Episode Transcript
Good morning.
Ten o'clock and it is time to begin.
Today we are in Job chapter 5.
Just like we were last week.
And we've left off in verse 2, in the second half of verse 2, by studying the word silly.
How about that?
And how it means something quite different in the Bible than we use it today.
And that part of the verse said, and envy slayeth the silly ones.
And we learned that a silly one is one who's deceived.
And what kills the silly ones is envy.
And we studied that word quite a bit last week.
So today we want to pick up with the conclusion of the study of verse 2.
And to put the words together, the words we've studied so far together, we can say that envy kills the one who is deceived.
So the word silly, as you can tell, is nowhere near as light-hearted as we use it today because it's translated from the Hebrew, and we have to look at what the Hebrew means uh or what that word means in the Hebrew language.
When I'm playing with my grandchildren, I do some funny stuff.
You may not realize what a funny person I am Because I am as one with a firm and grave countenance and disposition.
But when I'm playing with my grandkids, one of them may say, he's so silly.
And they don't mean that I'm easily deceived by flattery.
They don't even know what that is, the little ones don't.
What they mean is I make them laugh.
That I'm being funny.
And being funny probably won't kill me, but being silly in the scriptural way as one who's deceived by flattery certainly could kill me.
And it eventually would.
I'll give you an example of that Suppose I was in the company of someone who really didn't know me, and they said, wow, you look really athletic.
I bet you could jump over a moving car without getting hurt.
So in my pride and foolishness, I thought, I think I could jump over a moving car.
So I looked out on the highway and decided the first car that comes by here, not a truck, that's too high, but a car.
I'm gonna jump smooth over it and land on the other side Well, this isn't TV, it's reality.
And so what would happen is I'd get hit by the car And knocked into another car, or I'd get run over, and the impact would probably kill me.
And then the scriptures would be fulfilled in your ears.
Envy slayeth the silly ones.
But let's go back to the first silly person in the Bible.
Her name was Eve.
And I'll read you the relevant passage and you can hear it for yourself if you keep in mind that a silly one is one who's deceived.
Now the sir, when I read from Genesis chapter 3 to set this up, the serpent had already tempted Eve to eat.
Of the tree that God placed off limits, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
And Genesis chapter 3, verses 4 through 6 contains Eve's answer and her actions.
Genesis three, verses four through six, if you're taking notes.
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die.
Now what had God told her?
God said, in the day you eat thereof, you shall surely die.
And so Satan, through the serpent, said, You shall not surely die.
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof.
And did eat, and gave also unto her husband, and he did eat.
So Eve went from hearing God's word To believing God's word was true because she quoted it back to the serpent.
We know she believed God's word was true, because up to that point she had not eaten. of the tree after learning God's law.
He said, don't do it or you'll die.
And she said, All right.
So for the the time up to this point, she had obeyed God's word.
She heard it, she believed it, she obeyed it.
She told the serpent God's word was true.
The serpent told her God's word's not true.
So Eve believed the serpent.
Now somewhere in there, she became a silly one, didn't she?
She was deceived.
We know she believed the serpent rather than God, because she ate of the fruit of that forbidden tree.
And so did her husband in the subsequent verses.
Eve, therefore, was a silly woman.
She was deceived by the serpent.
Now, lest we think, well, that was just Eve back then.
Let's supply this truth to you and me.
Because it certainly does.
When you hear the Bible taught like this morning or like you will in in just a few minutes with Brother Fulton or Wednesday night or any other time, when you hear the Bible taught.
You know it's God's word.
If you're a Christian, you know it's God's word.
And some people who aren't Christians say, yeah, I believe that's God's word.
They just don't want to receive it.
But you know it's God's word, and whether God's word tells you to do something or to not do something. . .
The proof that you believe that word is your obedience.
And when Satan attacks you as he did Eve.
And he tempts you to do wrong, as always, you have two choices.
You can obey or you can be silly and disobey.
When Adam and Eve disobeyed God's word, they were both silly.
When the The slick-tongued serpent advertised the supposed benefits of eating the tree.
Now what were those benefits?
Your eyes will be open.
You'll know good and evil.
Those were supposedly benefits.
And when Eve saw the immediate benefits of eating of that fruit.
Now what did she say they were?
She said those benefits were they're good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and it was desired to make one wise.
So she recognized that that was a quality of that fruit to make one wise.
So when she listened to what the devil's advertised benefits were And she considered what she thought the benefits were and acted accordingly.
She acted in silliness, not in faith.
You see, we look at things in God's Word and we say, you know, it would be a lot more fun if I could do that right there that the Bible says not to do.
Now that's because we're thinking according to our own corrupt flesh, our own defiled minds, and not in faith.
And as I was studying the Genesis passage, and I do this a lot, I have questions, I and I have to answer those.
If I ask myself a question, I have to answer it.
I've got to go to the scriptures and find the answer.
Or it drives me crazy.
But as I was studying the Genesis passage there that I just read, I thought about what would have happened had Eve slowed down. and analyzed each of these supposed benefits of eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
And had she done so, she would have realized that the first benefit she advertised, that is that it's good for food.
And the second one that it's pleasant to the eyes had already been met, those benefits had already been met in the other trees of the garden.
Genesis chapter 2 verse 9 says so.
It tells us both benefits had already been met in the other trees of the garden.
It says, and out of the ground Made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
So did you see that?
God had already given them all these other trees from which to eat good food that was pleasant to the sight.
So yes, you could look at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and say, the food looks good and it's pleasant to the sight.
And you could turn over here to this other tree and say that's got good food and it's pleasant to the sight.
The serpent did not tell Eve that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil tasted better.
And looked better.
And she didn't say that.
She didn't say, you know, this actually looks better than all these other trees.
She said it's good for food and pleasant to the eyes.
In other words, there's nothing wrong with this.
Ebe didn't say that about the forbidden tree.
The difference in the fruits of all the trees was not in their taste.
It was not in their fitness for consumption.
The difference is was that the eating of those other fruits would have given life and health rather than death.
That was the difference.
Certainly wasn't the difference she was thinking about.
In Genesis 2, 17, God had told men that in the day that he ate of that tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
He would surely die, not maybe die, not possibly die, or even probably die, but surely die.
And in that verse, the word surely and the word die are the exact same Hebrew word.
So if you die, you surely die.
And if you surely, if you will surely die, then you will die.
Just as surely as if you were already dead.
A good example of this teaching came to mind as I was studying because I was getting hungry.
While I studied, and for some reason I thought of eating fish Now I love to catch crappie and clean them and put their carcasses in my garden to help my vegetables grow. and put their delicious meat in the fryer and fry it up.
Sometimes I grill it.
Now I've never died from eating fried croppery.
Can you tell?
I'm still here And nobody I've ever fed it to, and that's been in the hundreds, has ever died or gotten food poisoning from it.
It's just wonderful.
In fact, it's always tasted very good, and I raised my little girls on crappie from the time they were able to chew adult food Now there is in the Indo-Pacific waters a creature called the stonefish.
And its meat is reputed to be quite tasty.
However, the stonefish has a highly toxic venom in its spines.
And that venom during the preparation of the fish can easily contaminate the meat.
And so it takes a specially trained chef to prepare that meat and you'll know if he didn't do it right because you'll suddenly lose feeling in your lips and your face and you'll be paralyzed.
Your diaphragm muscle won't do its job anymore and you'll suffocate.
And die.
It's a bad way to end a meal, isn't it?
The only good thing is I wouldn't have to pay the check.
You all know me, I'd be okay with that But I can promise you this, I would never bring a stonefish into my boat, into my house, or to my table.
Because I don't want to take the chance that this good eating fish could expose me to the venom and potentially kill me.
And I certainly Would not put a stone fish on the table for my wife or my children to eat You know why?
Because there are plenty of fish that are good for food and a lot more pleasant to the eyes than the stone fish.
And I'm satisfied with those.
I'm okay not eating stone fish ever.
And because of what I know about stonefish, the most silver-tongued chef could not persuade me to try a bite of it.
Now, if I can have that sort of mindset toward stonefish, why can't I have that same mindset toward God's Word That's the frustrating part about living in this flesh is, God, why can't I be as faithful to your word as I am to not eat stonefish?
Makes me feel pretty silly in the biblical way.
In our flesh we are easily deceived.
We are silly in our flesh.
Mankind has always tried to find a way around God's word, starting with Adam to our generation now and everyone in between In fact, silly Israel, remember we've read all about the children of Israel in the 1st and 2nd Kings and before then even.
Silly Israel Would rather have believed the prophets of Baal than the prophets of God And Elijah showed the prophets of Baal and the witnesses at those altars who was silly and who was right.
And the only way that we can resist Satan's efforts to steer us away from the Bible is by the power of the Holy Spirit.
An unsaved person can't do it.
A saved person can't do it without the power of the Holy Spirit.
And that power is not some mysterious thing you have to go to a Benny Henn meeting to get.
That power comes through belief in the gospel of Jesus Christ when God's Spirit enters into the believer and lives there and never leaves.
And then when we read God's Word, then we say, Lord, help me.
I use the word help more than I do any other word.
I got two phrases that I use in my prayer.
If you ever want to know, I wonder what Brother Andy prays, well here you go.
Thank you and help That's it.
I mean that's not all, but that's that comprises the majority of my prayers.
Thank you, thank you, Lord.
I thank him for a lot of things daily But I cry out for help too.
I do it before I study.
I say, Lord, you know I can't do this in my flesh.
You've never failed me yet.
Would you help me to study so I can understand it and be a better believer?
And then I can pass it out to the people who want to listen to it And they can be strengthened in the faith.
And if they're lost, they can be drawn to the gospel.
Because I can't do that.
I may be persuasive But I'm not that persuasive.
I can't persuade a lost person to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ by faith.
Not in my flesh, but God can.
So I just take his word And he's the one who helps us to believe and to obey his word.
And our spiritual man never dies.
Envy never slays the spiritual man.
The one that is born again.
But our flesh continues to be silly.
That's why it has to die.
Envy slays our flesh.
The wages of sin is death, the Bible says.
The wages of envy is death.
Now the serpent had the task of convincing Eve that the word surely, he said, you shall surely die, that the word surely had been misapplied.
That was Satan's task.
In fact, not only did he convince her of that, but he also convinced her that the word die was incorrect.
The word surely and the word die were the same in the Hebrew.
He said, you're not going to die, and you're not going to surely die.
And that's how intelligent the devil is.
You and I are not anywhere as smart as Satan.
If somebody thinks they can outfox the devil, they're foolish.
We're no match for him.
In fact, none of Adam's race is a match for Satan.
And to Satan, we're all silly ones.
He's just waiting to deceive.
He is a deceiver And that's what he goes about trying to do, is deceive people.
And when he deceived silly Adam and Eve.
They died spiritually.
They were cut off from God.
And they began the physical death process.
In that day they died, meaning they died spiritually.
They were cut off from their source of life.
And their bodies began that death process.
Now, uh many of you have joined us since I last gave you this illustration, and it was actually an object lesson that I used in a prior church where I taught through the Genesis to Jesus, which uh we now teach here as uh the well or it was the creation to Christ back then and we now teach it as Genesis to Jesus so it's a There's some different things in there, but it's the same gospel that's being taught.
And when I was teaching the creation to Christ, I taught about what happened when Adam and Eve ate of that fruit of that forbidden tree.
Because God had said, In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
And so the question on the students' mind was, well, when they ate, they were still standing.
And they lived, and then they were kicked out of the garden, and and Adam lived to be over 900 years old, 930 I believe.
So how how is it that they died?
And so I had explained to them what that meant.
So we had uh these are sometimes the most obnoxious hedges you can have.
It's a red-tipped fotinia.
They're only obnoxious if you fall into one But they're protective, you put them by your windows, and no thief is going to want to climb into your house.
So we had a red-tipped fotinha outside the church.
So I went outside and it was a beautiful red-tipped fotina and I pulled one of the branches off And I brought it in and I laid it down on the communion table in the church.
And uh so that Sunday the red tip fotinia branch looked just fine.
It was wonderful.
It was beautiful.
It looked like it just came off of the book the hedge.
And it did.
And so I told my Sunday school class, I said, it's dead.
Y'all understand it's dead?
And they looked at it and you can see the furrowed brows.
Well it doesn't look dead.
They came back next week and had withered.
It was cut off from its source of life.
And then it they came back the next week, and so whenever whenever I was going to explain to them how that beautiful clipping of the red tip fotinia was dead as soon as I pulled it off of its source of life.
I wanted them to see the progression of that from a beautiful greenish-reddish tint to something that was brown and crackly and ready to be thrown into the trash.
Well, one of the well-meaning deacons or ushers that we had thought that he should clean the communion table up and he threw it away.
He went out and he picked one of the flowers I had planted out in the front of the church and brought it in.
He said, I'm sorry, and I I just laughed.
But I had done that for a purpose because I wanted to show them What happened with Adam and Eve.
They were cut off from their source of life.
They began to die that day.
Alright, just an aside there for you But when a lost person hears the word of God concerning salvation, the message is clear.
Jesus shed his blood And died for our sins.
He was buried, and he rose again from the grave for our justification.
And that's the gospel.
And God's word tells the lost sinner to believe that gospel, to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.
It says, He that believeth on the Son hath life.
And it says, For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.
It's a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.
And through the ages, the silly ones have continued to reject this message.
And because they are silly, it says, envy slayeth a silly one, because they are silly, because they envy the prosperity enjoyed by the unbelievers.
They envy the thing that the devil advertised that, hey, this is more fun not being a Christian.
Then they die lost and in their sins.
Envy slays them.
It slays them both in this world, as their physical body dies.
And it slays them in the world to come because they're eternally separated from God, their source of eternal life.
And I reckon from this point you may not think as lightly of the word silly after today, at least when you read it in the Bible.
Now let's move to verse 3 if you're just joining us online Let's uh we are in Job chapter 5 verse 3 where Eliphaz says to Job, I have seen the foolish taking root.
Now we already looked at the word foolish in the previous verse, and it's the same word here.
So let's look at the words.
Eliphaz said he had seen the foolish taking root.
Now, taking root, when you look at the Hebrew word, it can mean two things.
It can mean firmly planting the roots or pulling up by the roots.
And I think we'll find here that it means to plant the roots in the ground.
And some of the verses after this will bear that out.
And interestingly, if you look at the words rooted and uprooted in the New Testament, which is written in Greek, and we got it translated to English.
Those words have the same root word, but there's a prefix in the Greek word for uprooted.
So you have rooted and uprooted, very much the same as the English there.
And with that in mind, let me read you two of the New Testament verses that have the English word root, and it'll show you the difference between being the foolish one and the wise one when it comes to taking root.
First one is Ephesians chapter 3, verses 17 through 19.
Ephesians 3, verse 17 through 19.
That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.
And in Colossians chapter 2, verses 6 through 8.
Colossians 2, verses 6 through 8.
As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him, rooted and built up in him. and established in the faith as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.
Beware Now here it is, beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men after the rudiments of the world and not after Christ So very clearly from these verses I just read you, the wise take root in Christ.
They are rooted in him because they believe.
He said, as you've received the Lord Jesus Christ, that's what happens when you become a Christian.
You receive that truth.
You believe it And very clearly, those wise who are rooted in Jesus Christ shall be able to know the love of Christ and to be filled with all the fullness of God.
That's what it says.
And any man who tries to spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit is trying to uproot you, not root you in the ground.
Big difference He's trying to uproot you.
He's not trying to establish you.
If I want to establish my okra plants, I have to make sure that the roots are in the ground.
I can't pull them up and go, oh, that's such a pretty plant and lay it down on top of the soil and expect it to grow, it's going to die.
That vain that man who tries to spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit.
Is not trying to build you up, but he will convince you that he is.
Satan, through the serpent, convinced Eve, I'm trying to do you a favor here, girl And she said, oh, I appreciate that.
You're right.
That's good looking food, and it is pleasant to the eyes.
How can I disagree with you?
So will you be rooted and grounded in Christ, or will you be a foolish one who falls for the deception of the worldly man?
And that is a very real choice people make.
The worldly preacher, that's the one who tries to appeal to the flesh, tries to get you excited in the flesh about something that he's got going on at his church.
The worldly preacher disguises himself as one who plants, who roots people, rather than as one who uproots.
If a worldly preacher came in and said, I'll tell you what I'm going to do, I'm going to uproot everything you know, every promise that you have in God, and I'm going to make you feel about this big Why nobody'd stay and listen to him.
So that wolf in sheep's clothing doesn't come in that way.
He comes in in sheep's clothing.
And here's an example, and some of you may have seen it in one form or another.
There have been many so-called pastors on television.
And it seems the later at night their program errors, the weirder they are I know some of you have gotten up at 3 o'clock because you can't sleep and you turn the TV on and you saw Peter Popov or you saw Robert Tilton blinky, can't stop blinking.
Yeah And those are the ones we're speaking of who claim to be rooting you, who claim to be establishing you in God's will.
Now there's a particular one of them, uh Mike Murdoch, you probably ran across him, and he loves to ask people to send seed offerings.
That's what he calls it.
I'll send him a package of rotten moly ochra seeds and see what he can do with that.
But he says, send me your seed offering.
Now what's the image created in your mind when you hear of a seed offering?
Well, for most people, especially for country folks like us, it's the image of a seed being planted and watered.
And growing into a plant and bearing fruit or vegetable.
Now, the deceiving pastor here, Mr.
Murdoch, And many others like him tell the viewers to send him their money as a seed offering In fact, he'll claim in many cases that God told him to tell you that there are a certain number of you Who are supposed to send a $1,000 seed offering?
God put that amount on his heart is what he says.
And then the deceiving pastor does something just as nefarious as that.
He tells them the money they send him will somehow bring them a financial blessing Now what happens?
There's a lot of problems with that, first of all.
Those people, if they have a A scriptural church, if they go to a scriptural church, that's where their tithes and offerings ought to be going.
Support that ministry.
Not to some charlatan on TV.
He's appealed to their flesh, hasn't he?
And what happens when a seed is planted and watered is that it first establishes roots.
You'll you won't see it come up yet.
It'll establish roots first.
It is rooted.
And to be rooted, promises this deceiver, you need to plant a seat.
In fact The idea there is if you don't plant this seed, if you don't send me your $1,000, you won't be rooted And that whole scam is nothing more than a way to enrich Mr.
Murdoch and people like him with the hard-earned money of poor, vulnerable, and easily deceived people.
And maybe you've been one of those before.
But it's good that you recognized you were deceived and don't ever do it again.
And furthermore, the person who sends him the thousand dollar or whatever the amount is is no more rooted than if they had sent nothing.
In fact, they're $1,000 poorer than they were.
He's not rooting you in your money.
He's uprooting your money from you.
He's not rooting you in the faith.
He's uprooting you.
Because what happens to these people when they don't, when they open that mailbox and all they get in there is another advertisement from somebody wanting to buy their house Or to sell them a roof.
After a while they get disillusioned, and they get disillusioned not just at Mr.
Murdoch, but at the whole religious thing.
The whole Christian thing.
Because they assume he's a Christian.
And whether he is or not, I'm not going to stand here and say I don't know.
But I know he's a deceiver.
He's got your money and you don't, and that's the end of that.
Do you want to read about a man of God who truly cared about rooting people?
I've already read you some of his writings.
Ephesians chapter 3, verses 14 through 19.
Ephesians 3 verses 14 through 19.
This is the whole purpose of the ministry of the Apostle Paul.
He said, For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.
That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.
I read you part of that passage earlier, but I backed up in in chapter three there.
Because Paul said that was his purpose.
He said he he bowed his knee to God, praying that God would grant you all these things.
And one of those is being rooted and grounded in love.
That's what he prayed for.
In fact, the Apostle Paul did the opposite of Mr.
Murdoch.
He was willing to work a full-time job as a tent maker.
So that he wouldn't be chargeable to any of the churches he established or where he preached.
And when they gave, he was glad to receive it, especially when he was in prison.
He couldn't work.
When he was, when they did not give to him, he still preached the same gospel.
He didn't go, well, they're not going to be blessed.
I'm not going to bless this church.
He preached the same gospel to them.
He told them the same truth.
He thanked them for their generosity.
And when there were churches who either weren't or couldn't be, they didn't have anything, he said, I'm preaching Christ anyway.
He spent himself And because he was more concerned about the churches being rooted and built up in the faith than he was his own pocketbook.
Jesus said, the birds of the air have nests, the foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man, meaning himself, hath not where to lay his head.
He was content not to have a dime on this earth, even though he owned, even though he created all things.
I'll read you another passage where the same apostle Paul, who wrote to the Corinthian church, also wrote to the Colossian Christians.
Colossians 2, verses 6 through 8.
Colossians 2, verses 6 through 8.
He said, As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him, rooted and built up in him, established in the faith.
Now established in the faith, that's rooted in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.
Beware, as I read a moment ago, lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of Men.
After the rudiments of the world and not after Christ.
So we're rooted and built up in Him Not in some earthly covetous pastor who's nothing more than a wolf in sheep's clothing And being rooted in love or anything else spiritual has absolutely nothing to do with someone sending a self-proclaimed pastor a so-called seed offering.
Not at all.
Here's how this works.
When a person becomes a Christian and grows in God's Word, then he comes to understand through the scriptures That the work of God on earth is financed by God's people.
The key is it's got to be the work of God before God's people need to finance it.
That's why you need to be careful where you send your money.
We're not money grabbers here, but we want you to be careful where you send your money.
And once a Christian is then taught about biblical giving about tithing and offerings and so forth, then he won't have to be tricked into tithing and offering.
Kingdom work will be the most important thing to a Christian.
Yes, we have secular work we have to do, we've got to fix the cars and mow the lawns and go to the grocery store and and our jobs that we have that are in honorable professions.
We have to do all that.
But kingdom work will be the most important thing to a Christian.
Eighteen months and nine days.
And Brother Andy won't have to do secular work anymore.
I'll get a lot more time to do kingdom work, and I'm gonna tell you I'm looking forward to that, and your pastor won't be uh at it that long.
He's not too far away from being able to to to do that himself, as he's said in here before But since I've been at this church, which is 14 years in November, we've never had to beg people to give, ever.
We've never run out of money to pay bills or support evangelistic work or fix the roof or remodel the paint the walls, none of that.
And if you're visiting with us or you're watching online, or maybe you're somewhat new as a member, you may wonder why we don't take up an offering Well an offering is something you give, not something we take in the first place.
But there is a custom in many churches of passing a plate.
Now uh when I was at uh My prior churches, uh, the the one I remember the most, I passed out the plate.
I was one of the ushers who came down and we got the plates And it was kind of fun for me because I love watching the looks on people's faces.
I already knew who gave and who didn't.
I had the I was a a trustee there, so I you know I had the books.
I already knew who gave and who didn't And to watch the people what they do with their hands when that plate's coming down their row and they don't give, they don't tie, they don't do anything.
They just they just come and I guess they enjoy the singing and the fellowship, I'm not real sure.
But to watch that and to watch the expression on their faces, or Watch them look at me out the side of their eye.
That was just priceless to me.
I was a little bit ornery.
But here we leave the the plates on the communion table and you know what God's people give.
They figure out a way to get down here and drop their ties off.
They don't say, Well I was going to tithe, but they didn't pass the plate.
And if we didn't have these, they would some of you uh Venmo or you Zell or you PayPal or or whatever method we receive that.
In fact, some people who I believe have been unbelievers have dropped money in the plate occasionally But God always provides for this church.
And we've never told people to sow a seed offering so they can be financially blessed.
That's worse than gambling because there's no hope in that.
That the TV preacher is going to send you money.
You might as well go play a slot machine.
Don't do that.
Somebody's going to cut and paste that part from my message and say There he goes.
He said go to go to the Choctaw Nation and spend it.
No.
But we want you rooted and grounded in love.
By faith in Christ, not because you put money in the plate.
And there's when you go through the Genesis to Jesus, after that you go through the uh building on Jesus, it's it's the discipleship part of it.
And you learn about tithing and church attendance and baptism and all of those things, then uh when you learn that truth You either gonna obey it or you're not.
When we come across it in the teaching, we'll teach about it.
And when we don't, we won't.
But it's it's there before you.
But we want you rooted and grounded in love by faith in Christ.
That's our number one goal, and everything else will naturally flow from that.
Eliphaz said he had seen the foolish taking root And those about whom he speaks are not rooted in love by faith in God's Word That's why he called them foolish.
Because the Bible says the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.
And therefore, their roots, because it says they take root Their roots are insufficient for spiritual growth.
And of the foolish taking root, Eliphaz said But suddenly I cursed his habitation.
And when we meet again next week, we will see what that means.
Let's pray.
Father, it's been good to be in your house this morning.
Thank you for every person who came, everyone who tuned in And we pray that you would take the word that has been taught and make it very clear to them that they may understand and believe the scriptures in Jesus' name.
Amen.
