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

I want to follow that guy. And whenever I was, I don't know, young 20s, I had this thought a lot of times of, if I could go back into the Bible, at any time in the Bible, when would I go? You know, it's kind of a fun question, maybe you think about it. Would you want to see Noah? Would you want to see the beginning? Would you want to see Abraham? Would you want to see David? I mean, there's a lot of cool stuff to see in the Bible. But I always immediately was like, I want to see Jesus. I would just want to walk with Jesus. I would want to follow Jesus. I would want to be right there. I mean, no questions asked, following Jesus. And I always thought about that, and then one day I kind of like woke up to that thought and I realized, no I wouldn't. No, I wouldn't follow Jesus if I lived in that time because in my life I'm not even following any church really. I'm not even going to church consistently. I'm not even reading my Bible consistently. And I think that I would just be the guy following Jesus Christ. So then I said, well Jesus, you know, He's infinite. He created all things. He created me. There's a purpose for me being on this earth. If I really would have followed Jesus, wouldn't He have put me in that time? I mean, if that was when I was going to really do the biggest works for God, when He was going to really use me the most, wouldn't He have put me in that time? But He didn't. He put me in today. So if I really would have followed Jesus Christ, I just immediately realized I would follow the greatest man of God on this planet today. I mean, if I truly would have followed Jesus Christ, if I would have been given forsaken everything and followed Him, then I would, if I was going to do that today, I would probably follow the greatest Christian on this earth. I'd probably try to find who is most Christ-like, and I'm going to go follow that guy. If I want to even try to be realistic about that vision, if I want to even try to be realistic about that thought, if I don't want to just be a hypocrite and say that. So, you know, why did I come to Fayetteport Baptist Church? I felt like Pastor Anderson was the greatest guy that I could find that was following Jesus Christ. So I decided I want to follow this guy. You know, I think a lot of people in this room, maybe you've had a family member or you've had a friend or someone criticize you, say, oh, you're just following a man. Oh, you're just following some guy. Amen. I'm just trying to find a guy that loves Jesus Christ, that wants to do the things of Jesus Christ. And I want to follow his example. I want to follow the things that he's doing. It's a good thing to follow a man. And we're going to see some examples of that. Go to, uh, go to Matthew 23. I want to show you something. So how can you tell if you're following a man that's good or bad? I mean, that's kind of the question, right? Because obviously following a man isn't always good. It isn't always something that we should be doing. But when you're picking a guy, this is how you know, when you're following a man's right, when you're reading the Bible and the Bible is your final authority and you finding a guy that's matching what the Bible says, you say, well, what does the Bible say I should be doing to find somebody to follow? And then you find the guy according to what the Bible says, and then you follow him. But the opposite of that is when you find a guy that you really like, that you like his personality, like what he says and what he says, doesn't line up with the Bible. It goes against the Bible and you decide to just follow him. Anyways, you say, well, I know that he's not teaching the Bible. I know he's getting contrary to the Bible, but I'm still going to follow him. That's following a man in a bad way. I was thinking about Matthew 23 verse nine, the Bible says, and called no man, your father upon the earth for one is your father, which is in heaven. We see a lot of people that they are following the Pope and they call him his father. They say, Hey father, but guess what? That's contrary to the Bible. So following a man that's going to go against the clear scripture is going to go against God's word is not the right example of somebody that you should follow. You shouldn't be following that man. You should be going to the Bible and saying, what does the Bible say? What does the Bible teaching me? The person I should be following and then finding the guy that lines up with that, because the thing that's, that's the best about this is the Bible never changes. So if you know what the Bible says about following somebody, even if that guy were to fall away, then you just find the next guy that matches up with this book says, and you can just always be grounded by following the guy that the Bible's telling you to follow. But if you're following just one person that's against the Bible, when he changes, everything falls away. Now you're stuck and you have nobody to follow. You don't know what to do because you were following just a person. You weren't actually following what the Bible said. So of course, I'm not teaching that you should elevate man above the Bible, but the Bible does teach a very positive example that we should follow a man.