This motel of His might and sea of His grace,
Whose power is the light, whose hand hath He space?
This series of grand flooding, thunder, clouds pour,
And our news is held on the wings of the storm,
I bow to Him for care.
What a day He's high!
He breathes in the air,
He shines in the light,
He streams from the fields,
He sends to the plain,
He rides with me,
He sails in the air and the bay.
Hail, children of God!
We will astray,
We will rejoice,
For finally to be,
By your seas of tingle,
Welcome to the air,
Our King, our King,
And our King, our King,
And our King!
Jesus will receive
Soundless word of grace to all,
Through the heavenly path with Thee,
All will be,
For all will fall,
Singing over the air,
Our King, our King,
Christ, we see,
His face will stand,
He will make the best His way,
Christ, we see,
His sinful man,
Come and He will give you rest,
Trust Him for His word is plain,
He will take the sinful best,
Christ, we see,
His sinful man,
Jesus will receive
Soundless word of grace to all,
Through the heavenly path with Thee,
All will be,
For all will fall,
Singing over the air,
Christ, we see,
His face will stand,
He will make the best His way,
Christ, we see,
His sinful man,
Satisfies His last demand,
Singing over the air,
Our King,
Christ, we see,
His face will stand,
He will make the best His way,
Christ, we see,
His sinful man,
At last now, Christ, we see,
His sinful man,
Even He, with all my sin,
First of all, His love and sin,
And within, I entrain,
He is Lord of all my sin,
Christ, we see,
His face will stand,
He will make the best His way,
Christ, we see,
His sinful man.
All right, good afternoon,
everybody, and welcome
to Steadfast Baptist Church.
We'll go ahead and find our
seats and grab a hymnal.
We will start this afternoon
in song number 406,
Who is on the Lord's Side.
Song number 406,
Who is on the Lord's Side.
Song number 406,
let's all sing it out
loudly together on the first.
Who is on the Lord's Side,
Who will serve the King,
Who will be His helpers,
Other lives to bring,
Who will lead the Lord's side,
Who will face the foe,
Who is on the Lord's side,
Who for hail will come,
By Thy call of mercy,
By Thy praise divine,
We are on the Lord's side,
Savior we are thine,
Not for way of glory,
Not for crown and wall,
Enter we beyond thee,
Praise the warrior's song,
But for love that claimeth,
Let's for whom be thine,
We through Jesus' name
It must be on this side,
By Thy Lord constraining,
By Thy praise divine,
We are on the Lord's side,
Savior we are thine,
Jesus thou hast bought us,
Not with gold or hail,
But with thine own lifeblood,
For Thy guide I am,
With Thy blessing willing,
Each who comes to Thee,
Thou hast made us willing,
Thou hast made us free,
By Thy grand redemption,
By Thy praise divine,
We are on the Lord's side,
Savior we are thine,
Fears may be the conflict,
Strong may be the foe,
But the King's old army,
None can overthrow,
Now His standard reigning,
Victory is secure,
For His truth unchanging,
Makes the triumph roar,
Joyfully in mystery,
By Thy praise divine,
We are on the Lord's side,
Savior we are thine.
Great singing, everybody.
Let's open up the service now
with a word of prayer.
Lord, we love you,
and we thank you again
for this awesome church.
Thank you for just allowing us
to gather here
and sing unto you, Lord.
We just ask that you fill this
church with your spirit,
help us sing unto you loudly,
and just honor and glorify you
in everything that we do, Lord.
And it's in Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
All right, for our next song,
let's go to song number 150.
Song number 150,
My faith has found
a resting place.
Song number 150.
Song 150.
Let's all sing it out
together on the first.
My faith has found
a resting place,
Not in device nor dream.
I guess we ever live in one.
This was for he shall be.
I need no other argument.
I need no other plea.
Great is enough that Jesus died
and that he died for me.
Enough for me that Jesus saves.
This is what here and now.
A simple soul I come to him
will never cast me out.
I need no other argument.
I need no other plea.
Great is enough that Jesus died
and that he died for me.
My heart is beating on the Word,
the ranting Word of God.
Salvation by my Savior's name.
Salvation through his blood.
I need no other argument.
I need no other plea.
Great is enough that Jesus died
and that he died for me.
My faithless sin
shall heal the sin
the ones he came to save.
For he is precious,
bloody sin.
For he is life-behaving.
I need no other argument.
I need no other plea.
Great is enough that Jesus died
and that he died for me.
Good evening. Thank you so much
for coming to Steadfast Baptist Church.
If you didn't already get a bulletin
and you'd like another one,
just lift up your hand
and one of us can come by
and get you guys a bulletin.
Again, we have our Matthew 28 verse 10
for the verse of the week.
If you're able to quote
the entire chapter,
there will be a prize.
There's services,
soul-winning times there,
church stats.
On the right is our list
of expecting ladies.
Please be in prayer for them.
Upcoming events,
we have a Reynosa
soul-winning marathon.
Also, we have a couple other things
there for you to put on the calendar.
There's our church reminders,
also our prayer list on the back.
We did give out prizes
for a baptism challenge
to the Urbanic tribe.
If you haven't received that,
you can see Brother Fur
if you're a part of his tribe.
Did we get them all handed out already?
Okay, congratulations to them.
And that's pretty much
all I have as far as announcements.
So just go ahead and sing
our Psalm of the Week, Psalm 148.
It's in our special handout,
Psalm 148.
All right.
That was Psalm 148.
In your special handout
or in your King James Bible,
Psalm 148.
Let's all sing it out together
on the first.
Praise ye the Lord,
praise ye the Lord,
Praise ye the Lord! Praise ye the Lord from the heavens!
Praise him with the heights! Praise ye him!
All his angels! Praise ye him!
All his hosts! Praise ye him!
Sun and moon! Praise him from new stars of light!
Praise him, ye heavens of heavens!
And he waters at thee above the heavens!
Let them praise the name of the Lord!
For he commanded and they were created!
He had also established them forever and ever!
He hath made the decree, which shall not pass
Praise the Lord from the earth!
He, dragons and of heaps, fire and hail,
Snow and vapor, stormy wind,
Fulfilling his word, mountains,
And all hills, purple trees,
And all cedar trees,
And all cattle, dripping things,
And ploughing cows, kings of the earth,
And all evil, princes and all judges of the earth,
O young man and man!
May his moment and children
Let them praise the name of the Lord!
For his name alone is excellent,
His glory is above the earth,
And heaven he also exalteth the Lord!
O his people, the praise of all his saints!
Even unto him love is round,
The people behind you will praise
Jesus the Lord!
Deuteronomy chapter number 1, the Bible says,
These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel,
on this side Jordan in the wilderness,
in the plain over against the Red Sea,
between Paran and Tophil and Laban,
and Hazeroth and Disahab.
There are eleven days journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir unto Kadesh Barnea,
and it came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month on the first day of the month,
that Moses spake unto the children of Israel,
according unto all that the Lord had given him in commandment unto them,
after he had slain Sihon the king of the Amorites, which dwelt in Heshbon,
and Og the king of Basham, which dwelt at Asheroth in Edrei.
On this side Jordan in the land of Moab began Moses to declare this law, saying,
The Lord our God spake unto us in Horeb, saying, Ye have dwelt long enough in this mount,
turn you, and take your journey, and go to the mount of the Amorites,
and unto all the places nigh thereunto, in the plain, in the hills, and in the vale,
and in the south, and by the seaside, to the land of the Canaanites,
and unto Lebanon, unto the great river, the river Euphrates.
Behold, I have set the land before you.
Go in and possess the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
to give unto them and to their seed after them.
And I spake unto you at that time, saying, I am not able to bear you myself alone.
The Lord your God hath multiplied you,
and behold ye are this day as the stars of heaven for multitude.
The Lord God of your fathers make you a thousand times so many more as ye are,
and bless you as he hath promised you.
How can I myself alone bear your cumbrance, and your burden, and your strife?
Take you wise men, and understanding, and known among your tribes,
and I will make them rulers over you.
And ye answered me and said, The thing which thou hast spoken is good for us to do.
So I took the chief of your tribes, wise men, and known, and made them heads over you,
captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds,
and captains over fifties, and captains over tens, and officers among your tribes.
And I charged your judges at that time, saying, Hear the causes between your brethren,
and judge righteously between every man and his brother, and the stranger that is with him.
Ye shall not respect persons in judgment, but ye shall hear the small as well as the great.
Ye shall not be afraid of the face of man, for the judgment is God's.
And the cause that is too hard for you, bring it unto me, and I will hear it.
And I commanded you at that time all the things which ye should do.
And when we departed from Horeb, we went through all that great and terrible wilderness,
which ye saw by the way of the mountain of the Amorites, as the Lord our God commanded us.
And we came to Kadesh Barnea, and I said unto you, Ye are come unto the mountain of the Amorites,
which the Lord our God doth give unto us. Behold, the Lord thy God hath set the land before thee.
Go up and possess it, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath set unto thee. Fear not, neither be discouraged.
And ye came near unto me, every one of you, and said, We will send men before us,
and they shall search us out the land, and bring us word again by what way we must go up,
and into what cities we shall come. And the saying pleased me well,
and I took twelve men of you, one of a tribe. And they turned and went up into the mountain,
and came unto the valley of Eshkol, and searched it out.
And they took of the fruit of the land in their hands, and brought it down unto us,
and brought us word again, and said, It is a good land which the Lord our God doth give us.
Notwithstanding ye would not go up, but rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God.
And ye murmured in your tents, and said, Because the Lord hated us,
he hath brought us forth out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorite, to destroy us.
Whither shall we go? Whither shall we go up?
Our brethren have discouraged our hearts, saying, The people is greater and taller than we.
The cities are great and walled up to heaven, and moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakims there.
Then I said unto you, Dread not, neither be afraid of them.
The Lord your God which goeth before you, he shall fight for you,
according to all that he did for you in Egypt before your eyes.
And in the wilderness, where thou hast seen how that the Lord thy God bare thee,
as a man doth bare his son, in all the way that ye went, until ye came into this place.
Yet in this thing ye did not believe the Lord your God, who went in the way before you,
to search you out a place to pitch your tents in, in fire by night, to show you by what way ye should go,
and in a cloud by day.
And the Lord heard the voice of your words, and was wroth, and sware, saying,
Surely there shall not one of these men of this evil generation see that good land,
which I swear to give unto your fathers, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh.
He shall see it, and to him will I give the land that he hath trodden upon,
and to his children, because he hath wholly followed the Lord.
Also the Lord was angry with me for your sakes, saying, Thou also shall not go in thither.
But Joshua the son of Nun, which standeth before thee, he shall go in thither.
Encourage him, for he shall cause Israel to inherit it.
Moreover your little ones, which he said should be a prey,
and your children, which in that day had no knowledge between good and evil,
they shall go in thither, and unto them will I give it, and they shall possess it.
But as for you, turn you, and take your journey into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea.
Then ye answered and said unto me, We have sinned against the Lord.
We will go up and fight, according to all that the Lord our God commanded us.
And when ye had girded on every man his weapons of war, ye were ready to go up into the hill.
And the Lord said unto me, Say unto them, Go not up, neither fight, for I am not among you,
lest ye be smitten before your enemies.
So I spake unto you, and ye would not hear, but rebelled against the commandment of the Lord,
and went presumptuously up into the hill.
And the Amorites, which dwelt in that mountain, came out against you, and chased you, as bees do,
and destroyed you in Seir, even unto Horma.
And ye returned and wept before the Lord, but the Lord would not hearken to your voice,
nor give ear unto you. So ye abode in Kadesh many days, according unto the days that ye abode there.
Let us pray.
Dear Heavenly Father, I want to thank you for the word of God.
I ask you to bless Pastor Shelley's message.
Just want to thank you for the salvations today and for all your great blessings. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Amen.
Here in Deuteronomy, it's kind of giving a recap of what's happened to the children of Israel
and their journeys through the wilderness, which was a 40-year journey.
And he's kind of reminding this younger generation what the previous generation was like
and some of the experiences they went through.
I want to look at verse 35 where it says this,
Surely there shall not one of these men of this evil generation see that good land, which I swear to give unto your fathers.
Now, they were supposed to go through the wilderness for 40 years so that God could kill every single one of these evil generation
and so that they could not enter into the Promised Land.
It was actually God just waiting for them to weed themselves out and kill themselves off
so that the next generation could go into the Promised Land.
And God called them an evil generation.
Why? Because they did not trust in the Lord.
They did not believe in Him.
And they turned back in their hearts.
And it kind of goes through a lot of the reasons what they did and the things that they said.
And so because of that, God punished them by forcing them to stay in the wilderness until they died.
Now, really, I think what's important is we have to recognize that not only will God sometimes deal with us as an individual, but sometimes even corporately.
And so we have to kind of work together and be a team, in a sense, because God will many times judge us corporately,
you know, as a church, as a state, as a city, as an area.
I mean, God often is judging groups of people, you know, for the group sin, in a sense.
And it doesn't mean that there is an individual responsibility and there is an individual consequence,
but many times there's also corporate.
There's a corporate response that God will dole out where essentially, hey, this generation is just not good enough,
so you're all going to kind of be punished corporately as a body.
And because he can punish a whole group of people like this, it makes me feel nervous and say, you know, I don't want us to be an evil generation.
You know, it's not just good enough for me to serve God.
We need other people to come alongside of us and for us to not be an evil generation
so that God can do great wonders and works in our lifetime and not just be kind of waiting for the next generation to step up to the plate.
You know, this is our time, this is our opportunity to be a good generation and make a big difference in this world,
and we don't want to be an evil generation.
And really, that's the title of my sermon this evening is Don't Be an Evil Generation.
Don't be an evil generation.
And you know what? It doesn't take just one person.
It takes all of us to commit ourselves to say, you know what, we are not going to be an evil generation.
We are going to trust in the Lord.
Now, I want to go through some of this that we just read again, but just highlighting a few points here.
If you go back to verse 21, the Bible says,
Behold, the Lord thy God hath set the land before thee. Go up and possess it.
As the Lord God of thy fathers has said unto thee, Fear not, neither be discouraged.
So he's encouraging this next generation to not be like the past generation.
Don't be like the evil generation that just died.
What do you need to do?
You need to go under this land. You need to possess it. You need to take it.
The promised land is there for the taking. You got to take it.
So an evil generation does not take the land.
An evil generation is afraid of the giants of the land, is afraid of the conflict, afraid of the fight,
and they just want to stay out in the wilderness, not really accomplish anything, not really possess anything.
They're afraid of possession in a sense.
He says, Don't be afraid, neither be discouraged.
Verse 22, And he came near unto me, every one of you, and said,
We will send men before us, and they shall search out the land and bring us word again,
by what way we must go up and into the cities we shall come.
And the saying pleased me well.
And it took twelve men of you, one of a tribe, and they turned and went up into the mountain
and came into the valley of Eshkol and searched it out.
And they took the fruit of the land in their hands and brought it down unto us,
and brought us word again, and said, It is a good land which the Lord our God doth give us.
Notwithstanding, ye would not go up, but rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God,
and ye murmured in your tents, and said, Because the Lord hated us,
he hath brought us forth out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy us.
With us shall we go up.
Our brethren have discouraged our hearts, saying, The people is greater and taller than we,
the cities are great and walled up to heaven, and moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakims there.
Then I said unto you, Dread not, neither be afraid of them.
The Lord your God, which goeth before you, he shall fight for you,
according to all that he did for you in Egypt before your eyes.
And in the wilderness where thou hast seen, how that the Lord thy God bare thee,
as a man doth bare his son, in all the way that ye went, until ye came into this place.
Yet in this thing ye did not believe the Lord your God,
who went in the way before you, to search you out of place, to pitch your tents in,
in fire by night, to show you by what way you should go, and in a cloud by day.
And the Lord heard the voice of your words, and was wroth and swear, saying,
Surely there shall not one of these men of this evil generation see that good land,
which I swear to give on your fathers.
So he's recounting, Hey, we drug you to the promised land,
I'm saying go into it, you took twelve spies, not a bad problem, not a bad thing, good idea,
but they came back, they brought an evil report, you guys murmured, you guys got discouraged,
you didn't want to go into the promised land, you weren't trusting me to fight the battles for you,
and as a result I got so angry I said, Fine, none of you are going to see it, save Caleb and Joshua.
And of course that's what he brings up here in verse number 36,
Save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, he shall see it, and him will I give the land that he hath trodden upon,
and to his children, because he hath wholly followed the Lord.
Also the Lord is angry with me for your sakes, saying, Thou also shalt not go in thither,
but Joshua the son of Nun, which standeth before thee, he shall go in thither, encourage him,
for he shall cause Israel to inherit.
So only Caleb and Joshua get to enter in the promised land, even Moses is kept out,
and there's real reasons for this, but there's also spiritual reasons for this,
this is kind of like a foreshadowing and a picture of something,
the promised land in a sense pictures salvation in some ways,
and if you think about it, salvation, you can only enter through faith,
and if you don't have faith, you can't enter in the promised land,
and because they didn't trust in the Lord, he didn't allow them to physically enter the promised land
as a picture of what salvation is like, that when you don't trust in the Lord,
you don't get that salvation.
Additionally, Moses is not allowed in, but did you notice how he worded it?
For your sake, he's saying he's not allowed to go in for your sake,
because Moses pictures the law, of course the law was given unto him,
and the reason why God is mad at us is because of the law,
not because of the law, but because of our sake, because we broke the law,
and because of the fact that we broke the law, you can't be saved by the law,
the law cannot get you into the promised land, it cannot give you salvation,
because salvation is a free gift by faith,
and so no matter how much repenting of your sins,
no matter how much you want to turn over a new leaf,
you cannot get into the promised land by works, by the law, it's by faith only,
and then of course Joshua enters in the promised land,
and of course Joshua is really the name Jesus,
if you actually understand the root, it is the same name as Jesus,
and of course Joshua goes in, has a picture of how Jesus leads us into the promised land,
and gives us that salvation.
Caleb, the son of Jephunne, you kind of study this,
he seems to be of Gentile background,
and you kind of see a picture of replacement theology also coming in here,
hey, Caleb gets in, and the children of the kingdom are cast out,
that evil generation is cast out,
and you get another foreshadowing of the gospel, of replacement theology,
all of these great things,
but I want to talk about this more of a practical perspective,
and the practical thing is that while we're not necessarily knocking on the door
of some physical promised land where we have to go fight some physical giant,
I believe that God wants to still have the same attitude though
of possessing the land upon which he has given us,
and fighting the giants that we do have in this world,
and not being an evil generation that's unwilling to trust the Lord
to fight our battles for us.
Because there could be this attitude, there could be this temptation
for us to just get lazy, backslidden, fearful, afraid,
and not willing to fight the Lord's battles.
And you know, it's not for us to decide what battles there are,
there's just some giant out there screaming,
and saying whatever to find the armies of the God of Israel,
or just possessing the land, and we have to fight it.
You know, I didn't pick that in America we would just be filled
with a bunch of homosexuals, and freaks, and weirdos, and faggots,
and that we would have to fight that battle,
but you know what, that is a giant in our land.
And there's a lot of churches today that say,
you know what, I'm not willing to fight that battle.
I'm not willing to preach what the Bible says about it.
I'm not even going to use a derogatory word about them,
I'm so afraid of them.
And yet we as a church, we should not be afraid of fighting that battle
and saying, you know what, the Lord is going to fight that battle for us.
Hey, we need to possess the land.
You know what, America is our country.
It is not some faggots country.
You know what, we should possess the land and say,
you know what, I'm not afraid of you.
You should be afraid of God.
And you should be afraid of the Word of God.
And you should be afraid of how the culture has been changing lately.
Because, you know, for a while it felt like, man,
they're going to win this battle.
But boy, it seems like the tide's been turning lately.
And you know what, the last thing Christians need to do is get soft now.
We need to just keep going and stay strong on the Word of God
and say, hey, these people are weird.
They're freaks.
We should keep them away from our children.
And we should overturn a lot of the laws that were passed in the past.
You know, Lawrence v. Texas needs to be re-reviewed by the Supreme Court.
And it needs to become illegal to be a sodomite again in America.
You say, is that possible?
Well, it's definitely possible.
I don't know if it's going to happen.
But you know what?
I'm not going to stop trying.
I'm not going to stop trying to preach what the Bible says.
I'm not going to discourage people.
You know, there's somebody in my personal life that's close to me.
And they were off on this issue.
And not that long ago I recently said, hey, if Texas had on the books a law
and you were going to vote, because they love voting.
They love to tell me all about it, right?
I'm like, if it's on the ballot, Leviticus 2013, are you voting for it?
I said, yes, I am.
All right.
I was like, hey, that's all I need.
Hey, we're winning people over right now.
OK, and maybe we need to win the culture over before it's on the ballot
because it may not win right now.
So we need to win more people over so that if it ever came on the ballot,
hey, you would be like, yes, I do.
Yes, that is what should be the law of the land.
And we should possess the land.
You say, oh, the giants are too big for us.
The giants are too strong for us.
They're going to destroy it.
You know what?
The nuts of the giants, they're bred for us.
We should possess the land.
Don't be an evil generation that just says, I don't want to fight that battle.
I'm not interested in talking about uncomfortable things.
I'm not going to fight against feminism.
I'm not going to fight against the modern versions of the Bible today.
I think all of them are generally the word of God.
I don't want to fight against the way that women dress.
I don't want to fight against the whoredom.
I don't want to fight against issues.
You know, that's an evil generation that says, you know what?
I'm not interested in fighting.
You know, we should be willing to fight the battles of the Lord
and say, you know what?
It doesn't matter what the battle is.
I'm just on the Lord's side.
And if he says, hey, go in here and conquer this land,
then I'm going to conquer this land.
You know, in the New Testament, Jesus is giving all kinds of parables.
And one of them, he says, occupy till I come.
We should occupy America.
Fundamental Baptists should occupy America.
We should possess the land.
We should make more fundamental Baptists.
We need to get more people saved.
We need to turn more people to righteousness.
We need to start printing more King James Bibles.
We need to make Baptists great again.
You know, you want to make America great again?
Well, you've got to make more Baptists.
You've got to get more people saved.
You've got to get more people King James only.
You've got to get more people believing salvation by faith alone,
eternal security.
We need to get more of the post-trib being taught everywhere.
Hey, yeah, we should fight that giant of the pre-trib rapture.
And look, you know, I'm not against being friends with pre-tribbers.
You know, it wouldn't even bother me.
This would be fun to me.
It's like if a pre-tribber came and preached for us,
you know, sometimes you don't want to, like,
preach something the church doesn't agree with
because you don't want to, like, lead them astray.
But I'm like, I'm pretty confident that nobody's going to be led astray
by the pre-trib rapture in our church.
Okay.
Like, even if someone visited our church and their pre-trib
and they accidentally just said something, you know,
or I don't think if they accidentally taught a little bit of Zionism,
you'd be like, oh, no, now I believe it or something.
You know, I think what they're really afraid of is us rubbing off on them.
But you know what?
I'm willing.
I'm willing to be friends with these people.
I'm willing to hang out with these people
because we need to turn more people to righteousness.
We need to become friends with more people.
We need more soul winning.
We need more badness.
We need to link together and fight the real battle here
because I don't want to be an evil generation
where we as a whole are just not willing to fight the battles.
Hey, I'm independent Baptist all day long,
but you know what?
We should still come together with our brothers and sisters in Christ
and fight the real enemies that are out there
and come together on the real issues that we're fighting today
and actually start turning a lot of people towards the Lord.
You know, we need to do this.
We need to do this.
Go to Ecclesiastes chapter 2.
But here's the question.
What kind of person are you?
What kind of Christian will you be?
And there's no guarantee of what your outcome is going to be like.
That is for you to decide.
It is for us to decide.
And we have to make the decision, you know what?
I am going to serve God.
And whatever we've been handed down,
we should not just rest in what's been handed down to us.
We should take it and do something with it.
You know, Solomon was handed a great opportunity
to build the temple of the Lord.
You know what he did?
He built it.
He could have squandered it.
He could have ruined it.
Many kings inherited the temple of the Lord,
and it diminished in their reign.
Some of them, they even lost it in their reign.
And the reality is, what kind of generation are you?
Are you going to take the things that God gave us
and we're going to use them and put them to great use,
or are you going to squander them and ruin them?
You never know.
Look at Ecclesiastes 2, verse 18.
Yea, I hated all my labor which I had taken under the sun,
because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me.
And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool?
Yet shall he have rule over all my labor wherein I have labored,
and wherein I have showed myself wise unto the sun,
this is also vanity.
So Solomon's worried.
He's saying, man, I was great.
Man, I did a lot of things.
I was really smart.
I made a lot of good decisions.
The kingdom prospered in my hand,
but I'm kind of mad about it,
because whoever I hand it to could be a complete idiot
and just ruin all of it in five minutes.
Just one sinner destroyeth much good.
And of course it's like you have the 12 tribes united together,
this one great kingdom to give all this honor and glory to the Lord.
It's handed to Rehoboam, his son,
and then just instantly it's now down to two tribes.
I mean, he went from 12 tribes all locked together,
all unified, this great kingdom,
and then you hand it to Rehoboam,
and he's just a fool,
and he just runs off 10 tribes right away for no legitimate reason.
The old men gave him counsel and said,
hey, if you are kind to these people,
if you serve these people, they'll serve with you.
They'll stick with you.
But he's like, no, I'm going to chastise you with scorpions,
and I'm going to basically break your backs,
and you think that my father was strict.
I'm going to be 10 times more harsh than he is,
and I'm paraphrasing, of course.
But generally speaking, Rehoboam is not taking the counsel of the wise men.
He's a fool.
He hearkens to the young generation that's with him,
his companions are fools,
and he loses half the kingdom.
Now, it's half the kingdom basically in the population.
It's about half the population, even though it's 10 to 2 tribes,
just because the tribe of Judah was just so much larger than a lot of the other tribes.
But at the end of the day, he basically just squanders tons of it,
and eventually Israel just goes so downhill.
I mean, he basically just ruins half of their entire nation
because of Jeroboam takes them on.
And look, we don't know what the next generation is going to do.
You never know what the next generation is going to do,
and frankly speaking, if you study the Bible,
there's tons of generations that are just terrible.
There's tons of kids that are just terrible.
Go if you went to Judges chapter number 2, go to Judges chapter 2.
I mean, think about Adam.
His first son is Cain.
What an evil generation, Cain.
But he has Abel, right?
Abel was good, Cain's bad.
And really, if you study the Bible,
you'll kind of notice a pattern of many great men in the Bible having horrible sons,
having some terrible sons.
Let me just give you a little sampling.
Adam had Cain.
Noah had Ham.
Abraham had Ishmael.
Isaac had Esau.
Jacob had Reuben and his brethren.
Aaron had Nadab and Abihu.
Gideon had Abimelech, who slew all of his brethren.
Eli had Hophni and Phinehas.
Samuel had Joel and Abiah.
Saul had Ish-bosheth.
David had Amnon, Absalom, and Adonijah.
Solomon had Rehoboam.
Now, a lot of them had a counterpart, had a good son.
A lot of them had some good children.
But, you know, that goes to show that if that many good men...
I mean, you could have two conclusions here.
Here's one conclusion that I think is weird.
Every single guy in the Bible is a bad dad.
Okay.
Or, B, here's another alternative,
that there really is sometimes just bad seeds and bad kids
and they have free will, right?
I mean, that seems like a pretty logical conclusion.
Or you could just simply say, Adam's a bad dad, Noah's a bad dad,
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Aaron, Joshua,
Gideon, Eli, Samuel, Saul, David, Solomon.
And I would ask you this question,
where are all the good dads at in the Bible?
And you have, like, okay, maybe you could say,
Philip the Evangelist.
Right?
But it's like, is that the only one good dad in the entire Bible?
I think that that would be kind of a weird conclusion to draw.
But what I would say is that I think that all these dads were good.
You know why?
Well, I taught you this morning something.
What did I teach you this morning?
That pretty much if you're not a good parent,
like, if you don't really do anything,
you're going to always have a bad outcome.
But in order to have a good outcome, you have to be a good parent.
And if you think of these same people, you know what?
Adam and Eve had Seth.
Adam and Eve had Abel.
Adam and Eve had two great sons, one bad.
That sounds to me that they're probably good parents then, actually.
Because, you know, you don't just have good kids accidentally.
Good kids, foolishness is bound on the heart of a child.
If a child's left to himself, he brings his mother to shame.
So if the reason why his son Cain was bad because of parenting,
then you would expect all the other ones to have been bad too.
Because it's a mixed bag, I'm going to say he's a good parent.
Noah, Shem and Japheth, they were great kids.
You have Abraham has Isaac, great kid.
Isaac has Jacob, great kid.
You have Jacob having Joseph, great kid.
Aaron has Eleazar and Ithamar to balance out Nadab and Abihu.
Joshua, no, and we're going to read about this in a minute.
Gideon, I don't know.
Eli, I don't think so.
Samuel, I'm not sure about.
Saul, he had Jonathan.
You have David, he had Solomon.
And so you kind of have a lot of these guys having some good sons
along with some bad sons that tells me that they must have been a good parent too.
And I would think that they were a good parent in general.
It's just that good parents don't have a guarantee.
Pretty much my opinion, bad parents have a guarantee of a bad kid.
Good parents have a mixed bag a lot of times in the Bible.
Sometimes you have all good kids.
That's what I would hope for.
That's what I would want for.
But you know what?
We don't know what the next generation is going to be like.
Why would Solomon get up and say, I have no idea what the next generation is going to do
if he could just know for sure that they're going to be good.
He can't.
No one can know if the next generation is going to be an evil generation.
And so we as a generation need to make sure that we're not evil.
We can't affect anything but the present.
And we need to be focused in on our present.
And we need to realize that even if our generation before us was great,
we still have a call on our lives to be great.
And Joshua's generation was great and they went into the promised land.
They weren't like their fathers, that evil generation.
You had an evil generation.
Then you have Joshua.
What happens immediately after Joshua?
Well, look at what it says in Judges chapter 2 verse 7.
And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua
and all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua
who had seen all the great works of the Lord that he did for Israel.
So during Joshua's reign, it's great.
Great generation.
They're loving the Lord.
They're loving, right?
It says in verse 8,
And followed other gods of the gods of the people that were round about them
and bowed themselves unto them and provoked the Lord to anger
and they forsook the Lord and served Baal and Asheroth.
So what is the Bible saying?
The Bible's making it clear.
Look, the previous generation of Joshua before them, evil generation.
That's what it says in Deuteronomy chapter number 1.
Joshua and his generation, great generation, served the Lord
all the way until him and all the elders die.
As soon as all of them die, now we're back to another evil generation
and we have an entire generation where they forsake the Lord.
They're not seeking him and they're doing a lot of wickedness.
They're serving Baal.
We don't want to be that evil generation.
We don't want to be, well, I'm serving God as long as my parents are there with me,
as long as that Joshua generation is just hanging on.
But as soon as the Joshua generation is gone,
well, now we're just going to go back to serving false gods.
We're going and we're going to forsake the Lord.
We're going to forsake the Word of God.
No, we need to be a generation that is a great generation
and keeps everybody on the right track.
And you never know what the next generation is going to do.
But while I'm in charge, while we have the ability to possess the land,
we need to be like Joshua.
We need to not be an evil generation.
Go to 1 Samuel chapter number 3, 1 Samuel chapter number 3.
Sometimes you can even be better than your fathers.
When we think about Gideon specifically,
Gideon, his first task that he had to do,
because after this evil generation starts, the book of Judges gets gnarly.
They're just bad.
It takes a specific deliverer or judge to help them.
Gideon's going to be that judge.
His first task that he has to do is overthrow his father's altar to Baal.
That tells me that Gideon's striving to be better even than his own father,
striving to serve the Lord and get rid of the idols in his father's life.
And of course his father gives him a name, Jerubabel,
because he is throwing down Baal, because he's a destroyer of Baal.
He gets this nickname of Jerubabel as Gideon
because he is throwing down the false religion that he inherited.
So a good generation is not only going to take what they've been received,
they're going to even go beyond what their fathers.
Hey, that Joshua generation, they were better than the generation before them
because their fathers didn't enter the Promised Land,
but they entered the Promised Land.
And so we want to make sure that we're serving God fervently
and that we're not an evil generation, that we're like a Joshua
and we're doing even better.
But sometimes you have these evil generations pop up.
Look at 1 Samuel 3, verse 12.
In that day I will perform against Eli all things which I have spoken concerning his house.
When I begin, I will also make an end.
For I have told him that I will judge his house forever,
for the iniquity which he knoweth because his sons made themselves vile,
and he restrained them not.
And therefore I have sworn in the house of Eli
that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be purged with sacrifice nor offering forever.
So Eli is kind of, in my mind, one of the only mentions in the Bible
in this list where they have a lot of bad kids,
where God's putting some blame on the parent.
You kind of see some blame on Eli specifically.
And what is he being blamed for?
Like what did he fail?
If you're going to say there's something he failed in,
what does the Bible bring up, what does God bring up
that he didn't restrain his children?
So apparently he wasn't applying enough discipline in his children's life,
or he was allowing them to do things that he should not allow them to do,
and because of that, God is going to punish Eli for not disciplining his children appropriately.
And it's not giving them enough discipline, so he's going to punish him.
You know, we need to make sure that we're disciplining our children
so that they can be a good generation, right?
Not only so we can be a good generation,
but also the next generation doesn't just go down a bad path.
We need to restrain them and keep them from evil.
Go to chapter 8, go to chapter number 8,
and I just picked out a couple of these examples that I wanted to show you.
Cain is completely ostracized and rejected from society
and pushed out and shunned so that we can rebuild society with Seth.
God pretty much just finds the entire world just reprobate
and unfixable with Noah's generation,
and so he just restarts with Noah and his family.
But then even Ham is evil and wicked,
and cursed became in his son,
and Ham's generation is going to end up cursed as a result of his sin.
Now, even Samuel, who is a great guy in the Bible,
whenever it's kind of the end of his life, he gives a whole speech asking the whole church,
like, what have I ever done, anything wrong?
Have I ever taken a sheep? Have I ever done anything?
Have I ever done anything? A bribe or anything wrong?
And they just say, like, you haven't.
But they say, but we just don't want your sons to essentially rule over us
because they do take bribes. They do, like, they are wicked.
We want a king.
And the Bible tells us a little bit about his kids.
It says in verse 2,
Now the name of his firstborn was Joel,
and the name of the second, Abiah, they were judges in Beersheba.
And his sons walked not in his ways,
but turned aside after Lucre and took bribes and perverted judgment.
So even though Samuel is a good guy, even though Samuel doesn't take bribes,
even though Samuel serves the Lord, even though Samuel has good character,
his sons just choose to not walk in their father's ways,
to pervert their father's ways, and as a result of that,
they end up being rejected and God replaces them with a king.
You can think of it this way.
The judges are replaced with a king just like the judges of the Old Testament
were replaced with a king, and that king is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Okay, because the judges were perverted,
and so they end up getting replaced with the Lord Jesus Christ
as our judicial system, okay?
Now you have, again, Saul, Ish-boseth, Jonathan, David,
with Abnon, Absalom, Adonijah, and Solomon.
You see, you just see like a mixed bag constantly.
And God is constantly purging out these evil people.
Ish-boseth loses.
The house of Saul waxes weaker and weaker and accomplishes nothing.
Amnon, Absalom, Adonijah get destroyed.
Solomon gets built up.
And in a society, God wants there to be a righteous generation
doing the works of God, and those who are evil,
he will purge from society.
So we need to make sure that we are serving God faithfully,
and we're doing what's right, so that God will preserve us
and destroy the wicked.
I believe, you know, we just don't want to be in a situation
where it's like, I sought for a man among them, and I found none.
We could say, you know what?
Well, we're not going to serve God like all the other wicked people,
and then he's just like, okay, we need to just start over again.
God's going to constantly purge the wicked from society over time.
And even amongst some good people,
there's going to be some people that need to be purged from society.
But at the end of the day, what we have to understand
is God is going to use those who are going to have the faith in him
to take them into a promised land and possess land.
When I say possess land, I'm meaning it literally.
I think that we need to literally possess Texas.
We need to literally possess America.
And not only that, we need to go over the whole world
and start possessing large areas and start preaching the gospel
and rebuilding Christianity in all kinds of different areas.
An evil generation would say, I don't want to do that kind of a work.
I want to be lazy.
And you know what? God is going to destroy them.
God's going to purge them from society.
But he's going to build up the Solomons.
He's going to build up those that serve him.
Now, I want to address a certain point.
I want you to go to 1 Kings 15.
It's also important that we do this for our child's upbringing
because we've been talking a little bit this morning about nature versus nurture.
And what we need to do is we need to set a good example for our children
because I cannot guarantee that my children will walk in my ways.
But what I don't want is to set a bad example so that if they do walk in my ways, they fail.
I want it to be like, hey, I want to set up a good way.
I don't want to be an evil generation.
I want to be a good generation and set them up.
Just like David, you know, he wasn't going to build the temple,
but he procured a lot of assets so the next generation could do so.
And, you know, maybe we won't like see a lot of huge victories in our life or in our generation,
but what we could do is walk in the ways of the Lord and set up the next generation
that if they choose to walk in the ways of the Lord,
that they could just have major successes, major victories,
have huge conquests in the name of God.
And sometimes we just have to be that building block for them.
But I've seen, you know, some people just kind of have this weird idea about, you know,
people in the Bible and just parenting in general.
And I think that, you know, David is such a great example.
David is a great example of someone that was willing to humbly just say,
you know what, I'm not going to build the temple even though I wanted that.
I'm just going to lay out for my son and he's going to do it.
And we should be like David.
But, you know, I've seen this accusation thrown out and I just want to address it for a moment.
I've seen this accusation where they say David is a bad dad or David is a crummy dad or David is a bad father.
And, you know, I'm thinking like I don't agree with that, number one.
But what does the Bible say on the subject?
Because, you know, it doesn't really matter what my opinion is.
If David is a bad father, then he is.
But if David is a bad father, then why do you have Solomon?
And why does the Bible consistently say about David specifically
that he wants every king in the kingdom to be like David?
I mean, if you study the Bible, you'll notice that everybody in the Bible is held to a standard
and that standard is David consistently in the Bible.
What does the Bible say about David?
It says that he's the man after his own heart.
The man after God's own heart is David.
What does the Bible say in 1 Kings 15 verse 5?
Because David did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord
and turned not aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life
save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.
But, oh, but God forgot that he's a bad dad on top of that, right?
I mean, do you really expect me to believe?
Who am I supposed to believe?
Your opinion or what the Bible says about David specifically?
I mean, what does the Bible say about it?
He's the man after God's own heart.
He's laying up in store so his son can build the house of God, not for his glory.
David doesn't get the recognition.
David, you know, had shed too much blood is what the Bible says so he couldn't build the temple.
He lays up for Solomon.
According to the Bible, other than the matter of Uriah, the Hittite, he did that which was right.
Notice this from anything that he commanded him.
All the commandments that God gave David, the Bible is saying he did it
except for one pretty big issue.
It was a big issue.
I'm not trying to, you know, say that it wasn't.
I'm not saying that David was perfect.
I don't think the Bible is saying David is perfect.
But just generally speaking, it sounds like David is about as good as you can be.
Now, go backwards to chapter 11 for a moment.
Go back to chapter 11 for a moment.
We should be like David.
Don't be an evil generation.
Be like David.
And the reason why I'm just kind of spending a second here is I want to defend David for a moment
because I want us to be like him.
I don't want us to sit here and think that David is this bad character that we would model our lives after
or something like that.
No, David was a good father, according to the Bible, because he did everything that God told him
except for in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.
Now, does that mean that I agree with every single decision David made
or I couldn't nitpick or be upset with some of the things?
Well, maybe I could, but let's just see what God thinks about him.
Let's see what the Bible says about him.
Now, it says in verse 6, 1 Kings chapter 11, verse 6,
And Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord, and went not fully after the Lord, as did David his father.
So if we're going to compare and contrast, who's better?
David.
I mean, it's not my opinion. That's God's opinion.
According to God, who is the better king?
Who is the better man?
It was David.
David was the better guy than Solomon.
Solomon did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord,
whereas David, it's like he did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, saving the matter of Uriah the Hittite.
You got your one issue.
You want to make that clear so that nobody would be like,
well, what about that one time, you know?
That was obviously a huge issue, right?
Look at 1 Kings chapter 15.
Go back, and let's go to verse number 3 now.
We want to be a good generation, and we want to raise the next generation to be good.
But, you know, David didn't know what Solomon was going to be like.
But let's just think about Solomon's life for a second.
At the end of David's life, he hands over the kingdom to King Solomon.
Solomon's around 18 years old, young man.
He gives him all this great advice in 1 Kings 2.
We're going to read that in a minute, but he gives him all this great advice.
When is Solomon at his peak?
I mean, if we read about the Bible, when do you want to be Solomon?
You want to be Solomon at the beginning of his ministry because he's very humble.
He asks the Lord for wisdom so that he can judge and discern God's people,
and he does a lot of good things in the early parts of his ministry.
When does he kind of go bad?
Way later in life with all these different women, with all these different wives.
So if I were to say, like, why is Solomon so great?
I'll tell you why. Because David was great.
And here's the thing. You know why we need to be a good generation?
So that our children can be a good generation.
Now, as our memory fades, it's going to be up to them to keep that going.
Just like when we see with Joshua, hey, as their memory faded,
we notice that that next generation kind of waxed worse.
But if we want the next generation to be great, then we have to be a great generation.
We have to be a great generation, and we have to model for other people how to live.
Because many times, and we not only just have to start good, we have to finish good.
It's often much better how we finish than it is how we started.
Now look at 1 Kings 15, verse 3.
And he walked in all the sins of his father, which he had done before him,
and his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father.
Now, I wanted to show you this because Solomon, it doesn't ever have, like, this disclosure about Rehoboam.
You have David, then who's his son?
Solomon. Who's his son?
Rehoboam. Then who's his son?
Abijam. This is the one that we're bringing up.
He doesn't have this statement about Rehoboam that I could find,
but it does inadvertently here in verse 3 because it says that he walked in all the sins of his father.
Who's Abijam's father?
Rehoboam. So you have Rehoboam, and then you have Abijah,
and it says, and his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father.
When the Bible brings up someone's father, it's not always the direct descendant.
It's talking about someone in his lineage specifically.
So when God wants to tell somebody, hey, you should have done the right thing,
who does he go back to, who does he point to?
He doesn't point to Rehoboam, he doesn't point to Solomon, he points to who?
David, because David is the standard.
David is the standard of what a person should be like of a king, and basically a Christian in general.
Go over to 2 Kings, chapter number 14.
2 Kings, chapter number 14.
Think about how weird it would be if in your Bible it said David is the example,
this is the standard of what you should be like, but he's a crummy dad.
Also, David lives to be 80 years old.
Okay, what does the Bible say?
Honor thy father and thy mother, so that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
It's the first commandment with prominence.
So he obviously would have honored his father and his mother.
He would have been a good son.
He even took care of his family.
When he fled, when he fled from Saul, the Bible says at first he took his family and he hid them among the Gentiles
so that they would be safe while he was on the run from King Saul,
and they weren't used against him as leverage or attack or destroyed because he cared for his father and his mother.
So this guy is a great son, obviously living a long life.
I just don't see where you're coming up with this idea.
David's this crummy dad.
Were you there? Did you see how he was bringing up his children or what they were doing?
It doesn't really make any sense to me.
I think that it makes more sense with the Bible saying that he's the standard.
Now look at 2 Kings 14 verse 3.
And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, yet not like David his father,
he did according to all things as Joash his father did.
So here he's saying, hey, this guy did right, but he still wasn't as good as David.
He was like his dad.
I mean, do you notice how the Bible just bring up David as just the standard?
I mean, David is the highest standard, the highest caliber.
Look at 2 Kings 16 verse 2.
So when it's comparing good, David, it's bad, it's also David.
It says in 2 Kings 16 verse 2,
20 years old was Heaz when he began to reign and reign 16 years in Jerusalem
and did not that which is right in the sight of the Lord his God, like David his father.
So it's saying, look, this guy didn't do right.
He should have been like who? David.
Because the Bible is consistently showing you.
I mean, think about this. The Bible is just saying David's the best.
David's the standard. David is right.
He didn't do right like David did, like David did.
And then it's just like, oh, but David's a bad father.
That would be weird, wouldn't it?
When he's the example and the standard consistently in the Bible.
Go over to 1 Kings chapter 2 now.
I'm going to go back to 1 Kings chapter number 2.
This is a question I had.
When someone falsely accuses you after you're dead, do you still get rewards in heaven?
And I don't know.
But that would be kind of funny.
David just sees his mansion just keep getting bigger like every day.
He's just like, sweet, you know.
I mean, I don't know if that works or not, but it's just kind of a funny thought experiment.
1 Kings chapter 2 verse 1, the Bible says,
Now the days of David drew nigh that he should die, and he charged Solomon his son, saying,
I go the way of all the earth.
Be thou strong therefore, and show thyself a man,
and keep the charge of the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways,
to keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his judgments, and his testimonies,
as it is written in the law of Moses, that thou mayest prosper in all that thou doest,
and whithersoever thou turnest thyself, that the Lord may continue his word,
which he spake concerning me, saying,
If thy children take heed to their way, to walk before me in truth with all their heart,
and with all their soul, there shall not fail thee, said he, a man on the throne of Israel.
This is a great charge.
We need to recognize, hey, David is our spiritual father,
and David is giving us the exact same charge right now.
What is the charge that David is giving us?
He's saying you need to be a good generation.
He said, I'm going to be prosperous.
You're going to be prosperous if you do something.
What is it? Verse 3.
It says we have to walk in his ways, talking about the Lord God,
keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his judgments, and his testimonies.
It sounds like he's being kind of repetitive, but I think it needs to be said.
Hey, you need to keep every single commandment, and every single testimony,
and every single judgment, and walk in all of his ways, and do everything that he said,
and if you do that, you're going to be prosperous,
because he promised me that I would have the same success.
And you know what? David ruled for 40 years.
You want to know why?
Because he kept the statutes, and the promises, and the commandments,
and the judgments, so that he was prosperous.
And then he's saying if you do the same thing, then you will have the same success.
Towards the end of Solomon's life, though, God wants to kind of end it with Solomon prematurely.
But then he said, hey, I'm going to keep you going for your father David's sake.
Not for your sake. You don't even deserve this.
And then even with Rehoboam, he's like, hey, I'll give you a tribe just for David's sake.
You don't even deserve this.
I mean, what is the insanity to sit here and say, I think that David's a crummy dad,
when the Bible is saying he's the man after God's own heart,
when the Bible is saying he did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord,
and all the things that he commanded him saved the matter of Uriah,
when the Bible is setting him as the standard, standard, standard, standard,
then he's telling Solomon, follow all the commandments like I've done and been successful,
and then you'll be successful, and then it's just like, yeah, but he was a crummy dad.
It sounds like you don't read the Bible.
It sounds like you don't even understand what the Bible is teaching.
And frankly speaking, we need to make sure that we are going to do what David said,
and we are going to follow the Lord with all our heart and with all our soul,
and then we will have the same success.
Now, of course, we're not going to literally rule on a throne of Israel,
and we're not going to be the king of Israel.
But the same truth applies that when we follow his commandments and his statutes,
we're going to be prosperous and we can conquer the land.
We can conquer the land. We can have great successes in this world.
Now, in the past, there has been some great men,
and I'm just going to go back to kind of the recent past,
to somebody specific that I want to talk to for a second,
but there was a guy named Pastor Jack Hyles, and I think that he was a great preacher.
In the 1990s, his church ran 20,000 people.
They were running 20,000 people on a weekend.
They said that they had 100,000 people in their membership roles.
So of the people that they had names for.
So in the 1990s, you have First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana
is running 20,000 people on a weekend.
And if you've ever listened to Jack Hyles preach,
it wasn't because he was watered down, folks.
This guy was preaching hard.
This guy was preaching the King James Bible unapologetically.
He was preaching King James only-ism, calling out sin,
calling out all kinds of things, and he was running this many people.
In the 1990s, I was alive in the 1990s, okay?
I was a young child, but I was alive in the 1990s.
That wasn't that long ago.
Here would be my question, because you can tell something,
I'll get through it in a second.
You can tell in Jack Hyles' preaching, just listen to it,
listen to the end of his life, all the preaching he did.
You can tell he has a consistent theme that he's worried about the next generation.
There's a specific sermon that's like all about it.
And I think you should listen to it, it's a great sermon,
but it's a vote for preaching is the title of the sermon.
It's like really long.
I loved it, it was excellent, okay?
Excellent sermon, but the whole sermon's about passing down the torch to the next generation,
and how he's worried about the next generation, and what they're going to do,
and what they're going to be like, and are they going to carry forward.
Here's the thing, when you're running 20,000, what would carrying the torch look like?
Probably still running 20,000, or running more.
But you know, you look at that church, and you look at a lot of the things that happened.
What happened after he passed?
Here's my question, where are those 20,000 people?
Because a lot of them are still alive.
Where are they?
Have they gone in the right direction?
Have they taken the torch and been a Joshua generation,
or have they been an evil generation, and turned away from the things of the Lord,
and not walked in his ways, and not gone in his direction?
And you know, we are following in the footsteps of many of these people.
What are we going to be like?
Are we going to carry that torch again?
Are we going to do some great work?
Are we going to possess the lamb?
You know, at the time that Jack Hyles was pastor of that church,
it was the largest church in America.
Now what are the largest church? Life Church.
You know, here's the thing, Life Church is going hard.
But you know what? I don't want that to go hard.
I don't want America to be conquered by Life Church.
You know what's so funny?
They call the new IRB a, quote, cult.
But let me explain to you how Life Church works.
You go to a building where there's a TV, and you watch a guy preach on a TV.
They have 50 campuses, approximately, where they all go to a building and just watch one person preach.
Now just imagine for a second what people would say if we all came to a building
and watched the screen of one preacher.
And isn't it funny that the people that go to Life Church would say,
we're a cult because we like somebody,
but they go to a building and watch the one preacher that they have,
and they're not a cult.
Now look, I'm not accusing Life Church of being a cult because I frankly don't even care.
But I'm just saying, isn't it funny that they have more tendency,
more proclivity to actually being a cult than we are,
but then they call us the cult, right?
We're somehow magically a cult even though they go to watch a screen of Craig Groeschel preaching.
Someone's going to take over America, folks.
Someone is going to take over Christianity.
Someone is going to take over Texas.
Someone's going to take over Dallas-Fort Worth area.
And you know what it should be? It should be fundamental Baptists.
It should be King James only, soul winning, fundamental Baptists.
It should be skirt wearing, pregnant ladies going out preaching the gospel.
It should be people preaching the Word of God unapologetically.
It should be people with the Baptist bias is what it should be.
And you know what? Someone's got to do the work. Someone's got to step up.
Someone's got to join forces and say, hey, you know what?
It's time for America to be Baptist again.
And to say, hey, we're going to keep the Lord's statutes,
but we're also going to go to battle and we're going to conquer the land.
Someone is going to get the people saved in the Bahamas in the fall and it's going to be us.
And if we don't do it, someone else will do it.
Hey, if someone else doesn't reach these people, if we don't reach these people, someone else will.
Life Church will. Gateway will. Whoever.
And they're going to just suck up all these resources and just waste them and ruin them
and do nothing with them and squander them.
And many times it's because we're not going in to possess the land.
It's like the giants just keep wasting all the land in Canaan
while the children of Israel could have been using those resources and serving God with them.
And you know what? We need to not waste the opportunities we've been given.
And of course our children are a great opportunity that we've been given.
We don't want to waste them.
Go to Acts chapter 20. Go to Acts chapter number 20.
And we need to take advantage of the leadership that we've been given
because I think we've been given some good leadership.
I think that Pastor Steven Anderson is a very unique preacher
and a once in a generation type person to really lead a charge.
But we need to take what he's done and run with it.
And say, hey, we should follow suit and be likewise and keep reaching people and doing great works.
Because when you don't have great leadership, bad things happen, folks.
I mean, as soon as Joshua and those people are gone, everyone's bad.
The whole generation's bad.
And it's not like, oh, what about the good people that weren't there?
No, the rest of the world's bad too.
The whole world lies in darkness and wickedness.
And what does the Apostle Paul even say?
Look at Acts chapter 20 verse 29.
For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wills enter in among you, not sparing the flock.
Hey, when does it happen? When he leaves.
I have no idea what's going to happen when I'm gone.
I can't affect it. I can't do anything.
In the grave, I might roll, okay?
I might roll over my grave, but I can't do anything.
You know what I can do something? Right now.
And I can't guarantee that the next generation won't be evil.
I can't guarantee the next generation won't squander what we've built.
But this is what I know. We should do everything that we can right now.
And we should build a pathway forward for the next generation to walk into and to do great works.
Because afterwards, grievous wills will come in.
Like Life Church. Like Gateway. Like the Pentecostals.
Like whoever that wants to come in here and sweep and destroy and ruin all the resources.
Grevious wills trying to do things, not sparing the flock.
Verse 30, also of your own self so men arise, speaking perverse things that draw away disciples after them.
Go over to 2 Chronicles chapter 24.
Don't be surprised when people are constantly trying to get you out of a good church.
And let me tell you something. This is a great church. This isn't even a good church.
This is a great church. And we're doing great works for God.
And we're making a big impact in this world. And you know what?
We need to keep going. And when people want to draw you away from a great work.
I mean, imagine in hindsight, you could go back in time and people are like,
you need to stop following Moses. You need to stop following Joshua.
You need to get out of the Apostle Paul's church.
You need to get away from Peter and James and John.
Hey, you need to follow me. My name is Diotrophes.
You need to come detox with Diotrophes, okay?
And in the trash can with us.
With Hymenaeus and Philetus and even Gashmu sayeth it.
It's like the funniest line to me in the Bible. It's like, who cares about Gashmu?
Who is Gashmu? Nobody cares. He's a literal nobody.
He's a proverb. He's a joke.
You know, but there's going to be people that are trying to destroy the work of God
and try to draw you away from the things of God.
But you know what? We need to say, you know what? I'm not going to be an evil generation.
I'm going to keep going forward. I'm going to follow the leadership.
I'm going to do what's right.
And you don't know when you're going to have good leadership.
And when you have it, you need to just go all in.
When you got somebody that's leading the charge, you got to get in.
Well, the getting is good.
2 Chronicles 24, look at verse 2.
And Joash did that which was right in the sight of the Lord all the days of Jehoiada the priest.
This guy was doing great while he had Jehoiada.
Then what happens? Look at verse 15.
But Jehoiada waxed old and was full of days when he died,
and 130 years old was he when he died.
And they buried him in the city of David among the kings,
because he had done good in the Israel, both toward God and toward his house.
Now after the death of Jehoiada came the princes of Judah and made obeisance to the king.
Then the king hearkened unto them, and they left the house of the Lord God of their fathers,
and served groves and idols, and wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for their trespass.
Well, it even says this, verse 19,
And he sent prophets to them to bring them again unto the Lord,
and they testified against them, but they would not give ear.
What happens? While Jehoiada is there, good, good, good,
as soon as he's gone, evil generation, and they turn away from the Lord,
and things aren't going well.
And you know, we could have an evil generation.
Have you ever heard of the dark ages?
It's not even dark decades, it's dark ages, folks.
Why? Because Christians weren't possessing the land,
because evil generation must have just squandered the work that was there.
And we need to rise up and say, hey, we've been given a great opportunity here.
We've been given the King James Bible.
We need to make sure that we're going to do the work of the Lord.
We need to not harden our heart as in the day of provocation,
but we need to serve God.
And we need to say this, you're not going to take our Bible.
We're not going to let them take our Bible.
We are going to fight for this.
We are not going to be an evil generation
that deconstructs away from the King James Bible.
We're not transitioning away from the King James Bible.
We're going to turn more people to the King James Bible.
We're going to get more King James Bibles printed.
Hey, we're printing more Texas Receptus works
with the Spanish Reina Valera Gomez 2010.
You're not going to take the Word of God from us.
We're going to make the Word of God be more abundant,
not less abundant in this land.
You're not going to take our church away from us.
This is our church, and we're going to keep it.
You're not going to take away our soul winners.
We're going to keep our soul winners.
Now, if you want to take the trash out, please do.
We need more room.
But don't take our soul winners.
You're not going to take our soul winners.
I'll fight for soul winners.
Hey, you're not going to take our gospel.
We're not going to be like the Galatians and get watered down.
Hey, we're not going to start turning into a pen of your sins here.
We're not going to start turning into lordship salvation here.
It's a free gospel.
You don't have to do any works.
Hey, they're not going to take our state from us.
It's Texas and I like it.
Hey, if you don't want it to be Texas, go back to California.
Don't try to make Texas become California.
If you like Texas, then become Texan.
Hey, we want to keep the things that God has given us,
and we're going to possess the land.
In fact, Texas might just take over your state.
How about that?
Hey, you're not going to take our brisket.
You're not going to take our preaching.
You're not going to take our joy.
You're not going to take our spirit.
Tell everyone the Psalm 78.
Hey, we've got a steadfast attitude, and you're not going to take it.
We are going to be a good generation.
We're not going to be an evil generation.
We're not going to turn away from the things of God.
You can't take these things from us.
If God be for us, who can be against us, is what the Bible says.
And you know what?
We need to make sure that we are a righteous generation
that rises up and turns many to righteousness.
We turn the hearts of the fathers to the children
and the children to the fathers,
and that we actually do something big in this world.
You know, I don't know what to think about the presidency.
I don't know what to think about Trump,
but I already said this a while back, and I still mean it.
God's given us four years to do some real damage.
So we need to do some real damage.
We need to go hard. We need to preach.
We need to be unapologetic.
We need to do great exploits.
We need to reach the world with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ
because we need to redeem the time because the days are evil.
And I don't know what the next generation will do,
but I know what we can do. We can do great works.
Look at Psalm 78, verse 5.
For He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel,
which He commanded our fathers,
that they should make them known to their children,
that the generation to come might know them,
even the generation which should be born,
who should arise and declare them to their children,
that they might set their hope in God and not forget the works of God,
but keep His commandments,
and might not be, as their fathers,
a stubborn and rebellious generation,
a generation that set not their heart aright,
and whose spirit was not steadfast with God.
You know what the problem is? People are not steadfast.
You know what the solution is? People that are steadfast.
Hey, you know what the solution is for America?
Steadfast Baptist Church,
and having me a steadfast spirit and a steadfast attitude,
and let me tell you something. You're not going to take our children,
I'm going to make my children steadfast,
and I'm going to command my children to be steadfast,
and you're not going to take our sons,
and you're not going to take our daughters.
You know what? My daughter's not going to wear a halter top.
My daughter's not going to look like a hoochie mama.
My daughter's not going to dress like a slut and a skank
and a whore and a tramp.
My daughter isn't going to wear that butch haircut.
My daughter's not going to wear the miniskirt.
My daughter's not going to wear the midriff.
My daughter's not going to dress in her underwear in public.
My daughter's not going to wear the bikini.
You know why? Because I'm not going to be an evil generation.
And there's so many people that want to destroy our country
and destroy our land, and when you say, you know what?
Our daughters are going to dress godly.
You're not going to have my children.
Our children are going to serve God.
You know, the Bible says that we're not supposed to prostitute
our daughters to cause them to be a whore.
America is turning their daughters into whores.
It's evil. It's wicked.
We need to raise some women that respect themselves
and love God and do not forsake the covenant of their God
and actually want to be a godly, conservative woman,
a wife, a mother.
Being a mother is one of the greatest things you can ever do
with your life, and we need to praise mothers
and praise wives and say no to being a whore.
I'm not going to let them take my wife.
My wife is going to obey me.
My wife is not going to succumb to this feminism.
My wife's not going to have to go get some job.
My wife's not going to become some boss babe.
My wife is not going to be Vashti. She's going to be Esther.
And you know what Esther does?
She comes in and asks me if she can ask me a question.
Vashti, when she's called in, she doesn't even show up.
She's too busy getting herself dolled up with a bunch of makeup or something.
You know what? I'm not interested in Vashti.
You're not going to take my wife and turn her into some Vashti today
where all the women and all the wives despise their husband.
You know what? God can get rid of all the junk in our country.
Let me tell you something about feminism.
It is a self-defeating ideology.
Where is all your daughters coming from?
Oh, you didn't have any. You killed them all.
You're just pruning yourself, aren't you?
And the next generation, you won't exist.
No one will even know your name.
Nobody even cares about you, cat lady.
Even your cats don't like you.
We need to make sure that we're not an evil generation
because we're literally raising the next generation.
They're not raising the next generation.
They killed the next generation.
The next generation is our children,
and we need to motivate them to not be an evil generation.
Say, hey, look at these psychos destroying themselves.
Don't be like them. Don't dress like them.
Don't talk like them. Don't hang out with them.
Don't go to the movies with them.
Go to Psalm 24. Go to Psalm 24.
We're not going to let them have these things.
We are going to take possession of the land.
We're going to make women godly again.
We're going to make wives submissive again.
We're going to make husbands good leaders and good providers.
We're going to make our sons strong.
We're going to make people actually know what the Bible says.
We're going to make people articulate, God-fearing Christians
who value the things of God, who sacrifice for the things of God.
That's what we're going to do.
We're going to motivate people to actually serve God the way he should be served.
Look at Psalm 24, verse 1.
The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof,
the world and they that dwell therein.
For he hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods.
Who shall ascend in the hill of the Lord?
Or who shall stand in his holy place?
He that hath clean hands and a pure heart,
who hath not lifted up his soul into vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.
He shall receive the blessing from the Lord
and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
This is the generation of them that seek him,
that seek thy face, O Jacob, Selah.
We need to be a generation that the Bible says,
hey, this is the generation that's seeking the Lord,
that has pure hands and a clean heart,
that says, you know what?
We are not going to let the world take our hearts.
Our hearts and our affections and our desires
and our spirit and our attitude is going to be for God,
for the King James Bible, for the Word of God.
We're going to have faith in God.
We're not going to let our affection be given
to some cheap substitute, to the whores of this world,
to the pleasures of this world.
I'm not going to be dying and on my gravestone
have a cowboy star on it.
I'm not going to have the Star of Rem fan on my grave.
You know what? I want a King James Bible verse on my grave.
How about steadfast, be steadfast.
How about that?
We need to make sure that we're laying up treasure in heaven
because you know what?
That's where our heart will be.
We should not let them have our hearts.
Don't let the giants of this world,
the Canaanites, have our hearts.
Don't let them have your affection.
Don't let them have your attention.
Don't let them have your energy.
You know what the trolls want to do?
They want to zap you of all your energy
and of all your attention and of all your creativity.
Don't let the haters and the disgruntled people
get all your attention.
Instead of fighting losers, just build something
and just let the losers continue being losers
and continue saying,
let's go listen to sermons we hate again.
Instead of saying, why don't we go knock on someone's door
and give them the gospel?
Why don't you build something?
Why don't you baptize someone?
Why don't you actually preach a good sermon for once?
Oh, sorry.
I guess you just spend so much time hating people
instead of actually reading your Bible
to then think that David's a crummy dad.
I don't see that in my Bible.
But you know what? I believe what the Word of God says.
Maybe you're just too busy
just studying a bunch of tourist traps in Israel
and making stupid movies about it
instead of actually trying to reach people with the gospel.
Oh, I'm going to take videos down off the Internet
reaching thousands of people,
trying to put strikes on it so that people don't get saved,
so that I can promote a movie that no one wants to watch
that's stupid and wrong anyways.
Because I'm too busy hating people
and now I'm blinded by God
and now I'm taken advantage of by suckers
and instead of actually doing something
and building something, I'm just doing destructive work.
You know what? We shouldn't let them have our mind.
We should use our creativity to do something good
and reach new people,
not our creativity to make a board game
about people that we hate.
What a weirdo!
I mean, think about how much time, effort, and energy
has to go into that
that you could have done something productive with your life.
And I'm telling you,
your wife and kids do not think it's cool.
My wife shared with me this list
and it was the number one most embarrassing habit of men.
Number one was gaming.
It should have been making board games of people you hate.
It should have been above that.
I mean, what a loser activity!
What a troll!
You know, let us not give them our souls
and our youth and our strength.
You know, the Bible says we should fight the good fight of faith.
Hey, say it like Nehemiah.
Hey, I'm doing a great work. I can't come down.
I'd beat you at that board game, but I'm too busy, okay?
You know, it's just silly
that people just get so distracted
in all the nonsense and the garbage
and the hate and the weirdo.
But it happens. Read the Epistles.
Just read Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians.
And you'll see Paul constantly saying, like,
ignore the haters, ignore all the disgruntled people.
You have 10,000 instructors in Christ,
yet have you not many fathers.
I mean, just constantly saying, like,
beware of all the bozos, the dogs, the concision,
all the evil workers, the false apostles,
all these different people just constantly trying to drag you away.
Why? Because we're actually doing something.
Don't let the...
Well, I don't like fighting.
Okay. You just want to wander around in the wilderness then?
You want to be the evil generation that accomplishes nothing?
Because you know what? I would rather fight
and die fighting
than to just be a lazy bum out in the wilderness.
Just be a lazy jerk.
You know what? Even if I don't get to enjoy the land,
maybe my kids can enjoy the land.
You know what? I don't want to be this generation
when we look back and we say,
hey, they had great opportunity to serve the Lord,
but they turned aside.
Hey, remember the heyday when they were running 20,000
and now they're running 1,500?
It's interesting that these group of people raise amazing children
that they go from 20,000 to 1,500.
How does that work? How does that math even...
Math. I feel like your math's not mathing.
And then they'll say like, oh, but see there's 1,500.
Yeah, but you came from 20,000.
So if you were on the right path,
if you were on the right...
You were walking down the right direction,
wouldn't it go up?
Wouldn't it at least maintain?
I mean, to see a 90-some percent decline
tells me there's some issue.
You know, when you look at some of the greatest churches,
even America today, of independent of the Baptist,
most of them are in decline.
Most of the biggest churches of the old IFB
are in decline from what they used to be.
They're a shell of what they used to be.
You know what that tells you?
You're not going in the right direction.
If you were to buy a business, I know most people,
you know, some people just don't understand this,
but if you were to buy a business
and you look at their chart and they say,
hey, 20 years ago we were making a million dollars a year in sales.
Okay, but what do you make last year?
Uh, you know, 100,000.
And we've seen this pattern of it just going down.
You wouldn't say, hey, they're doing great.
Great business model. Model them.
It's like, but look, they have $100,000 coming in.
Yeah, well, that's different than if you say,
hey, we started two years ago.
We started first with 10,000, then 50.
Now we're at 100.
That's a different story than going from a million
to half a million to 200,000 to 100,000.
You have to look, what's the direction that you're headed in?
And sometimes you have to see, hey,
what's the direction that someone's headed?
What is the direction of our country?
And I don't like it.
Let's change it.
Let's take over.
Let us take over.
Let us possess the land.
Let us be the one that everybody says,
hey, they reached us.
They're getting us safe.
They're getting us baptized.
They're coming into our nation.
Hey, they gave me the Baptist bias.
And let us not be a evil generation.
Let's close in prayer.
Thank you, Heavenly Father, so much for giving us
an opportunity to do great works for your name
and for your honor and for your glory.
I pray that we'd have the faith to get into these battles
because we know that you're ultimately going to fight them for us.
I pray that you would increase the faith of the men
and the women and the children in this room,
that you would help us to reach more people
and that we could turn many people to the Lord.
I pray that you would give us this great opportunity
in these next coming years.
I pray that this year with all of our soul winning
and missions trips and all the projects and the work that we have
that we could just reach more and more people
and that we would not be this evil generation
that turns away from the Lord or forsakes God,
but rather we would be a generation of revival
that reaches more people and sees more people saved
and that we would continue to grow for your honor and for your glory.
And I pray that we'd have the right attitude that we would say,
you know what, we're going to fight
and we're going to set up a great example
for the next generation to follow.
And I pray that you would help motivate the young people
and the next generation to also follow in those works too.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Alright, in closing, let's go to song number 43.
Song number 43, we're marching to Zion.
Song number 43.
Let's all sing out loudly together on that verse.
Come we that love the Lord
And let our joys be known
Join in a song with sweet accord
And thus around the throne
We're marching to Zion
Beautiful, beautiful Zion
We're marching upward to Zion
The beautiful city of God
Let those refused to sing
Who never knew our God
The children of the heavenly King
We speak their joys of promise
We bear joys abroad
We're marching to Zion
Beautiful, beautiful Zion
We're marching upward to Zion
The beautiful city of God
The hill of Zion yields
A thousand sacred streets
Before we reach that heavenly field
We'll walk the golden streets
We're marching to Zion
Beautiful, beautiful Zion
We're marching upward to Zion
The beautiful city of God
Let our songs abound
And every tear we try
We're marching through the angels' crowd
To nearer worlds on high
We're marching to Zion
Beautiful, beautiful Zion
We're marching upward to Zion
The beautiful city of God
Great singing, everybody. You were all dismissed.