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Hello. We have the congratulations to Dustin and Kerry Connor on the birth of Micah Lee. He was born December 10th, 11 AM, weighing 10 pounds, 4 ounces, measuring 21 and a half inches long. Congratulations to them.
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And then also, we've had them in our prayer list for a long time, but congratulations to Nicholas and Haley Williams on the birth of Axel Scott. He was born on the 14th at 7, 57 PM, weighing 7 pounds, 9 and a half, or 9.2 ounces, measuring 19.9 inches long. Congratulations to them as well.
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So that's exciting to see. Lots of more babies, and boy, you've got to get them in there last minute for that tax return benefit. I'm telling you what, you know? So these are the good babies. It's that like right after January, you're kind of like, ugh, but you know.
So that's pretty much all I have as far as announcements. We'll go ahead and sing our Psalm of the Week, Psalm 150. Psalm 150.
All right, Psalm 150.
Greatness.
Oh,
As the offering plates being passed around, please turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 20, Acts chapter number 20.
Acts chapter 20, the Bible reads,
And after the uproar was ceased, Paul called unto him the disciples, and embraced them, and departed for to go into Macedonia.
And when he had gone over those parts, and had given them much exhortation, he came into Greece, and there abode three months.
And when the Jews laid weight for him, as he was about to sail into Syria, he purposed to return through Macedonia.
And there accompanied him into Asia, Sopater of Berea, and of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus, and Secundus, and Gaius of Derbe, and Timotheus, and of Asia, Tychicus, and Trophimus.
These going before tarried for us at Troas, and we sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread, and came unto them to Troas in five days, where we abode seven days.
And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow, and continued his speech until midnight.
And there were many lights in the upper chamber, where they were gathered together.
And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep, and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead.
And Paul went down and fell on him, and embracing him, said, Trouble not yourselves, for his life is in him.
When he therefore was come up again, and had broken bread, and eaten, and talked a long while, even till break of day, so he departed.
And they brought the young man alive, and were not a little comforted.
And we went before to ship, and sailed unto Assos, there intending to take in Paul, for so had he appointed, minding himself to go afoot.
And when he met with us at Assos, we took him in, and came to Mytilene.
And we sailed thence, and came the next day over against Chios, and the next day we arrived at Samos, and tarried at Trojilium, and the next day we came to Miletus.
For Paul had determined to sail by Ephesus, because he would not spend the time in Asia, for he hasted, if it were possible for him to be at Jerusalem the day of Pentecost.
And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called the elders of the church.
And when they were come to him, he said unto them, You know from the first day that I came into Asia, after what manner I have been with you at all seasons,
serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears and temptations, which befell me by the lying in weight of the Jews,
and how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have showed you, and have taught you publicly, and from house to house,
testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
And now, behold, I go bound in the Spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there,
save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me.
But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy,
and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.
And now, behold, I know that ye all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more.
Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men, for I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.
Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers,
to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.
For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.
Also of your own self shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.
Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I cease not to warn every one night and day with tears.
And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and the word of his grace, which is able to build you up,
and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.
I have coveted no man's silver, or gold, or apparel.
Yea, ye yourselves know that these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and unto them that were with me.
I have showed you all things, how that so laboring ye ought to support the weak,
and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.
And when he had thus spoken, he kneeled down and prayed with them all, and they all wept sore,
and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake,
that they should see his face no more, and they accompanied him unto the ship.
Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer.
Father in heaven, we thank you for our morning service today, and for the evening service coming up later.
I pray that you fill Pastor Shelley with your spirit.
Just enable him to preach with clarity of mind this morning,
and give us ears to hear, to receive the message of the preaching of your word today.
We love you, and in Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
Amen. I want to look back at verse 26 again. The Bible says,
Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men.
For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.
Verse 28,
Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock,
over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers,
to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.
For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock,
also of your own selves, so men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.
Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I cease not to warn everyone, night and day, with tears.
So the Apostle Paul is gathering together the elders, which are in Ephesus,
and he's essentially giving them one last charge.
In his mind, he believes this might be or most likely is the last time he's ever going to see these people.
He's taken several missionary journeys where he's gone and started churches and then visited them,
and then even come back maybe a third or fourth time depending on what area or what church that we're talking about.
And the Apostle Paul is just practically understanding,
I can't just travel the world every single year for the rest of my life.
This is most likely the last journey I'm going to make to this part of the world, to this area.
Plus, you guys are doing well.
You guys got saved, you got baptized, you got church started, and then we ended up appointing elders.
So now you have your own pastors, and then even after getting your own pastors, the churches are doing well.
And the Apostle Paul is trying to give them kind of a last charge here of saying,
I'm not going to really be an overseer anymore.
I'm not going to really be someone to hold you guys accountable.
You guys are going to be commended unto the Lord.
And what really makes me nervous is I already know that when I'm gone,
there's going to be certain bad people that are going to take advantage of the fact that I'm gone.
There's going to be certain evil people that creep in and taint the church, taint the Lord Jesus Christ,
take advantage of people.
And so the Apostle Paul's attitude was, that's why I'm warning you night and day with tears.
That's why I was so over the top.
I mean, that's over the top.
To be warning somebody about grievous wolves night and day.
He's trying to say, I was being bombastic.
I was being a little bit over the top.
I was being dramatic about this because I know how serious it is.
I know that it's a real present danger.
And I know a lot of times people just don't take it seriously enough.
And so as a result, the Apostle Paul is just trying to really open up his heart and share it with these men.
These men are the leaders of their churches.
They're essentially the guard against evil in the churches.
They're the overseer. They're the shepherd. They're the pastor. They're the bishop.
They're the main person to protect the flock.
And if they don't do it, the flock is not going to be spared.
Did you notice that?
How it's talking about what these grievous wolves do.
Verse 29, not sparing the flock.
So it's not like, well, maybe if we just reason with the wolf, he won't eat very many sheep.
Or maybe we can redeem the wolf.
Or perhaps we can turn him into Fido.
This is like people trying to domesticate pit bulls.
It's like, it's a pit bull.
It's not necessarily an animal designed to snuggle up with toddlers.
Now look, I'm sure some people that own pit bulls, they think he's so cuddly and nice and sweet.
But you know what, there's some wolf in there and he could snap at any moment.
And here's the reality.
You just can't seem to redeem pit bulls.
They have too much aggression and they can snap.
And I saw this statistic, it was funny.
It was saying like, only 5% of dog breeds commit like 65% of the violence of all dogs.
And it's like, hmm, I wonder if that means there's something wrong with that specific dog breed.
And it's true that there are wolves out there in the world that you cannot redeem.
There are bad people.
And look, I'm not saying every pit bull is a bad dog.
But generally speaking, they're dangerous.
And of course, if we were going to go to the extreme of a wolf, wolves are not really a domesticated type animal.
If you had a pet wolf, you should at least tell people like, hey, I have this dangerous beast or animal in my house or around my children.
I mean, imagine if I said, hey, you're going to let your kids come play with my kids.
But I didn't tell you that we have a wolf in the backyard that they're going to be playing with.
Wouldn't you be kind of mad at me when you came over and you're like, why are they taking rides on the wolf?
You know, like that seems a little dangerous.
I didn't realize that's what we did at Pastor Shelley's house.
OK, that seems like kind of a bad idea, right?
But then some people do this with a pit bull, don't they?
With other animals.
And this is what some pastors do with their church is they literally have a wolf in the church.
And they're letting children and families come in and play with the wolf and hang out with the wolf.
And they don't even know that it's a wolf.
There are pastors out there that know.
And I'm not saying like they perceive or have an idea.
I'm saying they know 100% fact certain people in their church are registered sex offenders.
And yet the congregation doesn't know.
Yet, oh, they know that this person's been accused of something evil or wicked of another church and they're bringing them in.
Let's restore them.
We don't want to tell everybody how bad they are or what they've done because then that might cause people to not want to hang out with them or bring their kids around them.
Yeah, just like if I said, hey, you want to play with my kids in the backyard?
But FYI, there's a bunch of wolves in the backyard too.
You might be like, no, I'm not going to let my toddler play with a wolf, literally.
And the same should go with the house of God that we shouldn't be bringing in wolves and bringing in evil people and allowing them to hang out with the flock.
Because notice what the Bible says, they're not going to spare the flock.
Okay, so it's important to identify these things and recognize that this is a serious issue.
Now, I think what's also important to note in this passage is in verse 28 again, the Bible tells us to feed the church of God which he had purchased with his own blood.
Did the apostle Paul say that the ownership of the church was the elder?
It's not the elder's church.
You know, in some ways, it depends on what context you want to say this, but this is my church and this is also not my church.
Right, in the sense that this is my church, this is my church home, I'm the pastor of it, I'm a member of it, I love it.
If someone said what church do you go to, I'd say this is my church.
If I go out soloing, I'm going to say, hey, I want to bring you to my church.
But we also have to recognize and realize that at the same time it's also not our church in the sense that it's the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
That it's his church and that he's the ultimate shepherd and the ultimate bishop.
And so really what we have to do is we have to take care of the church of God.
This is not the church of Pastor Shelley, this is the church of God today.
And this is God's house and this is God's flock and this is God's sheep and this is God's institution that he purchased with his own blood.
We're just renting.
You know, if someone said, hey, I want to come over to your house and you're renting, that would still make sense, right?
You say, yeah, come to my house.
But then if we were to be honest, we'd say, well, technically I don't own it, though.
If someone else owns it, I'm just renting.
Okay?
So that's similar of analogy how it comes to the church is this is not my house.
I'm just renting.
This is not my house.
I'm just the steward of the house.
I'm just the person taking care of the house right now.
You guys are also helping me take care of the house of God.
But if we were to be honest, who's on the deed?
It's God.
God purchased this.
God paid for it.
It's his.
And we are to be good stewards of the house of God.
Okay?
Every action that we do should always be done with the mentality that this is not my house.
This is God's house.
Now, again, I like using the language, hey, it's still our church and it's my church and it's your church and it's our church.
Okay?
It's not even just mine.
It's our church.
But at the same time, we understand this is the house of God specifically.
And we should look at every church with that mentality.
Every church in America, every church in this world is not just some random guy's church.
It is the church of Jesus Christ.
And when I say this, I'm talking about bona fide legitimate churches, okay, where the pastor is saved or the vast majority of the flock is saved.
You know, that is, I still believe, a church of some semblance.
You know, I'm not going to equate the Mormons.
They're not a church.
That's just a complete false religion, fake and garbage.
The Catholics, that is not a legitimate church because at best they have a handful of people that are saved there that stumbled in on accident, okay?
But that is not a legitimate church.
But I'll say this.
I think that, you know, even the most lame, watered down, you know, Christians that are out there having church and it might even be called experience, it's still a church.
And at the end of the day, it's the church of Jesus Christ.
Now, you know this and I know this that we can go to certain parts of DFW and the house, all the housing on the street is rented but it's really nice.
Like you can go to some of the downtown areas or go to places like Highland Village or South Lake or something and there would still be a large section of housing that's all rentals but they're super nice, well manicured.
And then we can go to another part, you know, of South Dallas where every house on the street is a rental and boy are they trashed, graffiti, the yard is destroyed.
You're kind of thinking like what's going on here and that's how it is a church.
But you know what?
It's still a rental, right?
And we could look at some churches.
They've got graffiti on them and they're a little rough, spiritually speaking, but it's still a church of Jesus Christ.
And here's the thing, I'm for every single church that is a church of God.
Every single church, I'm for the church.
Now that doesn't mean that I personally am supporting their leadership or I want to have fellowship with them or I'm recommending you go there.
But I'm on their team.
Does that kind of make sense?
Like I'm pro the church of God, period.
It doesn't matter how many problems they have because if you read Revelation, you look at the seven churches which are in Asia, some of them have some serious problems.
And in fact, you could almost argue that a couple of those churches you shouldn't even recommend anybody going to apart from the people that already live there and are already in membership.
But you would never be like, hey, you should move to Sardis or something, you know.
Like you should move to this particular Laodicean church.
Like that probably doesn't make any sense, okay.
But at the same time, there's somehow still a church.
And I mean, think about some of the issues they have.
They have women preachers getting up, preaching a pro-fornication message.
That's pretty screwed up.
That makes me think of like a Baptist church out there that would let someone like Joyce Meyer come and preach for them every once in a while, right.
And wouldn't you think like, man, that's just kind of a joke.
But at the same time, I still think that God can look down and still recognize, hey, this is my house.
This is a church of God, albeit it's being destroyed and graffitied and has a lot of problems.
But let's say there was a pack of wild wolves that were going to go and attack some liberal church.
You know what, I'm pro the liberal church every single time.
If sodomites gather against any institution of the house of God, I'm always with the house of God.
Always with the church of God.
Always with the people of God.
Always going to side on their team, no matter how many issues they have.
Just like my children.
It's not like, well, I would defend the child I like the most.
No, even if my child was screwed up and had a lot of problems, I'm still on his team.
I still love my child.
I still like him.
You know, this is what Cowboys fans have to constantly think of every year.
It's like, I'm still a Cowboys fan.
No, I'm just kidding.
It's really like Patriots fans this year.
It's rough.
But what the reality is, is we should always be pro-Christian.
Pro-Christian church.
Pro-Christian.
We're on their team.
We're on their side.
That doesn't mean that we wouldn't rebuke them for their sin.
That doesn't mean we wouldn't reprove them.
That doesn't mean that we wouldn't offer them exhortation.
That doesn't mean that we would even necessarily hang out with them.
But at the same time, we would come to their aid.
We would help them.
Just like when Abraham heard that Lot had been taken with the city of Sodom.
It's not like he endorses Lot's lifestyle.
It's not that he endorses Lot's attitude.
It's not like he endorses the church that Lot's been going to.
But you know, when he hears Lot being captured, you know what Abraham does?
Let's round up the boys and we're going to go get Lot and we're going to bring him back.
And even if he goes back to Sodom Baptist Church, which makes no sense.
You know what?
I'm not going to let Abraham die on my watch.
And I'm never going to side with someone against Lot.
Right?
I'm not going to go against the house of God or the people of God.
I'm always going to be on their side.
Because we have to think about what it represents.
The church of God isn't representing the pastor.
It's not representing the people.
It's representing the Lord Jesus Christ and his blood that was shed for us.
And you know what?
That's always worth fighting for.
The blood of Jesus Christ is always worth fighting for.
The church of God is always worth fighting for.
Now, what some people don't realize, you know, maybe you're insulated a little bit from the world's, you know, shenanigans.
But we're not the only church that ever gets protested.
Okay?
Other churches get protested.
In fact, even in this area, churches sometimes other than us have and will get protested.
One of our friends, Pure Words Baptist Church, has been protested for a really long time now.
They're giving us a run for our money.
You know, I don't know how to preach harder than the pastor at Pure Words so that I can get protesters back again.
But man, you know, I need to kick it up a notch because for some reason the pastor down there is doing a better job.
You know, he's getting more rewards in heaven.
So maybe it's that evangelist or something.
You know, I don't know.
That could be the problem.
But again, that's not only the churches that get protested.
So this morning, there's another church that's being protested, and I want to talk about that for a moment.
It's First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana.
So First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana is being protested this morning.
Who knew that already?
Okay, yeah, a decent number of people kind of already even knew that.
But First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, this is a church that was pastored in the past by a man named Pastor Jack Hyles.
So a pretty popular preacher, pretty famous preacher.
And they had a Bible college called Hyles Anderson College that has really sent out a lot of different men,
started a lot of different independent Baptist churches throughout the history of its existence.
And I wanted to read, just so people know a little bit about it, I just wanted to read just a little bit of information about the church.
The First Baptist Church of Hammond is a fundamental independent Baptist church in Hammond, Indiana.
It is the largest church in the state of Indiana.
In 2007, it was the 20th largest church in the United States.
So it used to be just even giant compared to every other church.
Though founded in 1887 by Allen Hill, it was under Jack Hyles' leadership from 1959 to 2001.
So that's about 42 years approximately.
So that's a long time to have pastored, 42 years.
When it became one of the mega churches in the United States, it was during the 70s, it had its highest Sunday school attendance of any church in the world.
So in the 70s, they had the largest Sunday school attendance of all churches in the entire world.
Additionally, in 1990, the church had weekly attendance of 20,000.
20,000 people were going to an independent, fundamental Baptist church where all the ladies are wearing skirts and dresses,
and all the men, they don't like communism or sodomites whatsoever, okay.
And let me tell you, hard preaching. Hard preaching.
In fact, sometimes when I listen to some of the stuff that they say, I'm thinking like,
boy, I don't think our church is going to handle this kind of preaching and the things that they're talking about.
Really hard preaching, conviction, standards.
I mean, when someone would make a face in the sermon, Pastor Hyles would call them out in the service.
Hey, you right there in the red shirt, don't make that face.
Hey, you get out of here.
And in fact, they don't allow like the same family integration.
So if a baby's crying or something, it'd be like, hey, help them get out of here.
During the service.
Dude, that offends people like that, okay.
People get nervous about that kind of stuff.
Hey, you know, I've come close a few times.
This is kind of my rule, and unfortunately it hasn't completely gotten there.
But if the parents are doing nothing, that's when I'm going to say something.
So like if a kid's kind of upset, I kind of try to give a little bit of grace.
But if it's just like they kind of have an apathetic look or they're not dealing with their child, you're testing me, okay.
Now again, I'm not saying I'm going to be really mean about it or anything, but I might have to say something.
And it's okay if someone has to say something.
That's, you know, the leader has to take charge, and we're here to learn the Bible.
You know, I understand why they want to take little babies out of the sanctuary because it can break a train of thought.
It can totally disrupt the service.
It can totally cause a lot of people to not pay attention.
And we're here to learn spiritual truths.
So, you know, we don't want to necessarily ruin that for other people.
And we do have mother-baby rooms and stuff that still accommodate that as an option.
But at the same time, you know, after a while you kind of get used to it.
It's a quiet roar out there apparently.
So, you know, I can manage it for the most part.
But, you know, these churches or this church is an awesome church and big.
It wasn't just like they're just come as you are and anything goes and we're just singing karaoke up on the stage or something like that.
We're talking about a legit, bona fide, soul-winning church.
And, boy, I'll tell you, no one put conviction on a congregation to go soul-winning more than Pastor Jack Hiles.
This guy preached on soul-winning almost all the time, almost every service.
There's so much pressure and emphasis on going soul-winning, being a soul-winner, going out there and doing the work, reaching people.
They bust in a lot of people.
And if you understand where they were located, it's kind of interesting because it's basically Chicago.
But because of the way the state lines are, technically they're in Indiana.
But it's really, if you just looked at the Chicago metro, you wouldn't really even perceive that it wasn't Chicago.
It kind of makes me think of other big cities like Dallas-Fort Worth or I was thinking about Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington.
Technically those are in two different states.
But the only distinction is really there's a bridge where you cross the river and they have that large body of water.
I don't even think you have nearly as much of a dividing line between Hammond and Chicago.
And so it basically just kind of all runs together.
And that south portion of Chicago has a lot of poor people, black people.
And so they would go over there and bust a ton of people from those areas into their church and reach a lot of people.
And they brought in a lot of people, got a lot of people saved.
Pastor Anderson, our friend, he actually went to House Anderson and was a student.
And he basically was going to graduate but left his last semester because of Jack Scopp.
And I'm not going to go into the details on that just yet.
But he would always go into certain areas of South Chicago and do soul winning.
And it's very dangerous, but at the same time it was really receptive and a lot of people were getting saved back then.
And I think it's probably still a fruitful area and they're getting a lot of people saved.
Chicago is actually a large area. It's about 8 million people in that metro.
So it's actually larger than the Dallas-Fort Worth or Houston metro is considered.
Chicago is I think like the third. I think it's New York and then L.A. and then Chicago.
And maybe that changes, but it's roughly true.
I think Dallas-Fort Worth is usually 4 or 5.
Houston kind of teeters on that when you're looking at metros.
And so Chicago is a huge area, lots of people, big church.
And Pastor Hiles actually came from here.
He used to be a minister here at a Southern Baptist church.
And then I think he had an independent Baptist church here.
They left the SBC and then he moved to Hammond, Indiana to take that church.
I think they were only running like 1,000 when he took over.
So he grew that church from 1,000 basically to like 20,000.
That's a lot of growth, a lot of people coming, plus a lot of students, a lot of visitors.
I mean we're talking about a ton, a ton, a ton of people.
It says that the church also operates Hiles Anderson College,
a non-accredited institution established for the training of pastors and missionaries.
And it has two K-12 schools called City Baptist Schools.
And they bus children in for the schools as well.
And they have a Hammond Baptist School.
So they even have two elementary, junior high, high school style schools.
And they feed those into the colleges.
Plus they have tons of other churches that feed their students into these colleges.
So we're talking about tons and tons of people.
Their current pastor is Pastor John Wilkerson.
He is the senior pastor of First Baptist Church Hammond Indian.
So I just wanted to give you a little bit of a just history and just kind of what's going on there.
Now Pastor Hiles, when he was either retiring or kind of before he let go of the church and before his death,
he ended up having his son-in-law Jack Scopp come in and take over the church.
And he had married his daughter.
Now Jack Scopp actually started preaching some weird stuff.
In fact, that was the reason why Pastor Anderson left the college,
is just because of the stance that Jack Scopp had taken on a lot of different issues,
including the King James issue.
Jack Scopp started saying, yeah, there's errors in the translation of the King James
and that it's not really inspired and just saying some other things.
And that just really offended Pastor Anderson.
So he ended up not even graduating from the college specifically because of that.
And he could see the writing on the wall.
In fact, it's interesting because Pastor Anderson called him a pervert
before anything ever happened, just while he was preaching, buying the pulpit.
And then it came out a few years later that Jack Scopp had a relationship with a 17-year-old in the church
and because their relationship had gone across state lines,
which, I mean, that's not that hard when you live literally on a border town
that literally crosses state lines all the time.
It is what it is.
But the more important issue is the fact that it was with a 17-year-old.
He was married.
I don't know his age, probably in his 40s when this particular relationship happened.
But he ended up going to jail.
Now I think that he's recently been released from prison for the sentence that he had.
In that particular situation.
But there's been some issues also with the church.
I mean, think about it.
If you literally have 20,000 people coming on just one service,
I believe that their church roles, and I've read this,
they have over 100,000 people on their church roles.
So people that have come or are coming.
Because even our church, we have a lot of people on our roles
that don't necessarily come to every service or every Sunday morning.
And that kind of grows and grows.
And so for them, they're having 100,000 plus people.
You don't think that there's at least one bad person out of all those people.
Like, you'd kind of have to just defy reality to think that that's the case.
David, David, the man after God's own heart,
had sons of Belial in his mix when he was only running hundreds.
Let alone if he was running hundreds of thousands.
You can just guarantee, lock it in,
if you have 100,000 people gathered on this earth,
there is a devil in the midst.
He only takes two Jews.
But when we're talking about 100,000 people,
it doesn't even matter what kind of people.
I don't care what kind of gathering.
I don't care if it was the Red Hot Preaching Conference.
If you had 100,000 people, you're going to have a lot of wolves in that midst.
In fact, you could even have a wolf in here right now, okay?
And I don't know you, because if I did, I would beat you with a spiritual rod.
I would spiritually beat you out of here, okay?
And destroy you spiritually, okay?
That's what would happen.
And so we have to understand that if you have that spirit,
you have to understand that if you have that many people
and that many instances, you're going to have some bad.
It's just facts. It's going to happen.
And especially when you have that many people running buses
and involved in children's work, you have schools.
I mean, predators are going to want to creep into those areas.
Bad people are going to come in.
Bad things are going to happen.
So over the history of First Baptist Church, Hammond, Indiana,
yeah, of course, there's been some bad people,
and there's been some bad things, and there's been some bad events.
And of course, Jack Scott's probably one of the worst, if not the worst.
But then, because Pastor Hiles is now passed away,
there's also been a lot of people that have just thrown a lot of accusations at him,
kind of apt the fact, or towards the tail end of his ministry,
there's a lot of people that said a lot of stuff that never stuck,
nothing was proven, and it was probably just all a bunch of garbage, okay?
But for some reason, there's this online reputation,
or there's this view out there that First Baptist Church, Hammond, Indiana,
is just super bad, and it's just filled with abusers
and filled with terrible people, and they cover it all up,
and no one ever is held accountable for anything.
I'm pretty sure Jack Scott went to prison.
I mean, again, should that have been what happened?
No, he should have been taken out and stoned to death.
Physically, literally, and spiritually, all of it, okay?
And that didn't happen.
So I'm with you that I wish our justice system was more biblical
and more in accordance with the scripture,
but at the end of the day, he was held accountable,
and I know other people have been held accountable for issues,
but not every accusation is true, and not every situation is true,
and you can't always catch everything 100% or be perfect in any scenario.
So here's the thing. Am I going to, then,
get mad at First Baptist Church, Hammond, Indiana,
because bad people exist? No, because you know what?
It's the church of God.
It's been purchased with the blood of Jesus Christ,
and let me say something.
I am going to stand with First Baptist Church, Hammond, Indiana,
and I do stand with First Baptist Church, Hammond, Indiana,
and even though there's protests going on,
the last thing I would do is go stand with protesters against a church of God,
and I even heard that it's been suggested that some church members
wanted to stand with the protesters against their church this morning,
and I just think that that is a very poor decision,
and I would even venture on to say it's just wicked.
I don't know everybody's motives and intentions,
but just generally speaking, I think that's a wicked attitude
because you're not protesting a person.
You're not protesting a thing.
You're protesting the church that Jesus Christ bled and died for,
and I'm not going to go and protest Sardis Baptist Church this morning.
I'm not going to go and protest the Laodicean church.
I'm not going to go find some church that has issues or has a problem person
or they did something wrong.
I'm not going to go to the church at Corinth and say,
hey, I'm going to protest you until you get that guy out of church
with his father's wife.
You know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to walk into the church, and I'm going to open my Bible,
and I'm going to go and say this is what we should do,
but I'm going to stand with the people of God.
I'm not going to go stand against the people of God.
That doesn't make any sense, and you know what?
We as leaders need to recognize and realize that we are here to guard the flock,
not to cater to people outside the church.
My job as a pastor is not to make sure that the world likes my church,
and if you think that I've been trying to please the world,
I don't know what to do.
What do you want me to say?
I'll do it.
I'm not trying to please the world here.
My goal is, number one, to please God.
Number two is to help people serve Christ better,
but somewhere in this chain of priorities and pretty high up
is also to guard the flock, is to make sure that we're protecting people.
I would argue evangelism is probably next or somewhere up there on the list,
but at the same time, I'm not so evangelistic that I'm going to try and win wolves over.
That's why I've already said before, and I'll just keep repeating it,
but I don't care what some sodomite says about salvation.
He's never welcome here.
Some child molester, I'm not going to have a restoration ministry.
I have zero tolerance for that.
Child molesters and people that are sodomites in any capacity
are just not welcome here ever.
And you say, how are you going to reach them?
I'm not.
That was the point.
Oh, people aren't going to go to your church, so you're not going to reach these people.
Okay, well, let them go to queer Baptist church, but I'm not going to do it
because part of my job, and albeit I'm not saying it's the number one point,
but the high priority is to guard the house of God.
And let me tell you something.
When you have a big group of people protesting your church, there's sodomites in the mix.
And the last thing I'm going to do is encourage my members
or even permit or allow my members to go and stand with sodomites against the church of God,
against men, women, elderly, children that are just coming here to worship the Lord Jesus Christ.
You know what? We should never stand against church.
We should always stand with church.
And I don't care how screwed up the church is.
I'm going into the building. I'm not going to stay outside.
The reason why you stayed outside is because it was a heathen nation
that you're going to march around and let the walls come down on them.
Okay, not a church.
We are going to rebuild the church. We're going to fix the church.
You know, when the apostle Paul had problems with the church or there was wolves in the church,
instead of standing outside and protesting it, you know what he did?
He went inside the church and he confronted the wolves to their face.
He said, hey, you bozo, get out of here.
You're not welcome in the house of God.
And you know what? If you're a real man of God, if you really care for the things of God,
then you're going to be in the church trying to weed out the weeds,
trying to get out the wolves, not standing outside the church
and protesting the institution that Jesus Christ bled and died for.
This is God's house. We're celebrating the Lord Jesus Christ.
We're not here to make sure everybody's feelings are okay.
I don't care about your feelings.
I care about the house of God and the church of God,
and we're here to celebrate the Lord Jesus Christ.
Oh, well, you know what, Pastor Shelley, you're not being sensitive to victims.
Well, let me tell you something.
There are millions, millions of people that are victims that are in church this morning in the world.
There are millions of people that have been victimized, taken advantage of,
or been abused by somebody, and they're in church today.
They're not protesting a church.
And you know what? If you want to help those people,
the last thing you can do to help them is to go stand with them against a church.
That person needs to get their behind in church.
And if you don't like First Baptist Church, Hammond, Indiana, then go somewhere else,
but do not protest a church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And you know what? I get sick and tired of people attacking churches
because they think it's not perfect.
You know, this is a cancer that's creeping even in the new IFB sometimes,
where you see some people that act like they can't even go to an old IFB church because they're pre-trib.
Well, you know what? Nuts on you.
That's a church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Hey, do I like false doctrine? No! I preach against it.
But you know what? I'm not going to attack a church and try to hurt churches that are doing the work of God.
You know, that just doesn't make any sense.
We need to stand with churches and both of them, and you know what?
Hey, I'm all for holding people accountable for their wickedness.
Don't get me wrong.
But point one of the sermon this morning is this, is that we should always, always stand with the church of God.
Always side with the church of God.
Always champion the church of God.
Always be with the church of God.
I'm never going to go against the church of God.
That doesn't make sense.
And we need to side with the people of God, the church of Jesus Christ.
We need to side with them.
The church is the most important institution we have on this planet.
Why are we going to destroy it?
More important than the institution of marriage is church.
More important than the institution of family is church.
More important than the government, that wasn't hard, is church, okay?
I don't care what institution, I don't care what you dream up, there is nothing more important than the church.
That's what Jesus Christ bled for.
And every woman, boy, child, girl, everything, they're all supposed to be able to go to the house of God
and to pray unto the Lord Jesus Christ and to sing unto the Lord Jesus Christ.
And we should never protest against it.
We should always side with it and always be for it and always helping it and encouraging it.
And you know what, if you want to get mad at someone, okay, let's get mad at the person that did something evil or wicked.
But you know what, it wasn't Jesus and it wasn't the church.
And if you don't like a particular church, well, this side of heaven you get to pick, right?
And I always say this, go to the best church in the area.
And if you feel so convicted because that church doesn't have everything dialed in that you want, then move.
But do not criticize the idea or institution of church and do not get away from church
because there is a giant cancer, a giant movement today saying, oh, all churches are bad, no one's got it right,
no one's sincere, no one wants to do the work, everybody's got false doctrine.
You know, I'm having church right now. I'm just sitting here with two people. We're just looking at a Bible.
You know, man, this is church. Liar.
Hey, I am pro-church and you should be pro-church too for your entire life.
Because guess what, as soon as you die, you're going to be at the church of the firstborn in heaven, all right?
Now I want to go to a few verses here. Go to Colossians chapter 1.
Here's what the Bible says in Hebrews 2, verse 12.
I will declare thy name unto my brethren. In the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee.
I want to notice a word here. In the midst, in the midst of the church, I'm not going to sing outside the church.
I'm not going to go against the church. I'm not going to protest against the church.
I'm going to be in the midst of the church singing praise unto the Lord Jesus Christ because that's why I'm here.
I'm not here for the food. I'm not here for the chairs. I'm not here for the preacher.
I'm here for the Lord Jesus Christ.
And you know what? When you get that out of your mind, you go to church for the right reason.
Some people say, oh, I don't like this guy's preaching. Well, go to church anyways.
And you know what? Sometimes lame preaching with the Bible will still change your life if you just open your heart.
Because you know what's powerful? The words of God.
And even the lamest preacher preaching the word of God can change people's lives, their minds, and their attitudes.
And I can't tell you how many times I've learned something even from lame preachers.
I'm just listening. I'm like, this sermon's boring. And then they read a verse and I'm like, oh, wow, that's a good point.
Or, hey, the Holy Ghost can still talk to me through the scripture.
And you know what? People that say nuts to church are bad Christians.
There's no such thing as a good Christian that doesn't go to church. Doesn't exist.
These people aren't real. They are, and many times, enemies.
And I'm not going to side with enemies. You know what? If you're not going to the church of God, you're an enemy of God.
If you have friendship with the world, you're an enemy of God.
Why in the world would I go stand with the world against a church? You're the enemy of God.
Get your behind in church and shut your stupid mouth. How dare you speak against a church of God?
You know what? People should be shamed for standing against a church.
You know, I've heard people tell me this. They're like, I would rather join the protesters than go to your church.
Shame on you! I heard that from Christians. How embarrassing.
Hey, if you don't like my church, fine. There's literally hundreds of other Baptist churches you can go to.
Go to it and love it and appreciate it and give the pastor the greatest Christmas present ever. Please.
But you know what? Do not protest any church that's a church of God. Ever. Never stand against them. Never go against them.
You know what? We are pro the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
You say, well, I don't like that preacher. It's not about the preacher. It's the institution that we're celebrating.
It's the Lord Jesus Christ. And in the midst of the church, am I going to sing praises unto God?
It didn't say who the preacher was in Hebrews. It didn't say what the choir sounded like.
It didn't say what the seats looked like. I'm just going to be there and I'm just going to sing to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Because that's my duty as a Christian. That's my obligation as a God-fearing man.
It's to do what God created me to do and it's to open up my mouth boldly and to make known the mystery of the gospel and to do that even through singing.
I'm supposed to exhort and encourage my brethren by singing. That's what God wants me to do.
You know, he didn't create me a voice and a mouth and vocal chords so that I could sing Led Zeppelin.
So that I could sing Beastie Boys. So that I could sing Highway to Hell.
You know, what a disgrace and an embarrassment. There are literal churches out there where Perry Noble, the pastor of a church, had Highway to Hell sung in his church.
Highway to Hell. How in the world are you reconciling that with what the Bible says about the institution of the Lord Jesus Christ?
That you're going to take all the talent that God gave you, the voice that God gave you, the vocal chords that God gave you, and then you're going to sing some blasphemous song in the church? Wicked.
Praise God he got thrown out of his own church for being a drunkard.
Yeah, it sounds like you have to be drunk to think of such a stupid idea of singing ACDC for church.
What Bible verse motivated you to do that? What spirit came upon Perry Noble to say,
Hey, you know, we need to really kick things up at church. What if we sing satanic music to really kick it off? That would really help.
What a wicked evil idea that came into his mind. But you know what? I'm not mad at that. I'm not going to go protest that church.
You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to call out Perry Noble for being a horrible pastor. Probably not even saved. I don't know for sure.
But man, that's some serious doubt from my side of the equation. But I'll tell you this, I'm going to be in the midst of the church singing praise to God.
Now if you show up at church and they're singing Highway to Hell, leave and go to a different church. Probably that morning.
Just be like, where's the Baptist church that I can go to? And I'll come in 15 minutes late and I'll sing at least the last hymn really loud.
I'm not saying stick around there. But at the same time, I'm still not going to protest this church. I'm still not going to go against him in that kind of way.
That doesn't make sense. You know where I'm going to be on Sunday morning? In church. You know why I never protest church? Because I'm in church. I'm busy.
It's like, hey, when are you going to go do that? Oh, I'm in church. Sorry. I can't do that.
The people that decide to show up and protest a church also decided not to go to church. Did you realize that? Why is that okay?
I mean, think about it. If your church was so bad that you honestly felt like you need to protest it, why can't you just decide, let's just go to a different church?
Like, why isn't that the option? Like, if you say, hey, this church is bad. Okay, then go to the next one. Well, that one's bad. Then go to the next one.
Well, all of them are bad in my area. Then move. But, you know, you tell people that and they're like, well, I can't move. It's because you just don't want to go to church.
They didn't want to put you in a La-Z-Boy in the middle and, you know, turn out the lights and let you sleep and feed you Cheetos or something and tell you how wonderful you are.
Or you came in and you've been to church two weeks and you're like, hey, pastor, you should let me preach. And he's like, no.
They're like, they don't understand what kind of talent they're not letting preach.
It's like, dude, why don't you go to church for decades and then we'll talk, right? Why don't you go preach at the nursing home? Why don't you just go soul winning first?
It's like these people are like, I want to be a preacher. Okay, come with me. 2 p.m. I'll let you preach. You can knock every door with me, all right? I preach enough today.
Hey, we can go to the nursing home. You can preach. Hey, you can preach to your family. You can preach to your neighbors. I mean, you can preach all day long.
But, you know, the guy that doesn't want to do that kind of preaching is the same kind of person that God doesn't want to elevate to preach in the house of God either.
This is a special opportunity. Hey, preaching in the house of God is a blessing. It's a special opportunity. People should take it serious. It's not a joke.
And look, we live stream our sermons, but you know what? I don't even care about that. I don't stream on YouTube just so I can say whatever I want.
I'm not trying to get up here and try to put on a show to see how many clicks and likes I can get because, you know what? Nuts to that. I'll shut it down if I have to.
I don't want that mentality either. We're not here to please the world. I'm not here to try and see how much the world…
In fact, I guarantee my best sermons aren't going to be liked by a lot of people because there's no way that the spiritual truth of God's word is going to be appealing to a broad mass of people.
They don't like the Bible. Wake up. Look at the world. They hate the Bible. They hate the light. They run away from the light.
They're a bunch of cockroaches out there, okay? And this institution here is an important institution, and I'm siding with it. I'm pro it.
I don't care if it's here or in Houston or in Oklahoma City or in Hammond, Indiana. I stand with Hammond, Indiana. I stand with Pastor John Wilkerson.
And you know what? It's so stupid for them to protest his church when literally he didn't do anything.
There's not even a person there that they're mad at specifically. There's not like this obvious wolf that they're all just like, hey, get this one wolf out.
They're just getting upset about past grievances or some idea. And you know what? I think most of them are insincere.
Now again, I'm not going to say that every person there is insincere, but I think a lot of them are insincere.
You know why I think they're insincere? Because why aren't they protesting the federal government for all the wickedness that they're doing?
I mean, you want to talk about abuse. Why aren't they going and protesting the federal government and demanding that all of the clients of Jeffrey Epstein be released right now?
I mean, if we're going to just stand against abuse, why wouldn't we go to the top? Why wouldn't we go to the worst abusers?
Why wouldn't we go to the people that are trafficking children across this world?
And look, some people don't realize they're trafficking children from foreign countries, abusing them and then killing them and discarding their bodies.
Just all in a day. Just constantly. Just slaughtering children, doing all kinds of horrible, wicked things.
I don't even want to talk about it, but some just sodomy has been spreading all over the news.
There's been open sodomy happening in our Senate. Don't even go online because you might accidentally see something.
You might get this extension you can put on your browser where all pictures are just blocked completely.
We might have to get to that point with the internet where you just already start saying, I don't want to look at any images.
Because, boy, I'll tell you, it is bad out there. I mean, how can you have open sodomy in our government buildings?
That is happening. And, of course, I think a lot of people probably knew it was happening, but now they're just rubbing our nose in it.
They're saying, hey, Christians, what are you going to do about it?
And look, who is protesting? The only protesters that are protesting? The church?
They're protesting a church today with Pastor John Wilkerson and thousands of God-fearing men, women, children singing praises of the Lord Jesus Christ
while in D.C. we have literal sodomites doing sodomite acts in our government buildings and they're not protesting that.
Insincere. I mean, if there's something to protest, that protest. I mean, you know what America should be doing?
We should literally be having millions and millions of Americans protesting all of our government buildings and telling them how terrible they are.
But you know what millions of Americans are going to do this morning? They're going to go to a football game.
That's what they're going to do. They're going to sleep in.
They're going to lay on their La-Z-Boy chair and eat their La-Z-Boy chips off their La-Z-Boy belly and drink a beer before noon and get drunk.
And you know what? They don't even care about the God of the Bible.
And then they're going to be like, yeah, I don't really like church either. I kind of stay with them protesters.
You hillbilly idiot. You're ruining America.
How dare you encourage anybody protesting an institution of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And look, I don't even care what bad person went to their church. There is no excuse.
These people are insincere, folks. I am not going to side with, encourage, support, promote, do anything for these protests against a church.
Oh, we're protesting sexual abuse. What about your local Catholic church? How's that going?
Where's that protest? Boy, you want to talk about abusers. You want to talk about a bad rap sheet.
You want to talk about a history of issues. How about your local Catholic church?
Why don't you just go pick a random Catholic church and I guarantee you that there's more abusers in that building than there is at First Baptist Church in Indiana.
So if you just want to be against abuse again and you want to pick a random institution that has nothing to do with you, pick that one.
And it's not a church, so I don't care. How about your local daycare? How about your local school?
I mean, there's predators committing all kinds of abuse in all these places and you know what, they're not protesting there.
You know why? Because it's a thinly veiled attack on Christianity, folks.
They're not trying to make a positive change. They don't really care about the truth.
Look, there's plenty of people that have been abused and then they still decide to go to church and love the Lord Jesus Christ because you know what, don't let one bad person ruin your day.
Don't let one bad person ruin your life.
Don't let bad people dictate for you the reality of the Lord Jesus Christ and His love and His grace and His mercy.
Look, Pastor Wilkinson is probably one of the most gracious pastors out there.
You can almost argue maybe a little too gracious if anything.
But if we talk about this issue, we need to side with him and encourage him to stand for the church or the Lord Jesus Christ and to not be intimidated by these protesters, not to kowtow by these protesters.
Because I noticed comments. He made a public video and a public statement about this.
Here's some of the comments I was reading.
And look, what Pastor Wilkinson said was probably about as gracious as someone could ever be.
Like just being as kind and as gracious and if anything maybe a little too gracious.
But certainly not digging in, making excuses, I mean just being very gracious about the whole situation.
And sympathizing for anybody that's been abused or hurt by anybody.
But even then, even when you give the most sincere and the most gracious attitude and you just say, you know, I'm trying to help as many people as possible, this is the comments that he gets.
Wilkerson needs to condemn Hiles and his crowd that have covered up the abuse that still goes on.
Started with Hiles and that's where true contrition would be visible.
So now it's not enough for them to apologize or to say they're going to do better or to be gracious or to extend mercy to these people.
Now you have to condemn Jack Hiles.
Why?
Because they'll never be done.
And as soon as you condemn him, it'll be like, oh, and then condemn this person.
And in fact, you should shut the whole thing down because the whole thing's just broken.
But let me tell you something, no, you're broken.
And you know what? Don't kowtow to these trolls.
Don't kowtow to these protesters.
Don't give in.
Don't think that they're sincere because they're not.
They're not sincere.
And look, there might be a few that are, but I'm just saying generally speaking, these type of people are not sincere people.
And look, the type of grace that should be offered a victim is come in the Lord Jesus Christ's house and we'll help you.
We'll teach you the Bible.
We'll love on you.
We'll try to give you counseling, right?
That's the kind of help, that's the kind of offer that we have here.
But you know what?
We're not going to sit here and hold your hand while you scream at our church.
No, now you're attacking the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's a boundary.
I am not going to support that.
Here's another comment.
It's about time somebody protested First Baptist Church.
Maybe there were others, but this is the first time I've heard of it happening.
So some people are just excited that anybody's protesting this church.
That's not a sincere person, folks.
Look, and you're going to have an increase of protests in this country.
And if there's anything that we have experience in, it's protests, okay?
And let me tell you, independent fundamental Baptist pastors, don't cater to them.
Don't give in to them.
Don't side with them.
Don't sympathize with them.
You stand for the Lord Jesus Christ and you know what?
They'll move on.
They moved on from us and they'll move on again.
Whenever you try to negotiate with these terrorists, it just brings problems.
The fear of man is a snare and a trap.
Do not get sucked into this.
Do not try to appease the world.
Nuts to the world.
I don't care if there's 10,000 lined up against me.
And you know what?
You as a member of this church, you better not side with protesters against any church.
And if you do, you better hope I never find out about it.
Because I won't take kindly to that.
I don't care what church it was.
I don't care if it was a non-denom church, okay?
I don't want to hear that junk.
You better get your booty in church, all right?
I would rather you go to the non-denom church than protest one, okay?
And I'm not encouraging you to go to a non-denom church.
That's probably what people think.
Go to Revelation chapter 2.
Point one's my super long point, okay?
I could probably preach the whole sermon on it.
But I stand with First Baptist Church in Indiana, and I stand with every church of God.
And you know, I stand with the people.
You know, when we say church, we're not talking about a building.
You know what church means?
Congregation. You know what it means? It means you.
I stand with you. I stand for you. I stand for your children.
I stand for the people that Jesus Christ bled and died for.
For the souls of men.
That's why we even have church, folks.
We're not here to reach lost people.
We're here to comfort the saved.
We're here to exhort the saved.
We're here to embolden the saved to go out and do more works.
We're here also to guard the flock from the wolves.
And you know what we need to do is we need to condemn the wicked.
Point one is we need to stand with the church.
Point two is we need to condemn the wicked, okay?
Revelation chapter 2, look at verse 20.
It says...
Now this is an important point.
Point one was you stand with the church.
This church has a bad person in it. Jezebel.
And she's not alone.
There's other people that have committed adultery with her.
What is Jesus Christ doing?
Condemning them, but then still standing for the church.
He's not saying, let's shut down Thyatira.
He's not saying, let's protest Thyatira.
He's not saying people shouldn't go to Thyatira.
What does he say?
Hey, I'm going to kill those people.
And then the rest of you, you know that?
All of you that weren't involved in this?
All of you that weren't doing this wickedness?
What's your commission?
Well, he says this,
I will put upon you none of the burden,
but that which ye have already,
hold fast like hell.
Keep going to church.
Keep singing praises.
Keep going soul winning.
Does this say stand against the church
and protest until Jezebel steps down?
No, no, no.
It's just keep going to church.
I'll kill her.
Don't worry.
And you just keep going.
I mean, what if you came to this church
and there was a bad person in it?
What do you do?
Just keep going and then God will take care of that bad person.
And it happens.
It has happened.
It will continue to happen, okay?
You know what?
Don't give up on church because of a bad person.
Condemn the wicked.
Sure, let's do that.
I'm all for it.
But you know what?
I'm not going to protest the church.
I'm going to keep going.
Go if you would to Romans chapter 16.
I'll read for you from Deuteronomy.
If there be a controversy between men
and they come into judgment,
that the judges may judge them,
then they shall justify the righteous
and condemn the wicked.
Important.
So we're not just condemning the wicked.
We are also justifying the righteous.
Meaning when you look at an institution
like First Baptist Church, Hammond, Indiana,
you know what we're going to do?
We're going to justify the righteous
Pastor John Wilkerson
and we're going to condemn the wicked
Pastor Jack Scott.
You know what we're not going to do?
We're not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
We're not going to, hey, when you get a baby
and you wash it in a bath,
that bathwater is dirty.
I'm not going to take that tub
and dump it off the cliff
because I love my precious baby.
I'm going to take the precious clean baby out of the water
and then I'm going to get rid of the water.
Just like, hey, I'm going to keep all the good people
of First Baptist Church, Hammond, Indiana
and I'm going to love them
and I'm going to justify them
because they're righteous
and they're doing what's right
and they're standing up for the Lord Jesus Christ
and I'm going to condemn the wicked abusers,
condemn the wicked evil people.
And that's how we should look at every church.
We should justify the righteous
and we should condemn the wicked.
But we should not get this just easy attitude
of just, they're all good, they're all bad.
No, no, no, no.
And people err on both sides of this equation.
Don't go to either.
They're all good?
No, no, no, no, no.
They're all bad?
No, no, no, no, no.
He's bad, he's good.
Okay, this is the type of mentality
that we need to have.
Look at Romans chapter 16 verse 17.
Now I beseech you, brethren,
mark them which caused the visions and offenses
contrary to the doctrine which you have learned
and avoid them.
What is the Bible saying?
We need to mark people.
That's why it's important for the church,
the pastor, to mark the wolves, mark bad people.
You know, the former pastor of this church,
Pastor Romero, Donnie Romero,
should never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever
hold any position of authority in a church ever again.
And he should be publicly marked.
Now does that mean that we can't forgive him
and let him just live his life and be a Christian?
No, we should love him and let him move on in his life.
And hey, you want to be a soul winner?
Go for it.
I hope you win thousands of Christ.
I hope you teach and train your children
to be great soul winners.
But you know what?
If he starts pastoring again,
you better believe I'm preaching hard against that crap.
That is junk.
I don't care if he becomes an assistant pastor.
I'm coming after that.
If he becomes a deacon, I'm coming after that.
Not because I don't like him,
because I stand with the church of God.
And we are supposed to stand with the church of God.
And we are supposed to what?
Justify the righteous and condemn the wicked.
And you know what?
When there's a wicked person, we have to deal with them.
1 Corinthians 5 makes it abundantly clear
not everybody's welcome at church.
The drunk isn't welcome at church.
The person that's a railer is not welcome at church.
And you know what?
It makes me so mad that I see people railing online,
on social media, and pastors notice
their church members railing online,
and then they're still going to their church.
That's a joke.
You better not ever have me catch you railing,
because I will deal with it.
I have dealt with people.
I will deal with people.
And you know, you come to this church,
and you recognize,
Peter Shelley doesn't just have fun up here.
He's not just playing church.
This is real church, and I will deal with issues.
And I'm sick and tired of all the railing that goes on,
and people talking trash on pastors,
and saying all kinds of just evil,
and then people not dealing with them.
Hey, you rail on a pastor that's a good man,
you're not coming to church on Sunday morning,
and if you do, you'll get named publicly,
and we'll pick you up and throw you out of the building,
until you repent, until you get it right,
until you apologize to that pastor,
until you take the post down, until you do whatever.
But you know what?
It's just ridiculous how pastors allow people to do that.
When 1 Corinthians is super clear,
and it says that you're supposed to put away from yourselves
that wicked person.
We're supposed to condemn the wicked.
And then, of course, you know why churches sometimes
get a bad rep?
Because they don't deal with wicked people.
We need to deal with wicked people.
We need to mark and avoid people.
Oh, you're not loving.
No, you know what?
I love the children in this room.
You know what?
I love my friends.
You know what?
I love church.
I love the Lord Jesus Christ.
I love the Bible.
You know, what does it say about you
when you don't exercise 1 Corinthians 5?
How can you say you love that chapter?
Do you really love it?
Do you really love every single chapter of the Bible?
Do you really love every single word of God?
Do you really abide by every single word of God?
Because you know what?
This church needs to be a church that says
we love every single word of God.
Even when we're guilty.
Even when we're the person that has to be dealt with.
Even when we're the one that's wrong.
Even when we have to go through something uncomfortable.
You know, we should love the Bible.
You know, and these wicked, evil people,
Jesus Christ called out.
He called out the scribes and the Pharisees.
He said they devour widows' houses
and for a pretense make long prayers.
And he condemned the wicked.
He condemned the Pharisees.
He condemned the Sadducees.
He condemned the scribes.
We'll go to 2 Timothy, chapter 3.
And let me tell you something.
There's a reason why abuse is happening in churches a lot.
And it's number one,
because they're not condemning wicked people.
If we would condemn wicked people,
if we would exercise church discipline once again,
if we would actually mark and avoid people,
it would greatly reduce the amount of freaks and weirdos.
And this church is no exception.
There is dozens of people that have come to this church
that are weirdos and freaks and all kinds of serious issues.
And if they were still in this church,
who knows what they would have done.
You know, you have to deal with these people.
They're dangerous. They're dangerous.
Just like I would rather have a pet wolf
than be hanging around with a flat earther all day.
Because I already know what that wolf's capable of,
and I can kind of lock him up.
You don't know what that flat earther's capable of.
He thinks the earth is flat, folks!
Like, that is so retarded!
He's, like, mentally handicapped,
but in a spiritually dark way.
Like, you know, some people, they're so mentally handicapped
that they can't hold, like, a knife or sharp instruments
because they could hurt themselves, they could hurt others
because there's involuntary reactions.
That is like a flat earther.
They should not be allowed to drive vehicles.
You're afraid of Elon Musk's, like, auto driving feature?
I'm afraid of flat earthers driving vehicles.
I'm not joking.
It's funny, but it's not at the same time.
These people are that bad.
And you know what? I'm telling you.
You need to get some of these evil, wicked people out of church.
I don't want them around my kids.
You know, one of those wicked evil people was in our church
and he would constantly, like, push kids and throwing people around
and horsing around and doing all kinds of weird stuff
and you're thinking, like, dude, stop touching my child.
Stop horsing around.
Like, what are you doing?
And you've got to wonder, like, what's with this creeper?
What's with this person?
I mean, imagine if we were letting him hang out with children
and no one's watching.
What about in the backyard? Or what about at an event?
You never know what these freaks are going to do.
And if you're not consistently condemning wicked people
and getting them out of there, you know what?
You're just making yourself a target.
And not only just wicked people.
How about reprobates?
Churches have stopped preaching the reprobate doctrine.
And you know what?
Pastor Jack Hiles used to preach the reprobate doctrine.
They need to get back to that.
Pastor John Wilkerson preached the reprobate doctrine.
Hey, have some of your members realize
some of these protesters might just be reprobates.
Like, I feel bad for them. I feel sorry for them.
You know, the Bible talks about some reprobates as being cursed children.
Have you ever read that?
Who's read that in their Bible? Okay.
Do you know that actually means something?
God didn't just give you things in the Bible for no reason?
That means that some reprobates had a horrible childhood.
Does that... Oh, let's bring them in then.
Just because someone was abused
or just because someone had a horrible childhood
does not mean they just get grace automatically.
Just like someone's a Jew, they don't automatically get grace
and everything they do is right.
And just because someone was a victim
doesn't mean they automatically get grace
and they're always right in everything they do.
No, we're supposed to justify the righteous and condemn the wicked.
And you know what?
There's plenty of people that have been abused,
but they're just wicked as hell too.
And we need to look at that person and examine them
and say, you know what?
I'm not just going to bring anybody in.
We need to preach reprobate doctrine.
Look what it says in verse 8.
2 Timothy chapter 3 verse 8.
Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses,
so do these also resist the truth.
Men of corrupt minds reprobate concerning the faith.
Notice the people protesting.
Are the protesters in this chapter and this verse in the Bible,
are these the good people?
Should we stand with Jannes and Jambres?
Should we stand with the people against Moses?
No!
Usually the instigators and the ringleaders of this
are always reprobates, folks.
There's some documentary that came out called Let Us Pray.
Look, the main architects of this film and documentary are reprobates.
I haven't even watched it.
I don't even want to watch it.
I don't want to sit here and just listen to more Jannes and Jambres
talk garbage on the Church of Jesus Christ.
Oh, but they point out a bad person.
Oh, I'm shocked.
Okay, well, condemn that person.
But you know what?
I'm not interested in sitting here
and listening to a bunch of reprobates talk
because I've heard, and I can't confirm,
I've heard this documentary includes Pastor Hiles and Pastor Anderson
in the documentary.
And I guarantee the things they said about them were lies.
Look at verse 9.
But they shall proceed no further,
for their folly shall be manifested on all men as theirs also was.
Meaning we don't stand with them.
We expose their stupidity.
You know, point one, we need to stand for the Church of God.
Point two, we need to condemn the wicked.
Point three, we need to preach the reprobate doctrine again.
And point four is we need to mark and avoid false teachers.
Mark and avoid false teachers.
Go through it in 1 Samuel chapter 2.
I'm almost finished this morning, but this is what I want you to realize.
Why abuse is constantly happening in a lot of these churches
is because they're not exercising church discipline.
They're not preaching against reprobates.
They welcome reprobates into their church.
And then number three, they hang around with people that preach false doctrine.
And boy, you want to know what creates reprobates?
It's false doctrine.
There are so many Baptists today that are preaching repent of your sins.
And let me tell you something.
They're not saved.
But there's so many Baptists that cater to them and pretend like they're their friend
and still bring them to their conferences and hang out with them.
And then what ends up happening is that pastor or their assistant pastor ends up being a predator
because the church isn't even saved.
The leadership isn't even saved.
The churches would get up and say,
hey, I'm not hanging out with those freaks because they're not even saved.
It would actually make the church look better because then we'd say,
of course there's predators in that church.
We already marked them because they're preaching a false gospel.
Why am I shocked when a church that has the gospel wrong has predators in it?
It's the Catholic Church.
It's the United Methodist Church.
It's the Baptist Church that's bringing in sodomites and preaching a false gospel.
Oh, I'm shocked that they have predators in their church.
But you know what?
There's a lot of Baptists today that won't call out preachers for preaching repent of your sins
and as a result of that, they're enabling predators.
They're encouraging predators.
And they're just making church look bad as a whole.
Look at 1 Samuel 2, look at verse 22.
Now Eli was very old and heard all that his sons did unto all Israel.
And now they lay with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.
Here's a good example of sexual abuse of predators in the church.
These are the pastors, these are the priests, these are the men of God and they're committing adultery.
Now I can prove that.
Go to chapter 4, go to chapter 4 and verse 19.
Now it doesn't give a timeline but I believe this has got to be coinciding timelines.
Look at chapter 4 verse 19.
And his daughter-in-law Phinehas' wife was with child.
Let me explain something.
When you have a wife and you're laying with women assembled at the door, it's called adultery, folks.
So these guys are married but they're committing rampant adultery.
And you know what it makes you think of?
It makes you think of passages like in 2 Peter where it says,
having eyes full of adultery that cannot cease from sin beguiling unstable souls.
Hearts that have exercised with covetous practices.
Oh, what is Hophni and Phinehas like?
Oh, give me the fat, give me the portion now.
They're covetous, they're fat, they're laying with the women assembled at the door.
You know, they're false prophets, they're false teachers.
And instead of their dad, and I get it because the nepotism was probably harder,
but the dad should have marked them and avoided them and got rid of them.
But he just kept letting them pastor, kept letting them be a priest, kept letting them shepherd,
kept letting them be in leadership position.
You know what? Pastors need to hold everyone accountable, even their sons.
And let's be honest, there's been plenty of examples where the pastor's son is a pervert.
I mean, and again, or son-in-law.
Jack Hyles, Jack Scott. Does that make Eli bad? No.
Eli is a man of God. Eli is saved. Eli is in heaven.
But you know what? His sons are in hell.
And you know what? Jack Scott, when he dies, is going to burn in hell.
But you know what? Jack Hyles is looking down from heaven right now.
And I'm not going to sit here and get mad at the fact that Jack Hyles is in heaven or something,
or condemn First Baptist Church in Indiana, or go against their church just because Jack Scott exists.
Yeah. Is there a mistake there? Probably.
I mean, look. You've got to take your son-in-law out soul winning and, you know, date him for a while, okay?
I mean, you're going to date me before you date my daughter. That's guaranteed.
That's just a fact, okay? And I'm not buying the meals, okay?
I've got to get this dowry somehow. You know what I mean? We're bringing dowries back, okay?
And if you're kind of a bozo guy, the price went up, okay?
It's like, what can you not afford? That's the price, you know? That's basically how it's going to work.
But I'm telling you, you know, it's important.
And I guarantee when you're running that big a church, that big a ministry, it's easy to make mistakes.
Did he make some mistakes? I'm sure he did because he's human. Everyone makes mistakes.
But at the end of the day, hey, when we have someone that's preaching false doctrine, get rid of them.
Hey, you became friends with somebody and you like them, but they're preaching false doctrine? Get rid of them.
Hey, you catch a pastor that you like, but he's laying with women that he shouldn't? Get rid of them.
Bye. Sorry. You're done. Get out of here.
That's, you know, that's the reality. And let's just be honest, this is a commonality in false preachers is they commit a lot of adultery.
Now, I'm not saying that every single guy that did that is a reprobate or something, because even David stumbled, okay?
And we understand that. But generally speaking, it is a mark of a false prophet and a false teacher, especially when they can't stop.
That's kind of the more, it's, you know, David stopped. He did it, but he didn't keep doing it, right?
These guys and with the false prophets, they just can't, they can't help themselves.
That's all they're going to do, because they know that as soon as they die, they're going to hell.
So they're just trying to live it up now. Go over to 2 Peter chapter 2. We'll finish there.
2 Peter chapter 2. What's the title of the sermon?
I stand with First Baptist Church, Hammond, Indiana.
Oh, you support abuse. I don't support any abuse.
Are you kidding? Have you been listening to the sermon?
Have you listened to any of our preaching ever?
Like, that's ridiculous. The only reason I'm even the pastor of this church is because I didn't stand for abuse.
I mean, couldn't, none of you knew on Monday that Pastor Amero was in the situation he was in.
None of you knew on Tuesday. None of you knew, I mean, well, maybe a few, I don't know.
There could be like a few examples, but apart from just a few key people, almost no one even knew.
And the only reason those people knew is because it was coming down the pike on purpose.
But couldn't me and Pastor Anderson or Pastor Anderson himself just said,
you know what, I know this is bad, but you do you.
Are you coming to the conference this week?
Are you going to come preach to my church next week?
I mean, oh, hey, Pastor Amero, when are you going to come preach for Pure Words?
I mean, couldn't we have done that?
Who was stopping us from doing that?
Oh, do you think we were like, you know, this is going to make us look good.
Oh, this is going to be a lot of fun.
Oh, man, I just can't wait to sell my house and take a complete just loss on that and move up here.
That just looks like a lot of enjoyment.
I really want to just make all these videos against Fanon, you know.
Now, partly that was kind of fun.
But I didn't plan on doing that.
I'm just saying, I mean, do you really think that we're advocating for abuse?
We literally had that issue and we dealt with it.
I mean, we were probably one of the most public abuse situations in just recent church history.
I mean, we have all kinds of articles.
I was being interviewed by like NBC and all kinds of different institutions.
They're trying to twist my words and say all kinds of weird stuff.
I mean, you just type in Jonathan Shelley and Google, it's a nuclear bomb, folks, okay.
I mean, it's bad.
And it's bad from the world perspective.
From mine, I don't care.
Everything I said, everything I did, I agree with.
So, I'm like, yeah, I still agree with that.
That was a good point, you know.
I didn't preach on that again.
But I'm just saying, like, from the world, I mean, they're like, oh, you're so bad and so evil and so horrible.
You know.
But you know what they can't accuse us of?
Covering up abuse.
Didn't happen, folks.
Not going to happen.
And you know what, I would never cover up abuse.
If someone from First Baptist Church, Indiana, called me, if Pastor John Wilkerson called me and said,
hey, Pastor Shelley, we have all this abuse and we need to cover it up, how will you help us?
I'd be like, I'm going to immediately make a video and tell everybody what you just said.
That's how I'm going to help you, okay.
I mean, I'm not going to cover anything up.
I'm not going to be like, oh, you got a bad pastor?
You got an abuser?
Bring him on down.
We could use one of those.
No.
That's sick and weird, okay.
So we're not going to cover anything up, but we're going to stand with the church of God.
Number two, we're going to condemn the wicked.
Number three, we're going to preach the reprobate doctrine.
And number four, as we just proved, we're going to mark and avoid false teachers.
When you do this, you're going to reduce the abuse a lot.
We're never going to get 100% away from it.
That's why we always stand with the church.
But you know what, we need to also encourage our brethren to start employing these tactics.
Get some boldness, get some courage, kick people out of church.
Start preaching the reprobate doctrine.
And then also start marking and avoiding these preachers that are preaching a false gospel.
It says in 2 Peter 2,
But these as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed,
speak evil of the things that they understand not,
and shall utterly perish in their own corruption,
and shall receive the reward of unrighteousness,
as they that count it pleasure to riot in the daytime,
spots they are, and blemishes,
sporting themselves with their own deceivings while they feast with you,
having eyes full of adultery,
and that cannot cease from sin,
beguiling unstable souls,
and heart they have exercised with covetous practices,
cursed children,
which have forsaken the right way,
and are gone astray, falling away of Balaam the son of Bozor,
who loved the wages of unrighteousness,
but was rebuked for his iniquity,
the dumb-ass speaking with the man's voice forbade the madness of the prophet.
We need some more ass's voices to get out there
and forbid the madness of the prophet.
And say, what did you just say?
No, repent of your sins is not a requirement for salvation, liar.
You freak.
Get out of the pulpit.
Learn the Bible.
Quit preaching false doctrine.
We should call them out.
Oh, how dare you stand against a brother in Christ.
Not everybody's a brother in Christ.
Wake up.
Recognize that these people exist
and that they're evil
and that they only care about money.
And, you know, what's interesting in this passage
is how they even have cursed children.
You know, just because they're a victim
doesn't mean I just think they're good.
You know, how about Pastor Stacey Shiflett?
Pastor Stacey Shiflett is a cursed children.
He was molested multiple times
and then propositioned again
by another pastor.
And he's written a whole book about lambs amongst wolves.
And I liked the book, except for the end.
I liked the book and then he said,
oh, you got to repent of your sins.
And then people called him out on it
and he wouldn't answer their questions.
And then he preaches hardcore repentance now.
Hey, and he's got some weirdos in his church.
His piano guy
if he's saved, he's the most effeminate person.
And you know what, he just happens to be
the president of their school.
And let's just say that guy's fine.
Let's just say Aiden is fine.
Aiden isn't gay, okay?
Well, you know what?
He's definitely a queerbait.
You say, what's a queerbait?
Someone that attracts queers
and attracts predators.
Let me tell you something.
No one will ever be allowed
in any leadership position of this church
and any capacity if they're effeminate.
You won't even be able to be the talker at the door.
Because you know what happens
when you let some people be effeminate?
Then you enable the opportunity
for a creeper to come in.
And then it's like, well, do we give this guy grace or not?
Because we don't know.
And it's just like, no.
If you sound like a queer,
you're a queer.
If he sounds like a queer,
and he acts like a queer,
he's probably a queer.
And we're going to get rid of your queer.
Hit the road, Jack.
I don't want any queers in my church!
And you know what?
It's not a shocker that the guy
that doesn't preach clear on salvation
also has queerbaits in his church.
Has people that are effeminate in his church.
No, but he stood against abuse.
Maybe that's a smokescreen
to make you feel all comfortable inside.
And like, oh, okay.
I'm telling you, folks,
this world is getting crazy.
And you know what? We need to demark people.
And you know what?
Pastor Shifflet, even if he was saved,
I don't know that he is.
Even if he is, he needs to get that right.
And he needs to tighten things up.
He acts like he's such a tight ship.
Well, how about you stop having guys
who actually preach a clear, free salvation
if you're saved?
And you know what?
We should mark those people and say,
I'm not going to have anything to do with you
until you fix those issues.
Because if another scandal happens in that church,
I will not be shocked.
But you know what?
We should stand for the people of God
and the church of God
and warn them against predators like that.
So that doesn't happen.
But you know what?
I stand with every single church.
I'm never going to protest them.
I'm never going to protest Stacey Shifflet's church.
But you know what?
We should mark and avoid certain people.
We should condemn the wicked.
And I pray that you will have a heart
and a desire to build the church of God,
not tear it down.
Thank you Heavenly Father so much
for giving us this church,
for giving us this institution
with the sacrifice of your son.
And that we could have this morning here
where we can sing praises.
Thank you for taking all these disgusting,
evil protesters away from us.
I don't have to see their ugly faces
and their ugly hearts
and their ugly voices and their ugly words.
And I pray that you would just help
these other churches that are struggling with protesters.
I pray that you would just destroy them,
that you would just cause evil upon them,
sudden destruction, calamity, confusion.
And I pray that you would just give wisdom
and boldness to these churches
that are being afflicted right now.
That they would have the boldness
to stand with the church.
They would have the boldness
to kick people out of church
that needed to be kicked out.
They would have the boldness
to preach the reprobate doctrine.
And they would have the boldness
to mark and avoid false teachers.
I pray that you would strengthen
the church of God in this country
and in the world.
That we would have even better churches.
That we could clean up
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ
by getting rid of a lot of these abusers
and these wicked people.
And that we could have a love and appreciation
for God's word again.
And that we could give you glory and honor.
And it's Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
All right, for our last song,
431 Silent Night, Holy Night.
432 Silent Night, Holy Night.
433 Silent Night, Holy Night.
434 All is calm, all is bright,
round your Virgin Mother and Child.
All the infant songs never end while.
Sleep with heavenly peace.
Silent night, holy night.
Shepherds play at the sight.
Holy street from heaven afar.
Let people sing hallelujah.
Christ the Savior is born.
Silent night, holy night.
Son of God, lost through night.
Pray with me from God only praise.
With the thought of redeeming praise.
Jesus, Lord, and thy birth.
Silent night, holy night.
Wondrous star, let thy light.
With the angels let us sing.
Hallelujah to our King.
Christ the Savior is born.
Hallelujah to our King.