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

Hallelujah, by the glory, revive us again. Oh, glory and praise to the Lamb that was slain, who has borne all our sins and has bled every stain. Hallelujah, by the glory, hallelujah, amen. Hallelujah, by the glory, revive us again. Revive us again, fill his heart with thy love. May his soul be rekindled with fire from above. Hallelujah, by the glory, hallelujah, amen. Hallelujah, by the glory, revive us again. Praise him, praise him, Jesus our blessed Redeemer. Sing, O Earth, his wonderful love proclaim. Hail, hail, hail, hail, highest of angels in glory. Strength and honor give to his holy name. Like a shepherd, Jesus will guard his children. In his arms he carries them all in awe. Praise him, praise him, jealous his excellent greatest. Praise him, praise him, ever in joyful song. Praise him, praise him, Jesus our blessed Redeemer. For our sins he suffered and bled and died. He our God, hope of eternal salvation. Hail, hail, hail him, Jesus and crucified. Sound his praises, Jesus, you bore our sorrows. Love, love, love him, wonderful, deep, and strong. Praise him, praise him, jealous his excellent greatest. Praise him, praise him, ever in joyful song. Praise him, praise him, Jesus our blessed Redeemer. Heavenly portals, loud with rose and a scream. Jesus, Savior, reign in forever and ever. Round him, round him, prophet and priest and king. Christ is coming over the world victorious. Power and glory unto the Lord beloved. Praise him, praise him, jealous his excellent greatest. Praise him, praise him, ever in joyful song. I am thine own, I am mine on, I am only one, I am not too many. I will want to rise in the arms of the king. I will be closer, I will come to thee. I'll be there, I'll be there, I'll be there, I'll be here, I'll be there, I'll be there, I'll be there, I'll be there, I'll be here. Hear her, blessed Lord To thy precious, fleeting sound Hark, sing greatly now to thy service, Lord Like the power of grace divine Like my soul, Lord God, with its steadfast hope And my will be lost in time Draw me near, hear her, blessed Lord To the cross that thou hast done Draw me near, hear her, blessed Lord Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Steadfast Baptist Church. It's awesome to see everybody here today. If we can go ahead and find our seats, we will get started. And once you have found a seat, go ahead and find a hymnal, and we will go to song number 210 for this morning's Service First song. Song number 210. Wonderful Grace of Jesus. Song number 210. Wonderful Grace of Jesus. Sing it out loudly. Let's get started this morning. Song number 210. Wonderful Grace of Jesus. Greater than all my sin. How shall my tongue describe it? Where shall His praise begin? Taking away my burden. Setting my spirit free. For the wonderful grace of Jesus reaches me. Wonderful, the matchless grace of Jesus. Deeper than the mighty rolling sea. Higher than the mountains. Sparkling like a mountain. Oh, sufficient grace for even me. Rotter than the scope of my transgressions. Greater far than all my sin and shame. O magnify the precious name of Jesus. Praise His name. Wonderful grace of Jesus. Reaching to all the lost. By it I have been pardoned. Saved to the uttermost. Chains have been torn asunder. Giving me liberty. For the wonderful grace of Jesus. Reaches me. Wonderful, the matchless grace of Jesus. Deeper than the mighty rolling sea. Higher than the mountains. Sparkling like a mountain. Oh, sufficient grace for even me. Rotter than the scope of my transgressions. Greater far than all my sin and shame. O magnify the precious name of Jesus. Praise His name. Wonderful grace of Jesus. Reaching the most divine. By its transforming power. Making Him God's dear child. Purchasing peace and heaven. For all eternity. And the wonderful grace of Jesus. Reaches me. Wonderful, the matchless grace of Jesus. Deeper than the mighty rolling sea. Higher than the mountains. Sparkling like a mountain. Oh, sufficient grace for even me. Rotter than the scope of my transgressions. Greater far than all my sin and shame. O magnify the precious name of Jesus. Praise His name. Great singing everybody. Let's open up the service now with a word of prayer. Lord, we love you and just thank you so much for this church. Thank you for the ability to gather here and hear great preaching and singing, Lord, and be able to do all these things unto you. We love you and just ask that you fill this room with your spirit and bless this church and it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Alright, for our next song, let's go to song number 211. The very next song. Sorry, 211. Whosoever meaneth me. Song number 211. I am happy today and the sun shines bright. The clouds have been rolled away. For the Savior said, Whosoever will, Come with me to stay. Whosoever surely meaneth me. Surely meaneth me. Oh, surely meaneth me. Whosoever surely meaneth me. Whosoever meaneth me. All my hopes have been raised. Oh, His name be praised. His glory has filled my soul. I've been lifted up and from sin set free. His blood hath made me whole. Whosoever surely meaneth me. Surely meaneth me. Oh, surely meaneth me. Whosoever surely meaneth me. Whosoever meaneth me. Oh, what wonderful love of what grace divine, That Jesus should die for me. I was lost in sin for the world I find, But now I am set free. Whosoever surely meaneth me. Surely meaneth me. Oh, surely meaneth me. Whosoever surely meaneth me. Whosoever meaneth me. Also, if you can chat, do the whole chapter to a non-family member, there's a special prize that we give out when we finish that. Inside, we have a couple things. I'm going to wait to get to those. Our bulletin does have our service and soul-winning times. Soul-winning times meet here at the church in that church-wide category, and then different parts of the Dallas-Fort Worth area for our regional times. And so, if you are interested in going in one of those times, you can contact those leaders. But just to give you some kind of idea, I wanted to ask, Brother Sam, what kind of part of town have you been going on Monday? So on Mondays, it's kind of like the Irving area. What about you, Brother Malton, for Tuesdays? Where have you been kind of going generally? Fort Worth. Is that like West Fort Worth or just anywhere Fort Worth? Okay, kind of like a Fort Worth, West Fort Worth. I believe the ladies, y'all have been doing Grand Prairie kind of? Okay, so kind of Mid-Cities Grand Prairie. Brother Suelle, what have you been doing on Thursdays? Carrollton. Carrollton, okay. And then also Brother West, have y'all been doing Arlington still for Saturdays? Okay, yeah. So, just to give you kind of an idea, if you, you know, Irving, Carrollton, Arlington, you know, people live all over, so that gives you some idea. And see one of these guys. Also, even if you aren't familiar with them, but you're just interested, you could ask your soul winning captain, you could ask me, email the church, and we'd love to help you as far as identifying maybe an area or a time that works for you to do soul winning. And then down below, we have our church stats. We've been doing really, really well on our church stats for the year. And so, but we want to make sure that we still finish strong. And I'm really hoping that next year that we're going to smash these numbers. I have a lot of plans and a lot of goals for us to do a really big push next year, and so I'm really excited. But we honestly did very, very good so far this year. Also, I'm planning on getting a newsletter from our evangelist, Urbanic, in the Philippines. And he has, he beat us by himself. So, you know, he's, obviously he's had some other people help him, but it just, I mean, he's just really doing great over there in the Philippines. And so I'm really excited to have his year-end newsletter to share with you. That should be on the 1st, so we should have that newsletter to share with you on the 1st. On the right, we have the list of expecting ladies. We also have our prayer list. If you'd like any additional prayer, please let us know, and we'd love to be in prayer for you. On the back, it has a note about the most upcoming event. It's going to be an event in the Houston area. Pastor Enrique Reyes of Springcrest Baptist Church has invited me to come out and preach for him. And we're going to do a major soul-winning event the day before. So we kind of have an itinerary there. So if you'd like to participate, there is a sign-up sheet out here in the foyer. And I'd really like you to sign up so that way we can coordinate if you need maybe lodging for that Saturday night, or if you're planning on coming to the event so I can make sure to purchase all the food and everything necessary, and we can plan our fellowship event accordingly. So if you want to go, we'd really like to know. And please fill out that sign-up sheet in the foyer for that specific event. I'm going to do the other events before I get to this church reminders. So in the bulletin, I have a save the date. Now, this is what's going to happen. As soon as the service is over, you're going to come and ask me for all the details about all these events. This is a save the date, alright? So when we get closer, I'll be able to give you the details. This is just simply, we have it scheduled as far as the date. If you want all the other details, you have to wait patiently. But I just wanted to give you an idea of what we're looking at for next year. So if you are interested about dates, there will most likely still be additional things that are not even in this that we'll add throughout the year. But this is pretty much the things that have already been locked in, that we have scheduled, and we're doing. So like we had at the very top, that Spring Crest event on the 11th and 12th, February 6th through the 8th is our Rayonosa Soul Waning Marathon. There's also a sign-up sheet for that. So if you're wanting to go and we'd like to know who's needing or wanting to do the carpooling for that particular event, but we're very excited to go down there. We're going to be staying on the state side, McAllen. We always stay state side and then just go over into Mexico for the Soul Waning. And it's very receptive there. It's always been great. Who's gone to Rayonosa with me before? Yeah, yeah. Lots of people have gone. It's a great trip. Ask those people about it. It's a lot of fun. Oh, I did want to ask because the next event is going to be this Wednesday. We're going to have a men's preaching and we're going to have pizza. Who's planning on coming Wednesday to service? Just so I have some kind of an idea. All right. Thank you. February 16th through the 23rd. This is a cruise missions trip that we're going to be sending evangelists for on. And some other church members. But I put in our group chat the actual details for that particular event if you want to go. And essentially it's just a recommended cruise trip if you would like to go on one. Faith Award also has one in March. I need to get those details and I'll put that in the group chat too if you're interested. But it's pretty affordable. I believe it's about just under $1,800 for two people. And so it's about $875, $880 a person or something like that. But that includes all of your food obviously and everything. You'd have to maybe buy a flight as well. So I would say for about $1,100, $1,200 you could go on one of these type of cruise missions trip options. And this specific one is from Sunday to Sunday. It's going to be a seven day cruise. And you have three stops. One's in Nassau, Bahamas. One's in St. Thomas and the other one's in St. John's. Now you get quite a bit of time actually. You get about 8 to 10 hours each stop. And so you can pretty much just eat the unlimited buffet and food and just hang out. And then you get like 10 hours of just dedicated soul winning time three days out of that seven. And honestly it's probably going to be one of the easiest missions trips you've ever been on. If you've ever done one of these four missions trips. And so if you have about $1,100, $1,200 you could take a week off of work. It would be a pretty easy missions trip if you want to try it. So we're going to be trying it and we'll have a sign up sheet for that too just so people can know how to coordinate. But Evangelist Fur will be going on this one so he'll already have some idea of where they're going to be going. Where they're going to be traveling. Nassau, Bahamas is the main island for the Bahamas. That's where we went on a missions trip. It's very receptive. A lot of great opportunities to go soul winning there. And we even have a contact there that can help with transportation or getting people to places to go soul winning. St. Thomas and St. John's I'm not familiar with those but doing some research they are English speaking islands. They have at least 40-50,000 as far as population and they seem pretty densely populated near these ports. So I would assume that it's going to be pretty good options as far as getting out there and going soul winning. I can't say for sure. Some people have visited these places and said it's pretty decent. So I would just anticipate that they would also be good options. But we're kind of exploring and trying new things and so if you are interested please ask Evangelist Fur about it. Or at least indicate on our sign up sheet if you want to try to see about that. But that's something that you can go on. I know some people said they're interested. In later March there's also one Faithful Word Baptist Church is going to be doing with Brother Chris Segura. He's going to be going out there and being the lead for that particular event. And I think that they're going to have maybe four stops instead of three. But one of those stops is one of those fake islands. So I don't even know that it's necessarily any much better as far as soul winning than the one that we have scheduled. So I've looked at tons and tons of cruise missions options and I feel like this one is a really good option as far as being able to go to a lot of good stops. It's also on the Royal Caribbean which I've heard is a pretty good cruise line. So I'm not an expert into this but from the research and the opinions and the people I've talked to this seems like it will be a pretty good option. And you should be able to get several people saved in some pretty receptive spots. And this is what's funny. People that just go zoning maybe once a week on average or something. You might get more people saved on one cruise mission strip than you would like a whole year going in just this area. Just because when you go to these receptive areas it's just you have so much more opportunity to get a lot of people saved. So that's just to put that out there. Obviously if you don't have the money there's still lots of great soul winning missions that we're going to have here locally. The church is going to pay for. So don't feel like if you can't do it you can't participate in lots of soul winning. We are starting a kids choir that we're going to do for our Easter services. My wife is going to be leading that. It's going to be 2 to 3 and it's going to start in March 2nd. So it's going to be. I need to double check on ages. Do you have a cap on the high end of the age yet? Do you know? Okay no. I think we're going to have at least maybe 4 or 5 will be like the bottom cap and then maybe up to 16. So when we get a little closer we'll have the details. Evangelist Duncan Urbanic is going to be coming on furlough for a couple weeks in March and he's going to actually preach for us on March 12th. So that's going to be a Wednesday night service. We'd love for you to come for that. March 22nd we're going to have a spring recital. So that's for all of you musicians and you can even do voice if you'd like but we'll have our spring recital March 22nd. April 19th. So that's the day before Easter. We're going to do a Mansfield Texas Soul Waning Marathon. May 16th through the 18th. That is one of our friends Pastor Aaron Thompson is having a conference about the King James Bible and it's going to be in Vancouver Washington where his church is at. It's her Foundation Baptist Church. So if you'd like to participate or visit that would be a great opportunity. May 31st we're going to be doing a Durant Oklahoma Soul Waning Marathon. This is in Oklahoma and we're going to be partnering with Anchor Baptist Church. Who's going to be kind of meeting us halfway and so it'll be a great opportunity to go Soul Waning with them. Durant has got I think about 13 to 14 percent Native American population so it's kind of near some of the Native American areas and so might give you an opportunity to witness kind of to the Indians. June 15th Father's Day floats. June 28th we're going to do a Shreveport Louisiana Marathon. July 19th Lancaster. Very excited about that because it's only like 25 minutes from us. So it's just like 25 minutes east of us. But it looks like a very receptive area and so I'm excited to try that one. August 14th through the 16th is our Men's Retreat. August 27th through the 31st we're going to have our Fire Breathing Baptist Fellowship. And I already have several pastors who are lined up for that particular event and so I'm very excited that we're going to get to do that again. September 27th our Tyler Texas. It's kind of a little bit east as well. We're going to try that. October 6th and 11th we're going to do the Bahamas Missions Trip again. And so basically my goal is I'm going to try and get reservations and book a certain amount of locations. But the way it's going to work this year is I'm only going to provide church lodging for Soul Winners. So if people want to take their family they're more than welcome to go to this event. It's just the church lodging will be specifically only for adult Soul Winners. So those who want to go and it's going to be limited to the first people to respond. Because honestly I've had so many people interested and it's hard to even anticipate that it's probably going to be about the first 40 or 50 people that have booked their tickets. And then given me their itinerary that are going to lock in a spot for the church lodging. And so when I get probably in a few weeks or so I'll get all of that together and make a video about it and I'll let you guys know as well. So if you want to participate and it's going to be pretty much the same as last time we have our contact there. Hopefully we'll be able to get in some of the schools again. But also I'm trying to time it this year where we're actually going to go when school's in session and like kind of hot and heavy. Because the last few times I've gone for some reason it's just I didn't time it well with the college and stuff. But I'm hoping this year we're going to time it right to where school's going to be having tons and tons of students there. And honestly the schools are a great opportunity to go soul winning and the Bahamas is a great place to visit. So if you can make it. I don't know exactly how much it would cost for someone to go on a trip like this. You'd have to look at flights for that time period. But sometimes flights are around $500-$600 round trip. Sometimes they're a little bit more expensive if it's a peak season. But for about $500-$600 you could probably get a ticket per person. And then if you go with the church lodging you might only have to pay a couple hundred dollars worth of food. I mean you could possibly go on this trip for like $750 maybe even $800 maybe a thousand. If you have to do your own lodging it would probably be more like $1200-$1300 a person or something like that. But that's just to put an idea of that kind of an option. So we had about 60 people go two years ago and it was an awesome trip. People said it was like their most favorite trip they've ever been on. So I highly obviously recommend and encourage trying it. And we could have had more people because even going to the schools there was more opportunities than we had people at a few of the schools. And so we're definitely going to go hard this year for the Bahamas again. October 31st Chili Cook Off. November 9th Dr. Stringer is going to be preaching for us. We're going to have our Turkey Bowl. And then we have pretty much all of our holiday events. Christmas party, caroling, cookie bake off, candlelight service, men's preaching. Like I said as we get a little bit closer into the season there might be a few more events that pop up towards the end of the year. But I just wanted to give you an idea. We're going to be doing lots of soul winning, lots of events. Really excited for 2025. Thank you guys so much for being a part of this church. We really appreciate you guys because it helps us do some of these awesome events and conferences and missions trips. We're really making a big impact in the world. And so we want to continue to do that. And we want to do more next year than we've ever done before. So I want us to really challenge ourselves next year to just shatter our soul winning records and everything that we've done before. And let's do even better. And let's reach even more people. I have a lot of personal projects that I'm excited about. We'll be working on a documentary again for Soul Winning. A book idea and a few other things that I'm hoping will get accomplished. And we're going to try and make some better music. I've written a couple more psalms that we're going to implement into our singing. So a lot of good things. Down below in our bulletin though, I have one more thing I want to go for. And this is long announcements today. I apologize. But we're ending the year strong. So a couple church reminders. And these are something that we just always need to be reminded on. But children should not be running or rough playing in the church at any time. Alright? So just keep your hands to yourself. No pushing. No shoving. No wrestling. You can do that. Just not here. I'm all for it. Just not at church. Children should not be on the stage at any time. Children shouldn't be in the kitchen getting drinks or fridges or ice machine or anything. Unless they're being assisted by an adult. So if your mom or dad are with you, that's fine. Children should not be in the Mother Bay rooms without their parents at any time. So that's before, during, or after services. They should not be in those areas unattended. The Fellowship Room is not a play area either. So when I said no wrestling, I didn't mean only the sanctuary. But it's like a WWE match in the Fellowship Room just because we can't see you. It's just anywhere in the building. So please do not be wrestling and fighting anywhere in the building. Also, please make sure you're cleaning up after yourselves. And really, honestly, you really need to just say clean up. Because most people are like, well I didn't make that mess or that's not my water bottle. Just help out. Help clean up trash. That really helps. And also the water bottles in our fridges are for soul winners or guests or visitors. If you need water, there should be cups right there with our water fountain. So for us, please do that. Also parents, please make sure you're watching your kids after the service. You should have an idea of where they're at at all times. And then also children, if any adult is telling you that you're doing something wrong, you need to just say yes sir or yes ma'am and do it. That includes all of our ushers, our staff, my wife, anybody. If they're saying, hey, you need to not go in this room or you need to move out of the kitchen or stop running, you just need to obey them even if they're not your parent. You just need to obey the adults and the staff in the church. Also one other thing I don't think is mentioned here, but we have a lot of materials. Bibles, we have invitations, we have cards that you can fill out for first time guest visitors. That is not toys. Those are not things to play on, draw on, write notes, or do anything like that. So please help us that you're not letting your kids just destroy church materials for no reason. That's all I have as far as announcements. We're going to go ahead and sing our third song and it's going to be a psalm. Psalm 126 should be in our handout. Psalm 126. All right, that was Psalm 126. Psalm 126. Everybody sing it out together on the first. When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion We were like them that dream Then was our mouth filled with laughter and our tongue with singing Then said they among the even the Lord had done great things for them The Lord had done great things for us Whereof we are glad, turn again our captivity Oh Lord, as the streams in the South They that sow in tears shall reap in joy They that sow in tears shall reap in joy Then said they among the even the Lord had done great things for them The Lord had done great things for us Whereof we are glad He that goeth forth in weeping, bearing precious seed Shall doubtless come again Shall doubtless come again With rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him Then said they among the even the Lord had done great things for them The Lord had done great things for us Whereof we are glad Great singing everybody. Now it's often a pleasure being passed around. Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Jeremiah chapter 7. That's the book of Jeremiah chapter number 7. Jeremiah chapter 7. Jeremiah chapter 7 the Bible says the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying, stand in the gate of the Lord's house and proclaim there this word and say hear the word of the Lord all ye of Judah that enter in at these gates to worship the Lord. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, amend your ways and your doings and I will cause you to dwell in this place. Trust ye not in lying words saying the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these for if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if you thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor, if you oppress not the stranger, the fatherless and the widow and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after your gods to your hurt, then will I cause you to dwell in this place in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever. Behold ye trust in lying words that cannot profit. Will ye still murder and commit adultery and swear falsely and burn incense unto Baal and walk after other gods whom ye know not and come and stand before me in this house which is called by my name and say we are delivered to do all these abominations? Is this house which is called by my name become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold even I have seen it saith the Lord. But go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh where I set my name at the first and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel. And now because you have done all these works saith the Lord and I spake unto you rising up early and speaking but ye heard not and I called you but you answered not. Therefore will I do unto this house which is called by my name wherein ye trust and under the place which I gave to you and to your fathers as I have done to Shiloh and I will cast you out of my sight as I have cast out all your brethren even the whole seed of Ephraim. Therefore pray not thou for this people neither lift up cry nor prayer for them neither make intercession to me for I will not hear thee. Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood and the fathers kindle the fire and the women knead the dough to make cakes to the queen of heaven and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods that they may provoke me to anger. Do they provoke me to anger saith the Lord? Do they not provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces? Therefore thus saith the Lord God behold mine anger and my fury shall be poured out upon this place upon man and upon beasts and upon the trees of the field and upon the fruit of the ground and it shall burn and shall not be quenched. Thus saith the Lord of hosts the God of Israel put your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices and eat flesh for I spake not unto your fathers nor commanded them in that day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices but this thing I commanded I them saying obey my voice and I will be your God and ye shall be my people and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you that it may be well unto you but they harken not nor incline their ear but walked in the councils and the imagination of their evil heart and went backward and not forward since the day that your fathers came forth out of the land of Egypt unto this day I have even sent unto you all my servants the prophets daily rising up early and sending them yet they harken not unto me nor incline their ear but hardened their neck they did worse than their fathers therefore thou shalt speak all these words unto them but they will not harken to thee thou shalt also call unto them but they will not answer thee but thou shalt say unto them this is a nation that obeyeth not the voice of the Lord their God nor receiveth correction truth is perished and is cut off from their mouth cut off thine hero Jerusalem and cast it away and take up a lamentation on high places for the Lord hath rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath for the children of Judah have done evil in my sight saith the Lord they have set their abominations in the house which is called by my name to pollute it and they have built the high places of tophat which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire which I commanded them not neither came it into my heart therefore behold the days come saith the Lord that it shall no more be called tophat nor the valley of the son of Hinnom but the valley of slaughter for they shall bury in tophat till there be no place and the carcasses of this people shall be meat for the fowls of the heaven and for the beasts of the earth and none shall fray them away then will I cause to cease from the cities of Judah and from the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride for the land shall be desolate let us pray dear heavenly father I want to thank you so much for Jesus Christ thank you for the sacrifice that he paid for all of our sins and rose from the dead making salvation a free gift thank you for eternal security thank you for the word of God please open our understanding and give pastor Shelley boldness to preach in Jesus name amen i want to look at verse 24 the bible says this but they harken not nor incline their ear but walked in the councils and the imagination of their evil heart and went backward and not forward and and that's really where i'm drawing the inspiration for my sermon is this idea of going backward and not forward now i wanted to read that verse but i actually want to go through this chapter quite a bit and before we kind of get back to this this verse and kind of thinking about what it's really saying but when when you get to the end of a year this is something that i think is really important is to kind of just evaluate the direction that you're headed and what direction have you been going down have you been going forward or have you been going backward and when we look at the nation of Judah and we look at this southern kingdom god's basically saying that this kingdom as a whole obviously there's exceptions and individuals that don't fit this but as a whole as a conglomerate they have gone backward not forward in the service of god in fact he says specifically that this nation is worse than the children of Israel were in the wilderness and we typically think of the children of Israel in the wilderness as being kind of like the the worst and a really bad generation having been very backslidden he's saying they're worse look what it says specifically in verse 26 yet they harken not unto me nor incline their ear but harden their neck they did worse than their fathers so he's saying the children of Israel that were in the wilderness who are their fathers were actually more obedient than this generation than this specific group of people and so when we think about the stiff necked and hard-hearted people in the wilderness that didn't obey god and constantly complained rebelled and worshipped the golden calf and did all kinds of crazy things he's saying this generation is even worse that them as a conglomerate they've gone even further backwards not actually forwards they're not getting more christian more godly more righteous they're getting worse as a whole now if we go back to the very beginning this is important when we think about the concepts and the who the audience is that he's directing this towards but verse one it says the word of the lord that that came to jeremiah from the lord saying stand in the gate of the lord's house and proclaim there this word and say hear the word of the lord all ye of judah that enter in at these gates to worship the lord so who is jeremiah chapter number seven written to it's written to people that are showing up at church at the house of god and with a motivation to worship god he's not preaching this to an a heathen nation he's not preaching this to just generally the inhabitants of judah it's specifically the people that are going to church and the people that are going to church with a purpose to worship god he's saying the people that are going to church trying to worship god this is the message for you guys this is what you guys are like that's important to think about verse three thus say the lord of hosts the god of israel amend your ways and your doings and i will cause you to dwell in this place so god's appealing to the people of god the people that want to worship him saying hey if you repent if you get right with god if you actually change the way that you're living you could live here forever god wants them to be able to dwell in this land and to be able to be established in this area what is their problems and they have several problems here first when he mentions look at it says in verse four trust ye not in lying words what is one of the major problems they have is they're trusting lying words they believe false doctrine they believe false teachings they have people that are telling them things that are not true and they just believe them and really there's a lot of parallels i think when you study the book of jeremiah when you look at the nation of judah two things we see in today's world and we see even in america with a large percentage of americans still go to church today don't they a large people a group of people in america consider themselves christian they consider themselves people who are trying to worship god that show up at a building that are there to worship the lord in theory but the problem is they're going to listen to someone that's going to lie to them and notice what it says in verse four trust ye not people are trusting in lies people are believing and putting confidence in false doctrines and false teachings they're trusting liars now what is the lie that they're specifically believing in verse four the temple of the lord the temple of the lord the temple lord are these i believe the attitude that he's trying to describe here is they believe since they have the temple of god they believe since they're the people of god they have the temple of god nothing bad can happen to them that they're basically immune from enemies from attacks from god punishing them because they have the temple of the lord and it's similar i think how some people today they think because they go to church or because they are of a particular denomination or something that somehow they're just right with god automatically or that god's not mad at them or that god could never want to punish them but you know we can't just trust in the fact that we just showed up at church or just trust the fact that because we have a church or have a building god would never be mad at us or something and i mean when we look at the temple of the lord people often like to brag in how many people they have come into their church or how nice their church is nothing can compare to the temple of the lord the temple of the lord is a magnificent structure and it's drawing people from the entire world to come and worship god at the specific temple but even if you have the greatest church building with the largest congregation god could still be mad at you if you're not following his commandments if you're listening to false preaching or you have false prophets or false teachers just lying and telling things to people that are not true they have to abide by the word of god verse five for if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings if you thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor so number one they trust that because they have the temple of the lord they can't be touched but secondly god is mad at them for not doing something what is god mad at them for not doing and what does it say in verse five that they're not executing judgment between a man and his neighbor meaning what that they're not actually considering who's right and wrong in situations and they're not actually judging people and consistent theme throughout the bible if you actually read it is you realize god loves judgment wicked people do not love judgment righteous people like righteous judgment and ungodly wicked people they don't want to consider the cause of the poor they don't want to know why someone's wicked they don't want to hold people accountable for what they've said and done and they themselves are giant hypocrites about it and they only apply judgment to people they don't like and they don't apply it to themselves and so one of the big problems that you have with church people is them not executing good judgment them being hypocrites and really you can preach a whole sermon on this being holier than thou's where they typically are judging everybody else as harshly as they can but they're not judging themselves and they don't apply standards to everyone they only apply standards to the people that they like that and against the people that they don't like where they essentially are not executing righteous judgment they are constantly condemning the righteous and exonerating the wicked and you know as god's people we need to make sure that we're executing righteous judgment you know they don't care about facts they care about feelings judgment doesn't care about feelings it cares about facts and we live in a society where it's become more about feelings than it has become facts anymore ideas like believe all women or something and and it's just like why why can't you know why do we just believe fifty percent of the world just automatically and we can't believe the other fifty percent are men just objectively worse than women or something like that you know and there's just this attitude there's this idea out there that essentially anybody that is a friend of mine because we both hate the same person i believe everything they say where essentially just if this person is saying something negative about somebody i don't like it must be true you know why because of their feelings their feelings are i want this to be true or i don't like this person or something and then they just believe it i mean look at the trump derangement syndrome that we have in our country today where people just believe any narrative against trump and it's like it's not like there isn't plenty of things to criticize trump over but at the same time our country and our nation often is believing things that aren't even true about people and it's not even just about him even democrats people believe weird things about democrats people believe weird things about republicans people believe weird things about everyone and it's like it's like we live in this culture where everybody wants to make like an exposed video or something where everybody just wants to go and just say like everything they can think negative about somebody and everybody just believes all of it it's just a tabloid magazine society it's a weekly worldly news society and people aren't executing judgment anymore they're not actually looking at facts anymore they just look at feelings and this could extend to every everybody i mean what you just talk about professional sports if you like a team and you don't like another team you'll believe every negative thing you can about the other team just because people care more about their feelings than they do about facts today and you know what that is an ungodly attitude god is mad at them god is upset with them for not executing judgment between people we need to figure out who's really right who's really wrong what are the facts and it doesn't matter what my feelings are whoever is right that's the person that we need to exonerate and it's frustrating when people won't execute judgment either just avoid it just like well everybody's wrong everybody's a liar everything and and they won't actually deal with situations we live in a society now where essentially law enforcement or legal cases or everything there it just seems like there's no judgment or it's just so delayed i mean if you want to actually have judgment in a case it's going to be years and years and cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions of dollars to get judgment and how is that fair how is that fair considering the fact that the majority of us don't have seven years to wait and don't have millions of dollars to spend on a lawyer to defend ourselves and essentially at this point there's just no judgment judgment should be free you should be able to go and allow the judges of the land to rule in situations and to exonerate the righteous and condemn the wicked and it not cost you trillions of dollars and take years and years and years i mean that is a bad system and god gets mad at this because what often happens is when there's no accountability bad people act badly and they just keep getting away with things and keep doing bad things you know one some industries are just really notorious for this you know when you think about like used car salesmen you think about the construction industry there are some people who just have bad businesses on purpose and they rip people off and as soon as they get caught they just bankrupt their company and start a new one and they're just like no accountability no buddy holding their feet to the fire no real judgment and we just live in a society where there's no judgment but think about this we're not even all of what i just said doesn't matter because the context of this is about church and even in churches even amongst god's people people get to a point where they're just not executing judgment anymore and we live in a culture where if you exercise church discipline if you hold people accountable for their actions then they act like you're a cult or something and it's like wait a minute you don't hold people in church accountable for what they say and do you're not executing judgment you mean you let people in your church just gossip and rail and lie about other people in the church and you don't do anything about it you let people in the church rip other people off and do all kinds of crazy things you allow people to go out and preach weird things at the soul-winning door and no one holds them accountable you allow people to believe literally any doctrine and pull people aside and teach them this other doctrine and you don't hold them accountable you allow people to just be disgruntled against the pastor and the leadership and just to attack them and try to draw people out of church and you don't say anything about it and you don't do anything about it look you're the one that's wrong by not executing judgment the people executing judgment are not the ones that are wrong you're wrong for not allowing church to be a place of judgment church should be a place where we actually feel accountable and this is what i always hear and it's funny to me people say like oh i don't like that church because people feel a little bit nervous or they're a little bit fearful it's like you should be fearful in the house of god you know you shouldn't think like i can show up in my pajamas and say anything i want and act however i want and there's no accountability that's not church that's walmart okay but you know what or that's uh what is it planet fitness the judgment-free zone but you know what that's not the house of god this is not a judgment-free zone and they say like oh you guys are so judgmental well as long as it's righteous judgment then i like that notice god is not saying you guys are too judgy i'm really mad at you guys because when i when y'all are going to the house of god y'all are trying to make people follow the commandments too much you guys care what i say a little bit too hard no no he's like you guys don't care you're not executing judgment you're not thinking about things that are right you guys are wicked and of course why why would you want to go to church i mean think about how many non-enominational churches you drive by and this is what they say on the sign come as you are what are they saying they're saying like planet fitness judgment-free zone they're saying you will not you will not show up here and anybody say hey you're dressed like a whore you won't show up there and they say hey why do you have the message in your hand you won't show up there and they'll confront you on your false doctrine and your false teaching and all the weird stuff you got going in in your life they won't confront the trannies at the door they won't confront heretics they won't throw anybody out in fact there's no there's nothing to be thrown out because i'm gonna have membership that is not the house of god that is what this is being described as and he's like this is not right look at verse six if you oppress not the stranger the fatherless and the widow and shed not innocent blood in this place neither walk after other gods to your hurt then will i cause you to dwell in this place in the land that i gave your fathers forever and ever now he's bringing up some severe sins what i think is interesting and you have to think about kind of this context god is not saying you guys have to be perfect to stay in this land he's like hey if you just kind of like high level aren't doing these things then you could live here forever because god does not expect perfection for them to be here but he does expect some level of standard there is at least some standard there is some objective that if they cross this threshold or this line he's not going to pardon him now oppressing stranger fatherless and widow taking advantage of people that are dependent on society and again stranger here is being foreigners specifically fatherless and widows and you know these three groups of people are in the situation they are to no fault of their own they didn't choose where they're going to be born they didn't choose for their father to abandon them or to die and they didn't choose for their husband to die you have to think about all three of these people are a victim of circumstance not a victim of being a bad person okay so we should not take advantage of people that are a victim of circumstance and we live in a society and in a culture where a lot of people are being taken advantage of by circumstance you know especially in america we really have imported a slave class through hispanic people coming through america through mexico and it's not fair i believe that our country is greatly oppressing them because we allow them to come in illegally but then we don't either ship them back or give them citizenship and we put them in this weird awkward situation where they it's like wink wink nod nod you can be here but we're not going to actually give you rights and give you a good wage we're going to give you a crappy wage we're going to give you a lower wage and allow you to just be a slave class imported into our country that's wrong god doesn't like that you know either a we should not let them come or b allow them to come and be a citizen and have equal rights but you shouldn't allow them to come and then have this like subclass status where they're an illegal and you could deport them and they live under a threat of being deported or or not having rights and then on top of that they don't get the same kind of wages and it's just all this awkward stuff now again i'm not saying if you are nice to an illegal or if you pay them to do stuff you're doing anything wrong but obviously if you are paying them slave wages if you're taking advantage of them because they're an illegal well then you're oppressing them to some degree if you know the widow or the fatherless they don't have a dad or a husband to defend them or protect them and you're a car salesman and you're like oh i can jack up the price because they don't know what they're doing they don't have someone to defend them well now you're oppressing them and the same could even happen amongst god's people you know as god's people we should not be their oppressors we should not partake participate in what the world's doing to these people we should be kind fair and treat them the same as everybody else and i'm not just saying only hispanic people because there's foreigners from all over the world that are in our country and we should treat them the same not any way different and you know our church praise god actually has a lot of diversity i mean i feel like our church demographic is almost like the demographic of dfw whatever you looked at percentages it's probably pretty similar to just the dfw area which to me seems like we're the least racist church you could possibly be if you match the demographic percentages of your area you're going to be the least racist if you're really skewed as far as what the like if let's just say you live in dfw and i don't know the numbers look them up yourself whatever i say is wrong but let's just say it's like 40 white 25 Hispanic probably like 15 black and then like another 10 other that's probably not even 100 so you know fill it in with something else then there's like this mix or something right but i'm just saying like then your church if it wasn't very racist it would be like that exact same number right 40 50 white 20 25 Hispanic you know whatever but if you go into a church and it's 100 white it's 100 Hispanic it's 100 black well that's actually more racist than a church that's actually filled with a pretty much close percentage demographic of what your city is like and then it's funny because then they'll act like you're racist even though they're the ones that have a crazy you know deviation from the standard mean and that's a statistical thing but at the end of the day you know when we come to church it should be a church for all nations a house of prayer for all nations and we don't want to be discriminatory against any group of people we love all people red yellow black and white they're all precious in his sight and we don't want to be guilty of oppressing certain people or discriminating against certain people or not allowing people to participate in the things of god the same way and i think our church does a pretty good job in that area but there are going to be places where they are taking advantage of these individuals one thing i've i've seen and especially in bigger churches is they have these financial gurus coming through and they're always trying to sell them mutual funds and they prey on widows they prey on the ignorant i also know that they'll come through and they'll do reverse mortgages and other kinds of financial scams that take advantage of the elderly and an impoverished people and you know what the house of god should be a place where we're taking care of our parents we honor our father and mother and we take care of them do not let your parents be taken advantage of by some reverse mortgage scam artist by some mutual fund scam artist or something like that you help them you take care of them you find out the information do not let them be ripped off by these scam artists that cycle through churches here's another thing that he's saying in this particular passage is shedding innocent blood and walking after other gods now hopefully our church is not doing this but i think that some churches you know if you look at abortion correctly it is shedding innocent blood and here's another thing though how many churches just have an unconditional support of a nation called israel and israel is just endlessly bombing gaza and all kinds of different areas and just shedding innocent blood for no reason and these churches are literally funding all kinds of events and things going on in the middle east wanting to put these type of people in positions of power and authority in our country and think about it if christianity in america if evangelicalism in america actually believed replacement theology and actually believed this what the bible really says about zionism would we really have the presidential cabinet that we have would we really have the supreme court that we actually have and is it is it interesting that we have all these people going to a church going to the house of the lord to worship god and they're trusting and lying words about four nations and all kinds of things and then our nation is just filled with people that are just supporting the destruction of innocent blood all over this nation and of course these same people are responsible for bringing in feminism bringing in abortion bringing in all kinds of these other ungodly things whereas if christians were actually christian in america it would look completely different and people get mad at our church but let me tell you something i'm not going to be a willing participant in all the innocent blood that's being shed in this world and oh you're anti-semitic well if not wanting babies to be killed is anti-semitic then please i want to be anti-semitic right i mean like do you even listen to what you just said it's weird how our country and our nation is just trusting and lying words and you know what god gets mad god gets really feared you kind of wonder like why would god destroy end times babylon well the end times babylon country is really wicked and it's it's guilty of the destruction of tons and tons of people and just because you don't realize it doesn't mean you didn't participate just because you're david you're hiding in your little castle while yariah is being destroyed by the enemy on the front lines doesn't mean you aren't guilty for his bloodshed and so just because americans are sitting in their houses and their their temple their huge temple them giving money to these wicked organizations and voting for these type of people and supporting all these kind of people you know what it's the same thing from god's perspective we should not be participating in those events walking after other gods to your own hurt you know one application and there's so many applications but one application i think this whole chapter that you have to really think about because because i always think about this i'm like we're not like worshiping other gods we don't have idols we're not doing this and then i'm always like oh yeah what about the catholic church the catholic church literally has idols it's literally worshiping graven images and statues of things that are not god let me explain something that crucifix is not jesus christ and if you look at any picture of jesus as a catholic he has long hair jesus didn't have long hair buddy there jesus is not the jesus of the bible all of their paintings their little picture of the lord's supper or essentially all the disciples gathered around a table let me tell you something that was drawn by a faggot right and that is not what the disciples look like they're worshiping the little mary statue that is not even mary and the mary that they worship is like the mother of god in a completely different sense than what the bible teaches they teach that she's somehow divine they teach that she ascended to heaven they teach that she's never sinned well the only person that's never sinned is god so if you're going to teach that mary didn't sin now you're basically teaching that she's somehow god in a sense which is extremely wicked evil satanic and they're worshiping false gods under the guise of christianity under the guise look when america was formed and they were setting up colonies certain colonies like georgia explicitly banned catholics from even practicing their religion in the state they said everybody has religious freedom except for papists let's let me explain that catholics i mean they said anybody you can practice any religion except for being a catholic i think that people forget like what our nation was even built on our nation was not built on catholicism yeah there was mary land i wonder what that was about but we as a whole we're protestant christianity evangelical christianity it's pretty much a lot of baptist heritage and that's what built this great nation that's why god blessed it so much and now we've just allowed them to take over we look at our supreme court we look at our government it's filled with catholics and jews this is not christianity anymore it's a different kind of christianity and why would god be mad at america well we're allowing people to take over and we're trusting in lying words we're letting all kinds of abominations happen and if we didn't do it look at verse seven then will i cause you to dwell in this place in the land that i gave your fathers forever and ever if we didn't do this stuff we could live here forever america would just live on forever and ever if we weren't allowing people to just worship false gods and shedding shedding innocent blood and constantly listening to lies and we actually executed some judgment and actually said hey you know what the catholics not saved sorry how many christians they think catholics are saved but you're trusting in lying words because they're not saved they don't believe the gospel verse 8 behold you trust in lying words that cannot profit i mean how many times do you need to say like you just believe stupid things you believe lies verse 9 will you steal murder and commit adultery and swear falsely and burn incense unto bail and walk after other gods whom you know not and come and stand before me in this house which is called by my name and say we are delivered to do all these abominations they think that they can do this stuff and that there's no consequence you know what a what an example of the indulgences that the catholic church literally sold where you could go and commit one of these sins listed and just pay money to the church and somehow you're absolved of that sin let me explain something to you that is not christianity christianity does not teach that you can shed innocent blood and then pay money to have that absolved that is not christianity that is paganism that is catholic indulgences if anybody's preaching that they're preaching satanic lies if they think you can pay money to absolve the sin of murder or any sin there is no sin where god is like all right 50 bucks 100 bucks a thousand bucks that's the bribery system in american justice where you pay the judge off or you pay money and these type of rituals but you know what that is not christianity whatsoever god does not accept ransoms like that god does not accept bribes and payments like that people that are teaching this are under satanic influence it is not christianity and they think that they're somehow delivered people think oh i can commit abortion and whatever and god doesn't care i can murder i can take things steal rip people off take advantage of the the poor the needy i can swear false i can just lie as much as i want and again burn incense to bail i mean how many catholics are just have a literal shrine to marry i can go to i can take you to neighborhoods we're in the front yard in the front yard they just have this giant orifice of just like mary and all these candles and their lighting stuff and then now we're trying to import hinduism into our country and all kinds of other weird religions and you know this is what's crazy you think like well that's not christianity but i've been around people who are hindu and they'll go to the non-the-non church with you and they just think they they're like oh i like jesus because he's just one of the other 50 trillion gods that they worship in their mind they worship every god they worship everything so they are going to come and worship god with you why would i want to go to church where i'm sitting next to a hindu that worships literal rocks and statutes as god that pours milk on their head and gods them out pleased with that but let me tell you you go you go with me to gateway you go with me to kenneth copeland you go with me to one of these big non-nama churches there will be a hindu in that church service there will be catholics in that church service there will be atheists there'll be everything you could think of and you're going to all worship god together in truth and spirit and truth it's a joke it's a lie god is not pleased with that god wants you to come out from among them and be separate sayeth the lord that sounds like a count well it sounds like we actually care what the bible says that's what it sounds like yeah i'm not interested in joining hands with the world and singing kumbaya and singing oh god is an awesome god he reigns with no real doctrine what religion can't sing that song jews could sing that song the ant the jews that crucified jesus on the cross could sing that song while they're crucifying him oh it's such a great song it might sound good but you know what i don't want to just go and sing just generic random songs to a random god while we have all these random people with random beliefs and random bibles and random sins and we have no idea what's going on we don't even know what the gender of the guy is sitting next to us and he's the one that wrote the song that we're singing too because if you've ever gone to one of these churches you look at the musicians and the people that are writing the music and none of them seem straight look can we can we make music ministers manly again can we make people that play like the guitar and drums and stuff like normal why do they always have to look like a grungy weird effeminate faggot and i mean even the old ifb struggles with this problem i'm sorry but you go to a lot of old ifb churches and the music minister seems a little sweet he seems a little light in the loafers he's got that sweet spirit you've been looking for and it's like why can't we have manly guys leading the music i'm sure the men of god in the bible he-man the singers you know these guys these guys know how to play asaf i'm sure they're pretty good they're not like these weak puny guys we need to you know make christianity separate again it needs to be different god gets mad oh well we have the temple of the lord who cares are you doing all this stuff hey we're delivered to all these abominations god's not mad at you that's what i think of joyce myer god's not mad at you no god is mad at you for committing abortion god is mad at you for worshiping false gods god is mad at you for having the message in your hand god does not is not pleased with those things says in verse 11 in is this house which is called by my name become a den of robbers in your eyes behold even i have seen it say the lord but go ye now into my place which was in shiloh where i set my name at the first and see what i did to it for the wickedness of my people israel he's saying oh you guys think you you're good how about shiloh what's happened it now gone destroyed become just a nothing god will destroy places even that are great even built into his name when they are not going to follow his commandments verse 13 and now because you have done all these works say the lord and i spake unto you rising up early and speaking but you heard not and i called you but you answered not therefore will i do unto this house which is called by my name wherein you trust and under the place which i gave you and your fathers as i have done to shiloh saying hey even though this is my house with my name and you're my people i will destroy you like i destroyed shiloh i mean think about this we live in america we don't live in israel we have a church we don't have the temple of the lord if god destroyed israel and the temple of the lord how much more a nation in america a church in america we ought not think that we are exempt from god's judgment or god's wrath when he literally did it to his own house did it to his own land verse 15 and i will cause you i will cast you out of my sight as i have cast out all your brethren even the whole seed of ephraim therefore pray not thou for this people neither lift up cry nor prayer for them neither make intercession to me for i will not hear thee that's crazy think like it's not good when god is saying don't pray for these people god is saying i mean think about this people say like god just loves the jews no matter what and just loves israel no matter what and then you read the bible and god's saying don't pray for them at all and it you know there's this argument of like who's really the nation of israel who's really the children of abraham and all this kind of stuff nowadays but back then there's not a question mark here this is just absolute certainty god is saying the literal seed of abraham the literal nation of israel don't pray for them i will not hear you why because god's not a racist god is not a respecter of persons it's not about genetics it's not about your heritage god wants you to serve god out of your own heart let me tell you something children your parents being a baptist does not exempt you and automatically give you favor with god you have to choose to be a baptist yourself be baptist born baptist bred and baptist dead now you didn't choose the baptist born and bred but you get to choose if you'll be bad this dead and every child needs to decide for themselves to serve god to have their own walk with god to actually read the bible you being drug to church against your will does not make you right with god you should actually desire to come to church yourself you should have your own walk with god you should read the bible yourself he says in verse number 17 see is thou not what they do in the cities of juda and the streets of jerusalem children gather wood and the fathers kindle the fire and the women need their dough to make cakes to the queen of heaven and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods that they may provoke me to anger so these people are claiming that they're worshiping god but then they're literally performing all these rituals for the queen of heaven how is this not catholicism where they go to church they're supposed to worship jesus they're supposed to worshiping the god of the bible but then how much time and effort are they spending on that versus how much their time they're spending on mary specifically and idols of mary and food for mary and events for mary and you know all these hail mary's it's gross he says verse 19 do they provoke me to anger say it the lord do they not provoke themselves to confusion of their own faces saying like they're just they just look like idiots verse 20 therefore thus say the lord god behold mine anger my fury shall be poured out upon this place upon man and upon beast and upon the trees of the field and upon the fruit of their ground and it shall burn and shall not be quenched thus say the lord of hosts the god of israel put your burnt offerings under your sacrifices and eat flesh for i spake not unto your fathers nor commanded them in the day that i brought them out of the land of egypt concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices but this thing commanded by them saying obey my voice and i will be your god and he shall be my people and walk ye in all the ways that i have commanded you and that it may be well unto you so i'm making this application of catholic of catholics but there's so many other applications but if we stick with that theme for a second notice he's saying if you just did what's right if you just did what i said then i would be your god and this is what's frustrating i love catholic people god loves catholic people and if they would just repent from dead works and trust in the living god if they actually would put their faith in the gospel that they know so well god would be their god but because they're worshiping the queen of heaven in their mind because they're thinking they're delivered to do all these abominations because they think they can just go confess their sins to the priests and be absolved of all their sins because they're not actually worshiping the god of the bible and truth you know what god is mad at them and god is going to pour his fury out on them and we as god's people need to execute judgment between our neighbor and tell the catholic you're wrong tell the catholic you need to get become a baptist nothing makes me more upset when i go soul wedding and someone knocks on the door and they say i go to saint john's or whatever and their soul when he says we want to take you from a good church just like why did you say that what do you mean yes i do want to take you from that church yes i know i don't want you to ever go back ever again stay away from the pagan idolatry stay away from the satanic witchcraft stay away from those evil people and look not all catholics are evil but look their doctrine and their priests and their teachers are evil and satanic and some of their adherents are too but many of those people are sucked into this they're trusting in lying words they're being destroyed and you know it extends beyond catholicism it goes to the non-thon churches and all the catholic light churches of the presbyterians and many of god's people today they're going to church and they're just trusting and lying words and what is the consequence verse 24 but they harken not nor incline their ear but walked in the councils and the imaginations of their evil heart and went backward and not forward god looks at them and says man you guys aren't going forward you're going backward if you look at america as a nation if you look at as a whole from a religious perspective we have not been going forward we've been going backward we are trying to get rid of catholicism now we're bringing more catholicism we're trying to get rid of other religions now we're bringing in more religions we're trying to get rid of all the heresies and the false prophet now we're bringing even more heretics there's more bad churches than ever before in our nation more division we're not going forward on the bible issue we're going backwards and instead of taking the texas receptors and making even more foreign translations out of it we made 50 bad english versions we didn't go forward on the bible issue and getting the bible into people's hands we went backwards as a nation as a whole when it comes to doctrine the doctrine of baptist as a whole has not been going forward it's going backwards so many baptists are taking baptists off of the sign if you go back 50-70 years to a baptist church it was just they all use the king james bible everybody's king james you go back that far in fact and i'm not saying this is all right but if you actually went to a baptist church no dancing no drinking you know they look down on even smoking they look down on living a worldly sinful life they were conservative they dressed nice they went soul winning i mean they were a lot more conservative as a whole we as a society have not been going forward we've been going backwards you look at how people dressed they showed up at the baseball game in a suit and tie you show me the how people dressed in the 1950s you know we always like to think that we're always moving forward or we're like getting better as a society every time i look at a picture in the past everyone's dressed nicer than society today everyone you know this is this just makes me mad this is a whole sermon in itself i'll maybe preach it at some point but you know i watch these christmas plays and it's like everybody in the christmas place is wearing like a glorified garbage sack you know what i'm talking about it's like they took this brown trash bag cut a hole in it and just put it on someone's head and everybody's just walking around in this weird garbage bag and i'm thinking like why why do you think that if you actually study the bible people had better fashion than we do and if you look at any picture look at the 1950s everybody's walking around in suit and tie how let's go back to the 16 1700s they're dressing really fancy they're now of course there's always been peasants there's always been slave class there's always been people that are impoverished in general and and i'm not trying to necessarily say that everybody's dressed super nice but generally speaking fashion has been on a decline everybody's just wearing sweatpants and like a t-shirt or or all kinds of just weird garb weird outfits they don't actually respect themselves as a society we have not been going forward backwards they're in the 60s or 70s they're singing songs about the itty bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini you know why because it used to be inappropriate inappropriate for a woman to wear a bikini out in public now you go in public that's what people are wearing in the mall that's what people are wearing just up and down the streets you would get arrested you would get arrested if you were wearing that you would be fined if you were a woman wearing pants in the 60s in houston you would be fined or arrested ah i just yeah i don't like what you're saying yeah because you're trusting in lying words right because you want to go to a church where it's like come as you are and act how as you are but you know as a society as a country as a whole we've been going backwards and not forwards and we need to do some judgment in the house of god and you need to ask yourself what direction have you been going it's the end of the year why don't you ask yourself this question what was i like at the beginning of this year now go to act chapter seven go to act chapter seven what were you like five years ago were you doing more soul winning less soul winning were you going to church more were you going to church less were you reading your bible more were you reading your bible less how about doctrine did you know more or less a year ago and you you would think like no one would say less but it happens for sure i mean there's been times where i've had 20 30 chapters of the bible memorized i could quote for you right now and then i lose it because you know if you don't exercise it if you don't use it you kind of lose it in a sense you can go backwards and all you can forget things you can lose the information and the knowledge that you have you could have been sharper on certain things you could have been sharper on soul winning because you were doing it actively you could have been so winning in a foreign language and now you're not doing it and you're losing it you could have been really good at an instrument and now you're not playing it and you've gone backwards you could have been really athletic and in really good shape and able to run and lift and do push and now you're going backwards you could have been in shape now you're going backwards there's a lot of ways that we can go where were you a year ago and look don't think about anybody else don't be thinking about your spouse or your children or me think about you where were you are you going in the right direction and in every area of your life what were the children of israel like in the wilderness look at acts chapter 7 verse 39 says to whom our fathers would not obey talking about the children of israel in the wilderness but thrust him from them talking about god and in their hearts turned back again in egypt there's this consistent theme of the bible where people are going back it's called backsliding backsliding turning back in their hearts constantly wanting to go back to egypt the bible warns about people like this dimas hath forsaken me having loved this present world he loved it i bet you if we asked dimas he said oh my life's so much better since i left new ivb because he loved it but what if we what if we took dimas and we said okay but let's put you on the scale did you go forward dimas or did you go backwards you came out of egypt but then did you keep going towards the promise or did you turn back in your heart towards egypt were you like the children of israel where hey we're trying to worship god but they actually didn't go forward in the worship of god they went backward in the worship of god and where are you at where are we at you know we want to make sure that we're headed in the right direction and you know i have more in fellowship with someone that's walking in the same direction with me that may not be as close to me there could be someone that's standing i'm standing here and i'm trying to walk this way and someone's standing right next to me but they're going to go this way and then there's someone else back here but they're walking this way you know you know what i have more in relation i'm more interested in that guy walking with me this direction than the guy that's really close to me but walking this way and we need to be careful which direction you're headed just because someone's in this room doesn't make them necessarily someone that you should be hanging out with and being rubbing shoulders with because you have to ask them this question which direction are you going because you know when i'm walking in this direction the guy behind me is not going to do anything to me but the guy going this way what if we're kind of yoked together he's trying to go this way and i'm trying to go this way well someone's going to win whoever's stronger or it's just going to break and then we're just you know that relationship's going to break but if i'm weaker he could he could kind of take me back with him a little bit couldn't he or he could just keep me locked in i can't go forward because i'm locked in with this guy and he's trying to go backwards and i'm trying to go forward and we're just kind of locked what direction are you headed in are you going back to egypt and your hearts verse 40 this is what they did saying unto erin make us gods to go before us for as for this moses which brought us out of the land of egypt we will not what has become of him this is what's funny in jeremiah chapter 7 what we're reading go back just go back because i wanted you to look at this verse with me again because this is important this is the attitude of everybody that's going backwards and this is it it always surprises me but it shouldn't surprise me okay look what it says in verse number 24 but they harken not nor inclined their ear but walked in the councils and in the imagination of their evil heart now you'll read the story about the children of israel and the wilderness they're always making these crazy things up they're like god brought us out in the wilderness to kill us were there not graves in egypt that's insane god did not drag the children of israel in the wilderness to kill them and die without a grave where did that come from the imagination of their evil heart them just dreaming things up and making up weird accusations that are not in reality at all and you'll notice people that are walking with us to serve god all of a sudden they'll turn back and then they'll say these wild crazy things like oh we're just out here we're in the wilderness just to be killed it's a cult oh you know everybody's carnal everybody's prideful just just all kinds just dreaming stuff up that has no basis in reality that's not true and you're just thinking like where did that come from it came from their backslidden heart came from their evil heart it came from them getting hardened through the deceitfulness of sin and they allowed their hearts to be hardened the day of provocation and they turned back towards egypt and they're going to go backwards and no one likes to walk back by themselves so what they're going to do is they're going as they walk by they're going to be like hey you want to come with me hey you want to come with me and they're just going to try and get everybody to come with them and then they're going to really spend as much time on that the few people are in the back of the crowd because they already know the guy's ahead of them they can't catch up so they're just they're just waiting and then they get there and they're like there's no one else left so i better just hang on to some of these people in the back of the crowd the people that are young inexperienced immature already kind of struggling to keep up and they're going to try and latch onto those people and drag them down with them but you know what don't go backwards go forwards this year look at where you're at don't think like oh he only gives us this manna what happened to moses everybody's always mad at moses you notice that have you ever noticed all the people the children of israel that were bad they never like moses they're never like you know moses is a pretty good guy i like moses but i just want to go back to egypt they don't say that they're like what happened to moses moses abandoned us moses lifts himself up above the congregation they're just always attacking moses no one that's backslidden likes moses so you should expect someone that's backslidden will not like the pastor will not like the evangelist will not like the soul winning captains will not like the zealous christians in the church they'll attack them and they'll say that they're prideful and they'll get mad at them because they want to drag everyone else down with them they're over here looking at the guy up in front and saying like hey don't be don't keep following that guy come back with me but you know what we need to constantly go forward follow paul as he follows christ follow the men of god as they follow the lord jesus christ and this is what i think is really interesting think about church history for a second and none of us are experts but let's just think about it from like a big picture jesus christ ascends into heaven his apostles go out and start a whole bunch of churches if we think about what happened here we have the passover we have the going through the the the red sea and then they're in the wilderness now what do the children of israel do as soon as moses is gone as soon as moses goes up in the temple then they fashion a golden cap and they start worshiping idols and is it any coincidence that it's like as soon as jesus goes back up in heaven and the apostles are gone that then you have spring out of nowhere the catholic church with all of their idolatry and it's just like this big repeat of it's like as soon as moses is gone as soon as the leadership's gone it's just like they immediately go into worshiping false gods and idolatry and then it's like as soon as jesus goes up into heaven and the apostles are gone then we just have the catholic church spring out of nowhere with just all their pagan idolatry and all of their wicked practices just like the children of israel did okay it's crazy these molten images and they went backwards not forward people often think like you know church always gets better but that's not true church can go in any direction church shouldn't get better church can get worse christians can get better christians can get worse movements can get better movements can get worse i mean it's all up to us and what we're going to do and we as a congregation have to decide we want to move forward we don't want to move backwards you know no one's perfect i mean when we read that this chapter in chapter seven he's not asking for like extreme perfection here is he he's not saying like make sure everything's always right you never sin he didn't even bring up fornication i mean that's a big sin in the bible i'm not even trying to downplay it i'm just saying he didn't say y'all have to never commit fornication to stay in the land he's like saying these big things like don't trust all the liars don't kill people don't worship false gods and i'm like you know as a church and as a movement and as a society we don't have to necessarily be perfect but we need to make sure that we're going in the right direction and that we're getting better over time and then we're working on our sanctification you know where are you at here's a question you should ask yourself have you gone back to some of your old sins and bad habits or have you have you been doing better than at the beginning of the year and how about bad relationships are you are you hanging out with people that you used to not you kind of like realize as a toxic person you stayed away and now you're going to go back to that toxic relationship that toxic person how are you doing what direction are you headed and look a companion of fools shall be destroyed is what the bible says we need to evaluate and here's another thing you should realize if you think to yourself you say you know what five years ago i wasn't really in church i wasn't really serving god i didn't know much doctrine i was getting nobody saved and since then now i'm going to church regularly i'm having kids i'm loving my wife i'm getting people saved i'm reading my bible more why in the world would you leave that like if you've noticed like i've had serious growth in the last five six years the last two years the last six months why in the world would you go backwards and there's so many people that are going to go backwards so many people are not going to walk and you know it's so funny they're always like there's all these other great churches that they're going to go to and i'm always thinking like look i've always said this and i'll always say this go to the best church in the area why because you personally need to constantly be walking forward but then these people will leave and they'll admit that they're going to a church that's inferior or not good and they're going to church less they're not going soul winning they're not getting the sins out of life now they're just bitter now they're just full of railing and they're just like their little leader that they've been listening to online because there's leaders out there that'll try to get you out of a good church they'll try to get you to stop going soul winning as much and just be bitter angry and just constantly attacking things and just be a railer like them don't go backward with that person go forward do more bible reading next year there's the new testament challenge get it done sooner than you've ever done it before go soul winning more get go to church more in 2025 than you did in 2024 go to more events you've never been on a missions trip try to figure out a way to go to mischief even if it's not next year just plan maybe it can be in 2026 maybe it can be in 2027 just go on i mean some of them some of the soul winning events that we're going to have are 20 minutes from the church there was we had all the regional guys raise your hand there's probably a region in your area you could go soul winning in and preaching the gospel and you know we can't take a lot of things with us in fact pretty much nothing but we can take the souls with us when we go to heaven i could work on so many things my car could be taken from me my house my job my family my wife uh this church my brain my health my everything could be taken from me but you know what can't be taken from me is the people i got saved and sometimes you just have to ask yourself this question what direction have i been walking in if i've been walking backward or i've been walking forward and if you're walking forward please continue walking forward if you feel like you've gone a little backwards turn around with me and let's start walking forwards 2025 there are so many opportunities there's so many victories we can have but we need to be walking forwards together and if someone in here is trying to walk backwards let them walk alone tell them to come walk with you but at the end of the day don't let people drag you down with them don't turn in your heart back to egypt either you stay serving god and let us not become like the children of israel where god looks down and says they are worse than their fathers let us let him find us pleasing in his sight and saying even if we're not close to where we need to be we're at least just walking in the right direction let's close in prayer thank you heavenly father so much for your instruction your guidance thanks so much for the word of god so that we can know which direction to head i pray that we would all evaluate ourselves that we'd all examine ourselves that we would think about where we're at where we've been what direction have we been heading i pray that you would give us zeal in our hearts and our minds to start walking in the right direction that you'd help us to to work on the sins that we struggle with that you'd help us to avoid the toxic and the bad relationships that exist i pray that you would help us to desire going soul winning more i pray that you'd help us to have a zeal for going to church and ministering to the saints i pray that you would bless all of our soul-winning endeavors next year that you'd bless our missions trips that you would allow us to just uh get so many people saved and baptized and give them a zeal to also preach the gospel and a zeal to read the bible and a zeal for church and i pray that you would just help us all to stay away from the people that want to drag us down from the people that want to walk backwards and i pray if there's anybody that's walking backwards that you could just touch their heart convict them and and cause them to turn back and start walking towards you that you would just give them that desire just thank you for all you give us and i pray that we give all the honor and glory to your son in jesus name we pray amen all right in closing let's go to song number 370 song number 370 song number 370 throw out the lifeline across the dark way there is a brother whom someone should save somebody's brother oh who then will dare to throw out the life that we've been through and say somebody's brother oh who then will dare to throw out the lifeline his barrel to share throw out the lifeline throw out the lifeline someone is drifting away throw out the lifeline throw out the lifeline someone is sinking today throw out the lifeline with head quick and strong why do you tarry why linger so long see he is sinking away say today and now with the lifeboat away then away throw out the lifeline throw out the lifeline someone is drifting away throw out the lifeline throw out the lifeline someone is sinking today throw out the lifeline to danger fraud man sinking in anguish where you've never been winds of temptation and billows of woe will soon hurl them out where the dark waters blow someone is sinking throw out the lifeline someone is thinking today soon will the season of rescue be o'er soon will they drift to eternity's shore ain't then my brother no time for delay but throw out the lifeline and save them today throw out the lifeline throw out the lifeline someone is drifting away throw out the lifeline throw out the lifeline someone is sinking today all right guys we're gonna do one more song let's go to song number 75. 75 we'll sing it out together on jordan's stormy banks song number 75 on jordan's stormy banks i stand and cast a wishful eye to gain its fair and happy land where my possessions lie i am bound for the promised land i am bound for the promised land oh who will come and go with me i am bound for the promised land although those wide extended plain shines one eternal day there god the sun forever rains and scatters night away i am bound for the promised land i am bound for the promised land oh who will come and go with me i am bound for the promised land no chilling winds or poisonous breath can reach that helpful shore sickness and sorrow pain and death are felt and fear no more i am bound for the promised land i am bound for the promised land oh who will come and go with me i am bound for the promised land when shall i reach that happy place and be forever blessed when shall i see my father's face and in his bosom friends i am bound for the promised land i am bound for the promised land oh who will come and go with me i am bound for the promised land great singing we have a baptism this afternoon sister elisa is coming for baptism have you trusted christ as your savior have you trusted christ as your savior yes yes that i baptized in the name of the father son and holy ghost buried in the likeness of his death raised to walk in newness of life i hope you like congratulations do we have any more okay make sure to congratulate our baptism and you guys are dismissed