Bye.
good afternoon everybody and welcome to Steadfast Baptist Church. It's great to see everybody
here tonight. We can go and find our seats. We will get started and tonight we will start
You
In the blood of the lamb, are you washed in the flood?
In the swoon-blending blood of the lamb, are your garments spotless?
Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the flood?
Lord, we love you so much.
We just thank you for this awesome church.
Thank you for the songs we get to sing.
They're awesome as well.
We love you, Lord.
We just ask you to fill this room with your spirit.
Help us to lift up our voices unto you, Lord.
And it's in Jesus' name, we pray.
All right, for our next song,
let's go to song number 19.
Song number 19.
There is a fountain.
Song number 19.
You're coming to Steadfast Baptist Church.
If you did not already get a bulletin and you would like one,
just lift your hand up nice and high.
On the front, we have our Bible-Memory passage.
Matthew 28, we're getting really close to completing this passage on the inside.
Our church terms, our church times, and our soul-winning times.
We have our church stats and keep up the great work.
We're doing really good and it would be great
if we could just double our last year's total.
So we just got to keep working
and we've been doing really, really great.
So keep up the great work on our soul winning on the right.
We have the list of our expecting ladies.
We have some upcoming events.
We have our Kids Choir practice that's been happening
and we're getting really close to our Easter services.
So looking forward to them performing on Easter.
We have our spring swap, April 13th.
Then Mansfield's soul winning marathon, April 19th.
And we still have Easter cards if you'd like to hand out,
but we'll be doing a big push on the 19th for Easter.
We have Easter services, of course, April 20th.
We have the Scott baby shower May 3rd mother's day brunch May 10th. I don't think it's in the
It's not in our bulletin, but just so people would be aware,
we're gonna do the Lord's Supper service
Sunday evening on Easter.
So I know that we typically may do that
on Thursday or something,
but just so we have maximum participation,
we'll be doing that Sunday Easter evening services.
And so if you'd like to participate
in the communion service,
we'll be having that for the evening service.
Church reminders there down below.
Make sure you're watching your kids on the back.
Baby shower for the Scots and their baby boy.
May 3rd.
And if you can bring a side dish or dessert to share,
please let us know.
You can RSVP to Mrs. Milstead as well.
They are registered on Amazon.
If you'd like to get them a gift,
it is Nurslings Only Preferred.
Our prayer list there,
if you continue to pray for the Naeems
for their grandmother,
and we've been praying for Ms. Carlson's mother,
Faith Miller's mother, or friend's mother, I'm sorry.
The brother Scott his parents have been praying for both brother Horace and Miss Grace and also his wife Miss Olivia
If you've been praying for the Garcia's health, Miss Goodwin's been praying for Miss Sarah's health
We also have brother Nick's praying for his mother salvation another co-worker. We have Miss Larky
We're continuing to pray for her arm brother Brad
We've been praying for his father and sister as well as he has a couple personal requests there
Continue to pray for brother Diego's friend, Michelle
Ms. Sarah is also from our church,
is having an upcoming surgery.
So if you please be in prayer for her for that.
Ms. Yuhakim is also praying for a friend for their health
and then the Canaries have one for their cousin
who's recovering from a vehicle accident.
So a lot of health requests and some others.
We'll go ahead and say a quick word of prayer
as a church family.
Thank you, Heavenly Father, so much for our church.
Thank you for all the ladies who are expecting.
I pray that you just bless their pregnancies.
Please help those that are wishing to conceive.
I pray that you would also just be with our church family
that needs health or recovery from sickness or illness
or a chronic issue.
I pray also those that are friends and family,
if possible, that you could give them health
and that you could heal them.
And I pray that those that need to hear the gospel, that you would just soften their hearts,
that you would give us the boldness and courage to approach them,
that you give us the opportunity to preach unto them.
and I pray that you could help them to get saved.
I pray that you'd also just bless our church,
family and friends that need favor with their work
or with their travel.
I pray that you'd also bless our evangelists
in the Philippines and continue to help him
with the work that's going on over there.
I pray that you'd bless our upcoming Easter services.
I pray that you'd help us to get many people saved
and get them baptized and also encourage them
to wanna change their life and serve you
and in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
It's pretty much all I have as far as announcements. We'll go ahead and sing our Psalm of the week Psalm 119
Psalm 119 it's in our Psalm binders
All right, that was Psalm
119
It's all singing out loud together
Psalm 119
One, two, five.
Chapter 17 that's the book of Matthew chapter number 17
Matthew chapter number 17, the Bible reads,
and after six days, Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother
and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart,
and was transfigured before them, and his face did shine as the sun,
and his raiment was white as the light.
And behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him.
Then answered Peter and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here.
If thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles, one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for
Elias.
While he yet spake, behold a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold a voice out
of the cloud which said, This is my beloved son, and whom I am well pleased, hear ye
him.
And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, and were sore afraid.
and when they had lifted up their eyes they saw no man save Jesus only,
and as they came down from the mountain Jesus charged them saying,
tell the vision to no man until the Son of Man be risen again from the dead,
and his disciples asked him saying, why then say the scribes that Elias must come first?
And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come and restore all things.
But I say unto you that Elias has come already, and they knew him not.
But have done unto him whatsoever they listed, likewise shall also the Son of man suffer
of them.
Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them."
of John the Baptist and when they were come to the multitude there came to him a certain man
kneeling down to him and saying Lord have mercy on my son for he is lunatic and sore vex for off
times he falls into the fire and often to the water and I brought him to thy disciples and
they could not cure him then Jesus answered and said oh faithless and perverse generation how
long shall I be with you how long shall I suffer you bring him hither to me
and Jesus rebuked the devil and he departed out of him, and the child was cured from that very hour.
Then came the disciples to Jesus apart and said,
why could not we cast him out? And Jesus said unto them, because of your unbelief,
for verily I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed,
ye shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder place,
and it shall be removed, and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
And while they abode in Galilee, Jesus said unto them,
The son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men and they shall kill him in the third day
Shall he be raised again and they were exceeding?
Sorry and when they were come to Capernaum they that received tribute money came to Peter and said
Doth not your master pay tribute he saith yes, and when he was come into the house
Jesus prevented him saying what thinkest thou Simon of whom do the kings of the earth take customer tribute of
their own children or of strangers
Peter saith unto him, of strangers, Jesus saith unto him, then are the children free.
Now with sanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast and hook,
and take up the fish that first cometh up. And when thou hast opened his mouth,
thou shalt find a piece of money. That take, and give unto them, for me and thee. Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, thank you for this church. Thank you for allowing us to be here.
I pray that you fill Pastor Shelley with your Holy Spirit, Lord, that he may preach the Bible to us, Lord.
I pray that we would receive what he preached unto us, Lord, with an open heart. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.
Matthew 17, I want to back up one verse because the previous verse kind of comes into chapter 17.
Look what it says in verse 28 of chapter 16.
Verily I say in you there be some standing here which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.
Now, some...
interpretations of the Bible or some strange ideas about the end times will take this verse
and they'll use it to try and teach what we call preterism. Preterism is a weird doctrine
that suggests that Jesus Christ has already come back, already returned and everything in
And they'll often point to a verse like this or other passages,
and they'll say, see, Jesus Christ came back in their lifetime.
And they'll point to other verses in the New Testament about
the disciples, you know, waiting for the Lord Jesus Christ to come and
the idea of Peter and John kind of discussing this in the book of John about how
What is it if I Terry till he come and so, you know, they're kind of given this idea where
Hey, Jesus Christ came back in their lifetime
But if you read chapter 17 you end up realizing that is not what this passage was saying
It's not talking about the second coming of Christ because it was talking about the second coming of Christ
Well, then you know a lot of things just wouldn't fit with reality
Of course, we understand that Jesus Christ has not come back.
And one of the questions I always ask is, I'm just like,
when were the locusts from hell?
You know, I'm just, anybody that believes in preterism
or these ideas that all the stuff's already happened,
I'm always curious about that part.
Of course, there's a lot in the book of Revelation
that we could point to and say, when did this happen?
That doesn't seem to fit.
I would even argue though that saying that Christ has already come back when He hasn't
is a damnable heresy and it's an evil false doctrine.
Because the Bible even warns that people teaching that the resurrection has already happened
overthrow the faith of some so they're just destroying people's faith causing Christianity
to seem like a nonsensical religion, cults like the Jehovah's Witnesses and other groups,
declare that Jesus Christ was coming back,
and then they obviously got it wrong
multiple times over and over.
And we have to understand that this passage
is not talking about the second coming of Christ,
but rather it's talking about what's described here
in chapter 17, verse one.
It says that after six days Jesus taken Peter,
James and John as brother and bringing them up
into and high mountain apart.
Now you kind of wonder like why does it bring up
the six days because for the most part we haven't
been really tracking specific timelines
and this six days is random so it doesn't
really help us like identify anything.
But what I think it's trying to help us understand
is that six days after he made this proclamation
the fact that people would not taste of death before they saw this is just saying this was the timeline from that being said to
This event actually happening. It wasn't 60 years. It wasn't some time in the future that still hasn't happened
It was just six days later
What does it mean to taste of death? Well
Consistently the Bible when it uses the word taste just means some some kind of a short duration
or just a short sampling of something.
If you think about tasting, you partook in something,
but it just hasn't been a long time.
You know, the Bible says about Jesus Christ in the book of Hebrews
that he should taste death for every man.
What does that mean?
It means that he went to hell for three days and three nights.
So he tasted it.
He didn't go there for an eternity.
He didn't go there for thousands of years.
He went there just for three days and three nights.
So he tasted it in the sense that it was just a short duration.
It was a small amount of time that he went there.
But even just that short duration was an incredible experience.
I don't want to spend five seconds in hell, let alone three days and three nights.
Just because the excruciating amount of pain, suffering, separation from anything that's
good, water, no light, I mean it's just a horrible experience that's unimaginable.
There's nothing worse than hell, no one could dream up anything worse than hell, it's the
worst punishment and Jesus Christ took that for us.
Now it says when Jesus made this proclamation, he then takes three people, Peter, James and
John, brings them up to a high mountain apart, says in verse two, and was transfigured before
Transfigured is just another variation of transform.
Transform just means to change.
So just saying Jesus Christ changed right before them.
Now, what did he change into?
Or what was the transformation?
Or what was the transfiguration?
Well, it's going from a mortal, just regular state to a glorified state.
What Jesus Christ would inevitably look like in His full glory.
and so he's shining bright.
But notice that he didn't transform into someone else.
He didn't transform into something else.
He just was a more glorified version of himself, okay?
And when he's transfigured, it says,
in his face did shine as the sun,
as the raiment was white as the light,
and behold there appeared on them,
Moses and Elias talking with him,
then answered Peter and said unto Jesus,
Lord, it is good for us to be here.
If that will, let us make here three tabernacles, one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for
Elias.
While he yet spake, behold a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold a voice out
of the cloud which said, This is my beloved Son, and whom I am well pleased, hear ye him.
And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, and were sore afraid.
So a lot of things we can pull out of this few verses here, but notice a couple things.
Moses is really well known.
A lot of people would point to these guys as potentially being the two witnesses.
And if you think about it, the Bible does talk about Elijah being carried up
with a whirlwind up into heaven.
So we never saw him die physically, we never know where his body went.
The Bible also brings up the concept that the devil will argue about the body of Moses and so you could even argue that possibly Moses and Elijah are the only two people that have a physical body in a sense and haven't lost that body yet.
I don't know. Maybe they have lost it. Maybe they've been transfigured. We don't know exactly, but the Bible does bring kind of this mystery up about what happened with Moses' body.
And we saw Elijah just go straight up into heaven.
We don't even know what happened to him.
They looked for him all over the earth
and could never find him.
They never said like oh, here's Elijah's dead body. So his body is kind of missing
Moses's body is kind of missing and that's just kind of an interesting idea. So some people have suggested this might be the two
witnesses
Makes a little bit of sense think about this when Jesus Christ comes and is glorified like the second coming of Christ
And he comes in the clouds. That's kind of the timeline of when the two witnesses show up
So, another interesting parallel here is that when Jesus Christ is transfigured, oh, there's
Moses and Elias almost signifying another clue that perhaps they would be the two witnesses
because they just happened to show up at the same timeline as Christ kind of being there
in the clouds transfigured for all to see.
I'm not going to say it's, you know,
I don't want to be dogmatic about future things.
So we can always, you know, be willing to adjust our view.
But I would say that that's a really likely theory,
makes a lot of sense.
I feel like there's a lot of verses in the Bible
that point to the idea that they too
could be the two witnesses.
I've heard some people bring up maybe Enoch,
just because he was translated,
and we don't really see him physically dying.
But I honestly like the Elijah and Moses options
a little bit better.
It's even possible it could just be two other random guys in the future.
You know, I'm willing to say it could be, but it seems most likely it's probably like Moses
and Elijah's. That's one idea we can bring up. Here's another idea. Notice that they weren't
hanging out in Abraham's bosom. Did you notice that? It's just like these two guys appear and
they're there because, you know, we believe that when Old Testament saints died, they went to heaven
And, of course, they can come back and show themselves.
We have people doing this, not just them.
You have Samuel kind of being brought up
at one point in the Old Testament.
You have, of course, at Jesus Christ's resurrection,
some people coming back to life.
You have people just even coming back to life
that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead.
You have other people that were risen from the dead
and other places in the Old Testament.
So, you know, it's not unreasonable
to see people being resurrected.
So I, you know, I don't know exactly how to explain this,
but they're not talking about how they came out of Abrams
bosom or something weird like that.
So that's kind of an interesting thing.
Also, I think it's interesting that Jesus Christ
transfigured, and then it says in verse number five,
that a bright cloud overshadowed them
and be able to voice out of the cloud.
Showing another distinction again,
you have Jesus Christ transfigured,
but then you have a voice coming out of the cloud,
showing the distinction between the father and the son.
that Jesus Christ is not just the Father wearing like a bodysuit,
and then when he gets to heaven, he'll go back to his father's state.
He's just not the Father. He's just distinct from the Father. You have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
And even in Jesus Christ's most glorified state in heaven,
you still have that distinction where the Father is clouded with that shadow,
or, you know, fire, or cloud. He's just basically covered with something.
And again, you know, my speculation, my interpretation or believe is that it's just God, the father's too bright that if he just revealed himself
unshielded people would just die instantly
Her faces would melt or we would just die like we just couldn't handle it because the Bible says no man
She'll see my face and live and so of course, you know
God the father has to shield himself from mankind
so that's why he's always showing up in some kind of a cloud or
Fire or something just to kind of shield himself even when he showed himself to Moses
He had to cover his face with his hand and can only show him his back parts because you just couldn't see it and live
And so it's just kind of him protecting us
Also, you see the distinction of what he says.
This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.
So the father's talking about the son,
he's talking about being pleased with the son,
and we see that relation between the father and the son.
Of course, the Father has a voice coming out of the cloud.
They heard it.
So they hear Jesus, they hear the Father, they hear them both.
And of course, when they heard this though,
they fell on their face and were so afraid.
Our God is a consuming fire.
Our God is a terrifying God in the sense that He would strike terror
in the hearts of us if He was physically present.
He is an intimidating, he's intimidating to be around.
He has just a lot of power and magnificence.
When he came down on the mountain, the earth did quake
and the children of Israel just so terrified
at his presence and so it's a fearful thing
to be in the presence of God.
It's a fearful thing, it's a terrifying thing
and we see them just being in complete just fear
and falling down.
Which is consistent consistently in the Bible when God and people are in God's presence in any context
You know and he's not shielded by the incarnation or something people are just falling down and
They're just in fear and terror
Whereas you know all these people that give you these stories like I went to heaven or like God appeared to me or something
They never bring up this they never say like I just fell down
I couldn't even look at his magnificence. They're just like hanging out like their buddies or something
and just having a good old chat.
One guy heard, said they were writing segues around in heaven.
I'm just like, no.
He said they were writing segues around in a mall.
And I'm just like, that sounds like hell.
That does not sound like heaven, all right?
But, you know, of course, when people see God in a sense or are in His presence, they're
always just like falling down, Daniel's falling down, John's falling down, Peter, James and
John are falling down.
I mean, they're just falling down because it's just, He's a terrifying presence and,
you know, it's something that we can't really even handle.
Now, Jesus in verse seven says,
and Jesus came and touched them and said,
arise and be not afraid.
Now, I want to talk more about these first seven verses,
but for sake of the sermon,
I want to just try and get through the rest of this chapter
and then God willing, we'll come back
and I want to address a final point.
So we'll come back to this,
but I just don't want to spend the whole sermon
on these first few verses.
Look at verse eight.
And when they had lifted up their eyes,
they saw no man save Jesus only.
And as they came down from the mountain,
Jesus charged them saying television to no man
until the Son of Man be risen again from the dead.
Another thing that's interesting is how many times Jesus Christ wants his disciples or others to kind of conceal information.
You know, I think it's a lot of people save and tells them, like, don't tell anybody or don't go around and talk about this yet.
He's also telling his disciples, hey, don't share this experience until after the death, burial and resurrection.
And this is what you would just call exercising discretion.
Not everything needs to always be shared at all times.
Sometimes there's certain information that we need to keep private
or keep to ourselves for the right timeline, for the right moment to reveal it.
It's not that you're trying to keep secrets or anything like that,
but at the same time, not everything's always appropriate to say
or to open up with or to give all that information.
Sometimes it's better to have a certain timeline,
allow certain events to take place before you reveal certain information.
You know, for example, if I'm trying to get someone saved at the door,
I may not reveal everything that I believe before I get them saved.
You know, isn't the most important thing while I'm there just to get them saved?
But I mean, you'll have people ask you every question you could think of at the door.
They'll be at the door and they're like, hey, tell me about Homos.
And you're just like, let's wait a second, all right?
Let me tell you about the gospel first.
Now, some people just demand, like,
no, I want to know that now.
And then you kind of have to show them.
But you know, I'm not necessarily going to give you
every idea about the Jews and about homos
and reprobates and drinking alcohol.
Sometimes we're like, tell me about drinking alcohol.
It's like, let's get you saved first
and then we'll talk to you about
this particular thing that we want to bring up.
And so, you know, sometimes we want to make sure
that we're not trying to just get ahead of ourselves.
Things need to take time.
We need to have discretion,
knowing when to reveal certain information,
when not to.
But we shouldn't just always just say everything
and blurt everything out.
Sometimes we need to think about
what's the right timing,
can this person handle this information
and considering people's ability
to receive certain types of information.
You know, one thing that I was going to say
about the New Testament itself
is I kind of believed loosely
the New Testament
tends to, as you go through it, get more advanced.
So, like, the information for your spiritual life,
as you go through the New Testament books,
they kind of get more advanced.
and they more deal with more mature subjects.
So the further you are into the New Testament,
it's usually dealing with the more high level
and higher levels of maturity aspects of the Christian life,
whereas the earlier books and the earlier chapters
are more dealing with some of the basics when you talk about...
Christianity. You look at the Gospels, it's dealing with what? Getting saved.
You look at the Book of Acts, it's kind of talking about some of the early stages of salvation,
baptism, just some early points in Christianity. Romans is a really likeable book because it's
kind of basic. It talks about how you walk through salvation and just the points of doctrine,
kind of understanding baptism. You get into 1 Corinthians and you kind of notice these are
church issues that we have to deal with.
We're dealing with carnal Christians and carnal churches
because they haven't gone that far in the maturity of the Christian life.
You look at 2nd Corinthians, again, dealing with more carnal issues,
more baby issues, and as you kind of go through Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians,
Colossians, it starts to graduate.
As we get to the later books, when we talk about Hebrews and James and 1st and 2nd Peter, those skybooks,
those are more for the mature Christians and those that have gone through a lot of these carnal stages
and can grasp the stronger meat of the Word.
And I'm just saying that kind of just loosely speaking, it's almost like the New Testament kind of takes you on a journey.
And is it any coincidence that false prophets and false leaders, they just love to go straight to Hebrews, straight to James,
because they're not saved and they want to rest scriptures
that aren't dealing with salvation.
They're not dealing with basic topics.
They're actually dealing with more advanced topics
and more mature level of topics
when we talk about the Christian life and the Christian faith.
Of course, all books of the New Testament
will still bring up verses that have to do with salvation
or baptism or basic doctrines.
But for the most part, if you really study them,
they're kind of dealing with more advanced
and mature levels of topics.
Here's another thing, if you kind of like some of the more early parts of the New Testament.
Maybe it just means you're kind of more in an infancy
or a beginning part of your Christian life.
And as you grow up, you get more mature.
The more you read your Bible,
the more the later chapters and the later books
of the New Testament,
we'll actually kind of gravitate towards.
Once you kind of graduate through the entire New Testament,
then just start to like some of the harder books
of the Old Testament.
And of course, you know, once you get through all that,
then there's always the minor prophets last
and you're just like, these are hard, okay?
But of course, God wants us to have some hard books
in the Bible.
because the Christian life is one of our entire lives,
not just five minutes.
And of course, God gives us all levels of difficulty
when it comes to the Word of God.
And that's great.
It's great that you don't outgrow the Bible.
You can't outgrow the Bible.
You can't learn it all.
It's something that we can study our whole lives
and still come short,
just because the wisdom of God is infinite
and we are a finite being.
But just to give you some kind of a general idea
about these books.
When I'm going out and preaching the gospel I don't necessarily need to explain to them the finer points of Hebrews and James when they're not even saved
And again, you know, most people bring up James too as an objection.
I'll just kind of like quickly explain that because they need that obstacle to be overcome.
But for the most part, I don't want to get into the deep doctrine of Hebrews and James
and 1 Peter with unsaved people or people that are baby Christians just because it's
typically not something they can handle or grasp yet because they just haven't really
got into those subjects yet.
Okay.
Just in the same way, I'm not going to talk about a lot of adult subjects with children
They may not quite grasp it yet.
They need to kind of go through more of the basics
before we can get to some of the more advanced subjects
and them to fully comprehend them.
Now, in verse number 10, the Bible says,
and his disciples asked him, saying,
why then say the scribes that Elias must first come?
And Jesus answered and said to them,
Elias truly shall first come and restore all things.
But I say to you,
that Elias has already is come already and they knew him not but have done unto him. What's over they listed?
likewise
Shall also the Son of man suffer of them now
Listed their means whatever they wanted
So just saying they already did with John the Baptist whatever they wanted to do with him now. Who's the they there?
Typically the they is people that wear small hats, okay?
But this is a little tricky one because it's I don't believe this is the that that day
This is a different day because who is it that executed John the Baptist?
It was Herod it was the Romans and if you think about it, what is he trying to suggest or what is he bringing up?
He's saying hey the Romans
Killed John the Baptist and who's gonna kill Jesus?
Now, we understand that the Jews delivered Jesus under the Romans, and it was at the Jews
bidding that the Romans killed Jesus Christ, but we know that the Romans are the ones that
carried out that action.
John the Baptist, he wasn't really delivered by the Jews.
He was just simply taken custody by the Romans
for offending Herod and Herodias,
and that's why he was slain.
But I think that it's just interesting.
Jesus already kind of knew,
hey, I'm actually gonna be killed by the Romans
and not the Jews.
Which is interesting because really the only reason
you would be killed by Romans
is for offending the Romans, like committing a crime.
And since we know Jesus is never going to commit a crime,
it would be kind of puzzling like,
how in the world would the Romans kill you,
or why would they kill you?
It doesn't make any sense.
We know that the Jews want to kill you,
but the Jews want to stone him.
Because the execution method by Jews was stoning.
But we know that the Bible is always pointing to the cross
and being, you know, hung on the tree
and as a serpent lifted up, I'm sorry,
as Moses lifted up a serpent in the wilderness,
so also saw the Son of Man be lifted up, right?
So we have this interesting idea of like,
how is Jesus Christ going to die on the cross?
How is he going to be lifted up?
Because the Romans wouldn't care.
The Romans aren't really that religious.
They don't really, they're not interested in
these kind of debates and talking about the Bible.
It would have to be a crime.
But God obviously orchestrated it in a way that the Romans were going to be willing to do this at the request of the Jews
And that Jesus Christ would be crucified to fill all scripture
So it's interesting that Jesus is bringing this up and talking about how he is going to be crucified
Of course, Elias here is just simply a loose mention of John the Baptist
And it says there in verse 13 then the disciples understood that he's spake out of them of John the Baptist. So
They were kind of confused because they're like is Elijah literally coming back or kind of in a metaphor
And of course, I believe the Bible is clear
There's just a metaphor that he had like the spirit of Elijah and that he was like Elijah and he came in
The spirit and power of Elijah, but it was a genuinely different person
It was John the Baptist and John the Baptist had the spirit of Elijah on him, but he was like Elijah
Verse 14,
And when they were come to the multitude,
there came to him a certain man kneeling down to him
and saying, Lord, I have mercy on my son
for he is a lunatic, or for he is lunatic,
and sore vex for off times he falleth into the fire
and off into the water.
And I brought him to the disciples
and they could not cure him.
Then Jesus answered and said oh faithless and verse generation how long shall I be with you and how long shall I suffer you?
Bring him hither to me and Jesus rebuked the devil and he departed out of him the child was cured from that very hour
Then the disciples came to Jesus apart and said why could not we cast him out?
And Jesus said unto them because of your unbelief for verily I say in you if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed
You shall say unto this mountain remove hints to yonder place and a shower move
and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
How be it this kind goeth not out,
but by prayer and fasting.
So Jesus has healed a lot of people.
He's healed people of all ages.
Here's another example of a young man
who's considered lunatic.
Often, what we understand when we compare this with other passages and other places in the Bible,
he was demon-possessed. Notice in verse 18,
and Jesus rebuked the devil, and he departed out of him,
and the child was cured from that very hour.
So, in many cases, especially in the Gospels,
it describes people of having some kind of an issue as being related to being demon-possessed
or having some kind of demonic spirit upon them.
This is kind of interesting and this is what I think is the point that I like to draw out of this text is a
Child, you know, we don't know the exact age here
But notice the child can be afflicted by
Demonic experience or demon possessed in some way and I believe that could still be possible today
And there's probably some children in our world that are demon possessed
What is a demon possession look like?
Someone hurting themselves and so you know often when the world
Will see children hurting themselves or trying to harm themselves
They try to put them on drugs and they try to subdue them with some kind of a drug
You know drugs doesn't cure anything. It doesn't cure a demonic possession and you know
That's that's the wrong treatment for demonic possession
Now, of course, anybody could have a disease or an illness and medication could apply.
I do think that there are potential issues where people need medicine.
There are some times people have disabilities or maybe some kind of deficiency, whether that
be vitamin and they need some kind of medicine.
But when we're talking about...
Children hurting themselves, you know, this this kind of just sad
The press state trying to do things to harm themselves doing things that don't make sense
Again throwing yourself into fire or trying to drown yourself or something extreme is not something that's normal
Sometimes that's this question. Maybe this person's just demon possessed and
Of course for us, you know, I don't have the ability to just cast out demons
But what I do believe we have the ability to is to give the gospel and get someone's hate
And, when you get someone saved, the Holy Spirit comes inside, and I believe that that
would cast out whatever demon or devil would be inside of them, because I don't believe
a saved person can be deemed possessed.
And what I think is really important about this passage is thinking about the idea of
why it's important to get children saved.
Number one, perhaps it could relieve them of that,
but number two, once they get saved,
this can't happen to them.
And a lot of people might even criticize our church
or churches like us where we go out
and we preach the gospel,
and oftentimes we'll preach to children.
You know, we'll go to apartment complexes,
we'll go to parks, we'll go to areas,
and we'll preach to young children.
You know what, children need to get saved
just as much as adults.
And if children could be deemed possessed to the point where they would kill themselves or harm themselves,
how much more important is it to get them saved at a young age?
And we shouldn't look down upon the idea of getting a young child at 7, 8, 9, 10,
giving them the gospel and getting them saved when we go out to preach the gospel.
Because you know what? They need the gospel and someone needs to save them.
And you know what? Jesus had compassion on the young children in his time.
And we need to go out there and preach the gospel because we don't know what influences they have in their lives.
Many times we talk to kids, their parents are Muslim, or Hindu, or they have some kind of false religion,
or perhaps they're atheists, who knows what kind of influences they have in their life,
who knows what kind of friends they have in their life,
and what kind of demons could come and torment them, afflict them if we don't get them saved.
We need to go out there and preach the gospel
to every creature is what the Bible says.
And hey, I'm not trying to usurp the authority of parents.
I'm not going to try and infringe on parents' rights
when it comes to their children.
But if children are out and available
for me to give them the gospel,
I will do so when appropriate.
Obviously, when there's a young child at the door,
I'll often ask for their parents
or try to get their permission to give them the gospel.
But, you know, for the most part,
if a child understands and wants to hear,
I want to give it to them.
And, you know, when we go into these apartment complexes,
a lot of times they're just out running around.
And I'm thinking, like, if you're going to allow your kids
to just run around with you, paying attention,
me giving the gospel is not going to hurt anything.
You know what I mean?
And we need to go out there and preach the gospel
and get a lot of these kids saved.
And we do.
And you know what?
It's the same as getting anybody else saved.
And, in fact, I would argue it's even better.
Think about this, kids are being cured at a young age.
The Bible tells us in 2 Timothy,
let's keep your finger here,
go to 2 Timothy, chapter number three.
The Bible teaches that children can get saved,
which to me is just a great proof
of the fact that salvation is not a hard process.
It's not a long process
and has nothing to do with repenting of your sins.
Because frankly speaking,
all of us have sinned way worse
after being a young adult than when we were kids.
I mean, 99.99% of people sin way more after being a teenager than before being a teenager.
I mean, when you were a young kid, your sins were not anything in comparison to probably what you did later in life or as an adult.
And you don't even have time to repent of those because you're still a child.
But look what it says in 2 Timothy chapter number three towards the end of this chapter.
It says in verse 15 that from a child that has known the holy scriptures which are able
to make the wise and the salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus, yes you can
get saved as a young child.
And if you can get saved as a young child,
you know what else you can get?
Baptize as a young child.
And you know what, there's nothing wrong
with us getting our children saved and baptized
at a young age and trying to get them
on the right path for the rest of their life.
And look at a great example of someone that did that,
who ended up being greatly used of God, Timothy.
Someone that was saved at his young age,
he saw the faith of his mother and his grandmother,
and he ended up being greatly used by God.
And I believe that we should
put our kids on the best path for success by getting them saved at a young age,
encouraging them to take that step in baptism and serving God with the rest of their life.
I was saved at a young age and baptized at a young age, and you know what? I don't think that that
is a coincidence that then I want to end up serving God with my life. And then I know other
people in my family didn't get saved at a young age and didn't get baptized ever. And you know what?
You know, I notice a lot of people that get saved
and they don't get baptized, end up not serving God.
In fact, show me the person out there
that's greatly serving God that's never been baptized.
Hey, we're Baptist.
We don't believe you have to do that to get saved,
but let me tell you something.
People that get baptized serve God.
And people who don't get baptized often never serve God.
And look, there's plenty of people
that get baptized who don't serve God.
But I'm telling you, the ones that don't get baptized,
wow, it's pretty much scarce pickings
on anybody that's actually serving God
or trying to live a Godly life or trying to do right.
And you know what, we emphasize baptism.
We want people to get baptized
because we want them to serve God
and walk in newness of life.
It's an important step, it's a big step to say,
hey, not only did I accept free salvation,
I want to die to self and I wanna serve Christ with my life.
And you know, we don't go around
trying to give out licenses of sin.
We say, hey, after you got saved, get baptized.
That's what we try to get people to do.
We try to encourage people to dedicate their life
to serving God.
And yeah, do they have to do that to be saved?
No.
We give out free salvation. We don't even give it out. I mean, we're just telling people about it
Jesus is the one that gives it out obviously, but at the end of the day, you know
We're trying to encourage people to get baptized so that they will then serve God with their life
And we need to get these children saved
Baptized and encouraged them to serve God with their lives. Of course, you know as a parent I
Want this for my children
I don't want to necessarily force it on them, though.
You know, I want them to make that decision for themselves.
I want them to want to get baptized.
I want them to want to get saved so that they remember it,
that it's important to them,
that they don't just get baptized to get baptized.
You know, I've known a lot of people,
and I've heard a lot of testimonies from people.
They say, I was baptized as a young child,
but I didn't know what I was doing.
I just thought it was cool. I just wanted to get baptized.
You know, we don't want to just baptize people
because it's fun or cool.
In fact, most of them don't even seem like they like it, you know?
Babs has a lot of children and they're just all like,
ah, when they're coming out of the water,
they're kind of like shocked or it's cold or whatever.
You know, it's not like super fun experience
or something like that.
It's to talk about the fact that they wanna die to self
and serve God and we should talk to our children
and talk to those who get baptized and explain,
hey, this is you deciding you actually wanna
serve God with your life.
And this is a serious commitment.
This is something that you're dedicating yourself to
and we wanna take baptism seriously.
Of course, we don't want to discourage anybody from getting baptized when everyone that wants to to get baptized
But we should also encourage them to understand what they're doing what that means and what it looks like just like marriage
You know we want people to take marriage seriously want people to take baptism seriously
We want to take all these steps seriously and you know what we should take preaching the gospel to children seriously too
Don't think that it's a meaningless thing
You know children need the gospel just as much as adults and we should care for them and give them the gospel
Notice also though that they couldn't get it done
You know, the disciples were struggling with this.
Jesus brings up in verse 20 because of your unbelief
is the reason why they couldn't.
He says, but if, man, if you even just had enough,
like a faith, just a small faith,
you would have been able to do anything.
But verse 21, I'll be at this kind,
both not out, but by prayer and fasting.
I think sometimes we have to understand that
not every prayer request is answered immediately.
And not everything that we want to happen
happens on our timeline.
And it doesn't mean that God's not hearing our prayers,
but there could be another reason why it's taking a while.
I want to go to a passage in Daniel,
if you would, to chapter 10, Daniel, chapter 10,
and show kind of a clear example in the Bible
where a prayer request takes time.
But what's interesting about Daniels, chapter 10,
is that this prayer request, well, it took time.
It wasn't God trying to delay the prayer request.
Now, in Daniels, chapter 10,
Let's read verse number two it says in those days I Daniel's morning three full weeks
I ate no pleasant bread neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth neither did I not myself at all till three whole weeks were fulfilled
You could argue that this is a type of fasting isn't it?
He's not eating pleasant bread. He's kind of holding himself back, and he's praying for three whole weeks
Then if you skip down to verse 12
Some angel shows up
Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words.
But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one in twenty days, but lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, and I remain there with the kings of Persia.
For yet, the vision is for many days.
So, Daniel wants to understand the Word of God.
He's chastening himself as the Bible describes.
What is chasen? Discipline.
He's disciplining himself with what?
Some type of fasting.
So fasting is a form of self-discipline.
I've heard people say that you cannot discipline yourself.
That is a false doctrine.
Daniel disciplined himself. He chastened himself. That's what the text says. So you can exercise self-discipline
And Daniel then, of course, continues to pray,
does it for 21 days or three whole weeks is what the Bible says.
Finally the angel shows up. This tells me that we need to be steadfast
in our prayers and realize that not every prayer request
will be granted the day that we ask it.
Now, it wasn't that God didn't want to grant it. In fact, it almost seems like he did say
go ahead. The problem was somehow there's spiritual warfare happening that we can't see.
between angels and between the devil that was preventing him from coming.
Notice it said in verse 13,
but the prince of the kingdom of Persia
withstood me one in 20 days.
Below Michael, one of the chief princes came to help me
and I remain there with the kings of Persia.
So somehow the devil can fight against God's angels.
You know, the Bible says in the book of Revelation,
chapter 12 that the devil at one point
is gonna have a battle
and is gonna be cast out of heaven.
So it seems very clear in the Bible
can actually go up to heaven right now.
I don't understand how that works.
I don't understand what that looks like exactly.
But in the book of Job, chapters one and two,
the Bible says that the devil or Satan
presented himself before the Lord.
We also have in the book of Revelation, chapter number 12,
a time upon which the devil is cast out of heaven.
And once he's cast out of heaven,
he has but a short space, a short time.
And that's where we kind of see that
in times coming to fruition,
that last seven weeks or seven years.
of Daniel's 70th weeks.
Sorry, it's really just one week.
I misspoke, it's not seven weeks,
but it's seven years, which is one week
that the devil just basically is gonna have
just kind of wreak havoc.
Towards the end part, of course,
God pours out his wrath on them.
But what we can see in the text is the devil somehow can fight even God's messengers and God's angels and
So we see the spiritual warfare in the same way
We have a child who's
Experiencing spiritual warfare of some kind of demon or some kind of devil possession and the disciples couldn't do it
But it seems like they kind of it must have given up
They weren't steadfast. They weren't fasting. They weren't praying enough and he's kind of just mad at them for giving up
And, you know, we want to make sure that we're not giving up on God.
You know, sometimes we have prayer requests in our bullets in for a long time.
But you know what, we don't want to give up.
We want to be steadfast and we want to realize,
hey, some things happen to God's timing.
Now it could be that God's just never going to answer
that particular request.
Maybe we just don't understand it.
But I don't want to be the one that gives up.
I don't want to be someone that just prays and,
oh, but it didn't happen right now,
must not happen or lose faith in God.
You know, we want to be the type of person
that's just continually asking, continually praying
and allow the Lord's will to come to fruition,
whatever it is, thy will be done.
But at the same time, having the faith that,
Whatever we ask in the Lord's name, it can happen.
It is possible.
We could even cast mountains into the sea
and we just need to keep praying for those events.
You know, whether that be good, negative,
you know, keep praying in precatory prayers,
keep praying positive prayers.
And there's been a lot of times in my life
where there was things I thought couldn't happen.
or I was skeptical that they could ever happen.
But I said, you know what?
I believe God's real.
I know that he answers prayer,
and I'm just gonna pray for this anyways.
And he has performed miracles, in my opinion.
Things that I thought just didn't make sense
or wouldn't really happen, and just kept praying.
You know, if there's that family member or friend
or situation that you feel like needs to get saved,
don't give up on them.
Again, obviously,
There's reps and we get that but I'm just saying you know if there's not this obvious sign that they're rejected of God
We shouldn't give up on them. We should keep praying and we should have faith
And I think that's the lesson that he wants us to get here in Matthew 17. Go back if you would I
Don't want to give up on the hard cases and I don't want to give up on children
We need to go out there and preach the gospel and get a lot of people saved
Verse 22 the Bible says
And when they abode in Galilee, Jesus said to them,
the Son of Man shall be betrayed into the hands of men,
and they shall kill him, and the third day,
he shall be raised again, and they were exceeding, sorry.
So Jesus is talking about the gospel.
Notice he says in verse 23,
and the third day, he shall be raised again.
Interesting, Jesus can call it, hey, on the third day.
That's real specific.
You know, as we enter into the Passover week,
this timeline, you know, we'll have Palm Sunday coming up on Sunday, and then
we'll have Wednesday, which was the Last Supper, and then we'll have Thursday,
which is the crucifixion, and then we'll end up celebrating the resurrection of
Jesus Christ on Sunday, Easter Sunday. That's what we celebrate. Easter Sunday is
the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, that He was raised the third day. How
do I get all those other days? Well, there's a lot of things you can look at.
I want to go to one of the passages,
if you can go to Luke 24.
I've made a whole chart on this before,
but I believe that Jesus Christ was crucified
on Thursday, not Friday.
Also, some people believe that it was Wednesday.
I believe it was Thursday.
Now, we notice that Jesus says
that he was raised on the third day.
Luke 24 is another clear verse on the subject and in Luke 24 it's Jesus Christ kind of walking
with two guys and they don't really like, their eyes are beholden, they don't realize
it's Jesus.
It's called the walk to Emmaus, a lot of people kind of know it by that.
And he's just going through the whole Bible just explaining how Jesus was going to die,
And I'm always like thinking like did he just go through the whole testament because it just seems like the whole
Testament signifies Jesus Christ's death from resurrection, but would have been a really cool
You know walk it would have been a really cool conversation. In fact, these guys are blown away
They're saying that their heart did burn within them
But he's there's something that they say in this chapter. That's kind of a clue about the timeline look at verse 21
This is them speaking
But we had trusted that had been he which should have redeemed Israel.
And beside all this, today is the third day since these things were done.
Now, what were the things?
Verse 20, it says,
So it's the third day since what?
since he was crucified.
So if you think about it, Sunday, the first day of the week,
that's the day that Jesus Christ rose again early in the morning.
Before the sun came up, before 6 a.m., Jesus has risen.
I don't know the exact time could have been 2am, 3am, maybe even 4am, probably it was
at least by 4am just because other people had shown up before the sun had risen and
he was already gone.
So and it says it very early on the first day.
So it's probably somewhere around 2am, 3am is what I would just speculate but it's definitely
on Sunday early in that morning.
we'll do three. So that would make Saturday the second day since. That would make Friday
the first day since what? Since crucified. Sunday is the third day since crucified. Saturday
is the second day since crucified. Friday is the first day since crucified. Well, you
can't really have dying on Friday if it's been the first day since that's happened.
So that's just another great evidence of how you can kind of figure out it's Thursday.
It could be complicated.
I've made a whole chart if you want to show people.
But if I were to try to explain it to somebody really quickly, this is what I would do.
I'd just go to Luke 24, say, hey, verse 20, he was crucified.
Verse 21, it's the third day since.
So then you just count backwards.
Sunday is the third day since.
Saturday is the second day since.
Friday is the first day since.
He was crucified on Thursday, it's pretty simple.
And of course, the Bible talks about three days and three nights
that he's going to be in the heart of the earth.
Well, he was crucified at the ninth hour,
which would have been approximately 3 p.m.
And, you know, it says that he died in that ninth hour,
so that would be somewhere between three and four.
So you basically have Thursday as that first day,
couple hours, then you have Thursday night,
so there's your night, then you have Friday day,
that's your second day, then you have Friday night,
then you have Saturday day, then you have Saturday night,
and then he rose.
So you have three days and three nights,
And he rose, you know, before the sun came up on that first day.
So you have the three days and three nights.
Now is it a 72 hour period?
No.
But it doesn't matter where you plot it, it's never going to be 72 hours.
It's just not possible to be 72 hours because he died in the ninth hour and he's not rising
again on the ninth hour of that other day.
So it's just, it's like two point, you know, something days and two point something.
You know two point something on both sides two point something days two point something nights, but think about it. That's how we
Talk when we talk about hotels if you get a hotel and you you're staying somewhere
You'd say hey, I'm gonna be there two days and one night
But usually when you show up at the hotel you can't clock in until what 3 p.m. Or something right?
But you still count that as a day even though you clocked in at 3 and it's interesting Jesus died at 3
That's where hotels got it, okay, guys?
You know, you're wondering, like, why it's 3 p.m.?
It's, you know, I'm just, that was a joke, okay.
But you got that day, then you have the night,
and then you have the next day.
And you don't even stay there the whole day.
They make you clock out at what, 11 or something,
or 10 or something like that in the morning?
But it's still two days, one night,
because that's just how we speak, okay.
So that's how you can kind of quickly understand that.
Go back to Matthew chapter 17.
If you're interested in studying all that,
I made like a whole detailed Passover chart.
It's on our website.
You can't share it on Facebook.
They'll ban you.
But you can see the chart.
Matthew 17, look at verse 24.
And when they recumbed the Capernaum,
they that received tribute money came to Peter and said,
does not your master pay tribute?
He said, yes.
And when he was coming to the house,
Jesus prevented him saying,
what thing is thou, Simon,
of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute
of their own children or strangers?
Peter saith on him, of strangers, Jesus saith on him,
then are the children free,
notwithstanding, lest we should offend them,
go thou to the sea and cast unhook
and take up the fish that first comeeth up,
and when thou hast opened his mouth,
thou shalt find a piece of money,
that take, and give unto them for me and thee.
So I think, you know, Jesus is kind of answering this question in an interesting way.
It's almost like he's saying, like, technically speaking, since we're the sons of God and God is the one really in charge,
we wouldn't have to pay taxes.
But in a sense, by not paying taxes, you're going to offend earthly authorities.
And it's an unnecessary offense that will just hinder your life and hinder your testimony in going to preach the gospel.
Someone that did this is Ken Hoven.
Ken Ovan was not paying taxes he was just he was just basically saying like no
I'm just a guy of the land and you don't have any authority over me and he tried to make all these arguments about why he didn't
Have to pay taxes well, I mean, I can't even say he's wrong because Jesus is saying here
Hey, technically we should be free, but what happens when you do that you offend them?
And then Ken Hovind had to go to prison for like a decade or something like that.
Don't quote me on the timeline, but it was several years that he went to prison.
And, you know, I'm not saying that he didn't accomplish anything in prison,
but couldn't he have accomplished more by not going to jail?
Hey, I'm not saying that I wouldn't go to jail for some things, you know
If it's preach the gospel and I'm gonna go to jail
Well, I'm gonna be willing to do that, you know preach, you know controversial things in the Bible
I might be willing to do that
But at the end of the day, you know, I don't want to go to jail for something to the Bible saying this is not a die to heal
Or a hill to die on
And to me, it's just like, pay the money and just move on.
And notice, hey, you pay your taxes.
God will cause miracles sometimes to just give you
the money to pay the tax anyways, right?
Just open up a fish and hey, here's the money.
There could be also just a symbolic meaning here
of how do you get money, you work.
Right? He's a fisherman. He gets the fish. It turns into money. Hey, you go out and you pay your taxes
Yeah, we all have to work and pay taxes
We can't just all be full-time soul winners and never go and work and again, is that is that frustrating?
Yeah, does it slow us down a little bit? Sure
But that's just how God is ordained it and so God wants us to do this
But think about it if we just all gave up on marriage and working and we just preach the gospel then it wouldn't last for the next generation
We're raising up the next generation
and trying to reach more people.
And so from a longevity perspective,
it's important that we still earn wages, make income,
have houses, have children,
and basically be fruitful and multiply
so that more work can be done.
You know, this church, we've been doing a great work.
We've been growing.
And in some ways, you know,
I think we feel a little bit of the inconveniences.
growing just we've moved around a lot that's caused a lot of people hard
hard times you know raising money to buy buildings or have nice stuff takes a
lot of work and effort but you know I don't want to just sit here and not
accomplish that you know I'd like to pass down something to the next
generation and even if we don't get to enjoy it as much in our lifetime it'd be
nice for them to get to enjoy it and so you know working hard to build
them a nice building, build them a nice program and have a nice church that we can pass on
to the next generation. You know, I don't want to sit here and just not build something
because I don't get it. You know, David, he couldn't build the house of the Lord,
but he laid up so that his son could end up building the house of the Lord.
And even if we don't get to enjoy all the fruits of our labor,
I still think it's biblical to lay up and build for the next generation so that they
can enjoy those things. And you know, church has been kind of on the decline in the past,
Hey, the temple of the Lord was destroyed.
with the Babylonians, but then Nehemiah and his generation came and rebuilt it so that the next generations could enjoy it and they could go forward.
And so, you know, we can rebuild the Baptist's faith, we can rebuild independent fundamental Baptist, we can rebuild King James onlyism, we can rebuild soul winning, we can rebuild, you know, baptism by immersion, we can rebuild singing the Psalms,
we can rebuild a lot of different things that the next generations can enjoy and use for the service of God and for the glory of God. And we had to invest in that.
You know, we don't want to have a short-term mindset.
One thing that kind of gets brought up in this passage recently is something about the idea of tariffs.
And I think that President Trump has been really pushing this idea.
And a lot of people ask like, what do you think about tariffs?
Well, you know, when it comes to tariffs, it's kind of a complicated issue.
And economics can be a little bit complicated.
But generally speaking, I believe tariffs, if done correctly, can be a good thing.
Now, what is a tariff?
Okay, and if you're like, I don't care,
just close your eyes for a moment
and pray to the Lord or something, okay?
I'm gonna educate you.
If you actually wanna learn something,
let me explain how tariffs work, okay?
Tariffs are essentially just charging extra money
to a foreign country when they bring a good to America.
So, let's just say they bring, and we have almost every good imported today.
Lumber, steel, even finished products, such as just toys and electronics and all kinds
of goods that are constantly being imported from China, China, and China, okay?
And a few other places, very few other places.
A lot of cars, though, brought in from Germany, and I don't know why Germany just made a lot
of cars and they're superior.
But they bring in all kinds of different goods
Now what does a tariff do essentially? Let's just isolate it to one product because it's all products was isolated to one
This is a steel
Steel steel has a certain price. Well, you could buy Chinese steel or you could buy US steel
I looked it up today, it said that U.S. steel,
and I don't know the exact conversion rate,
but they were saying whatever normal unit of measurement
that you buy steel in, American steel is $465 more expensive
than Chinese steel right now.
So what America could do, or what the president is suggesting
is they would just impose a tariff on that.
So let's just, and I don't know the numbers,
I don't even know if he has one,
but he could just say, all right,
now Chinese steel is $200 more than it was before.
It closes that gap a little bit instead of being four hundred and sixty five dollars different now
It's two hundred dollars difference and that two hundred dollars would just simply be collected by the US government
So the US government would just get this extra two hundred dollars and be paid by the Chinese when they sell this good
Now of course when you do this, what does the Chinese do? Well, they just jacked the price up two hundred dollars
So then who ends up really paying it?
Us we end up we end up having to pay that and of course we do it and directly pay that a company that buys the steel
Would pay that and then that company that's producing whatever goods we need to seal they jack up their price and then we end up paying
So here's the thing about tariffs and
You got to think about goods that we purchase if there's an American good
And let's just say it's $20 to make it and the Chinese goods $5
If they raise a tariff that's like let's just say they add two bucks onto it
Well, it's never going to change the amount of consumption of that product.
It's literally just going to be a $2 tax on Americans, because everybody that was buying
the $5 good is probably going to still buy it at $7.
So in fact, for a tariff to be effective, it almost has to raise the price to about
an equivalent price or close to, for it to actually change the consumption of that particular
product.
Okay. So if America does not raise tariffs enough to actually affect the consumption,
all it is is just passing on more tax dust, just increasing the price of the goods that we have.
Here's the second thing. If the U.S. government does not then have an offset
of a tax rebate to us lowering our taxes to compensate for the income they get from tariffs,
then again, it just taxes the American people even more.
So tariffs done wrong is just an extra way to tax us.
Okay, just tax the American people, just pass.
We just have to pay that much more money on our goods
and we don't get any benefit whatsoever
and the federal government just gets more money.
Of course, the foreign companies don't get anything either.
It's just simply the federal government
lining their pockets through the Americans
by a consumer tax, essentially.
Now, because we have so many illegals in our country though,
they're not paying a lot of taxes.
They're not even registered.
So by increasing consumer taxes though,
it actually just helps them collect money
from people that weren't paying.
So consumer taxes can be good, but we again want offsets from the federal government so again my position is hey
I'm all for terrorists if number one
you actually affect the consumption of that product and then number two you give us tax offsets because of those terrorists now
I've done correctly. It's greatly beneficial to the American people and to us if done poorly
It's just an extra tax burden that's given unto us. Okay?
Another factor of tariffs though and this is really important that people don't understand is just a military aspect
You know we like to think of that we're at peace with everybody
But we're not necessarily at peace with everybody and I think you've probably experienced in COVID the
Supplying to manage you with vehicles because we had certain computer chips that were being manufactured afar and because of
Basically supply chain issues them not manufacturing and sending them to us. Nobody had cars to sell
And we have certain raw materials like steel, lumber, other goods, that if we're completely
dependent on foreign companies or foreign countries to supply those goods to us in a
military situation, we're hurting and harming ourselves.
You know, you don't want to be dependent upon foreign countries or foreign institutions
for raw materials and goods.
Another factor of tariffs that's good is when we actually tariff important infrastructure
type raw materials so that in a military situation we're not dependent upon them.
Because what if we just say, you know what, we're going to make US steel so expensive
that no one's ever going to buy it, we're only going to buy foreign steel, well then
what happens?
All the steel plants shut down.
And then we have no infrastructure.
And then what happens in a military situation,
we need steel all of a sudden.
Well, we have no manufacturing plants.
We have nobody producing it.
And we basically put ourselves in a bad situation
where we can't produce the goods we need
for military situations.
So, you know, tariffs are a good thing.
In general, but again applied for poorly all it is just an extra tax passed on to the United States
But again executed properly they protect you militarily
They protect your economy and they reduce the tax burden on citizens of richer nations
We are a rich nation already and it would just make us a little bit richer if done correctly
So again, I'm not against terrorists. That's just that's just a quick rundown high level
There's a lot of nuance to this if you want to study that
Let's go back to the verse 1 and I'm going to point out a few more things, okay?
You're like, I don't care about tariffs. Well, it could affect you. I'm just bringing it up.
Some people ask me and they care, alright?
Here's the thing I want to point out. We've gone through this whole chapter.
Here's something that I find really interesting about this.
Did you notice in verse 1 that only Peter, James, and John get to go to Jesus?
You know, the Bible talks about John being the disciple in whom Jesus loved.
It doesn't mean he doesn't love all of them, but he has a special place in his heart for
John.
And is it any coincidence that when you look at this group, Peter and John, those are two
of the guys that end up writing large sections of the New Testament.
In fact, of the disciples, who writes the most of the New Testament?
John.
John writes the most of the New Testament you got John and you got first second and third John written by John
You have Peter is first and second Peter
But if you look at the disciples themselves
John the disciple in whom Jesus loved is the one that ends up writing the most of the New Testament as far as the disciples only and
Then Peter is kind of like second place. Have you think about them?
They're both the ones that do the most work for the kingdom of God Peter of course being that that rock that helps the church get started
So think about it this way, not everybody is going to be treated the exact same by Jesus
and use the same by Jesus because there is a hierarchy in the kingdom of God.
Let's prove this.
Go to Matthew 5.
I'm going to look at a lot of verses here real quick and we'll finish.
But you know, only Peter, James and John get to go up.
Of course, James and John are considered the sons of Zebedee.
They're greatly used of God.
Matthew chapter number 5, look at verse number 19.
Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments
and shall teach them in so, he shall be called the least
in the kingdom of heaven.
But whosoever shall do and teach them,
the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
How you live your life will determine all of eternity,
how you spend it.
And if you're considered great or the least,
there will be a hierarchy in heaven
and it'll be based on your works.
Not all the disciples are the same.
Not all Christians are the same.
Let me say this, not all pastors are the same.
Not all churches are the same.
Not all soul winners are the same.
And you say, is that fair?
I don't know.
I kind of like God's system.
You know who likes it to not be this way?
Communists.
I'm not a communist.
I like that God rewards us according to our works.
Go good to Luke 9 go to Luke 9. I'm gonna look a lot of verses here
You know when I was going into the workforce
I ended up working for a bank for a while and what I noticed in the bank is it wasn't really about how much skill or effort or work
You put in it was just about how many years you'd been there and everybody got the same raise basically
And I kind of thought you know I want to work in an industry where if I work harder than someone else I get rewarded more than that
I want to work in an industry where skill matters.
I want to work in an industry where the effort and energy that I put in has a direct output.
I don't want to just sit here and work super hard and the next guy does nothing and we both get the same raise.
And you know what? That's what I love about Christianity is that in Christianity, God doesn't operate that way.
God doesn't look at someone working super hard and reward them the same as someone that's lazy and doing nothing.
And you know what? We're here on Wednesday night.
Don't think that you serving God on Wednesday night has no impact on your life
Hey, you could be a Sunday morning only, but you know what? I'm not looking to be the least in the kingdom of heaven
Hey, you could be an Easter-only Christian,
but you know what? I'm not looking to be the least in the kingdom of heaven.
I don't want to be an Easter-only Christian.
I want to be a Christian that's there Sunday morning, Sunday night,
Wednesday night at the conferences, at the missions trips, at the soul-winning times.
I want to go out there in the highways and hedges and preach the gospel to every creature.
Because you know what? I'm not trying to see a bare minimum Christianity that I can live.
I want to live a steadfast Christianity that's always abounding in the work of the Lord.
That's what I was striving for that's what I want to encourage you to strive for you know not all pastors
Not all churches are the same is that fair it's not fair in a sense
But in another sense it's completely fair because people should be rewarded according to their works
You know, there's this idea that it's usually people
that aren't very successful and aren't very good.
They just kind of act like, oh, size doesn't matter
and works doesn't matter and all the things
that we do don't matter and how good a preacher
someone is doesn't matter.
It should all matter.
I mean, you know, God gives people 10 talents,
five talents and one talents.
You know what he wants them to do with them?
Produce, produce results.
And you know, if God gives someone 10 talents,
they should output 10 talents.
Hey, if you only gave you five and you could only produce five, okay, but produce five.
Hey, if you only got one, well, produce one.
But don't be someone that doesn't produce.
Luke chapter number nine, look at verse 46.
Luke chapter nine, look at verse 46.
Then there arose a reasoning among them which of them should be the greatest notice that they want to be the greatest now
Of course, they had the wrong mindset of how to accomplish that
But there was nothing wrong with wanting to be the greatest go to mark go back to mark
I want to look at a couple more verses here. Go to mark chapter number 10
The disciples, you know, they want to be great
James and John come to Jesus asking to sit at his right hand and his left hand
You can kind of see there's a rivalry constantly between Peter and John and you can tell Peter's just kind of like
He's kind of frustrated that he feels like he's in second place
He wants that he wants to get in there, but you know, I like the competitive aspect that these disciples have and of course
I think that's why they're greatly used by God is because they want to do work. They want to be great
They're not sitting here. Just like, you know, I don't know if I want to serve God or not
It's like Jesus walks by and says come and follow me and they just immediately follow him
They're ready to go. They're ready. They said they had forsaken all to serve God. They weren't just some, you know,
fly-by-night Christian. They were a lifelong dedicated Christian to serve God. They were all in.
Look at Mark chapter number 10 verse 35.
And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, come on them saying, Master, we would that thou should as do for us
whatsoever we shall desire. And he said to them, What would ye that I should do for you?
They said to them, Grant unto us that we may sit one on thy right hand and the other on thy left hand in thy glory.
Somebody's going to be really close to Jesus in his glory.
And some people aren't.
Some people are going to be the right hand.
Some people are going to be left.
Some people are going to be really close.
And you know what?
They want to be close to Jesus.
They want to succeed.
They want to win.
They want to accomplish something great for the Lord Jesus Christ.
And not everybody got to go to the Mount Transfiguration.
Peter, James, and John.
They got to go.
Why? Because they dedicated themselves.
Go to 1 Corinthians chapter number nine.
Hey, you want to be greatly used by God?
Well, there's limited spots in some cases.
Who you say oh, I want to do it. Are you sure you can be baptized with that type of baptism with Jesus basically says to him
Are you sure that's what you want?
He'll give it to you, but you got to work for it. You got it for sake all look at 1st Corinthians chapter number 9 verse 24
Know you're not that they which run in a race run all but one
Receive at the prize so run that you may obtain and every man that strives for the mastery is tempered in all things
Now they do it to obtain a corrupto crown, but we an incorruptible
He's he's bringing out this analogy Paul. He's saying look in a race only one person wins and
in the sense only one person will be the greatest Christian and
a sense only one person will be the second greatest Christian in a sense only
You know one person will be the third greatest Christian and here's the question. Where are you gonna be?
Well, that's up to you and what kind of race that you're going to run
Used by God kind of in second place and in a sense kind of second place in the number of books of the New Testament he writes
From the disciples perspective
First place would be John, but you know what who's really first place in being used the Apostle Paul
Apostle Paul writes the most of the New Testament
Is it a coincidence that then the Apostle Paul is also the one that accomplishes the most work and does the most things for God?
No, it's not a coincidence, okay?
And what does the Apostle Paul say?
Why?
Why did he accomplish more?
Why did he get used more by God?
Why did he write more than his testament?
First Corinthians 15 verse 10,
that by the grace of God I am what I am,
and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain,
but I labored more abundantly than they all.
Yeah, not I, but the grace of God, which was with me.
You know why the apostle Paul was greatly used of God?
You know why God had so much grace on him?
Because he knew that the grace would not be in vain
and that the apostle Paul would labor more abundantly
than they all.
That the apostle Paul would put his life in sacrifice
and go out and start churches all over Asia
and all over this world
and turn the whole world upside down to the gospel.
Someone that would be willing to be stoned
and get up and go to the next city.
Someone that would be shipwrecked.
for a day and a night and the depths of the sea and then get out and go again.
Someone that would be basically killed and get up and just do it again. Someone that would get
whipped 39 times or 40 times save one and get up and go to the next city. The apostle Paul who
was contemptible in the flesh but yet he was mighty in the spirit and the demonstration of
spirit and power by preaching the word of God and he's the one that's used by God. So you know what
if you're willing to put in the work God will greatly reward you.
and God has favorites.
Why is John the disciple whom Jesus love?
Because of the works.
It's all about the works, folks.
And we need to be willing to do the works.
Go to James four and we'll finish.
Go to James chapter number four.
Only somebody, only one person gets to sit on the right hand.
Only one person gets to sit on the left hand.
There's only 24 elders in heaven
that are throwing down their crowns.
There's only certain positions limited to certain people.
And you know, where are you gonna be in heaven?
That's based on you and your works.
Oh, you know, I don't wanna go to church on Wednesday night.
Well, you know, that might be a sacrifice,
but think about what kind of rewards you're gonna have
in heaven for all of eternity.
Think about the extra soul winning you did those are going to be eternal rewards
Eternal labors that you had laid up whereas this life we even forget what we did. I
Mean who in here can tell me what they did 70 weeks ago on Wednesday night
Now some of you say I was in church. I had no idea what happened, but it's probably a long sermon
It's pretty accurate, but I'm just saying like you don't do you even remember?
Was it really worth it?
What was your life like before you went to church?
You didn't really remember Monday from Tuesday from Wednesday to Thursday.
Do you even remember those days?
I mean, does it even really matter?
It's all vain. You've forgotten.
It's meaningless.
You know what we do to serve God,
getting people saved and doing the things of God.
You know, these are going to have eternal consequences.
And if you really want to be close to Jesus,
well, you have to draw close yourself.
Look at James chapter 4 verse 8.
Draw a night of God and he will draw a night of you.
Peter and John are drawing night to Jesus and then notice he's picking them to go out with him.
It's not just that example. Earlier in the text we had Jesus going to heal a young girl
and he only allows Peter, James and John to go into the house again.
And it's not like he's just randomly picking three people out of the crowd.
Who does he always pick? The three best.
David had his mighty men, and then he has him literally ranked.
Here's number one, here's the next three,
here's the next three, this guy's mightier than this guy,
this guy's better than that guy.
And look, I'm not trying to take this to a corner way
where we start comparing ourselves among ourselves
and we start trying to like see where we rank or something,
but we should also realize that we are ranked.
We should also realize that what we do
has an impact, and what we should do is we should compete for that prize.
I like competition.
I like, you know, sports and athletics and things like that, but you know, the most important
competition we're in is the one for serving Christ.
You know, I'm not like upset when someone posts like, hey, I got five people saved the
day.
Ah, he's just trying to brag.
He thinks he got them saved.
You know what I'm thinking?
Like, I need to do more.
You know when someone goes out and does a great mission strip
I'm not sitting here thinking like ah, he's probably just doing that to try and get glory of man or something
Nothing like I need more mission strips. Yeah, I need to get more people saved
Just like hey when Peter and John are running to the tomb one guy gets a little ahead of you kind of like hey
I got it. I got us picking up the pace. I got to run a little harder
You know and and sometimes we look at other people serving God
I want to be around people that want to go hard. I want to be around people that want to get people saved
I want to be around people that want to go on mission strips
I want to be around people that want to be in church
I want to be on people that want to serve God not just on an Easter service once a year
No, I want to be around people that want to serve God with their life
They want to go three times a week.
They're going to get baptized.
They're going to dedicate their lives to the Word of God.
They're going to memorize Scripture.
They're going to read the Bible cover to cover.
And you know what? They're going to raise their family to serve God.
I'm not looking to see how lukewarm I can get.
I want to see how red hot I can get.
And I want to get church going harder and harder,
not softer and softer.
I want us to mature and learn and grow more and do more.
I don't want to get to a point where we're slowing down.
where you say, hey, remember when we used to do
a lot of mission strips?
Remember when we used to have all these cool conferences?
Remember when we used to be busting at the seams?
Remember when we used to get a lot of people baptized?
Remember when we had a big soul winning year?
Now I want to say, hey, let's do more of this here.
Let's keep going.
Let's do bigger things and bigger events
and let's just keep going.
And then whatever God's blessed us with,
let's use it for His honor and for His glory.
You know some people could try to build a big church or do a lot of stuff for themselves
But honestly those people that have that attitude we're probably gonna fail
But I don't think there's anything wrong with us accomplishing big works and great works
I mean Jesus said greater works that you do so we should try to do great works
Someone should love God enough to do something big
So how many people are just dedicating their lives to be some great champion of the world we should be great champions of the faith
and we should model to the world what it looks like
when a bunch of people dedicate themselves
to the things of God,
and they're not steadfast in name,
they're steadfast in action and purpose.
Let's close in prayer.
Thank you Heavenly Father so much for the word of God.
Thank you for this opportunity to serve you.
I pray that you would just help motivate us
to realize that the works that we do have an impact.
I pray that we could see the importance
of accomplishing works, not only for just reward's sake,
but rather for your honor and for your glory.
Thank you for giving us an opportunity to do something that matters with our lives.
I pray that we've motivated to go out and preach the gospel,
not only to the old, but also to the young.
I pray that you would help to use our church to do great works
for your son's name and Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Alright, for our last song, let's go to song number 23.
23.
Song number 23. There is power in the blood. Let's all sing it out together on that first verse.
In the freshest blood of the land.
Would you be free from your ratchet and pride?
There's power in the blood, power in the blood.
Come for a cleansing to power each side.
There's wonderful power in the blood.
Bye-bye.