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🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 Alright everybody, welcome to Steadfast Baptist Church You can all be here tonight Let's go ahead and take out our hymnals to 374 Send the Light Again that song number, 374 Send the Light 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 Yes, today our soldiers say, send the light, send the light, send the light, the blessing God's full of. Let it shine from storm to storm. Send the light, the blessing God's full of. Let it shine forevermore. We have heard the Macedonian call today. Send the light, send the light, and our golden love for God's relay. Send the light, send the light, send the light, the blessing God's full of. Let it shine from storm to storm. Send the light, the blessing God's full of. Let it shine forevermore. The ray that graced me everywhere I found. Send the light, send the light, and our Christ-like spirit everywhere he found. Send the light, send the light, send the light, the blessing God's full of. Let it shine from storm to storm. Send the light, the blessing God's full of. Let it shine forevermore. Let us not grow weary in the work of love. Send the light, send the light, let us gather jewels for a crown of love. Send the light, send the light, send the light, the blessing God's full of. Let it shine from storm to storm. Send the light, the blessing God's full of. Let it shine forevermore. Amen, let's bow our heads for a word of prayer. Dear Father, we just thank you that we could gather together in your house tonight to hear the preaching of your word, and I just pray you fill Pastor Shelley with your Holy Spirit, help him to edify the congregation here, and please protect our church and our people from persecution, and bless our efforts for it to reach the soil of the gospel. Amen. Next is going to be in your handout. You should have had one coming through the door. God is so good. We have a few new songs tonight. We have a couple we're going to practice for the fire breathing conference next week. We're going to get a couple of these down tonight. We've got God is so good coming up next. If you don't know it, it's a pretty catchy one. If you need one, raise up your hand if you don't already have a handout. We're going to try and share it with your neighbor. I think we should have enough. God is so good. We'll sing it all together. God is so good. God is so good. God is so good. He's so good to me. He cares for me. He cares for me. He cares for me. He's so good to me. I love Him so. I love Him so. I love Him so. He's so good to me. I praise His name. I praise His name. I praise His name. He's so good to me. Amen. Amen. Good singing. If you did not already get a bulletin, you'd like one, slip your hand nice and high, and one of our ushers can come by and get you all on a bulletin. We have on the inside our service and soul winning times, as well as our church stats, and we also have our expecting ladies list. If you'd please be in prayer for all of them, we have our prayer list below that. Please make sure to write any checks to Pure Words Baptist Church at this time, or if you would like to donate, just go to PureWordsBaptist.com. On the back, we have the upcoming events, our Fire Breathing Baptist Fellowship, which we have a printout with all the events. We have a baby shower on October 30th for Miss Nexus Cooper and her baby girl, Melody. She's registered on Amazon if you'd like to get them a gift, and you can bring a snack or dessert to share. We also have a couple sign up sheets. I need to make sure that we have a singles one. I think we ended up redoing that one, but also down below we have a, if you'd like to be able to help, or if you're able to help clean the church during the conference, see my wife or our messenger on Facebook just so we can have that list. You don't have to technically sign up for the kid spelling bee to participate, but if you do that, please for us just so we can prepare. As long as you arrive, if you sign up and don't arrive, you can't make it. So it's kind of like that parable where the one says he's not going, but then he shows up, and the other one says he's going, and he doesn't. So it's more important that you come than that you sign up, but we'd like for you to sign up. Also we have our conference list here. You can just kind of look through that. Lots of different events, lots of things to participate in. If you can't make everything, that's fine. If you're able to just partially attend anything, that's fine. We'd like for you to participate in as much as humanly possible, and we like to have lots of events because lots of people show up for all kinds of different things, and we have people coming from out of town. We're definitely going to be a packed house probably this week, and so just try to make space for people, try to be friendly to people, and we're going to have chairs set up all in that area, as well as we're going to add another row here. So we'll make it just a little bit tighter, kind of bring up the front row a little bit, and then if we really have to, we'll let the kids sit on the stage. They'll get the double win, right? They get to hear the conference, and if you feel like your kids can behave, they can come up here and sit up here. We're also probably going to make at least Brother Dylan's office another mother baby room area that will have a TV and a speaker in there, so you can hear the services. So we should have at least another third option for that, and so hopefully we can bear through it. I think it's going to be just fun anyway. This evening is immediately following the service. We're going to have just a short business meeting hopefully, and it looks like we might be breaking the record this evening, so you might get ice cream after that, all right? So you have to stick through and bear through that, but then there's a prize on the other end. I don't know what our counters have got at yet, but it looks like we might be there. So that's pretty much all I have for announcements. This Wednesday, everyone's getting ice cream, so you don't have to quote the verse, but you still should, okay, kiddos? All right? No slacking. You better get that verse quoted, all right? That's pretty much all I have for announcements. Let's go to our third song for the evening, How Great Thou Art. It's in the handout. Hopefully you have the other handout, How Great Thou Art. Again, we'll be singing this at the conference. So everybody, it's a pretty familiar song, so hopefully you already know it, but if not, we can learn it together tonight, How Great Thou Art. We'll sing it all together at the top. O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder Consider all the worlds a hands have made I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder I cry throughout the universe displayed Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee How great Thou art, how great Thou art Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee How great Thou art, how great Thou art Then through the woods and forestlands I wander And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees When I look down from off the mountain grandeur And hear the world and feel the gentle breeze Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee How great Thou art, how great Thou art Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee How great Thou art, how great Thou art And when I think that God His Son must carry Send Him to die, I scarce can take it in That on the cross my burden gladly carry He bled and died to take away my sin Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee How great Thou art, how great Thou art Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee How great Thou art, how great Thou art When Christ shall come, we shout of acclamation And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart Then I shall bow in my full adoration And then proclaim, my God, how great Thou art Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee How great Thou art, how great Thou art Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee How great Thou art, how great Thou art Amen. While the offering plates are being passed around, please turn in your Bibles to 1 Peter chapter 2. That's 1 Peter chapter number 2. 1 Peter chapter 2, the Bible reads, Wherefore, laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word that ye may grow thereby, if so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious. To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious. Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, and holy priesthood, who offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Wherefore also it is contained in this scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect, precious, and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded. Under you therefore which believe, he is precious. But unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, and the stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense, even unto them which stumble at the word, being disobedient, whereunto also they were appointed. But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, and holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, which in time past were not a people. But are now the people of God which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul, having your conversation honest among the Gentiles, that whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king, as supreme, or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well, for so is the will of God, that with well-doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, as free, and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. Honor all men. Love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king. Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward, for this is thankworthy if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? But if, when ye do well and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. For even hereunder were ye called, because Christ also suffers for us, leaving us an example that ye should follow his steps. Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again. When he suffered, he threatened not, but committed himself to him that judgeth righteousness, who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness, by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned under the shepherd and bishop of your souls. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you for our church. Thank you for our pastor. Please fill him with your spirit. Allow him to edify us. And please, Lord, help us apply the message to our lives that we might be better Christians. For your honor and glory. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. I wanted to get soul-winning numbers. I forgot to do that. So I'm going to get soul-winning numbers real quick before I get into the sermon. Anybody have anything in your report from Thursday? Anything on Thursday too for Thursday? What about Friday? Nothing Friday. What about Saturday? Two. Four. Four for Saturday. What about today? I don't think I got the church band numbers either. So, everything. So we had 20 today. Praise the Lord on that. All right. Let's dig into the Bible. Let's look at verse number 11 again. The Bible says, Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstained from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles, that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good words, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king as supreme or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. So, according to the Bible, we're supposed to live in an honest manner. We're supposed to do that which is right. We're supposed to submit ourselves to the government that exists, that we find ourselves under, to the best of our ability. Specifically, in verse 13, it says, submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake. And so, the title of my sermon this evening is this, Ordinance of Man. Ordinance of Man. And so, I want to talk about this because the Bible literally commands us to submit ourselves to the ordinances of man for the Lord's sake, meaning that God wants us to do it. Now, obviously, when you read the Bible, you have to compare spiritual to spiritual. You have to compare certain verses and you have to make sure you have a balanced view. There's going to be certain places in the Bible where even the ordinance of man should be not followed if it's in contrast to God's commandments, right? You have to take all of God's commandments and you kind of have to look at them and balance them. But when it comes to submitting to authority, God doesn't necessarily go through and give all the exceptions every single time. He just tells you all the different authorities that you're supposed to obey and then points out that you're supposed to obey the higher power whenever there's a conflict in general, right? So, we all have authorities in our life and we're supposed to submit to those authorities 100% as long as it's not in violation of a higher authority, right? So, we're all supposed to be subject to the Bible, period. This is the final authority. This is our boss. This is who we obey. But then below that, you're going to have other authorities in your life, okay? If you go to a church, the pastor should be your authority. You know, you should obey the pastor and the church and whatever leaders are in the church. You should submit yourself 100% to them as long as they're within the boundaries of the word of God, right? Then below that, you know, when it comes to, or not necessarily below, but just in a completely parallel universe, you also have the family, right? So, you have church. You have church leaders, which is one realm of authority. Then you have the family, and really the husband is the ultimate authority for that family. Now, when it comes to the home, you know, the church doesn't have any authority over the home. You know, I can't tell you what to do. I can't tell your wife what to do. I can't tell your children what to do. The church is a self-governing authority, but all of the rules of the church cease to exist when you're no longer in the church, okay? Outside of the church, there's no longer me coming and ruling and telling you what to do. You get to do whatever you want. It's just when you're here in the church, the leadership that exists within the church, you're subject to that leadership, okay? So, in the home, the man is the final authority, you know? It's not the church gets to dictate what he's going to do, the man gets to decide. Then below that is the wife. The wife would be the next authority. So, children, they have to obey mom and dad, and if there was a conflict between mom and dad, they obey dad. That's how the Bible clearly outlays it. Now, there's going to be other authorities, right? Let's say you have a job. Well, when you go to the job, you have to obey your boss. In fact, you're supposed to be subject to your boss 100%, again, as long as it's not in violation with the word of God. So, no matter what authority that you have, whether it's your boss, whether it be your husband, whether it be your pastor, you're supposed to submit to them 100%, and only the exception would be is if there's a higher power or a higher authority that would prompt that. Now, when it comes to church and the home, there could also be a conflict where, you know, maybe a wife, she's being told one thing from the pastor, and she's being told one thing from her husband. Well, she's supposed to obey her husband. The husband has the final rule, the final authority. She's supposed to submit to the husband, but not to the pastor or to the church if there was even a conflict there, right? So, you have a couple different realms of authority, and they are going to interact with one another. But as long as you're, you know, letting the Bible be your final authority in these things, it's pretty simple. Now, when it comes to the government, when it comes to just where we live, so this would be, you know, in America, the president, it'd be, you know, all the different branches of government, the executive, judicial, legislative branch, as the federal government. That's one realm of authority that we're supposed to be subject to. Then there's the state government. Then there's the local government, right? And we're supposed to, to the best of our ability, submit ourselves to every one of their ordinances, every single one of the rules, every single one of their laws, where only the exception would be if the Bible's telling us to do something different, okay? So, if the government's saying, disobey your parents, well, God said to obey your parents, so I'm going to obey my parents, right? Where if they say you can't go to church, well, I'm going to obey God rather than man. I'm going to go to church, right? I'm going to read the Bible. I'm going to go soul winning. So, whenever there's a conflict, you know, we obey the higher power, which is what Romans 13 says, and I'm not going to go there just yet, but I'm just kind of giving you the principles laid out here, but we're doing it for God's sake. We're doing it for the Lord's sake. We want him to be pleased with us, and ultimately, God wants society to operate well. He wants things to go well, and whenever there's no authority structure, when there's no rules, when there's no one in charge, it's always chaos. Things go poorly. You need authority. Now, what people often don't understand is that just because there's a bad person in authority doesn't mean authority's bad, right? It just means that person's bad, and you should want to replace that person or get a new person in. Look, there's nothing wrong with having government, with having state governments and local governments and all these things that we have. In fact, you know, the American governmental system is actually pretty similar to how the book of Judges is set up, which is kind of ideally how God wanted man to operate. You know, God wanted man to not have a king. He wanted man to basically rule with a system of judges, where the judges would interpret the laws of God and basically rule in the society they live in. You know, you look at the early colonies, and you look at how they were established. I mean, a lot of their laws are just straight coming from the Bible. And then they have the judges of the land that would make the rules, and they would try to execute those rules and everything like that. I mean, humanly speaking, it's about as close as you could get, apart from actually having Jesus Christ rule and reign, okay? Now, it's important, though, that we, as a church, try our best to have an honest, you know, existence. That everything that we're doing is in the best position that we can possibly be in, that we're submitting ourselves to these things. And look, submitting yourself doesn't mean you agree. I think some people don't understand this word, okay? A wife submitting to her husband does not mean that she agrees with her husband and does everything that she agrees with. It means when she disagrees, she goes ahead and gets on his program anyways. You know, he says we're not putting beans in the chili. She wants to put beans in the chili. She doesn't put beans in the chili, okay? This is the submission. Now, Texas women, you don't have to teach them that. They already know, okay? You don't have to fight with them on this good doctrine, right? And it saddens my heart, but theoretically, okay, theoretically, if you came to our church and you realized and you heard the really good preaching, but your husband says put beans in the chili, you have to put beans in the chili, okay? I'm just teaching you what it means to submit, okay? But you want to make sure that every rule that you have the opportunity to submit to, that you do it. And again, when it comes to the government, there's plenty of rules that our society, there's plenty of ordinances that America has that I don't agree with, that I don't like, that I don't want to do, but I'm supposed to submit myself to those, okay? And some people say like, oh, you're a FEMA pastor or whatever. And it's like, first of all, where's my paycheck, you know? Don't I get paid if I'm FEMA or something like that? Second of all, I don't think that the FEMA pastors are preaching what we've been preaching lately, okay? I don't know. I mean, I'm just guessing that that's probably not what they want me to be preaching. But it's just silly to say that we're not supposed to submit ourselves in the government when the Bible literally says it. Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man, okay? And it doesn't mean that I agree. It doesn't mean I like it. It doesn't mean I want to. It means that God told me to do it. And you know what? I'm going to obey God. So whether I like it or not, there's going to be things that we have to do as a church, as an individual, as a family. Look, I don't agree with all of the tax system that we have in the world that we live in right now. I don't agree with all the driving rules. Now, I'm supposed to submit to those, okay? And if you ask me, I'll tell you you're supposed to submit to them, all right? But I'm also willing to submit if I get caught doing something wrong with driving, I'll pay the ticket. I won't sit here and say like, no, I didn't do it. I'll just say, I'm guilty. Just give me the ticket, you know? I've already accepted the fact that any ticket I get, I deserve it, okay? And that's fine. So therefore, if I get one, I don't feel upset about it. I'm not like, oh, man. I'm just thinking like, I deserve this, you know? It's fine. It's not a big deal. It's just the cost of doing business, okay? And when it comes to running a church in America, you know what? We have pretty light affliction when it comes to submitting ourselves to the ordinance of man. I mean, we have a lot of freedoms granted to us in even 2021 America. I mean, it's pretty easy to serve God here. There's not a lot of hard things. But just the few things that they do ask us to do, I think that we should do it, okay? Now go to verse 15 and look at this. It says, For so is the will of God that with well-doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men as free, and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. So he's saying there's going to be some people that just want to resist the government just because they're, you know, this tax protester or they're this anarchist or they just hate the government, they hate authority or whatever. But most of the time, those people are just bad people. And we're supposed to put to silence these ignorant men. Notice what it says. When we do well, we put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. These people are stupid. People that say, oh, I can't believe you're doing what the government wants you to do, or I can't believe you're organized in the manner that the government wants you to do. You know, you're just a stupid idiot is what you are. And you say, what would this look like? Well, you know, to run a church legitimately in any state in the United States, you need to file to be a corporation of some sort. You have to file some kind of a business paperwork to be some kind of a company so that you can actually handle money appropriately. Because that's the society that we live in. So, you know, if you just don't want to be incorporated, or you don't want to establish any kind of business entity structure with the state and with the basically United States, then basically what you're saying is, please come and take all of our assets, raid us and throw us in jail. Because it's not legal. What you're doing is just is like a sham. And you know what? The government doesn't like that. So if the government says, hey, if you want to run a church, you need to form some kind of a company, some kind of a corporation, some kind of an entity to basically have an organized structure, then that's what I'm going to do. You know? And fortunately in America, you can actually form corporations where you don't have to pay taxes the way other corporations do. They give a break to churches. But even if they said you had to, you know what I would do? I would pay it. Go to Romans chapter 13. Go to Romans chapter number 13. Look, I don't like these tax protesters. They're wicked. They're not of God. You know, it's really a rebellious attitude that's not found in scripture. People that just refuse to obey. You know, one individual comes to mind in this category, it's Kent Hovind. Okay? Now, Kent Hovind, a lot of people don't really understand what happened with his situation. But essentially, Kent Hovind was running a parachurch ministry, which is already failure number one. Okay? Ministry should be run by the local church. You know, Jesus Christ died for the local church, not for creation science evangelism. Okay? Not for dinosaur adventure land. Not for your just little canoe club or whatever it is that you have going on the side. You know? And so number one, that's already a failure. But number two, whenever you have some kind of a company and you have money coming in, you're selling goods or people are donating or any of these kind of things, the government wants to make sure that it's being tracked appropriately so they make you file for certain corporations and these type of things. Well, Kent Hovind doesn't believe any of that. You know, he doesn't want a social security number. He doesn't want to pay taxes. He doesn't want any of these things. So what he ended up doing, and this is what happened, is every single one of his employees that worked for dinosaur adventure land, he claimed that they were a pastor. He just claimed, like, you know, the janitor, pastor. The woman that takes the money at the front desk, pastor. Everybody's just a pastor, you know? And if you're a pastor, you do have certain privileges or benefits when it comes to paying taxes. But he didn't really understand exactly how this works. If you're a pastor, okay, you don't pay FICA from the church, from the organization, okay? So every one of you, who's a W-2 employee in here? Who gets paid through a W-2, okay? Something you have to realize is your employer pays seven and a half percent of your FICA. So you don't even see that in your paycheck. You pay seven and a half percent. They pay seven and a half percent. So when it comes to Dylan, whatever he sees on his W-2, that's only seven and a half percent. The steadfast Baptist church has to pay the other seven and a half percent just straight up, just straight to the government, okay? He never sees that. It's not something he's aware of or anything like that. Well, Ken Hovind doesn't want to pay seven and a half percent for every single one of his employees. So what he did is he called everybody a pastor, so then he's not paying seven and a half percent for the 40 different people that are working for him. And then all of their income that's coming to them, they didn't declare it, so they're not paying the seven and a half percent or whatever. And so then the federal government comes in and shuts them down and says like, look, you owe us like half a million dollars because for several years you're just not paying FICA on any of your employees. This is a sham. This is illegal. This is not how you're supposed to run a business or whatever. And what is he doing? He's just avoiding paying taxes. He's just avoiding trying not to pay any kind of money to the government. He's just putting a middle finger up to the government. And look, that's the last person you want to put a middle finger up to, okay, when it comes to people on the earth. I don't want to start putting a middle finger up to the government right now. Look at Romans chapter 13 verse 1. Let every soul be subject to the higher powers for there is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God. And they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works but to the evil. Wilt thou not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good and thou shalt have praise of the same. For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil be afraid for he beareth not the sword in vain. For he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore he must needs be subject not only for wrath but also for conscience sake. For for this cause pay he tribute also for they are God's ministers attending continually upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. Notice the Bible just plain out states that the government is literally God's ministers and that their ordinances become the ordinances of God and that's why you have to pay them tribute. Tribute is taxes my friend. Tribute is all the different fees and taxes and everything else you have to pay to the government. And so people that don't want to do this is what's called a tax protester. And look the government will come down very heavily on people that are like this, have this attitude, feel like they can just nonchalantly ignore what the government has to say and what they want them to do. So look if I have 40 employees you know what Steadfast Baptist Church is going to do? It's going to pay FICA for 40 different employees. It's just facts. Now when it comes to the actual pastor or someone that's ordained as a pastor the church does not pay FICA. What ends up happening is whatever income is given to a pastor I have to pay 15 percent. Okay so it's like someone that's self-employed. And it's so funny that people are like oh these churches they don't pay any taxes and it's like what are you talking about? I mean I get I have to pay all kinds of taxes. Okay I have to pay federal. I have to pay I have to pay not just the seven and a half that all UW2 players will pay. I have to pay another seven and a half on top of that. Okay that comes out of my personal taxes that I have to pay just like a self-employment person or a 1099 employee would have to get paid. Now technically I get a W-2 but it operates like a 1099. Okay and look that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make sure that every single tax that they think is necessary I pay. Now I don't believe in paying more than is necessary. You know what I'm going to take advantage of every tax break that is possible. I'm going to make sure every tax deduction. I'm going to make everything I possibly can do. I don't want to overpay. You know I don't want to like give them more money than I have to. But I also don't want to give them less than I have to. Because the Bible says I'm supposed to pay them tribute and give them honor. And I'm supposed to owe no man anything is what the Bible clearly says. Okay so when it comes to these issues I believe the church, the church staff and all of its members should pay all of their taxes exactly however the government says. You know if they raise it up to 50% I'm paying 50%. You say do you agree with that? Not at all. I think that's wicked. Okay I think that's terrible. That's evil. But you know what I'm not going to go to jail for being a tax protester. Now I'll go to jail for a lot of things. I'll go to jail for preaching Leviticus 20-13. I'll go to jail for preaching any verse in this Bible. But you know what I would be going to jail against the Bible if I decide not to pay tribute. Because that's what the Bible clearly instructed me to do. It's what it's clearly telling me what to do. And look I don't think there's any problem with you know telling your legislative branch or telling the government like I think you should lower taxes or I don't agree with this or voting for lower taxes or any of those kinds of things. That's fine. But at the end of the day whatever ends up happening you just do it. Let me prove this. Go to Matthew chapter number 17. Go to Matthew chapter number 17. Whatever the government wants me to do when it comes to these issues I say we just do it unless it's violating God's commandments. I don't see where I'm violating God's commandments by paying taxes. In fact I see that I'm obeying God's commandments exactly. I'm doing exactly what the Lord wants me to do here. I'm not looking at running you know Kent Hovind 2.0. That's that's just not legitimate. That's not what a New Testament church should be doing. And we need to put all these people that have contrary opinions to silence because they're just idiots. They're just fools who want to resist the government. Matthew 17 looking at verse 24. And when they were come to Capernaum they that received tribute money came to Peter and said, Does not your master pay tribute? He saith, Yes. And when he was coming to the house Jesus prevented him saying, What thing is thou, Simon? Of whom do the kings of the earth take customer tribute? Of their own children or of strangers? Peter saith unto him, Of strangers? Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free? Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast and hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up. And when thou has opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money, take that take, and give unto them for me and thee. Notice Jesus, he even knows what all of the people are thinking. He knows every single one of your thoughts, right? He walks in and notice his disciples weren't thinking that Jesus wasn't going to pay taxes. They asked and he says, Yeah, he pays taxes. And then he walks in and Jesus is like, Hey, do we really, do we really, should we really have to pay taxes? Is kind of the question that he's asking. And the answer is no. Technically, I mean, do you really think that Jesus should have to pay taxes since it's his earth, right? Does it really make sense that Jesus should be paying taxes? Or should they be paying taxes to Jesus? You know, I mean, he's really the owner, right? But then he just goes ahead and pays it anyway. Look, if Jesus can pay taxes, how can you not pay taxes? I mean, how silly is that? He's the creator of the universe. He created everything. Now, I wish we could pay taxes the way he did. I wish we could just go fishing and then be like, here you go. But it kind of shows work too, doesn't it? I mean, these guys were fishermen. They go to work, they earn a paycheck, they give. And this system is 100%, you know, this is kind of a rough system right here, whatever they got. But it went pretty well. They found a fish with a piece of money, they took it, and they gave it to the government so they paid taxes. Go to Luke chapter 20. Go to Luke chapter 20. You think we should pay taxes? Sure. Now, this isn't like a fun sermon. This isn't like people are like, amen, pay them taxes. You know, I haven't gotten a lot of amens yet, you know. You know what, I'm going to preach whatever the Bible says, whether you like it or not, okay? I'm not here to please you. I'm here to please God. All right? And there's certain things in the Bible that we read that are not as exciting. You know, it's like, let's take it to the reprobates and the enemies and let's kill Goliath. And we're like, woo, pay taxes. And you're like, oh, that was kind of rough, you know. Luke chapter 20, look at verse 20. And they watched him and sent for spies which should feign themselves just men that they might take hold of his words. That so they might deliver him under the power and authority of the governor. And they asked him saying, master, we know that thou sayest and teacheth rightly. Neither except is thou the person of any. Teacheth the way of God truly. Let's pause for a moment. Do these people really believe that? They're a bunch of lying, flattering devils, aren't they? Verse 22, is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar or no? But he perceived their craftiness and said unto them, why tempt ye me? Now, people that come around and ask all these tax questions about churches, let me just be honest with you. They're not really sincere. They're just like this person saying like, why are you trying to tempt me, trick me? Why are you trying to be, you know, crafty here? Because it's really a wicked type person that's coming around asking these type of questions, trying to trick him, trying to trip him up. Verse 24, show me a penny. His image in surface Christian hath it. He answered and said, Caesar's. And he said unto them, render therefore unto Caesar the things be Caesar's. And unto God the things which be God's. And they could not take hold of his words before the people, and they marveled at his answer and held their peace. And notice what he did exactly. Didn't he put to silence the ignorance of foolish men? They come around saying like, hey, should we pay taxes? And he said, hey, has that money got Caesar's picture on it? Give it back to him. You know? Give it back to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson or whoever it is. You know, if they got Obama on a coin, Sacagawea, you know, give it back to Sacagawea, okay? Who cares? You know, it's just monopoly money anyways, right? I mean, at the end of the day, are you really, when you have eternity in mind, who cares about all this money? It's dirty anyways, you know? Cash is gross. I don't even like cash. All the numbers in the computer screen, they're just numbers. They're just fake anyways. Who cares what they just elevate up and down? Does it really matter? It's so silly that people get really fixated on this. Why do people get fixated on this? Because they only care about money anyways. Because if I can still go soul winning, if I can still preach the gospel, who cares about all that good stuff? Now, I don't want to stop us from being able to preach the gospel or getting harassed by the government. That's why we obey them. That's why we do what they say. That's why we help them out. And I'll say this, this isn't very popular either, but I'm not of the train that says let's just defund every single police officer. I like the police. I like the police. I don't know if I agree with that. Well, look, what government structure do you want, buddy? Do you really think, I mean, can anybody look at me in the face after the service and say, hey, if we didn't have any cops, you know, society would be operating a lot better right now. Go to the neighborhood where no cops do any drive-bys. Go to the neighborhoods where the cops don't respond and tell me how safe it is. Tell me how nice it is. Let's go to all the Democrat-run cities where the cops are quitting like crazy right now. I mean, they're getting fired by Buttery all over, you know? I mean, Buttery is just laying these cops off like left and right. I mean, look, it's not safe there. And it's silly because, you know, Jesus Christ, even when he was teaching in Matthew chapter number five and teaching in the, you know, the Beatitudes and everything like that and the Sermon on the Mount, he's bringing up the fact that you're supposed to agree with your adversary quickly, bless the heart and the way, and the officer come and take thee to the, you know, judge, and then you're thrown into prison. Look, what's an officer? How about, let's put a word in front of that. Police officer. What is another name for them? Law enforcer. Law enforcement. Why would I not want someone to enforce the law? What's the point in having laws if you don't enforce them? All I want is for them to enforce the right laws. But I'm not against law enforcement. I'm just saying, let's take Leviticus 2013, put it in the law, and then enforce it. But you better believe I want an enforcer of that law. And look, I'm not mad at cops for doing their job. I'm mad at the laws that they have to enforce. You know, I just want them to enforce the right laws. It's not fair to get mad at the messenger. Why don't you get mad at all these politicians who create stupid laws? Why don't you get mad at the Supreme Court justices who constantly overturn good laws and constantly go against the Constitution and go against, you know, biblical laws? I mean, I'm all for having law enforcement. And look, even in the system of judges, you still drug people to the judge, the judge made a ruling, and then all the people would stone them. You know what that made? Everybody a law enforcer. Everybody's law enforcement. Now look, in a small society, that makes sense, right? You're running hundreds of people in a city, then pretty much every able man is going to be able to be a law enforcement. What about when you live in a city where it's running millions, right? It's a lot harder to necessarily operate where everybody is in that situation. Wouldn't it make sense if we just appointed certain men that met certain qualifications that are able-bodied? That are of the right age, that are capable, and they study the law? Why don't we just appoint them as the designated law enforcers of our society and give them the authority to do so? Oh yeah, it's called police! And you say, I don't like that system. Well look, eventually Jesus Christ will rule and reign and we'll be in that system, but right now, we don't have a benevolent dictator. You really want Joe Biden to be our benevolent dictator? You really want to go to China? I mean, you go to these other places, military places, even worse. Look, I'm not of the opinion that we should just rebel against all these authorities that exist, that we should criticize them, hate on them. I went to a good church, I was in a good church, faith-ward Baptist church, and this stupid idiot who was some young punk, I remember going soloing with him and he's like, do you think all police officers are extortioners? Because I do. And I'm like, no. He's like, well I think all the police should be thrown out of church. And I'm like, you're an idiot. I mean, he's like, oh, but whenever I, you know, driving and I, you know, basically break the law and go too fast and they give me a ticket, that's extortion. I said, that's not extortion, that's you breaking the law, you idiot. And you want no one forced you to drive, no one forced you to get a driver's license and submit yourself to all the laws of the land and say you're going to, you know, abide by them. Now look, if you want to drive as fast as you want, accepting all of the tickets, I get that, okay? I'm okay with that because you're still submitting yourself, essentially, right? But at the end of the day, if I get the ticket, I'm going to pay it. This guy tells me, he says, you know what, if I get a ticket, I'm not going to pay it. I'm just going to walk up to the clerk office and say, I refuse to pay. And I was like, that's really bad advice. And I say, where'd you get that advice? Oh, this old guy told me. And I'm like, okay, well, does he have a driver's license? No. Does he have a car? No. So someone who doesn't drive gave you advice on what to do when you get a ticket. Bad advice. That's stupid. You know, and I guarantee if he did get a ticket, he'd go pay it. He's just running in his mouth. But at the end of the day, to say every cop's an extortioner, I mean, let's go and find out what you do for a living and let me try to cherry pick all the evils that are in your industry, right? Oh, you work at Wal-Mart? Well, guess what? They sell liquor. Wal-Mart supports bags, but now you support bags? Wal-Mart sells all kinds of weird junk. Wal-Mart has credit cards. Now you're a usurer. You use your you. I mean, this is just nonsense to try and attack certain people for what they're doing. Look, the law enforcement, it's not like we're in Mexico where whenever you get pulled over, the cop literally shoves the $20 bill in his wallet, okay? Maybe that's a little bit of extortion. But at least in America, I don't know of cops that are literally getting paid off when they get a ticket. I mean, all they do is file a ticket and then you go and pay the government. I'm not giving the cop like 20 bucks or 50 bucks or 100 bucks or anything like that. And if you are, don't tell me about it, okay? Go to Ezra chapter number seven for a moment. Ezra chapter number seven. Not only that, these same bozos, these same morons, what they'll do is they'll say, oh, all these churches, they're not good because they're 501c3. And this just makes me angry, okay? It makes me angry because of how stupid this argument is. Now, what is 501c3? It's a very specific classification of IRS code, okay? The IRS designates every company within some category. I mean, no matter who you are, if you're a company, you're going to fall under some category. You have to have some designation. Now, for churches, the IRS has given us an option of being a 501c3 classification. Now, this is what people don't realize. And let me just read from you from IRS.gov. This is what they say on their website, okay? Under 501c3 about churches. Automatic exemption for churches that meet the requirements of the IRC section, 501c3, are automatically considered tax-exempt and are not required to apply for and obtain recognition of tax-exempt status from the IRS. So according to the IRS, if you form a nonprofit corporation and you are a church and you meet the requirements of a church, you're automatically 501c3 whether you like it or not. Okay? So it's like, oh, man, these 501c3 churches. Well, in order to not be 501c3, that means you're not a church. Or you had filed a very specific documentation with the government saying that you're a different designation. So you could be like 501b3 or something like that. Or you could be like 5018. There's like a few different categorizations that you could be in. But if you are just a normal church and you go ahead and incorporate yourself or you do whatever, you file the documents and become a company, you're automatically 501c3. It's like, what did you do to do that? I just am a church. And all these churches that get up and they pontificate about how they're not 501c3, well, this is what I want to know. Which of the five requirements of the 501c are you not meeting? Because if you are meeting them, you're automatically 501c3 whether you like it or not. The only people that pontificate about not being 501c3 that are not is when you have these house churches where they don't actually have anything and everything's done in cash and it's under the table and it's illegal. I'm not going to be a part of that. Let me read for you the five things that detail out whether or not you meet their classification. Number one, the organization must be organized and operated exclusively for religious, educational, scientific, or other charitable purposes. So it means that we have to be a church. Check. I mean, if you say that you don't meet that one, you're just saying we're not a church. Number two, net earnings may not inure to the benefit of any private individual or shareholder. What this means is at the end of the year, if we took all of our income and all of our expenses and we said, let's say there was $10,000 left over. I can't just go ahead and just assign that to Dylan or to myself or some kind of a staff member or a director or any member of the church. I couldn't just hand it over to them and just say, hey, we had this extra money left over. I'm just going to give it to you for no reason other than the fact that we just have it. That would then be in violation of the 501c3. So as long as you're just doing normal payroll and just paying people normal and that the excess income that's coming in from the church isn't just given to any random individual for no reason whatsoever, then you're fine. Again, if someone gives an extravagant gift to the church, it's not like it's my money or Dylan's money. It's not like we're just sitting over here like, sweet, let's go take a vacation now. We have designated set salaries that are designated at the beginning of the year. You know when they don't change? Through the year. It's not like we're just riding up and down this wave of however much money comes in or not. It's just set. Other things need to fluctuate like fellowship events and other trips and other things that we do. Those things fluctuate based on the tithing and the giving and everything like that in a church. If it was that any individual was just basically taking all this extra income based on the net profit of the corporation, they could risk being viewed as not being not for profit. Again, it's a not for profit. It's not sitting here saying, let's maximize profits from my personal benefit or Dylan's personal benefit or a church member's personal benefit. Then it's no longer really a not for profit corporation. They need to start paying taxes on them. Number three, no substantial part of its activity may be attempting to influence legislation. What this is is typically lobbying. Meaning that we're all volunteering to get Trump reelected. Or that we're taking a significant portion of our tithes and donations of the church and giving it to the Trump campaign or the Biden campaign or whatever. It is true that I could literally give, and it's kind of varied, but five or ten percent of all the money that comes in the church to Trump or Biden and it would still not violate this principle. Isn't that silly? Now you know how much money I give to politics from our church fund? Zero dollars. You know how many organized, volunteered events we've had for any kind of political candidate? Zero. You know how many I'm planning? Zero. So it would be weird. It's like, oh, well we're not a 5-1-C-3 because we give all our money to Biden. It's like, that's weird. Here's the number four. The organization may not interfere, not intervene in political campaigns. I don't feel like I have any influence because Dominion voting machines already determine who's going to win every single election, okay? Number five, the organization's purposes and activities may not be illegal. So as long as you meet those really stringent five requirements, you're automatically 5-1-C-3. And so if someone said like, oh, steadfast Baptist church is 5-1-C-3, you're right. And you say, did you file paperwork? No, because I'm automatically exempt. Just like if the government came out tomorrow and said, you know what, you can file a paperwork with us and we'll tell you if you're a man or a woman. You can file an application and tell us if you're a man or a woman. But if you happen to be born a man, you're automatically exempt, you're already a man. And if you're a woman, you're automatically exempt from a woman. I'm not filing that document. Since we're already a church, I'm not filing for the document or I don't plan on. If I do, I'll let you know. Even if I do, it doesn't change anything. All that does is it basically protects the church from future probes. If someone asks the government and says, hey, look, we meet these requirements. And they just say, yep, you're right, you meet those requirements. And they'll give you a verification letter. And then large companies may donate because they feel safer about donating on their taxes or something like that. Even though it doesn't change anything. And if they ever did an investigation in the future, they wouldn't be able to come after prior years because they already designated you as a 5-1-C-3. But at the end of the day, if the IRS is going to do whatever they want, they're going to do whatever they want. So I don't really feel like I'm going to go and beg for their permission to keep doing exactly what we're doing. But we're a 5-1-C-3. Our donations should be tax exempt and people have been doing that. I can't guarantee that the IRS would never come after a New Testament church because they may. But they probably won't anytime soon because it wouldn't just affect Stadfast Baptist Church. It would affect every church in the entire country. There would be a pretty big pushback on that. A lot of ramifications. And if it happens, it happens. What's the worst case scenario? They deem us as not a non-profit and we have to start paying taxes on the net profit of our corporation. But you know what I'm still going to preach? All of the Bible. I'm not sitting up here like, oh no, I better keep this non-profit status. I mean, it's not even that much money. Because if you took all the income from our church and you took all the expenses, it ends up not being a lot left over. And that's the only portion that would even be taxed anyways. We're talking about a small portion of funds. I mean, it would be like 5,000 bucks or 10,000 bucks or whatever. Look, I'll pay 20 grand if I can preach the whole Bible tomorrow. You know, I'm not afraid. Or we'll just spend all the money. We'll just buy more DVDs. You know? I know where to buy some really expensive DVDs from people that sell them. Look at Ezra chapter 7 verse 21. And I, even I Artaxerxes, the king, do make a decree to all the treasurers which are beyond the river, that whosoever Ezra the priest, the scribe of the law of the God of heaven, shall require of you, it be done speedily, unto a hundred towns of silver, and to an hundred measures of wheat, and to a hundred baths of wine, and to a hundred baths of oil, and salt without prescribing how much. Next thing. They're going back to build the house of God, and the government's giving them the authority to do that. The government's also blessing them with all kinds of goods. Now somebody was looking, this is what the bozos would be like, Ezra's a FEMA pastor, because Artaxerxes is giving them authority. But God told us that there's supposed to be people above us, and we're supposed to submit ourselves to those people. I don't work for the government. Biden did not approve this message. I guarantee it, okay? He doesn't approve anything anymore, okay? His handlers approve all the stuff for him. But at the end of the day, it's not that it's wrong for the government to, you know, have to tell you what you should do, or bless you, or interact with you. Verse 23. Whose server is commanded by the God of heaven? Let it be diligently done for the house of the God of heaven. Why should there be wrath against the realm of the king and his sons? Also we certify you, that touching any of the priests, and Levites, singers, porters, and ethnics, or ministers of this house of God, it should not be lawful to impose troll, tribute, or custom upon them. Now this is great. This is the first 501c3 church. Where they literally said, hey, you're not allowed to impose tax. Now as a corporation, as the best better church, we have state exempt sales tax forms that we can fill out. You know, there's certain purchases that we can make as a church, but we don't have to pay sales tax. Now, that's not every purchase, and most of the time we don't even have the opportunity to fill that out. It's kind of a hassle to even fill that out with lots of people. But when we have the opportunity, we try, we fill that out, we already have the forms, we have that in Texas, we have that in Oklahoma, and we have that in Florida. And here's my question, why would I not use that? If the government's saying, hey, here's an opportunity to avoid having to pay extra sales tax, then I say, please. Now me personally, I don't benefit from this any different than you. I still pay all the same sales taxes and all the other, you know, federal taxes. I have to pay personal taxes. And I wish they would say the minister's guy don't have to pay taxes because I pay a lot. It's an ungodly amount. I pay way more than Trump then because then he'd pay like a dollar or something. I mean, I pay a ton. It's just silly. But I don't want to pay even a dollar. But at the end of the day, I'm going to pay whatever I have to pay. You know, it's really crystal clear. Now, I'm pretty much done with what I wanted to preach, but I just want to address a couple other things while we're here. So look, if someone asks, is your church 501c3? Yeah, every church is automatically 501c3. Fact. Unless they did something purposeful to designate them not as a 501c3, they are 501c3. Unless they're illegal or they file different types of paperwork, they are 501c3. Let me make that abundantly clear. I get really frustrated when people falsely accuse all these 501c3 churches as if they're doing something wrong because if you're not 501c3, my question is, what are you doing? Again, I think some of our friends are not technically. I think they file like different, a few of our friends have filed different forms to be a different classification. That's their own prerogative. I don't care. I'm not going to nitpick a church based on their corporate governance or how they file with the IRS. As for us, we accept the automatic exemption. We like this, okay, and we're going to continue to do that as long as we can. As far as our membership of the church, okay, this is how membership works at our church. If you come three times in one month, you're automatically a member. That's how I view it. Now, if you don't show up for about three months or so, then I move you to a separate list on our spreadsheet of all the members where you're just not a member anymore. But as soon as you come back three times in a month, back to the member. So, you know, as long as you're just showing up, you're a member and you have all the rights to remember. There's not different classifications of a membership. Everyone's at the same classification. You show up three times in one month, member. And from then on, you're a member until you tell me so, okay, or you just don't show up and then you just remove yourself as a member. When it comes to corporate governance, we are a nonprofit corporation filed in the state of Texas. We have bylaws. We have a doctrinal statement. And this evening, we're going to update a few of those things. But let me say this. No matter what happens, carnally speaking, it's always going to be subject to the spiritual, okay? And I say that we believe in a pastor-run church where the pastor has the final authority, pastor leads the church, pastor guides the church. It's not, if 99% of the church wants the NIV, we're still King James. If 99% of the church believes in oneness, they can all join Tyler Baker in hell, okay? If 99%, it doesn't really matter what you want, frankly speaking. Now, from a legal perspective, that could cause issues if 99% of the church is revolting against its pastor. It could be that, you know, I have to just give the church like the corporate documents or something to you, but then I'll just start a church somewhere else or do something. But why would I want a pastor church if 99% of the congregation doesn't even want me? Just like when I was in Pure Words, I literally was talking to Pastor Anderson and I said, look, I just want to have at least a consensus of who wants me or not because I said if they don't want me, I don't want to be the pastor. And I'm not interested in shepherding a bunch of goats, like I want to find some sheep that want me to shepherd them and if they don't want me as their shepherd, they can take a hike, you know? So even if somehow a carnal document or a carnal situation were to arise where there was a conflict, I'm sticking with the spiritual side of things. The Bible is the final authority for this church no matter what the government says. If the government comes in and says, you know, we're putting these other people in charge, I'm saying no. Sorry, and we'll figure out a way to just make sure that our church operates the proper way. Now, some people, this is what they usually accuse you of. Well, I don't like that because it seems like there's no accountability. Well, first of all, that's an atheistic viewpoint because you realize that God is the ultimate bishop of our souls as we read in 1 Peter chapter number 2. He's making sure what's going on. And look, if a pastor is really bad and doing a bunch of wicked stuff and the whole church is good, don't you think God could figure out a way to get that pastor out of there? I wonder if this church knows anything about that. And you say like, yeah, but we didn't have any power, we didn't have any authority, we didn't have any rule. Didn't work out anyways. And why do you think it wouldn't happen again? God is going to make sure things work out the way that they need to work out. We just have to have faith that the God of heaven, the God of the universe, is going to make sure everything works out. But beyond that, a good leader, I believe, should provide accountability. Just to protect himself, his employees, and his church from everything like that. So that's why when it comes to all the things that happen in the church, especially when it comes to finances, there's multiple people that are paying attention to everything. Brother Dylan Oz has access to all of our financial stuff. So there's another person that knows everything that goes on financially. I know everything, he knows everything. On top of that, Brother Tanner Furr, he is the leader of our Oklahoma City church plan. He's seen every single thing that goes on with our finances and had access. If you get rid of our weird situation right now, we all had access to everything. Right now, we're all kind of limited in what's going on. But we all had access, we could view every single transaction. Every single transaction that Steadfast Baptist Church has had since I've been the pastor. Tanner Furr has seen all of it. I obviously shared it with other men in the church. When I had another employee, Jesse Michael, he had access to it. He could view all of it if he wanted to. He could see everything that's going on. I personally don't even really handle any of the money virtually. Except for in rare circumstances or rare exceptions, we have men collect the ties. They take it back there. They log it. They take pictures of it. They double count it. Everything's up and up. Dylan deposits it. I don't even do anything with it. And anybody that broke the chain, there's all kinds of mechanisms in place to catch them. For them to basically be turned to the police if they were stealing or taking money. It's a pretty sound system that we have when it comes to the running. And then when it comes to all the finances, everything's run through the bank. So it's not like we're just taking huge deposits out in cash and nobody knows what's going on. It's all handled through either credit cards, debit cards, or online checks, or just physical checks and everything like that. So you can track every single transaction. You know where all the money's going. And my system that I believe is a good system for accountability is that every six months and every year, basically, that I will present to three men of the church all the finances, everything that they want to see, and they're going to sign up on it. So you have Tanner, me, Dylan, and three other church members all looking at all the finances to their heart's content and then preparing just a general statement for the church to view and go over one time. Now, unless we're just going to have every single church member prepare their own financial statement with all the bank statements and accounts, I can't really foresee a more practical solution. And at the end of the day, accountability's only going to go so far. You just have to trust in the Lord that whatever is going to happen, he's going to make sure it happens well. And I just want to have layers of accountability, though, so that I'm not tempted, Dylan's not tempted, church members aren't tempted to do anything weird. As long as there's accountability in place, as long as they realize things are going to be checked, there hasn't been a finance meeting in three years, you need to be like, what's going on? Nothing's being accounted for, nobody's seeing anything. And I pick three guys that are in good standing, they come three times a week, they're sole winners, they're not related, they're not necessarily the best, it's not like they're not friends, but they're not necessarily all the three best buddies or something like that. And I'll probably rotate here and there, I pick at least another new person to participate in that. But I think that's the best way to handle ourselves. You know, the Bible says we're supposed to find things on the side of men. Not just God, but on the side of men, so that's how we basically run things, it's how we've been running things, everything's been on the up and up in our church, and I continue to run, I continue to believe that we need to run our church that way. Especially since our past has been a little shady. You know, the former pastor did a lot of weird things, a lot of weird junk, and was involved in a lot of weird sins, and you know, but that's his problem, that's not your problem, and we just want to continue to have good policies and procedures and make sure that we're obeying every ordinance of man. Let's close in prayer. Thank you Heavenly Father for giving us this church, for giving us the opportunity to come here and serve you. I pray that we would fear you, that we'd fear following every rule and every ordinance that we're supposed to, that we'd realize that, you know, the governments that you've put in place are there for a reason, and whether we agree or not, that we should just submit ourselves to them to the best of our ability. I pray that you would just watch over, you know, all the things that go on with our church, whether that be the finances, that be the corporate governance and everything, that you would just make sure that we're protected, we're doing things right, and that you would just bless our church so that we can go out and preach the gospel freely, so we'd not be hindered and we wouldn't have a bad testimony or a bad witness, and that you would just continue to bless and multiply all the efforts of our church. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Alright, let's go sing our last hymn for tonight. Go ahead and take out your hymnals to 319, Just a Closer Walk with Thee. I believe this is the first time we've sung this as a church, so it should be a new one. If you haven't heard it before, you can learn it here together tonight. 319, Just a Closer Walk with Thee. I believe this is the first time we've sung this as a church, so it should be a new one. If you haven't heard it before, you can learn it here tonight. 319, Just a Closer Walk with Thee. I believe this is the first time we've sung this as a church, so it should be a new one. 319, Just a Closer Walk with Thee. I believe this is the first time we've sung this as a church, so it should be a new one. 219, Just a Closer Walk with Thee. I believe this is the first time we've sung this as a church, so it should be a new one. 319, Just a Closer Walk with Thee. I believe this is the first time we've sung this as a church, so it should be a new one. 219, Just a Closer Walk with Thee. I believe this is the first time we've sung this as a church, so it should be a new one. 219, Just a Closer Walk with Thee. I believe this is the first time we've sung this as a church, so it should be a new one. 219, Just a Closer Walk with Thee. I believe this is the first time we've sung this as a church, so it should be a new one. 219, Just a Closer Walk with Thee. I believe this is the first time we've sung this as a church, so it should be a new one. 219, Just a Closer Walk with Thee. I believe this is the first time we've sung this as a church, so it should be a new one. 219, Just a Closer Walk with Thee. Again Now! nordie Himself