and welcome to steadfast baptist church great to see everybody here as we find our seats let's go
ahead and grab a hymnal almost well actually we're going to start this morning off towards the back
you'll find some sheet music with oh come come emmanuel towards the back sing it out sing that
out thank you so much for sending your son to die for us sending emmanuel or we love you we just
ask you to bless this church that's the singing this morning fill us all with your spirit as we
sing out unto you and it's in jesus name that we pray our next song let's go to our hymnals
go to song number 425 let's all sing that out together this morning thank you for minutes at
vast baptist church if you did not already get a bulletin you'd like one just lift up your hand
nice and high we'll get you a bulletin on the front we have memory passage romans 10 we're on
verse number two you can quote the entire verse child 18 and under you can get a treat on wednesday
nights if you can quote the entire chapter to a non-female member you can receive a special prize
that we give out when we complete the entire chapter on the inside is our service and soul
winning times also our church stats keep up the great work on our soul winning try to finish the
year strong on the right is a list of several expecting ladies although one of those we have
an update for hannah villaril we have a little handout in here congratulations to the villarils
on the birth of their daughter chloe isabella she was born on the 11th 3 18 p.m seven pounds five
ounces and 20 and a half inches long congratulations then so uh continue to pray for the villarils and
also the other expecting ladies that we have here um children's choir is going to continue to practice
immediately following the evening service so they'll have another practice tonight upcoming
events uh that december 21st sunday morning is going to be when our child's choirs perform so
if you would want to make sure to be here for that also that evening we're going to have our
christmas cookie bake off there really isn't any rules as far as uh what kind of cookies you can
bring any kind of cookies that you want if you want to do well chocolate is advised and uh so
and of also bringing a large quantity huge batches is usually going to be in your favor just because
it gives you a higher likelihood of more people wanting to vote for you um i will will say that
in years past especially in the categories of most creative and best decorated there's been some
excellent entries and so uh you got to bring your a plus plus game if you want to compete um in our
christmas cookie competition but um they're always a lot of fun we really enjoy it christmas candlelight
service is gonna be december 24th men's preaching and pizza december 31st there's a uh free marriage
workshop that we are offering january 23rd to the 24th um did we put a sign-up sheet yeah we
have a sign-up sheet out on our welcome table if there's any you know older teenagers or adults
single adults or something that just want to help with some free child care activities that
we're going to do during the conference we have a sign-up sheet and we'd love for some people to
volunteer for that also if you haven't signed up and you would like to participate in our marriage
workshop it's a free event you can go to steadfast vows.com and there's a way to click on a link
there to register and just kind of fill out just a little bit of information just so we make sure we
understand everybody that is coming and we're really looking forward to it it's not going to
be here at the church it's going to be somewhere else it's going to be really nice there's going
to be lots of different things that are going to be a part of that event and so I highly encourage
people to participate whether you have the worst or best marriage all are invited so it doesn't
really matter the goal is basically to have the attitude of hey we're stuck with each other so we
might as well make the best of our situation whether that be you know just plugging away
or just taking it to another level the event itself and just to give you a little bit of advice
or a little bit of tips as far as what's going to happen it's not going to really be just like a
lecture it's going to be mostly just like doing stuff together with your spouse so it's going to
have a lot of just activities and things that you are just kind of working through and just
spending time together and you know from so so it's really a partner event it's not really like
something where i'm going to get up and just preach sermons or something it's not really like
that it's more designed where you actually do interactive things with your spouse and just try
to work on your relationship so from my perspective you know listening to me preach for five hours
isn't going to make your marriage better you talking your spouse for five hours is going to
possibly help make your marriage better so that is the goal that is kind of the design of what
we're going to do and so i'm really looking forward to it if you want to participate again
it's completely free and then there's some other options optional things that are go on
with that event just make sure to look online it gives you a lot of details there's a do it yourself
missions trip january 26 through february 4th vangelis fir he's not here today but he's a great
contact brother marcel's also going on that trip you could ask them about it i know there's i think
there's like maybe almost a dozen people from our church going on this particular missions trip and
so really looking forward to it i spoke with vangelis or bannock this week and he's trying
to plan some things for that particular time frame and even if we can't go let's just pray
that it's a successful event i think again flights have been pretty cheap maybe historically cheap
for that time of year going out there and so if you'd like to participate it's never been an
easier time to go out to the philippines on the back is our prayer list and then just as a quick
reminder i noticed there's a couple over here but if you haven't returned the gifts from the ribbons
that were put on the tree please make sure to do that at least by this the the 21st would really
appreciate it and we appreciate you for just providing gifts for our expecting ladies that's
pretty much all i have as far as announcements we're going to sing our psalm of the week it's psalm
148 and our special binders so if you get those out psalm 148 that was psalm 148 psalm 148 let's all
sing it out together this body now after being passed around go ahead and open your bibles to
first corinthians chapter number five the book of first corinthians chapter number corinthians five
the bible reads it is reported commonly that there is fornication among you and such fornication as
is not so much as named among the gentiles that one should have his father's wife and he are puffed
up and have not rather mourned that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you
for i verily as absent in body but present in spirit have judged already as though i were
present concerning him that hath so done this deed in the name of our lord jesus christ when
ye are gathered together and my spirit with the power of our lord jesus christ to deliver such
and one unto satan for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit may be saved in the day of
the lord jesus your glorying is not good know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump
purge out therefore the old leaven that ye may be a new lump as ye are unleavened for even christ our
Passover is sacrificed for us therefore let us keep the feast not with old leaven neither with
the leaven of malice and wickedness but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth i wrote
under you in an epistle not to company with fornicators yet not all together with the
fornicators of this world or with the covetous or extortioners or with idolaters for then must
he needs go out of the world but now i have written under you not to keep company if any man that is
called a brother be a fornicator or covetous or an idolater or a railer or a drunkard or an extortioner
with such in one no not to eat for what have i to do to judge them also that are without do not you
judge them that are within but them that are without god judge it therefore put away from
among yourselves that wicked person let's bow our heads for a word of prayer father in heaven we
thank you for this day and i pray lord god that you fill pastor shelly with your spirit and help
him to preach the sermon you've laid on his heart with clarity of mind with boldness and help us
lord to apply this sermon to our lives so we could serve you better and be better christians
we love you in jesus name i pray amen amen first corinthians 5 look at verse 8 the bible says
therefore let us keep the feast not with old levin neither with the levin of malice and wickedness
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth the bible uses the word here in verse number
8 malice now in this particular passage we're talking about someone being in grievous sin
someone being a fornicator and as a result they're supposed to be church disciplined until
they get right in that particular situation and that it's not good for a church to just tolerate
anything and everything and it kind of brings up two different things here in this passage it says
the leaven of malice and wickedness now wickedness i believe is mostly what's being described here in
first gremlins chapter number five when you look at verse number 11 it talks about people that are
in certain sins that should not be tolerated in church what are these notice fornicator covetous
idolater railer drunkard extortioner it says we're not even supposed to eat with those individuals
now of course this is not a list of sins on which someone has committed ever it's an active
unrepentant lifestyle so someone that's in an active unrepentant fornication lifestyle
or is unrepentant covetousness or unrepentant idolatry or unrepentant railing unrepentant
drunkenness unrepentant extortioning you know then we would want to ex-communicate that person
temporarily say you're not allowed to be here until you get that right once you get that right
you're allowed to come back so we don't want to come to church and worship god with people that
are exercising these lifestyles in our congregation that would be having the leaven of wickedness
but additionally it says the leaven of malice now malice is a little bit more difficult of a word
i think for most of us we don't necessarily think of it that much we don't use it that much
according to the dictionary this is what it says it says malice is a desire to harm others or to see
others suffer extreme ill will or spite so really if you kind of think about it it's like a hatred
it's really kind of what it's talking about like you hate other people and especially in the context
here it's talking about like hatred towards the brethren hatred towards each other probably the
most similar sin that's being brought up in this particular chapter is probably that of railing
where you're essentially lying about or falsely accusing people in the church often this comes with
malice it comes with the intent to harm it's because of hatred towards someone that you would
be tempted to rail against them to lie or slander them or to falsely accuse them and the bible is
really clear that we don't want a church where people are in it that have malice one toward
another hatred one toward another wishing evil towards each other or harm towards each other
and you know in our christian life we should not spend our lives dwelling with malice malice is a
bad behavior a bad attribute it's actually mentioned several times in the new testament
i want to go to a few more places go to aphesians chapter four aphesians chapter four but it stands
the reason that we should never want to go to church where the people in the room next to us
want to harm us right and it should be a safe place church should be a safe place you should
be able to come here and not feel like people hate you and they're wishing evil and they're
going to lie about you and they're going to slander you and they're going to attack you and
they're vicious like it would make no sense to say that that should be tolerated in the house of god
now look that does not mean that we all have to be best friends that doesn't mean you have to
hang out with each other all the time that doesn't mean you have to sit next to every single person
but you shouldn't have malice one toward another that you just not be tolerated not allowed just in
the same vein that we don't tolerate the fornication we don't tolerate the drunkenness we shouldn't
allow people to come in here just drunk and just sitting here and just being a a blithering idiot
you know we should address that situation in the same way if someone's coming in here with hatred
and malice towards another person in this in this room we should deal with that particular issue
and you know you should not live your life just having this malice towards brothers and sisters
in christ okay hatred wishing ill wanting to see them suffer this is just a carnal attitude now
athesis chapter 4 the bible says in verse 25 wherefore putting away lying speak every man
truth with his neighbor for we are members one of another now again in first corinthians chapter 5
it said that we need to come to church with sincerity and truth you know we should not lie
to our brethren we should be truthful to our brethren and we want to speak truth to each other
we don't want to lie to each other why would someone lie a couple reasons number one either
to flatter you or essentially to deceive you so they can harm you later okay and again that's
kind of the same thing but people will lie to you because they want to harm you and afflict you and
we're gonna look into the passage on that but the bible is saying we should not lie to each other
like we should be this is the house of god it's supposed to be the house of truth it's supposed
to be the pillar and ground of the truth we shouldn't come to church and lie to each other
we should be honest we should be straightforward we should we should say what is right and so we
should put that away that's what the bible says this is this is the main sin of the tongue is
lying to each other and and hiding and concealing how you really feel being deceitful verse 26 be
angry and sin not let not the sun go down upon your wrath now again you can't control the natural
response and the natural emotions you have okay obviously if someone walks up to you and just
spills coffee all over you you could get angry if someone you know does something harmful to you
someone rams their car into your car it might cause you to feel anger in the moment like there's
going to be things that happen and you just feel anger and there's nothing wrong with that that's
just natural this is what happens right one kid's mean to another kid you experience anger
someone does something wrong to you someone harms you someone does something says something is mean
you know maybe someone says something you know a little bit mildly inappropriate
or is is this kind of like saying something stupid to you and it hurts your feelings that's normal
that's gonna happen okay but what does the bible say be angry and sin not let not the sun go down
upon your wrath neither give place to the devil what happens though when someone does this to you
is you're supposed to figure out a way to resolve it you know talk to the person address it with
them if it's not a big deal let it go if you can't let it go then address it but here's the problem
that a lot of people have even after they address it they still don't let it go you kind of have to
still then let it go or move on with your life because if you don't what ends up happening is
it starts to grow it starts to fester and it becomes more bitter and that bitterness can turn
into hatred and then it turns into malice where you essentially you're just hoping like i hope
someone hits their car you know oh man i hope i hope someone i hope someone spills coffee all over
them you know i help their kids you know something bad happens to their kids you know it's just like
this it's just like this angry just bitter malice hatred towards people and you know what this is a
destructive attitude and notice what it says that we shouldn't give place to the devil the devil
would love it if we all just start hating each other if we all start having bitterness and anger
that's unresolved tension conflict and we're wishing evil upon each other you know we should
have the exact opposite attitude we're constantly wishing well for one another we're wishing good
for each other we like each other says in verse 28 let him that stole steal no more but rather let
him labor working with his hands the thing which is good that he may have to give to him that
needeth you know it's kind of random here in verse 28 it's like lying and attacking your brother
and hating him and there's like randomly stealing and then it keeps going back to this thought of
like not attacking them verbally it almost seems like reading between the lines maybe a lot of
people are mad because someone stole from another person or they ripped them off or they took
advantage of them or maybe they borrowed money and didn't give it back or maybe they took something
that wasn't theirs they took their lunch right or they they took something that they didn't realize
wasn't theirs or or maybe they just even realized that what they were doing but they just stole
and it's saying hey we shouldn't steal but like even if someone stole against you you know you
need to resolve that and move on don't stay bitter don't hate that person forever you know suffer
yourself to be defrauded you know in first Corinthians chapter six uh people just can't
handle that so they have to like sue each other and again that's like malice if you take your
brother's sister of christ to court when there's a there's any other way out of it you know what
that's a lot of malice because you know what the court system and suing is just evil it's wicked
it's it's just like horrific it's one of the worst things you can ever do it's this a nightmare and
look i would only ever exercise this if it was absolutely necessary sometimes it's absolutely
necessary sometimes you have to go because you're being drug in there by other people or other
people's actions and i get it you know i've unfortunately had to go through lawyers way too
many times and every time it's an L every time and i mean there's been times where i won but
you still lose okay because everyone loses the only winners are the lawyers okay because they
just get paid and get the bill no matter what and don't trust a lawyer at all okay don't trust any
lawyer because their profession is just it's just a slimy profession and it's not even their fault
entirely it's just the system is just so corrupt and so you know hey if someone stole 500 bucks
from you don't take them to court you know someone stole even just a large amount of money don't take
them to court because often you're never going to get it back you're going to feel you're going to
feel worse after having gone through that particular situation it's better just suffer yourself be
defrauded move on just just move on with your life don't worry about it now again if they're
doing something to you that you just have to resolve then okay there's going to be times and
places but just generally speaking this would be something we avoid completely if it can be
handled within the church it should always be handled within the church first obviously you
know you can have vicious attacks i remember one of my lawyers was telling me there was a lady who
got um church discipline because she was committing adultery against her husband and and she was in an
open affair against her husband so he exorcised church as well she sued the church for for
essentially like sued the pastor for excommunicating her i saw another video recently some woman came
to the pastor and and just confided and said hey i'm cheating on my husband i'm committing adultery
regularly on my husband and i feel bad about it and i think the way it worked i didn't hear the
whole thing but i think he said like you have like 30 days to tell your husband or i'm telling him
well then he eventually told the husband told the husband and then she sued him for telling
the husband she took him to court for doing that and look when it comes to you know pastoral you
know uh privacy like i keep conversations completely private but look if you come and
tell me that you're committing adultery on your spouse i will tell your spouse okay don't think
that that's like off the table in fact i really don't believe in like keeping things from spouses
okay so if you tell me something just just believe that since you're one flesh it's pretty much going
to go to the other spouse like hey i committed murder okay hey you know they killed someone you
should probably deal with this situation but that doesn't mean i have to tell everybody else i don't
have to necessarily tell anyone else but look you know that's kind of absurd to think that that kind
of information is going to be kept private you know in that particular context but at the end
of the day you know we have to resolve issues sometimes we have to address issues i'm not saying
that we don't address issues but here's the thing we don't want to just sit here and dwell on
bitterness we don't want to dwell on just hating people and having this vicious attitude because
then we're giving place to the devil and the devil can cause us to go down a dark road
and it it's something that is very observable you know over time you see people be in a church like
ours they start growing hatred towards somebody towards certain people and it turns into this
bitterness and then and then it basically just drives them into this crazy weird cycle of events
where they just like rage quit a church and then they obsess over it and then just like every
decision of their entire life is just based on malice almost and again what's malice just wishing
harm on others wishing suffering on others just constantly hoping for other people to suffer and
be destroyed and it's like this is an unhealthy attitude it will destroy you actually is what
happens you know you to be careful and stay away from this attitude verse 29 let no corrupt
communication proceed out of your mouth but that which is good to the use of edifying that it may
minister grace under the hearers and grieve not the holy spirit of god whereby you're sealed on the
day of redemption again we don't want to wish evil on each other we want to edify one another
we want to minister grace unto one another you know again what is this corrupt communication
well in in the context think about it it's saying don't lie to each other and let's not have this
like built up you know anger towards one another we don't have wrath towards one another then in
verse 31 it says let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away
from you notice this with all malice and be kind one to another tender-hearted forgiving one another
even as god for christ's sake have forgiven you so we now we now we've wrapped all this passage
together because did you notice again if you go back to verse 26 be angry and sin not let not the
sun go down upon your what your wrath and then when you fast forward to verse 31 little bitterness
and wrath it's kind of just explaining what this looks like as a package deal we should stop
lying to each other we should stop wishing ill for each other we shouldn't let corrupt
communication proceed out of our mouth what would be corrupted lying to people slandering people
deceiving people and then just wishing evil to people saying i hope bad things happen to you
now again in this particular passage people often kind of just miss the entire point of this passage
and they're like hyper focus on one little phrase here where it says let no corrupt communication
proceed in your mouth and they'll say like oh this just means saying four letter words or something
but that's like totally missing the point of this entire passage because i can wish evil on you
and not say a single four letter word and i could say four letter words all day long
and i'm not even saying anything negative i could be saying something positive so again like that's
not what this is focused on now let's just be honest though most of the time when people are
wishing you evil when people are verbally attacking you they'll use a lot of four letter
words in there to really spice it up won't they and so then again a lot of people get the wrong
connotation there's a direct correlation but it's not the causation it's not the four letter words
that causes it to be wrong but there is a tight correlation that oftentimes when people are wishing
you evil they're saying like things like go to hell and you know i wish you know you'd be damned
and just like all this strong language they're using strong language because they're just trying
to wish as much evil upon you as possible okay and so then a lot of people say like oh man this
person is using profanity they're cursing they're swearing at me why because they're trying to wish
evil upon them they're trying to harm them they're trying to hurt them and most of the time when
people are using profanity it's because they're sinning through the sin of anger and wrath and
malice and of course we don't want to do that we want to avoid that you know it's wrong you know
if my children get up and and are using words with malice i'm going to correct them and say don't say
that but it doesn't matter what word they're like hey you're a doodoo head hey don't say that that's
wrong right not that the the words doodoo head are bad or something like that it's just saying like
hey attacking people with malice is a wrong attitude we want to call people names and attack
people and wish evil upon them and hope bad on them you know i like how my kids used to say they
don't say this much anymore but when one of them would kind of be in a tiff they're in a fight and
and it's unresolved it doesn't seem like there's going to be any justice they would just say this
god knows and then they just kind of walk away you know that's that's kind of how they resolve it i
like that hey that's that's biblical but you know you don't have to sit there and use a bunch of
harsh language and try to attack them verbally and you know you don't want to dwell on it either
we want to be quick to forgive want to give grace to people we want to edify one another we should
let all bitterness notice this all bitterness how much bitterness are you allowed to hang on to
biblically zero if you have bitterness towards people you need to let it go it is a bad attitude
a wrong attitude is a carnal attitude let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and
evil speaking be put away from you with all malice notice what's the what's the contrast and
be kind one to another tender-hearted forgiving one another even as god for christ's sake i've
forgiven you what is the spiritual attitude hey we should be kind to each other we should be
tender-hearted we should be gracious we should forgive one another what is forgiving they did
something wrong yeah but you don't know what they did i don't care what they did let it go get over
it forgive be kind be tender-hearted that should be the attitude that we have towards one another
and you know what what a great church it would be if you're surrounded by people that are kind to you
tender-hearted forgiving they don't have any malice why would i want to be surrounded with
a whole group of people that are just filled with malice and hatred and anger and clamor and look
there are groups of people out there that are rallied together with kindness and grace and
they're rallied together for love of the lord jesus christ and then there's other groups that
are rallied together because they all want to hate and clamor and evilly speak of the same thing
don't want you don't want to be in a hate club you want to be at a love club you want to be in a club
that's a gracious club that's a kind club that's what we want to do and look why would we want
people in our club that are hate hate hateful they hate us that don't that don't like us like
that doesn't even make sense the bible says hey get rid of these people you don't want to have
the leaven of malice why because when someone has hatred oftentimes they rub that off on other
people they cause other people to start having negative opinions and negative feelings and
negative attitudes and you know as a church you know we have a pretty sizable church not
everybody can be friends so as a result there's going to be smaller groups there's going to be
what people call cliques and and just smaller subdivisions where you have this group of friends
you kind of that group of friends and it could be really easy for one person in their little group
to start attacking somebody from another group you know the west side not like in the east side
or whatever the bloods in the crypts kind of warring with each other and they just start
talking negative about somebody and look this is not an adult issue this is an everyone issue
this happens in teenagers too where teenagers don't like another you know one of the little
girl group the cool girl group doesn't like the not cool girl group or something or the cool dudes
don't like the uncool dudes or vice versa or hey the uncool dudes are just envious of the cool
people and they start lying about each other and railing on each other and saying evil this is
wrong you should not have malice towards anybody in this room we should be kind to one another we
should love one another i'm not saying you have to be best besties with everybody but you should
be kind and gracious and loving towards everyone and look we're not going to all be besties we're
not going to all necessarily be best friends that's just life that's just not how it works if you want
more friends be friendly to more people and if they don't reciprocate well then find someone else
that will will reciprocate because you can't necessarily be besties with everybody but you
know what you should be enemies of none friends with some you try to be friends with all your
friends with some but your enemies of none and we want to get rid of the malice that exists in
church why why do people lie again that was brought up early in this passage go to proverbs 26
and we'll see the bible bringing this up proverbs 26 want to make sure that our church is not it's
not having malice in it and again malice sometimes is a private private thing but eventually it'll
come out it's it's one of those things it's like bad breath or bad body odor you can only
hide it so long and eventually it's just going to eke out and we're going to all be able to tell
and it's like a bad haircut that nobody wants to say anything about you know and it's just like hey
you know we can all tell because you just can't you're so infected by it it's going to eke out
you can't hide it so that's why you have to resolve it thinking that you can hide malice or
hide bitterness is a fool's errand it will come out eventually so that's why you need to resolve
it you need to let it go you can't hang on to it now of course because it's so obvious sometimes
people then have to be fake they flatter you they have to lie because they don't want it to just be
so obvious their their hatred and mouths towards you says proverbs 26 look at verse 24 he that
hateth dissembleth with his lips and layeth up to seat within him again dissembleth is kind of a
harder word just talking about deceit trickery not being sincere and how you actually communicate
with someone you're lying to them so the person that hates you lies to you the person that hates
you does not say i hate you the person that loves you will sometimes say i'm kind of hating you
right now i'm kind of mad at you the person that never says it is more likely to be the one that
actually hates you so be careful hey this person never speaks evil of me and never says anything
wrong it's like well maybe they actually hate you i don't know you know the person that criticizes
you more is probably more likely a sincere friend than the person that never says anything negative
about you especially if they use language like think about it this way you have a friend and
your friend never says anything like over the top to you they're never like man we're just besties
and i'll never leave you and i'm just you know i just can't wait to see you every time we hang out
you know they're never saying this because you just hang out this is normal but then this person
that never sees you and you never hang out they're like man we're just like besties and but they're
using this language you're thinking like that's inconsistent with your actions when words are
inconsistent with their behavior or actions there's a problem now look if you hang out all the time
and you're like we're besties and that makes sense but if you never hang out they're like we're just
besties i'll die for you whatever it's just like i don't know you you know this is kind of awkward
like this seems not reasonable you know i've had people come up to me in the past and they just
said that this sermon was the best sermon i've ever preached and then sunday night it's the best
sermon ever preached and then wednesday night it's the best sermon i've reached you know eventually
you're just kind of thinking like i don't think that that's possible i don't think that it's
possible that i'm always one-upping myself every single sermon every single time of course it
didn't take me that many sermons to realize i'm just saying like you just kind of start you start
cringing every time they come up to you and talk to you because you're just thinking like
what's wrong with you there's something wrong with you like i didn't even like the sermon that much
like this there's no way this is like such a great sermon why do they say that there's something in
there that they don't really like and they have nothing else to say so they just have to say
something and they're just like i guess i'll just oh this is the greatest sermon ever why because
they're lying they hate you oh i just love your shirt why why did they say that because they don't
want to talk about your haircut right they don't want to talk about some other issue that you have
so they just lie to you whereas your friend is like bro what's up with your hair man like you're
looking weird you know that's just how that's how the world actually works the person that loves you
criticizes you often and the person that doesn't love you lies to you the symbols says this in
verse number 25 when he speaketh fair believe him not for there are seven abominations in his heart
whose hatred is covered by deceit his wickedness shall be showed before the whole congregation
notice he's not going to get away with it no one's going to get away with it who's so dig
in the pit shall fall there and he that rolled the stone it will turn upon him look if you have
bitterness and and hatred and malice it'll often just come back to bite you it'll cause you the
problems you know you say oh man i'm gonna i'm gonna attack this other person and i'm gonna i'm
gonna make everybody not like them what'll end up happening is that really it's not like you
that's why you should just be friendly to everyone okay kids don't be this person that
just is constantly attacking other people and putting other people down because eventually
you'll run out of friends if you want friends you have to show yourself friendly if you don't want
friends be bitter gossip rail talk negatively about other people you know that is how to lose
friends quickly and that stone that you're rolling will roll upon you it says in verse 28 a lying
tongue hateth those that are afflicted by it and a flattering mouth worketh ruin get noticed the
person that lies you hates you the person that tells you things that aren't true is the person
that actually hates you that's not going to help you you know the democrats lie to their constituents
consistently they actually hate their constituents but they just want them to vote for them and you
know what it comes to ruin it's it's it's gross it's gross to watch people just obviously lie and
flatter people it's a gross attitude and we don't want that in church we want people to be sincere
want them to be honest to go to Colossians chapter three now this you know again we're trying to
strike a balance when we think about these ideas i'm not saying that we should all walk around
and criticize each other constantly of every negative thing you can think of i'm also saying
that we shouldn't hold our tongue and never criticize each other right there's discretion
and there's balance sometimes hey we need to lovingly correct our brethren sometimes we need
to lovingly hold our tongue and not express every feeling but one thing that we should never do is
lie to each other we should never lie to each other we should not be bitter towards one another
we should not have malice towards each other wishing harm wishing evil wanting their destruction
this is a bad attitude amongst Christians Colossians chapter 3 look at verse 5 mortify
therefore your members which are upon the earth fornication uncleanness inordinate affection
evil concupiscence and covetousness which is idolatry now again mortify means to kill
we want to kill these attitudes we want to kill these behaviors in our life and notice that this
list is pretty similar to first corinthians chapter number five it's got a lot of overlap
with that particular list it says in verse six for which things sake the wrath of god come upon
the children of disobedience in which he also walked some time when you lived in them but now
he also put off all these things anger wrath malice blasphemy filthy communication out of
your mouth lie not one to another seeing that you have put off the old man with his deeds and have
put on the new man which is renewed knowledge after the image of him that created him so what
is the bible saying it's saying that we need to put off these attitudes what are these attitudes
anger wrath malice brings up blasphemy filthy communication out of your mouth and then it
ties it into verse 9 to lying is specifically one to another and it's saying hey that's what the old
man is like the carnal man the problem is even if you get saved you still have the old man you still
have the flesh you still have that carnal aspect of yourself and the carnal aspect wants to hate
people the carnal aspect of every single one of us wants to be angry with people and wrathful and
wish evil on our enemies and wish evil on people that have harmed us and wish evil on people that
we don't like and sometimes they didn't even harm us we simply want to wish evil on people
that have something we want that's the covetous attitude the envious attitude saying man i just
don't like that this person has what i want they have the position that i want i hope just a truck
annihilates them so that i can take their position that would be a malice hating someone because they
have something you don't you know someone gets picked over you someone gets promoted over you
someone gets a job that you wanted someone gets a house you wanted someone gets a car that you wanted
someone gets a friendship you wanted someone gets something good and you start hating that person
because they have something that you don't have and so you have this hateful bitter malicious
attitude towards them and it's wrong it's carnal it's a carnal attitude you know we should have a
spiritual attitude where we're wishing good for our brethren where we say i want them to get promoted
and i want them to have a nice house and i want them to have you know a good family and i want
them to have money and i want them to have good friendships and i want them to succeed and i want
them to do well you know we have a friendly competition between us and avengers urbanic in
the philippines trying to win this soul winning competition and frankly speaking i i feel like
they're probably gonna win okay and at the end of the day i hope so why not you know and hopefully
he hopes that we win you know but at the same time we're not going to hope that like i'm going
to do less i'm going to not do a good job i want to do a great job in fact you know i had this
opportunity to possibly help avengers i'm not not sorry avengers but brother kenton he seems like an
avengers might as well just call him that to send him over to the philippines early and and do a
lot of work over there because he was thinking about going there but maybe a long time and i was
like hey is there any way that we can help you we just like to get you over there as soon as
possible this is what i knew you send brother kenton over to the philippines for a couple months
boy he's gonna jack up those soul winning numbers a lot and they could possibly crush us if we do
that but then i'm thinking like why would i be mad at that i'm like let's go let's let's put another
person over there and let's hope that you know avengers or bannock does even better let's hope
that his church grows let's hope that he gets a lot of people safe like yeah we're in a friendly
competition so that we'll try to do better ourselves but we don't want to wish evil on
those that are on our team you know there could be this attitude out there especially with some
betting and sports and just this attitude you know sometimes you have these prima donna athletes
that they can't stand it that they're not getting the ball thrown to them it's like oh this other
guy scored on my team or this other guy's getting more attention or this other guy got to play you
know that's a bad attitude you know they'll win the game and then they're disappointed because
they didn't get to score the touchdown or they didn't get the pass or they didn't get the
recognition or they didn't get the MVP you know what this is a bad attitude our attitude should
be hey if this person is doing good and good things are happening to them praise god we
shouldn't have this attitude where we just hate other people and we're envious of other people
because they have things that we don't have it's a bad attitude and this happens with a lot of
individuals where they become covetous in this particular passage again we should put away these
things we shouldn't have these attitudes look at first peter chapter one first peter chapter number
one we should wish well onto our brethren we don't have malice towards individuals and you know only
you and god often right now will know that but if you don't resolve it we'll all figure it out you
might as well just get it resolved with you and god so then we never know that you had any malice
towards anyone but first peter chapter one look at verse 22 seeing you have purified your souls
and obeying the truth through the spirit and unfeign love of the brethren see that you love
one another with a pure heart fervently we need to love each other with a lot of zeal and and a
pure heart meaning we don't have some ulterior motive we're not kind of also wishing a little
evil upon them no we want to have a sincere pure love towards our brethren being born again not a
corruptible seed but of incorruptible by the word of god which liveth and abideth forever for all
flesh is as grass and all the glory of man as the flower of grass the grass withereth and the flower
there follows away but the word of the lord endureth forever and this is the word which by
the gospel is preached unto you wherefore laying aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisies
and envies and all evil speakings as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word
that ye may grow thereby what is the bible insinuating it's saying we should love one
another with pure heart a pure love a sincerity we should do it fervently in order to do this we have
to lay aside all malice and all guile and all hypocrisy and all envy and all evil speakings
we should not have these attitudes towards brothers and sisters in christ we need to lay aside all of
that and we need to just desire what the bible says and become spiritual and to grow up and be
mature mature christians don't have this malice carnal christians often struggle with this malice
struggle with envy struggle with these attitudes and again i'm not saying that we won't ever have
these attitudes if you become mature but the more mature you are the less likely you are to struggle
in these areas if you're newly saved if you're if you're kind of backslidden it's a lot easier
for you to get very envious very carnal wishing evil speaking evil lying to people this is not a
very mature attitude someone that is constantly lying and slandering and falsely accusing and
being envious it's a very carnal person's a backslidden person he's saying we should put all that
aside we should get the word of god we should grow because the bible tells us to grow in grace
and the knowledge of our lord and savior jesus christ people that are getting more vicious and
more bitter and more angry are not growing spiritually they're going backwards they're
backsliding they're becoming more like their old man not like their new man the new man increases
in grace the old man increases in malice and we don't want to have malice towards one another
gov you would to titus chapter three you know the bible says rejoice not when thine enemy
stumbleeth you know even if someone does you wrong even if someone harms you even if someone does
wrong to you lies about you whatever you know we shouldn't wish for evil upon them and even
when the evil comes we shouldn't be excited about it we shouldn't have this immature attitude of
hoping evil for them we should still wish good for them now titus chapter three also says in
verse one put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers to obey magistrates
to be ready to every good work to speak evil of no man but to be no brawlers but gentle showing all
meekness unto all men for we ourselves also were sometimes foolish disobedient to seed serving
divers lusts and pleasures live notice this living in malice and envy hateful and hating one another
he's saying hey this is what you are like this is what people are like typically before they get
saved they're just living in these attitudes they're just living in this mindset and he's
saying once we recognize what god has done for us how god forgave us how god doesn't have malice
towards us how god doesn't have unresolved tension with us we should then extend the same grace and
the same kindness towards our brothers and sisters in christ god forgave our sin god allows us to live
things down god separated our sins as far as the east is from the west from us and so we should then
try to have a similar attitude a similar grace a similar mercy a similar attitude towards our
brothers and sisters in christ and the bible just hammers this point notice in verse two to speak
evil of no man again what is what is evil you know sometimes evil can be referred to as just
wickedness also it can refer to harm we don't want to speak harm to our brethren we don't want to
wish evil upon them we don't want bad things to happen to them and and try to cause negative
things to happen to them of course the bible brings up in other passages a different sermon
but we're not supposed to avenge ourselves also what malice will often do is when just wishing
evil doesn't work they'll try to procure evil against you they'll they'll order you pizza falsely
right they'll they'll call and just hang up they'll ring your doorbell and run away they'll they'll
try to sick people on you they'll call your boss and lie about you and try to get you fired from
your job then when that stuff doesn't work then they just lie and slander and they'll they'll make
public false accusations against you then when that doesn't work sometimes they escalate to
literal violence or harassment or following you around you know it just keeps escalating
and then even sometimes they're they're trying to pay for your death they're trying to cause you to
die and so we don't want to go down this dark road because it starts with just that hatred inside
but eventually it could get to such an extreme place that they want to kill you like Saul wants
to kill David. Saul's literally throwing spears at David. Saul is dedicating his entire life to
hunting down David to kill him. You don't think as the king of Israel you have more important
matters than trying to kill David? Like don't you have something to accomplish King Saul? Don't you
have something to do? Can't you write some music for God or can't you rule your kingdom or can't
you make sure people are fed or can't you make sure to fight the actual legitimate enemies in
the philistines or the worst? No he's going to spend his entire life hunting down David to try
and kill him to his own detriment to his own destruction that's what malice does you know
there's a lot of king sauls in the world there's a lot of people that get this this bitterness and
this envy and they get backslidden you know the king saul was humble and little in his own sight
and then later now he can't allow David to dethrone him or to take his place and out of envy
and out of hatred towards his brethren he just goes down a dark path and wants to destroy him
you know we should never go down this path what is what is the lesson that we've learned number
one that we shouldn't lie and number two is that we shouldn't wish evil now when it comes to lying
there's even two more things that we can think about we don't want to lie to each other and
we don't want to lie about each other okay so we don't want to lie to each other we don't want to
lie about each other and we also don't want to wish evil now i think it's important even though
i've covered this to contrast it with other things the bible brings up because people hear
this message and simple-minded people will then say oh it sounds like you're a complete hypocrite
pastor shelly because you're calling people out and you criticize people and you quote attack
people and all this different stuff and it's like oh how dare you say those things well it's because
these people don't understand the differences in these words and they don't want to understand
these differences because they're the ones with malice just because you call someone out doesn't
it mean you have malice i mean think about this chapter doesn't this chapter specifically say
living in malice and envy hateful and hating one it's telling you not to do that right in the exact
same chapter look at verse 9 but avoid foolish questions and genealogies and contentions and
strivings about the law for the unprofitable in vain a man that is an heretic after the first and
second admonition reject knowing that he that is such a subverted incentive being condemned himself
notice in the exact same chapter of the text it is saying hey someone that's a heretic admonish them
once admonish them twice then reject them so that that has nothing to do with malice why what are
we talking about we're talking about heresy okay there's there's a difference between calling out
heresy and having malice towards someone i don't have malice towards someone when they're preaching
heresy i want them to fix it and get right that's why you call them out you're not randomly calling
them out for no reason you know the bible says we shouldn't be angry with our brother without a cause
okay so if someone's doing nothing harmful to me nothing to attack me not lying about me not
preaching heresy it would be wrong for me to just randomly be angry with them and randomly attack
them that would be wrong calling someone out for preaching heresy or saying heresy is biblical
the bible is saying first admonition second admonition reject not only that i'm also not
saying that rebuking is wrong because look at chapter 2 right before chapter 3 and look what
it says in verse 15 these things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority let no man despise
thee so what is the bible saying the bible saying we shouldn't allow people to hate us and we should
rebuke them so think about it it's wrong to hate people it's wrong to despise people so you're
supposed to call them out and rebuke them and say don't have malice it can't be self-contradicting
the bible is not contradicting itself there's nothing wrong with rebuking someone and saying
you're being hateful oh no you're being hateful you called me out no no you can't play that game
you're supposed to rebuke with all authority and say hey you're wrong you're not allowed to despise
me you're not allowed to despise the brethren you are having a bad attitude you have to change you
have to get right you have to let go of your bitterness you have to change so when we talk
about having malice we're not saying you can't rebuke people the bible says in leviticus chapter
19 verse 17 that we shouldn't suffer sin upon our brother but we're supposed to rebuke our brother
and not suffer sin upon him so it's not like this passage addressed to pastors is limited to pastors
either hey if your brother's doing wrong you should correct your brother you should obviously
probably not start with rebuke but it could get to rebuke maybe you're gentle then you approve
then you lead up to rebuke if necessary but you know rebuke your brother is not having malice
towards them you're wanting them to get better you're not trying to suffer sin upon them you're
not trying to allow them to go down a dark path you're trying to correct them and trying to help
them church discipline is obviously also not malice because think about it the whole point
of church discipline is to get rid of the malice by church disciplining people it's actually loving
them so what what bible is not saying is it's not saying hey you can't rebuke people the bible
commands to rebuke the bible is not saying you can't church discipline is commanding the church
discipline it's not saying that you can't call out heresy it's demanding that you call out heresy
not once even twice and then even rejecting people for heresy it's also not saying that you couldn't
publicly address issues go to romans chapter 16 go to romans chapter number 16 why rebuke somebody
because you love them and want to get it right why church discipline someone because you love them and
you want to get their life right why call out heresy because you love people and you want them
to believe the truth why publicly mark and avoid people because after the first and second ammunition
i have to reject this person and it's not only that i need to reject them other people need to
reject them because they could be poisoned by their heresy because if they're gonna if they're
gonna have heresy and i corrected them they won't listen well you're not magical like you're gonna
correct them you know it's gonna correct them the bible and if they won't hear the bible then don't
think you're special you know that's why church discipline is supposed to be observed by everyone
it's not like oh this person won't listen to me well let's make sure to go down the line
everybody get in line and we're gonna all take it we're gonna all take a turn to correct the
person twice before we can reject them no no it should be sufficient that hey when the leadership
or when people have addressed it hey it's good for everybody what's good for the goose is good
for the gander and we're just gonna say hey we're publicly marking this person because they won't
get this issue right they've been corrected from the bible they won't get it right and so as a pastor
as a leader sometimes you have to say hey this person's wrong on these issues they need to repent
get it right so that we don't affect the whole congregation maybe someone that's not a pastor
not an elder not mature in the faith could be more easily deceived or led astray by lies and error
you know the simple belief of every word is what the bible says you know there's people that with
cunning craftiness and deceit they come and they lie in wait to deceive and to trick the simple
okay so that's why it's important as leaders to call people out this is not malice i have malice
towards heresy but i don't have malice towards the person we want them to get it right and sometimes
you have to call out people what does it say in romans chapter 16 look what it says in verse number
17 now i beseech you brethren mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary notice this to the
doctrine which you have learned and avoid them for they that are such serve not our lord jesus christ
but their own belly and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple notice
they never use bad words they only use good words you know notice the the bad people only use good
words how convenient right oh i would never use bad words i only use good words oh what i say is
just so nice and it's so fair but what does the bible say it deceives the hearts of the simple
doesn't it i have such a fair speech why don't you just listen to what i have to say i'm going
to use good words you're so wonderful you're so great look this is a liar and of course the bible
saying hey sometimes you have to publicly mark with people this is not malice again it's you
actually love the brethren you don't want them to be evil affected and so you mark people and say
this person has this problem i hope no one else gets sucked into that trash because you actually
love other people so you're publicly marking people out of love love for the brethren love
for the people lord jesus christ is constantly publicly marking the Pharisees and the lawyers
and other individuals because he loves the people and he doesn't want them to get sucked into the
leaven of the Pharisees the leaven of malice the leaven of wickedness the leaven of heresy why
because it grows and it turns into something way worse it just keeps growing and growing
and they start believing weirder and weirder things you know a little heresy sometimes this
explodes into the weirdest heresies go over to jobe chapter 29 go to jobe chapter 29 so again
we want to balance all of these concepts we don't want to just believe one verse in the bible a
certain way that contradicts the rest of scripture you know we want to make sure that we harmonize
scripture and we keep everything in balance because it's possible to read a verse or read a passage
come up with an idea and kind of run with it and not realize that it's contradicting many other
commandments many other instructions in the bible and so that's why it's important to harmonize what
we're talking about we talk about malice we're not saying you can't rebuke we're not saying we won't
church discipline we're not saying we won't call out heresy we're not saying that we won't publicly
mark and avoid and here's another one that's really important that i want to draw out is it's
not even saying that i won't laugh at you okay that i won't make fun of you now i don't make
fun of people necessarily in malice now i could but sometimes it's just the this is the normal
response to something that's kind of stupid when someone says something stupid or foolish you just
kind of laugh you're just like wow that was really dumb and again is that is that bad actually it's
a good thing it's called the rebuke of humor sometimes if you say something that's so dumb
and people are all laughing at you maybe you should think like is this actually right maybe i'm just
weird maybe what i just said is kind of kind of silly and you know people that are highly respected
people that have studied the bible people that actually dedicate their lives to the things of
god if they laugh at your idea you should take that seriously now joe actually brings this up
in chapter 29 look what he says in verse 21 unto me men gave ear and waited and kept silence at
my council he's talking about before all this calamity happened to him he's he's reminiscing
of what his life used to be like and what did the bible describe job as a man that was upright a
shoot evil he's basically the greatest man to live on the face of the earth at this time just super
wise super godly pretty much does everything right virtually speaking even god himself when
talking with the devil is saying have you considered my servant job that there's none like him he's
saying this guy is unique this guy is special and what is job saying he had so much respect
on the earth that men gave ear unto him and waited and kept silence as counsel they were like i
didn't want to talk about this until i've heard what job has to say because i don't want to say
something dumb verse 22 after my words they spake not again and my speech dropped upon them
saying like after he said it they're just like case closed guy nailed it there's nothing i can
add to this verse 23 and they waited for me as for the rain and they opened their mouth wide as for
for the latter rain. Notice this verse 24. If I laughed on them, they believed it not.
And the light of my countenance they cast not down. He's saying if they said something
and Job laughed at them, then they would just shut their mouth and be like, Oh, wow, that
was dumb. They recognize that if Job's laughing at you, you're wrong. If Job's making fun
of you, you're wrong. If Job's making memes about you, you should change. If Job can make
a song about how stupid you are, you should probably change. That's what Job is saying.
Look, is this malice? No, this is Job trying to help this person realize what you're doing
is stupid. What you're saying is stupid. You're being a hypocrite. You're being an idiot.
And then people are like, Ah, I don't want to be like these people that are making fun
of people. Well, maybe they're making fun of you to help you. And it's like, I don't
do that. You know why you don't make fun of people? Because you're wrong. Like, you know
what? In order for something to be funny, it has to be true. Man, I can't make a meme.
I wonder why Democrats.
I wonder why left.
I wonder why.
Look, when people can't make comedy,
it's because it's false.
Why did Hollywood struggle for years during COVID?
Because they had to teach all these lies
that they couldn't figure out how to be funny at all.
And then they had to go back to making fun
of Biden and stuff again.
There's just even get a little bit of comedy
because it has to be a little bit true or nobody cares.
Lies aren't funny.
You know what's funny?
Truth.
Truth is what's funny.
Truth is what resonates with people.
Why is it that Democrats and politicians
all over this world want to censor memes?
Why is it that in the UK right now,
people are being harassed by police for making memes?
People are possibly going to jail and imprisonment
for making jokes online and making memes.
You wanna know why?
Because the truth is powerful.
Why is it that the same group of people,
Democrats, evil politicians, communists hate memes.
And then there's this other group,
ex new IFB.
It's like, why are they all in the same category,
in the same camp?
It's because they hate truth.
Look, I'm not saying that every time you make fun
of someone, it's right.
I'm not saying that we should just be mean to be mean.
You know what, sometimes there's a place for comedy.
Sometimes there's a place for humor
to help people realize how dumb they're really being.
And to try and laugh on them and say, man,
this is just kind of, what you just said is really stupid.
Like, it's really, really stupid.
Now, I wanna give you examples.
Go to Exodus chapter 12.
Go to Exodus chapter number 12.
And here's the thing.
You know, people will hear a sermon like this
and they'll say like, oh, Pastor Schoenle's a giant hypocrite
because he's rebuking people.
He's church-disciplining people.
He calls out heresy.
He publicly marks and avoids people,
and he laughs at people.
But wait a minute, all that's biblical.
You can do all of that without malice, okay?
Malice is wishing evil and harm upon people
and wanting their destruction
with this hatred, bitter attitude that they won't fix.
And there's one other thing I need to,
I'll address here in a minute,
but obviously we're not talking about the enemies of God
because we do wish they're evil.
We do wish their destruction.
And it's not even saying that we're not asking God
to avenge us because, hey, in 1 Corinthians 5,
they're delivering that particular individual
over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.
And there's a difference between someone being
my personal enemy and someone attacking church
and attacking the things of God.
You know what, there are imprecatory prayers
against people attacking the things of God
and becoming an enemy of God, an enemy of this church, okay?
That's a different category.
We're just saying they're just wishing evil upon anybody.
Someone cuts them off in traffic
and it's just like, I can't wait for a fireball
to come out of the sky and just destroy them, okay?
Or that attitude they had towards the Samaritans
that some of the disciples had
where they were wanting to call down fire from heaven
and devour them and the Lord Jesus Christ rebukes them
saying, you know not what spirit you are of.
Saying, hey, we should wish for them to get saved
and these people to be saved.
But of course, we've also had lots of quote,
frenemies over the years that were our friends,
we tried to be friendly too
and then they start preaching heresy.
They start preaching false doctrine
and they get called out for it.
And again, it's not me having malice
towards these individuals,
it's doing what the Bible says.
And you know what?
As a pastor, I have to call out heresy.
I have to call out false doctrine.
That's just part of the job.
It's an ugly part of the job,
but at the end of the day,
someone's gotta do it and it's to protect people.
So throughout the years,
we've called out tons of different people.
You know, there was a guy I went to church with
at Faithful Word Baptist Church, Tyler Baker.
He came out with this weird oneness version of the Trinity.
He was saying that Jesus was sitting next to Jesus in heaven.
He was saying that when you baptize,
you should say in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
and that name is Jesus.
So he's saying the name of the Father is Jesus, okay?
Some of his disciples were saying that the Father
came down to be the savior of the world
and called himself Jesus, okay?
This is rank heresy.
This is just bizarre heresy that needs to be called out.
Other individuals, you know,
I took on this church, Adam Fanon,
was supposed to be the evangelist for us in Jacksonville
and just continued doing his thing.
But he didn't want to work with me,
not because he ever said anything to my face.
In fact, to my face, everything was just lies.
It was, oh, it's so great.
I can't wait to work with you.
This is going to be wonderful.
Then behind my back,
he calls up every single pastor under the sun
begging them to basically become his pastor.
He's calling pastor Amenas.
He's calling pastor Berzins.
And he's just saying like,
I can't work with, you know, Jonathan Shelley.
Can't work with Shelley.
Why?
Because I'm going to wait like two years to ordain him
or something like that, at a minimum.
And they're like, well, I'm the same.
And he's like, oh, well, then I don't want you either.
And I don't want you either.
And it's funny.
He shopped around to get anyone to ordain him.
And when everyone said no, then he walks away,
looking for a better option, walks away,
changes his doctrine and now believes
in congregational ordination.
Now he just believes, oh, you know, I don't,
now conveniently, I don't need anybody to ordain me.
Even though I just shopped around and asked everybody
and they all said no.
Now I just need to just change my doctor.
So yeah, I preached tons of sermons
against Adam Fanon in that period of time.
People are like, oh man, you just won't let it go.
Well, I'm not gonna let heresy go.
I'm not just gonna let people just say whatever
and do whatever.
It was a major event, it was a major thing.
I preached a lot of sermons calling out
a lot of the weird stuff that Adam Fanon said.
Shopping his ordination, changing his views.
I think since then he's even changed on hell now.
He doesn't believe that Jesus suffered in hell.
I don't know exactly how to articulate his viewpoint
'cause these guys oftentimes don't even know
what they believe either, okay.
I just know that he's changed his views.
He's kind of come in line with Manly Perry,
who which in the past both preached vitriolic malice
towards each other.
Now they're buddies again, magically, okay.
I also called out Manly Perry.
Manly Perry totally changed his doctrine on hell.
He said in a sermon, "No one burns in hell,"
which I was just like, what in the world?
He was saying that Judas was the best soul winner
to ever live, okay.
So I was just like calling out some of these things
and saying like, this is bizarre, this is weird.
Like it seems like this guy doesn't wanna be our friend,
but not for good reasons.
And he's preaching all this heresy.
In fact, by me calling him out,
he self-deleted his entire YouTube channel
'cause he just couldn't take the heat, okay.
Again, it wasn't because I hate mainly prayer,
I wanted to be his friend.
He was telling me he didn't wanna be my friend.
I was trying to be his friend.
Then after he preached a bunch of heresy
and I called him out, then he kinda does his thing.
Adam Fann, I was saying I was gonna work with him.
He was the one going behind my back
saying he didn't wanna work with me.
He's the one that was gonna walk away.
And after, through his actions, I said,
well, I'm gonna fire you.
Didn't mean he couldn't stay at the church.
He just wasn't gonna be in that position anymore
'cause he showed himself to be a liar,
a flatterer, an evil person.
So I said, this guy shouldn't be leading.
But he again walked away.
He's the one that's leaving.
He's the one that's causing all these problems.
And of course, I think they're still waiting
for a better option.
I also called out Tommy McMurtry,
Pastor McMurtry at one point.
And there was a lot of little things,
but there was just this one sermon
that just really crossed the line for me
where he preached the whole sermon
about the false gospel of many soul winners.
And since then, he's not taken the sermon down.
He's not repented of anything he said in that sermon.
It's total weird nonsense.
But he was basically teaching that any of you
that come to the church that get a little backslidden
and then go back out soul winning,
you're now preaching a false gospel.
He was saying, man, if you get a little backslidden,
if you're sinning a little too much,
if you're a little bit of a hypocrite in your lifestyle
and then you're going out and soul winning,
you are preaching a false gospel.
And I was like, man, this just crosses the line for me.
Like at this point, I just can't just tolerate this anymore.
I've kept my opinions too private.
I'm gonna call this out.
And I called out other things along the way
in that particular situation.
But you know, a little leaven just leavens the whole lump
and these people just start believing all kinds
of weird stuff and nonsense and just crazy things.
And so, you know, at times I'll call them out.
One of the more recent times, Pastor McMurtry was saying
that, hey, the children of Israel did not spend 430 years
in Egypt, they only spent 215 years.
Which, on the surface, you kind of think like,
how is that even a big deal?
I mean, it's just about the numbers.
But here's why it's a big deal to me, okay?
The Bible just explicitly says that they were in Egypt
for 430 years.
Look at verse number 40.
I had you turn to Exodus chapter 20.
I'm sorry, 12, I said 12.
Verse 40, "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel
who dwelt in Egypt was 430 years."
For most people, you could just close the Bible
and be like, all right, that was pretty obvious.
But here's why it's a problem for me.
When you can take a clear verse like this
and then just teach something completely contrary,
what other clear verses are you just gonna deny on the page?
You know, and what you're kind of doing
is you're planting seeds in people's minds
that the Bible doesn't often mean what it says.
Oh, when it says, "Let us make man in our image,"
that's not actually, you know, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
That's him talking to angels or something.
Or, hey, when the Bible says that man's created
in his image, it's not just man, it's just woman, too.
And when it says, "Let women keep silence in the churches,"
it doesn't mean that they should actually
be quiet in the churches.
You know, it's just like every verse,
they just say the exact opposite
of what the Bible says often.
And it's like, hey, when it says 430, actually it's 215.
And you're like, where do they even get this 215 number?
It's not a number in the Bible.
It's a derived number.
Now, they'll say, oh, well, this actually,
you know what this means?
This means when Abraham was given a promise by God,
that's when this covenant was made.
And then all the time that he's dwelling in the land of Canaan
and Isaac and Jacob, and then them coming in.
And they basically calculate all this different timelines.
They're like, I think it was about 215 years
from the time that Abraham was given this covenant
up to them going into Egypt.
And then if you subtract 430 from 215,
you get another 215.
And they'll say, oh, it was really 215.
And I think another attitude with this type of doctrine
is like, you can't really trust the plain reading of the text.
You need a guru to come tell-- you need someone to study.
You need someone to come and tell you what the Bible says.
Because you can't just believe just clear,
obvious verses in the Bible.
So I did a little show where I was just challenging them
on this viewpoint.
Because it's like, if they're only there for 215 years,
you have some mathematical problems.
Because when they come out of Egypt,
there's 603,000 men coming out of Egypt.
How do you get these kind of numbers in this period of time?
And specifically, I isolated it into one scenario.
Because, you know, we talk about these bigger numbers,
it's harder to figure out.
But he isolated and was talking about Moses specifically.
You know, the Bible talks about Levi having Kohath,
then having Amram, and then having Moses.
And he's saying that is a direct lineage.
There's no gaps, no skipping, nothing.
And then he's like, from Moses being 80 years old,
the Bible says there's 2,700 Kohathites.
I was trying to think about this,
I asked my wife this in the morning, I was like,
I was thinking about my grandpa, okay?
And I was thinking about how many people in our family.
'Cause my grandpa, specifically my dad's over 80 years old.
So if you put my dad as like Moses, 80 years old,
and I'm thinking about my grandpa,
and I'm thinking about this family tree,
I'm like, how many men are in our family?
Because you can't count the women,
and you can't count their husbands,
you can only count the direct male descendants.
And I think we counted like 13, maybe?
It was like 13 men, 'cause it's like,
my grandpa has two sons, and one of them,
my uncle Phil had no sons,
my dad had two, me and my brother,
my brother has a son, I have three sons.
And it's like, you add all that up,
it's like a dozen, more or less, men that are in the family.
How do you get to 2,700 in this period of time?
You can't.
Like, they would each be having to pop out
so many people that it's just like mathematically impossible.
So most people that adhere to this,
particular theory of the 215,
they're younger creationists, and they're kind of weird,
and they often will say just these weird mathematics
to get to these kind of numbers.
Just like crazy and insane.
It's just like every 10 years,
they're popping out 12 kids or something,
and you're just thinking like this doesn't seem likely, okay?
Plus, it kind of undermines the entire story of the Bible,
since the reason why Moses was gonna be thrown in the river
was because they had already multiplied greatly.
Not that they went from just a handful or a couple thousand
to a million plus in just 80 years.
No, over 430 years they've gotten to this point,
which is not mathematically that difficult.
It's still a miracle, it's still a blessing of God,
but it's not unreasonable whatsoever.
So I was talking with Pastor McMurtry about this,
And I'd never heard this in my entire life.
But he said, oh, well, actually, this
is how you solve this problem with the 215.
The children of Israel are not biological.
It was just servants.
And I'm like, what in the world?
I was like, I've never heard this before.
And I was just kind of incredulous.
And he's just like, oh, yeah, yeah.
The children of Israel-- it was just a bunch of servants,
because Abraham had, like, 300 servants.
So they're bringing all these servants.
So the vast majority of the children of Israel
are not actually descendants of Israel.
They're not descendants of Jacob.
They're not descendants of Isaac.
They're not descendants of Abraham.
They're descendants of Rando's.
They're just Rando's.
And I'm kind of thinking, like,
why does the Bible constantly say children of Israel?
What do you think children of Israel are?
Like you said, children of Pastor Shelly.
What do you think I'm saying?
Let me explain to you.
My children, it's that simple.
But I said, like, how do you read this verse then?
How do you read Exodus 12 verse 40?
'Cause I read, I said,
"Now the sojourning of the children of Israel
"who dwelt in Egypt was 430 years."
And he's like, "Oh, let me read it for you."
He's like, "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel
"who dwelt in Egypt was 430 years."
And as soon as he read that, I just laughed out loud.
I just laughed hysterically because I was thinking like,
"Wow, what a stupid way to read the Bible."
'Cause what he's trying to do is he's trying to say
that this who dwelt in Egypt is an anecdote.
It'd be like, "Oh, Pastor Shelley,
"who's wearing a gray suit, loves his wife."
And it's like me having a gray suit
has nothing to do with me loving my wife whatsoever.
It's just a random little anecdote in the story
that has nothing to do with what the text is actually saying.
So he's trying to say like,
"No, the sojourn of the children of Israel,
"dwelt in Egypt, was 430 years."
It's just like, what kind of nonsense is this
to read this in the Bible?
I just laughed at him.
Why did I laugh at him?
Because it's stupid!
Is it because I have malice towards the person?
No, it's because the idea is stupid.
And again, sometimes we need to just laugh at people
for having stupid ideas.
Go if you went to James chapter three.
Go to James chapter three.
Look, the Bible tells us that we should not be hateful.
We should not wish evil upon people.
I don't wish evil upon Pastor Murtry.
I just want him to stop being an idiot.
I want him to stop preaching sermons
about the false gospel of many soul winners.
I want him to stop preaching lies
and weird doctrines about Job happening on earth.
Whenever it says that the sons of God
came to resent themselves before the Lord
and the Satan appeared also,
he teaches that happened on earth.
And he teaches that he's actually been there.
He's been to this place, okay?
I'm not joking, this is real.
He's going down a weird road
because just a little Levin, Levin's the whole lump.
Why?
He partnered with Paul Wittenberger
who has acts to grind against Pastor Anderson
and he wants to make this weird movie,
which he already made, it's called The City Loss.
You probably didn't know it came out
'cause no one cares, no one's ever watched it.
It's the most boring, stupid film.
It's filled with errors and lies.
He tries to say that the Temple Mount
is not really the Temple Mount, it's something else.
And it's this weird conspiracy theory.
And it's just not true.
It's filled with lies and just nonsense.
But of course, when you are hating someone,
you believe lies about them.
You believe heresy.
So he gets partnered up with him.
And now everything's about the temple.
Everything's about this secret hidden location
called Temple Zero, which again, nothing in the Bible.
You know, we're supposed to walk by faith, not by sight.
It's interesting, you've never believed this doctrine
until you saw it.
You didn't hear it in the Bible.
You didn't have faith to believe it in the Bible.
You saw something with your eyes, and now that's
your whole life's ministry.
It's about Job 1 happening in Temple Zero,
and everything's about Temple Zero,
and now the children aren't even the children of Israel.
Now they're not actually physical descendants anymore.
It's just like, what's next?
You know, a little leaven leavens the whole lump.
You know, I wish this guy would get things right,
because honestly, he does have some good doctrines.
You know, he is right on replacement theology
to some degree, and he is right on the gospel,
typically, when I've heard him say it,
albeit he's friends with heretics on that issue.
He's friends with Stacey Shiflett,
and some of his old pastor friends
that preach weird things on repentance,
false teachings on salvation, specifically.
What is his former friend pastor?
I'm forgetting this guy, dispensationalist.
Keith Gomez, yeah, Keith Gomez has preached
his weird hair, see, Keith Gomez preached
that people were saved by works in the Old Testament.
He can be friends with him, right?
Friends with Stacey Shiflett saying,
I don't believe repentance is a change of mind.
You have to actually repent of all your sins
and genuinely turn away from your sins to be saved.
You know, he can be friends with those people,
he can't be friends with us, right?
Making friendship with bad people,
with people wrong on the gospel, hating us,
you know, going down this bad path.
You'd wish for these people to get right.
Hey, get clear on the gospel.
Don't have friends that are preaching heresy on the gospel.
Don't believe a bunch of lies.
Don't read stupid things in the text.
You know, it's gonna discourage the congregation
when you read the Bible and it just makes so much sense
and then they're saying that's not what it means.
It doesn't really mean 430 years.
It's the secret esoteric understanding of 215, okay?
What else is like that in the Bible now?
You know, what other secret hidden knowledge is there?
Are there some places in the Bible
where maybe you can come to a wrong conclusion
from a simple reading?
Yeah, I get it.
For the most part, that is not what,
the Bible says what it means, it means what it says.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist
to understand the Bible.
The Bible is for the simple.
The Bible's for the common man, okay?
And we wanna make sure that we don't have malice
towards people that we don't like.
I don't have malice towards the people
that have been our frenemies, but at the end of the day,
sometimes people that are attacking our church
and hurting our church, sometimes you just deliver them
over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.
Even David prayed, I believe in precatory Psalms
against Saul in the book of Psalms.
You can read Psalm 143, 142, Psalm 59, Psalm 57.
There's a lot of passages we could read on that.
When he's being hunted down by Saul.
The Bible says in James 4, 4 that,
you're already there I guess, we could look at this verse.
Says in verse four, "You adulterers and adulteresses,
"know you not that friendship of the world
"is enmity with God.
"Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world
"is the enemy of God."
You become an enemy of God.
Hey, you know what?
Anything's on the table at that point.
And obviously someone can be my enemy
and I'm gonna try and do well and I'm gonna wish them well.
You start attacking the things of God,
I'll pray in precatory prayers, okay?
So we understand that nuance as well.
But just generally speaking,
we don't wanna have malice
towards the brothers and sisters in Christ.
We don't have hatred, we don't have envy,
especially in this room, in our congregation.
We need to get rid of all of that.
We need to have nothing to do with it.
Sometimes we need to rebuke,
sometimes we need to church discipline,
sometimes we need to call it heresy,
sometimes we publicly mark and avoid,
sometimes we even laugh at people.
We don't have malice, we don't have hatred,
we don't have envy.
You know, some groups that people are like this towards,
police too.
We don't wanna just hate all police.
We don't wanna hate all ICE agents.
We don't wanna hate all strangers and foreigners
and immigrants in our country.
We don't wanna just hate all black people
because of some video you watched online.
You don't wanna just hate all of our frenemies.
We don't have mouths.
We don't wanna just live our life hating people.
Don't live your life just consumed
with hating other people.
And this one will hairlip a few people,
but don't spend your entire life only hating Jews.
Now look, I'm not saying that I don't have a strong detest
towards the synagogue of Satan.
I'm not saying that I'm not gonna preach tons
of sermons against them.
I'm not saying we aren't gonna have a whole conference
called the Anti-Israel Conference.
We are, and we're gonna go hard.
But you know what, we're also later in the year
gonna have a conference for the kids.
It's not gonna be like Anti-Israel Conference,
one, two, three, four, five, and six for the year, okay?
We're not gonna just like only preach on that subject
and that issue and just focus only on one thing.
Hey, we might make a documentary about it,
but we'll make documentaries about soul winning too, right?
At the end of the day, we want our focus of our ministry
to be on soul winning, not hating Jews.
Now, again, it's hard to let the Bible fall open
and not say something negative about Jews
'cause it's almost on every page.
But at the end of the day, you know,
it's also on every page, soul winning,
loving Christ, loving our brother,
and we wanna balance all of these ideas.
We wanna emphasize what the Bible emphasizes,
and we wanna make sure that we don't live a life
full of malice, and bitterness, and hatred,
and ah, interest, those Jews, you know.
Ah, you know, payday loans,
and oh, the Fed printed more money.
They're gonna do that every day.
You're gonna get charged interest every day.
They're gonna have smut on the television every day.
They're gonna constantly start wars every day.
Yeah, the Jews are causing problems every single day.
If you want an excuse to hate Jews,
they're gonna give it to you six million times every day.
But let me tell you something, you know what?
I wanna live my life loving Christ, and loving the Bible,
and loving the souls of the lost, and getting them saved,
and loving the brethren,
and ministering under the brethren.
You know what?
It's better to spend some time loving someone in this room,
doing good under someone in this room,
than just hating a bunch of rats.
Bunch of sewer rats crawling out
of New York City's tunnels, okay?
Hey, I wanna be an equal opportunist.
We can have balance in our lives, but you know what?
I wanna be more focused on love than on hate.
Hate is a time to love, and it's a time to hate.
If you're consumed with hatred, you're wrong.
If you never hate, you're wrong.
We wanna have balance.
But you know what?
We wanna make sure our hatred is towards the enemies of God,
not towards our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Not having malice.
Look at James chapter three, verse 11.
"Do the fountains send forth at the same place
sweet water and bitter?
Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries,
either a vine, figs?
So can no fountain, both yield salt water and fresh.
Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you?
Let him show out of a good conversation
his works with meekness of wisdom.
But if you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts,
glory not, and lie not against the truth,
this wisdom descendeth not from above,
but is earthly, sensual, devilish.
For where envying and strife is,
there is confusion in every evil work.
But the wisdom that is from above is first pure,
then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated,
full of mercy and good fruits,
without partiality, without hypocrisy.
And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace
of them that make peace.
We should not have this attitude of bitterness,
of hatred, of strife, why?
'Cause that's earthly, sensual, devilish,
where there's envying and strife.
What do we wanna be?
We wanna be pure, peaceable, gentle,
easy to be entreated, full of mercy, good fruits,
without partiality, no, this is without hypocrisy.
You know, don't allow someone to trick you
and think that they're the loving person
when they're filled with hypocrisy.
You know, I need to lovingly separate from you
because of who your friends are,
but then I'm gonna become buddies with someone over here
that has atrocious friends, atrocious friends.
We'll be an example of this.
Well, how about this?
How can you break fellowship with Pastor Aaron Thompson
for being friends with me and Pastor Anderson?
But then you can be friends with Pastor McMurtry,
who is friends with, I don't know, Stacy Shifflett,
who you've preached against and hate
and have called out repeatedly,
who's friends with Keith Gomez,
who's friends who ordained the flat earther knowingly,
who is just friends with just any kind of weirdos
and freaks and just, I mean,
this guy's friends list is atrocious.
It's like, I can't be friends with you
because of who your friends are,
but then I'm gonna ignore this person's friends.
That's called hypocrisy.
And you know what it is?
It's bitterness.
That's what the Bible just said.
It's bitterness.
This is what this entire passage is about.
And then they say, oh, earthly sensual devilish.
They'll hate on another church.
They'll call it another church
and say this church has horrible music.
It's earthly sensual devilish,
but it's really they're the one that's bitter.
They don't even understand what this passage is even saying.
Look, we shouldn't hate other churches in our area.
I think that Dallas Forward area
is probably one of the easiest places
to go to a church that's not New IAB.
Like of all the areas that live in America,
I'm just gonna say this might be the absolute best place
to find a church that's not New IAB.
I mean, there are tons of good options out there.
There's tons of other churches.
I mean, there's multiple soul winning churches in our area.
There's multiple churches that are big.
There's other nice guys, good pastors.
You know, some of the people in our church
visit other churches regularly.
I talk with their pastors.
I'm friendly with some of them.
Some of them will never return my call no matter what.
It doesn't matter.
You know, I have to like burn their field down
or something to get them to answer.
But I'm not gonna do that, you know?
I'm not gonna do such a thing.
But at the end of the day, I mean, hey,
you live in the Dallas-Worth area.
It's got a, it's like a Baptist Mecca in some ways.
I mean, you got tons of options here.
We shouldn't hate those people.
I'm not in competition with those people.
You know what, I'm in competition with people
like Robert Morris preaching Lordship Salvation,
who's a pedophile, you know, with Gateway.
I'm in competition with the Catholics.
I'm in competition with the Methodists
and the United Methodists and all the weird denominations
that are damning souls to hell.
You know what, God bless every saved fundamental Baptist
in our area.
- Amen.
- God bless all of them.
I hope they do great.
I hope they excel.
I don't want to have malice or envy
or bitterness towards them.
And you know, you say, Hey, Pastor Shelley,
I don't want to go here.
I want to go to this other awesome
fundamental Baptist church.
God bless you.
And you know what, go be a blessing over there.
And you know what, if you love that church so much,
why don't you share their sermons
instead of constantly making clips about mine to hate on.
You know, it's funny to me, like,
oh, I went to this other church, it's so great.
How come you never share any of their sermons or clips
of their preaching?
If it's so great, you know, and again,
I'm not saying it's not great.
I'm just saying, don't live your life with hatred
and bitterness and envy.
Hey, why don't you find something to love and love it.
And if you don't love this church, leave.
We don't want you.
We wanna serve God with sincerity and truth.
We don't wanna have the leaven of malice.
We don't wanna have the leaven of wickedness.
We wanna have pure hearts.
We're worshiping God.
And you know, if you in this room
have a little bit of bitterness,
have a little bit of anger towards someone in this room,
fix it today.
Fix it now.
Now is the accepted time.
Hey, if you have some bitterness or hatred a little bit
towards other people that are saved,
that are just outside these walls,
you need to fix it now.
And you know, maybe that's your mom,
maybe that's your dad.
Maybe that's your brother, maybe that's your sister.
Maybe it's a friend, maybe it's a coworker.
Maybe it's a church you used to visit.
Maybe it's someone that did you dirty.
I don't care.
Let it go, get rid of it.
'Cause it will not help the cause.
We have so much work to do next year.
We're gonna do so many great things.
And you know what will destroy us?
We're just focused on hating people.
Now, I'm not saying next year I won't rebuke people.
I'm not saying I won't church discipline people.
I'm not saying I won't call it heresy.
I'm not saying I won't make fun of and laugh at people
for preaching stupid things.
I'm gonna do all of that.
But at the same time,
I'm gonna make sure that I'm not hating them.
I'm gonna make sure that I'm trying to love them
and trying to do good, wishing good for them.
And you know what?
I wanna do good for us as well.
We don't wanna have a church filled with malice.
We wanna have love for the bread.
And this goes in prayer.
Thank you heavenly father so much for the word of God.
Thank you for all that you've given to us.
Thank you for forgiving us of all our debts
and forgiving us of all of our trespasses.
I pray that we would appreciate that attitude
and apply it to others.
That we apply it to our brothers and sisters in Christ.
That we would love the brethren.
We'd have the boldness and we'd have the confidence
to correct them when needed.
That we would not suffer sin upon them.
But if necessary, we would rebuke them.
We'd do it with love.
We'd do it with charity.
We'd do it with grace.
That we would try to be kind one to another.
I pray that any of us that are struggling with hatred
or envy or bitterness, that we just let it all go
with all the malice, that we would reconcile,
that we would try to wish good
for our brothers and sisters in Christ,
that we would love all of our brothers and sisters
in Christ, and that we would continue to focus
on what's good and what's right and seeking peace
in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
- Okay, for our last song this morning,
let's go to song number 428.
Song number 428, "Aim Upon a Midnight Clear."
Song 428, sing that out together.