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Music You You You Good morning everybody and welcome to steadfast baptist church It's great to see everybody here this morning if we can go ahead and find a seat We will get started and once you find a seat go ahead and find a hymnal and turn to song number 159 Song number 159 Blessed be the name song 159 everybody sing it out together real loud on the first In majesty Oh Oh Oh Oh Great singing everybody. Let's open up the service now with a word of prayer More we love you and we thank you again for steadfast Baptist Church. Thank you for its ten years in existence Lord we just asked that you keep it moving strong and bless this church and bless everybody in it And we just ask all these things in Jesus name. Amen All right for our next song. Let's go to song number 405 Song number 405 the banner of the cross There's a royal banner given for display to the soldiers of the king As an ensign ferry lifted up today while the ransom ones receive Marching on, marching on, for Christ found everything but loss And to round him came, toil and sing, beneath the banner of the cross Though the foe may rage and gather at the flood, let the standard be displayed And beneath its folds as soldiers of the Lord, for the truth be not dismayed Marching on, marching on, for Christ found everything but loss And to round him came, to toil and sing, beneath the banner of the cross Over land and sea, wherever man may quell, make the glorious tidings known Of the crimson banner, now the story tell, how the Lord shall play his role Marching on, marching on, for Christ found everything but loss And to round him came, to toil and sing, beneath the banner of the cross When the glory dawns, tis drawing very near, it is tasting day by day Then before our King, the foe shall disappear, and the cross the world shall sway Marching on, marching on, for Christ found everything but loss And to round him came, to toil and sing, beneath the banner of the cross Great singing everybody. Good morning, thank you so much for coming to Steadfast Baptist Church. If you did not already get a bulletin, you can lift up your hands nice and high and one of our ushers can come by and get you a bulletin. Also, today we are celebrating 10 years as a church, and so the church has actually started in August of 2014, which is 10 years ago, and so in commemoration of that specifically, my wife and I wanted to give everybody in attendance a small gift, and so our ushers are going to be passing out right now, just a small thing of cookies, and it's basically one per family or for the adult single individuals, and so our ushers are going to come by and getting you all that, as well as I also wanted to have another recognition, and so my wife helped me make this, but this is a special commemorative plaque, and on it it says Steadfast Baptist Church 10-year members, and what we, well just hold on for just a second, so we have the Milstead family who are there at the first service, we have Alberto Hernandez who's also there at the first service, and then we also have Miss Lucy who came in 2014, and so we just want to honor those people who have been here with the church for 10 years, so let's go ahead and give them a round of applause, and we're going to be hanging this up in the church, and then of course there's extra spots here, so through the years, those who make it, we can add them to this each year in August. I also have a gift that I want to give to each one of you, so if you just come, one of your family members come over here, and I'll just give you guys a gift real quick. So it's a very exciting day, and thanks to everybody for coming in attendance. At the very end of the service, as soon as we're done with the last song, I want to try and do something special and difficult, all right, but essentially we're going to have our ushers come, and they're going to come and remove all of these chairs and equipment up here, and up here, pretty much we're going to just try to leave the piano and the benches, and we're just going to try and as an entire church come up here, and we're going to take a group picture, and so it might take a second to get everybody situated and everything, but we can layer the kids across, and probably even some sit on the benches and stuff, but we'll try to get everybody up here, and we're going to take a group picture. Brother Rich is going to help us with that, and then as soon as we're done with the group photo, those who I mentioned for our 10-year members, we also want to take a picture with y'all, and then y'all individually, so only the 10-year members, we want you to just stick around right after that group picture, and do another picture with y'all as well, so if you can please help me with that, that would be greatly appreciated, so immediately following the service, I'll come back up here and just make a quick announcement about that, just a reminder, have the ushers start removing stuff, and then we'll all try to come up here and take a group picture, and really appreciate everyone for coming to service today. On the inside of our bulletin, we have our service times, our soul winning times, our church stats, and then also on the right, we have our expecting ladies list, we have our prayer list, please make sure you're praying for our church family on the back, upcoming events September 1st, so next week is going to be an ordination service for Brother Salvador Alvarez of Pure Words Baptist Church, and so I'm going to be in Houston next Sunday, preaching for them in the morning, and then having an ordination service, and then Pastor Salvador at that point will be leading the church, and he's going to preach that evening service, so just kind of an idea, if you're not able to make it, that totally makes sense, I'm sure most people will still be here, but just at least pray for us that the services and everything will go well, pray that Brother Salvador Alvarez, that God will bless him, and they'll bless that church, and that church will continue the works that it's been doing so far. Also, September 8th, I'll be here, but I won't be preaching, we're going to have a guest, Dr. Phil Stringer is going to be with us, and he's going to be preaching, and he's a highly sought after guest speaker, in fact, he's usually booked for two plus years in advance, he's so well liked, and such a great preacher, and so I really encourage you to be here for both services that September 8th. Also, October 4th through the 6th is our Heritage of the Lord Conference, we're going to be having that here at the church that Friday evening, we're going to have a double feature, we're going to have Pastor Bruce Mejia, and we're going to have Pastor Anderson, so you don't want to miss it. Also, I put online on our events page the spelling bee words, and so if you want to participate in this year's 2024 kids spelling bee, the study list has been put out there on the website. I did update the events page as well, just so we have some of those dates and everything on there. October 31st is our Texas chili cook-off, and so it's a great time of fellowship and fun, where instead of worshiping the devil, we eat chili, right? And then, you know, of course, some people, they also put beans in their chili, and you know, satanic worship, no I'm just kidding, but no, it's a great time, we like to hang out, play games and stuff like that, so if you'd like to visit and hang out with us, you can come. I think it's a Thursday this year, and so you're welcome to come. We'll try to kick off eating around six, but that means if you're participating in the competition, you got to bring your chili right before then, so that way we can make sure to get a couple samples for our judges. And then a really exciting announcement, congratulations to Cassidy and Britt Campbell on the birth of their daughter, Sakari Love. She was born on the 19th at 2 18 a.m, weighing 9 pounds, 14 ounces, and 21 inches long. Congratulations to them. So that's pretty much all I have as far as announcements. We're going to go ahead and sing our third song, Psalm 150. Psalm 150. All right, that was Psalm chapter 150. Psalm 150. Psalm 150, everybody's singing out together on the first. Praise ye the Lord, praise God in his sanctuary. Praise him in love, firmament of his power. Praise him for his mighty acts. Praise him according to his excellent greatness. Praise him with the sound of the trumpet. Praise him with the psaltery and horn. Praise him with the timbrel and nets. Praise him with string instruments and forebears. Praise him on the loud cymbals. Praise him on the high sounding cymbals. Let everything bat that breath. Praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord. Praise God the Father. Praise God the Son. Praise God the Holy Ghost. Praise God in three persons. Great singing everybody. Now as the offering plates are being passed around go ahead and turn in your bibles to Nehemiah chapter number 10. That's the book of Nehemiah chapter number 10. So Nehemiah chapter 10. We'll read the entire chapter before the preaching of God's word as is our custom. The Bible reads, Now those that sealed were Nehemiah, the Tershothah, and the son of Helkaliah, and Zechariah, Sariah, Azariah, Jeremiah, Pashor, Amoriah, Malchiah, Hadash, Shebaniah, Malak, Harom, Meramoth, Obadiah, Daniel, Ginnithon, Barak, Meshulam, Abijah, Mijamin, Meaziah, Bilgei, Shemaiah, these were the priests, and the Levites, both Joshua the son of Azaniah, Benuiah of the sons of Hanadad, Kadmeel and their brethren, Shebaniah, Hadijah, Keledah, Paliah, Hanan, Micah, Rehob, Hashabiah, Zechar, Cherubiah, Shebaniah, Hadijah, Beni, Beninu, the chief of the people, Perosh, Peyhath-Moab, Elam, Zathu, Beni, Buni, Azgad, Bebei, Adonijah, Begvei, Adin, Ator, Hizkijah, Azor, Hadijah, Hashim, Bezei, Harith, Anathoth, Nebbei, Magpeash, Meshulam, Hezer, Meshezabiel, Zadok, Jedua, Pilateiah, Hanan, Aniah, Hoshea, Hananiah, Hasheb, Helohesh, Pilahah, Shobek, Rehom, Hashebna, Meaziah, Anahijah, Hanan, Anan, Malak, Harib, Bayanah, and the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the porters, the singers, the Nethinims and all they that had separated themselves from the people of the lands unto the law of God, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, everyone having knowledge and having understanding. They clave to their brethren, their nobles, and entered into a curse and into an oath to walk in God's law, which was given by Moses, the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our Lord, and his judgments and his statutes, and that we would not give our daughters unto the people of the land, nor take their daughters for our sons. And if the people of the land bring where or any vittles on the Sabbath day to sell, that we would not buy it of them on the Sabbath or on the holy day, and that we would leave the seventh year and the exaction of every debt. Also we made ordinances for us to charge ourselves yearly with the third part of the shekel for the service of the house of our God, for the showbread, and for the continual meat offering, and for the continual burnt offering of the Sabbaths of the new moons, for the set feasts, and for the holy things, and for the sin offerings to make an atonement for Israel, and for all the work of the house of our God. And we cast the lots among the priests, the Levites, and the people for the wood offering, to bring it into the house of our God, after the houses of our fathers at times appointed year by year to burn upon the altar of the Lord our God, as it is written in the law, and to bring the first fruits of our ground and the first fruits of all trees year by year unto the house of the Lord, also the firstborn of our sons and of our cattle, as it is written in the law, and the firstlings of our herds and of our flocks, to bring to the house of our God unto the priests that minister in the house of our God. And that we should bring the first fruits of our dough and our offerings and the fruit of all manner of trees of wine and of oil unto the priests to the chambers of the house of our God, and the tides of our ground unto the Levites, that the same Levites might have the tides and all the cities of our tillage. And the priests, the son of Aaron, shall be with the Levites when the Levites take tides, and the Levites shall bring up the tide of the tides unto the house of our God to the chambers into the treasure house. For the children of Israel and the children of Levi shall bring the offering of the corn of the new wine and the oil unto the chambers, where are the vessels of the sanctuary and the priests that minister in the porters and the singers, and we will not forsake the house of our God. Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer. Father in heaven, we pray Lord now that you would just bless the sermon this morning and fill Pastor Shelley with your spirit. We thank you for 10 years of Steadfast Baptist Church and I pray that you would just enable us to do mighty works for you in the years to come. We love you and in Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. I want to look here at the last verse here again and the Bible says in the last phrase, we will not forsake the house of our God. And that's what I'm drawing inspiration for my sermon this morning is we will not forsake church. We will not forsake church. And church is the house of God as defined in the New Testament and it's important that God's people recognize that this institution is an institution that God is a part of. That God is among us. The Bible says where two or three are gathered together in his name there I am in the midst and of course the New Testament church was purchased with the blood of Jesus Christ and in the Old Testament they had, you know, a different style of worshiping God. They would meet potentially in the tabernacle in the wilderness or they had the temple or they had a few different locations but it's the same God and it's still the quote house of God when the congregation gathers together. And in the New Testament it is the church but these principles that we find in the book of Nehemiah I believe still are to be observed in the New Testament and it's important that God's people has the right attitude towards church that we will not forsake church. Whereas today many people are not going to church anymore. Many Christians have given up on church they just give church a bad name and frankly speaking you know what it's a bad attitude towards the things of God. Christians should have an attitude of saying as long as I'm on this earth I will not forsake church. Now let's go back to the beginning of this passage where we kind of have some text verse 28 the Bible says and the rest of the people the priests the Levites the porters the singers the nethanims and all they that had separated themselves from the people of the lands under the law of God their wives their sons and their daughters everyone having knowledge and having understanding. They clade to their brethren their nobles and entered into a curse and into an oath to walk in God's law which was given by Moses the servant of God and observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our Lord and his judgments and his statutes and that we would not give our daughters under the people of the land nor take their daughters for our sons. Now in this passage we see a clear separation of God's people from the heathen and I think there's three points that we can really draw out from this particular text about not forsaking our our God not forsaking church and one of those is that we need to separate ourselves. Church is a institution is an organization where we come out from among them and we're separate. Now I want to go to a couple passages go to Matthew chapter number 10 go to Matthew chapter number 10. In this particular passage they say that they're not going to give their daughters to the heathen and they're not going to allow their sons to marry the daughters of the heathen. Now generally speaking I think that that is still an applicable practice that New Testament Christians should have the day where you are not going to allow your daughter to marry someone that's unsaved. You should not allow your daughter to marry someone that's not a Christian and additionally you should not encourage or enable your sons to marry a young woman who's not a Christian. It doesn't matter if they're well they're Catholic that's still not Christian and they're not saved and we need to make sure that we're instructing our children that they should marry only saved individuals. Additionally when it comes to church we should separate ourselves even not necessarily just from the unsaved of course that's important but even from the saved because not all saved people have the same zeal for God not all saved people want to serve the Lord not all saved people are going in the right direction and you know we come together here in this church to be a called out separated group of people that want to worship God in sincerity and in truth okay and there's going to be cases there's going to be situations where you sometimes have to separate from the world and it's not comfortable now generally speaking separating from a bunch of people you don't know isn't very hard right I mean most of us probably aren't that close with the majority of our neighbors maybe you like a few of your neighbors but most of your neighbors you probably don't even really know them that well and you don't really care so when you leave your neighborhood and come to church that doesn't really hurt your heart or hurt your feelings or cause you any kind of angst but what can cause a lot of people you know strife and and grief is when they have to separate from their own family when their mom or their dad goes to a different church than they go to or their brother or their sister or their cousin or their uncle or there's just a riff in the family because of the church that you attend and they don't go to that particular church and the bible warns that this is a reality it says in 10 matthew 10 verse 34 think not that i'm coming to send peace on earth i came not to send peace but a sword for i am come to set a man at variance against his father and the daughter against her mother and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law and a man's foes shall be they of his own household according to the bible for many people not everyone but for many people family members will be a major obstacle to serving god now if that's if you feel like i don't have that situation right now just just praise god that you're not in that situation because when you do have this situation it can be very heart-wrenching it can feel uncomfortable it can be very confusing um you know there's all kinds of people that are in various situations where it's their their brother that they grew up with and they're close to it's their sister that they love very dearly it's their mom it's their dad it's their in-laws it's their cousins it's their nephews it's just people that you just love and again we love our families we love our mother and we love our father and we love our brothers and sisters and we love our cousins and our nephews and our uncles and our aunts and we love all these individuals and and that's why it's difficult that's why they're actually a foe because if you didn't care about that person it wouldn't be hard to separate yourself from them it wouldn't be a big deal that you're not hanging out with them or that you're going to a different church or that you're serving god in a unique way why it's difficult is because you actually care about these people and the bible is warning that for many people they're not going to serve god specifically because of their family and i guarantee there's a lot of people that we get out we go out and say get saved through door-to-door soul winning that their whole family is catholic and they're just not going to come to our church because of the fact that their entire family's catholic or their entire family is presbyterian or their entire family is hindu or their entire family is muslim or or some other religion or some other denomination and because of that they're afraid of becoming baptist they feel like they're going to lose their family i remember talking to someone that was catholic specifically and she said i don't want to leave the catholic church and i kind of brought up to her how what i was teaching her was that the bible teaches salvations by faith alone but the catholic church teaches it's by works and she's like yeah i get that but she's like i don't know that i want to become a baptist because if i if i leave the catholic church then i won't be able to go to all the family parties and like this person was being sincere to me they were like just saying like you know she's she was and then she's explaining to me what it is to be catholic it's not like she goes to mass and actually worships god it's that they're constantly going there and having quinceaneras and having all these parties and she's just like i just love hanging out with my family and she's like i don't even she's like they never teach anything she's like all we do is we just go to the church building and have parties and just have events and just do fun activities she's like i don't know what they believe about anything so so to her it's like confusing that i'm telling her like hey in order to be saved you got to reject what the catholic church is teaching but to her the catholic church is just teaching let's party and have fun with our family members and so that's really confusing to her and she ended up not wanting to pray not wanting to even get saved and again i was trying to make it clear like it's not about quitting parties or going to that physical location or this it's about what you believe and how they're teaching a false way of salvation and this is the only way to go to heaven i said you could never come to my church and you're still gonna get saved but she just still had this draw and this attachment to the catholic church because of her family i've knocked on people's doors and the person pretty much just abruptly interrupted me into my just like hey i'm from a baptist church and just said well you know what my grandfather's catholic my dad's catholic and i'm gonna be catholic and it's just like okay and and for some people they don't even want to listen they don't even want to hear because they're too afraid of having to separate from family members they're too afraid of the consequences of changing religion based on losing that relationship that they have and look i get it because me personally i grew up in a family where we really loved each other we hung out with each other and in fact at one point in time we all lived within about a two to five minute drive from each other's houses like basically all of us as adult children with with all my nieces and nephews and my mom and dad i mean we basically lived within a stone's throw of each other all of us and we would hang out almost every friday night saturday night all sunday and then we would go to all the different events we'd go to all the basketball games and all the soccer games and we would see each other just regularly throughout the week i mean we were very close we would play every game you could possibly imagine we played it all okay and we fought over all of them too all right but at the end of the day it was a close tight-knit family we loved each other we hung out and look there was nothing wrong with that there's nothing wrong with hanging out with family there's nothing wrong with hanging out with your parents there's nothing wrong with having that that closeness with your family but when i started getting serious about the things of god and i left the church that we were all going to it caused a rift in my family they didn't really want to associate with me anymore and it wasn't even that i didn't want to associate with them they didn't want to associate with me because they were afraid of what i was going to teach them and their children they were afraid that my wife might show up wearing a dress or a skirt and i'm not even joking when they would tell me that they say we have to walk on eggshells around you and i said what do you mean you have to walk on eggshells around me and they said well you're just always judging us and i said well what did i say and like well your wife wears dresses and skirts and i'm like so so i didn't say anything and they're like no and i'm like you realize that my wife would wear dresses and skirts before i even changed my opinion on that and you were never offended so why are you now magically offended that she's just doing it all the time and it's just like no answer it's just like well you're just you're you're preacher that you listen to online is hateful he's mean and i said so because i listen to this guy online i'm judging you and they're like yes and it's just like like you can't even you can't even rationalize these things i had family members that have have looked me in the eye and said that i'm a false prophet and that i teach work salvations and i said what do you mean they said you teach if you don't go soul winning you're not saved i was just like i said when did i teach that well i don't have time to talk about this i said show me the video i said if you can show me the video i'll delete it right now i said i don't believe that well i don't want to talk about it you're just like how are you a fault it's like what does that even mean i've had i've had people tell me that i'm cursed of god i've had people tell me that i need to quit steadfast and pure words baptist church immediately and beg for god's mercy for how evil i am i mean i've had anything and everything you can imagine i've had people when i've told them decisions about church and stuff say that that's the worst decision i've ever made in my entire life which i know that's not true because i know lots of decisions i've made that were way worse okay you don't even know all right i mean and look whatever i've been through is honestly even very minor compared to a lot of you guys and stories you guys have told me and experiences you guys have had and separation now again i've also had some good experiences some of them warmed up some of them not i've had admit i've had family members tell me that they would rather join our protester group than come and visit our church okay and so you know like i know what it's like to be so close-knit that you hang out all the time regularly you're really close you have just a special bond with each other and then for them to say some of the most hurtful things you could imagine now again like i'm i'm pretty thick-skinned i mean it's pretty much almost impossible to kind of offend me or hurt my feelings but it's still it's it's not that it doesn't hurt a little bit it's just that you know in the reality i could usually handle these things but the things that they're saying are just so over the top i mean i've had them lie about me and slander me repeatedly to try and make all of the rest of the family hate me uh you know just just anything i'm in a cult i'm the cult i always say like to my family members i joke i say well at least i'm the leader you know like you know it's funny because my my dad helped us with pure words baptist church because in texas you have to have three directors and so my father helped me with uh getting the church started and so you know it can't be like my four-year-old son or five-year-old son right and i didn't really know anybody yet so he helped us with that and i remember calling him and i said well i have good news and bad news i said bad news is you're now officially a part of a cult i said good news is you're a director of the cult all right so there you go right it's like and again it's a joke because he doesn't feel that way but i was just i was just trying to make the joke because our family might say those kind of things and feel that way and obviously they even themselves kind of realize that what they're saying is kind of silly but it's just it's just one of those things where if you're gonna serve god most likely not every one of your family members will want to serve god with you and for a lot of you children in here you just haven't experienced it yet but when all your siblings grow up unfortunately statistically some of them may not serve god some of them may not have the same zeal some of them may not come to church as often some of them may even go to a different church some of them maybe just stop going to church and you know what you have to decide for yourself if you're going to go to church you have to decide for yourself if you are going to serve god you have to decide for yourself if you're going to forsake church or if you're going to not forsake church And you know what? I guarantee your parents, they're praying for you, and they're instilling all the right values, and they're hoping that you'll keep serving God. But you know what? That's up to you. And you know what? God forbid someone would quit church because a family member would quit church. But it happens. Kids get offended, parents leave. Parents leave, kids leave. You have a spouse leave, the other spouse leaves. You have brother leave, brother leave. And even beyond that, you have friend leave. You have friend leave, this other friend leaves. You have just all kinds of people just quitting church, giving up, forsaking God, and they're often dragging people down with them. And you know what? You have to have the steadfast mentality in your heart and in your mind that says, You know what? I'm not going to forsake church. Though everybody quit church, yea, my family, my brothers, my sisters, my wife, my children, my Siamese twin, I'm going to drag him to church. And so, you know, we need to decide that we're going to serve God. Go up to Mark chapter 3. The Bible says, Wherefore come up from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you. We need to decide that we're going to separate ourselves unto God. Now again, here's what it means to separate. Separate means that on Sunday morning, I'm not going to hang out with you, I'm going to go to church. What it means is Sunday night, I'm not going to hang out with you, I'm going to go to church. What it means is Wednesday night, I'm not going to hang out with you, I'm going to go to church. What it means is, hey, I'm not going to go do that on Saturday because I'm going to go soul winning. What it means is, hey, I'm going to still read my Bible. Hey, I'm going to go to church, I'm going to go to the events, I'm going to go soul winning, and so that time is off limits and I'm going to separate in that situation. That's what it means to separate. It doesn't mean to say, like, I hate you and can never see you again. It doesn't mean to be rude to family members. It doesn't mean that you can't go over to their house and have dinner with them. It just means, hey, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. We're going to church on Sunday morning. Come with us if you want. If you don't, well, I'm not going to hang out with you. To me, the most important relationship is God. The most important relationship is Jesus Christ. And so Sunday morning, I carved that out, special for the Lord, and that's a time where I'm going to worship God. That's a time where I'm going to hear the word of God being preached and I'm going to open up my heart and I'm going to try and allow God's word and Jesus Christ to minister unto me and for me to have a relationship with him. And I'm going to go out and I'm going to share that relationship with others by preaching the gospel. That's what it means to separate. So don't get confused. Some people would think like, oh, well, these fundamental Baptists, they're going to reject their family or hate their family or stay away from their family. I'm not trying to stay away from my family. I'm just trying to stay close to God. And if you don't want to stay close to God with me, well, then we're going to have a separation, aren't we? Right? It's not that me and my father and my mother and my brother and my sister and all my family, we can't all stay together and serve God. We can. But here's the thing. If you're not going in the direction I'm going, there's going to be a separation. There's going to be a little bit of a divide there. And so that's what it means to separate. And in some cases, that means that you would make a decision that would separate you even physically from them. What would be one of those? Well, how about moving for a church? A lot of people have moved for a good church, and it's confusing. It's confusing to family members, especially that are not very zealous. They think, there's 10,000 churches here. Why would you move to go to a different church? Or there's a Baptist church down the street. Why don't you just go to the Southern Baptist church down the street? Why don't you go to the Ruckmanite church down the street? Why don't you go to the hyper-dispensational church down the street? And you're just thinking, have you ever been there? Do you even know what they believe? Have you ever read the Bible? It's like, there's reasons. Why don't you go to the Repent of Your Sins Baptist church down the street? And it's like, because I don't believe it works salvation. Why don't you go to the Baptist church where they have pedophiles in there? These are reasons why people have moved. People have moved because they say, hey, I want to go to church, but the only church that I can find that seems decent is Repent of Your Sins. They're inviting pedophiles into the church. They kicked me out. They kicked me out because I just didn't agree with certain heresies of the church. And it's not because I was being antagonistic. It was just me existing as a person. Some people go to a church and they've said this. They just say, like, how did you hear about church? And how did they come here? They're like, well, I got saved online from a new IV pastor and then I decided to look up churches in our area and come. And they're like, get out. And you're just like, and then family members don't understand, like, why would you move for a church? Well, because a lot of people don't have a great church to go to in the United States and, yay, the world, of course. But we're thinking about in the United States, a lot of people just don't have great options out there. And they want a great option. They don't want to just go to church. They want to go to a great church. And you know what? I'm not against anybody that wants to go to a great church. And you know what? Sted Best Baptist Church is a great church because of its people. That's what makes it a great church. It's people that have separated themselves and said, we want the unfiltered truth of the Bible. And not only do we want to hear it, we want to actually experience it too. So we don't want to just get up and read 1 Corinthians 5. We want a church that exercises church discipline. And we don't want a church that just reads about the importance of preaching the gospel. We want a church that's actually inviting us to go soul winning every day of the week. That's what we want. And we don't want a church that just tells us that it's important to be fruitful and multiply. We want a church where we are literally multiplying physically and there's lots of children in the church. But that's an important thing for people is that their kids have other kids in the church. And then they can have friends and they can associate and they can go through life with other people that are experiencing the same things. Going through getting pregnant and breastfeeding and having toddlers and having babies and having the diaper stage. And learning how to read and tie your shoes and grow up and be educated and to read books and to play sports. And just all the different activities that go with youth and adolescence and growing up. People find that important. And you know a lot of these churches today don't have a youth program. Like their youth program is dwindling. It's getting smaller. It's led in an awkward way. It's led by women of the church or something like that. And so a lot of people, they want their children in the service with them. They want to have the King James Bible be the only Bible being used. They want to go soul winning. And so they've decided, you know, these things are important to me and I don't want to forsake church. So if my option is forsake church or move, I'm going to move. And maybe it's not even just completely forsake church but they're just not going to feel very good about their church. Or they don't feel like they're going to serve God very well where they're at. And so they decide to move to have a great church. Now just for my benefit and everybody else's, who's moved to go to this church? Look around. This sounds like this is a point that has to do with what I'm talking about. Did you notice something? This is a pure separation. And think about this. Our church started in Fort Worth, Texas. Then it went to Hurst. Then it went to Watauga. And now it's in Cedar Hill. Almost no other church in the DFW area could do that and still exist. Almost no other church, especially our size. You could not just take some random church in Fort Worth and move it this far over here and it would still be the same. It would almost just like crumble immediately as far as attendance. All those people would probably just find a closer Baptist church in their area. Very few people would probably follow that church. You know what? We have a super high retention rate. In fact, it was really difficult to explain this to lenders and banking institutions. They're like, how far is Watauga from Cedar Hill? And you're like, well, you know, our church is all over and a lot of people are kind of just, you know, in certain areas. But, you know, it's like hard to explain to them like they don't want to just go to the church five minutes from their house. Many of them have literally moved across the country to come to this church specifically. Why in the world would you move 1400 miles to come to our church and then the church moves 20 minutes further away and you don't go? You laugh, but I've had someone literally tell me that. I've had someone literally tell me, they're like, I moved this far away to come to this church and then if it moves 15, 20 minutes away, it's like now I don't want to go. I'm just thinking like, wow, that's crazy to me. I mean, it's like running 99% of a marathon to quit. I mean, if you think about it, it's like if I'm going to go through that much extremity, well, I'm just going to keep going. You know, I'm just going to figure out a way to get there and to be a part of that church because there's something special about Steadfast Baptist Church. And, you know, there's something special about just church. There's something special about the King James Bible. There's something special about actually following God's commandments. And that's why people want to do that is because of the work of the Lord and because of the Spirit of the Lord that is amongst his people. And you know what? It makes sense to sometimes move away. But you know who's not going to get that? Family members many times. In fact, many family members will think it's crazy. They'll think you're weird. They think, oh, man, are you joining the compound? And it's like, look, we have nowhere to sleep. We don't have food. We got you some cookies. And you might get some ice cream every once in a while, right? But you're not going to survive on that. There's nowhere to live. You've got to find your own place. You've got to have your own job. And you know what? People come and go. People have moved here and then just go somewhere else or go to another church or whatever. It's not like, and again, this is what's so funny about a cult. It's usually hard to get away. It's really easy to quit church. Especially here when it's constantly moving and there's all these obstacles and it's hot and whatever. You never know what to expect. We're probably the most unpredictable church. Some churches are just really predictable. Here it's like you kind of wonder, sometimes people are wondering, like it's becoming too predictable, Pastor Shelley. Like something needs to happen or whatever. But family members won't get this, why you would separate. But you know what? That happens. Or why you would maybe just go to a different church. There's been people that have been reached locally. They were in a church here. They were going somewhere. They were serving God. But then they ended up realizing, hey, I think there's a better church for me. And they end up switching. And their friends, their family members, they don't get it. They think like, why would you leave? Why would you go somewhere else? And sometimes that can be an obstacle. Another thing is some people unfortunately have to get church disciplined every once in a while. And that's a separation that could happen. You could literally have a family member get church disciplined. And I would hope, and I don't have this situation, but I would hope that even if one of my family members got church disciplined, it wouldn't cause me to turn against the church. It wouldn't cause me to say, well now I'm going to forsake church because I have more loyalty to that family member than I do to our church. But I've seen it. I've seen individuals who have been preached against and church disciplined and then their family members decide to just get offended and leave the church. Even though it's clear as the black ink on the white page that that's what should have happened, but they are offended by the word of God. And there are some people in our church that may hear about church discipline and they decide not to observe that. They don't want to observe that. And as a result, they just decide to quit church because of it too. Now again, some people come to church and just don't observe church discipline. Okay, that's wrong, but they still go to church at least. But some people will literally even quit church because of church discipline issues. They say, well I still want to hang out with all the drunkards in my life and all the fornicators in my life and all these family members who should be church disciplined and should be avoided. I don't want to avoid them, so therefore I'm going to quit this church because I don't want to hear about it. I don't want to feel guilty about it. I don't want people to bring this up. I don't want anybody to know about it. And so they just basically quit church. You know, hey, I have had to and still have to exercise church discipline in my own family. And you know, it's not fun. It's probably some of the most uncomfortable conversations I've ever had. It's not enjoyable to explain to family members who don't really care that much about the Bible why they're doing something that's violating the Bible. It's like, hey, we can't come to this wedding. Hey, we can't come to this birthday party. Hey, we can't come to this particular event. Praise God, sometimes it's really clear. I mean, when one of the groomsmen is a literal tranny, it's pretty easy to be like, I'm not coming to that wedding. Right? I mean, it's kind of easy when they're such a drunker that they drink hard liquor literally every day that you're like, hey, you're a drunker. And it's like, even that person will still admit they're not. I don't care. If the person drinks 24 beers every day and is literally on the floor passed out drunk, you'd be like, you're a drunker. They'd be like, no, I'm not. No one will admit that they're a drunkard virtually. The only ones that admit are like in an AA class, and they haven't had a hard time saying it then. They're like, my name's so-and-so, and I'm not a drunkard. They're like, I'm recovering. No one's really a drunkard in the world. But you know what? Why would the Bible give us an admonition to avoid drunkards if they don't exist? Why would it give us an admonition to avoid fornicators if it doesn't exist? And they're like, well, they're not doing it around me. Really? Is that your standard? My standard is I'm going to separate from fornicators when they're doing that. That's ridiculous standard. So some people, they just avoid church discipline whatsoever. But you know what? I'm not going to forsake church. I'm not going to forsake the commandments of God. And if I have to separate from somebody, I will separate from them. And I will do what the Bible says. And you know what? That's an important principle, because I've noticed how it just drags people out of church. It causes people to come not zealous for the things of God. And you know, a little leavened, leavened at the whole lump. When you say, I know what the Bible says, but I'm not going to do it, well, it's pretty soon after, there's a lot of things like that. Usually when someone says, I know that's what the Bible says, but I don't want to do it, then it's like, well, what's another thing that the Bible says that I'm not going to do? And what's another thing that the Bible says I'm not going to do? What's another thing? And then pretty soon it's just like, well, I'm not going to follow any of the commandments because I'm not following any of them. It's really easy to give up when you quit. It's really easy when you say like, well, I'm not going to do X, Y, and Z, therefore, might as well just give up now. Whereas, you know what, it's important to exercise every principle of the Bible and do nothing in partiality. Now, the Bible also brings up the idea of just priorities in general. And, you know, families are going to sometimes prioritize themselves above church. I've had people tell me, and I've seen this in my personal life, where they say it's unbiblical for children to move away from their parents. Now, I'm not saying like children that are just like young children. I'm saying like adult children that are married. And let me explain something. That is not unbiblical. In fact, the Bible almost teaches the opposite in many cases, that children, adult children that are married should separate from their parents to some degree. Now, where they live in the world, to me, it doesn't matter. But sometimes family will say like, I think it's wrong for you to move and go to that church and be away from us. You know what? I don't believe that whatsoever. And we even see Abraham specifically is commanded by God to leave his father. How in the world could I reconcile that with your teaching that we should just always stay near our physical parents no matter what? No, Abraham, he was going to follow God and do the things of God, and so he had to say, you know what, I'm even going to leave my physical parents. And sometimes that's a reality because we have different priorities. You know, my number one priority is not making money. This is what's so funny. If I told my family like, hey, I'm going to get a huge bonus and a huge promotion at my job if I move to this city, they would all be like, sounds great. Make sure to invite us over when you move there. And yet if I say, hey, I'm going to go to an awesome church and get a spiritual promotion, they're like, you're in a cult. You know, it's just like, but wait a minute. How is church less valuable or less important than a job? A job that I could literally be fired from at a moment's notice. I mean, in Texas, it's a right to work state where essentially a company can let you go for any reason. They could just say tomorrow, bye. See, you could move all the way across the country for a job and then just go on. Whereas church, unless you're in clear violation of the scriptures, we can't get rid of you. I've studied this, OK? There's been people I'm like, is there an option here? OK. And it's like, no, stuck with that person. It's a new kind of family. And, you know, you're kind of stuck with your physical family, whoever they are. In some cases, you're sometimes stuck with your spiritual family, too. Now, in some cases, that's good. What does it say in Mark, chapter three, verse thirty two? And what he has seen and heard. I'm sorry, I'm just reading a random passage. Give me a second to turn there. Mark, chapter number three. Look at verse thirty two. Now what Jesus said is offensive. It's offensive. If your brother, your mother came up to you and said, like, hey, I'm your mom. You're like, who's my mom? I mean, how many mothers in here want their son to literally look at them and be like, who's my mom? Wouldn't that offend you? Wouldn't that kind of hurt a little bit to feel like, wow, I literally gave birth to you. I, in many cases, breastfed you. I took care of you. I changed your diapers. I didn't sleep a lot because of you. You know, all the different things that moms have invested in their children for someone to just simply say, like, who's my mother? You know what? Jesus Christ was emphasizing spiritual relationships above physical relationships. Now, of course, Jesus didn't hate his mother. He still cared very deeply about his mother. And even at the end of his life, he made sure that his mother was taken care of by the Apostle John. But that doesn't mean that he didn't have some elevated significance of spiritual relationships above physical relationships because he did. He said, you know, more important to me is the people in this room than my physical mother and my physical brother. And when you have that perspective, then you see, wow, church is important. Church is important because I'm separating myself under my spiritual mother, spiritual father, spiritual brothers, spiritual children, just all the different spiritual relationships that we have where we're related, where the older men or the people that got you saved in a context, in a sense, can be like a father unto you, just like the Apostle Paul was a father unto Timothy, and he calls Timothy his own son. And in some context, there is that relationship where you could also have a spiritual mother. Maybe she got you saved or just came alongside and helped you. You can have brethren, people that you got saved around the same time that you go out and work together with, and of course, your sisters, and there's all these dynamics. And of course, for most of us, we just feel comfortable calling each other just brothers and sisters, right? We're all just basically just brothers and sisters. And of course, we have one Heavenly Father, which is God the Father, who's our only Father in that sense. And so we have this family unit, this family bond, but it's more important. And think about it. It's going to go with us into eternity. Unfortunately, for many of us, we will have physical family members who will not be with us in Heaven, who are not even saved, who are not really our spiritual brother or our spiritual sister, and so what's more important than that relationship is the people in this room. And Jesus Christ gave His attention to those who were saved, number one. But number two, notice this in verse 35 again. Producers shall do the will of God. These are people that are actively serving in ministry. These are people that are actively wanting to hear the Word of God teach. I would rather spend my time this morning teaching you this book than to just go hang out and play games with family members. This is more important. This is what's really needful in our society and in our culture, and this is what God wants. God wants us to minister the Word of God to the saved. He wants us to listen to the words of God being preached. He wants us to use those words in our daily lives with our family and our friends and to go out and preach the Gospel. And so we need to understand that if we're not going to forsake church, we have to separate. We have to separate. We have to separate from the relationships that are not spiritual and come into the church. This is that separation. Church is the literal separation. When you don't think that separation is important, well, then you're not going to go to church. You have to realize separation is important. Now let's be honest. We all know that when we're in church and we're active, we're being more spiritual in our daily lives, aren't we? We're thinking more about the things of God. We're dressing better. We're acting better. We're loving our children more actively. We're just being a better person in general when we're going to church and we're around spiritual brethren. And when you go out and you hang out with your friends that are not saved, you go and hang out with people that are backslidden, you have perverted conversations, you have bad thoughts, you do bad actions, you make bad choices, you're just not being very spiritual. Whereas when you're hanging out with people in this room, you're probably going soul-willing, talking about the Bible, you're fellowshipping, you're ministering to the things of God. You notice a huge difference when you separate yourself among this brethren than the brethren of the world. Don't tell me you don't because you're a liar. Those, when you separate yourself and you get around God's people, you act more spiritual. And when you're around the heathen and unsaved and backslidden Christians, well, you act like them too. You know, it's a lot easier to drag people down, be not deceived, evil communications, corrupt good manners. We're all affected by the company that we keep, and when you're in bad company, well, you usually act bad. And when you're in good company, well, iron can sharpen iron. But it only happens in church, and we need to realize, if we're not going to forsake church, we have to realize that we need each other. I need y'all. And, in a sense, y'all need me, we all need each other. We need that relationship, and we need to make sure that we're not willing to separate this bond. As much of a bond you have towards physical family, you need to add to that and make it a spiritual bond. And say, I'm spiritually bonded to the people of God. Now, go back to Nehemiah chapter 10, and I want to read a little bit more of this passage, Nehemiah chapter number 10. So point one is this, we need to separate so that we won't forsake church. If we're not separating ourselves, well, then we'll end up just forsaking church. We won't really serve God. People that don't go to church don't serve God, folks. I know someone, no you don't. And the greatest people, the people that are serving God the greatest, or doing the most, are very dedicated to church. Church is the institution where you serve God. And it's where it motivates you and empowers you to serve God effectively. Some people may be trying to serve God, and may be putting a lot of effort, but they're really not accomplishing much because they're not doing it through the local church. There's people that have all these online ministries. But these people that have these online churches, they're always the weirdest people, attracting the weirdest people. You know why? Because all the normal people are in church! And you know what makes you normal? Church. If you're weird, you need church. And there's some people in here that need some church, okay? I'm just being honest with you, alright? We all need church. Church makes you normal. You know what makes you weird? The internet. The internet makes you weird. And these people that are these online-only individuals often are some of the weirdest people you'll ever meet. They have the weirdest beliefs, the weirdest ideas, and so I don't want to have an online church. Oh, well, I have this online ministry. We're just reaching all these people. But, you know, it's not even real. Most of the time, these people, you look at their comment section, and it's filled with unsaved people and trolls and bots. It's like, who do you even think that you're reaching? You're not really reaching a lot of people. And look, I'm not against doing things online. Obviously, there's a time and a place. I'm for getting the Word of God out there as much as humanly possible. But you know what I'm not going to do is I'm not going to skip Sunday morning church to do something online. I'm not going to skip evening church to do something online. I'm not going to skip soul-winning time to do something online. Now, if I can do something online and it's not impacting those, praise God, I'm not against that. But you know, the people that are forsaking the assembling, they're not separating themselves. Well, you know what? That's a problem. And we need to make sure that we're not letting anything get in the way of us serving God and observing His statutes and His ordinances and His days even. Now, in the Old Testament, we have the Old Testament Sabbath. It says in verse 31, And if the people of the land bring where any vittles on the Sabbath day to sell, that we would not buy it of them on the Sabbath or on the holy day, and that we would leave the seventh year and the exaction of every debt. So, point one, these people, in order to not forsake the house of God, number one, they make sure to separate themselves. They separate themselves from the unsaved. They're separating themselves from the backslidden. They are dedicating and separating and congregating themselves unto the things of God. Secondly, they make this proclamation of how they're not going to buy stuff or do stuff on the Sabbath in violation of the Sabbath. Basically, they're just saying, we're going to observe the Sabbath. And this, to me, shows that they are steadfast. They're steadfast in their conviction. That they are going to do what they said. They're not going to allow someone to tempt them to be taken away and violate the Sabbath. Just in the same vein, in the New Testament, while we don't have the Sabbath, I believe we still have church. We still have this day where we go and worship God together, and we shouldn't allow somebody to draw us away from church to go do some other activity. And what we have to buy something, to sell something. Basically, this is the idea, work. So you have a lot of people forsaking church because of family members. But then you have another reason why a lot of people are forsaking church, and it's because of money. It's because of money and activity. It's because they have just something else to do. Well, I need to go buy something. I need to go sell something. I've got to basically do some kind of business transaction. Or it could even just be entertainment. But these people are not going to allow these things and draw them away. How many people are not serving God on Sundays because of sports today? Is it any coincidence that sports, major sports, are on Sunday? Things like football and other sporting activities and events that are on Sundays. And now youth sports are even that way. It used to be that youth sports were never Sundays and never Wednesday nights. But now there's been a major increase in Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. You know why? You want to know why kids sports, many of them, are now Wednesdays and Sunday nights? It's because there was nothing ever planned for those times, and now a bunch of people quit church, so they all have this free time. They're like, hey, when's the time when everybody's free? Well, I'm not doing anything Wednesday. I'm not doing anything Sunday anymore. Well, just kids sports are exploding on Sundays and exploding on Wednesdays. Why? Because so many people have forsaken the house of God. They've forsaken church. They've forsaken the commandments of the Lord. They decided, you know what, I'm going to buy or sell. I'm just going to do work. I'm going to do activity. I'm going to go have fun. I'm going to go do my thing as opposed to standing aside a day to worship God. And you know what? We, as God's people, need to decide, you know what? I will not forsake church. I don't care what sporting activity. I don't care what sale. I don't care what business. I don't care what activity. I'm not going to do it. And some people, they just refuse to do this. They refuse to put church as that high of a priority. They would say, well, but if my boss wants to pay me a lot of extra money, I'm going to skip church. Well, if I'm going to lose this job, then I'll skip church. Well, if my kid can't be this all-star baseball player, then I'm going to skip church. I mean, there are people that say, well, my kid can't be on this traveling soccer team, this traveling baseball team, if I go to church every Wednesday night and every Sunday night. We just can't be on it. They'll kick us off. And they literally choose the baseball team for their kid. They'll choose the traveling basketball team for their young girl. And then their young girl will probably get an ACL injury that will permanently hurt them for the rest of their life. And I'm not cursing them. I'm not wishing evil upon them. But most girls that play basketball get ACL injuries because they're not designed to jump like that and have that much impact on their knees regularly. ACL injuries are just really common for those individuals. And you know what? I would not want to be a saved Christian that knows better and go into these sports. I would be afraid. I would be afraid that something's going to happen to me or that God could do something to me, or traveling up in the mountains in Colorado to be a part of all those teams and all those events. There's always sporting events happening in Colorado, probably because they hate God up there mostly. It's one of the most wicked places. Why are they traveling to Oklahoma? Or why aren't they traveling to Louisiana or Alabama? Why aren't they always traveling to Colorado? You know why they're always traveling to Colorado? Because they don't have church up there apparently. Because they don't care about churches much over there. It's very ungodly in general. So they have all these different events and conferences and things for sports because they're not busy serving God over there. You know what? I don't want Texas to become this place where it's just like, Yeah, you know what? There's nothing to do on Sundays, so let's invent something to do. No, we have something to do. We have church. And then we have soul winning. And then we have church again. And they're like, how much church do you have? Do you want more? We can have more. Go to the Spanish, speak Spanish, go to the Spanish service. Praise God for the Spanish service. Praise God for the people that are going to, some people are going four times a week. Praise God for them. People are really plugged into church. You know what? The people that are just forsaking church, going one time or whatever. You know what? They're in danger. Go back to chapter 6. This is Nehemiah's attitude. I'm not going to let anything stop me. Not only just money, business, sports. Also trolls and enemies. I'm not going to allow them to stop me either. He says in verse 1, Now it came to pass on Sanballat and Tobiah and Gisham the Arabian, and the rest of our enemies, heard that I had builded the wall and that there was no breach left therein, though at that time I had not set up the doors upon the gates. But Sanballat and Gisham said unto me, saying, Come, let us meet together in some one of the villages in the plain of Ono. But they thought to do me mischief. And I sent messengers unto them, saying, I am doing a great work so that I cannot come down. Why should the work cease whilst I leave it and come down to you? There's so many people that they realize that you're winning. They realize that you're succeeding. And so they need you to be distracted. And they're just saying, hey, why don't you come over here and talk to us? Why don't you come argue with us? You know, the Bible says, after the first and second admonition, to reject. A man that is an heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject. Knowing that he is subverted and sinneth, being condemned of himself. According to the Bible, once you've given somebody just enough to figure it out, and they don't want to figure it out, you leave them alone. And there's a lot of enemies, there's a lot of trolls, there's a lot of evil workers that would love to get you out of church. And they may not be able to do it successfully by saying, hey, quit church. What they can do is just like, hey, come over here and talk to me about this. Hey, I just want to argue about this with you. You know, there's so many people that just argue with trolls online, and it's like you just don't even understand what a troll is. The troll wants to argue with you. It's not that the troll actually has a sincere opinion. They have no sincere opinions. They are just a vacuous soul. In fact, most of the things they say are all lies. They just simply want you to talk to them. And by you talking to them, they are winning. This is just so funny. You're like, did you see what I said to this troll? And it's like, they won. I don't even know what you put, but they won. Because it doesn't matter how much you defeated them and how much reason and logic you used. Just by giving them even a little bit of time and energy, they won. And you fed them. It's like a tick. It's like if you ever had a tick on you, the more they feed, the bigger they get. I don't know if you like, ticks are tiny. But when they start sucking that blood, they can like, they get big and they like billow up or whatever, and they can look like a giant mole because they're just constantly sucking that blood. But you know what? That's what we're doing in society is we're just like propping up all these ticks of society and all these trolls by people talking to them. If they were to just ignore it, it would just go away. It would find a different host. It would find someone else to bother. And you know what? We as God's people need to make sure that we're not giving our time, effort, and energy to our enemies. This has happened. We've had literal church services where we've just had hundreds of protesters. We've had dozens of protesters. And they're just saying like, hey, come over here and talk to us. Hey, come over here and just like hang out with us. Hey, let's talk about this. It's like they're not interested in talking to you. They just want you to not go in the building. Or they just want to do some mischief under you. Or they want you to walk over there and they want to antagonize you so much that you'll like get in a pushing, shoving competition or something, or then they can sue you or they can find out more information about you so they can harass you. You know, best advice is just stay away from them. Hey, I'm doing a great work. I'm going to do what they say. What is this, the 90s? Talk to the hand. Is it 90s? I don't know. This is what I remember. Right? It's just I'm going to ignore you. I want nothing to do with you. And you know what? Give them zero of your energy. Give them zero of your time. Don't even pay attention to them. Just be steadfast. Just say, hey, I'm walking into church. I'm ignoring you like the parasite and disgusting, abominable freak that you are. You're just a dead man walking, and I'm going to ignore zombies. All right? Go to Matthew 13. I want to show you another verse here. Go to Matthew chapter 13. We will not forsake church. And one of those ways is sometimes you have to be careful because while you purposely don't want to forsake church, people want to destroy you. And by giving them the opportunity to destroy you, you end up forsaking church. Well, I don't want to forsake church, but I love baseball. But then you let baseball destroy you. Or you let your work destroy you. Or you let protesters or enemies destroy you. You need to just say, like, I'm keeping all of you all in your own lanes, and I'm just steadfast locked into church. And if my company says, hey, we need you to work Sundays from now on, I would say, well, if that's the case, this is my last day. It's like, what do you mean, Pastor Shelley? I'm, like, serious. If my company said that, or if I go to a job and I say, like, hey, I would love to work for you. I like this company. I'll work overtime if I have to. I'll work some nights. I'll be willing to come in on Saturdays and stuff. But I'm not going to forsake church, and I'm not going to forsake Wednesday nights. They say, well, you have to work Wednesdays. And I'm just going to say no. Be like, Pastor Menes told his subway boss, I will not work on Sundays. And they're, like, no one gets Sundays off. And he's, like, well, then don't hire me. And they're, like, okay, you're hired. Look, I remember going into a job interview, and I just told the boss. I said this. I said, hey, I want to be done at 4 so that I can go home and see my family. And I said, if you're going to interrupt church or my family, like, I'm going to be off on Sundays, Wednesday nights, and I want to be off at 4. I said, I'll come in early. I'll even work from home at night just to make up any difference. But I said, if you're going to interrupt my family time or if you're going to interrupt my time at church, then don't hire me. Because I will quit. And then they gave me a job. That's what I told them. I wasn't walking in. They wasn't, like, on the interview, like, sheet or something. It wasn't on the job application. It was like, you can have whatever you want. You can do, you know, you don't have to work on Sunday. I was just saying, like, this is how I feel about the situation. And you say, well, how could you walk in and demand that of an employer? Well, I was good at my job. You know, if you're lazy and you're not dressed well and you're not smart and they have no interest in hiring you and you say that, they're like, bye. But when you've already interviewed and you show them that you're competent and they're excited to hire you and you're in that negotiation phase of, like, how much you're going to get paid and all that stuff, be clear. And, you know, all of you men, this is a tip. Negotiate high in that spot because they won't want to pay you after they hire you, okay? Your window of negotiation for pay is before they hire you. And, unfortunately, most times you only get pay raises by switching companies. And it's kind of frustrating that that's the reality. But once they kind of got you locked in, they'll just kind of, here's a nickel, here's a dime, you know, every once in a while, every few years. But sometimes it's usually getting another position where you get that pay raise. And that's your opportunity to say, hey, if you want me, here's my price. Here's where I'm at. Here's the number that I want. And everything's negotiable, okay? Now, again, some companies will just say we just can't afford that, we can't pay that, so this is our highest. And then you decide if you want that or walk away. But I'm just saying, you know, more important than my pay was that. And, in fact, that's what I would even say. They would say, like, what about pay? And I'm like, I don't care about pay as much. I just wanted to tell you this. Sundays, Wednesdays, my family. If you mess with those, bye. Work is not more important than church and it's not more important than my family. And so I'm going to make sure that those things are taking priority for me in my life. Now, Matthew chapter 13, I want to look at verse 22. The Bible says, He also that receives seed among thorns is he that heareth the word, and the care of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful. In the parable of the seat of the sower, we have someone who they love the word of God, they've received the seed, they're even growing a little bit, but they just allowed something else to come in, and then notice now they're forsaking the house of God. I think that everybody here is at least in this category. I think everybody here is saved. If you're not, you know, you can go be a reprobate somewhere else. Virtually everybody here, I believe, is saved. Everybody here actually cares about the Bible. All of you have a desire to serve God. But all of us are susceptible to allowing something to enter into our hearts and enter into our lives that will drag us out of here. Whether that be a family member, whether that be a job, whether that be a sport, whether it be an activity, whether that be just a friend, there's something that could drag us out, and then we would forsake the house of God. What would become more important to us than God is your mom. What becomes more important to you than God is a job. What becomes more important to you than the house of God is money. What becomes more important to you than this is baseball, or football, or having fun, or pleasure. And then that becomes your new God. That's the one that you serve. And there are way worse Gods. Every God is inferior to the God of the Bible. Football is not a God. You want to go be a servant of the Dallas Cowboys? Talk about a losing season after losing season. Talk about being disappointed in the playoffs every single time. Talk about coming up to the battle to the gauntlet and being let down and ashamed every single year. Whereas, hey, when we go to battle, God gives us victory over our protesters every single time, where God gives us victory after victory when we go out and preach the gospel and get people saved every single time. You know what? The God of the Bible is a great God to serve, and the Gods of the heathen are just sin and wickedness and disappointment and shame and contempt. Who are you going to serve today? You know what? You have to sometimes trim the garden to make sure that the fruit comes out. Now, I'm just going to go to a few more places for the sake of time. Just go to Romans 12. I was going to go back to Nehemiah. If you read the rest of the chapter and read it, those seven verses, you know what it brings up? Sacrifice. It brings up sacrifice, ties, ties of ties, all the different offerings, all the different things that they're pouring in. And if we're not going to forsake church, number one, we need to separate ourselves. Number two, we need to be steadfast. And number three, we need to sacrifice. Now, if you've ever read the Old Testament, I don't even have to remind you how much the Bible brings up the idea of sacrifice, doesn't it? Animal sacrifices. Now, let me explain something to you because you don't really equate this in an American economy, but animal sacrifices is money, folks. When you have to slaughter a cow, that is money. And let's just be clear. In today's money, we're talking somewhere between $2,500 to $3,000 to slaughter one cow. You slaughter one cow. And, I mean, they're offering animal sacrifices all the time, just animal sacrifices, just daily, all the different times, all the time. You do a sin, animal sacrifice. I mean, they're just bringing in all these sacrifices. All this money is being poured in all of the time into the house of God. You know, it kind of makes me think of today how most of us are probably being paid biweekly. I mean, no one here gets paid bi-monthly. I said biweekly. I meant bi-monthly or, like, every other week, something like that, right? Lots of people, right? Most of us are being paid at least at a frequency of once a month or even greater. And so a lot of us are tithing or bringing in our sacrifices, bringing in our offerings every single month. I mean, we're just bringing in this stuff. But you know what? That's the same example we have in the Old Testament where they're literally just slaughtering animals just every single day, just all the time, just constantly bringing in all their sacrifices and their offerings unto the Lord. The Bible says in Romans 12, verse 1, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which is a reasonable service. We should be willing to sacrifice ourselves. And one of those sacrifices is the fact that we work for money that we give to church. We work for money. We literally are putting in our effort and our energy, and then we're giving that money to church. We're tithing on what God has given us. Go if you would to 2 Corinthians, chapter 9. Proverbs, chapter 3, talks about this as well. It says in verse 9, In the book of Genesis, you have men of God tithing. In the book of Malachi, it brings up the importance of the tithe. In the book of Proverbs, it brings up the idea of honoring God with your firstfruits. You have a Nehemiah. They're bringing all their sacrifices and they're bringing all their tithes. Then the people that are actually the ministers, they're also required to tithe. It's not like I don't tithe. I have to tithe on the tithes. The Bible says that you bring in the tithe of the tithes. So whatever I get paid from church, I tithe on that. No one's exempt from tithing. No one's exempt from making sacrifice unto the Lord. We're all to be sacrificing unto God. The Bible even makes it clear that there's also offerings that go above the tithe. There are some people who not only tithe, but they also give in abundance above the tithe. They're giving money to the house of God because they care about the house of God. They're wanting to make these kinds of sacrifices. We see that the poor widow woman cast in two mites. When Jesus Christ described that, he didn't say that she tithed. He said that she cast in all her living. Meaning that this was a woman that was giving money above what would be required as a particular tithe. This was an offering. The Bible talks about free will offerings. Probably something Calvinist's head would explode. A free will offering is where you're not commanded or obligated. And God's not grabbing you by puppet strings and like, Hey, I'm going to give money to the church. No, you just out of your own heart just say, I love God. I love church. I want to give money to the church. And you just give something above what is required. 2nd Corinthians chapter 9 verse 5 says this, Therefore I thought it necessary to exhort the brethren, that they would go before unto you, and make up beforehand your bounty, Where have ye had notice before, that the same might be ready, as a manner of bounty, and not as of covetousness? But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly, and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give, not grudgingly, or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver. There should be some giving that's not of necessity. That is an offering. Now if you don't, okay, you reap sparingly. If you do, the Bible says you reap bountifully. But I just want to give you a quick rundown of our history, and I know for the sake of time it will be a few minutes past 12, but I want to give you a quick rundown of some things that have happened in our church, because you give money to the church, sometimes you don't really understand what's going to happen. Like, why give money to a church? Why invest money in a church? Well, in 2014, August 31st, Steadfast Baptist Church was founded. Now I believe the first services were in Romero's home, is that correct? Or they might have been in another member's home. Was it in his home or another member's? His house. And how many people were there? Do you all remember? 20-ish people or something like that? So pretty humble beginnings. In a house, 20 or so people for the first service, and from then they grew quite a bit, because I visited Steadfast Baptist Church in 2015. They had their one-year anniversary. It was on August 28th. Me and my wife and my son Clayton, we all drove down and we came. It was a Friday night service that they celebrated, with Pastor Steven Anderson coming, and he preached, go big or go home. And you know what? I love that sermon. And that should still be the sermon for our church, okay? And it was a great time. There was a lot of people there. There was well over 100 people in attendance on that Friday night. It was the weirdest building I've ever been in in my life, okay? I'm just going to be honest. It was this tri-stack layer building or something. It was just like a platform, and then there was another platform that was a little bit higher, and then another platform. I think it was a multi-tenant building that had just basically been knocked down or something, the walls. So it was just this extremely awkward facility. And then in the back, they had a little kids' room, which was like the screaming hellion room. But I was there. Who was there for the first year anniversary service? Yeah, we had some other people, not just some of the first. It was a great time. And then also in 2017, August 6th, I know that this is my birthday, you all found the Jacksonville church plant. Now, I was originally going to go out there because Tyler Baker was going to go out there and I was going to go help him, but I cancelled my ticket when I found out he wasn't, and then I found out you guys were going to send Adam Fanon to go out there and start that church. But that church had a lot of people joining it, even despite all that. I remember when Pastor Anderson went out to preach for one of their services, they had like 230 people in one of those services. That was a lot of people. I think the church was running services sometimes over 100, is that correct? Who was part of the Jacksonville church at any point in time? Yeah, look, lots of people were part of our Jacksonville church. And look, obviously some of the things that steadfast has done, you have mixed feelings about, but we're focusing on the good, right? Wasn't still a lot of good that happened in Jacksonville and a lot of great people saved. And here's the thing, that church still exists today as a biting word, Baptist church, by Pastor Theo Matthews, who loves God, is a great servant, has a great family, is a good soul winner, and you know what, praise God that that church is still going. It's because of this church. It's because of Steadfast Baptist Church that that even exists today. Not only that, in 2018, November 4th, OKC was founded. Now, it's crazy because I was actually there for their Friday, I think it was a Friday service, I was there, I went out and I was a guest preacher. I got to go out there and preach for them. There was a lot of people there. It was a great service. I really enjoyed it. 2019, January 6th, I became the pastor of Steadfast Baptist Church. And boy was that fun, OK? It's the funnest times of our lives, right? It was exciting. It was exciting and dramatic and eventful and crazy and bittersweet and upsetting. It was pretty much every emotion you could possibly have in a week. I mean, here's the thing, how many people were a part of this church before I became the pastor and are still here? Look around. In fact, I have a spreadsheet. It's over 100 people that are still a part of our church even before I became its pastor. That is a huge testimony to you guys being steadfast because to have your pastor be that and then stick around shows that you actually love the Word of God and that you are not following a person. You are following the Bible. Because if you're following a person, you would just all crumble. But because you are following the Word of God, you're stuck here and it's a true testament. It's funny to me, the Scots, their first service was the Wednesday when Romero stepped down. That is just crazy. Can you imagine moving to a church and the first service, the pastor is quitting? You're like, what? But you know what? They stuck with church, and you know what? Praise God that they're in church today. Praise God. They've been a blessing to this church. In 2020, August 1, Dylan Oz joined staff. And you know what? That really helped my heart. I'll just be honest with you, okay? And in 2020, October 18, is when we had our grand opening in our Hearst location. Now, it moved prior. I think we gave ourselves a little bit of time. But in October 18, we had a grand opening. And you know what? I love that building. And we put a lot of work in that building. Who worked on that building? Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Who sanded forever? No, I'm just kidding. Oh, man, we put so much effort and energy into that building. And you know what? We reached a lot of new people. We brought new people in. We got people to become steadfast from that specific location. We ended up starting our Baptist Bias podcast in that building. And we had our first pilot episode in there. And then in 2021, September 4, we had all of our money stolen. So that was an interesting day. Also, on the 27th, me and Brother Oz were fired by Buttery, okay? So that was interesting. But I'm still here, you know, somehow. Not only that, on March 12 of 2022, we were evicted from the Hearst location. That was when we had our last service. I think that was a Wednesday night. And then in May 22 of year 22, we moved to Watauga. So we ended up moving to the Watauga building. March 1 of 2023, we moved here. So we've had kind of a crazy journey of what we've been doing. In 2021, we released The Sodomite Deception. Hey, your money helped contribute to that film, all right? 2023, we released The Preserved Bible. And in 2023, we released the LGBT Terrace. We've also released the Daniel series with help of Pastor Anderson. And Brother Ben helped on all of those projects and has done a great job with them. We've had three FBBF conferences. And in 2019, that Friday evening service, we had 263 people in service. In 2021, on that Friday evening, we had 268 people in service. And in 2023, we had 307 people in service. You think it's crowded right now, all right? That wasn't it. What do we have this morning? 241? Okay, we smashed our record this morning. But still, 307? That's great. Our previous church attendance record for Sunday morning was 222. We have 241 this morning. So praise God for that. We had some of our big protests. Hey, we all went to... not all of us. Some of us went to the city council meeting in Arlington. Who went to the city council meeting in Arlington? Oh, yeah. How about the city council Watauga meeting? Oh, yeah. Those are pretty exciting, huh? Right now, we have approximately 285 active members. So I always am keeping track of this. People that are regularly attending church services, we have 285 active members. We have one foreign evangelist. We still have two church plants, in a sense, and we have Pure Words Baptist Church, we have Oklahoma City. We have another evangelist there in Oklahoma City, Brother Evangelist Tanner Furr, and he's going to be moving here and becoming part of our staff here permanently. We have 109 people that were members that are no longer members. They either went to another church or they moved on or whatever. And we've had well over 120 guests that have filled out communication cards that came to our service and we got all their details and information. So we've had over 500 people that have been in our services and attending... just since I've been the pastor. And then we've had over 100 people kicked out. That's a different group of people, okay? Salvations. In 2019, we had 2,080 salvations, 34 baptisms. In 2020, we had 2,012 salvations, 20 baptisms. In 21, we had 2,111 salvations and 22 baptisms. In 22, we had 1,771 salvations and 35 baptisms. In 23, we had 2,758 salvations and 24 baptisms. And so far, year to date, we have... I want to make sure my numbers are accurate with the bulletin, but... Yeah, my numbers are a little more accurate. 1,502 salvations and 11 baptisms. So just from the time that I've been the pastor, because I don't have records before this. Sorry the records weren't kept very well. Shocker. Since I've been the pastor, we've had 12,234 professions of faith in Christ. And we had 146 baptisms. Look, we are just getting started, folks. And this started with a humble group of just a couple dozen people in someone's house. Now look at where we're at. And now look at where we're heading. There's never been a better time to invest in the things of God. And you don't know what kind of spiritual implications your sacrifices and the things that we make have. But you know what? Praise God that there's 241 people that decided we're not going to forsake church this morning. Praise God that there's 285 people active in our church that are saying, we're not going to forsake church, we're going to get plugged in a church. You know what? We need to make sure that we just decide right now, I'm not going to forsake church. I'm going to separate myself. I'm going to be steadfast no matter what opposition or opportunities come my way. And number three, I am going to sacrifice for the things of God. Because this is an institution to invest in. This is a place to live and to enjoy. And you know what? Praise God that there are people that have stuck around for 10 years. I mean, that is honestly a real monument to stay in one church for 10 years. And not just any church. A church of just a few people. And to see it grow over the years. Without those people, we wouldn't have this church. Without those people's dedication. You know, it's important to have members that have been here for a long time and are dedicated to church and serving. And you know, the people that we've honored this morning, they're all people that have given a lot to this church. Of their time, effort, energy, sacrifice. And they also are dedicated. They're involved in a lot of the ministries. They are a huge blessing and asset to this church. And you know what? I would hope that we have more people like that. I would hope that every church would have people like that. Where people say, you know what? We are going to get plugged into a church and we're going to dedicate ourselves to a church. And we're going to be loyal to a church. And we will serve God. And rain and shine, wherever they move, whatever protesters, whatever events happen. You know what? We're going to stick with God. We're going to be with the people of God. And we won't quit on God. God forsake church. We're going to be steadfast. Let's close in prayer. Thank you Heavenly Father so much for this church and this congregation. I pray that you would just bless this afternoon, our soul winning. Please bless our evening services. Please give us another 10 years. Give us another 50 years. Allow our church to just be a continual testament to people that are dedicated to your promises of being steadfast. And that we don't just have the name, but that we actually care about being steadfast. And I pray that you would help use this church to do even greater works for your son's name. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Alright, in closing, let's go to song number 437. Song number 437. Song number 437, Battle Hymn of the Recloyed. Everybody knows it well. Sing it out on the first. Song number 437. My eyes have seen the glory of the doubting of the Lord. He is standing on the vintage where the grapes of wrath restore. He is standing on the vintage where the grapes of wrath restore. He afflicts the faithful and he covers terrible snares. His truth is marching on. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Glory, glory, hallelujah. His truth is marching on. I have seen Him in the watchbars of a hundred circling camps. They have built Him in the doctor and they heed me lose and dance. I can be His righteous sent to climb the dam and flaring nets. His faith is marching on. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Glory, glory, hallelujah. His faith is marching on. He is sent before the trumpet that shall never sound retreat. He is sending out the hearts of men before His judgment seat. Oh, be swift my soul to dance. For you be true awake like me. Our God is marching on. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Our God is marching on. In the beauty of the world, His grace was poured across the sea. With the glory in His presence, There's rich figures, you and me. As He died to make me holy, Let us die to make me free. Come out in time to God. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Our God is marching on. All right, if you please stay seated still for a moment. Our musicians, I'm going to have you go ahead and get up now. Take your instruments and all your personal things with you. And then our ushers can come now as well. And you're going to be just helping us move these chairs off. As soon as they get done, they're going to come up here. If you're tall, you're going to go in the back. So if you're six foot and taller, you're going to be in the back. And the children will try to get you up here in the front area. Brother Rich, you're going to help. He's helping us with the camera. Where are you putting the camera exactly? Are you putting it? Okay, so we're going to be trying looking right here. Brother Rich is going to help try and get us organized. My wife might even help just kind of getting people stacked correctly. But we're just going to give them another 30 seconds or so to get all this stuff cleared off. Hopefully, I think we can do it without the piano.