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

Men, in Malachi chapter number two, we have some very hard preaching against false religion. God hates false religion. And some of the worst false religion is false religion that's done in the name of the Lord because obviously you've got religions out there like Buddhism and Hinduism that are just way out there and are not going to be confused with the actual worship of the Lord. But then you have apostate, twisted, corrupt, perverse forms of Christianity like Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, right, also known as the Mormons, the Jehovah's false witnesses, and all of these things. And let me tell you something, it's not that, well, they're kind of sort of halfway Christian and they're in the ballpark. No, God hates false religion. He hates the twisting of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He hates those who do wickedly and preach wicked things in his name. Now, the Bible says in verse one here of chapter two, and now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you because he's already been preaching hard in chapter one about the Israelites. And then he said, okay, now I'm talking to you now, the priests, the religious leaders of the nation. He says in verse two, if you will not hear and if you will not lay it to heart to give glory unto my name, saith the Lord of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you and I will curse your blessings, yet I have cursed them already because you do not lay it to heart. He's saying, look, if you are not going to follow my word, if you're not going to listen to what I am telling you to do, then I'm going to curse you. And he says, I'm going to curse your blessings. What does he mean by that? These false religious leaders, these priests, they're giving out blessings to the people. You know, it'd be sort of like if you went to the Roman Catholic Church and they bless your car by throwing a bunch of holy water at it or something or they bless your marriage or they bless your baby or whatever they do. I just saw in the news in the last few weeks, the big news was that the Pope has now allowed the blessing of faggot couples. As long as it's not made to seem like a marriage. You know, what kind of pharisaical garbage, like some kind of a technicality or something like, well, we'll go ahead and bless your faggot union, but just so long as, you know, we don't call it marriage. Well, you know, it doesn't matter what you call it. God calls it abomination. God calls it vile affection. Okay. God says that it's disgusting and wicked. And so, you know, the Pope is going to bless sodomites. Well here's the thing, God's going to curse those blessings. So actually if you went down to some false religion, if you went down to the Mormon temple and you got sealed to your wife or sealed to your husband in the Mormon temple, God's going to curse that blessing. He said, I've already cursed it because you're not actually listening to what the word of God says, your false religion. He says in verse number three, behold, I will corrupt your seed and spread dung upon your faces. Now, it's funny when people think that I preach too hard or that my friends preach too hard because there is so much in the Bible that's harder preaching than we typically do on a Sunday or Wednesday at church. I mean, he's basically saying here, I'm going to spread dung upon your faces. Now what does that mean, spread? Well if you think about the word spread, you know, you can think about like spreading butter on toast or something, right? Or you could think about, and here's what I, when I think about this verse right here, I think about somebody like getting ready for like a football game or getting ready to go to war or something and they like do that little thing where they kind of spread those dark lines under their eyes, I guess. What is the point of that? The sun doesn't get in their eyes or something? What's that? Yeah, camouflage, whatever. You know, it's basically, I could just picture basically just dung being taken. What are dung, feces, poop, crap, and he's basically saying, I'm going to spread that in your face, like smearing it on their faces. Now that's a pretty graphic picture. That's pretty strong language and you know, when I read this chapter, I can just feel the wrath. I can just feel the anger toward false religion that the Lord is giving here and that he's using Malachi to preach. You can feel God's anger and wrath and hatred for false religion when he says, I am going to spread dung upon your faces. Where am I going to get this dung? You might ask. What kind of dung is it going to be? What, you know, what, what creature will it emanate from? But it basically says it's the dung of your solemn feasts. He's saying your solemn feasts, your church service, your holiday, your rituals, your religious dog and pony show is dung and I'm going to spread that dung in your face. I mean that's a pretty hard preaching against false religion. So am I supposed to believe in 2024 that I should go soft on false religion and be nice and just kind of emphasize the things that we have in common and just get up behind the pulpit and handle the Roman Catholic Church or the Mormon Church with kid gloves? You know, if I'm going to fall in the footsteps of the biblical prophets of old, I should preach hard against false religion because it's offensive in the sight of God. You know, can you imagine having dung spread upon your face, how that would offend your nostrils? Just how gross that would smell and just how unsanitary that would be, disgusting. And look, I've stepped in dog do before, you know, I've accidentally gotten dung on my fingers before, you know, but I've never had dung actually shoved in my face, you know, so far. Hopefully, I can go all the way to the grave without ever experiencing this, but it's a pretty serious curse that God's putting on them. And he says, your solemn feasts are dung, and I'm going to spread it on your faces. And then he says, at the end of verse three, and one shall take you away with it. And the way I interpret that last phrase, one shall take you away with it, is just as dung is wiped away and flushed down the toilet, he said, that's what I'm going to do to you. I'm basically going to wipe you out and flush you down the toilet. Okay, obviously, they didn't have toilets back then, but still, I think that the same principle applies. This is some pretty strong language toward false religion. God hates it. We should preach hard against it like Malachi did. The Bible says in verse four, ye shall know that I have sent this commandment unto you, that my covenant might be with Levi, saith the Lord of hosts. My covenant was with him of life and peace, and I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared me, and was afraid before my name. So right religion starts with the fear of God, right? We should fear the Lord God, and the Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of understanding. By the fear of the Lord, men depart from evil, right? The fear of the Lord is above to the wise to depart from hell beneath. And what that fear of the Lord does for me as a preacher is that I'm afraid to get up and preach things that aren't true. I'm afraid to skip things in the Bible that I know are true, that I know need to be preached. You know, I'd be afraid to water down the message, censor it, skip things, twist things, sugar coat it, soften things up, adapt things to our current culture. No, I fear God, and so I would be scared to death to get up and abuse the position of pastoring by just getting up and preaching what I think and not preaching what the Bible says, okay? And so the fear of God is where it should start from the pulpit and also in the pew the fear of God. You know, you should fear God. You should actually care what the Bible really says because you want to please God and you don't want to mess things up. And so the Bible says that he was blessed because of the fear wherewith he feared God and was afraid before God's name. It says in verse 6, the law of truth was in his mouth and iniquity was not found in his lips. He walked with me in peace and equity and did turn many away from iniquity. And so first of all, he's speaking the word of God, the law of truth is in his mouth. The Bible, when you use the word law, obviously there is a certain part of the Bible that really is a law book. Like when we're reading through the second half of Exodus, reading books like Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, those are law books. But in fact, the Bible will use the term law more expansively just to talk about the word of God in general or the Old Testament in general. It's all kind of referred to as the law of God in general. Even if you're reading in Genesis and it's really more of a Bible story than a law code, it still could be called the law of God, right? And even later books in the Old Testament, when we're reading through books like Joshua and Judges and Ruth, I mean, all of it could collectively be referred to as God's law in general. Okay. And so the Bible is saying here, the law of truth was in his mouth. You see, the priest is supposed to be the messenger of the Lord of hosts that is speaking God's word. The Bible tells us, preach the word, be instant in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine. And as a result of actually speaking the word of God and not only talking the talk, but also walking the walk because he not only had the law of truth in his mouth and iniquity not found in his lips, but he also in verse six there says, he walked with me in peace and equity. So he talked the talk, he walked the walk, and as a result, he did turn many away from iniquity. We need preachers and churches that not only walk the walk and talk the talk, but that also preach hard against sin in order to turn people away from iniquity. Okay. So that the result of going to church, the result of becoming a Christian should be that you're getting sin out of your life and living a cleaner, more godly, more righteous life. Okay. We should be as a church growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and part of that is that we're turning away from iniquity. We don't want the church to be a den of iniquity, right? We don't want it to be a place where fornication abounds and people are constantly stealing and ripping people off and it's a place where abortions are condoned and where divorce is rampant and adultery is rampant and drunkenness is rampant, right? It's the job of faithful preaching to turn people away from iniquity. We need more preaching against sin. You know, I talked to a lot of people across this country just in my capacity as a pastor. I've got all kinds of friends and family and people all over this nation that I talked to and obviously, you know, I'm interested in these things as a pastor. You know what's going on in other churches, what's going on in the Bible colleges and seminaries of America and so forth and one thing I've noticed is that when I talk to people who go to various Baptist churches across America, independent fundamental Baptist churches or that attend various Bible colleges is that it seems like there's not as much preaching on sin as there used to be. There's just a lot less preaching on sin and this kind of surprises me because I can understand why some of the things that I preach or that my friends preach, you know, could be considered a little bit radical and maybe, you know, everybody doesn't want to go down that road and maybe people don't necessarily agree with everything that we preach. Like, I get that. But what's funny is that there are so many sinful practices that all Christians agree are wrong, that we would all agree are wrong and yet you find that in the average Baptist church or Baptist college across America, there's just not a lot of preaching against these things. That shouldn't even really be controversial, that aren't really controversial, that aren't really going to offend people. So why don't they preach against sin? You know, I was talking to somebody who attends a Baptist Bible college. Actually I don't think it's Baptist. It's technically non-denominational but it's kind of, you know, filled with Baptist faculty and staff and students and so forth and I was talking to him about the chapel sermons that he hears on a daily basis and he was telling me about, you know, kind of the good things about the sermons that he hears and, you know, some of the deficiencies that are there and I was asking him, you know, do you hear preaching on this? Do you hear preaching on this? And I was just kind of talking to him about the preaching that he hears and I started listing sins. I said, you know, uh, do they preach against fornication? You know, are you hearing a lot of preaching in your Bible college against fornication? No, not really. You know, abortion, no, not really. You know, drunkenness, no, you know, and he was talking about how they were doing some really in-depth word studies on, uh, you know, the, the Hebrew word for God's loving kindness and things like that, but it just seems like there's not a lot of hard preaching against sin and I'm thinking to myself, if anybody needs to hear hard preaching on sin, it's 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 year olds, right? I mean it's a college. Why would you not be getting up and breathing fire about fornication? I mean, how many passages in the New Testament are constantly hammering on the sin of fornication and is there really any fundamentalist Christian in America who is offended by preaching against fornication or, or thinks that that's too radical or doesn't agree with that? Hey, all Christians virtually agreed that fornication is wrong. Okay. That's not controversial. That's not radical. That's not pastor Anderson getting up and expounding Romans one and, and breathing fire. You know, it's, it's basically the most just rudimentary kind of preaching against sin you can imagine, but it's just not happening. You say, well, pastor Anderson, we, it's cause we already all know that that fornication is wrong, but here's the thing. It's one thing to know that fornication is wrong. It's another thing to constantly hear hard preaching against fornication. You know, that's what's going to keep you pure, not just, oh yeah, check a box. I know fornication is wrong. Never hear about it at church for the next three years. That's not what we need. My friend, we need to constantly have our pure minds stirred up by way of remembrance. The apostle Paul said to write the same things unto you for me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe. It's safe for you to hear these things over and over again. It's not grievous for me to repeat these things. And look, I grew up hearing a lot of hard preaching against fornication and that's why as a teenager I was scared to death to commit fornication. And so I didn't commit fornication because I was afraid that God would punish me because God killed 23,000 people in one day because of fornication. But you're not hearing about that in the average Bible college. You're not hearing about that in the average Baptist church. You're just hearing, uh, deep Bible studies on, uh, you know, the unconditional agape love of God or something. And look, I'm all for preaching on the love of God, but we need to preach all the counsel of God. We need, and by the way, God's love is not unconditional. That's a fraud anyway, because guess what? There's certain people whom God hateth. Okay, why? Because he told people in Hosea nine 11 I will love you no more. Doesn't sound unconditional to me. Now I do believe that God's love for the saved is unconditional because the Bible says what can separate us from the love of God, right? Nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So God's love for the saved is unconditional, but the unsaved, if they persist in rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ, will ultimately wind up in a not so loving place called hell where they will burn eternally and they will then not be experiencing the love of God. They'll be experiencing the unadulterated wrath of God poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation. And so we need hard preaching against fornication. We need hard preaching against drunkenness. We need hard preaching against drugs. I mean, please don't tell me that the watered down liberal Baptists of America or Evangelicals of America now think it's okay to smoke pot or snort cocaine or go out and get drunk and do binge drinking or fornicate or have sex before they're married. I'm assuming that we all still agree that these things are wrong. So get up and say that it's wrong. Get up and preach about it and turn people away from iniquity. It's the job to preach these things. It's filled in the Bible cover to cover with preaching against these things, especially in the New Testament, especially the Epistles of Paul, just hammering on these things. All of the sins that the uncleanness, the drunkenness, the adultery, the covetousness, the love of money. We need to be preaching against these things and we need to constantly be reminded of these things. You know, I try to say something about fornication in my sermons and preach hard against fornication in my sermons about once a month because I feel like that's what teenagers and young adults need to hear. Once a month. I mean, can we spend five minutes once a month just letting them know, hey, God wants you to remain pure in the midst of a wicked and adulterous generation. God wants us to be pure and God's will is that you be a virgin on your wedding day, whether you're male or female, you say, well, I don't like cows for women. No, because the Bible says of the 144,000 in revelation, which are men, these are they which were not the father of women for they are virgins. So the Bible doesn't just use the word virgin about a woman, use the word virgin about a man too. This is one thing I hate about the German language. I'm sorry. The German word for virgin is Jungfrau, like it has frown it like, like as a dude, I can see why I wouldn't want to be a Jungfrau. Do they literally use that about dudes? Yeah. What? That's why they're so screwed up over there. God bless America. What kind of stupid word is that? Sorry, but it's true. Virgin is a great word because a man can be a virgin, right? A woman can be a virgin. It's God's will that we be a virgin when we get married. You know, you're going to have your entire life to enjoy that physical relationship, but you need to wait until you get married. And so, you know, then you can enjoy it for as long as you want till death do you part. But this attitude that says that, you know, well, uh, everybody's doing it. No, they're not. Everybody's not doing it. There are all kinds of young people that are going to the marriage altar pure and you need to be one of them. That's what God's will is, is what God has commanded. Why are Bible colleges not ringing that bell all the time? How come I ask a Bible college, Hey, you just spent a year at, at a, at a top Bible college. Did you hear any preaching? It's fornication. No, I don't remember that ever coming up in a sermon. What the, I mean, come on, what are we doing here? People? It's our job to turn many away from iniquity. It says in verse seven for the priest, the priest's lips should keep knowledge and they should seek the law at his mouth for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. He's to preach the word of God. And so here's what I should emphasize as a preacher, what the Bible emphasizes. Okay. So if there's a whole bunch of scripture on justification by faith, salvation by faith in Jesus, and I should emphasize that if hell is mentioned repeatedly in the New Testament, I should be mentioning hell in my preaching, right? If, if, if the Bible is really ringing that bell of fornication and adultery being sinful in the New Testament, throughout the epistles, obviously Christ preached about it multiple times. Then, you know, I should be doing the same thing when I think about what I'm going to preach. I go to the word of God and I think about what does God talk a lot about? That's what I want to talk a lot about. And what does God talk about a little bit? That's what I'm just going to, you know, talk about sparingly. Now obviously there are certain things that the Bible only talks about a little bit that might become like a really big issue in our society and might need to be dealt with in the time that we live. But in general, I think a good rule of thumb is that I base my preaching on the Bible and that I preach the word and that people, when they come to church, what are they looking for? The Bible says verse seven, they're seeking the law of God at his mouth, right? They want to hear what does the Bible say? What does God want us to know as a church? And he's the messenger of the Lord of hosts, right? It's his job to just give the Lord's message, not his own agenda. But he says to these false priests, he says in verse eight, but ye are departed out of the way. You've caused many to stumble at the law. You've corrupted the covenant of Levi, sayeth the Lord of hosts. Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people according as you have not kept my ways but have been partial in the law. And so those who exalt themselves will be a base. Those who humble themselves will be exalted. And God is saying because these priests have taken it upon themselves to preach their own agenda, to preach what makes them happy or what they've dreamed up out of their own heart. They've exalted themselves in a place where they are now the authority. Well God says, I'm going to make you base and contemptible on the side of all the people. I'm going to bring you down a notch. I'm going to humiliate you. And so he says, I've also made you contemptible and base, it says in verse nine, before all the people, not based, base before all the people according as you have not kept my ways but have been partial in the law. Have we not all one father? Had not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother by profaning the covenant of our fathers? Now this is a verse that is somewhat misunderstood because this verse is not saying that every person on this planet is a child of God. That is not what this verse is saying. How do I know that? Because the Bible says in John 1 12, but as many as received him, talking about receiving Jesus, to them gave he power to become the sons of God. Even them that believe in his name. You can't become a son of God unless you were not previously a son of God and now you are. That's what it means to become something, right? To become a son of God. Also the Bible says, but ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3 20. What is the mechanism by which we become the sons of God? It's faith in Christ Jesus. What is this verse actually saying? Have we not all one father? That father is not talking about God, that's talking about Jacob, that's talking about Israel because they're Israelites and he's talking about the fact that they are doing treacherously against their brothers. Do you see that? So it's saying, have we not all one father? He's saying, hey look, aren't we all descended from Israel? We're Israelites, okay? And even if, you could even say that even if they're not physically every single one of them an Israelite, if they were a proselyte who moved into the area or whatever, then you know, still spiritually he's their father. But when it says have we not all one father, he's not saying, hey, saved and unsaved people all have the same father, God, no, because that contradicts other scripture. So it would make a lot more sense that he's just referring to the fact, hey, we're all brethren here, we're all Israelites, and what's the context say? Have we not all one father? Had not one God created us, why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother? So again, that's why I think it's more of an ethnic thing of, hey, we all have one father. Okay, now the Bible also says, hath not one God created us? You see, obviously every single human being is created by God and is in the image of God and therefore in general we should respect our fellow man because he is made in the image of God. Red, yellow, black, and white, he is made in the image of God and so we should not disrespect our fellow man who is made in God's image, right? The Bible says, you know, out of the same mouth perceives blessing and cursing because he says we bless God with our mouth and then we turn around and curse men who are made after the similitude of God. So we should have a respect for people as being a creation of God. But again, it's a logical leap to put those two statements together and say, oh, uh, we have one father because God created us ergo, we're all God's children. You know, God created animals too. They're not God's children. God created trees and rocks and stars and the moon. The moon is not a son of God. Okay, so just saying, well, being created by God makes you automatically a child of God. Well, frankly, that's just not what the Bible teaches because the Bible clearly says you become a son of God by believing in Jesus. We're all children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. Oh, just kidding. We were already children of God because we were spirit babies up in the Mormon heaven star based collab and you know, we got sent down to earth. No, we're not all God's children. You become a child of God by believing in Jesus. God's not going to send any of his children to hell. That's the good news. The bad news is most people aren't God's children because you have to believe in Jesus to become a child of God. That's what the Bible says. So don't let anybody twist this verse to you. Have we not all one father hath not one God created us? Those are two separate statements. They have to be because of what we see elsewhere in scripture. Why do we deal? Those are just two reasons not to deal treacherously against your brother, not to mistreat your fellow man. Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother by profaning the covenant of our fathers? And again, when he says, have we not all one father, you could even say that that's Adam or you could say that that's Noah. You know, whatever you want to do with that, but you can't say, well, we're all God's children because it frankly isn't true. Verse number 11, Judah had dealt treacherously and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem for Judah hath profaned the holiness of the Lord, which he loved and has married the daughter of a strange God. The Lord will cut off the man that do with this, the master and the scholar out of the tabernacles of Jacob and him that offers an offering unto the Lord of hosts. You know, beware of the master and the scholar who is worshiping a strange God who is not following the God of the Bible, who is not following the word of God. We in our society really lift up and exalt the masters and scholars of this world, right? You know, we think of the master's degree, right? That's given out, the master of divinity, master of theology. And obviously when we hear the word master also, you could think of like a Kung Fu master or something, right? So this is somebody who is an expert at something and teaches it to other people, right? And then the scholar is someone who is a student or someone who spends a lot of time studying and learning and being educated. And these things are not bad in and of themselves. It's not bad to be a highly educated person, to be a scholar or something like that. But you know, the problem is that in our society we will sometimes put these people on a pedestal and think that because they have a lot of education that they must be speaking the truth. And just because someone is extremely smart or extremely educated, well guess what? That doesn't mean they're telling you the truth because couldn't someone be really smart and really educated and then just lie to you and just tell you things that aren't true and claim, oh man, I've studied and I went back to the Hebrew and it turns out it says something totally different than what the King James says. Well, you know what? Maybe they're just lying to you. In fact, maybe they go in their basement and worship Satan for all you know. Do you think that anybody worships Satan in this world? No, nobody would ever worship Satan. Yes, they do. There are some evil, wicked people out there. And not only that, even besides those who worship Satan, there's a whole other group that's just worshiping the almighty dollar. And they teach things which they ought not for filthy lucre's sake because it gets them paid because they get the grant money, they get the patronage of people who give them money to give them the conclusions that they want. And so just because someone is a scholar or a master in a certain subject, it doesn't mean that what they're saying is necessarily true. It might be true and maybe we could learn something good from them, but it all needs to be checked with the word of God because many scholars and masters of this world are not faithful to the Bible and they're going after a strange God. God will cut them off. Just because they're smart doesn't make them righteous. And in fact, what you'll find is that of people who are truly actually serving God, men of God who are actually preaching and doing the will of God. You know what the Bible says, look at your calling brother. It's not many noble. It's not many that are wise according to this world. It's not many who are mighty. God doesn't just go around using the really good looking, really high IQ, really physically strong and super well educated people. That's not who God typically uses. Why? Sometimes those people are filled with pride and they can't really be greatly used by God. And also God specifically delights in using people who are weak and who are not as smart according to the world's standards or good looking or charismatic according to the world's standards because then he gets all the glory for the work that's done and it doesn't become a cult of personality necessarily around just that person. You know, God has used some pretty unlikely people to do some pretty amazing things throughout history and God can use you too. You know, and that gives all of us hope that are just, you know, maybe we're not super smart or super talented or super good looking, but you know what? God can use us if we will submit to his will and do what he wants us to do. We could be greatly used by God and that should be encouraging to think, Hey, I don't have to be some special person, some superstar. I don't have to be headed for the Olympics or something like that in order to be greatly used by God. And here's the thing about that. If you look at the disciples that Christ chose, obviously they're special people because they turned the world upside down with the gospel. But what kind of people were they? I mean, they were fishermen. They were just average blue collar kind of guys. They weren't coming primarily from scholarly groups of scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees and these ultra religious, ultra educated, uh, types or even nobility. You know, you don't see them necessarily coming from the royal family or something or famous, well known families. I mean, who are these people? You know, the sons of Zebedee, the guy is a fisherman. You know, it's not like some impressive pedigree from royalty or something like that because God typically uses normal people and not often does he use these masters and scholars of this world and we don't want to get an attitude that every, uh, every intelligent person, you know, is off the table as being a great man of God or every good looking person or every mighty man. But just in general, the truth of the matter is that God uses humble, ordinary people to do the most work, just the way it is. Now there are exceptions to that, okay, but in general, that's true. And so some people would maybe even look down upon the, uh, independent fundamental Baptist movement and think, oh, you know, you know, the pastors and the independent fundamental Baptist movement aren't necessarily as scholarly as, you know, over here in this other denomination or whatever. But at the end of the day, you know, who's telling the truth? I mean, who's preaching the Bible? And I do think we should all be as smart as we can. We should all learn as much as we can. I'm definitely not anti-intellectual in any way, shape or form. You know, I'm a strong believer in what the book of Proverbs is teaching, continually learning, continually gaining knowledge, and I think we should all as men of God be studying to show ourselves approved. But at the end of the day, I would rather listen to a simple, humble man preach what the Bible actually says in the power of the Holy Spirit than to listen to some scholarly intellectual tell me that the Bible doesn't really say what it's always said all these years. And, you know, we have all these new groundbreaking interpretations now that we've, uh, you know, uncovered new Hebrew documents in the deserts of Israel. You know, it turns out that the Bible doesn't even start out, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, it turns out. Can you imagine that? Because it actually begins, when God began to create the heaven and the earth, the earth was without, folks, this is garbage, folks, it is always said in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, period. It's always said that, okay? All the Bible translations out there throughout history, in other languages, they've always said something like that, right? You know, en el principio, I'm doing this, I'm kind of making this up as I go, so hopefully I'm getting this right, en el principio creo dios el cielo y la tierra, how am I doing? You know, close enough, right? You're mad at me about Jungfrau, okay. But the point is, though, you know, it doesn't matter, you know, which language we look at, you know, throughout history, that's the traditional text of scripture, that's what spirit-filled Christians have been believing and preaching all this time, then a bunch of bozo scholars come along and try to tell us, hey, that's not really what that is. You know, because we're going to move the vowel pointings around and we're going to change everything, get rid of the traditional reading and just read it a whole fresh new way. See, here's the thing about scholars is that scholars, they really make a name for themselves with new discoveries. And the problem with that in biblical scholarship is that instead of becoming purveyors of truth, they're often just kind of looking for some new thing. And so the exotic readings are what's going to sell. It's just not that interesting to get up and say, hey, that just means in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, that's what it's always meant, that's what it's always translated as, hey, nothing to see here, folks. It's like, when God began to create the heaven and the earth, ooh, the earth was without form and void. And here's where they're going with this. They're basically trying to say, well, you know, when God began to create the heaven and the earth, the earth was without form and void, meaning that God's not creating the heaven and the earth ex nihilo, from nothing, but that he's starting with an already preexisting earth, and when he goes to create it, it's without form and void. No, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth from nothing. God created the heaven and the earth. They didn't exist, and then he created them, and then they existed. I mean, that's a pretty basic verse, right? But look, Genesis 1, 1 isn't the only verse that's up for grabs. You know, the whole rest of the Old Testament's up for grabs. The whole New Testament's up for grabs, because you've got all of these so-called scholars and masters going back and just rethinking everything, even though the Holy Spirit has been using his word for centuries, and we've all known what the Bible says. We have all these traditional translations. We have the received text of Scripture, the preserved word that God has preserved, and it's been providentially kept pure in all ages. But yet now, all of a sudden, we got to just go back to the drawing board, and in fact, even the name of God, I promised myself I wouldn't keep bringing this up, even the name of God is up for grabs. We've got a brand new name of God, Yahweh. Don't even get me started. I got to go back to the text before I go off on that nonsense. Verse number 12, the Lord will cut off the man that doeth this, the master and the scholar out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and him that offereth an offering unto the Lord of hosts. And this have ye done again, covering the altar of the Lord with tears, and with weeping, and with crying out, insomuch that he regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth it with good will at your hand. Yet ye say, wherefore, why? Because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously. Yet is she thy companion and the wife of thy covenant. Now what does this word treacherously mean, you know, treachery? It's kind of related to the word treason, and it's this idea of, you know, I guess dealing in bad faith, right, and just, you know, breaking the covenant, as it were. And this could be breaking the covenant between God and Israel, or it could be breaking the covenant of a man with his wife in marriage. And so earlier he talks about how these men of Judah, at the end of verse 11, he said Judah hath profaned the holiness of the Lord which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange God. And then he starts talking to them about the fact that they have dealt treacherously against the wives of their youth. Now obviously there's a kind of corporate Israel idea of committing adultery against the Lord, dealing treacherously against God, but then there's also the individuals who are actually literally divorcing their spouses. Like the Bible says at the end of verse 15, just to prove that that's the case, it says at the end of verse 15, therefore take heed to your spirit and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth. So we're saying let nobody deal treacherously against the wife of his youth, saying, you know, across the board, don't let any dudes be breaking that covenant of marriage that they've made with their wife. So with that in mind, let's back up and look at this. He says because the Lord, verse 14, hath been witnessed between thee and the wife of thy youth against whom thou has dealt treacherously, yet is she thy companion and the wife of thy covenant. You know, when I hear the Bible talk about the wife of your youth, here are a few things that come to mind because that's a phrase that comes up a lot, comes up in Proverbs, it comes up here, this idea of the wife of your youth. The first thing that always pops into my mind whenever I hear that is the fact that it's normal to get married when you're young. You know, we shouldn't be telling young people, hey, you got to wait till you're much older to get married. No, we should normalize getting married young. And I'm not talking about these bunch of weirdos trying to marry girls that aren't even fully grown yet. Okay. You say, well, when is a girl old enough to get married? You know, and sometimes you'll hear them say, well, it's the first menstruation. Yeah, but if she eats enough Tyson chicken, you know, she's, that might be 10 years old. You pervert, listen, Mohammed, she needs to pass the flower of her age. The Bible says, and you know what that means? Pass the flower. It's the flower of her age is talking about full maturity. She needs to be passed that meaning fully grown, fully developed. Now, now here's the thing. What age is that? Well, here's the thing. Men are typically fully developed later than women. You know, men are fully developed when they're what, like 18 typically stop growing when you're 18. I mean, some people might continue to grow into their 19th year or something, but in general, you know, men grow till they're about 18. You know, girls grow until they're probably about what, 15, 16 years old or something. Right. Yeah. Girls that are younger than that, they're still growing. They're not old enough to get married. Warren Jeffs, they're not old enough to get married. Mohammed, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young. Okay. It's perversion. Okay. When a woman is fully grown, she's old enough to get married. Okay. And in our society, the law says that, uh, that women need to be, you know, 18 to get married without their parents consent. I think 16 with a parent's consent. Right. Why are those laws in place? Because we're not a bunch of Muslim perverts here. That's why. Because we don't follow a pedophile religion and those laws are in place to protect young ladies so that they're not these child brides at age 12 and 13 or even younger than that. Okay. So when the Bible says the wife of your youth, he's talking about young people getting married. We're not talking about people who are not adults. We're just talking about young adults. You know, people that are fully grown, fully developed and that are old enough physically to get married. Think about the stupidity of a child bride. How is she, you know, guess what the product of marriage is? Children. Well, you know, how, if she's not old enough to have a baby, then she's not old enough to get married. Right. I mean, if she's not fully grown, is that going to be a healthy pregnancy? If she's not even fully grown? No. And so the child, the first thing I think of when I hear the wife of your youth is that, Hey, getting married young is okay. You know, we shouldn't teach young people, Hey, you should wait until you're 30 to get married or something. No. You know, I, I got married when I was 19 years old, past three minutes, got married when he was 18 years old. And I'm not saying that everybody has to get married that young. Obviously that's on the younger side, but you know what? I think in general, getting married young is a virtue, right? Uh, rather than just being out there floating around through this world, getting into trouble, it really did a lot for me spiritually, uh, to get married young. It made me grow up and mature cause I had to, right. Cause I mean, I'm, I'm married now. I got to, you know, uh, shortly thereafter I had a kid on the way and so now I have responsibilities, you know, and I think that's great to grow up and be a man and not just be a child forever. You know, you're just going to be a teenager all through your twenties. You know, you're, you're just, you're 27 years old and you're just, uh, living the life of a teenager. Your life's just about video games and playing online and goofing off and whatever. Now at some point it's time to grow up and live life and be a man. But the second thing that I always think of when I hear this term of the wife of your youth is that I think of celebrities, how before they're famous, they have the wife of their youth. Then they become this big shot celebrity and you know what they often do? Now they trade up because now they're super celebrities so they could just marry whatever the supermodel or whatever. You know, they, they just feel like, well, I can do better now because I'm super famous now or something. It's wicked. They need to be faithful to the wife of their youth and you'll see some celebrities will stay with that original, just normal wife. And then the other ones that will be like, see ya. And then they go off after these whores of Hollywood or whatever and get divorced five times. So that's what I think of when I hear the wife of your youth is that number one, you get married at a young age if possible. Now look, obviously you don't marry the first girl who comes along. You know, you got to find the right person, but once you find the right person, there's no reason not to get married young. It's a virtue. Okay. You get married young. And then no matter where life takes you, no matter how much you change or no matter how much your spouse change, you stay with your original spouse because it's till death us do part. You don't deal treacherously against the wife of your covenant, right? What does the Bible say at the end of verse 14? She is thy companion and the wife of thy covenant. So don't deal treacherously. Verse 15 and did he not make one yet had he the residue of the spirit and wherefore one, why one that he might seek a godly seed, therefore take heed to your spirit and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth. We need to stay married and if we want to have a godly seed, as it says there in verse 15, we need to remain one family unit. God is joined together. Let not man put asunder and you say, well, you don't understand, you know, how, how toxic my marriage is, right? Deal with it. Deal with it. Oh, you just don't understand how bad it is. Well, you know, how bad was it for Jesus when he was hanging on the cross? How bad was it for Jesus when he was being beaten and whipped and flogged and nailed to the cross and he bear in his own body our sins on the tree and he tells you to stay married, so do it. We all have our own cross to bear. Hopefully your marriage isn't your cross to bear, but if it is, bear it. Hopefully your marriage is a joy. Hopefully it's a source of pleasure and enjoyment in your life, but if it's your cross to bear, then bear it and don't deal treacherously against the wife of your youth and you know what? Your kids are better off if you stay married. You know, you're this garbage out in the world of, oh, you know, if the parents are continually fighting, you know, it's better for the children if you get divorced, you know, and oh, they're going to be happy. It's garbage. It's better for children to grow up with their biological parents still married one nuclear family unit. That is the best case scenario for children growing up. Even if your parents are fight, you know, you'd rather have parents that are a little bit angry at each other or fighting than some weirdo step parent coming in that turns out to be a creep. I don't care if you like that or not. That's the truth. Look at the statistics. You're more likely, what, what, which kids do you think are more likely to get victimized? I'm not saying that every step parent is bad. Obviously there could be nice step parents, but let me ask you this, which kids more likely to get victimized? The one who's growing up in a home with their biological parents or the one where strangers are brought in? Hmm. I wonder which one is going to have the most likely good outcome. I don't care if this offends you or not, okay? I am going to get up and I'm going to preach marriage for life and raising children with the parents staying married because God hates divorce. So don't get divorced. If you're under the sound of my voice right now and you're married, stay married. So you're just, you know, beating up on me cause I got divorced. I don't care about your path. I don't care if you've been divorced 50 times. I just want you to stay married to the person that you're married to right now. Okay? And don't ever buy into this garbage. Oh, I swear it's for the children that I'm getting divorced. Your children are better off with you staying married. So stay married that he might seek a godly seed. Verse 15, therefore take heed to your spirit and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth for the Lord, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away. And putting away is divorce, right? Putting away your wife is synonymous with divorcing your wife. God hates it. God hates false religion. God hates divorce. And what does this have to do with false religion? Well apparently the same people who are dealing treacherously against the Lord and not being faithful to the law of God and the word of God are apparently the same people that are divorcing their wives, being unfaithful to their wives, committing adultery, whatever. The spiritual adultery and the literal adultery seem to be going hand in hand apparently in this society. And that's why the Bible says ye adulterers and adulteresses know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God. Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy with God. There's a spiritual adultery of cheating on God, as it were, and then there's a literal adultery of cheating on your spouse or of divorcing your spouse. And so the Bible says don't do it. God hates putting away. For one covereth violence with the garment, saith the Lord of hosts. Therefore take heed to your spirit that ye deal not treacherously. You've wearied the Lord with your words, yet ye say, where if we wearied him? When you say everyone that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord and he delighteth in them, well where is the God of judgment? Look, we don't want to condemn the innocent, but it also angers God and wearies God when we declare evil people to be good. If some Baptist pastor gets up or some Evangelical pastor gets up and says, you know, I think the Pope is a pretty good man, that should anger us because that angers the Lord. The Pope is the vicar of hell. The Pope is an antichrist. And yet I've literally been to a Baptist church where the Sunday school teacher got up and said in my parent's class that, you know, many of the Popes throughout history have been saved Christians and that Pope John Paul the second was, was saved. That's what we, in a, in a Baptist church, in a, in a fairly conservative Baptist church, they're saying that Pope John Paul the second said, Hey, Pope John Paul the second is burning in the lowest hell right now, bro is rotting in hell. It's not a good man. And you say, well, I'm just trying to be nice. And just, I'm just like, I'm just saying nice things about people. Just, Hey, you know, John Paul the second, he really did some good things and you know, mother Teresa really did some good things and you know, good old Gandhi and good old Marxist Lucifer King. Hey, when you praise the wicked, that is an abomination to God. You say, well, how do I know if people are wicked? Here's a clue. Woe unto you when all men speak well of you for so did their fathers under the false prophets. When this evil and adulterous generation is lifting someone up and saying that they're wonderful and just ever, I mean, look, there's a lot we disagree on folks, but we can all agree that Billy Graham was a great man of God, can't we? I mean, we can all agree on Martin Luther King Jr. Right? I mean, I mean, you know, he was just such a great man. I mean, you know, we can all get behind him. Look, when the whole world is exalting somebody, that's a red flag you can do, and then you can spend about five minutes researching Martin Luther King Jr. If you want to figure out that Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist pastor. That's why he's the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr is a Baptist pastor. Here's what I don't like in a Baptist pastor. I don't like Baptist pastors who deny the virgin birth of Christ. I don't know any. I've never met one in my entire life. I've never met in my entire life of pretty much eating, breathing and sleeping Christianity and ministry for decades. I've never met a Baptist pastor that denied the virgin birth. I've never met a Baptist pastor who denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus. But that's because I never met Martin Luther King Jr. Because what year was he killed? I was born in 1981. So you know, I never met him. But if I did meet him, I would have met a Baptist pastor who denied the virgin birth and who denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus. How are you even a pastor? How are you even a Christian? What could be more basic to our faith than the fact that Jesus is the Son of God? And that he bodily rose again from the dead. I mean, these are the most foundational truths. Like if somebody just said, write Christianity on a postage stamp for me, it'd be like Jesus is the son of God. He died on the cross and rose again. Right. And then you're starting to run out of room at that point. But I mean, those would be the key things if you wanted to write Christianity on the back of the postage stamp. He doesn't believe in it. He's in hell. You say, well, you know, why bring that up? I mean, it's more about the good things that he did, folks. False prophets are, according to the Bible, if you believe the Bible, false prophets are the lowest of the low. They're the worst people in the world. So just the fact that he's a Baptist pastor who denies the bodily resurrection of Christ and the virgin birth. And look, it's not hard to do it. You can go on university websites, you know, these trusted websites that end in dot edu and dot gov, trusted sources of information, and they will have his own writings where he denies the bodily resurrection and the virgin birth and so forth. And look, these people, according to the Bible, are the most rotten lowest of the low. And this is why, of course, it is common knowledge that even the most libtarded liberal would acknowledge in 2024 that Martin Luther King Jr. was having all kinds of orgies with prostitutes, continually committing adultery, and that the FBI had him under surveillance because of his connection with all these communists and the communist party and everything. And as they're surveilling him, they're surveilling him because they're interested in the communist connection, but then what they ended up getting was their ears were burning because they're just listening to a bunch of just filth and wickedness and debauchery. Here's what you have to understand. He that doeth righteousness is righteous even as he is righteous. Somebody who is out there living a life of sexual perversion and debauchery and calling themself a man of God, calling themself a Baptist while denying the key tenets of the Christian faith is not a good person. They're a rotten person, period. How dare you, you vicious racist. I don't have a racist bone in my body. Everybody who actually knows me knows that I don't have a racist bone in my body. I'm so past that, it's not even funny. I mean, I do not care about race at all, okay? But guess what? I'd rather judge a man on the content of his character than on the color of his skin. And so why are you making it about race? Why are you defending Marxist Lucifer King just because he's black? Because Marxist Lucifer King is a serial adulterer and a false prophet and he's burning in hell. Billy Graham, burning in hell. Woe unto you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers and the false prophets. Don't say that those who are evil are good in the sight of the Lord or that God delights in them. That is not just, well, I'm just kind of playing it safe and being nice to everybody. So you know, I just want to say something good about Charles Manson and the Pope. No. They're trash. They're wicked. And so all that to say this, God hates false religion. Malachi 2 is a rough chapter. God hates false religion. God hates divorce. You know what he wants us to do? Two things. He wants us to, number one, be faithful to the word of God. Number two, be faithful to your spouse. That's what God wants out of you. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word. Lord, thank you for faithful Baptist pastors who have stayed faithful to their word of prayer. And Baptist pastors who have stayed faithful to their wives and faithful to the word of God. Unlike Marxist Lucifer King who was faithful to neither, Lord. And God, tomorrow as we go about our normal days on just another Monday, Lord, help us to be faithful to you and your word and read your word. And Lord, help us to seek opportunities to seek to share the gospel with a lost and dying world. And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.