning times.
Soul-winning times meet here at the church in that church-wide category,
and then different parts of the Dallas-Fort Worth area for our regional times.
And so, if you are interested in going in one of those times, you can contact those leaders.
But just to give you some kind of idea, I wanted to ask,
Brother Sam, what kind of part of town have you been going on Monday?
So on Mondays, it's kind of like the Irving area.
What about you, Brother Malton, for Tuesdays?
Where have you been kind of going generally?
Fort Worth.
Is that like West Fort Worth or just anywhere Fort Worth?
Okay, kind of like a Fort Worth, West Fort Worth.
I believe the ladies, y'all have been doing Grand Prairie kind of?
Okay, so kind of Mid-Cities Grand Prairie.
Brother Suelle, what have you been doing on Thursdays?
Carrollton.
Carrollton, okay.
And then also Brother West, have y'all been doing Arlington still for Saturdays?
Okay, yeah.
So, just to give you kind of an idea, if you, you know, Irving, Carrollton, Arlington,
you know, people live all over, so that gives you some idea.
And see one of these guys.
Also, even if you aren't familiar with them, but you're just interested, you could ask
your soul winning captain, you could ask me, email the church, and we'd love to help you
as far as identifying maybe an area or a time that works for you to do soul winning.
And then down below, we have our church stats.
We've been doing really, really well on our church stats for the year.
And so, but we want to make sure that we still finish strong.
And I'm really hoping that next year that we're going to smash these numbers.
I have a lot of plans and a lot of goals for us to do a really big push next year,
and so I'm really excited.
But we honestly did very, very good so far this year.
Also, I'm planning on getting a newsletter from our evangelist, Urbanic, in the Philippines.
And he has, he beat us by himself.
So, you know, he's, obviously he's had some other people help him, but it just, I mean,
he's just really doing great over there in the Philippines.
And so I'm really excited to have his year-end newsletter to share with you.
That should be on the 1st, so we should have that newsletter to share with you on the 1st.
On the right, we have the list of expecting ladies.
We also have our prayer list.
If you'd like any additional prayer, please let us know, and we'd love to be in prayer for you.
On the back, it has a note about the most upcoming event.
It's going to be an event in the Houston area.
Pastor Enrique Reyes of Springcrest Baptist Church has invited me to come out and preach for him.
And we're going to do a major soul-winning event the day before.
So we kind of have an itinerary there.
So if you'd like to participate, there is a sign-up sheet out here in the foyer.
And I'd really like you to sign up so that way we can coordinate if you need maybe lodging for that Saturday night,
or if you're planning on coming to the event so I can make sure to purchase all the food and everything necessary,
and we can plan our fellowship event accordingly.
So if you want to go, we'd really like to know.
And please fill out that sign-up sheet in the foyer for that specific event.
I'm going to do the other events before I get to this church reminders.
So in the bulletin, I have a save the date.
Now, this is what's going to happen.
As soon as the service is over, you're going to come and ask me for all the details about all these events.
This is a save the date, alright?
So when we get closer, I'll be able to give you the details.
This is just simply, we have it scheduled as far as the date.
If you want all the other details, you have to wait patiently.
But I just wanted to give you an idea of what we're looking at for next year.
So if you are interested about dates, there will most likely still be additional things that are not even in this
that we'll add throughout the year.
But this is pretty much the things that have already been locked in, that we have scheduled, and we're doing.
So like we had at the very top, that Spring Crest event on the 11th and 12th,
February 6th through the 8th is our Rayonosa Soul Waning Marathon.
There's also a sign-up sheet for that.
So if you're wanting to go and we'd like to know who's needing or wanting to do the carpooling for that particular event,
but we're very excited to go down there. We're going to be staying on the state side, McAllen.
We always stay state side and then just go over into Mexico for the Soul Waning.
And it's very receptive there. It's always been great.
Who's gone to Rayonosa with me before?
Yeah, yeah. Lots of people have gone. It's a great trip. Ask those people about it. It's a lot of fun.
Oh, I did want to ask because the next event is going to be this Wednesday.
We're going to have a men's preaching and we're going to have pizza.
Who's planning on coming Wednesday to service? Just so I have some kind of an idea.
All right. Thank you.
February 16th through the 23rd.
This is a cruise missions trip that we're going to be sending evangelists for on.
And some other church members.
But I put in our group chat the actual details for that particular event if you want to go.
And essentially it's just a recommended cruise trip if you would like to go on one.
Faith Award also has one in March. I need to get those details and I'll put that in the group chat too if you're interested.
But it's pretty affordable. I believe it's about just under $1,800 for two people.
And so it's about $875, $880 a person or something like that.
But that includes all of your food obviously and everything. You'd have to maybe buy a flight as well.
So I would say for about $1,100, $1,200 you could go on one of these type of cruise missions trip options.
And this specific one is from Sunday to Sunday. It's going to be a seven day cruise.
And you have three stops. One's in Nassau, Bahamas. One's in St. Thomas and the other one's in St. John's.
Now you get quite a bit of time actually. You get about 8 to 10 hours each stop.
And so you can pretty much just eat the unlimited buffet and food and just hang out.
And then you get like 10 hours of just dedicated soul winning time three days out of that seven.
And honestly it's probably going to be one of the easiest missions trips you've ever been on.
If you've ever done one of these four missions trips.
And so if you have about $1,100, $1,200 you could take a week off of work.
It would be a pretty easy missions trip if you want to try it.
So we're going to be trying it and we'll have a sign up sheet for that too just so people can know how to coordinate.
But Evangelist Fur will be going on this one so he'll already have some idea of where they're going to be going.
Where they're going to be traveling.
Nassau, Bahamas is the main island for the Bahamas. That's where we went on a missions trip.
It's very receptive. A lot of great opportunities to go soul winning there.
And we even have a contact there that can help with transportation or getting people to places to go soul winning.
St. Thomas and St. John's I'm not familiar with those but doing some research they are English speaking islands.
They have at least 40-50,000 as far as population and they seem pretty densely populated near these ports.
So I would assume that it's going to be pretty good options as far as getting out there and going soul winning.
I can't say for sure. Some people have visited these places and said it's pretty decent.
So I would just anticipate that they would also be good options.
But we're kind of exploring and trying new things and so if you are interested please ask Evangelist Fur about it.
Or at least indicate on our sign up sheet if you want to try to see about that.
But that's something that you can go on. I know some people said they're interested.
In later March there's also one Faithful Word Baptist Church is going to be doing with Brother Chris Segura.
He's going to be going out there and being the lead for that particular event.
And I think that they're going to have maybe four stops instead of three.
But one of those stops is one of those fake islands.
So I don't even know that it's necessarily any much better as far as soul winning than the one that we have scheduled.
So I've looked at tons and tons of cruise missions options and I feel like this one is a really good option as far as being able to go to a lot of good stops.
It's also on the Royal Caribbean which I've heard is a pretty good cruise line.
So I'm not an expert into this but from the research and the opinions and the people I've talked to this seems like it will be a pretty good option.
And you should be able to get several people saved in some pretty receptive spots.
And this is what's funny. People that just go zoning maybe once a week on average or something.
You might get more people saved on one cruise mission strip than you would like a whole year going in just this area.
Just because when you go to these receptive areas it's just you have so much more opportunity to get a lot of people saved.
So that's just to put that out there. Obviously if you don't have the money there's still lots of great soul winning missions that we're going to have here locally.
The church is going to pay for. So don't feel like if you can't do it you can't participate in lots of soul winning.
We are starting a kids choir that we're going to do for our Easter services.
My wife is going to be leading that. It's going to be 2 to 3 and it's going to start in March 2nd.
So it's going to be. I need to double check on ages. Do you have a cap on the high end of the age yet? Do you know?
Okay no. I think we're going to have at least maybe 4 or 5 will be like the bottom cap and then maybe up to 16.
So when we get a little closer we'll have the details.
Evangelist Duncan Urbanic is going to be coming on furlough for a couple weeks in March and he's going to actually preach for us on March 12th.
So that's going to be a Wednesday night service. We'd love for you to come for that.
March 22nd we're going to have a spring recital. So that's for all of you musicians and you can even do voice if you'd like but we'll have our spring recital March 22nd.
April 19th. So that's the day before Easter. We're going to do a Mansfield Texas Soul Waning Marathon. May 16th through the 18th.
That is one of our friends Pastor Aaron Thompson is having a conference about the King James Bible and it's going to be in Vancouver Washington where his church is at.
It's her Foundation Baptist Church. So if you'd like to participate or visit that would be a great opportunity.
May 31st we're going to be doing a Durant Oklahoma Soul Waning Marathon. This is in Oklahoma and we're going to be partnering with Anchor Baptist Church.
Who's going to be kind of meeting us halfway and so it'll be a great opportunity to go Soul Waning with them.
Durant has got I think about 13 to 14 percent Native American population so it's kind of near some of the Native American areas and so might give you an opportunity to witness kind of to the Indians.
June 15th Father's Day floats. June 28th we're going to do a Shreveport Louisiana Marathon.
July 19th Lancaster. Very excited about that because it's only like 25 minutes from us. So it's just like 25 minutes east of us.
But it looks like a very receptive area and so I'm excited to try that one.
August 14th through the 16th is our Men's Retreat. August 27th through the 31st we're going to have our Fire Breathing Baptist Fellowship.
And I already have several pastors who are lined up for that particular event and so I'm very excited that we're going to get to do that again.
September 27th our Tyler Texas. It's kind of a little bit east as well. We're going to try that.
October 6th and 11th we're going to do the Bahamas Missions Trip again.
And so basically my goal is I'm going to try and get reservations and book a certain amount of locations.
But the way it's going to work this year is I'm only going to provide church lodging for Soul Winners.
So if people want to take their family they're more than welcome to go to this event.
It's just the church lodging will be specifically only for adult Soul Winners.
So those who want to go and it's going to be limited to the first people to respond.
Because honestly I've had so many people interested and it's hard to even anticipate that it's probably going to be about the first 40 or 50 people that have booked their tickets.
And then given me their itinerary that are going to lock in a spot for the church lodging.
And so when I get probably in a few weeks or so I'll get all of that together and make a video about it and I'll let you guys know as well.
So if you want to participate and it's going to be pretty much the same as last time we have our contact there.
Hopefully we'll be able to get in some of the schools again.
But also I'm trying to time it this year where we're actually going to go when school's in session and like kind of hot and heavy.
Because the last few times I've gone for some reason it's just I didn't time it well with the college and stuff.
But I'm hoping this year we're going to time it right to where school's going to be having tons and tons of students there.
And honestly the schools are a great opportunity to go soul winning and the Bahamas is a great place to visit.
So if you can make it. I don't know exactly how much it would cost for someone to go on a trip like this.
You'd have to look at flights for that time period. But sometimes flights are around $500-$600 round trip.
Sometimes they're a little bit more expensive if it's a peak season.
But for about $500-$600 you could probably get a ticket per person.
And then if you go with the church lodging you might only have to pay a couple hundred dollars worth of food.
I mean you could possibly go on this trip for like $750 maybe even $800 maybe a thousand.
If you have to do your own lodging it would probably be more like $1200-$1300 a person or something like that.
But that's just to put an idea of that kind of an option.
So we had about 60 people go two years ago and it was an awesome trip.
People said it was like their most favorite trip they've ever been on.
So I highly obviously recommend and encourage trying it.
And we could have had more people because even going to the schools there was more opportunities than we had people at a few of the schools.
And so we're definitely going to go hard this year for the Bahamas again.
October 31st Chili Cook Off. November 9th Dr. Stringer is going to be preaching for us.
We're going to have our Turkey Bowl.
And then we have pretty much all of our holiday events.
Christmas party, caroling, cookie bake off, candlelight service, men's preaching.
Like I said as we get a little bit closer into the season there might be a few more events that pop up towards the end of the year.
But I just wanted to give you an idea.
We're going to be doing lots of soul winning, lots of events.
Really excited for 2025.
Thank you guys so much for being a part of this church.
We really appreciate you guys because it helps us do some of these awesome events and conferences and missions trips.
We're really making a big impact in the world.
And so we want to continue to do that.
And we want to do more next year than we've ever done before.
So I want us to really challenge ourselves next year to just shatter our soul winning records and everything that we've done before.
And let's do even better.
And let's reach even more people.
I have a lot of personal projects that I'm excited about.
We'll be working on a documentary again for Soul Winning.
A book idea and a few other things that I'm hoping will get accomplished.
And we're going to try and make some better music.
I've written a couple more psalms that we're going to implement into our singing.
So a lot of good things.
Down below in our bulletin though, I have one more thing I want to go for.
And this is long announcements today. I apologize.
But we're ending the year strong.
So a couple church reminders.
And these are something that we just always need to be reminded on.
But children should not be running or rough playing in the church at any time.
Alright? So just keep your hands to yourself.
No pushing. No shoving. No wrestling.
You can do that. Just not here.
I'm all for it. Just not at church.
Children should not be on the stage at any time.
Children shouldn't be in the kitchen getting drinks or fridges or ice machine or anything.
Unless they're being assisted by an adult.
So if your mom or dad are with you, that's fine.
Children should not be in the Mother Bay rooms without their parents at any time.
So that's before, during, or after services. They should not be in those areas unattended.
The Fellowship Room is not a play area either.
So when I said no wrestling, I didn't mean only the sanctuary.
But it's like a WWE match in the Fellowship Room just because we can't see you.
It's just anywhere in the building.
So please do not be wrestling and fighting anywhere in the building.
Also, please make sure you're cleaning up after yourselves.
And really, honestly, you really need to just say clean up.
Because most people are like, well I didn't make that mess or that's not my water bottle.
Just help out. Help clean up trash. That really helps.
And also the water bottles in our fridges are for soul winners or guests or visitors.
If you need water, there should be cups right there with our water fountain.
So for us, please do that.
Also parents, please make sure you're watching your kids after the service.
You should have an idea of where they're at at all times.
And then also children, if any adult is telling you that you're doing something wrong,
you need to just say yes sir or yes ma'am and do it.
That includes all of our ushers, our staff, my wife, anybody.
If they're saying, hey, you need to not go in this room or you need to move out of the kitchen or stop running,
you just need to obey them even if they're not your parent.
You just need to obey the adults and the staff in the church.
Also one other thing I don't think is mentioned here, but we have a lot of materials.
Bibles, we have invitations, we have cards that you can fill out for first time guest visitors.
That is not toys. Those are not things to play on, draw on, write notes, or do anything like that.
So please help us that you're not letting your kids just destroy church materials for no reason.
That's all I have as far as announcements.
We're going to go ahead and sing our third song and it's going to be a psalm.
Psalm 126 should be in our handout. Psalm 126.
All right, that was Psalm 126.
Psalm 126. Everybody sing it out together on the first.
When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion
We were like them that dream
Then was our mouth filled with laughter and our tongue with singing
Then said they among the even the Lord had done great things for them
The Lord had done great things for us
Whereof we are glad, turn again our captivity
Oh Lord, as the streams in the South
They that sow in tears shall reap in joy
Then said they among the even the Lord had done great things for them
The Lord had done great things for us
Whereof we are glad
He that goeth forth in weeping, bearing precious seed
Shall doubtless come again
With rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him
Then said they among the even the Lord had done great things for them
The Lord had done great things for us
Whereof we are glad
Great singing everybody. Now it's often a pleasure being passed around.
Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Jeremiah chapter 7.
That's the book of Jeremiah chapter number 7.
Jeremiah chapter 7.
Jeremiah chapter 7 the Bible says the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying
the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying,
stand in the gate of the Lord's house and proclaim there this word
and say hear the word of the Lord all ye of Judah
that enter in at these gates to worship the Lord.
Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, amend your ways and your doings
and I will cause you to dwell in this place. Trust ye not in lying words
saying the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are
these for if you thoroughly amend your ways
and your doings, if you thoroughly execute judgment
between a man and his neighbor, if you oppress not the stranger, the
fatherless and the widow and shed not innocent blood in this
place, neither walk after your gods to your hurt,
then will I cause you to dwell in this place in the land that I gave to your
fathers forever and ever. Behold ye trust in lying words that
cannot profit. Will ye still murder and commit adultery
and swear falsely and burn incense unto Baal and walk
after other gods whom ye know not and come and stand before me in this
house which is called by my name and say we are
delivered to do all these abominations? Is this house which is called by my name
become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold even I have seen it saith the
Lord. But go ye now unto my place which was in
Shiloh where I set my name at the first and see
what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel.
And now because you have done all these works saith the Lord and I spake unto
you rising up early and speaking but ye
heard not and I called you but you answered not.
Therefore will I do unto this house which is called by my name
wherein ye trust and under the place which I gave to you and to your fathers
as I have done to Shiloh and I will cast you out of my sight
as I have cast out all your brethren even the whole seed of Ephraim.
Therefore pray not thou for this people neither lift up cry nor prayer for them
neither make intercession to me for I will not hear thee.
Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?
The children gather wood and the fathers kindle the fire
and the women knead the dough to make cakes to the queen of heaven
and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods that they may provoke me to
anger. Do they provoke me to anger saith the
Lord? Do they not provoke themselves to the
confusion of their own faces? Therefore thus saith the Lord God behold
mine anger and my fury shall be poured out upon this place
upon man and upon beasts and upon the trees of the field
and upon the fruit of the ground and it shall burn and shall not be quenched.
Thus saith the Lord of hosts the God of Israel put your burnt offerings unto
your sacrifices and eat flesh for I spake not unto your fathers nor
commanded them in that day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt
concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices but this thing I
commanded I them saying obey my voice and I will be your God
and ye shall be my people and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you
that it may be well unto you but they harken not
nor incline their ear but walked in the councils and the imagination of their
evil heart and went backward and not forward
since the day that your fathers came forth out of the land of Egypt unto this
day I have even sent unto you all my
servants the prophets daily rising up early and sending them
yet they harken not unto me nor incline their ear
but hardened their neck they did worse than their fathers
therefore thou shalt speak all these words unto them but they will not harken
to thee thou shalt also call unto them but they
will not answer thee but thou shalt say unto them this is a
nation that obeyeth not the voice of the Lord their God
nor receiveth correction truth is perished and is cut off from their mouth
cut off thine hero Jerusalem and cast it away and take up a lamentation on high
places for the Lord hath rejected and forsaken
the generation of his wrath for the children of Judah have done
evil in my sight saith the Lord they have set their abominations in the
house which is called by my name to pollute it
and they have built the high places of tophat which is in the valley of the son
of Hinnom to burn their sons and their daughters
in the fire which I commanded them not neither came it into my heart therefore
behold the days come saith the Lord that it shall no more be called tophat
nor the valley of the son of Hinnom but the valley of slaughter
for they shall bury in tophat till there be no place
and the carcasses of this people shall be meat for the fowls of the heaven
and for the beasts of the earth and none shall fray them away
then will I cause to cease from the cities of Judah and from the streets of
Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness the voice of
the bridegroom and the voice of the bride for the land shall be desolate
let us pray dear heavenly father I want to thank you so much for Jesus Christ
thank you for the sacrifice that he paid for all of our sins
and rose from the dead making salvation a free gift
thank you for eternal security thank you for the word of God please open our
understanding and give pastor Shelley boldness to preach in Jesus name
amen i want to look at verse 24 the bible says this but they harken not nor
incline their ear but walked in the councils and the
imagination of their evil heart and went backward
and not forward and and that's really where i'm drawing the inspiration for my
sermon is this idea of going backward and not forward now i wanted to read
that verse but i actually want to go through this chapter quite a bit
and before we kind of get back to this this verse and kind of thinking about
what it's really saying but when when you get to the end of a
year this is something that i think is really important
is to kind of just evaluate the direction that you're headed
and what direction have you been going down
have you been going forward or have you been going
backward and when we look at the nation of Judah
and we look at this southern kingdom god's basically saying that this
kingdom as a whole obviously there's exceptions and
individuals that don't fit this but as a whole as a conglomerate they have
gone backward not forward in the service of
god in fact he says specifically that this
nation is worse than the children of Israel were in the
wilderness and we typically think of the children of
Israel in the wilderness as being kind of like
the the worst and a really bad generation
having been very backslidden he's saying they're worse
look what it says specifically in verse 26
yet they harken not unto me nor incline their ear but harden their neck
they did worse than their fathers so he's saying the children of Israel that
were in the wilderness who are their fathers
were actually more obedient than this generation than this specific
group of people and so when we think about the stiff necked and hard-hearted
people in the wilderness that didn't obey god and constantly complained
rebelled and worshipped the golden calf and did all
kinds of crazy things he's saying this generation is even
worse that them as a conglomerate they've gone even further backwards
not actually forwards they're not getting more christian
more godly more righteous they're getting worse
as a whole now if we go back to the very beginning this is important when we
think about the concepts and the who the audience is that he's
directing this towards but verse one it says the word of the
lord that that came to jeremiah from the lord saying
stand in the gate of the lord's house and proclaim there this word and say
hear the word of the lord all ye of judah that enter in at these gates
to worship the lord so who is jeremiah chapter number seven written to
it's written to people that are showing up at church
at the house of god and with a motivation
to worship god he's not preaching this to
an a heathen nation he's not preaching this to just
generally the inhabitants of judah it's specifically the people that are
going to church and the people that are going to church
with a purpose to worship god he's saying the people that are going to
church trying to worship god this is the message
for you guys this is what you guys are like
that's important to think about verse three thus say the lord of hosts the
god of israel amend your ways and your doings and i
will cause you to dwell in this place so god's appealing to the people of god
the people that want to worship him saying hey if you repent if you get
right with god if you actually change the way that
you're living you could live here forever
god wants them to be able to dwell in this land and to be able to
be established in this area what is their problems and they have several
problems here first when he mentions look at it says
in verse four trust ye not in lying words
what is one of the major problems they have is they're trusting
lying words they believe false doctrine they believe false teachings
they have people that are telling them things that are not true and they just
believe them and really there's a lot of parallels i
think when you study the book of jeremiah
when you look at the nation of judah two things we see in today's world and we
see even in america with a large percentage of americans
still go to church today don't they a large people a group of people in
america consider themselves christian they consider themselves
people who are trying to worship god that show up at a building that are
there to worship the lord in theory but the problem is they're going to
listen to someone that's going to lie to them
and notice what it says in verse four trust ye not
people are trusting in lies people are believing and putting confidence in
false doctrines and false teachings they're trusting
liars now what is the lie that they're specifically believing in verse four
the temple of the lord the temple of the lord the temple lord are these
i believe the attitude that he's trying to describe here
is they believe since they have the temple of god
they believe since they're the people of god they have the temple of god
nothing bad can happen to them that they're basically immune
from enemies from attacks from god punishing them
because they have the temple of the lord and it's
similar i think how some people today they think because they go to church
or because they are of a particular denomination or something
that somehow they're just right with god automatically
or that god's not mad at them or that god could never
want to punish them but you know we can't just trust in the fact that we
just showed up at church or just trust the fact that because we
have a church or have a building god would never be
mad at us or something and i mean when we look at the temple
of the lord people often like to brag in how many people they have come into
their church or how nice their church is nothing can compare to the temple of the
lord the temple of the lord is a magnificent structure
and it's drawing people from the entire world to come and worship god at the
specific temple but even if you have the greatest
church building with the largest congregation
god could still be mad at you if you're not following his commandments
if you're listening to false preaching or you have false prophets or false
teachers just lying and telling things to people that are not true
they have to abide by the word of god verse five
for if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings if you thoroughly
execute judgment between a man and his neighbor
so number one they trust that because they have the temple of the lord they
can't be touched but secondly god is mad at them for not
doing something what is god mad at them for not doing
and what does it say in verse five that they're not executing judgment between a
man and his neighbor meaning what that they're not actually
considering who's right and wrong in situations
and they're not actually judging people and consistent theme throughout the
bible if you actually read it is you realize god loves judgment
wicked people do not love judgment righteous people like righteous judgment
and ungodly wicked people they don't want to consider the cause of
the poor they don't want to know why someone's
wicked they don't want to hold people accountable for what they've said and
done and they themselves are giant hypocrites
about it and they only apply judgment to people they don't like
and they don't apply it to themselves and so
one of the big problems that you have with church people
is them not executing good judgment them being
hypocrites and really you can preach a whole sermon on this
being holier than thou's where they typically are judging everybody
else as harshly as they can but they're not judging themselves and
they don't apply standards to everyone they only apply
standards to the people that they like that and against the people that they
don't like where they essentially are not executing
righteous judgment they are constantly condemning the
righteous and exonerating the wicked and you know as god's people we need to
make sure that we're executing righteous judgment
you know they don't care about facts they care about feelings judgment
doesn't care about feelings it cares about facts
and we live in a society where it's become more about feelings than it has
become facts anymore ideas like believe all women or
something and and it's just like why why can't you know why do we just
believe fifty percent of the world just automatically and we
can't believe the other fifty percent are men just objectively worse than
women or something like that you know and there's just this attitude
there's this idea out there that essentially anybody that is a friend
of mine because we both hate the same person i believe everything they say
where essentially just if this person is saying something negative about somebody
i don't like it must be true you know why because of their feelings
their feelings are i want this to be true or i don't like this
person or something and then they just believe it i mean look at the trump
derangement syndrome that we have in our country today
where people just believe any narrative against trump
and it's like it's not like there isn't plenty of things to criticize trump over
but at the same time our country and our nation often is believing things that
aren't even true about people and it's not even just about him even
democrats people believe weird things about democrats
people believe weird things about republicans people believe weird things
about everyone and it's like it's like we live in this
culture where everybody wants to make like an
exposed video or something where everybody just wants to go and just say
like everything they can think negative about somebody
and everybody just believes all of it it's just a tabloid magazine
society it's a weekly worldly news society
and people aren't executing judgment anymore they're not actually looking at
facts anymore they just look at feelings
and this could extend to every everybody i mean what you just talk about
professional sports if you like a team and you don't like
another team you'll believe every negative thing you can about the other
team just because people care more about
their feelings than they do about facts today and you know what that is an
ungodly attitude god is mad at them god is upset with them
for not executing judgment between people
we need to figure out who's really right who's really wrong
what are the facts and it doesn't matter what my feelings are
whoever is right that's the person that we need to exonerate
and it's frustrating when people won't execute judgment either
just avoid it just like well everybody's wrong everybody's a liar everything
and and they won't actually deal with situations
we live in a society now where essentially law enforcement or
legal cases or everything there it just seems like there's
no judgment or it's just so delayed i mean if you want to actually have
judgment in a case it's going to be years and years and
cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions of dollars to
get judgment and how is that fair how is that fair
considering the fact that the majority of us
don't have seven years to wait and don't have millions of dollars to spend on a
lawyer to defend ourselves and essentially at
this point there's just no judgment judgment should be free you should be
able to go and allow the judges of the land to rule
in situations and to exonerate the righteous and
condemn the wicked and it not cost you trillions of dollars
and take years and years and years i mean that is a bad system and god gets
mad at this because what often happens is when
there's no accountability bad people act badly and they just keep
getting away with things and keep doing bad things
you know one some industries are just really notorious for this
you know when you think about like used car salesmen you think about the
construction industry there are some people who just have bad
businesses on purpose and they rip people off and as soon as
they get caught they just bankrupt their company and start a new one
and they're just like no accountability no
buddy holding their feet to the fire no real judgment
and we just live in a society where there's no judgment but think about this
we're not even all of what i just said doesn't matter because the context of
this is about church and even in churches
even amongst god's people people get to a point where they're just not
executing judgment anymore and we live in a culture where if you
exercise church discipline if you hold people accountable for their
actions then they act like you're a cult or
something and it's like wait a minute you don't hold people in church
accountable for what they say and do you're not executing judgment you mean
you let people in your church just gossip and rail and lie about other
people in the church and you don't do anything about it
you let people in the church rip other people off and do all kinds of crazy
things you allow people to go out and preach
weird things at the soul-winning door and no one holds them accountable you
allow people to believe literally any doctrine
and pull people aside and teach them this other doctrine and you don't hold
them accountable you allow people to just be disgruntled
against the pastor and the leadership and just to attack
them and try to draw people out of church
and you don't say anything about it and you don't do anything about it
look you're the one that's wrong by not executing judgment
the people executing judgment are not the ones that are wrong you're wrong
for not allowing church to be a place of judgment
church should be a place where we actually feel accountable and this is
what i always hear and it's funny to me people say like oh i don't like that
church because people feel a little bit nervous
or they're a little bit fearful it's like you should be fearful in the house
of god you know you shouldn't think like i can
show up in my pajamas and say anything i want
and act however i want and there's no accountability
that's not church that's walmart okay but you know what or that's uh what is
it planet fitness the judgment-free zone but
you know what that's not the house of god
this is not a judgment-free zone and they say like oh you guys are so
judgmental well as long as it's righteous judgment then i like that
notice god is not saying you guys are too judgy
i'm really mad at you guys because when i when y'all are going to the house of
god y'all are trying to make people follow
the commandments too much you guys care what i say a little bit
too hard no no he's like you guys don't care
you're not executing judgment you're not thinking about things that are right
you guys are wicked and of course why why would you want to go to church i
mean think about how many non-enominational churches you drive by
and this is what they say on the sign come as you are what are they saying
they're saying like planet fitness judgment-free zone
they're saying you will not you will not show up here
and anybody say hey you're dressed like a whore
you won't show up there and they say hey why do you have the message in your hand
you won't show up there and they'll confront you on your false doctrine and
your false teaching and all the weird stuff you got going in
in your life they won't confront the trannies
at the door they won't confront heretics they won't throw anybody out
in fact there's no there's nothing to be thrown out because i'm gonna have
membership that is not the house of god that is
what this is being described as and he's like this
is not right look at verse six if you oppress not the stranger the
fatherless and the widow and shed not innocent blood in this place
neither walk after other gods to your hurt then will i cause you to dwell in
this place in the land that i gave your fathers
forever and ever now he's bringing up some severe sins
what i think is interesting and you have to think about kind of this context
god is not saying you guys have to be perfect to stay in this land
he's like hey if you just kind of like high level
aren't doing these things then you could live here forever
because god does not expect perfection for them to be here
but he does expect some level of standard there is at least some standard
there is some objective that if they cross this threshold or
this line he's not going to pardon him now
oppressing stranger fatherless and widow taking
advantage of people that are dependent on society and again
stranger here is being foreigners specifically fatherless and widows and
you know these three groups of people are in the
situation they are to no fault of their own they
didn't choose where they're going to be born
they didn't choose for their father to abandon them or to die
and they didn't choose for their husband to die you have to think about all
three of these people are a victim of circumstance not a
victim of being a bad person okay so we should
not take advantage of people that are a victim of circumstance
and we live in a society and in a culture where a lot of people are being
taken advantage of by circumstance you know especially in america we
really have imported a slave class through hispanic people coming through
america through mexico and it's not fair i believe that our
country is greatly oppressing them because we allow them to come in
illegally but then we don't either ship them back
or give them citizenship and we put them in this weird awkward
situation where they it's like wink wink nod nod you can be here
but we're not going to actually give you rights and give you a good wage
we're going to give you a crappy wage we're going to give you a lower wage
and allow you to just be a slave class imported into our country
that's wrong god doesn't like that you know
either a we should not let them come or b
allow them to come and be a citizen and have equal rights but you shouldn't
allow them to come and then have this like subclass status
where they're an illegal and you could deport them and they
live under a threat of being deported or or not having rights and then on top of
that they don't get the same kind of wages
and it's just all this awkward stuff now again i'm not saying
if you are nice to an illegal or if you pay them to do stuff you're doing
anything wrong but obviously if you are paying them
slave wages if you're taking advantage of them
because they're an illegal well then you're oppressing them to some degree
if you know the widow or the fatherless they
don't have a dad or a husband to defend them or protect them and you're a car
salesman and you're like oh i can jack up the
price because they don't know what they're doing
they don't have someone to defend them well now you're oppressing them
and the same could even happen amongst god's people you know as god's people
we should not be their oppressors we should not partake
participate in what the world's doing to these people we should be kind
fair and treat them the same as everybody else and i'm not just saying
only hispanic people because there's foreigners from all over the world that
are in our country and we should treat them the same not
any way different and you know our church praise god
actually has a lot of diversity i mean i feel like our church demographic is
almost like the demographic of dfw whatever you looked at percentages it's
probably pretty similar to just the dfw area which to me seems
like we're the least racist church you could possibly be
if you match the demographic percentages of your area
you're going to be the least racist if you're really skewed
as far as what the like if let's just say you live in dfw and i don't know the
numbers look them up yourself whatever i say is wrong but
let's just say it's like 40 white 25 Hispanic
probably like 15 black and then like another 10
other that's probably not even 100 so you know fill it in with something else
then there's like this mix or something right but i'm just saying like then your
church if it wasn't very racist it would be
like that exact same number right 40 50 white 20 25 Hispanic you know whatever
but if you go into a church and it's 100 white
it's 100 Hispanic it's 100 black well that's actually more racist than a
church that's actually filled with a pretty much
close percentage demographic of what your city is like
and then it's funny because then they'll act like you're racist
even though they're the ones that have a crazy
you know deviation from the standard mean
and that's a statistical thing but at the end of the day
you know when we come to church it should be a church for all nations
a house of prayer for all nations and we don't want to be discriminatory
against any group of people we love all people red yellow black and
white they're all precious in his sight and we don't want to be guilty of
oppressing certain people or discriminating against certain people
or not allowing people to participate in the things of god
the same way and i think our church does a pretty good job in that area
but there are going to be places where they are taking advantage of these
individuals one thing i've i've seen and especially
in bigger churches is they have these financial gurus coming through
and they're always trying to sell them mutual funds
and they prey on widows they prey on the ignorant i also know that they'll
come through and they'll do reverse mortgages
and other kinds of financial scams that take advantage of
the elderly and an impoverished people and you know what the house of god
should be a place where we're taking care of our parents we honor our father
and mother and we take care of them do not let your parents be taken
advantage of by some reverse mortgage scam artist
by some mutual fund scam artist or something like that
you help them you take care of them you find out the information
do not let them be ripped off by these scam artists that
cycle through churches here's another thing that he's saying in this
particular passage is shedding innocent blood
and walking after other gods now hopefully our church is not doing this
but i think that some churches you know if you look at abortion correctly
it is shedding innocent blood and here's another thing though
how many churches just have an unconditional support
of a nation called israel and israel is just
endlessly bombing gaza and all kinds of different areas and just shedding
innocent blood for no reason and these churches are literally funding
all kinds of events and things going on in the middle east
wanting to put these type of people in positions of power and authority in our
country and think about it if christianity in
america if evangelicalism in america actually
believed replacement theology and actually
believed this what the bible really says about
zionism would we really have the presidential
cabinet that we have would we really have the supreme court
that we actually have and is it is it interesting that we have
all these people going to a church going to the house of the
lord to worship god and they're trusting and lying words
about four nations and all kinds of things and then our nation is just
filled with people that are just supporting
the destruction of innocent blood all over this nation
and of course these same people are responsible for bringing in feminism
bringing in abortion bringing in all kinds of these other ungodly things
whereas if christians were actually christian in america
it would look completely different and people get mad at our church but let me
tell you something i'm not going to be a willing participant in all the innocent
blood that's being shed in this world and oh you're anti-semitic well if
not wanting babies to be killed is anti-semitic then please
i want to be anti-semitic right i mean like
do you even listen to what you just said
it's weird how our country and our nation is just trusting and lying words
and you know what god gets mad god gets really feared
you kind of wonder like why would god destroy end times babylon
well the end times babylon country is really wicked and it's it's guilty of
the destruction of tons and tons of people
and just because you don't realize it doesn't mean you didn't participate
just because you're david you're hiding in your little castle while yariah is
being destroyed by the enemy on the front lines
doesn't mean you aren't guilty for his bloodshed and so just because americans
are sitting in their houses and their their temple their huge
temple them giving money to these wicked organizations and voting for these type
of people and supporting all these kind of people
you know what it's the same thing from god's perspective
we should not be participating in those events
walking after other gods to your own hurt
you know one application and there's so many applications but one application i
think this whole chapter that you have to really think about
because because i always think about this i'm like we're not like worshiping
other gods we don't have idols we're not doing this
and then i'm always like oh yeah what about the catholic church
the catholic church literally has idols it's literally worshiping graven images
and statues of things that are not god let me explain
something that crucifix is not jesus christ
and if you look at any picture of jesus as a catholic
he has long hair jesus didn't have long hair buddy
there jesus is not the jesus of the bible all of their paintings
their little picture of the lord's supper
or essentially all the disciples gathered around a table
let me tell you something that was drawn by a faggot
right and that is not what the disciples look like
they're worshiping the little mary statue that is not even mary
and the mary that they worship is like the mother of god
in a completely different sense than what the bible teaches
they teach that she's somehow divine they teach that she ascended to heaven
they teach that she's never sinned well the only person that's never sinned is
god so if you're going to teach that mary
didn't sin now you're basically teaching that she's somehow god in a sense
which is extremely wicked evil satanic and they're worshiping false gods under
the guise of christianity under the guise look when america was
formed and they were setting up colonies
certain colonies like georgia explicitly banned
catholics from even practicing their religion in the state
they said everybody has religious freedom except for papists
let's let me explain that catholics i mean they said
anybody you can practice any religion except for being a catholic
i think that people forget like what our nation was even built on
our nation was not built on catholicism yeah there was mary land
i wonder what that was about but we as a whole we're protestant
christianity evangelical christianity it's pretty much
a lot of baptist heritage and that's what built this great nation
that's why god blessed it so much and now we've just allowed them to take over
we look at our supreme court we look at our government it's filled with
catholics and jews this is not christianity anymore it's a
different kind of christianity and why would god be mad at america well
we're allowing people to take over and we're trusting in lying
words we're letting all kinds of abominations happen
and if we didn't do it look at verse seven then will i cause you to dwell in
this place in the land that i gave your fathers forever and ever
if we didn't do this stuff we could live here forever
america would just live on forever and ever if we weren't allowing people to
just worship false gods and shedding shedding innocent blood and constantly
listening to lies and we actually executed some judgment
and actually said hey you know what the catholics not saved
sorry how many christians they think catholics are saved
but you're trusting in lying words because they're not saved they don't
believe the gospel verse 8 behold you trust in lying words
that cannot profit i mean how many times do you need to say
like you just believe stupid things you believe lies
verse 9 will you steal murder and commit adultery and swear falsely and burn
incense unto bail and walk after other gods whom you know
not and come and stand before me in this house which is called by my name and say
we are delivered to do all these abominations
they think that they can do this stuff and that there's no consequence
you know what a what an example of the indulgences that the catholic church
literally sold where you could go and commit one of
these sins listed and just pay money to the church and
somehow you're absolved of that sin let me explain something to you
that is not christianity christianity does not teach
that you can shed innocent blood and then pay
money to have that absolved that is not christianity that is paganism
that is catholic indulgences if anybody's preaching that they're
preaching satanic lies if they think you can pay money to
absolve the sin of murder or any sin there is no sin where god is
like all right 50 bucks 100 bucks
a thousand bucks that's the bribery system in american justice
where you pay the judge off or you pay money and
these type of rituals but you know what that is not christianity whatsoever
god does not accept ransoms like that god does not accept bribes and payments
like that people that are teaching this are under
satanic influence it is not christianity and they think that they're somehow
delivered people think oh i can commit abortion
and whatever and god doesn't care i can murder i can take things steal rip
people off take advantage of the the poor the needy
i can swear false i can just lie as much as i want
and again burn incense to bail i mean how many catholics are just
have a literal shrine to marry i can go to i can take you to neighborhoods
we're in the front yard in the front yard they just have this giant
orifice of just like mary and all these candles and their lighting stuff
and then now we're trying to import hinduism into our country
and all kinds of other weird religions and you know this is what's crazy you
think like well that's not christianity but i've been around people who are
hindu and they'll go to the non-the-non church
with you and they just think they they're like oh
i like jesus because he's just one of the other 50
trillion gods that they worship in their mind they worship every god they
worship everything so they are going to come and worship
god with you why would i want to go to church
where i'm sitting next to a hindu that worships literal
rocks and statutes as god that pours milk on their head
and gods them out pleased with that but let me tell you you go
you go with me to gateway you go with me to kenneth copeland you go with me to
one of these big non-nama churches there will be a hindu in that church
service there will be catholics in that church service
there will be atheists there'll be everything you could think of and you're
going to all worship god together in truth and spirit and truth it's a joke
it's a lie god is not pleased with that god wants
you to come out from among them and be separate sayeth the lord that sounds
like a count well it sounds like we actually care
what the bible says that's what it sounds like
yeah i'm not interested in joining hands with the world
and singing kumbaya and singing oh god is an awesome god he reigns with no
real doctrine what religion can't sing that song
jews could sing that song the ant the jews that crucified jesus on
the cross could sing that song while they're crucifying him
oh it's such a great song it might sound good
but you know what i don't want to just go and sing just generic
random songs to a random god while we have all these random people
with random beliefs and random bibles and random
sins and we have no idea what's going on we don't even know what the gender of
the guy is sitting next to us
and he's the one that wrote the song that we're singing too
because if you've ever gone to one of these churches you look at the
musicians and the people that are writing the music and none of them seem
straight
look can we can we make music ministers manly again
can we make people that play like the guitar and drums and stuff like normal
why do they always have to look like a grungy weird effeminate faggot
and i mean even the old ifb struggles with this problem
i'm sorry but you go to a lot of old ifb churches and
the music minister seems a little sweet he seems a little light in the loafers
he's got that sweet spirit you've been looking for
and it's like why can't we have manly guys leading the music
i'm sure the men of god in the bible he-man the singers you know these guys
these guys know how to play asaf i'm sure they're pretty good
they're not like these weak puny guys we need to
you know make christianity separate again
it needs to be different god gets mad oh well we have the temple of the lord
who cares are you doing all this stuff
hey we're delivered to all these abominations god's not mad at you that's
what i think of joyce myer god's not mad at you no god is
mad at you for committing abortion god is mad at you for worshiping false
gods god is mad at you for having the message
in your hand god does not is not pleased with those
things says in verse 11 in is this house which
is called by my name become a den of robbers in your eyes
behold even i have seen it say the lord but go ye now into my place which was in
shiloh where i set my name at the first and see
what i did to it for the wickedness of my people israel
he's saying oh you guys think you you're good how about shiloh
what's happened it now gone destroyed become just a nothing god will destroy
places even that are great even built into his name
when they are not going to follow his commandments
verse 13 and now because you have done all these works say the lord
and i spake unto you rising up early and speaking but you heard not and i called
you but you answered not therefore will i do
unto this house which is called by my name
wherein you trust and under the place which i gave you and your fathers
as i have done to shiloh saying hey even though this is my house with my name
and you're my people i will destroy you like i destroyed shiloh
i mean think about this we live in america
we don't live in israel we have a church we don't have the temple of the lord if
god destroyed israel and the temple of the lord how much
more a nation in america a church in america
we ought not think that we are exempt from god's judgment
or god's wrath when he literally did it to his own house
did it to his own land verse 15 and i will cause you i will cast you out of my
sight as i have cast out all your brethren even
the whole seed of ephraim therefore pray not thou for this people
neither lift up cry nor prayer for them neither make intercession to me for i
will not hear thee that's crazy think like it's not good
when god is saying don't pray for these people
god is saying i mean think about this people say like god just loves the jews
no matter what and just loves israel no matter what and
then you read the bible and god's saying don't pray for them at
all and it you know there's this argument of
like who's really the nation of israel who's really the
children of abraham and all this kind of stuff nowadays
but back then there's not a question mark here this is just absolute
certainty god is saying the literal seed of
abraham the literal nation of israel don't pray for them i will not hear you
why because god's not a racist god is not a respecter of persons
it's not about genetics it's not about your heritage
god wants you to serve god out of your own heart let me tell you something
children your parents being a baptist does not
exempt you and automatically give you favor with god
you have to choose to be a baptist yourself
be baptist born baptist bred and baptist dead
now you didn't choose the baptist born and bred but you get to choose if you'll
be bad this dead and every child needs to decide for
themselves to serve god to have their own walk with god
to actually read the bible you being drug to church against your will
does not make you right with god you should actually desire to come to
church yourself you should have your own walk with god
you should read the bible yourself
he says in verse number 17 see is thou not what they do in the cities of juda
and the streets of jerusalem children gather wood and the fathers
kindle the fire and the women need their dough to make cakes to the queen of
heaven and to pour out drink offerings unto
other gods that they may provoke me to anger
so these people are claiming that they're worshiping god but then they're
literally performing all these rituals for the
queen of heaven how is this not catholicism where they
go to church they're supposed to worship jesus
they're supposed to worshiping the god of the bible but then how much time and
effort are they spending on that versus how much their time they're
spending on mary specifically and idols of mary and food for mary and
events for mary and you know all these hail mary's
it's gross he says verse 19 do they provoke me to anger
say it the lord do they not provoke themselves to confusion of their own
faces saying like they're just they just look like idiots verse 20
therefore thus say the lord god behold mine anger my fury shall be poured out
upon this place upon man and upon beast and upon the trees of the field and upon
the fruit of their ground and it shall burn and shall not be
quenched thus say the lord of hosts the god of israel put your burnt offerings
under your sacrifices and eat flesh for i spake not unto your fathers nor
commanded them in the day that i brought them out of the land of egypt concerning
burnt offerings or sacrifices but this thing commanded by them saying
obey my voice and i will be your god and he shall be my people and walk ye in
all the ways that i have commanded you and that it may be well unto you so
i'm making this application of catholic of catholics but
there's so many other applications but if we stick with that theme for a second
notice he's saying if you just did what's right if you just did what i said
then i would be your god and this is what's frustrating i love catholic
people god loves catholic people and if they
would just repent from dead works and trust in the living god if they
actually would put their faith in the gospel that they know so well
god would be their god but because they're worshiping the queen of heaven
in their mind because they're thinking they're delivered
to do all these abominations because they think they can just go
confess their sins to the priests and be absolved of all their sins because
they're not actually worshiping the god of the bible and truth
you know what god is mad at them and god is going to pour his fury out on them
and we as god's people need to execute judgment between our neighbor
and tell the catholic you're wrong tell the catholic you need to get become a
baptist nothing makes me more upset when i go
soul wedding and someone knocks on the door
and they say i go to saint john's or whatever and their soul when he says we
want to take you from a good church just like why did you say that what do
you mean yes i do want to take you from that
church yes i know i don't want you to ever go
back ever again stay away from the pagan idolatry stay
away from the satanic witchcraft stay away from those evil people and
look not all catholics are evil but look
their doctrine and their priests and their teachers are evil and satanic
and some of their adherents are too but many of those people are sucked into
this they're trusting in lying words they're being destroyed and you know it
extends beyond catholicism it goes to the non-thon churches and all
the catholic light churches of the presbyterians
and many of god's people today they're going to church
and they're just trusting and lying words
and what is the consequence verse 24 but they harken not nor incline their
ear but walked in the councils and the imaginations of their evil heart
and went backward and not forward god looks at them and says man you guys
aren't going forward you're going backward
if you look at america as a nation if you look at as a whole
from a religious perspective we have not been going forward
we've been going backward we are trying to get rid of catholicism
now we're bringing more catholicism we're trying to get rid of other
religions now we're bringing in more religions
we're trying to get rid of all the heresies and the false prophet
now we're bringing even more heretics there's more bad churches than ever
before in our nation more division we're not
going forward on the bible issue we're going backwards and
instead of taking the texas receptors and making even more foreign
translations out of it we made 50 bad english versions
we didn't go forward on the bible issue and getting the bible into people's
hands we went backwards as a nation as a whole
when it comes to doctrine the doctrine of baptist
as a whole has not been going forward it's going backwards
so many baptists are taking baptists off of the sign
if you go back 50-70 years to a baptist church
it was just they all use the king james bible
everybody's king james you go back that far
in fact and i'm not saying this is all right but if you actually went to a
baptist church no dancing no drinking you know they
look down on even smoking they look down on living a worldly
sinful life they were conservative they dressed
nice they went soul winning i mean they were a lot more conservative as a whole
we as a society have not been going forward we've been going backwards
you look at how people dressed they showed up at the baseball game in a suit
and tie
you show me the how people dressed in the 1950s you know we always like to
think that we're always moving forward or we're like getting better as a
society every time i look at a picture in the past
everyone's dressed nicer than society today
everyone you know this is this just makes me mad this is a whole sermon in
itself i'll maybe preach it at some point but
you know i watch these christmas plays and it's like everybody in the christmas
place is wearing like a glorified garbage sack
you know what i'm talking about it's like they took this brown trash bag
cut a hole in it and just put it on someone's head and everybody's just
walking around in this weird garbage bag and i'm thinking like
why why do you think that if you actually study the bible
people had better fashion than we do and if you look at any picture look at
the 1950s everybody's walking around in suit and tie
how let's go back to the 16 1700s they're dressing
really fancy they're now of course there's always been peasants there's
always been slave class there's always been people that are impoverished in
general and and i'm not trying to necessarily
say that everybody's dressed super nice but generally speaking fashion has been
on a decline everybody's just wearing sweatpants and
like a t-shirt or or all kinds of just weird garb weird
outfits they don't actually respect themselves
as a society we have not been going forward backwards
they're in the 60s or 70s they're singing songs
about the itty bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini
you know why because it used to be inappropriate
inappropriate for a woman to wear a bikini out in public
now you go in public that's what people are wearing
in the mall that's what people are wearing just up and down the streets
you would get arrested you would get arrested if you were wearing that
you would be fined if you were a woman wearing pants
in the 60s in houston you would be fined or arrested
ah i just yeah i don't like what you're saying yeah because you're trusting in
lying words right because you want to go to a church
where it's like come as you are and act how as you are
but you know as a society as a country as a whole we've been going backwards
and not forwards
and we need to do some judgment in the house of god and you need to ask
yourself what direction have you been going
it's the end of the year why don't you ask yourself this question
what was i like at the beginning of this year
now go to act chapter seven go to act chapter seven
what were you like five years ago
were you doing more soul winning less soul winning
were you going to church more were you going to church less
were you reading your bible more were you reading your bible less
how about doctrine did you know more or less a year ago and you you would think
like no one would say less but it happens for sure i mean
there's been times where i've had 20 30 chapters of the bible memorized
i could quote for you right now and then i lose it because you know if you don't
exercise it if you don't use it you kind of lose it in a sense
you can go backwards and all you can forget things
you can lose the information and the knowledge that you have
you could have been sharper on certain things you could have been sharper on
soul winning because you were doing it actively
you could have been so winning in a foreign language and now you're not
doing it and you're losing it you could have been really good at an
instrument and now you're not playing it and you've
gone backwards you could have been really athletic and
in really good shape and able to run and lift and do push and now you're
going backwards you could have been in shape now you're
going backwards there's a lot of ways that we can go
where were you a year ago and look don't think about anybody else
don't be thinking about your spouse or your children or me
think about you where were you are you going in the right direction
and in every area of your life what were the children of israel like in the
wilderness look at acts chapter 7 verse 39
says to whom our fathers would not obey talking about the children of israel in
the wilderness but thrust him from them talking about god
and in their hearts turned back again in egypt
there's this consistent theme of the bible where people are going back
it's called backsliding backsliding turning back in their hearts constantly
wanting to go back to egypt the bible warns about people like this
dimas hath forsaken me having loved this present world
he loved it i bet you if we asked dimas he said oh my life's so much better
since i left new ivb
because he loved it but what if we what if we took dimas and we said
okay but let's put you on the scale did you go forward dimas
or did you go backwards you came out of egypt
but then did you keep going towards the promise or did you turn back in your
heart towards egypt were you like the children of israel
where hey we're trying to worship god but they actually didn't go forward in
the worship of god they went backward in the worship of
god and where are you at where are we at you know we want to make sure
that we're headed in the right direction and you know i have more in fellowship
with someone that's walking in the same direction with me
that may not be as close to me there could be someone that's standing i'm
standing here and i'm trying to walk this way
and someone's standing right next to me but they're going to go this way and
then there's someone else back here but they're walking this way you know
you know what i have more in relation i'm more interested in that guy walking
with me this direction than the guy that's really close to me
but walking this way and we need to be careful which direction
you're headed just because someone's in this room
doesn't make them necessarily someone that you should be hanging out with
and being rubbing shoulders with because you have to ask them this question
which direction are you going because you know when i'm walking in this
direction the guy behind me is not going to do anything to me
but the guy going this way what if we're kind of yoked together he's trying to go
this way and i'm trying to go this way well
someone's going to win whoever's stronger or it's just going to
break and then we're just you know that
relationship's going to break but if i'm weaker he could he could kind of take me
back with him a little bit couldn't he or he could just keep me locked in i
can't go forward because i'm locked in with this guy and
he's trying to go backwards and i'm trying to go forward
and we're just kind of locked
what direction are you headed in are you going back to egypt and your
hearts verse 40 this is what they did saying
unto erin make us gods to go before us for as for this moses which brought us
out of the land of egypt we will not what has become of him this
is what's funny in jeremiah chapter 7 what we're reading
go back just go back because i wanted you to look at this verse
with me again because this is important this is the attitude of everybody that's
going backwards and this is it it always surprises me
but it shouldn't surprise me okay look what it says
in verse number 24 but they harken not nor inclined
their ear but walked in the councils and in the imagination of their evil heart
now you'll read the story about the children of israel and the wilderness
they're always making these crazy things up
they're like god brought us out in the wilderness to kill us
were there not graves in egypt that's insane
god did not drag the children of israel in the wilderness to kill them
and die without a grave where did that come from the imagination
of their evil heart them just dreaming things up and making
up weird accusations that are not in reality at all
and you'll notice people that are walking with us to serve god
all of a sudden they'll turn back and then they'll say these
wild crazy things like oh we're just out here we're in the wilderness just
to be killed it's a cult oh you know
everybody's carnal everybody's prideful just just all kinds just dreaming stuff
up that has no basis in reality that's not
true and you're just thinking like where did
that come from it came from their backslidden heart
came from their evil heart it came from them getting hardened through the
deceitfulness of sin and they allowed their hearts to be
hardened the day of provocation and they turned back towards egypt and
they're going to go backwards and no one likes to walk back by
themselves so what they're going to do is they're
going as they walk by they're going to be like hey you want to come with me
hey you want to come with me and they're just going to try and get everybody to
come with them and then they're going to really spend
as much time on that the few people are in the back of the crowd
because they already know the guy's ahead of them they can't catch up
so they're just they're just waiting and then they get there and they're like
there's no one else left so i better just hang on to some of these people in
the back of the crowd the people that are young inexperienced
immature already kind of struggling to keep up
and they're going to try and latch onto those people and drag them down with
them but you know what don't go backwards go
forwards this year look at where you're at don't think
like oh he only gives us this manna what
happened to moses everybody's always mad at moses you
notice that have you ever noticed all the people the
children of israel that were bad they never like moses they're never like
you know moses is a pretty good guy i like moses but i just want to go back
to egypt they don't say that they're like what
happened to moses moses abandoned us moses lifts himself
up above the congregation they're just always attacking moses no
one that's backslidden likes moses
so you should expect someone that's backslidden will not like the pastor
will not like the evangelist will not like the soul winning captains
will not like the zealous christians in the church they'll attack them
and they'll say that they're prideful and they'll get mad at them
because they want to drag everyone else down with them
they're over here looking at the guy up in front and saying like
hey don't be don't keep following that guy come back with me
but you know what we need to constantly go forward
follow paul as he follows christ follow the men of god as they follow the lord
jesus christ and this is what i think is really
interesting think about church history for a second
and none of us are experts but let's just think about it from like a big
picture jesus christ ascends into heaven his
apostles go out and start a whole bunch of
churches if we think about what happened here we have the passover
we have the going through the the the red sea and then they're in the
wilderness now what do the children of israel do
as soon as moses is gone as soon as moses goes up in the temple
then they fashion a golden cap and they start worshiping idols
and is it any coincidence that it's like as soon as jesus goes back up in heaven
and the apostles are gone that then you have spring out of nowhere
the catholic church with all of their idolatry
and it's just like this big repeat of it's like as soon as moses is gone
as soon as the leadership's gone it's just like they immediately go into
worshiping false gods and idolatry and then it's like as soon as jesus goes
up into heaven and the apostles are gone then we just
have the catholic church spring out of nowhere
with just all their pagan idolatry and all of their wicked practices
just like the children of israel did okay it's crazy
these molten images and they went backwards not forward
people often think like you know church always gets better
but that's not true church can go in any direction
church shouldn't get better church can get worse
christians can get better christians can get worse movements can get better
movements can get worse i mean it's all up to us and what we're
going to do and we as a congregation have to decide
we want to move forward we don't want to move backwards
you know no one's perfect i mean when we read that
this chapter in chapter seven he's not asking for like extreme perfection here
is he he's not saying like make sure
everything's always right you never sin he didn't
even bring up fornication
i mean that's a big sin in the bible i'm not even trying to downplay it i'm
just saying he didn't say y'all have to never commit
fornication to stay in the land he's like saying these big things like
don't trust all the liars don't kill people don't worship false
gods and i'm like you know as a church and
as a movement and as a society we don't have to
necessarily be perfect but we need to make sure that we're going in the right
direction and that we're getting better over time
and then we're working on our sanctification
you know where are you at here's a question you should ask yourself
have you gone back to some of your old sins and bad habits
or have you have you been doing better than at the beginning of the year and
how about bad relationships are you are you hanging out with people
that you used to not you kind of like realize as a toxic
person you stayed away and now you're going to go back to that
toxic relationship that toxic person
how are you doing what direction are you headed and look
a companion of fools shall be destroyed is what the bible says
we need to evaluate and here's another thing you should realize
if you think to yourself you say you know what five years ago i wasn't really
in church i wasn't really serving god i didn't know much doctrine i was getting
nobody saved and since then now i'm going to church
regularly i'm having kids i'm loving my wife i'm
getting people saved i'm reading my bible more why in the
world would you leave that like if you've noticed like i've had
serious growth in the last five six years the last two
years the last six months why in the world
would you go backwards and there's so many people that are
going to go backwards so many people are not going to walk and
you know it's so funny they're always like there's all these other great
churches that they're going to go to and i'm
always thinking like look i've always said this and i'll always say this go to
the best church in the area why because you personally need to
constantly be walking forward but then these people will leave and
they'll admit that they're going to a church that's inferior or not good
and they're going to church less they're not going soul winning
they're not getting the sins out of life now they're just bitter now they're
just full of railing and they're just like their little
leader that they've been listening to online
because there's leaders out there that'll try to get you out of a good
church they'll try to get you to stop going
soul winning as much and just be bitter angry and just
constantly attacking things and just be a railer like them don't go
backward with that person go forward do more bible reading next
year there's the new testament challenge get
it done sooner than you've ever done it before
go soul winning more get go to church more in 2025 than you did in 2024
go to more events you've never been on a missions trip try to figure out a way to
go to mischief even if it's not next year just plan maybe it can be in 2026
maybe it can be in 2027 just go on i mean some of them
some of the soul winning events that we're going to have are 20 minutes from
the church there was we had all the regional guys
raise your hand there's probably a region in your area
you could go soul winning in and preaching the gospel and you know we
can't take a lot of things with us in fact pretty much nothing but we can
take the souls with us when we go to heaven
i could work on so many things my car could be taken from me my house my job
my family my wife uh this church my brain my health
my everything could be taken from me but you know what can't be taken from me
is the people i got saved
and sometimes you just have to ask yourself this question what direction
have i been walking in if i've been walking backward
or i've been walking forward and if you're walking forward
please continue walking forward if you feel like you've gone a little backwards
turn around with me and let's start walking forwards
2025 there are so many opportunities there's so many victories we can have
but we need to be walking forwards together and if someone in here is
trying to walk backwards let them walk alone tell them to come
walk with you but at the end of the day don't let people
drag you down with them don't turn in your heart back to egypt
either you stay serving god and let us not
become like the children of israel where god looks down and says they are
worse than their fathers
let us let him find us pleasing in his sight and saying even if we're not
close to where we need to be we're at least just walking in the right
direction let's close in prayer thank you heavenly
father so much for your instruction your guidance thanks so
much for the word of god so that we can know which direction to head
i pray that we would all evaluate ourselves that we'd all examine
ourselves that we would think about where we're at where we've been what
direction have we been heading i pray that you would give us zeal in
our hearts and our minds to start walking in the right direction
that you'd help us to to work on the sins that we struggle with
that you'd help us to avoid the toxic and the bad relationships that exist
i pray that you would help us to desire going soul winning more
i pray that you'd help us to have a zeal for going to church and ministering to
the saints i pray that you would bless all of our
soul-winning endeavors next year that you'd bless our missions trips
that you would allow us to just uh get so many people saved and baptized
and give them a zeal to also preach the gospel and a zeal to read the bible and
a zeal for church and i pray that you would just help us
all to stay away from the people that want to drag us down
from the people that want to walk backwards and i pray if there's anybody
that's walking backwards that you could just
touch their heart convict them and and cause them to turn back
and start walking towards you that you would just give them that desire
just thank you for all you give us and i pray that we give all the honor and
glory to your son in jesus name we pray amen
all right in closing let's go to song number 370
song number 370
song number 370 throw out the lifeline
across the dark way there is a brother whom someone should
save somebody's brother oh who then will dare
to throw out the life that we've been through
and say somebody's brother oh who then will dare
to throw out the lifeline his barrel to share
throw out the lifeline throw out the lifeline someone
is drifting away
throw out the lifeline throw out the lifeline someone is
sinking today throw out the lifeline with head
quick and strong why do you tarry why linger
so long see he is sinking away
say today and now with the lifeboat away
then away throw out the lifeline throw out the lifeline
someone is drifting away
throw out the lifeline throw out the lifeline
someone is sinking today
throw out the lifeline to danger fraud man
sinking in anguish where you've never been
winds of temptation and billows of woe will soon
hurl them out where the dark waters blow
someone is sinking
throw out the lifeline
someone is thinking today
soon will the season of rescue be o'er soon will they drift to eternity's shore
ain't then my brother no time for delay
but throw out the lifeline and save them today
throw out the lifeline throw out the lifeline
someone is drifting away
throw out the lifeline throw out the lifeline
someone is sinking today
all right guys we're gonna do one more song let's go to song number
75. 75 we'll sing it out together on jordan's stormy banks
song number 75
on jordan's stormy banks i stand and cast a wishful eye
to gain its fair and happy land where my possessions lie
i am bound for the promised land
oh who will come and go with me
i am bound for the promised land
although those wide extended plain shines one eternal day
there god the sun forever rains and
scatters night away i am bound for the promised land
i am bound for the promised land oh who will come and go with me
i am bound for the promised land
no chilling winds or poisonous breath can reach that helpful shore
sickness and sorrow pain and death are felt and fear no more
i am bound for the promised land
oh who will come and go with me
i am bound for the promised land when shall i reach that happy
place and be forever blessed when shall i see
my father's face and in his bosom friends
i am bound for the promised land
oh who will come and go with me
i am bound for the promised land great singing we have a baptism this
afternoon sister elisa is coming for baptism have you trusted christ as your
savior have you trusted christ as your savior
yes yes that i baptized in the name of the father
son and holy ghost
buried in the likeness of his death raised to walk in newness of life
i hope you like congratulations
do we have any more okay make sure to congratulate our baptism
and you guys are dismissed