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

James chapter 20, we've got this story about Hezekiah. Now, the part that I want to focus on is beginning in verse number 16. But then I'm going to show you something earlier in the chapter that's really telling about the character of Hezekiah. It says in verse number 16, in Isaiah, it's coming to Hezekiah, hear the word of the Lord. Behold, the days come that all that is in thine house and that which thine fathers have laid up in store unto this day shall be carried into Babylon. Nothing shall be left, saith the Lord. And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. Then said Hezekiah unto Isaiah, good is the word of the Lord which thou hast spoken. And he said, is it not good if peace and truth be in my days? Now, compare that with his reaction at the beginning of the chapter. Look at verse number one. In those days when Hezekiah was sick and dead, and the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz came to him and said unto him, thus saith the Lord, set thine house in order, for thou shalt die and not live. Then he turned his face to the wall and prayed unto the Lord, saying, I beseech thee, O Lord, remember now how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart and have done that which is good in thy sight. And look at these next words. And Hezekiah wept sore. Now, here's a man who is in authority. He's the king of a nation, a once great nation, the nation of Israel. And Hezekiah is in government. He's a ruler. He's a governor. He's a leader. And when he gets bad news at the beginning of chapter 20 that tells him, you are sick. You're going to die. And God's really gracious here to give him a warning. We'd all probably like to have that warning. If we were sick and we weren't going to recover, we'd probably like it if God would tell us that and give us a chance to set our house in order. So God gives him a warning and says, this sickness is not something that you're going to recover from. You're going to die. And he's so upset. He's weeping. And he's begging God, don't let this happen. He wept sore. And then God answers his prayer and says He's going to give him another 15 years. Now, later on, Isaiah comes and gives him this news about the fact that his whole nation is going to be overrun by Babylon and that they're going to be taken captive and into bondage and slavery to a foreign nation. And that his own children, it says, in verse number 18, shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. I don't know if you know what a eunuch is, but these guys are going to go through something that no man would ever want to go through. And he tells them that this is going to happen to your children and your nation, but it's going to happen after you're dead. And Hezekiah, he doesn't weep at all. He says, well, that's good news, as long as it doesn't happen in my days. Did you notice that? Look at that again in verse 19. I want this to really come home. Then said Hezekiah and Isaiah, good is the word of the Lord which thou hast spoken. And he said, hey, is it not good if peace and truth be in my days? Now, unfortunately, this is the exact mentality that's destroying America today, especially amongst our leaders, a mentality that says, who cares about the next generation? Who cares what happens down the road? Who cares what happens to our children, as long as there is peace and truth in our days, as long as things are good for us, and there's no regard for what we are leaving as a heritage to the next generation? Now, look, if you would, at Deuteronomy 15. I'm going to explain this a little bit further. Deuteronomy chapter 15. See, Hezekiah did a lot of great things in his life. But when it came to caring about the next generation, he completely failed. Why didn't he weep and cry and beg God for mercy on his nation and on his own children? All he cared about was his own well-being. And that's a sad fact about King Hezekiah. That's why King Hezekiah's son, if you know the Bible, was a man named Manasseh who was the worst king that the children of Judah had ever had and completely destroyed the nation, that son Manasseh, that was born three years after Hezekiah made that statement. Hey, as long as there's peace and truth in my days, three years later, a son Manasseh's born and it destroys the whole nation and destroys the whole future of the children of Judah. Look at Deuteronomy 15. Let me show you how this applies to us today with our leaders today. It says in Deuteronomy 15 five, only if thou carefully hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God to observe to do all these commandments which I command thee this day. For the Lord thy God blesseth thee as he promised thee. And thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow, and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee. So the Bible talks about a nation that is blessed by God, that is keeping the commandments of God. And he says that part of that blessing is that other nations will not rule over you. And he says, you're not gonna be borrowing money from them, they're gonna be borrowing money from you. Do you see that there in that passage in Deuteronomy 15? Jump over to Deuteronomy 28 and we'll see something similar. Deuteronomy 28 verse number 12. And the Bible says in Deuteronomy 28 12, the Lord shall open unto thee his good treasure. Again, talking about those who serve him and love him and obey him with all the heart. The Lord shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the reign unto thy land in his season and to bless all the work of thy hand. And thou shalt lend unto many nations and thou shalt not borrow. And the Lord shall make thee the head and not the tail. And thou shalt be above only and thou shalt not be beneath, if that thou harken unto the commandments of the Lord thy God, which I command thee this day to observe and to do them. The Bible's clear from Genesis to Revelation, the path to God's blessing is through the door of obedience. And when a nation obeys the commandments of God and loves and honors the Lord our God, he said, we'll be blessed. And part of that blessing is that we're not gonna be ruled over by a foreign nation and that we're not gonna borrow money from a foreign nation. I mean, did we see that in these two chapters? And you see, the Bible says, you don't have to turn there, but in Proverbs 22, seven, the Bible says, the rich rule it over the poor and the borrower is servant to the lender. Did you hear that? The borrower is servant to the lender. And so part of what happens when a nation loses its freedom and loses its sovereignty is that it becomes financially dependent on foreign nations and foreign powers through borrowing. You see, this is exactly what happened in Hezekiah's day. A foreign nation came in and ruled over them because of the wickedness of the land, because of the sinfulness of the people. Babylon came in and ruled over them and enslaved them. And we're seeing the same thing happening today in our nation because of people who do not think about the future and they don't think about their children and their children's children. They only think about right now. They can only see what's right in front of them. Sort of like Hezekiah, long as it doesn't happen in their day. Now let me give you some staggering facts here about what's going on in our country today. Because this is Freedom Sunday, so basically the sermon is about freedom and liberty. And I'm exposing you this morning, the biggest way that our freedom is being taken away from us today and the biggest thing that should cause us to fear for our freedom. You see, our country is borrowing a mass amount of money today. Now I did some research on this and I went to this website that was called the usdebtclock.org. And I was trying to write the numbers down but they kept changing. You know, because it's like, it's this little thing that spins and it keeps changing because it's going up like every second by thousands of dollars. So I kept writing it down, crossing it out, writing it down, crossing it out. And then finally I just decided, you know what, I'm just gonna have to round this off. And I'm kidding, of course. But listen to these figures. The US national debt right now, up to the minute this morning, 15.8 trillion dollars. Now here's the interesting thing about a trillion. It's a million times a million. Just to put it in perspective. So think about a million dollars a million times. And then 15 times, okay? So 15.8 trillion dollars. You know how much of that is held by foreign governments and foreign countries? You wanna talk about borrowing from another country? 5.2 trillion dollars. And just to put it in perspective, the whole national debt in 2000 was 5.2 trillion dollars. Now, just 12 years later, that's just the portion that's being held by foreign governments. And you know which foreign government owns the most of it? China. Communist China. One of the most wicked countries on the planet that forces women to have abortions because they have a one child policy, total enslavement, total ruthlessness, total dictatorial system, total nuclear weapons, total enslavement of their own population. That is who today owns us financially to the tune of 5.2. Or not 5.2 trillion. That's all the government foreign powers combined. But the biggest one is China. Well over a trillion dollars. And all these other nations that own the debt. Listen to this. Per citizen. And that's every man, woman, boy, and girl. That's my children. That's Anna. I mean, this isn't per adult. This is per citizen, okay? That shakes out to be $50,422 per citizen, okay? Per taxpayer, it's $139,000. So my family share, if you just count the eight people in my family, not counting the one that's on the way that is basically gonna pay part of this. My family share in this is $403,000. Now wouldn't I like to have that? $403,000. I could have bought a pretty nice property with that and I'd have the same debt that I have right now. Or nothing, okay? Now listen to this. The deficit spending, they're spending every year going further into the hole. Right now is at a rate of 1.3 trillion. So there's 15.8 trillion in debt and every year it's going 1.3 deeper at this stage. Not only that, but the states, the 50 states debt is 1.1 trillion. Just the states. Now listen, local governments, cities, towns and hamlets across America are in debt $1.7 trillion. For what? For their little school districts and their little town governments? Okay, but it gets way worse. What are the largest budget items? Where's this money going? Well, $801 billion for a year is going to Medicare and Medicaid. The number one budget item. Medicare and Medicaid, which is healthcare for the elderly and poor. And I'm gonna get to that in a minute. Socialist security, $738 billion. Warfare and defense, $675 billion. Income security, I don't even know what that is, but it's $375 billion. I don't even know what that means. Net interest, just the interest that we're paying on the debt. The net interest is $225 billion. Federal pensions, $213 billion. But listen to this. Then there's the unfunded liabilities. Now I've heard this term a lot and I didn't really quite understand it. So I did a little research on what this unfunded liability is. This is what it is. It's the amount that has been promised in benefits to people who are living right now. Not the ones that are gonna be born, but the ones that are alive right now. It's the benefits that have been promised to them that will not be funded by the tax revenue that the system is expected to take in for those benefits. And the Medicare trustees calculate the unfunded liability for a period of 75 years. So if we just didn't have any more children and we just take what we owe the people who are alive right now that we quote unquote promised, just to pay out their benefits, above and beyond the taxes that are gonna come in over the next 75 years, $119 trillion in unfunded liability. So we're 15 trillion in debt. And then we have 119 trillion that we're going to go into debt minimum over the next 75 years. I mean, these numbers are mind boggling. They're staggering. Medicare is 83 trillion of that and prescription drugs is 21 trillion. So of that 104 trillion dollars is healthcare unfunded liabilities, 104 trillion dollars. Now you say, well, Pastor Anderson, this is for healthcare, Pastor Anderson. Are you just gonna throw these people under the bus? These people need healthcare. Now, I don't know why they need that much healthcare. If there's only 300 and some million people or 311 million people in America, they all need 300 and some thousand dollars in healthcare. What's wrong with us? I mean, what's wrong with us? We each need every man, woman, boy and girl, but we don't need it. It's all a big lie and I'm gonna expose that to you. But first of all, you say, well, this term is too political, preach the Bible. Okay, how about this Bible verse? Thou shalt not steal. Now, let me explain to you why this is stealing. If you would, turn in your Bible to Psalm 37. Go to Psalm 37 this morning. I'm gonna explain this to you, why this is immoral and wicked and theft. Now, the Bible talks a lot about borrowing money from Genesis to Revelation. You can look up words like lend and borrow and owing and you'll find a lot of scripture on borrowing and lending and usury and all these different things. Now, I've studied the Bible on this topic many times and I've read a lot of scriptures on it. And if you do this study and if you read all the verse about borrowing, you'll see it's not a sin to borrow money. There's no place in the Bible that teaches that it's a sin to borrow money. There are a lot of verses that actually show that sometimes you may need to borrow money and so forth as you study the Bible. There are some that believe it's a sin to borrow, but that's not a biblical concept in my opinion after studying all the scriptures. I don't have time to turn to all of them today, but look what the Bible does say is a sin. Look at Psalm 37 verse 20. But the wicked shall perish and the enemies of the Lord shall be as the fatt of lambs. They shall consume into smoke so they consume away. Look at verse 21. The wicked borroweth and payeth not again. So it's not that it's wrong to borrow, but it is wrong when you borrow and you don't pay it back. That's wrong. The Bible says the wicked borroweth and payeth not again, but the righteous showeth mercy and giveth. For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth, and they that be cursed of him shall be cut off. You see, the Bible says in Romans 13, eight, owe no man anything but to love one another, for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. So when you owe someone something, you pay what you owe. And the Bible says over again, pay what you bow. Pay what you owe. The wicked borrow and pay not again. Biblically, it's not borrowing that's a sin, but when you borrow and you have no intention of paying it back, and you have no humanly possible way to pay it back, that's what the Bible calls wicked. That's the sin right there. And it's funny how the government loves to cram Romans 13 down our throat, don't they? With all their FEMA pastors. And look, don't tell me these FEMA pastors don't exist. I know for a fact that they do exist. Because I've been to a church where the pastor was literally summoned to the federal government to go talk to Bush, and he came back spouting all this pro-government garbage. And I've seen it take place. And I've seen the evidence of it, even in my own life, that it does exist. And that they love to cram Romans 13 down our throat into misinterpreted, twisted, that it means that the government has supreme and absolute power in every area of our life. When that's the power that only God enjoys, my friend. But isn't it funny that they didn't get to the part that said, owe no man anything? If you love Romans 13 so much, government official, FEMA pastor, why don't you realize that the Bible is condemning you as a thief and a cheat and a liar for borrowing money that you can't pay back? Turn Romans 13 back, you know, they try to hit you with Romans 13 and say, let's go to verse eight. Who do you owe? Who are you borrowing from that you can never pay back, that you can never pay again? The Bible says a good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children. He doesn't saddle them with debt that he can't pay. Now think about this for a moment, and let me just show you, and this is a biblical truth here, that the wicked borroweth and payeth not again, and then we ought to owe no man anything. We ought to pay what we owe. Now look at this, think about this now. What if I made per month X amount of dollars, okay? And let's just use a round number, okay? Let's say I make 1,000 bucks a week, okay? And every week I make $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000. And let's say I want to live a lifestyle that's a $1,200 a week lifestyle, right? And I have no promotions coming up, I'm not getting a raise, my job doesn't really have a future, I mean, I'm just pretty much, I'm already talked out at 1,000 a week, and I just start borrowing $200 a week, $200 a week just so I can live a higher life, $200 a week, $200 a week, $200 a week, and I have no intention of ever paying it back. Just stacking up debt. Wouldn't you say that that would be wrong to do that? Because that's not my money. Now look, there are times when I borrowed money, you know? And here's the thing, whenever I borrowed money, it was because I had a short-term need, right? And you need to borrow the money, and you have a plan and a pathway for paying it back, and you pay it back. For example, maybe you're buying a house, and you take out a mortgage, but you don't just take out a mortgage and say, I'm never gonna pay for this house, I'm just moving in, I'm never gonna pay. No, you sign a paper that says, hey, I'm gonna pay this much every month, and in 30 years, I've completely paid it back, right? I mean, isn't that how it works? You buy a car, you say, okay, I'm gonna pay this much every month for the next five years, and then the car is mine, then the car is paid off. I remember, the only time I could think of that I ever borrowed money from another person was when I was newly married, I had to move to get closer to a new job, and so I borrowed $500 from my dad, and said, hey, dad, I said, I'm moving into this apartment, and they want this huge security deposit, and first and last month rent, and I'm 500 bucks short, if you loan me the 500 bucks, I could pay it back in three weeks. I had a date, and I was gonna work and pay it, okay. Three weeks later, all around, paid it back. There's nothing wrong with helping people out like that. My dad helped me out, I paid him back. But when you're just borrowing money with no intention of ever paying it back, and I've known people who've gone bankrupt, and they knew they were gonna go bankrupt, so they went out and they racked up their credit cards an additional 20 grand, because they said, if I'm gonna bankrupt 50 grand, I might as well bankrupt 70 grand. And so they just go out and just rack up their credit cards, I mean, just a total spending spree. Just fund things, not needs, not food to live, just going out and buying fancy things so that they can bankrupt it, and I'm here to tell you, that is stealing. It's not right. Now, thankfully in our country, when you die, your debts are all forgiven, as it were. It comes out of the estate or whatever. But let's say I racked up some massive debt of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then I die. It's not like they'd go after my children and say, hey, you have to pay this bill. But what if it were, because there are other countries where you do have to pay your parents' debts, and then other times in history, you did have to pay your parents' debt. That's a biblical thing, where people got stuck in that situation in the days of Elisha, for example. Can you imagine how wicked I would have to be as a person to just go out and just eat steak and lobster dinners and fly around the country and take cruises all over the nation on money I didn't have, and then I die, and then some nut comes at the door and comes to my children and says, you owe $30,000. You're starting out your life. I know you're a young married man, just trying to pay your bills, and you're living paycheck to paycheck, but here's $30,000 that you're gonna owe, and you're gonna have to pay this off, and you're gonna have to find a way to pay this. Can you imagine how wicked I'd have to be? Would you say I love my children if I did that to them? I mean, if I were to sit there and go out and live high and blow money and spend above my means so that my children would have to pay for it and so that they would suffer for the rest of their life trying to dig out of a mess that I got them into, I mean, wouldn't that be horrible? You know, they're hoping, yeah, they open the will or whatever, and they're hoping, you know, maybe you get a little something of an inheritance, and it's like, no, you owe $100,000. You're gonna be saddled with it, and look, for a young married person to get saddled with that and to have to pay off, I mean, they're probably never gonna get out of that mess, that kind of debt. That's what our government is doing to us today. That's what our nation is doing today when we personally have $50,000 for every man, one boy, and girl that we owe when we come into this world, and that's not even counting what it's going to multiply into. You know, when you extrapolate out this unfunded liability, it's $1,050,000 per taxpayer, did you hear me? Over the next 75 years, not only is my share already for my family 400,000, but also for the rest of my life, I've got, in the next 75 years, you know, hopefully I live to be 105, but in that time, I gotta come up with a million bucks for them. This is enslavement, this is bondage, and it's people who wanna just basically just push the responsibility of the next generation, because not only are we in debt, they're not even trying to pay it off. They're racking up a trillion and a third dollars more every year, they're not even trying to pay it off. They don't even have a plan to pay it off. They have no pathway. I've even listened in on some of these congressional hearings on C-SPAN. They say, when will the budget be balanced? In what year will it be balanced? And they say, there is no year that we have planned for it to balance, let alone to begin paying down just to balance, just to quit going further into the hole. This is a government that cares nothing about the future, nothing, and it is wicked and immoral for any of us to have any part in borrowing money that our children are gonna have to pay for. It's a sin, it's wrong, and don't tell me I'm not preaching the Bible. The Bible said the wicked borrow it and pay it not again. And everybody who votes to raise these debt limits and wants to borrow more money and everything, the Bible says they're wicked. They're borrowing money that they have no intention or pathway or means to ever pay back again. You say, but Pastor Anderson, money is needed for the healthcare of all these people that need all this healthcare. You know, where is all this money going? How much healthcare does you need? Now look, I'm not exactly as healthy as a horse. I mean, I'm a fairly healthy person, but I've had my share of sickness and health problems. I'm not the healthiest person in the world, okay? But yet, I don't find myself using these amounts, and I know a lot of people, and I don't see where this money's going. Let me tell you where it's going real quick, and then I'm gonna get out of these statistics and get more into the Bible here. But let me just give you one little tiny example of where this money is going. Because remember, the big $119 trillion that we all have to pay over the next 75 years, look, $104 trillion of that is Medicare, Medicaid. It's all going to healthcare. The biggest budget item today is healthcare, government healthcare. And this is before the new healthcare law. We're not even talking about that. You know, the so-called Obamacare new healthcare law. We're not even into that. I mean, this is just the current government spending, let alone what that's gonna do, I dread to think. But listen to this. I'm gonna give you an anecdote here of two people in the healthcare industry. The healthcare industry is millions of people, billions and trillions of dollars in mega corporations. Here's just one example. I read a book this week that gave one example of this. There is one drug, it's called Procrit, and this was a drug that was basically marketed in the 90s. It was the biotech wonder drug. Turned out later it was described as Miracle-Gro for cancer. And everybody was dying because it was killing everybody. So this is like one of the deadliest drugs that's ever been on the market. But everybody thought it was great and they lied and did all these fake trials and everything. But listen to this. Two salesmen for Johnson & Johnson's Ortho Biotech Unit, and their names are Marks Duxbury and Dean McClellan. These guys were sales representatives selling one drug, Procrit. And Duxbury sold $13 million of Procrit between 1992 and 1998, and listen to this. He says that approximately 80% of the sales that he made were false or fraudulent Medicare claims. One guy, one salesman. And I mean we're talking, there are a lot of salesmen. I mean there are tens of thousands of guys. And this is one guy, he said in those seven years, I sold $13 million. He said 80% of that was Medicare fraud. He's admitting it, and he's blowing the whistle on it. Here's another guy, a friend of his in the company, Dean McClellan, he sold $65 million of Procrit. And about 50% of his sales, he says, were fraudulent Medicare claims. This is one, these are two guys just stealing money, bilking the system. And here's what they would do. They'd give out free drugs to the hospitals. Free drugs to the doctors, and then the doctors bill Medicare the full price. To the tune of tens of millions of dollars. Just these two guys alone. And they said they were being instructed to do it by the company, and then everybody in the company was doing it. They go around, give out the free drugs to the doctors. And then here's the thing, the doctors, they love it. Because they're getting a free drug, they're charging Medicare 2500 bucks a pop. 2500 bucks, 2500 bucks, 2500 bucks. They're getting this stuff for free, okay? So then, they have an incentive to prescribe this drug. Even though it's deadly, even though it's killing like two thirds of the people in the, when they actually finally did the safety trials, like two thirds of the people are dying. This drug was prescribed, and some have estimated that 500,000 people died from this drug. And they're giving it out for free. Because they'll give them a free batch, they bill Medicare the full price, then they order a batch that they pay for, they still get it for a discount, and they lie to Medicare how much it costs. They said every hospital is practically doing it, these doctors, that's how they're getting rich off this stuff. So look, it's not the fact that people are not getting them the healthcare that they need, and we need to spend more money. It's the fact that any time the government does anything, they mess it up. You know, this government healthcare, yeah, you know who's making rich? These salesmen. These salesmen, somebody's getting rich, these salesmen and these doctors. They don't care about the patients in these cases, and they list the names of the doctors that were on the take. They're getting, and they're even just being handed $10,000 checks. Oh, thank you for buying more pro-crit. Here's 10 grand. Totally legal. Oh, here's a five grand check, we just really appreciate you buying all this pro-crit. Hey, here's a bunch of free samples to the tune of $400,000 of free samples. And you can bill Medicare, and we'll teach you how to bill Medicare for the stuff we're giving you for free. You got a customer for life. They are made, these multi-millionaires today, and then we the people are strapped with the debt. Our children are forced to pay for it. And the government doesn't care. People took this information of these whistleblowers. They had all the documents, all the evidence. I mean, they were on the inside. They risked their lives and risked their career bringing all this stuff to the government, saying, look, we have the evidence. Aren't you guys interested in this multi-billion dollar fraud that's going on? And they just, to this day, the drug is still on the market. They don't care. The Department of Justice will not prosecute it. They don't care. They just, you know, doesn't matter to them. Why? Because the whole system is corrupt, my friend. But look, does it surprise you that a system that puts the debt on their children would be corrupt? In every way? I mean, look, I don't wanna saddle my children with my problems and my debt. I wanna help them. I don't wanna hinder them. I don't wanna be this anchor that they carry around for the rest of their life. Look, this is a wicked mentality that lives it up and borrows, and that's what our country's been doing for decades. And this is the problem today in America, is a mentality that doesn't care about the next generation. Just fix the economy now! Because I need more money, just fix it now! I don't care what you have to borrow or do. Just fix it for me. And you know, you're selling your children into bondage. It's unbelievable. The list is this. Go to Nehemiah chapter five, if you would. Nehemiah chapter five. And then I'm gonna change gears in my sermon here, but Nehemiah chapter five, look at verse number one. Nehemiah five, one says, "'There was a great cry of the people "'and of their wives against their brethren the Jews. "'For there were that said, "'We are sons and our daughters are many, "'therefore we take up corn for them "'that we may eat and live. "'Some also there were that said, "'We've mortgaged our lands, "'vineyards and houses that we might buy corn "'because of the dirt.'" Look at Nehemiah five, verse four. "'There were also that said, "'We borrowed money for the king's tribute.'" So basically they're saying, we had to borrow money just to pay our taxes. "'We borrowed money for the king's tribute "'and that upon our lands and vineyards, "'yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, "'our children as their children, "'and lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters "'to be servants.'" And that's what we're doing today in America. "'And some of our daughters are brought "'unto bondage already, "'neither is it in our power to redeem them, "'for other men have our lands and vineyards.'" See, why are you so mad, Pastor Aniston? Verse six, and I was very angry. That made Nehemiah mad, and that made us mad when I heard their cry and these words. "'Then I consulted with my accountant.'" No, he said, I consulted with myself. "'And I rebuked the nobles, "'and I'm here today to rebuke the nobles of our nation. "'I'm here to rebuke today the rulers.'" He said, "'I consulted with myself, "'and I rebuked the nobles, "'and I rebuked the rulers, "'and said the exact future to every one of his brother, "'and I set a great assembly against them.'" See that there? He said, "'I rebuked them, and I got other people mad, "'and set a big assembly against them, "'and said, we're all mad. "'You're wrong, you're a liar, you're a thief.' "'And he said unto them, "'We after our ability,' verse eight, "'have redeemed our brethren the Jews, "'which were sold unto the heathen.'" Which is what's happening today with our day. He said, "'We're sold unto the heathen, "'and will you even sell your brethren, "'or shall they be sold unto us?' "'Then held they their pieces, "'found nothing to answer.'" That shut them up. "'Also I say, it is not good that ye do, "'ought ye not to walk in the fear of our God, "'because of the reproach of the heathen our enemies, "'likewise that my brethren and my servants "'might exact of them money and corn. "'I pray you, let us leave all this usury. "'Restore, I pray you to them, even this day, "'their lands, their vineyards, "'their olive yards, and their houses, "'also the hundredth part of the money, "'and of the corn, and the wine, and the oil.' "'That's exactly the man.' "'That was some high taxes back then, a hundredth part, 1%?' "'He's screaming and yelling, "'and tearing his hair out about 1%.' "'Then said they, we will restore them, "'and we will require nothing of them. "'So will we do as thou sayest. "'Then I called the priests, "'and took an oath of them, "'that they should do according to this promise.'" Now let's change gears. Turn to 1st Corinthians chapter seven. You say, man, it's a depressing sermon. There's no hope, but look. What's the moral of the sermon here? What can we do? Because look, are we gonna fix the government? I mean, are we gonna fix this? Are we gonna pay off this multi-trillion dollar debt? No, we're not going to. You say, well, let's just bury our heads in the sand and just forget we ever heard this sermon. Well, no, because there is something that we can learn from this truth, and I'm gonna make some applications in a moment, but even just to this point of the sermon, let's look back on what we've just learned in the sermon, and what can we learn from it? First of all, we see that it's an evil generation that would basically spend money that they don't have and say, I'll send the bill to my kids and grandkids. That's a sin. Borrowing money that you can't pay back, I showed you from the Bible, it's sin. It's wickedness, okay? So what we can learn from this is, first of all, not to do that, not to be like that. And secondly, we can learn this, not to participate in it by supporting these rulers that do this. Now, today, we've been brainwashed, and I grew up being brainwashed, even in Baptist churches, and this is what they tell you, you know, you have to vote. And people would literally tell you, like, it's a sin not to vote. Who's ever heard that kind of preaching before? Oh yeah, hands are going up. Like, you're in sin if you don't vote. Now, can somebody show me in the Bible where it says, thou shalt vote? So don't tell me it's a sin not to vote. I'll say this, you're in sin if you're voting for wicked people, okay? And look, I'm not saying that it's wrong to vote. You should vote if you have somebody to vote for that you actually believe in that is not doing this. Can I explain something to you? It's very, it's gonna be really rare that you're gonna find somebody to vote for that doesn't wanna steal from our children and grandkids, because they all, they don't wanna, you know, take away from Medicare and Medicaid and socialist security, and we don't wanna take away from this. And that, and look, it doesn't matter. One, the left and the right, it's just two different things that they wanna spend money that they don't have on. Don't lie to me and tell me that one of the two parties, you know, is gonna tell you, like, oh, we don't wanna spend any money we don't have. None of them, none of them wants it to be balanced and to actually pay down the debt. They all, when they get in power, they spend. Like a drunken sailor, they spend. And so, I say that we should not participate in it by supporting rulers and leaders who are engaged in this kind of wicked and immoral and sinful activity. We shouldn't support it, okay? Now, I'm not saying not to vote. I'm saying you should only vote for somebody who's a righteous person. Or at least they're not selling us into slavery. And my opinion is that you're probably gonna be voting rarely. Now, you might not like that, but that's, you know, and I've heard people say this, you don't vote, you can't complain. And my thing is, if you voted for these people, maybe you're the one that should quit complaining. Since you put these people in power over us. Because supposedly we're ruled by the people. So I would say, you know, learn about this stuff. And look, if you say, well, I'm not interested in politics, I don't wanna learn about it, well, you probably shouldn't be voting it. If you don't know anything about it, why would you vote for people you know nothing about? Like, do you ever go down to the polling booth and I've gone down there, and there's all these names that you've never heard of, right? Like, you know a few of the names, but then you're like, county supervisor, like, hey, you know, who is this? And then there's like 30 judges. Should we keep this judge? And it's like 30 judges and you don't know who they are. I mean, when you look at that, and you just randomly just vote for people, I mean, you don't really know what you're voting for. It'd probably be smarter just to either do the research and vote for the people that you believe in, or else to just not vote at all. Would probably be safer bet, okay? And when you find somebody that you believe in, then yeah, go down there and vote for them. But don't just randomly vote for people that could, they might be, the day might be voting for the devil himself, right? I mean, you don't even know who these people are. Now, I always just vote no on all the female judges, because the Bible says the judges should be men in Deuteronomy, you know, but sorry to confuse you with the Bible in regards to who even said that, you know? Because, you know, that's just so weird to actually think that the Bible has something to say about judges. Like, I think he wrote a book called Judges, you know? And he said that it's supposed to be a man, okay? But, you know, whatever. And I'm like, what about Deborah? Yeah, exactly. Deborah said, you go do it, Barak. You go do it. And he's like, I'll only do it if you go with me, okay? That was the problem, okay? That was not a sterling example of what, you know, government's supposed to run like, okay? But anyway, let me change gears here. Go to 1 Corinthians 7. So not only can we learn, it's just good to just know the problem for what it is so that we don't participate in it, and don't follow it, and so that we don't do these kind of things in our own personal lives. But not only that, look at 1 Corinthians 7, verse 21. It says, art thou called being a servant? Care not for it. But if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. For he that is called in the Lord being a servant is the Lord's freeman. Likewise also he that is called being free is Christ's servant. Now let me say this. The outlook is pretty bleak financially. You know, 15.8 trillion in debt, 119 trillion in unfunded liabilities. Okay, it doesn't look good for us having any financial freedom in the near future. So I'm just to the point where I just accept that, okay? Now I'm not saying don't scream about it. I'm not saying don't get a great assembly and get mad about it. I'm not saying not to fight it. But look, you know and I know it's a bleak outlook. And you say that's a depressing sermon. No, it's not a depressing sermon. Because the Bible says right here in 1 Corinthians 7, it says that even when we're a servant in this world, a financial servant, when we don't have freedom in this life, he says we have freedom in Christ. He says if you are called being a servant, which today we're in servitude, we're in bondage and it's getting worse every day. But he says, you know what, you're Christ's freedom. You're free in Christ. Now what does that mean? Go to John chapter eight for example. John chapter number eight. John chapter eight. You see, if I were a person today that believed that this life is all we have, it'd be depressing today. But thank God, this life is just a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. And the Bible says in John chapter eight, first of all, it says in verse 32, and he shall know the truth, verse 32, and the truth shall make you free. So part of freedom is just knowing, even just hearing the problem diagnosed for you this morning brought some freedom into your life. Because at least you know the truth now. No one is more hopelessly enslaved than those who think that they're free. Look at verse 33. They answered him, we be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man. How sayest thou, ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, verily, verily, I say unto you, whosoever committed sin is the servant of sin, and the servant abideth not in the house forever, but the Son abideth forever. If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. You see, I today am the freest person that you've ever seen. You say, oh, but you got all this debt, and you've got all these liability, you're gonna be paying for this for the rest of your life, and you got all these rules that you have to buy. But you know what, honestly though, I have freedom, because you know what, they can't really enslave me because my soul is free. And they can take all my money away from me, but you know what, I was naked when I came into this world, and I'm gonna be naked when I go out of this world. That's what Job said. He said, naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return, that the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. You know what, if your life is just all about money, it's pretty depressing. If you just love your house, your car, and I'm not condoning the thieves and robbers and murderers, I already dealt with them in the first half of the sermon. So don't say I'm going soft on that. I'm not saying not to get a great assembly and get mad about it and fight it. I'll spend time fighting it, but you know what, I'll spend way more time serving the Lord. Because of the fact that I know that that battle is a losing battle. But when we're fighting on the Lord's side, it's always a winning battle. I don't like being a loser, I like to be a winner. And let me tell you something. The Bible says that if the Son of God makes us free, then we're free indeed. He said even if you're a slave, even if you have no freedom in this life and you're a complete slave. I mean, even if we think back to the time in our country when there were the black slaves in the South, and many of them had a lot less freedom than others, and some of them were really bad. Even the most enslaved of the slaves, if he had Jesus in his heart, had freedom in his soul. And the Bible says that if Jesus makes you free, you're free indeed. You see, we ought not today be depressed and sad about the state of our nation. Because you know, our citizenship's not really with this nation, it's with the kingdom of God at the end of the day. This nation's gonna come and go. But the he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. And today, we can have freedom. Today, we can rally behind the cause of freedom and liberty today and say, you know what? I have freedom in the Lord Jesus Christ because they can beat me and throw me in prison and kill me. But they can never take away my salvation. They can never take away my home in heaven. And they can even tax everything that I have. They can take all my money. They can garnish my wages. They can seize my bank account. They can put a padlock on the front of my house. They can put a padlock on the front of the church. But the Bible says that I have treasure in heaven. Amen. Where month and rust did not corrupt, and where the tax man did not break through its field. Yeah. Seriously. What are you going to tax? Are you going to tax my inheritance in heaven? You can't. You'll be in hell. And let me tell you something. Today, I got more money in my spiritual bank account that they can't touch than what I got in my personal bank account, I'll tell you right now. If I, you know, and I haven't gone to the spiritual ATM lately and protect my balance. You know, it'd be kind of cool if you could do that. You know what I mean? Like, go to a spiritual, you know, like go to a church or something. Like a spiritual ATM, you know, you type in who you are and it's like, OK, here's your spiritual balance. Here's your rewards in heaven. You know, this many crowns, this much gold, you know, this much. And then, you know, you can see exactly what kind of precious stones and gold is laid up for you there. And the Bible says that we have an inheritance in heaven that's incorruptible. He said, don't lay up treasures on the earth. Lay up treasure in heaven. So here's the moral of the sermon this morning. If you're laying up treasures today, you're wasting your time because the government's going to take them away from you. Are you listening this morning? If you, if your life is all about making money, if your life is all about laying up treasure, if your life is how much wealth and money and gold and silver and precious stones you can amass, I got bad news for you. That $119 trillion liability is like this black hole just pfft. And all your money's going to be flying out of your pocket and doing everything you own. So why don't you just take your little dream of being rich and just put it to bed and say, you know what? I'm not going to spend my time working for the almighty dollar. I'm not going to spend my time serving mammon. I'm going to spend my time serving God. Because if I serve God, it's the only tax-free income I'm ever going to see. You know, people try to say, oh, when you're a pastor, your income's tax-free. Yeah, dream on. It's not. Because there's a little part of it that's sort of, kind of, a little bit tax-free. But all the big taxes you still pay. You pay a ton, OK? And here's the deal. The only real tax-free income is what you can put in heaven. I mean, I've got my money in an offshore account, buddy. And I'm not talking about Micronesia. You know, I'm not talking about the Virgin Islands, my friend. I'm going a little further offshore than that, OK? My treasures are laid up in heaven. And seriously, this is what we can do with this sermon. We can walk away and say, you know what? Serving money and serving riches, man alive, they're just going to take more and more. I mean, if they're taking this much in 2012, you know, when they really start running out of money soon, they're going to start taking more. And they're going to take more. And they're going to seize more. And they're going to devalue it more, what you do in the mattress or whatever. But look, if you would, at Colossians chapter 3. I think this is the key right here at Colossians 3. So a couple things we can learn from the sermon. Let's do a quick review. Number one is it's an evil system. It's an evil ruler that we have, all of our rulers, really. I mean, you know, because we're not ruled by one person. We're ruled by a huge conglomerate of people, OK? And we're ruled by hundreds and hundreds of people, yea, thousands of people that rule over us. And really, you know, those people are wicked that are basically borrowing money because they have no intention of paying. The Bible said they're wicked, OK? And you'd have a lot of trouble coming up with probably more than you could count on one hand that are not part of it, OK? I would. And I'm kind of informed on these things. I mean, I'm not an expert on it. But I'd probably struggle to come up with five, OK? And so if you think about it, they're wicked. The first thing we should learn is don't support them. You know, rebuke them, right? Rebuke them. Don't support them. Don't, you know, help them. Rebuke them. That's one thing we can learn. Number two, we can learn that serving money is just a waste of time because they're going to take it away from you. The more you make, the more they take. But look at this last thing. It says in Colossians 3, 1, if you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ is on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth, for you're dead. And your life is here with Christ and God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Mortify, therefore, your members which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry. For which things take the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience, in which ye also walk sometime when ye lived in them. Jump down if you would to verse 11. It says, or no, I'm sorry, keep reading. But now also you put off all these anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image and in the creativeness, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision. Barbarian, Scythian, look at the next three words. Bond nor freak, but Christ is all and in all. And the bottom line is this. We can't stop our nations. And go back to one place, 2 Kings 13, and we'll be done. We can't personally change the course of our financial future as a nation. Now, if we serve the Lord, if we win souls to Christ, then if our nation is more righteous, then God will bless us. If we preach hard against sin, God will bless more. And then that will help things the most. But honestly, it's probably not going to be fixed. But in our own personal lives, we don't have to be in bondage. We can be free if we're in Christ, if we're laying up our treasures in heaven, tax-free, if we in a tax-sheltered annuity up in heaven. That's our IRA or whatever, whatever that is. And basically, we can be free if we know the truth. If we serve God, nobody can take away the fruit of that labor. We can leave our children an inheritance of godliness, righteousness, Christianity, and biblical truths. We may not be able to leave them a great inheritance after the death tax or whatever gets through with it. But we can leave them a legacy and a heritage of soul women and the Bible and truth. And we can pass on freedom in their hearts through God's word and through Christianity. You see, Hezekiah in the book of 2 Kings was the example of somebody whose life basically ruined the lives of the people who came after him. Even though he was a pretty good guy, he didn't leave a good legacy to his children. He ended up causing them to go into bondage and to be destroyed. And he didn't care. He just cared about himself. Here's another example in 2 Kings of another guy who, even after he was gone, his life was helping people and not hurting them. Look at 2 Kings 13. This is one of my favorite Bible stories. And you might not have ever even heard this story. But you remember how Elijah was followed around by his servant Elisha? And he wanted to have a double portion of Elijah's spirit. He wanted to do twice as much. And if you remember, God granted him that request. And so Elisha preached all kinds of great sermons. And he did all kinds of miracles. And he just did great things for God. He's one of the greatest characters in the Bible. Well, Elisha did one final miracle even after he was dead. Now, if you count up the miracles, it seemed that he came one short of doing double the miracles that Elijah had done. Look at this final miracle. This is my favorite story about Elisha. It says in verse 20 of 2 Kings 13, and Elisha died and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming of the year. And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that behold, they spied a band of men. And they cast the man into the sepulcher of Elisha. And when the man was let down and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood up on his feet. Now, this is an interesting story. Here they are. The Jew and Israel are burying a man. A man has died and they're at the funeral and they're gonna bury this guy. Well, just as they're about to bury him, the invading Moabite army, the enemy army comes in to take over. And they're scared. They gotta run away from this invading army. They're caught off guard in the midst of this funeral. So they just say, quick, throw the body in this grave that's already there. They throw the body into the sepulcher of Elisha. It'd be like this, picture this. You're at the funeral and you're gonna dig the hole. And all of a sudden you're interrupted by this invading man. So it's like, well here, over here, is this, a sepulcher was more like a cave that they would bury. It was like an enclosed space. Kind of like today, I guess we call it like a crypt, I guess you could say. So basically it's like, well here, open up this grave. We don't have time to finish digging this hole. Just open up this other grave and throw him in there. And they open the grave of Elisha, throw in the dead body of the funeral into Elisha's grave, and as soon as his body hits Elisha's bones, he comes back to life. Okay, now, it's an interesting story. Who's, I don't wanna ask who's never heard the story, because then I'm exposing who doesn't read the Bible or I don't wanna know. But anyway, it's a cool story. But here's the thing. Why did God put this in there? Just to round out Elisha's miracles, so it'd be double Elijah? Well that's part of it, but I think part of the reason why God gave us this story is to teach us a spiritual truth. That even after we're gone, we can bring light to others. We can bring light to the darkness. We can bring truth to the others. I think of Abel, where it says in Hebrews 11, he be dead, yet speaking. We can still have an impact and an influence on the world after we die. Hezekiah did, for bad, he didn't care. Elisha, even after he was dead, God was still using him to be a blessing to others. And we can do the same thing in our life today. We are not gonna be on this earth forever. We're not gonna be alive forever. We will all be gone someday. We'll have eternal life with the Lord in heaven, but obviously on this earth, we're all gonna check out one of these days, and let me tell you something. You will leave a legacy behind. Our wicked government leaves a legacy of debt that cannot be paid, that causes us to be a slave to foreign nations. You personally will leave a legacy behind. Don't be like them. And look, maybe you won't leave a financial burden, but you know what's a bigger burden? The burden of sin, the burden of being a bad example, the burden of drunkenness. If you're a drunk, guess what? Your kids are probably gonna grow up to be drunks too. That's a fact. It's a statistic you can look at any time you want. That smokers beget smokers, and drunks beget drunks, and drug users beget drug users, and fornicators beget fornicators, and adulterers beget adulterers, and on and on and on. You need to decide, I'm not just living for myself. It's not just about how I can succeed, and I can prosper, but I wanna leave a legacy behind that my children can remember my good example, and they can remember my words, which were the words of God being preached, and they can remember my life that backed up those words, and I can leave behind a legacy that no matter how bad our country gets, and people today say, well, I don't even wanna bring children into the world because it's so bad, but you know what? I believe that my children can be free no matter how bad it gets. Sometimes I wonder like 20 years from now, how are my children gonna make it in this world? It's getting so much worse, but you know what? They're gonna make it because they've got the word of God in their hearts, and they've got Jesus in their hearts, and I love the verse that my wife put on the front of the bulletin. I just saw it. It says, I will walk at liberty, for I seek thy precepts. I will speak of thy testimonies also before kings, and will not be ashamed. You see, those of us that are serving the Lord and have decent hearts, we're on the winning side. We don't have to be ashamed or blushed before any ruler, any king. We are free, we walk at liberty because we love the word of God, we believe the word of God, we live according to the word of God, and my children are gonna be free no matter what this government does. And I wanna leave them that legacy of godliness, righteousness, and you oughta think about what kind of a legacy you're leaving behind your children. Our government's destroying our country and leaving a horrible legacy, but let me tell you something. I wanna leave the right legacy in my family. I wanna care about the next generation. I don't wanna cause them to be enslaved. I wanna cause them to be free. And so let that challenge you today to decide that there's more to your life than just you. It's about influencing other people. It's about training your children and teaching them. And you say, well, I don't have any children. You know what, when you go out and win souls to Christ, you say, I have no children. Go out and win somebody to Christ. When you're dead, they still may be soul winning. Think about that. I mean, you know, my mother won me to Christ. I don't know which of us will be gone sooner. But you know what, honestly, if she's gone sooner, I'll still be winning souls on her account. You know, because she being dead will yet speak through me. Other preachers who preach the truth to me that I've learned from, even after they're dead and gone, they still live. And they being dead yet speak. You see, we can leave a legacy and a heritage behind. We can be like an Elisha. Where even after we're gone, we're accomplishing miracles for God. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Lord, we pray that you would just have mercy on us, dear God, our country is not on the right path today. But thank God we don't have to go out of here alone with our heads hanging, because nobody's gonna touch our assets up in heaven. And we know, and yes we are fighting it, we're trying to do the best we can, but God, help us to fight even harder to win souls and to train our children. Because that's really a much more important battle. Help us to do both. But help us to always seek first your kingdom and your righteousness, and these other things. Let them be secondary in our lives. And in Jesus' name we pray, amen.