All right, well, we're in Exodus chapter number 23, and I spent two different services on
Exodus 22.
I'm going to do the same with Exodus 23, just a lot of good stuff in here.
And I think that carefully going through the word of God is a good thing.
And obviously, we're still here with Moses on Mount Sinai.
This is multiple chapters.
The children of Israel are still in camp below, and Moses has gone up into the thick darkness
because remember, the people didn't want to hear God's voice anymore.
They said, you talk to us for him.
That's what the people asked for.
And so Moses goes to the thick darkness to receive God's statutes, his laws, and judgments
for breaking these laws or not keeping these commandments.
Let's look at verse number one, where the Bible says,
And you're like, well, it seems like God is repeating himself a lot, but really what he's
doing is he's elaborating on commandments that he's already set forth with the Ten Commandments.
So there's obviously commandment number nine, I believe it is, that says thou shalt not
bear false witness.
And this goes along in the same, you know, this is just an elaboration.
And again, it's not going to always give us every single instance of how you would break
this commandment, but it is kind of helping us get the sense of what it's talking about.
And to raise a false report is something that goes along with bearing false witness because
you're lying about something that didn't, you're saying something happened, you're reporting
something happened that didn't happen.
And this happens a lot in our day and age, and it's a wicked sin.
It is really a wicked sin, especially because, you know, God said if someone comes forth
as a false witness or they try to take somebody to the judges for something that maybe they
would even be put to death for, whatever it is that you were trying to accomplish by bringing
them before the judges, if they find that you're a liar or they find your story to not
be true, then whatever you wanted to happen to them is going to happen to you.
And I think that people would stop doing this kind of stuff if there was some real strict
punishments when people do this kind of stuff.
Because people can report false reports all the time, and I've had false reports filed
against me.
I'm sure everybody else in here has probably had something like that in their life where
someone's just lying about them.
And what happens to them?
Nothing.
Absolutely zero.
What should happen to them is that whatever they wanted to accomplish should be done to
them.
And it would stop that garbage real fast.
You can just malign people and say whatever you want about people, and then you have to
prove that it wasn't true.
They don't have to prove it was true.
They can just say something, and then that's it.
And then you're guilty according to the law of public opinion a lot of times.
And with the age of social media, those things can really take fire.
And it's like people will say things about people in our church or our church members
or me or whatever, and they can just say that without any ramifications if it's not true.
It's really wicked.
And God's going to punish them, which is even worse.
But they should have some accountability for doing things like that.
But anyway, so you've probably heard the term, when it says, thou should not bear false
witness, you've probably heard the term the bearer of bad news.
So basically when someone's bearing something, usually it's kind of indicated by like you're
carrying something, you're bearing weight, a load of some sort.
But when you're bearing it, you're carrying that lie to somebody else.
And in this case, a false report, very specifically a false report, you're bearing false witness
with that false report.
And plotting with the wicked to testify as an unrighteous witness, you know, I mean,
if you're saved, why would you ever, first of all, side with the wicked and testify against
someone as an unrighteous witness?
I mean, you saw this happen when Jesus was arrested.
They tried to bring all these false witnesses in against him, and none of them could keep
their story straight.
None of them held true.
And they finally just had to ask him, are you the son of God?
Then when he said yes, then they said we have no further need of witnesses.
But that was like a kangaroo court.
But that happens today too, unfortunately.
I mean, you know, I'm not exactly a Donald Trump fan, but you can see what's happening
with all that, right?
I mean, they just don't want him to run against him because he's so popular.
They have to try to, you know, we've kind of gone full banana republic in this country,
where you're just putting charges against somebody.
And New York is actually trying to take away all of his buildings, all of his businesses,
based upon devaluing his stuff, his businesses, and things like that.
And it's just like, but he paid the loan back.
So it's like, what's the crime here?
Even if he did devalue it, he lives in a place, his home in Mar-a-Lago, they said, yeah,
you said it's worth more than $25 million or whatever.
I mean, if you've ever seen the property, it's pretty nice, and places that are next
to him sell for the same price.
So I don't know, it's just, this is the kind of stuff that people do.
I remember not too long ago, also concerning Donald Trump, where one of his aides that
worked for him said that he, on the way to the January 6th, where he was going to make
that speech, that he tried to reach up and grab the steering wheel to change the direction
of the driver.
But she was found to be a false witness because there's like that, he's in a limo.
You can't just reach forth from the back seat and grab the steering wheel in a limo if anybody's
ever ridden in one of those.
It's just an example.
I'm not trying to go all Trumpster here.
I'm just saying that he's being railroaded through a kangaroo court system right now.
I mean, the judge that's in charge of the case is smiling like this weird, creepy smile.
He obviously looks like some kind of far-left bozo.
And when we can't even trust the judges to make a right decision, having false accusations
is just so bad.
And our system is definitely corrupt.
It's not supposed to be like this, but this is what we see happening in our world.
And so do you think that they're not going to do that to Christians?
Of course they're going to do that to Christians.
So it is a really wicked sin.
And again, there's different degrees of lying.
Obviously all lying is sin.
That's just what it is.
Even the white lie, so to speak, where someone asks you, hey, do I look fat in this dress?
I mean, it's still sin.
Don't ask stupid questions.
You won't get the answer that you don't want.
Does this dress make you look fat?
Don't put somebody in that position.
If you know you look fat, then don't ask that question.
But there are degrees of lying.
And sometimes we lie because we're uncomfortable.
Someone puts you in a position where you feel uncomfortable and you feel like you have
to lie.
And we shouldn't have to feel that way.
So people shouldn't push you to that point, but you also shouldn't lie.
But if you tell the truth sometimes, people get really angry.
They don't really want the truth.
They're not really asking you for the truth.
They're asking you to basically lie and make them feel good about themselves.
And so false accusations, what kind of false accusations do we see a lot today?
Well, false accusations against spouses in custody cases, I mean, that's just common.
Both lawyers are going to try to make their side look really great.
In reality, what ends up happening is the woman gets the kids, and you get to see them
every other week, if you're lucky.
But these things are designed to make money.
Lawyers aren't lawyers because they don't make money.
They're lawyers because they make a lot of money.
And they do it a lot by lying and taking false reports and putting people up on the stand
to give false reports.
What other kinds of things do you have?
Well, you have rape cases that are not true.
A woman can just accuse a man of raping them, and then they can convict you based upon the
word of one person.
And me and my wife had a really big discussion about this not too long ago because Mike Tyson,
who obviously is not the greatest guy in the world, I'm not saying he is, but he had this
beauty pageant lady visit him at 1.30 in the morning, and then goes up to his room, shows
up in lingerie, and then the next day accuses him of raping her.
She accused him of raping her.
But she also had some other guy that she had dated that had said the same thing to her
because her dad was a preacher, and she didn't want to look like a whore.
But if you go meet some professional boxer in the middle of the night, I'm not saying
that he didn't for sure.
I don't know 100% for sure.
But here's the tragedy of it, is that there's no evidence.
If you don't have evidence, then two witnesses or three witnesses, then that shouldn't be
able to be allowed to happen.
But it does all the time.
And just the accusation alone can be damaging to someone for their whole lifetime or just
damage them in the meantime.
So when you're just throwing out false accusations, it's super wicked.
Men cannot defend themselves against that because people are always going to have something
in the back of their mind going, well, did he really do that?
Is that really true?
And so that is not something that you just flippantly do because you want to get your
way or something like that.
So false witnesses also will say that they saw a crime that they really didn't see.
Being a false witness and raising a false report is such a damaging thing that the Bible,
he puts it in the Ten Commandments.
It's not just like it's just a, oh, it's not really that big of one of the Ten Commandments.
No, it's a big one.
It's super wicked.
So also there could be bearing false witness or raising a false report by omission.
Just recently there was a woman and her and her boyfriend were like these political Antifa
extreme hate the police activists.
And I don't remember their names, but they've been in the news a little bit lately.
And there's a video where a guy who's black stabs her boyfriend to death in front of her.
I don't expect her to help him.
What's she going to do if she's unarmed?
But she literally apologized to him before the stabbing, before everything was all said
and done and refused to give a witness to what he looked like because she was afraid
that he was going to be treated differently because he was black or something.
It's like he stabbed your boyfriend to death and you're not going to give witness for that?
That's like a false report by omission, isn't it?
Because don't you think that if you witness a crime or somebody's murdered in front of
you and it's your boyfriend that you might want to give some of the information so he
doesn't do that to somebody else?
But this guy, I mean, sounds like he was pretty far extreme on the whole not wanting to have
police at all.
And that mentality has led to where police don't even want to solve cases anymore.
They don't want to be involved in cases that they just would rather, if it's homeless things,
they just want to walk away from it.
And that's why our streets are the way they are.
Brother Sean Harrington was showing me some pictures earlier of someone that did Norman
Rockwell.
Who knows who Norman Rockwell was?
He was like a painter and it was saying, there was Norman Rockwell style family pictures
and then it had Portland backgrounds and current liberal things and ideas.
And one of them that he showed me was this nice 50s style looking family all sitting
down and eating bugs like I was talking about.
But just showing backgrounds of them driving through a town that just has trash all over
the sidewalks and stuff like that, it's just weird how far things have gone because police
aren't allowed to do their job and now they just won't do anything.
So if someone steals your car, they're not even allowed to...
I signed a petition where they said, let's give the police the ability to chase people
that commit crimes and drive off.
They can't pull people over that commit a crime because they don't want them to hurt
somebody or they just, for whatever reason, they can't do it.
So they're trying to overturn that now and I signed it in a heartbeat.
I want the cops to do their job.
I don't want them to go too far like they do a lot, but obviously if you're shooting
people in the back that are unarmed, you should go to jail for that.
But should we punish all of society that way because some cops are just in it to kill people
or just stupid?
I mean, there was a lady that shot a guy and she thought she tased him.
Just a good reason not to have women in law enforcement, but I mean, she was like, oh,
I shot him.
I thought I tased him.
She just killed some guy in a car.
This one guy got the best of some cops that were all beating on him in a Wendy's parking
lot when I was in Atlanta.
And when he ran away, he got their taser and ran away and the police just open fired and
shot him in the back and killed him.
It's like, I mean, was that really necessary?
And then after the Floyd riots, it's like, you're really stupid if you think that you're
just going to get away with shooting people.
You just shouldn't shoot people in the back anyway, especially if it wasn't some kind
of felony crime where he's wanted for murder or something.
But this is just how bad it's gotten.
And even the wokeness has gone so far over the top that a person that witnesses her own
boyfriend being killed refuses to say, oh, it was a black guy and here's what he looked
like.
That is just wild.
It's weird.
It's disgusting to watch.
They don't show the whole stabbing.
They kind of just skip ahead on the video that I watch.
But he's brutally stabbing this guy and kills him.
And she's apologizing because he's black or something.
That's how weird people are today.
In some neighborhoods, people refuse to give details about being witnesses to a crime because
it's snitching or ratting somebody out.
So you have neighborhoods that just have this mentality, don't turn people in, don't talk
to the police.
Places like Baltimore, South Boston, South Chicago, and just anywhere where there's just
like a really bad crime rate, in some places they'll just kill you if they know that you're
talking to the police.
So I guess that's why people are afraid to come forth.
But our country shouldn't be like that.
We shouldn't have anywhere in this country where you're afraid to tell the truth and
do the opposite of raising a false report.
Because if you're omitting things that you know about it, then you're helping some criminal
get off scot-free.
Look at verse 2.
It says,
Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil, neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline
after many to rest judgment.
So we're not to follow a multitude to do evil.
What is that?
What is evil?
It's not just doing, you know, like, evil is used in different ways.
But evil is mainly, when it's used in the Bible, it's talking about harm, doing harm.
And whether that's violence or destruction of people's property, it's not something.
God said this way back, 3,500 years ago, not to do this.
But what do we see in our streets?
What have we seen across the river multiple times?
People rioting and following multitudes to do evil.
To break other people's stuff.
To break out of their business's windows.
To assault people that aren't on the same political realm that they're in.
And we see a bias happening where people that are more right-leaning, those people get the
book thrown at them for doing anything.
Where on the left, you can stab a conservative black guy.
As long as he's conservative, it's okay to stab a black guy.
And then they get probation.
Meanwhile, people that didn't even set foot in the Capitol building on January 6th are
doing 20 years in prison.
How is that right?
How is that fair?
Well, and more specific to this particular verse, we're not supposed to be involved in
this type of stuff.
And that's why I think it's wrong for Christians to do it too.
And you're like, well, what do you mean?
We're not out there doing this or that.
But what do the Proud Boys do?
I'm not saying that they should get punished worse than the other people just because they
won the fight.
But what are they doing?
How is that helping Christians move forward?
If you're there just to fight with the lefties, then you're going in there.
You want to fight.
And our battle is not a physical battle.
It's a spiritual battle.
So we don't want to go in and just, we're going to counter-protest and we're going to
beat you up.
Well, we're not supposed to follow a multitude to do evil.
That's not what we do.
That's not what Christ has called us to do.
Show me the verse where Jesus said, hey, let's go protest this abortion clinic.
Show me the verse where Jesus said, hey, let's go protest the Sadducees today and see if
we can get in a fistfight with them.
He just doesn't care about that stuff.
God doesn't care about that stuff.
He wants us to move forward with His mission and quit just getting distracted on all this
side stuff.
You're like, well, you're bringing up side stuff, Pastor Thompson, but I'm saying it
so that you'll stay out of it.
Yeah, look at it, whatever.
If you want to learn about what's going on, that's great.
But you don't follow a multitude to do evil.
And we should just stay far away from all that kind of junk.
And we're not supposed to speak in a cause to decline after many to rest judgment.
So what does that mean?
To twist what the right judgment is.
Because when you talk about resting the Scriptures to their own destruction, in the New Testament,
this is the same word where you're just twisting something.
You're trying to make it, you're trying to decline true judgment to happen to somebody.
So we should stay far away from all those things and not be partaking in anything like
that.
Look at Romans chapter 13 verse 12.
Now I believe that what this verse in Exodus chapter 23 verse 2 is talking about is anything
that has to do with rioting or just following the crowd.
It's like peer pressure kind of.
And a lot of teenagers kind of get caught in this particular area.
And sometimes people are protesting and they don't even know why they're protesting.
They're just, I'm just going to follow the crowd.
When I was in high school, all of our communist teachers that we had, which I didn't know
anything about that at that time, and they're like involving us in politics.
And we all, excuses from class to make posters saying no war, no blood for oil and all this
other stuff.
It was the first George Bush.
And he went into Iraq the first time and the teachers had us protesting and we didn't even
know why we were protesting.
We didn't know what was really going on.
They're just like, okay, we can cut class to do this, cool.
I remember I have a picture of me out in front of the school with everybody.
I didn't make a sign.
I didn't care.
I just was like, I'm skipping school.
That's what I'm doing.
I'm here for the picture and I'm going to take off and go someplace else.
But I didn't really care because I didn't know all the details about it.
And I'll tell you what, probably 95% of the kids that were in those pictures and doing
those protests that the Oregonians showed up to take pictures of.
But this kind of stuff is happening all the time.
And that was in Southeast Portland many, many years ago.
And now it's probably way worse.
If I walked into a public school right now, I'd probably just start freaking out.
I mean, it's probably so bad there.
I mean, it was bad when I was a kid, but it's way worse now.
The fags were in the closet back then.
I mean, there was fag teachers, but they weren't allowed to talk about stuff.
Everybody kind of thought, well, why is the volleyball coach with the, you know, with
this, they all have short hair.
We kind of knew what was going on, but like they weren't allowed to just talk about it
openly.
But now they can.
And now they're making us, you know, making kids sit through all these things and they're
dressing weird.
One of the Norman Rockwell pictures that I was showing was this really heavy lady in
like a scoot, one of those scooters, you know, that you drive around in the stores in.
And like with red hair, you know, like the Kool-Aid hair and, you know, preaching sodomy
to the kids.
That's what's happening, folks.
And even if they're told not to do it, they still do it anyway.
Because what's anybody going to do about it?
You're a bigot if you don't do something about it.
So if you do something about it, you're a bigot.
But anyway, so let's look at Romans 13, 12, it says, the night is far spent, the day is
at hand.
Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light.
Let us walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering
and wantonness, not in strife and envy.
So you know, and this is obviously speaking of how a Christian should behave, we need
to cast off the works of darkness, not join them.
We need to stay away from the riots, not partake in them, or even just go to watch.
I mean, I feel like if you're just going to, it's like going to a pride parade.
Why would you go to a pride parade to just watch?
It's just bizarre.
That's why we don't have protests at pride parades where we're going in and trying to
preach everybody the gospel.
You know, 99% of the people that are there are probably reprobates and they're going
to get militant and they're going to start causing violence toward you.
So why would we feed our pearls to swine and cast that which is holy unto the dogs?
Let's not do that, let's stay away from it.
Isn't that what God's saying here?
Not in rioting.
So we stay away from that.
We cast off the works of darkness, and obviously it's probably talking about participating
in it, which I just can't imagine a Christian participating in this, but it happens.
So the Proud Boys are kind of quasi-Christian, right?
But what's their name?
Proud Boys?
I mean, just the name alone is probably disgusting to God.
So shouldn't be involved in that.
A riot is a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd.
That's what a riot is.
That's what's following a multitude, it's a big group of people, to do evil.
First Peter chapter four.
Turn to First Peter chapter four, verse number three.
The Bible says, First Peter chapter four, verse number three,
For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles
when we walked in lasciviousness, lust, excess of wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominable
idolatry.
So he's talking about the time that we, what we were like, some people were like, before
they got saved.
It says, wherein they think it's strange that you run not with them to the same excess of
riot.
So, again, riot is violent disturbance or peace by a crowd.
They think it's weird when we don't want to be involved in this type of behavior, but
God says it's wrong.
So that's why we should stay away from it.
It says, speaking evil of you.
Don't people think that you're weird because you don't drink?
Don't people think it's weird, ladies, that you just wear dresses and skirts only?
Don't people think it's weird that we believe in one man, one woman, till death do us part?
You can't just get divorced for any old reason.
We're just supposed to be so different from the world, and when we live out our Christianity,
people think it's weird.
And it says that they think it's strange that you run not with them to the same excess
of riot, speaking evil of you, who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the
quick and the dead.
These people are going to have to answer for the things that they're doing.
All this excess of riots and all this other stuff.
We need to stay far away from that kind of stuff.
Turn to 2 Peter chapter 2, verse 12, and you notice that if you watch Pastor Shelley's
most recent documentary, The LGBT Terrorist, he showed the pictures of Antifa, and it's
like all these people with different colored hair and bones in their noses, a major portion
of them are sodomites.
So why would we expect anything less?
Because the Bible says what they are here in 2 Peter chapter 2, verse 12, it says, But
these as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things
that they understand not, and shall utterly perish in their own corruption.
In the context, it's talking about false prophets, isn't it?
It says, and shall receive the reward of unrighteousness as they that count it pleasure
to riot in the daytime.
If that's what somebody's all about, rioting in the daytime, rioting in the night, then
they're very clearly very wicked people.
And burning down churches and destroying people's property is just really wrong.
People work hard for that.
I know that they live in their grandma's basement on welfare or whatever, or maybe they just
get paid as a human resources person at some company where they don't do anything.
The city of Portland has a lot of just useless people that work there.
When I was working there at the beginning, they had a light management team, but this
concept came in where this lady that was the head of PBOT, who's a sodomite by the
way, she said that we need to have one manager per every 12 people there.
And that's not talking about supervisors, that's talking about managers.
So they need to have that much control, that much stuff going on, and it's just bizarre,
the mentality that you get there.
But there's people that are like chief equity officer, second chief equity officer, all
these equity things.
They put white people and everybody else in the class and they separate the white people
from all the other people, and then they sit there and tell you how you're wrong because
you're white.
It's just like, I never went to one of those classes because I would have freaked out.
But other people went there and spoke up and then management started coming to the meetings
because it was a union place.
You think you're just going to come in and tell people that they're wrong because of
the color of their skin?
That's exactly what you are supposedly against.
But now you see the opposite of that happening.
Now white people, you're bad just because you're white and you don't realize that you
have a privilege that you have because you're white and you can't see it.
White privilege.
And somehow we're responsible, even though I've never owned a slave or I don't think
anybody in my family ever has that I know of.
My family came from Norway, they're immigrants.
My great-grandpa and great-grandma came over from Norway.
They didn't own slaves in Norway as far as I know, I don't think that was a thing.
But I could be wrong about that, but all I'm saying is that there's a lot of worthless
people working at these companies.
A lot of them are these types of people right here.
They're doing nothing in the daytime.
During COVID, they sit around in their flip-flops or their fuzzy pajama, bear pajama, those
little shoes that they wear that look like bear paws or whatever.
I guess bear slippers is probably the best way to explain that.
We would go to do a job and the engineer screwed up the job so bad because they're total idiots
and we would try to call them no response.
You know why we didn't get any response?
Because they're still dealing with the hangover that they had from last night, not working
for two years.
People are whining about all the, oh, we have to come in and come to work again.
It's like, yeah, it's time to join the real world like everybody else had had to go out
and work their tails off and they treat everybody there like Rapunzel.
Don't come, don't come up to the tower, you can't come up here.
You can't just sit in the organization room where everybody used to come and get their
paperwork every morning.
We have to meet in outside spots, rain or snow.
They're just treating us like we're subhuman there and they're in their ivory palace that
nobody can ascend to.
Don't come up here scum, you just get out and do the work and shut up and we'll just
keep counting the beans and finding out what you're not doing that we want you to do.
It turned into a tyrannical place to live and guess what happened?
The sodomites all came in and took over the key positions and then they know how to do
work better than some man that's been doing that for 30 years who learned it from another
guy that did it for 30 years and another guy before that that did it for 30 years.
But now all of a sudden some sodomite that worked at a train station can come in and
tell everybody at PBOT what they're supposed to be able to do.
They've never even picked up a hammer in their life.
They've never done anything besides punch numbers and go to college and look I'm not
downgrading college.
Obviously there's some good college educated people that can come in and be managers.
They don't have to necessarily do those things but when you replace all the knowledge in
a place with a bunch of people that don't know what they're doing, they don't know how
to work, they have no clue how infrastructure actually works and they're telling somebody
that's been working there for 30 years it's time for you to retire idiot because we know
better than you.
You wonder why city workers can't get anything done?
It's because the bureaucracy at the top that and now it's like so top heavy with management
you got all this money that you're paying for gas taxes by the way if you live in Oregon
you're paying for all this.
We used to pave a hundred miles a year.
That was the standard.
Then some sodomite came in and took over and we never hit the mark again after that.
You tell me how effective it is and it's so funny because I knew when the sodomites started
taking over at my work that my days were numbered.
I knew that they weren't going to be what everybody thought they were.
It's funny I'd have my boss be like, yeah I think she's going to be pretty good.
She's like this little Ellen DeGeneres looking freak and I knew that they're all nice at
first but then they start going after the men and they chop their what's off and they
degrade them and then they put women that can't do the job in those positions and then
now you never get a hundred miles paved and a hundred miles isn't very much.
They used to do way more than that back in the day.
I don't know why I'm going off on municipalities right now but I'm just angry about it I guess.
It just sucks because there are some really good workers that work for municipalities
but then they get equally paid with someone that can't do the same thing that they can
do.
That's frustrating.
That's the thing I hate about unions is that everybody gets paid equally and if you suck
and you've made it through probation and you won't work they'll just put you in the easiest
jobs or they'll move you to management or they'll put you in a dump truck because they
want to keep that person for their stats.
We have enough women, we have enough black people, whatever.
It's ridiculous and it's sad because the city should be able to function.
We should be able to go into downtown Portland sparkling clean.
We shouldn't have trash all over the ground and contracting out other companies to do
this stuff and come clean up the homeless camps.
Who's seen those signs on the Washington highways where it's saying like please do your job
and pick up the litter.
It's like where do you think that litter came from?
I guarantee you it's less than 3% of the trash that you find on highways is from some person
throwing it out the window.
You know where it's from?
It's from all the homeless camps all over the place and they just throw their stuff
anywhere as they walk by like the walking dead zombies that they are across whole highways
spreading their garbage all over the place and when they fill up their garbage den with
human feces and needles and everything else and destroyed stuff then they just move over
to the next place and destroy that neighborhood too.
Say I'm lying about that.
You know it's true.
This is what's happened to our country and nobody's doing anything about it and you know
you're going to make a sign to tell us to clean up the garbage?
No you clean up the garbage.
You're the one that started it.
You're the one that allowed it.
You're the one that suffers it in this country that you just reap what you sow.
I'm not picking up a single scrap.
I'm not picking up a single needle and if anybody tries to camp in my yard they're going
to get a molotov cocktail in their tent when they're not home and then it's going to be
taken away.
So go ahead and try to come and camp at my house and see what happens.
You're not taking over our park.
You're not taking over our neighborhood.
It's not happening.
They've been moving further out.
They come in.
They strip all the wire.
They steal everybody's stuff.
They're stealing cars at record levels right now and the police just got in Portland.
The police just got eight hundred million dollars from the governor to have cops be
able to deal with all the stolen cars.
How about you should have gone after them when it first happened?
And now they've got cops all over the place giving law abiding citizens tickets and that's
how they're going to get their numbers back up because their cops didn't do anything for
two years.
Fact.
All the way they arrested people that were law abiding citizens but they're not arresting
people that are criminals.
They're letting them go.
Anyway.
Was that part of the sermon?
I'm sorry.
Anyway.
I need to be said.
So anyway these are the types of people though, these natural brute beasts.
They love to riot in the daytime and I think about the time when Paul is in Ephesus and
then the people that are making the idols and stuff get mad about the fact that they're
turning the world upside down and then they have this riot in the building.
And all they're doing, it doesn't say that they hurt anybody or broke anything.
I'm sure that maybe it did.
But they're literally just causing an uproar.
Everybody's in there.
Go ahead and turn to Acts chapter 19.
So fast forward to all the stuff there.
The craftsmen are upset and then they stir up the people.
In verse 39 Acts 19, 39 says, but if you inquire anything concerning other matters it shall
be determined in a lawful assembly.
So this is at the end when somebody's trying to come and just make sense of everything
that's happened.
They've already shouted out, great is Diana of the Ephesians, for hours on end.
And this is what we see today, isn't it?
It says, for we are in danger to be called into question for this day's uproar.
He's talking about people that aren't saved.
They're just like these craftsmen that make false idols and he's just saying, hey, we're
in danger to be called into question for this day's uproar.
The Roman Empire, for all the faults that it had, at least they stamped out things like
this.
And if it would have gotten further, they would have had the soldiers come in and take
care of business.
It says, there being no cause whereby we may give account of this concourse.
And when he had thus spoken, he dismissed the assembly.
So back then, you would actually get in trouble for things like this.
That is a riot though, isn't it?
Just chanting Diana of the Ephesians, he said, this is an uproar, this is not a lawful assembly.
And so, you know, look how far people can go nowadays and it's not declared a riot or
they won't even say riot, because that's just has bad negative connotations.
It's racist, right?
But that's kind of where we're at now, where everything's racist.
You don't like that?
You don't, you say, what'd you say, riot?
You're racist.
How's that racist?
All those people are white over there that are doing all the protesting.
It's true.
I mean, I would drive in from work every day on Broadway and 33rd or whatever, and I would
see this, it looks like they all escaped from a rest home.
They're all white, they're all wearing masks, and they're all wearing, you know, have the
signs made for Black Lives Matter.
I'm not saying that white people can't stick up for black people, but Black Lives Matter
was started by two sodomites.
That's a fact.
They're against the nuclear family.
They got billions of dollars.
I mean, you even had all the sports teams putting all kinds of slogans all over and
all this stuff.
This all happened in like some weird perfect storm where it's okay to just burn Portland
down every night.
It's okay to shine lasers in cops' eyes every night.
It's okay to throw Motov cocktails and bricks and whatever else you want every night.
For like almost a year straight, they did this.
That is not a lawful assembly, folks.
That is a riot.
And when it becomes something more than just a peaceful assembly, it becomes a riot.
And like, they just don't want to classify it that, you know, until they've burned a
few buildings down or something.
But let's go back to Exodus 23, verse 3, it says,
Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his cause, given.
So when you countenance something, you know, it's alluding to the look on your face.
So it says,
Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his cause.
And I feel like it's saying, like, give a negative look.
When someone's like trying to make their cause and you're just like rolling your eyes at
them, you should hear people out when they have something to express.
And you know, I think that when you're showing that you don't support them by the look on
your face, that that is being, you know, you're judging before you've heard the whole matter
in reality.
Look at verse 4, it says,
If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to
him again.
And, you know, people get this idea that the Old Testament was all gloom and doom and destruction
and God was just mad all the time or whatever.
But God has always taught that we're supposed to love our enemies.
God has always said that we're supposed to help people that are enemies.
Look what it says,
If thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again.
And a lot of people would say, good, I hope he loses his ass, good, I hope he loses his
ox.
You know, a lot of people, that would be their attitude if that's your enemy.
It's not talking about God's enemies, it's talking about your personal enemy.
Maybe it's a neighbor that doesn't like, you know, how your yard looks or something.
And neighbors will find weird, if they're not saved, they don't have their own life
going on, they're going to try to inspect everybody else's houses, make sure that they're
up to their level.
You're taking down my, you know, the value of my home by having three cars parked on
the street or, you know, whatever.
People get weird, right?
But we're supposed to help people, even if they're our enemies, and do good to them.
Turn to Matthew chapter 5 verse 43.
Matthew chapter 5 verse 43.
It says, in Matthew 5, 43, it says, You have heard that it had been said, Thou shalt love
thy neighbor and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them which curse you, do good to them that
hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be
the children of your Father, which is in heaven.
For he maketh his Son to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just
and on the unjust.
For if you love them which love you, what reward have ye?
Do not even the publicans the same?
And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others?
Do not even the publicans so?
Be therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven, which is in heaven, is perfect.
So this is the concept Jesus is talking about, but that first verse that I read, it says,
Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy.
I don't know what verse that is in the Old Testament, I guess I just didn't really check
it out, but I don't think it's there.
So sometimes Jesus is challenging what the Pharisees were teaching, what has crept in,
and that's why when Jesus tells that story about the Good Samaritan, the Levites would
walk and avoid those people and not even walk on the same side of the street as them
because they had become so racist in their beliefs and just not wanting to touch any
uncleanness in their mind, stay as far away from them in case they accidentally coughed
on you or something.
But that's not the concept that Jesus taught, and that's not the concept that's taught in
the Old Testament.
The concept that's taught in the Old Testament is to help people when they need help, even
if it is your enemy, because that's what God wants you to do.
Go ahead there to Romans chapter 12, I'm going to read Proverbs 25, 21.
Proverbs 25, 21 says, If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he be thirsty,
give him water to drink.
For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the Lord shall reward thee.
So obviously you don't do it so that you can have God nuke them.
But if they continue to be that way when you've treated them well, then God is going
to allow them to reap what they've sown.
But we're not the ones that need to pay those people back.
We need to treat them and show the love of Christ to them.
Look at Romans 12, 19, it says, Dearly beloved, and you'll see Paul quote these scriptures,
Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath.
For as written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.
So see, it's not our job to take vengeance on our enemies.
God's going to do that for us.
It says, Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him.
If he thirst, give him drink, for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head.
So if he continues to be your enemy, sometimes you can win people over.
See what it says in verse 21?
Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
Because really, if you are overcome by the evil that people do to you, then you're going
to be a miserable, bitter person.
You're always going to be upset about things, and when I find myself getting into those
types of moods, I really don't want to be a negative person.
I really don't.
I want to be a positive person.
I want to be a happy person.
I want to rejoice.
I'm saved.
These people are going to hell.
So really, I don't have it that bad.
Oh, somebody calls you a name at the door, oh, can't handle that.
I'm never going soloing again.
Don't be weak, as Pastor Jones would say, quit being weak.
So look at verse 5, back in her text, it says, Thou see the ass of him that hateth thee,
lying under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt surely help with him.
So again, same thing.
You walk by, you see someone, there are animals down, and the animal needs help back up.
And you would forbear to help them, that means you would just not decide, that's my
enemy helping him, but the animal dies.
That's just not how we win people over.
Because obviously, we preach the gospel, but there is a certain extent of us showing Christian
character to people, and people think about that kind of stuff.
They think about it, they remember it.
You can give somebody one verse, and they'll remember that years later.
I remember stuff from years ago, when people were trying to point me toward the Lord, even
just saying, it's time for you to trust the Lord with all your heart.
I had a lady say that all the time when I asked her what time it was, and I still remember
it because it had an effect on me.
And she was right, and I was an idiot.
But God puts people in our paths, and if we have the wrong reaction to them, it can be
detrimental to their eternity, it can be detrimental to our life, because you're taking vengeance
by acting or not acting the way you should.
And really, that's part of the Christian life.
It's like, we're not just nice to the people we like, we're not supposed to just be nice
to the people that we love, Jesus is giving those examples to us of who we should be helping.
Not examples of who we shouldn't help, but examples of who we should help.
And he's talking about, don't the publicans do the same thing?
Don't they like each other?
The unsaved people do nice things for each other, so why would we as Christians be different
than them?
Where we're just like, that is kind of a Pharisee attitude.
And yeah, I get upset with people sometimes, and I blow my top every once in a while.
But that shouldn't be how our life is always as Christians.
People will hear me preaching and be like, I thought you were just this mean person,
like in reality I'm pretty easy going.
I'm not always mad, I'm not always angry, I'm not always just chomping at the bit to
destroy people and all this other stuff.
Like people think, you know.
People act like we're just murderers in the wait.
We're just waiting to murder some queer somewhere and get away with it or something.
It's like, I don't even want to look at them.
I don't want to touch them.
I don't want a blood spray to accidentally get on me to where I would get AIDS.
I don't want to look at them, I don't want to talk to them, I don't want to see them,
I don't want them serving me food, but I can't help that.
I guess just never go anywhere.
But I don't want to kill anybody.
I never have, and I never will.
As long as somebody doesn't force me into that situation or something, but I don't want
to do anything like that.
What I want to do is I want to affect the world that I live in and the small part of
the world that I'm in and do my best to love my neighbor as myself and to not only just
love my neighbor as myself, but also love people that don't like us.
And that is hard to do.
Why is Jesus saying to do this?
Because it's hard to do it.
And we're called to do things that are hard sometimes.
But in the Old Testament it's the same thing.
He still wanted us to be this way.
It's not like He's just like, kill all these people and that's all I want you to do.
No.
He has a program of love that He wants us to instill in our life and it was in the Old
Testament too.
And it says in verse 6, thou shalt not rest judgment of thy poor in his cause.
Again, that's twist or distort judgment.
So for our own ends or if it suits us or others.
A lot of these things are probably written to people that actually are in leadership
and have the position of judgment in their lives.
God doesn't want unrighteous judgment.
So if someone's a judge in the land, then that judge is supposed to abide by the laws
of God.
And He's helping us to understand.
Didn't Moses have to judge?
He sat from the morning till the evening judging the children of Israel and then He's like,
you need to kind of break this up a little bit.
But God's giving Moses the judgment because he has to make the judgment calls.
And leadership has to do that a lot of times.
But we make judgment calls in our day in life every single day.
So we don't want to twist to rest judgment of the poor in thy cause.
We shouldn't look down on poor people either.
Poor people, some people will always just be poor.
It's just the way it is.
But we shouldn't look down on them because they are.
That's not how we should look at people.
Obviously we want people to work hard.
And sometimes people work really hard and they just can't ever get ahead.
That's just the way it is.
Look at verse 7, keep thee far from a false matter, and the innocent and righteous slay
thou not, for I will not justify the wicked.
Obviously this should go without saying.
I mean, keep away from the false matter, yeah we got that.
And the innocent and righteous slay thou not.
We shouldn't be slaying anybody, but especially someone that's innocent.
And especially someone that's saved, just because you just want to kill them.
Obviously we live in a different time now.
But if you worked in law enforcement or some kind of thing where you have to get along
with a bunch of other people, and maybe some of those people are psychopaths.
Some cops are psychopaths.
Some cops do want to kill people.
Some people sign up to be a police officer because they just want to kick somebody's
butt.
They want to hurt somebody.
They want to shoot somebody.
They want to be the super cop or whatever.
And obviously there's people that are Christians that are in law enforcement.
And you don't want to get yourself into a situation where you have to cover for somebody
that's doing something wicked.
Because this is how corruption happens.
If someone sees a corrupt cop doing something and they don't do anything about it, then
you're in a false matter, whether you like it or not.
And obviously, over the years, people, even if you think about in war, people that murder
innocent people for no reason.
In the military, they say that there's more psychopaths that join military forces than
anything else.
It's like a 25% rate or something, according to Robert O'Hare, which wrote the book on
psychopathy.
He said a lot of the people that came back from war, he would test them on the psychotherapy
list, the 20-question list, and a lot of them are psychopaths.
And what better place to be than in the military, where you could just kill people in a war
so they can get their lust out.
And for thousands of years, people have been in wars.
And then they rape all the women.
And then they kill all the old people and all the babies and rip up the wombs of the
women that are with child.
And there's going to be people in these cases.
But we need to stay far away from those types of people.
We need to stay far away from the wicked, because God says, I will not justify the wicked.
This sentence, you would think, is two different things, but it's not.
Because if you see the first words here, keep thee far from a false matter, semicolon, what
does that mean?
Well, it means that it could end the sentence here, but it doesn't.
It continues on.
So it's the continuation of the thought here.
So keep thee far from a false matter, and the innocent and the righteous slay thou not,
for I will not justify the wicked.
So I mean, if you apply this to things, we might not be in situations like this necessarily,
but in war, that's kind of what I see as a really good example of how this could be,
where other people in the platoon are doing one thing, and they're asking you to not say
anything, and you have a chance of getting killed for just speaking about these things.
But do you think that this stuff doesn't happen in war?
It does.
Do you think this stuff doesn't happen in law enforcement, where you're asked to shut
up and not enter this evidence in, or let's just take some money off the top?
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
There's no fetters on people, and they're a psychopath.
They're willing to do anything.
So we have to be diligent not to get caught into these types of situations.
And obviously, none of us are soldiers in here necessarily, but there's other situations
I'm sure that you could think of where you just don't want to be involved, even in an
office job, I guess.
Maybe somebody wants to cover up some mistake that they made or something, and if you have
knowledge of it, and you're involved in that false matter, God's going to judge you harshly
for it.
You might not even get in trouble, but you're going to get in trouble, guaranteed.
Because God's not going to justify the wicked, and He's not going to justify you going along
with some false matter that you shouldn't be involved in.
Look at verse 8.
It says, "'And thou shalt take no gift, for the gift blindeth the wise, and perverteth
the words of the righteous.'"
See how it's kind of like going in this judgment mode here, or how we should judge rightly?
It's not saying don't take gifts ever from people.
That would be kind of bizarre, right?
There's nothing wrong with giving a gift to people.
What it's talking about is that a gift blindeth the wise.
It could transfer over into personal relationships where people will give you something to kind
of get their hooks into you, and then when you start doing something wrong, then they're
like, well, they did give me that one thing that one time.
They really did give me a pretty necklace, or whatever.
So it can be used for those things, but I think that when it's talking about this, it's
mainly talking about someone that is in a power position.
And when people give gifts, it's like judges are not allowed to accept gifts from people.
Why?
Because it perverts their judgment, and it allows people to corrupt them.
And it's no wonder we have so many corrupt judges in our country, and if you think that
that's not because they're not getting gifts from people or payoffs, then you'd be wrong.
I mean, the mafia ran this whole nation to a certain extent in a lot of different ways,
all the crime and all that stuff.
And how did they do that?
Well, they paid off law enforcement.
They paid off police officers.
They paid off district attorneys.
They paid off judges, and they owned them.
Once they did that, they own them, and then they have to do whatever they ask.
And so people would get off scot-free.
Why?
Because they accepted a gift that they never should have accepted.
That's how corruption works.
That's the tool to get one's favor.
And so that person will give that favor back because the person gave them a gift.
That's what it's talking about.
I think that's the context of what it's meaning here.
Also, verse 9, thou should not oppress a stranger, for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing
you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
So he goes back to this again, and he mentioned this in the last chapter about oppressing
strangers.
And people would come to Israel to probably, I mean, I'm sure people sold stuff from all
over the world.
And so as the children of Israel, as the nation of Israel, they shouldn't be oppressing strangers
in the land or people that just kind of immigrated there.
And just because they're a stranger, they might not know certain things.
This is a way that people take advantage of people, even in this country.
I mean, there's a lot of illegals in this country right now, and you know what they
are?
Working less than minimum wage jobs in farms and fields, and it is a form of enslavement.
They live in those places, and they migrate.
That's why they call them migrant workers.
And they migrate from one place to the other, picking crops and doing things, and what can
they say about the mistreatment?
Because they're not supposed to be here by law, so then that would be taking advantage
of a stranger or whatnot.
So we're not supposed to do that kind of stuff.
It's wicked.
Look at verse 5, it says, if thou seest in the ass of, wait, I need to turn the page.
That's what I need to do.
Okay, so what does it mean to oppress someone?
It means to keep in subservience and hardship, especially by the unjust exercise of authority.
So that's what it means to oppress somebody, that you're keeping someone down because you
have an advantage over them in authority.
And it could also be to cause someone to feel distressed or anxious or uncomfortable by,
you know, obviously, well, I'm going to have you sent back to Mexico.
I'm going to call immigration or whatever.
Whatever it is that someone's doing, modern day USA, there's people just coming across
the borders on record levels right now, and people are upset about them coming, but what
you should be upset about is the corruption that's actually going on.
Because again, I said that I would probably come over here, it's like, let's see, live
in Mexico where the cartels are running everything and putting people's heads on spikes on bridges
and stuff, and there's all these wars down there, there's a lot of corruption.
The government's corrupt, I'd want to live in a place that wasn't corrupt.
But I'm sure that, I mean, you think about David's mighty men, they were from all these
different nations around them.
And they were strangers, but they were in the land, and they probably had to abide by
the rules of Israel, and they were saved, I think most of them were probably saved.
So we shouldn't be against people that are strangers.
Basically in this country there's a lot of different flavors here, so it's not really
something that's a big thing here, but it can be when it comes to oppressing people
that are illegal.
I think that that's kind of how it translates to us in our station where we're at in this
day and time.
And look at verse 10, I'm almost done here folks, sorry.
But look at verse 10, it says, and we're going to move on and talk about the Sabbaths and
Holy Days.
It says in six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in the fruits thereof, but
the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still, that the poor the people may eat,
and what they leave the beast of the field shall eat, and like manna, thou shalt deal
with thy vineyard and with thine oliverd.
So it's talking about a Sabbath rest of your property.
Don't just keep planting crops and reaping crops in the same part of the field.
So you've got to let it lie still for a little bit.
And usually on the seventh year, I think later on it says every seven years you should let
it rest.
But you know, people are greedy.
But everything needs to rest.
Machinery needs to rest.
If you ran your car 24-7, you'd never be able to get it maintenance, you'd never be able
to do the things that you need to get the tires changed and all that stuff.
You just can't run things into the ground.
And God's talking about not running your land into the ground.
I mean, the Dust Bowl happened for a reason, because people were just planting all these
crops and then it turned into something that couldn't even be used.
And people just got greedy and people still do that today, but most farmers kind of go
by these, even though they might not be a Bible-leaving Christian, they still will go
by these principles because it's just a fact and reality of science that you can't just
keep planting and reaping and expecting the land to just keep producing if you never let
it rest.
And it says in like manner, deal with thy vineyard and with thy voliver.
So you know, and you're like, well, we just can't afford to stop doing this.
It's like, well, God didn't say to do it and then act like you're just going to go broke
because of it.
I think it's the opposite.
I think that if you don't let it rest, then God's going to not let your crops come in
one year, or He's going to let an early frost happen and kill everything or whatever.
But you know, this principle is throughout Scripture.
The Bible says, Six days shall thou labor and do thy work and on the seventh day thou
shalt rest.
And thine ox and thine ass, that thine ox and thy ass may rest and the son of thy handmaid
and the stranger may be refreshed.
Human beings need rest.
Oxes need rest.
That's why God put the Sabbath in.
It wasn't so He could spank us every time we picked up sticks.
It was so, we'll stone you.
But He did that so that we could rest.
Because a lot of times we won't rest unless we're made to.
Now obviously this is a picture spiritually for us that the Lord Jesus Christ was going
to allow us to rest from our works and that He would do all the works for us so that we
could be saved.
And that is why we no longer have to keep the Sabbath days.
But I still think that it's still good to take a rest.
If you work seven days a week, you can do that.
There's no law against it, but you will wear out.
You will wear out early.
And we just need to rest every once in a while.
I was talking to this guy at the door, and he was talking about all the studying he's
doing in the Bible.
He said, but right now I'm playing some word game on my phone.
I was like, well, if you're working all the time, it's good to have a rest.
It's good to have just like an outlet that you, not a sinful outlet, but just an outlet
you can have to where you're just kind of resting your brain from all the work.
You're resting your body and not overdoing it.
Because especially, women do this too.
They'll just keep going and going and going and going.
It's like, honey, you need to take a rest.
I can't.
I got all this stuff to do.
It's just like, okay, well, you're going to wear out.
So we need to take rest.
We need to let the land rest.
Machinery needs to rest.
It needs to be maintained.
So it's kind of like, if you think of it like machinery, animals, you can't just work an
animal 24-7.
They need to rest.
They need to eat.
They need to be, you know, their body needs to rest.
And so God put this principle in place for us.
Again, we're not commanded to keep the Sabbath day where we do nothing and whatever.
But it's a good idea.
It's one of the Ten Commandments that is no longer in effect.
But the principle is still true.
And you know, the Sabbath was made for man.
So God said, the Sabbath, you know, Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man, not the
man for the Sabbath or whatever.
And that's true.
Because in reality, even physically, He made it for us to rest.
But spiritually, He also made it for us to rest also.
And so it was truly made for man and is a good thing.
But you know, and how do I know that people get mad about this too?
Like where does it say the Sabbath is done away with?
Well, let's look at the verse.
Colossians chapter 2.
And anything, the principle is that anything that was commanded in the Old Testament and
is changed in the New Testament, we don't have to keep that anymore.
Colossians chapter 2 verse 14.
And Jesus Christ, when He was nailed on the cross, He took away some of these things because
He fulfilled them.
It says, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances.
There's a lot of ordinances in the Old Testament.
What are the ordinances that we keep now?
Baptism and the Lord's Supper.
Those are the ordinances that picture the death of Christ.
But there's a lot of ordinances that we don't have to keep anymore.
It says, that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing
it to His cross.
And having spoiled principalities of powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing
over them in it.
Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or
of the new moon, or of, what's it say there?
The Sabbath days.
It's not just the Sabbath day every week, but there was holy days.
We call them holidays now, but there were holy days where the people would have to go
up to Jerusalem.
We'll talk about that in the next sermon, about the feast days and stuff like that.
But there was a respect.
We're not judging that.
We're not judged in what different types of food we eat.
We can pretty much eat anything now, except for roadkill, meat sacrificed to idols, if
you know what it is, blood, don't want to eat that stuff.
Anyway, let's see.
The Bible says that it was a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ.
Those things were a shadow for us.
There were ordinances that they had to keep in the Old Testament, but we no longer have
to keep those.
So look at verse 13 back in our text.
It says,
And in all things that I have said unto you, be circumspect, and make no mention of the
name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth.
Now again, and you might disagree with me about this, but this is what I think about
this verse.
So obviously circumspect means watchful, discreet, careful, prudent, well considered.
You think about the ramifications of what that decision is going to make.
This is what I see Christians making big mistakes about in life, is that they're not thinking
ahead.
They're not thinking about the conclusion of what that choice is going to make for them.
And the choices that we make, God has backup plans for us, but some choices we make could
ruin our lives.
It could ruin our reputation, it could ruin our lives.
And so when you have a big decision, don't just say, well, I'm making more money, so
I'm going to go work at this place and move away from my church, and it's a stupid decision.
Think circumspectly.
You need God's house.
You need to be in the house of the Lord and in a good church on a regular basis.
But the second part of this verse is talking about make no mention of the names, the name
of the other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth.
So obviously, we don't walk around talking about all these different gods in the Old
Testament.
We barely name them by name.
But God gives us their names in the Bible.
He tells us what their names are, if it's Chemosh or Molech or all these other false
gods.
I think that what he's talking about is that we're not supposed, because obviously we're
commanded to read the Bible, we're commanded to even read the Bible out loud.
But if we read a chapter of the Bible, is it wrong for someone to mention the name of
those gods in that chapter?
I don't think that that's what it's talking about.
I think that if you're just going around talking all willy-nilly about false gods and just
bringing it up and talking about it in front of your kids, circumspect is who are you saying
this stuff in front of, who are you talking about it with.
And so we should think about what we're saying and who we're saying it to and who we're
mentioning these names of these gods.
If that's just what your focus is, is focus on all these Old Testament false idols and
gods, I think that that's probably an exercise in futility.
We don't need to know all their names.
We don't need to talk about them all the time.
But it says don't mention their names.
But I think that this is talking about in a way where you need to be circumspect, because
the first part of the verse is talking about circumspect wisdom, having circumspect wisdom.
So I think that that's a clue to us that it's not necessarily just saying don't ever
read their name in the Bible.
We should just mark that name out.
Never say it.
Obviously, if we're reading the chapter in the Bible, I don't want people to go bleep.
And God put their names in there, some of them.
Not all of them, but some of them.
And we should know certain things about them, but going around talking about them, it can
have an effect.
Things that you talk about can have effects on people, and some people aren't ready for
all the truth that you have for them.
So if you're just talking about these false gods in front of your family members or something
that aren't even saved, you're like, well, this god, Moloch, and he, you know, whatever.
That's just uncircumspect wisdom, is that you're not having circumspect wisdom.
You're just talking about things of people that aren't ready for that level of stuff.
And some knowledge and some truth doesn't need to be told to certain people.
I hope that makes sense, because that's just the way I'm thinking about it, but I don't
think this applies to Bible reading, preaching against them.
In the Bible, they're preaching against them and mentioning their names.
So we're talking about Elijah.
Baal was like a big false god in the Old Testament, and his name is mentioned multiple times.
And he's preached against multiple times.
And the people that worship him are preached against multiple times.
But just casually discussing this in front of the wrong people and just maybe even just
thinking about it too much, or maybe it's just become an obsession, which I just don't
know anybody that's like that, but I'm just saying to just constantly be saying the names
of false gods out of your mouth all the time is just probably God's saying, be circumspect.
Even in everything, every doctrine, not everybody's ready for every truth that we preach.
Some people in the congregation aren't ready for the truth that I preach sometimes, and
they can't receive that.
That's why sometimes you'll hear a pastor preach something and you're like, I know I've
read that verse so many times, and it's like, and now it applies to you somehow.
You weren't ready for that truth until God gave it to you, and God gives us truth on
different levels.
So if you think that you're going to just read the Bible one time, and now I know the
Bible, I know the Bible, no you don't.
You've just scratched the surface.
And God hasn't taught you everything you need.
Like, I've read the Bible one time, people say that at the door, I've read the Bible
so many times, well then you don't know the simplest things in here?
I don't believe you.
Have you read the book of Hezekiah?
I don't think so.
So we'll close on this last spot here in Ephesians 5.14.
I'll make it quick here.
But there is dangers in giving people too much truth or teaching people truths that
they might not be ready to handle.
And I'm talking about unsaved people.
And even with your kids, some of the things in the Bible might not be, you know, if they
can understand what you're saying, they're ready to hear it.
But if they don't understand what you're saying, I try not to be too graphic in a lot of the
things that I say in the Bible just because we have kids here.
So anyway, look at Ephesians 5.14, it says, Wherefore, he saith, Awakest thou that sleepest,
and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light?
See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because
the days are evil.
Wherefore, be not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.
So in verse 15 it says, See then that ye walk circumspectly.
This is how we should walk through our lives.
Not as fools, just blurting everything out of our mouths that we want.
And look, I'm not saying hide the truth from people as far as like, I'm not going to just
get up here and go, I'm never preaching this because they can't handle the truth.
That's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about sometimes God is not going to let you handle the truth that I'm preaching
to you.
And sometimes it's not circumspect wisdom to give it to people that aren't saved or
that aren't ready mature-wise to handle it.
In a preaching setting, I think that people are either going to get up and leave and be
mad, or they're going to go, I don't agree with that, or they're going to agree with
it, or they're just going to not be paying attention, whatever.
But God gives things to us in small bursts.
He's not going to just let you understand the whole Bible in one Bible reading.
And you don't know everything you need to know.
And so that's why we should have circumspect wisdom in our learning.
Don't put the meat before the milk.
Know the milk first.
And that's better for you because trying to understand all these complicated doctrines
before you get the basics down is just, those people will burn out and leave.
Because it's not as exciting anymore.
They just are thrill seekers.
They're just there for their flash in the pan, they're a Roman candle Christian, whatever
you want to call it.
Some people just come in, they want to know all the conspiracies and talk about the Jews
and the post-Trib rapture, the fags, and then that's all they want.
When it comes to just understanding Christian doctrine, not interested.
So it shouldn't be like that.
Be circumspect.
Let's pray.
Thank you so much for this great chapter in the Bible and the great truce that it holds.
Pray, Lord, you'd help us to be mindful of these things.
Lord, I pray that you'd just bless us as we go our separate ways tonight.
Thank you for all the people that went out soul winning, for the people that got saved.
Pray you'd just bless our fellowship afterwards.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.