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

Amen. We're in Ezra chapter number nine. Look at verse one, the Bible reads now, When these things were done, the princes came to me, saying, The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the people of the land, doing according to their abominations, even of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites, for they have taken of their daughters for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those lands. Yea, the hand of the princes and rulers have been chief in this trespass. And in this context, we have a couple different things, but Ezra's very upset. Ezra has come to the realization that the children of Israel are back to their old ways. They're trespassing in one of the grievous commandments that the Lord has given them to stay away from these type of people. They're chief in this trespass, and not just the people, even the priests, even the people that are supposed to be God's people, the pastors, the priests, the prophets, all of these people are chief. Chief means the most guilty, in fact, saying that the people that are the most guilty of committing these type of abominations are in fact their leaders, their rulers, the spiritual leadership. And this is a very horrible sin that they're in. Keep your finger and go to Deuteronomy 7. Deuteronomy 7, we're gonna look at where God actually explicitly commands for them to not intermingle with these type of people. Now, the thing that we have to understand when reading the Old Testament, and even really it makes no difference in the New Testament, is God does not detest these people because of some physical attribute that they possess. It's not based on their skin color. It's not based on their height. It's not based on who their dad is, per se. It's not based on them from a physical perspective. The problem is their spiritual problem. The problem is the fact that the God of the Bible is not their Lord. They have other gods. They have false gods, and they do very wicked abominations. They don't wanna follow God's commandments. They're very ungodly and wicked type of nations. It says in Deuteronomy 7, look at verse 1. It's what God said. When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whether thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hightites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou. And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them. Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them. Neither shalt thou make marriages with them. Thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. Notice this, for they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods. So will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly. Now notice that the problem is not because their kids are gonna come out with a different skin color. Oh, well they're gonna be now too white, or now they're gonna be too dark. Everybody in America thinks the only racism that exists is being against black people, but there's plenty of people that are dark skinned that are just as racist as white people, okay? Get over it. In fact, there's black people that are racist against other black people because you're not black enough. Or you don't hate white people enough. Or if you go to Asia, you wanna offend an Asian, tell them they look like they're from China. Because every other Asian nation hates China, I think. So if you say to a Japanese person they're from China, they're like, ah, I'm not from China. Sorry, that was probably offensive to somebody. Or you say someone from China's from Japan, or South Korea, I don't know the difference. Just like you don't know the difference, it doesn't matter, okay? And the reason why God is bringing this up is it's not about race, it's about religion. And it's always been about religion. We'll get often accused of being anti-Semitic, of being against people of a physical descent of Jewish background. I don't care what your background is. When we are against Jews, it's against the religion of Judaism. It's against those that reject the Messiah, they reject Jesus Christ. And the problem in Deuteronomy chapter seven is no different in the Old Testament or the New Testament. It's the same problem. God doesn't want his people to intermingle and to marry with people that are unsaved, people that have a different God, people that have a different religion. And notice what God says about it. When you mingle with this type of person, they're gonna cause you to stumble. He doesn't say, well, now you're gonna get them saved. No, he says, you guys are gonna end up falling down. Why, because the lowest common denominator oftentimes will drag you down. That's why it's important who you fellowship with. And he's giving a strong commandment that you're not supposed to make any covenant, especially that of marriage. Marriage is a lifelong commitment till death do us part. And it's always been like that from Genesis to Revelation. Divorce is not an option with God. It was a provision given in the law out of the hardness of the hearts of the children of Israel. It's not God's invention. It's not God's desire for divorce ever, period. Now, go to 2 Corinthians 6. We'll get a present day application out of this, even though it's very present day, because while we don't have any Canaanites to marry or Jebusites or Hivites, there's still plenty of them spiritually today. There's plenty of Jebusites and Canaanites existing today spiritually. And in fact, they live in America. They dwell in among us. And they commit all the same abominations listed in this book. And in fact, when God is telling the children of Israel that they're gonna inherit their land, he makes it really clear to them at one point. He says, hey, I'm not bringing you guys in because y'all are any better really. They're just a little bit worse. You're not being brought in because of your righteousness. I just have to get rid of them. And somebody else has to just come in here. It's not because the children of Israel are just so much better of a people and so much cleaner of a people. No, it's the fact that God is gonna use these physical examples for spiritual examples. Because most of the children of Israel, I don't know the most, but a lot of them are not saved. A lot of them don't even go to heaven. It's interesting how they're using examples throughout this Bible, but a lot of them are not even going to heaven. A lot of them will go to hell. So don't think of it as a physical sense. That's what the natural mind wants to do. That's what false teachers do. But the Bible's a spiritual book, okay? Look at 2 Corinthians 6, look at verse number 17. Wherefore, come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you. So according to the Bible, we have a commandment to be separate. We're supposed to be different. We're supposed to come out from among them and be different. You say, oh, your church is different than other churches. Well, praise the Lord on that. Hey, you guys act different than the rest of us. Praise the Lord. Hey, you dress different than the rest of us. Praise the Lord. Hey, you have a different Bible. Well, that's because you don't have a Bible. I'm coming out from among you, and I'm gonna use God's word, okay? So we have to make sure what we're doing, and the Bible commands this. Now, we're gonna go back and forth. Go to Leviticus chapter 20 now, our memory chapter, all right? Go to Leviticus chapter number 20. Because the God of Genesis is the same God of Revelation and all the New Testament, and Jesus Christ is the Alpha and the Omega. He's the beginning and the ending. He's the first and the last. I am the Lord, I change not. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So when I look at the Old Testament, I don't think, well, that's Old Testament, though. Look at what's written for our admonition. In fact, it probably has more application to us than it did to them back then, if you actually understand it. Now, look at Leviticus chapter 20, verse number seven. Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy, for I am the Lord your God, and ye shall keep my statutes, and do them. I am the Lord which sanctify you. Now, just because you might not be familiar with these words, you might not realize this is the exact same commandment that we have in 2 Corinthians chapter number six. What does it mean to sanctify? It means to set apart. What does it mean to be holy? To set apart. What does it mean to be sanctified? To be set apart. And in fact, in the Christian life after being saved, there's a commandment, constant theme throughout the Bible to be sanctified. Sanctification. What is sanctification? It's separating yourself from the world and being more like Jesus Christ. More holy, more righteous, more called out. We are called to be holy. Be ye holy in the New Testament. Where's that come from? Oh yeah, this, Leviticus chapter number 20. Didn't it say be ye holy? It's the same commandment. It's the same concept. It's the same idea, and we're not supposed to be intermingled with the world today. We're not supposed to make marriages and covenants, and unfortunately, a lot of people, they'll get married to someone that's not even saved. That's the first application we can take from the book of Ezra. We ought not marry people that are unsaved, and you should not allow your children to marry someone that's unsaved. Now, I'm all for children being able to pick a spouse, but there should be some caveats there. I believe that the parrot should guide their children to the right type of spouse. Not the exact person, but at least the right type, and say, hey, you're not gonna marry that person. You do not have my blessing to marry a Catholic. You do not have my blessing to marry a Hindu. You do not have my blessing to marry an atheist. You do not have my blessing to marry any of these unsaved, different God type of religions. That's gonna ruin your child's marriage. I don't care how much they love each other or like each other or please. Look, it destroyed Samson. Samson wanted to marry some ungodly, unsaved person, and it destroyed him. It destroyed his life. If he had married a godly young woman, maybe he would have killed even more Philistines. Who knows? Obviously, God had a purpose for Samson's life, and he was a type of Christ, and I get all that, but at the end of the day, that was a bad decision on his part to marry this Philistine woman, to go and to commit this type of a sin. Now, go back to Ezra if you would for a sec. Well, no, go to John chapter 17. I wanna go to another place. Go to John chapter 17. So no matter where we drop open the Bible, it's gonna teach the concept of sanctification. What is sanctification? Well, every single commandment is sanctification because it's trying to get you to not commit sin and be more like God, be more like Christ. And in fact, in Leviticus chapter number 20, you have a lot of these sins that these Hivites and Jebusites were into, the sins of men with men and the sins of being with beasts and the sins of incest and perversion and filth and abomination. That's what those nations were like. And you say, well, that was just them. Well, Jerusalem gets into all those sins too. Just later on, why? Because they started intermingling with these people. And even America, America being a pretty set apart nation and its foundation has constantly intermingled itself with Jebusites and Canaanites spiritually, and now it's turning into a literal Sodom and Gomorrah. It's turning into these nations that got cast out by God. And you know, they didn't just get cast out in Numbers and Deuteronomy. They didn't just get cast out in Joshua. They didn't just get cast out in the Kings and the Chronicles. They didn't get just cast out in 70 AD. They didn't just get cast out at Pompeii. They didn't just get cast out, you know, when the Roman Empire was destroyed. They're constantly cast out. God is still judging nations the same way. He didn't change. He didn't decide, well, there's gonna be one point in time where I'm just gonna pour out a lot of wrath on this one nation that hates me. But in the future, I'm never gonna do that again. No, actually, when we look at history, we see him constantly judging nations that turn away from God. Nations that turn away from God. Nations that forget God are turned into hells is what the Bible says. And God is gonna continually pour out his wrath on nations that forget him and don't follow his commandments and don't sanctify themselves and are not holy. Look what Jesus says in John chapter number 17. Look at verse 13. "'And now come I to thee, and these things I speak "'in the world, that they might have my joy "'fulfilled in themselves. "'I have given them thy word, "'and the world hath hated them, "'because they are not of the world, "'even as I am not of the world. "'I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, "'but thou shouldest keep them from the evil. "'They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. "'Sanctify them through thy truth. "'Thy word is truth.'" What is sanctify? It's to set apart. It's to be holy. It's to be separate. How are you gonna be separate from the world today from this book? Thy truth. When you read God's commandments, it's gonna separate you from the world. The world will not follow God's commandments. The world wants nothing to do with this book or God's righteousness. They have their own righteousness, which is not of God. It's a different kind of righteousness, a pharisaical righteousness, or a righteousness of the devil, in many cases. The only way you're gonna be separate is through this book. Look at verse 18. "'As thou hast sent me into the world, "'even so have I also sent them into the world, "'and for their sakes I sanctify myself, "'that they also might be sanctified through the truth. "'Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also, "'which shall believe on me through their word.'" Jesus said, I'm setting them an example of how to be sanctified, how to separate yourself, how to be faithful unto God's commandments so that we as God's people can do the same. And he even prayed for us that we would sanctify ourselves while we're on this earth, not just as disciples, but everyone that would believe on him. "'Let everyone that nameth the name of Christ "'depart from iniquity,'" is what the Bible says. And we as God's people need to sanctify ourselves. When you come to church, your goal should be what, to be cleaner. You should come to church thinking you're dirty. Hey, I need to clean some areas of my life up a little bit. Not thinking I got this. You should want to increase in knowledge, increase in grace, increase in charity, but ultimately your goal is to sanctify yourself, to come out from among the world and be different. If you don't go to church and you don't read the Bible, you will not be sanctified. It's the washing of the water of the word that sanctifies us. The TV doesn't sanctify you. The TV dirties you up. The radio dirties you up. The world just gets you filthy today. It makes you filthy and think filthy and do filthy things. The Bible and church actually scrub a lot of that filth off. The problem is people don't want that to be scrubbed off. In our church, we have the really rough pad. We got the felt pad that really gets a lot of dirt off. And that can kind of be irritating to some people. They're like, I am not that dirty. And it's like, dude, you don't even understand how dirty you are. We're just trying to scrub you. You start preaching God's word and it rubs them the wrong way. It's like, you just haven't been cleaned in a while. Because the person that's really clean, they enjoy a good shower. I don't detest taking a bath. Well, a bath. I don't like baths, but I do like showers. I do love taking a shower. Why? Just you feel good after taking a shower. I don't feel good after getting really dirty and being really gross. And that's what it's like for us spiritually. And we need to sanctify ourselves and be holy and be righteous and be clean in God's sight constantly. But false religion is going to destroy that for us. And when I was trying to think about kind of some of these concepts, obviously the primary application here would be not marrying an unsaved person. But there's other ways that people intermingle themselves with the world today. What was it that these women were causing these men? What kind of sins were they falling into? Well, go if you would to Revelation chapter two, we'll see those sins that they were mentioned. And honestly, there's no new thing under the sun. When we look at the struggles of the people, the children of Israel back then, it's the same struggles that we have today. There's no real difference. It's just packaged in a different way. They advertise it in a new way. But it's still the same old sins and it's the same old problems. Look at Revelation chapter two verse 14. But I have a few things against thee because thou hast them there that hold the doctrine of Balaam who taught Balak to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel to eat things sacrificed unto idols and to commit fornication. So the women of these ungodly areas were used by Balaam to cast a stumbling block for them to commit all kinds of whoredom and fornication. And in fact, when we go look up the story, which we're not gonna do for a single time, but in Numbers 25, they commit them to, they cause them to commit all this fornication and eat these sacrifices unto the idols. And then they end up bowing down to the idols too. They end up worshiping their false gods and getting involved in false religion. And it happens all the time even today. Now it looks a little bit different per se. Now the God is not Balaam, the God is the Democrat. The Democratic Party, which is literally a party of Satan. I mean, this party just like worships Satan if you just look at what they believe. I mean, what are their main agendas? If I said, hey, I'm a Democrat, what am I saying? Well, I'm definitely pro-choice. In fact, every Democratic nominee is pro-choice just across the board. They just want you to be able to murder your babies and murder your children. Now, what were the women doing causing men to do back then? Oh yeah, offer their children and sacrifice unto Molech. Oh, it's so different today. And in fact, when I look up the statistics, 62% of women vote Democrat. Because you have to wonder like, who is voting for Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders? Luckily the faggot dropped out of the race, Pete Buttigieg. But I just want like, who's voting for these people? It's women. Women are voting for these people. And in fact, not only do they disproportionately vote Democrat, they also outnumber men in the voting. More women vote than men. That's why the Democratic Party has such a big appeal and they have so many people voting for them. It's the women. And look, I'm not gonna sit up here and say that women are worse than men. I'm just letting you know that it's the same type of whoredoms from back then. Now, what are they for? Pro-choice, pro-LGBTQ alphabet crew, you know, whatever that is. And they wanna eliminate weapons. What guy is, you know, wanting any of those things? Look, Joe Biden is a wicked devil. He wants to eliminate every assault weapon in America. That's his vision. If you go to his website, one of his number one agendas is that no one in America can own any kind of assault weapon. Talk about literally going after the First Amendment as hard as he possibly can. Who's gonna vote for that? Not me. Oh yeah, some woman somewhere. Some woman's gonna vote for some nonsensical, you know, Joe Biden to go be the President of the United States. You know why they wanna do that though? I thought about this. Again, I'm not against women. The problem is they don't have a man to take care of them. So you know what? They want the government to take care of them. So that's why. Look, if they had a big strong man with a gun, if they had Rambo standing right next to them, they'd be all for the gun. The problem is there's no man to protect them. So they're afraid of the gun. They misplaced their anger for the gun. And they say, oh, it's the gun's the fault, you know. Even though a gun has never killed anybody on its own. It's always taken a man to do it. It's always taken a human to do it. Interesting how that works. But it's the same whoredoms. And you know, they're all pro-choice, but I'm gonna give you a tip here of how you could stop abortion, stop whoredom. Isn't that interesting? I mean, if you stop being a whore, then guess what? You wouldn't have all these abortion problems. Because you know who doesn't wanna commit abortion? Women who are happily married with a husband. So for some reason, they don't kill their babies. So if we just actually stopped all the rampant fornication in this country, we wouldn't have to wonder if you're pro-choice or not. There wouldn't be any need for any kind of a pro-choice. We just need to stop all the whoredom. But who's gonna get up and preach against whoredom today? Virtually no one. Virtually nobody's gonna get up. They're gonna say, oh, go grab some devices on the shelf. Go be safe. Don't be safe. That's one of the worst things you can do. The Bible says to flee fornication is what God's saying. But you know what? People are intermingling themselves with the world today and they're being like the world. And you know what? God is gonna be extremely angry with a nation that's intermingling with the world like this, even when it's Christians. Go back to Ezra. What are the Democrats for? Abortion, women's rights. Oh, I wonder why they're for women's rights because that's their voter base. It's not that they actually love women. They hate women. They wanna turn women into men. They want, this is their agenda, to take the woman, skirt off and put some pants on and get her out of the kitchen and go give her a job and then tax her 50% and then provide for some of her bills. That's what they wanna do. They wanna turn her into a weak man, a weak version of a man that can't really completely provide for himself and allow her to not have to worry about pregnancy because she can just kill her baby at any moment. They basically wanna strip a woman of everything that makes her a woman. What's the difference between men and women? Well, the women are great at cooking and cleaning and nurturing and giving birth. You know, I've never given birth and never will. They're great at all the things that God designed them for, but the government wants to turn the women into men. Why? So they can get the votes. Used to be in this country, women weren't even allowed to vote. Say, oh, that's so horrifying. Why is that horrifying? I think it's great. Then we would have less abortion. Then we'd have less Democrats. Then we'd have, in that case say, oh, so the Republicans are great. No, the Democrats are in disguise. They're called Republicans too. You know, the Democrats, whenever I was a child, they were probably more conservative than any Republican today. Funny how that works out. They just keep shifting the bar. I mean, Bill Clinton was against abortion except for just in like rape. It was like only rape. Now Donald Trump says, hey, I'm pro-life except for rape, incest, and the safety of the mother. Look, he's more liberal than the liberals literally were. Back when I was a kid, he would have been the most liberal Democratic nominee. If you compared him several decades ago, he would have been the most liberal Democratic nominee. Look, the parties, it's just shifting sands today. You say, why do you say that? Well, how come a Christian today is gonna go vote Democrat? Why can't you come out from among? How can any Christian vote Democrat? And you say, oh, you're voting for Republicans. No, they're Democrats too. They're both Democrats. But they wanna be yoked up with all this nonsense, all this filth and all this smut in our country today and promoting whoredom today. And then we have to worry about abortion. Why don't we worry about whoredom? Why don't we go on a task force? You know, we're so worried about the coronavirus. Why don't we get worried about all the sexual predators out there? How about all the sex traffickers? Why don't we just drag them out in the street and just stone them to death with bullets? It's real effective. We don't care about that. We don't care that 79,000 children in the state of Texas are in sex trafficking right now. And then when they catch one of these predators, it's like a slap on the wrist. Or they can't even make a case against them or whatever kind of nonsense that goes on in this country. You know why? Because the sexual predators are usually in office. When the vilest men are exalted, the wicked walk on every side is what the Bible says. And God's people should come out from among them. What if every Christian in this nation said, well, we're not voting for Democrat or Democrat light. You know what happened? There'd be a rise of a new party where they actually support maybe what the Bible says. And then they'd actually be shaking in their boots because you'd say, hey, you know what our party stands for? Pro-life, period. And hey, we're gonna destroy all the sexual predators and the perverts and the filth in this country. And then they'll go back into hiding. They'd flee and go to another country. But because Christians are intermingling themselves, oh, you go to vote for the Democrat light. I don't have to. All Democrats are wicked. I don't, oh. How can you say that someone that's literally pro-burdering babies, pro-fags, pro-stripping people of their right to have an arm, you know, an armed weapon, that that person's godly. They're so, they're so wicked. It's no different than the mole bites back then when God said, don't make any marriages with these people. Don't marry a Democrat. He liked it when it was the Canaanite. What if we just make a modern application and just say, hey, why don't you come out from among them? You cannot believe the Bible and be Democrat. You're just telling me you don't believe the Bible today. And you know what? I know back, you know, yesteryear, they were so much better or whatever. I don't really believe it. But frankly speaking, there's no, I mean, the political parties today are just both advocating for Satanism, advocating for the destruction of this nation and this country. And we keep wondering, well, if we get Trump in office, then our nation will be preserved. No, it's not. Preserved from what? Preserved from the Bible? Preserved from being godly? I mean, the adulterer? The gambling-owning, casino-owning, whoremonger? How is that guy gonna help me? How is that guy, the guy that rejects the Bible, his favorite story is 2 Corinthians? He needs to get 2 Corinthians 6. 12, about coming out from among them and being separate, right? Let's get a little bit, I've got too much preaching. Let's keep coming back, okay? Let's read a little bit more of this story. Don't advocate the baby killers to me. Says in verse three, when I heard this thing, I ripped my garment, my mantle, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard and sat down a stone. I mean, I haven't ripped out my beard yet. That's some intense anger. How is it any different? How is it any different when Ezra comes back to the land and he sees, hey, they've married all these wicked people and we see Christians today are yoking up with the most wicked and ungodly people and voting for them and giving them money and not only giving them money, they're taking my money and giving them to baby killers. How come nobody's upset about that? How come everybody's so nervous about that? I mean, why can't we just call sin what it is? You know, God doesn't look down from heaven and say, oh, it's 2020, I'm a little bit nicer now. I didn't really mean Leviticus back, you know, Leviticus, that was a harsh part of my life. No, he's the same Lord. His anger's probably only getting worse because we have new inventions of even more wicked things today. I mean, the wicked just get worse today. He's a stony, that's like astonished, dazed. He doesn't even know what to do, it's so bad. And when I look at America today, honestly, that's how I feel. What do you even do? I mean, it's just like, it's so bad. It's like, what would you do if you're president, start over. There's no fixing it. If I was president, the only thing I would do is eliminate laws. I don't need to pass any new laws. Let's just hold on to the ones that we originally started with and eliminate like 99% of what they've done. But again, it's probably better to just hit the nuke switch. I mean, there's nothing really to salvage at this point. Would you salvage the Department of Education? No. Would you salvage, what would you salvage with them? Nothing. Get rid of all of them. They're all horrifying and wicked and evil. You know what's gonna happen? God's gonna do it for us. Every nation that gets this corrupt and evil and wicked, God just has someone come in and destroy it for them. Every single nation, every single time, constantly. And then people are in horrible, horrible oppression. Let's keep reading and let's get an idea. Says in verse four, Then were assembled unto me every one that trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the transgression of those that had been carried away. And I sat a stony until the evening sacrifice. And at the evening sacrifice, I rose up from my heaviness. And having ripped my garment and my mantle, I fell upon my knees and spread out my hands of the Lord my God and said, Oh my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee my God, for our iniquities are increased over our head and our trespasses grown up under the heavens. That's how Christians should feel today. 60 million abortions. We should be afraid to even ask God for anything. We should be afraid that he doesn't just kill us instantly. We deserve it. See, I don't know about that Pastor Shelley. Well, keep your finger and go to Leviticus chapter 20. It's a good memory chapter. Let's see how God feels about a nation that doesn't want to follow his commandments. Leviticus chapter 20, verse number one. See, I've not been memorizing this. Well, we'll memorize it whether you like to or not, all right? Verse one. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying again, Thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech, he shall surely be put to death the people of the land shall stone him with stones. And I will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he hath given of his seed unto Molech to defile my sanctuary and to profane my holy name. The Bible says, if you commit an abortion, you should die. You say, well, I've never committed abortion, Pastor Shelley. Well, let's keep reading. And if the people of the land do anyways hide their eyes from the man when he giveth of his seed unto Molech and kill him not, then will I set my face against that man and against his family and will cut him off and all that go hoarding after him to commit hoarding with Molech from among their people. He says, hey, when a nation won't kill the baby killers, I hate the whole nation. I'm against the whole nation. Oh, God bless America. No, God's cursing America. God set his face against America and all the families that are for these baby killing, disgusting predators, the abortion doctor. It's horrifying. You say, oh, you seem upset. Well, I'm not as upset as God. I know that. And Ezra is way more upset. He's like, man, we've intermingled with these people. We tolerate them. You go to churches a day and they just, they soften the message. When do they get up and preach that chapter? I like how God said it. Hey, Moses, say unto them again. Notice Leviticus chapter 20 is not the first time he told them that message, is it? Oh, let me tell you, again, and again. You read those, when I was a child, I read these chapters, I'm thinking like, what kind of people do this stuff? And it's like literally our nation. It's literally everyone. There are people voting for it. People advocating for it constantly. Go back to Ezra chapter number nine. Go back to Ezra chapter number nine. Say, oh, I think God really likes America. God is not pleased with America. And let me say this, you know, I don't think there's a better place to live if I had to compare, but at the end of the day, that doesn't make America righteous just because it's better. Just like the children of Israel replacing the Jebusites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, it's not like God's automatically pleased with them just because they're not as bad. In fact, he's still just as angry with them and kills many of them often. And he didn't let any of their fathers into the promised land because of how wicked they were, how much they rebelled. He said, hey, I'm gonna let you guys go into land, but you just can't, you know, you can't have faith in me. He doesn't let them in either. So, you know, he lets in no one. He lets Joshua and Caleb last for a really long time and they, two people on the planet. There's two people that God thinks are good enough to get in there. He's saying, do you really think that God, you know, is just against everyone? Well, I think he still believes all of his commandments. God didn't lower his standard of righteousness. I don't care how wicked the world gets. It's not like he just has less standards now all of a sudden. He has the same standards. The same standards for a pastor is the same standards. The same standards for the priest was the same standards. The same standards for him to do anything always are the same. I am the Lord, I change not. Now, obviously the people that entered in, it wasn't because of their righteousness either, but they did have faith in the Lord. And in fact, in Joshua chapter number one, they said, if anybody breaks any of the commandments and doesn't do everything that Joshua says, we'll just kill them. That's how serious they were about following the Lord. That's the ones that actually got into the promised land. But then just shortly after, it's just, well, we stopped following God's commandments and then he takes the land away from us. And we just see this constant fight and struggle for people not wanting to follow God's commandments. And Ezra, he's just to his wits end because they just received the most harsh punishment you could imagine. And then they're just back through it again. I mean, I can resonate with this a little bit, not as much, but sometimes you get under your children and you spank them and then they do it again. And then you spank them and they do it again. And then you give them like a spanking. You know what I mean? You're like, that's not gonna happen again. And then they do it again. You like, you don't even know what to do. It's like, I thought like after that whooping, like there's no way. And they do it again. That's like what Ezra's thinking with the children. He's like, you realize the whooping we just got? I mean, we went into Babylon. We didn't even have a nation anymore. The temple's gone. It was wiped out. Do you remember for the last 70 years what just happened? You're just back at it again though. That just shows the human condition. That just shows the inner struggle of mankind, okay? But at the end of the day, you can see why Ezra's so frustrated. And honestly, it's just frustrating for any Christian because especially a position in leadership is you see so many people, they'll clean up their lives. And then all of a sudden they're just back at it again. You're just like, why? Why are you doing such a thing? Why do you just keep going back like a dog to its own vomit? Do you not realize that God's gonna punish? Do you not realize that it's the same God? Let's keep reading. Verse number seven. Since the days of our fathers, we have been in a great trespass unto this day. And for our iniquities have we, our kings and our priests been delivered and of the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity and to a spoil and to confusion of face as it is this day. And now for a little space. Grace has been showed from the Lord our God to leave us a remnant to escape and to give us a nail in his holy place that our God may lighten our eyes and give us a little reviving in our bondage. For we were bondmen, yet our God hath not forsaken us in our bondage, but hath extended mercy unto us in the sight of the kings of Persia to give us a reviving, to set up the house of our God and to repair the desolations thereof and to give us a wall in Judah and in Jerusalem. So you're saying, man, we just got a space of grace here. God just finally kind of gave us a little bit of grace here to come back and say, why are we just immediately back to the whoredoms? Why are we just immediately back to the thing that caused us to fail in the first place? Just like Solomon, he fell because of what? Because of the whoredoms of all the women that he made. And because of these nations, if you read the book of Joshua, chapter number three, I believe it is, God is telling them he left these nations to test them whether they would hearken or not. And I don't think it's any different today. I mean, if we just drive by the church, we'll pass all kinds of things. Liquor store, gentlemen's club, video stores, movie places. There's just filth and abomination. There's Jebusite over here and high tide over here and democratic station over here. I mean, there's all kinds of whoredoms out there just constantly trying to attract you and to pull you off the Lord and God's testing you what's your heart gonna be like? Are you gonna be faithful in his commandments or not? And he's saying, man, now that we have a little bit of grace, I mean, think of it this way. I mean, there's gonna be times in history where there's a good church and there's not. I would say that steadfast Baptist church is a time of a little bit of space of grace. Hey, we have a good church here that we can go to. We can worship the Lord in truth and we can be sent out soul winning and we can read the whole Bible, right? But what if we decide to take that lightly? What if we decide to just go back to the whoredoms of the world? God will take that grace away from us. God will take that mercy away from us. God will put you back into that bondage, that heavy oppression and bondage. And you know, I've visited old IFB churches and sometimes it feels like bondage. I'm just gonna admit it. Like if I would go and serve God as long as I possibly could there, but I'd rather serve him here. I don't wanna go back in the bondage of having to be forced to try and take my kids to the nursery, constant pressure about that, constant message about the Christian school and constant message about all the things that they teach and influence their children. You know, they de-emphasize homeschooling. Some churches, independent from Baptist churches, de-emphasize even having kids. They actually preach birth control. They're literally like Balaam. They're literally like these whores going around advocating fornication and lasciviousness. I mean, birth control, the murder of your own children. I mean, what kind of bondage and oppression are these people? Oh yeah, I remember the priests were a chief and some of these trespassers weren't they? Advocating this nonsense. Well, here's the thing. What happens when Ezra realizes their horrible sin? And we all can be guilty of horrible sin at different points in our life. What does he do? He immediately goes to God in prayer, doesn't he? Now go through the first Kings chapter eight. I don't think I'm gonna be able to read all this for the sake of time because I have a lot of stuff here, but King Solomon way before Ezra had prayed unto God and asked him to be merciful unto his people whenever they would commit some grievous trespass that they could call upon the name of the Lord, they could pray towards his temple and that he'd be merciful unto them, that he would bring them back to the land or whatever problems they were going through that he would give them some kind of relief from those problems. Says in first Kings chapter eight verse 22, And Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the congregation of Israel and spread forth his hands toward heaven. And he said, Lord God of Israel, there is no God like thee in heaven above or on earth beneath who keep his covenant and mercy with thy servants that walk before thee with all their heart, who has kept with thy servant David my father that thou promised him, thou spake us also with thy mouth and has fulfilled it with thine hand as it is this day. So Solomon's praying and he's like, man, you keep your covenant mercy with people that notice are following God's work commandments with all their heart. And in fact, when you read Kings and Chronicles, you'll constantly see this theme about the Kings. It'll say, oh, he did that which is right in the sight of the Lord, but his heart was not right with him. He didn't fall in all the ways or here's his problems, here's his downside. And those downsides, what would they cause them? Wars, it caused them losing parts of the land. They'd have all these issues. Look, God protects and preserves those that have their heart right with him all the way. Not just half in, not just a little bit in, all the way in. Says in verse 30, skip down to verse 30. And hearken thou to the supplication of thy servant and thy people Israel, when they shall pray towards this place and hear thou in heaven, thy dwelling place and when thou hearest, forgive. Now for the sake of time, I'm not gonna read all this, but what's the context? The context is if any time you commit any kind of sin, just immediately go to the Lord in prayer. Confess that sin. And also notice what it says in verse 35. When heaven is shut up and there's no rain because they have sinned against thee, if they pray toward this place and confess thy name, notice this, and turn from their sin when thou afflictest them. So notice God is causing punishment to come upon them because of their sin. And Solomon's saying, hey, if they seek you, God, if they're praying and they're confessing and they're turning from their sin, forgive them. Now again, work salvation heretics would love to turn to passages like this and teach this is about personal salvation and going to heaven. That is not what this passage is about, okay? We know that you don't have to turn from any sin for God to forgive you of all your sins, to go to heaven. But that does not mean that your daily life is not gonna be affected by the sin that you have. If you don't turn from your sin, God is gonna afflict you and you're gonna go into great oppression and there's gonna be curses and all kinds of bad things are gonna happen to you when you do not follow his commandments. And we always wanna de-emphasize turning from your sin when it comes to salvation, but I'm afraid, I don't want people to get the wrong idea. We still believe in turning from our sins. We still believe in repenting of your sins, just not in context of salvation. It's a very biblical concept. It's taught all over the Bible. It's a constant theme. It's a daily fight. You get saved once, you don't repent your sins then, then you repent of your sins the rest of your life. Then you repent of your sins every other second. I'm all for repenting your sins 99.999% of the time. The only time I'm not for it is when you call upon the name of the Lord for salvation. That was the one time you didn't. Every other second of your life you should be full of repenting of your sin and confessing your sin and praying unto God and ask him for to be merciful. But look at verse 41, I like this verse because you asked this question. Okay, well, the children of Israel are granted this awesome petition by Solomon, but what about the heathen? What about all these bad people that were with them? Well, look what it says in verse 41. Moreover, concerning a stranger, that is not of thy people Israel, but cometh out of a far country for thy name's sake. For they shall hear of thy great name and of thy strong hand of thy stretched out arm, when he shall come and pray toward this house. Hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place and do according to all that the stranger calleth to thee for that all people of the earth may know thy name to fear thee as do thy people Israel, and that they may know that this house which I have builded is called by their name. So notice God doesn't even make a difference between those that are born in the land and the stranger. Hey, anybody that calls upon his name is saved. Anybody that seeks the Lord is his people. Anybody that wants to dwell with him can dwell with him. He's the Lord of all. He's the same. It's not like, oh, in the New Testament, now all of a sudden I can worship God being a Gentile. You could have done in the Old Testament too. It didn't matter if you were born a Jebusite, a Canaanite, if you decide to go serve the Lord, God would accept you. God would bring you into the land. In fact, you have more respect with God than the people that were born of the seed and didn't believe in him. Read John chapter eight for that one, okay? Go to, go back to Ezra. Go back to Ezra. But why did I bring that up? Because here's the thing. When they're coming back to the land and they have these foreign wives, these strange wives, the problem is not that they're strangers. The problem is the fact that they don't worship the Lord. The problem is that they're doing wicked abominations and they're causing his people to commit those same abominations. And they're turning them away from the Lord. They're spiritual Canaanites, not just physical Canaanites. Because didn't we read Ruth? Was there any problem with Ruth? Was Boaz like, Ruth, you need to get out of here. I'm worshiping the Lord. No, he embraced Ruth. He blessed Ruth. He had mercy on Ruth. Why, because she had called for mercy unto the Lord. She had sought the Lord. So it's not about their lineage. It's about their spiritual lineage, okay? Now, for sake of time, we don't have time to get into chapter 10 and what that's all about. But it's important to understand these concepts that we're kind of unraveling and discovering when we get to chapter number 10. So keep them in your mind. But look at verse number 10. And now, O our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken thy commandments, which thou has commanded by thy servants the prophets, saying the land unto which ye go to possess it is an unclean land with the filthiness of the people of the lands, with their abominations, which have filled it from one end to another with their uncleanness. Now, therefore, give not your daughters unto their sons, neither take their daughters unto your sons, nor seek their peace or their wealth forever, that ye may be strong and eat the good of the land and leave it for inheritance to your children forever. And after all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great trespass, seeing that our God has punished us less than our iniquities deserve, and has given us such deliverance as this, should we again break thy commandments and join in affinity with the people of these abominations? Wouldest not thou be angry with us till thou has consumed us so that there should be no remnant nor escaping? O Lord God of Israel, thou art righteous, but we remain yet escaped as it is this day. Behold, we are before thee in our trespasses. We cannot stand before thee because of this. So we have this great prayer and confession of Ezra, and he's saying, man, we can't do this anymore. We can't just keep joining in with these people, their wicked abominations. And I agree. Should they continue to marry unsaved, wicked nation people? No. They shouldn't marry their daughters. They shouldn't marry their sons. They should confess that sin and they should forsake that sin. The Bible says in 1 John 1, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So it's the same in the New Testament. When you're guilty of a sin, what should be your response? Confess it to the Lord and forsake it. Confess and forsake your sin. And he's faithful to forgive you of that sin. God is merciful. God doesn't want you to be destroyed. God doesn't want you to be punished. In fact, in this passage, he says he's punished us less than our iniquities deserve. Ezra's acknowledging the fact that, hey, we haven't even received all the punishments that we should. We should have been punished a lot worse. Now go to Ezekiel chapter 33, Ezekiel chapter 33. The main thing that we have to understand is we need to get right with God. As soon as you sin, get right with God. And there's gonna be a temptation as soon as you sin to draw away. There's a temptation when you do something wrong to stop reading your Bible, to stop going to church, to stop praying, to stop doing. You need to do it more. In fact, as soon as you sin, you need to just get on your knees and just pray, and just say, God, please forgive me, please help me. Read your Bible more. Even more so, you need to get spiritual immediately. You need to confess and try to forsake that sin. You need to deal with your sin. And it works no different. I mean, if I do something bad against you, if I trespass against you, when do you want me to apologize? Wouldn't it be right away? No, let's wait. Let's wait for you to apologize on that one. I want you to think about it. No, if I trespass against you, wouldn't you want me to just get it right immediately? If you do something against your wife or your husband, when do you think they want you to apologize? It's right away. And the same with God. As soon as we do something wrong or wicked, we need to get on our knees and we need to confess and pray, not wait for the confessional booth like the Catholic, okay? You don't need the Catholic priest. He's a pedophile anyways. He doesn't even believe in the Lord. Your prayers from him, when you pray to him, it doesn't go to the God, it goes to the devil. The devil's listening to all your problems and he's gonna try and make them worse for you. You're literally giving him ideas of how to attack you more. That's why you just confess your faults to God, okay? Just confess your faults to the Lord Jesus Christ, all right? Resist the devil and he'll flee from you. Go to the Catholic church and you'll have demons follow you home. But look at Ezekiel 33, verse 11. Say unto them as I live, say the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live, turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways, for why will ye die, O house of Israel? God doesn't want his people to perish physically. He doesn't want them to be destroyed in a physical sense. So he's saying, when I punish people or I give them chastisement, it's not because I want them to suffer, I want them to get it right. I want them to turn from their ways. Look what it says in verse number 14. Again, when I say unto the wicked, thou shalt surely die, if he turn from his sin and do that which is lawful and right, if the wicked restore the pledge, give again that he had robbed, walk in the statutes of life without committing iniquity, he shall surely live, he shall not die. So God gives us some kind of a promise, some kind of a hope here that when you get caught in a really bad sin, as long as you forsake it and get it right, God's gonna show you a lot of mercy. And you know what, that gives me a lot of hope and it should give you a lot of hope to say, hey, even when I've screwed up, God still has a plan for me. God still has a purpose for me. As long as I've got breath in my lungs, God wants me to do something for him. Never think that God's done with you. God's not done with you. There's always, there's never a bad time to get right with God. Never. Now is the time, though. Now is the accepted time. Now is the day of salvation. In any case, in every situation, it's always the right time is now to confess with the Lord. So you say, hey, I have this problem. You need to confess it now, tonight, like right after the service. Just confess it and forsake it and get it right with the Lord. And God will be merciful unto you. The Bible says, let us come there, let us therefore come boldly under the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Another great promise. He wants us to get it right. Now go to Joshua chapter nine. Now here's the question. Because when people commit horrible sin and they've confessed it and they've forsaken it, the question is, what do I do now? Okay. Well, obviously don't commit that sin again. But then sometimes people try to make two wrongs into a right. They commit a bad sin. They do something very wicked, but then they do something even worse to try and fix it. But the problem is whenever you commit sin, that is not null and void the commitments that you've made in your life. If you make oaths or commitments unto the Lord, they're till death do you part. And so you're supposed to honor the commitments that you've already made, no matter what the sin was. Now let me prove this to you. Joshua chapter nine, look at verse 15. And Joshua made peace with them and made a league with them to let them live and the prince of the congregation swear unto them. Now this is the type of people that were mentioned that we read in Deuteronomy chapter seven where God said, never make a commitment to these people. Never, don't make any covenant with these people whatsoever. So did they break that commandment? Absolutely, it's crystal clear they broke that commandment, didn't they? They made a covenant. They made a league. They swore unto them, okay. Says in verse 16, and it came to pass at the end of three days after they made a league with them that they heard that there were neighbors and that they dwelt among them. And the children of Israel journeyed and came unto their cities on the third day. Now their cities were Gibeon and Kephira and Biroth and Kirjath-jearim. And the children of Israel smote them not because the princes of the congregation had sworn them by the Lord God of Israel. And all the congregation murmured against the princes, but all the princes said in all the congregation, we have sworn unto them by the Lord God of Israel. Now therefore we may not touch them. So the inhabitants of Gibeah, they are wise in the sense that they realize they're doomed. And their only option is they trick the children of Israel to make a covenant with them to keep them alive against God's commandment. God's commandment was to kill them, to wipe them out. But they swore unto them that they would never kill them. They would never destroy them. So the question is in this paradox, what do we do? When God's commanding you to kill and murder this person, but you sworn that you will never kill them. Well, which one are you gonna honor? Well, the Bible tells us which one we're supposed to honor. Okay, because I don't want you to be left hanging. Go to 2 Samuel chapter 21. Go to 2 Samuel chapter 21. And look at verse number one, 2 Samuel chapter number 21 and look at verse number one. Then there was a famine in the days of David three years. Year after year and David inquired of the Lord and the Lord answered, it is for Saul and for his bloody house because he slew the Gibeonites. And the king called the Gibeonites and said to them, now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites and of the children of Israel had sworn unto them and Saul sought to slay them in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah. Wherefore David said unto the Gibeonites, what shall I do for you? And wherewith shall I make the atonement that you may bless the inheritance of the Lord. So notice God actually tells us who is right here. If God says, kill this person, you follow his commandment and you kill them, okay? But if you end up making a trespass against the Lord and you sin and you make a covenant and say, I'm not gonna kill this person, now what do you do? You honor that commitment. You confess your sin. You say, Lord, sorry, I shouldn't have made that oath. I should have followed your commandment. I should have killed them. From now on, all the people, other people that are appointed to death, they're appointed to death. I'm not gonna make a league with them, but this one person that I've made an ode with, I'm gonna honor that oath and I'm gonna keep them alive. Now, how does this pertain to the Ezra situation? Well, didn't they marry all these horrible women? So what do you do? Well, you do what Ezra did, you confess and forsake. Say, we're not gonna marry any of these people anymore. We're done making bad marriages. That's not gonna happen. We're never gonna do that again. But now what do we do? Is it okay that we're married unto them? Well, didn't you make an oath to be married unto that person? So what would God expect you to do to honor that oath, to keep that oath till death do us part? He wouldn't expect you to get rid of the wife now, to get rid of the children that you've made an oath unto the Lord. You say, yeah, but his commandment told you not to make a marriage. Yeah, you already broke that. You already screwed that one up, buddy. Now, go if you would have journaled in chapter 13. He said, yeah, but we don't wanna continue having a problem in this area. Well, let me show you how you would not have a problem in this area, okay? Because what was their problem? It's not the lineage. It's the problem is these people were turning the children of Israel away from the Lord, okay, unto strange gods, unto false gods. They were destroying them with false religion and false ideas. You know, this is a constant problem for the children of Israel, even before they were the children of Israel, okay? Even when they were just Jacob's literal children, okay? They were like the beginning stages of the children of Israel, right? Jacob in Genesis 35 had to tell his whole household to put away the strange gods that are among you. So you say, hey, we have this problem with false gods. You know what you do? You put the false gods away. You keep the wife and you throw the idol in the trash. You say, hey, I'm gonna keep the Catholic wife and she's gonna go with me to church. She can go to a real church. I'm gonna take the Catholic Bible and throw it in the trash and hand her a King James Bible. That's what I'm gonna do. We're gonna say, hey, Rachel, get those idols from underneath your bottom and throw them in the trash. Quit hiding them under your seat. We're gonna burn them. You say, oh, I don't know, what will my wife say? Who cares what she says? You burn the idol. You get rid of the idol. You be a man. Don't be a weakling. Don't say, I don't know what to do now. I'll have to ask my wife if it's okay. Then what would the wife say? Well, the Democrats are for a no fault divorce, so I'm gonna vote a Democrat in office and then I'm gonna divorce you and then I'm gonna force you to pay for me to live after I did all that to you. Good job. Way to go. What a man you are. Hey, if you just kept your wife in check and burned her idol and told her, sorry, honey, you don't even get to vote, then you wouldn't have all those problems, would you? We have all these problems in America because men don't wanna be men, because men don't wanna put away the idols today. Now, just because we broke one commandment doesn't mean we need to break all the others. Why don't we just continue to reenact God's commandments? Then we would fix that problem real quick, wouldn't we, Ezra? Look at Deuteronomy chapter 13, verse six. If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, notice the wife, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, enticed thee secretly, saying, let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers, namely of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth, even unto the other end of the earth. Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him, neither shall they nigh pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him, but thou shalt surely kill him. Thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones that he die, because he has sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and all Israel shall hear and fear, and notice this, and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is among you. So notice what the cure is. The cure is what? It's a couple things. First of all, you gotta confess and forsake your sin. Secondly, you gotta honor your commitments. And thirdly, if you just follow God's commandments, you'll fix it. Hey, we have this problem. We have a bunch of women here that wanna worship false gods. Okay, well, the Bible says anybody that wants to worship a false god's gonna be put to death. That'll fix that problem real quick. Because guess what? They'll either stop worshiping the false gods or die. Then you instantly fix that problem. You say, how do you fix the problems in America? Institute the death penalty for everybody listed on one of those death penalty sins in the Bible. You'll fix America real quick. Just line up all the fags and just put them right to death. And then, you know what? We already screwed up in a lot of ways, abortion, adultery, murder, child trafficking, I mean, name it. Death penalty sin after death penalty sin, okay? We'll confess, forsake those sins, honor our commitments, and then anybody that does that again in the future will put a bullet in their head. You know what happened in America? It would change overnight. They would get the evil out away from them. What's the problem? The problem is the death penalty, if you ask me. Because wouldn't that be the cure? I mean, what should Ezra should have done? He should have just got him up and said, all right, now that we've confessed and forsaken our sin, we're instituting the death penalty. Problem solved. Then we're back to worshiping the Lord again, okay? The problem is the death penalty is hard for people. Some people just don't like it. Look, it's time to clean up the house of God. And we need to actually institute all of God's commitment. Some people say, well, why can't you just preach on soul winning, Pastor Shelley? And that's it. Why don't you just preach soul, because isn't that the main thing, Pastor Shelley? Why do you have to take us to Leviticus chapter 20? And why does it have to be the memory chapter? And why do you have to advertise it? And why do we have DVDs back there called psychopath reprobates? Why can't we get something nicer? Why don't we have a big flower that we hand out that says God loves you on it? Oh, I'm sorry, I actually like God's blessing. I actually want to follow all of God's commandments. Let's find the nation that's the least godly. Hmm, how about North Korea? You know, in North Korea, and again, it's kind of vague. We're looking through a glass darkly, because we don't really know exactly what's going on there. But the women there, they're so feminine that they are all forced to be in the military virtually. Oh, you want to get rid of the Bible women? Oh, I can't believe all those standards, making women wear dresses. I'd rather just be in the military and serve three grains of rice a day and have to pretend like I'm happy under threat of death. You think it's hard, oh, I have to act happy now. What about being in North Korea? No one's allowed to leave, and the only television programming or cell phone you get is the government-sponsored propaganda that you get very occasionally, very occasionally. They have no roads, virtually, no cars. Is that where you want to live? Oh, let's go to China. I mean, anywhere there's not God, there's heavy oppression. There's all kinds of bondage. It makes me think of Babylon. Oh, oh, I'm so glad we're not in the day and age when Babylon exists. Have you ever heard of a Muslim country? Try being a Christian in a Muslim country today. They have to worry about men coming in there and taking advantage and forcing all the women, murdering their families, killing them, ripping their children out of their arms, killing their children. There's countries where they'll come and just rip your children out of your house and put them in the public fool system, the brainwashing propaganda machine, where they'll end up hating their own parents, hating the Bible, hating God. You say, oh, we live in America. Yeah, it's coming. Bernie Sanders is like a legit candidate. You say, how is that coming, Pastor Shelley? Well, if the Christians in this nation don't separate themselves and humble themselves and get right with God, God is gonna bring that kind of oppression on this nation. That's why I want to preach every verse and every line, because I don't like that kind of oppression. I don't want to lose all of my freedom. I actually want freedom from the Lord. You know where the spirit of the Lord is? There is liberty. There is no liberty in these countries that don't have God. It's a hell hole. It's horrible. It's wicked. And you know, when you're in a church that doesn't have this, oppression again. We need to preach every verse, every line. And we need more Christians to get their rears up and stop watching church on YouTube and get into a real church. Start supporting a real church. Or you know what? You won't be watching anything. You'll be watching the propaganda machine from the Democrats who said that hate's a bad word. You won't ever be able to see hate again. You won't ever be able to see anything that's pro-Christian. They're just gonna turn it all off. If we just put a bushel on our light, it's gonna be complete darkness in this world today. And we need to have Ezra's attitude and the people that listening to him, we need to actually fear all of God's commandments. When I read Leviticus and I think about what God's gonna do to the people that won't kill the baby killers, I'm like, how has he not destroyed us already? And you know what? Evil is always at bay. Evil is always ready to destroy you. It's God that's constantly having a hedge and trying to keep them in check and foiling their plans. How many times are the Christians, just there's all these adversaries ready to kill them at a moment's notice. And it's only by the Lord's protection that they're not. The apostle Paul has a bunch of men devout. They just make an oath saying, we won't eat until we kill Paul. That's intense. Saying, we can't even eat until we kill Paul. All kinds of people going false witnesses trying to kill Paul, trying to kill the Christians. How about all the people trying to kill Daniel? How about Haman? Haman's like on a one man mission to kill Mordecai. He's trying to kill, but you know what happens? God foils his plan. But what did Mordecai say to Esther? He said, hey, if you don't take this opportunity, don't think you're gonna escape in the king's palace. Don't think you in America are gonna escape God's wrath if you don't follow his commandments. Don't think, well, I'm not North Korea. Yeah, but you have a lot more opportunity here to follow God's commandments. If you forsake it, if you get out of church, God will destroy you. And look, God is destroying Christians' lives left and right and they don't even realize it. I mean, this nation gets worse by the minute. How much more, I have to pay more taxes every year. It's just insane. And it's like, how many fees exist? I looked at my phone bill and it's like more fees and taxes than any other line item. It's like this phone fee and bill and tax and license. I mean, the government has so many fees. There's so much oppression in this country. We're literally enslaved and we don't even realize it. And how many more walls are they building? I mean, you think that's for your protection? You really think that they have to protect you from Mexico? They have to protect you from Canada. Canada is about to just come in here and just take over real quick. That's not gonna happen. We wouldn't even need the military to stop these countries. Our militia could take them out. What are these walls for? But you say, oh, we gotta be all worried about all these walls and all this evil and all the Democrats. No, you know you need to be worried about? God! Because guess what? Evil always wants to destroy you from the serpent in the garden all the way to the end. The devil is constantly trying to kill you and destroy you. You say, man, look at all these plans to kill and destroy us. Yeah, they're gonna constantly happen. You know what's gonna keep them at bay? You serving God's commandments. You following God's commandments in his statutes. You deciding that you like Leviticus chapter 20. You deciding that you like serving God and going to church. Hey, if you stop going to church, maybe God will just stop churches from existing. If you decide to stop going soul winning, maybe soul winning will become illegal. If we stop championing the King James Bible, maybe it's too hateful of a book. You know, it's got words like bastard in it and hell and damnation, so evil. Look, I'm gonna keep thundering it forth. Hey, I'll take out billboards with verses on it. I talked to a lady today. I said, I can put any verse in the Bible on a billboard? And she was gonna say like, yes, without question. Then she kind of like, ah. There's some verses in there. There are. You be scared, Christian. I don't read this book and think, oh man, we're doing good. I'm thinking we're a lot dirtier than we thought. We need to clean ourselves up. We need some men to weep for our nation today and weep for our children and decide that they wanna get right with God and follow all of his commandments and all of his statutes. We need a group of people that aren't just, oh, I do soul winning, but I don't care about any other commandments. Wrong. You need to follow all of them. You oughta take heed onto every single verse, every single line. And hey, we'll get into more of chapter 10 about marriage and stuff, but divorce is never an option. I don't care what you did or how you screwed up your life. Honor the commitments that you made. Two wrongs don't make a right. Putting away your wife doesn't, you know. If you're divorced and remarried 75 times, you know, stick with the 75th partner, okay? That was bad. That was bad. You probably need to pray for a while tonight, but you know what, you need to honor that commitment. You know, whatever sin. Hey, you commit adultery, you need to still stay with that spouse. Hey, you're on drugs, you're doing alcohol. I mean, God's people do weird stuff. You committed abortion, well, never do it again and confess it and get it right with God. And you know what? As soon as you turn, he says, well, I'll forget all that anyways. Your sin's not even gonna be remembered. As far as the East is from the West, I'm separating from that. That's the great thing about the God of Bible is you have that option. And we need to reenact that and we need to not be afraid, you know, when the pastor preaches any part of the Bible, well, I'd appreciate a church that preached the whole part of the Bible. Let's go to some prayer. Thank you, Father, so much for this great chapter for the heart of Ezra to wanna confess and forsake the sins of the children of Israel. And I pray that we'd have the same heart that when we look at our nation, we'd look at it through your eyes, through how you see us. And we know that you're angry at the wicked every day and you are displeased with us when we break your commandments, but I pray that we would have a heart to just constantly wanna turn to you and to confess and forsake our sins. And I pray that you'd just be merciful unto us. There's a lot of scary looming things out there, but Lord, I know that if we just humble ourselves and seek you, that you'll give us deliverance, that you'll preserve us, that you can show yourself mighty on our behalf. I pray that we'd not be ashamed of you and your.