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

Man, Ezekiel 24, the part that I want to focus on is beginning in verse number 3, the title of my sermon this morning is purging out the scum. Purging out the scum. The Bible says in verse 3, and utter a parable unto the rebellious house and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God, Set on a pot, set it on, and also pour water in it. Gather the pieces thereof into it. Then every good piece, the thigh and the shoulder, fill it with the choice bones. Take the choice of the flock, and burn also the bones under it, and make it boil well, and let them seed the bones of it therein. Wherefore, dost sayeth the Lord God, Woe to the bloody city, to the pot whose scum is therein, and whose scum is not gone out of it. Bring it out piece by piece, let no lot fall upon it. Now this is the only chapter in the Bible that uses the word scum, but it actually says the word scum over and over again in the chapter, repeats that over and over again, and I looked up scum in the dictionary, and the primary definition of scum fits this passage perfectly. It says it's a film or a layer of foul or extraneous matter that forms on the surface of a liquid. So what are we talking about in this story? There's a big pot, and there are a bunch of bones and things put in the pot, because broth is being made. Soup is being made. Now my wife actually makes her own broth at home, so I know a little bit about this process. Actually she knows a lot more about it than I do, but she will boil bones and things on the stove in order to produce broth, and there is a layer of scum that develops, okay, that will be left on the edge of the pot, that ring of scum. Now all that junk or scum, that foul matter that forms on the surface of that liquid, that junk is being removed from the bones. You know, you put in the bones, you put in the meat, there's good flesh there. There's good marrow there and protein and nutrition, but then there's also just some dirt, some junk, some scum there, and that boiling process separates that which is good from that which is bad, and it allows the scum to rise to the top and to accumulate on the edge of that so that you can get the good meat out of there, the good broth out of there, and have something that's useful. So God is using this as a parable for the city of Jerusalem, because he says in verse number 6, wherefore, thus saith the Lord God, woe to the bloody city, to the pot whose scum is therein. So the pot with the scum in it is Jerusalem, according to this parable, the bloody city. Now if you get the context of this passage, at the beginning of the chapter, verses 1 and 2, it says, Again in the ninth year, in the tenth day of the month, came the word of the Lord unto me, saying, Son of man, write thee the name of the day, even of this same day, the king of Babylon set himself against Jerusalem this same day. And then he gets into this parable about the pot, boiling the bones, and the scum that is accumulated. Now what does this mean? Basically the pot is Jerusalem, and the Babylonians are going to come and siege Jerusalem, and take the Jews captive into Babylon and into all lands, and they're going to burn the city with fire, destroy it. This is God's wrath and judgment on the bloody city. Verse 6, wherefore, thus saith the Lord God, woe to the bloody city, to the pot whose scum is therein, whose scum is not gone out of it, bring it out piece by piece, let no lot fall upon it, for her blood, verse 7, is in the midst of her, she set it upon the top of a rock, she poured it not upon the ground to cover it with dust. Now keep your finger there in Ezekiel, and go back to Leviticus chapter 17. And let's compare scripture with scripture here. Leviticus chapter 17. Now what are the grievances that the Lord has with Jerusalem in Ezekiel 24? What's the problem? What is it that he refers to as the scum of the city? Well if you get the context, and go back to chapter 23 of Ezekiel, the things that he kept hitting on were fornication, adultery, and whoredoms. And those are the big sins that he's bringing up. Later on in chapter 24 itself as we're going to see, he brings up their lewdness and filthiness. And obviously when we hear the word lewdness, that goes hand in hand with things like fornication, whoredom, and adultery. Then he also emphasizes their blood guiltiness, woe to the bloody city. Now what do these two things have to do with one another? What does fornication and adultery and lewdness on one hand have to do with bloodiness on the other hand? I'll tell you exactly why. Because the one leads to the other. A lot of people think that just going out and sleeping around and committing fornication and adultery is just something that they do and they're not hurting anybody. You know, it's their life, they're going to do what they want. But it actually does hurt people. And in fact, there's a mass amount of bloodshed going on today in the United States of America as a direct result of fornication. It's called abortion. It's called abortion. I mean just murder after murder after murder is taking place today in the United States and elsewhere around the world as a direct result of fornication. Fornication leads to a pregnancy that one will quote unquote terminate, but the Bible calls it killing or murder. So that is how fornication and lewdness and promiscuity leads to becoming a bloody city or a bloody state or a bloody nation. Not only that, but adultery often leads to murder. Because when somebody catches their wife with somebody else, there's often a crime of passion that ensues and someone is often murdered out of revenge for that wickedness. So you can see how those two things go together. Now one of the things about this murder and lewdness that Jerusalem had been involved in was that it was something that was not hidden. It was something that was done out in the open. And God makes a point to say her blood is in the midst of her. She set it upon the top of a rock. She poured it not upon the ground to cover it with dust. Now here's another passage that talks about pouring blood on the ground and covering it with dust. It actually has to do with animals, you know, when you're actually just making food. Look what the Bible says in Leviticus 17 verse 10. And whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, of the strangers that sojourn among you that eateth any manner of blood, I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood and will cut him off from among his people. So the Bible tells us that we should not eat blood. Verse 11, for the life of the flesh is in the blood and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. Now why were they not supposed to eat blood? Because blood was to be kept sacred or respected because of the fact that that blood was offered upon the altar in a sacrifice unto the Lord. Remember when they did animal sacrifices in those days, right? And it pictured the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so it was to be kept sacred, it was the blood on the altar that made an atonement for their souls that covered their sins, right? And it says in verse 12, therefore I said unto the children of Israel, no soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger that sojourneth among you eat blood. And whatsoever man there be of the children of Israel or of the strangers that sojourn among you which hunteth and catcheth any beast or fowl that may be eaten, he shall even pour out the blood thereof and cover it with dust. Therefore it is the life of all flesh, the blood of it is for the life thereof. Therefore I said unto the children of Israel, ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh, for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof, whosoever eateth it shall be cut off. Now if you would go to Ezekiel 24 where we were. So the idea here is that if even when you hunt an animal and kill it, you would even show the respect even to that animal. You're showing the respect of pouring out the blood upon the earth, covering it with dust and cleaning up the mess as it were that you've made when you killed that animal. You know this is a different situation to Ezekiel 24 where they're actually murdering human beings and not even properly disposing of the bodies and not even having any shame about it but just pouring it on a rock, the Bible says. Now think about it, if you were to pour the blood upon the dust of the earth and then put dirt over it, what are you basically doing? You're concealing it, you're hiding it, you're putting it away, right? Which is obviously symbolic. And so what they're doing in Ezekiel 24 is the opposite. Their blood is not being poured on the ground and you know covered in dirt but it's actually being put upon a rock, just exposed, open, everybody knows about it. Nobody cares, nobody's ashamed, nobody has any respect for that human life that's being destroyed and it just cries out to the Lord like the blood of Abel crying out to the Lord from the earth. Now like we were talking about with abortion, this is applicable as well. The bodies of the aborted are not dealt with properly. They're not given any kind of a proper burial, they're not shown any respect, they're actually thrown in the trash or worse yet, they're even used in consumer products. The parts are even sold, pieces that are even sold, cells and things that are used and abused. You know, so this is what we see today in America, a similar situation. There's too much scum in America today. The scum of fornication, the scum of adultery, the scum of innocent blood that's being shed. You know, the United States is like a big pot that has a bunch of scum in it, right? So after you've boiled the food and taken out that which is good, and there are good things here, but what's left is just a bunch of rotten, dirty scum. That's what we see here. God is likening sin to scum, right, that you would find in a pot. Let's go back to Ezekiel 24 with that in mind. And by the way, the United States, we're not ashamed of abortion. I mean, it's just, it's in the phone book, it's in the yellow pages, there's a building advertising it, and it's just, it's just accepted. It's just, it's legal, everybody knows about it, and a lot of people are okay with it. It's wicked. People are okay with fornication. Some people are even okay with adultery. But let's keep reading. The Bible says in Ezekiel 24, verse 7, for her blood is in the midst of her. She set it upon the top of a rock. She poured it not upon the ground to cover it with dust, that it might cause fury to come up to take vengeance. I have set her blood upon the top of a rock, that it should not be covered. Therefore thus saith the Lord God, woe to the bloody city. I will even make the pile for fire great. Heap on wood, kindle the fire, consume the flesh, and spice it well, and let the bones be burned. Then set it empty, the empty is the pot itself, right, so after the meat's been eaten and everything comes out of it. Then set it empty upon the coals thereof, that the brass of it may be hot and may burn, and that the filthiness of it may be molten in it, that the scum of it may be consumed. She hath wearied herself with lies, and her great scum went not forth out of her. Her scum shall be in the fire. Now what's this talking about? After the broth is made, after the soup has been made, and the heat of the fire and the boiling has caused separation to occur between that which is useful, the meat and the broth that can be used, and that which is just junk, the dirty scum that's left. Then he's gonna take that pot and he's gonna put the pot empty upon the fire just to clean it out, just to melt away all that scum and to cleanse it. Now I don't know anything about what it would be like using a brass pot, and it's hard to know exactly what alloy is being referred to here by this brass, but I know that my wife cooks with cast iron. Who's had some experience with cast iron, right? And sometimes when cast iron is not cared for properly, it'll have a lot of rust and a lot of kind of just junk and build up, and it'll start looking pretty ugly, right? And the way that you have to fix it, and my wife's done this a bunch of times, she makes a little campfire in the backyard with a bunch of wood, like the Bible's talking about here, and she puts that cast iron upside down on that little campfire and just gets it as hot as she possibly can, gets it over those coals and over those flames and fire, and just gets it just glowing hot, and that heat causes all the junk and all the garbage just to come off of it, so that it comes out of that looking good and clean. So she puts it on the fire, gets it just super hot, and that's how it's cleansed, and the Bible talks a lot about, in the law of Moses, cleansing metal accoutrements with fire, just putting them through heat to clean them, get all the junk out, get all the garbage out, and all the junk will kind of like, I don't know how to describe it, it'll kind of like sweat out of the pores of the iron itself, okay, all of the junk that got in there over time, and it's all brought out by the fire. And then she takes it right off the fire and she hoses it down, stop me if I get this wrong, and she hoses it down to cool that off, right? And then she goes in with, do you use butter? What do you use? Bacon grease? All right, yeah, sounds good, all right. No wonder the food's so good at my house. So anyway, so then she seasons the pan, because you can't just leave it with nothing. You know, if you get it clean, you get all the junk out, you burn it all off, you hose it down and clean it up, there's a void there though, and it'll just get rusty and damaged unless it has some fat on it to keep it what the Bible, or not what the Bible calls, but what people call seasoned, right, to keep it in working order. So you have to leave a layer of fat on it all the time. That's why with cast iron you can never wash it with soap, because then you'll get rid of all the fat and you'll ruin it. And that's why a lot of it is in bad shape, because people don't know how to take care of it. So the right way to take care of it is to immediately coat it with a layer of bacon fat or some kind of lard or something, and you just leave that fat on it all the time. So when you're done cooking with it, you just wipe it off, but you always leave a layer of fat. Who knows what I'm talking about with this? And again, I'm kind of speaking second hand, because my wife has done all this, but I've observed her doing this, so I think I understand the process. Where did you learn all this, honey? Trial and error. So she learned the hard way. She reinvented the wheel, you know. Actually, she was studying Ezekiel 24 one day. No, I'm just kidding. So anyway, so she's been doing this. But basically, that's what the Bible's talking about, using fire to clean things, right? To just kind of melt away and burn up all that scum and get rid of it. Now, the word that the Bible uses for this process spiritually to get the junk out of our life, to get the sin out of our life, to get the garbage out of our life is purging, right? God purges us. And the word purge comes from the same root word where we would get the word pure or purify or purity. Look at the first three letters of purge. But isn't it interesting also that the word fire, what's another word for fire or a prefix that has to do with fire would be like pyro, right? Like a pyromaniac or pyrotechnics. So you can see how pyre, a funeral pyre is like a big fire, right? Pyre, fire, pyre, purity, purging. Why? Because fire cleanses. Fire purifies. See how the purity has to do with the pyro right there? So there's a connection between these words because fire purges the scum, right? It gets the junk out. And so that's why it says, if you keep reading here in verse 12, she has wearied herself with lies and her great scum went not forth out of her. Her scum shall be in the fire in thy filthiness. Verse 13 is lewdness because I have purged thee and thou was not purged. Thou shall not be purged from thy filthiness anymore till I have caused my fury to rest upon thee. I, the Lord, have spoken it. It shall come to pass and I will do it. I will not go back, neither will I spare, neither will I repent. According to thy ways and according to thy doings shall they judge thee, saith the Lord God. And then he changes the subject in the next verse. So what's he saying here? He's saying that he brings the fire in order to purge us and if we don't get purged, he gets angry and then he's going to have to bring even more fire and he's going to have to bring a consuming fire and he's going to come with rage and fury and anger. God's desire is to purge us of the sin and scum in our lives. God wants us to be clean. God wants us to live a righteous and holy and clean life. He wants us to get the sin out of our life and in order to do that, somebody's going to have to put us through some heat. He has to bring some heat into our life. He has to bring some fire into our life and if we're smart, we'll let that heat and fire do its job and purge us of our sins. But if we don't, if we resist that and try to hang on to that scum in our lives, then God's going to really have to bring some serious fire and we don't want that, do we? Now let's look at some verses on purging and if you would flip over to Isaiah, chapter number four, Isaiah, chapter number four, all right, I'm glad I noticed this. My outline is stapled out of order, I'm getting it fixed though, all right, there we go. So you go ahead and turn to Isaiah chapter four and I'm going to read for you some other verses just so you kind of get an understanding of the word purging in the Bible. Purging has to do with cleansing us of our sins or purifying us of our sins. The Bible says in 1 Samuel 3.14, therefore I have sworn unto the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be purged with sacrifice nor offering forever. Second Chronicles 34.3, for in the eighth year of his reign while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father and in the twelfth year, watch this, he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places and the groves and the carved images and the molten images. So this is a godly king that's purging his nation of idolatry. He's going through and he's cleaning it all out. This is scum, you know, these graven images, idols, so he gets rid of it, he breaks them down, he burns them, he destroys them. Psalm 51, this is after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba and what was the result of that adultery? Murder, bloodshed, right? He ended up killing Uriah the Hittite with the sword of the children of Haman and this is what he prayed to God afterward. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. So purging is like washing but washing is done with water and soap and purging is done with what? With fire. Psalm 65, 3, iniquities prevail against me, as for our transgressions thou shalt purge them away. Psalm 79, 9, help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name and deliver us and purge away our sins for thy name's sake. Proverbs 16, 6, by mercy and truth iniquity is purged and by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil. Here in Isaiah 4, flip back to Isaiah 1, keep your finger in 4 there, we'll go right back to 4, but in chapter 1 of Isaiah, he says, I will turn my hand upon thee and purely purge away thy dross and take away all thy tin. Now this is pretty similar to what we saw with the pot with the scum in it or the cast iron being purified in the fire because this has to do with metal, you know, heating up metal really hot so that they can get all the impurities out of it, get all the dross out of it, get all the junk out of it, right, and purely purge, do you see those two words side by side in verse 25? Purely purge away thy dross and take away all thy tin. You know tin is a pretty weak metal, isn't it? You know, you don't want to have a sword or something that's made out of tin, right, or a shield that's made of tin. You don't want to be the tin man, right? So look at chapter 4 verse 3 and we'll find something very similar to what we saw in Ezekiel. Look at Isaiah 4 verse 3, it shall come to pass that he that is left in Zion and he that remaineth in Jerusalem shall be called holy even everyone that is written among the living in Jerusalem when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof. And how's he going to purge away this garbage? How's he going to purge away the blood and the lewdness and the filth and the sin? He's going to do it by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning. You see that? He's going to burn away that wickedness. Go to Daniel chapter 11, Daniel chapter number 11. And while you're turning to Daniel chapter 11, I'll read for you from Malachi chapter 3. Behold, I will send my messenger and he shall prepare the way before me, obviously speaking of John the Baptist. And the Lord whom ye seek, Jesus Christ, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant whom ye delighted. Behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts, but who may abide the day of his coming and who shall stand when he appearth? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fuller's soap and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver and he shall purify the sons of Levi and purge them as gold and silver that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. So you see, God is interested in purging his servants. He wants to purge them. Job said that when I am tried and purified, I shall come forth as gold, right? And he said the sons of Levi need to be purified like gold or silver. They need to be cleaned up. They need to be cleansed of their wickedness so that they can offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. Look at Daniel chapter 11 verse 32. And such as do wickedly against the covenant, shall he corrupt by flatteries. But the people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits. And they that understand among the people shall instruct many. Yet they shall fall by the sword and by flame and by captivity and by spoil many days. Now when they shall fall, they shall be hoping with a little help. But many shall cleave to them with flatteries. And some of them of understanding shall fall to try them and to purge and to make them white even to the time of the end because it is yet for a time appointed. So we have people who love the Lord God. They're strong. They know their God according to verse 32. And in verse 33, they have understanding that allows them to instruct many. So they're teaching a lot of people the word of God. So this could be in our modern time somebody who's going out and doing a lot of soul winning. You know, they're winning a lot of people to Christ. They're teaching people the Bible. They're getting people saved. They're teaching them other things from the Bible. They're expounding scripture unto them. They're doing great exploits or works for God. And he says that these people are going to fall to try them and to purge them and to make them white. So God is going to take people that are good people, godly people that are doing great works that are instructing a lot of people and he's going to purge them. Why? So that they can be even better. So that they can be even stronger. So that they can do even more for God. Now if you would go to John chapter 15. So everything we've looked at so far has been in the Old Testament, hasn't it? We've looked at a lot of Old Testament scriptures about purging and purifying. And again the title of the sermon is purging out the scum. Purging out the scum. That's what Ezekiel's parable was all about. Purging out all that scum. Getting rid of it. Why? So that you can have a clean vessel. So you can have a vessel that's ready to be used by God. And that's what God had to do with Jerusalem. It had gotten so dirty and so filthy and there was so much scum in it that he had to turn up the heat. And when he turned up the heat, you know, there were good elements in there, right? Good pieces of meat, good bones and good marrow. And those things were purified. The junk was separated from them. Those pieces were well spiced and eaten but they had to be taken out of the pot, didn't they? So God took them captive. He took them all out of Jerusalem. And then the pot is left there and he really turns the heat up. He burns it to where it's just red hot so that all the scum could be melted out. That way they could come back 70 years later into a clean vessel. It's like a reset button. They could start over, have a clean pot and they're ready to, you know, be used by God and serve the Lord in righteousness. Now look at John chapter 15. Let's get a New Testament application of this, okay? This is Jesus Christ speaking. He says in verse 1, I'm the true vine and my father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh away. And every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit. So this is a really similar concept of a vine. And I don't know much about vines but I know a little bit about trees. And when you have trees, you have to purge the tree because if you just let it grow wild and if you let all the different branches and all the different shoots exist, it's too much. The root or the trunk, you know, is wasting time on a lot of branches that aren't producing anything. So it's wasting energy and resources. It can't really put it toward the productive branches. So what you go in and do is you prune it, right? And again, not an expert on this. But you go in and you trim off that which is unproductive and you choose the branches that are the best branches, right? And those are the ones you leave and you trim off other branches. And then even on the good branch, you might trim it down to the best, most promising shoots and branches and everything like that. That way, all of the resources are going to that which is productive. So by pruning a tree, it'll bring forth more fruit than if that tree is just left alone. If you just let it just grow and go wild and just go everywhere. And I've learned this from experience just in my backyard having a lemon tree when we just kind of let it go, it gets out of control and it's not healthy. But then you go in and have somebody trim it who knows what they're doing and then you have a much better harvest of fruit from that thing. So he says that every branch in me that beareth not fruity taketh away and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit. So if you're a fruit-bearing Christian, if you're a godly Christian, if you're one who's winning souls to Christ and you're productive for the Lord and you're serving him and you're making results happen, you should expect to be purged by God. God's going to come in with his clippers and cut things out of your life that are bad for you. Things that are slowing you down. Things that are wasting your time, wasting your resources. And he might have to purge certain people out of your life that are just the wrong people and wrong friends and wrong activities. He's going to purge you so that you bring forth more fruit. He says in verse 3, now are ye clean through the word which I've spoken unto you. Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except you abide in me. I'm the vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth in me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit. For without me you can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he's cast forth as a branch and is withered and men gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned. Now some people will take this and try to say oh that means you're going to hell. No you can't lose your salvation. And we never want to base our doctrine on a parable. Base your doctrine on the clear statements of the Bible. The clear statements of the Bible, especially in the book of John, are that if you believe on Christ you have everlasting life. You shall never perish. No man will ever pluck you out of his hand and so forth. So there's a ton of scripture on the eternal security of the believer specifically in the book of John. John 5 24 is a great, I mean there's just too many to even mention. So this is a parable. It's not saying oh you're going to go to hell. What it's saying though is that you know you might be purged from the house of God or you might be one that God cast aside and is not going to use. You know there are people that God's going to use greatly and other people that aren't abiding in him, they can't be used. Now this is what the apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians chapter 9 when he said you know I don't want to, having preached to others, myself be cast away. You know I've preached to others and then I end up washing up. I end up falling out of the work of God. And look there are many, many Christians who are actually saved. It's not that they weren't saved. They're saved Christians but they end up not being used by God. They end up becoming unfruitful. They're like the one where the cares of this world choke them and they become unfruitful. And eventually you know they end up just totally getting out of church, totally getting out of the work of God and not being used by God, not bringing forth any fruit. It doesn't mean that they're not saved. The Bible is just talking about men gathering branches that are trimmed. You know the trees prune, they take them all out and they throw them into the fire. You know that's not hell. That's the fire of God basically trying to purge you. And you know he's putting you through discomfort. You know when you get out of the house of God, when you get out of serving God and living for God, you're going out of the frying pan and into the fire is what you're doing according to Ezekiel 24 and according to this. You know I want to be in the frying pan you know where I'm a soup that's being made you know for the Lord's honor and glory. I don't want to be like those bones that ended up getting thrown into the wood pile and burned with the wood. That's what he talked about in Ezekiel 24. He talked about the bones that are in the broth but then he talked about bones that are just being thrown into the fire just because they don't really have anything good to offer to the soup. And you know when it comes to the body of Christ here you know there are different members in the body of Christ that have different spiritual gifts and different roles but we're all you know working together as a team to serve the Lord, to get people saved, to grow in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to edify one another, to raise our families, to raise our children and to live our lives in a godly way, in a way that pleases God right. But there are some people that are going to be purged from the church you know and sometimes that's just going to come in the form of them just slowly fading away and they just quit coming and we don't really know why. You know it's because they weren't bringing forth fruit that's why. You know and then there are going to be other people that are scum that need to be burned and melted and purged away from the church itself. So this lesson goes for our lives and it also goes for a church, it goes for a city, it goes for a country and so forth. So think about this in your personal life if you're one who loves the Lord, serves God, wins people to Christ but you've got sin in your life which we all do right. I mean nobody's perfect. You should expect that God's going to work on you and work with you to try to get that sin out of your life. Now why does God want you to get the sin out of your life? Because then you can bring forth more fruit. The Bible says every branch in him that brings forth fruit he purges it so that it will bring forth even more fruit right. So let me ask you this, are you going to bring forth more fruit living a sinful life or living a clean life? I mean if you're going to go out soul winning once a week and you show up for the soul winning time and knock doors, what's going to be better though if you spend the rest of the week living for God or if you spend the rest of the week walking after the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life? You know some of that scum in our lives is what slows us down from winning people to Christ and being used greatly by God. Because what people need to understand is that when we go out soul winning this is not just an intellectual exercise that we're going through with people. When we go soul winning, I mean otherwise we could just program a robot right. I know that the technology is not quite there but it's getting there. Maybe in our lifetime we'll just be sending out robots to go out and you know turn to Romans 3.23 you know blah blah blah. But here's the thing, I don't think that robot's going to win anybody to Christ because that robot doesn't have the Holy Spirit living inside of it. And you know what, Judas was like a human robot because he didn't believe in Christ. He didn't have the Holy Spirit living inside of him. But what did he do? He went out and preached the word of God. But guess what wasn't there? The power of God wasn't there. Because everything brings forth after its own kind. A good tree brings forth good fruit, a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit. So you know Judas could go out like a robot and just repeat things he's heard or recite what he's heard. A preacher could get up and preach all the right things just because he's just repeating what he's heard. He's an imitator, he's an imposter, he's a hypocrite. But the power of God isn't going to be there. And when we go out soloning it's the power of God that saves people. It's the Holy Spirit's power that saves people. That's why if we're Spirit filled, if the Holy Ghost is upon us, when we go out soloning that's where you're going to see the great power of God and you're going to see more people saved when you're filled with the Spirit than if you're a carnal Christian. Now look if you're saved and you go out soloning you will get some people saved. If you're saved. If you're not saved you're not going to get anybody saved because you're not even saved. Even if you robotically repeated the Romans road or even if you went through and you know just gave the gospel exactly like Pastor Anderson gives it. Yeah well what's the difference? I mean if somebody gave the gospel exactly the way you do the difference is that they're not saved and I am and getting someone saved is a spiritual activity. Now some people struggle with this doctrine. I don't want to make the whole sermon about this. I'm just kind of touching on this. But you know Paul talked about people that he had begotten. He said that they were his son in the faith. He said Onesimus is one that I've begotten in my bonds. Okay. Why? God likens winning somebody to Christ as bringing forth fruit or reproducing or having a child in a sense. It's like your spiritual son or daughter when you win that person to Christ. Well everything brings forth after its own kind and a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. So if you have a corrupt tree if you have some Judas Iscariot rotten person who's not even saved who's a false prophet an infiltrator and they go out and they give the gospel somebody and pray with that person you might think that that person got saved. But if the soul winner is not saved then they didn't get saved. You know it's that simple. It's sort of like it takes two people to produce a baby right. It takes a mother and a father and then the babies produced right. Well it's the same thing with soul winning. You know what it takes. It takes the Lord and it takes the saved Christian to win somebody the Lord. You know everybody that got saved somebody got them saved. You know somebody gave you the gospel. Somebody preached. Now some people say nobody ever gave me the gospel. Nobody ever preached. I just got saved by reading the Bible on their own. No no because the natural man the unregenerate man when he picks up the Bible he can't understand it. That's why the Ethiopian eunuch when he was asked hey do you understand what you read he said how can I except some man should guide me. He needed that spirit filled soul winner to show up and give him the gospel. Now you say well God's just going to directly win people to himself. No even when he appeared to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus right when Christ appeared to him and said Saul Saul why persecutors thou me. Did the apostle Paul get saved right then and there. No he didn't. A lot of people say oh you know Saul got saved on the road to Damascus. Not true. Jesus Christ appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus and he told him you need to go to Damascus and find Ananias and Ananias is going to tell you what you need to do. And then when he goes to Ananias Ananias tells him he needs to call upon God and wash away his sins. He got saved through Ananias winning him to Christ. Think about Cornelius. You know Cornelius is a man who's praying and fasting and he gave a lot of money to the poor and so God looks down on this guy and thinks you know this is a good guy. This is a sincere guy. I want to make sure that this guy gets the gospel. So he sends Peter. He sends an angel to Cornelius telling him hey you need to go find this guy Simon Peter and then he sends an angel to Peter saying hey you need to go find this guy Cornelius. But in order for Cornelius to get saved what had to happen. Why didn't the angel just win him to Christ right there. No no no what happened is Peter had to go to Cornelius and give him the gospel right. So we have been entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation. God has given us the responsibility to preach the gospel and preaching the gospel is a spiritual activity. OK so if we're going to go out soul winning we want to pray first and ask God to bless our soul winning and to be that we might be filled with the Holy Spirit. Right so that we could preach the word of God in the power of the Holy Ghost so that people might be saved as a result of that. Now here's the thing. If we are living a carnal sinful life we are not going to have the fullness of the spirit as much as if we are living a separated and clean and godly life. That's why he says look you have to be purged so that you can bring forth more fruit. If you're worldly if you're sinful if you're carnal and you go out preaching the gospel because you are saved because you do have the Holy Spirit inside you. You will get some people saved. So I'm not saying don't go soul winning because you're too carnal. You know get out there and go soul winning anyway why. Because if you go out there in your carnal condition and do a little soul winning. What are you doing. You're bringing forth a little bit of fruit because you're a little bit spiritual. You're going to bring forth a little bit of fruit. Everybody follow what happens when God looks down and sees you bring forth a little bit of fruit. What's he going to do. He's going to purge you. He's going to say you know what you're bringing forth a little bit of fruit. I like that. Now I'm going to purge you so you can bring forth more fruit. Then you bring forth more fruit then he's going to purge you again. Then you're going to bring forth even more fruit. And the more you're purged the more fruit you're going to bring forth. This is a process that we go through in our lives of just cleaning up our lives getting sent out of our lives and walking in the Spirit. And it's not going to happen overnight. It's not like you just get saved and you're just in the Spirit and you're just this amazing soul winner and everything like that. No no it's going to take time for God to slowly prune you and purge you. Because if you just go all bonsai on your tree the first time you could go overboard and then the tree might just die. If too much purging happens at one time. Again I'm not an expert on arbology or I don't even know what the word is right. What's the word for horticulture. What's the word for the study of trees. Arboriculture are you making that up. Trying to make me look dumb. I don't know what it is. See that shows how little I know. But the point is that you know when it comes to trees I'm not an expert but I do know that I've seen a tree get over trimmed and it just died because it was trimmed too much at one time. I mean if God just comes into our lives or if people come into our lives and just try to just start chopping everything off at once you know it might just be too much for us to handle. Just make sure we don't overwhelm new believers. Where somebody gets saved and we just start taking a chainsaw out of their life. You know they just got saved yesterday and we're taking a chainsaw out of their life. You know it's got to be line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little there a little. We take steps in our Christian life. We take steps of growth. We can't expect everybody to just be right on everything the first week that they got saved. We take time to quit this sin, to quit that sin, to start this Bible reading habit, to start this prayer habit, to start this church habit, soul winning habit, whatever. Get rid of the bad habits, bring in the good habits. But God wants us to bring forth more fruit. We've got to be purged. Look a scummy Christian is not going to be greatly used by God. And if God looks down at your life and sees a pot with this ring of scum around it, what's he going to do? He's going to purge it. And if you don't let him purge it, then he's going to get angry and he's going to really turn up the heat. And he's going to just melt that scum out one way or the other. He's going to get rid of it. So we want to make sure that we respond to the correction of the Lord. We respond to God's chastening when he comes in and tries to purge us. And you know sermons will sometimes be a purging session. You know you come to church and you hear preaching, right, and it's like snip and something needs to go. We've got to get rid of something in our lives. We've got to change something in our lives. That's purging. And look, sometimes it's going to hurt. But it's part of the process for God to use us. We want God to purge us. So this is on the personal level in our lives, purging out the scum out of our lives, fornication, adultery, lasciviousness, theft, whatever the sins in our lives of just, you know, whatever they be. All kinds of different things. But then also a church is the same way. You know a church has to be purged so that it could bring forth more fruit. And this is what's wrong with the neo-evangelical philosophy or the non-denom philosophy that just says bring everybody in. Doesn't matter what they believe. Doesn't matter what the doctrine is. Doesn't matter what the sin is. Just bring everybody in. And what do you end up with? You end up with just scum. You know the scum isn't purged. And think about it. I mean a little leaven leavens the whole lump. I mean look if you take a pot with a bunch of scum in it and then you cook dinner in that, how's the dinner going to taste? A little scum is going to ruin the whole thing. You know this is like in 2 Kings chapter 4 when you know some son of the prophets goes out and gets some wild gourd. They have this big bowl of food. It's supposed to feed everybody. He finds some wild gourd that he's never seen before, slices it up, throws it in the pot and poisons the entire pot. All the food for the whole group. The whole mission strip is shot because all the food is poisoned. And you know God had to perform a miracle to cleanse that thing. So this is the way it is in churches. There are churches today that just say throw everything in the pot. Never cleanse the pot. Turn off the heat. Bring everybody in. No wrong. We need a church that cares about purity. Now look obviously we're a church filled with sinners saved by grace. We're not perfect. We're not expecting everybody to be mature. Like I said people are at all different stages of spiritual growth. People have to grow at their own pace. But there are certain things that are just not acceptable. The Bible specifically tells us what those things are. He says look fornication. It can't go on in the church. People can't just be coming to church and they're living with their girlfriend. They're not married. It can't happen. We can't just have people committing adultery in the church. We can't have drunkenness going on in the church. There are specific things that God says we need to draw a hard line on these things. And also when it comes to doctrine we need to draw a hard line on certain doctrine. Certain things that are just heresy and get it out. We can't just have this thing of well anything goes. Like there's a Baptist church in town here that says hey if you're against speaking in tongues that's okay but if you want to speak in tongues speak in tongues because we want to bring both in. Well when they say speaking in tongues they're not talking about what the Bible's talking about when it says speaking in another tongue or speaking with another tongue. They're talking about this kind of you know this kind of weird stuff where they're falling on the ground and flopping around and all kinds of stuff. We're not going to bring that into our church. Not acceptable. If somebody starts flopping around and doing that kind of stuff we're going to drag them out of here. You know and we're trying to cast out the demon if we can, amen. You know we'll do our best. And the thing is that you know heresies in regard to salvation, you know denying the Trinity whatever you know that's scum and it's got to be purged. Now a lot of people in the last year have been thrown out of our church as heretics. You know we went through a big spiritual battle in our church. We had heresy coming in. We had people infiltrating with false doctrine and heresy and we had to take out the trash. And a lot of people look at that and they see that you know we've thrown out a bunch of people and then even some good people have quit the church over it. You know first of all there are the bad people who are heretics and it's like good riddance take out the trash. But you know what? When you're in a spiritual fight there are going to be some good people that are casualties as well. Why? Because they're just weak in the faith. You know they can't handle the fighting, they can't handle the battle and so by and by they're offended. You know when persecution or tribulation arises because of the word, when things get a little ugly, when there's some kind of a fight, they get offended and they fall away. But you know what? The way that you need to look at it, Faithful Word Baptist Church, is that it's just a purging process that's going on. You know first of all there are some diseased branches that need to be trimmed. You know when you see those branches that have like this white and black rot creeping, you know you want to cut those off, right? You don't have to be an expert to know that. Cut that off. There's a disease in this tree. So those rotten, diseased branches need to be trimmed. But then there are other branches that are just weak branches and you know sometimes they just end up getting trimmed as well. And what do we end up with? A stronger church. A stronger, more fruitful church. You know and when it comes to the metal analogy, you know when you melt down that silver or gold you know you take out the tin because it's weak. Some people are just too weak. They just can't handle it. Now here's the thing. It's good to have some weak people in our church because those weak people of today will be tomorrow's strong people as they grow and get stronger. But some people are just in church after a year, two years, three years, still weak. Still a baby. Sometimes God's just like, all right, let's make room for somebody else. Get them out. Why? You say, why not just bring in all the weak? Bring in all the weaklings and the unfruitful, non-soul winning Christians. Here's the problem with that. Then you just have a majority of weakness in the church. Now look, the majority of faithful word Baptist church goes soul winning. The majority of people that are sitting in this room right now, they win souls to Christ. I like it that way. I don't want to pastor a church where 10% of people go soul winning and 90% don't. I don't want to go to a church where 10% of the people are spiritually strong in the Lord and in the power of his might and 90% are just ready for just every little wind of trouble to just blow them over and knock them on the ground because they're so frail and weak spiritually. I like being in a church that is predominantly filled with warriors, predominantly filled with soul winning, red hot Christians, people that are fired up for the Lord. You know what? I like that. I like the way this tree looks. I like the way this pot looks because it's solid, it's strong, it's fruitful. And you know what? We shouldn't get upset or down and depressed like, oh man, we lost a family. We lost people. You know what? It's okay. It's okay because we're stronger. And you know what? Look around. Does it look like we're losing people? Looks to me like we got a full house this morning and last Sunday we had a full house and the Sunday before that we had a full house. He said, oh, but we're losing so many. Yeah, but we're gaining so many people. And you know what? We're just getting stronger. So in our personal lives, you know, we're going to lose some friends, but we're going to make some new friends. The church is going to lose some people. We're going to gain some people. In our personal life, we're going to cut out some activities, but then we're going to get some new activities to replace them and we're going to get stronger and we're going to get more fruitful by purging out the scum, purging out the leaven, purging off the branches that don't bring forth fruit. Let's turn to one last place, 2 Timothy chapter 2. What's the title of the sermon? Purging out the scum. In our personal lives, we need to purge out the scum because if we don't do it, then God's going to do it for us and we'd rather do it ourselves than for God to crank up the heat in our lives. You're like, oh man, I just feel like there's just so much pressure in my life and I just feel like I'm just getting burned here. Well, maybe God's trying to purge you. Loosen up on that scum, let that scum go, and then God can take you out of the fire and hose you off and then you're ready to be used. And then down the road, he might have to throw you in the fire again when you start getting too much scum in your life, right? Burn it all off, hose you down, slap you with some bacon fat, and you're ready to roll. That's life in a nutshell right there. 2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 19, nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure. Verse 19, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his, and let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. Those of us that name the name of Christ, God wants us to depart from iniquity. He wants us to clean up our lives. Now we don't have to clean up our lives to be saved, we don't have to clean up our lives to go to heaven, but if we want to be greatly used by God, he wants us to clean up our lives. And he says, but in a great house, there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth, and some to honor and some to dishonor. If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified and meet for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work. So why do we need to be purged so that we can be prepared unto every good work? Why do we need to be purged so that we can bring forth more fruit? Why do we need to be purged of the scum that we can be a clean vessel, meet for the master's use, ready to be used by God, prepared unto every good work, and then he says, flee also youthful lusts. But follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. What do we need to get rid of out of our lives? You know, we need to get rid of the worldliness, we need to get rid of the drinking, we need to get rid of the gambling, we need to get rid of the dishonest business practices, the laziness, the wickedness, the dirty jokes that are being told, you know, whatever the sin in your life, whatever the junk is, you've got to get it out so that you can be used greatly by God. You know, go into your wardrobe, go into your clothing, ladies, and get the attire of a harlot and throw it in the trash because it's scum. That stuff's not bringing you any closer to God. That stuff's not helping you bring forth more fruit when you're wearing the party dress and the short skirt, right, and all the tight-fitting clothes. You know, purge your wardrobe and use fire to do it, right? Now be careful because some of that stuff will just, you know, some of it's doused in harmful flame retardant, but, you know, purge your wardrobe, purge your music collection, purge the video cabinet, right, purge your activities, purge your life. Purge it. Why? So that God doesn't have to purge it for you. You say, tie it in with Father's Day, you know. Here's the thing. On Mother's Day, you've got to tie it in. On Father's Day, you can get away with not tying it in, right, men? Everybody, are we okay, men? All right. Let me tie it in though. You know what your dad wants more than anything else? If you want to honor your father, you know what? Your dad wants you to not be a scum bag of a person. You know, a wise son maketh a glad father, you know, but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother, you know. More than anything, I want my sons not to be scum, you know, because the definition of scum is a film or layer of foul or extraneous matter that forms on the surface of a liquid, but number three definition of scum is a low, worthless, or evil person, okay. You know, figuratively, they're like scum. You know, I don't want my sons to be scum. You know, the best thing that my sons could do for me is not to buy me a new tie or give me a glass of root beer or, you know, tell me Happy Father's Day. You know, the greatest thing that they can do for me is to just love the Lord and be a good person, right. And to be proud by going to church, loving the Lord, having a life that's clean of fornication, adultery, drunkenness, lasciviousness, you know, that's what dad wants. No dad comes home from the hospital with their baby and says, hey, you know, I want him to grow up and be a whoremonger. I hope he grows up to be the biggest drunk in town. I hope that he has a gambling addiction, a pornography addiction, a smoking addiction, you know, a cocaine addiction. Is that what any dad wants? No. Dads want their kids to be clean and to live holy and to be pure. That's what we should want for our children, right. So make dad proud today by reading your Bible, going to church, and living a good life. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord, and thank you for this chapter in Ezekiel, Lord, about the pot and the boiling of the bones and the scum that was the result, Lord. Help us to get the scum out of our lives, Lord, and the scum out of our church, and Lord, help us to bring forth fruit unto you and be a church that can be used by you and individuals that can be greatly used by you, and in Jesus' name we pray, amen.