- Good morning everyone, the Steadfast Baptist Church.
All find your seats, we'll go ahead and get started.
This morning off, a song that we should all be familiar
with, "Redeemed" will be near the back.
Like we got a pretty full house,
so I expect to hear some loud voices this morning.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for this church.
We thank you for everyone that's gathered here today.
We ask the Lord that you please fill Pastor Shelley
with your Holy Spirit, help him to preach
an edifying sermon unto us so we can walk out better
Christians than the way that we came in.
For your honor and for your glory,
it's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
All right, next up, we're gonna go into our hymnals
to song number 10, song number 10, cross.
- Coming to Steadfast Baptist Church,
if you did not already get a bulletin,
you can lift up a hand really high.
One of our ushers will come by and get you a bulletin.
We did our Bible memory chapter memorization
for the last passage on Matthew 28.
I did give out prizes last Wednesday,
but I know some people were not here.
So if you had quoted the entire chapter of Matthew 28
to a family member, or non-family member, I'm sorry,
and you had not received your prize,
you can come down, and I have gift cards right here.
You can get two of your choice.
So you get two, they're $20 gift cards.
So if you wanna come, come on down
and get your gift card right now.
We'll give them a round of applause.
Thanks to those who are working on Bible memorization.
On the inside, we have our service times.
Take note, we have a Spanish service at 9 a.m.
So if you wanna encourage people to visit
our Spanish services, they can.
Everything is completely in Spanish.
Our announcements, singing, and the preaching.
We also have our church-wide soul-winning time
that meets here at the building,
and then regional soul-winning times
that meet in different parts of the city.
You can see any of those respective leaders.
Ask your soul-winning captain or your tribe captain,
or you could talk to me or an usher.
We can help you with soul-winning.
Down below is our church stats for the year,
and we're doing really, really good.
What I think we should try for
is to finish this six months
or this first half year really strong
so that we could beat our numbers from last year
at the halfway mark.
And then hopefully we can not only beat them,
we can smash them,
and then we can try to do it again the next half
so we can do more than double what we did in 2024.
And 2024 was a pretty good number for us.
I think apart from the year that we went to the Bahamas,
it was maybe our second highest year,
so we had done pretty good.
Also, I don't think we have,
we don't always have Evangelos or Banach's numbers updated,
but if we could crush him,
that's fine with me as well, all right?
But he's a tough cookie to catch,
so he's doing a really good job.
A lot of work out there.
On the right, we have a list of our expecting ladies.
Please be in prayer for them.
Also, we have upcoming events,
the Scott Baby Shower on the 3rd,
Mother's Day Brunch, May 10th.
This is for ladies and their mothers,
and of course, they can bring their daughters.
There's a sign-up sheet in the foyer,
as well as you can do it through the app.
Please make sure to sign up,
so that way we can prepare adequately.
Soul Winning Marathon in Cleburne, Texas.
This is gonna be May 24th.
It's kind of a special event
where we're gonna just be meeting out at a park area,
and we're not gonna necessarily do a breakfast meetup.
We're just gonna meet out of the park
and do some soul winning,
then have lunch, and then go back.
There's supposed to be thousands of people,
islanders out there,
so we're looking forward to that opportunity.
There's a Durant soul winning marathon in Oklahoma
right after that.
The baby shower details are down below.
The back is our prayer list.
That's pretty much all I have as far as announcements.
We'll sing our Psalm of the Week, Psalm 139.
- That is Psalm 139.
It's also gonna be in your binders.
Psalm 139.
You can also find it in your King James Bible.
(choir singing)
- As the offering plates are going around,
would you please turn your Bibles to
Second Timothy, chapter number four.
- Second Timothy four, the Bible reads,
I charge thee therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ
who shall judge the quick and the dead
at his appearing and his kingdom.
Preach the word.
Be instant in season, out of season.
Reprove, rebuke, exhort.
With all lung-suffering and doctrine.
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine.
But after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers
having itching ears.
And they shall turn away their ears from the truth
and shall be turned unto fables.
But watch thou in all things endure afflictions.
Do the work of an evangelist.
Make full proof of thy ministry.
For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.
I hath fought a good fight.
I hath finished my course.
I have kept the faith.
Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous
Judge, shall give me at that day, and not to me only, but unto all them also that love
his appearing.
Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me.
For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica,
Cretians to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia.
Only Luke is with me, take Mark, bring him with thee, for he is profitable to me for
the ministry.
Antichicus have I sent to Ephesus, the cloak that I left that Troas with Carpus when thou
comest.
Bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments.
Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil.
The Lord reward him according to his works, of whom be thou aware also, for he hath greatly
withstood our words.
That my first answer, no man stood with me, but all men forsook me.
I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge.
Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me, that by me the preaching
might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear, and I was delivered out of the
mouth of the lion.
And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly
kingdom, to whom be glory for ever and ever.
Amen.
You Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus, Erastus abode at Corinth, but
Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick.
Do thy diligence to come before winter; Eubulus greeteth thee, and Putans and Linus and Claudia
and all the brethren.
The Lord Jesus Christ be with thy spirit; grace be with you.
Amen.
Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer.
Father in heaven, we thank you for this chapter of the Bible, and for this opportunity to
hear your word being preached.
I pray that you fill Pastor Shelley with the Holy Spirit now, and help him to preach the
message you've laid out his heart with boldness.
And Lord God, help us to apply this sermon, to pay close attention to it, and to make
any necessary changes to be better Christians.
We love you.
In Jesus' name I pray.
Amen.
Second Timothy chapter number four, a really famous chapter of the Bible, it says in verse
two, preach the word, be instant in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with
all longsuffering and doctrine.
Now the Bible is giving a commandment to a pastor.
The pastor is told to do something specific.
It is to preach the word, and when we talk about the word, we're talking about the word
of God.
We're talking about the Bible.
And so when we come to church, we should hear a preacher getting up and preaching the
Bible, not their opinion, not their ideas, not what the world's saying, not the Republican
Party agenda, not just something that's smooth, nice, fun, comfortable, joyous.
The Bible.
Just the Bible.
Whatever it is.
Now, what I believe in and what our church stands for is what we call hard preaching.
Hard preaching.
And the title of my sermon this morning is this, "Hard preaching is what works."
Hard preaching is under attack today and people don't want to have hard preaching.
People are constantly looking down upon hard preaching.
And this is what's so funny to me about this is people will constantly criticize hard preaching.
They'll say it's too judgmental.
They'll say it's mean-spirited.
They'll say it's damage control.
They'll make all kinds of accusations against it.
They'll act like people that say these things are causing people to be depressed and feel
bad and to upset people, and they're causing a reproach to the cause of Christ and they'll
label it all these things.
And they'll say, "We're not like that."
But what's so funny is by them constantly criticizing hard preaching, they're doing
exactly what they're accusing us of doing.
They're judging us, and they're the ones with the mean spirit, and really what they're
doing is they're attacking the Bible, because hard preaching is what the Bible prescribes.
Now, I have three simple points.
I've already preached this sermon, but it needs to be re-preached.
Hard preaching is number one, biblical.
Number two, it is corrective, and number three, it's specific.
So as we go through this sermon, it's going to start with Bible, then it's going to get
really corrective, and then it's going to get really specific.
Okay?
Now, why do people not like hard preaching?
It's because obviously our flesh doesn't really like the Bible.
It doesn't really like the Word of God, and so we have to preach against the flesh.
We're warring against ourselves in many cases.
The Bible talks about our worst foe being ourselves and being our flesh, and that's
who we're constantly fighting.
And so there's an internal struggle between your flesh and your spirit, and your spirit
wants to do that which is biblical and right and pleasing to God, whereas your flesh doesn't
really want to hear what the Bible has to say.
Your flesh wants to be pleased.
Your flesh wants to be comforted.
Your flesh wants to be taking over all areas of your life, and so there's going to be
a war until we die, until we can shed this flesh.
There's going to be a war of you doing that which is right, and preaching in the Word
of God and going to church is what helps us to strengthen our spirit and try to overcome
the flesh and to try to do that which is right and pleasing unto God.
Now right here the Bible is really clear that we're supposed to preach the Word.
That's point number one.
Hard preaching is biblical.
We should always make sure that the sermons that we're listening to and the sermons that
we're preaching are ideas coming from the Bible.
And often, you know, you have to first judge a sermon and say this, where did this preacher
come up with this idea?
Like was he reading a certain passage of scripture?
Was he reading some verse?
Was there something in the Bible that could trigger this idea?
Because if the idea being preached cannot be found in a clear section of the Bible
or from reading a clear passage in the Bible, then you know what, it's a wrong idea.
Our ideas and our sermon should be coming from the Bible, from the Word of God.
Now, hey, many preachers, we get inspired by anything and everything and that can cause
us to want to preach a sermon.
We always have to go back to the Bible first and say, is the idea that I'm having coming
from verses in the Bible or is it just my opinion, my ideas?
You know, the Bible warns that without the Bible, every man does that which is right
in his own eyes.
Everybody thinks that everything they do is right.
No one goes around thinking that they're just constantly doing that which is wrong.
They constantly think that they're right.
They're right about their food preferences, they're right about their favorite color,
they're right about the best place in the world to live, they're right about everything
that they think.
But you know what?
It doesn't make things right or wrong, what makes things right or wrong is a standard.
And our standard is the King James Bible, it's the word of God, and that's what judges
for us who's right and who's wrong.
Because someone's right and someone's wrong, not everybody's right, in some cases everybody's
wrong.
But you know what?
This is always right.
And so that's why we go to the Bible.
Now go over to Romans chapter 10, we're going to do a lot of verses this morning, I hope
you like the Bible because that's what you're going to get this morning.
And there's all these attacks on the Bible, and attacks on the Bible are not always coming
from the wicked, they're not always coming from the ungodly.
They can also come from Christianity, and they can even come from preachers who maybe
they are in the right path, but then they just, they start subtly attacking the Word
of God, they start subtly attacking the Bible.
And we want to make sure that in our church, and for our attitude, is that we're always
magnifying the Bible, we're magnifying the Word of God, we're making it seem more important
than less important.
That we're making the commandments of God seem more important, not less important.
They're making church seem more important, not less important.
They're making soul winning seem more important, not less important.
This is what we mean by magnifying the Word of God.
That we make God seem more important than less important.
That we make the flesh seem less important and the spirit more important.
This is what it means to magnify the Word of God.
And at the end of the day, our faith is not an arbitrary faith, our belief system is not
something that's man-made or just created in a laboratory somewhere.
No, we get our faith, we get our beliefs, we get our core doctrines from the Bible.
The Bible says in Romans chapter number 10 verse 17, "So then faith cometh by hearing
and hearing by the Word of God."
If we want to increase our faith, if we want to have a great faith in the church, it has
to be coming from a source and that source is the Word of God, is the Bible.
You know what changes men's lives?
The Bible.
I get up and I scream and yell about how you shouldn't put beans and chili.
You know what I've noticed?
These stubborn, you know, willfully ignorant people still put beans in their chili because
I just don't have a clear verse, you know?
If I had a clear verse though, maybe I could really convince some people.
You understand what I'm saying?
Like, I could get up here and scream and yell about my personal opinions and my personal
preferences and how I like things to be done, but at the end of the day, it really doesn't
persuade that many people.
But you know what can change people's minds is this, the Word of God, the Bible.
And that's what hard preaching is.
You want to know why churches are causing no one to change?
Because they're not preaching this.
They're getting up preaching their opinion, their ideas, what they think.
They don't use clear verses in the Bible.
They major on the minors.
Go through it to Hebrews chapter 10.
Go to Hebrews chapter number 10.
We need to make sure that our sermons are coming from the Bible.
And this is another thing.
If someone's going to get up and tell you this is a really scary doctrine or this is
a really bad thing, then they should be able to take you to a place in the Bible where
even a five-year-old would read those verses and come to the same idea.
Not you coming up with an idea and then fetching for a verse that can loosely or vaguely convey
the idea that you're coming up with.
That's called eisegesis.
It's a fancy word and it's just basically saying you're bringing your baggage or your
ideas to the Bible and trying to make it fit.
As opposed to going to the Bible and just saying, "What does this say?"
And then saying, "I need to change or my ideas need to change."
We need to make sure that we're using the Bible.
You know, you can go anywhere else and hear all kinds of wisdom and advice, read tons
of books.
There's more information you could ever consume outside of these walls and it's all garbage.
This is what we need.
The church is the pillar and ground of the truth and we need it to constantly be thundering
forth the Bible and the Word of God.
Why come to a church like this?
Because you want to hear the Bible being preached.
People come to this church for many reasons, but hopefully the number one reason is because
of the fact that you want to hear the Bible being preached.
If you could hear the Bible being preached as clearly and as soundly somewhere else,
closer to your home, you may be tempted to go there because that should be the main goal
anyways is the Bible.
Our church emphasizes preaching.
It's got to be, I mean, it's like maybe an hour and a half service.
My sermons are anywhere from like an hour, hour and 15 minutes.
I mean, what percentage of that is it?
I mean, it's like more than two thirds, maybe even three quarters
of the entire time that we spend here is just simply getting up
and just hearing the Bible being thundered forth.
Right before I preach, we have someone just read the Bible.
And if you think about it, even the Psalms and the hymns,
many of the lyrics are just straight Bible.
They're just the word of God.
I mean, we're just getting up.
We're singing the word of God.
Then we're having someone read the word of God.
And then we're having someone preach the word of God.
That is what our church is.
It's about the Bible.
It's about the word of God.
And you know what?
Hard preaching is what changes people's lives.
Why?
Because it's based on the Bible.
Hard preaching is not yelling.
Now, I like to yell, OK?
I'm kind of a loud person by nature.
But at the end of the day, me yelling and screaming
doesn't really make something hard preaching.
You could go to the watered down liberal church
and they'll scream and yell.
Stephen Furtick will yell louder than I can yell.
There's tons of people that'll get up
and scream and yell for Israel.
That's not hard preaching.
There's all things that could be screamed and yelled.
Hey, let's go to any sporting event here.
Let's go to the Dallas Cowboys.
Let's go to the Mavs game.
Let's go to the Stars game.
Let's go to the Rangers.
Let's go to the soccer, what is it?
Burn or something.
I don't know, nobody cares.
We can go to one of those and hey, go to NASCAR.
Wow, go to the racetrack.
That is loud.
You have people screaming, let's go Brandon.
You know what I mean?
You don't only hear that at church.
Okay, I'm just kidding.
You can hear that anywhere.
You can go with me to the sporting event and they're going to scream and they're going
to yell.
That's not hard preaching.
That doesn't make something hard preaching.
You know, you could go to our church to stand outside sometimes and the protesters will
scream and yell at you.
That's not hard preaching.
Hard preaching is biblical.
And look, someone could technically not even be yelling or screaming and what they're saying
is just screaming at them inside because it's the word of God that convicts our hearts
and our minds and causes people to want to change.
Hebrews chapter 10, look at verse 24, "And let us consider one another to provoke unto
love and good works."
What is provoking?
Typically when we think about being provoked, we think of it in a negative connotation.
You think of it like a little brother provoking his older brother or children provoking their
parents or typically in the Bible, you have the children of Israel provoking God and it's
often considered kind of like an irritation, something that's caustic in some cases.
And in the same way, you know, sometimes when we preach the word of God or we remind someone
of the Bible, it's a little bit of a provoke.
You know, the Bible says faithful are the wounds of a friend.
Faithful are the wounds of a friend.
Why?
Because the provoking can sometimes be a little bit injurious.
It can cause a little bit of harm.
It can hurt your feelings.
You know what?
Stop living your life based on your feelings.
You know why people don't like hard preaching?
Their feelings get in the way.
It's not about feelings.
Look what we're even provoking you to do.
Love and good works.
How is that even bad?
Oh man, these people are so bad, they're constantly trying to tell you to go to church.
These people want you to read your Bible more.
These people want you to go out and share the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ more.
These people want you to not commit grievous sin.
Wow, what a terrible group of people that are constantly trying to cause you to serve
God more and to love more and to do more good works.
You know, what a foolish accusation to act like that's somehow bad or that's somehow
negative or that's somehow a cult.
You know what a cult is doing?
It's destroying people's lives.
It's driving a wedge between them and people that they love.
It's causing them to do self-harm.
It's causing them to get away from the world.
We're saying go out in the world and talk to everyone.
What about Jesus?
Tell everybody about our church.
How in the world are we a cult when we want everybody to know?
Cults are trying to hide themselves.
You know what a cult is?
It's the Freemasons.
It's the Masonic Lodge in every single city where you drive by and all the windows are
boarded up or cemented in or closed in.
Show me a Masonic Lodge where they didn't shut in the windows.
The exceptional proved the rule, even if you could find one.
I mean you virtually cannot.
If you see a Masonic Lodge, every single time you'll see that the windows are just either
cased in, boarded up, closed down.
Why?
Because they want to hide the satanic things that they're doing in there.
Because evil is in there.
Okay?
We are not doing that.
We're handing out an invite.
When we show up, we're like, "Hey, we're Steadfast Baptist Church.
Here's a DVD.
Here's the t-shirt.
Come to the conference.
Listen to the preaching."
You know how many sermons I hide?
Zero.
In the history of our church, there's probably been a handful, if not even less than that,
of sermons I've taken down just simply because I disagreed with what I said, or I said, "Hey,
I taught this, and then I either changed my mind, or I thought something was wrong," or
whatever, and I took it down.
There's nothing wrong with occasionally removing a sermon or removing some kind of information
if you felt like, "Hey, I was an error.
We're all imperfect.
No one gets everything right, and hey, if I want to be honest, I also have to change
sometimes.
I also can get things wrong.
I also need to be corrected, and hey, if I need to be corrected, I want to be corrected
by the Word of God and I want to change."
But you know what?
In the history of our church, it's like less than five, it's probably less than a handful
out of thousands, out of thousands.
Why?
Because we're not afraid of what we believe here, and I'm not even afraid, even if someone
was like, "Hey, what did you hide?" I'll show you if you really want to see, but there's
not really a point to it.
Hey, I'll tell you what I said, and then I'll tell you why it's wrong, and why the Bible
is saying something different, right?
Because at the end of the day, we shouldn't be afraid of what we believe if it's the truth.
People that hide the information are afraid of people exposing what they really believe.
Go if you went to 1 Corinthians chapter number one, go to 1 Corinthians chapter number one.
We need today the Bible more than anything.
The Bible is our light.
It's our lamp.
It's our everything.
It's how we see.
It's how we understand the world.
It's how we have faith.
It's how we decide to run church.
It's how we decide to run our families.
It's how we decide to live our lives.
It's how we decide to make every single decision of our lives.
That is the Bible.
That's why we need hard preaching that is going to use the Bible in all of it.
Not just the parts we like, not the, quote, nice parts, not the, quote, friendly parts,
not the, quote, family friendly or family safe parts, all of it.
If you come to this church, there is never, ever any guarantee that a part of the Bible
won't be used.
You say, hey, what is it?
I'm nervous about bringing a family member or friend because of what might be said.
Well, that's a real fear because everything's on the table.
And you know, I'll be honest with you.
I don't think like, you know, this is the Sunday morning crowd.
Let's not preach that as too spicy for the Sunday morning crowd.
No, no, no, no, no.
I'll give you the Sunday morning special.
I'll give you everything.
Look, by the end of this sermon, you'll think, hey, there's he's willing to say anything
on a Sunday morning because I will.
First Corinthians chapter one.
I want to look at verse number 17 of the Bible is primarily focused in on the context of
getting people saved here, but it definitely expands from this.
It says in verse number 17, "For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel,
not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect."
Now, number one, if you ever want to expose the church of Christ for believing a false
gospel, this is a great verse because notice that the baptism is not the gospel.
If baptism was part of the gospel, this verse couldn't even be true.
The apostle Paul makes a clear distinction between baptism itself and the gospel because
the gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and what saves you
is believing in that.
Baptism is an outward profession.
Just like putting on a ring doesn't make you married.
What makes you married is pledging those vows before God that you're going to be faithful
unto that person until death do you part.
That is the getting married, not just putting on a ring.
You can put on a ring or not put on a ring and still be married, and you could actually
be saved and not actually get baptized.
Now look, I believe, hey, you get married, let's put the ring on.
Let's put it on right away.
I mean, don't we even do that in the ceremony?
I mean, we literally after they make the vows, we put the ring on in the same way.
As soon as you open your mouth to make known that you confess Christ, that you believe
in Christ, let's get baptized.
But if someone decides I don't want to get baptized for some dumb reason, well, you know
what?
They're still saved.
Now the apostle Paul continues, "For the preaching of the cross is them that perish, foolishness.
But in us which are saved is the power of God."
When we preach that salvation is a free gift, they say, "Wow, that's easy.
That's cheap.
Oh, well you're just denying all the verses about keeping the commandments."
You know, it's foolishness in them.
They just don't understand how salvation is a free gift.
They just don't understand how Jesus Christ paid it all.
And so they mock it.
They say that's too easy or that's too simple or this is what I always hear, "Then everybody
saved."
I'm like, what do you mean everybody?
The vast majority of this world doesn't even claim to believe in Jesus Christ.
Even though Christianity is the number one religion, it's still a minority in contrast
to all of the people in the world of all eight billion, only about 2.2 billion even claim
to believe in Jesus Christ.
So that would be a minority even if you said every Catholic, every Jehovah's Witness, every
Mormon is somehow saved.
They would still be a minority, but then that's insane to think that because Jesus clearly
says many, which are basically declaring the name of Christ aren't even saved.
Of course, cults like the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses that hide their information, they're
not saved.
The Catholics aren't saved because they believe in their works.
And of course, the preaching of the cross to them is foolishness.
They don't get it, but we preach the Bible anyways.
Verse 19, "For it is written, 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing
the understanding of the prudent.'"
Where is the wise?
Where is the scribe?
Where is the disputer of this world?
Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
Now, this is such an important verse, verse 20.
There's all these people that want to do Christianity in a different way than what the Bible prescribes.
What does Christianity look like in the Bible?
Church with a pastor.
Church with a pastor screaming, yelling the Bible.
That's what it looks like.
But you know what they say?
Oh, that's going to turn people off.
That's not how we reach people.
We reach people by being wise.
So then you have all these people that go out and they do debates.
These apologetics.
But you know what?
Apologetics doesn't change the world.
Apologetics isn't getting the job done.
Or they say, "Where is the scribe?"
This is all your Bible translators with their modern versions.
This is the people that are going to the higher levels of education.
They're getting their doctrinal thesis.
They're masters of theology.
But you know what?
They're not changing the world for the better either.
And then you have the disputer of this world.
This is all your online trolls.
This is all your online YouTube ministries.
This is all your parent church ministries that are saying, "Oh no, no, no.
Church is bad and we don't want to have religiosity.
And we don't want to go to some place where there's this authoritarian there that calls
himself a pastor.
We don't want to go where there's this dictator.
We don't want to go where there's this guy that's a cult leader, man."
Wherever, they're the cult leader, they're the one with literally no accountability.
They say like, "Oh, I don't want to go to a church where this pastor doesn't have accountability."
Well, where's your accountability?
YouTube censorship?
Is that your accountability nowadays?
Well, you know what?
YouTube censorship will lead you to not preach the entire Bible.
If you say, "Hey, I have only a YouTube ministry," you know what that tells me?
You don't preach the Bible, because you preach the Bible, you will lose your YouTube ministry.
So why is it that these people have to constantly soften the message?
Weaken the message, not preach what the Bible says, because they care about a YouTube ministry,
and they're a disputer.
Don't follow these people.
Their entire ministry is just exposing people only, just attacking people only.
These people are trolls, they're scornful, they would probably be thrown out of a church
if they actually tried to go to, they always downplay church.
And you know what?
That is not how God decided to build the kingdom of God through disputers of this world through
YouTube ministry, through the church.
We need a magnified church, and God has made foolish the wisdom of this world.
All these people are going to look like fools.
All the apologetics, all the PhDs, and all the scornful, hateful YouTube ministries out
there, they all look like idiots because they are, and God will make sure that they look
that way.
Verse 21, "For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom do not got it.
Please God, by the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe.
For the Jews require a sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified
unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness."
Again, the Bible is telling us that we need the "foolishness of preaching."
Meaning what?
People are going to always look down on hard preaching, people are always going to look
down on the Baptist Church, but you know what?
They're the ones that are wrong.
Go over to Ecclesiastes chapter 12, Ecclesiastes chapter number 12.
We need the Word of God because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.
The Bible tells us to preach the Word.
The Bible tells us that we need to provoke unto love and good works.
The Bible tells us that we need the foolishness of preaching.
That is what's going to save people.
That's what's also going to inspire people to serve God in their lives is the foolishness
of preaching.
Now of course the Bible is using this in jest.
The Bible is using this from the perspective of the hater, of the disputer.
Because it's not foolish.
What I'm saying is not foolish.
Preaching the Word of God is not foolish.
Church is not foolish.
It's just saying from their mindset, from their perspective, they call it foolish.
And honestly, you know, it's the Bible being sarcastic.
Sorry you don't like sarcasm.
It's Bible.
The Bible uses sarcasm by calling, hey, it's the foolishness of preaching.
That's God making fun of idiots.
That's God making fun of haters and trolls and the PhD saying, oh yeah, it's the foolishness
of preaching.
But you know what, it's actually the wisdom of God.
It's the Word of God.
And you know what, it's way wiser than all these PhDs, these apologetic ministries, these
online trolls and idiots that make the mockery of the Word of God.
We believe the Word of God.
And you know what, it's foolishness to them, but it's the wisdom of God to us.
And it changes people's lives for the better.
Now the Bible tells us in Ecclesiastes chapter number 12 what the Word of God is supposed
to be like.
Look at verse 10.
"The preacher sought to find out acceptable words, and that which was written was upright,
even words of truth."
The word "even" means specifically.
So the preacher is supposed to figure out one thing when he talks.
What is true?
What's acceptable words?
You know, don't get confused about this.
It's not like there's a list of words that are unacceptable and then there's a list of
words that are acceptable.
No, no, no.
It's the choices that you make with the words that what you're saying is true.
There's one thing that the preacher needs to make sure what he's saying is that it's
true.
I don't really care so much about the words.
Now, sometimes the Bible gives us an idea of, like, what words to use.
We should use the words which the Holy Ghost teacheth, so we should use Bible words.
A second thing the Bible tells us is that we should make it plain so we shouldn't try
to just use a bunch of fancy theological jargon to confuse the audience or to talk above the
head of the audience or to use something that's unfamiliar to them.
It would be inappropriate if I just got up and started preaching a sermon in Mandarin
because that would just go over your head.
In the same way, it would be inappropriate for me to get up and just start using theological
vocabulary only, not explaining it, so it just goes over your head.
That would be the exact same as just preaching in a foreign language.
Because the only reason, you know, speaking a language doesn't just make you so much smarter
than other people.
Five-year-olds can all speak their native tongue.
I mean every five, six-year-old can communicate in their native language, not because they're
brilliant because we can just all learn a language, we all know how to talk.
So me speaking in a foreign language isn't so much sophistication, it's just I learned
it in the same way.
Theological jargon, you don't have to be smart, it's just something you have to learn.
And you know, just because you didn't spend four years in a cemetery, I'm sorry seminary,
rotting your brain through with stupid vocabulary doesn't mean that you're not smart enough
to understand it, it's just you haven't studied it in the same way.
Mandarin would seem really hard to me because I've never studied it, but you know what,
if I'm in an environment where I'm only hearing Mandarin for four years, yeah, I'm sure I'd
probably pick some of it up and I'd be forced to end up learning how to speak Mandarin just
because that's how the world works.
But it would be silly to get up and just pretend like I'm so much better than you because I
went to some seminary, learned a bunch of fancy theological vocabulary, and then I talked
over your heads, "Oh, you have to go to this university to understand the Bible."
No, you don't.
The Bible makes wise the simple is what the Bible says.
And you know, praise God for people like William Tyndale who wanted to make the plow boy more
knowledgeable than the Catholic priest.
And so he gave us a King James Bible.
You know, and some people, they say, "Oh, we need to dumb down the Bible so that people
can understand it."
But wait a minute.
How is the plow boy in the, you know, essentially Middle Ages to the Renaissance period, how
is that guy, if this is too hard for people today, how is this too easy for him?
Like, how could the plow boy back then, with limited education, limited schooling, understand
the King James Bible?
And then now we say, "Oh, it's too difficult."
That's an oxymoron.
That doesn't even make sense.
This is already very simple.
I mean, there was a man sent from God, his name was John.
Wow.
Talk about a high level of, you know, reading there.
Now obviously some parts of the Bible are difficult, mostly just because we're unfamiliar
with some of the language that's being used or some of the vocabulary isn't as familiar
to us.
But at the end of the day, the Bible is not just super high level to where people can't
understand it.
It's very simple.
My children read it.
My children understand it.
Your children can understand it.
And we need to use the Bible words.
We need to make it plain.
We need to make sure it's true.
When I evaluate a sermon, my number one and number two and number three most important
thing when I'm listening to a sermon is, "Is it true?"
Not "Does it hurt my feelings?"
Not "Which words did he use?"
Not "How mean was he?"
Not "If it was harsh."
I just ask, "Was it true?"
Because at the end of the day, the truth isn't going to really hurt me.
It could hurt my feelings.
It could hurt my flesh, but it can't hurt my spirit.
Hey, you know what, we need to get up and make sure what we're saying is true.
And as a listener, you need to make sure what you're listening to is true.
You should be constantly evaluating and judging everything I'm saying and making sure it's
true.
And not just me, everyone, every single person, we need to make sure and we need to trust
only this.
The Bible says in verse 11, "The words of the wise are as goads."
What is a goad?
It's a long stick with a point at the end, and it's used to jab the animal.
The animal won't do what you want it to do, so you literally shove a sharp stick into
its backside.
You poke it.
You provoke it to then do what it's supposed to do.
That's hard preaching.
Hard preaching is like a goad where it's just like, "Hey, get to church!
Hey, read your Bible!"
And you know what?
Sometimes we use the carrot.
We don't always use the stick in this church.
I mean, I just handed out a bunch of gift cards to people who are just memorizing the
Bible.
That's the carrot.
But you know what the goad would be like is the sermon when we're ripping on, "Hey,
you not reading your Bible, not memorizing scripture, not even taking serious the things
of God."
That's where the goad comes in.
You know what?
The person that does do those things, it doesn't hurt in the same way the animal that's moving
and going in the direction it's supposed to doesn't get the goad.
You know why it gets the goad?
Because it's not moving.
And then people will say like, "Oh, I'm offended by the preaching."
Well, that just tells me you're just stuck in the mud.
You're just a cow that won't get its behind in gear.
Because you know what?
The cow and the horse that's actually moving in the right direction doesn't get the goad
-- doesn't get the spur.
Hey, we're in Texas where there's cowboys.
You know what?
They have spurs.
You like the San Antonio spurs?
Well, you know what?
You should like the spiritual spurs of God's Word where you get a little bit jabbed in
the backside.
And yeah, you know what?
It hurts.
Faithful are the wounds of a friend.
We should provoke unto love and good works.
And we need the Bible to constantly provoke us and to prick us in our hearts.
Go if you would to Acts chapter number 2.
I have too much Bible.
I need to move on from this point.
There's so many more verses I would like to go to.
You know the Bible says that the Word of God, "Wherefore serveeth the law?"
It was added because of transgressions.
The Bible tells us that when we talk about the Word of God, that it was to make sin exceeding
sinful.
Why do we preach the Word of God?
To make you think that sin's even worse than it really is.
And I'm not saying that we actually make sin worse.
We make it in your mind it worse.
We help you realize how bad it really is.
How much God's actually angry at it.
So you actually realize, oh wow that's actually bad.
I didn't realize.
I wasn't really concerned with it.
We need to be preaching the word of God.
Preaching the Bible.
The Bible tells us in Isaiah 58 that the preacher is supposed to lift up thy voice like a trumpet.
Look the trumpet is loud.
I mean they often, often Brother Jared or the Jareds, I don't know we have lots of trumpet
players here.
When they play the trumpet they even use a softener many times just because of how loud
the trumpet is.
The trumpet is made to be heard and not just to be heard in a small room.
You can blow a trumpet and hear it you know thousands of feet away possibly even miles
depending on how loud that trumpet was blowing.
Why because the trumpet is supposed to be thundering forth a message.
That's why the Bible says hey the preacher is supposed to lift up his voice like a trumpet
to show my people their transgression.
Why do you come to church?
Good job guys.
Way to go team.
You're doing so good.
No, no, no.
It's to show the people their transgression.
You're a sinner.
Here's where you're wrong.
Here's what you did bad.
Not to say you can't even sin.
You're sanctified already.
Why would I get up and show your transgression if you're already sanctified?
When Jesus looks down, when God looks down, He just sees you as perfect already.
He just sees you as sanctified already.
Already set apart.
I know you just shot up heroin.
Good job my son.
Well done now good and faithful servant.
I mean we're just all going to get the same reward, same mansion, same blessing, same
words at the judgment seat of Christ.
No!
That is silly!
That is nonsense!
No, the preacher's supposed to show the people their transgressions so that they'll change.
Point number one is we need hard preaching because it's biblical, but number two is so
it corrects us.
And hard preaching needs to be corrective.
What is the gold?
Do something different.
Provoking.
Hey, love more.
Hey, do more good works.
Hey, get the sin out of your life.
Do something different.
And the Bible shows us this pricking, how it actually makes a change or a difference.
Acts chapter number two, the context is, the apostle Peter preaching unto the Jews, and
they think that everybody speaking in a foreign language is speaking in, you know, statically
like someone that's drunk, slurring their speech or saying something, and he's saying,
hey, these people are not drunk as he's supposed, but he explains that this is just the Holy
Ghost coming on them and then preaching intelligent words in a foreign language, getting people
the gospel and getting people saved.
Now that actually serves a purpose.
You know, Pentecostal screw up this passage to think everybody's just rolling around on
the floor barking like a dog to glorify God.
How does that even glorify God?
You know what glorifies God?
Someone preaching the gospel in a foreign language and getting someone saved.
And you know what?
How does it benefit me?
I mean, just imagine, hey, I'm going to go to Africa and I'm going to roll around on
the floor and bark like a dog.
How would that help people?
Or what if I went there and I actually told them, "Hey, Jesus loves you.
He died on the cross of your sins.
Believe in Jesus Christ and be saved."
And I preach that in their foreign tongue and their mother tongue, and then they hear
that and they believe in Jesus Christ and get saved and change their life.
That actually has benefit.
You know, Pentecostals are going to Africa and flooding Africa with all their nonsense
constantly.
All their ooga-booga.
You know, we want to say that Africa's ooga-booga.
Let me tell you, Pentecostals are more ooga-booga than the ooga-boogas.
It's nonsense, don't bring back ooga-booga, bring back the intelligent words of God and
actually give them something to correct their life with.
I mean, how would you come to church and let's all just sit around and just like, ooga-booga-booga-booga.
Alright let's go to lunch.
You know, I saw online people are just like, oh man the Pentecostals are so exciting.
So much zeal, they're just so much fun.
It's fake.
You know what has a lot of excitement and fun?
The preschool, the toddler room.
Right?
It's really one of these fun centered churches.
Let's go into two and three year olds room.
It is loud, exciting, they're rolling around the floor and saying things that you can't
understand.
Is that now the standard of what church is?
Is that how we decide if a church is good?
If it acts like toddlers?
How about grown adults sitting quietly with their Bible and following along as a preacher
reads the word of God to them?
That sounds pretty good to me.
I like that.
And you know what?
It's not out of order.
The Bible says, hey when everybody's just talking and saying, no one can figure out
what's going on.
When you have one person getting up and delivering a message, wow, you can have maximum results
out of this.
And preacher in Acts chapter two is Peter.
Peter gets up and just declares to thousands of people, he's going to explain the Lord
of God.
He preaches them all this Word of God and then he pricks them.
Look what it says in verse number 36, "Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly
that God have made that same Jesus whom you have crucified both Lord and Christ."
Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart.
What pricked the Jews in their hearts?
The preaching of the word of God.
You know what pricked them in their hearts?
The gospel.
Preaching that they had crucified Jesus.
How about this?
It says, "Therefore let the house of Israel know assuredly that God have made that same
Jesus whom you have crucified."
Okay, now it says, "And with wicked hands they crucified another place in the Bible."
But here's the thing, he's calling them out.
He's preaching against them.
He's correcting them.
You crucified him.
This is correct.
And then they're pricked in their hearts.
That is the logical question after them being pricked in their hearts and setting the Peter
into the rest of the apostles, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?"
What's the logical conclusion of hard preaching?
"Hey, here's the Bible.
You need to change."
And then they say, "How do we change?"
Right?
I mean, this is just a logical progression of hard preaching is that we say, "Here's
what the Bible says.
Here's what you need to change."
Or, "This is the change that needs to be made."
And then lastly, it would be, "This is how you make the change," which is the specific
part.
This is the moment, but we understand why we even preach these things, is to prick people
in the heart.
"Oh man, this sermon is about me."
Yes.
You know, you come to a church like ours, and you're going to constantly feel like
the sermon is about you.
Go to 2 Corinthians chapter 7, go to 2 Corinthians chapter 7, and you say, "Why?
Why would I feel that way?"
Because it is.
You know, I'm going to maybe get there later, but 1 Corinthians chapter number 10 tells
us that the entire Old Testament was written for our admonition.
There's not a story in the Bible that's not about us or for us.
In fact, he's saying, I literally wrote these stories down for you specifically.
These passages are for us, about us.
We're supposed to learn from their example.
We're supposed to constantly put ourselves into the story, into the biblical character's
shoes and say, hey, how does this apply to me?
People always want sermons to be relevant.
What does that mean?
How does this apply to me?
How do I put myself in the story?
And we need to understand that the Word of God is meant to cause us to sometimes feel
bad, to be pricked in our hearts, to feel that goad, to feel that uncomfortable feeling
so that you would change.
If I never get up and make people feel uncomfortable, they're not going to change.
What does it say in 2 Corinthians chapter number 7 verse 9?
"Now rejoice not that you are made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance.
For you were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing.
For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation, not to be repented of.
But the sorrow of the world worketh death.
For behold this self same thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort.
What carefulness it wrought in you, yea what clearing of yourselves, yea what indignation,
yea what fear."
What fear.
"Yea what vehement desire, yea what zeal, yea what revenge.
In all things you have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter."
When the Bible is being preached it's supposed to cause you to fear, it's supposed to cause
you to have zeal, it's supposed to cause you to change, and then when you change you never
change again.
You say hey I'm going to change, I'm going to put away the bottle, I'm not going to drink
alcohol and I'm never drinking it again.
You have that godly sorrow that leads to repentance unto salvation from the slavery of the bottle,
from the slavery of Jack Daniels, from the slavery of alcoholism, from the slavery of
drunk driving, from the slavery of going to prison because you killed somebody while being
drunk.
And let me tell you something, salvation is not only about going to heaven, many times
salvation is about things from this world.
Salvation from an early death, salvation from being a servant to sin.
And you know what, that's what it's talking about.
So many preachers use this passage to teach work salvation, that's not it.
It's talking about salvation from sin, salvation from the destruction of this life, salvation
from the evils of this world, and it's saying, look, we need to get up and rip on the Bible
so people will stop being drunkards, stop committing fornication, stop committing adultery,
stop extorting, stop railing, stop lying, stop being wicked.
That's what we get up and rip on, so people will quit.
Ah man, this term is about me, good.
Change.
I feel sorry, good.
And look, sometimes, as preachers, verse 9, "Now I rejoice not that you're made sorry,
but that you sorrowed to repentance."
I don't want to get up here and hurt your feelings.
The apostle Paul even says at one point, "Hey, I kind of repented at first.
I preached the sermon and I was thinking like, 'Yeah, that was harsh.'
But then he thought about it and he's like, 'But it was true.'
And then they changed.
And you know what?
I'm not sorry because I saw you change.
And you know what?
I've been doing this enough to realize that hard preaching works.
And I've hurt people's feelings and I've caused people to feel uncomfortable, but I've also
seen people change.
And you know what?
For the people that changed, it's worth it.
For all the people that didn't change and got tooth vended and left, okay, they weren't
going to change anyways.
Even if I had patted them on the back and told them how special they were and played
soccer with them and was their friend and bought them meals, it wasn't enough.
Never enough.
But you know what?
Sometimes you don't need someone to buy you something.
You know what you need someone to do is prick you.
Go to Hebrews 6, go to Hebrews chapter 6.
You know why people don't like hard preaching is because they just don't want to change.
They've already arrived.
They don't want to learn because they're already smarter than you.
They don't want to grow because they're already mature.
But the people that have that attitude are usually the most immature people that need
to grow the most and don't know anything.
And so we need to often constantly challenging ourselves and saying, "You know what, I need
to get better."
Come to church with an opportunity to say, "Hey, how can I get better today?"
That's how you should come to church.
And you know what?
Go to a church that's going to challenge you to grow.
Go to a church that's going to challenge you to get better.
Go to a church that's going to challenge you with verses in the Bible.
And you know, this sermon this morning, I'll be honest with you,
I don't even think it's a lot of new verses.
It's probably not a lot of new information.
Come on Wednesday night, we'll learn something.
But you know what?
Sometimes we just need to be provoked again.
Sometimes we just need to get a little bit pricked again.
Sometimes we need to just get told what to do again.
Hebrews chapter 6, the Bible says in verse 1,
"Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ,
let us go on unto perfection."
What is perfection?
Completion.
So, we should come to church to grow.
We're showing up to get better, to become more perfect, more complete.
Why do professional athletes go and practice?
I mean, let's just be honest.
Every professional athlete is so good right now that they could beat all of us, any of
us handily.
Like, it wouldn't even, they would never have to practice again and they could beat us forever.
But at the end of the day, they're not necessarily a complete player.
They're not necessarily perfect.
And whatever weaknesses they have, they need to improve on.
If we put it in the context of, let's say, basketball, you know, they maybe work on their
dribbling a little bit more, or their free throw shooting, or their three-point shooting,
or their fadeaway jumper, or their defense, or maybe just their physical fitness because
they get tired at the end of the game.
We could apply this to all kinds of different areas.
And you could look at a player and say, "Hey, this guy's good at this area, but he's struggling
this way."
He needs to go into perfection and become more of a complete player.
And we as Christians, you know, there might be areas in our life that we're thriving
in that we might be really good, but we want to become a perfect player.
We want to become a complete player.
"Hey, I go snowboarding three times a week."
"Okay, good."
"All right, how about your Bible reading?"
"Oh, I'm good at Bible reading."
"Okay."
"How about your family life?"
"How about your job?"
"Are you providing well for your family?"
"Are you taking care of your kids?"
"Are you a good employee?"
You know, there's lots of different areas.
"Hey, do you struggle with this area of sin in your life?"
"Hey, are you prideful?"
We want to make sure we're a complete Christian and we need constant correction.
Yeah, maybe you got one area good in your life, but we don't want to just say, "Hey,
I'm good in one area.
I'm good."
No, no.
We want to be someone that has the dribbling and the defense and the three-point jumper
and the layups and everything.
We want to become a complete player and the stamina, all of it.
And think about the stamina aspect, because we're Steadfast Baptist Church.
Let's say you're the greatest three-point shooter, you're the greatest at layups, you're
the greatest at rebounding, but you get tired after 30 seconds and you can't perform.
Then what's the point?
And you know what?
Sometimes people come to church, they're three and a five, they're going soul winning,
they know the Bible, but then they last like six months and then they're gone.
It's like, what's the point?
You know, you'd be better off having a player that's not even as good as them, but just
can play the entire game, than the guy that can play super great for 30 seconds.
You know, at the end of the day, you know, Christianity is not measured in what you can
do in five minutes or five months.
How can you do for 50 years?
How can you do all the way under the end?
Can you be steadfast under the end?
In fact, there are rewards in the Bible designated only to those who cross the finish line,
meaning not were you a Christian now or 50 years from now.
Were you a Christian when you took your last breath?
Were you steadfast under your last breath?
That is what we should be striving for.
Not just being a Christian today or tomorrow or five years from now.
Will I die a Christian?
Will I die a Baptist?
Will I die steadfast?
Will I die as a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ?
Will I finish my course?
Will I finish my race?
Because there is a crown laid up for those who finish the course, who finish strong.
We want to go into perfection.
We don't always need to just hear how to get saved.
How many churches a day have turned their church service geared only to preaching the
gospel?
Only to preaching just how to get saved, only the death, burial, and resurrection.
Now look, we need a lot of that.
The New Testament emphasizes that.
Hey Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it's all about the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ,
but you know there's a lot more in the Bible than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
And we don't want to just go to a church where we're only getting the principles, we're
only getting the basics, we're only getting baptism, and we're only getting salvation.
And you've got to go to Bible college to get the rest.
No, we want to go into perfection as an entire group.
Not everybody can afford Bible college, not everybody's ready for Bible college.
Some people are too young, some people are too old, people are too busy, people don't
have enough money, people don't have, you know, resources.
You know, you should be able to just come to church for free and hear the Word of God
being preached, whether you can go to Bible college or not.
And I would argue this, that our young men and women in this church are more knowledgeable
than every Bible college graduate.
Not even just some of them, like virtually all of them.
Maybe there's an exception for them.
But I would just say by and large I would venture to believe they have stronger doctrine,
more conviction, better soul winning techniques.
Hey, take the ladies' time and let's just take one random lady from one of our women's
times that goes soul winning and let's take a random Bible college student and let's see
who's better at presenting the gospel.
You know what?
We should help the women that labor with us in the gospel.
We should praise them.
Go if you would to Romans chapter 16.
In fact, I think that a lot of the women in our church that go soul winning are probably
even better than a lot of the men because being a lady, you're just less off putting.
It's typically the sales men at the door.
People think I'm either the Joe's witness or a roof salesman or some insurance guy or
internet TV guy or something like that.
They see a pregnant lady with a bunch of kids.
They're thinking like, how do we help this poor woman?
How do we rescue this woman?
And then she's just like, she's just laying down the Bible.
She's just like, bam.
And she speaks with authority.
And she gets them saved.
You know, I'm just telling you, it's impressive.
And some of the ladies in our church are great soul winners.
Praise God for them.
We need number one, the Bible, because it's biblical and it's going to give us our faith.
Number two, we need to be corrected sometimes so we can go into perfection.
And number three is we need it to be specific.
Because if I get up and just say, hey, let's stop sinning, quit sinning, people aren't
going to come up to me after the sermon and be like, that sermon was about me, wasn't
it?
There's a person out there doing something bad.
Don't be like them.
I remember going to church growing up and my pastor would constantly say, there's these
people out there that think salvation is by works.
And I always wondered, who are these people?
You know, they sound dangerous or whatever.
And like, I wish he would just, he didn't, I don't even know if he was saved, but that
was a true statement.
I thought everybody that went to church was saved.
I thought every Catholic was saved.
I thought every Nazarene was saved.
And you know, being young and impressionable, I thought the people that we needed to reach
were atheists because I'm thinking, "Oh, those are the people that believe in work salvation."
No, atheists are idiots.
Atheists are the most unreachable people.
Now, again, I'm not saying don't try to give the gospel to atheists, but as a young man,
if I'm trying to get people saved, you know, that's probably not the target demographic.
If you go to public school, you're probably going to be less likely to get the atheist
saved than the Catholic saved.
And I wish that I had just known, "Oh, no, no, no.
The Catholics are the ones that believe in works.
The Presbyterian is the one that believes in works.
The Lutheran is the one that believes in works in many cases.
Hey, it's the Orthodox that believe in works.
Hey, it's the Church of Christ that believes in works."
And then I could go to those people who already have some interest in the Bible and the things
of God, and they'll be much more likely to get saved.
That's why we have to be specific and say, "Hey, Catholics aren't saved.
Orthodox aren't saved.
Church of Christ are not saved.
Many Baptists aren't even saved."
And we need to tell people this so that we can know, "Oh, wow, I need to approach these
people.
You know, we're making a soul-winning documentary."
And my main goal with the film is to try and wake people up to realize that most people
aren't saved.
That's like the main goal of the film.
And so I'm just hoping we can just show like a bunch of soul-winning encounters where we
talk to the person and just basically just say, "What do you have to do to be saved?"
And just have them be like, "Be a good person, follow the commandments," because I think
for a lot of Christians they would be blown away by that thing and like, "Oh, wow, I
didn't realize how many people say that salvation is by being a good person."
It's mind-blowing to me when I started saying, "Hey, do you believe it's faith alone or
faith in works?"
How virtually everyone says it's both.
Because I thought by asking that type of question, everybody would be like, "Well, of course
it's not works."
But that's not what happens.
They're like, "Of course it's works."
And I'm thinking like, "Wow, okay, let me show you how it's not of works.
It's not both.
It's just the faith.
You can't believe both and be saved.
You have to believe in faith alone.
That's the only thing that saves.
It's a free gift.
Can I show you?"
And you know what?
It just cuts the chase and you can start preaching the gospel in a quick way.
And I want to show people that.
But if we didn't do that, then well, you know, how many people wouldn't get saved?
We have to be specific.
You know, think about just soul winning in general.
It's not like, "Hey, do you think you're going to go to heaven?"
"Yeah."
"I accepted Jesus."
"Okay, bye."
No, we start getting specific.
No, wait, wait.
Do you mean faith alone or faith and works?
Hey, do you mean you can lose your salvation or not?
Hey, do you think that salvation is a lifelong process of continuing to do right?
Or do you think it's a one-time event that's free gift?
We ask specific questions because we want to know where they're really at.
And you know what?
Preaching needs to be specific.
Here's another one.
Avoiding bad people.
How can you avoid bad people if you're not specific?
Romans 16, look what it says in verse 17, "Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which
cause the visions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which you've learned, and avoid
them.
For they that are such serve not the Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly, and by
good words and fair speech, has deceived the hearts of the simple."
Sometimes we need to just call people out by name.
Go over to 2 Timothy chapter 2.
For a second time, I'm going to skip some stuff.
We'll get to the good stuff, all right?
But at the end of the day, you know, 1 Corinthians 10 says that these things are written for
admonition.
We need to be specific on sin, too.
We need to be specific saying, "Don't drink alcohol."
We need to be specific and say, "Don't get a tattoo."
Not just like, "Don't print marks on your body."
Because everybody that wants to get a tattoo say, "Oh, well, I'm not getting it for the
dead."
It didn't even say that.
It just said, "Don't print marks on your body."
What is that?
Just look up the definition of tattoo, and it's like making a mark on your body.
"Well, I didn't print it.
I didn't use a printer."
Okay.
I mean, if you want to believe whatever you want to believe, you can.
You know who doesn't like hard preaching?
People that are guilty.
That's why.
You know what the men in our church, they would almost be fine if I preached this once
every week, which is against fags, because they just think it's fun and entertaining
and they hate them, and they never come up to me like, "Man, that sermon really offended
me."
But they're like, "You can leave whenever you want."
You usually get mad at things that you're guilty of, not the things that don't affect
you at all, or things that you hate.
And then you're just thinking like, "Yeah, get them, right, yeah."
That's what the Bible says.
You know, people get offended by the Word of God, and you know, Jesus Christ said, "All
men cannot receive this saying."
People get offended, they have itching ears, they don't want to hear the truth, and you
know who gets offended?
People have marriage problems when you preach on marriage.
Let's just put it on the table.
Everyone has marriage problems.
If you don't have marriage problems, then you're not married, and then you still have
problems anyways, all right?
The only person that has a perfect marriage is the single guy who thinks that he would
have a perfect marriage if he was married.
Nobody else has failed before me, but if I were married, my wife would do what I told
her.
Okay.
Good luck.
You know the people that get offended?
People that are not sanctifying themselves.
They're not setting themselves apart, so they get offended by preaching saying you need
to sanctify yourself.
People are not reading the Bibles, unruly women.
Women that tell their husbands what to do will not like our church or my preaching,
and they'll tell their husbands after the sermon why.
You know will not like my sermon, weak men, because then when they're on their way home,
your wife's telling them why the sermon was bad, and challenging them, saying, "You would
never tell me what to do, would you?"
He needs to become a strong man.
You know who gets offended by the preaching?
Non-soul winners.
It's like, "Oh man, you're always preaching on soul winning."
Good.
Get offended.
You know who gets offended?
Divorced people.
Matthew 19, Jesus says this is like one of the hardest servants ever.
Never divorce.
You know who gets offended?
Railers, because they don't like to speak the truth.
Drunkards, fornicators, tattoos, women wearing pants, that's who gets really offended.
Women with short haircuts.
A lot of these are the same person.
The woman with the short hair cut, wearing the pants, telling her husband what to do,
that's a railer.
And, you know what, she wants to drink wine on the weekends so she gets really offended
at steadfast and tells her husband what to do so she doesn't have to get rebuked for
her sin.
Instead of shutting up her mouth and the one time she opens it is to preach the gospel
weekly when she goes soul winning.
But you know what I've noticed about hard preaching is it produces great fruit.
I love hard preaching.
You know what it causes?
It causes people to go to church more.
It causes people to go more soul winning.
It causes people to have less sin, have better attitudes.
And here's the number one thing I've noticed, fellowship.
The fellowship in this church is the greatest that I've ever seen.
I've never been to a church where the fellowship is better.
And let me tell you something.
Why?
Because of hard preaching.
Hard preaching makes the fellowship here great.
Why?
Because we have unity around the doctrine.
We have the same Bible.
We have the same beliefs.
We have the same vision.
We have the same goal.
And you know what?
People that are trashing people and gossiping and lying about people get thrown out.
So we don't have to deal with them anymore.
That's why the fellowship is so great in here.
If we didn't throw out those people, then we'd all be a little bit bitter.
We'd all be in our little huddles talking about the other huddle, how dare them, and
this blah blah blah.
And that's most churches today.
It's a bunch of gossip circles everywhere where everybody's hating on each other and
getting mad at everybody and making things up and slandering people and a bunch of old
biddies coming over and complaining about everything.
And you know what?
I'm sick of it.
I don't want to be around that.
The fellowship here is great.
That's why people like to stick around and talk for hours.
That's why we have to tell them, hey, we're leaving, bye.
A lot of churches, it's a ghost town after five minutes.
Here it's just, it's off the chain.
And you know what I've also noticed about this is, you know, people preach against this
because they themselves are guilty.
But I want you to go to a place, go to Romans chapter 12.
I don't know if I had to go somewhere earlier, but go to Romans chapter 12.
Sometimes we need to be specific about the people that we name too.
Oh, I had you go to 2 Timothy chapter 2, didn't I?
The Bible's talking about warning people, you know, because of the cancer, the canker
that can come in and destroy a church.
You know, and pretty much my philosophy is that if I have a friend preach something that's
kind of wrong or off, I typically don't like name their name just because I don't want
to cause like unnecessary strife or shame, but I still think it's right to preach against
whatever they said.
You know, maybe be careful about it, not necessarily go over the top, because we always just need
to hear the truth.
And you know, if someone preached against me even by name, even if it was my friend,
as long as what they said was true, I wouldn't really care that much.
Even if it was a different opinion, but it wasn't wrong, I wouldn't be that offended
much.
I get mad when people call me out and it's not true, or they preach against me by name.
You know, people that are not my friend, boy, they're on the table, I'll tell you what.
And we sometimes need to just call out names and give specific examples so the people know.
I know that you are sitting there thinking like he's talking about somebody, who is
it?
Who is it?
Just say it.
Okay.
So, you know, like, and I've preached a sermon recently about this person already,
but I just want to bring up something else that they said, because it's just so stupid.
But Pastor Joe Jones had preached a sermon recently where he criticized people that go
to church three times a week, saying that three to thrive is bad.
And he said he, quote, "lost faith in the three to thrive people because some of them
supposedly had threatened to physically hurt him at church on Christmas," or something
like that.
He claimed that all these people in the church just said, "we're going to show up and hurt
you on Christmas day."
And he said that's when he, quote, "lost faith in three to thrive."
Now it's funny because I've had a lot of people threaten to hurt me.
A lot of voicemails, a lot of emails, a lot of people just coming to my church, coming
to the church, screaming how they're going to hurt me.
And it wasn't the three to thrive people.
And I thought about it, I was like, all right, let's just test this a little bit.
So I looked at all the people in our church.
And I looked at all the people that have been thrown out.
And just this church, not like OKC and Jacksonville, I mean there's a lot more.
Just like this church.
And it was basically like 27 family units.
Only 3 of those family units were 3 to thrive people when they were coming to our church.
So, if only 3 of them were, then that means only about 11% of the time is a 3 to thrive
person even getting disgruntled for having the problem in the church.
Then I looked at our church now.
There was like 70 something family units or whatever that are active in our church right
now.
Of those, about 45 of those are 3 to thrive.
You know, and of course some people miss for sicknesses, I'm saying they pretty much are
coming to all 3 services as best they can.
That's 64 percent.
So you know what that tells me?
You're 6 times more likely to hurt the church and do evil to the church when you're not
3 to thrive.
Not that, oh wow, I've noticed that the people that are 3 to thrive, they're the ones causing
problems and issues and leaving and whatever.
So if 3 to thrive was bad, you know what I would expect to see?
I would expect to see the bad people or the people causing problems to be disproportionately
higher in the 3 to thrive category, not the opposite.
And look, just from just personal observation, you constantly see the people that are 3 to
thrive, they're the ones that are giving in the church, they're the ones that are charitable,
they're the ones going soul winning, they're the people that give the shirt off their back,
they're the people that are helping the church, they're the people that care about the church,
the people that are going 3 to thrive then go 2 and then 1, pretty much they're the ones
that end up getting back into sin, going into drugs, committing adultery, doing all kinds
of evil, committing crimes, doing illegal activity, reving sin, hurting their family,
and so it's like oh man how dare you try to convince people to go to church more.
Well you know I just see patterns, I'm a pattern noticer.
I notice that there's a group of people that happen to own all of the television networks
and they happen to also own all the Hollywood studios and they happen to be disproportionately
owning a lot of banks and pharmaceutical companies and being in presidential cabinet positions
and represented on the supreme court and basically in every high ranking position of authority
and you know what it's not a coincidence Jews.
I don't care what Grock says, yeah it's disproportionate but it doesn't mean that it's necessarily
connected.
It is connected.
I'm a noticer.
I notice patterns and I notice the guys that go three to thrive are more likely to follow
God than the people that don't.
This is a bad correlation.
What if I said, hey, there's some bad people in my church and I noticed all the guys wear
pants?
Must be something wrong with pants, man.
That's a bad correlation.
Even if you could say, hey, there was a group of bad people in my church that went three
to thrive, that doesn't make three to thrive bad.
That's a dumb, dumb argument.
It's a bad correlation.
And show me the verse in the Bible that said, hey, the people that go into church a lot
are really bad.
I thought the Bible says in Hebrews that it was, you know what?
We should go to the church even the more as we see the day approaching.
We should provoke people to go to church more, not less.
That doesn't make sense.
It doesn't say three times a week, no.
It doesn't say anything about times a week.
But the Bible says you should go more and more and more and more.
And the Bible says you should do what the pastor's doing.
You should follow his example.
I go three times a week.
I want to go more and more and more.
Now, I'm not saying we're going to start a fourth service or something like that.
I think three's fine.
That's what's been passed down to us.
That's tradition.
It makes sense.
And I see us being very successful at Three to Thrive.
It's a bad, bad correlation.
Well, I've noticed all the people that got thrown out drive cars, okay.
You know what I've noticed?
I've noticed that people that like Jones sermons are bad people.
That's what I've noticed a correlation to.
And there was another guy, so I just put on Facebook the other day.
I don't remember.
I don't remember the time.
Yesterday or something.
And just, you never know what's going to pop up anymore.
Mostly ads.
I hate it.
But it was just a sermon, and it was Pastor Jared Pszarnski preaching at some camp.
And it was like live.
So I just click on it.
And I'm just listening.
I probably listened for like two minutes.
I was interested to hear what he was saying.
And he was reading in Judges, and he said, "Now, we didn't read that story in Judges
19, because I didn't want to ruin the family camp."
Go to Judges 19.
How does the Bible ruin the family camp?
You know, that sounds like you don't like the Bible or something.
Is there something wrong with the Bible?
And you know what I like about my children is they love the Bible.
It was funny.
There was a period where one of my kids was really into just making books.
I don't know why.
It's Clayton.
Clayton just loves to make books and he would just, he would just literally just take all
these papers, write a whole story, make a whole book, staple it together and he would
just like give us books.
Well he just randomly like gives me this book and it's the story of the children being torn
apart by the she-bears.
Now a psychologist would say oh this child's disturbed, you know, but I asked him like
so why'd you pick this one, right?
And he's like it's like my favorite story in the Bible.
And he was happy.
And you know what?
I think kids can like stories where bad things happen because you know what, they're like
I don't want to be like these bad kids that make fun of the man of God, that make fun
of preachers.
You know, this is a bad attitude.
And you know what?
He wasn't, it didn't ruin his day that he made that book.
He was happy.
He was smiling ear to ear.
He was thinking like wow what a bunch of stupid kids to make fun of the preacher and get destroyed
by bears.
You know what?
It caused him to fear God.
And you know what?
Judges 19 is a great story in the Bible even though it's ugly, but you know what?
Isn't it funny that people love to watch movies like this?
How many movies are about crime and drama and horrible things that are happening?
Hey, we like to know, why is it when you drive down the road everybody slows down to watch
the horrible accident?
Rubberneck.
We love it.
Why is everything a drama?
Why is it that when they do a live TV show, a reality TV show, it's never good enough
so they have to make stuff up to make it more dramatic?
Because if it was just happy and normal everybody would be like, "Alright, move on, next verse."
And then there was peace for 40 years.
Next verse.
I mean just think about the Bible itself.
Where in the Bible is it just describing in great detail all the happy peaceful times?
It's just like drama, next story, drama, next story, drama.
It's not going from like happy, healthy, fun, joy.
It's just basically like next drama, murder, death, disease, fornication, false gods, false
prophets.
I mean, Jeremiah is not just this happy-go-lucky book.
And you know, when you start getting this poison in the mind where you think the gnarly
parts of the Bible can't be read to children, let me tell you something, you're wrong.
I've heard this disease also affected Steven Crowder.
Steven Crowder is an example of someone that said, "Hey, certain parts of the Bible shouldn't
be read to your children."
I will read every part of the Bible to my children, and it doesn't ruin family camps.
You know what ruins family camps?
People being afraid to preach parts of the Bible.
That's what ruins family camps.
Now look at Judges 19 verse 25, "We're not going to ruin this morning's sermon, we're
going to make it better.
But the men would not hearken to him," this is talking about faggots by the way, "so the
man took his concubine and brought her forth unto them, and they knew her and abused her
all the night until the morning, and when the day began to spring, they let her go."
You know why we read stories like this?
So our children see those people screaming what they're like.
You know, I'd rather them read about what faggots are like than have to not know and
then actually get abused by one of these freaks.
Because faggots abuse people, faggots kill people, faggots are serial killers.
That's why we made a movie called LGBT Terrorists, 'cause they're terrorists, 'cause they go
to public schools and just shoot innocent children, because they're disgusting freaks.
And you know what, I'd rather them read it in the Bible than have to read a news headline
to figure out the reality of this world.
Than to be drugged to some public school and say, "Oh, they're nice, they're happy,
they're gay.
No, they're not gay, they're faggots.
They're disgusting and filthy, and they should be taken out and shot in the head by the government,
not by me."
That's my caveat, alright.
You gotta put it in with the clip, otherwise they won't get it out, alright.
But you know what, if I was the government and I was given the position of executioner,
I would pull the trigger.
I'm not weak.
I'm not gonna say, "Oh, we can't read this story in the Bible."
No, no, you know what happens?
They hear about what faggots did, they hear about these disgusting freaks, then what does
the man of God or this man do?
It says in verse 26, "Then came the woman in the dawning of the day and fell down to
the door of the man's house where her lord was, till it was light.
And her lord rose up in the morning and opened the doors of the house and went out to go
his way.
And behold, the woman, his concubine, was falling down at the door of the house and
her hands were upon the threshold and he said unto her, 'Let us be going.'
The nun answered.
Then the man took her up upon an ass and the man rose up and got him unto his place.
And when he was coming to his house, he took a knife and laid hold on his concubine and
divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces and sent her into all the coasts
of Israel.
And it was so that all that saw it said, 'There was no such deed done, nor seen from the day
that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day.
Consider of it, take advice, and speak your minds.'
The Bible's saying, 'Don't hide from the evil, consider it.
Don't hide from Judges 19, consider it.
And take advice, and speak your minds.'
Here's my mind, 'I hate faggots, I hate pedophiles, I hate these evil workers that are destroying
children.'
And you know what?
What did God, America, would hear Judges 19 being thundered from the housetops that at
the family camp you could hear about these predators so they wouldn't be destroyed.
We need the next generation to rise up and say, 'Hey, we're not going to take it anymore.
We're taking back the rainbow.
Let's put the faggots to death.
We don't want to ruin the family camp.'
You know what's ruining the family camp?
Sodom and Gomorrah.
You know what's ruining the family camp?
San Francisco.
You know what's ruining the family camp?
Michelle Obama, Pete Buttigieg, Peter Thiel, Ellen Degenerate.
That's ruining the family camp.
You know what's ruining the family camp?
All the faggots in our government right now.
You know what's not ruining America?
Judges 19.
You know what's not ruining this church service?
Judges 19.
It's disgusting.
What a stupid idea.
Foolishness.
My phone wants to talk to you now, apparently.
It's getting you on the preaching.
Sorry.
It got excited.
It's like Siri's like, what did you say?
Go view the Romans 12.
How dare you call Jared Pizansky?
How dare he call it the Bible?
Oh, but guess what?
These guys get to call me out all the time
with their little vague book sermons.
Here's another thing Pizansky said.
He said, oh, there's these preachers that are cussing.
And there's these preachers that teach
his doctors about cussing.
And they say, we can use any verse in the Bible
or any word in the Bible however we want.
Yeah, and this is what he said.
He said, this is the dumbest thing he's ever heard
preached by a Baptist pulpit.
Now, number one, I don't know exactly who said it
or how verbatim that quote is.
But of course, you know, we believe
that we should follow all the Bible's commandments.
So, using a word in the Bible however we choose
is not saying using in a sinful way.
Obviously, we're not going to use Jesus Christ's name
as a cuss word, that would be sinful.
Obviously, we're not going to use strong language
in a way to lie about someone or slander someone.
But you know what?
As long as you're not breaking a commandment,
I believe every word in the Bible is on the table.
And I think that's just clear-cut doctrine.
I personally go beyond that,
and I say you can use any word, period.
Now, I know everybody gets offended by that.
I know why you're offended by words,
not false doctrine, words.
And how is that the dumbest thing you've ever heard preached?
What about Tyler Doca preaching that the earth is flat?
And I know he knows about that.
You know why?
Because he's not that offended by the flat earth theory
because he believes in geocentricity,
which has been debunked
for hundreds and hundreds of years, folks.
Debunked by virtually everyone.
In the 16th and 17th century,
it was pretty much just completely debunked by and large.
If you go back even way before Christ,
people already knew that the earth was spinning or moving.
It's not like this is some new thing.
Obviously the Catholic Church denied a lot of this
and they killed people for having a heliocentric model
and stuff like that.
But you know what, I'm not Catholic
and I'm not defending the Catholic Church.
They're stupid, okay?
By 1851, Leon Foucault created a pendulum
to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt
that the earth was rotating.
And now they have Foucault pendulums all over the world
that just prove beyond any shadow of a doubt
that the earth is spinning.
But no, the dumbest thing ever is saying
you should use words in the Bible how you please.
How is that even a bad thing?
How is that even damaging the cause of Christ?
Now look, I've preached in the past
and I'll continue to preach that I'll say anything I want.
So if you want to go somewhere else to church, you can.
I'm, no one's forced to be here.
You know, I've used strong language.
And at the end of the day, to me, you know,
if you ask the world what's the worst thing
that I have ever said or could say, it's faggot, okay?
And I will for sure say that.
Now, there's other F words that people get more offended by
and whatever.
I said I'm not gonna say that again from a pulpit,
but at the end of the day, you know what?
I've noticed that there's not a direct correlation
to cussing and being a Christian.
All these people wanna act like you can't be a Christian
and cuss, and I'm just, I was trying to think about this,
and I'm like, okay, look, I'm gonna think about
the people in my church, and I'm like,
I'm gonna think about the people that I know
have never heard cuss and probably would never hear cuss,
and then I'm gonna think about the people that have heard cuss,
and then I'm thinking like, okay,
are the ones that cuss every once in a while,
are they going soul wedding, three to thrive,
serving God, loving the Lord, yeah.
Are the people that never do, are they doing it, yeah.
It seems like it just has no correlation, folks,
and if it was such a bad thing,
you would see an obvious difference,
just like the three to thrive has an obvious difference.
I've never seen this difference.
Now does that mean that we should just go around
and just say everything we can think
and everything we do?
Because you know what, if we use strong language
all the time, then it's not strong language anymore.
Strong language serves a purpose that when it's used
in a very specific and limited way, it's powerful.
You know, I don't think we should go around
using strong language.
I don't approve of that, I don't like it.
I tell my children no.
I say don't talk like that.
We don't use that word this way.
But you know, at the end of the day,
I'm not saying you wicked sinner, you.
That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard ever.
You know, these people want to sit here.
And then this is what Brzezinski said.
I'm going to prove to you how cussing is super evil
and super wicked, Romans 12, ready?
Verse one, "I beseech you therefore, brethren,
by the mercies of God, that you present your body's
living sacrifice wholly acceptable unto God,
which is a reasonable service.
And be not conformed to this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that you may prove what is that good
and acceptable and perfect will of God."
Now, how many children, how many people do you think
on their daily Bible reading read this verse
and then just thought cussing?
Or do you think it's like, hey, just not in the Bible
and I just need to just stretch something,
I need to just find something and then it's like,
oh, I'm defining what the perfect will of God is.
Now, let me help you because isn't that vague?
Let's just all be honest, isn't that vague?
But you know where you find the will of God?
You know how you know what the word of God is?
You know how you get specific?
You find a different verse.
You cannot go to a vague verse that says,
let's find out what the word of God is
and then there's a missing specific verse
and then say, that's what the Bible teaches.
No, if it's what the Bible teaches,
you show me a specific verse.
Hey, let's prove what the will of God is.
Hey, for salvation, oh, I'll show you John 3, 16.
Let's show you to not get a tattoo.
Okay, don't print marks on your body.
Hey, let's show you not to drink.
Oh, look not upon the wine,
when it give us its color in the cup.
There's a specific verse.
Show me the specific verse on cussing.
You don't have one, that's why you go to a vague one
and pretend like there's a specific one 'cause there's not.
And you're teaching for doctrines,
the commandments of men and not the Bible.
And you know what?
Hey, if you don't wanna cuss, God bless you,
I don't even care, you're awesome.
You're so great, buddy.
But let me tell you something,
that's not hard preaching because it's not in the Bible.
It's not biblical, it might be corrective,
and it's not even specific either
because they'll never give you a list.
If it's such a bad thing, give me a list.
And why is it that God,
you really think that God's looking down from heaven
and using all of your alternatives for cussing,
he's pleased with you?
Holy cow, oh, my son, good job.
Oh fudge, oh, that was so much better.
Good gravy, for Pete's sake.
Jiminy crickets.
Turkey, oh blimey, crikey, cheat wheel occurs.
Cheese and crackers.
How is that even better?
God's looking down from heaven, he's like,
oh, I'm so glad he said Jiminy crickets.
What a Christian, what an amazing God-fearing man.
You know, I've noticed the people that are so offended
by cussing, they're holier than those.
Oh, he said H-E double hockey sticks.
In fact, from now on, when we go soul winning,
you can't pray and say, Lord, I deserve to go to hell.
Lord, I deserve to go to H-E double hockey sticks.
Please take me to heaven when I die.
Don't do it, folks.
We don't want to ruin the family camp.
God's so pleased with you that you wouldn't even
use a word in the Bible.
You know when people get-- they just don't like the Bible.
Show me the verse-- show me the word list that's acceptable.
Oh, it's what the Jews tell you in Hollywood.
That's what they say is the acceptable uses
of language now.
I wonder why they don't like the word faggot.
Go to the Hebrews 12 and we're finished.
Hey, you know why you're offended by cussing
and not flat earth?
Because you're an idiot.
That's why.
And what, you know, we're supposed to be
messengers of truth.
I mean, I just can't trust,
I mean, if you can't even understand just simple math,
simple science, and these type of things,
like, it scares me.
What else are you not understanding?
How are you a critical thinker?
I mean, okay, expose folk who's pendulum.
You can't do that.
And of course, you know, these people,
then they just should believe this kind of stuff.
You know what they have to say?
All of NASA's wrong.
All of science is wrong.
All the other preachers that I have are wrong.
You can't listen to them.
Don't trust anybody.
Don't trust the science.
Don't trust math.
Don't trust your eyes.
Don't trust these experiments.
Don't trust anything.
Trust me.
You can't even use certain words in the Bible.
Which one?
Well, I'll tell you which ones you can't use
and which ones you can.
And I have another special naughty list of words
you can't say or you're not really a Christian.
And you know what?
There's certain chapters of the Bible you shouldn't read.
I'll tell you which ones you can read
and which ones you can't.
That's called a cult, folks.
That's what a real cult looks like.
Not one that says use any word.
Use any chapter.
Love the Bible.
It's all great.
Hey, who is he preaching about?
Joe Jones and Pastor Brzezarski.
I'm not gonna like sit here in vague book and just say,
oh, this is the dumbest stuff
I've ever heard being preached here.
Who are you talking about, buddy?
Oh, they wouldn't call anybody out.
They're calling, I mean, come on, folks.
Well, I'm uncomfortable.
We'll be uncomfortable.
That was the point.
I hope you feel pricked.
Hebrews chapter 12, look at verse 6.
"For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth,
and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as his sons.
For what son is he whom the Father chasteneth not?"
You know, people that brag about never being punished
by God, that's a bad thing.
I keep doing all this stuff,
and it never seems like anything happens to me.
Okay.
"But if you be without chastisement,
whereof all are partakers,
then are ye bastards and not sons.
Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh
which corrected us, and we gave them reverence.
Shall we not much rather be in subjection
unto the Father of spirits and live?"
You know, when your parents punish you,
you know what you're supposed to do?
Give them reverence, not make attack videos.
"For they verily for a few days chastened us
after their own pleasure, but he for our profit,
that we might be partakers of his holiness.
Now no chastening for the present
seem to be joyous but grievous.
Nevertheless, afterward it yielded the peaceable fruit
of righteousness unto them which were exercised thereby."
You know what hard preaching produces?
Peaceable fruit.
You know why our church is a great church?
Six years after being a really bad church
and a rough church?
Hard preaching.
Preaching those based on the Bible.
Preaching that was corrective
and preaching that was really specific.
And you know, let the testimony of our church be a witness.
Especially if you've been here for a while.
You can tell they're the peaceable fruit.
Hey, we're getting more people saved
than we've ever gotten saved before.
Our church is breaking every attendance record,
every baptism record, every soul winning record.
And you know what?
The fellowship here is great.
It's peaceful here.
It's fun here.
We enjoy it here.
That's because of the hard preaching.
And you know what?
When you preach stupidity, you know what?
You're gonna be filled with a church of railers
and flat earthers and all kinds of weird garbage.
I don't wanna be around that.
You're gonna be around people that don't love the truth.
You're gonna be around people that constantly hate
on pastors and preachers and are destroying their lives
in all kinds of different ways.
You know, wisdom's justified over children.
You know, these people wanna act like I'm such a bad guy
because of words that I've said occasionally.
Like it's not even like I do this every sermon or something
or every year even.
It's like one time a few years ago
and they get so upset about it and so uptight about it.
But if it was so bad,
don't you think we would have seen a sharp decline in our church?
I mean, don't you think God would have come down
and just done something to us or hurt or harm us and said,
"Wow, y'all are going down a really bad direction, guys."
It seems like the exact opposite just keeps happening.
You know, wisdom is justified over children.
If your doctrine is so pure, if your doctrine is so right,
then just prove it to us.
Show us you holdier than the house.
But you know what, the people that get up and say like,
"I've never cussed in my entire life,"
are the same people not doing missions trips,
not doing big soul-winning evangelism,
not preaching great sermons,
and people frankly that are terrible friends
that would never want to be around.
Are you going to agree with everything I say?
No, I'm sure you don't.
But you know what, we need some hard preaching.
I don't even agree with everything I say, all right?
Get over yourself.
Quit being so prideful.
You know, we need hard preaching in this church,
and I'm never going to stop.
Hard preaching's under attack,
and I will fight back with the word of God.
I will fight back by preaching hard.
People that vague book preach against me, I'll name you.
You want to be named, I'll name you.
I'm not afraid of it.
And the congregation needs to be warned of false doctrine
so that we don't destroy ourselves.
We don't let that cancer affect us.
Let's close in prayer.
Thank you, Heavenly Father,
for giving us the peaceable fruit of chastisement.
I pray that in our spirit, we would accept the word of God,
no matter how comfortable it makes us feel.
I pray that when we feel like a sermon is directed at us,
we would just appreciate it and change.
I pray that you would provoke us unto fear and unto zeal
and godly sorrow that would lead to repentance.
I pray that we wouldn't go back on those things.
I pray that people would go to church more, not less.
I pray that people would go soul-witting more, not less.
I pray that people would read their Bibles more, not less.
I pray that people would have boldness
to use the words of God more, not less.
I pray that people would like every story of the Bible more,
not less.
I pray that you would just allow our church
to be a testimony and a witness to what the Bible is like
when it's preached and believed,
and that people are following it like a light and like a lamp.
And I pray that you would continue to bless our church
so that we could give you the honor and glory
because we're following Christ.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
- Amen.
All right, for our last song,
we're gonna go to song number 50...
Yes, 56, excuse me.
When We All Get to Heaven, song number 56.
Excellent singing, everybody.