a friend I have called Jesus whose love is strong and true and never fails how
where to start no matter what I do I've sinned against this love of his but
when I now to confessing all my guilt to him the sin clouds rolled away it's just
like Jesus to roll the clouds away it's just like Jesus to keep me day by day
it's just like Jesus all along the way it's just like his great love sometimes
the clouds of trouble be damned the sky above I cannot see my Savior's face I
doubt his wondrous love but he from heaven's mercy see beholding my despair
in pity burst the clouds between and shows me he is there it's just like
Jesus to roll the clouds away it's just like Jesus to keep me day by day it's
just like Jesus all along the way it's just like his great love when
sorrows clouds or take me and break upon my head when life seems worse
than useless and I were better done my grief to Jesus then nor do I go in
vain for have me hope he gives that cheers like sunshine after rain it's
just like Jesus to roll the clouds away it's just like Jesus to keep me
day by day it's just like Jesus all along the way it's just like his great
love on the last oh I could sing forever of Jesus love divine of all
his care and tenderness for this poor life of mine his love is in and over
all and winds and waves obey when Jesus whispers peace be still and
the clouds away it's just like Jesus to roll the clouds away it's just like
Jesus to keep me day by day it's just like Jesus all along the way
it's just like his great love great singing let's open up in a word of
prayer Lord we thank you so much for this day and for the opportunity to be
in church tonight and thank you so much for salvation and for sending us your
son pray that we would just worship you tonight from our hearts love you
and thank you for all that you do for us in Jesus name we pray amen
all right for a second song we'll go to song 260 he is able to deliver the
260 he is able to deliver the song 260 he is able to deliver the is the grandest
theme through the ages wrong tis the grandest theme for a mortal tongue is
the grandest thing that the world's ever sung our God is able to deliver
thee he is able to deliver thee he is able to deliver thee though by sin
oppressed go to him for rest our God is able to deliver thee tis the
grandest theme in the earth or main tis the grandest theme for a mortal
strain tis the grandest thing tell the world again our God is able to
deliver thee he is able to deliver thee he is able to deliver thee
though by sin oppressed go to him for rest our God is able to deliver thee
tis the grandest theme let the tidings roll to the guilty heart to
the sinful soul look to God in faith he will make thee whole our God is
able to deliver thee he is able to deliver thee he is able to deliver thee
though by sin oppressed go to him for rest our God is able to deliver thee
amen thank you so much for coming to steadfast Baptist Church if you need a
bulletin if you didn't have one or you need another one just lift your
hand up real quick and one of our ushers can come by hopefully and get
you guys a bulletin on the front we have our announcement for the canaries
on the birth of their daughter Madeline Castilian so congratulations
to them she was born October 28 at 421 p.m. weighing seven pounds three
ounces and measuring 18 inches long gradually since that family we have our
Bible memory passage John 1 verse 50 and we're getting really close to
finishing this one and we'll have to start another one soon we have our soul
winning times and our church stats is there any soul winning that did not
get reported that needs to be reported to your soul winning captains or
leaders anything like that all right keep up the good work on soul winning
also on the right we have the list of our expecting ladies we have our
prayer list and we're gonna kind of go over that this evening continue to
pray for the niguiras for upcoming MRI Miss Lucy for her mother's tumors
brother Cameron Hall for his leg but the Matt Pendleton been keeping him in
her per quest for his brain cancer praying for Oscar Tobias is in and
looking for another job for a new job miss Natasha we were praying for health
and protection and healing and also brother Goodwin he is asking for
prayer for his brother-in-law David salvation and for his cancer so we have
several that were mentioned there a couple to add we can say a quick word
of prayer as a church family for those that are on our sheet we'll go
ahead and pray now Thank You Heavenly Father for this opportunity to be here
and to sing praises and to hear the Word of God being preached and I pray
that you would just be with our church family that is struggling with
various health concerns not just the people that are here but people that
can't make it the church tonight not just our church family but even our
friends please be with them please strengthen them please help them with
this sickness this illness I pray that if possible you just give them a
miracle please help our family that needs a favor or a job or or
provision that you would just bless them right now I pray that you would
also just help bring a soul winner of our family members and friends that
were we're praying for that we want to get saved I pray that you would help
soften their hearts and you would allow us or a soul winner to have
boldness to confront them about the gospel and to get them saved and I
thank you for all that you give us I pray that we continue to be zealous
for you in Jesus name we pray amen we have a baby shower on November
19th it is for mrs. Cooley and her baby girl if you'd like to RSVP please do
that to mrs. Milstead also if you're planning on bringing a dish to share
anything like that please let her know as well that just way we can have
the event planned and it will go smoothly we had our Texas chili cook-off
Monday and man it was everybody was a winner because I didn't see any beans
in the chili now I heard there might have been some traders amongst us that
tried to sneak it in there but you know what God killed in a nice and
Sephira for for lying under the Holy Ghost and so I'm just I'm just telling
you that's dangerous move all right but for the second year in a row we
had miss Cassandra as our winner so you know I don't know I would think
that Brent would be like 400 pounds or something you know but I guess he he
doesn't need home often or something I don't know on the back we have our
church reminders no running in the church no playing on the stage
children should be under the supervision of their parents at all
times the mother baby room is for birth in two years what that means is
just the the children that are roaming you know the roamers we want to kind
of limit that to zero to two years old that way they can participate in that
activity safely once they start getting older they're three four five it makes
it hazardous for the actual the crawlers and the little babies and it
kind of almost defeats the purpose of that room for those individuals and so
you can still take anybody in there you need to just please have them sit
during the service so if you have a three year old four year old five year
old please please make them sit and pay attention to the service to the best of
their ability and so that way the zero one and two year olds can safely use
the mother baby room area also the rockers are specifically for mothers
who are nursing or pregnant or some or even both you know you got you
recombination of that but please please allow them to use those they are
for the ladies not for children or for single dudes also please don't allow
your children to get into the ice machine or refrigerator without
assistance also children should not be in the mother baby room without their
mother and we don't want any children roaming through the church services at
any time as well so if an usher or someone noticed that please just help
them to find their parents we had our Arlington soul winning blinks 44 soul
winners and 16 salvations that's really good numbers I think we even had better
numbers the previous time but that's still really good and so that's
encouraging that a lot of people went out and participated in that we have
our music recital coming up November 5th so if you'd like to if you'd like
to eat this this this Saturday so if you would even like to just come and
just hear the children perform that's gonna be great my wife already did a
rehearsal and it went really well and I think it's gonna be a really great
performance these kids have been practicing hard and so we want to
support them and encourage them by showing up and telling them that they
get that did a good job also our Matamoros soul winning trip is getting
really close now some people signed up for the church transportation and there
is a sign-up sheet if you're not on this sheet you need to get on it like
tonight but we need we're gonna we've already kind of planned that the the
church van is gonna leave here on Wednesday kind of like Wednesday
morning brother Jacob's gonna be leading that train so if you need any
details I think there was about five or six individuals that signed up for
that so he's gonna be taking the church man down on Wednesday morning
and they're gonna come back they're gonna leave there Saturday right around lunch so that means
you'll probably get back kind of like evening late Saturday night so if you want to do the
church transportation as far as the van is concerned it's gonna go Wednesday morning come
back late Saturday night if you're not doing that if you're you're flying or taking your own
vehicle just will email everybody they're assigned sleeping arrangements they know where to go or if
you are flying and you need someone to pick you up the airport you need to email us your
itinerary and say something if it's not an opportune time we might just get like a
boober or something for you or help you with that but otherwise our schedule is gonna kind of
be like I'm getting in there Thursday morning and leaving Saturday afternoon via plane god
willing so mostly the schedule is gonna be kind of like Thursday lunch is kind of where
all meet together as a group we'll do a lot of old afternoon soul winning and then we're gonna
have Friday morning Friday afternoon and Saturday morning and it's kind of a Saturday afternoon a
little bit so if you want to participate with the group it's basically Thursday lunch to about
Saturday lunch Saturday afternoon everything else is on your own if you have any questions
ask me or email me and I'll try to get you those those answers we have people that are gonna
be coming and staying with us from other churches other countries and things like that
and if you're not able to go please just please pray that our trip will be successful every
time we've gone down there it's gone really well and a lot of people gotten saved but of
course you know our border is kind of a mess and you know going traveling like this it can be a
little hazardous but every time we've gone it's felt really safe it's been it seemed very safe
so I don't anticipate any problems but of course we just want to pray that God will allow
our journey to go smoothly and I assume we will gonna see a lot of people saved when we go
down there so I'm really excited about it November 19th is the baby shower we talked about
November 23rd Thanksgiving dessert fellowship December 2nd is a lady's Christmas party so that's
pretty much all I have for the announcements right now let's do our Psalm of the week Psalm
147 should be in your handout Psalm 147 in that Psalm 147
you
crazy
to sing praises on to our God for it is pleasant and praise is coming the Lord up
build up Jerusalem he gathered together the outcasts of Israel he healed at the
broken in hard and binded of their wounds he tell it number of the stars he
call it he call it all by their names great is our Lord and of great power is
the Lord lifted up cast it down to the ground sing on to the Lord with thanksgiving sing praise
upon the car but you are God who covered the clouds
three rain for the earth who make it grass grass to grow upon the mountains
and to the young
he delighted not in the strength of the force he take pleasure in the legs of a man the
Lord take it pleasure in them that we hear him in those that hope in his mercy praise
the Lord over
oh
for he
I
strength
Of thy gates he hath blessed, Thy children within thee he maketh peace In thy borders and fillet thee.
With the finest of the wheat he sendeth, Forth his commandment, upon earth his work runneth,
Very swiftly he giveth snow like wool, He scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes,
Scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes.
His ice like wool, souls who can stand before his cold, He sendeth out, and melteth them he calls, and his wind to blow.
And the waters flow, he showeth his word unto Jacob, His statutes and his judgments unto Israel,
He hath not dealt so with any nation, And as for his judgments they have not known them,
So praise ye the Lord.
And God the Father, who raised him from the dead,
And all the brethren which are with me unto the churches of Galatia,
Grace be to you, and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ,
Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world,
According to the will of God and our Father,
To whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel,
Which is not another, but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.
But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you,
Than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.
As we said before, so say I now again,
If any man preach any other gospel unto you, than that ye have received, let him be accursed.
For do I now persuade men, or God, or do I seek to please men?
For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.
But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man.
For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.
For ye have heard of my conversation in times past in the Jews' religion,
How that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God and wasted it,
And profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation,
Being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.
But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb,
And called me by his grace to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen,
Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood,
Neither when I upped to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me,
But I went into Arabia and returned again unto Damascus.
Then, after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter and abode with him fifteen days.
But other of the apostles saw I none save James, the Lord's brother.
Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God I lie not.
Afterwards I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia,
And was unknown by face unto the churches of Judea which were in Christ.
But they had heard only that he which persecuted us in times past,
Now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed,
And they glorified God in me.
Let's have a word of prayer.
Heavenly Father, thank you again for this evening,
And thank you for this new book of the Bible we're going to be studying.
I pray that you would help us all to have ears to pay attention to the preaching of God's word tonight.
And please fill Pastor Shelley with the Holy Spirit.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
So we're starting a new chapter, or sorry, book of the Bible.
And we're in Galatians chapter number one.
And Galatians is a interesting book that really kind of illustrates the fact that even though the gospel is so simple,
And it's so easy to be understood,
Even saved people can get corrupted, mixed up,
Or have bad people come in and influence them when it comes to the simplicity of the gospel.
And so I believe that Galatians is a really important book to understand the fact that,
Even though we understand that someone who's saved is never going to end up becoming an atheist,
Or a Mormon, or something really extreme,
They can still get mixed up to some degree or have some kind of an issue with the gospel.
And so it's important to kind of understand this doctrine as it relates to ourselves,
And our family, and our friends, and people that we get saved,
And kind of seeing how easily that someone can still be led astray even after getting saved.
The Bible does say here in verse number one,
Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead.
Now the apostle Paul, the way that his sentences are structured are very deep,
Because many of his sentences are four or five verses.
And even within a singular verse, he barely even gets through any topics,
And just explains so much about every single word on the page.
Really, verse one, the entire sentence is just Paul an apostle.
And then he has this elaborate definition of what him being an apostle is.
Now this is good because there's a false teaching sometimes that people will say about these topics,
And these little parenthesis or these little explanations actually benefit us in understanding the Bible.
Because there's a guy that used to be ordained at this church, Adam Fannin.
He was an evangelist at one point in Jacksonville, Florida.
And he ended up just kind of proving himself to be kind of a selfish person,
Not really interested in putting Christ first.
And when I was coming in to become the pastor of this church,
I felt like he was a bad fit as an evangelist for that church,
And was going to not allow him to be there anymore.
Well he ended up causing a lot of other controversy,
And took about half the church, a little less than half,
And kind of split off and formed his own little cult.
And in his little own cult, he started preaching a lot of doctrines of convenience.
One of the doctrines he taught is that the apostle Paul was ordained by the men of the church in Acts chapter number 13.
Now keep your finger here and let's just go to that passage for a second.
And of course he needed that to be true,
Because Adam Fannin was not going to have any pastor ordain him.
Especially at the time.
That was a big controversy he had.
In fact that was probably the number one issue he had with me,
Was the fact that I was not willing to ordain him within six months of me becoming the pastor of this church.
And I just told him, I said, frankly speaking, I have a standard for ordination.
You are not going to meet it in the next six months.
If you stick around, you are faithful, you know, whatever.
And I told him this, I said, look, even though I may not ordain you as a pastor within six months,
I said, I will give you everything you could possibly want,
Or everything that you would get as pastor without the title.
And he said, oh, okay, no problem, I will serve like that for ten years.
But that wasn't really what he meant, he didn't really believe that.
And so, you know, I said I would pay him, he could lead his church however he wanted.
It was like, you get everything but the title.
But, I mean, really the title is kind of meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
I mean, imagine if you are the evangelist over a church, you are kind of in charge,
You get to make all the decisions, you are kind of leading, you are preaching every single week,
You are getting people saved.
I mean, what is the real big difference between being the evangelist and being the pastor, practically speaking?
There is not even that much of a difference.
Really, you have a safety net on top of the fact that you are leading this church.
Because I know certain guys, there are certain churches that have been planted foreign countries
and foreign areas with an evangelist that is never going to be a pastor.
And it is very likely they may never even get a pastor.
And so this guy might just be an evangelist for a really long time.
And it is like, who cares?
Why can't that person just be an evangelist there forever?
Why do you have to be pastor? Why do you have to have the title?
It kind of shows that you maybe don't have the right heart about the situation.
So, after he found out no one wanted to ordain him, he wanted to separate so he could, as I call it, self-ordain.
Now, self-ordain, it is not like he was going to sit here and put hands on himself and be like, I'll ordain!
Rather, what he would do is he would pick a bunch of people to be in his church and be like, hey, will you all ordain me?
But that is still basically self-ordination.
No different than going online and finding some church online that you can pay 30 bucks and they will ordain you with a little certificate.
That is still a self-ordination, in my opinion, even though, yeah, technically that other church is the one that ordained you and gave you the certificate.
But, I mean, they did not really want to. You are the one that asked for it and they gave it to you.
So that is the form of self-ordination.
Now, Acts chapter 13 does talk about the apostle Paul being sent out.
But let me make something clear. This is not when he was ordained as an apostle, but let's just read it.
Verse 1.
Now, they were in the church that was at Antioch, certain prophets and teachers, as Barnabas and Simeon that was called Niger and Lucius of Cyrene and Manion, which had been brought up with Herod the teacher-arch and Saul.
As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me, Barnabas and Saul, for the work whereinto I have called them.
And when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.
Now, I kid you not, after reading these verses, Adam Finan was basically teaching, not verbatim, but just in essence, that this is when the apostle Paul was ordained as an apostle.
First of all, it doesn't bring up being an apostle, number one.
And number two, if we go back to our chapter, the Bible explains to us that being an apostle is not something that a man can even ordain another person to do.
Look what it says in verse 1 again.
Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man.
He's saying, you want to know why I'm an apostle? It has nothing to do with man.
There was no man involved. There was no man involved. How was he ordained an apostle? By Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead.
So notice that being an apostle is not something that a man can give to another man.
It was something that Jesus gave unto his disciples.
Jesus made them apostles. Jesus ordained them apostles.
And Jesus ordained Saul, who is also called Paul, as an apostle.
But it was not a man-made ordination.
We have instructions in the Bible on how to ordain people, how to ordain a pastor, how to ordain a deacon.
We have qualifications. We have explanations.
We also see that Philip was ordained at one point and then later is called an evangelist, which from at least indirect evidence, we have some semblance of how to ordain an evangelist.
There's nowhere in the Bible where we see any other position being ordained in the Bible.
We don't see someone being ordained a teacher. We don't see someone being ordained an apostle.
And we don't see someone being ordained as a prophet.
All of those things are different.
And some people would like to twist the Bible.
They twist the fact that God gave us apostles and prophets and pastors and evangelists and teachers.
But someone could be a teacher in the church and they're not officially ordained.
We have men that get up and just preach sermons when I'm not in the pulpit.
Maybe I'm sick or traveling or visiting somewhere.
That person is a teacher.
And that is someone that God gave you to teach you the Bible and to give you some of his word.
But that doesn't mean it's an official ordination.
Being a prophet, you know, prophet can mean a couple different things.
We have the Old Testament prophets, which are kind of like ordained of God.
But just being a prophet could just mean someone who's prophesying, which is another word for just preaching.
You know, and I believe that even women are considered prophets throughout the Bible and in the New Testament because they go out and they preach.
I love women prophets if you mean women that go out and preach the gospel.
Women that go out and try to get people saved.
Yeah, I would that every woman in this church would be a prophet in that context.
But we don't have as women pastors.
We don't have as women deacons because they're not the husband of one wife, okay?
And we also don't have this, apostles.
We have no apostles.
Now there are churches, whole denominations, the Pentecostals and every variation of Pentecostals there is, they believe in this prophet and apostle thing.
And they'll go around and they'll say, I'm apostle so and so and I'm prophet so and so or whatever, prophetess so and so.
And it's just an unbiblical understanding of what an apostle even is.
Because to be an apostle requires certain things.
Number one, that you saw the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ.
Number two, that you were ordained by God, not by man.
Both of these requirements are never met by the Pentecostals.
Because none of them, if they said they saw Jesus Christ resurrected, they were lying or crazy.
And in both of those cases, that means they're not qualified.
I don't care if you're crazy or if you're lying, but both of, for sure it's wrong.
There's nothing right about it.
And number two, I know for a fact God didn't call you on your cell phone and tell you to be an apostle.
Because the only way he speaks to us is through this Bible.
And I didn't see your name in this book.
So guess what? You're just not an apostle.
Now of course, to understand this, how do we know that Paul was an apostle?
Well number one, the Bible explains it to us and shows it to us and acts.
But God gave all the apostles the signs of an apostle.
What was the sign of an apostle?
That they could just lay their hands on someone and they would recover.
That they could lay their hands on someone and they would be filled with the Holy Ghost.
That they could lay their hands on someone and, you know, just basically anything that was a special miracle would happen.
I mean, even Peter's shadow was healing these people.
Peter's handkerchief was healing these people.
They could have a serpent bite them.
And they would just be like, shake it off.
They just, you know, they could drink poison and nothing bad would happen to them.
Of course doing it by ignorance, not on purpose.
They're not testing the Lord.
They're not doing, they're not tempting the Lord with some foolish action.
But they could just speak in a foreign language, you know, without ever having studied.
Now that particular gifting was not just limited to the apostles.
We see that a lot of people, that gifting came upon them.
But when it came to the signs of an apostle, not everybody could lay hands on someone and they would be filled with the Holy Ghost.
And then get all those extra giftings as well.
And that's where Peter and John came in.
Because Philip the evangelist came in, ordained.
But you know what?
Philip couldn't just give people the Holy Ghost.
So after he got a bunch of people saved, Peter and John came into town, laid their hands on all these people.
And they're just getting filled with the Holy Ghost to the point where they can perform miracles too.
Where they can preach in a language they've never studied, never heard before, they can understand these things.
And it's just, it's like an incredible miracle to get what?
The gospel out to as many people as possible.
One thing you have to understand, every single one of these gifts is really specific to helping the gospel go forward.
Because think about it.
If I get bit by a snake and become sick, ill or die, that's going to prevent me from preaching the gospel.
If I drink a deadly thing, that's going to prevent me from reaching more people and preaching the gospel.
People being sick and stuff like that, maybe they can't even comprehend the gospel because they have a fever or they're delirious or whatever.
So getting them healed and healthy is going to then help them to hear the gospel and to get saved.
Also, being able to preach in a foreign language, if I go into an area and I just can't communicate to that person,
that's going to make it difficult for them to get saved.
So I can preach in their language and directly just communicate to them and get them the gospel, that's going to help them get saved.
None of their miracles though were just to show off.
They weren't pulling magic cards out of their mouth or something.
You know, they weren't pulling a nail through their hand or something like that.
Like David Blaine, you know, street magic or some nonsense like this.
You know, they weren't dancing around with snakes just to have a cool snake service.
What they were doing was they were trying to get as many people saved as fast as possible.
And how would I know?
If someone randomly just came into our church and said, you know what, I'm an apostle.
Let's assume that we go back to 50 AD.
It's 50 AD, we're in Galatia, and someone walks in and says, I'm an apostle.
How would you and I know that that's legit if they had the signs of an apostle?
That's how we would know that it was legit back then.
Whereas now, we just know that those things have ceased and they no longer exist.
Now, you would say, well, how do you know that?
I just know that because it's not happening anymore.
You know, there's nothing in the Bible that just says for sure that all of these gifts had to go away.
But we know that they did.
And you say, how do you know that they did?
Because no one's doing them, folks.
There's a church that I drive by when I go to Houston all the time and they have this sign.
It's a big billboard.
It says, signs and wonders are performed here.
And they have like an arrow to their little church.
And I'm like, you know how I know that you don't have any signs and wonders?
You have a billboard telling us that you have signs and wonders.
Because let me explain something to you.
If anybody in this room could just simply lay their hands on someone and they would be healed instantly,
just no questions asked, just someone walked in, perfect healing like that.
The next service that we have, you wouldn't even be able to fit in this building.
And we wouldn't have any billboards.
Word of mouth would spread so fast and so quickly and you would just have thousands and thousands.
Everybody that was sick would come.
Why?
That's what always happened.
Every single time.
And when Jesus came into town, you couldn't even get in the door.
When the apostle Paul is on a random, barbarous island, the Bible says that just every single person came to him
that had any kind of issue and you just healed it all.
And even Jesus, the Bible says healed every sickness and every illness.
Why?
Because if you knew that someone could just instantly heal you and is doing it for free,
you would show up and it would just happen like this.
So that's why it's silly to even believe that it's happening.
Because anybody that had this ability, everyone would know about it like that.
And with the way we have technology and the internet and cell phones and whatever,
that thing would spread so fast it wouldn't even be funny.
Okay?
No one's doing that.
No one can just preach in a language that they've never heard before.
And frankly speaking, I don't think we need it.
Because if every saved person could heal every single person and speak every language without question,
we would all be done already.
I mean, think about that.
We already have like 50 million people in America that are possibly even saved.
I mean, I don't know what the numbers are,
but we have at least millions and millions of saved Christians in America alone, let alone this whole world.
If they could just touch people and get them healed and preach in a foreign language, I mean, it would be over already.
God is not using that vehicle right now.
He did that for a specific reason, for a specific time,
so that when the Apostle Paul walked into your church, you could know that what he was saying was legit.
You could know, oh wow, this guy is a apostle.
Because obviously, I'm not saying I would actually believe this,
but hypothetically, if someone walked in here and could do all the signs of an apostle,
you would have to believe them, theoretically.
Now, we already know that's not going to happen.
And anybody that even came in here trying to do some bizarre stuff, we'd check them at the door, okay?
But I'm just saying, if someone showed up at our soul-wanting time, or someone showed up at our church service,
and they just start healing every single person in the church service,
and they can start communicating all the foreign languages, and here's Spanish and German and French and whatever,
and you're just like, what in the world?
And then they just open up the Bible, and they can teach you everything in the Bible like that.
They know everything. They understand everything.
They're teaching you doctrines you've never seen before.
You would have to just be like, wow, this guy's of God, obviously.
Just kind of like Nicodemus was looking at Jesus, and he's like, you're obviously of God.
I mean, there's no way to deny this, because this guy's walking around healing people.
This guy's walking around performing miracles by the Holy Spirit.
Like, you can't deny that.
To deny that is to deny the Holy Ghost, and that's what the Jews did.
They were blaspheming the Holy Ghost by seeing an obvious miracle of God and just denying it.
Just outright denying people being raised from the dead.
Outright denying men who were crippled walking.
Outright denying people who were blind seeing.
I mean, this is kind of stuff.
And look, while the devil can do certain tricks and even quote-unquote miracles,
when do you ever see the devil healing people and giving people life and preaching the gospel?
He's not going to do that kind of stuff.
The only person that he even gives life to is the Antichrist, okay, folks, which is for selfish ambition.
But obviously, it's not going to happen.
I'm just saying that's kind of how we could understand this passage.
And I think it's important, even though we're just one verse in,
to kind of just slow down and pay attention to that parenthesis or that, you know, just little statement here.
It's not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead.
Now, of course, other positions of ordination, I do believe, are in combination with man.
It's not that it's only of men.
Being ordained a pastor is not just by man, but it is a man process.
There is a man involved.
There is that element of the bishop ordaining the bishop and the elders ordaining the elders
and the men of God ordaining the men of God, which we see is the pattern all throughout the Bible.
Moses ordains Joshua. Elijah ordains Elisha.
You just constantly see the torch being handed down in the Bible.
And, of course, the pastoral epistles, Timothy and Titus, they're written to have ordination services.
You know what's not?
Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, because he wasn't telling churches how to ordain people.
He was telling individuals how to ordain people.
Not only that, he left Titus and Crete to even ordain people, which would be unreasonable if a church could do it itself.
It would make no sense to say, hey, you need to ordain people here if the church could just do it themselves.
He would have just told the church what to do and just not worried about wasting Titus' time.
No, the reason why he left Titus there is because Titus is the guy doing the ordination.
But if someone says, I'm ordaining apostles, leave the service.
You know, get out of there.
If they're like, hey, I'm going to start dancing with snakes, get out of there fast, okay?
Or call 911 for their sake.
You know, one of the, maybe both at the same time.
But, you know, that is not what we believe.
We're Baptist here.
And this is what I get accused of when I preach on this.
Oh, you don't believe in the Holy Ghost.
And I'm like, okay, yeah, I don't believe in these snake-handling fraudsters.
Yeah, I don't believe in gibberish.
I don't believe that when you go, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that that was the Holy Spirit.
But that's not me denying the Holy Spirit.
That's me denying gibberish.
Glossolalia, folks.
I'm not denying you.
If you can preach in a foreign language, if you can just start preaching to me Greek and German and Russian and you've never studied it before, I won't deny that.
But you know what? You can't do that.
Because you're a liar and you're a fraud.
You know, it's funny how they have to have a healing service every single week and it never works.
And then they want to tell me that I'm denying the Holy Spirit.
And I'm thinking like, well, what are you doing?
Because you keep failing, like, every single week.
And again, I believe that we should pray for prayer on a continual basis.
But you know what I'm not doing is promising people if they come down here and I lay hands on them, they're definitely going to recover.
Because I don't have that power.
If I had it, I would just lay hands until I couldn't lay hands on people.
But you know what? I don't have that ability.
You know, I can only pray and ask the Lord.
And frankly speaking, we all have to die eventually, you know?
I mean, we can't just constantly just get healed and rescued forever.
Eventually we're going to get old and die, okay?
So, you know, it sucks.
It's life.
But hey, then you go to heaven and you get the permanent healing there, all right?
Look at verse number 2.
And all the brethren which are with me under the churches of Galatia.
Now, I know I'm taking a long time on these first few verses, but it's a Bible study, okay?
Now, this is what caught my eye when I was reading this chapter.
Churches.
Now, I always just, like, before, like, studying this chapter, I'm just thinking, like, the church of Galatia.
But it's like the church is of Galatia.
So apparently he's not even writing to one church.
He's writing to multiple churches in a particular area.
And I think that's fascinating is because I always think, like, well, there was at least one church that kind of got mixed up on this issue of the gospel.
But actually it was multiple churches that got mixed up on this issue.
It was, like, a whole area.
But it also makes sense that it was kind of, like, one little area because usually heresies like this are kind of regional, local.
They kind of have, like, some kind of a source to this nonsense that's emanating out.
It's kind of like there's this ruckmanite source and, like, all of this ruckmanite teachings eking out from it or whatever other weird false teacher.
It's kind of limited to a certain area.
Kind of like the pre-trib doctrine is related to the churches of America.
It's like find me the churches of other countries that believe in the pre-trib doctrine and it's, like, virtually doesn't exist.
Of course we have some American church plants all over and they teach that nonsense.
But I'm just saying when you find other countries that don't speak English, their churches are, they're, like, what are you talking about this pre-trib doctrine?
What bible are you reading?
You know, that's not even in the NIV.
That's, like, I don't even know what you're saying.
So you kind of can pay attention.
If you have a doctrine and no other country or language has that doctrine, it's probably suspect.
Because we should all be coming to the same doctrines regardless of our language and regardless of our country and our area.
And this whole area has kind of been infected.
One other thing to note about this, and I'm not going to go over the verses to prove this for the sake of time.
But I kind of tend to believe, ideally speaking, there should be about one church per city.
And you kind of see this pattern.
Now it says the church of Galatia.
I don't think that what it's saying here is that there's all these different churches in one little city.
Because if you think about in Revelation, you have the seven churches which are of Asia.
But when it's talking about Asia there, it's talking about one in Ephesus, one in Smyrna, one in Philadelphia, and even Corinth.
When you look at the epistle written under Corinth, it's under the church of God which is at Corinth.
So according to the scripture, there's only just like the one church at Corinth.
And ideally speaking to me, that makes sense that you would really only have one church per city.
Of course, we kind of have these mega cities now in our modern world.
We have Dallas, Fort Worth, and then we have like 20 or 30 other cities, maybe even more, all around here.
And it's confusing.
It's like I never even heard of Watauga until I found this place.
And it's like, somebody's like, why are you moving to Taga?
Not for the name.
Okay.
It's like a tiny little island in the middle of like North Richland Hills and Keller and Fort Worth.
It's kind of like that triangle and we're just some little tiny minuscule dot in the between of all that.
It's kind of weird, right?
I have people contacting us or emailing me all the time like, when are you going to start a church in North Texas?
And they're like specifically like Denton.
And I'm like, never.
It's like, when are you going to start a church like 20 miles this way?
It's like, never.
It's like, I don't believe in that and I'm not going to do it.
Folks, let me just explain something to you.
There are 1600 Southern Baptist churches in this area.
Not only that, there's probably hundreds of independent Baptist churches.
Okay.
So I'm not looking to see just how many we could get.
To me, it's more about quality than quantity at this point.
We've got, you've got a Baptist church within five minutes of your house if you live in this area.
I mean, so it's not like trying to find another church that's just mediocre close to you.
It's like, instead of worrying about that, why don't we just see how good of a church we can make here?
And then if we really care about other places, then let's care about places like Minneapolis or St. Louis or Chicago or, you know,
big areas that don't even have a really high quality option anywhere.
Because if I'm going to start another high quality option, why do I want to even compete with myself?
And like put some, let's start a church in North Christian Hills too, you know.
And it's like, that doesn't really make a lot of sense.
So when it says Church of Galatia, I'm not thinking that these, there's all these churches like stacked up on one another.
They probably only have one church per general area, you know, what's reasonable to travel towards.
So my view is like I probably, just saying, I'll probably never ever start a church within two hours of this one.
So like the furthest or the closest would be something like Wichita Falls or Waco, but probably that won't even happen.
I don't even believe that.
Like most likely, the churches we're going to start and plant are going to be big cities further away.
Things like Austin, if someone hates themselves or, you know, somewhere like really far, you know, away.
But I'm not, I'm not interested in just taking good talent and just dividing itself.
Now, of course, Faithful Word, we tried this.
You know, we had Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, and then we started one kind of what's called the North Church.
And it was like the north part of Phoenix.
Now, they were about 25, 30 minute drive, no traffic.
So with traffic, it's like hour, hour and a half.
And so it makes sense that, you know, some people, maybe they live on the north side, aren't going to necessarily want to drive an hour and a half to church on Wednesday night.
But the reality is, you know, if it was, hey, drive an hour and a half on Wednesday night and hear Pastor Anderson preach, or drive 15 minutes and hear Brother Jonathan Shelley preach, you know which one they picked?
You know which one I would have picked?
Hey, I went to Wednesday night church.
Of course, I live closer.
But I'm just saying like, you know, let's be real.
If someone is considering going to a church that's not five minutes away from their house, what are they trying to go for?
Quality.
So if they're going to go for quality, then they're going to always go to the highest quality and probably not elevate just a minimal distance equation anyways.
So by me starting another church 20 or 30 minutes away from here, they're just going to pick whichever one's the best one eventually.
Whatever's the best one's just going to end up winning and just suck all the people from that other one.
And then it's like, why have two again?
It's like, just why don't we just combine forces?
And the people that want to make it work are going to make it work.
And the people that don't, they weren't going to stick anyways.
The person that won't drive to this church from 30 minutes away is the same person that won't drive five minutes away to the one that's right next to them.
Okay?
So it's kind of silly for this idea.
If you're online and you're listening and you want me to start a church, I'm not doing it.
Okay?
Just making it clear.
All right.
If you're in this room, like hoping I move close to your house, that could happen, but not, it's going to be the whole, we're picking the whole thing up and just going right there.
Right.
And I have no idea.
I would love for it to be near me, but it might not be either.
So I don't know.
We're all, we're all going to play the lottery on that one.
All right.
And no one ever wins the lottery.
So look at verse three.
Grace be to you and peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according the will of God and our Father.
To whom be glory forever and ever.
Amen.
Now, what I like about this verse four is it says that Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins.
And you know what I was thinking about is if you had it, and I didn't want to just bring out the board just for this one illustration.
But you just saw on the board drawn sins, and it was just like all of your sins, right?
And then Jesus walked up and just erased that.
Then how silly would it be like, you have to repent of that to be saved.
It's gone.
If he already paid it all, if he, if he already gave himself for everything, if he already took care of all of it, then sin has nothing to do with me getting saved.
Because it doesn't, frankly speaking.
There's only one decision that has any impact than if I go to heaven or hell is if I accept what Jesus did for me or not.
Because if I accept what he did for me, that's what saves me.
It's not being sorry for this sin because look, it's gone.
It's not repenting of that sin because it's gone.
It's not doing, it has nothing to do with sin because he already, he already gave himself for it.
He already paid it.
He already did everything necessary.
He's just saying, take it.
Take it.
Have it.
It's like, well, what do I got to do?
Take it.
That's what you have to do.
It's like, but do I have to say sorry?
No.
Well, do I have to, do I have to quit doing what I was doing?
It's already gone.
Well, do I have to be good in the future?
I already took care of that.
It's like it's all been gone.
It's all been paid for.
It's a literal free gift.
He's just saying, take it.
Grab it.
Get it.
And then they're like, well, this is what some people are saying.
Well, I'll trade you.
And he's like, no.
Well, what if I give you five bucks?
No.
What if I give?
No.
What if I help?
No.
What if I, and it's like, no, just take it.
You either take it for free or he won't give it to you.
Why?
Because he gave himself.
The Bible's really clear.
He already gave himself for our sins.
Our sins have already been taken care of, so we simply receive it.
Look at verse six.
I marvel that you're so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ
into another gospel, which is not another, but there be some that trouble you and would
pervert the gospel of Christ.
So the Bible says that he went in this area, preached them all the gospel.
Lots of people got saved.
And then he leaves and he hears they're preaching a weird gospel all of a sudden.
Like, they're all sucked into this weird false teaching, this perverted teaching.
Some repent of your sins heretic or some loser, lordship salvation came in, has taken
over their churches.
Now, of course, their specific example, and we'll get into this later, it's the Judaizers
coming in saying, oh, you've got to be circumcised.
Oh, actually, you've got to still keep the law.
Oh, you've got to do X, Y, and Z to be saved.
It's kind of a, and if you're saved, you're going to do the works type salvation.
And he's just like, how in the world did I get you all saved, and then just five minutes
later you're already sucked into this garbage, you're already sucked into this trash.
It really kind of probably shows that the Galatians did not read their Bible and do
their own study.
So that's the problem.
People are not rooted and grounded in the truth, and so they're easily led astray.
And frankly speaking, people that tolerate false preaching and people that tolerate
bad pastors, bad evangelists, bad whatever, are typically spiritually immature.
They just don't know a lot of Bible.
They're not very well rooted and grounded in the truth.
And that's why they allow themselves to kind of get seduced or suckered in, or just
tolerating it.
And what you have to understand is that sometimes it's a toleration.
It's not like they're sitting here enjoying it.
They can kind of tell something's off, but they just don't do anything about it.
You're just going to sit there and just let it happen.
And it's like the whole point of this chapter is that you would never, ever just allow
it to happen.
It's not something that you tolerate.
There's some things we tolerate, like a long sermon from Pastor Shelley.
And then there's some things you don't tolerate, like someone getting up and preaching false
doctrine.
You sit through the long sermon, and you're just like, this is great, I love it.
But if it starts turning into heresy, you just get up and leave.
Or yell something.
Yell heretic or something.
But you don't just sit there and take it patiently.
There's a time to be nice.
There's a time to allow people to kind of be off.
And at the door, when I'm not at church, I'll let people tell me weird junk, just
give them a little bit of grace.
After the first and second admonition, I'll reject them.
People getting up just unequivocally or just very clearly stating, work salvation.
It's just like, bye, sucker.
This is just wait until Pastor Shelley gets back or something.
Whatever the case is, it's just like, but I'm not going to sit here and let my family
hear this junk.
And if I visited a church that had this junk, and it's just like real clear, either
just get up and walk out, or at least you never go back.
I mean, if you don't want to just be super rude and walk out, at least never go back.
I'm not even going to give that person an opportunity to fix it, frankly speaking.
Because why would I?
I'm just not interested in these people.
And look how Paul words it.
He says, I'm going to read verse 7, which is not another, but there be some that trouble
you in the birth of the gospel of Christ, but though we, or an angel from heaven, preach
any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.
As we said before, so say I now again, if any man, any, preach any other gospel
unto you than that which we have received, let him be accursed.
Now there's not many times in the Bible where God just totally repeats himself.
So if God gives you a verse and then just says, hey, FYI, here's the exact same verse
again, let me just tell you, let me say this a second time.
Then it means it's really important, like super important.
Like something that you need to do, it should just like trigger everything in your
brain like, wow, this is a big deal.
Because it is a big deal.
We do not, will not tolerate a false gospel at any level.
And it should be our biggest division.
It should be our biggest separation.
But you know what I noticed?
A lot of independent Baptist will tolerate false gospels so they can fit in with their
Bible college, so they can fit in with their little preaching crowd, so they can
fit in and seem popular.
Because let me tell you something, preaching against people is not popular.
You won't, you don't make friends by calling people out.
You don't really draw a big crowd in from rebuking everybody.
You know how you get a big crowd saying everybody's great and having every preacher
always come to your church and preach and just whatever they preach is great.
And then invite everybody and tell everybody to come in and just everybody's great, everybody's
wonderful.
That's how you get the big crowd.
That's how you please everybody.
But you know what?
The apostle Paul was not interested in pleasing people.
He was interested in pleasing God.
And you know, there's been people that I thought were good, but then as soon as I
realized that they're preaching a false gospel, it's like, I want nothing to do this person
anymore.
You know, case in point for me, there's a guy named Pastor Stacey Shiflett in Dundalk,
Maryland.
And what's the guy, Calvary Baptist Church, Calvary Baptist Church of Dundalk, Maryland.
I thought this guy was a nice guy and while he might be different than me in some
ways, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt in those areas.
But as soon as I realized this guy's preaching like hardcore repent of your sins doctrine,
it's like, let him be accursed.
And you know what, honestly, I don't want to not like him.
I'm just being like, personally, I kind of just like him as a person and I like
his preaching style and I visit his church and I like want to like this guy.
But let me tell you something.
I don't care how much I want to like you.
If you're going to preach a false gospel, I want nothing to do with you.
You're a heretic and you're a curse of God.
And I don't care what you do.
Like I want nothing to do with you and you should be called out for even getting confused
on the gospel.
I don't care if he's saved or not.
I don't think he is as confused as he is.
But let's just say he is.
I don't care because you're confused and you need to be called out for preaching
this junk, for preaching this heresy.
He has all kinds of other problems and his assistant pastor also is super mixed up on
this issue.
And I go in with this guy and he's telling me, yeah, if you don't have works, you're
not saved.
And he's telling me the people that he not, he preaches the gospel to at the door.
If they don't come to church, they're not saved.
And I'm just like, wow.
And he like won't even finish preaching the gospel to people at the door because he
doesn't think that anybody's ready to get saved at the door.
So you only give them a little bit and then tell them to come to church and walk the
aisle or whatever and get into that Holy Spirit conviction.
But let me tell you something, that's not soul winning.
And if you're not going to get people saved at the door, you're not going to get
very many people saved.
Let's just be honest.
Most people aren't going to come to church.
And that's okay.
Where are the nine?
They're still in heaven.
Hey, where are the nine?
They're in heaven.
Were they at church?
No.
You know, Step Past Baptist Church is going to be a big church in heaven, which is not
now.
We're going to have so many people with us that are, I mean, we get thousands of people
saved every year and all those people are going to come up and they're like, Hey,
what church steadfast, steadfast, steadfast, steadfast.
You know how many are going to be from Calvary?
None apparently, you know, and it's sad.
I don't want that, but let me tell you something.
I'm not interested in pleasing man.
I really haven't grown up like that and nor do I start planning or have the idea of starting
now.
And you know what?
This church is one goal to please God and pleasing God does not always look the same
as pleasing man.
So don't ever think that we will decide to make a decision that's going to cater
to you because I don't really care what you think.
At the end of the day, I care very little what you think and I care so much about
what this thinks.
Now, if you could start showing me stuff in here, then I'll start caring about what you think.
But it's because of what you're thinking is what this thing, you know, people come up with me
suggestions and I'm thinking, OK, but, you know, at the end of the day, like I have to
evaluate everything in the lens of this.
And this is really, you know, decisions that I have to make.
Yeah, of course, I care about your spiritual walk and your journey.
And I'm a pastor.
I have to be a good under shepherd.
But it's more important that I'm right with God than pleasing you guys or making sure
everything goes perfect for you guys.
I have more responsibility and being right with God and my family and then it's you guys.
So if it's ever going to be a detriment of God or my family, sorry, like you're just you're not
going to get there.
But, you know, when it comes to the gospel, you know, this is such an important doctrine that we
can't let slip.
And you know who lets this slip?
People are not soul winners.
If you go to my if you go to this church and you don't go soul winning, you might
eventually go to a church that's wrong on the gospel.
Because you just forget and you stop realizing how important it is and you kind of get sucked
into this jaded attitude, this bad attitude, this bitterness or something like that.
And it allows you to just start believing weird junk so that you don't feel like a crummy
person.
Because it's like, you know, if you come to my church and you don't go soul winning, I would
think you just feel weird.
I don't know, I'm just saying that's how I would feel, OK?
I would feel awkward because it's like, why is it bringing up soul winning all the time?
It's like because you're not going, OK?
And because the people are going, I don't want them to stop going.
And you'll never be mad at me for having the courage to go soul winning.
You know, I've had people get mad at me about things, but I've never heard anybody come
to me like, I'm so mad that you made me go soul winning that one day.
No one's ever told me that.
No one's ever been like, man, I can't believe I went soul winning.
They never said that to me.
But I've heard them tell me all kinds of other stuff that they got mad about.
And that's OK.
You don't have to like everything about me.
You know what?
We should all be unified about how important the gospel is.
And in fact, that's the reason why a lot of people come to our church.
They may not even like my preaching that much.
It's hot in here.
We've got a lot of issues.
But you know what?
We put the gospel at the forefront of our church.
And show me other churches that are emphasizing preaching and soul winning the gospel as much
as our church.
And I'll say, well, let's do more then.
Iron sharpened as iron.
Hey, I'm all for it.
I hope that they are.
I hope that what we're doing is causing these other churches to be like, well, we need
to start doing something.
And frankly speaking, there's actually a decent amount of churches in our area that
do go soul winning.
I run into their tracks, and we've had some of our members run into their soul winning
members.
Praise God.
And you know, if this church folded tomorrow, go find the best soul winning church in
this area and go to it.
I think there's like a Trinity Baptist church that does soul winning.
Go to that church.
You know, go to some church that at least does soul winning.
But you know what?
Don't go to a church that's good on everything but the gospel.
It's like, I don't care if the church has the worst singing.
I don't care if the song leader is tone deaf and he has no rhythm.
He's just like directing air traffic control or something.
And I don't care if it's 100 degrees in the building.
I don't care if they have a thousand sodomites outside screaming at you when you walk in.
As long as they are right on the gospel, it's like that's good to go.
You know what?
Don't go to the church that's just a cathedral with the stained glass windows and the most
beautiful music you've ever heard but then they get a little mixed up on the gospel.
Don't go there.
It will ruin your family.
And you know what?
You go to these churches, you go to a Southern Baptist church that's mixed up on the gospel
like this and you know what you're going to find in the pews?
Reprobates.
You know you're going to find atheists.
You know you're going to find people that hate God.
You know you're going to find back sledding, worldly, unseparated, God-hating people.
You're going to find all kinds of junk in the pews.
But you know what?
Even though this church might be small, you're going to not find that here.
You're going to find a lot of people that love Jesus, that are sold out, that
are separated, that are actually trying, trying to serve God with their lives.
And so that's why it's important to go to a church that cares about the gospel.
You know you also find in a church, besides the gospel, all kinds of languages and demographics.
You notice that our church is actually pretty diverse.
We have a lot of different people.
We have black people, Hispanic people, Asian people.
We definitely have really white people, OK?
And we kind of have everything in between.
We have Arabs, you know.
We have the Semites.
OK, we have our token Semite.
You know, we got a lot of tokens around here.
At the end of the day, why do you have that?
Because we're gospel-centered.
When you are not gospel-centered, you start leaning in a really specific demographic.
Then you start having the Asian church.
Then you start having the black church.
Then you start having the rich white church.
Yeah, it exists.
Yeah, then you have the poor of all these versions, too.
The poor white church, the poor black church, the poor Hispanic church.
Why is it that they have that demographic?
Because they're not gospel-centered.
They're centered on something else, race, location, some other thing that's not what
church is about.
Church is only about the gospel, really.
I mean, you know, it's all about it.
That's the main emphasis.
We won't tolerate any kind of perversion of the gospel.
And, you know, you have to understand that what he says here is it's not another.
Don't virtually every church in this area preach the death, burn, and resurrection of
Jesus Christ.
Don't almost all of them preach the Trinity.
I mean, we go out, and you knock on doors, yeah, Jesus is God, yep, Jesus died on
the cross, yep, Jesus died, you know, paid for my sins, yep, Jesus rose again from
the dead.
I mean, I almost never have to convince someone of these doctrines.
Pretty much everybody believes in the virgin birth.
Pretty much everyone believes Jesus is the Son of God.
Pretty much everyone believes Jesus died on the cross.
Pretty much everyone believes Jesus rose again from the dead.
A couple things, sometimes they're a little off on the deity of Jesus Christ, sometimes
they're a little off on the bodily resurrection.
But apart from those, those are usually from ignorance, not from just a different
belief.
People are on the right gospel, so to speak, in the sense that they believe the death,
burn, and resurrection.
What they've done is they've perverted it, and they don't actually believe Jesus paid
all their sins.
It's a Jesus plus baptism, church of Christ.
It's a Jesus plus being faithful unto the end.
You're Methodist, because he believes you're going to lose your salvation.
Jesus plus catechism, the Catholic.
Jesus plus whatever, you know, all the Catholic light, the Lutheran, the Episcopalian,
all the other men, you know, they just add in works, and so you have to understand
that of course the devil is not going to just come at you and say like, I'm the devil.
That's the Democrat party.
That's not church.
Okay?
Yes, of course the Democrat party is just like, we're Satan, okay?
I get that.
But most churches, apart from like the United Methodist, are not just saying we're Satan.
Now the United Methodist, you have a pretty strong case, because I think that there
was a church in Texas that had a drag show at the church.
Like if you're not saying we're Satan, you know, I don't know how it's better to
say it.
So when we went to Austin, me and my wife, it's like some church is just, they're
decorating their church in rainbow flags, and it's just like, wow, you guys are
just trying to say we are Satan, and it's usually a United Methodist church, okay?
Or one of those like first disciples or first Christian churches or something bizarre.
You know, Bright Divinity School, yeah, of course they're advertising that they
love Satan, but most churches are not like that.
Of course this passage is really relatable to us, because there's so many people perverting
the gospel.
And this is what I always get, oh, they hate everyone.
I don't hate everyone, but of course I do hate the false gospel, being preached
by false prophets.
You know, I don't hate the Catholic, I hate the Catholic priest.
I don't hate the Methodist, I hate the false prophet Methodist.
I don't hate the Episcopalian and the Lutheran and the non-denom.
I hate Robert Morris, who's a false prophet, okay?
So yeah, I hate the 1% false prophet, false teacher who should be accursed according to
the Bible.
Oh, how dare you hate someone?
Didn't Paul say let them be accursed?
Now, you study that in the Bible, it's usually just meaning this person's going to hell
is what that means, to be accursed from God, okay?
You don't have Jesus taking the curse for you.
You are accursed.
And that person is just damned is basically what it's trying to say.
It's like people purposely going out and preaching a false gospel and actively damning
people's souls, you know, there might be exception, but just virtually speaking they're
all damned.
Someone that possibly is just young and just caught up and just kind of parroting
some stuff, maybe there's grace there, but these people that are locked in, you're
Kenneth Copeland's, you're TD Jake's, you're televangelist, these people are damned to
hell.
James White is a damnable heretic.
John MacArthur is a damnable heretic.
These people are not saved and they're not going to get saved.
They've had enough exposure to the right thing and they don't believe it.
And the apostle Paul, as we kind of read the rest of the chapter, you have to understand
there's a difference between him and Kenneth Copeland, okay?
But let's keep reading.
It says in verse 10, for do I now persuade men or God, or do I seek to please men?
For if I yet please men, I should not be the servant of Christ.
Hey, why is your church unpopular?
Because I'm serving Christ.
Why does your church not have five stars?
Because we serve God.
If your church has five stars, it's not a servant of Christ, okay?
Verse 11, but I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is
not after man, for I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by
revelation of Jesus Christ.
Apostle Paul's unique.
He didn't have a soul winner come up and preach him the gospel like most people.
He had an actual encounter with Jesus and that was kind of what really changed
his mind about kind of who Jesus was.
Now he had Ananias come along afterwards and kind of wrap things up and kind of help
him call upon the name of the Lord and get saved.
And yes, I do believe that Ananias did preach him under the faith and help him get saved.
But generally speaking, he's saying like all the things about Jesus, I kind of
learned from Jesus himself.
I had a revelation.
I had an experience with Jesus.
I had an encounter with him and he is kind of like what helped me, okay?
It says in verse 13, for you have heard of my conversion or conversation in
times past in Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church
of God and wasted it and profited in the Jews' religion above many mine equals
in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my
fathers.
But when it pleased God who separated me from my mother's will and called me
by his grace to reveal his son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen,
immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.
Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me, but I went
into Arabia and returned again unto Damascus.
Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter and abode him 15
days.
But other than the apostles, saw I none save James, the Lord's brother.
Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God I line up.
Afterwards I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and was unknown by
faith in the churches of Judea, which are in Christ, but they had heard only
that he which persecuted us in times past, now preacheth the faith which he
once destroyed, and they glorified God in me.
Now this last portion is the apostle Paul kind of explaining that he was raised
a Jew, he was raised of the Hebrews, he was zealous for the religion of the
Hebrews, but then he had an encounter with Jesus, it wasn't by a man, but by
Jesus, that ended up transforming who he is.
And then he didn't even confer.
He's saying like, I didn't even like learn this from the disciples.
I didn't go to Peter and John and hang out with them and they taught me all
this, Jesus has taught me all this, is what he said.
And then he's like explaining how he went to all these different places, preaching
all these things, having never learned by any man.
And that is something that's really unique about Paul, but it's not unique
about Paul in the sense that it's only limited to Paul.
I believe what Paul is kind of giving us an example here of is how you could
learn everything in the Bible on your own through the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Have you ever read the book of Revelation?
It's called the Revelation of Jesus Christ.
And what this means is that you are not limited to me or another person getting
you up to speed on the things of God.
You could get there all yourself.
And why that was important for Paul is Paul saying, look, guys, all this great
stuff I'm teaching you and all the stuff I did teach you, I got it from God.
I didn't get it from some kind of a man.
This isn't some kind of a cult here, folks.
This is something I got from the Bible on my own.
And of course, that's what I get accused of and what our church sometimes
would get accused of.
It's like, oh, you guys are a cult.
You just believe this because of a person.
And it's like, I can't prove that to them because they won't believe anything
anyways.
But it's like, I believe 98% of what I believed before I had even heard of
Pastor Anderson.
Like, yeah, there were some things that I was off on.
There was some stuff that he kind of sharpened me.
But when it comes to just like a doctrinal statement, like if you had
a doctrinal statement of Pastor Shelley before I had ever heard of Pastor
Anderson, I was like 98% of the way there.
So it's not like you just have to find some person to get all the way there.
In fact, I guarantee there's independent fundamental Baptist and there's other
Christians on this planet that believe very similar to us, that have never
heard of us or never heard us preach.
Why?
Because you can get it all from the Bible, folks.
You get it from the Holy Spirit.
And the Apostle Paul is trying to help them understand, look, guys, this is like the
Bible.
This is God.
This is the Holy Ghost here.
What I'm talking to you guys about is not just some specific like Peter and John
doctrine.
It's not just specific to these disciples.
This is coming from God.
This is a special knowledge that comes from the Holy Ghost and the Word of God,
not from a man.
And again, it's really emphasizing these points.
But of course, the Apostle Paul is a good pattern here for a lot of things.
Go through with the first Timothy.
I want to go to another place real quick and kind of show you.
But think about what the Apostle Paul did not say.
The Apostle Paul did not say, I was a drug dealing, gang banging, STD filled,
God hating atheist, and then overnight I became a Jesus freak.
This is what the modern, you know, non-denominational try to get up and have
everybody give a testimony.
Come give us a testimony of, you know, how you are just like this horrible
gang banging cartel member that did all these horrible atrocities, uh, like
Adolf Hitler.
And now all of a sudden you're saved or something.
You were Jeffrey Dahmer of your past, and now you're the Apostle Paul.
You know, that's not the Apostle Paul's testimony, folks.
Okay.
What is the Apostle Paul's testimony?
He was separated to serve God from birth, meaning he was plugged in at church from
birth, and he studied the Bible his whole life, and he was zealous for the things
of God.
He was just wrong.
So what would be a more equivalent to the Apostle Paul?
Someone that grew up in church their entire life, went to every church service, read
the Bible all the time, but was just in a bad church.
And then as soon as they realized, like, what was the right thing, they just moved
straight onto that and just got really zealous for that.
That's like a real Apostle Paul, okay?
Not this, like, weird, bizarre idea of, like, this false prophet.
He also wasn't a false prophet, meaning where do we see the Apostle Paul
preaching a false gospel?
Yeah, he was persecuting people in the church, but again, according to the Bible,
he's doing it ignorantly.
Look what it says in First Timothy chapter 1 verse 12.
And I thank Christ, he is our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful,
putting me into the ministry, who was before a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious,
but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord is
exceeding abundant with faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus.
So I'll give you an example of someone that reminds me of this, and it's a guy named
Dr. Phil Stringer.
And Dr. Phil Stringer is, he's always, like, raised an independent of all Baptists, I think,
but at one point, he went to, like, a Bible college, and they're teaching him that the
King James Bible is not the legit word of God, it's not the perfect inspired word
of God, that the modern versions are, like, superior and whatever.
And he kind of got sucked into that, but he was, like, real zealous, and he's like,
I'm going to study this thing out, and I want to find out all the information.
Well, then when he actually started doing research and study, he started realizing,
well, these guys are wrong.
Every claim they're making about the King James isn't even legit.
And he kept seeing how the King James kept standing up to scrutiny, and then he ended
up becoming one of the most zealous, pro-King James people ever, and now he preaches it everywhere.
You know, he's like a traveling evangelist to a lot of churches.
He's a pastor, I think, too, but, like, he'll travel to all these different churches,
and he'll preach King James-onlyism.
In fact, that's one of the main things he preaches, even though, at one time,
he was a blasphemer, right?
At one time, he's saying, oh, the King James isn't the best Bible, right?
He's not saying good things about the King James.
But he was doing it ignorantly in unbelief.
And then once he actually kind of was just, he was just kind of forced to study that and figure out what's going on,
he ended up changing his mind.
You know, he wasn't, like, some rabid atheist that's burning it, okay?
He wasn't doing some weird satanic ritual with the Bible, and then he got saved.
Those people aren't going to get saved, folks.
The guy that's just in ignorance, though, and then, when confronted, has that conversion and then immediately
preaches it, you know, that's a completely different experience, okay?
And I've heard some people get up and say, like, oh, we need to be nice to these false prophets because maybe they're,
like, an apostle Paul.
And I'm thinking, like, no.
You know, I had a pastor come to my church and teach that, Manly Perry, came to my church, the first church service of
Pure Words, and is basically teaching how we need to be, you know, nice to these Jehovah's Witnesses and all these
other weird cult-leading false prophets.
And I'm like, let me explain something.
No.
Let him be a curse.
And let me tell you something.
If the Jehovah's false witness actively going out and damning people's souls, if I can't say, let him be a curse, then who
can be a curse?
I mean, who's actively preaching a false gospel if it's not the Jehovah's false witness, okay?
But yeah, if I run into one of these Christian light people, some of these non-denom people or whatever that are zealous
for their church, they're not the leader, they're not the pastor, they're just zealous for the church and they're wrong,
I might give them a little grace.
I might try to give them an opportunity to figure out what the truth is.
But that's different, folks, than Kenneth Copeland.
That's different than T.D.
Jakes.
That's different than the leader of the Catholic Church, than the pope and the archbishop and all of these pedophiles, okay?
Yeah, I'm not going to extend grace to these people.
I'm going to preach against them.
They are my enemy.
And they will be my enemy until I die.
And we're going to preach against them because we, you know, have to call out the false prophets to draw out the good people from them.
You know, how does anybody get saved if they never hear that?
You know, a lot of people get saved because they hear someone offend them by saying their church is bad or their pastor is bad or they're not saved.
There was a guy that went to Faithful Word Baptist with me and he, like, found a Pastor Anderson sermon or something online.
And he put a comment and said something like, oh, no, you have to repent of your sins to be saved.
And he said, Pastor Anderson just replied and just said, you're not saved.
And he said it just really, he was just so mad.
He was just like, how, how does he know I'm not saved or whatever?
But then he just started watching more and more videos and saw all the gospel and he realized he wasn't saved.
And then he got saved.
But it's like, how would he have gotten there?
You know, he figured out who Pastor Anderson was because he was calling out Ray Comfort for being a false prophet and preaching that repent of your sins nonsense.
You know what? And we need that.
I would love it if people would call out more false prophets and more teachers.
We need more of that, not less.
It used to be enshrined in the laws of Connecticut, the heretics.
But what is the lesson that we can draw from this chapter?
You know, what I think that we can draw, go to Titus chapter two, I want to show you one more verse, is that the apostle Paul was zealous.
And even if you're zealous and wrong, it's better than not being zealous.
What I find is the most frustrating thing on this planet is apathy.
And one of the hardest things to cure is apathy.
It is so much easier to take a zealous person that's wrong and get them pointed in the right direction than to take someone that's in the right direction and doesn't care and kick them in and start getting them to do something.
And zeal is just so important.
Zeal, I mean, you say, what is zeal?
You know, it's not, in my estimation, zeal is not measured in your emotional state.
It's not just like, I'm so excited to be at church tonight.
You know, it's not sharing every sermon on Facebook.
It's not liking every post.
You know what zealousness looks like to me?
Being in church every time.
Showing up at the soul winning time every time consistently.
Every time there's an event, every time there's a thing, you're just there.
When the song is being played, you're singing it.
When the verse is being turned to, you have your Bible open and you're looking at it.
You care.
That's what zeal looks like.
And let me tell you something.
It affects every person around you.
It affects your wife.
It affects your children.
It affects the person on the row next to you.
It affects all these people in this room.
Because if half the church started not coming on Wednesday nights, even less people would
show up.
Some people are in this room because you're in this room.
Not because I'm here.
Now, of course, if I wasn't here, that would affect people too.
We all affect you.
If I'm not here, it's like half the church doesn't show up sometimes.
It's like, just show up anyways.
The zealous person shows up when Dylan's preaching.
The zealous person shows up when Ben's preaching.
They're really zealous.
Hey, the zealous person sings the song when Brother Jacob's leading.
The really zealous person sings the song when there's no instruments.
The really zealous person plays the trumpet when no one else shows up to play an instrument.
The really zealous person is just always there, always doing right.
And you know what?
It will affect the people in your life so much.
There's this song I was hearing, it's like a Christian song.
The fire of my devotion is supposed to basically motivate everyone else.
And it's so true.
You being devoted to the Bible, I'll be honest.
When you watch Liam quote an entire chapter of the Bible,
you just feel like a crappy Christian inside.
You're just like, I need to learn more.
But his devotion inspires me.
You reading the Bible inspires me to read the Bible more.
You showing up inspires me.
You caring about doctrine.
You know, sometimes I'll preach a really doctrinal heavy sermon.
And if everybody doesn't care, then it's like,
it's less motivation for me to preach those kinds of sermons.
People ask me questions, or are interested, or ask about topics.
It inspires me to want to talk about that more.
You going soul winning inspires me or inspires other people to go soul winning.
You know, what you do affects everyone else.
And the Apostle Paul was a really zealous person.
And notice what the Bible says, that God had counted him faithful,
and then put him in the ministry.
So even though he was like kind of mixed up in some junk,
just the fact that he was a faithful person, God said, hey,
if you can be that faithful in this garbage religion,
let me put you in the real thing and see what you can do.
And often God will take those who are faithful with what they have, and
give them even more.
You know, I didn't grow up a Baptist.
I didn't grow up fundamental.
I didn't grow up with the King James Bible in my hand.
You know what?
My parents were zealous for church.
My mom loved church.
She always wanted to be there every time the doors were open.
She read her Bible every day.
And she would always tell me the most important thing to her was that her kids
loved God and wanted to serve God with their lives.
And I believe I'm here today because of my mother.
If it wasn't for her devotion to God, I wouldn't be here.
I wouldn't care as much.
I wouldn't, church wouldn't be a non-negotiable for me.
You know, I've never in my life had a time where it's like,
church is optional to me.
There was times where I didn't go as much, sure.
But, you know, I never had this idea of like, am I gonna go to church?
It's just like, where?
And, you know, I want my children to have that upbringing.
Where it's not, if we're going to church, it's where.
And, you know, my children, they tell me, like, when I grew up,
I want to go to this church.
They like pure words better, I'm sorry, I don't know.
I don't know, I'm just like, why?
Okay, well, whatever.
At least, hey, I don't care if all my kids go to pure words,
as long as they're going to church.
You know, I don't care if they all go to, you know, Verde.
You know, God bless them.
California's rough, but you know, go for it.
It needs some more salt, right?
To preserve that before it gets, you know, falls off into the ocean.
But, you know, you gotta, you gotta get zealous.
Don't, don't just play Christianity.
Make it real.
Get excited, get excited inside.
Be, be zealous for something.
You know, some people, I just look at their life,
they just look like a wet noodle.
It's like, they just don't like anything.
It's like, what do you like?
It's like, eh, I don't know.
It's like, like something.
You know, people that don't like anything are just going to just be a nothing in
their life.
You know, you don't have to do everything.
You don't have to like everything.
You don't have to be the best chess player.
You don't have to be the best ping pong player.
You don't have to be the best, you know, brisket maker.
You don't have to be the best at any, you know, everything.
But, you know, just find something to do with your life.
But one thing you should just be excited about is church.
You figure out how to get excited about it.
And even if you're not, just force yourself until you start liking it.
And I guarantee eventually you will.
But, you know, not being zealous is a danger because you'll eventually just
become Demus and just be like, do you remember this guy?
Oh yeah, that guy.
We bring that up all the time.
We were talking at the chili cook-off and it's like, remember this guy?
And it's like, oh yeah, that guy used to come to church.
What happened?
Wasn't zealous.
Didn't care.
And you know, I don't want to think about all you guys in the past.
I want to see you guys in the future.
Let's go to prayer.
Thank you Heavenly Father so much for the word of God, for giving us this free gospel.
I pray that we would never allow the gospel to become unimportant or something that we could tolerate a
perversion of.
I pray that we would be zealous for the gospel.
We would zealous for the word of God, that we would be inspired to do something with our lives for you and those that are struggling with zeal.
I pray that you would just give them some kind of burning desire in their, in their heart, that they could read the word of God and it could just, it could change their affections.
I pray that you would just stir something up inside of them that would cause them to realize the importance that they have in this life and how they affect everyone around them.
And I pray that our church would be one that's zealous of good works and always seeking to please you.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
For a final song this evening, go to 363 Wonderful Words of Life.
363 Wonderful Words of Life.
Song 363 Wonderful Words of Life.
Sing it out nice and loud.
Sing them over again to me.
Wonderful words of life.
Let me more of their beauty see.
Wonderful words of life.
Words of life and beauty.
Teach me faith and duty.
Beautiful words.
Wonderful words of life.
Beautiful words.
Wonderful words.
Wonderful words of life.
Christ the blessed one gives to all.
Wonderful words of life.
Centerless to the loving call.
Wonderful words of life.
Also freely given.
Wooing us to heaven.
Beautiful words.
Wonderful words.
Wonderful words of life.
Beautiful words.
Wonderful words.
Wonderful words of life.
Sweetly echo the gospel call.
Wonderful words of life.
Offer pardon and peace to a
Wonderful words of life.
Jesus, only save your sanctify forever.
Beautiful words.
Wonderful words.
Wonderful words of life.
Beautiful words.
Wonderful words.
Wonderful words of life.