(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Man, Ezekiel chapter 33 starts out with a section that is pretty much the same as something that we saw earlier in the book of Ezekiel. This actually comes up a few times in the book of Ezekiel, and so I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on this first part of the chapter, but it does really bear repeating because it's such a powerful statement that's made here. It says in verse number 2, Son of man, speak to the children of thy people and say unto them, when I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coast and set him for their watchman, if when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet and warn the people, then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet and taketh not warning, if the sword come and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. So he's saying that in the sense of a city that has a guy who's there to guard the city and it's his job to warn the city when danger is coming, if he does his job, if he blows the trumpet and people just ignore the warning, that's their fault. That's their problem. If they die, their blood's on their own hand. But if the watchman fails to blow the trumpet, then it's really his fault that people die because he did not warn them. And the Bible is saying that preachers are a watchman, and the Bible says that when we preach, we should cry aloud and spare not and lift up our voice like a trumpet to show the house of Israel their sins, show my people their sins, show the house of Jacob their transgressions. And so it's a preacher's job to get up and yell out and cry out and sound the trumpet and warn people about the dangers of sin. Obviously, we're supposed to be warning the unsaved about the fact that hell is real and that they must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ in order to escape hell and go to heaven, but also it's our job to warn people about the consequences of sin in this life. Those of us that are saved can never lose our salvation, but we could face serious consequences for sin in this life, in the here and now, and we need preachers to get up and warn us about that. Now, if a man gets up and claims to be a preacher of God's Word and he just gets up and only preaches motivational sermons, he only preaches the positive things of the Word of God, then that man is failing to sound the trumpet and to warn of all the dangers that are out there, and it's basically his fault. When the church is filled with sin, it's his fault. You know, when people are just continuing down these dark paths, it's his fault because he didn't warn them. He didn't say anything, and it's his job. And when you decide to become a pastor, that's the job, is to warn people, whereas if the pastor gets up and preaches hard against fornication, he's preaching against drunkenness, he's preaching against adultery and murder and theft, and people do those things anyway, well, guess what? It's not his fault because he got up, he warned people, he sounded the trumpet, and their blood's on their own head. So he says in verse 7, so thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel, therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth and warn them from me. Now, obviously, God is not speaking to me in an audible voice the way that he spoke to Ezekiel and appeared to him in visions, but I've got the Word of God right here, and I spend my week listening to the Word of God, reading the Word of God, getting the instructions from God, and then getting up on Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night, and warning people from God. Not warning people with my own opinion, but warning people of what the Bible says the dangers are. And it says here in verse number 8, when I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die, if thou does not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thine hand. So let's jump down just for sake of time, because we've already gone over this in a previous chapter. Verse 11, say unto them, as I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways, for why will ye die, O house of Israel? And a lot of people have this attitude that God is just so mean, and he's so strict, and he's just always pouring out his wrath, and judging everybody, and they say, you know, why would a loving God send anyone to hell, or why did God allow this car accident to happen, or why did God allow this person to go to prison, or whatever, you know, why isn't God just showing mercy to everyone all the time? But what we have to understand is that God desires to bless us. God doesn't want to punish us or chastise us. He desires what's best for us. He loves us. And that's part of the definition of what love is. I mean, if you love someone, you want what's best for them. The opposite of that would be to hate someone where you want bad things to happen to them. You want them to die, or you want them to suffer all kinds of misfortune, hateful attitude. A loving attitude is I want good things to happen to you. And so God is looking down from heaven, and he's not just out to just damn people, okay? He wants people to be saved. We want people to be saved, but he wants people to be saved way more than we want people to be saved. God is love. And not only does he want people to be saved, he wants Christians to be blessed. He wants us to have joy in our lives. He wants us to have success in our lives. He wants us to be like that tree planted by the rivers of water where whatsoever we do, it prospers. God would love nothing more than for us to be that Psalm 1 kind of guy. That's what he wants. He doesn't just enjoy destroying people because they messed up. He would rather that they take the warning and do what's right and not have to face those consequences. So it's not that God is mean. It's not that God is too strict. It's that we just need to get on God's program. And if we get on God's program, things are going to go well for us, and he's got all kinds of blessings, and he's able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think. We just need to get on his program and not fight against his program and constantly then complain when the hammer comes down on us in our lives. So God wants the wicked to turn from his wicked way so that he doesn't face judgment in this life. Now, some people will try to take this and make it about salvation and say, see, you know, you have to turn from your wicked way in order to be saved. But when you read this passage, what it's actually talking about is your status in this lifetime. When it says the wicked man's going to die in his wickedness, it's talking about literal physical death. It's talking about Israel being literally judged. And the context is, of course, even about the Babylonians coming in and literally physically killing people. And that's a judgment that comes in this lifetime. You see, we face judgments in this lifetime. It's not just about heaven and hell. It's also about our life here on earth right now. And so this passage, when it says you've got to turn from your evil way so you don't die, that's talking about things that go on in this life. Because, for example, in Jonah, it talks about how the city of Nineveh believed God and they turned from their evil ways. And what does the Bible say about that? In Jonah 3.10, it says, and God saw their works, and God saw their works that they turned from their evil way, and God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them, and he did it not. So if turning from your evil way is part of salvation, you might as well just come right out and say it, that you believe works is part of salvation. And the Bible's pretty clear. In the New Testament, it says that salvation is not of works, lest any man should boast. It says, by the works of the law shall there no flesh be justified in his sight. So we're not saved by works, and turning from our evil way is works. Some people, when you tell them that salvation is not of works, they'll say, like, well, I know you don't have to do any good works to be saved, but there is some stuff that you have to stop doing to be saved. But that's why I like it when people use this term, salvation by grace through faith, they'll say, plus nothing, minus nothing. It's salvation by grace through faith. And you know what? That's important. Plus nothing, meaning we don't have to do works, it's also minus nothing. We don't have to subtract things from our life in order to merit going to heaven, because guess what? We're not good enough to go to heaven. And it doesn't matter how much we subtract, we're still not going to be good enough to go to heaven. We're still not going to make it. We've all sinned. We've come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Salvation is by faith. Not by works. But let me tell you something, we do need to turn from our evil way if we don't want God to cloud up and rain on us on this earth. And you know what? Many a Christian has had their life cut short physically because of living in sin. If I went out and just started living in sin, don't be surprised at all if I get physically killed at a young age because I went out and started living a life of sin. That shouldn't surprise anyone. Why? Because of the fact that we have examples of that in scripture. King Saul, he's in rebellion against God, and God tells him that as a punishment, he's going to be killed the next day. And so we could face a lot of things in this life as punishments, even though nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, even though we're going to heaven no matter what, and he'll never leave us or forsake us. You know, he didn't say you're never going to go to prison, or you're never going to take a beating, or you're never going to be killed prematurely as a result of your sins because of the fact that we can still face judgments in this lifetime. Whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth and scourges every son whom he receiveth. And a scourge, that's a whip. I mean, that's a serious punishment that we could face in this lifetime. So there are two different aspects that we need to think about. There's heaven and hell, that's settled when we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Then there's our life on this earth, blessing versus cursing. Which one do we want? You know, do we want God working for us or working against us? Because both can happen in the life of a Christian. Now even if God brings punishments upon us in this life, it's done out of love. He still loves us, but he still brings the punishments. And so we need to keep that in mind. The house of Israel, God's people in the Old Testament are being told, turn from your evil way, for why will you die, O house of Israel? This is a very real threat of physical death that is imminent. So verse 12, therefore, thou son of man, say unto the children of thy people, the righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression. What's he saying there? Good works don't make up for sin. You can't do a bunch of good deeds to make up for the bad things that you do. You do bad things, you get punished. That's how life works. You can't go to court in the human justice system and start telling the judge all the wonderful things that you've done. That typically isn't going to sway his decision about the fact that you committed an armed robbery or murder or whatever. You know, you get pulled over by the police and even just are issued a speeding ticket. I doubt giving a litany of your good deeds to the cop is really going to just cause, oh, well, why didn't you say so? Have a good day, sir. I didn't realize you were such a great person. It's just that, you know, our good deeds are independent of our crimes. So the righteous of the righteous doesn't deliver him in the day of his transgression. It doesn't give you a license to sin because you do so many good works for the Lord. You know, like, oh, well, I'm a big soul winner, I'm doing all these great works, so therefore, you know, it's okay if I go out and commit these sins because it'll all sort of balance out. That's not the way life works. And vice versa. You know, it talks about how if someone is wicked and commits a lot of sins and, you know, has a lot of punishments in store, it says that if the wicked... What's going on here? Did somebody push a button on something? Okay, I need... Where's Raymond? Who knows what button to push over here to turn off all the mics besides my... Can you go push it, Daniel? Thank you. Nothing except the one that I'm using, which is the silver one. Sorry about that, folks. You know, it's just people, you're falling asleep during the sermon and we need to wake you up. No, I'm just kidding. All right. Testing one, two, three. All right. We're back. We're back in business here. Okay. Where was I? The wicked, the righteous, the... Okay, ungodly people getting right with God is what we're talking about, right? The wicked, verse 15, restores the pledge, gives again that he had robbed, walks in the statutes of life without committing iniquity. He shall surely live, he shall not die. What's the Bible saying? You know, if someone has a wicked past but they're living right now, we should let them live that down. We should forget about it. We shouldn't bring it up. We shouldn't throw it in their face. Even God can still bless that person. So if you've done a lot of wicked things in the past, you shouldn't think to yourself, well, I've already done so much bad stuff. I've already sinned so much. I have no hope of being blessed by God in the future. No, you can still be blessed by God in the future. And we as Christians should also treat you well and not try to hang things over your head from your past. This is what I really don't like about this whole idea of a criminal record. You know, I don't think the criminal record should exist. I don't think it's right to keep bringing up what someone did for the rest of their life. If they went and paid for the crime and they did the time, it should be forgiven and forgotten. And you say, well, we have to be warned about these dangerous people and blah, blah, blah. No, we don't. Because if you're talking about pedophiles, they should be dead. And then we don't have to worry about a background check because they're dead. It can't hurt anyone anymore. But let's say someone stole or somebody smoked pot or somebody did, you know, if it was something that was not worthy of death, if it was a lesser crime, you know, that person should be punished. And we move on. Well, we've got to warn people about them. No, we don't. That's your human understanding. The Bible says, trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. You might say, well, I need to warn people about so-and-so's sinful past. Really? Because that's not what the Bible says. Okay. Well, we've got to warn people. Well, no, we don't. Because warning people becomes an excuse to basically just dredge up people's sinful past and to just throw that in their face instead of giving people the opportunity to move forward in the Christian life and live that down and start over and do right. And again, we're not talking about dangerous pedophiles or something. I mean, people like that, obviously, that's a different situation. But these criminals here in the Bible, they've robbed, they've done bad things, they've sinned. You know, what does it say in verse 16? None of his sins that he has committed shall be mentioned unto him. You know, we don't need to bring that stuff up, do we? Don't mention it. And also, the good news is that when I get to heaven, God's not going to mention any of my sins to me when I get to heaven. You know, as far as the east is from the west, so far as God separated me from my sins and He's put all my sins behind His back, and I will face consequences for things in this life as I live and grow and endure chastening and am sanctified in this life. But man, when I get to heaven, God's not going to throw my sins in my face, thank God. That wouldn't be a very happy day to look forward to, like, yay, we get to go to heaven. Every stupid thing we've ever done is going to be brought out. What a day that will be, what a day that will be. You know, thankfully, that's a wrong teaching that's not biblical. And what a relief that is, amen? Yet the children of thy people, verse 17, say, the way of the Lord's not equal. They're basically saying God's not fair. We want to throw things in people's face from their past. You know, we don't want to let them live that down. And we think that people's good deeds, that they do give them a license to do some bad things. They get a pass. God's saying, no, no, no, your way isn't equal. And this is how a lot of people's attitude is where they say the way of the Lord's not equal. And it says at the end of verse 17, as for them, their way's not equal. Any time somebody says God isn't fair or this law, I found this law in Exodus and I don't think it's fair. There's this law in Leviticus, it doesn't seem fair to me. Well, guess what? That just means that you don't know what you're talking about or that you don't have a good sense of justice. Now, there have been times when I was reading the Bible and I saw something in Exodus and I said, that doesn't seem fair. That doesn't seem right. But you know what I did? I actually adjusted myself and said, but God said it and he's a lot smarter than I am. So therefore, I'm going to adjust my way of thinking and start to think the way God thinks about this. And that's what I've been doing my whole life is constantly adjusting my thinking to match scripture. I'm going to adjust scripture to match my thinking, okay? We need to let the Bible correct us and not correct the Bible. God is the one who decides. And I remember even having this thought even as a child, who am I to stand in judgment of the God of the universe? And I remember thinking to myself, you know, where do my opinions come from? I remember asking myself that as a kid, where do my opinions come from? They come from things that my parents taught me. They come from things I've seen on TV. They come from things that I learned in school. They come from things that I read in books. Everything that we take in is influencing us, whether it's a book, a magazine, friends that we hang around with, our parents, our church, reading the Bible, listening to the radio, whatever, all of these things are coming in to us and they're forming our views. And then I do believe that we also have a unique soul and that we do have some unique views that we kind of bring to the table because we're not just these robots taking in a bunch of input or something. We're also human beings with our own views and our own soul, but we are heavily influenced by our culture. And it's so funny when all these people today in 2022, they're all just kind of coming to the same opinion on their own. But isn't it funny how 50 years ago when people all came to the same opinion, it was a different opinion. So it's not just this, well, humans just kind of automatically know what's right and wrong and they've kind of just all decided that being a homo is okay or something. It's like, well, no, that's our culture that's been training people to think that way. And so when I was growing up, there were some things that I would read in the Bible and I thought to myself, that doesn't quite seem right to me, but you know what? It's just because of the way that I've been trained. It's just because of the culture that I'm living in and I need to just have the faith to believe that the Word of God is right and not stand in judgment and say, hmm, well, I like what you did over here, God. I really like what you did here, God. But this other stuff, God, we need to talk about this because I think you're a little off here, creator, Lord of the universe, supreme being. Let me just correct you here. Sort of like Peter taking Jesus aside and correcting him. And Jesus didn't respond very well to that. He said, get thee behind me, Satan. So we should never stand in judgment of God or say that God isn't fair. What God does is always right. We need to adjust our sense of fairness to match scripture. And of course, the older and wiser you become, the more you're going to see how God just ends up being right over and over again. When you look at the way things play out in life and in this world, you're like, wow, God was right again. When you're a child, you haven't lived as much, you haven't experienced it enough, it's going to take more faith to just accept what's in the book. Whereas as you get older, you start needing less and less faith to believe because you're like, I've seen that. Oh, this is exactly how this happens. And you just see God's word being right over and over again. So then he kind of changes gears. And again, we've already covered all that in an earlier week. That's why I'm kind of glossing that over. So I want to get to some of this stuff later in the chapter here. So he kind of changes gears in verse number 21. It came to pass in the 12th year of our captivity, in the 10th month, in the fifth day of the month, that one that had escaped out of Jerusalem came unto me saying, the city is smitten. So Ezekiel is in an earlier wave of captivity. Jerusalem is still there. And it's been attacked. It's been smitten. And the hand of the Lord, it says in verse 22, was on me in the evening before he that was escaped came. And before he got this message about Jerusalem being smitten, he'd already gotten this vision from the Lord. The hand of the Lord came upon him. And he says, my mouth was open. I was no more dumb. Because if you remember from earlier in the book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel is being struck with dumbness for periods where he cannot speak anything. And then the word of the Lord comes to him, and then he can speak. And then it says in verse 23, then the word of the Lord came unto me saying, son of man, they that inhabit those wastes of the land of Israel speak, saying, Abraham was one, and he inherited the land. But we are many. The land is given to us for an inheritance. Here's what they're saying. You know, Abraham inherited the land, and it was pretty big for him, because he's like one guy. But there's a whole bunch of us. There's millions of us. And then we inherit the land. We don't have enough land. This isn't enough. We want more. We're not content with what we've been given. Verse 25, wherefore say unto them, thus saith the Lord God, ye eat with the blood, and lift up your eyes toward your idols, and shed blood, and shall ye possess the land? He's like, what are you talking about? You don't deserve any of this land. You're whining that your inheritance is too small because it got divided too many ways and got too diluted as the children of Israel multiplied, but yet you don't deserve any of that land. Because when you're living in sin, you don't deserve that land. Now, this is completely contrary to what a lot of evangelical Christians teach today, which is that the children of Israel were given that land unconditionally, and there was an unconditional land grant unto the Israelites. That is false, because when they rebelled, even in the days of Moses, they weren't allowed to enter the land. They had to wander for 40 years in the wilderness. And at various times, they are removed from the land as a result of their sins. And so, no, that was never an unconditional land grant to the children of Israel. That is a wrong doctrine, okay? So he's saying, look at what you're doing. You're eating blood. You're doing idolatry. You're shedding blood. You're killing people. You're doing abortions and infanticide. Shall you possess the land? And then he says, I skipped verse 26. You stand upon your sword. You work abomination. You defile everyone, his neighbor's wife. And shall you possess the land? Now, these are things that make the Lord angry. God doesn't like murder, innocent bloodshed, adultery, idolatry, these kind of satanic practices like eating blood and so forth. These things enraged the Lord. And let me just park it on this one right here, verse 26. I'm going to touch on a little current event here. You defile everyone, his neighbor's wife. You know, adultery is a major sin in the Bible. And the Bible says that if a man lies with his neighbor's wife, Leviticus chapter 20, verse 10, says that if a man lays with his neighbor's wife, even the man that lays with his neighbor's wife, it says that they shall be put to death. Both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death. You know, marriage is a sacred bond. And when you lie with another woman, with another man's wife, both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death, according to scripture. You know, there's a big thing all over the internet over the past few days about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at some meaningless, stupid award ceremony where they want to get some golden idol handed unto them, some molten image, because they are such a great actor or whatever, right? And I don't think anybody gave a rat's tail about this award event until somebody got slapped. That's the only way I even heard about it or even knew what's going on. And I still don't know what it was. I don't know if it was the Grammys or the Oscars or the Academy Awards or what, but it was some kind of an award thing, some stupid, meaningless Hollywood junk. So anyway, this incident happened and, you know, it got everybody's attention and it got everybody talking about it because what happened is this one Hollywood comedian is up there and he says something mocking about Will Smith's wife. And Will Smith is also an actor slash rap artist, comedian, whatever he is. And so he says something about this guy's wife and a joke. So then Will Smith gets up out of his seat, goes up there and slaps Chris Rock across the face and Chris Rock just kind of laughs about it and then he goes and sits down and yells some stuff from his chair and blah, blah, blah. Now here's the thing about this. You'll see people, you know, talking about this and either justifying what Will Smith did and saying, yeah, you know, he's defending his wife and good for him. And then you have other people kind of saying, well, no, he shouldn't get physical, he shouldn't get violent, it's just a joke, blah, blah, blah. But here's the big elephant in the room is that Will Smith's wife is a complete whore who openly talks about sleeping with other men. And Will Smith has gone publicly and said that he's fine with other men sleeping with his wife. So how about that? So before you young people, and you say, well, why bring this up? I'll tell you why I bring it up because I don't want young people in our church idolizing the whores and whoremongers of Hollywood and thinking, oh, that's so cool that Will Smith did that. My hero, I'm so glad that he slapped someone. He really must love his wife to protect his wife. Let me tell you something. If he loved his wife, he wouldn't be pimping her out to other dudes. How is that protecting your wife when you're getting up and saying, yeah, other men lay with my wife and it's fine? What a loser. You're the biggest beta male wimp sissy if you're just allowing your wife to be with other dudes. You have no business to be lifted up as, oh, this guy, yeah, yeah, you know, he had the guts to get up there and slap. First of all, the whole thing's probably staged anyway. Let me just explain something to you. They're actors. Two actors. They do this for a living. They're experts at making things look real. I mean, look, you know, if you've ever seen a movie in your life, you know that when they punch somebody, it really looks like they're getting punched, right? You know, gone are the days of where it's like, you know, it's real obvious that they're kind of like, you know, you know, it looks pretty real, doesn't it? You know, they're experts. So guess what? They're probably just staging it because they're not relevant anymore. So they're trying to just be in the news because I guarantee you now everybody's probably listening to more Will Smith music than they've ever listened to. They're probably watching more Chris Rock movies and watching more Will Smith movies and whatever because there's no such thing as bad publicity. So it's probably just a stunt where they both benefit. They both agreed on it. They're a couple of actors or whatever. But I don't care if it's real. I don't care if it's fake. Hey, I'm not impressed by Will Smith as a man, okay? If you're letting your wife be with other dudes, I'm not impressed with you as a man. And so you young people, don't fall into the trap of thinking that Will Smith is cool or that Chris Rock is cool or whatever. Folks, these are not your role models. That's why I bring it up. You know what's funny is that bald, broad, and you say, oh, you shouldn't make fun of her for being bald. She has a disease. No, she doesn't. It's a lie. Just like everything that these people say is a lie. I have a friend who has that disease that she claims she has, alopecia, and he said, hey, I'm an expert on this disease. I've had it for 10 years or whatever, and she doesn't have it because this guy, his hair fell out. And guess what? He doesn't have this five o'clock shadow all over his head of every single hair follicle, and he has no eyebrows. He has no eyelashes, and there's no follicles there. It's just gone, okay? So I know somebody who has this, and he said, believe me, I know about this. And you look at pictures of her, and she's got this five o'clock shadow. That's called shaving your head, is what that's called. And hey, if it's a shame for a woman not to be covered, let her also be shorn. If you're going to have short hair, you might as well go for the buzz cut. But honestly, women are supposed to have long hair. Men are supposed to have short hair. But supposedly, oh, it all fell out because I have alopecia. Well, my buddy who has alopecia said no. I'm not claiming to be an expert on the disease, but he said no way, and that's my understanding of it. But what's funny is that Baldilocks had actually contacted, she contacted our church in 2019. Her producer Olga Arana, who is producing her red table talk show, contacted us on her behalf, okay? So I got the email here. This is from September 10th, 2019. My name is Olga Arana. I am clearance producer for the Facebook series Red Table Talk, hosted by Jada Pinkett-Smith. Her 17-year-old daughter Willow, a leading voice for her generation. And blah, blah, blah, telling about the show. Our upcoming episode talks about transgenders. We're getting different pastors' views and perspectives on being transgender, and we want to use the following speech of Pastor Anderson and basically as a YouTube link. We clicked on the link, but, you know, the channel's been deleted, so we couldn't figure out exactly which sermon they wanted to play at the time, but basically they gave a quote of what they wanted to use, so I'll read it for you. Look, I have nothing but hate when I see a man dressed up as a woman who has mutilated his body to become a woman and saying, hey, look at me, everybody, look at me, kids, right? Some guy who mutilated his body and dressed up like a woman, so I'm just ripping on transvestites or whatever. So she sent us over like a release form, so we filled out paperwork and signed a release and said, yeah, sure, you may use that on your show. Here you go. Put this in your pipe and smoke it. So of course, because here's the thing, anytime anyone asks us for permission to use clips from my preaching, I told Brother Segura, don't even ask me, just sign it, just agree to it, it's always yes, yes, yes, yes. Do whatever you want with it, you know, have fun. But let me tell you something, so here we have these people who've openly talked about and bragged about the fact that they commit adultery, that his wife is just an adulterous and she's allowed to be an adulterous and whatever, and then they have two kids, they're both sodomites. And then the male, what's the dude's name? Jayden? Okay, so Jayda and Jayden, so Jayden's a sodomite, Jayden's a sodomite, the girl's a sodomite, and they're making a TV show promoting transvestites, because I wonder if they're playing my clip like, hey, we found some preaching that we like. Do you think that's what they're doing? No, they're playing a clip for me to talk about, oh, can you believe this guy, can you believe how mean he is, can you believe the stuff that Christians are saying, isn't it so terrible how hateful they are? And what's so funny is that they actually say, our goal is to highlight some of the differences between, you know, pastors' views, and we by no means are siding with any opinion. Who believes that? Who believes here that they are playing my clip screaming about how I hate transvestites because I don't want my kids to see the grossness, okay? Who here thinks that they're playing that because they think that's a valid viewpoint and they're not taking a side, they just kind of want to put that out there for the viewer. Now look, if they would have just said, Pastor Anderson, we hate your ever-loving guts, can we use your clip? I'd just be like, sure. So why do they lie about it? Like they must think I'm stupid. They must think I'm stupid like, hey, uh-oh, hey, let's tell Pastor Anderson that we're not taking a side, maybe then he'll let us use the clip. I'm just like, use it. Use it, you bald idiot. And look, I understand that some people do have a disease where their hair falls out. I get that. Now look, if I were a woman and I had a disease and my hair fell out, I would just put on a wig. How about that? You know what I mean? And if you're a dude and your hair falls out, hey, but guess what? That's not even the case because what she probably, didn't you tell me that she dyed her hair like six million ways to Sunday over the years and so probably she just nuked her hair so bad. Her hair is probably just so trashed. She didn't use enough Pantene Pro-V on it or something and so she probably just had to shave it off because her hair probably just died from all the chemicals. That's probably what really happened, but it's not alopecia, okay? But I don't care if she has alopecia or not, she's a whore. That's the problem. She's an adulterous and not only is she an adulterous, it's bad enough to be an adulterous, but she's an adulterous who goes on TV and says, hey, and by the way, I didn't even tell you this, because I went on, after we talked, I went on Facebook to the TV show because I was trying to find the episode where my clip got used and I saw another episode that was promoting the open marriage, they call it, and it's like, hey, is polyamory right for you and, you know, so this is like, they're like evangelizing this junk and then I'm supposed to be like, hey, good on Will Smith for defending his wife, you know, yeah, that's what a real man does when somebody talks smack about his wife. Look folks, if you're looking for a role model, look elsewhere than Hollywood. You know, you're looking for a man who stands up for his wife, it ain't Will Smith, okay? All right, back to our normally scheduled sermon here. But anyway, you know, that was on my mind from seeing it all over the internet everywhere and then I'm reading my Bible in Ezekiel chapter 33 and there it is, you defile everyone, his neighbor's wife, and shall you possess the land? Are you going to be blast America when this is your role model, when you're defiling women that are married women and it's wicked, it's adultery, et cetera. God, as I live, surely they that are in the waste shall fall by the sword and him that is in the open field will I give to the beast to be devoured and they that be in the forts and in the caves shall die of the pestilence for I will lay the land most desolate and the pomp of her strength shall cease. And that's what these award ceremonies are, they're pomp, pomp, roll out the red carpet and pose for the photos in the fancy expensive dresses and look, you don't need to be buying that magazine about all these people, People Magazine. Or magazines probably aren't even a thing anymore. But it's probably like what, a blog now or a TV show or a website or, so where do people go to just follow celebrity gossip right now? Twitter? Yeah, they're following celebrities on Twitter and they're following every twist and turn of their personal lives. You know, let me just say this, this fan culture where you're vicariously trying to live your life through other people. Why don't you live your own life? Why don't you have some of your own achievements and actually have your own relationships and your own friends and your own life instead of trying to vicariously live through others? But it's even worse when you're trying to vicariously live through these really sordid people. You know, if you want to have role models, pick godly Christians, godly men and women that are actually good, decent, normal people. Yeah, but they're not famous, they're not celebrities. Who cares? Celebrities mean nothing to God. God's not a respecter of persons. We shouldn't be a respecter of persons. I wouldn't give you five cents for these celebrities. You know, I wouldn't even walk across the street to, you know, if Jada, Pinko, whatever were over across the street, I wouldn't even walk over and say hi. I wouldn't even rub over there to rub her bald head, okay, to feel all the stubble. I wouldn't even, it's not even, why? I don't give a, oh, it's Will Smith, let's go get our picture taken. It's like, no, I'm not interested. You know, I hang around with real men whose wife is only for them. They're the only one who actually lays with their wife. That's the kind of guys I hang around with, guys who actually have a monopoly on their own wife and don't just allow her to just be the town bike or whatever, okay? But beloved, verse 28, the pomp of her strength shall cease and the mountains of Israel shall be desolate that none shall pass through. Then shall they know that I'm the Lord when I've laid the land most desolate because of all the abominations, of all their abominations which they have committed. So why is he making it desolate? Because of the abominations. So it's stuff like that. It's the polyamory and the open marriage and the adultery and the abortion and the stealing and murder. That's the stuff that brings down God's wrath upon a nation. And so we don't want to support that because look, if we love America, we don't want to see America destroyed, then guess what? We shouldn't be promoting Will Smith because Will Smith is part of the problem. He's not part of the solution. Another reason that I bring this up is because Will Smith is one that probably appeals to a lot of Christians because it's my understanding, I've never listened to his music, but it's my understanding that his music and his movies are relatively clean. And that he's kind of, isn't that kind of his thing, like he's kind of putting out something that's relatively clean because he's not a gangster rapper or whatever. And Brother Segura was telling me, he's my hip hop expert, no I'm just kidding, we needed one on staff to enlighten me on these things, to debrief me on these things. But basically apparently he got an award and he said, I didn't shoot anybody and I didn't talk bad about anybody and still here I am getting this award. So he has sought to have cleaner, because I'm not saying it's clean, I don't know. He doesn't cuss in his music. You know, I'd rather hang around with a guy who cusses whose wife isn't with other dudes. Amen? I mean, I'm just saying like, oh, you don't cuss, great, except you're promoting adultery openly. It's like, dude, get the beam out of your eye. What in the world? His music, it doesn't have the advisory label. He's not cussing in his music, he's relatively clean and wholesome. But here's what it goes to show you, is that even when Hollywood has something wholesome, it's pretty sordid, isn't it? It ends up being dirty stuff underneath the veneer, underneath the facade. And so I just want to make sure that our Christian young people don't get sucked into this. And this is why I'm kind of just constantly ringing this bell in my preaching of just like ripping on celebrities and Hollywood people and musicians, because I just don't want them to get enamored by all the glitz and glam and pomp of that world and start to think, I want to be in that world. You know, maybe I can go into modeling or whatever. Maybe I can go into acting or maybe I can become a pop star. Maybe I can be a dancer on stage. I can be dancing in the next Will Smith video because it will be so clean and whatever. But you know what? Just stay away from that world is what I would advise you and just say, you know what? You don't want to be those people. You don't want to be around those people. Why don't you just live a normal life with people that are down to earth normal people? We don't need to be celebrities ourselves and we don't need to hang around celebrities. You know, why does the world need to glorify us? You know, who cares? You know, I don't need the world to validate me and give me an award and hand me a molten image to tell me that what I'm preaching is correct or that, you know, I'm the best preacher award or, you know, the best soul winner award goes to the McPhails or whatever. But the point is, you know, they win every year. But the point is, you know, I don't need to be validated by the world. And you know what? I'm not going to get excited because the world validated somebody. Oh, well, I mean, yeah, this is our guy. God bless America. Folks, we need to kind of have our own ideas about what success looks like as Christians. And it's not a fancy car. It's not a fancy house. It's not a bald wife in a fancy expensive dress. What it ought to be is, you know, it should be a godly Christian life that's, you know, where we're going to church, where we're reading our Bibles, we're raising our kids in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And you know what success looks like? It looks like getting married and staying married for decades to the same person. You know, and no matter what happens, through thick and thin, you stay with that person. And even if their hair falls out, you stay with them. But it's only you that's with them and not other dudes, okay? You stay with them through thick and thin, for better, for worse, till death do us part. That's what success looks like. Success is staying married for decades. Success is going to church, reading your Bible, loving the Lord. Success is not, oh, you have fancy clothes, you're famous. You're a social media influencer or whatever, okay? That's not success. Success is what God says success is. God says if you have the Word of God in your mouth, God will make your way prosperous and you will have good success, okay? So don't get sucked into what the world considers the successful people, right? We want to make sure that we look at them and, you know, our only attitude should be either to be disgusted by them or to just feel sorry for them or to just think to ourselves, man, you know, I'm glad I'm not them. But we should not look at them and be like, oh, man, it must be so awesome to be Will Smith. It's so awesome to be, oh, man, I just wish I were married to, you know, girls could say like, oh, I just wish I were married to Will Smith. He's such a dream or whatever. Such a dreamboat, all right? He's the biggest loser ever. That's what I think. So the abominations that they committed, that's what gets them judged and then, man, I'm running out of time. There's such a great part at the end here. I almost feel like I need to like save it for another sermon because it's a good part here. But in fact, that's what I'm going to do, because it's just that good, folks. I'm not just going to spend 10 minutes on this, OK? This needs to be an entire sermon, this last part. So let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord. And Lord, thank you for pastors all over America that are preaching on sin, that are getting up and yelling about adultery and drunkenness and fornication and stealing and abortion and murder and everything else, Lord. And we just pray that all of us would not get sucked into this fantasy world of thinking that these Hollywood actors really love each other or that they love anyone other than themselves. Lord, help us to love and follow the faithful of the land and not to be beguiled by Satan into thinking that these Hollywood actors or musicians are actually living the greatest life, Lord, because we as Christians, we're actually living the greatest life if we're just saved and following you, Lord. And so thank you for all the blessings that you've given our church over the years, Lord. And thank you for the blessings in our personal lives. Give us safety as we go our separate ways tonight. And in Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.