Amen. I want to say thank you so much for coming here.
It's very encouraging seeing all of you guys here.
The church is very full and hopefully God will bless you guys
with a larger space so you can continue to grow.
And y'all's church is very near and dear to our heart,
Steadfast Baptist Church and Pure Earth Baptist Church.
I know a lot of my church members are constantly asking me about this church,
asking me about your pastor, Pastor Matthew Stuckey.
Some of the church members of mine have visited out here
and they've always spoken very highly of this church and the soul winning
and they really love you guys.
And so I don't want you to feel like just because you maybe aren't in America,
no one cares about you because us in America,
we very much care about you guys and we're thinking about you.
And I really appreciate the kind words from your pastor, Pastor Matthew Stuckey.
I haven't necessarily gotten to hang out with him as much as I'd like
because he's always traveling the whole world, starting a million churches.
So, you know, he's a hard guy to track down,
but I always enjoyed his preaching and really enjoy his fellowship the last few days.
I'm here by myself as far as I don't have my family with me today
and they definitely are thinking about you guys and in prayer for you.
I have five children and one on the way and so we're definitely growing.
And then I did bring one of my church members, James Perry.
He's with me. He's from Pure Words Baptist Church and also evangelist Duncan Urbanic.
He was our evangelist at the Pure Words Baptist Church for the last few years
and he's been doing an excellent job.
He's been really helping that church grow and doing a lot of evangelism,
a lot of soul winning and it actually works out that he's going to be at home.
Sorry, I'm not turning on my mic.
These words are just for you all, okay?
Can you all hear me now better? All right.
Also, I have evangelist Urbanic with me today
and evangelist Urbanic was leading our church plan at Pure Words
and he has been doing such an excellent job
and really he has a heart for the Philippines.
He has a heart for soul winning
and so I feel like we have a great and unique opportunity
to be able to send another evangelist over here
and we just want him to be a blessing to you guys
and also to just really be sensitive to the work of the Lord
and that whatever opportunities may arise that he could help plug himself in
and really get shoulder to shoulder with you
and try to help with the work because there's a great work here.
I don't know if you know the traffic is pretty intense around here.
There's obviously a lot of people
and I think I looked it up, there's like 14 million people in just Manila proper
and obviously that doesn't even include all of the outskirt areas
and I'm sure many of you don't even live necessarily in Manila.
You live in other parts of the Philippines
and so there's definitely a need for many soul winners.
The Bible tells us that we're supposed to pray to the Father in heaven
that he would send more laborers into his harvest
and so we want to continually send more people to this area
and reach this people and for us, a soul is a soul.
We don't care. Red, yellow, black and white, they're all precious in his sight
and so we want everyone to go to heaven
and we really love Verity Baptist Church.
Again, I really appreciate you guys for accommodating us
and giving me the opportunity to preach to you this morning.
Now, I want to get into my text.
It's really just the very end of Mark that I want to focus on.
If you look at Mark 9, the last two verses here, verse 49, the Bible says,
For everyone shall be salted with fire
and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt.
Salt is good, but if the salt hath lost his saltness,
wherewith will ye season it?
Have salt in yourselves and have peace one with another.
Now, what's interesting is I believe that verse 49
is bringing to remembrance something that was mentioned in the Old Testament.
So, if you would go to Leviticus chapter number 2 for a moment.
Go to Leviticus chapter number 2
and the Bible is telling us that we're supposed to have salt in ourselves.
So, we're supposed to be salted.
We're supposed to be seasoned with salt
and that's really the title of my sermon this morning is Season with Salt.
We as God's people need to be seasoned with salt
and what's interesting in the Old Testament is that the sacrifices of God
were to be seasoned with salt.
The Bible even just literally says, salt is good.
And so, you know, the Bible says that salt is a good thing.
Look at verse 13, Leviticus chapter 2, verse 13, the Bible says,
And every oblation of thy meat offering
shalt thou season with salt.
Notice that phrase again, season with salt,
neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God
to be lacking from thy meat offering.
All thine offerings, thou shalt offer salt.
So, notice that every single offering was supposed to have salt in it
and the Bible makes it abundantly clear that we're supposed to also be salted.
Now, God uses what I always describe as carnal truths to expound spiritual truths.
God often uses earthly examples of things so we can understand spiritual truths
like being born again.
We understand how physical birth works
and that helps us understand how spiritual birth works.
We understand all kinds of different nuances of a father and son relationship
and that's to help us understand the relationship that God the Father has
with His Son, Jesus Christ.
And how we too are supposed to have a relationship with our children
and how we're supposed to treat our children
and the love and the attention and the affection
that we should have towards our children.
You know, Jesus Christ often describes things to His disciples
when the Bible uses metaphors or parables.
There's often an earthly example, a carnal truth
that Jesus Christ uses to expound spiritual truths.
And so I was thinking about salt. What does salt do?
Just from a carnal perspective, one of the things that salt does
is it preserves the food that has been placed on it, especially meat.
If you season meat with salt, it helps it last longer.
It helps it preserve itself and so it doesn't rot.
It doesn't deteriorate. It's still edible for a longer time.
And in fact, certain meats have become so heavily salted
they're actually just kind of permanently preserved.
Things like deli meats or pepperoni or salami.
A lot of these meats have been so salted
that in fact they actually are preserved for a very long time.
And so one of the aspects of salt is that it preserves.
Another aspect of salt is that it tenderizes meat.
So actually in fact, salt will actually make the meat itself
just a little bit more tender.
It kind of draws out the water content of the meat
and so it will make it taste a little bit better.
Instead of being as chewy or tough, it actually can make it really savory.
It can make it just kind of melt in your mouth.
And there's nothing better than having meat melt in your mouth.
This is why I'm from Texas and we love brisket, okay?
And if you've never been to Texas, you have never had brisket.
So sorry if I'm offending you.
When you go to Texas, we make brisket
and boy, does it melt in your mouth.
I also like to make smoked barbecue ribs.
So I take pork ribs and I smoke it
and it gets to the point where it's so tender
that it literally just falls off the bone.
You can't even get any meat to stick to the bone.
The bone is just nothing.
Essentially, you're going to eat all of it.
And it's annoying when I go to a restaurant and I get ribs
and it's like you have to try and gnaw off that meat off of the bone.
It's nice when it just falls right off
and it's so tender and it's juicy.
But of course that takes salt.
It takes cooking it very slowly.
And lastly, the other thing that salt really does
is it enhances the flavor of that meat.
And so salt is good.
Salt provides a lot of benefit in our carnal world.
It provides a lot of benefit for our eating, for our meat.
It causes the meat to last longer so that we can have it.
It allows the meat to be more tender so it tastes better.
It has a better quality when you chew it.
And then in fact, the flavor is actually increased or amplified
when you add salt to your meat.
Many people really like salt.
They like to add it to the food that they eat.
And you know, I love salt.
So that's the carnal truth.
We can all go home. No, I'm just kidding.
I'm getting hungry, right?
But there's also a spiritual truth to the carnal truth of the Bible.
And just like meat is supposed to have salt in it,
we too are supposed to have salt.
And if that salt is preserving the meat,
the salt also is going to preserve us.
And the Bible, I believe, makes it abundantly clear
that the salt is the Word of God.
It's a representation and a picture of the Bible,
of the Scriptures, and how the Lord Jesus Christ
wants us to be salted with the Scriptures.
He wants us to have the Word of God inside of us
and that the Word of God is going to preserve us
when we have the Scriptures seasoned in our lives.
Go over to Proverbs 2 for a moment.
We'll go to Proverbs 2.
And the Bible is abundantly clear
that the Word of God is what provides us preservation.
When we talk about preservation,
it's a pretty broad category.
But the Bible just generally preserves us
from evil, from destruction,
from all kinds of horrible things that can happen to you
because sin is a very destructive thing.
Sin will cause our lives to be destroyed.
It will cause emotional anguish.
It will cause pain, suffering.
It can cause your relationships to deteriorate.
Sin will destroy you.
It will destroy your family.
It will destroy those around you.
It will destroy your city.
It will destroy your country.
It will destroy the entire world.
Sin is an evil force.
And what causes a preservation of us,
a preservation of our city,
a preservation of this world,
is the Word of God.
The Word of God and the Bible
preserves everything on this earth.
The only reason cities and people
and things still exist
is because there's salt in it.
God is angry with sin every single day.
And if it wasn't for salt,
He would have no reason to preserve it.
The only reason He is preserving things today,
the only reason it hasn't poured out His wrath
the way He would like to,
is because of the salt that exists
in this world.
And that salt is supposed to be somewhere specific.
It's supposed to be inside of us.
So we need to read the Bible.
We need to meditate on the Scripture.
We need to memorize Scripture.
And we need to be seasoned with salt.
Look at Proverbs 2, verse 10.
The Bible says,
When wisdom enterth into thine heart,
and knowledge is pleasant
unto thy soul, discretion
shall preserve thee,
understanding shall keep thee,
to deliver thee from the way
of the evil man.
And that what the Word of God does
is it will give you wisdom
and knowledge and understanding
and help you realize,
I need to stay away from certain people.
You know, I understand there's a heart
to get every single person saved.
And I believe that with all of my heart.
I want everyone to be saved.
But we also have to balance the reality
that not everyone is going to get saved.
And not everyone is a good person
to be around.
The Bible says there are certain evil men
that we should avoid, that we should stay away from,
and that wisdom gives us that knowledge
to say this is an evil person.
I'm not going to be around them.
Many churches, they are inviting evil men
into their church.
Many times the evil men are the people leading the church.
And you are no stranger
to the fact that there are many churches
in the Philippines that are filled with
evil men.
They're filled with evil people.
And you know, we need to stay away from those evil people.
And you say, how do I stay away?
You get saved and you realize this is a bad church.
You get baptized
and you start reading the Bible and you start realizing
there's so many false prophets in the world.
The Bible says, Beloved, believe not every
spirit, but try the spirits, whether
they are of God, because many false
prophets are gone out into the world.
And you know what? It's not just America.
It's in the Philippines too.
And it's not just the Philippines. Yea, all of the world
is filled with false prophets and evil men
and we need the wisdom
and the discretion to be preserved
from their lies, to be reserved
from their false doctrine, to be preserved
from the leaven that's leavening
the whole lump. And let me tell you something,
Jesus Christ ripped on the Pharisees.
Jesus Christ preached hard
against them and their leaven
and their false doctrine. And you know what?
We need men of God like Pastor
Matthew Stuckey to get up and
rip on these evil men.
And you need to listen to the word of God
and get that in your heart so you're preserved
from evil men.
Now the Bible keeps going here
in Proverbs chapter number 2.
It says in verse 12,
Deliver thee from the way of the evil man,
from the man that speaketh thrower things,
who leave the paths of uprightness
to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice
to do evil and delight
in the throwerness of
the wicked. Notice that they delight in
wickedness. They will praise
sin. They will praise
sinners. They delight in
things that are contrary to the Bible
and the word of God. It says here
also, verse 15, whose ways
are crooked and they throw it in their paths.
This is also something that wisdom
will deliver you from. To deliver thee
from the strange woman,
even from the stranger,
which flattereth with her words,
which forsaketh the guide
of her youth, and forgetteth
the covenant of her God.
For you young men,
you have to realize there are also
evil women in this world,
the strange woman
which would love to destroy you.
Many men are being
destroyed in this world
through strange women.
And when we talk about strange women,
we're not talking about someone that's awkward
or weird.
We're talking about someone that you don't know.
Many people
are committing whoredom today
with people they don't know.
And because of the Internet,
because of applications on people's phones
today, it's never been easier
to meet a stranger
and to commit whoredom.
And you know what the Bible is saying?
You need wisdom, you need to be seasoned with salt
so that you avoid those people.
So that you avoid those kinds of temptations.
To avoid that
application. If you have an
application on your telephone that gives you
easy access to strangers, you should get rid of it.
You shouldn't even have it.
You need to replace that with an application
that reads the Bible. You need to replace
that with an application that memorizes Scripture.
You need to get the Faithful Word app
and listen to sermons, okay?
Because we need to be seasoned with salt
and realize that whoredom is a
giant problem.
And it's not, you know, it's crazy.
It's not just America.
It's not just Australia.
It's also the Philippines.
It's everywhere.
It is literally everywhere.
And it's all over the place. And you know what?
We need to keep our young people pure
and we need to preserve them
and we need parents to guard the hearts
of their young people. And you
young single men, you need to protect
yourself from the strange woman
because she will destroy you. In fact,
look at Proverbs 7. Just flip over the page.
Look at chapter 7 right here.
Look at verse 21.
The Bible says,
With her much fair speech
she caused him to yield.
You know why the
strange woman is so dangerous?
Is that the things that she
says sound so good.
You know the Bible talks about a strange
woman that her words are as
smooth as oil.
So it's just like the best tasting
food. The best sounding
food. She just has a way with
her words. She's going to tell you everything
you wanted to hear. Everything you
would like to know. But in fact,
it's all lies. It's flattery.
It's deceit.
She doesn't really care about you.
And it causes many men
to stumble and to fall and to be
destroyed by a woman that's
insincere. She has ulterior
motives. And there are a lot
of women out there, the Bible describes,
that want to destroy
young men. In Proverbs
chapter number 7, it keeps going.
It says in verse 22,
He goeth after a straight way.
It's saying when
the woman comes and gives this guy
the words that he wanted to hear,
it just says immediately he's
going to follow her. Just right away
as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as
a fool to the correction of the stocks,
to the dark strike through his liver,
as a bird hasteth to the snare,
and knoweth not
that it is for his life. Notice that
he's actually being physically destroyed.
It's a trap.
In fact, in the government,
especially in America and some other places,
they call this the honeypot trap.
And it's essentially, they describe
a woman is this honeypot
and she's out there as this, oh,
I want some honey, but it's a trap.
Because if you trap animals,
I don't know, you all have a few animals around here, okay?
You have a few dogs left,
okay? But you go to other parts of the world,
there's a lot of animals. To catch animals, a lot
of times what you do is you take food that's very delicious
and you put it in this
trap. And as soon as they walk into
the trap, trying to get this delicious food,
the door closes shut and
now they're stuck in this trap. Or a bear
trap, in fact, it has jaws
of teeth and if a bear
comes in and touches the food,
it'll set the release trigger
and then the claws just clamp really hard.
And now all of a sudden it's got
its arm or its leg
and it's stuck and this is the
point of a trap. The Bible is describing
this woman like that. She is like
a little bear trap where she
puts some honey out there, her smooth
bear speech, and many men
just go straight into the trap
and the Bible says it just destroys
them. They end up
dying as a result of
going down this road of perishing.
And if you go to the very end of this,
look at verse 26.
For she hath cast down many wounded, yea, many
strong men have been slain by her.
Her house is the way to hell,
going down to the chambers of death.
You know, this literally happened
to some people in the Bible.
Samson is someone
who went into the trap of Delilah
and Delilah
only cared about money.
Delilah sold out
her boyfriend, I guess is the best
way to word this. I don't know how else to word it.
And essentially
he was killed and slain
as a result
of going with Delilah and
hearkening unto her. And a lot of times
it's not necessarily that the woman
is going to actually kill you. It's not that she's
necessarily going to be the one to physically
destroy you, but chasing after that
kind of woman, the lifestyle that these people
are living, and the path that she'll lead you
down often leads to
physical death, often leads to physical
destruction, often leads to
emotional destruction. Even in fact, many
men in America are even committing
suicide because of
what women have done to them. Women
that are taking advantage of them and leaving
them and racking up bills
and just causing all kinds of anguish upon
them, slaughtering their children through
abortion, have caused many men to be
so upset and so disappointed,
disenfranchised, feeling
like they're never going to have an actual woman,
that no women are genuine, they actually
end up taking their own lives.
There are so many ways that
death can come upon you, and we
need to avoid this particular woman.
How do we do that? We have to season
ourself with salt and that salt is the
Word of God. We need to get wisdom and discretion.
We need to read the Proverbs. We need
to memorize the Proverbs. We need to set our
children down and drill these
into their brain, into their head, because
you know what? Temptation is strong, and
we need a lot of salt.
We need a lot of salt.
Go to Psalms chapter
40. Go to Psalms
chapter 40. Point one is this,
that the Word of God is going to preserve you.
It's going to preserve you from whoredom.
It's going to preserve you from
false teachers. It's going to preserve you
from evil people, people that get involved
with drugs, people that get involved
in idolatry, people that get involved
with familiar spirits, people that get
involved in stealing and scamming,
people that get involved in all kinds of
evil that's out there today. You know
the Bible will give you the wisdom and
instruction to stay away from that.
To preserve you from rotting,
to preserve you from
destroying yourself, just like that
meat would rot and destroy itself,
that salt keeps it preserved
and keeps it lasting longer.
And you know what? The Word of God will keep us
lasting longer. I mean the Bible
literally even says that one of the commandments
is given with a special promise
that if you honor your father and your mother,
that your days will be long upon the land
which the Lord by God giveth thee. So according
to the Bible, that's literally
preserving your life longer by
obeying your parents. You children, you want
to live long lives? Obey mom and dad.
In fact,
you should just get a calendar up there
and just mark off
days every time you disobey, like I'm going to
die one day sooner.
And then just
another day and another day. I mean you
could be just taking days off your life and you
don't know it. You know, when your mom and dad
tell you to do something, you say, yes
sir, yes ma'am, you do it
the first time, you obey
and you know what? God promises to give you
a longer life.
I guarantee you when you meet older people,
there is a common denominator
among all of them, that they are very
obedient children. Because you know
science is always trying to figure this out.
They're trying to figure out like, well, what's going to preserve
these people? And you know, it always baffles them.
They'll find people that are
80, 90, 100 years old and they're
smoking cigarettes every day.
Or they're eating very unhealthy.
Or they're doing, and they're thinking like, how is this
person defying, you know,
all of these dietary laws
or these dietary restrictions? And it's
probably because they're a very obedient child.
You know, and I'm not
advocating smoking, okay? Don't hear the wrong
message, okay? I'm not advocating living
an unhealthy lifestyle. But what I'm
telling you is that many
people don't realize that your life
is tied to following God's commandments
directly. And then on top
of that, He gives you wisdom and knowledge to say,
hey, that's something bad. Anyways, I'm going to stay away from it.
And that also prolongs your life
and preserves your life. And you know, we
need to be constantly seasoning ourselves with salt
so that we will be preserved.
Now in Psalm chapter number 40,
it's kind of
interesting because this prayer
is for sure quoted by
the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's about
the Lord Jesus Christ. But
a lot of the Psalms kind of have a dual
fulfillment where the author themselves,
David or whomever,
is kind of living through this experience
and then Christ also
is using some of those verses
to apply to Him. And what I
believe about this passage is it's very clear that
the beginning portion is about Jesus,
but then it's going to shift and be mostly about
the author. And it's something that we can relate to.
Notice what it says in verse 7,
Then said I, Lo, I come, in the volume of the book
it is written of me,
I delight to do Thy will, O my
God. Yea, Thy law
is within my heart. So this is definitely about the Lord
Jesus Christ. He talks about this. He brings us
up. He reads this scripture. But notice
how the passage keeps going. It says,
I have preached righteousness in the great congregation.
Lo, I have not refrained my lips, O Lord,
Thou knowest. I have not hid Thy
righteousness within my heart.
I have declared
Thy faithfulness and Thy salvation.
I have not concealed
Thy lovingkindness and Thy truth
from the great congregation.
Withhold not Thou
Thy tender mercies from me, O Lord.
Let Thy lovingkindness
and Thy truth continually
preserve me. Notice that He's
wanting God's mercy and His grace
and His lovingkindness and the truth that's in
Him to help Him be preserved.
Notice what it says in verse 12,
For innumerable evils have compassed
me about. Now, of course, that's true
of the Lord Jesus Christ. He had many enemies,
many people that wanted to destroy Him.
It was innumerable at times.
But notice this. Mine
iniquities have taken
hold upon me.
Now, that's, of course, not
necessarily about the Lord Jesus Christ
unless we're talking about Him being on the cross
and taking our sin. But the Lord Jesus Christ
didn't have any iniquity. The Lord Jesus Christ
never sinned. The Bible says He
who knew no sin became
sin for us. So there was a moment
in time when He took our
sins upon Him. But I believe
this is also in relation to the author,
the human author, David, who's
also someone that was encompassed with many enemies,
who's also someone that had
many iniquities.
And look what the Bible says his
attitude is about this
when he talks about his iniquities have taken hold upon me
so that I am not able to look up.
They are more than the hairs of mine head.
Therefore my heart faileth me.
You know, if you were to ask David,
how many sins do you have, he would have
said, I have more sins than the number
of hairs on my head.
Now, for people that are bald, that's easy.
But, I think that
David had a full hair of head,
or a full head of hair, sorry. And so
according to the Bible, you
know, no one's perfect. There's not
a just man upon the earth that doeth good and sinneth not.
I mean, the Bible says that there's none that doeth
good, no, not one. The Bible says for all
sin it comes short of the glory of God.
You know, if we were honest with ourselves, we sin regularly.
And to me, this is
just the same idea as raw meat.
That raw meat is just
deteriorating quickly.
Raw meat is constantly
wasting away. And the thing that's going to
keep that on the shelf life, the thing
that's going to keep that preserved is salt.
And so in the same with us, we're
constantly sinning and we constantly have
iniquity and we constantly have problems as well.
And the one thing that's going to preserve
us longer and longer
is that salt. Inevitably, we
will die. Inevitably, we will
experience physical death. And because
of our sin nature, we have to die.
But we can prolong
that. We can last longer.
And the longer we're going to last
is directly related to
how much salt we're putting in our lives.
If you are a Christian and you're not putting
much salt in your lives, there's a
high likelihood you're going to go home soon.
There's a higher likelihood
that you're going to rot quicker and that you're
going to be deteriorated to a point
we have no real use anymore,
no real value. And so we
need to constantly put salt on ourselves
to preserve ourselves.
And I like that this
attitude from the author,
you can kind of see the tenderness
of his heart. So point one
that I brought up was the preservation
that we get from salt. But point
two is the tenderizing
that we get from God's Word.
And we notice when you read the Bible over and over,
you're going to recognize the fact that you're
sinful. You're going to recognize
that you're not perfect. You know, the people that talk
about how perfect and how godly they are
often are the people who don't
read the Scripture.
Because the Bible made it abundantly clear that the king
was supposed to read the Bible every day
of his life so that his heart would not
be lifted up above his brethren.
Why? The Bible humbles you.
The Word of God in the Scripture helps you
recognize the fact that you're not
as great as you think that you are.
In fact, many godly men when confronted
with the Lord Jesus Christ, when confronted
with visions, their initial reaction
was, Lord, depart from me for I'm a
sinful man.
I mean, or they acted as if
they were not worthy to be used.
Moses felt unworthy to be used
by God. We have men like
Isaiah feeling unworthy to be
used by God. We have men like Jeremiah
worrying about being too young
to be serving the Lord.
We have men like Timothy
who Paul has to remind,
let no man despise thy youth.
And you know, there's nothing wrong with
young people serving God.
There's nothing wrong with young people
getting into the ministry and doing
great exploits for the Lord at a
young age.
But you know, we have to recognize and realize
we're all sinful. We all have problems.
We all have issues. And we need that
Bible to constantly
tenderize our heart
and soften us up and make
us sensitive to
the Lord's will. Make us sensitive
to cleaning up our
lives. Sensitive to
serving the Lord and recognizing we need Him.
You know, when people stop
going to church,
typically their heart starts to harden.
When they stop reading the
Bible, their heart starts to harden.
When they stop going soul winning, their
heart starts to harden and they become
more prideful. They're not
sensitive to the Lord. They're not
recognizing how sinful they are.
The more sinful we recognize that
we are, oftentimes it'll help us
to recognize our need
for church. Our need for the Bible.
Our need for the Lord.
And we can consistently
see that people that had a tender heart
were the ones that even got saved.
I mean, who was getting saved? The publicans
and the harlots. It was easier for them
to recognize how sinful they were
and their need of a Savior. And when we
go out and preach the Gospel, who are the people most
likely to get saved? The people that
are more humble. The people that
have less money. The people
that recognize that they're a sinner.
In fact, you can meet people in America
that say, I don't sin.
Do y'all have that here?
Okay. You're like,
what? You don't sin?
What are you talking about? Now, how easy is it to get
that person saved? It's a lot more
difficult to get that kind of a person saved
than the person that's easily like, oh yeah,
we're all sinners, of course.
In fact, I often ask this question
when I go soul winning.
Right off the bat, I say, we're all sinners,
right? I just show them Romans 3.23.
And I just say, you know, what an example
of that would be lying. And if I told
you I've never lied before, would you believe me?
And it's just
funny to watch different people's reactions.
Most of the time, people are like, no.
Of course not, right?
But then some people are like, well, if that's what you say, then sure.
And I'm just thinking like, what?
This is a prideful person that thinks
that someone wouldn't be a liar, right?
And it just kind of shows you
this kind of person doesn't have the right heart
towards the things of God.
We need to have a sensitive heart
towards the Word of God.
Then we go to Luke, chapter number 8. The Bible brings
this up about the importance
of having a soft and a
tender heart because
the Bible uses, again, other earthly
examples of
these truths.
The Bible in Luke, chapter number 8,
describes our hearts
as being dirt,
as being soil.
And I believe that the parable of the
sower illustrates
for us the different reactions
you have when people are approached with the gospel.
And you have it
very clearly laid out here
where essentially seeds being
sown everywhere and
Jesus Christ kind of gives this parable explaining
all these different choral things. But when you get
to the interpretation, he's really clear what this means.
Look what it says in verse 11.
Now the parable is this, the seed is the Word of God.
So the seed being sown in this parable
is the Bible or the gospel.
And it says, those by the wayside
are they that hear, then cometh the devil, and
taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they
should believe and be saved. So those who are
unsaved, they
never believed in Jesus Christ.
And I believe that this could generally represent
everyone because everyone that
doesn't get saved, I believe
has heard at least some Bible at some point
in their life, and the devil would love to take
that away from them and cause them
not to hear it and not to get
saved. Look at verse 13. They
on the rock are they which
when they hear receive the word with joy and these have no
root, which for a while believe and in time
of temptation fall away.
So then you have another group that actually
does get saved, but notice
because of the fact that they are on a
rock, which is something very hard,
they can't really root
themselves, they don't get enough
nutrients and
supply of water to
actually produce any kind of fruit, so they dry
up, they wither away, they
don't really produce much. Verse 14, and that which
fell among thorns are they which when they have
heard go forth and are choked
with cares and riches and
pleasures of this life and bring no fruit to
perfection. So another group gets saved
and they potentially
have the soil capable
of producing fruit, but the problem
is that they have something else in that soil.
And the Bible describes
it as thorns, and that these
thorns are
essentially the cares of this life,
the deceitfulness of riches, the deceitfulness
of sin and other parables,
and just the pleasures even
of this life. Pleasure is not even necessarily
wrong, but it's just a distraction.
The devil would love for you to be distracted
with just pleasure so that
you don't do anything for him.
And ultimately what happens is again
your heart is not tender enough to
produce that fruit. Look at the next group
it says in verse 15, but that
on the good ground are they
which in an honest and good heart
having heard the word, keep it
and bring forth fruit with
patience. So the Bible makes it abundantly
clear that the people who have the good
soil are the people who have the good heart.
And the good heart
are the people that have taken the gospel,
they've taken the word of God, and
they're not going to allow the world
to choke out
that particular fruit that's being
grown
are actually going to just
purge themselves from all these
thorns, purge themselves from these things,
and they're going to simply produce a lot of great
fruit. And one of the ways
to keep that soil
tender, to keep that soil
in a good position is
that salt. Whenever you're putting
thorns in, you're going to destroy the ground.
When you're putting salt in, it's
actually going to cause for you to be able
to bear that fruit. And we need to constantly
tenderize our heart and keep them sensitive
to the things of God so that we'll get people
saved. The people who have the most tender
heart are people that go out
soul winning.
The person that loves
Jesus is the person that's a soul winner.
The person that's following
Jesus is a soul winner.
People that are not going out and preaching
the gospel are not following
Jesus. They don't love Jesus.
They don't have a good heart. And you
know what? They're not tender because they don't have
any salt in their lives.
The more you read your Bible, the more you're going to
recognize the need to go out and preach the gospel
to every creature.
Don't tell me that you're constantly reading
the need to go out and preach the gospel
over and over and then you do nothing.
In fact, I went to a church, it was a
Baptist church, and they had stopped
soul winning, and I was
asking the pastor about it, and I said,
you know, I go out soul winning on Saturdays.
Can we start a time or do something?
And he said, well,
you know, I don't want to just start a time
and people come and then we kind of quit.
And he's like, you know, every
once in a while, I'm just sitting
in my office and I start
reading the Bible and then I
just feel this need to go out and preach the gospel.
You know
why? Because that salt will tenderize
your heart and you'll be reminded
of what you need to do and
how you're supposed to go out there and preach the gospel
to every creature, and it must be
that these churches that aren't soul winning
anymore, it must be that the individuals
that stopped soul winning, they must
have stopped reading the Bible. They must
have stopped seasoning themselves with salt.
They must have stopped going to a church
with a leather lung preacher getting
up and emphasizing soul winning.
You know, if there's a church in this world
that needs to be on fire for soul winning,
it's very Baptist church because
soul winning can't be much easier than here.
I mean, you have
millions and millions and millions of people
lined up, ready to hear the gospel.
We need to be sensitive
here at Verity Baptist Church to go out
there and preach the gospel. And you know
what, Jesus Christ needs you to preach the gospel.
Not just the pastor,
not just the evangelist, not just
some of the men. No, he needs every man,
woman, boy, child, and
girl to learn how to preach the gospel
that they would open their mouths boldly
to make known the mystery of the gospel. And you
know what, we need to tenderize ourselves
with the soul of God's word
so that our hearts care more
about people going to heaven than pleasure.
I am from the
country of pleasure. I am from the
land of pleasure where everyone
that's Christian seems to be just
choked with the cares of this world
and the deceitfulness of riches and
pleasures. And you know what,
it would be sad to see an area like this go down
that road. And you know what, you don't
have to have money
to have a love of money.
In fact, many poor people
have a love of money
in their mind and their heart.
That they care more about making money
than serving God.
You know, people here work really hard.
I ran, I took a grab
taxi today or yesterday
and I asked the man, I said, how much do you
work? And he said he works
12 hours a day, six days
a week. That's 72 hours
in a week. You know, in America
almost no one works that.
And especially even if they did clock
in that long, they're not working that hard.
They're not working that many hours.
They're fooling around messing on their,
taking bathroom breaks and doing whatever.
You know, it's a joke.
You know, that guy's working so
hard to get ahead and
to provide for his family. You know what, there's nothing wrong working
hard. There's nothing wrong with providing for your family.
In fact, the Bible commands us to do so.
But you know what, if your goal
is to get rich, you have the wrong heart.
If
your goal is to have more pleasure, then you have the wrong
heart. We need to constantly be seasoning
ourselves with salt so that we can go out
and preach the gospel. And if there's anybody
whose example you could follow,
let it be your pastor.
Because let me tell you something, living
here and moving here and doing this
work is not
that second group that's
caring about the pleasures of
this world, okay?
That is someone that has dedicated
his life to getting people saved,
who has dedicated his family
to be an example of
soul winning. And you know what, you need to follow
your pastor's example. You need to
look at what he's sacrificed and
what he's given up. Coming here is a sacrifice
for Americans. I'll just be honest with you, okay?
Because we've been grown up
with a silver spoon in our mouth, and
you know what, we've had so much luxury
and wealth and just
abundance, and yet
you know what, there are men that are
still willing to make a huge
sacrifice and dedicate
their ministry and dedicate
their life to preaching the gospel.
That's what it's about, folks.
When the Bible talks about people losing their life
for the gospel's sake,
look no further than Pastor Matthew Stuckey.
Look no further than Vangelis Duncan
or Bannock. Look at men that are willing,
and you know what, there are many men that love
Jesus, that love the Bible,
but they are not willing to make that decision.
They are not willing to make that kind of a sacrifice.
That is a special kind of
love. That is a special kind of appreciation.
These men have obviously
salted their hearts
with the Bible and with the
Word of God, and we need to look to
these men and encourage these men and
follow these men and be like them
as well and say if they're going to sacrifice,
I want to sacrifice too.
I want to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I'm going to care about souls. You know,
if these men are going to sacrifice this much to
come here and have a soul-winning time,
you know what, you go to that soul-winning time.
You show up, and you support
them. You be reliable.
I mean, they're making a big sacrifice.
And look, I know a bunch of you are making big sacrifices
to even be here. I'm sure people
have traveled an hour, two hours,
even sometimes to come to church
through traffic. It probably
costs a lot of your income, a lot of your money
to take away from work
and to come to church. But you know what,
you have a great pastor that's made a lot of sacrifice.
You can follow his example.
And we need to follow his
example.
Go if you would to 2 Kings,
chapter number 2. Go to 2 Kings,
chapter number 2.
We need to season ourselves with salt.
We will
recognize and pay attention
to how the Bible brings up
this particular topic.
You know, we're not just preserving
ourselves to be able to watch
TV for the rest of our lives.
I'm not cleaning up my lives
and following the commandments just so I can have as much
fun as I can possibly have.
The reason why I'm supposed to be preserved is so I can preach
the gospel more.
So I can preach the gospel for the rest of my life.
Not just so I can end up
enjoying all the luxuries and the cares
of this life, but rather so that I can do something
for God. That's the whole point
of me being preserved.
Just like I'm not going to put salt on meat to preserve it
and then just throw it in the trash.
No, I'm putting salt on it to preserve it to put it on the grill.
Put it on the barbecue
to smoke it and then
to eat it, okay?
To consume it and to enjoy it.
And that's the whole point. Look at 2 Kings
2, look at verse 19, the Bible says this.
And the men
of the city said unto Elisha, behold I pray thee
the situation of this city
is pleasant as my Lord seeth, but
the water is not.
And the ground barren.
And he said, bring me a new cruise and put salt there in.
And they brought it to him.
And when he went forth
unto the spring of the waters and
cast the salt in there,
and said, thus say the Lord, I have healed
these waters, there shall not
be from thence any
more death or barren land.
So we have a carnal example of
the water's bad,
the land's good, the water's bad,
and Elisha performs
this miracle where they pour
salt in the water.
It fixes the water and then it causes
it to where they can produce fruit again.
And it says there's no longer going to be any
more barrenness in it.
And you know what, I believe what it's
picturing, if we go back to our example
of Luke chapter 8, that
our hearts are like that soil
and when you put the salt in it,
it'll fix it to where it won't be barren anymore.
The Bible will fix you.
Jesus Christ said, if you follow me,
you're going to become fishers of men.
He promised that. He gave that
as a command to
his disciples as a reward
to following him. Hey, when you're
reading the Bible and you're going to the right kind of
church, you know what, you will become
a fisher of men and you
won't be barren anymore.
So the reason why people are barren,
they're not putting the salt into
the water, they're not putting the
miracle that we have here of the Scripture
and you know what, the Bible will fix things.
The Bible has power.
I want you to go to
Luke
chapter 14. Go to Luke chapter number 14.
And you know, because of sin,
this world
is very unfruitful.
The Bible tells us
and because iniquity
shall abound, the
love of many shall wax cold.
And
you know,
it's hard to know exactly what
the world's always been like through every
generation and every decade,
but it just seems
like in the last few decades
that our world as a whole
has become more sinful.
And you know, that's just my personal
opinion. If you have a different one, you can tell
me later, but I kind of
see it not just in America,
but really in the whole world that sin
kind of seems to be escalating and
increasing. And
the Bible is telling us that because
iniquity shall abound in the end times, towards
the end and the coming of Christ,
that many people are just not going to have any
love anymore. And you know what? Sin will
do that to you, where if you allow
sin to take over your life,
you'll stop loving people as
much and you'll have less of a desire
to go to church, less of a
desire to go soul winning, less
of a desire to see people saved.
And sin will harden
your heart. Salt will
tenderize your heart. And so
because we're always going to be sinful,
we need to constantly be applying
a lot of salt to keep it
tender because it's kind of like that
tide. Sometimes you can stand
out in the ocean a little bit
and you're not even moving, but somehow
it's like drawing you further out. Who's noticed
that before? Yeah, it's this weird phenomenon
where you kind of are drawn. That's kind
of how it is in our lives when we're not really
proactively serving God, reading
our Bible or going to church or doing
godly things. It's like the sin
is constantly drawing us further
away, hardening our hearts even
more and more, even if we don't really realize
it, it's like this
parable of a frog boiling
in a pot of hot water.
Who's heard of that expression? I don't know
if you all know this. The expression is basically
if you take a pot of hot water
and throw a frog in, he'll just jump out.
But if you put a frog in
a pot of cold water
and you slowly heat it,
the frog will stay in the whole time until he cooks
to death. And it's kind of the
way sin is that sometimes
we don't realize that the little sins
start to slowly add up
and take us to bigger and bigger and bigger sins
and bigger and bigger. And eventually we're
drawn to an area where we would have never gone
initially, and we're doing
things that we wouldn't normally do
because we've allowed ourselves
to slowly be cooked by sin,
to slowly be desensitized by sin.
And we need to keep our hearts
tender with the salt
of God's word.
So point one is that the salt is going to
preserve us. Point two, it's going to tenderize us.
And point three is that it's going to enhance
our flavor.
It's going to enhance
the flavor. Now of course
we want all three. We want the meat to have
been preserved and not rotten. We want the meat
to be tender when we bite into it, that it's
not tough. And we also want it to have a
good taste. We want that seasoning
to taste good. Because if it was really
tender, but has bad seasoning,
then it's not going to really be
worth it, right? And if it's
really well seasoned, but it's not very tender,
it's okay, but it's not as good.
You want all of it, right? We want to have
the entire effect. And we get
that through salt here.
And it really enhances the flavor.
Now, I want to go to Luke chapter 14.
I actually wanted to go to Matthew 5
first. So just keep your finger and go to Matthew.
Matthew
chapter number 5.
The Bible brings up salt a couple
times in some pretty familiar passages. I think
you probably recognize this. Matthew
chapter 5. Look what it says in verse 13.
Ye are the salt of the earth,
but if the salt of loss is
savor, wherewith shall it be
salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but
to be cast out and be trodden underfoot of men.
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is
set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men
light a candle and put it under a bushel,
but on a candlestick. And it giveth light unto
all that are in the house. Let your light so shine
before men, that they may see your good works and glorify
your Father, which is in heaven. Now according to the Bible,
we are salt.
Now that's kind of interesting,
because we've been talking about
how we need to have salt in us,
but then the Bible is also saying that we
are salt. And the reality is
that both are true. And it has
the exact same parallel,
that just like salt in us
preserves us, us being salt
in this world
preserves this world, and it
preserves our city, and it preserves
our country, and it preserves
our family, and it preserves
the things that are around us when we
ourselves are salt.
But the only way we're going to be salt
is if we've been seasoned with salt
and we actually have that unique
characteristic of what salt is.
When salt loses its savor,
it just seems like just
nothing. It has no real
flavor, it has no
benefit, no qualities about it
anymore. It's just grains, grains
of dust.
Empty grains of dust that have no meaning.
Whereas salt
actually has that essence
of it, it has that saltness
that gives its quality,
its benefit. And so the Bible
is saying that we need to have
that salty characteristic
so that we can benefit
this world. If you're a Christian and you're
not sharing your faith with anybody,
you're not benefiting this world.
If you're not living a godly life, you're not benefiting
this world. You're not to preserve
our city, to preserve Manila,
to preserve the Philippines, to
preserve Pampaga, to preserve
all these different areas. We
need people that are actually salt.
We need you and me to be
salty and preserve these particular
areas. And it really enhances the
flavor. Now look at chapter 14 of Luke.
Go back to where you put your finger.
Luke 14,
and look at verse 34.
Luke 14, look at verse 34.
The Bible says,
salt is good,
but if the salt had lost its savor,
wherewith shall it be seasoned?
It is neither fit for the land nor yet for the
dung hill, but men cast it out.
He that hath ears hear, let him hear.
Notice that when the salt loses its saltness,
loses its savor, it's worthless.
It just basically becomes
something on the ground used to
catch moisture
and prevent ice from forming on
the ground. But it's basically not
used as salt really anymore. It's a
completely different substance. And so
it's important that we
remain having our savor
and that we're constantly seasoned. Notice
it says, wherewith shall it be seasoned?
You know, the only thing that's going to make you godly
is the Bible.
The only thing that's going to make you right with God is the Bible.
You know, people aren't moral
without the Bible. Go find
me a religion of really moral people
that are not Christian.
Go find me the giant group of Catholics
that really are godly, doesn't exist.
Go find me the Muslims that are very
godly, doesn't exist.
Go find me the false religion out there
that is really worshiping God. How about the
Jews? The Jews are the most
ungodly people in the world because they
despise the Bible. They despise the
Scripture. And you know what? The
thing that makes you salty
is the Bible.
So if you don't have the Bible, you will not
be salty.
Watching YouTube videos
doesn't make you salty.
Going and learning some martial
art doesn't make you salty.
Going and educating yourself in the
college doesn't make you salty.
The one thing that makes you salty, the one thing
that gives you savor, is the Bible,
is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
That's what gives us the saltiness.
And that's what causes us to have actual
flavor. So what we
have to do is we have to elevate this book
and say, everything in this book
is going to give
me that saltiness. And we
can't reject any of it. But we
notice a lot of people are rejecting what this book
says. And you know what? They're rejecting
it all the parts that you can really
savor, that have a lot
of saltiness to them. It makes
me remember something. Go over to Luke
17. It makes me remember
something that Jesus told me to remember.
And Luke chapter
17, look at verse 31.
In that day
he which shall be upon the housetop and his
stuff in the house, let him not come down to take
it away. And he that is in the field, let
him likewise not return back.
Remember Lot's
wife. Hey, talk about
an example of salt that's good for
nothing. How about Lot's wife
who is, according to the Scripture,
turned back and literally
turned into a pillar of salt
that had no real
benefit. Go over to Genesis 19.
Go to Genesis chapter number 19. Let's
read that verse for a moment. Let's just
remind ourselves. Let's remember together.
And you know what? There's so many preachers
today. There's so many Christians today
that they've lost their savor.
They've lost their saltiness because they
won't preach the salty parts of
the Bible.
They won't remember Lot's wife.
They say, oh, Jesus never brought
up the L-G-B-T-Q-I-A-Z
H-I-V.
Well, you're wrong. Remember
Lot's wife?
Jesus literally brought it up.
I mean, why
would Jesus bring up that story
if it didn't really happen?
I mean, think about it. He's confirming
that the story about Lot's
wife really happened.
He's recognizing it
and saying, you know how I felt
about them? Well, remember
Lot's wife. And you say, well,
what happened in Genesis chapter number 19?
Well, of course, the Lord
sends two angels down there to
see if the cry is as great
as it really was.
Lot is pretty much the only
just guy in the town, as the text describes.
But look at verse 26.
It says this.
But his wife looked back
from behind him and she became a pillar of salt.
So they fled the town.
In fact, they didn't want to leave. The angels grabbed
Lot and his wife by the hand and their two daughters
marched out of the town
and the angels even told them specifically
don't look back.
Don't look at that. And they just
looked at it. She looked at it anyway. She turned back.
She couldn't help herself.
She looked back and she was turned into
a pillar of salt.
And, you know, I don't know what you
call these people here, but what I
call them is faggots, okay?
And the Bible makes it abundantly clear
that you're not supposed to be looking at faggots.
Because then you turn into salt
that's worthless.
You shouldn't be hanging out with these people.
God burned them with fire in the Old Testament.
And then later he gave a law
saying that all of them were supposed to be put
to death. They were supposed to be stoned with
stones. That it was a wicked
abomination. And you let people have forgotten
that. Churches don't preach
that anymore. And the question is
is this preacher worth his salt?
No! Because
he's not remembering Lot's work. You know, you
need a preacher. You need a pastor
that's going to get up and he's going to actually rip
on what the Bible rips on.
He's going to actually preach against the most wicked
people on this planet. And let me tell you who they are.
It's faggots. It's
sodomites. It's homosexuals. It's
men with men. The most disgusting
and grotesque abomination on the planet.
It's evil.
It's wicked. I don't even
want to look at it. And I'm sorry
you guys have to look at a lot of this filth.
Americans have to look at a lot of this filth these days.
But you know what we don't want to do
is we don't want to become a
Lot's wife where we're constantly
looking back and not focused
on the things of God. We want to be seasoning
ourselves with salt so that we don't turn
into worthless salt.
But so many people are just constantly
concerned with
pleasing this world. We have so many Christians
that won't preach these things. They're not
seasoned with salt. And they've allowed
homosexuals and fags
to take over virtually
every part of our society.
They've taken over the media
in this world. They've taken over
the governments in many of the world.
They've taken over Hollywood.
They've taken over the trafficking
of children.
And you know it's not just America. America's
over consuming it. But they're taking children
from all over the world and importing them.
And trapping them.
And guess what? They really are taking over.
How about the clothing?
I mean what is
Lot's wife really looking back at?
Was she looking back?
What about that snow bag?
Oh.
What about the Christian
Dior? Oh.
What about the dulce and babana?
Oh.
I mean what was she looking back at?
Oh by the way all those people are faggots.
Just to let you know.
Oh do you need some more? How about Armani?
Faggot.
Just basically pick a popular
fashion designer. It's a male
homosexual.
Why in the world are women
so concerned with
male homosexuals dressing them?
Why
is it that they want to look like
a male sodomite would have them
dress? And the clothing that they would
have them wear?
Christian Dior. Perry Ellis.
Dulce and Gabana. Michael
Coors. Chanel.
Armani. And you know what? It's no different
here. You go up and down the malls
and these places they have all these kind of stores.
They have all these kinds of goods.
Everybody's so concerned with them.
And what is the apparel that these
sodomites are trying to put everybody in?
They're trying to put women in the pants aren't they?
They're trying to get women to dress like
men and then they make the men
so effeminate and queer looking
that it's hard to even tell the difference between men
and women anymore.
It's embarrassing. It's a shame.
It's a mockery. You know what? The devil
would love for every man to look effeminate
and queer and
to not dress like a man, not
manly. You know what? The Bible tells us
that being effeminate is a sin.
And you know what? We need Christian
men that have some salt in them
and they're going to be physical men.
They're going to look like men. They're going to act like
men. They're going to sound like men. They're going to
dress like men. And they're not going to let
a bunch of male sodomites tell
them how to dress.
They're not going to tell a bunch of male sodomites how
to act and how to behave and how to
look. And let me tell you something. Women
don't even like it anyways. They like
a strong man. They like
a strong man physically, mentally
and spiritually. They want
the whole package. And you know what?
You young men that don't have a wife
yet, work on being a strong
man.
If you're married, become a strong man.
If you're a boy, become a strong man.
We need some strong
men in this world. And you
know what? I'll tell you something.
Even in America, we're suffering from this.
But the Philippines could use a lesson
as a whole and men becoming
stronger,
taking this more seriously, being
more masculine, being more manly.
The men in the Bible are manly.
The men in the Bible are
lifting off the stone
from the well.
The men in the Bible are wrestling
bears and lions and
tigers. I mean, oh my.
I mean, the men in the
Bible are
killing men. I mean, they're warriors.
They're using their
strength physically.
Let me tell you something. It changes
your life when you follow the
Scripture. You eat the strong meat of the Word.
You know there's so many false religions
that won't let men eat meat.
That's a demonic doctrine
causing them to be weak. Causing them
to be puny and to not have testosterone
and to not actually be able
to function at a high level. We
need men functioning at a high level.
We need to get preachers up there
preaching against faggots. And you know what?
I want my church to be so
manly that if a fag ever showed
up, it would stick out like a sore thumb
and not blend in.
But you know what? The sodomites want everybody
to dress weird so they can blend
in with society. We need
to make society and culture
so godly again that they can't
blend in. That it's so obvious
that their disgusting limp wrist
and pink pants and
whatever skirt they're wearing, that we
just throw them out of the church
and then they'll come protest mine.
The sodomites, they don't get
to come in. They're just always outside my
church protesting. And they're
so mad that they can't come in.
But you know what? Over my dead body.
Why? Because
our church is going to be seasoned with salt.
We're not going to be seasoned
with the cares and the deceitfulness of riches
and with the pleasures of this life.
And I don't care what the world says,
nuts to them. You know what? I'm going to remember
my mom's wife. I'm not looking back.
I'm not interested in what they can do.
You know, fags are confused
on anatomy.
Did you know what makes someone
a fag? They're confused on how anatomy
works. They're confused
on what makes a man a man, what makes a woman
a woman. They don't know how any of that works.
Why would I have them dress me?
They don't even know what's
going on in a male reproductive
body. They
like to play with dung.
I mean, why in the world would I have this
person dress me? Why would I have
this person tell me what to do,
rule my life? You know, we need God's
people to get back and preach the
Word of God. The Bible says in Proverbs 28,
They that forsake the law praise the
wicked. But such as
keep the law, contend with them.
You know, we need to do more
and 24.
And 2024, we
need to do more. We need to be seasoned
with more salt, and we need to have
more flavor, not less.
We need to be saltier
than ever before, not weaker
than ever before. And you know what? You need
to encourage your pastor. Pastor
Stuckey needs to be encouraged that when he
preaches a sermon that has a lot
of savor, when it has a lot of flavor,
when it has a lot of saltiness
in it, that you encourage him
and not think like, oh, that was a
little spicy.
Oh, that was a little too salty, Pastor
Stuckey.
You should say, hey, put more salt on it.
Not less.
You know what? That's not going to fix America.
That's not going to fix the Philippines. That's not going to fix
the world. It's by people preaching
soft. We need more salt.
The salt is what preserves.
The salt is what tenderizes.
And the salt is what gives us flavor. In fact,
that's what makes our preaching so great.
It's not that I'm
great. It's that the Bible
is great. It's that the seasoning
here is so great.
That's what makes the preaching good. You know, some
people say, New Ivy
preaching or Pastor Anderson's preaching or Pastor
Stuckey's preaching. It ruins other preaching.
Why? Because they don't
season their food.
Once you get used to good seasoning, you're like,
this is dry.
Where's the seasoning? This doesn't taste good
anymore. It's like, can't you
put some salt on it or something?
You know? And that's why good preaching
is so good is because it's seasoned
with salt.
You know, we need evangelists or bannock
to preach on this more, not less.
Don't be discouraged.
Don't allow the enemies and the foes
to cause you to quit.
You know, I didn't see a lot of protesters out here
this morning, okay?
But no matter what opposition you have,
just keep preaching the Bible.
Because, you know, we've had protesters for years.
I think if you count, like,
all the services I've ever preached, I've probably had more
service where I had protesters than I didn't.
But,
you know, I don't have any right now.
And if I went back home, I wouldn't have any right now.
They're gone. They're licking their wounds because they
lost, and we're winning.
And you know what? Christ always
causes us to triumph. We're always
victorious in Christ. And even if they were
still protesting, I'm still winning.
I'm on the winning side.
And you know what? I would rather
be with God's people in a prison
than to be with the world
and dress in dulce and gabbana.
Not gonna do it. Throw us in the fiery
furnace. You know, we need
to set the example. We need to
follow Christ. We need to be seasoned with salt.
And you need to get into church,
otherwise you're gonna be what the Bible says,
good for
nothing.
When you don't go to church,
you're gonna get hardened, and you're gonna get to a point
where you're just good
for nothing. If you stop reading your Bible,
you can get to a point where you're
good for nothing.
If you stop going soul winning,
you're good for nothing.
We need to keep
the basics and the fundamentals. Hey, we're
fundamentalists. It's not like
rocket science here. It's easy, it's
simple, it's basic. It's not hard to know
what to do. It's hard to consistently do it.
But we need to constantly
season ourselves with salt. You need to constantly
hearken to the voice of your pastor,
get into church,
make the sacrifices you need to.
Why? So that you can be used by the
master. So that very Baptist
church can continue the course
and the trajectory it's on. I mean, you guys
have six churches. Pretty
soon you might even catch up to Pastor Thompson.
Maybe.
I don't know.
You know, it's a tough race.
I mean, look at the bull.
You got six churches going.
You're starting churches where
white people are. You're colonizing white
people, okay, in Poland.
Right? I mean, you got to reach
the white man. Alright? The white man
isn't saved anymore. You know, I always make this joke.
It's like atheism is like the white man
religion. You know? And it's
sad. But you know what? There's no reason
why little can't
do much.
Little is much when God is in it.
This is a humble people. Y'all certainly
aren't the richest church in the world.
But you know what? You can be rich in faith.
You can be rich in preaching the gospel.
And you know what? God can reward you
greatly. The woman that's considered
going to have some of the greatest rewards in heaven,
she gave the least amount of money
anybody's ever given. Did you ever think about that?
Don't think that you have to be
in America or in
some awesome
other country to do something great
for God. You have an amazing
opportunity right here, right now to do
something incredible for the Lord Jesus
Christ. And to be greatly
rewarded of Him. Don't let
the lies and deceptions of
this world, the pleasures of this
life choke the word.
Make sure you're constantly seasoning yourself
and you're reading your Bible, you're
going to church, you're getting into church
and we need
some more people to lose
their life for the gospel's
sake. Just like Pastor
Stuckey, just like Evangelist or Bannock,
these men are willing to lose their life for
the gospel's sake. We need more men
like that. We need more people here
that would be willing to make giant sacrifices.
And, you know,
the Bible doesn't say when you lose your life
it's over. It says you'll find
it.
When I talk with Pastor Stuckey, he's a happy
man. When I talk with
Evangelist or Bannock, they're happy men. It's not like
their sacrifice is God is not going to
take care of them. He isn't going to reward them.
You know, they're walking by faith, not
by sight. Because nobody
by sight would trade America
for this place.
I'm sorry, okay.
Just like many of you
may not even trade for America because
you know, it's got its problems too, okay.
But at the end of the day, you know,
men that are making these
giant sacrifices should be
worthy of praise and
you know, I hope that you guys don't get comfortable
with your pastor. Because
you know, the Bible says a man is not without honor
saving his own country and his own land.
And I'm sure you've probably given him a lot of
honor to this point. But I hope you
continue doing so because
he really deserves it and he really needs
your support. And it's probably
really hard on him to be in a distant land
and to not have as many friends.
And you know, I'm really encouraged
by men like Pastor Stuckey
to make sacrifices myself.
I like to look at his example
and what he's doing to motivate
myself to be more spiritual
and to love God and to say, you know what,
this is a man that's seasoning himself with a lot
of salt. We need to seize ourselves
with a lot of salt too.
Let's close in prayer.
Thank you Heavenly Father so much for this great church
here and this wonderful group of people.
I pray that you would just help us
to recognize the need to salt
ourselves with the scripture.
I thank you that you give us the opportunity
to read the Bible and to salt ourselves.
Thank you so much for giving
us an opportunity to also preserve our towns
and our cities and our lands
if we will be that
salt and light. I pray that you would
be bold in us, that you would encourage us
to preach the gospel more in 24.
That we would take bold
stands on the things that the Bible says
and that we wouldn't be ashamed of Christ and His words.
And I pray that you would
really work on people's
hearts today, that you would help
tenderize them and make them
soft so that they would be
willing to make spiritual decisions.
I pray that men and women in this room
would decide to give their lives to Christ,
that they would serve Him with their lives.
We thank you for the free gift, but I pray
that people go beyond the free gift of salvation
and they would just offer
themselves as a living sacrifice
the need for the Master's use.
And I pray that you could use this church greatly
to win thousands, yea millions
and start all kinds of churches all over this world.
And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.