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The pattern of sorrow, tell it to Jesus, tell it to Jesus. Are you anxious? What shall be tomorrow? Tell it to Jesus alone. Tell it to Jesus, tell it to Jesus. He is a bread that you'll know. You know a little such a bread, but, brother, tell it to Jesus alone. Are you troubled at the thought of dying? Tell it to Jesus, tell it to Jesus. For Christ's coming, kingdom are you sighing? Tell it to Jesus alone. Tell it to Jesus, tell it to Jesus. He is a friend that's well known. You know a little such a bread, but, brother, tell it to Jesus alone. Praise and thank you everybody. Let's all open up with a word of prayer. Lord, we want to thank you once again for Step Past Baptist Church. We want to thank you for just allowing us to gather together here and praise you, Lord. We just ask you to fill this room with your spirit and bless this church. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Alright, for our next song, let's go to song number 157. Song number 157. Come, Thou Almighty King. Help us, Thy Name, to sing song number 157. Now, Almighty King. Now, Almighty King. Help us, Thy Name, to sing. Help us to praise. Father, all glorious. For a rectorious. Come and bring us. Ancient of names. Come, Thou incarnate Word. Gird on Thy mighty sword. Our prayer attend. Come, let Thy people bless. And give Thy Word success. Spirit of holiness. Come, let us descend. Come, holy God, art o'ercome. Thy sacred witness bear. In this glad hour. Thou who Almighty art. Thou who in every heart. And where prophets depart. Spirit of power. To the great One in three. Eternal praises be. It's evermore. His sovereign majesty. May we in glory sing. And to refer with Thee. Love and the glory sing. Amen. If you need a bulletin, and you didn't already get one, or you'd like another one, lift up your hand. Keep it up just a second. Our ushers will come by. Get you guys a bulletin on the front. We have our Bible memory passage, Psalm 58, verse 9. Inside service time, soul winning times, church stats. On the right, we have a list of all the ladies in our church. And they also are expecting. No, I'm just kidding. It was a joke. But we do have a lot of ladies who are expecting. And so definitely, we want to be praying for them. Also, our prayer list, we like to go over this on Wednesdays. We have the Negeres who have been praying for, continue to pray for health. We've been praying for Miss Lucy's mother. And she kind of updated and said that, I guess, it's gotten really serious. And so she's just asking for people to definitely be praying for her. And so we're definitely in prayer for her mother. Also, we've been praying for Brother Cameron's leg. We've been praying for the Wallach's daughter, who's also pregnant. We've been praying for Miss Cooley's stepdad. He's having cancer treatment. We've been praying for the brother of Dylan. We've been praying for Miss Grace. We've been praying for Alicia's grandmother for a lot of things, health and salvation. We've been praying for Miss Nichols' daughter's living situation. And I know that things went well the last week. We'll continue to pray for that. And then we've been praying. Also, the Wallach's added here, it might not be on your list, but pray for his niece, Hattie, who was unfortunately diagnosed with a brain tumor. And she's 12 years old. And so it's definitely very sad for them as well. We'll go ahead and say a quick word of prayer for our church this evening altogether. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for our church services. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to be here. Thank you so much for all these ladies who are expecting. What a wonderful blessing. I pray that you please be with them and their children. Please help their development. Please give them a timely birth. I pray that you would also be with our church family that's been struggling with a lot of health issues, a lot of problems. Please be with Lucy's family and her mother right now. And please give them comfort during this difficulty. I pray that you'd also help some of our new requests that are struggling with health. We know that it definitely can be devastating. It can be difficult. There can be a lot of anger and frustration. I pray that you would just please give them peace. You'd give them patience. You'd also help these people in these situations to also be brought to the gospel if they're not saved. And I pray that you'd also, if possible, just give them a miracle. Please just help them. Please give them full recovery if it is your will. I pray that you'd also please help our family members and friends that need help with their jobs and with their travel. And we just thank you so much for all that you give us. I pray that our church do everything in honor and glory of your son. And in Jesus' name we pray, amen. On the back, church reminders, also upcoming events. October is going to be our fire-breathing Baptist fellowship. And boy, it's going to be fun. So I'm really excited about this. We've been scheduling a lot of events. We're going to have events on Thursday and Friday and then also Saturday. So just as an FYI, I know a lot of people may not be able to take off work or whatever, but I just want to at least put on the radar that we are going to have things pretty much the whole conference time. We are doing our spelling bee again on Saturday. And so we'll have that in the morning. I'm going to get those words out and emailed out to everybody by the end of this week. So that way you guys can start practicing and working on it. It is aimed at having all the words be from the King James Bible. But anticipation of the fact that some students just memorize the entire list perfectly, we might have a secret special list of words or names or anything like that. So you never know, all right? But we are going to do that again this year. That'll be a lot of fun. I would highly encourage you to participate in our conference. I think we're going to have a lot of people coming as well. And so one thing I had mentioned previously I wanted to alter, on Sunday night, I was originally thinking we might do a dessert, like all the church family bring a dessert on Sunday night. But I want to change that and ask if you would do it on Friday night instead. So on that Friday night, we'll probably do a dessert fellowship. Because we're going to provide pizza for everybody. And then if a church just kind of brings a bunch of desserts. Because the way Friday is going to be scheduled, we'll have a preaching sermon. We'll have a dinner in between. We'll have pizza and dessert. And then we'll have a second service after that. Sunday, I'm planning for the conference this year. Because Pastor Thompson is going to preach in the morning. We'll still have our regular soul-winding time. But then I'm probably just going to move up our evening service to 4.30. And so we won't have the Spanish service. I'll just preach at 4.30. And then that'll just give everybody opportunity to go have dinner together, or go home, or whatever you want. So that way, because I know a lot of people would like to go out to eat. But it's hard when you get off late and you don't have a lot of time. So we're just going to try for this year to just move everything up a little bit, get you guys out of here a little bit sooner. And then if you want to go have dinner or fellowship with people, you can do that on Sunday night of the conference. So that is pretty much the tentative plan. We'll probably put a little information sheet in our bulletins on Sunday that'll give you some more details as far as exactly what activities we're going to have for the conference. But I don't want to announce them. I'll just put them in the bulletin for you guys to check out. Also, congratulations to the Lugo family on the birth of Lemuel Luke Lugo. He was born the 27th at 1237 PM, eight pounds, 12 ounces, and was 19 inches long. Congratulations to them. And so Marcel got to spell his name. So there you go. And I don't know what he's doing after this. You'll have to ask him. But that's great. And I got to visit Pure Words last Sunday. And we had kind of our fifth annual false Bible burning. And we had kind of this anniversary service. And everything was going really well. It was great to see Brother Duncan down there and his family. And church is doing really well down in Houston. And if you ever get a chance or you have family members or friends that are ever in that area, definitely plug Pure Words Baptist Church. It's a great church, a lot of good people, a lot of new people, new families, and people that have been joining and adding to the church. And so it's a great spirit. The soul winning down there is off the chain, folks. I mean, it's just still really, really good. I know when we went out Sunday, I don't remember exactly how many soul winners we had, maybe like six to eight soul winners. We had like 23 salvations in just a few hours. And I mean, here, I feel like it's still pretty receptive here. But it's gotten a little bit, maybe a little bit worse. But man, Houston is just still just incredible. It's very receptive. And so that's one of the cool things about the Houston area is just how great soul winning is, especially Spanish speaking. Even in English, there's a lot of opportunities. And so if you ever get an opportunity to go down there, soul winning is something you want to definitely check out. And so just wanted to plug those few things real quick. But it's good to be back here with you guys and preaching Romans chapter 12 this evening. We'll go ahead and sing our third song of the week. It's Psalm 139. Sing it out nice and loud. Psalm 139. All right, that's Psalm 139. In your laminated handout or in your King James Bible, either one will do. Psalm chapter 139. All right, sing it out real loud together on the first. Surely thou wilt slay the wicked. Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God. Depart from me, therefore ye bloody men. Depart from me, therefore ye bloody men. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee. In them not I grieve with those that rise up against thee. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee. For they speak against thee wickedly. For they speak against thee wickedly. And thy enemies take thy name in vain. And thy enemies take thy name in vain. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee. And am I grieve with those that rise up against me? Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee. I hate them with perfect hatred. I hate them with perfect hatred. I count them my enemies. I count them my enemies. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee. And am I grieve with those that rise up against me? Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee. Great singing, everybody. Now as the offering plates are being passed around, go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 12. That's Romans chapter number 12. Now as the offering plates are being passed around, go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 12. And as the offering plates are being passed around, go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 12. And as the offering plates are being passed around, go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 12. And as the offering plates are being passed around, go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 12. And as the offering plates are being passed around, go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 12. And as the offering plates are being passed around, go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 12. And as the offering plates are being passed around, go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 12. And as the offering plates are being passed around, go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 12. And as the offering plates are being passed around, go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 12. Romans chapter 11, the Bible reads, I beseech you, I'm sorry, Romans chapter 12, Romans chapter 12, the Bible reads, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be he transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. For I say through the grace given unto me to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. For as we have many members and one body, and all members have not the same office, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, everyone members one of another, having then gifts deferring according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith, or ministry, let us wait on our ministering, or he that teacheth on teaching, or he that exhorteth on exhortation, he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity, he that ruleth with diligence, he that showeth mercy with cheerfulness. Let love be without dissimulation, abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good, be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love, in honor, preferring one another, not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing instant in prayer, distributing to the necessity of saints given to hospitality, bless them which persecute you, bless and curse not, rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep, be of the same mind one toward another, mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate, be not wise in your own conceits, recompense to no man evil for evil, provide things honest in the sight of all men, if it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men, dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him, if he thirst, give him drink, for in so doing, thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head, be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer. Father in heaven, we thank you for Romans chapter 12. I pray that you would bless Pastor Shelley now with the fullness and power of the Holy Spirit as he expounds this chapter to us. Help us to make connections, Lord, and to pay close attention to the Bible study tonight. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Amen, so we're here in Romans chapter number 12, and of course we look at these chapter divisions in our Bible, but of course this epistle is written as a whole, and I think what's easy about chapter 12 is to kind of forget about the context in which we're in because it does make a pretty clear kind of shift in narrative, but notice what it says in the very first verse, I beseech you therefore. There's a reason why there's a therefore is because it's there for a reason, right? It's trying to connect the previous passage to this particular passage, and I think that's kind of important to think about just for a second is why does it say there for? Well, previously in chapter 11 God made it abundantly clear that the children of Israel by and large rejected God, are never going to get saved, and as a result of that, instead of allowing that remnant of physical Israel to perpetually continually keep this nation of Israel going, he ends up replacing them with spiritual Israel, and it makes a lot of distinctions between this physical Israel and this spiritual Israel, and in order to completely get rid of the physical Israel, he had to do something. Well, look what it said in verse 32 of chapter 11. For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all. So God actually considered all of physical Israel to just be unbelievers so that he could discard them and replace them with a spiritual nation, the children of Israel, and notice that it's labeled as or described as mercy upon all. It was through mercy that we get the opportunity to become the sons of God. We get the opportunity to be spiritual Israel, that we get to be his children. Look at verse 1 again. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which is reasonable service. Now, before I kind of get into this latter portion of this verse, I still want to connect these ideas. He's saying, I beseech you, therefore, and notice this word, brethren, very, very important word, and what's important about this word is because I've literally looked it up and seen, and I've never even heard of this doctrine until the last few weeks, but there's a group of Messianic Christians out there or so-called Messianics that believe Jewish people who would say that in Romans chapter number 2, when it talks about those who are the true Jews, you had to be a physical Jew and believe those are the real Jews, but those of us that are Gentile and believe we're not the real Jews. But see, this verse actually completely shatters that theory because notice that the Apostle Paul is calling these Gentiles brethren. Now, here's the thing. He's made it abundantly clear that he himself is not a Gentile. He's not from Rome. He's told us very clearly that he's of the Hebrews. He's of the tribe of Benjamin. So when he says brethren unto them, it certainly couldn't be physical. It's impossible for him to be meaning that in a physical way or saying my brethren, and notice, you know, if we go back just a couple chapters, look at chapter 10. Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved. Again, he's calling Romans brethren, but he's not calling the children of Israel his. Go to chapter 9 and look at verse 1. I say the truth in Christ, have I not? My conscience also bearing witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were cursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. So notice when he wants to talk about brethren that are physical brethren, he always gives that caveat of, oh, well, I mean my flesh brethren, just so you guys don't get confused. So when he's talking to the Romans, he's calling them what? Spiritual brethren. So if we are his spiritual brother, how? How am I a brother with the apostle Paul? It's because we both believe in Jesus Christ, and now we are brothers and sisters in Christ, and we have that same connection. And the Jew that the apostle Paul is taking upon himself is the spiritual Judas, not the physical Judas. The spiritual brethren, not the physical brethren. And so it's really important to realize that when he's talking to us, the apostle Paul doesn't look down on Gentiles and call them goyim, he calls them brethren. You know, goyim can sometimes be translated as cattle. And let me tell you something. The religion of Judaism looks at Gentiles as being subhuman, as being a subspecies, as a subrace, not worthy of being considered a brethren or becoming a brother. And you can even see hints of this at the time of Christ. You can see how the Jews or the Hebrews looked really down upon Gentiles. They looked on them with disgust. They couldn't even eat with them. They couldn't even have any dealings with them. And you can even see how they were astonished that Jesus Christ would have anything to do with the woman at the well because they say, hey, you guys have no dealings with the Samaritans. But wait a minute. That's a false doctrine. Number one, God's not a respecter of persons, and there is no physical, special difference between Jews and Gentiles. We're all Adam and Eve's children, folks. We're all Noah's children, OK? Noah's children had us, OK? We can all say Grandpa Noah. We can all say Grandpa Adam, OK? But the only reason we get to say Father Abraham is spiritually not a physical thing, even though probably all of us do have Abraham as a physical grandpa, but it's meaningless, OK? And the brethren here, what the Apostle Paul is talking about is a spiritual brethren, and he's talking to us. Why? Because we left off chapter 11 on this idea of, hey, Israel's been replaced with who? With you. You are that Israel. So therefore, it's really important if you're the church, if you're the new spiritual Israel, if you're God's people, if you're the one that God is going to be dealing with, if you've now become the apple of God's eye, well, what do we do? That we present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Because God has sanctified us, separated us from the world, we become children of God, we become priests of the Lord. Therefore, we are to serve Him. Just like the Levites were separated from the children of Israel and become the priests of the Lord in the Old Testament, is similar to how we in the New Testament are called out and become priests of the Lord. And there are some things about the priests in the Old Testament that I think have kind of a spiritual or metaphoric semblance in the New Testament, and that is how the children of Aaron were not to have any inheritance. Basically, they were not to really care about the things of this world. They really couldn't have any inheritance. Their inheritance was the Lord, and their lives were supposed to be dedicated to serving Him. In the same way, God wants us to have the same mindset, where this is not my home, I'm just a passing through, I'm not really trying to lay up treasure for myself on earth. What I'm here to do is to be a priest of God. What I'm here to do is to serve God and to be a minister unto God for my entire life. No matter what that calling is, or no matter what lot I have, I have to be that Levitical priest. And again, we are not under a Levitical priesthood, it's been done away with. I don't want you to get confused on that. We're in the priesthood of Melchizedek, but of course those symbols and pictures and shadowy types of the Old Testament can still have application for us today. And there are still similarities and crossovers that I believe work. And notice this though, it's your reasonable service. Isn't that kind of crazy to think about what he's saying? He's not saying like this is an above and beyond ask of God. He's saying it's reasonable. If God is willing to sacrifice His Son and have Him die on the cross for all of your sins, it's reasonable that you would just serve Him. It's reasonable that you would be holy. What is holy? Set apart. That you're not like the world, you're different from the world. Not only are you holy, but you're a living sacrifice. And of course God has a lot of sacrifices in the Bible. Typically when we think about sacrifices, it's something dying. We're killing an animal, we're killing the lamb, we're killing the goat, we're killing the birds. That's what we often think of with sacrifice. But He wants us to be a living sacrifice. Now what is sacrifice? It's essentially losing out on something. In order to sacrifice, you're losing something. If you didn't lose anything, could you really argue there was any sacrifice? No, it's not really a sacrifice. The loss of something is where the sacrifice comes into play. And the Bible talks about how we're supposed to lose our lives and lose ourselves. And we're supposed to pick up our cross daily. And so what God wants us to do is He wants us to make some sacrifices in our lives. You know, you go to the Naam De Naam Fund Center today, you go to Joel Osteen's church, you go to T.D. Jake's church, and they'll say, live your best life now. They'll say, hey, serving God, you're going to be blessed with so much money and just fun and prosperity. Whereas, what is the Bible saying? Sacrifice. You want to know why Christianity is not very popular, like true biblical Christianity? Because it calls for sacrifice, not a lottery ticket. It's not get rich quick. It's not just sugar cane and parties and ponies and whatever. No, no, no. It's sacrifice. It's work. It's persecution. It's saying no to the flesh. It's discipline. It's chastisement. I mean, this is what true biblical Christianity is, and God wants us to be a living sacrifice. And some people would say, well, I don't want to go to that church because I'm going to have to make some sacrifices. Well, you know what? It's not the church's fault. You just don't like God. You just don't like Bible. How can you go to church three times a week? It's a sacrifice. How can you read the Bible? How can you read the King James Bible? It's not a picture book. Yeah, it's a sacrifice, okay? Well, do you have a movie version? No, we don't. How am I supposed to read Leviticus? With your eyes. Well, it's not the funnest thing. Yeah, it's a sacrifice. Look, reading certain portions of the Bible, let's just all be honest. It's a sacrifice, folks, okay? It's not necessarily the most enjoyable thing you've ever done in your life. Now, I'll grant you this. There are places in the Bible that are a treat to read. Like, sometimes I read the Bible, and I just really like it. It's a lot of fun. It's enjoyable. But then there's lots of portions of the Bible that are not enjoyable to me. Reading the Bible from a carnal perspective. Obviously, the inward man always loves the Bible. What I'm just saying is, like, physically, I'm just like, I don't want to. It's hard. It's tiring. Your mind easily wanders or drifts away from the subject matter. And sometimes it's just a difficult task to read the Scripture. But you know what? God wants you to do these things because it's a sacrifice. Going soul winning is many times a sacrifice. It's a sacrifice of your time. It's a sacrifice of your money. It's a sacrifice of your gas. It's a sacrifice of your effort. It's a sacrifice of your energy. It's a sacrifice of your mental capacity. It's a sacrifice of your patience. Look, people are just dumb. And I'm not trying to be mean, but I'm just trying to be realistic that people are just kind of dumb, by and large. And when you talk to everyone, you talk to a lot of dumb people. You talk to a lot of frustrating people. And sometimes you even, you get dumb people saved, and it wasn't necessarily fun. You're like, do you know what eternal is? No. What? Hey, if I gave you this Bible and I said, I'll charge you $100 for it, is that a gift? Yeah. No, it's not a gift, buddy. And you're like, you're kind of like, right? I mean, again, it's not the most fun to talk to somebody that doesn't even know what a gift is, that doesn't even understand simple concepts or basic concepts. You know, it's like, if you break your parents' rules, are you no longer their son? Yeah. It's like, no, you're still their son, right? And I mean, you just get, like, you talk to certain people, and it's not the most enjoyable experience, is it? But you know what? Plus, you go to some people's house, it smells bad. Who's experienced this, okay? I'm not the only bad person here, all right? You know, you open that door, and you can tell Curry is peeing on the stove, okay? And you already know how I feel about this, okay? You open the door, and it's just like, you go into the ghetto, boy, sometimes it reeks. I remember, I remember going into someone, someone invited me in, and I usually just say no because I just don't even want to go in, but I go in, and I kid you not, there was so much trash and litter and crumbs and food on the ground, you could not see the carpet. Like, it was just covered in just something else. And it was just like, and there's bugs everywhere. And, like, I've seen this episode of Hoarders, and it gave me this eerie feeling about Hoarders because I, it's so funny, but my brother, his house was on Hoarders one time because he lived next door to the person on the show. Like, he was, like, a few houses down. So, like, they would always drive by, and you're like, I'm like, that's where my brother is, right? But in this episode of the Hoarders, like, this lady had all these cats, and there was just, like, feces everywhere, and her toilet had stopped working, and there was just bugs, and so I'm just, I'm, like, getting all these flashbacks of this TV show while I'm in this apartment, and I'm just like, I didn't like it, okay? I'm just gonna be honest with you, it wasn't fun. I was kinda nervous, and sometimes, I felt like the floor was moving, and I was like, I don't know if it's moving or not, but I wanna look and see if it is. Like, I don't know what's going on, but I'm just, like, I'm just, like, I'm just trying to give him the gospel and just looking at him in the eye like, yep, yep, okay. You know, I just wanna get out of there. But you know what? In my new man, I wanna get this person saved and take him to heaven, where he'll finally have streets of gold, and he'll finally be clean. And, you know, he won't have dogs licking the sores on his body anymore or anything, right? And, you know, it's great that Lazarus got to go to heaven. But you know what? I bet Lazarus stank. I bet Lazarus smelled terrible. I bet Lazarus was sitting in his own filth. And this is just my hyperbole. I don't know exactly what the guy was like. Didn't have a great description, though, in the Bible. But you know what? Someone must have loved him enough to give him the gospel. Someone must have gone there. And you know what? That was a sacrifice. But I guarantee now both those people are in heaven and they're rejoicing at the fact that he made a sacrifice. And God is looking at people and saying, you were supposed to be a living sacrifice. You're not supposed to be like the rich man that went to hell who fared sumptuously every day. Now, of course, some of us do fare sumptuously occasionally. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with having fun, enjoying things. But you know what? You know what? Our lives are not to fare sumptuously all day every day. Our lives are really supposed to be a living sacrifice. We're supposed to make a lot of sacrifices. We're supposed to say no to the flesh and say no to all the things that we want. And look, I'm all for having fun in its place and having joy in its place and having the things that we need. You know, those of us that have wives and children, hey, we got a lot of things that we got to take care of in addition to serving God. But you know what? We don't want to let those things replace the things of God. We need to still have our sacrifices in their right place. You know, we're still putting that church, still putting that soul-winning, still putting that Bible reading, and just also just doing it regularly. You know, it's not necessarily a sacrifice to go to church for one month of your life. How about do it for decades? You know, that's sacrifice. Even, you know, a lot of people in this room, you know, driving to church on a Wednesday night is a sacrifice. Some of you, it's not. But some people in here, it's a major sacrifice. And in the history of our church, it's changed for a lot of people. Some people, it was like not a sacrifice because you're literally in the backyard of the church. And then all of a sudden, it's like an hour and a half away. You know, it's like it changes dramatically, right? It goes from not as hard. But you know what? Having the church in your backyard is a different kind of sacrifice, okay? It doesn't sacrifice on the gas, but it's a different kind of sacrifice, okay? You know, some people, like Pastor Anderson and Pastor Mendez, they had church in their house to start out with. And I remember telling me about people going and using their bathroom, and it's like a horror story. People just wouldn't leave. It's like, look, church is over. This is no longer church. This is our house. And you're trespassing. It's like, bye, we'll see you again. Never, you know. And it's always, it's the weirdest people that stay the longest, isn't it, you know? I'm not shaming anybody, but you know who you are. No, I'm just kidding. But at the end of the day, you know what? Christianity is a sacrifice, folks. Don't try to, don't think like, well, I'm not really enjoying everything about serving God or church right now. Okay, let me ask this question. If it is what you're doing right and is what you're doing a sacrifice, then you know what? Stay on that course. Just like working out or something. Working out is not necessarily fun, but you know what? That's how you get the gains. No pain, no gain. And a lot of times in Christianity, it's no pain, no gain. Hey, you want to go to the fun center? You want to go to Gateway? There'll be no pain, but let me tell you something. No gain either. There'll be no spiritual gain. In many cases, it's the opposite. You'll actually have a lot of negative things happen as a result of getting sucked in to that demonic force over there. But you know what? Not going to church isn't going to benefit you either. We have to make the sacrifices. But of course, serving God, while there's a lot of sacrifice, it doesn't mean that he won't reward you for that sacrifice or bless you through that sacrifice or make things easier in the future. Some things may be a sacrifice now that end up not becoming a sacrifice later. Sometimes things change. But we need to be patient and just go through the sacrifices, separate ourselves, and every decision we make in our lives, do you really ask yourself this question? Do you ask, is the thing that I'm going to do today or the decision I'm going to make, is it acceptable to God? Is it acceptable to God? Is it what God wants me to do? If I were talking to God right now and I said, what decision do you want me to make today, what would God tell you? And you know, obviously, none of us have his cell phone number. But you know, we do know what he would say. And we have a Holy Spirit who will remind you of what God would say to you. And I would venture to say that most of the time, we probably already know what he would say. But the reason why we don't want to think about that or ask that question to ourselves is because the flesh is saying, don't ask God. The flesh is saying, we don't want to find out what the answer is on that one. Hey, let's ignore what God would think about this particular issue. But you know what, this is what our lives are supposed to be, is a constant thought process of what is acceptable to God. How does God want me to dress today? Where does God want me to go today? How does God want me to talk to my boss today? How hard should I work on the job today if God were giving me the instructions? How would I talk to my children if God were in the room with me? Right? Would I go soloing in today if God wanted to be my silent partner? Would I go to church if God were preaching today? Right? What if Jesus Christ was preaching Wednesday night service? Do you think more people would have showed up? Do you think more people would go soloing if Jesus walked across the room and said, hey, will you be my silent partner today? Or can I be your silent partner? I mean, you know, what if Jesus was coming home at work time, how many of you ladies would make a really good meal for dinner? You know, I'm just I'm saying this. And of course, obviously, you know, if Jesus were really coming over, you'd probably make the best meal you've ever made. And that might not be realistic financially. I get it. But wouldn't we think about, hey, within reason, what should we serve them? And I guarantee you this. I guarantee that Jesus didn't always have the most luxurious meals, even while he was on this earth. Right. Sometimes it was just fish and bread like that. I would be sad if that was the meal. I mean, like, what do we have any steak around here? Like, you know, like, can we even get chicken? I mean, like, what is this fish and chips? I mean, what do we what do you got here? But obviously, that would be silly to complain if Jesus is the one serving you fish and bread, wouldn't it? That would be kind of a poor attitude. I'm just saying, even carnally speaking, I wouldn't even want that kind of a meal. And Jesus was willing to take it. Jesus was very humble about every single situation he was in. And we should constantly think about where does God want me to live? How does God want me to act? What would God want me to do with my time right now? What would God want me to think? Where does God want me to go? You know, this is this is what our mindset is supposed to be. Look at verse two. And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. So he's not wanting us to just act like everybody else. We all pretty much through birth and just living. We kind of all have like a default lifestyle. You just kind of get a default lifestyle. And most of it's inherited through your parents or maybe didn't have parents. Whoever was your guardian, you know, whether that be you lived with grandparents or just your mom or uncles and aunts, or maybe you just were raised in an orphanage or maybe you're just raised by school. But essentially, whatever was kind of your upbringing, you kind of just get a default. You know, you default and what kind of food you like. You default and what kind of activities you're interested in. You kind of just default. I mean, you pretty much just if you're raised here, you're just a Cowboys fan by default, right? I mean, I was raised a Cowboys fan in my household just because that's how my family was. We just we watched the Cowboys. We apparently like the Cowboys, right? We go to certain restaurants. We went after church on Sunday afternoon. We always go to Luby's. OK, who's ever been to Luby's? All right. OK, I see that hand. All right. God bless you is the old person cafeteria. I was like the only young person in the room. OK, but I loved Luby's just because we went we just went to Luby's. All right. Went to Luby's on Sunday afternoons. And so, you know, I got a lot of defaults in my life. You know, at least one of those defaults was church for me. OK, church was a default for me. You know, if I was ever good in school, I got a happy meal from McDonald's. OK, now I think the reason why I don't like McDonald's is because I was never good. So I never got one. So I didn't get it enough. Right. But McDonald's, we would I would eat McDonald's before we go to play golf in the morning. We get the bacon and egg biscuit. That was really good. All right. McDonald's was still serving food. Now the eggs, they did pour it from a carton. I did see. I don't know if you knew this, but it's just liquid. They just pour from a carton and microwave. So that was the McDonald's back then. Now it's just glue. I don't know. But you just get all these defaults of life. You know, you default. Oh, we just send our kids to public school. Oh, default. You just go to college. Oh, default. You know, for a lot of people, you live with someone before you get married. For some people default. It's just we we worship football or we worship baseball or we worship hockey or we worship golf or whatever, you know, NASCAR. I'm so glad I didn't get that default. OK, I'm sure I would have walked away from it. OK, but, you know, you just get all these different defaults in your life and the world is just trying to set the default. The world is saying, hey, we're all going to go see the same movies. We're all going to listen to the same music. We're all going to go eat the same kind of food. We're all just going to have the same morals. We're all going to have the same just everything is just pretty much just trying to set you into their version of life. And they want you to live their lifestyle. And the Bible is saying, don't just go the way of everybody else. Don't just be like everybody else. No, no, no. We need to renew our mind and prove what's actually good, acceptable and perfect will of God. Meaning, hey, I always do this thing, but is it biblical? You know, is the activities, the decisions, the foods, the clothing, the friends, the lifestyle they have. Does it match with the Bible and the parts that match? Hey, embrace them. You know, there's nothing wrong with doing certain things that you were raised as a child and they're still biblical. And you're like, check, I'm going to still do that. Right? Going to church was biblical. Now, going to a non-denominant church that was liberal and charismatic, wrong. So, okay, so we'll adjust that one, right? We'll modify that one and we'll improve that one. And that's where the process comes into where you're transforming and renewing your mind and not just being conformed. Not just being like everybody else, going down their mold, but actually coming out of their mold. And this is that part of sanctification, being holy, set apart, being different. Some people say, oh, you guys are different. Good. You know, the church, the members of our church should be different from just everybody else in your neighborhood, everybody else out on these other streets. And, yay, I would say everybody else even claims Christianity because they're not even following Christianity anyways. So, if you're like them, you're not even different. And you'll notice from the non-denominant crowd to the people at your office, it's the same group. Like, you don't really notice a big difference between these people. They're all kind of the same. And it's like, that's not how Christianity should be. Just as much as the Muslim woman in her hijab sticks out, Christians should stick out from this world. I mean, think about how much she is willing to be different than the cultural norms of America, and yet Christians, many times, they don't want to be any different than everybody else. Okay? And that's a shame. It's a shame when Christianity has become a nothing culture, a nothing religion. This is like the accusation that Andrew Tate hurls against Christianity, that it's weak and powerless and that they don't actually stand for anything. And, by and large, he's right. By and large, it's true that most Christianity and most Catholicism is no different than the world. It's just, you know, a hobby or something, at best, for these people. But, you know what? True biblical Christianity is much different. And he ignores true biblical Christianity, just like the left. Many people don't want to talk about us or bring us up because they realize people will be attracted to the truth and to real Christianity. So, they're afraid of shining that spotlight. But let me tell you something. Real Christianity is different. It's going to look different. It's going to feel different. It's going to sound different. Boy, when you listen to new IFB-style preaching for the first time, you're like, that was different. You know, when you show your coworker, family member, or friend just a sermon, they're like, whoa. That guy was, like, screaming the whole time. Why is he so angry, you know? That wasn't very nice, you know. I know what he said was true, but it was just mean. It's like, get over yourself. I made something like, sure, Dylan helped me put this together for my sermon in Houston. But I was making fun of this stupid atheist, Matt Mehta, who stalks our church and watches every single one of our sermons. And I was just making fun of him because he's, like, trying to disprove Genesis. And he doesn't even know the difference between light and the sun. He thinks that they're equivalent. So I was just proving how he's just a complete idiot on that point. And someone's in there just like, I know these atheists are wrong, but that's just not very Christian. That was really mean how you said that. How else are you supposed to use the word idiot? Am I just off limits? The word idiot is no longer allowed to be used by Christians. It's like, look, if someone's literally an idiot, the best thing I can do is call them an idiot. What do you think Jesus meant when he said, thou fool? Oh, he's so mean. Look, Jesus, I don't even if he is mean, I like it. OK. And you know what? The Bible doesn't say thou shalt not be mean. I forgot it doesn't have that commandment anywhere. You know what? The Bible says that you're supposed to rebuke thy neighbor and not suffer sin upon him. And let me tell you something. Everyone that's weak will say that rebuking is mean, but rebuking, according to the Bible, is loving. Rebuking is the most loving thing you can do. And let me tell you something. We're in the car and you're headed to a brick wall. I'm not going to be like, hey, watch out. Watch out for the wall, idiot. And I'd rather you call me an idiot so that I don't run into the brick wall than for you to lovingly caress me into the brick wall. Hi, kind sir. Would you realize that our acceleration is rather approaching a solid object that's not moving? And such thing could do potential damage to our physical structures. Watch out for the wall, dummy. You know, it's like, come on. Which one's more loving? It doesn't take a rocket scientist here. OK. And when it comes to this world, you know, we need to stop worrying about what they think. Oh, you're mean. I don't care what you think. You're like the world. Oh, yeah. Like what is the world really even that nice anyways? Is the world really that God? They always talk about how you're so ungodly or whatever. While they allow their daughters to dress like whores, while they are allowing their daughters to commit open fornication, while they're allowing their children to get hit, you know, hit up with all kinds of drugs and covid-19 and killing themselves and smoking weed and letting them drink alcohol, drink themselves into oblivion. But God forbid they would use the word idiot. You know, I can't stand that preacher. He said people that drink are idiots. You know, I was so mean. So me and all my kids are going to go get drunk. It's like that. How is that good? You know, I would rather for me to be a little too mean and your kids are actually sober and smart than to be so nice. And your kids are just killing themselves through drugs and alcohol and fornication and sin. And you know what? The person who loves the truth is not offended by someone who's mean. You know, I just like the truth. It doesn't matter how mean you are about it. You know, mean, mean is to me, the mean is when you're not trying to give me the truth. That's what lies are mean. Lies are the thing that I really get upset about. Not someone telling me the truth. It doesn't matter how harshly they have to tell you. Obviously, sometimes we use discretion and, you know, with your wife and your children, you don't want to always be as harsh as you can possibly be about the truth. You know, the worst thing you can do is lie to your children and hide the truth from them. And you know what? Sometimes your sons and your children, they need to be told they're being dumb because they're being dumb. I'm not afraid of you hurting their feelings. And I always tell my children this. I say, well, since you don't have public school, your mom and I get to haze you just so you'll be normal, alright? You won't, you don't get all the teasing that you would have gotten at regular school, so we'll do it for you, alright? And you know what? It's healthy, though, because when you get teased and you get picked on a little bit, you know, it helps get some thick skin. Right? Because they cry right now about everything when we tease them and make fun of them. But you know, then when they go out into the world, they won't just be so easily triggered by everything. It's like these liberals never got made fun of in a healthy way or something, right? They never were picked on in a healthy way, so they just, any time they get picked on, it's just like, they said something mean about me, they misgendered me, fire them, arrest them, they should be arrested, you know, they don't like me, ah! It's like, dude, can't you just handle people not liking you? Not everyone's going to like you. You know, and if you come to this church, you know what, you can get some thick skin pretty quick, can't you? You'll learn, hey, I don't have to get everybody to like me. There's going to be certain people that just hate me and you know what? Nuts to them because I'm only considering what's good and acceptable and the perfect will of God. And I already know that going to church is God's perfect will for my life. And I already know going to church that elevates the King James Bible is God's will in my life. And I already know that going soul winning is God's perfect will in my life. And I don't have to question whether or not these decisions are the right ones. I've already figured them out. You say, well, that doesn't sound fun. That sounds like a sacrifice. Now you're getting it. Now you're getting the whole point. And I say this and I repeat it because it needs to be repeated, but it's not as hard to know what to do as it is to do it. And, you know, coming to church on Wednesday night, you know, sometimes it's not even going to be, I learned a whole bunch of new things today. You may not learn anything new, but at least you're reminded and we're renewing your mind back on what you should be doing. Because the world's constantly trying to get you to think about their stuff all week. And, you know, you come back to church to be reminded like, oh, yeah, this is what matters. Oh, yeah. Families with matters. Yeah. God's with matters. OK, these are the things that and you kind of recalibrate yourself and get back on the right mindset. Look at verse three. For I say, through the grace given unto me to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, according as God had dealt to every man the measure of faith. And so God wants us to be serious about our lives. And, you know, pride is just a big deal. We all struggle with it. And he's really trying to hammer that we do not think highly of ourselves. We need to always approach every situation with an attitude of humility where we say, I don't always know everything. I may not always be the best. I may not have the right answer. You know, and trying to elevate other people around us, approaching things with caution, not thinking like for sure I'm going to win, I'm going to be the best I've already arrived, but rather making sure that we approach every subject with humility. And, you know, there could be people in this room that just genuinely know more about stuff than you. And the worst thing you can do is go around bragging and putting other people down or not allowing other people to speak up or considering other people's opinions. We need to think lower of ourselves and not just, I don't need to know what you have to say or you couldn't possibly be better than me. You know, the best way to learn is to ask other people questions and hear other people talk and get other ideas. You're typically not going to learn much from you speaking. Very seldom. I would almost argue zero percent, but obviously sometimes you can be speaking other people's material and learn. Like, I feel like I learn a lot through preaching. Like, I'll learn myself while preaching, but it's because we're using this. And so this thing is teaching me things while I'm preaching. But if I were just up here only giving you just my thoughts and ideas, I wouldn't really learn anything. It's just me sharing what I already have. And in the same process, when you just blow off your mouth and just talk, talk, talk, you're not really learning. And if you've ever been to school, what do you do? You sit and shut up and let someone else talk to you. Right? Isn't that the whole point? You have a professor or a teacher or instructor and they're the ones giving you knowledge, giving you information, giving you wisdom. And you know what? The best way to learn is to shut your stupid mouth and just soak it in. Right? And here's a great way to learn is this, just reading this or just reading in general. You know why people are smart? Because they read. You know why people are dumb? Because they don't read. You want to know why our world is so dumb? Like, let's reference point one earlier. People are dumb. No one reads. People read almost nothing. And literature is really a sign of intelligence and community. Like, where do you think, if we were just to take a random sample or a group of people in this world and say, like, here's a group of people that probably read almost nothing. Where do you think we would just, you just grab a clump of people in this world and you think, like, this clump of people probably doesn't read much. How about, how about, like, the tribes of Africa? You think the tribes of Africa are reading Moby Dick and the Tale of Two Cities? I bet they've read almost no books. Now, would you say that this is the best and brightest on the world, building the greatest civilizations? Probably not, is it? And I guarantee, you look across the world and you find the smartest people committing, you know, creating the most intelligent products. They're readers. And the places where there's no reading and it's just ooga booga, you know what's going on there. Okay. They're putting skulls through their nose. Okay. That's the kind of inventing that they're doing. And let me tell you something. America is not going to necessarily always be at the top of the food chain if we all become ooga boogas and everything is just text lingo. L-O-L. Mmm. G-M. I feel like everything is just turning into, like, letters now. Beast! G-M! L-O-L! I could use a lot of others, but people criticize me because usually letters mean a lot of interesting things, all right? For some reason, I always have an F in all of my acronyms, okay? I don't know why, but you know what I'm saying. And of course, why do people even use profanity? It's because they're not very intelligent typically, right? They don't have an extensive vocabulary, they're a loss of words, so they just substitute it with profanity. And again, I'm not, I personally don't believe it's a sin. You've already heard the sermon a thousand times. But what it does do is it kind of loses its effect. Profanity loses the whole point and reason why it even exists. And it just shows that you're not very intelligent when that's all you can do is just use, you know, all kinds of four-letter words. It doesn't seem like you actually know any other words or have a bigger vocabulary. It doesn't seem like you would win at Scrabble, okay? It might be an interesting Scrabble board, but it wouldn't be a lot of long words, okay? And we want to make sure that we're sober about ourselves and we're learning, we're growing. We're not just, I only know four-letter words. No, learn some five-letter words, learn some seven-letter words, learn some big words. I remember I was fascinated with words at a young age. My dad gave me this book, it was like World Records, and it was like the longest words in the English language. Now that's changed a lot over time. So if you look this up, I'm sure it's different than this book, which is isolated in time in my memory from when I was young. But I remember, I think the top word was like hundreds of letters or something like that. But there was this one word that was 48 letters long. And I remember my dad could say it. He knew it. Like, my dad's kind of like a human encyclopedia, so it's always really frustrating talking to him. But it's like, I'm just looking at these words, and I'm like, I bet you don't even know any of these words, and he just starts spouting some of them off, and I'm just like, good night. But you know, one of the big words that a lot of people know is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, right? That was in the list. But then there's another word, it's called pneumonia ultramicroscopic silico-volcanoconiosis, all right? It's 48 letters long. And you know what I like about this word is whenever someone's copycatting you, repeating every word that you're saying, you just say that and they'll have no idea what you just said, all right? But, you know, learn some big words. Don't just get stuck on cat. Cat on the hat. Pop and jump and hop. It's like, learn some big words here, okay? And you know what, the King James Bible has a lot of big words. Where have the spelling been? You know, I was really impressed with the students and the kids that we have in our homeschool groups, because man, I guarantee you put them against the public school kids and they would stand out. They would be different than the world. And you know what, praise God for that. Praise God that our kids are better. You know, wouldn't it be a shame if we were so emphasizing like homeschool and education and all this, and then all the kids here are just dumb and just drooling on themselves and they just, you know, it's like, ooh, step fast. Hey guys, we color, you know. I like blue. It's like, it would be nice if all the kids when they grow up, they're like, man, these are the most articulate, smart, well behaved, brilliant kids. They went on to be engineers and architects and they built businesses and hey, some of them became, you know, the mayor or the police chief or whatever. Wouldn't it be nice if all the police chief and the mayor and everybody was a fundamental Baptist and the lawyers. We need, we need a few people to become lawyers. Okay, folks. But let me tell you something about lawyers. You have to read a lot. You know what, lawyers just read. That's basically their profession is just reading and writing. Now they don't know how to spell it all. Okay. But you know, that is a profession that we don't want to just give to the God hitting atheists. We don't want to give any profession to these people. We want to build society up and be in the world just not of the world. Be different from the world where people look and say, wow, there's something amazing about these Christians. I want to learn more about the God of the Bible. Think about Solomon. They weren't wanting to go see Solomon because he was dumb as a box of rocks. They wanted to hear the wisdom which proceeded out of Solomon's mouth. And you know what? Don't be this dumb Christian that just says, well, I'm retarded. If you gave me a puzzle, I couldn't put it together. I can't read half the words on this page by flipping my faith. I mean, that is a bad representation of Christianity. You say you're exaggerating. Those are direct quotes, folks. I'm not even exaggerating an inch. People have literally said that kind of stupidity preaching buying the pulpit. And you know what? That is a fake humility, too. We're talking about humility in verse three. Let me tell you something. That is not true humility because if you really believe that you are that dumb, you would never stand behind this pulpit and preach. That is a fake humility. It is a fake sign of someone who's very arrogant and prideful, thinks very highly of themselves, and is trying to dig for compliments, dig and try to pontificate about their actual true intelligence. And so, you know, don't fall for this fake humility. And people do this a lot. They hear, oh, humility. Oh, I suck. I'm dumb. I'm boring. No one likes me. That's not humility. That's just self-deprecating attitude, and it's annoying. And you know who's most guilty of it? The most guilty of it is usually women fishing for a compliment, okay? I'm just so ugly and people don't like me. And if you, here's how you know it's not real. Agree with them. Yep. Oh, I just feel so fat in this dress. Yep. Because, see, if they're being honest, they'd be like, yeah, okay. But you know what? They're not being honest, are they? They were just fishing for a compliment and it was an insincere, it was a fake humility, okay? So that's how you know when someone's not being sincere is if you can agree with them and then they're offended by it. Okay? It's like, oh, I'm so stupid. Yep. Now say it's it. You know, it's like, exactly, right? But when they don't really mean it, you know, that's when they get offended when you agree. When you have, you have to compliment them. No, you don't. Of course you're not. You're so smart and beautiful and wonderful and nothing bad. You've never done anything bad. You know, that's, that's the kind of thing that they're wanting you to say and it's a manipulation tactic, okay? True humility says things that it believes. It'll say, hey, you know what? I don't know a lot about this subject. And they're like, yeah, you don't. It's like, okay, yeah, I said that. I agree. I still agree. I don't know much about this or I'm not the best at this. Or, you know, this person's better than me or whatever, you know, and sincerely meaning it in your heart. If you don't mean it, don't say it. Verse four, for as we have many members in one body and all members have not the same office. So we being many, our one body in Christ and every one members, one of another, having then gifts differing according to grace that is given to us, whether prophecy. Let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith or ministry. Let us wait on our ministering or he that teaches on teaching or he that exhorteth on exhortation. He that giveth, let him do it with simplicity. He that ruleth with diligence. He that showeth mercy with cheerfulness. So, you know, you could compare this with First Corinthians, chapter number twelve sake of time. I spent a lot of time in these first few verses, so I'm not going to go there. But notice there's actually seven gifts or seven diversities that are mentioned here. Prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation, giving, ruling and mercy. I think that some people get a little confused on this, but I want to make it clear in this. I believe and I think the Bible's clearly teaching. Not everyone is the same. Not everyone has the same potential. Not everyone has the same gifts. Not everyone is good at everything. Some people are better than other people at things, and that's OK. Let's just be realistic. OK, I'm not physically built to be the greatest quarterback that's ever lived. You know, I'm not as big, I'm not as tall, I'm not as strong. There's other people that are going to be better than me. And let's be realistic about just sports in general. Black guys are usually the strongest, biggest and fastest in America. That's just the reality. And you say, oh, why? Well, you know, when you selectively take people from Africa that were the biggest, strongest and fastest, and then bring them on a ship where only the strongest survive the most harsh conditions, and then you put them to physical labor where they literally have to work to themselves to death, and only the strongest and biggest and fastest of them survive, and then they breed for hundreds and hundreds of years, you know what's going to be the result of that? Children being the biggest, strongest and fastest. That's why American black people are typically the most athletic, strongest and fastest. That's just through selective, you know, natural selection and breeding, and it's happened in America. That's why when you go to the Bahamas, not every single black person is taller than you. But in America, it's like every black guy is like six foot. It's like every guy is almost six foot. I mean, it just seems like by and large, most black men in America are much taller on average, bigger, stronger, muscle mass, and they can jump about three times more than all of us, OK? There's a reason why Sonny won the Mighty Men competition, folks, OK? It's genetics, all right? There's a reason why Elijah is the fastest person I've ever seen, OK? It's genetics, folks, OK? And you know what? You can go to other parts of the world and you're going to see the same phenomenon, where you're going to see certain people having better tendencies than others. There's going to be parts of the world where groups of people are smarter than other groups of people. There's going to be groups of people where they have better eye-hand coordination. There's going to be groups of people where they're bigger. They're going to be taller, stronger, faster. All of the different physical characteristics just make up the human body and the human race, OK? You say, how many races are there? One. There's one human race, and then there's diversity within all of that of what? Hair color, skin color, eye color. But you know what? We're not going to divide the human population on eye color. Like, which eye race are you? Are you the brown race or the green race or the blue race? Like, that's as arbitrary as it would be to categorize this all in skin color or hair color or height. It's like, are you of the six-foot race or are you the five-foot race? Are you the five-foot ten race? These are just arbitrary physical characteristics that are meaningless. Why would I classify or categorize people based on external characteristics? It's stupid. Just like if you take the blackest guy you've ever met and the whitest girl you've ever met and they have a child. Is he black or is he white? Which race is he? Or did you invent a third race? You know, it's stupid because there's only one race, folks, OK? But you know what? Within that one race, there's a lot of differences. And you know what? In Christianity, it's the same way spiritually that we're talking about physically, where some people are stronger or faster physically, people have different giftings spiritually. Some people are more prone to preaching. Some people are more prone to ministry or serving or ruling or whatever. You know, ministry is serving. Some people are really good at serving and they would not be good at ruling. And there's some people that are really good at ruling and they may not be as good at ministry. Or perhaps, maybe they are good at both, but since they're really good at ruling, we're going to make them the ruler because not everybody has the gift of ruling. And some people, they're really giving. Some people are really kind. Some people are really affectionate. Some people have just different kinds of gifts here. Some people, you know, what's exhortation? What's the gift of exhortation? It's like encouraging people. You know, there's some people in your lives that just are way better at encouraging than others. Some people are better at just ministering to you than others. Some people are good at just telling you what to do than others. Some people are really good at preaching. Some people are not very good at preaching. And again, you can practice and always get better at a lot of these activities, but some people just have different potential levels. Like, I can play certain instruments for the rest of my life and not be as good as many people. Right? Like if I just start playing violin, I've never played in my life. If I just start practicing violin all day, every day, I may never be that good at violin. Whereas there's some people that are really good, naturally. Okay? And there's other people, they can play the piano for the rest of their life and they still can't even make a sound that sounds good. There's some people that could sing for the rest of their life and you're still tone deaf. Okay? There's some people that could practice preaching and they would still be terrible at preaching. Because they're just not really wired that way, they're not as gifted that way, and that's okay. You know, just like a woman can't be a man and a man can't be a woman no matter how much they practice or try. And we should look at the same way with spiritual gifting. If you don't have a certain spiritual gift, it's okay. But why don't you just embrace what God has given you, the roles that God has afforded you, the options he does want you to take. You know, I can never be a mother. I can't do it. I will never ever give birth to a child. Ever. It's never going to happen. Even if it was an option, I won't sign up for it. Okay? I promise. But I can't do it. But you know what? If I could have, you know, again, hypothetically speaking, if God decided that I was going to be born a lady or a woman and I got married, why wouldn't I want to have as many kids as I could? But you know what? I can't do that, so I'm just not going to do it, obviously. But you ladies can. You literally can be a mother. You literally can have children. So why wouldn't you be the best mom ever? Be the best wife ever? You know, us men, we have the potential to be great husbands and great fathers. Be the best husband ever. You know, and you ladies, you'll never be the husband. You're like, if I was in charge, our family would rock. You know? I wouldn't make any of these mistakes. Everything would be going great. But you know what? You're never going to be that person. Okay? So be the best woman you can. And you men, you say like, wow, it'd be so nice to just stay home and be a wife. I don't think you've ever had that thought. I hope not. But just be the provider. Right? Just be the best provider you can be and be the greatest. You know, what if what if Adrian Peterson, sorry for all my sports references, but it's like, let me go. Let me use this example. What if Michael Jordan said, you know what? I just only ever want to be a professional baseball player. But you know, he played in the in the MLB. But you know what? If you had never played basketball, he would have never made it in the MLB. He only made it in the MLB as kind of like a favor as because the fact that he was so good at at basketball, they just let him play. But he sucked as a baseball player. And what if Michael Jordan had just never decided to play basketball? You know what? We would never know who he was. He'd be a nobody. But because he embraced the fact. Look, Michael Jordan loved baseball more than basketball. He wanted to be a baseball player. But you know what? He was in a basketball player's body. OK. And he was the greatest basketball player, arguably, in my opinion, probably ever. OK. Super amazing. But you know what? He has to embrace the fact that he is that person. Just like some of us have to just embrace whatever God has given us as a spiritual. Hey, be the greatest song leader ever. Be the best piano player ever. Be the best soul winner ever. Be the be just the most encouraging person in the church. You know, whatever whatever it is, you know, be that person and embrace that role and embrace that gift that God has given you. And instead of just worrying about what you want, because you know who cares about what you want? No one else. You know, this chapter doesn't say God wants you to find out what you want. God just wants you to have the desires of your heart here. God wants you to, you know, just follow your heart like Disney Channel. No, no. It says you're supposed to figure out what his will is, what he wants you to do. And of course, in that whole process, we end up getting our hearts transformed. He does give us the desires of our heart, but a lot of times the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. Who can know it? We don't really the heart doesn't really know exactly what it wants. We have to follow God's will to even figure that out. And this whole chapter is just hammering this point over and over. What does God want? What does God want you to do with your life? I don't want to have a lot of kids, but does God want you to have a lot of kids? Well, I don't want to raise my kids, but does God want you to raise your kids? I don't want to teach my kids, but does God want you to teach your kids? I don't want to drag them to church, but does God want you to drag them to church? Well, I don't want to have to work two jobs so that my wife can stay home, but what does God want you to do? You know, if you don't like having eight jobs or whatever, well, why don't you read a little bit and get smarter so you can have less jobs? But let me tell you something. The world that we're living in right now, unless you're just really special, you probably even have to have multiple jobs or side hustles or something. I mean, it's just it's it's getting bad, folks. I preach a sermon on it. It's called Help Gather Straw. It's because the Pharaoh is putting a really unrealistic burden and task on us and prices are getting insane. Money's drying up. Jobs are getting tight and it probably could even get worse. But you know, what does God want you to do? Did God want the children to just sit on their thumbs and nothing or gather straw at night and make brick and just say, you know what? Here you go, Pharaoh. And of course, God, you think God is going to rescue people that quit and are lazy or are being burdened and happen to work extra hard and saying this Pharaoh sucks? You know, Biden sucks, right? Saying, let's go, Brandon. You know, he hears those cries. All right. And we have to just we just have to whatever God has given us, let's just do it right. Verse nine, let love be without dissimulation, abhor that which is evil, meaning Biden, cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affection one to another with brother, love and honor, preferring one another. That's a really important phrase. What is honor? Honor is recognition. So it's like when someone's going to get recognized, prefer that someone else get recognized above you. That's hard to think like, man, I hope that this person gets attention or people like what they did or appreciate what they did or they get all the glory or people like what they did as opposed to what I did. Right. You know, I hope that people appreciate who he got saved or what he did for the Lord or what he preached or what his church is doing or what their mission trip is doing. Or, you know, instead of just worrying about you getting recognition and glory, preferring other people, you know what it takes to prefer other people. True love, because if you only love yourself, you can only fake this one. Because if you only love yourself, you're going to always want yourself to get the glory in order to to actually prefer other people getting glory. You have to sincerely love other people. You know, I think it's easy for us parents because it's like a lot of us think like, man, I just want my kid to succeed, you know, and you hope that they get glory and they do well. We should even extend that to our brothers and sisters in Christ in this room and hope they do well and they succeed and they get glory and that God's pleased with them. Verse 11, not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing instant prayer, distributing to the necessity of saints, given hospitality. Interesting thing about this kind of section of scriptures reminds me of the qualifications of a bishop. And what sticks out about that is it's a reminder of the fact that the qualifications of the bishop were not unique to the bishop. We're all supposed to be doing all these things. Everything in that what the bishop was doing was what we're already commanded to do. He's just saying, hey, these are things that, of course, a pastor should be doing to verse 14. Bless them which persecute you, bless and curse not, rejoice with them that do rejoice and weep with them that weep. Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of lowest hate. Be not wise in your own conceits. So we're supposed to match other people's emotion, caring about other people. I really think this phrase stuck out to me a lot where it says mind not high things. What does that mean? To mind not high things. To mind here in this context is meaning to desire. So think about it this way. Desire not high things. What are the high things in this world? Well, you could look at it from what makes people popular or famous, getting recognition. How about what are the high things in society? Recognition, honor, fame, the high real estate, the nice houses, the nice cars, the fancy things. And within all of us, some of us are doing way better financially than others, right? And so you could say like, man, I really hope I get invited to the rich guy's house in church and get to eat the really rich meal with them. And you're like, but I wouldn't want to eat with the poor brethren and eat the poor meal. And what it's saying is like that's the wrong mentality. Now again, there's nothing wrong with hanging out with people that have money or enjoying of their luxuries. But what it's saying is that you shouldn't just only desire that. You should also be willing to condescend to men of low estate and say, you know what? I'm not too good to eat and to hang out with and to fellowship and to enjoy the simple things of life. You know, go to the simple guy's house and ride in the simple guy's car. You know, it's fun to ride in the Ferrari. It's fun to ride in the Hummer, right? But what about the beat up truck that the doors barely hanging on, you know? And it's like, it's just saying don't just desire the high things. Be willing and change your mind and say, you know what? It's not about all that kind of stuff. I can enjoy and relate and participate in humble circumstances. Humble food, humble homes, humble activities like Christ. Christ didn't have to necessarily only hang out with rich people. Now he did, so I'm not saying it's wrong. Didn't he go and he hang out with some rich people occasionally? Didn't Jesus go out and have some really fancy meals? And didn't they even get mad at him for that? But at the same time, Jesus also went to the poor. Jesus also went into humble means. And Jesus just wasn't a respecter of persons. He was willing to hang out with the poor, with the rich, with the sinful, with whomever. You know, he didn't have this, I have to have the most luxury and the most fun. You know what? He can enjoy the simple things of life. You know, I personally, it's not that I don't, let me say it this way. I also struggle with that, carnally speaking, because I like the high things. I like, you know, the fancy life. I like the country club and the fancy pools and the fancy dinners. And I don't really like the fancy meals a lot because they're kind of gross. But I like steak and that's kind of fancy, right? You know, but you can get to this point where it's like that's the only thing I'm going to seek out. Like I'm only going to seek out opportunities where I get to do those things. And what the Bible is saying, don't have that mentality where that's all you're seeking out. Spread yourself and also condescend to middle of the state too. Also go and have, you know, just the simple parties and the simple friendships and enjoy everything. Don't be like so uppity that it's like I couldn't go to that place or hang out with that person or eat that kind of food or go do this thing. You know, that's the wrong mindset. We want to be people that are willing to enjoy humble things, not only the fancy things of life. And look, fancy things are fine. I'm not against that. And that's what the Bible is saying. What the Bible is saying is that's not what our desires and affection should be towards. And that shouldn't be the only thing we're seeking. We, of course, most of the people in our church, we're not fancy. And that's okay. I mean, what if you're only seeking for the fancy church? We wouldn't come here. Okay. But you know what? If God willing ever gave us a fancy building, okay. You know what? That shouldn't be where our heart is. Our heart should still stay on the simple King James Bible and soul winning and being of a humble mind and a humble attitude and a humble spirit. Otherwise, God could strip those things from you to teach you a lesson. Look what it says in verse number 17. Now, I'll admit, this is a hard chapter. I've preached a while. I apologize. It's a little longer sermon. But this chapter makes me think of Proverbs, where it's just like almost every verse. This is just packed with so much information. And it's just a lot of different instructions. So, I've just kind of pointed out a few things. There's definitely a lot more in this chapter than what I'm covering this evening. But you know, this last point is important to just think about that we don't want to always extend evil for evil. And I think this is a danger for our church because of how much persecution we received and how a lot of people have been really evil toward us. That we could become jaded and think that every person that doesn't like our church or every person that attacks our church is a reprobate. And that's the wrong mentality. Okay. There are, of course, some of those people. And I get that. Okay. And I'm not saying that we should love those people. But what I am saying is that there's going to be a lot of people that are not them that treat us the same way at first. And we need to still be good to them. We need to still be compassionate to them. We need to be kind to them, long-suffering them, helpful to them. And it's the honor of Christ. Christ had many people that were not necessarily on his team at first, and he won them over. And we've even had this as a church. We've had people that didn't really like us at first or treated us badly, and we kind of won them over. I think that a lot of communities feel that way about us because at first they hear about this Nazi psychopathic hate cult or something that everybody's against. And they're just like, who are these rabid psychos from Westboro Baptist Church that are inbreeding? They're these inbreeding psychopaths who say that black people have to serve them in heaven or whatever. And then they actually talk to us and they're like, wow, these people are kind of normal and nice. But what if every time they ran into us, they're like, yeah, we're from steadfast. Then they would think that we're these crazy psychos. Or what if we were just like, you're a rapper, man, get away from me. And then they'd be like, you are a bunch of freaks, OK? So the reason why you can overcome people's negative perceptions is because you are kind, loving, compassionate. You know, don't necessarily just get out the sodomite deception and be like, are you a fag or what? Have you seen this? You know, are you with us or for them? You know, it's just like then people are like, whoa, what's going on? You know, if someone attacks, just be like, well, go to hell, then reprobate. Just because someone doesn't like you doesn't mean they're reprobate folks. OK, maybe you're just not likable. Maybe you're awkward. Maybe you snow back. You know, have you taken a shower? Right. These are things that you need to reflect on before you instantly just reprobate every single person. And I'll tell you what, you know, because reprobate doctrine has been so neglected by other churches and were some of the few churches that still preach and teach on this, I think people can start getting like a reprobate hammer in their hand and they're not being very balanced with it. And they just start smashing everything with it. And they just think that like 85 percent of people are reprobates or something. It's like, look, no, it's still a very small percentage of our population. And it's usually really clear they have they them pronouns, OK? But if they're not approaching you with they them pronouns, you know, give them a bit of a doubt. Try to be kind to them. Try to be nice to them. There could even be a lot of teenagers who are being taken advantage of or confused that maybe they still need some compassion. They still need people to give them a second chance or give them an opportunity to hear the gospel. And, you know, it's not like you're going to lose your words in heaven if you're accidentally nice to a reprobate. OK. And I'll just be honest with you, I would rather our church accidentally be nice to reprobates than be mean to people that weren't. So we should try to err on the side of caution. You know, Jesus Christ washed Judas's feet. I thought Judas was a reprobate. He was. Jesus was nice to Judas for three and a half years or however long his ministry was. Seems like three and a half is pretty reasonable. But for a long period of time, Jesus was nice to Judas, did good to Judas. He washed Judas's feet. And it wasn't like at any point Jesus didn't realize he was a reprobate. He knew the whole time. But I think what he was trying to do or show an example unto us is that Christ is giving people the benefit of the doubt until they've proven otherwise. Once someone's proven beyond all shadow of doubt that they're a rep, OK, OK, fine, just get rid of them in your life, ignore them, whatever. But let us just be on default, kind and compassionate and loving and doing good unto these individuals. And we don't really know what's always going on in the heart and the mind of every single person. I think that a lot of new IFB people would have reprobated Saul in the New Testament. Number one, he was a Jew. Most people would already already reprobate. OK, and you know who I'm talking about. There are those people that are like that. Secondly, he was consenting under the under the death of Stephen. You know, I think a lot of people would have been like, this guy's obviously a reprobate. He was protesting Stephen. And look, I'm not trying to soften your approach to these like wicked people, but at the same time, let us be cautionary when it comes to how we treat others and how we're perceived and how people are approached by our church. Let us overcome evil with good. And I think we can win a lot of people over if we make sure that we have the right disposition and that we're kind and we're compassionate towards people because we're the only light that they have. What's the chapter about? You're spiritual Israel. You are God's people. You are the only representation of God on this earth. You are the only Jesus that they're going to see walking and talking on this earth, the ambassador of Christ. Let us then be as kind and compassionate as we possibly can, because that's what they're going to experience. That's how they experience Christ is through us. And I would hate to be a bad example of Christ to this world. Let us, you know, Jesus can accidentally, you know, Jesus can wash a few reprobate feet. Then you know what? Why don't we be as nice as we can be to them as well? Let's close in prayer. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for all these great instructions. I pray that you'd help us to renew our minds and to transform our understanding. I pray that you'd help us to realize the importance of being a living sacrifice. I pray that you'd help encourage us to follow these instructions, these guidelines, that we realize that every day of our lives we are representing Christ on this earth. We are ambassadors of Christ and that we should take our role in this life seriously. Whatever jobs, whatever talents, whatever giftings, whatever place you put us in, I pray that we'd embrace it wholly. We'd do the best that we can with the job and responsibilities you've given us. That we would be humble and that we would truly love one another to the point to where we would condescend to men of low estate, to where we would think highly of other people, to where we would prefer other people, to where we would wish good for other people. And even those who do us harm or do us wrong, I pray that we'd have the right mindset and be compassionate towards them in long suffering and hope that they would be saved or turned back to the Lord. And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right, in closing, let's go to song number 165. Song number 165, O Worship the King, song number 165. Song number 165, O Worship the King. All right, sing it out together on the verse. O worship the King, all glorious above, and gratefully sing his wonderful love. Our shield and defender, the ancient of days, pavilion in splendor and girded with praise. Hotel of his life and sing of his grace, whose robe is the light, whose canopy space is chariots of wrath the deep thunderclouds form, and dark is his path on the wings of the storm. Thy bountiful care what tongue can resign, it flees in the air, it shines in the night, it streams from the hills, it descends from the plain, and sweetly distills in the dew and the rain, rills no dread of dust and feeble as frail, in thee do we trust, Lord, find me to fare. Thy mercy's now tender, how firm to the end, our maker, defender, bekeeper, and friend. All right, great singing. So we have Miss Penny coming for baptism. Have you trusted Christ as your savior? Then I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, buried and lightened to the death, raised to walk in newness of life. Make sure to congratulate our baptism. You are dismissed. Copyright © 2020, New Thinking Allowed Foundation