On the third year anniversary, just for everyone showing up, we're going to Psalm 67 for the first hymn, the first Psalm.
Psalm 67 is a handout. This will be a handout somewhere around in front of you.
Or you can open up your Bible and we can sing that with you.
In Psalm 67, let's sing all out together.
Not be merciful to us and bless us, And cause the space to shine upon us,
That thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving help among all nations.
Let the people praise thee, O God, Let all the people praise thee,
O let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
For thou shalt judge the people, Righteously and covered,
The nations upon earth, The nations upon earth see thee,
Let the people praise thee, O God, Let all the people praise thee,
O let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
Which shall the earth kneel her increase, And, God, even our own God shall bless us,
God shall bless us and all the ends, Of the earth shall fear him,
Let the people praise thee, O God, Let all the people praise thee,
O let the nations be glad and sing for joy.
Amen, let's pray. Father, may you please be with us, Lord.
Thank you for the opportunity to be in your house.
Help us to keep praising and worshipping you in spreading the truth.
I pray that you will be with Pastor Shiloh later on as he preaches to us that you fill in with your spirit.
And we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.
Amen.
Let's go to number 43 in your hymn books.
Number 43.
My favorite here, we're marching to Zion.
So, sing out loud as we sing this next hymn, March of the Zion.
Okay, let's listen to the words.
Come, lead, wrath, love the Lord, And let our joys be known.
Join in a song with sweet accord, Join in a song with sweet accord,
And thus around the throne, And thus around the throne,
We're marching to Zion, Beautiful, beautiful Zion.
We're marching upward to Zion, The beautiful city of God.
Let those refused to sing, Who never knew our God,
The children of the heavenly King, The children of the heavenly King,
May speak their joys abroad, May speak their joys abroad.
We're marching to Zion, Beautiful, beautiful Zion.
We're marching upward to Zion, The beautiful city of God.
The hill of Zion yields A thousand sacred streets,
Before we reach the heavenly field, Before we reach the heavenly field,
For far the golden streets Will walk the golden streets.
We're marching to Zion, Beautiful, beautiful Zion.
We're marching upward to Zion, The beautiful city of God.
And let our songs abound, And every tear be dried.
We're marching through the angels' crown, We're marching through the angels' crown,
To bear her worlds on high, To bear her worlds on high.
We're marching to Zion, Beautiful, beautiful Zion.
We're marching upward to Zion, The beautiful city of God.
We're marching backward to Zion, Beautiful, beautiful Zion.
We had about fifty-two soul winners, and we ended up, I didn't count one yesterday,
so we had forty-one salvations from yesterday, so praise the Lord on that.
And Norman, we're actually very receptive, so if you're in those areas,
I highly encourage you to participate in some soul winning out there.
And it feels like it was just a drop of water and a hot stove out there,
because it was just a lot of opportunity.
So hopefully we'll go back and keep pressing the mark there.
Our service and soul winning times are listed below,
as well as we have an upcoming preacher schedule.
Brother Dylan Oz, he's with us today,
but he's also going to be coming back and preaching in December.
December the 2nd he's going to preach the Thursday service,
and he's going to stay the week to the Sunday service,
and that's anticipation of y'all's Christmas caroling.
He wants to sing with you guys, okay?
He's going to come out here with his family,
and they're going to have a time of fellowship here,
and do the Christmas caroling, and so that'll be a lot of fun.
I'm going to come back Thursday, December 16th,
and so I'll see y'all again in December.
On the right we have our Biblery passage, Romans 8,
and then continue to pray for all of our expecting mothers.
We also have a baby shower for the Gilliams.
It's Sunday the 1st, it's directly after the morning's service,
and then we have a Thanksgiving service.
We're going to move it from Thursday to Tuesday,
so that way you can still do whatever you want on your Thanksgiving plans,
but then we're going to have our church service.
It's going to be the same time, 7 p.m.,
so just instead of showing it Thursday, show Tuesday.
It'll be a pie fellowship, and so you can participate in that.
Also, December 23rd, we're going to have a candlelight service here
for that Thursday service.
We also have a bunch of leftover, steadfast, OKC shirts
that we put on that table out there,
so if you haven't gotten one or you just want another one,
make sure to grab one. We'd like for you to get one.
Or if you just have Christmas presents, you know, like,
hey, I got some Christmas presents for my family
because I know they want a steadfast shirt.
Very common.
I'm really glad to be here this morning. It's good to see y'all.
We're going to go ahead and go to our third song,
246, redeem, 246.
All right, number 246, redeem.
Sing out.
Redeem. Redeem by the blood of the lamb.
Redeem. Redeem.
His child and forever I am.
Redeem and so happy in Jesus.
No language my rapture can tell.
I know that the light of his presence
would mean a continually quell.
Redeem. Redeem.
Redeem by the blood of the lamb.
Redeem. Redeem.
His child and forever I am.
I think of my blessed Redeemer.
I think of him all the day long.
I sing for I cannot be silent.
His love is the theme of my song.
Redeem. Redeem.
Redeem by the blood of the lamb.
Redeem. Redeem.
His child and forever I am.
I know I shall see in his beauty
the King in whose saw I delight.
To the bigly guarded by footsteps
and here it resounds in the night.
Redeem. Redeem.
Redeem by the blood of the lamb.
Redeem. Redeem.
His child and forever I am.
Amen. Great singing.
As we take up the offering,
if you could go to 2 Thessalonians 2 for Bible reading.
2 Thessalonians 2. Read the entire chapter.
The Bible reads,
Now we beseech you, brethren,
by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ
and by our gathering together unto him,
that ye be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled,
neither by spirit nor by word nor by letter,
as from us as that the day of Christ is at hand.
Let no man deceive you by any means,
but that day shall not come,
except for there come a falling away first,
and that man of sin be revealed,
the son of perdition,
who opposeth and exalteth himself
above all that is called God,
or that is worshipped,
so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God,
showing himself that he is God.
Remember ye not that when I was yet with you,
I told you these things,
and now ye know what withholdeth,
that he might be revealed in his time.
For the mystery of iniquity doth already work,
only he who now letteth will let,
until he be taken out of the way.
And then shall that wicked be revealed,
whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mount,
and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.
Even him whose coming is after the working of Satan,
with all power and signs and lying wonders,
and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness,
and them that perish,
because they receive not the love of the truth,
that they might be saved.
And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion,
that they should believe the lie,
that they all might be damned,
who believe not the truth,
but have pleasure in unrighteousness.
But we are bound to give thanks always to God for you,
brethren beloved of the Lord,
because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation
through sanctification of the spirit and belief of the truth,
where until he calls you by our gospel,
to be obtained in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, brethren, stand fast,
and hold the traditions which ye have been taught,
whether by word or our epistle.
Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself,
and God even our Father,
which hath loved us and hath given us everlasting consolation
and good hope through grace,
comfort your hearts,
and establish you in every good word and word.
Father, thank you for your word.
Thank you for these truths, God,
that you've preserved for us.
We pray that you bless the service
and fill Pastor Shelley with your spirit.
We got you to remove distractions and open your word
and open our hearts.
Pray this with faith.
We pray it in Jesus' name.
Amen.
I want to focus in the latter portion of this chapter.
If you look at verse number 15, the Bible reads,
Therefore, brethren, stand fast,
and hold the traditions which ye have been taught,
whether by word or our epistle.
And so we have an admonishment here to hold the traditions.
Now the word tradition in the Bible can mean something good.
It could mean something bad.
It's really a neutral word in and of itself.
It depends upon the context upon which it's used
for you to decide if it's good or bad.
Because a tradition can be good.
A tradition can be bad.
And if you look at the dictionary definition of a tradition,
it says an inherited, established,
or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior,
specifically religious practice or a social custom.
It's basically just saying something that's been passed down
from one generation to the next generation.
And that particular tradition could be a good tradition
that's being passed down,
or it could be a bad tradition that's being passed down.
And really what I want to focus on, though,
this morning is the idea of the fact that sometimes
we also need to create a new tradition as well,
a new tradition.
That's the title of my sermon this morning,
is a new tradition, new traditions.
And, you know, when we think of the word tradition,
it's similar to words like heritage or legacy.
And sometimes because we're being handed down
some bad traditions or because we're given things
that are a lot different or they're not compatible
with the Bible, we have to end up creating a new tradition.
Okay?
And I want to go to a specific place.
Keep your fingers when I come back,
but go if you would to Ruth chapter number one for a moment.
Go to Ruth chapter number one.
And I have a few places I want to go to to kind of explain
some different points here this morning,
but I believe that a lot of different people in the Bible
are kind of confronted with the idea of having to create
a new tradition.
And really, people that this would be very obvious for
and someone that would affect greatly would be someone
that grew up not Christian.
I mean, if you grew up in a home where your family's
not even Christian, they're not even saved
or anything like that, then you're going to be confronted
with the idea that getting saved or becoming a Christian,
you're going to be forced to create some new traditions.
Right?
Look at Ruth chapter one and look at verse number 16.
The Bible reads,
And Ruth said, And treat me not to leave thee.
Order a turn from following after thee,
for whither thou goest, I will go,
and where thou lodgest, I will lodge.
Thy peoples shall be my people, and thy God my God.
Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.
The Lord do so to me, and more also,
ought but part death, part thee in me.
Now, Ruth is of the Moabites,
and the Moabites are not servants of the Lord.
They're not worshiping the Lord.
It's basically a different God,
and she ends up getting married to Malon,
and essentially, she becomes part of this new family,
but her husband dies.
Now, after her husband dies,
she wants to continue with the religion
that she was given of her husband.
She wants to continue worshiping the Lord,
worshiping God, and she cleaves to her new God, in a sense,
which it's not new in the sense that God is brand new.
It's new to her, okay?
And really, she needs to now cleave to that,
hold to that tradition of the new God that's in her life,
and she wants to cleave to her mother-in-law
and travel back and worship the true God,
and we as Christians, once we get saved,
we need to cleave to the God of the Bible.
We don't want to let go of Christianity, you know?
Some people, they kind of try a lot of religions,
and it makes me think of this person we confronted out,
soul-winning.
Brother Cameron's actually the person that talked to her,
and he knocks on her door, and he asked her about salvation.
She says, I've been baptized in five different churches,
and it was just like Protestant, Catholic, Mormon,
I mean, it was just like all these different religions
or whatever and all these different situations,
and the thing is is there's nothing wrong with getting right,
but once you get right, you need to stay right, okay?
You don't want to just constantly put on new hats
and new gods and new religions, but at the same time,
there's nothing wrong with going from being un-Christian
or not saved or not, you know, the right kind of religion
into the new religion.
That's a good change.
You want to go to the right God.
So here's my first tradition that you need to have,
the new God, right?
Once you get saved, he's new to you in a sense,
and so you want to hold to that tradition.
It's a good tradition to create, and once you have a new God,
you have the new religion, the right religion,
there's going to be certain aspects of that religion
that you need to adhere to, creating more new traditions
that surround the idea of worshiping the Lord.
What would be one of those for Ruth?
Well, she's traveling back to the land in which
she's going to be able to worship that God.
She's not going to stay in Moab.
She's not going to stay in a foreign country.
No, she's going to travel back, and she's going to be a part
of the religion of the Lord.
So that could picture, you know, the fact that you need
to get into church, right?
You need to actually start going to a church
where you're going to actually serve the Lord,
hear about the Lord, participate in serving
and worshiping God.
That's a new tradition that some people have to create.
You know, we've reached people.
Our churches have reached people that have, like,
never grown up in church or they didn't go to church
on a regular basis, and so a new tradition for some
would be going to church on a regular basis
or maybe some people that grew up going to church on Easter,
and that's it.
So maybe a new tradition is just going to church every week.
You know, some people, maybe they went every Sunday,
but they didn't go on a Wednesday or a Sunday night,
and so a new tradition for them is going three times a week.
But you know what?
That's a good new tradition to establish for your family
to say, you know what?
Our family is going to have a new tradition
where we're going to go to church Sunday morning,
Sunday evening, and Wednesday night, you know,
whereas before I may not have had that type of tradition,
and now we're going to establish it.
And when we use the word tradition,
think about what we're saying.
I'm not saying let's just try it for a week.
A tradition is something that you pass down to the next generation.
So by saying you're going to form a new tradition,
what you're saying is you're going to do this for the rest of your life
and instill it into your children.
That's what a real tradition is.
It's not just something that we're just trying out
or we think it's cool
or we want to just see what happens in the next few weeks or whatever.
It's something that you're deciding in your mind,
you know what, this is going to be my new tradition.
My tradition is serving God.
And for Ruth, taking this journey all the way back with her mother-in-law,
she's saying, you know, God's my God now.
You know, the Lord is my Lord now.
This isn't something that's just temporary.
It's not just based on who my husband is.
No, God is my God now, you know.
And we want to be Christians where we say,
you know what, the Lord is my Lord, period.
And I'm going to serve Him.
My tradition is going to be serving the Lord for the rest of my life,
and I'm going to hand this off unto my children.
You know, other aspects of serving the Lord is some of the things like Easter,
things like Christmas, you know, new holidays that you might celebrate
differently than you would have before being saved, right?
Maybe unsaved people, they might have done the Easter egg hunt
and they might have bought chocolate or whatever,
but they didn't have a tradition of going to church
or, you know, participating in the Lord's Supper
or, you know, other events and holidays that are associated with serving God.
And you know what?
I think it's good to establish some traditions for your family
around the holidays where you're serving God,
you know, another holiday like Christmas.
I have no problem celebrating Christmas
because I'm celebrating the Lord Jesus Christ and His birth
and aspects about that.
And, you know, our family would often try to establish traditions,
but a lot of them never really stuck.
But I appreciated the fact that my father would even try, you know,
sitting us down before Christmas morning, Christmas Eve,
reading Luke chapter number two or, you know, reading the Christmas story
or wanting to establish some kind of a tradition
where our family is thinking about the Lord, thinking about spiritual things
and creating something where it may be new,
but it's something we want to establish for the rest of our life.
And, you know, I think it's a great idea for people to come up with,
you know, especially young men, people that have a family,
to create some kind of traditions for your family to get excited about,
to participate in, to think about.
And, you know, some of the things that my family likes to do,
this is not necessarily just related to the Word of God,
but we like to go look at Christmas lights, you know, around Christmas season,
you know, drive around and just have, you know, some fun looking at Christmas lights.
And, you know, you kind of start creating your own habits,
your own traditions as a family, as you go through the years,
but some of those should be spiritual.
We should purposely create traditions that are spiritual
that we want to pass down to the next generation, pass down on our children,
that we want them to realize why we're serving the Lord.
Here's a good tradition associated with this.
How about reading your Bible daily?
I mean, is that something the unsaved people are doing? No.
I mean, pretty much no one is reading the Bible, even if it's saved.
So, you know, a good tradition would be, you know what,
I'm going to read the Bible on a daily basis, on a regular basis,
I'm going to create and establish that tradition for myself
and then try to pass that down onto my family.
You know, a tradition that I've tried to start with my family
is reading a chapter of the Bible in the evening.
You know, and it doesn't happen every night, I'm not perfect at this,
but we pretty much try it on a regular basis, we sit down,
kids have to sit down, we read a Bible chapter together,
we sing a song together, and then we work on the Bible in reverse.
And, you know, it's kind of becoming a tradition in our family
and I think that's a good tradition.
That's something that we can kind of establish and try to create.
Why? Because we want to serve God.
You know, the whole purpose of being on this earth is not only just getting saved
but also serving the Lord and, you know, it's good to establish traditions
that you can hand off onto your children that can kind of establish and root you
and serving the Lord.
Go if you would to go back to 2 Thessalonians chapter number 2.
So, we're thinking about point number 1, this.
When it comes to a new tradition, if you weren't Christian before
or if you didn't grow up in a Christian home,
it's going to be very important that you try to create some new traditions in your family.
If you're a first generation Christian, you probably need to think about
adding some traditions into your life that are spiritual traditions
that you can then pass on to your children
and realize you need to kind of restart, you know, whatever it was that you did.
Your whole life should be different, should be changed
because now you're serving God.
Now you're a servant of the Lord and we don't want to take the service of the Lord lightly.
We want to create our habits and our legacy
and our heritage around the Word of God
and so we have to start creating traditions that we can then hold to.
You know, the whole point of 2 Thessalonians chapter number 2 was hold the traditions, right?
If you don't have any though, it's hard to hold onto anything, right?
I mean, so you got to sometimes create a new tradition for your family
and there's nothing wrong with that as Ruth is example here.
She wasn't Christian, so she had to jump into Christianity
but when you jump into Christianity, you should embrace it.
You should try to incorporate it in your life.
You should add things in your life, the traditions that you can then hold
and probably one of the most important aspects of this is the doctrine, right?
I mean, we're thinking about new traditions.
Sometimes we also have to have a new doctrine.
Now, when I say new doctrine, I'm not saying like we just were the ones that came up with the doctrine.
Everything that I'm saying is always in the context of new to you, okay?
So, it's not necessarily that I'm saying something that you just came up with on your own.
I'm saying that sometimes you get exposed to doctrines that are new to you
where you didn't have this tradition before.
This doctrine wasn't passed down unto you.
So, maybe you were Christian your whole life, okay?
Or maybe you're not, it doesn't matter.
But once you become Christian, you're going to start being exposed to doctrine.
And what is doctrine's beliefs?
All the different beliefs of the Bible.
And you know, I grew up Christian. I grew up in a Christian home.
And so, I was handed down a lot of doctrine, you know.
I went to church. They handed me all kinds of different doctrines.
And one of these doctrines was the pre-trib rapture, okay?
I grew up with that.
My pastor literally preached on this doctrine like once a month.
And I'm not joking.
Like, it was literally, it was a very important doctrine.
It was basically, we had two services every month on tithing,
one on pre-trib, and then the fourth was just on like general encouragement, okay?
That was basically the church I grew up in.
And so, it was a steady dose.
And I remember at one point they said,
we're going to drop it down to just once a month on tithing, okay?
And I was just like, wow, you know.
So, but I got pre-trib just like every single week or month virtually of my life.
Just constant, constant, constant.
And the problem with this doctrine is you just can't find it in the Bible.
And we don't even have to go far this morning
because we can just stay in 2 Thessalonians chapter number 2.
Look at verse number 1.
The Bible says,
Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,
and by our gathering together unto him,
that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled,
neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us,
as that the day of Christ is an end.
Let no man deceive you by any means,
for that day shall not come except there come a falling away first,
and that man of sin be revealed the son of perdition.
Now, it's funny is the pastor I grew up under,
he read this verse and then he says,
I still think we're getting raptured before the Antichrist comes.
And I'm just like, what in the world?
Like, just ignoring what that verse even says,
just not even caring.
And because pre-trib was just crammed down my throat
as a young teenager and growing up in church and everything like that,
I literally thought that the rapture was going to happen every year of my life.
Like, because, you know, I mean, things are always escalating so quickly
and they're always talking about the mark
and they're talking about all this stuff.
And if you have a pre-trib perspective,
you're never going to get all the way to the end.
You're never going to actually see the mark implemented and all the other stuff.
It's just this looming doom type mentality.
So, you could feel like it could happen any moment.
And that's what they would preach.
I mean, they're just like, we've got to be so close
and it's coming down the pike and we could see the mark on the horizon.
You know, Christ could come before I finish this sentence.
And I remember just being a young teenager
and just being so terrified of the rapture,
which is kind of a weird mentality.
I'm just being honest with you, okay?
I was terrified because I wanted to live my life.
Like, it wasn't that I was disappointed about seeing Christ or something like that.
Although, you know, you go in these churches
and they don't really give you a lot of confidence on eternal security.
So, some people are wondering if they're even saved, right?
But I remember going to these churches and this is what I would always pray.
I'm just being honest, okay.
I would pray, Lord, please just let me get married first.
I would just pray this all the time.
I would pray this all the time. I just want to get married first.
I was like, as long as I can get married.
And I would sometimes pray. I would be like, Lord, can I just see what my wife looks like?
You know, I just want to get married.
And I was just so concerned with getting married.
And, you know, it's just silly.
But once you finally get exposed to the fact that that's a false doctrine,
you know, once you start realizing, like, these people are deceiving me
and the Bible says that he can't just come just whenever,
there has to be a couple of events that happen first.
One really specific event, like the Antichrist standing in the holy place declaring himself God.
That's a real big event, okay.
And he's causing everyone, small or great, to receive a mark in their hand or in their forehead.
And they can't buy or sell, okay.
That's real significant.
And it hasn't happened.
Therefore, it's impossible for Christ to come back.
And you say, well, God can do whatever he wants.
He can, but you know what, he can't break scripture.
He can't violate the word of God.
And so, therefore, Christ is not going to come until after those things.
That's the whole point of this chapter.
The whole point of this chapter is like saying, like, he's not going to just come whenever you want.
He's going to come after these few events.
And it's really important that we get the timing here so that we prepare ourselves.
You know, some people say, oh, eschatology, when the rapture, who cares about those things.
Yeah, but if your mentality is that we're getting out of here at any moment
and we're never going to experience any pain, suffering or whatever,
then that could cause people to compromise.
Because whenever there's any kind of pressure or any kind of tribulation coming,
they don't think they actually have to endure that because they're like, well, pre-trib rapture.
So, therefore, they're unwilling to resist any kind of evil, any kind of false doctrine,
any kind of, you know, enemy or anything like that because they just believe they shouldn't have to do that.
And anybody that does resist, anybody that does fight is in the wrong.
They'll say, oh, these post-tribbers think we need to actually contend for the faith or something, like Jude says.
Or they actually have to, you know, war or get some spiritual battling or some spiritual warfare or whatever.
It's like that's what the whole Bible is about.
And you're going to really tell me that the apostle Paul didn't suffer in tribulation?
He was pretty far removed from the return of Christ, okay?
So, it's really silly for churches today to basically keep spoon-feeding this doctrine of,
oh, you know, we're never going to have to suffer. We're never going to experience any pain.
God's not a wife beater, amen.
You know, all these just mantras they can get up and speak.
And it basically discourages the congregation from actually contending for the faith,
from actually, you know, fighting a little bit or having to endure a little bit of tribulation
or endure some kind of a difficulty today.
Whereas that's the reality, we're going to have to endure a lot of tribulation for the cause of Christ.
And we need to be willing to stand up for the cause of Christ and not to just cower
and not to just fade into non-existence to where we're so irrelevant
that basically the world can't even tell the difference between your church and the world.
I mean, isn't it sad today that a lot of churches, they're like,
our church is so accepting that people can come in and they don't feel bad at all.
You know, so the Satanists can come in, the Atheists can come in,
the Muslim can come in, the Mormon can come in and we're not going to offend them.
It's like, how weak is your church?
You know, how lukewarm is your coffee when anybody can drink it and it doesn't burn their tongue?
You know, sometimes we need the coffee to burn the tongue a little bit, to give it a little bit of a sink.
I mean, we want it to be either red hot or ice cold is what God said.
And when it comes to doctrine, sometimes you have to reject a doctrine that's been handed down to you.
You have to say, you know what, this pre-trib rapture, it goes in the trash.
And I'm going to have a new doctrine, a new tradition of realizing it's post-trib pre-rap.
And that's a good tradition. And what does it mean by tradition again?
I'm going to believe it my whole life and I'm going to teach it to my children.
That's what that means by the tradition.
And so we want to create some new traditions today.
And it's not that this is a brand new doctrine.
In the course of history, the pre-trib rapture is the new doctrine.
Post-trib has been believed historically by Christians for a long period of time.
What's new is this idea of the secret rapture and whatever.
And it's isolated to basically Americans.
You know, it's isolated to one subset of people that are living high on the hog that they don't think they have to suffer tribulation.
It's really hard to convince people living in the Middle East of this doctrine where they're literally going to be beheaded for owning a Bible.
Oh, you're not going to go through tribulation.
They're like, what are you talking about?
Like, they would never believe this doctrine or just the fact that if they're just reading their Bible, you'll never find that.
You know, some doctrines that are false, at least they have some verses that kind of seem to say whatever it is that they're thinking or they can kind of twist.
It's like the pre-trib, it's just like nothing.
I mean, it's just like the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.
I mean, it's just they're just grasping this Rawls.
I mean, it's not.
And then their defense is literally, you know, proving that Kyle's innocent or whatever.
You know, it's basically they're going to passages like this where you're saying like the man of sin is going to be revealed before the coming of Christ.
And like, doesn't that just prove it?
And you're just like, no, that's really the exact opposite of what you're thinking.
OK, if you don't know the trial, don't worry about it.
All right.
Go to Psalms 127.
Basically, a young kid killed like a pedophile rapist and an armed burglary shot his arm off.
And he has to basically be on trial for defending himself against predators.
It's crazy the world we live in today.
You know what?
The Bible warns that when the vilest men are exalted, the wicked walk on every side.
Psalm 127.
Look at the Bible.
Verse three.
Lo, children are in heritage of the Lord and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
Now, the word heritage is is basically a synonymous word with the word tradition.
OK, and heritage is basically what you're passing down under your children.
It's kind of what you have to give unto them.
And here's a great doctrine that you should be holding to is the doctrine of being fruitful and multiply.
That children are a blessing.
You know, the previous generation didn't hand that down.
You know, they handed down birth control.
You know, they handed down daycare.
You know, they handed down just a bunch of feminism and a bunch of anti big family messages, anti big family doctrine and propaganda today.
And you know what?
We need to get the doctrines coming from the word of God that says big families are biblical.
So the Bible teaches.
And, you know, happy is the man that have this quiver full of them is what the Bible teaches.
It doesn't say like depressed and sad.
And, you know, you know, the guys that are depressed and sad are all the ones living in China and Japan that can't get a wife or kids.
And they're wanting to kill themselves.
You know, living this like in cell lifestyle, living this just, you know, hide in your basement and play video games for the rest of your life is a worthless existence.
It's just, you know, it's never going to give you the joy and the satisfaction that an actual flesh and blood woman, flesh and blood children are going to give you today.
And you know what?
We need to teach our children that it's important to have children and not make them feel like they're a burden and not tell them they're a burden and not make them feel bad about, you know, them needing us.
Because guess what?
Children are real dependent.
It's just life.
And we don't want to raise our children to think that they're a drudgery or there's something wrong with having lots of kids or that there's something wrong with kids themselves.
We want to teach them that they're a blessing and we want to encourage them to have as many kids as possible.
We want them to have the same doctrine.
And it may be new to you.
You may have arisen in a family where you're a single child or you're an only child or you're spaced out.
I mean, my brother is eight years older than me and my sister is 12 years older than me.
So, there was a big gap and it was a purposeful gap for my family.
It wasn't like they were just struggling or something like that.
They just purposely decided to skip like six more of my siblings or something or four more.
I mean, they could have had so many more siblings in my family.
And by the law of averages, maybe I would have had another good sibling.
I don't know.
But I'm not trying to rag on them.
It was just a joke.
Okay.
But at the end of the day, I don't have any problem having more brothers and sisters that have been great.
The more the merrier.
I remember I went to college and I had a roommate and he was an only child.
And I remember asking about it and he said, I'm glad I'm an only child.
And I just thought, man, what happened to him to not realize like the joy of having brothers and sisters and having family.
And obviously, you fight and obviously, you can have a bad relationship with your brothers and sisters.
But at the end of the day, you know, the more the merrier.
You're not going to be disappointed that you had lots of brothers and sisters and you have people to play with.
And really, children that are only child really struggle being a very selfish, self-absorbed, narcissistic type person in their life.
Because everything was about them.
Mom and dad are giving them the full attention and always only caring about their wishes and wants.
And it ends up often raising a bratty, very narcissistic, self-absorbed type of a person.
You know, when you got eight kids, you got to realize mom and dad can't give you as much attention.
And you have to, you know, appreciate the attention you get and be a more humble person and basically love your siblings.
And so, it's actually better and healthier to have more kids, you know, in those different regards.
It's going to be easier on your children to not be a very selfish, self-absorbed type of person based on that type of an environment.
And so, that's a new tradition in a sense because the world is not teaching that.
I mean, the public bull system is not teaching have lots of kills.
I mean, in a sense, they're trying to get you to have less kids.
People like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
AOC, alright, so it's a lot easier to say.
AOC is just like mad that we're having kids.
She wants us to like be depopulated or have less kids or not get married.
And it's just coming from a satanic agenda, my friend.
She's just a pawn of the devil and it's a devilish doctrine that the world is constantly trying to postulate.
You know, we need to embrace the new doctrine that says children are a heritage of the Lord.
Go to Proverbs 22 for a second. Go to Proverbs chapter 22.
And again, this doctrine, while new to us, is not a new doctrine.
It's the literal first commandment spoken in the Bible from God to man.
Probably important.
I mean, the first time God's going to open his mouth in the Bible that we read about in Scripture.
I mean, he's talking to Adam, you know, there in the garden and he's saying,
breathe fruitful and multiply. Don't you think that's a little important?
I mean, if that's the first thing, I mean, it's the first thing he's going to tell you.
Basically, the only real doctrine he's giving them at the beginning.
Obviously, not to eat of the tree in the midst of the garden, but really, I mean, it's just starting out.
Be fruitful and multiply and don't eat that fruit.
I mean, that's basically, you know, stay away from the fruits.
Okay, no, I'm just kidding.
Only certain fruits, right?
Look at Proverbs 22, verse 28.
Then I believe it's a very important doctrine and we need to stick with the doctrines that God has given us.
It's not a brand new doctrine, it's an old doctrine.
And we want to balance this idea that I'm preaching this morning with this verse.
Look at Proverbs 22, verse 28.
Verse number 28.
The Bible says, remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set.
So now, while I'm teaching new traditions,
I don't want you to get this idea that everything that's handed down to you is necessarily bad, okay?
Something that's an ancient landmark, we never want to remove that.
We never want to discard that. We don't want to create a new doctrine on that.
What would be an example of this?
Like the new King James.
I don't want to move the ancient landmark of the King James Bible and start getting a new Bible.
Getting the new international version or the, you know, some other kind of new version, the new message or whatever.
I don't want any of that.
I want to stick with what God already said.
This is an ancient landmark. This is what he already communicated to us.
I don't need a new message from God. I want the only message from God, okay?
And so there's certain things that we're not going to change, right?
And so while I'm teaching that we want to embrace new doctrines and create new traditions,
we want to anchor ourselves still with the ancient landmarks of the Christian faith.
What would be another one? Salvation by faith?
We're not going to change that.
That's not up for debate.
You know, we're not going to get a new idea of the Trinity.
We're not going to get a new idea of the fundamentals of the faith.
We are not going to be a different, we're going to be a Baptist.
We can be a new Baptist, but we're still going to be Baptist, right?
So we're tied to that ancient landmark of Baptist that's been passed down, that's been given to us.
I didn't invent Baptist.
I don't know if you know this.
I didn't write the 1611 King James Bible.
I didn't come up with the doctrine of salvation by faith.
These are ancient landmarks that have been passed down, already been established,
already been nailed into the ground, and so we don't want to, you know,
try to remove those or update those or change those in any way.
We simply just want to realize that there's some doctrines that we didn't already have
that weren't handed down to us and we want to embrace them.
We want to make them our new tradition.
We want to make the old thing our new thing, right?
We want to make the old King James Bible our new Bible, right?
If you're using a different version, you want to now make this your new version that you're using.
And there's nothing wrong with buying a brand new one, but you want to buy a brand new King James Bible, right?
You want to make sure you have that new doctrine.
There's nothing wrong with salvation by faith, and sometimes people try to creep in a lot of false doctrine with that,
like repenting of your sins, and there's nothing wrong with, you know, revitalizing that old doctrine,
brushing it off a little bit, getting some of the silver dross off of it that people,
the leaven that people are trying to attach that doctrine and cleaning it up.
We want to stick to the ancient landmark of salvation by faith.
Go to Amos chapter number seven.
So, I'm talking about new traditions.
Point one is this, you know, if you're not a Christian, you need to get a new tradition of God being your Lord, right?
Number two, if you don't have all the doctrines of the Bible dialed in,
when you're exposed to a new doctrine of the Bible that's biblical, that's an ancient landmark that's new to you,
you need to embrace it.
And I think there's an understood point that we're making in point two,
is the fact that a lot of churches don't want to believe in a post-trib pre-wrath rapture because to them,
they say, well, I was handed down the preacher rapture.
You know, this is what my Bible college gave me.
And this is what their fathers taught them.
And this is the doctrine that they've been handed down.
So, we don't want to get so ingrained though that we get to a point where we say,
well, I can't change traditions because it's a tradition.
Now, if the Bible has a compelling reason to change on anything, we have to be willing to change.
And we want to get those things right and we want to correct them and constantly improve
and make sure that we are adhering to what the Bible teaches because this is our final authority
and all matters of faith and practice, not our tradition.
We want our traditions to be based on the Bible.
But when we realize our traditions are not really structured on the Bible,
they're not standing on the solid rock, they're on the shifting sands,
then we need to say, hey, break down that structure and let's rebuild on the new structure.
Let's rebuild on the rock, God's word, even if we have to start from scratch.
And so, it's important to realize that we should always be willing to change our opinion
if it's what the Bible says.
So, I'm always willing to change.
I'm always willing to do something new or say something new or think something new.
But it has to be based on the ancient landmark of the King James Bible.
It has to be based on the word of God.
And we should not be afraid to change on a dime even.
I'm not afraid to change quickly, I'm just afraid to change when it's not matching with this.
When this isn't the bedrock, the source of why I am changing.
So, we want to have a healthy respect for the traditions that we've got.
We never want to say, you know what, the Bible, I know the Bible is saying something different here,
but this tradition, I really like it.
It really goes well with my personality.
It's really special because my grandfather gave it to me.
Well, you know what, how about you appreciate the other good things your grandfather gave you?
You know, it's not just because it came from your grandfather, it's good.
Or your dad, it's good.
Or your Bible college, it's good.
This is good.
The word of God is good.
And sometimes we have to press a reset button and say, you know what, I'm willing to have a new tradition,
a new doctrine in my family.
Look at Amos chapter number 7.
Let's go to verse number 12.
Hosea, Joel, Amos chapter 7.
Look at verse number 12.
The Bible reads,
Now, what I like about this passage is Amos gives us a little bit of background to who he is.
And Amos is coming and he's preaching against the northern kingdom of Israel at the time.
That's kind of the setting that we're in.
And he's just ripping face.
I mean, he is just telling them they're wicked and God's going to basically bring all kinds of evil punishments under them.
And it's just a lot of like woe and sorrow and destruction that's coming.
And, you know, the skinny pant wearing, you know, liberal preacher over here, he doesn't like it.
It's like, get out of here.
Where did you come from?
Why are you coming in here and preaching to Israel?
Go back to where you're from.
And he brings up this interesting point and he says, look, I'm not a prophet.
Like, I wasn't like ordained as a prophet or anything like that in the sense that he wasn't like,
he is ordained in a sense from God.
But I'm saying he wasn't just like lifelong prophet.
That's not like his occupation per se.
He was just a Herdman.
He's just a regular blue collar guy.
He says, neither was my dad a prophet.
You know, it wasn't like a tradition that was passed down from my father unto me where now I'm a preacher because my dad was a preacher.
Saying, I'm not even really a preacher.
I'm just here because God said go and I was just like, how can I argue with the Lord, right?
I'm just going to go and preach.
And here's the new tradition that we need to accept that I like that's coming from Amos.
Being a soul winner.
You say, well, I wasn't, you know, my occupation's not a soul winner.
Okay.
My dad wasn't a soul winner.
My grandpa wasn't a soul winner.
But you know what?
Didn't Jesus say in the New Testament, go.
Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
Isn't he saying that to us?
Isn't he sending us out to go and to preach the gospel?
And so when someone comes in, who told you to come out here?
Your dad or your job?
Jesus.
That's who told me to go out there and preach the gospel.
And like, oh, go back to where you're from or go back.
No, no, no, no.
I'm going to keep going and I'm going to keep preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And I'm going to create a new tradition for my family.
And it's going to be a tradition of soul winners.
I'm going to say I'm going to be a soul winner.
I'm going to teach my children to be a soul winner.
And God willing, I'd teach my grandchildren to go out soul winning.
And I want to create a new tradition in my family of being people who will go and preach the gospel regardless of the fact that I wasn't taught that.
Regardless of the fact that I wasn't employed for that.
Regardless of what my past is, I can create a new tradition of being a soul winner for Jesus Christ.
And let me tell you something.
Almost everybody is going to have to press the new button on this one.
Almost virtually no one can say, you know what?
I was raised as a soul winner.
My mom and dad took me out soul winning as a boy and as a teenager and as a kid.
And I've just been soul winning my whole life.
And I'm going to continue going soul winning.
And that's sad.
It's sad that we don't have a generation that was raised as a soul winner.
We have a whole bunch of people that have to basically dig up the fallow ground.
They basically have to put the plow to the ground again and start over and say, you know what?
We need to go out there and start preaching the gospel again.
We need to make that a tradition.
We need to establish that as a lifestyle that we're going to be soul winners and teach our children to be soul winners and to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.
There's nothing more important.
I mean, you know, when we get into heaven, we're not going to have all these special badges for all the documentaries we made.
And for the building we met in, I'm sure glad that's not going to be a badge.
We're not going to get any kind of special badges for getting all the doctrines right.
You know, you know, you're going to get you're going to get crowns and stuff based on the souls that you got saved.
And, you know, there's a lot of churches that the church looks real pretty and they, you know, do a lot of special programs and they might be right on a lot of doctrines.
But you know what? They're not getting anybody saved. It's all in vain.
What's the point? What is the point of having a really nice social club?
Just so you can feel better.
Why just feel really great? Because our church is running 10,000.
How many soul winners do you have? Zero.
Why is that special then? Why is that important?
We're reaching zero for Christ, you know.
And obviously, probably any church that's saved, they still have some impact.
I'm not trying to say that they don't have an impact.
They'll get their own kids saved every once in a while.
You know, they'll have some vacation Bible school kids and they get saved every once in a while.
They'll do a little bit of works here, but they're not really encouraging the whole congregation to go and to start a new tradition of preaching the gospel and getting a new generation to raise children that learn the importance of soul winning and preaching the gospel and what our whole life is about.
Go to Revelation chapter two. And you know, when we think about second Thessalonians chapter number two, it said hold the tradition.
It's really hard to hold a tradition that you don't have.
How do you hold to the tradition of soul winning when it wasn't even given to you in the first place? Right.
So that means that they're going to be half to be one generation that starts it over again.
There's going to have to be one generation that says, okay, it's going to be a new tradition for us so that then our children can obey second Thessalonians chapter number two and our children can say we're going to hold to the tradition of soul winning that our parents left us.
We're going to hold to that. And I can show you a church in the Bible that did not hold to the tradition of soul winning.
Look at Revelation chapter number two and look at verse number four.
Nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee because thou hast left thy first love.
You know what that tells me? This was a soul winning church.
Because the first love and the first works is so many. Look what he says in verse five.
Remember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen and repent and do the first works or else I will come to thee quickly and remove thy candles that got out of this place except thou repent.
So he's talking to a church that had the first works, had the first love, had the right doctrine, had the ancient landmark.
But then what happened? They didn't hold to it, did they? They didn't cleave to it. They didn't make it a priority and eventually just slipped.
And I'm telling you this, this verse in the Bible, this chapter in the Bible is not here on accident.
There are going to be churches in the next decade that were soul winning today that are not soul winning in the future.
Like churches that we look at and we think like this is a good church or at least they're going soul winning or whatever.
But then they're just going to not be soul winning at some point in the future.
Because they didn't give us this and be like, but no one's going to actually do that.
I'm glad no church is going to actually end up slipping on soul winning.
No, churches are slipping on soul winning all the time.
Churches are lessening soul winning, less people going out.
And you know when they start lessening soul winning? In November.
Because it gets darker and colder, doesn't it? Right? I mean, I'm just being frank.
I went to a church that had soul winning in the past and I talked to the pastor.
I said, hey, I want to go soul winning. I go on Saturdays and whatever.
And I've been going by myself and I want someone else to go with me.
And could we start a program and I'll help in any way.
And he's like, well, you know, we used to have programs.
And he's like, but, you know, when it started getting darker and when it started getting colder, no one would show up.
And then we would just kind of quit.
And he's like, and every once in a while I'm reading my Bible and I just feel really convicted.
And then I'll just go out and knock some doors or whatever.
But I'm like, you know, they weren't really holding to that tradition, were they?
They weren't making the big priority.
And then a lot of times in the preaching, you know what happened?
He'd get to a really, he'd make a really great point from the word of God.
I mean, the word of God would just fly out the page.
And the application's just blinking soul winning, soul winning, soul winning.
But they don't have a soul winning program.
So then it was just no application.
It was just Occupy.
Occupy till I come.
And I was just like, what does that even mean?
You know, what was the application for that?
And it's like, we need to go out there and actually preach the gospel, go on the highways and hedges.
We need to occupy the entire apartment complex with soul winners.
Not solicitors, soul winners.
I'm not selling anything.
Giving stuff away for free.
Giving the gospel away for free.
And you know what?
If it can happen to the church here, not even that far removed from Christ,
a church that was probably established by Paul himself,
how could we think that we could be any different?
The gospel is a real threat of Christians just walking away from it, losing zeal.
Saying, why does it matter?
Saying, where are they?
Isn't that a real easy question?
We got 41 saved yesterday.
Where are they?
In bed, some of them for sure.
And we're knocking on the door to some people at 1130 in the morning.
They're like, I'm going back to bed.
And it was just like, what in the world?
People are back, they're still in bed.
But you know what?
If they die in that bed, they're going to heaven.
I mean, do you believe that?
You're like, well, I didn't see it.
Well, you didn't see you get saved and you believe that about you, right?
Why do you think you're going to heaven?
Is it because you're in church?
You might have the wrong doctrine then.
Because if you believe you got saved by faith through grace,
then why do you not believe they didn't?
Oh, well, they don't have the works.
Well, what works do you need to get into heaven?
I thought the Bible said none.
And so here's the thing.
Why does it matter if they show up at church or not?
That doesn't affect you.
You already got them saved.
You already preached them the gospel.
And at the end of the day, you know, if I have to worry about following up with everybody I get saved,
I'm not going to have time to reach new people.
I might as well be a soul winner instead of following up on my convert that never wants to come to church.
Because you know what?
When you drag people to church, you know when they stop coming?
When you stop dragging.
And so if you just want to be a dragger for the rest of your life, go for it.
I'd rather be a soul winner though.
And you know what?
Some people are going to stick.
It might be feeling far between.
It might be here and there.
But you know what?
Over a lifetime you're going to see the fruit of being a soul winner.
It doesn't happen overnight.
It's not a microwave meal.
You know, it's like Texas brisket.
Okay?
And the thing you have to know about Texas.
You know why Texas brisket is better than all the other states?
It's because they take their time in cooking it.
It's that simple.
All these other places.
It's like, oh man, we can get our brisket out in two hours.
Yeah, it's going to taste like rubber.
If you want really good brisket, you have to sit there and you have to put it fat side up.
And you have to low and slow.
And you just let it just slowly just break down.
And just all the juices running through it.
And it gets to the point where you don't even need a knife.
You never need a knife for Texas barbecue.
I mean, it just falls.
I mean, you try to pick it up and it just falls.
You can't even get it on your fork.
It's so good.
Okay?
And you say, well, how do I know if it's Texas barbecue?
If it's not matching this description, it's not Texas barbecue.
And of course you can go to the state Texas and you can go to a place that says barbecue up on the sign.
But then when you get your fork and you pick up the whole slice of brisket on your fork, it's not Texas barbecue.
Just like, you know, you walk a lot of places that have church on the sign.
But then you know what?
They say open up to your message.
It's not a church.
It's not the church of Jesus Christ.
It's the church of the message.
Which I don't care about that church.
You know, we need to have some new traditions today.
And one of those traditions is being a soul winner.
We want the real genuine thing today.
And you know what?
It takes effort.
It takes energy.
It takes time.
And you know what?
You're not going to enjoy it for a while.
Texas brisket is not something you get to enjoy a while.
It takes a lot of energy, effort, time to prime it.
That's why when you go to a real Texas place, there's a line that's long.
And it's expensive.
Man, is it expensive.
I mean, we're talking like 15 bucks a pound.
20 bucks a pound.
24 dollars a pound for Texas.
Why?
Because it's such high quality.
And here's the thing.
Going soul winning.
You know, having a soul winning church just go out and just plug away for years and years and years and years.
You know, that church is going to become like Texas brisket.
Where it's just going to be so tender to the Lord.
It's so tender to God's commandments.
It's going to have that sweet savor that's really pleasing unto God.
Just like Texas brisket, my friend.
Okay.
And so we need to have faith that doing the right thing is going to end up resulting how God wants it to.
Rather than looking for the quick fix.
Rather than seeing how many people we can just drag in for a church service by lowering our standards.
By the gimmicks.
And you know what?
You keep people with what you win them to.
If you win them over with gimmicks, you got to just keep the gimmick train going.
And the problem with gimmicks is the same gimmick doesn't work.
You have to keep escalating your gimmicks.
You have to make them more fantastical and more crazy and more whimsical.
I mean the gimmicks of modern churches today are so insane.
Like I remember we watched, I think I made Dylan watch this.
But there's some of these churches, they have like a literal circus show for their church services.
Like their Christmas pageant.
Instead of just having the nativity scene.
I mean they have like the cartoon characters and people are doing flips.
And they're like coming in on zip lines throughout the church and whatever.
And I mean there's a church in Tulsa.
It's like the most popular church on YouTube or something.
The guy's playing basketball on stage for the sermon.
I'm not joking.
He's like dunking and just like playing basketball.
And it's just like it's a show.
Why?
Because they can't get people in through the word of God.
They don't preach the word of God.
And they're not going to keep them with the word of God.
So they have to keep escalating their gimmicks.
And their gimmicks are going to get so insane.
I mean to a point where you're like how is this even church anymore?
I remember my church growing up.
They literally would just show Hollywood movies in the summer.
Because no one would come.
They're just showing Captain Phillips and Despicable Me.
And they're just showing like all of these Hollywood.
And I was offended.
Even me as a not – I was not a fundamental Baptist.
Okay.
But even me, I was thinking like this is weird.
I said if you just want to show a movie, just show a movie.
But like why would I replace the preaching of God's word with a Hollywood movie?
With Iron Man.
With one of these disgusting freaks, you know.
And try to relate them to Christ.
You know what I want to relate to Christ?
Moses.
Jonah.
Amos.
Amos where he shows up and he preaches to Israel and they don't want to hear his message.
And they say go away.
It reminds me of Christ when he showed up and preached the gospel and the Jews didn't want it.
And they wanted him to die.
They wanted him to flee and to depart from their sight.
Iron Man doesn't remind me of Jesus Christ.
Iron Man reminds me of the anti-Christ.
And of Jews.
The Christ rejecting synagogue of Satan.
That's who it reminds me of.
And it reminds me of evil and wickedness in this world.
It reminds me of filth and smut.
Why would I want to come into God's house and learn about that?
And if you have the doctrine of, hey, we need to be soul winners.
They're going to be motivated to go out and preach the gospel rather than being motivated to try and drag people in to see a movie.
It's the opposite philosophy.
Saying we're going to go out and reach the lost rather than try to bring lost people in with some gimmick.
With some stupid movie.
With some kind of a junk today.
No, I want to go and show up on their doorstep with a King James Bible, an old-fashioned word of God, and preach them the Bible.
And you know what? There's still people today that want to hear it.
In fact, there was 41 yesterday.
And there was even more than that.
They just didn't all get saved.
There was more people that heard the word of God yesterday.
There was more people that were willing to listen to the Bible being preached yesterday.
Not everyone we talked to gets saved.
You know what? At least 41 got saved.
They did want to say, you know what? I need a new God.
I need a new doctrine.
I like this doctrine of soul winning and I'm going to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and get saved.
Not, I need a new movie fix.
I need a new coffee klatch.
I need a new social club.
I want to watch some guy play basketball that sucks.
If you want to watch basketball, go to the NBA game.
You have the thunder, go watch the thunder.
And go watch, you know, and then after the game you can see your little buddy, what is it, Russell Westbrook or whatever?
What's the guy? Wear a dress coming out and doing a little interview.
The sick, disgusting freak or whatever.
Maybe I got his name wrong. You look it up.
There's some guy for the thunder though. Is it Russell Westbrook?
This guy looks like a complete faggot.
Why would I want to care what he has to say?
Oh wow, he can dunk at basketball. Cool.
He's going to be burning in hell for all of eternity.
The sick, disgusting freak wanting to try and pervert our children.
These people get lifted up like an idol and everybody worships them and they have all their jerseys.
And then they see this disgusting man put on a dress and act like a little fairy.
Like a little freak today.
It's gross.
I don't want that new tradition.
We're not going to remove the ancient landmark.
Have you not heard?
Have you not read?
Have you not read that which he made them from the beginning, made them male and female?
We're not going to get a new dress code.
We're not going to get, hey I'm all for new traditions.
But you know what we're not going to sacrifice is the word of God.
We're not going to sacrifice men being men and women being women.
We're going to say, you know what, out with the Hollywood movie, end with the King James Bible.
End with new doctrine and soul winning.
Go if you would in your Bible to Ezekiel 18 for a moment.
Go to Ezekiel chapter number 18.
And I'm preaching this message.
I want to encourage you to say, you know, there's nothing wrong with embracing new traditions.
But they need to be anchored in the ancient landmarks of the word of God.
You know, soul winning didn't, I didn't invent it.
It wasn't invented with the previous generation.
It wasn't invented with the new IFB, you know.
It's always been around, my friend.
From the beginning of time.
You know, even God preached the gospel to Abraham.
Okay.
The gospel being preached is not a brand new concept.
It's the only, it's the everlasting gospel.
It might be new to you, but you know what?
It's not a new doctrine.
A new doctrine will be saying that men are women.
Because it started out men are men, women are women.
Period.
And God dressed them and God gave them commandments and God called them what to do.
It's the Canaanites and all these other wicked people, Ham and all these other people.
Bringing in this perversion, bringing in these satanic doctrines.
And we want to say, you know what?
I'm going to reject that and I'm going to cleave to the word of God.
And sometimes your parents, sometimes your family is going to give you sinful traditions.
And you have to just say, you know what?
I'm not going to do that.
You know, sometimes your family gets plastered on holiday seasons.
Right?
And you're going to say, not me and my family.
I may have done it in the past.
I may have done things that were inappropriate in the past.
I may have gone and done things I'm not proud of now.
But you know what?
I can start a new tradition by saying I'm not going to be a sinful person.
I'm going to walk in the new man.
Hey, it's new to me, the new man.
But you know what?
It's the old spirit of Christ.
It's that everlasting spirit of Christ that's in me.
And I want to live in the new man and embrace new traditions for my family.
Not these old sinful wicked traditions.
Now, I had you turn in Ezekiel.
Did I say 18?
Did I say that correctly?
Okay.
Yeah.
Chapter 18.
For the second time, I'm not going to read the whole chapter, but you probably should
because it really goes well with this entire sermon.
But essentially in this chapter, and we'll read a few verses here, but God is trying
to explain that children are no longer going to have to suffer the consequences for their
parents.
And it's really never been a doctrine.
It's just that it's happened a lot.
And so people have this idea that if parents screw up, their kids are doomed or something.
Okay.
And that's why it says in verse number two, what mean they use this proverb concerning
the land of Israel, saying the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth
are set on edge.
Now this is just kind of a euphemism.
This is just kind of a phrase.
What he's saying is when your father screws up, when your dad does something wrong, the
children were nervous about the consequences they were going to suffer from what their
dad did.
Now, the reason why this is probably a parable, this is my opinion.
The reason why this is probably a proverb is just because every generation is wicked.
And instead of taking responsibility for themselves, they just blame dad.
You know, it's like the person that says, you know, the reason why I'm an alcoholic
because my dad made me an alcoholic because my grandpa made me an alcoholic.
It's not that they actually decided to drink alcohol either or are perpetuating that wicked
doctrine.
They're just blaming the previous generation and just saying, oh, I'm a crappy person because
of dad and I have these bad habits because of dad.
And it's just always blaming dad and blaming your grandfather.
Instead of saying, I'm my own man, maybe I should reject some of the things that I was
taught realizing they're wicked.
And you know what?
There's not an excuse for being a wicked person when you've grown up.
Once you've grown up, you have personal responsibility and God is going to hold you responsible for
your actions.
Look what it says in verse number 10.
If he beget a son that is a robber.
Now, the context here is someone that was righteous.
Someone that's righteous, if he begets a son that is a robber, a shedder of blood and that
doeth alike to any one of these things and that doeth not any of those duties, but even
hath eaten upon the mountains and defiled his neighbor's wife of the press, the poor
and needy, hath spoiled by violence, have not restored the pledge and have lifted up
his eyes to the idols, have committed abomination, have given forth upon usury and have taken
increase, shall he live?
He shall not live.
He had done all these abominations.
He shall surely die.
His blood shall be upon him.
So he's saying someone that was raised right, but then chooses to be wicked.
He's going to be punished.
God's going to make sure he gets very severely punished.
Now it says in verse number 14.
Now, lo, if he may get a son, so this is the wicked person beginning his son, and seeth
all that his father sends, which he hath done, and considerth and doeth not such like that
he hath not eaten upon the mountains, neither have lifted up his eyes to the idols of the
house of Israel, have not defiled his neighbor's wife, neither have depressed any, have not
withholding the pledge, neither has spoiled by violence, but have given his bread to the
hungry and have covered the naked with the garment that have taken off his hand from
the poor, that have not received usury nor increase.
Hath executed my judgments, hath walked in my statutes.
He shall not die for the iniquity of his father.
He shall surely live.
So he's saying, look, your dad's good.
You're bad.
You're punished.
Your dad's bad.
You're good.
You're not going to be punished for what he did, for what his actions were, meaning that
you're your own person and God is going to hold you liable and responsible for what you
do.
Okay.
Now you say, all right, well, what happens when my dad's bad and I start bad, right?
Because of that influence.
I mean, your parents are going to have a major influence on your life.
It's going to be really hard to say no to dad when he's forcing sin and all kinds of
bad doctrines and traditions onto you.
Well, let's keep reading a little bit further down.
Verse 21, but if the wicked, so we're talking about someone that's wicked, whether it's
been handed down or they purposely chosen or not says, but if the wicked will turn from
all his sins that he had committed and keep all my statutes and do that, which is lawful
and right, he shall surely live.
He shall not die.
So notice at whatever point you decide, you know what?
That was a bad tradition.
I'm going to hit the no button now on.
We're not going to do that from now on.
We're not going to live that way from now on.
I'm going to reject these sinful traditions.
We're not going to get plastered and drunk and go to the whorehouse and watch filth and
watch smut and speak all manner of evil communication and go into the places that I shouldn't and
think the things that I shouldn't say and hear and all the things that I shouldn't.
Whenever you say no, God says, okay, you can live now.
And it's not talking about salvation, my friend.
Okay.
Don't twist this passage.
Work.
Salvation is love to try and twist this into their work.
Salvation.
You're basically saying physical life.
Okay.
This is talking about your physical life.
You want to live a long life.
Obey your parents is what the Bible says, right?
But if your parents are asking you to do sinful things, you got to obey God rather than men.
And you got to say, I'm going to obey my heavenly father.
I'm going to do that, which is right.
And I'm going to create some new traditions in my family.
You know, instead of having a poker night, we're going to have game night.
You know, instead of getting drunk on Christmas Eve, we're going to have a candlelight service.
Right.
Instead of going out and worshiping the devil on Halloween, we're going to eat chili.
We're creating new traditions that we're handing down and saying, we're not going to just worship
the devil with you.
You know, instead of getting out the Ouija board, we're going to burn it.
In fact, we're not going to burn that.
We're going to burn false Bibles on top of that new tradition.
We're going to create an established new ideas that are based on the word of God.
And we're going to walk in the new man.
You know, in the Bible, Kings even had to deal with this often where their father is
very wicked.
Their parents were going to first Kings chapter number 15% go to first Kings chapter 15.
And they had to, you know, basically say to their parents, like, I'm not going to do this
or you're, you're wrong.
And they have to confront their parents on these issues.
Now I'll say this, if your parents are very simple people that doesn't give you the right
to treat them disrespectfully.
Always honor our father and mother, you know, and, and this was disagreeing with someone
is not disrespecting them.
Okay.
Saying, you know, I love you, but I'm not going to participate in this activity.
I find this activity to, you know, sinful to me.
It's not right.
I want to serve the Lord.
I'm going to do this.
I'm going to abstain.
I'm going to separate myself.
That's not being disrespectful.
Okay.
But you don't have to just, you know, shove it down their throat and rub their nose in
it.
Like you're just such a wicked person.
You must hate God and blah, blah, blah.
You know, you don't want to just be rude to your, your father and your mother.
You want to be respectful and loving, but even sometimes you have to just separate them
from your company.
Even look at first Kings chapter 15, look at verse 11 and Asa did that, which is right
in the eyes of the Lord, as David, his father, as the Davis.
So is what Asa we're about to read is what he did right or wrong.
Bible's clear.
It's right.
Okay.
Verse 12.
That's a good start and removed all the idols that his fathers had made.
And also Mayika, his mother, even her, he removed from being queen because she had made
an idol and a grove.
Now here's the thing.
What would that make his mother?
If she has idols, what does that make her?
An idolater.
Okay.
Now, first Corinthians chapter number five makes it very clear that even someone that's
called a brother, if they be an idolater with such in one, no, not to eat is what the Bible
actually teaches.
And so it could come to a point where, you know, maybe your family's Catholic and they
worship idols.
Literally.
They have the Mary shrine.
You know, I'm not going to show up in my Catholic family member's house and be a part of their
little seance to Mary or whatever, or allow them to be bowing down to Mary or hang out
with Mary.
And they should probably not even be in this person's presence at all until they repent
of that idolatry, especially if they claim the name of Christ.
Okay.
Obviously if she's just unsaved and you're trying to show up and preach her the gospel
and reach her, that's one thing.
But if they're saved and they're clinging on to the Mary statue and they're clinging
on to the idolatry, you're supposed to say, that's wicked.
You know, right.
You know better.
You're not allowed to be participating in that.
And I'm not going to have fellowship with you until you clean that up.
Now.
Praise Lord America.
This isn't a huge battle, but what about some of the other ones?
How about drunkard?
How about Rayler?
You know, I mean, there's going to be some of these.
How about fornicator?
That'll hit a lot of families.
How many families do you have where you literally have family members coming that are a literal
fornicator?
What does that mean?
They're just living together and they're not married or they're college kids or have this
girlfriend and they're, you know, a fornicator.
It's real obvious.
And no one's saying anything.
He said, well, that's going to make me uncomfortable.
Well, which one are you more uncomfortable?
Are you more comfortable with the word of God or are you more uncomfortable with sinful
family members?
And are you going to create new traditions for your family or are you going to teach
your children?
It's okay.
It's okay that they're fornicators.
It's okay that they're drunkards.
It's okay that they do these sinful attitudes.
It's not a big deal.
And basically teach your children that if they do it, no problem, no consequences, no
issue, or are you going to actually draw a line in the sand and say, you know what?
We're going to have a new tradition that we're not going to hang out with people that we
shouldn't.
And you say, well then who can I hang out with?
Well, everybody at church, because if someone's on that list in church and we know about it,
they're getting thrown out.
So theoretically everybody in church should be safe to hang out with.
And you know what?
Jesus didn't have a problem with his doctrine because when his mother and brother were standing
without asking to see him, he says, who is my mother?
Who is my brethren?
They would hear the word of God and do it.
Not just the hearers of the word only, but the doers of the word.
And you know, we get a, we get labeled for being a cult or whatever, but it's like at
the same time we do need to separate ourselves.
The Bible teaches separation, go to second Corinthians chapter number six, go to second
Corinthians chapter number six.
You know who, who liked this doctrine, Rahab the harlot.
Didn't Rahab the harlot live in an entire town of people that are wicked.
And you know what she chose?
She chose to be with the children of Israel to side with them.
And she was like, Ruth saying, your God's gonna be my God and your people are going
to be my people.
And you know what?
They all died and she lived.
So point one, we need a new God.
We need a new doctrine.
We need new soul winning.
We need the new man.
And sometimes we need new people.
These are the new traditions we need.
You know, and a lot of people don't have the right God.
They need the right God.
They need a new God, the God of the Bible.
They need new doctrine because their doctrine is real screwed up.
Then you get rid of dispensationalism and repenting of your sins and pre-trib and modern
Bible versions and just, there's so much junk.
They need some new doctrine and we need some new soul winners.
And we need people to start walking in the new man saying that it's actually serious.
I mean, what I'm saying, a lot of people just don't want to do.
I don't want to walk in a new man.
Well, it's biblical.
Look at second Corinthians chapter number six, look at verse 14.
Be not unequally go together with unbelievers.
For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness, and what communion hath light
with darkness?
And what concordeth Christ with Belial, or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?
And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?
For ye are the temple of the living God.
As God has said, I will dwell in them and walk in them, and I will be their God.
And they shall be my people, wherefore come out from among them and be he separate, saith
the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you.
The Bible teaches separation.
You say, well, I don't separate from anybody.
That's because you're not walking in the new man and you're not allowing God to be your
God and you're not allowing God's people to be your people.
You need to take a lesson from Ruth.
You need to take a lesson from Rahab and saying, you know what?
That's going to be my God and that's going to be my people.
And as for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord.
We're going to separate ourselves and we're going to have new friends, a new tradition
of hanging out with Christians rather than a bunch of unsaved family members that don't
like the word of God.
They're just going to get drunk and they just care about fornication and football and whatever
other nonsense is out there saying, you know what?
I want to be around people that love God, that love the Lord Jesus Christ.
And you say, well, I don't, well, you know, you're going to end up being destroyed with
those in Jericho.
You know, even a safe person, God will destroy when he doesn't walk away from those sinful
habits that were traditionally passed down him.
Saw that in Ezekiel and you know, the Bible, we didn't get, I didn't read it, but when
he said, when you were really wicked and then you turned and you live, but he says, if you
were really righteous, you did everything right.
And then all of a sudden you make a bad turn, you die.
And they're like, well, how's that equal?
And he's like, my ways are equal.
Your ways are not equal.
So it's usually, this is how God views you.
How are you doing the last five minutes?
What have you done for me in the last five minutes?
His mercies are new every morning, right?
But guess what?
His judgments are new every morning too.
And so that's why it's important to serve God now and get some new traditions that you're
going to carry with you for your life.
So I've talked about five points.
There's one last point I want to make.
Go forward to Psalms 33.
So there's nothing wrong with getting right.
It's just, you need to stay right.
You know, I mean, we all have done wrong.
We've all had problems in these areas.
These are all things that we probably had issues in, and we need to constantly get more
right and get more separated and get more holy and, you know, serve God better and get
better traditions and better, establish better principles.
But then more importantly than just establishing the right doctrine is holding to it, staying
on it, keeping it, you know, not just, well, at one point I was on fire for God.
It was a cool year.
No, you want it to be your life.
You want to get to the end of your life and then look at your children and admonish them
and say, you guys be like me and keep it all the way to the end.
You hold the tradition.
I mean, 2 Thessalonians is a later book.
Paul is saying to, you know, he's kind of in the back nine, as it were, looking at the
newer generation and saying, you guys need a hold of this stuff that I gave you.
We pioneered a lot.
I mean, a lot of you weren't even Christian when I met you.
Right.
And we're talking about Greeks.
They went from worshiping idols to now being some of the greatest Christians on the earth.
I mean, that was a big transformation that they went through.
And Paul's like, it's not, it's not a feat to have just climbed the mountain.
It's a feat to stay on the mountain.
You know, it's not like a one time thing.
We won the championship one year.
No, you want to be a dynasty.
You know, you want to just basically just keep staying there and keep winning and keep
doing that, which is right.
Having a pattern of good works.
You know, the Bible admonishes us to have a pattern of good works.
And it says, this is the last one I want to focus on that I think is another new one that
we need to do is having new songs.
New songs.
But again, we're not removing the ancient landmark when we create our music.
Now we praise the Lord saying one this morning, Psalm 67, didn't we?
That's a relatively new song, but you know what?
It's not a new song in the sense that it existed a long time ago.
It's really, really old.
Okay.
It's a lot older than all the other songs you sing.
Every song that you know, Psalm 67 is older.
I mean other than other songs that you know.
So it's a new song, but you know what?
We're holding the traditions that have been given to us from the word of God.
And the Bible teaches us this.
Look at Psalms 33 and look at what it says in verse number three, sing unto him a new
song.
Go to chapter 40.
Let's just go quickly.
Chapter 40.
Look at verse number three here.
And he has put a new song in my mouth.
Go to chapter 96.
Flip a couple pages, chapter 96 and look at verse number one.
Bible says, sing unto the Lord a new song.
Look at chapters 98 verse one.
Oh, sing unto the Lord a new song.
Go all the way to the end of Psalms because Psalm 144, Psalm 144, look at verse number
nine.
I will sing a new song unto thee.
Look at Psalm 149.
Look at verse number one, praise thee the Lord, sing unto the Lord a new song.
So one thing that we should be doing is creating new songs with the Psalm book, taking the
Psalm book and creating new versions of this, new melodies, new tunes, and you know what?
I love doing this.
I love singing a new Psalm that has the lyrics of the word of God right in them.
And you know, there's a lot of churches that have forsaken singing this song.
I mean, most Baptist churches, they don't sing any Psalms as far as just straight from
the text, you know, just a straight through Psalm.
Now, admittedly, a lot of hymns and a lot of the music that we do sing still contain
a lot of the word of God, but it's not necessarily even limited to the Psalms.
You know, they have a lot of other chapters of the Bible.
They'll have pieces in Romans or first Timothy or, you know, these other parts of scripture.
You know, they'll talk about Daniel, they'll talk about Jonah, they'll talk about other
people in the Bible.
And that's great too.
You know, we should sing spiritual songs and I'm not even against making new songs that
are from other portions of the Bible.
But you know what?
A great tradition would be that our church sings new Psalms.
When I say new Psalms, I'm saying a new tune to the old Psalms.
Isn't that great that we can create new stuff, but yet we still create it from the word of
God.
It's not like I'm just creating a new doctrine here out of the thin air.
But you know what?
God wants us to create.
You know, when God put Adam in the garden, he gave him something free will.
You know, and God likes, you know, Christians are inventors.
Christians are creative Christians.
You know, man is created in the image of God and you know what God is?
He's a builder.
God creates things.
God forms things.
God establishes things and God wants us to build things.
You know, he wants us to build the church.
He wants us to build our family.
He wants us to build religion.
He wants us to invent and create things.
And what I've noticed in this world today is Christians create everything and then reprobates
come in and destroy it all.
You know, they're never creative.
The devil doesn't create things.
He just perverts it, twists it.
He just destroys it.
The only inventions they have are evil things.
Yeah, that's the Bible says they invent evil, wicked things, but they're wicked devices
are destructive devices.
They're not like anything beneficial to the site.
It's like birth control.
Oh, thanks for inventing that.
Thanks for invent.
They invent new ways to sell sin, sell smut and sell filth.
And but you know what?
They're never creating anything new or beneficial to society.
And if you study history, it's like basically Christians are in an area.
They get so heavily persecuted, they move to a new area.
And then once they need to move to a new area, they create and build a new society and all
these wonderful things and new inventions.
And then after all these cockroaches and vipers and wolves devour the area they're in, they
want a new area to devour.
So they come where the Christians are, start devouring and destroying it.
And the Christians have to move again and they just have to move again.
And they just have to move again.
Here's the problem.
We're to a point where the landscape of the earth has run out.
And so basically we're in just a self-destruct mode.
I mean, where are the Christians going to go at this point?
There's not really much landmass.
That's why I think we're headed towards the end times is because we're heading these directions.
But even though we may not be able to establish as many cool things carnally, we can still
build the spiritual things.
We can still build our families.
We can still build the church.
We can still build new traditions within the steadfast Baptist church and we can get better.
And instead of looking at our church and just saying, oh, we just have to sit here and just,
you know, it's old everything and whatnot, no, we'll get some new chairs, right?
We'll get some new songs.
We'll make new documentaries, but it's still going to be anchored in the ancient landmarks
today.
But we need some men today that are going to get purposed in their heart.
And they're going to say this, I'm going to establish a new tradition, not a new fad,
not a new flavor of the week, not a new flavor of fruits, Stripe gum.
That's going to last about 10 seconds.
No, I'm going to create a new tradition that's going to be passed down to the next generation
that I'm going to stick with for my entire life.
I'm going to make an EV, you know, a long legacy.
It was the legacy of law.
Not a very good one.
Why?
Because he didn't root himself in any good.
He wasn't reading the Bible.
He wasn't in a good area.
He's not going to church.
He didn't have any of these things.
And you know what?
If you don't create any good traditions for your family, there'll be like a lot at the
end of your life, but just nothing to show for it.
Nothing of value.
That's why you have to establish now, I'm going to create some good traditions for me
and my family, some new traditions based on the word of God.
And as for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord.
Let's close in prayer.
Thank you, Heavenly Father, for giving us the word of God that we can just open it up
and it's more relevant than the newspaper.
It's more relevant than anything we could read that there's just, there's something
unique about the word of God because it's alive, it's living and that you give us a
great opportunity to reestablish ourselves every day.
You have new mercies for us every morning.
And I pray that because of that, we would be encouraged to create some new traditions
that we're going to want to pass down to our children.
Things that are anchored upon the everlasting truths of the word of God and the Bible.
And that we realize that the decisions we make are going to have an everlasting impact
and that we wouldn't take things lightly, but rather we would take the service of God
very seriously.
And in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Let's sing out, All I Need, all together.
All I need, all I need, all I need, all I need, all I need, all I need, all I need,
all I need, all I need, all I need, all I need, all I need, all I need, all I need,
all I need, all I need, all I need.
All I need, all I need, all I need, all I need, all I need, all I need, all I need,
all I need, all I need.
All I need, all I need, all I need, all I need, all I need, all I need, all I need,
all I need, all I need, all I need, all I need.
All I need, all I need, all I need, all I need, all I need.
All I need, all I need, all I need.