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Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, everybody. Welcome to Faithful Word Baptist Church. If you would, please find your seats, and we'll begin our service this evening. When you find your seat, grab a hymnal and turn to song number 66. Song number 66. Years I spent in vanity and pride Caring not my Lord was crucified Song number 66 at Calvary Years I spent in vanity and pride Caring not my Lord was ca validate For lo, when I was When God my Lord was crucified, for knowing I was his being, I was never free. Mercy there was great, grace was free. Fire and fear was multiplied to me. There my hurt and sorrows of liberty have never re-earned. I got hurt and lost until I learned. Let's gamble at the law I just earned. Till my guilty soul in glory turned to half the rain. Mercy there was great, grace was free. Fire and fear was multiplied to me. There my burdens of liberty have never re-earned. O the love that through salvation's plan, O the grace that brought it now to man, O the mighty hope that God had spent in Calvary. Mercy there was great, grace was free. Fire and fear was multiplied to me. There my burdens of liberty have never re-earned. Now I gather Jesus every day. Now I gladly own Him as my King. Now my rapture soul can all be saved from Calvary. Mercy there was great, grace was free. Fire and fear was multiplied to me. There my burdens of liberty have never re-earned. Amen. Great singing, everybody. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for the opportunity to be here at church this evening. Please fill Pastor Anderson with your Holy Spirit as he preaches unto us and open our hearts to hear the message. And it's in Jesus' name that I pray. Amen. Amen. All right. Next, if you would, turn in your hymnals to song number 28. Song number 28. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Song number 28. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. Alas and did my Savior bleed. that I have done, he groaned upon the tree. How amazing any grace I know, that love beyond decree. Thou might the sun, in darkness lie, and shut its glory still. When Christ the mighty neighbor died, for when the creature sins, the drops of green and airy plain, the devil bought my own. There, Lord, I give myself to thee, I give myself to thee, I give myself to thee. I give myself to thee, I give myself to thee. There, Lord, I give myself to thee, I give myself to thee, I give myself to thee, I give myself to thee, and it's going great out there. And so keep praying for them that they will have a successful time out there. Pray for the expectant ladies. Of course, my wife thanks everyone for all the birthday wishes and gifts and things last Wednesday night. And then on the back, we've got the mother-daughter tea party coming up. So make sure that if you haven't already, you RSVP for that and get your spot secured on one of these two dates. And then other upcoming events are listed down there below. All right, let's go ahead and count up the soul winning. First of all, the trip to the Bahamas is going great. The first day of soul winning on Monday in Nassau, they had 136 people saved. And that was just through personal soul winning. They had 136 people saved, but then they also preached to several hundred students in addition to that in classrooms in the high school. So they got to preach in a whole bunch of classes. The school had like 500 students. I think they preached in all the classes. And then they were able to do personal soul winning with some of the students. And then that was where half the team was. And the other half the team was over at the university and just did straight soul winning over there. And so that was a successful day. They had 136 people saved total with 27 soul winners out there. And then on Tuesday, they just had a recreation day. And then on today, they were in a different place called Bimini, which is just a really little tiny island in the Bahamas. So there's not a whole lot of residential area. They probably knocked the doors of like, literally most of the island on this trip. And they had a total of, what was it? 73 people saved today on Bimini. So the total so far for the trip is 209 people saved. And then we still have tomorrow. So pray that tomorrow goes well. Tomorrow is Freeport. Bimini's not really quite as receptive as Nassau. I feel like Freeport's kind of like halfway between the two. So hopefully we'll get another great day of soul winning in tomorrow in Freeport. And then everybody should be coming home on Friday from that trip. So praise the Lord for that. Okay, so in addition to those 209 salvations from the Bahamas, any other soul winning that we need to log from Monday of this week, going back to Monday the 24th? Is that a three? Okay, all right. Okay, anything else from Monday? How about Tuesday? Anything from Tuesday? Okay, all right. And then what about today, Wednesday? Did we get a total for the van? Zero for the van. How about outside the van? Okay, gotcha. Okay, anything else from today? Very good, keep up the great work on soul winning. And with that, let's sing our next song. Come lead us. All right, there should be an insert in the front of your hymnal with the song, or Psalm 81. Psalm 81. If you need one, raise your hand and one of the extras will get you one. Psalm 81. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Great singing. Next, lastly let's turn in our hymnals to song number 44. comes. Oh, land of rest for thee I sigh. And the home of the brave. For the land of the free and the home of the brave. Sing it out with me. Oh, land of rest for thee I sigh. When I am home and proud. When I shall lay my arm, her fire proud. The voice of the Lord will word. Till Jesus comes, he will word. Till Jesus comes, he will word. Till Jesus comes, he will be gathered home. To Jesus Christ my friend, for as he made me cease to grow. And the voice of the Lord is rest. Till we, who love the Lord, will word. Till Jesus comes, he will word. Till Jesus comes, he will word. Till Jesus comes, he will be gathered home. I saw that once my Savior sighed. The Lord my sins shall hold. With him a brave and sterling tide. And grieve my earthly home. Will word till Jesus comes. Will word till Jesus comes. Will word till Jesus comes. Will word till Jesus comes. Will word till Jesus comes. All right, this time we'll pass the offering plates around. As the plates go around, let's turn in our Bibles this evening to Psalm 75. Psalm 75, right in the middle of your Bible, is the book of Psalms. And then you find Psalm 75. We'll read the entire chapter. Follow along silently with Brother Dan as he reads. Beginning in verse number 1, Psalm 75. In Psalm 75 the Bible reads, Unto thee, O God, do we give thanks, unto thee do we give thanks. For that thy name is near, thy wondrous works declare. When I shall receive the congregation, I will judge uprightly. The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved. I bear up the pillars of it, Selah. I said unto the fools, Deal not foolishly. And to the wicked, Lift not up the horn. Lift not up your horn on high. Speak not with a stiff neck. For the promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge. He putteth down one, and setteth up another. For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red. It is full of mixture, and He poureth out of the same. But the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth, shall wring them out and drink them. But I will declare forever, I will sing praises to the God of Jacob. All the horns of the wicked also will I cut off, but the horns of the righteous shall be exalted. Dear Lord, thank you for Faith Ward Baptist Church, Lord, and we thank you for every day that you give us. And Lord, I pray that you would help us to be better Christians every day and to love one another more. And Lord, I pray that you would fill Pastor Anderson with your spirit. And in Jesus' name I pray, amen. Amen, Psalm 75, we're continuing with the Psalms of Asaph. We were first introduced to Asaph in Psalm 73. And if you remember, Psalm 73 was the one where he was sort of looking at his life and wondering why he went through so many hard things. And wicked people seemed like they were better off than he was. And so he was upset about that. But then he went to the house of God and realized that eventually the wicked are going to get smoked and there's no reason in the world to envy them. Then in Psalm 74, last week, we got another Psalm of Asaph. And again, his personality kind of comes through in these. And so it's kind of good to read this whole section of the book of Psalms as a unit. And to sort of see the personality of Asaph as it differs from some of the other Psalmists. And remember that the Bible is both written by God and written by man. There's a dual authorship going on where we have the Holy Spirit as the divine author. But then there's also the human author. And so his personality is going to come through. And yet the word of God is perfect and always right and without error. Which is what makes it such a unique and marvelous book. Now in Psalm 75, we start out in verse number one with just a pretty standard verse for the book of Psalms. Under thee, O God, do we give thanks. Under thee, do we give thanks. For that thy name is near, thy wondrous works declare. Then in verse number two, he says this. When I shall receive the congregation, I will judge uprightly. It's a pretty interesting verse here about receiving the congregation. And remember, I just reminded you recently that the word congregation in the Old Testament is identical in meaning to the word church in the New Testament. And when the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, if a verse says congregation, it'll change it to church when it's quoted in the New Testament. Because those words are used interchangeably. And so obviously we don't use the word church necessarily in the Old Testament simply because of the fact that, you know, we hear the word church in our English language. We're going to think about like the New Testament church versus the congregation, which is just an assembly of people. But the Old Testament assembly or congregation is a foreshadowing or a picture of the New Testament church. And then the New Testament will talk about the Old Testament in wording like, you know, Moses was with the church in the wilderness and things like that. And so when Asaph here talks about receiving the congregation, what he's talking about is being given the opportunity to lead a congregation. When he receives the opportunity to be in charge of the congregation, then he is going to judge uprightly. Okay. And if you think about the New Testament version of this, there are all kinds of churches all across America and all across the world that are Bible-believing assemblies of born-again, baptized believers, right? All over the world, we have churches in various geographic locations. And these churches are led by pastors, right? They are led by men who have received that congregation. They have received that responsibility of overseeing the flock of God. And if you remember in Acts chapter 20, when the apostle Paul is parting with those elders from Ephesus, he tells them to take heed unto themselves and unto the flock over which the Holy Ghost has made them overseers to feed the church of God, which he has purchased with his disciples. He has purchased with his own blood. And so here's the thing. The church ultimately belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's his institution. He founded it. He died for it. He purchased it with his blood. And then he has entrusted it to men who are stewards of God's inheritance, of God's heritage. And it's a big responsibility to lead the congregation, right? The Bible says, my brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation. Because there's an accountability of being in charge of the congregation, leading the congregation. And so that's what Asaph is getting at here when he says, when I shall receive the congregation, I will judge uprightly. He's talking an Old Testament context, but we're reading it in a New Testament context and the principles still apply. Okay. What does this mean? When I shall receive the congregation, I will judge uprightly. First of all, receiving the congregation could be thought of as a man taking over an existing church, right? Because there are really two ways that someone would start out pastoring. They would either go somewhere and start a congregation from scratch by just going out, knocking doors, winning souls, and just bringing people in and starting from scratch. That's how our church started a little less than 20 years ago, just a half mile from here, right? Just started absolutely from scratch in my living room, me, my wife, three kids, and a couple visitors the first day, and we were off and running. But then another way to become a pastor would be to take over an existing church. And this is much more common that pastors would take over a church that's already there. Because there's so many churches already in existence, many of them don't have pastors, and they're looking for a pastor, and so then someone can come in and take over that church. Okay. Now, here's the thing. Nowadays, when starting a church like ours in America, because of the internet, typically, if a guy that agrees with us or aligns with us, at least for the most part doctrinally, goes and starts a church from scratch in an area, a lot of times there's already even going to be a group of people that's just kind of ready to go. He's almost just receiving a congregation out of the gate. There's also a situation where churches like ours will plant another church and operate it as a satellite ministry for a while, where it's sort of like an embryonic church plant that's still being operated by our church. And then once it grows a little bit and gets going, then that existing congregation that's already been sort of founded and cultivated, then that'll be handed off to some faithful man to take over. And then he's what? He's receiving the congregation. Okay. Now, when he receives the congregation, Asaph says he will judge uprightly. This goes to show that obviously there are human beings that are leading congregations who have to make judgments. They have to make decisions. And we obviously want them to make the right decisions, biblical decisions, godly decisions. But decisions are what they make. We do not believe in this sort of anarchist model of church where we all just kind of get together, wave hands, sing a few songs. Anybody kind of just gets up and talks and we just kind of do whatever. It's an open mic. It's a karaoke bar. We don't believe in that style of church. Also, we do not believe in the board-run church, the committee-run church, the precipitary-run church. We believe in pastoral leadership. And of course, I've preached whole sermons on this because nothing could be more biblical as you read through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. You see God using individuals to lead and do great works and so forth. And so we believe in a pastor-led church. And look, when I was growing up, I remember there'd be situations where we'd be in a church where the pastor was cool. And the pastor was preaching good. The pastor was fired up. But the church was not run by the pastor. The church is run by the deacon board. And they're holding him back and slowing him down. And they are just sort of putting the damper on everything, putting the brakes on everything. And then the church can't really thrive because the man at the helm, his hands are tied. And so he can't actually lead and judge uprightly because he's not the real decision maker, unfortunately. He preaches the sermons and then you've got these crusty old deacons. My dad would call them the moss-back deacons that are sort of running the things in a smoke-filled room or whatever. And they're the ones who are making the decision. And there's a famous story that my dad would tell where he's in church and the pastor is preaching about soul-winning or talking about soul-winning. And one of the deacons, literally this old crusty deacon, held up his hand and just gave a thumbs down to soul-winning while the pastor's up preaching and talking about soul-winning. Now, in our type of church, that would be unimaginable or unthinkable. But that's great that that's unimaginable and unthinkable because that's not the culture that we have around here. Okay? Now, a lot of people will freak out and say, oh, you're giving the pastor too much power. You know, let's get a bunch of crusty deacons and Presbyterians to rein him in and slow him down. But here's the thing about that is that, you know, the pastor needs to have the ability to make decisions and lead and be decisive and do stuff. Are there going to be pastors who abuse that power? Of course there will. But at the end of the day, though, you've got to have a leader that can do stuff in order to get anything done. So it's better to take your chances by letting the man of God do his thing and, you know, obviously you pick a person that's going to do a good job. And you hope that they do a good job. You pray that they do a good job. And, you know, at the end of the day, you don't like it, you go somewhere else, right? Because there's a million Baptist churches to go to. But this thing of saying like, well, you know, he can't be in charge, he can't have too much power or something. I mean, what kind of power are we talking about here? You know, the power to get up and preach whatever the Bible says? You know, the power to make decisions about what Bible we're going to read and whether we're going to be a soul-winning church or whether we're just going to hand out a door hanger once a month? Like, what kind of power are we talking about? Okay. Because I believe that the pastor should lead in the church and should run the church and set the tone for the church. That's his job. Okay. Whereas I don't believe that the pastor should obviously take over your personal life. And I've seen that. I have seen these pastors who are like control freaks, micromanagers, you know, sort of obsessed with power, you know. And, for example, I remember in the old IFP, you'd hear a lot of pastors say, don't make any major life decisions without coming and talking to me first. Like, don't buy a home until you talk to me first. Don't buy a new vehicle until you talk to me first. And those kind of things. I'm not saying that that's, you know, necessarily bad or something. But, I mean, to me, it feels super weird. And, you know, I'm not comfortable with that. And I don't think that it's really the pastor's job to get involved in your home and your personal life and tell you this. So I could see how maybe an abuse of power could be the pastor coming in and invading your personal space or invading your home or telling you what to do. But a pastor getting up and saying, hey, it's King James only and if 90% of the church doesn't want to be King James only, tough. It's going to be King James only anyway. That's the kind of leadership that we need. We're not going to vote on, hey, you know, which Bible are we going to use? Hey, what kind of music are we going to have in the church? Hey, are we going to do soul winning once a month or every day? You know, what do people want? You want me to sell stuff, not sell stuff? That's the wrong way to lead. You need a leader who just gets up and says, here's what we believe. This is our Bible. This is our soul winning. And the trumpet needs to give a clear sound. And the pastor needs to judge uprightly. Needs to judge. Needs to make a decision. Needs to make a judgment call. Needs to make the right call. And Asaph is promising or stating that when I receive the congregation, he says I will judge uprightly. And look, we have seen a lot of examples over the last few years of good examples of this and bad examples of this. You know, somebody receiving an existing congregation and doing great things with it. You know, receiving one talent and turning it into two talents. Receiving one talent, turning it into five talents. Turning it into ten talents, right? You know, Pastor Aaron Thompson is a great example of a guy who has basically, you know, handed an existing congregation in many ways. Although he was, you know, there from the beginning and part of that process. But it was originally a church plant from Verity Baptist Church. It all kind of started with a soul winning marathon that we did up there in Portland, Oregon. And then you had the Verity Church Plant. And then you have Pastor Jimenez training Pastor Thompson. And, you know, that group that initially started out there in Portland, you know, it was probably, I think, about 40 or 50 people, you know, in the beginning that sort of was the seed of that church. Well, now that church, of course, is running, you know, well over a hundred people. I don't know their exact attendance, but I know it's well over a hundred people. And I know that Pastor Thompson is also founded literally, you know, I want to say eight churches that he has founded. He's founded eight churches and he's got a bunch of great congregations going. And now that he's got a bunch of good soul winning groups going, even in places where they don't even have a church. So he's got all kinds of soul winning, all kinds of churches. He's handed the congregation and he did a good job. He tripled the size or more and keeps it going. Right? But then you have other people that received all the same training, received the same type of thing where they're handed a group of 50 people. And instead of tripling it and starting a bunch of soul winning, starting a bunch of churches and doing great works for God like Pastor Thompson did, what do they do? They take their group of 50 people and they run it absolutely into the ground, scatter the flock, offend everybody, make everybody mad. Not by preaching the word of God, but by pastoring poorly, being unethical and gossiping and slandering and doing stupid things. And then running the church into the ground from 50 people to 15 people. Okay? And look, that's not judging uprightly. So when you receive the congregation, you can either do something great with it or you can ruin it. You're not guaranteed success just because you're handed a congregation. Because guess what? Pastoring is a little harder than it looks. And, you know, obviously churches are constantly losing people. And they're constantly, it's just, there's an attrition that's always there. And, you know, let's say you look at a church that's running 300 people and then five years later they're running 300 people and 10 years later they're running 300 people. You know what that means? They reached a whole bunch of new people because churches like ours have a revolving door and there's a constant rate of attrition. And this is why you can never just grow indefinitely. You know, the church is going to go from 10 to 20 to 30 to 50 to 100, 150, 200, 250, 300. It's not just going to go forever until you're running, you know, 700,000 or something. Okay? Because of the fact that there's attrition. And this is a mathematical concept. I don't want to spend too much time on this. But, you know, if you went to a math class they would explain it to you that basically it's sort of like a bathtub filled with water and there's no drain plug in. Okay? And the more water is in the bathtub the faster the water goes down the drain. And then you also have a faucet bringing the water in. Right? So the water level is going to rise or drop depending on whether there's more coming in versus more going out. And eventually you'll reach like an equilibrium point. Okay? Where the amount of people leaving and the amount of new people that you're reaching is the same and then the tub just kind of stays at a consistent level because you've got water coming in, you've got water going out. And it's at an equilibrium point. Right? And for our church that is usually historically been about 300 people where we just are kind of reaching people, bringing new people in, and we're losing people, losing people, losing people, bringing people, bringing people, bringing people. And we kind of just are around 300. And sometimes we'll get up to 350. Sometimes we'll go a little below 300. But we sort of have just hovered at that 300 for literally like the last 10 years because that's just kind of where we're at. And unless the fundamentals of our church or what we do change, you know, then that stays fairly consistent. But let's say a church that's like ours, let's say we just stopped reaching new people. Let's say we just stop bringing new people in. Well, guess what? The attrition is not going to stop. The attrition is still going to keep going. And then what's going to happen? It's just going to get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller until eventually you're down to just a tiny handful of people. And then you say, okay, what do we do? You know, we've got this tiny group. We've got a bunch of money in the bank. Let's donate that money to another church, dissolve the church, and go off into the sunset. And this happens literally every day in America. Churches that have been run into the ground and close their doors. Okay? So we don't want to be that church. Amen? We want to be one that is consistently reaching new people, bringing in new, save people, getting people saved, reaching new people so we can continue to grow and thrive and reach people. And so when I receive the congregation, Asaph said, I'll judge uprightly. Now, verse number three is kind of a difficult verse. It says, the earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved. But I bear up the pillars of it. Selah. So this is kind of a strange statement that we need to unpack here. And the Selah is a musical notation that no one really knows for sure what it means. And because the King James translators, they don't know what it means. They just left it untranslated. Just Selah. That's what they do sometimes when they just don't know what something is. Like, for example, gopher wood. You know, nobody knows what kind of wood Noah built the ark out of. So the Hebrew word is gopher. It's not the animal gopher. It's just a Hebrew word that sounds like gopher. So they just said, we don't know what kind of wood this is. So instead of just guessing or making something up, we're just going to leave the Hebrew word untranslated gopher wood. And so that's what you'll find throughout the Bible. Selah is one of those things. A lot of people believe that it's a pause. That it means that you pause here or like, you know, it's a musical interlude, guitar solo, whatever. Okay. Versus it could also be repeat. It could mean to repeat something. Because think about it. When you write down a song, those are the kind of things you'll put. Like, you'll put, there's a pause here. There's a repeat here. Those are the kind of things that you have. So those are the theories, but nobody's really quite sure. But from our perspective, we don't really care because we're not trying to sing this. We care more about interpretation. Right? So if we're thinking about it from an interpretation standpoint, we could just look at it as a punctuation mark. Sort of, because whether you're pausing or whether you're repeating, either way, you're kind of ending a section in a sense or ending a unit and maybe thinking about everything up to that point before you move to the next point. Right? Either way you slice it. So what does this mean, verse 3, the earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved. Well, what does it mean to be dissolved? You know, you could think of other synonyms for dissolving, like melting away or falling apart. Right? The first thing that comes to my mind is Alka-Seltzer. Right? You know, you drop the Alka-Seltzer into the water, plop, plop, fizz, fizz, and you drop it in there and, you know, it begins to dissolve in the water. And really what that means is that it's coming apart. It's falling apart and the little pieces are leaving and the structure of it is breaking down. Now, in the second half of the verse, we also have a word that has to do with structure, which is the word pillars. Right? Because pillars are holding up a structure. They're helping it keep its shape or its frame. The opposite of having a strong, sturdy shape or frame would be to dissolve. Right? So, the Bible says here, the earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved. I bear up the pillars of it. And again, this is what I mean about Asaph's personality coming through. Asaph is not a guy who is in love with this world. You know how the Bible says, like, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. The Bible says, he that loveth his life shall lose it, but he that, you know, hateth his life in this world will find it, or he that loses his life for my sake will find it. You know, that's Asaph's life verse. Okay? Asaph does not think that this world is a cool place. He has a little bit of a pessimistic view about the world that we live in that kind of comes through in these Psalms. Like in Psalm 74, when he talked about how the dark places of the world are full of the habitations of cruelty. That's the kind of stuff that he emphasizes. And so, sort of like when Elijah is frustrated and saying, oh man, you know, all these other prophets have bowed the knee to Baal, and I'm the only one left. And then God tells him, hey, there are 7,000 men that have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal, that haven't kissed his lips. But he kind of felt like he was the only one, and he got a little bit pessimistic there when he takes that trip to Mount Horeb after the showdown with the prophets of Baal. And so I feel like Asaph is in a similar frame of mind here when he says, the earth and all the habits thereof are dissolved. What's he saying? He's saying this world is falling apart. It's coming apart. It's dissolving. The structure of it, society is breaking down. And I feel like in many ways, this is the way our society is in America today, that in many ways it's dissolving, right? Institutions are falling apart. Families are falling apart, okay? And a lot of churches and groups are falling apart, dissolving. And then even just basic things that would provide the structure of our society, like just distinctions like this is a male and this is a female, right? These are just some of the basic divisions between light and darkness, good and evil, you know? Male, female, up, down, sweet, bitter, just these basic things that are the foundations of our society in many ways are dissolving. There's a mentality now that just wants to just question everything, you know, just deconstruct everything and just throw out everything and just go back to the drawing board. And it's madness because we need to be founded upon the rock of God's word. And so no, we're not going to question everything. God made them in the beginning male and female, period. You know, right is right, wrong is wrong, fornication is wrong, adultery is wrong, drunkenness is wrong. You know, we need to have an anchor of our soul that says stealing is wrong, killing is wrong, adultery is wrong. We need the word of God to be the foundation. And when you start taking away the word of God as the moral standard in a country or even in our world, well, then it starts to dissolve. It starts to fall apart and it comes apart at the seams, right? You could also think of an illustration of fabric where there's a little thread hanging off and you're like, oh, let me just kind of pull this thread. And then sometimes you pull the thread and it just starts just unraveling your garment. And you're just, if it were a cartoon, you'd basically just be like, and it would just be like undressing you like, you know, you're just like, oh, I can't get to the end of it or whatever. Turns out your whole garment was one thread. Okay, maybe my imagination got a little carried away there. But the point is, you know, coming apart at the seams, right? And that's why it's always better to cut off that thread or tie it off or something. If you just start pulling it, sometimes you can just pull apart the garment. And that's what's happening today is that you got all these bozos just grabbing on a bunch of threads and just kind of pulling on them. Oh, what about this? Oh, you know, bringing in all this feminism and woke garbage and it just is destroying the fabric of our society. And we're coming apart at the seam and the earth and the inhabitants thereof are dissolved. So Asaph's perspective is the earth and all the inhabitants that are over dissolved, I bear up the pillars of it. So here he is, he's receiving the congregation and he says, I'm going to bear up the pillars of it, meaning I'm going to lift up pillars to provide structure. You know, another illustration that you could use is like a tent, right? And the tent has pillars that are holding it up. It has a skeleton that's holding it up. And if you were to break one of those pillars, then the whole thing just starts kind of caving in and collapsing. And then what you have is Asaph lifting up a big giant pillar in the middle of the tent and holding the tent up, keeping it up. And so the idea here is that other people around him, the whole world is seeming to go crazy and just be falling apart, coming apart, dissolving. And then he's trying to stem the tide by providing structure, okay? Preaching rules, preaching right from wrong, providing a foundation on which we can build our lives. And the thing about that is that we need biblical rules governing our lives. You know, you've got a bunch of churches out there just dissolving, you know, and they just dissolve like, hey man, you know, Christianity is not a list of dos and don'ts, man. It's a relationship. And here's the thing. Obviously we all want to have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ and we want to have a relationship with God where we're walking in the Spirit. And obviously as we grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we're going to be less and less fixated on rules and we're just going to be led by the Spirit. But that's advanced Christianity, okay? That's advanced mode, not beginner mode. You know what beginner mode is? Beginner mode is don't steal, don't kill, don't commit adultery, be not drunk with wine. That is beginner mode. And what you have is a bunch of people, they don't want to learn how, they don't want to learn the left jab, they don't want to learn the right cross, left hook, right hook. You know, they just want to go straight to the spinning back fist and a flying jump kick. Okay? They don't want to learn how to dribble the ball, do a bounce pass and a layup or whatever. You know, they just want to go straight for the slam dunk. And it's not going to work and it doesn't work. And so now you have all of these churches out there that are not providing the rules for people. They're not getting up and preaching against sin and preaching the rules and preaching the dos and don'ts so people don't know what to do or what not to do. No one's teaching them. Now look, obviously as we grow and mature, we don't need those things as much because we're led by the Spirit, we're walking in the Spirit. But you've got a bunch of baby Christians, you've got a bunch of just very immature Christians who don't know the Bible well at all, and then they're just claiming to be walking in the Spirit even though their life is not in accordance with the rules of God's Word. The whole point of walking in the Spirit is that you'll automatically be following the rules. Because you're just loving God, you're just loving your neighbor and so it just comes naturally to follow the rules, not to kill, not to steal, not to be drunk. You know, because you're just naturally following the rules because you're walking with God. But then you have a bunch of just worldly, sinful people who are openly breaking God's rules saying, Oh man, don't hit me with rules, I'm just walking in the Spirit. And then what do you have? Morality dissolves. Right? Society, the family, the church, our nation dissolves, falls apart because there's no structure. We need some preachers who will bear up the pillars of it. Right? That will bring in some rigid, and what's a pillar like? It's rigid, it's hard, it's strong, and it doesn't bend or break. Okay? And so that's the kind of preaching that we need. That's the kind of leadership that we need. And again, this goes back to the committee-run church, why it doesn't work. Because you need a man like Asaph to lift up the pillars thereof. Somebody who's going to be unbending and inflexible on important biblical foundational truths. There's a time to compromise, there's a time to bend, there's a time to flex, but not when it comes to thou shall not steal. Thou shall not kill. Thou shall not commit adultery. Right? We're not going to bend on these things. Foundational truths about the Trinity, salvation by grace through faith, the eternal security of the believer, the preservation of God's word. These are not up for grabs. These are the pillars of which our whole church is established. And so, you know, these things are not up for debate. They're not up for grabs. They are foundational things. But in our society, everything's up for grabs now. Everything's up for debate. Everything's up for grabs. And you know what the Bible says? Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. The Bible says that God wants us to mature and grow up so that we're not tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine. Because there are so many just bizarre, stupid doctrines out there. And especially when you start just getting rid of all the foundational truths and everything's up for grabs. Then you start getting into crazy stuff. Weird stuff. Stupid things. I mean, you know, it's like I preached on Sunday morning on the second coming of Christ. Right? Like that should be a doctrine that's not up for grabs. It's very clear in scripture. Anyone who actually has seriously read the Bible believes that there's a second coming of Christ coming. Now look, even if people disagree on the exact eschatology, even if some people are pre-trib, post-trib, you know, whatever. And they have different views on it. Even people that are, you know, post-millennial, awe-millennial, goofball doctrines. Here's the thing. One thing we should all be able to agree on if you're even saved, if you've even halfway read the Bible, is that Jesus Christ is going to return in the future. That Christ is coming again and that he is literally coming again. I mean, that is not up for grabs. That is not up for debate. Hey, if somebody's pre-trib, they're wrong. But you know what? It's not damnable heresy. But saying that there's not a second coming of Christ coming is damnable heresy. Because it is just so blatantly contrary to the Word of God, it's a lie out of the pit of hell. Okay? And yet, you just have it just surging online right now. Online, full preterism, which that's a fancy word for people who just believe, oh, it already all happened. It's all over. Christ already returned in the first century. Nothing to see here, folks. No second coming of Christ. This full preterist garbage is surging online right now. You know why? Because people don't know the Bible. Because you just got a bunch of bozos watching YouTube videos and getting all these weird conspiracy theories in their head instead of actually reading the Word of God. But there's another reason why it's surging. It's not just that they're not reading the Bible, don't know what they're talking about, and listening to a bunch of charlatans online. It's also because of this mentality that just everything's up for grabs. Sorry, my friend, there are certain things that we're not going to question. The deity of Jesus Christ. We're not, it's not up for grabs. The second coming's not up for grabs. The inspiration of the Bible's not up for grabs. You know, these are things that we're not interested in debating, revisiting, deciding about. No, it's done, my friend. Okay? And here's the thing. You're never going to go far in math if you're still debating third grade math and you're still not sure whether two plus two really is four. And you're still trying to figure out whether three times three is nine. You know, you can't really proceed until you at least get those foundational things down. Wouldn't you agree that anyone who says two plus two is three is an idiot? Wouldn't you agree that anybody who says two plus two is five is an idiot? Well, guess what? Anyone who denies the second coming of Jesus Christ is an idiot. Anybody who says the earth is flat is an idiot. Okay? And these are things that shouldn't just be, we got to just keep revisiting the shape of the earth and we got to keep revisiting, you know, the second coming. No, no. My friend, nail some things down. Let's get some pillars. Let's get some pillars in place. Let's get some things locked in. Let's get a structure. Let's get a framework. Let's get a skeleton in place and then we can start building something. But not like, oh, we lay a foundation and then start building. Oh, let's change the foundation. Oh, let's change the foundation again. No, my friend, you lay the foundation and you leave it alone and you build on that. And yeah, we can question things but we're not going to question the things that are the core tenets of the Christian faith that should be locked in, set in stone. We need to have some pillars. God made them at the beginning male and female. Don't let some idiot come and tell you, well, there's some people that are both. It's a lie. There's two genders. That's what the Bible says. Deal with it. If you have a functioning Y chromosome, you're a male. If you don't have a functioning Y chromosome, you're a female. It's over. Done. Discussion is over. And anybody wants to challenge me on that, I'll just tell you right now, you're wrong and you're an idiot so don't bother leaving a comment. I've studied the science. I've studied biology. I know what male and female, you know, I'm not like that lady in Congress that's like, I'm not a biologist. I am a biologist and let me tell you something, functioning Y chromosome equals male. Done. We need some pillars, holding up society, holding up the family. You know, I'm not going to debate whether the husband is the head of the home. I'm not going to debate whether children need to obey and honor their parents. I'm not going to debate whether the King James Bible is the word of God in English. We've got to settle these things, folks, because if we're switching Bibles every month, we're not going to get very far in nailing down our beliefs. We're not going to have stability. And you've got some unstable souls out there changing their doctrine all the time, switching what they believe constantly and it's not healthy. I mean, just when you think you can't hear anything stupider, I just heard something even stupider this week. This weird end times doctrine called Satan's little season eschatology, okay? And here's what they're basically teaching, that the millennium already happened. And it was actually the dark ages was the millennium. It was awesome. And all the history books are just lying to us and telling us it was a bad time. When really it was just awesome and it was just wonderful and perfect and everything. And that now the millennium ended and we're living in Satan's little season right now where he's deceiving the nations for the battle of Gog and Magog. I mean, this is the stupidest, most absurd thing I've ever heard. Okay? But it's just like everything's up for grabs. I mean, it's just wild things out there. Right? I mean, and there's a hundred things out there like that, friend. If you want to just go down every stupid rabbit hole of every conspiracy, everything we've been told in the history books is a lie. Everything in the science book is a lie. Everything that we've ever heard is a lie. You know, it's like, come on, relax, okay? Yeah, people lie, but literally everything's not a lie. Okay? Two plus two is still four. So we need to put some pillars up. Okay? I got to hurry up here. Verse number four says this, I said unto the fools, deal not foolishly. And to the wicked, lift not up the horn. Verse four is a great verse. I said to the fools, deal not foolishly. You know what people today, they don't like being corrected, do they? But when people are stupid and acting stupid and talking stupid, somebody needs to tell them, deal not foolishly. Right? And so Asaph wasn't scared to get up and correct people and to preach against things and to call out foolishness where he saw it. He said to the fools, quit being an idiot. Deal not foolishly. And you know what he said to the wicked? Lift not up the horn. Lift not up your horn on high. Speak not with a stiff neck. Now, what does this mean to not lift up the horn? The horn is a symbol of power and authority and prestige and if you think about animals, they have the horn that they use to show off, you know, to other animals or maybe to get a mate or to fight with or do something with. And so, you know, what's the animal that kind of comes to mind first with this? Like a rhinoceros, right? That's what it comes to. Somebody say a ram. I mean, you can think of all kinds of animals, right? That, you know, if you think about like antlers or horns or they have some kind of a display of power and a lot of times it's a literal weapon. And so that's what we have with the horn. So when it says lift not up your horn on high, he's saying, you know, don't be arrogant, haughty, don't have your nose up in the air thinking that you're so cool. He's saying to the wicked not to be prideful and he says speak not with a stiff neck. And the stiff neck is one who does not want to be corrected. They will not accept any kind of training or instruction or correction. They're wicked and they've hardened their heart and they've hardened their neck and they're lifting up the horn and they're arrogant and full of pride. And then he says in verse six, for promotion cometh neither from the east nor the west nor from the south. Now there's only one direction left, which is north. Okay. And the idea here is that when you look at a map, of course, by convention, north is up, right? Now I know north isn't really up, but on a map it is up and that's the way God is looking at it, is that basically God dwells in the sides of the north. So promotion is coming from the north, meaning promotion is coming from on high, promotion is coming from above. And then it defines it in the next verse because it says, but God is the judge. It doesn't come from the west, not from the east, not from the south, but God is the judge. He puts down one and sets up another, right? So he's saying, look, don't be prideful, don't be arrogant. If you have any kind of position in this world, if you have any kind of power, prestige, financial prosperity, God gave you that. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and coming down from the father of lights with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. And so don't be haughty or puffed up because you have something because God gave you that. He said, no, it's because I was so smart. God's the one who made you smart. God gave you the power to get wealth. God gave you your brains. God gave you the brawn. God gave you everything and the ability to get more. You would need to be thanking God every day. And so don't be stiff neck toward God or start lifting up the horn because God can bring you down just as easily as he lifted you up. He lifts up one, he puts down another. Promotion comes from the north is what the Bible is saying here. God is the judge. Verse 8, for in the hand of the Lord there's a cup and the wine is red. It is full of mixture and he pours out of the same, but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall ring them out and drink them. And this is a common theme. The wine of the wrath of God, right? Which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation. Now, what you have to understand is that in the ancient world, wine is typically being mingled with water. It's being watered down and, you know, all, every drunk in town down at the, you know, reform church or whatever is going to want to argue these points. But people have actually studied ancient history and ancient literature know that obviously the wine that they're selling down at CVS pharmacy in a cardboard box is not the same wine that the Bible is talking about in the, you know, when it talks about it in a positive way. Okay. Because of the fact that they're drinking fruit juice, okay, in the Bible or they're drinking something that's fermented that's totally watered down that's not going to inebriate you or, you know, get you drunk whatsoever. The wine that is sold today, if you went to, you know, Total Wine and More with all the elderly booze hounds that shop there, and I know that because I used to do their fire alarm systems, and so I saw all the old drunks in there, you know, getting all their booze. And the thing about that is that, you know, if you go down there, the alcohol content, that is extremely high alcohol content and it's because of modern techniques and modern methods, meaning after the biblical time. And by the way, hard liquor, such as, you know, bourbon, whiskey, everything that the Canadians are dumping out and pouring down the trash this week or whatever, you know, all that stuff was invented in the Middle Ages with modern distilling techniques and did not exist in biblical times. So when the Bible is talking about strong drink and strong wine, it's not talking about vodka and bourbon and whiskey because those things hadn't been invented yet. They literally didn't even exist. It's really just talking about wine that's been fermented naturally, but it's undiluted and it's allowed to ferment to the max, which in the ancient world, don't quote me on this, but I want to say they could get it up to maybe like 8 or 10% alcohol or something, whereas, you know, you go to the store now and it's 15% or whatever. Okay. The point is though, that like, like even in the Iliad and the Odyssey, I was literally, I was reading book seven of the Odyssey last night and it was literally in a, in a geek reading club and geeked out ancient Greek reading club and we're reading it and it's literally talking about how they're mingling the wine with water before serving it to Odysseus in a book seven of the Odyssey. But there, there's another place in the Odyssey where he goes to see the Cyclops and everything and he has wine and he talks about how they, they water it down 20 to one. So it's 20 parts water, one part wine, and then he gives it straight to the Cyclops. The Cyclops gets drunk, the Cyclops passes out, and then of course he stabs the Cyclops in the eye and, you know, I don't know if you've seen the claymation version of that. Isn't that a claymation? Am I making that up? I think there is one. Don't you love claymation? I used to love those when I was a kid. But anyway, where was I going with that? I got distracted. I'm just, all of a sudden I'm just running through all my claymation archives. So yeah, the wine of the wrath of God. This is a theme of God making the wicked drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation. And the idea here is that God's wrath is portrayed as the strongest, most concentrated wine imaginable, and then that's what's being given to the wicked to drink. So, you know, some drunks out there are like, hey, sounds great. But you're a fool if you think that, right? Because drinking, first of all, drinking large amounts of alcohol can literally kill you. You can literally just drink too much in one sitting and just literally die. Or you can black out. You can be abused. You can be molested. You can be harmed. You can be robbed. You can have things stolen from you. You can get involved in all kinds of weird crimes and sins and all kinds of horrible things. And so the idea here of drinking of the dregs is talking about just the bottom of the cup, the most undiluted, bitter, concentrated, you know, dregs of the wine of the wrath of God. And so he says here in verse 8, for in the hand of the Lord there is a cup and the wine is red. And remember, what did the Bible say in Proverbs chapter 23? Look not upon the wine when it's red. And the idea there is that the red wine is talking about the alcoholic stuff because it is the skin of the grapes that is red, that is covered in yeast. The yeast is what provides the fermentation. And so to make an alcoholic beverage with a high alcohol content, you're going to soak it in those skins from the grape to make red wine. And that's why if you peel a grape, it's not red inside, is it? The outside of the grape is red. What color is the inside of the grape? It's like white or yellow, right? You peel it. It's the skin that's red. The skin has the yeast. The yeast does the fermenting. And so it's saying the wine is red. It's full of mixture. And it says, he poureth out of the same. Okay, so he's got the wine and it's, remember how I quoted a minute ago from Revelation how it's poured out without mixture? Okay, this is one that's with mixture, so meaning that it is somewhat watered down. Okay, so he pours out the watered down wine which represents his wrath that's being mediated. It's not the most extreme version of his wrath. Does everybody understand what I'm saying? It's a watered down version of his wrath where he's punishing but he's not just absolutely annihilating, right? But then it says he poureth out of the same but the dregs thereof. Now that is the unadulterated, most concentrated part that is not benefiting from the mixture higher up in the cup. The dregs, the very concentrated portion, all the wicked of the earth shall ring them out and drink them. And again, the idea here is that you get down to the bottom of the cup and the dregs are like sticking to the cup. So, you know, imagine you made yourself some kind of a, I don't know, mixture, fruit smoothie or something, you know. It's like, you know, you drink it and then it's like there's stuff sticking to the bottom of the cup, right? And then you take like some kind of a cloth and you wipe out the inside and then you wring that out and you're getting like that concentrated bottom of the barrel kind of dregs from the glass. And it says that the wicked of the earth shall wring them out and drink them. So they're getting the unadulterated, the most concentrated version of God's wrath is the idea there. But I will declare forever, I will sing praises to the God of Jacob. All the horns of the wicked also will I cut off. The horns of the righteous shall be exalted. And so Asaph is no soft preacher. He's preaching hard. He's lifting up the pillars of the earth and he is going to cut down the wicked. He's saying, look, I'm going to say to fools, deal not foolishly. I'm going to call out people on their stupidity and I'm going to name it and I'm going to rebuke it and I'm not going to just let them lift up the horn. And then he says in verse number 10, he says, all the horns of the wicked also will I cut off. You know, the wicked are out there and they're being prideful and arrogant and lifting up the horn. He's saying, I'm going to take them down a notch. I'm going to put them in their place. You know, and the Bible says that if you humble yourself, you'll be exalted, but that if you exalt yourself, you're going to be abased. And here's the thing, people today don't like hard preaching. And so they've heaped to themselves teachers having itching ears, turning away their ears from the truth and being turned unto fables. But hard preaching does involve calling out wickedness, calling out foolishness and wickedness both. And it involves sometimes naming the names. You know, and when we read the word of God in the New Testament many times, the apostle Paul, the apostle John, they're naming the false teachers. And saying, hey, these people, these false teachers concerning the truth have erred by saying that the resurrection is past already and overthrow the faith of some. You know, they believe in this stupid Satan's little season or something, you know, and they believe that the resurrection already happened. Oh, second coming of Christ already happened. The resurrection of the saved already happened. That's nonsense. And the Bible says that if you preach that garbage, you're overthrowing the faith of God's people by teaching lies that deny the future resurrection and deny the future second coming of Jesus Christ. OK. Resurrection is still coming. Second coming of Christ still coming. OK. And so Paul names the heretics that are teaching that. He names the false prophets and he calls them out. Also, people who had harmed him and slandered him and did evil unto him, he called them out too in his public writings. Like, for example, he said, Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil. The Lord reward him according to his works. Now, here's what's funny is that sometimes when you call out false prophets, people will get angry. Or if you just call out wicked people, slanderers, railers, they'll say, oh, you know, you should not return evil for evil. Or, oh, you need to just actually, you know, turn the other cheek and because we're supposed to overcome evil with good. And the Bible says vengeance belongs to the Lord. He'll repay. So don't take vengeance yourself or don't take things into your own hands. That's what they'll say. But this is what's so wrong about that. OK. Is that calling out railers and evil people who've harmed men of God, harmed the church of God, harmed the work of God, calling these people out is not taking vengeance. Taking vengeance would be to actually go and hurt those people. You see what I'm saying? You know, like, look, people have done me wrong. Somebody did me wrong and I called them out and this is what people said. Oh, you know, you shouldn't be taking that into your own hands. I'm thinking to myself, you know, taking it into my own hands would be to go burn his house down. You know, somebody who did me mega evil, taking it into my own hands would be to go beat the fire out of him, to go take a baseball bat and attack him. I mean, that would be wrong. That would be sinful. That would be evil to take vengeance, to take things into my own hands, to get violent. OK. Or if someone lied about me, so then I turn around and lied about them. That would be evil, wouldn't it? That would be me trying to take vengeance myself. But if someone actually does me harm, does me evil, can I at least just get up and say, Alexander the Copper Smith did me much evil. Oh, how dare you, Paul. You're taking it into your own hands. No. The Lord rewarded him according to his works. You know, it's just calling out wicked people, enemies of the gospel, enemies of pastors that are doing good work for God. That's not taking vengeance. That's not rewarding evil for evil. That's not taking things into our own hands. No, my friend, that is what we see happening in the Bible. We see men of God calling out wicked people and naming the names of false prophets and known railers and backbiters and evil people. You know, there's nothing wrong with calling it out in preaching. It's totally appropriate. You know, and a great example of this, a perfect example of this is, and we already talked about this, I believe, in a sermon the other day, but you know, this guy, Ryan Gallagher. OK. I mean, this guy, Ryan Gallagher, did a lot of evil unto the work of God. He was never one who was involved with our church, but he did a whole bunch of evil to Pastor Aaron Thompson's church. And he made a slanderous, he teamed up with this other guy, Chad, and made this slanderous, lying, evil video about Pastor Aaron Thompson that ended up hurting Pastor Thompson's reputation and, you know, causing problems and whatever. Then, he doesn't stop there. Then he goes to Texas and teams up with a bunch of other wicked people and steals $125,000 from Steadfast Baptist Church bank account because, you know, his buddy worked for the bank and whatever. And they did this and then, you know, it ended up going to court and everything and then the lawyers all made a bunch of money and then, you know, eventually, you know, the church got the money back or whatever, but like it all just went to the lawyers and it was just a big nightmare. I mean, here's a guy who's done evil to the cause of Christ, big time. You know, he's harming a good church up in Washington. He's harming a good church in Texas. And then, you know, he was posing at first as an independent fundamentalist Baptist. Now, he's posting pictures of himself in gay pride parades. You know, he and his wife are saying that the best Christians they know are gay men and he's a gay affirming Christian and whatever and just literally just gone all the way to just worshipping Satan now, openly. I mean, can we call him out? Can we call him out for that? Oh, by the way, he left his wife and kids. Now, he's married to a third wife and he took her name, you know, to show what a great feminist he is. So now, instead of being named Ryan Gallagher, his name's Ryan Becker. Well, why don't you Google where Ryan Becker is right now because you know what? His skin is all rotting off of his body and he's going to be dead in a couple of weeks. He's about to fall over dead. He's in excruciating pain. But you know what? If you have a weak stomach, don't look at the pictures because the pictures are horrific. He's covered in disease all over his body and the doctors are saying we have no idea. That's why it's in the news. It's in the London Guardian. It's in UK newspapers. It's in American newspapers. They're saying we have no idea what this is. They said there's no one in the world that has this diagnosis that he has. There's no one in the world. This is so unique and he's in excruciating pain, patient zero of some kind of a new AIDS virus or something, just covered in horrific growth stories. You know my first reaction when I saw those pictures? My first reaction when I saw those pictures was like, whoa, I want to just like drop to my knees and just be like, oh God, is there anything I'm not right about? That was like the first thought that I had. Amen? Because I fear God. I fear God. I just wanted to drop to my knees and be like, God, I don't ever want this to happen to me. This is horrible. This is gross. This looks so painful and torturous and I'm just like, man, this just makes me want to just make sure that I'm 100% right with God because I'm just like trembling at the wrath of God. But you know what's funny is that someone else looked at the same article and the same pictures and you know what they said? This is what this person said. He said, oh, you think this had something to do with what he did to Pastor Thompson and Pastor Shelley? That's absurd. That's absurd. Yeah, of course it's crazy. It's crazy to think that it's not a coincidence that this young healthy guy, and look, this guy had everything going for him. Young, healthy, sharp looking guy, just graduated from law school, so he's no dummy, just graduated from law school, young, healthy, carefree, making money hand over fist. And it's just all of a sudden now he is just cut down and just covered in a torturous lesion. You know, they said lesion, I'm thinking legion because this guy was so evil. He's covered in these horrible lesions all over his body, but I guess that's just a coincidence, right? But here's the thing, fools, they're not going to heed the warning. You know what's funny is like the people who need the warning the least are the ones who are getting the warning. You know what I mean? Like people who are already serving God, like myself, I'm serving God, and I'm just like dropping to my knees, God, you know, is there anything I need to fix? Right? And I guarantee you that tons of other people felt the same way and are like examining themselves and searching themselves, right? But you know what's funny is that the people who are the most sinful, the most backslidden, the most needing of this warning are the ones who are just regarding it the least. Isn't that ironic? The people who should be scared right now. Like how about the people, how about the people that Ryan teamed up with to do those things to Pastor Thompson, teamed up with to do those things to steadfast? Like what, I mean, if I were those people, I would be like at that pastor's house begging, I'd be walking up to the doorstep on my knees. I'd be literally coming up the driveway on my knees begging forgiveness. But you know, this is just, but to the wicked, this is a joke. But you know what, you know what the transgression of the wicked tells me? Tells me that there's no fear of God before their eyes. There's just, there's no fear of God. It just doesn't register. And what's funny is like I'll preach a hard sermon sometimes and people will come up to me afterward like, oh man, I really needed that. And I'm thinking like, you didn't really need that that much. You know, like you're already doing great, but then the people who really did need it, they're the ones not getting it. I mean, right. I mean, look, if anybody needs to get that message about Ryan Becker, it's the people that aren't right with God. It's the people that are enemies of the cause of Christ, enemies of good soul winning churches, attacking men of God, right? What does the Bible say? Touch not mine anointed and do my prophets no harm. You know, people that are harming the prophets of God, they should be scared. But no, they're not. They think it's a big coincidence. The whole world's a coincidence, right? Maybe it's also a cosmic accident, you know? In fact, I think that the entire universe is just one big cosmic accident because gravity exists. You know, the universe can and will create itself. But you know what? It's just as stupid when Christians will look at something like this and claim it's a coincidence. It's a God incidence. It's not a coincidence. I mean, what nonsense. Yeah, it's just totally random. Just get a weird flesh eating destructive thing right after you mess with, you know, two Bible believing soul winning churches. And these aren't just any churches. These are some of the soul winningest churches in America. These are churches that are hardcore soul winning, hardcore on church planting, missions and everything else. You think God's just gonna sit back and do nothing? And then when God acts, everybody's like, oh, God didn't act. That's not God. That's a coincidence. It's crazy. You know what's absurd is saying that it's not a punishment from God. When you see someone do something wicked and then something happens like that, that's a punishment from God. So what about Job? Job didn't do anything wicked. So if you see someone not do anything wicked and then they're covered in sores, you know what? That's also not a coincidence. That's also a God incidence because was it a coincidence that Job was covered in sores? No. It was part of God's plan. Job is being tested and tried. And what did his friends say? Oh, you must have done something wrong. But they couldn't point to anything. The problem with his friends is they can't point to anything Job is even doing wrong. It's just, well, you must have done something wrong because it's happening to you. Whereas when you can point to a picture of somebody at a gay pride parade who's promoting gay pride after they claim to be an independent fundamental Baptist. Oh, I don't know. Maybe he's Job. I forgot. I guess I forgot to read chapter zero of the book of Job where Job visited a gay pride parade. You know, I guess I forgot the part where Job went and stole money from church. I mean, you know, you just can't even make this stuff up. And so, as a preacher, you know, I'm going to cut off the horns of the wicked. I'm just going to. You know, and, you know, I'm blessed and it's a privilege that I've received this congregation, you know, that I've been able to pastor this church for the last 20 years. It's a privilege. Right. And here's the thing. It's a privilege. And here's the thing. If I am no longer worthy to pastor this church, then God will take away from me that privilege of pastoring this church. You know, because pastoring this church, it's a great responsibility. It's a great privilege. But guess what? I'm here because God put me here and God has kept me here. And a lot of people have tried to remove me, but here I am because there's one person that's going to remove me and it's God. You know, God wants to remove me. And if he wants to remove me today, I'm like, I can't get out of here fast enough if that's what God wants. Because why would I want to be here if it's not God's will? You know what I'm saying? I'm not up here for me. I'm up here for the Lord. You know, and so the promotion is only going to come from the north and the demotion is only going to come from the north. You know, and you know, that obviously is a sobering thought for me because I need to make sure that I'm not scattering the flock. And if I felt like me remaining as pastor was going to scatter the flock, then I'd be like, well, I need to leave so that the flock can stay strong and intact. And if I felt, does everybody understand what I'm saying? If I felt like, well, leaving is going to make the church better off, then I'll leave. If the church is better off with me here, then I'm going to stay here. That's how that decision works. Okay, but at the end of the day, if I'm the pastor of the church, I need to judge uprightly, but that also involves telling fools that they're stupid and cutting off the horns of the wicked. It's called hard preaching. And whether you like it or not, it's a biblical mandate to preach hard and to call these things out. Because when you come to church, you need to hear this kind of preaching to put the fear of God into you. I need to hear these things, put the fear of God into me. I'm putting the fear of God into myself when I look at those pictures. Wow. Let's, my friends, have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word. We thank you for this great chapter, Psalm 75. Thank you for a great man of God like Asaph that you used to pen these Psalms that are so interesting, they're so encouraging, they're relatable. And Lord God, I just pray that you would just bless us now as we go our separate ways. Most of all, Lord, we pray that our soul-winning group in the Bahamas would be blessed. And Lord, that you would use them mightily tomorrow. Thank you so much for all the wonderful works that you allowed them to do today and on Monday. But Lord God, help them to finish strong with one more strong day of soul-winning, Lord, and just lead them to the people that are receptive. And just fill them with your spirit, Lord, and help them to also be moved and inspired when they look upon the fields how white they are unto harvest. And that they will continue with life-long soul-winning and life-long mission strips. And we ask these things in your name, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I should say, amen. Amen. Lastly, let's turn in our hymnals to song number five. Song number five, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. Song number five, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. On this the Prince of Glory dies. Sing it out on the first. When I survey the wondrous cross. On this the Prince of Glory dies. My richest name I doubt but lust. And for the death of all my kind. For it is Lord that I should birth. Sing it the death of Christ my God. I have made things that have shown me worth. I sacrificed them to his birth. Sing from his head, his hands, his feet. Sorrow and love flowing through now. There's the source of love that is sorrow here. For words come old souls, praise your crown. Where the whole realm of nature lie. Ever a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine. Deep as my soul I, I, I, I. And everybody, great singing. You are dismissed. You are dismissed.