no it's amazing isn't it amazing love would you sing that fourth verse really
lit it up no condemnation welcome to steadfast Baptist Church thank you for
coming this Wednesday evening let's go ahead and get our service started let's
find your seats and open your hymn books page 207 only a sinner 207 a sinner for
steadfast baptisms else Christians and soul owners here in this that you would
preach is unto us this evening please guide him sustain my pray song this
evening in your black binders in front of you you should have one I sing
the mighty power of God to have a black binder front of you I sing the mighty
power of God be on verse side is their service and so winning times also have
our church stats keep a great work on our soul winning the right is a list of
several expecting ladies please be in prayer for them upcoming events we are
having our kids choir practice Sunday p.m. service Sunday night they will be
performing December 21st and so it's ages 4 to 18 if you can participate I
know a lot of families have been sick and especially this last week and this
week even and so even if you are sick you can still join in and try to join our
kids choirs we'd love to have you participate I'm gonna be preaching
November 23rd for anchor Baptist Church looking forward to that November 29th we
have a flag football event if you'd like to participate with us further Marcel's
gonna be leading this ladies Christmas party December 5th December 8th is
Christmas caroling December 21st we have a cookie cookie bake-off December 24th
is our Christmas candlelight service and then December 31st is our men's
preaching and pizza evening on the back is our prayer list so we'll go over this
real quick do you need to pray for the Carlson's parents for their health also
if you please be in prayer for mrs. Miller's friend her mother is having
cancer treatments please play for the Scotts parents brother Horace miss grace
and then also if you pray for brother Tony's health didn't pray for the
Foley's dad for his kidney disease are praying for the major and his daughter
and also friend who also have health issues continue to pray for the
Weathers we're praying for brother Goodwin sister-in-law miss Genzi's
husband had passed away please continue to pray for miss Lola and Phoebe and at
Faith Ward they had a memorial for brother Rowe that I would encourage you
if you're interested you could always check it out a lot of people gave
testimony this last week about just his life and just this impact and there's a
lot of people that talk positively about being his best friend and just you know
what an incredible example brother Kevin was just very organized he helped a lot
of things I think he had like plan and just advertise so many mission trips
that still haven't even happened yet so you know his life is still continuing a
legacy of just someone that was very zealous for the things of God and being
a soul winner and so I just continue to pray for them pray for brother Wallach's
aunt really she had passed away but pray for their family I guess pray for that
situation and then if you continue to pray for the Burns's brother Joe so
that's pretty much all I have as far as prayer requests in our bulletin we'll
say a quick word of prayer as a church family thank you any father so much for
all these ladies are expecting in our church I pray they be with them during
their pregnancies please help them to have a timely birth I pray that you would
also just help our church family that just has illness or sickness right now I
pray you give them a speedy recovery help them to get back into church I
pray you'd also bless our prayer list those that are mentioned here with
serious issues with cancer and kidney disease and other illnesses and ailments
I pray if possibly please just give them favor please give them recovery please
just give them peace during this difficulty I pray you'd also just bless
our church family that needs favor right now please be with those family members
and friends that have lost loved ones that you could please encourage them
you'd have opportunities to share the gospel with those that are not saved and
I pray you continue to bless the work that's going in the Philippines with our
evangelists over there bless him and his family and the work that they're doing
and I pray that you would just in help us with this this time of year to just
remember what Christ has done for us and to think about the lost and help see
them saved in Jesus name we pray amen go ahead and seeing our psalm of the week
Psalm 119, so it's in our special binders here,
black binders, Psalm 119.
- Psalm 119, passed around, can turn in your Bible
to Deuteronomy chapter seven, to Deuteronomy chapter number
seven.
- Deuteronomy chapter number seven, the Bible reads,
"When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land
"whether thou goest to possess it,
"and have cast out many nations before thee,
"the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites
"and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites
"and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier
"than thou, and when the Lord thy God shall deliver them
"before thee, thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them.
"Thou shalt make no covenant with them,
"nor show mercy unto them.
"Neither shalt thou make marriages with them.
"Thy daughter thou shalt not give unto thy son,
"nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son.
"For they will turn away thy son from following me,
"that they may serve other gods,
"so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you
"and destroy thee suddenly.
"And thus shall you deal with them.
"You shall destroy their altars and break down their images
"and cut down their groves and burn their graven images
"with fire.
"For thou art in holy people unto the Lord thy God.
"The Lord thy God hath chosen thee
"to be a special people unto himself
"above all people that are upon the face of the earth.
"The Lord did not set his love upon you nor choose you
"because you are more in number than any people.
"For ye were the fewest of all people.
"But because the Lord loved you
"and because he would keep the oath
"which he had sworn unto your fathers
"had the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand
"and redeemed you out of the house of Boneman
"from the hand of Pharaoh, King of Egypt.
"Now therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God,
"the faithful God which keepeth covenant and mercy
"with them that love him and to keep his commandments
"to a thousand generations and repayeth them
"that hate him to their face to destroy them.
"He will not be slack to him that hateth him,
"he will repay him to his face.
"Thou shalt therefore keep the commandments
"and the statutes and the judgments
"which I command thee this day to do them.
"Wherefore it shall come to pass
"if ye hearken to these judgments and keep and do them
"that the Lord thy God shall keep unto thee
"the covenant and the mercy which ye swear unto thy fathers.
"And he will love thee and bless thee and multiply thee.
"He will also bless the fruit of thy womb
"and the fruit of thy land, thy corn and thy wine,
"and thine oil, the increase of thy kind,
"and the flocks of thy sheep in the land
"which ye swear unto thy fathers to give thee.
"Thou shalt be blessed above all people.
"There shall not be male or female barren among you
"or among your cattle.
"And the Lord will take away from thee all sickness
"and will put none of this evil diseases of Egypt
"which thou knowest upon thee,
"but will lay them upon all them that hate thee.
"And thou shalt consume all the people
"with which the Lord thy God shall deliver thee.
"Thine eye shalt have no pity upon them.
"Neither shalt thou serve their gods
"for that will be a snare unto thee.
"If thou shalt say in thine heart,
"these nations are more than I,
"how can I dispossess them?
"Thou shalt not be afraid of them,
"but thou shalt remember what the Lord thy God
"did unto Pharaoh and to all Egypt.
"The great temptations which thine eye saw
"and the signs and the wonders
"and the mighty hand and the stretched out arm
"whereby the Lord thy God brought thee out,
"so shall the Lord thy God do unto all the people
"of whom thou art afraid.
"Moreover, the Lord thy God will send the hornet
"among them until they that are left
"and hide themselves from thee be destroyed.
"Thou shalt not be affrighted at them,
"for the Lord thy God is among you a mighty God
"and terrible, and the Lord thy God will put out
"those nations before thee by little and little.
"Thou mayest not consume them at once
"lest the beasts of the field increase upon thee.
"But the Lord thy God shall deliver them unto thee
"and shall destroy them with a mighty destruction
"until they be destroyed.
"And he shall deliver their kings into thine hand
"and thou shalt destroy their name from under heaven.
"There shall no man be able to stand before thee
"until thou have destroyed them.
"The graven images of their God shall you burn with fire.
"Thou shalt not desire the silver or gold that is on them
"nor take it unto thee lest thou be snared therein
"for it is an abomination to the Lord thy God.
"Neither shalt thou bring an abomination into thine house
"lest thou be a cursed thing like it.
"But thou shalt utterly detest it
"and thou shalt utterly abhor it for it is a cursed thing."
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, thank you for allowing us
to be at church tonight.
Thank you for Steadfast Baptist Church
and all the salvations that we've gotten this year.
Thank you for our pastor.
I pray that you bless Pastor Shelley,
fill him with your Holy Spirit.
Lord, that you may preach your word unto us.
Help us to make any applicable changes to our lives, Lord,
to become better Christians.
Praise in Jesus' name, amen.
- Amen.
Deuteronomy chapter seven, the Bible says,
"When the Lord thy God shall bring thee
"into the land where it goes to possess it
"and hath cast out many nations before thee,
"the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites
"and the Canaanites and the Perizzites
"and the Hivites and the Jebusites,
"seven nations greater and mightier than thou.
"And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee,
"thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them.
"Thou shalt make no covenant with them
"nor show mercy unto them.
"Neither shalt thou make marriages with them.
"Thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son
"nor his daughter shall thou take unto thy son.
"For they will turn away thy son from following me
"that they may serve other gods.
"So will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you
"and destroy thee suddenly."
Now Deuteronomy again, quick recap.
Moses is giving a second admonition
to this younger generation that has survived
40 years in the wilderness.
He's reminding them of the laws that God had given them.
He had given them 40 years prior at Mount Sinai
or as described as Horeb when they were at Horeb.
And so this is just a kind of a reminder
and arguably, this is a younger generation,
it's a new generation, so they just need to hear
this information again.
He's saying you're about to enter in this promised land
and you're gonna dispossess seven nations specifically
that are being mentioned here.
The Hightites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites,
and the Parasites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
Seven nations greater than them.
These specific nations, it's not entirely limited
to these groups because you also have the Philistines
that are gonna be mentioned in this particular area.
But just generally speaking, the land of Canaan
is the Canaanites.
You can kind of go back to the book of Genesis
and you can see kind of the heritage of these people.
You have Ham, and when we talk about Ham specifically,
Ham has like four kids.
And of those four kids, one's like foot or whatever,
put, I don't know how you say it, it's like P-H-U-T.
We don't really know his heritage that well, okay?
But then you have Canaan is one of them.
And from Canaan is kind of like all these Canaanites.
From another family tree is where you kind of get
Philistim and you get essentially the Philistines.
But this specific, you know, family tree
is pretty much all coming from Canaan.
And that's, you know, prophesied of in Genesis,
like cursed be Canaan, right?
And so this entire like family tree
is gonna be eliminated and is doomed and cursed of God.
And he was waiting essentially
for them to build this entire area
and for all their wickedness to come to a full point.
And then God's just gonna allow the children of Israel
to come in, take over, wipe out this entire family tree.
That's kind of what's in view here.
And then they're gonna have a lot of wars
with the Philistines.
They don't necessarily eliminate their family tree as easily.
But he's saying this specific group of people,
you should make no marriages with them,
no covenants with them.
You shouldn't have any mercy on these type of people.
And if you do, it's gonna cause you all kinds of problems.
It's gonna even cause specifically in verse four
that your son would stop serving you because of his wife.
Now, I think it doesn't bring up the wife
being turned away from God because of the husband.
I think that one's just more implied.
It's probably more implied that if you give your daughter
off to some false religion or some man,
she's very likely to just follow his lead
and essentially just kind of go after his religion.
But it's saying even a man could be corrupted by his wife.
And if he has this wife of a false religion,
of a false tribe,
they could drag his heart away from the things of God.
And so, we shouldn't think of women as,
even though they may be the weaker vessel,
that they can't necessarily affect their husband
or cause their husband to be drugged down with them.
And in many cases, it's women that destroy the men.
Now, in the Old Testament,
God is often talking about groups of people
from what we would assume is kind of like
an ethnic perspective, right?
You know, we're talking about genetics,
we're talking about family trees,
we're talking about certain ethnicities in many cases.
This is not to teach that God is somehow a racist
or something like that,
or he just hates a certain group of people
just based on their physical heritage.
But generally speaking, the Old Testament groups of people
were very tightly coupled with false religion.
And so when we look at the Canaanites specifically,
their problem is not their genetics.
Their problem is not just that this group of people
is just doomed because they have a certain color skin
or something nonsensical like that.
It's because they have a false religion.
And of course, you're gonna find throughout the Bible,
certain people that are of a Canaanite heritage
that end up being good people.
You have Simon the Canaanite
that's mentioned in the New Testament.
And so there's certain people that, hey,
they can still be redeemed even though they have
maybe a Canaanite heritage or a Canaanite upbringing.
But generally speaking,
this group of people adheres to a false religion,
to false gods, they're a heathen nation,
a heathen group of people.
And so God doesn't want them to intermingle.
And we carry this forward in the New Testament
to where we don't hate certain groups of people
because of their ethnicity or because of their family tree,
but we shouldn't want to intermingle with people
of a different religion.
America was founded as a Christian nation,
as a Protestant nation,
as one adhering to the Bible, as the word of God.
And what made America great was trying to divide itself
from false religion and separate itself under the Bible
and under the Christian heritage.
And I believe that's why we've seen the success of America.
And as America over time has allowed itself
to allow laws to change and to bring in people groups
that are not Christian, that don't have a Christian heritage
or a Christian upbringing, it's degraded our society.
It's degraded our culture.
It causes all kinds of problems.
It's not because of ethnicity.
It's not because of racial issues.
It's because of religious issues.
And the Bible teaches that there's nothing wrong
with mixing with different groups of people
based on their skin color or their genetics,
but there is something wrong with mixing with people
when they have a different religion.
And that is the huge problem.
And when we talk about America,
America's problems are not because we're bringing people
from Africa or India or Europe or Mexico.
The problem is that we're bringing people that are Hindu,
Islamic, people that are Catholic,
people that are of a false religion.
That is the problem.
Now, of course, there's been a huge overlap
with obviously people coming from India are usually Hindu.
People coming from Mexico are typically Catholic.
People that are coming from Africa many times
may have some kind of a voodoo religion
or some kind of a pagan weird religion
that's coming with them.
So obviously there's been a tight coupling
with people groups throughout history
that when you're bringing certain groups of people
into America, you're importing a false religion.
And people would look at these group of people
and think that there's something wrong with them
and they don't understand it's the religion
that's wrong with them,
not their particular racial demographics
or the differences of their culture
or the spices of their food or something like this.
Like that doesn't matter, right?
What matters is them bringing in false religion.
And of course, God is saying,
hey, as the children of Israel,
you shouldn't be intermingling with these false religions,
these false groups, you need to destroy them utterly.
Notice how God words it.
You shouldn't even have mercy on these groups of people.
Now, how would we apply that today?
And how could we make some parallels today?
Obviously, we live in the New Testament,
we have the gospel, we want people to be saved.
And of course, the Bible tells us
that we're supposed to preach the gospel
in every creature.
We're supposed to go into all the world
and preach the gospel to every creature.
I think we should give everybody a chance.
But at the end of the day,
you have to be realizing that there's different,
there's different modes in how we interact with people
based on context, right?
I should want everyone to be saved.
That doesn't mean that I want to marry everybody.
That doesn't mean that I want everyone
to live in my country, right?
There's gonna be different contexts
in how I operate with everybody.
Hey, I want everybody to be saved.
So should that mean that we should literally import
every single person on the entire planet
to just live in my country in an effort to get them saved?
No, that's not necessarily what the Bible is teaching, right?
In many cases, we go out into all the world
and preach the gospel.
Think about this.
Don't churches adopt this philosophy today
where non-denominational churches and evangelical churches,
their idea is we need to just bring tons of unsaved people
into the church in an effort to get them saved.
But then what ends up happening
is they ruin the church service.
They ruin the church atmosphere.
Because they're bringing in so many heathen
and ungodly people and because of their messaging,
they're basically not allowing for church
to be church anymore.
And to actually enforce church discipline
and actually to grow and to teach things
that are not just the milk of the word,
but actually the strong meat.
And so they're actually corrupting church
by supposedly wanting to get people saved.
You know, that's not the vehicle
by which you get people saved.
And in the same vein, as a country and as a state,
we shouldn't be trying to just import people
all over the world to get them saved.
You know, we should go out and preach the gospel to people.
And if we get them saved, then saying,
hey, we want to bring you to America,
or if that's possible, or if that makes sense,
or if that's logical.
We should not want to import unsaved people into our nation.
You know, that's a bad foreign policy.
That's a bad idea.
In the same vein, you also don't want to just
bring people into your home that are not saved.
You know, oh, well, we're Christians.
We should just bring anybody home.
I'm not gonna just bring in random Hindus
and random Muslims and random Jews
and ran them whatever into my household.
No, I can go knock on their door
and I can try to give them the gospel,
but let me just tell you something.
I'm not gonna just bring them into my house
and try to just set them up.
Hey, you wanna babysit my kids or something like this?
No, and of course, from a national perspective,
sometimes when we're dealing with
what we consider foreign policy as a nation or whatever,
we wanna have the right philosophy.
If you're a nation that's Christian
and you're dealing with a nation that's Hindu,
a nation that's Islamic,
we don't wanna make covenants with these nations.
We don't even wanna show mercy
on these nations in many cases.
We wanna say like, look, you have a false religion.
You guys have these problems.
We don't wanna entangle ourselves with you in this.
Now look, can we be peaceable under them
and try to offer whatever seems reasonable
and try to give the gospel, sure.
But at the end of the day,
there are certain religions that are so hostile
to Christianity, so hostile to the gospel,
it makes no sense to show them all of this
over-the-top mercy and grace.
You know, that's not biblical, frankly speaking.
And for some groups of people,
God is just saying, hey, you need to eradicate
these particular people, groups.
So obviously in the Old Testament,
there are certain groups of people,
they just need to be eradicated,
they need to be just disposed of,
and so they're going to eliminate them.
Obviously, when you look at these groups of people
and you compare Leviticus 20,
it actually tells you what they're like.
And it's like, they're incestuous,
not only are they incestuous,
they're committing like every perverted,
weird thing that you can imagine.
Just all kinds of just sodomy, witchcraft, adultery,
weird incestuous adultery,
all kinds of just like abominations,
all kinds of wicked paganism and idolatry.
And he's just saying, look,
all these nations have done these things,
therefore we're just going to eradicate them.
We're just, we don't want to import that.
We don't want to tolerate that.
We don't want to allow that.
And look, if there was a nation today
that's just full of incestuous,
just idolatry and adultery and pedophilia
and sodomy and whatever, we wouldn't want to be like,
hey, let's make a bunch of covenants with these people.
Let's be nice to these people.
We'd be like, we don't even want to tolerate your existence.
In America today, why do we send those type of people
to prison for the rest of their life?
We shouldn't even show mercy to those people.
We should just eliminate them.
We should just get rid of sodomites and pedophiles
and rapists and murderers or whatever.
We shouldn't be like, oh, let's just bring them back
on the streets.
You know, in America, I believe our Supreme Court
had passed legislation making it where you can't
put pedophiles to death.
And I think Florida, maybe recently,
they were trying to create a law where you could finally
put pedophiles back to death or whatever.
And it's like all the LGBT are saying,
they're going to use this to target us.
Yes, we are.
Instead of having to go to the fact
that we catch them being a pedophile,
we're just going to catch you being a faggot
and then we'll put you to death, OK?
Let's go there now, right?
But hey, I'll take anything I can get.
So if we can do that, I think it was like targeting them
if they hurt a child under the age of 12
or something like this.
And again, I'm just thinking like, amen.
I wish they'd also speed it up 'cause in many cases
when these people get caught
and it's proven beyond a shadow of a doubt,
it's still like a decade or something like that.
It's like, look, let's just get it over with.
We don't like you, you don't like yourself,
we're gonna help you, all right?
And we're gonna do what Jesus said
and we're gonna just help you with the millstone.
The millstone theology, all right?
But again, some people get really squeamish
about these things.
They say like, oh, God's performing genocide
or God is just eradicating whole groups of people.
Okay, you mean like the flood?
I mean, you have to understand that God eliminated,
his quote genocide here is way less
than what he did in the flood.
How are you gonna do?
If you don't like this passage,
you're really not gonna like the God of the Bible
because you just start reading
and in Genesis chapter number six,
he's just like, yeah, I'm gonna eliminate everyone
except for Noah and his family.
I mean, that's a pretty big just like overhaul.
Not only that, just 95 plus percent of humanity
is gonna die and go to hell for all of eternity.
I mean, if you don't like, I mean,
just a physical genocide isn't even nearly as bad
as going to hell for all of eternity.
You have to understand that the God of the Bible
is not, you know, he doesn't owe us anything.
We're sinners and as sinners,
we deserve a just recompense of reward.
You know, we're not granted life.
He just by his long suffering and gracious nature
allows us to live beyond what we even deserve.
You know, I think that this could help you a little bit.
You know, you see someone good die.
See someone nice die.
You see someone doing what's right die.
And maybe it seems like, man, he died at a young age.
It's like, you deserve to die the day you sinned.
I mean, God is not owe us anything.
We are here by his grace.
We are walking in his grace.
And whenever you get that in your mind,
you start actually appreciating every single day
God gives you instead of feeling like you're entitled.
You know, we live in such an entitled generation
and an entitled society that feels like
everything should be handed to them and God,
God should treat me this way.
You don't get to decide how God treats you.
He already treats you way better than you deserve.
And you should start counting your blessings
rather than accusing God of thinking like,
oh, how bad is it or whatever.
You know, there's so many Americans today
that are just so blackpilled on life
and they're sitting here thinking like,
you know what, I deserve a three-bedroom two-bath house
and not have to pay very much money for it.
I deserve a six-figure job.
I deserve to go to college and not have to pay for it.
I deserve to have a nice car and all these,
you know, in the '50s, you know,
they didn't have to pay that much
for cars and houses and whatever.
It's like, oh yeah, you know what happened
right before the '50s?
It was called the '40s,
where you got drafted against your will
to go over into Europe and to most likely die.
So it's like, oh, I wanna live in the '50s.
It's like, you can't just import yourself into the '50s.
Right?
Why don't we just play,
I just wish I was Tom Brady.
You know, why can't I just be 6'5"
in the best quarterback ever?
Right?
I just wanna be Wayne Gretzky.
I just wanna be the greatest, you know,
hockey player ever or whatever.
You know, does God just owe you
to be just the greatest person ever
and port yourself to any time or any place?
It's like, look, you could transport yourself
to any time and any place or whatever.
It's like, oh, I wish I could go back to the '50s.
Yeah, okay, how many women in the '50s
had a dishwasher in their house
and did all their dishes for them?
How many women in the '50s had a washing machine
and they just washed all their clothes for them?
How many women in the '50s had your little TikTok
and Instagram and whatever to look at all day every day?
And all your nice little, I mean,
how many families in the '50s even had two cars?
You know, they like to pretend like,
oh, if you just transport yourself into this magical land,
you would just have all this fun
and just all this great stuff.
It lies, honestly, in many cases.
You know, we're not guaranteed anything.
We're not promised anything.
Quit being such an entitled brat.
Honestly, you live in one of the greatest times to ever live.
I mean, let's import you to other times.
Let's just try, I don't know, how about the 1500s,
where if you're William Tyndale,
you're hunted down by the Catholic church
and you're gonna get your throat slit
and burned at the stake for wanting a Bible.
Do you wanna go back to then?
Why do you get to just press the button like 50s?
You know, I just wanted the 50s.
How about 1500s?
How about let's go to the 1400s?
The 1300s, the 1200s, I mean, when do you wanna go back?
Look, this is one of the greatest times
to ever live, honestly, if you actually realize history.
And then yet people are just complaining so much.
They're just complaining.
I mean, you're in Texas right now.
You're arguably one of the greatest places in the world.
I'm sorry, whether you realize it or not,
I've traveled a little bit, and I'm just telling you,
every time I travel, I'm thinking like,
Texas just got a little bit better to me.
And I also noticed like most places,
they like want to be Texas so bad.
I mean, you go anywhere, and it's like,
we have the Texas burger, you know?
Or we have Texas Roadhouse.
Everything's like Texas everywhere else.
Why, 'cause they just wanna be cool.
I mean, look, when I was in Australia,
you go to the restaurant, it says, try the Texas burger.
It's like, why does Australia want the Texas burger?
I'm telling you, Texas is awesome, that's why.
'Cause it's like, and again, what is the Texas burger?
What do you just think is in your mind?
What is the Texas burger?
It's probably a lot of meat, and it's big, right?
Amen, everything's bigger in Texas, bigger houses.
Look, you go move anywhere else in the United States,
the average size of a home is much smaller.
You go to Phoenix, you go to any of these places.
I mean, typically, just the average size
of the house is much smaller.
You know, the highways, much smaller.
The trucks, much smaller.
I mean, it's just like, why do you wanna go somewhere else?
I wanna go back in time, you know, to the '50s.
Well, they didn't have seat belts.
Your kids are just literally rolling around
in the car or whatever.
I mean, look, there is so many conveniences.
There are so many benefits to the time that you live in.
And hey, go back in time.
You have to literally walk across the sea
and go and literally fight giants to the death
in order to inherit the promised land.
And it's like, oh, but they're offering us
50-year mortgages.
You don't even have to take it.
It's like, your giant is a 50-year mortgage?
I'm like, look, bro, you're complaining
about the wrong things here.
Like, they have to go and destroy an entire evil nation
that wants to murder them that's literal giants.
I mean, you don't even understand
how little of a battle you actually have
and how much of a complainer you are.
But what's the problem here?
If you marry the wrong person,
hey, you could go down a bad path.
And of course, this is a common thing that happens.
Think about this, Eve is the one that gives the fruit
unto Adam, right?
And you know, as men, we have to be careful
that we are the true leaders of our homes
and that we don't allow ourselves to go down a bad path.
And of course, if you're not married,
you need to be careful who you marry.
You want to marry a woman that wants to follow you
and wants to follow you in the right direction.
Go to Nehemiah chapter 13.
Keep your finger, go to Nehemiah chapter 13.
You should never consider a woman that is not saved at all.
Like that should just be off the table.
You should never ever get married
to someone that's not saved.
But I'll go steps further than this.
I think that you should also be careful.
You wanna be careful that the woman is not only saved,
but actually wants to serve God, okay?
Now I'm not saying that she has to be exactly like you.
I'm not saying she even has to be like new IFB or whatever.
I'm not saying that she has to have every doctrine right.
I'm not saying any of that.
But generally speaking, she should have a desire
to want to serve God.
Because at least you can work with that.
Now, at the end of the day,
as close as she can get to the right doctrine you want.
I'm not trying to say you don't want a woman
that's already right in all the categories.
What I am saying is this, is like,
if she's not saved, it's off the table.
If she's saved, but she's just not really
that interested in serving God,
I would say that should be off the table too.
And again, I'm just giving you my personal opinion,
my personal advice.
If I had, God forbid, if I had to go back in time
and redo it, I would certainly marry my wife again,
that's for sure.
But I would be looking for a woman
that saves and wants to serve God.
And you know, praise God, when I was considering a wife,
that is what my wife was like.
My wife was saved, and I remember having
a very clear conversation with her,
a direct conversation early in her dating,
and I said, you're gonna go to whatever church
I want us to go to.
And I mean, and she was like, okay.
You know, she was willing to do that.
That was important for me.
She didn't know what church,
she didn't know I was gonna drag her
into the new Ivy fan club.
She didn't know what that meant at the time.
She just knew, hey, he wants the lead, I'm gonna follow.
And you know what, that was an important conversation to me.
Because if she had said, no, I'm gonna go to my dad's church
and like, I won't necessarily follow you
or wanna go where you wanna go to church.
It would have, I would have, sorry.
I know you're super attractive
and I know you're beautiful and I like you,
but that's just a deal breaker for me.
If a woman does not wanna follow me, you know what?
I don't wanna marry her, why?
Because she's gonna drag me down wherever she wants to go.
And this happened even to the greatest men to ever live.
Nehemiah, look at verse, chapter 13, look at verse 25.
And I contended with him, let's talk about Nehemiah,
and cursed them and smote certain of them
and plucked off their hair.
This is what he's doing to the Jews, you know what I mean?
And made them swear by God saying,
"Ye shall not give your daughters under their sons,
"nor take their daughters under your sons or for yourselves."
Did not Solomon, king of Israel, sin by these things?
Yet among many nations was there no king like him
who was beloved of his God,
and God made him king over all Israel.
Nevertheless, even him did outlandish women cause the sin.
He said, look, this is the guy
that's one of the greatest guys to ever live.
God loved him more than virtually any guy.
I mean, he just poured out a special blessing on him.
He gave him the greatest wisdom of any man.
The Bible's like pretty clear that Solomon's
just the smartest man to basically ever live,
the most wisdom, super beloved, super peace.
I mean, the guy is just accumulating wealth
from all over the world.
Everybody's at peace with this guy.
And yet even him, outlandish women did cause him to sin.
Meaning it doesn't matter who you are,
how much favor you have with God,
women can be the downfall of any man.
Go over to Proverbs chapter 31, go to Proverbs 31.
Think about Samson.
Samson is told by his parents,
hey, why don't you marry someone in our tribe
of your brethren, of your kindred?
And he didn't want that.
He wanted some foreign exotic woman.
And of course, that marriage didn't pan out.
Then he's just with Harlots.
Then he's with Delilah.
And she's from the Valley of Solrec.
We don't really know much about Delilah other than that.
But that area is pretty much in between the Philistines
and the children of Israel stands to reason.
She's probably Philistine or part Philistine
or something like that.
And of course she's not someone that loves him.
She's someone that's gonna betray him.
She's someone that's gonna stab him in the back
for money.
She's someone that's gonna take him to the cleaners.
And you know what?
You marry a woman that's not saved
or doesn't care about the things of God.
There's a high likelihood she will stab you in the back.
She will take you to the cleaners.
She will not love you.
You just don't get involved with people that aren't saved.
And you know what, you young women, same rule.
I don't care how good looking he is.
I don't care how much money he has or whatever.
You know what?
Why don't you marry one of your brethren?
And you young single guys,
instead of looking for, you know,
some Kim Kardashian new IFB wife or something like that,
or whatever it is, you don't even want that anyways.
Just marry a girl that actually loves Jesus.
Favor is deceitful and beauty is vain,
is what the Bible says.
And you know what I've noticed?
Women that are super into beauty and their looks
and stuff like that are just not women
you wanna be around anyways.
They have an ugly personality oftentimes.
You know, it's hard for women that are super attractive
to have an attractive personality
or to be like a nice, kind person
because they're just obsessed with their image,
they're obsessed with their hair,
they're just obsessed with outward beauty
and getting attention and for all the wrong reasons.
You know what?
You're better off just marrying a woman
that cares about everything else
than all of her looks and whatever.
That's just not the type of woman
that you wanna go down the road with.
You don't wanna go down the road with a woman
that's not saved, that doesn't care about the things of God.
These vain beauty women, beauty is vain.
And at the end of the day,
beauty's in the eye of the beholder anyways.
But I'm just telling you, you need to be careful
what kind of women you're getting wrapped up in.
What does Proverbs chapter 31 say?
Look at verse number three,
this is the instructions of a mother.
Give not thy strength unto women,
nor thy ways that was destroyed kings.
Notice that men can give up their strength unto women.
Look, how much power and wealth and strength
does Solomon have?
Yet he's somehow just giving it unto women.
He just somehow allowing women to just basically
rule his life and to tell him what to do
and just to lead him around.
And you know, at the end of the day,
this is just a danger for men.
Hey, you need to stay the leader.
You need to stay the man of the house.
You need to make sure that you're marrying a woman
that wants to actually be a wife,
that actually wants to follow you,
that actually cares about the things of God,
that's actually gonna be subject under the Bible.
These things are important.
It's a huge point of the Bible.
Think about it.
I mean, when Esau and Jacob are thinking about wives,
the wives of Esau are just very offensive
unto Isaac and Rebekah.
They're just very upset with the wives that he chose
'cause they just realized he's gonna not be a great guy
because of the woman he married.
And they wanna make sure, hey, Jacob,
you need to make sure and go back
and get a woman of our kindred.
What is that picturing?
A saved woman.
Think about Isaac's wife.
I mean, Isaac's wife, Rebecca,
she's never even seen him
when she agrees to go and marry this guy.
She agrees to marry him like the day that they meet.
And again, it's based on the testimony of the messenger
and the messenger's giving a testimony of the Lord.
Hey, the Lord, this is a divine appointment.
This marriage is for the causes of God
and the causes of Christ.
And so she ends up being willing to marry, you know,
for what?
For faith.
You know, if she's willing to marry you because of faith,
you know what, it's gonna last.
If she's marrying you for money and looks
and all the other stuff, that's gonna change, evolve.
That's not gonna last.
You're building your house upon the sand.
You wanna make sure that this woman is saved
and she wants to serve God.
Otherwise, it's dangerous.
You know, we should have no interfaith marriages.
Now, here's the problem.
Go to 1 Corinthians 7.
Here's the problem, is many people will get saved
later in life.
Maybe you already got married.
Well, you can't change it now.
But at the end of the day, interfaith marriages
is a negative thing.
You know, one of the more famous ones
that I could think of just off the top of my head
was J.D. Vance.
Now, J.D. Vance married a Hindu, Usha.
You know, you should already know, okay, Usha.
Usha Vance.
Now, his situation is, number one,
it's not exactly what we're talking about
because he's not even saved, all right?
He's a Catholic.
But just for the example,
I'm just trying to show an illustration
of someone that's got a completely different religion.
You've got a Catholic marrying a Hindu,
that's just very incompatible.
It's just not what the Bible teaches.
And again, leave it to Catholics
to always do the wrong thing.
But in his defense, they married in 2014
when he wasn't even very much involved in anything.
But he was raised evangelical,
later became agnostic or atheist or something,
and then later converted to Catholicism.
But he got married in 2014,
later converted to Catholicism
in somewhere like 2018, 2019,
maybe four or five years later or something like that.
But what do you do?
Let's say hypothetically,
JD Vance was someone that was actually saved.
He's not saved.
But let's say someone was saved.
You got married five years ago.
You're married to a Hindu.
You find yourself married to a Hindu, okay?
What do you do?
Well, 1 Corinthians 7,
look what it says in verse number 13.
And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not,
if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him.
Now, the Bible's clear, like,
you've made this vow to be married to this person,
even if they were not saved,
you should still stay married to them, period.
That should be your effort.
That should be your energy.
That should be your goal.
Hey, you're just gonna stay married to them, whatever.
Verse 14, for the unbelieving husband
is sanctified by the wife,
and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband,
else were your children unclean, but now are they holy.
So saying, hey, you could still technically
raise godly children, even though it's not ideal at all.
It's not the best case scenario.
And of course, if you are a woman who is saved,
and your husband is not saved,
I believe that you should still go to church.
And I believe you should go to the right church.
I don't believe that, oh, well, my husband's
dragging me to the Catholic church.
No, you go to a church that believes salvation by faith.
No, you go to the right kind of church.
Obviously, you should obey your husband and everything,
but you're supposed to also obey the higher powers.
And at the end of the day, I believe
that you should go to the church that God
wants you to go to, period.
This would be like one of the only times
that you wouldn't necessarily follow your husband to church.
Now, you know, there's discretion here.
Obviously, if your husband's saved
and he's taken you to a church where
they have the right gospel and the right Bible,
and maybe you just prefer one over another,
you should probably follow your husband in that scenario.
But if he's wanting to take you to an unsaved church,
to a church that doesn't have the right gospel
and the right Bible, I think you should go
to the right church and the right Bible.
And you're hopefully saying, hey,
I'm gonna do whatever you want.
I'll make any meals that you want.
I'll serve you.
I'm gonna call you Lord.
I'm gonna wait on you hand and foot,
but just I wanna go to the right church.
And look, I think that like 99% of husbands
are gonna just be like, that sounds awesome,
'cause they're definitely not even getting that.
I mean, how many women are even doing that, let alone?
And look, how many people do I go out
and knock on the door and the wife just comes up to me
and the husband's just drinking a beer and doing whatever,
and whatever, she just wants to talk about the Bible.
I mean, they don't care at all.
As long as they're getting their meal,
as long as they're getting whatever they need, they're fine.
I mean, you go to lots of churches just filled with women
without their husband and everything like that.
It's not unrealistic for women to go to the right church
apart from their husband if their husband was an unbeliever.
Now, of course, she should maybe potentially consider
encouraging them to visit church
and try to give them the gospel and stuff, I get that.
Well, let's just say she's tried it, he's not interested,
whatever, hey, go to the right kind of church.
Obviously, the same would be with a husband.
Hey, if your wife's not saved, you know what?
You still go to church.
Now, I'm gonna do everything in my power as a husband,
though, to try and get my wife into church, okay?
You know, including picking her up
and putting her in the car and bringing her to church.
And you say, like, literally?
Literally, okay.
Now, obviously, you only have so much physical control
over another person, but when push comes to shove,
like, I want my wife to be saved.
I want my wife to be in church.
I want these things to go well.
You know, I hope it wouldn't get to that point,
but hey, you know.
And let's be honest, you could do lots of things.
Like, hey, I'll buy you a nice meal afterwards.
You know, we'll buy you some nice dresses and skirts.
Like, I think you could figure out other ways.
You don't have to get to that extreme
or something like that.
But at the end of the day, I'm gonna do my best.
If my wife literally is like Peter Ruckman,
diving out of the moving car, okay,
then yeah, maybe you're like, okay,
I'm just gonna go by myself or whatever, right?
She literally dove out of the car.
Now, if she dives out of the car, check on her,
call an ambulance or whatever.
I'm just saying, I'm gonna put as much effort
as humanly possible to get her into church.
You know what I mean?
But if she's not going, I'm still gonna go.
I'm still gonna go and I'm gonna take my kids with me.
I wanna be in church.
I wanna serve God at the end of the day.
And what happens if they just say like,
I can't stand being married to you.
I don't like Christianity.
I don't like God.
I don't wanna be with you.
And they just, they go and get a lawyer
and they send you the divorce document.
What do you do in that situation?
Well, it says in verse 15,
but if the unbelieving depart, let him depart.
A brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases,
but God has called us to peace.
So I should not be insinuating this, encouraging this,
asking for this, wanting this.
I should say, no, I wanna stay with you.
But if they're just gonna just run away
and dive out of the car, then it's like, okay.
You know, that's basically what the passage is saying.
Is this saying like, hey, I don't like my spouse,
so I'm just gonna call them unsaved
and then I'm gonna serve them divorce papers?
No, that is wrong, and that's what a lot of people do today,
is they just basically say like,
well, I just think they're unsaved,
so I just filed divorce anyways.
Or it's just like, everyone that's getting divorced
hates their spouse, they're getting divorced, okay?
And anytime you hate someone,
you can just dream up any evil you want about them.
You know, as a Christian, you should not initiate divorce
or want divorce or encourage it or help it in any way.
And if my wife was saved, you know,
I don't even wanna try and sign the paperwork.
I'm gonna fight tooth and claw.
I'm gonna just do everything I can
to just basically keep that going.
It's just basically saying how much effort and energy
do you have to try and keep this unsaved person
in your corner and just saying,
look, if they're gonna be that arduous
at staying unmarried from you, then it's, you know, okay.
But let's say you do get divorced.
What's your options at that point?
Remain unmarried is what the Bible says.
You're not allowed to get remarried.
You're not allowed to date.
There's no exception.
There's no clause.
You have to wait until they die.
And then you're loosed from that arrangement
till death do us part means something.
And then you could potentially get remarried
if that were the case.
But you're supposed to remain unmarried.
So obviously, if my choice is to remain unmarried,
then I wanna make this thing work.
You know what I mean?
Like I want this thing to happen if it can.
This is just that scenario.
So in JD Vance's situation,
if he was saved and he's with this Hindu,
he should be trying to get her to a church.
He should try to give her the gospel.
And if she's fine living with him,
he should just try to be married to her
as much as humanly possible.
If she's just like, no, I'm super into my false religion
and I wanna go put dung on every door corner
and go to the dung festival and whatever,
it's just like, all right, bye.
You know, at that point, you kinda have to just say bye, okay.
But at the end of the day,
we don't want these interfaith marriages.
We should want nothing to do with them.
They're gonna draw people away.
You don't go follow your wife to the dung festival.
You don't go join some false religion.
You don't just become a Jew
because you're chasing some woman or something
that and convert to some false religion.
Don't go to the Catholic mass
because you're married to a Catholic or whatever.
You know what, stay away from false religion.
Go to it back to Deuteronomy 7.
You know there's also another interfaith marriage
which it's not a completely different religion
but I was just typing it in.
I was like asking the internet
like what are famous interfaith marriages?
The number one example it gave me
was Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton.
'Cause you know what, Bill Clinton's a Baptist
and Hillary Clinton's a Methodist.
I asked my wife, I said, 'cause I was asking her,
I was like, hey, I didn't even know this was interfaith.
You know, Bill Clinton's a Baptist.
Did you know what Hillary Clinton was?
And she was like a Satanist?
And I was like, yeah.
I was like, that's more accurate, you know what I mean?
Methodists, right?
But at the end of the day, it's like,
hey, even if you're a Methodist,
if you're not saved, it's not compatible.
And look, I think Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton
probably are both bad, but let's just be honest.
Don't we kind of all kind of think
like Hillary might be the worst, you know?
She might've been the Jezebel of that Ahab,
you know what I mean?
And he probably would've been better off
not marrying her in general.
Doesn't mean that he doesn't have his problems
and his issues or whatever.
But look, if you're a Baptist,
don't go marry some Methodist that's not saved,
some person that's not of the same faith,
the same religion.
You know what, you're gonna cause yourself
all kinds of problems and harm and issues.
And you know what, don't marry Hillary Clinton, okay?
Don't marry Delilah.
Don't marry these women that are gonna lead you astray,
just like Solomon.
I'm guaranteeing that Solomon was probably not marrying
based on faith, probably on looks.
You know what I mean?
And look where that took him, you know?
And he doesn't have satisfactory marriages,
he's ruining his life, he's destroying his life.
Anybody in the Old Testament that had multiple wives
or multiple girlfriends or multiple concubines
always had major problems.
God was obviously punishing them for doing such a thing.
You know what?
It's one woman, one husband, till death do you part,
you become one flesh, you should keep yourself
only unto them, as long as you both shall live.
You know what?
Marriage is honorable in all and the bed undefiled,
but whoremongers and adulterers, God will judge.
You don't get away with, you know, being with other people.
And you know what?
There's no satisfaction in it anyways.
You go out and you're with other people.
I mean, look, if there was satisfaction in it,
then why wouldn't you see guys that got an extra wife
just be good with the next one?
I mean, Solomon is not good with a thousand.
One thousand.
That means you would never, ever be satisfied.
Women will never be satisfied with multiple men.
Women will never, men will never be satisfied
with multiple women.
You just can't be satisfied.
Andrew Tate is not satisfied, folks.
These whoremongers and adulterers are not satisfied.
The celebrities of Hollywood are getting married
and married and married,
and are with partner and partner and partner,
and they're just never satisfied.
They're never happy.
It does not last.
It is not going to bring you to any kind of real joy.
It's just like drugs.
And let me tell you something.
Yeah, you might get your five seconds
or your 10 seconds of joy or your little contact high here,
but let me tell you something.
It's gonna give you more depression and more sadness
than it will bring you any kind of satisfaction,
'cause you might get that little bit of joy
for five minutes, for 10 minutes, but you know what?
You're gonna just be so much more depressed
in between that and your next time.
That whole day is gonna be a wreck.
That whole week is gonna be a wreck.
You're gonna feel like literal trash.
Why are so many of them killing themselves
and just wrecking their lives?
Look, you don't wanna go down this path.
You wanna be in one relationship and in marriage,
and that's gonna bring you the most happiness,
the most satisfaction you can get.
Is it gonna satisfy all of your needs
and all of your wants in every single way?
No, that's not gonna happen, but it's gonna be enough.
And the Bible does say that you should be satisfied
with her breasts at all times.
You should just satisfy yourself and your wife.
That is your one relationship, your one vehicle,
and the most happy people are happily married to one person,
and they're gonna have the best relationship.
Chasing after these multiple women and multiple men,
that's never gonna work.
And if you're in a relationship
where you don't have unity in doctrine,
you're usually not gonna have a very good marriage either.
You need to marry someone that has the same faith,
the same religion, do not intermingle
with these other people.
They'll turn your hearts away from God.
And why preach on this stuff a lot?
Why preach about marriage?
Why preach about this subject?
Let me tell you something.
One of the biggest reasons I see people stop serving God
is marriage problems.
Marriage problems, and of course,
that can mean a lot of things, right?
That could mean they're struggling
with just normal marriage problems.
That could be extreme marriage problems.
Often, though, it's just one person
is just not wanting to serve God,
and the other one's having to fight,
and blah, blah, blah.
I mean, why does the Bible say a man's foes
will be they of his own household?
Why does it even say that?
Because typically that's one of the biggest problems in life.
There are so many men and women
that want to be in a church like ours,
but because of their relationship status, they're not.
Because of their relationship status,
and it's not just like only because one's
literally not wanting to go to church,
it's just because they make a train wreck of their life,
they're way into sin.
They want to drink, they want to smoke,
they want to have their little farmstead.
And there's been people that are just like,
they don't drink, they don't smoke,
they're not committing any kind of adultery or infidelity,
they're living a very clean life.
Here's what they want, they want to live on a farm.
And it's like, where's the farm in the middle of the city?
Well, there's a couple, but guess what?
They're like $20 million, okay?
Yeah, because having that much land and acreage
in the middle of a city is just like super expensive.
So it's like, where do you get the farm?
You gotta live way out somewhere.
And look, even the farm in the Dallas-Fort Worth area,
a little bit outside of town, it's still like $2 million.
So it's like, they gotta go live somewhere,
it's some remote area that's near nothing
so they can have their little farm life
and then they go chase their little farm life.
And then it's like, oh, well,
actually I ruined my entire life too.
Look, I've known tons of people,
they just chase the farm life, they chase business,
they chase money.
And then they just make a complete train wreck
of their life.
And they're not serving God,
they're not in a good church,
they're not going soul winning.
Even though in their new man, they want all that.
They're like, man, I wish I was in a good church.
Man, I wish I was reading my Bible.
Man, I wish I was going soul winning.
I wish I was doing these things.
But they chased after the wrong thing.
Look, I want a wife that wants to be in church,
not some TikTok Instagram influencer
with her little homestead or whatever.
You know, if that's what you want as a woman,
I don't want that as a wife.
And you know what, you should be careful
what you're marrying.
What does she really want?
Well, my wife wants to be a pastor's wife.
Why?
She wants to have her little podcast.
Notice how it's always about being an influencer.
Have you noticed that?
That's what feminism teaches, right?
They always need to be this boss babe.
They want to be a homestead influencer,
a trad wife influencer, a pastor's wife influencer.
You know, maybe they're just the one running the church
or the deacon's wife,
and they just run the church influencer or whatever.
They just want to be out there
just being this quote influencer.
Look, I want my wife to influence my house.
And you know what?
I want my wife to guess what?
Want to serve God with me and be my helpmate
and to assist me in serving God.
And look, I'm just trying to help the young men
and the single guys.
This is what you should be looking for
when you're looking for a woman.
I didn't describe what she looks like.
I described what she acts like
because that's what really matters.
You know, the Proverbs 31 woman is not a poster.
What is it?
It's a description of a woman that wants to serve God.
You know what?
You need to be careful with the women
that are out there in this world today.
Many of them do not want to serve God whatsoever.
You know, you should be very careful.
And you know, and again, it's not about where they're from.
Who cares about that?
Who cares about their ethnicity?
Who cares about their race or their skin color
or their heritage?
Is she saved?
Does she want to serve God?
That is what matters.
Look at verse five.
"And thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thine heart and with all thy,"
I'm sorry, I'm reading chapter six.
Verse five, chapter seven.
"But thus shall you deal with them,"
talking about these nations.
"Ye shall destroy their altars and break down their images
and cut down their groves
and burn their graven images with fire.
For thou art an holy people in the Lord thy God.
The Lord thy God hath chosen thee
to be a special people unto himself
above all people that are upon the face of the earth."
Look, you can't have idolatry.
You need to burn it.
You need to destroy it.
All the graven images need to just be destroyed
and burned instead of being set up.
And there's many Hindus wanting to set up
all kinds of graven images and altars and stuff like this
all over the world.
You know, that stuff needs to be torn down and destroyed.
The Catholics with their idolatry,
it needs to be destroyed and torn down.
All the Mary statues need to be destroyed in this country.
Isn't it funny, all these Catholic guys act like,
oh, we're against feminism.
And then they go and literally bow down to a woman
at their little mass.
Yeah, you're such a macho man
over here and bowing down to Mary.
Verse seven, the Lord did set his love upon you.
I'm sorry, the Lord did not set his love upon you
nor choose you because you were more in number
than any people for you were the fewest of all people.
But because the Lord loved you
and because he would keep the oath
which he had sworn under your fathers
had the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand
and redeemed you out of the house of Boneman
from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
Now, a couple of things we could point out in this.
Notice that God keeps his oath no matter what you're like.
Says, look, you are the least of the people.
You're the smallest of the people and I still loved you.
Why? Because I made an oath unto you.
Meaning, hey, it's for better or for worse
in your relationships too, right?
When you make an oath, you shouldn't only keep the oath
just because, oh, well, this person's popular
or, oh, this person has money
or, oh, this person's gonna benefit me.
No, you keep your promises because you made a promise.
Look, if you make a promise, you make an oath,
you make an appointment with someone,
you just keep the promise and keep the oath.
You know, don't disappoint children either.
Oh, it's just a kid.
No, no, you make a promise to a kid,
you keep the promise to a kid.
Hey, you say you're gonna do something for someone,
you do it to someone.
We don't respect great or small.
We're not respectors of persons here.
God's not a respect of persons.
He made a promise and an oath unto these people.
They're the smallest and I loved you
because I made this oath with you,
not because you can benefit me
or you're the greatest number of people or whatever.
And notice God doesn't care about numbers.
He's like, hey, y'all are the smallest,
I'm sticking with you anyways.
Little is much when God is in it.
Hey, they can win when they're outnumbered.
You know, you might be in America and you think like,
man, we're outnumbered by the Catholics.
We're outnumbered by the Presbyterians.
We're outnumbered by the Southern Baptists.
Okay, I don't care because little is much
when God is in it.
And you know what?
God is not looking at,
well, Catholics is more Catholics than there are Baptists.
Who cares?
You know why God loves us and doesn't love them?
Because we believe in Jesus Christ and they don't.
And because of the oath he made unto us
by salvation, by faith in Jesus Christ.
That's why he loves us.
You know, God doesn't care about how many people are in it.
God cares about the quality of the people
over the quantity of the people.
And you know what, in this church,
we care way more about the quality than the quantity.
How many churches are bigger than us in Texas?
Many.
There are many churches bigger than us in Texas.
But at the end of the day,
I would take them to task on the quality of the people.
Let's see how many people in your church are saved
compared to the number of people,
as far as percentage wise, that are saved in our church.
Let's see how many of the kids in your church
can quote the same number of Bible verses
as the kids in our church.
Let's see how good a soul winner your church members are
versus the soul winners in our church, right?
I care way more about the quality.
How about just the doctrine?
Hey, what does the church believe on the Trinity?
What kind of Bible is the church using?
What does the church believe about soul winning?
What does the church believe about anything?
What does the Bible believe?
What does your church believe about Leviticus 20 13?
Can your church handle a hard sermon?
Can your church handle long preaching?
Can your church handle being, you know,
confronted with their sin, with their issues?
Can they be called out?
You know, that's more important than just
the number of people in the seats today.
Who cares about the number of people in the seats?
We should care about the quality that's in the seats.
And you know, this is what I believe.
If you care about the quality, the people will come.
But at the end of the day,
why would God want to bless a shepherd
that's not producing a good quality anyways?
You know, to me, if you're not producing a good quality,
God will just start sending his sheep somewhere else
where he can draw out the quality in his sheep.
'Cause God cares about the sheep
way more than the pastors do.
And so God wants to make sure
that they're going to good pastors.
And you know what?
If a pastor is not doing a good job with his sheep,
I believe God will take those sheep
and give them to someone that is.
And you know what?
As a sheep, you should be careful who is shepherding you
because at the end of the day,
you're gonna often become like your pastor.
You're gonna often become like your church members,
your friends.
You're gonna often become like your spouse.
That's why it's important to pick the right kind of spouse,
pick the right kind of Bible,
pick the right kind of friends,
pick the right kind of pastor to be following.
And to me, when it comes to churches,
I've always said this and I'll continue to say this,
I pick the church over the pastor way over than the people.
Like if I had to go to a church where I have zero friends,
but I like the example the pastor's following,
I would rather go to that church
than a church where I have a bunch of friends,
but I don't wanna follow the example of the pastor.
Because friends come and go anyways.
At the end of the day, I wanna follow someone
that's gonna lead me in a good direction,
and is gonna challenge me to be a better Christian,
and set forth a good example.
That's what I care about,
and that's what I want my family to follow.
Let's keep reading here, verse nine.
Know ye therefore that the Lord thy God,
he is God, the faithful God,
which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him,
and keep his commandments to a thousand generations,
and repayeth them that hate him to their face.
To destroy them, he will not be slacked,
to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face.
You know what I like about God is he's savage,
you know what I mean?
Like God is saying like, hey, you're good with me,
I'll be good with you for a thousand generations.
Like it's just basically gonna happen just for so long.
But you wanna mess with me, I'll pay you to your face.
I mean, this is like smack talk, you know what I mean?
I mean, he's just like, hey, you wanna mess with me,
I'll repay you to your face.
I am not gonna back down.
Notice that God is like the ultimate alpha male,
you know what I mean?
They're talking about this toxic masculinity
and these toxic men or whatever.
Sounds like God, you know?
I mean, God's like, bro, you don't wanna mess with me.
I'll come repay you to your face.
And they're thinking like, oh, God just,
this like Santa Claus, this fat pudgy guy upstairs
that just gives you grace no matter what.
That is not the God of the Bible.
The God of the Bible is a man of war.
I mean, think about just the context of this chapter alone.
Here's seven nations, please destroy and murder all of them
with no mercy whatsoever.
That's the context of the passage.
And then he's saying, anybody that wants to mess with me,
I'll repay them to their face.
That's how he talks.
That's how God is.
It's the same God that just destroyed Egypt.
It's the same God that destroyed the entire world in a flood.
He doesn't mess around.
And of course, if you don't believe in him,
you go to hell for all of eternity.
God is a serious God.
He's someone that you don't want to mess with.
You don't want to get on the wrong side of.
And that same God is the same God alive today
that's still seated on his throne
that you still don't want to mess with
and become an enemy of God.
Because why?
Because God will repay you to your face.
You know, we need to keep God's commandments today
because it's the same God that will take us to task
if we violate his word, if we go against him.
It's a fearful thing to fall in the hands of the living God.
Our God is a consuming fire.
I mean, we should be afraid of the wrath of God
and we should be terrified that what God will do to us
when we sin against him, when we're not right with him,
when we get backslidden.
But let me tell you something.
The backslidden want to tell you,
oh, you don't need to fear God.
Well, they're just waiting for their day, my friend.
I don't want to live in that kind of life
where I don't think I need to fear God.
We need to fear God.
You don't want to hate God.
You don't want to get on his bad side.
You don't want to just be an unrepentant sin,
an open rebellion to God.
He will take you to task.
Verse 11, "Thou shalt therefore keep the commandments
and the statutes and the judgments,
which I command thee this day to do them.
Wherefore it shall come to pass,
if ye hearken to these judgments and keep and do them,
that the Lord thy God shall keep unto thee
the covenant and the mercy,
which ye swear unto thy fathers.
And he will love thee and bless thee and multiply thee.
He will also bless the fruit of thy womb
and the fruit of thy land,
thy corn and thy wine and thine oil,
the increase of thy kind and the flocks of thy sheep
and the land which you swear unto thy fathers to give thee.
Thou shalt be blessed above all people.
There shall not be male or female barren among you
or among your cattle.
And the Lord will take away from the all sickness
and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt,
which thou knowest upon thee,
but will lay them upon all them that hate thee.
So notice, it's like serving God,
you just get all these blessings,
just good things are happening to you,
and pretty much like almost nothing really bad happens.
Now, I don't think that you should read this
and take this so like over the top,
to think that what he's trying to say
is like literally nothing bad will ever happen to you.
It's just kind of saying like it was a big picture, right?
Just saying it's a big picture,
you're not gonna have these major problems,
you're not gonna have these serious issues.
You know, you could interpret this a couple ways.
When it says I'm gonna take away from the all sickness
and we'll put none of the evil diseases of Egypt,
I don't, you could interpret this as like super literal.
Like literally they never get sick in any way whatsoever.
I just think that what he's really emphasizing more
is just like a big picture thing.
Like you're not gonna get AIDS,
like you're not gonna get syphilis,
like you're not gonna get these like major life illnesses
that he's kind of talking about,
these serious, the emirats of Egypt
and all this kind of stuff
that he was gonna put on them, these plagues.
And in today's modern understanding,
I don't think that we should take this like Pentecostal view
of these verses where literally nothing bad ever happens
if you're right with God,
because that's just probably, that's just not real.
But I do think generally speaking,
the more you serve God, the more you're right with God,
the less you're gonna have these issues,
the less you're gonna have these kind of problems.
And at the end of the day, when it comes to being sick,
sometimes that's part of life, I get it.
We're gonna all get sick here and there.
But if you live a good Christian life,
if you stay a virgin and you get married as a virgin
to a virgin on your wedding night,
and you stay faithful unto your spouse,
let me tell you something, you won't get AIDS,
you won't get syphilis,
you won't get many of these diseases,
you won't get a lot of these sicknesses.
Now does that mean that you won't get the cold
every once in a while and you won't get,
no, obviously I'm not saying that,
but we could take some application of this and realize
sometimes God's commandments literally prevent you
from getting serious illnesses and serious diseases.
And look, if you don't pump your body full of drugs,
if you don't take birth control from the age of 14 until 35,
you probably will have kids.
But there are some women
because they're just brainwashed by society
and lied to by parents and lied to by colleges.
And look, lied to by independent,
fundamental Baptist churches,
they take birth control from 14, 15, 16, 17,
18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25.
And then they can't give birth
when they finally try to have kids at 26.
And it's like, oh, well maybe, you know,
I don't understand it.
You know, it's like, well,
maybe you shouldn't have taken birth control for a decade
and just pumped your body full of drugs.
Because you know what?
Sometimes it can have negative consequences on you.
Now look, is it possible for someone
to do everything right and be barren?
I think it is possible, okay?
But generally speaking, it's, you know,
this is like the super rare case.
The person that's not pumping their body full of drugs,
that gets married young,
and is just having a healthy normal marriage,
they're pretty much gonna have kids, right?
And again, this is just wisdom and lessons
that we could learn.
Hey, you follow God's commandments, you do what's right,
you stay a virgin, you get married,
you do what's right in marriage.
God's pretty much not gonna give you
these nasty STDs and you're gonna have kids
and you're like, but I'm gonna have a lot of kids.
Well, you don't even know that.
You know, there's plenty of people
that actually get married
and try to have as many kids as they can.
They still only have one, two, three, four.
You don't know.
But at the end of the day, you know,
even if you have 10, even if you had 12
or something like that, you know,
I've never met an old lady like a grandma
that said, you know what, my life is ruined.
I had 10 kids.
You know what I do here though?
Man, my life is horrible 'cause I only had one kid
or I had zero kids or I only had two or whatever.
I've heard the opposite for days.
I've heard so many older people say,
man, I wish I had more kids.
I wish I had more kids.
Then you talk to someone that had a lot of kids.
They never say that.
You know what they usually say?
I wish I had more kids.
I mean, they're like, I had 12.
I wish I had more.
I wish I had another dozen.
And you're just thinking like, dang, you know,
I don't think, that's crazy.
You're crazy, okay?
But I'm just saying like,
if every single old lady is saying that,
why wouldn't you think that you would be the same person?
Right?
But again, it's so scary and it's just so awful.
And how are you gonna be this boss babe?
And how are you gonna have your career?
And how are you gonna win the SB?
And how are you gonna win, you know,
all of these actor awards and stuff?
You're not!
That's the point.
You're gonna be saved in child bearings,
what the Bible says.
And you know what?
Your little trophy on that little trophy case
is nothing compared to having a grandchild
or having your child or whatever serving God.
That's way more important to you.
And here's the thing, it talks back.
You know, your stupid little trophy doesn't talk back.
It just wears away, wastes away,
and it can't take care of you in your old age either.
It can't change your depends or whatever.
You know?
Just saying.
Let's keep reading in this chapter.
But I'm just telling you, hey,
keeping God's commandments has its benefits.
It says in verse 16,
"And thou shalt consume all the people
which the Lord thy God shall deliver thee.
Thine eye shall have no pity upon them.
Neither shalt thou serve their gods,
for that will be a snare unto thee.
If thou stay in thy heart,
these nations are more than I,
how can I dispossess them?
Thou shalt not be afraid of them,
but shalt well remember what the Lord thy God did
unto Pharaoh and unto all Egypt.
The great temptations which thine eye saw,
and the signs and the wonders and the mighty hand
and the stretched out arm,
whereby the Lord thy God brought thee out,
so shall the Lord thy God do unto all the people
of whom thou art afraid.
Moreover the Lord thy God will send the hornet among them
until they that are left and hide themselves from thee
be destroyed.
Thou should not be affrighted at them,
for the Lord thy God is among you a mighty God and terrible.
And the Lord thy God will put out those nations
before thee by little and little.
Thou mayest not consume them at once,
lest the beasts of the field increase upon thee.
So God's just saying I'm gonna destroy them,
they're doomed, they're cursed.
You know, and as God's people,
we shouldn't be afraid of all the feminists and whatever.
They're gonna put their own lamp out.
We need to just keep serving God
and multiplying like God said and doing what's right.
And you know what, he'll increase us
and he'll continue to diminish the wicked,
diminish the evil.
They're gonna be, they're a self-destructive force anyways.
But he also says I can't just do it like overnight.
You know, we wanna fix America,
we have to realize that we can't just fix it overnight.
Sometimes it's little by little.
You know, and even in your life,
you know, God doesn't just give you 12 kids overnight,
praise God, right?
I mean, praise God you don't just get all 12 kids
at the same time.
It's not gonna work well.
It's nice that you get one at a time,
you know, a couple years apart, right?
I mean, that's a little bit more manageable
than if you just were handed 12 infants, 12 two-year-olds.
I mean, it's just like, I would run away, okay?
That would just, that just sounds insane, okay?
But it's like, you can raise 10, 12 kids
if you get one at a time every couple of years.
If you were given two, you know, toddlers,
you both might run away, you know?
It's just like, you're like, I can't handle this, right?
I'm just saying, like, so God sometimes
doesn't give you everything right at the same time.
You know, sometimes you just get a little,
you know, building a church.
You know, what would we do if we just had 500 people
show up all of a sudden?
Well, we couldn't fit in the building, that's for sure.
We couldn't find parking.
But what if God gave us 500 people,
more people than we have right now, in the next 10 years?
So we're just getting an extra 50,
and another 50, and another 50.
Well, then we could kind of accommodate it.
Because look, if 500 people showed up,
half of them would walk away saying like,
I never wanna come back, I couldn't even find a seat,
I couldn't even fit in the building,
like this doesn't even make sense.
It's not gonna necessarily work,
we can't even necessarily accommodate that.
So oftentimes, God will just give you a little.
Why, because God wants to make sure
that you're just doing right every day of your life.
He just wants to give you a little,
and you have these little increases.
You know, little increases over time
amount to something big in the long run.
And you know, in your career, in your job,
you probably aren't gonna make a lot of money at first,
but let me tell you something, you work hard,
you put a lot of effort and energy in.
Over time, it accumulates,
and God can give you a good job down the road.
God can give you a big family down the road.
God can give you a better church down the road.
And of course, as churches come and go,
you have to understand that you're many times
not gonna grow like a weed,
and if you are, there's probably something wrong.
God's gonna give you little by little.
And it's important to grow.
It's important to constantly gain.
Everything's like this.
If you stop working out, you kind of lose strength.
You have to keep working out, just even maintain,
let alone to get gains.
And the same is with church.
Church is constantly having people come and go.
You know, just look around the room right now,
because about 2/3 of the people in this room
will not be here in five years.
About 5% of them will still be watching the sermons,
but with bitter hatred in their hearts
and lying and slandering and railing
and complaining about how they didn't get enough
free breakfasts, okay?
That's about 5% of the people in the room.
Look, like 2/3 of the people in here
won't even be in this room.
Half of them probably won't even be serving God,
going soul winning anymore.
I mean, people are gonna come and go in church.
And look, so it's important to reach new people.
You know, I was looking at statistics
'cause it was just kind of fun.
I know it's a long sermon, but you don't care, all right?
I was looking at statistics of our church
and it was like from 2014 to like now,
we had lost about 60 to 65 people
that were active members in our church.
That's a lot of people.
60 to 65, and about 40 of those
were from one specific drama, okay?
There was one specific drama that we lost about a chunk.
It's a lot of people to lose.
But in that same time,
we added 96 people or something like this.
So I think it was technically 60 that we lost,
and then we gained 96.
So we had a net 36 gain.
But it's like, that's some serious attrition.
And look, it's not just our church, it's all churches.
It doesn't matter.
In fact, I measured this on other churches
that are friends, 'cause I have some of their data,
and I was looking at it.
Many of the churches that we're friends with
had even worse attrition rates than we did.
They were losing more of their members
that were coming in than we were.
And it's like, look, we're having a pretty good retention
compared to most churches out there.
But all churches are gonna lose people.
People are gonna get jobs, people are gonna die,
people are gonna move, people are gonna have
marriage problems, things are gonna come and go.
And if you're not reaching people,
you will go in the wrong direction fast.
And so it's important to constantly be reaching people
and getting new people and trying to grow.
That's important if you want a church to be healthy.
In the same way, you have to keep working out,
you have to keep reading, you have to keep learning,
otherwise you're gonna go in the wrong direction.
But God is only gonna give you a little and a little
and a little and a little.
But it's important to constantly be planting seeds.
Constantly planting seeds so that you can grow,
you can just take a little bit more
and take a little bit more.
And you know what, in every area of your life,
you need to apply this principle.
You have to be constantly planting seeds
and constantly trying to grow.
You know, let's say wherever you're at in your marriage,
you don't like it.
And you would like to be over here in your marriage.
Let me just be honest with you.
There is no button to press to just warp over here.
No one can do that.
And I can't say, like, here's the magic advice,
and y'all are going to be so happy after this sermon.
Just implement this one little principle.
You know what you have to do?
You have to just start planting, like, tons of seeds.
You have to just start-- and you're going to only get,
like, a little-- like, all right, marriage is, like,
going to be a little bit better.
And then it's just going to be, like, a little bit better.
And then, like, next year is going to be a little bit better.
And then next year is going to be a little bit better.
OK?
But also, here's the thing.
If you're not doing anything, it's
going to be a little bit worse.
And then it's going to be a little bit worse.
And then it's going to be a little bit worse, and then pretty soon it's just going to be like a barren wasteland.
And then people are like, oh, man, I'm not enjoying my field.
Well, have you planted anything ever?
What are you doing?
Like, hey, if you're not plowing the field, if you're not planting seeds,
if you're not watering it, in some cases, you have to do that just to stay at status quo.
And it's like, hey, I want all these gains.
I want all this benefit.
I want all this blessing.
Well, you know what?
You're only getting a little, and a little, and a little.
Just like, hey, I want to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger,
but you're over here just like a toothpick.
Hey, you can't just go in the gym.
I'm going to work out for 12 hours today.
It's not going to work.
You have to work out a little bit.
That's all you can handle, OK?
And then you have to do it like every day consistently
for years and years.
And then eventually you can look like Brandon over here.
He didn't do that overnight.
Brother Devin over here, right?
You can't look like one of these guys, Brother Jason.
You can't look like Brother Jason overnight.
You know what I mean?
I mean, that guy's a hoss, right?
And even those guys, they still have to do something
to maintain 'cause you can always go back.
I mean, look at some of the actors in this world.
Some of the actors have like really done
some giant body transformations
for some of the roles that they've done
because you can really go in any direction.
But as the children of Israel,
they're gonna go into the promised land.
They are not gonna become a great nation overnight.
You know what they have to do?
They have to fight and war day after day,
week after week, month after month, year after year,
and then eventually they'll take over that promised land.
And let me tell you something about
Steadfast Badness Church.
You want a great church, I want a great church.
You don't wanna have all the problems that we have,
okay, I don't either.
But let me tell you something,
we're gonna have to fight day after day,
week after week, month after month, year after year,
and just gain a little here and a little there
and a little there,
and then eventually we'll have some big gains.
But you know what, if we stop fighting,
we'll eventually become that,
every other old Ivy Church out there
that's running about 12 people or something,
that's running about 30 people
and they're about to just close shop
when all the boomers die.
And look, I know there's other churches
that are not like that,
but there's a lot of churches in America
that are just about to shut down
'cause they stopped reaching people,
they stopped having drama.
You know, that's really what they did.
Let's keep reading here, we'll finish this chapter.
He says this in verse number 23,
"But the Lord thy God shall deliver them unto thee,
"and shall destroy them with a mighty destruction
"until they be destroyed."
Verse 24, "And ye shall deliver their kings in thine hand,
"and thou shalt destroy their name from under heaven.
"There shall no man be able to stand before thee
"until thou have destroyed them.
"The graven images of their gods shall ye burn with fire,
"thou shalt not desire the silver or gold that is on them,
"nor take it unto thee, lest thou be snared therein,
"for it is abomination to the Lord thy God.
"Neither shalt thou bring an abomination to thine house,
"lest thou be a cursed thing like it,
"but thou shalt utterly detest it,
"and thou shalt utterly abhor it,
"for it is a cursed thing."
I'm not gonna go to any more verses,
but I just wanna say quickly,
I don't believe the Bible is teaching
that silver or gold is cursed.
It's not saying money is cursed.
It's also not saying that any physical item is cursed.
But what can be cursed is essentially the method
by which something is derived.
So the Bible talks about filthy lucre in the Bible.
Some people, I believe, erroneously teach
that just money is inherently bad or something,
or money is filthy, or money is cursed,
or something like that.
If you study filthy lucre in the text,
it's coming from bribes or teaching lies for money.
So it's the source of that money
that is bringing the curse with it.
And again, it's the gold and the silver
that's attached to the idol.
So it's money that's attached to false religion.
And we should not desire to have money
that's coming in through false religion
or aiding people in false religion
and accommodating them for filthy lucre's sake.
What would be an example of this?
I don't know.
How about selling a modern Bible today just for money,
even though it's not actually what the Bible says?
You know, we shouldn't desire that.
We should say, hey, we should shut that down.
We should stop accommodating this,
and we shouldn't care about money.
You know, Christian bookstores selling Catholic paraphernalia
just for filthy lucre's sake.
You know, we should not want money
that's tainted by false religion.
There's so many people that are just willing
to sell their soul for money,
and you know what, it's gonna affect them.
You know, we should not make decisions based on money.
We should not allow money to be the deciding factor.
You know, if someone needs to give me money
because of false religion, I don't wanna.
How many non-denominational churches a day
are unwilling to preach uncomfortable truths
so that Catholics and other false religions
will come into their building
and still give money to them, still tithe them?
You know, that's cursed money.
Look, there's nothing wrong with money itself,
but the way in which you acquire that wealth can be cursed.
You're acquiring wealth through thievery, through robbery,
through witchcraft, through just illicit means.
Yeah, that's cursed money.
If you're acquiring money by lying to people
and ripping people off and taking advantage of people,
you know, devouring widows' houses,
selling out the Lord Jesus Christ,
you better believe that's cursed money.
You don't wanna bring that stuff into your house.
You don't wanna bring that into your income.
You'd be better off being right with God
than having that extra money,
than having that extra gold or silver.
And it's saying, look,
the gold and silver are attached to these idols.
What could be the tendency?
Well, and in order to preserve that gold or silver,
I don't wanna destroy the idol
'cause I wanna lose some of that,
so they just don't destroy it, right?
They just take the idols home
and then now they have the idols,
they start getting involved in worshiping them,
getting involved in that false religion.
Or, hey, I like that money that came from this.
They start pandering to that false religion,
accepting people of that false religion
just to try to acquire more wealth, more money.
He's saying, look, just destroy it all
and have nothing to do with it, get rid of the money.
We see this in the New Testament.
They burned the books that were of like a false religion,
of witchcraft and whatever,
even though it cost a lot of money.
They could have sold them and got a lot of money,
but they said, "Look, why would I wanna sell
"false religion to somebody just to get some money?
"I'm just gonna take the loss.
"I'm just gonna burn and smash the Mary statue.
"I'm not gonna sell my Mary statue
"to someone else to acquire wealth.
"I'm gonna destroy my Mary statue.
"I'm gonna destroy the idolatry.
"I'm not willing to profit off of false religion
"and lead someone astray for profit."
And that's kind of the message that's being taught here.
Let's close in prayer.
Thank you, Father, so much for these commandments.
Thank you for these instructions.
I pray that we would not get ensnared with false religion.
I pray that you would help the young people
that wanna have a desire to marry someone
that loves God and wants to serve God
over just something superfluous like beauty.
Pray that you would help the young women
to desire to be married to a man
that wants to serve God instead of chasing something vain.
I pray that you would help those
that have those little gains.
I pray that we'd have that faith
to just serve you and not be chasing money
and that we would do things that are pleasing in your sight.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
- We're gonna sing our last song this evening, page 58.
He the pearly gates will open, page 58.
He the pearly gates will open.
(choir singing)
♪ This is my redemption ♪
♪ And forgive me all my sins ♪
♪ I'll enter at the pearly gates below ♪