So we've been going through Hosea, chapter 10,
and we're in verse number one.
The Bible says, Israel is an empty vine.
He bringeth forth fruit unto himself.
According to the multitude of his fruit,
he hath increased the altars.
According to the goodness of his land,
they have made goodly images.
And as we go through the book of Hosea,
God just continues to use a lot of imagery, metaphors,
to explain how he feels about Israel
and kind of the problems that they have.
We've read a lot already about the problems that they have,
things that they've done.
Obviously, going and worshiping false gods
and having false religion is a big issue that they have.
There's a lot of sin issues
that are going on in this nation.
But another thing that's just a really big problem
for any nation, especially the nation of God's people,
is here found in verse one where it says,
Israel is an empty vine.
Now, that's kind of an interesting phrase.
I wanna keep our finger here.
Go, if you would, to Matthew 21 for a moment.
Go to Matthew 21.
I read that a lot, and it was kind of struggling
to decide what that even means.
What does it mean that they're an empty vine?
But I ended up thinking of,
or a passage of scripture came to mind
to kind of help interpret this section for me.
But in Matthew 21, if you look at verse number 18,
the Bible says, now in the morning,
as he returned into the city, he hungered.
And when he saw a fig tree in the way,
he came to it and found nothing thereon,
but leaves only, and said unto it,
let no fruit grow on thee henceforth forever,
and presently the fig tree withered away.
And when the disciples saw it, they marveled,
saying, how soon is the fig tree withered away?
And here we have a kind of a similar passage
where the Lord Jesus Christ ends up stumbling
upon a fig tree, and notice what he says,
that he was hungered, yet when he saw it,
and he came to it, he found nothing thereon.
So that's kind of a similar wording,
if you think about how he's looking at Israel
and saying they're an empty vine,
in the same way, when he's coming to this fig tree,
he's finding nothing on it.
And what does that represent?
Essentially, they're not finding any fruit.
There's no fruit on the vine, there's no fruit on the tree.
And when there is no fruit, there's a problem,
because God wants and expects for his people to be fruitful.
Now, obviously there's a carnal aspect to that,
we should be fruitful and multiply,
as the Bible makes it abundantly clear.
But more importantly, God cares about spiritual reproduction.
God cares about bringing forth fruit spiritually,
and notice how he words it, think about this.
A empty vine, meaning there's no fruit.
He comes to a tree and finds no fruit.
So imagine going to a church and finding zero fruit.
You know, a church where they've got no one saved,
no one's getting saved, no one is spiritual,
no one's serving God.
You know, think about a country,
a country where there's no one saved,
there's no one preaching the gospel,
there's no one doing anything for God.
I mean, at that point, it becomes worthless.
At that point, it's kind of similar
to how God would look at certain trees
or certain vegetation, and he'd say,
why come birth at the ground?
Meaning it's just, it's taking up resources,
it's taking up nutrients from the soil,
it's taking all the moisture and the water,
and it's consuming it, and it's not doing anything with it.
From God's perspective, it becomes worthless,
it should be trashed, it should be destroyed.
You have other passages in the scripture,
John chapter number 15, that talks about
the importance of bringing forth fruit
and not being a vine that's not producing anything.
You have passages in scripture in Revelation
when you talk about the church at Ephesus
and how they've forgotten the first works.
And if you're not keeping the first works
is what's preaching the gospel and getting people saved,
he's just thinking like,
I'm gonna take your candlestick away.
So what is one of the biggest problems
with Israel in the book of Hosea, go back to chapter 10,
it's that Israel is an empty vine.
It also says that he bringeth forth fruit unto himself.
Now, that's kind of an interesting parallel
because at first it's saying he's empty,
and then the second part it's saying
he's bringing forth fruit unto himself.
What does that mean?
Well, I believe what it's trying to say
is it's saying, look, from a spiritual perspective,
when you're looking at the nation of Israel,
they have no fruit spiritually speaking.
And the only fruit that they're bringing forth
is a carnal fruit, their money, their economy,
the things of their substance, but it's all for himself.
Meaning that when God comes, he finds nothing for him,
it's all for you guys.
You've already plucked the vine,
you've already basically taken all the fruit for yourself,
you're just basically consuming everything on yourselves.
And this could be the same.
You think about a church, a country, a nation, a state,
where they're not putting any resources towards God.
They're not putting any resources towards the Lord,
they're not putting any of the money,
effort towards the Lord Jesus Christ,
they're not putting any of their time
towards the Lord Jesus Christ.
And what is that gonna yield?
No fruit.
And he's saying, hey, whatever fruit you guys have,
the time, the resources, the energy,
the opportunities that you have,
you're just spending it on yourselves.
When I come, it's empty though.
It's empty for me, I have nothing.
You're just, you're bringing forth fruit in yourself.
Notice this, according to the multitude of his fruit,
he hath increased the altars.
According to the goodness of his land,
they have made good the images.
So what God is trying to explain here is this.
I gave you a very fruitful land.
I mean, they came into the land flowing with milk and honey.
They came into a prosperous land.
They inherited cities.
The Canaanites essentially built up a giant civilization
full of some of the best fruits, best vegetables,
best crops, best cities.
They already built them all the water attics or aqueducts.
They already built them everything that they essentially
need and they just walk in and inherit all of it.
And he's saying, whenever I bring you even more blessing,
when I've rained upon you and you brought forth
your plant ifly and your crops, what did you do?
You took all of your money, you took all of your goods
and your resources and you built altars.
Now these altars are not altars under the Lord.
They're altars under their false gods.
So he's saying all of your money and all of your resources
is going to false religion.
You just keep making even more false religion
and more things that are against the Lord.
Not only that, he says you've made goodly images.
What are the goodly images?
That's their idols.
That's their idolatry and it's using the word goodly
in the sense that of course what they're fashioning
is pleasant to the eyes.
It's done with a lot of skill.
It looks good, it's amazing.
You know and there's a lot of structures, buildings
and things that exist in this world that to the eye
they're very beautiful, they are very well crafted.
I mean you think about the Sistine Chapel.
You think about certain architecture of the Catholic Church.
You know frankly speaking even Mormon temples.
I mean Mormon Tabernacles are some great structures
with all kinds of ornate decoration
and it might be very pleasant to look at.
They might be very interesting.
Yet is that really what God wants us to do
with the wealth of the United States
is to build Catholic churches and to build
Mormon Tabernacles and to build these great structures
or to build some statue, the Statue of Liberty.
You think God is pleased with a dude in a dress
called the Statue of Liberty?
I mean that's what it is folks.
It's not even a lady.
I mean you think about you know in America
it's like how far have we fallen?
Well we started with trainees apparently, okay.
So why is it so incredible that we have them again?
You know that is coming to fruition.
So you know that thing should be knocked down.
You know our graven images and our goodly images
and all these structures.
All of our money and effort and energy
is just going into all the wrong things.
You know me and my wife we went to Walmart the other day
and it happened to be across from the AT&T Stadium.
And boy that thing is magnificent to look at.
That thing is giant.
And I mean it just it's incredible to look at.
Is it not a shame that the greatest structures we have
are about men in tights wrestling around for a football
and not a church of the Lord Jesus Christ
and not things that are spiritual
and things that are of God?
I mean why is it that the greatest things
and the greatest achievements of man are for vanity
or for idolatry, for false religion?
You know some of the greatest structures we have
are usually the public schools.
They're the government buildings.
They're all the things that are about man and about us
whereas God wants it to be the opposite.
Think about God's structures.
You know when we read in the Bible
what was the greatest structures
when God was basically ruling the temple?
No it wasn't the government.
It wasn't some you know vanity.
It wasn't some you know music hall.
No it was God's house.
That was the thing where everybody's bringing their money
into investing their time.
All the festivals and the seasonal activities.
Everything was structured around God.
That's what it should be.
It should be that the Lord's house
is the focus of our effort, the focus of our energy
and that we're trying our hardest
to bring forth fruit unto God
as opposed to taking all the blessing that God gives us
and just spending it on vanity and false religion
and false gods and everything else.
Look at verse two.
"'Their heart is divided.
"'Now shall they be found faulty.
"'He shall break down their altars.
"'He shall spoil their images.'"
So you know the Bible talks about a double-minded man
is unstable in all his ways.
And these people they like the idea of God.
You know they give lip service to the Lord.
They wanna worship God in theory but their heart's divided.
They're not really gonna go and serve him.
They're not gonna really go to church.
They're not gonna really read the Bible.
They're basically still kind of hung up
on all the other things that they really like.
You know the Bible talks about a man can't you know
serve God and mammon.
You know you're gonna either love the one
and cling to one or you're gonna despise the other.
And so you can't love God and other things.
You have to pick.
And at the end of the day you will pick.
It's not like you know if you decide not to pick
you're just gonna be okay.
No, no, no.
By not picking you're picking as well.
You have to choose to serve the Lord.
You know choose you this day whom you will serve
is what the Bible says.
It doesn't say like well just think about it.
And you know we live in a society where people
always put decisions on the back burner.
Isn't it?
I mean we live in a culture where making decisions
is just so stretched out.
Whereas in the past it was not like this.
And in fact even just in our own Constitution
it's not supposed to be like this.
You know when it comes to criminal prosecution
it's supposed to be a speedy trial.
It's not supposed to take one year, five years,
10 years.
I mean it's crazy how long the criminal injustice
system takes these days.
I mean people could be on trial for years.
They won't even get sentenced for years.
Their execution won't even be for years.
I mean it's just crazy why we're just delaying
the inevitable.
Why we just take so much time to make decisions.
You know think about certain men in the Bible.
I mean Isaac didn't take long to get married.
I mean he's just like let's go.
I mean day one they're getting married.
I mean yet some people they'll be engaged for a decade.
And it's just like no.
I met a young couple recently not here somewhere else
and I talked to them and I say oh is this your wife?
Oh no we're engaged.
And I was like okay congratulations.
When's the wedding date?
I don't know.
I don't really know how it works.
It's like okay.
It's like what's going on?
It's like people just take so long to make any kind
of decision in their life and you know it's silly
to sit here and just you know what do you want to do
with your life?
Kids will go to college and they'll still be like
I don't know.
And then they'll graduate from college.
It's like what do you want?
I don't know.
And it's like they're 40.
I don't know.
It's like maybe you should figure it out by now.
You know maybe you should make a decision.
Because let me tell you something.
Making a decision is better than just I don't know forever.
It's better than just having no idea.
And you'll find that the people that are the most successful
were typically people that said you know I already knew
what I wanted to do when I was 15.
I already knew what kind of job I wanted when I was 16.
And I just started working for that job
when I was 15, 16, 17.
I've met people that I worked with.
A guy in software development.
He started being a programmer at 14 years old.
And he started working in a business at 14 years old.
And now he's like, I'm not gonna get the number wrong,
like 40, 42, something like that.
But he's the C, he's like the CTO of a company.
Where he's essentially the top dog, in charge,
running the whole company, running all of the software.
And look that's a pretty young age to be that high up
in a particular business.
But you say well how do you get there?
Well he started at 14, right?
And he knew what he wanted to do.
And he started serving God.
And the same needs to be with Christianity.
You know it's a shame, it's a shame that so many people
have to wait until they're 35, 40 to finally get saved.
And you know what, there's never a bad time to get saved.
I'm not down on you if you got saved later in life.
But you know what, you should get saved at a young age
and decide to serve God at a young age.
And say I'm gonna go to church,
I'm gonna raise my family in church,
I'm gonna read the Bible.
You know, praise God for a lot of the young people
in this room, they're gonna have scores of scriptures
memorized by the time they're 18.
They're gonna have read the Bible cover to cover
tons of times by the time they're a young adolescent.
They're gonna be able to go into the world
knowing lots of great truths from the book of Proverbs.
You know the young men knowing how to handle themselves
in life, knowing what kind of woman they should look for,
how they should prepare themselves for this world.
Young women in this room realizing,
you know there's a lot of dangers out there
and I don't wanna just give away the precious gift
that God has given me to just some yahoo
that walks up and down the street
and just ruin my testimony as a young woman, as a maiden.
But the world doesn't know any better.
So they make all kinds of horrible mistakes, huge problems.
Then when they get saved, they have to reap
all the consequences of those actions
because they waited too long to make a decision.
And you know what, we as God's people
don't wanna be a divided people.
We don't wanna have a divided heart.
You know, if you're not really all the way into church,
you're gonna eventually go, you're gonna leave us.
And it's not just us, it's just church.
You know the person that's kinda like so-so on church
is just gonna eventually be go-go.
You know it's just, you have to decide certain things
like I'm going to do it.
I've already decided church is a non-negotiable for me
because otherwise it's just gonna be too hard,
too much difficulty and you're gonna be
too divided on these things.
The same goes with a woman.
You know, young men, if you find a woman
and you think like I wanna make her my wife,
that's not something to just wait around for.
You need to go ahead and seal the deal.
You need to get, you know, pounce on that.
You know, in the workplace.
You know, if there's a job out there,
if there's an opportunity out there,
you need to just grab it by the horns and take it.
And I'll tell you what, employers love a guy
that knows what he wants.
They love a guy that can make decisions.
They love a guy that says, I want this job.
I wanna work for you.
I wanna promote in your company.
I wanna make you money.
I wanna learn.
You know, they love that guy.
The guy that shows up and he's like,
hey, I'm so glad you joined the company.
Yeah, I don't know.
I'm just gonna try it out.
I don't even really wanna do that.
I'm not really, you know, I'm just kind of here.
We'll just see how it goes.
You know, no employer would ever wanna hear that.
In fact, they might just fire you for saying that out loud.
Okay, because that's the last thing that you want.
You know, when you're in a job, when you're in a position,
you know, the things in your life,
you need to just start making decisions.
You need to just start pulling the trigger
and deciding what you're gonna do in your life.
And you know, one of those decisions needs to be like,
I'm gonna serve God.
I am going to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.
I am gonna follow him.
No turning back.
You know what, I burned all those bridges behind me
of the world.
Hey, the Red Sea just closed behind me.
I'm not swimming back across that thing.
My only move is to go forward.
My only move is to head towards the promised land.
And you know what, that's what God will bless
is those who say, you know what,
hear my Lord, send me.
The guy that looks back, according to the scripture,
is not fit for the kingdom of God.
You know, the guy having put his hand to the plow
and looking back is not fit for the kingdom of God.
This is Jesus Christ's own words.
So a nation, and you have to understand the context
of where we're at.
The nation of Israel was delivered by God by great miracles.
And then God is making a covenant with them.
And they say very clearly, we will keep the covenant.
We will follow all of these statutes.
I mean, have you read Joshua?
They said, hey, we're gonna follow every rule,
every statute.
We're gonna do everything that Joshua says
and anybody that disobeys, kill them.
That's commitment.
Can you imagine?
I always make this joke, but I'm just saying,
if I was like, hey, if you don't come to church
on Sunday morning, death.
You know, Sunday night, death.
And it's not just like me, it's all of you.
We're all just like, all right, people,
we're gonna, and if you're not going soul winning,
off with his head, you know, it's like.
I mean, that's pretty extreme, isn't it?
But think about it, that's what they said.
God didn't force them in sense, you know.
They had their own free will.
They said, we're gonna serve God.
But then now, all of a sudden, he's so divided.
Now, all of a sudden, he's just like, well, I don't know.
I kinda like these other gods and I like these other altars
and I like these other images
and I like to just spend all my money on me
and I like to spend all my time on me
and I'm not really interested in the Lord,
but just lip service.
Well, God's very angry with them for that.
He looks at their vine, he says, there's nothing on here.
It's fake.
You know, it's gonna be, you know,
when you can't make a decision, your bank account,
empty vine.
When you can't make a decision on a wife, empty vine.
You're not gonna have any children.
You know how you don't have children?
Don't have a woman.
I mean, it just doesn't happen.
You know, you're not gonna get there
and you know, you don't have,
the things that you don't have,
it's because you just can't make a decision,
you're just divided, you can't decide what you want.
You know, this is often just a double minded,
man, you need to just decide, you know what,
I want this and I'm gonna get it.
Look at verse number three.
For now, they shall say we have no king
because we feared not the Lord.
What then should a king do to us?
So again, if you think about the timeline,
the children of Israel had a king.
So they've had a king, the king of Israel,
a lot of them were very bad in the scripture,
but essentially Northern Kingdom of Assyria
is gonna come in, wipe them out, take their king away.
So they're gonna basically in hindsight realize,
wow, we don't even have a king anymore,
we're not in charge anymore because we didn't fear God.
So they're gonna recognize that when their government
shifts from their own king to a foreign entity,
wow, we're being severely punished
because we didn't serve God.
Just think about this way.
What if America just overnight was taken over by China?
Wouldn't you think a lot of Christians would wake up
and be like, wow, we didn't fear God.
That's why we now have China ruling over us
or Russia or whatever it is, Israel.
Whatever nation it is that's ruling over us
is because we didn't fear God, is it?
And again, when you don't fear God,
because when you fear God, he'll let you be in charge.
When you don't fear God,
he'll put some terrible person in charge of you.
That's the foolishness of women saying like,
oh, I don't wanna serve my husband.
It's like, fine, go work at Subway and work for him.
The Subway manager, he's gross, okay?
He doesn't even bathe.
He smells bad and he's gross
and he makes all kinds of perverted jokes.
Why do you wanna work for the Subway dude?
You don't wanna work for him.
You don't wanna work for the corporate America
and you certainly don't wanna work for Karen.
I mean, what's your alternative?
If you don't work for him, then you get Karen to work for.
She's even more crazy.
And then it's like women start realizing,
women managers, it's not the best thing
going on in the world.
She's like, she's crazy.
She can't make a decision.
She's all over the place emotionally.
Why'd she just yell at me?
It's like, why would you trade a husband
that loves you for a Karen?
Why would you trade a husband that loves you
for the Subway manager?
I mean, it doesn't make any sense for Abdul or Weinstein.
That's who you're gonna end up trading for.
Why would you wanna trade that?
It doesn't make any sense.
And of course, that's how it is for them.
They didn't want their own king, so what do they get?
The king of Assyria.
Okay, fine, you don't wanna serve God?
No king.
And then they're basically saying, what should a king do?
So they're like, what's the point of having
another king right now?
We're not even in charge.
We're not even in, we're not really in authority.
What is that gonna do for us?
Verse four, they have spoken words,
swearing falsely and making a covenant.
Thus, judgment springeth up as hemlock
in the furrows of the field.
Now, this is interesting.
Furrows, if you look at an area that's supposed to be farmed
or you're gonna grow crops, furrows are basically
all the trenches that have been dug out with some tool.
You know, that could be the plow or some kind of instrument
where they've dug a ditch.
And essentially in those ditches, they're gonna plant seed.
They're gonna plant their crops.
And then the water and then out of those trenches,
out of the furrows, you're gonna yield your product,
your crop, whatever it is that you're growing.
Well, he's saying here that hemlock is in the furrow.
So what is it that they're sowing?
They're sowing hemlock.
Now, hemlock is known as a poisonous plant.
So it's basically insinuating you're sowing poison.
You're sowing poison into the field.
And what kind of crop are you gonna get?
You're gonna reap poison out of this.
Why did they reap poison?
Well, verse four says they have spoken words,
swearing falsely and making a covenant.
So here's the problem.
When you just tell God,
I'm gonna follow all of your commandments,
but you're not going to, you're in big trouble.
That's a bad move.
Because why?
You're basically gonna reap a lot of judgment
for having even made that kind of a commitment,
and they're gonna end up reaping a lot of poison.
So it's very foolish to make an oath unto God
or to make a covenant with God and a promise to God
that you're gonna follow his commandments
and then not do it.
Because he's gonna judge you even more harshly
than if you had made no oath
or if you didn't make a covenant.
And so they just, through feigned words,
just said, we're gonna serve God, we love the Lord,
we're gonna follow all his commandments,
but not really wanting to do that,
not having any desire to actually serve God.
So they're gonna end up reaping a lot of poison
and judgment as a result of making
this particular commandment.
Here's kind of a similar idea.
This could be two people that decide,
you know what, let's get married.
But one of the individuals has no real desire to be married.
They have no real desire to be faithful
unto that individual.
They're not going to end up,
you know, they get up and they make this vow
unto their spouse and they say,
for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer,
in sickness and in hell.
And they're saying all this,
but in their heart they're thinking like,
well, not, I mean, how sick, you know, how poor,
you know, like, till death do us part.
And it's like, what does death mean, you know?
And they're not really meaning that.
But they made this great oath, okay?
Well, here's the problem,
when they then end up and go commit adultery
and whore around and decide not to care about their spouse
and not to be faithful,
their life is gonna be way more miserable
than if they decided not to even get married.
It's like, you're basically putting yourself
in this horrible situation and then ruining your own life.
And it's like, no one forced you to get married.
No one forced you to make this vow.
No one forced you to decide to say
that you were gonna love your spouse.
But you know what, when you did that,
and then you showed that you were just a terrible person,
that doesn't mean what they say,
and you just commit all this sin, it's way worse.
And let's be real, adultery is worse than fornication.
And look, I'm not justifying either.
They're both wicked, God killed people for both sins.
But if we were to judge, it's clear that adultery is worse
because adultery was punished
with a death penalty, according to the Bible.
Whereas fornication is not a death penalty worthy sin.
Only in situations where a woman was supposed to be a virgin
and lied about it, or there's some situations
where fornication's kind of punished
with an extra, like lofty punishment.
But just generally speaking,
people that committed fornication,
the death penalty was not instituted for those individuals.
So we know that it's a worse sin, just the same way.
Saying you're gonna serve God,
trying to make commitments unto him, making oaths unto him,
and then breaking that, not serving him,
you're gonna reap an even bigger punishment unto yourself.
Think about the woman who commits adultery,
and the husband's jealous.
And he wants to, he can't figure it out,
so they essentially take her to the priest,
they have this bitter water that she's supposed to drink,
and she's gonna get a really severe punishment
if she's lying, if she's being deceitful
about that particular situation.
And it's because of her oath, it's because of what she said,
it's because of what she's doing.
And we have to be clear
that when we follow God's commandments as a,
we understand God's commandments,
and we decide we're gonna follow God's commandments,
there's gonna be a harsh punishment when we don't.
You that know a lot,
I mean, and people that are in this room,
you know a lot of Bible,
you know a lot of God's commandments.
And if you're just gonna go back to the world,
if you're just gonna live however you want,
beware that there might be an even severe punishment
than those who are going to the non church,
than those who are going to some liberal church,
than those that aren't even really
going to church whatsoever.
You might look at them and say like,
well, they're just partying, having fun, and doing whatever,
I wanna have fun like them.
But you know what, God might be more merciful
on those people and more gracious.
When you try it, he's gonna rain a ton of bricks on you.
I mean, you really think that he the nations
are acting any worse really,
than the children of Israel at this point in time?
Probably not.
But God's just much more angry at them, why?
Because they're even claiming to serve God
or they're saved and you know,
they gave the famed lip service to it.
So you need to be careful what you wish for.
Be careful how you hear is what the Bible says.
And to whom much is given of him shall much be required.
You know, you've gotten a lot.
You've been given a lot.
And there's a lot of people that don't have what we have.
There's a lot of people in this world
that don't have the gospel freely given to them.
They don't have King James Bibles at the dollar store.
They don't have a plethora of Baptist church options
in our area.
I mean, there are people that live in areas
where they have like no Baptist church.
Not just like, well, I wanna pick the best Baptist church.
They just have like almost no option.
There's some people that only have
like a really terrible option to go to.
And it's like those of us who have a great church,
we have a great church to go to here.
And even if you couldn't go here,
there's still other very good options,
not even that far from here.
And if you're going to one of those good options
or a great option, you should get yourself blessed
and realize that God expects a lot from you.
God's not expecting.
You know, the guy that got 10 talents
is expected to reap 10 talents.
Not to reap 0.5.
And the same with you.
You and us have probably gotten 10 talents.
We've gotten a lot.
God is gonna expect us to work hard
and to do a lot for him and to serve him.
And so we have to be careful,
just like the children of Israel were given a lot.
They're given the 10 commandments.
They were given the promised land.
They've been given all kinds of inheritance,
but God's gonna end up expecting a lot
because notice in verse one again,
he had said, according to the multitude of his fruit,
and notice this, according to the goodness of his land,
he gave him a good place to go to.
You know, we're not in North Korea today.
We're not in China.
We're not in Russia.
So I guarantee God expects us to do more soul winning,
more evangelism, and take bolder stands than those who live
in countries that are controlled by Muslims,
and countries that are controlled by some, you know,
evil psychopath dictator, like the North Korea leader,
Jeong Kim, I don't know what it is.
It changes every week.
I can't even say his name.
It doesn't even matter.
Some wicked leader over there.
China, they change all the time,
but you know, at the same time,
if we have a church over there,
we would be lucky just to meet.
You know, they have to meet underground in houses.
They can't even talk about it.
You don't have to talk with people.
They live in certain countries to go soul winning.
They basically have to have like a 20 minute conversation
with someone before they can even start talking
about the gospel, just out of fear
of being punished severely.
Because if you go up to the wrong person,
and you start trying to give them the gospel,
you'll get arrested.
You could be killed.
All kinds of punishments can happen to you.
And so for their soul winning, it's a lot more undercover,
a lot more difficult.
You know, for us, we just walk up the doors,
and we're just like, hey, we're Baptist.
You know, do you want to hear the gospel?
And then they're like, say some choice words back.
And we're just like, all right, see ya, you know.
But it doesn't, you know, it's like no skin off our back.
I mean, I have like 50 unanswered voicemails
from apartment manager Karens,
but I don't have to answer them.
I don't have to care, right?
So it's like, we should be going out there
and doing the hard work, the hard labor,
not letting, you know, all the pleasures
and the cares of this world stop us.
You know, that we have so much blessing.
Says in verse five, the inhabitants of Samaria
shall fear because of the calves of Beth-aven,
for the people thereof shall mourn over it,
and the priests thereof that rejoiced on it,
for the glory thereof, because it is departed from them.
It shall be also carried unto Assyria
for a present to King Jerab.
Ephraim shall receive shame,
and Israel shall be ashamed of his own counsel.
As for Samaria, her king is cut off
as the foam upon the water.
So he's saying, you know, you guys,
everything that you like is gonna be destroyed.
Your calves, all those golden calves
that look so good that you made,
we're just gonna give them to King Jerab.
I don't even know who he is.
It's like, that sucks, who's King Jerab?
It's like, it doesn't matter.
It's just some guy from a foreign land,
some king of Assyria, or some northern king
that we're just gonna give all the stuff you like,
we're just giving it to him.
All your tax dollars are going to Ukraine, you know?
Ephraim shall receive shame,
and Israel shall be ashamed of his own counsel.
All the cool ideas you had, all your woke culture,
you're gonna be embarrassed about it.
They're gonna be like, you think that men are women?
They're gonna laugh and mock.
I mean, if we got invaded by another country,
they would just mock us just so hard
for all the stupidity and the nonsense
that exists in our culture.
Not only that, he says, all of those beautiful altars
that you built, just thorns and thistles.
Now, it's interesting, in verse eight,
it says, the high places also of Avon,
the sin of Israel shall be destroyed.
The thorn and the thistle shall come up on their altars,
and they shall say to the mountains,
cover us, and to those following us.
That's interesting because it's quoted
in Revelation chapter number six.
For sake of time, I don't think there's really
any benefit to go there, but if you think
about Revelation six, what is the point of them saying this
about the mountains falling on them?
It's because the Lord Jesus Christ is returning,
and they wanna be hidden from the face of God,
and they wanna be hidden from the Lord Jesus Christ,
their brightness coming, and they're ashamed.
Now, what is immediately coming once that happens?
Wrath, the wrath of God is being poured out
viciously on the earth, and the Bible's saying,
woe unto the inhabitants of the earth,
and it's just a complete annihilation.
Similarly, it's using the same wording
because it's a mini-wrath picture.
God uses a lot of mini-wraths throughout the Bible
to picture the big wrath that's coming.
This is a mini-wrath in the sense
that it's only these people, whereas the wrath
in Revelation is the whole world.
The entire world is gonna experience just an outpouring
of God's wrath that's never been seen before.
The only thing similar was the flood,
but the thing about the flood is everybody died like that,
whereas God's wrath is gonna be years and years,
and in fact, some plagues are designed not to kill you.
On purpose, just to torture you even more,
like the locusts, and the Bible says
that men are gonna desire to die,
and they can't even die.
It's just too difficult for them.
I mean, this is terrible.
This is horrible, and this is a picture
of what's gonna happen to them,
and it's similar.
Why do we make parallels to Babylon and to us?
Because they're similar.
Cultures that had the gospel, had the Lord turned away,
start going down a path of degradation,
not caring about the Lord.
Well, what ends up happening,
he always takes his people out,
and then just the worst wrath imaginable
poured out on that particular area,
and it's no different than the end times Babylon.
The Bible teaches that God is gonna essentially rapture,
take up all of his children just like this,
and then there'll be like 30 seconds,
or I'm sorry, 30 minutes of just silence,
and then it's just like an outpouring of wrath
that's never been seen before,
and Babylon even somehow gets to just kind of coast
for a long time through that,
and then just at the last moment,
just at the very end, just sudden destruction,
just, I don't know, it could be nukes.
It probably is.
I mean, that makes a lot of sense,
and so it's very likely
that if America is the end times Babylon,
which fits the Bible very well,
that America is gonna live in prosperity
all the way up to the very, very end,
and then it's just gonna be nuked,
and you could think about it,
maybe the whole world would be nuked,
because the Bible does say that the whole earth
is gonna be baptized in fire,
and if essentially, think about it this way.
What if America is sitting there,
and all of a sudden it just comes on the GPS,
and whoever's big mics there, whoever it is,
they're looking on the screen,
and it says 10 nukes are incoming to destroy America,
and our missile defense systems
aren't gonna be able to react.
Why wouldn't they just then say, okay, fine,
then we'll just unleash all of ours on everybody else?
It's kinda like Zimrai burning down the house on himself.
He's just like, fine, you get the same thing,
and then it's just like,
the whole world just gets torched or whatever.
I don't know, I don't think that's really gonna happen,
because obviously Jesus Christ
is coming down to rule and reign,
and there's gonna be someone left over, I think.
But you never know exactly how the world
is gonna be torched and destroyed.
Obviously, with the Battle of Armageddon
that's coming in the future, too.
Perhaps that's when God's gonna nuke the entire earth
in some kind of a flaming fire.
There could be a lot of speculation
as far as how that's gonna happen,
but here's the good thing.
I won't be in the nuke, okay?
And you won't be in the nuke if you're saved, all right?
So you gotta get saved to make sure
you're not in that baptism of fire that's gonna happen.
He says in verse number nine,
"'O Israel, thou hast sinned from the days of Gibeah.
"'There they stood, the battle in Gibeah
"'against the children of iniquity did not overtake them.'"
That's an interesting passage that's brought up.
Gibeah is the town in Judges 19 and 20
that had the sons of Belial that hurt the woman.
And in chapter 20, they stand up in battle
against the children of Israel, but they don't win.
They end up eventually falling,
and they're almost completely wiped out.
They leave just a couple hundred men left over.
And it's basically saying the battle in Gibeah
against the children of iniquity did not overtake them.
And so the children of iniquity didn't win.
The children of Belial didn't win that battle.
And look, the children of Belial here
aren't gonna win their battle.
The children of Belial are always gonna be losers.
They're always gonna lose at the end of the day.
They might win a few battles here and there,
a few skirmishes, but they're ultimately just losers,
and they're gonna lose all of their war.
Verse 10, it is my desire that I should chastise them,
and the people shall be gathered against them,
when they shall bind themselves in their two furrows.
And Ephraim is as an heifer that is taught,
and loveth to tread out the corn.
But I passed over upon her fair neck.
I will make Ephraim to ride, Judah shall plow,
and Jacob shall break his clods.
Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy,
break up your fallow ground,
for it is time to seek the Lord,
till he come and reign righteousness upon you.
Now, in the book of Hosea,
towards the end of this book that we're reading,
we're gonna get a little bit of an allusion
to when the children of Israel are gonna actually return.
They're gonna end up returning into the land,
and they're end up going to having prosper.
But what you have to understand is,
all of the hope verses,
all of the verses that are telling them to seek the Lord,
how he would turn away his wickedness and stuff,
this is not for the current generation.
Because if we read in chapter number nine,
the Bible's really clear that he doesn't love them,
and he's not gonna love them anymore.
In fact, it says in verse 15 of chapter nine,
I hated them, it says I will love them no more.
So you have to understand this,
God is gonna destroy these people.
He's gonna wipe them out completely,
and he doesn't love them.
But he's kind of giving this allusion
for the future Israel, those that were scattered,
those that are gonna flee to Judah,
those parts of Judah that are gonna be scattered,
when they come back, because when they come back,
it's not gonna be the northern kingdom,
the southern kingdom, it's not gonna just be Judah
or whatever, it's gonna be all of Israel
just kind of gathered back together.
And then he's wanting them to do something.
He's wanting them to do this in verse 11,
is he's wanting them to break up his clods.
Verse 12, break up your fallow ground,
for it is time to seek the Lord,
till he come and rain righteousness upon you.
So anybody that knows anything about crops
will kind of understand this analogy pretty well.
If you don't, just to give you kind of an idea,
after a growing season, the dirt and the ground
is very hard, it's not suitable for plants again.
So what ends up having to happen is you have to plow,
and what plowing does is it breaks up the ground,
and it's to try and make it soft and available
for seed again, and it's a very hard work.
My dad plants several dozen tomato plants every year.
He yields hundreds and hundreds of tomatoes every year.
It's a lot of work that he does, and he enjoys it.
He's retired, so he gets to do a lot of gardening.
And every year, he'll hire someone
to break up all of his dirt.
And I've been fortunate enough to do this labor.
And at first, you're just thinking, what's the big deal?
I got a shovel, and you're just gonna break up.
It's like, he doesn't even have it in the ground.
He has built up, basically, some wooden trenches,
yeah, a raised garden, and he has soil in it.
So you're just trying to break up the ground in there.
It is so hard, it's so frustrating.
I mean, you'll do like one foot, like one square foot,
like one by one, it'll take like two hours.
And you're just like, you're just like, brr, brr.
It feels like you're hitting concrete at first.
You gotta get that stuff really soft, really tender
for you to be able to get the seed in there,
for it to actually do anything.
Otherwise, if it's just so hard,
that seed's not gonna get deep down in there,
it's not gonna have the nutrients,
it's not gonna have the moisture it needs,
and so it's just not going to plant.
So in order to have a successful harvest,
you have to first break up the fallow ground.
You have to break up the ground and the clods.
What's a clod?
A clod is basically just like almost like a rock,
but it's dirt, you know?
And it's like a rock in the sense it's very hard.
Now, it's not as hard as a rock, but it's similar.
And it's saying you gotta break those clods up
and you gotta try and get it into fertile dirt again,
into soil that can be used for the next planting season.
And you know, if you look at America today,
you look at the Dallas-Fort Worth area,
you look at a lot of these areas,
what you have to realize is it is fallow ground
in a lot of ways.
It is very hard.
It's not suitable for soil.
And I would even say this, the last few years,
it feels like sowing has turned
into a lot more fallow ground,
where sometimes in the past it seemed like all we're doing
is just picking up fruit that's fallen on the ground.
Like we don't even have to pick.
We don't even have to pluck.
It's just like there's all this fruit on the ground,
and you're just picking it up and putting it in your basket,
and you're like, this is great.
You know, more and more it's like
we've gone through a harvest season
where we've collected a lot of that,
and we've gleaned and we've gleaned,
and now it's like, now we're just looking at hard dirt
in a lot of ways.
And you say, okay, well what does that mean?
It means we need to break it up.
It means we have to break up, we have to do the hard job.
We have to do the difficult job.
But here's the thing, after doing all this hard labor
and this hard work, you know, it gets easier.
You know, the planting's a lot more enjoyable.
The watering's way more fun.
The harvesting is the greatest part of it.
But the only way to get to the harvest
is to break up the ground first.
And then you can sow the seed, and then you water the seed,
and then you reap from that harvest, okay?
Go if you would to Jeremiah four for a moment.
Go to Jeremiah chapter four.
And another thing is that sometimes
after a planting season, you have to pluck up
that which was planted, okay?
And you have to pick up all just the leftovers
and the trash and all this stuff.
Sometimes that's the case too, you know?
And we live in a society where there's a lot of trash
and there's a lot of just leftover
that needs to be discarded and gotten rid of.
And that's a lot of hard work too.
It's not necessarily as fun, but it's necessary.
In Jeremiah chapter four verse one, the Bible says,
If thou wilt return away as real, saith the Lord,
return unto me, and if thou wilt put away
thine abominations out of my sight,
then shalt thou not remove.
And thou shalt swear the Lord liveth
in truth and judgment and in righteousness,
and the nations shall bless themselves in him,
and in him shall they glory.
For thus saith the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem,
Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns.
So notice what he's telling them.
He's telling them that they need to break up
the fallow ground and make sure that they're not then
sowing their seed among thorns either.
So you wanna get both of these eliminated.
Go to Luke chapter eight and we're gonna get
a little more clear picture of what all this
is talking about.
But I kind of have two applications here.
Let's make the first one about ourselves
and think about it this way.
I kind of mentioned getting saved
in a later portion of your life.
If you got saved in a later portion of your life,
you could have, as the Bible describes,
certain abominations in your life.
You could have certain issues in your life.
And you say, I don't think I had any abominations.
I mean, that sounds extreme, Pastor Shelley.
Well, you know what?
Start reading the Bible, okay?
Deuteronomy 22 makes it clear that a woman wearing
that which pertained to the man is an abomination.
And a man wearing that which is a woman's garment
is also an abomination, right?
That's just one.
We're just talking about one.
How many people in America are stumbling on that issue?
Are struggling with that issue specifically?
And I'll tell you something,
to convince women to dress appropriately in America is hard.
And it takes a lot of plowing.
It takes a lot of breaking up the fallow ground
and trying to help them get to that position.
You know, praise God, we don't live in a culture
where very many men are tempted to dress like queers, okay?
But you know, there could be a day,
there could be a culture out there
where men are just wearing dresses and skirts
and you know, hopefully that'll never be Texas.
Hopefully that'll never be America, but you never know.
And again, you know, there could be other abominations
that we have in our society, in our culture.
You know, committing wicked sins like adultery
or fornication, those are abominations on the side of God.
Covetousness is an abomination on the side of God.
Lying lips is an abomination on the side of God.
There's a lot of things that are abominations.
And you know, what I think is that we have a lot
of first-time Christians, first-generation Christians
in our church and you may have to break up
a lot of the fallow ground in your life
so that your children can have really fertile ground
to plant in.
You have to get a lot of the abominations out of your life
and make a lot of the changes for you and your family
so that your children don't have to break up
the same fallow ground.
They get to have a lot better soil to plant in.
And God willing, our children, especially in this room,
will have a much easier path than us.
They won't have to put away all the abominations
out of their life with God.
Their parents help them keep those things at bay.
Their parents help them not to live that kind of a life.
And so they have an opportunity to serve God
in a better way, in an easier way.
Whereas for us, it might be hard work.
And it is gonna be hard work.
I didn't grow up being a fundamental Baptist.
And let me tell you something,
I had to break up a lot of fallow ground in my life.
There's a lot of issues that I had.
And it's not like I'm done.
It's not like, oh, now I'm just such fertile soil.
That's continual.
I have to constantly work and try to improve myself
and get better and try to work on being a good husband,
being a good father.
A lot of these things are new to me.
I've never raised teenagers.
I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of fallow ground
whenever I have to get through that stage of my life.
But we as God's people need to do this hard work
so that our children can actually have a harvest.
You're never gonna have a harvest
if you don't break up the fallow ground.
You're not gonna have a harvest of your children.
A lot of people decided not to break up the fallow ground
in their lives.
And so their children, they're reaping hemlock, folks.
They're reaping poison.
They're reaping judgment in their children,
in their grandchildren, in their whole family.
They're just reaping all this poison and weeds
and just terrible things.
Why?
Because they were unwilling to break up
the fallow ground in their life.
Now, what is some of the fallow ground?
Well, Luke 8 is a parable that gives us
a lot of information on this, but look at verse 13.
They on the rock are they, which when they hear,
receive the word of joy, and these have no root,
which for a while believe,
and in time of temptation fall away.
So similarly, you have a parable of the sower sowing seed,
and one group falls on the stony ground.
Now, if you go back to verse six,
it says, and some fell upon a rock,
and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away,
because it lacked moisture.
So when it's given the explanation,
it's saying it has no root.
What's kind of the problem?
When you don't have a root,
you're not gonna get the moisture.
So the purpose of a root,
and the purpose of roots stretching out
and going everywhere, is that they have more capability
to get water, because water's going everywhere.
So the more roots you have,
the more opportunity you have for those roots
to grab some water from somewhere and give it to that plant.
Whereas if you have no roots,
it's only that little tiny circle around
where your grass, plant, whatever it is, exists.
You know a tree usually has really big roots, why?
Because trees need lots and lots of water,
so they have to gather water from a huge circumference
in order to satisfy that particular tree.
Whereas a tree that's growing on top of the soil
and is not getting any roots down
is gonna just die very quickly,
because there's no way for it to get enough water.
The same is with a Christian.
A Christian who has no roots
is gonna end up lacking moisture.
Now what is the moisture that we need?
This, this is the water that we need.
We need constant watering from the word of God.
And so when you're not getting any Bible,
when you're not getting any moisture,
when you're not getting any,
you're gonna be just dry,
and you're just gonna basically just wither,
and you're not gonna be a Christian.
You know the people that don't read the Bible
will stop serving God.
It's just how it is, because they have no root.
And that root is not soaking in
the necessary water to survive.
You have to have water to wanna keep serving God.
Because if you're not reading the Bible,
if you're not searching the scripture,
if you're not going to church,
I mean if you're not getting this diet of water,
you will not serve God.
It's just not gonna happen.
Just like a plant getting no water.
Have you ever visited Phoenix?
It's not green, folks, okay?
You say why?
Lack of water.
Even when you do have water.
I mean we had sprinklers,
and we couldn't even get grass to grow in our backyard,
because it's just so hot and so dry.
And you know we live in a culture that's like Phoenix,
where it's just really hot, really dry.
I mean you better be putting tons of water on that thing
if you want it to possibly grow.
And so you know what do we have to do as Christians?
We have to soak in a lot of Bible.
We have to get a lot of roots in our life.
You know a root like church.
A root like a morning Bible routine.
A routine to memorize scripture.
You know you get all these roots going.
You know singing the Psalms.
And when you get all these different roots,
you're just gonna be flooding yourself with all this water,
and you're gonna wanna serve God.
Whereas if you have like one tiny root,
and it's like I go on Sunday mornings.
You know and you know you go to a church
where they read one verse.
I mean those people are just gonna die.
Spiritually speaking,
because they're just not getting enough water.
You know we need lots and lots of water in order to grow.
Look at verse 14.
And that which fell among thorns are they,
which when they have heard go forth,
and are choked with the cares,
with cares and riches and pleasures of this life,
and bring no fruit to perfection.
Now here's the thing,
you could be getting a lot of water.
You could have roots,
and you get a lot of water.
But you're also mixing in a lot of thorns.
And you're gonna have the same problem.
What's a lot of thorns?
A lot of cares.
A lot of pleasures.
A lot of riches of this world.
You know you can't have all of it.
You know if you try to serve God,
but then you're trying to get as much of the riches
and pleasures of this life at the same time.
You're gonna end up just failing at that point too.
So the thorns come in and they choke that work.
So in order for us to have a harvest,
in order for us to do what God really wants,
we have to get deep down and get the roots.
We have to get the word of God.
But then we also have to put away certain things.
We have to get all those thorns out of our life.
And let me tell you something.
Another thing that's a problem
with a baby boomer generation
is that they didn't get the thorns out of their life.
They let a lot of thorns grow with them.
And the 60s and 70s and 80s brought a lot.
I mean think about the just boom of rock and roll.
Think about just the boom of television,
the boom of sports, the boom of all these.
I mean in the 60s, let's go back to the 50s for a second.
In the 50s you're not gonna have a AT&T stadium to go to.
You're not gonna have all of the luxuries
and the pleasures of this world.
You're not gonna be able to go out to eat for every meal.
You're not gonna be able to go and just have all this fun.
You're not gonna have all the Sea-Doo
and the boat and all that.
I mean you're not gonna have all those pleasures
at your disposal.
You're not gonna have a phone in your hand
where you can basically just do nothing all day
and entertain yourself.
I mean you could entertain yourself all day
with just your phone, with just Xbox, with just PlayStation.
In fact in Japan there's guys
that just basically lock themselves in a room
and only want their mom to drop food off.
It's like prison.
I mean it's just like prison with a computer.
I mean they would go to jail
if they would give them a computer with fiber.
If they gave them a computer with fiber and three meals
they'd probably be like sign me up.
Let's go.
That's embarrassing.
That's shameful.
And you know what, if you just decide,
you know what, I'm just so full of this world
and I've got all the pleasures of this life
and I don't need anything else,
you know what, then you're gonna just stop serving God
no matter how much water you get.
Reading the Bible on its own isn't gonna fix the problem.
You have to also take things out of your life.
And you say well how do I know
if I'm taking things out of my life?
Well are you letting them interfere with the things of God?
If you say well I could go soul winning
or I could go have fun.
Well you need to get the fun out of your life then.
Well I could go to church or I could have fun today.
Get the fun out of your life.
Now here's the thing.
If it's not a church day, if it's not a church activity
and you wanna go have fun, have fun, right?
Take your kids out to the park, right?
Go get a boat and ride on it, I don't care.
Go watch the Cowboys lose, all right?
I mean if you wanna watch the Cowboys lose, do it.
Phone, anything okay?
I don't like the Mavericks
just because I really can't stand Mark Cuban.
He's like a leftist devil.
But go support the Rangers or something, I don't care.
But you know what, not on Sunday.
Not on soul winning time.
You know what, still read the Bible,
still spend time with your family,
still spend time with your kids
and you say look, we can have some fun.
God doesn't want us to just have no fun
but let me tell you something.
Fun should not replace the purpose of your life.
You need to get the thorns out of your life
and say you know what, this is taking in place of God.
This is ruining my walk with God
and I need to just rip it out of the ground
and trash it, burn it, get rid of it,
have nothing to do with it, just destroy it or sell it.
Hey, I sold all my video games and I sold our TV.
I could have destroyed it, I thought about it one time
but I just say you know what, we'll make some money.
All right, we'll sell it, okay?
But you say like oh my gosh, you don't have a TV.
No I don't but you know what, I don't really miss it
and honestly TV sucks so bad now.
What are you gonna watch, Lucifer?
Are you just missing out on some Lucifer?
RuPaul's Drag Race?
I mean what is it that you just wanna watch so bad?
Real Housewives of what, Vegas now or something?
I don't even know, where they run out of cities
or something?
It's probably now like real trannies of San Francisco
or something that you probably watch, I don't know.
Why do you wanna watch that filth anyways?
Oh maybe you wanna watch TBN with Kenneth Copeland.
You know that'll be really good, huh?
I mean what is there on TV to watch anyways anymore?
Okay, we need to make sure that we're not just destroying
the next generation by allowing a lot of thorns
and a lot of hard ground to exist in our life.
We need to break up our ground.
And I wanna go to one more place, go to Acts 17.
The last few verses is talk about how God's gonna destroy
the children of Israel and he's gonna kill his king.
So if you just really want to,
you can go read those verses real quick.
But Acts 17 verse 32, here's one other application
I wanna make very quickly is this.
I also believe in our culture we can break up fallow ground.
Not just us personally, but our culture.
And how we do that is by preaching the whole Bible.
And when we preach the whole Bible,
of course the world focuses on, quote,
the most negative messages.
But even the most negative messages
are breaking up fallow ground, folks.
They are making an impact.
And what typically happens is the first time
you take that shovel and you just smash it into the ground,
it's like nothing happens.
But something, as far as the eye can see,
but something happened.
And you just keep hitting it,
and eventually you're gonna break through.
And it's like maybe that first time
they watched the Sodomite deception,
they were like, ah, he's a faggot.
But you know what's gonna happen?
It did something to them.
Something changed about them.
And then the second time you said it in the film,
it was kind of like, ah.
And then the third time, like, ah, ah, whatever.
Then it just starts being like, okay.
And you know, the next time they get exposed to that,
they're like, oh.
You know, the first time they hear someone say
Leviticus 20, 13 out loud, they're like, whoa.
But you know what's gonna happen?
They're gonna see some disgusting article
that says two guys adopted all these children
and hurt all them, and they're gonna be like,
that Bible verse doesn't sound that bad anymore.
They're gonna be like, hey, those people aren't that crazy.
They're gonna, maybe they're like, I wanna go read that.
And they go read it, and they're like,
what the Bible says.
Then they're gonna go watch another video like,
what else does he have to say, you know?
And then they'll watch, and they'll be like,
that's in the Bible too, isn't it?
And then you know what they're gonna do?
They're gonna go up to their pastor,
they're like, pastor, I heard this terrible guy online.
He said all these terrible things are in the Bible.
Show me how it's wrong.
And the pastor's gonna be like,
well, you know, I know that verse in the Bible,
I don't know what it means.
They're like, what do you mean you don't know what it means?
No, no, show me how that's wrong.
You know, love thy neighbor.
No, no, no, the verse I'm showing you.
And they're gonna start realizing like,
this guy's kind of a joke.
And then they're gonna be like,
what else does that guy have to say?
And they're like, wow, that was a cool connection
he made with Christ in the Bible.
Why does my pastor never do that?
This guy keeps reading a lot of Bible.
It's like they're gonna just start,
it just starts making a difference.
It's like you just keep just hitting the ground,
you just keep just, and it's just like sodomite deception
and sacrifice reprobates and you know,
this is a preserved Bible, you just keep hitting.
And then pretty soon all of a sudden it's like,
this soil's like, what else you got for me?
And they're like, I might try that church out.
You know, and they might sit there and they're kind of like,
but you know what, that's the breaking up
of the fallow ground.
And you know, not everybody is gonna get saved
the first time.
Not everybody is gonna like what you think
about sodomites the first time.
Not everybody's gonna wanna use
the King James Bible the first time.
Not everybody's gonna like all these things.
You know, it takes time to expose them to the truth,
but let me tell you something, they can't unhear the truth.
The truth soaks in.
And it starts doing something to that individual.
And of course, what does the truth do?
Well, it basically either softens you
or turns you into reprobate.
You know, that's kind of what it does.
But we need a lot more truth to be going into our society
and our area, we start breaking up a lot of fallow ground.
So then we can start having some big harvests.
We can start reaping a lot.
And you know, just because you might not have
a good interaction with someone the first time,
don't let that stop you from being kind to those people.
You know, I think there's a temptation
to wanna be like, fine, go to hell.
Oh yeah, buddy?
You know, I'm gonna give you the words of my pastor,
no, I'm just kidding.
You say, have a nice day, right?
It's no problem.
People, you know, people, you're gonna reach people
in different ways at different times.
And look what this group in Acts 17, look at verse 32.
And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead,
some mocked.
And others said, we will hear the again of this matter.
You know, sometimes, you'll put out a documentary
about the Sodomites, some people are gonna mock.
We're not reaching those people anyways.
But then there's other people like,
I wanna watch that again.
I wanna hear something else about that.
What else does the Bible have to say?
And you have to realize that sometimes
making an impact takes a while.
You know, even in our lives.
You know, in my life, I changed a lot
from the King James Bible, but it didn't happen overnight.
Took years, I mean, I'm still work,
I'm still changing a lot, God willing.
I'm still getting better over time.
And you know what, we have to realize that
some people in our lives, they're not gonna get it
right away.
We gotta just, we gotta work though
on breaking up the fallow ground.
And we gotta be committed to breaking up fallow ground.
In our culture, we have a lot of fallow ground.
We're not in a harvest season in America.
We are in a season where we have to break up
as much fallow ground as possible.
And of course, we would love to use the internet
and tools to do that, but the enemy doesn't want to
let us do that because they realize
what a great impact we have.
I mean, the truth is so powerful.
And so they have to try and limit us.
But you know what, even if they shut all the internet down,
we can still go out and knock on doors
and give people the gospel and hand them the truth
and make a big difference.
You know, the apostle Paul didn't use YouTube
to reach the world with the gospel, folks.
And the Bible says that he turned the whole world
upside down.
It didn't say he got everybody to subscribe to his channel.
And you know what, I'm not against the internet.
I'm not against reaching people by any means.
Let's do it all.
But don't get discouraged at having to do it the hard way.
All of them did it the hard way, and we can do it again.
We can break up the fallow ground.
We can get people saved.
We can get them exposed to the truth.
We can get them in a church.
You know, it might seem discouraging
because isn't it hard to bring someone in a church?
It is, but let me tell you something.
If you break up a lot of fallow ground consistently,
eventually there could be a harvest.
Eventually you could start bringing in tons
and droves of people.
You know what, it takes faith to do that.
It takes faith to just keep going out there
and getting people saved, breaking up fallow ground,
reaching people, loving people, giving them the truth.
You know what, this church has reaped
a lot of harvest already.
And I think that there's even more to have.
Let us not look at the glory days
and think like, oh, we've arrived.
Let us look at the future and say,
there's even bigger harvest out there for us.
If we will do the hard work, if we will get the shovel
and we will go to the fallow ground and say,
I'm gonna rip up that weed.
I'm gonna rip up that thorn.
I'm gonna just smash that ground until it's soft.
And I'm not gonna give up.
You know, I'm not gonna quit.
Unless you just wanna be Israel.
Let's just be, I mean, we could be Israel.
We could just be like, ah, who cares?
Let's just live our own lives.
No, no, no.
Let us not fall in the same trap as Israel.
Let us say no to ourselves.
Let us say no to the world.
Let us sow in righteousness
because then we will reap in righteousness.
Let's close in prayer.
Thank you, Heavenly Father, so much for our church.
Thank you for giving us a great opportunity.
And we understand that there's so much blessing out there.
We get to reap all kinds of harvests
where we didn't even sow and we didn't even labor.
But we understand in order for us to reap that harvest,
other men had to break up the fallow ground.
Other men had to plant.
Other men had to water.
And I pray that we would have a strong desire,
a strong pathway to break up all kinds of fallow ground
and to sow all kinds of seeds.
And even if we don't reap,
that our children could reap
those giant harvests in the future.
And I pray that you would just continue
to increase our faith and allow us
to be greatly used of you.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.