Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to Steadfast.
Great to see everybody here.
Go ahead and find our seats.
We will get started with the seat.
Let's grab a hymnal and go to song number 192, 100, and the bells so much for this awesome
church.
Thank you for the opportunity to go out soul-winding this afternoon, and thank you for all the
souls that were one to you.
We love you, Lord, and we just ask you to bless this church and bless everything that
we do.
Fill it with your spirit as we sing unto you tonight, and it's in Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
For our next song, let's go to song number 144, if you're familiar, 44, a mighty fortress
is our God.
Much of you don't already have a bulletin, you can just lift up your hand nice and high,
make sure it will come by, bulletin, Jude 1 verse 13 is our Bible memory passage.
And then on the inside we have our service, soul winning times, make sure you're updating
our church stat groups with your soul winning numbers.
On the right, just right over the cross, it has soul winning stat reporting reminder.
Please make sure you're just listing all the soul winning partners by first name and at
least the last initial.
Also you can include a location if you ever do a special soul winning event.
And then if you do get emails, just put it in there.
Make sure to indicate if it's a Spanish only email just because otherwise we just don't
know.
We just assume it's for the English.
That really helps us.
Please prepare for expecting ladies.
We are having a business meeting immediately after the service.
So as soon as we're done with the last song, I'm just going to immediately start our business
meeting.
It's not going to be recorded or anything like that.
It's just an internal meeting that we have.
Just give an update, it's a normal thing that we do once every six months.
Lancaster Texas Soul Winning Marathon is July 19th, so I think we should have a sign up
sheet for that.
It's 20 minutes away.
Meet here at 9 a.m.
It's a great opportunity to go soul winning if you've never been soul winning.
You can even just come for the morning or the afternoon.
We should have breakfast and lunch for you.
So it's going to be a great, awesome opportunity really.
In summer, we have the details of that.
We'll probably just put it in our group chat and then maybe in the bulletin next week.
But we're looking forward to having another fun activity for our teenagers.
Then the adventure park's the ninth.
We have the men's retreat August 14th to the 16th, FBBF conference.
That's going to be August 27th through the 31st.
We're going to have lots of cool stuff.
It's going to be awesome.
There is a signup sheet that we have.
But there's only a few people that really didn't maybe fill it out yet, so we might
just bug those people personally.
But if you don't want to be bugged by us, you can just either mark through it or tell
us that you're coming or something.
And then Mexico Missions Trip, September 8th through the 12th, Brother Diego is helping
lead this.
October 6th through the 11th is our Bahamas Missions Trip.
We have other events, but we're just kind of giving you just a few months' notice.
If you go to our website, it pretty much has all our events listed out there, sbckjv.com,
and then just go to the preaching, I'm sorry, upcoming events tab, I'm sorry, the upcoming
events tab.
I do have the details for the conference laid out on the website, made a couple of videos
about it.
We have the spelling bee words list link is available on there, and so we're really excited
about that.
On the back is our prayer list, and that's pretty much all I have as far as announcements.
We're going to sing our psalm of the week, psalm 67, so we get your special psalms and
hymn binders out.
Psalm 67.
Let's all sing it out together, psalm chapter 67 in your binders.
You're being passed around.
Go ahead and open your Bibles to the book of Colossians chapter number one.
That's Colossians chapter number one.
Colossians chapter one, the Bible says, "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of
God and Timotheus our brother, to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are
at Colossi.
Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ praying always for you,
since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love which ye have to all the saints,
for the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the
truth of the gospel, which is come unto you as it is in all the world, and bringeth forth
fruit as it doth also in you, since the day ye heard of it, and knew the grace of God
in truth. As ye also learned of Apaphras our dear fellow servant, who is for you a faithful
minister of Christ, who also declared unto us your love in the spirit. For this cause
we also since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that
ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.
That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good
work and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all might, according to
his glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness, giving thanks
unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints
in light, who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the
kingdom of his dear Son, in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness
of sins, who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.
For by him were all things created, that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and
invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were
created by him and for him.
And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.
And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the
dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence.
For it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell, and having made peace
through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself.
By him I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.
And you that were sometime alienated, and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet
now hath he reconciled, in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and
unblameable and unreprovable in his sight.
If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the
gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under
heaven, whereof I, Paul, am made a minister, who now rejoice in my sufferings for you,
and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake,
which is the church, whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which
is given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God, even the mystery which hath been hid
from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints, to whom God would
make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which
is Christ in you, the hope of glory, whom we preach, warning every man and teaching
every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus, whereunto
I also labor, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily.
Let us pray.
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this day.
I thank you for the sermon we heard this morning, the reminder to be thankful and to praise
your name.
Please help us to praise you for the rest of this service.
And please help Pastor Shelley as he preaches your word in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Colossians chapter number one talks a lot about Christ.
If you look in verse 15 it says, "Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn
of every creature?
For by him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and
invisible, whether it be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things are
created by him and for him, and he is before all things and by him all things consist,
and he is the head of the body, the church."
And that's really where I'm getting the title of a sermon I want to preach this evening
is how Christ is the head, Christ is the head.
The Bible makes it abundantly clear he's the head of the body and the body is specifically
referring to the church, which is God's people.
And Jesus Christ uses a body, a physical body, to kind of illustrate a spiritual truth about
what the church is supposed to be like.
How we're supposed to be like body parts and how Christ is that head of our body.
And of course God uses this analogy because in a body our brain, our head is basically
what's controlling the rest of our body.
You know, if you're brain dead, well, you're a liberal NBC, right?
You're a Democrat.
If you're brain dead, you can't control your hands or your feet anymore, can you?
Your hands, your feet doesn't work.
The head is basically the control center of our body.
It's making the decisions.
It's deciding where your feet go.
It's deciding what your hands do.
It's deciding what you eat.
It's deciding where you go.
It's deciding when you wake up.
It's making all of the decisions.
And in fact, your hands don't make any decisions.
Your feet don't make any decisions.
Now, obviously, our body, because we have emotions, because we have feelings, because
we get hungry, because our body hurts, we influence our brain, and then our brain may
make a decision based on the rest of our body.
If my hand is injured, my brain might make a decision to, you know, deal with my hand,
help my hand.
My hand, my itch, my body, you know, my body might want it to be scratched, and my brain
might say, "Okay, scratch it."
But it doesn't have to.
You could have a mosquito bite, but you try not to scratch, because you don't want to
like cause it to be worse.
So yeah, obviously we're influenced by our body, but our body's not in control.
Our body will never be in control.
If you don't have a head, you're dead, right?
You could lose a lot of body parts and still be alive.
You can lose arms, legs.
You could have a half torso, you could have your heart transplanted, you could put someone
else's heart in here, you can do all kinds of crazy stuff.
But they haven't figured out a way for someone to walk around without a head.
I mean, you pretty much, if you don't have a head, it's over.
And so this analogy, while not exactly perfect, it's used in the Bible often to kind of illustrate
a lot of spiritual truths about the Bible, about God, about how the church is supposed
to operate.
And of course, all things are created by Him and for Him.
God created us, Jesus Christ specifically is the creator, He created all of us, and
He created the church, and He purchased it with His own blood, and He did everything.
And then on top of that, He is the head, meaning He's in charge.
A lot of times we use this language of head to tell who's in charge, who's the head of
the household.
That means the person that's in charge of the household.
And so we use this language to kind of differentiate or understand these things.
In our church, Christ is to be the head of our church.
Now he's supposed to be the head of all churches, and in reality he is the head of all churches.
But that doesn't mean that all the bodies and all the body parts are always working
together with the head.
Sometimes your body can make mistakes or not do what the head is wanting it to do, and
of course that causes a lot of problems.
A healthy body is one where the body parts simply do what the brain's telling it when
it wants to, it's obeying the brain, and it functions.
If my body did not do what my brain wanted, it would be out of sorts, out of whack.
There are people that have physical issues, whether they have some kind of deformity, maybe
they have some kind of mental handicap, maybe they have some kind of like Tourette's or
some kind of like problem with them, and it causes involuntary responses or it causes
them to behave in a way that's not necessarily consistent with what they want.
And again, it's not normal, it's not healthy.
In the same way, you could have churches that are acting like they have Tourette's.
You could have churches acting like they have some kind of deformity or are just simply
mentally handicapped in some ways, where they're not mature, they're not acting the way they
should.
And of course we don't want to be that, we want to be a body that's subject to our head
and we're doing what the head wants and we're alignment with our head.
You know you could be out of alignment with your spine and so the messages being sent
from the brain don't meet parts of your body and it can't respond.
People that are paralyzed or people that have some kind of deformity, sometimes it's literally
the messages just can't make it to that body part appropriately and it needs to be realigned,
it needs to be put back into place so that the messages can make it to there and then
the body can work appropriately.
We could go on for days, but I'm just trying to give you an essence of what we're talking
about.
Christ is that head of the church.
Everything should be built upon the head.
Now when we talk about Christ being the head of our church, we're not just talking in some
abstract, theoretical idea, he is the head in the sense that this book that I hold in
my hand, the King James Bible, is Jesus Christ, and this is the head of our church.
This is the final decision maker of our church, and this is what's supposed to lead our church.
This is what's supposed to make the decisions for our church.
When I'm deciding, like, "Hey, what do we do?
We should look to the Bible.
We should look to the Word of God and allow that to tell us what to do."
Go over to Mark chapter number 12, now a church that's not building itself on the Bible is
not part of the body in a sense.
Think of it this way because the Bible brings up another analogy about the church and about
how it's supposed to work.
It makes it an analogy of like a building project.
And the Bible says about Christ that he is that first stone, he's that cornerstone, he's
that headstone where you're basically laying the first foundation, the first most crucial
stone where all the other stones are supposed to be laid in congruence with this to build
the same structure.
It says in Mark chapter 12, look at verse 10, "And have you not read this scripture?
The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner."
So they rejected the stone, they don't want the stone, they said it not, and yet that
is that cornerstone upon which Christianity is built.
So the Jews, they rejected that cornerstone and they're not part of that building because
they're not part of Christ, because they're not part of God and they're not part of the
body.
In order to be a part of the body, you have to believe in Jesus Christ and then you have
to be a stone that's set in that same building construction.
You have to be put in congruence with that headstone, that cornerstone.
Ephesians chapter 2 brings us up to, go to Acts 4 and Ephesians 2, I'm going to go to
those two places next, but I want to look at Ephesians chapter number 2 because the
Bible talks about us being this building construction project and Ephesians chapter 2, look what
it says in verse number 19, "Now therefore you no more strangers and foreigners but fellow
citizens with the saints and of the household of God and are built upon the foundation of
the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone and in all the
building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord and also are built
together for the habitation of God through the Spirit."
So we are those building blocks put together to form a habitation, to form a house of God
and we are the house of God, the church is the house of God, we are a habitation for
the Holy Spirit, Christ dwells in us and of course He is to be that cornerstone, that
headstone that all the building instruction is based on.
Acts chapter number 4 verse 11 brings up the same concept, says this is the stone which
was set at not of you builders, which has become the head of the corner, notice Christ
is the head, Christ is that first stone and He's the stone that's built there, if you
aren't built in that same area, in the same place, you're just not part of the building,
you're not part of the house of God, you're not part of the body, and of course this would
be a false gospel, this would be work salvation, well that's built on a different building,
that's a different construction, that foundation that's laid for everybody is salvation by
faith, trusting in Jesus Christ, that's what gets us in, 1 Peter chapter 2, I want to
go one more place here and prove this point, but what are we seeing, we're just seeing
some really basic simple truth, what's the basic simple truth in the Bible, Christ is
the head of the church, Christ is the head of the corner, Christ is the cornerstone,
Christ is in charge of the church, He built the church, He purchased the church with His
own blood, He's the one that is considered the "husband" of the church, we are the bride
in a sense as a collective, as a whole, and so we are to be subject unto Christ, 1 Peter
chapter 2 verse 7, the Bible says, "Unto you therefore which believe he is precious,
and unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is
made the head of the corner."
Notice again the Bible is telling us that Christ is the head of the corner.
He is in charge, He is where everything is decided, every decision should be based on
that stone.
Say, "How do I lay the next stone?"
Well, it's based on wherever the headstone was laid.
What are the measurements?
It's based on the headstone.
What is the size?
Where is the foundation?
What are we supposed to lay?
Every decision that you make is based on that one stone.
This stone's been laid.
Every other stone is going to be based on this stone because it's the headstone.
It's the head of the corner.
It's in charge.
Everything is about that.
Any other decision that's not in congruence with this is false.
It's bad.
It's wrong.
Okay?
We need to be in line with it.
Go if we go to Ephesians 1 now.
Go back to Ephesians and go to Ephesians chapter 1.
Christ is the head.
Ephesians chapter 1, look at verse 21.
The Bible says, "Far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every
name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.
And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be," what?
"the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that fill
with all and all."
My hand does not get to decide which body it's attached to.
It's attached to this body, and this head is the one in charge of this hand.
And this hand doesn't get to say, "You know what, I don't really like your head.
I don't like how you operate.
I don't like what you do."
It's like, "Tough luck, buddy."
You know, we could all talk about technique, maybe a sport, or you could take it like basketball.
Everybody kind of shoots the basketball a little bit different.
But you know, my hand doesn't get to say, "You know what, I kind of like how he shoots
the ball."
No, no, it just does whatever my brain tells you.
You're going to do my form, you're going to do my way, because you're a part of my body,
and you're stuck with me, so you just do it.
And you know what, you could even potentially punish yourself, you know, for lack of a better
way to explain it, if your body wasn't responding correctly.
I mean, if you ever played golf with my dad, it was intense, alright, a lot of language.
But if he hit a bad shot, he would punch himself.
Now, I'm not saying this is right.
I'm not even saying it's a good idea.
I'm just telling you, his body didn't have a choice.
I mean, I've watched the man punch all kinds of parts of his body 'cause he was just mad
at it.
I've seen people, they hit their hand, people kick things.
Who's seen someone hit something, hit their self, hit their hand, or whatever, when they
got mad in sports?
Yeah, hands all over the room.
Like, you could get mad at your body just because you're kind of mad about what happened
or you're frustrated about it.
Again, I'm not recommending this.
I'm not saying that it's right.
I'm just saying it happens.
And as, you know, this analogy, we are in the body of Christ.
We don't get to choose who our head is.
We're already attached to the body.
We believed in Jesus Christ.
He is our head.
So therefore, we ought to embrace the fact that Jesus Christ is our head.
And while Jesus Christ isn't going to, quote, beat himself up, the Bible does say he will
chasten and scourge every son in whom he receive him.
And the Bible does make it clear that he would potentially punish us.
If you overeat or overindulge, you may end up having to diet or fast as a remedy to that.
And that's going to be suffering.
And so the body, there is an idea of self-discipline mentioned in the Bible.
The apostle Paul brings up how he brings himself into subjection, lest he be a castaway.
There's the idea of self-discipline control.
In fact, arguably lifting weights or exercising, if you don't understand this, you're actually
damaging your body.
And what you do, when you lift weights, you're actually making minor tears in your muscles,
and then your body responds by building them back a little stronger.
So your body thinks like, "Oh no, I'm not capable of handling this.
I can't do what this guy wanted me to do."
So their body just somehow realizes, "I need to be stronger so I can handle this."
So you lift weights, and you have all these minor tears in your arms and your muscles,
and then it builds back a little stronger.
And then you lift again, and it tears, and it builds back.
That's why you need a little bit of rest, that's why sometimes you're sore and it hurts
a little bit, is that process of you broke down parts of your body, it's building back.
Even your bones themselves, you're constantly causing little scrapes and little tears and
little minor fractures all in your bones.
When you go running and you're just slamming your foot down on the concrete just for ten
minutes or twenty minutes or if you're crazy for an hour, yeah, you're doing little mini
fractures and little splinting on your bones and then your bones will grow back stronger
in those places.
People that want to be in some kind of martial arts, they'll literally kick their shins against
bamboo trees on purpose and break their shins on purpose so that they'll harden and calcify
and become even stronger so that when they kick people, it's like they're kicking people
with a lead pipe or something because they basically just harden their legs so much through
all of that pain and all of that punishment.
So in the same way, you know, when God punishes us, when God chastens us, it actually makes
us stronger if you allow yourself to get healed, if you allow yourself to respond to this.
You know, no chastening for the present seemed to be joyous but grievous.
But afterward, it yielded the peaceable fruit by them which are exercised thereby.
So according to the Bible, hey, yeah, working out, disciplining yourself, doing these things,
they may not be fun in the short term but they yield great results.
And the brain gets to decide, hey, what am I going to do?
If you never work out, this is why old people often, they break their bones often because
they're not using them, they're not going out and exercising, obviously getting old
there's other problems too, maybe malnutrition is a part of it.
But look, when you don't use it, you lose it in a lot of ways because their bodies are
designed to constantly have to repair themselves and constantly be used and worked on.
And when you just sit around and do nothing, you become weak and brittle and soft.
Christ wants us to be a body that's being used, that's working out, that's being disciplined,
that's healthy, that's in shape.
And often when us preachers or pastors, we talk about churches, we talk about it as a
body.
And I often refer to our church as like, it seems like our church is often a ripped prize
fighter because it's just like we're constantly having to go through these battles and we're
losing all kinds of fat and excess weight and we're like dieting and we're going through
intense workouts.
And so, you know, if you look at a prize fighter, I mean, they lose all this weight to be able
to weigh in.
They basically have to just starve themselves and not eat so they can just basically, they
lose all this water weight, they're not really this fluff so that they can come in.
Whereas you could look at another person's body and boy, it's just they don't work out,
they don't run, they overeat.
And so they have all this fat and they just, they're kind of, that's how you can look
at a church.
There's some churches out there that are just this fat blob and they're like, it can't
even do it, it can't even get out of its chair.
Look there are people in this world that can't even get out of their chair.
There's shows where people can't even get out of their house.
There are shows where people couldn't even get out of their bed.
They weren't even capable.
I saw this one, it was like they had to take the roof off and they had to airlift this
guy off of his bed because he couldn't even, he couldn't even get out there.
And he was giant.
And look, I think there's churches like that.
They're giant.
I mean, thousands of people, but the stinking church does nothing and it would take a stinking
airlift to get them to ever do anything because they're just so fat and they're just so obese
and they don't do anything.
And why?
Because you know what?
They're not really plugged into the head and they're not doing what the head wants because
the head is going to keep you healthy, it's going to keep you balanced, it's going to
cause you to do what the right thing is.
And look, you're subject to this head whether you like it or not.
Look at chapter 4 verse 15, "But speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in
all things, which is the head, even Christ."
Here's another thing about a body is a body ages.
When you first get saved, you're kind of in a sense like a spiritual baby and you're supposed
to grow and you're supposed to mature.
And as awkward as it would look if you had a 20-year-old baby, it is when you have Christians
that have been saved for "20 years" and yet they know nothing, they're not serving Christ,
they have no charity, they don't really understand the Bible at all.
It's kind of embarrassing, it's awkward, it's weird looking.
And so we need to basically be maturing, growing.
We need to be in line with our head.
We don't want our head to outgrow our body.
We don't want to be this giant head on this little baby body where it's just kind of inadequate.
Because look, an adult head on a baby's body isn't going to really do much.
I mean, if you just put my head, my exact head right now on a three month old baby's
head, body, like I'm not going to be able to go play basketball or something.
I'm not going to be able to swim.
I'm not going to be able to rescue anybody.
I can't even stand behind this pulpit and preach.
I'd be down here somewhere, you wouldn't even see me.
That would be awkward.
And look, it's not, the head's the same because we all have Christ, yet there are churches
today where they have this, but then they're like a little three month old baby attached
to it where they can't do anything.
They don't know anything.
They're not going anywhere.
And it's just, you go to church and it's how to get saved every Sunday morning.
And then the other alternating Sundays is the pre-trib rapture, which is like a baby
that's just like, babies don't even know what they're saying.
They just say dumb things. They just say things. They have no idea what they're saying. They're just repeating lies and repeating nonsense and repeating sounds. Just like, "bleh bleh bleh." That's the same as going to a church and just hearing a preacher just lie about the preacher of rapture. Just saying nonsense. Just saying things that aren't in the Bible. Regurgitating some commentary. Just, but look, it's important to grow with your head. It's important to age with your head. It's important to mature with your head. And you say, like, how could that even be possible?
It's because they're not reading the Bible. Because they're not reading the Bible. They're not studying the Bible. And then they end up getting out of balance again. Chapter 5, look at verse 20. Chapter 5, verse 20.
"Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the Savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything." Now, so far the sermon is just, it's like, yep, got it, cool, no problem.
But then you make a transition, you say, okay, the same way we're supposed to be subject unto Christ is how wives are supposed to be to their husbands.
That's why it's so quiet in here. But here's the thing, we need to realize, why is it that a church is healthy?
What makes a good church? Well, a good church will be one where the pastor is reading the Bible. Why?
Because the pastor has to make decisions. Well, what kind of decisions does the pastor make?
He should make the decisions that Christ is telling him. And if he's not reading his Bible,
if he's not studying what the Bible is saying, well, then he's not going to be making the decisions
that the head wants. He's going to make decisions that he wants, and it's going to get out of whack.
It's going to get weird. The pastor has to decide what to feed the body. We're constantly eating.
If I just say, you know what, we're just going to have gushers tonight, and then tomorrow morning,
gushers for breakfast, and then for lunch, fruit by the foot, and then for the evening,
we're going to have Twinkies. Pretty soon, we're going to get weird and unhealthy.
You could be like that guy, the Super Size Me guy, and only have McDonald's.
And then you like almost died after like 30 days or something like that, only McDonald's.
So you've got to figure out like what are you eating?
Whereas if it's like, hey, we're going to eat steak, we're going to eat vegetables,
we're going to have salad, we're going to have baked potatoes, we're going to have good bread,
we're going to have butter, we're going to have milk. Hey, we can sustain on that forever.
In the same way, the pastor has to get up and decide like, hey, what are we eating?
Are we going to have gussers? Are we going to have Twinkies? Are we going to have steak and potatoes?
And it's like, hey, this is that steak and potatoes. This is that nutritious meal
that we need to be eating regularly. And when a pastor is not feeding their flock the Word of God,
they're not getting the mind of Christ. We're not being led by Christ.
They're going to get unhealthy. They're going to get weird. They're going to have problems.
And of course, a lot of dietary issues cause problems for people
because they're not getting all of the nutrients that they need.
You know, if you forego certain important aspects of a diet,
whether it just be like all carbs or all fruits and vegetables or all meat,
often any of these weird variations cause people problems.
And I'm not a doctor. I'm not saying that I'm a doctor.
I'm just saying in general, it's best to kind of have a well-balanced diet,
kind of have a little bit of all the different stuff, have, you know, some vegetables, some fruits, whatever.
And people have even noticed like, hey, they had some vitamin deficiency and it caused Lyme disease.
And then by eating limes, it helped them rid themselves of this particular disease because they were malnourished in some way.
And oftentimes people are malnourished in some way.
So, you know, we don't want just the popular parts of the King James.
We want the whole thing and we need the whole thing that keeps us healthy.
You know, pastors have to decide what to preach.
What I've tried to emphasize and I try to scream and yell and make a big deal about is how if anybody gets up to preach a sermon,
they need to make sure that the most important part or the core of their sermon, the essence of the sermon,
what they're just communicating for the next hour or hour long is a clear statement in the Bible.
It's a truth that the Bible is communicating because we want to make sure that our signals are coming from the head,
coming from Christ and that we're just transmitting that signal to the rest of the body.
We're like the spine just delivering those signals to all the different parts of the body.
We want to make sure they're coming from the head.
And what I've noticed, and you'll always realize, bad preachers and bad churches,
they are not starting their sermons with something in this text.
They're not explaining something that's in this text.
It's something that they just wanted to preach out of their heart, out of their mind,
their ideas, their thoughts, their story, their agenda, their experience, their whatever.
And they're not making Christ the head.
And then pretty soon their body is going to be jacked up.
Their body is going to be screwed up.
And look, a church is going to be successful when the pastor is reading the Bible
and memorizing the Bible and studying the Bible.
And when I listen to people just preach garbage sermon after garbage sermon after garbage sermon,
you know what I think?
This person is not reading the Bible.
And at the end of the day, you know, if you're reading the Bible,
it's going to be easier for you to recognize when this guy is not reading his Bible.
So not only do I need to read the Bible, a healthy church is where the members are reading the Bible.
And the members are memorizing the Bible.
And you know what? I'm not afraid of what the Bible says.
That's why we're constantly, I mean, that's why we're giving you gift cards
and candy and treats to memorize it.
We're putting it in songs. We're singing it. We're trying to,
we're doing New Testament challenges. We're trying to get you to read the whole thing.
Because what do we want to do? We want to get in line with the head.
This is the head of our church. This is what's in charge of our church.
And you know what prevents a church from being a cult? Is this.
This is the only thing. A church that preaches a lot of Bible,
has people memorize a lot of Bible, and have people that are reading a Bible,
prevent it from being a cult. When people get away from the text,
they downplay the text, that's when it starts becoming a cult.
When they're communicating messages that are not clearly laid out in the text,
it's a cult. So you look at any cult in the world, you look at any false religion in the world,
it follows in this problem. The Catholic Church, they're not going to get up and read all the passages on salvation by faith.
You take a Calvinist church, they're not going to go and show you all the places in the Bible
where it clearly says, "He tasted death for every man."
They're not going to go that he's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come under repentance.
They're not going to go to the places where it uses the word "free will" like 17 times in the Bible.
Or where it says, "That if, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus,
and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised from the dead, thou shalt be saved."
What does that "if" mean?
It means you have a choice.
It means you have a decision.
They're not going to go and show you verses that say, "Hey, I've sat before you life and death. Choose life!"
Just joking, no choices.
No, they're going to just go to Romans 9 for the rest of their life.
And they're just going to show you Esau and Pharaoh over and over again.
And they're just going to show you some nonsense.
But most of the time, you know what they're going to show you?
What John Calvin said.
And what Spurgeon said.
And what some Catholic theologian said.
Even though they say they're not Catholic,
but then they believe everything every Catholic theologian says.
And they're just going to show you all this nonsense.
And then the congregation not reading the Bible,
they're encouraged to read what?
Matthew Henry's commentary.
They're encouraged to get some other church father's commentary.
Read C.S. Lewis about the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe.
Read Tolkien.
He was a Christian.
He was a Catholic.
In fact, Tolkien is what helped converted C.S. Lewis.
And then we need to read about all the church fathers.
And we need to read about St. Augustine.
He's not a saint. Sorry.
But why is the Catholic church so screwed up?
Because they don't have this as the head of the corner.
Because they killed William Tyndale and burned him at the stake
for wanting to give you this, for wanting to give you the right head.
Why would a church be healthy because it has this?
Why is the Mormon church a cult?
Because it uses a book over this, the Book of Mormon.
I'm sorry, Mormon, same thing.
Why is Islam so bad?
Because they use the Koran over this.
Hey, you could show them verses in this and they'll be like,
"Oh, that's good when it's translated correctly."
You show this to a Catholic, "Oh, it's good when it's translated correctly."
You show this to a Mormon, "Oh, it's good when it's translated correctly."
You show this to someone at a college seminary at some Christian Bible school
and they'll say, "Oh, it's good when it's translated correctly."
And it's pretty interesting, you go into the Garden of Eden and you talk to the devil
and he's like, "Yeah, God's word's good when it's translated correctly."
And you realize all the religions are the same.
They're trying to get rid of the head of the body.
This is the head of the body, and we need to do what it says,
we need to read what it says, and that's what's going to give us a healthy church.
And when churches start getting away from the Bible and they're not preaching the Bible,
and they're not saying what the clear things are saying in the Bible,
you know what? It's dangerous.
Be careful of the church that every sermon is just this guy's idea and not what this says.
And boy, I mean, we also need to do something. We need to emphasize what the Bible emphasizes.
I think the Bible emphasizes a lot of things.
We this morning tried to spend a sermon on emphasizing the most important commandment in the Bible, praising the Lord.
And you know, people get mad at me, like they will, or they'll kind of be disappointed or they'll be confused.
They'll be like, man, you just talk about Jews all the time.
Talk about replacement theology all the time. Sorry, that's the Bible.
Show me where it's not emphasized all the time.
Oh, you emphasize salvation by faith all the time.
Okay, show me where it's not.
Oh, you emphasize all kinds of fighting and drama.
Okay, show me a New Testament epistle where there's not some drama or fighting.
You're constantly saying people are leaving church.
Show me where it's not just showing people leaving church all the time.
And the Bible constantly emphasizes you being steadfast and faithful and enduring
and not being backslidden and not walking away with all the other losers.
How do you call people losers? Well, the Bible calls them fools.
What do you want me to call them?
Brute beasts are mentioned in the Bible. People being brutish.
People being prideful. People being all kinds of evil things.
Wicked. People having wicked hearts.
Oh, you're talking about saved people being wicked?
Yeah, 1 Corinthians 5 calls people wicked.
It's funny to me. People get mad at sermons that I preach.
And I'm thinking like, oh, okay. Then the next week they're mad at that sermon.
They're mad at the next sermon. They're mad at the next sermon.
And I'm thinking like, what part of the Bible am I allowed to preach?
It doesn't seem like you're mad at me. It doesn't seem like you're mad at the sermon.
You're just mad at what the Bible says. You just don't like what the Bible says.
And at the end of the day, we have to start preaching what the Bible says,
because that's going to keep us in balance. The Bible keeps us in balance.
And you know what? I love to talk about all kinds of different things.
I have other interesting things that are fun to talk about, in my opinion.
I could talk about golf all day long, but it would be weird if all I did was talk about golf.
In fact, I would argue I almost never do.
I'd probably even bring up other sports, because none of y'all play golf or are good at golf.
So it would be weird if I'm just constantly talking about golf. You'd have no idea what I'm even talking about.
He said albatross. I don't even know. Is that a bird? What's happening?
Is that a sandwich? I'm not going to bring up analogies that you're not familiar with, because then it doesn't help you.
We're supposed to explain things to people that are common, easy to be understood.
We need to make sure that what we're saying as preachers is that the Bible is saying.
I can't tell you how many sermons I don't preach, how many thoughts I don't preach,
how many things I just don't really feel comfortable expressing
because I can't really find it in the Bible the way that it should be found.
Yet many people are getting up and they're just saying all kinds of stuff
and it's just like chapter and verse, where is it?
And you know what? Their body is going to get weird.
You need to make sure you're in a healthy church. You need to read the Bible too.
We want to be a healthy church. We need to be reading and submitting ourselves.
And you need to be following your pastor. I'm going to get to that in a minute.
I had us read Ephesians chapter 5. So, okay, I'm going to be successful
by following my head, Christ, by reading the Bible and doing what it says.
Then what does the Bible say? "Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ,
so let their wives be their own husbands in everything."
So how are you going to have a successful marriage?
You're going to do everything that your husband says.
Yes, you do everything your husband says. You say, "Well, I don't know what he wants."
Ask him. Now this is contrary to American cultural programming, which is really just Jewish programming.
It's like we all know Jews own Hollywood. Jews own every TV station.
But then you literally watch all of their TV shows where they're teaching you to not obey your husband,
not ask your husband what he wants, not submit under your husband, and then you think that that's normal.
No, it's wicked, it's satanic, it's of Judaism. It's a false religion.
The Bible says that you're supposed to be subject under your husband's in everything,
meaning you ask your husband what he wants and you just do it.
You know, when I go to work, I don't tell my boss what to do.
I don't show up and say, "Hey, boss, you need to do this today."
I say, "Hey, what do you want me to do today? How would you like it done?"
And you know what, I also don't even get mad at my boss when he tells me I did it wrong.
Let me tell you something. Most marriages in America could not survive husbands just telling their wives what to do and what they did was wrong.
Isn't that sad? I mean, how weird would it be if I got up and I just started ripping pages out of my Bible and saying,
"I don't like how this is done. We're going to do it different."
Hey, 1 Corinthians says that we should throw railers out of the church. I don't think so.
We're going to make them now the new soul-winning captains.
And now we're getting, and you know what? We're not going to do soul-winning 2x2.
We're just going to do soul-winning, you know, on our own, however we want.
We're going to mail out paper, paperwork.
In fact, I don't even think we need the Bible. I mean, who needs the Bible?
You could be like Jack Scott and get up and start saying,
"People don't even need the Bible to get saved or know the name of Jesus to get saved."
That's pretty weird, isn't it? If you were in Bible college
and the pastor started getting up and saying, "You don't even have to know the name of Jesus
or need the Bible to get saved," what would you do as a student?
I'd probably leave, too. You'd be thinking like, "That's weird."
I mean, as awkward as it'd be if I got up here and said, "You know what?
We're just gonna sing some hip-hop song this morning.
Turn in your hip-hop binder to 'Get Rich or Die Tryin'.'" Ready?
Let's all sing it out on the first. Wouldn't that be weird?
Wouldn't it be weird if I said, "All right, let's just..."
I wrote an autobiography. Let's turn to chapter three.
This is when I was 15 and I was playing golf.
Let's talk about that for a little while. Wouldn't that be weird?
But then it's not weird when wives just mouth off to their husbands,
tell them whatever they want, aren't subject under their husbands.
It's just as weird. It's just as awkward.
It's an awkward-looking body. It's dysfunctional.
There's something wrong with it.
The Bible says in verse 25, "Husbands, love your wives,
"as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it,
"that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
"that he might present it to himself a glorious church,
"not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing,
"but that it should be holy and without blemish.
"So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies.
"He that loveth his wife loveth himself."
Notice we're supposed to love our wife like our own body
because it's the same kind of analogy, isn't it?
Christ is the head, we have the body as a church.
The husband is supposed to be like one flesh with his wife.
He's supposed to love his body.
It says in verse number 29,
"For no man ever yet hated his own flesh,
but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord is the church.
For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother,
and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh.
This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church."
So if Christ is the head, what does the head do?
The head is making decisions that are the best for the body.
It's nourishing its body, it's cherishing its body.
The head's like, "I need to feed you good food.
I need to take care of you.
I need to bathe you.
I need to wash you.
I need to keep you in good health."
In the same way, a husband should be trying to take care of his wife by giving her good
food and by taking care of her and treating her well and proverbially washing her.
But at the end of the day, we need the body to respond and say, "Okay, I'm going to do it.
I'm going to fall in line.
I'm going to just accept my role.
I'm not the head.
I'm just part of the body and I'm just going to be that part of the body."
You know, I want my right hand to be a right hand.
I don't want it to be a nose.
I don't want it to be a mouth.
I don't want it to try and be my head because it can't be.
I want it to be a right hand.
And you know what?
There's nothing wrong with right hands.
There's nothing wrong with knee caps.
There's nothing wrong with shins.
There's nothing wrong with every part of your body.
There's nothing wrong with the belly button.
And at the end of the day, there's nothing wrong with wives.
You know what?
Wives have a specific role in this world.
And you know what's not good is when wives are not wives.
When wives are trying to be the head.
And just as weird as it is when pastors are trying to be the head
and not allowing Christ to be the head of their church.
Just as awkward as it is when you have Michael Todd of Transformation Church
getting on his pulpit or getting on his stage and getting a haircut for the service.
Just as weird as it is when Michael Todd gets up on stage and plays basketball
or jumps on a trampoline or eats some weird food
or literally hawks loogies into the eyes of other members.
Can I get a volunteer? I'm just kidding.
He had members come up on the stage and he hawked a loogie in his members' eyes.
Isn't that weird? It's gross. It's weird. It's awkward.
It doesn't make sense. It looks bad. You know what a church that looks good is
when it says, "Hey, we're using the King James Bible, and we're going to sing it,
and we're going to preach it, and we're going to say what it says."
It looks good. It sounds good. It feels right.
In the same way, when a wife is a wife, it feels good. It looks good.
When you've got this short-haired woman in pants telling her husband what to do,
and he's carrying her pink purse around with a little tiny Pomeranian dog in it,
it looks gay and it's garbage. And yet, that's the TV show you watch, isn't it?
Modern Family. You watch some TV show where the husband is this weak, docile guy
that's led by his wife, told what to do by his wife. You know what, that is not the Bible.
It's not what you're getting from the head. It's not what you're instructed to do.
And you know what, it's awkward, it's weird, and it doesn't work.
This world is so screwed up, and it looks awkward, and it's super destructive.
You know, what it says here in verse 32, this is a great mystery by speaking
concerning Christ and the church, "Nevertheless, let every one in particular
so love his wife even as himself, and the wife see that she reverence her husband."
Wouldn't it be nice if we had a culture where wives spoke to their husbands
the way they would speak to their boss at work?
I mean, we're not even asking for you to talk to your husband like a husband.
What if you could just talk to him like your boss at work?
And look, your boss at work, you wouldn't mouth off because you'd get fired.
You wouldn't mouth off because they would drop you like a bad habit.
You wouldn't disrespect them. You would say, "Yes, sir."
You would do what he wants.
You might say something behind his back, and I get it.
You might be a little, you know, in your head saying something different.
But boy, I'm just telling you, these even feminazis, they go to work
and they say, "Yes, sir," and do whatever he wants.
And look, you feminists, you, you think, well, I don't want to,
you know, I'm going to tell my husband what to do,
and I don't want to go to a church like this, and I'm going to get a job,
and I'm going to be a self-made woman. You're going to say yes to some man.
Some man is in charge of you somewhere, and you get to choose who.
And you might as well just allow your husband to be the one that you say yes to.
I mean, he loves you. In the same way, I have to say yes to somebody.
Our church has to say yes to somebody.
And instead of me saying yes to Nick Fuentes,
instead of me saying yes to some Andrew Tate wannabe,
instead of me saying yes to just some commentary out there,
instead of me saying yes to the Pope,
instead of me saying yes to some loser, orthodox, weirdo priest,
instead of me saying yes to Mohammed, a pedophile,
I say yes to the King James Bible, the Word of God.
And let me tell you something, you don't have original thoughts.
It's just a puppet of your reading and environment.
You can come up to me after this service and say,
"I have an original thought," and then I'll tell you exactly where it came from.
It's like, "Oh, I had this one thought."
"Oh, you've been listening to Andrew Tate."
"Oh, well, I think this."
"Oh, because you're listening to Jewish Hollywood propaganda TV."
"Oh, it's because you read this in the Hindu book."
"Oh, you read that it's just a lie coming from Satan."
You don't have original thoughts.
And here's my reality for you, this is where you should get your decisions from.
We should subject ourselves to Christ and what He said.
And as a wife, you should say, "I'm not smarter than God."
"I'm not smarter than the Bible."
"I'm just going to submit myself unto my husband so that I don't look like an awkward human head adult baby body or whatever."
It's like this weird baby boss or something.
It looks weird, Benjamin Button.
Sorry if you don't know the reference.
Don't do that.
You know, you should just say, "You know what? I'm just going to say yes to my husband."
I'm going to ask him what he wants.
If he tells me I need to change something, I'm just going to say, "Yes, sir," and I'm going to do it.
You're like, "Wow, this is crazy." It's not even crazy.
If I put this in any other context, you would think like, "Yep, okay."
What if I said, "Hey, if we see something in the Bible, we should do it, and we should have a good attitude."
Hey, if my boss at work tells me to do something, I should just say it and have a good attitude.
How about this?
Do you want your kids, whenever you give them instruction, moms, to just say, "Yes, mom," and do it?
Or do you want them to argue and tell you, "No, you're wrong. I'm going to do whatever I want.
You can't tell me what to do." Is that how you want it?
It's like, look, the way that you respond to the leadership and the head and your situation
is often how the people under you will respond as well.
When they see mom trashing dad, disrespecting dad, not serving dad, wanting to talk poorly about him,
boy, they're going to think, "Oh, it's fine to do that then, so I'll do that to mom."
When they say, "Hey, mom fears dad and respects dad and doesn't want to treat him this way,"
well, then they often do the same.
You know, it's kind of like all of us.
If you go to a job for the first time, you get hired and you go to work your first day,
and the other employees, they're just dressed sharp, in line.
Whenever the boss says something, they just say, "Yes, sir," they do it.
You kind of just end up being like, "Okay, I guess that's how it is.
I've got to be dressed sharp, I've got to be in line, I've got to say, "Yes, sir," or whatever.
Whereas you go to other workplaces, you walk in.
Everybody's just laying around. People are coming in late.
People are just got their shirt, you know, just tucked out like this, just like, "Yeah, man."
The boss is like, "Hey, can you do this?" "I don't know. I don't want to do that."
Then you just kind of walk in. You just sit down. You're like, "Whatever."
Look, that's how life works.
And you say, "Man, I'm just so frustrated. My children don't respect me. My children talk back to me.
My children are constantly arguing and complaining with me."
And then it's like, "Look in the mirror, honey."
Hey, churches, pastors are so mad at their congregation for constantly causing them problems
and talking bad about them and causing them issues.
And it's like, "Okay, well how are you treating the Bible, pastor?"
Boy, a pastor that really respects the Word of God and really respects the things of God.
Boy, I'll tell you the members act with a lot more reverence and respect to their pastor, don't they?
Everything likes to follow that example.
Now obviously you can always get out of line. You could be a perfect example and they don't follow.
But you know what? Sometimes when you're mad, maybe you should figure out who, how are you doing?
Are you subject? Go to 1 Corinthians chapter 11, go to 1 Corinthians chapter number 11.
Are you doing your husband's will?
1 Corinthians chapter number 11, verse number 1, you say, "Why are you bringing this up?"
Well, the Bible brings it up. Is it in the Bible?
You know, women get mad about things that you preach, but then you're thinking like,
"Okay, show me a passage in the Bible that's different than what I'm saying."
Bring up the passage where the wife's just telling her husband what to do,
where she gets a job, where she's this boss, babe.
I mean, I see a couple examples of wives being like this. They're usually called Jezebel.
Yeah, is that who you want to be like?
1 Corinthians 11, well how dare, you know, I don't think we should follow men.
I'm not going to follow my pastor. I'm not going to follow my husband.
Okay, well look at 1 Corinthians 11, verse 1, "Be followers of me."
That's the Bible. "Even as I also am of Christ." Why?
You're going to follow someone, period. We're all following someone.
We're all just followers. And you know what? Even me, I'm just a follower.
Now, this is what you should want. You should want me to be a follower of this.
But I'm going to follow something. I don't want to follow my heart like Disney tells me to
because my heart's desperately wicked. It's deceitful above all things
and desperately wicked. Who can know it? I don't want to figure out how bad my heart is.
I want to keep my heart subject to this. I want to renew my mind with the Word of God.
I want to try and get in alignment with this and be as close to this as I can,
knowing I will fall short. But at the end of the day, we want to try and be as healthy as possible.
And that is following people who, following your pastor, says in verse number three,
"But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ."
This is what women don't get. They think like, "Oh, it must be nice to be in charge."
Well guess what? I'm not in charge. The head of every man is Christ!
We, all of us men, we have a boss. His name is Jesus Christ. He is our head.
We are to do everything that this book says. Just like you are, honey.
Just like you are, children. We all have a person in charge of us, and it's Christ.
And you know what? Even Christ does. Did you realize the rest of this?
And the head of the woman is the man. And the head of Christ is God.
Christ is even subject unto the Father, just like we're subject unto Christ,
just like our wives are subject unto us, and just like our children are subject to everyone on the whole list.
You say, "Who am I in charge of?" No one. You're at the bottom of the totem pole.
So you've got to grow up. But then when you grow up, you're going to have to be subject to somebody.
If you're the man, you're subject to Christ. If you're a wife, if you're a lady, you become subject to your husband.
Or you stay to your father. But you have that man over you.
"I dare you preach." This is the Bible. Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonored his head.
The Bible is saying these long-haired Fabios are not right with God. They're disrespecting Christ.
All these paintings of Jesus with long hair are wrong. It's not Jesus Christ.
Catholic pictures of Jesus are wrong. Catholics are wrong on everything.
And it says here, "But every woman that prayed or prophesied with her head uncovered dishonorth her head, for that is even all one as if she were shaven."
It's like saying women that have a shaved head are embarrassing their husband.
And the reality is, that would embarrass me. That would embarrass all of us.
If our wife shaved their head, that would be really embarrassing.
Britney Spears looks awful and ugly as sin with her like shaved head.
She was like the heartthrob of every guy back in the day when she had her long hair.
Then she shaves that thing off and she just looks like a hideous creature from Jekyll Island or something.
It's embarrassing. Long hair is what makes women beautiful. Sorry.
Facts. Bible. And, it's embarrassing.
Now, of course, Amish and other cultist groups will say that women need to have a hat on.
But the Bible's not bringing up hats.
The Bible's bringing up hair length and it's saying women should have long hair and men should have short hair.
And it's saying men should have short hair so that they're not disrespecting Christ.
And women should have long hair so they're not disrespecting their husband.
And of course, it goes down the chain.
By disrespecting your husband, you're also disrespecting Christ and you're also disrespecting God.
And so, we both have this requirement.
And you say, "Oh, well, having short hair is easier."
Is it though?
Because by having short hair, you have to get haircuts all the time.
You have to constantly keep it maintained and have haircuts and whatever.
By having it long, yeah, you have something to deal with.
It's a problem either way.
It's a burden on both of us.
Whether you have to have constant haircuts or whether you have to keep it long or maintained,
it's going to be a little bit of a burden.
But you know, we do it as a symbol of what it means.
Obviously, it's not like there's something special in our hair that causes this stuff.
It's what it represents.
Our short haircut represents that we're subject unto Christ and we're going to obey Christ.
And the long hair on a woman represents the fact that she's going to obey her husband
and she's willing to be covered.
And you know what, a woman, when she's covered, she looks beautiful.
When she's uncovered, it looks embarrassing.
It looks like Ellen DeGenerate.
Why is it that lesbians cut their hair short?
Why?
Why is it that faggots put on a dress and lipstick and try to put on a wig?
And why is it that lesbians put on pants and have a short haircut?
It's because they're trying to say, "I hate God."
They're trying to say, "I don't like God."
And look, what is the symbol?
A woman with long hair is beautiful, but what is it symbolizing?
A woman that says yes to her husband
and says nice things to her husband is beautiful.
A woman that has short hair is not as attractive as she could be.
And when she's saying to her husband, "Eh, eh,"
it's gross! It's embarrassing!
"You don't tell me that. You don't talk to me like that.
"How dare you? You're not...
"I'm gonna be disappointed and mad and cold-shouldered and whatever."
It's gross! It's like having a short haircut!
And so many women in here would be so mortified
and embarrassed to have a shaved head...
You know what? It's even more embarrassing when you disrespect your husband.
You would be so mortified. You wouldn't even come to church
with a shaved head. You'd be so embarrassed.
Yet you'll mouth off to your husband and treat him poorly
and have the cold shoulder and just act all feminist all over you want.
You know what? It's worse and it's uglier anyways.
Just like as ugly as it would be for me to start ripping pages out of this Bible
and trashing the Bible and saying, "I'm not going to let Christ tell me what to do,"
is when a wife disrespects her husband.
And you know what? I'm glad that you have long hair,
but if you don't honor your husband, you might as well just shave it off, honey.
You know, we could make all these outward things and just say like,
"Oh, it's only about the outward appearance and just appearing like a godly wife."
No, just being a godly wife. That's what's important.
And we need to really work on this.
I want to go to 1 Peter 3 and we'll finish.
Look, I've seen so many churches where their pastor is just not preaching what the Bible says,
and it's just ugly. It's embarrassing. It makes me so mad.
You see posts on the internet of young girls who get bit by this liberalism disease,
and they have this long, beautiful hair, and then they start chopping it up and cutting it and dressing like a freak.
It's just so embarrassing. It's gross.
And then you just watch wives treat their husbands like trash.
And let me just tell you something. It's just so gross and it's so embarrassing.
I go to work and I see people trashing the boss and disrespecting him.
It's gross. It's embarrassing.
We need to set a different example.
We need to be men that honor our masters, honor our bosses, honor our head, and our head is Christ.
And look, when we act this way, we're disrespecting our head.
It's your body just not functioning the way it should.
You're walking with it. You're just kind of like this, you know?
And I'm not trying to make fun of people that are handicapped or something,
but that's how weird it looks.
You're walking with a gimp, with a limp, with some kind of deformity when you shouldn't be.
You should be walking like a soldier with your head up high and in lockstep
and doing what your head is telling you to do and have some respect for yourself.
And you know what? We need the church to say, "You know what?
We're going to do what this book says.
Preachers are going to preach what the Bible says.
Husbands are going to be obedient to Christ and the Word of God
and to their boss at work.
And wives are going to be subject under their husbands,
and they're going to dress right and act right,
and they're going to treat them with respect.
And then children are going to respect and obey their parents.
And boy, it just, it makes Christ look really appealing.
It makes the body look really appealing.
And look, Christ is the head.
Christ will always look appealing.
If we just got that portrait view and we get the head,
it always looks good.
The problem is, what happens when we start zooming out?
What does everything else look like?
What do the biceps look like?
Does this guy skip leg day?
It looks weird.
You know what I mean?
Has he got some kind of awkward deformity?
Has he got a baby body?
Is he gimp-y?
What's going on?
You know, we want the whole body to just look great.
We want to zoom out, and it's toned, it's ripped, it's that prize fighter, it's ready to go.
This is important, 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 1,
"Likewise ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands,
that if any obey not the word,
they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives,
while they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.
Whose adorning, let it not be that outward adorning of plating the hair,
and of wearing of gold, or putting on of apparel,
but let it be the hidden man of the heart,
and that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit,
which is in the sight of God of great price."
Now, I was listening to some, it was like a debate or something between two guys,
and this one guy was talking about how he had a hard time wanting to be a Christian,
because he's like, "I went to this church and the church is saying women are not allowed to wear jewelry."
And I was just like, "Well, that's not in the Bible."
And I was thinking like, I guess he's pointing to this passage.
Look, this passage is not saying women can't wear jewelry, okay?
Because if you took that logic and you said that's what it's saying,
did you read another one of these?
The putting on of apparel.
That's just wearing clothes.
It's not saying women don't wear clothes.
It's not saying you can't even braid your hair.
What is the passage actually saying?
The passage is not saying you could never do these things.
It's saying when you're trying to adorn yourself,
when you're trying to decide how am I going to make myself better,
don't try to be better by braiding your hair.
Don't try to be better by putting on nicer looking clothes.
Don't try to be better by putting on jewelry.
You know what you do?
Try to be better by being more meek and more submissive to your husband.
It's like, hey, what should I do all day?
Should I spend all day trying to get a new outfit?
I need to go buy a new outfit.
I need to buy more jewelry and I need to go to the hairdresser.
And then when my husband comes home, I'm going to give him an earful.
Or is it you didn't buy a new outfit, you didn't put any jewelry on,
you didn't even get your hair done,
but he came home and you were respectful and kind,
and then God says, hey, that's what I was looking for,
and that's what your husband was looking for.
Look, don't adorn yourself with all this stuff that's going to fade and age anyways.
Clothes are going to eventually get out of fashion, right?
Now we're back--what are we on, like '70s or '80s again?
It's always in cycles or something.
It's like fashion changes all the time and it's not cool anymore.
Pretty soon it'll be cool again.
It's like when my brother and sister were in school,
they said every guy--what was cool is they just wore a white t-shirt.
It was just a white t-shirt and like pressed jeans.
Like that was like what was cool.
Now it's basically like a grunge t-shirt and jeans with holes in it or something like that, right?
But pretty soon they'll be like, "You look homeless."
They'll probably go back to the clean white tee and like nice jeans again or whatever.
And it's just going to be vicious cycles.
Clothes are going to come and go on fashion.
Jewelry is going to come and go on what's nice and what people like.
Your hair is going to constantly go.
And eventually you just age anyways.
But you know what? A woman that's just sweet and kind, it just lasts forever, man.
Man, I just love grandma because she was so nice.
I love grandma because when we came over she just served everybody.
But you know who she served the most?
Grandpa. He didn't sit in grandpa's chair, he didn't disrespect grandpa.
Grandpa had his own cup, grandpa had his own everything.
I mean, she just, it was about, it was the grandpa show.
You come over and grandma made it about the grandpa show and you just loved grandma for it.
But boy, the grandma that pulled her husband off and has got the short haircut
and doesn't make meals anymore, nobody wants to see her anyways.
She killed all of her kids anyways.
And it's gross. We don't want to have gross churches, we don't have gross employees,
and we don't have gross wives, and we don't want to have gross families.
We want to have a body that looks healthy and looks good,
and we need people to be in subjection.
And I'm just hearing so many messages lately that are the exact opposite of what I'm saying today.
Because they're so worried about exceptions.
They're so worried about abuse and all this stuff.
And I'm like, "Show me the chapter on that."
You don't think God ever thought about those things?
Why didn't he bring them up?
He's bringing up these things because this is what the Bible says.
And we need to emphasize what the Bible says.
Oh, if you work out, you could injure yourself.
Okay, but I'm just going to work out anyways.
I'm not worried about every little exception.
Oh, if you drive to church, you could die in a car accident.
Okay, but I'm going to go to church anyways.
You know, I'm not always worried about the exception.
I'm not always worried about some hypothetical of what could possibly go wrong.
Oh, you go on a mission trip to Mexico.
I'm told by everybody, "It's dangerous!"
That's why I'm going.
This neighborhood's so dangerous!
That's why I'm going.
I had a family member say, "You cannot move to Houston.
It's like the murder capital of the world or something."
I'm thinking like, "Sounds awesome."
I get a lot of people saved.
Because when I say, "If you were to die today, it means something."
You know what I mean?
Hey, if you were to die today, they're like, "Yeah, everybody's dying today."
They get saved!
I'm just telling you, quit living your life on all these exceptions
and live your life on the head, the Christ, which is the head of the body.
Do what he said, read the Bible, preach the Bible, believe the Bible.
And we need a church that is healthy because, you know what?
Christ is our head.
Closing prayer.
Thank you, Holy Father, so much for the gift of your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thank you for allowing him to die so we could have the church.
I pray that we would realize that he is our head, whether we like it or not.
And I pray that we would just get the right attitude, that we would just embrace it,
that we'd accept that Christ is our head, that we read the Bible with zeal,
that we'd study the Bible more, that we'd allow Christ to rule in our lives and hearts.
I pray that the wives in this church that are struggling to obey their husbands,
they would just read their Bible more. They would read 1 Peter chapter 3.
They would read 1 Corinthians chapter number 11.
They would read 1 Timothy chapter number 2.
They would read Titus chapter number 2.
They would read what the Bible says about marriage.
They wouldn't allow culture and false religion to influence them.
They would renew their mind with the Bible.
I pray that children, they would obey their parents
whether their parents are setting a good example or not.
They'd be subject unto the parents.
And I pray that you would encourage us all to be a glorious body
because you're such a glorious head.
Such a worthy head that I pray that we could try to be a great body
for your honor and for your glory.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
In closing, let's go to song number 179.
Song number 179.
Such love. Song number 179.
Song number 179.
That God should love a sinner such as I
Should he to change my soul to great die
Such wonder such as I