of the earth. He volunteered to come save a bunch of dogs. Amen. That's all I got. That's all I got. Amen. I appreciate the preaching that we've got to hear. Appreciate the opportunity to be able to come and appreciate Brother Biddy. First time I guess I've got to hear him in these days of meeting. And he was talking about those sugar sticks. And that's what I had yesterday. And I'd actually heard another preacher preached it, and I'd reworked it, and I thought, you know, that'll go good. I've always wanted to be what I thought to be a camp meeting preacher, where we shout and run, and I thought, well, you know, surely one of these will work. But after God sat down back there, I was begging that Brother John wouldn't call on me. And about four o'clock this morning, the Lord said, now, if you want to preach what I want you to preach, we went to the study, and we'll be obedient to the time that the man of God has give. But you can turn to 2 Corinthians or 1 Corinthians chapter seven and then 2 Corinthians chapter number 11. I wanna be a help, that's the fell our lot in the ministry and I have no qualms with that. I'm a pastor, I don't apologize for that. A pastor is to do the work of an evangelist, an evangelist is not to do the work of a pastor. And so I love Bible preaching, I love all types. but I love what Brother Simpson, I just love the Bible, I love preaching. It was what changed my heart, changed my life, it's fed my soul, it's seen me through things that I didn't think I'd ever be able to see through, and I appreciate the goodness of God. 1 Corinthians chapter number seven, just wanna read a verse, and I just wanna use just a minute to get your mind to think, and I won't argue or debate the introduction, and that's all it is, is an introduction. and it'll get our minds to thinking, and then we'll go to 2 Corinthians 11 and bring the burden that God has given. In 1 Corinthians 7, this is Paul, of course, speaking to the church at Corinth, and verse number eight, he said, I say, therefore, to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I. You can be seated, thank you for standing. I was reading after Adam Clark one day about that verse. I was teaching through 1 Corinthians and I got to verse number eight where Paul said, it is good for them if they abide even as I. Adam Clark, he said the Greek words and I'd make a fool of myself if I tried to say them. But he said that phrase even as I is saying that he himself possibly was a widower. We know that Paul was part of the Sanhedrin court The Sanhedrin court was a supreme Jewish court of justice. In Acts 22, Paul testified of belonging. In Acts 23, he said, I am a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee. In Acts chapter nine, he was going to the high priest. The high priest was always the president of the Sanhedrin court. Ananias and Caiaphas there in Luke chapter number three. You find Ananias again in Acts 23. The Sanhedrin court was made up of 70 members. It was thought to be for life. And that was one reason the Apostle Paul, they say, was hated so much, was he excommunicated from that Sanhedrin court. It was the governing power over the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They tried extensively to live and to legislate the Mosaic Law. They attended a Jesus trial. They attended the stoning of Stephen. They were said to commit to the highest moral and family values. of the Sanhedrin. According to Nelson's Bible dictionary, scholars, as the scripture suggests, that Paul was a member before his conversion. And the burden for the message came out of verse number eight, where he said, even as I. And I just wanna give you the possibility, I just want our minds to think, possibly, was the Apostle Paul married? If he was part of the Sanhedrin court, it was demanded that he would be married. And when you look in 1 Corinthians 7, and we're not gonna look in it for the sake of time, Paul gives two avenues in the married life. He gives that one that we read, if a wife was to die, a spouse was to die, Paul said it is good for them if they abide even as I. And then later on in the chapter, he's gonna talk about if the unbelieving, if they're not gonna be converted, he said to let them depart. So you've got two avenues there that if Paul was married, and I'm not gonna argue and debate after, we're not gonna argue, but if he was, there's a possibility that she either died, his wife, or that she departed. Now I was thinking about this and thinking about the, if Paul was married, what could it have been that would have killed the apostle Paul's wife? You know, if he was, he's speaking maybe from personal experience, maybe it was because of unbelief. Because when Paul got saved, there was a drastic change come in his life. the Sanhedrin, they were the prestigious, they had the position, they had the possessions, everything that a woman would want in life, not just in that day, but in the day that we're living in. But when Paul got changed, he turned from all of that and turned to God. She may not have wanted to live like that. Seems like about every month I get a call or I hear indirectly about a pastor's wife or a preacher's wife that just does not want anything else to do with the ministry. And they go off, they leave the man of God, they leave the pastor, leave the evangelist to try to make it the best way that he can. You know, I thought about this. After Paul was converted, it was God that used him according to Acts chapter 22. that established the churches, and he was always traveling. There's the church at Ephesus, Philippi, Thessalonica, Rome, Galatia, Colossae. He was always traveling. She may not have wanted to have a husband that was always on the road, and she may, we're just looking suppositionally, she may have departed. I thought about how that they tortured and tormented her husband, and we're going to look at that in just a minute. And if that was a possibility, and she watched how they tormented and tortured and beat her man of God, she may have just said one day, that's all, I can't handle it anymore, and I can't take this anymore, and the unbelieving may have departed. I really believe personally, if he did, I have a wife. I believe that she died, that she perished. And again, don't lock down on me. We're just thinking now. We're just looking suppositionally. Could it have happened? Is it possible? Because the burden of my heart is I have watched in 26 years, actually longer than that. My daddy was a preacher. My brother was an evangelist. I grew up in a preacher's home. I watched my brother for years and years travel up and down the road. My grandfather on my mother's side was a Baptist preacher. My daddy come out of a Church of God background, so my grandmother may have been a preacher on my daddy's side, I don't know. But that's all I've been around, is preachers, been around church. And I've watched a lot of preachers' wives be heard. I've watched them get their heart ripped out because see, you gotta understand, it never affects your heart if your heart's not in it. And you get to wondering, you know, these older preachers, why their wives are not outgoing, why they're not trying to put everything together and run everything together. A lot of them have been walked on and stepped on, they've been heard, they've had the very life I've drawn out of them, and we sat back and wonder, are they saved? Do they love God? They've walked in places we've never seen. They've watched Herd in the midnight hours that most churches never know about. For just a few minutes, I wanna look, I wanna take and do an autopsy on the Apostle Paul's wife. Turn to 2 Corinthians, and we'll just read what the Bible says. 2 Corinthians chapter... Chapter number 11. Paul said in verse number 24, he said, of the Jews, five times received I 40 stripes. save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I've been in the deep, in journeyings often, in perils of water, perils of robbers, in perils by my own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Then he uses that word beside. Beside those things that are without them. and that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches. What is it that might be killing your man of God's wife? What is it that might be pulling the very life out of the pastor that Brother John, he's challenged us young ladies to get behind a godly pastor's wife and follow her and let her lead you and guide you in the things of God. Could it be that is killing the men of God's wives and you were watching them fall out by the way and we're watching them have to come into meetings like this and put on a smile when their heart's ripped out. Nobody's saying anything. We encourage pastor appreciation. We encourage praying for the man of God. But I'm gonna tell you, she's the scotch that holds him up. She's the one that knows him like nobody else but God. God, help us to see the need of the men of God's wives. Look at verse number 24. Notice the stripes that were draped upon her man of God. The Bible said in verse 24, of the Jews, five times received I 40 stripes, save one. She had watched her husband be beat and striped about 195 times. She sat Brother Eric and tried to at night maybe put some salve on the back. She's watching the blood. And it wasn't the heathens. It wasn't a foreign enemy. He said my own countrymen. I'm telling you, a pastor's wife hears things in the church that nobody else knows about. He'll go out to preach on a Wednesday and they'll begin to talk while he's not there. And they always make sure they do it in the vicinity where she can hear. I worked on this message in 2007 for about eight months. There was a crowd that felt so much of themselves that God put this together just for them. I have watched it. I watched it in my daddy's life, in my own home. I watched it in my brother's ministry. It's bled over into the ministry that God has allowed us in these days. Somebody needs to say something. It was people that turned on him five different times. It was perpetual, 40 stripes, save one. You see, it became personal. because she failed every stripe they put upon him. See, it was in the letter to Ephesus in chapter five, about five years after Paul wrote this, he said, for this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. You gotta understand, every time they're putting that lash on the man of God, it's draping down upon his wife. When they talk and make lies, and they lie and they do all of these things behind the back, it's being laid on her as well. And see, the men of God are called by God, commissioned of God, got the cloak, but that wife, that lady, she's to follow, she's to submit, she's to pray, you know what's best, we're gonna follow God's direction. It could have been the stripes that was laid upon her, man of God. As they beat him physically, it beat her mentally and emotionally. Three times, I've watched them. I've watched them beat the wives. Not literally, but it's almost as bad doing it mentally and emotionally. See, your pastor's wife doesn't need to hear all the problems. That's why you got a pastor. That's why you got elders in the church. That's why you've got those, their hairs turn the color of frost. They've already walked this path before. You don't have to go to her and dump all the troubles and everything, the gossip and all of that. It's not, she was not created to handle that. The stripes that are draped upon the man of God in verse number 25. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned. Thrice I suffered shipwrecked. A night and a day I've been in the deep. When Paul was stoned and left for dead. All Paul did was awaken a people from their depravity. He brought the gospel message. Not only did he awaken them in their depravity, but it was God that called Paul. Paul didn't ask for this. It was God that appeared to Paul on that Damascus road. It was Paul that went on and told the man of God, there's a young man coming. Paul didn't ask for it. All he's trying to do is fulfill the commission that God's put upon him. But that don't rest on the wife. She's just trying to follow. They're just trying to make bills meet, make ends meet. Bills are coming in. Things have happened that have brought hurt. People have been put out of churches. Seems like this year I've heard it more and more and more. That's one thing about living in the mountains and living in the south is that we are independent people. You try to cross some traditional lines and blood is thicker than water. Had a preacher called us here recently Great preacher, great man of God. Got a young wife, got young children. He said, Brother Seton, I don't know who else to call. I said, what's going on? He said, I've got to leave. First time I hear that, Brother Bitty, I'm thinking they've disqualified. He's not disqualified himself. He's a Bible preacher. He said, they want me to move, they want me to get out. He said, they don't want to pay me my severance. He said, I guess I'll end up going and working at a, and that's honorable. but it ought not be that way. In verse 25, he said, three times I shipwrecked in the deep. He said, and we could speak a lot about that. Let me get to this last one and we'll be done. I just pray God would help us. I don't know a lot of people here. Some of you I do know, some of you I've heard of, but I guarantee you there's some preacher's wives in here. and they feel like nobody cares, like nobody's concerned, and they don't understand, and they're trying to figure it out, and they're wondering where's God, but the whole time, they gotta smile. They've gotta do everything just right. It's like living, I didn't know what a glass house was till I got married and God called us in the ministry. Their kids have gotta be just right. They've gotta walk just right. They can't say Tennessee football. They can't say go to a high school ball game on Friday night. They gotta walk like this and do like this, and the whole time they're not understanding what's going on. That's not the way God intended it. These men of God that preach to us, Brother Sammy's preached to us, a man of God preached to us last night. I saw a picture of him down at the camp, 1986. I'm glad they're not bitter. I'm glad you can finish this thing with joy. Me and Brother Sammy cut up about Georgia and Tennessee. I'm glad you can finish this thing not being covered up in bitterness and not finishing it wondering is anybody real and is anybody right? God's real and God's right and there's still a remnant that wants to do right. Now watch this in verse 26. He said, in journeyings often, Paul was gone all the time. There was no dinner dates if he was married. You ain't locked down on me, are you? It's just supposition. I don't know, I've talked to good men. I'm telling you from what I grew up in, what I watched my brother in. Brother John, one day my brother come in and he said he saw a bat come out the back door. He said a woman walked out and I didn't recognize her. I said, what are you talking about? He said, I've been gone. He told me over half his married life he was in a motel and his wife was in Knoxville, Tennessee. That's the call God put on him. But I'm gonna tell you, I can't understand it all and God will. He's not gonna explain it when we get to heaven. But there's a lot of times, I'll say for Jimbo, I went places that I didn't have to be. First time my boy ever started a high school football game, I wasn't there. First time, all the first times in my children's life, seems like I was doing something that was fulfilling the ministry. The Bible said in journeyings often, I applaud you that travel with your families. One day, if the Lord don't come, Brother John, I'm gonna write a book on raising children. You need to get it, because I'm gonna write it from all my failures. I remember pulling out of the driveway and watching my oldest son. He's an outgoing hunter, fisherman, motorcycle rider, all of that. And I watched him at the gate where we lived there in Lenoir City, Tennessee, and he's crying. He said, Daddy, can't somebody else go? And I wasn't scheduled to be part of that that week. I just went. I went and went and went. Paul was in journeyings often. Preacher, when was the last time you took your wife out on a dinner date? When was it last time it was just you and her? She's struggling. Paul, I don't understand what happened, but in journeyings often, God places choice men in choice places to make full proof of the ministry. I understand that and I believe it, but God help us to understand that we have a home and that we have a family and that there is a church. I believe that God instituted the home before he did the church. I don't want to lose my family. trying to salvage all the others. I believe God will honor that. Verse number 26, there's the perils, the dangers. Perils is mentioned eight times, and it's not pearls that go around your neck, it's perils, it's dangers. Everywhere Paul turned, it was a perilous life. Has anybody else ever heard lately a preacher's wife Not long ago, there was a missionary come off the field. His wife, he said, she said, I can't take it no more. I can't handle it no more. And see us independent, we'll say, oh, you know, she ain't right with God. She needs to get saved. You've not been where they've been. And I admire the missionary for coming off the field with his wife to salvage his home. I don't hate, this is what God put at four o'clock this morning. Severe dangers. Look at verse 27. I think this might be closer to where we live. In weariness and painfulness, Paul's stability was constantly depleted. Weariness, you know what that word weariness means? It means emotional in your Strong's Concordance. The word painfulness, it is physical. But a lot of times, mental and emotional pain is a whole lot worse than physical. You remember when we were young and they said, them children are walking on your feet, but one day they're gonna walk on your heart. We didn't believe it then, but we're understanding it now. Paul was living in times of weariness and painfulness. That phrase there, in watchings often, it means, first of all, lack of sleep, and then it means stress. There's no preachers here living under stress, are you? Hunger and thirst, mental, financial, fastings, spiritual. cold and nakedness, destitute, lonely. I want to believe if she was alive, she may have watched Paul and it seemed like he's falling apart. You don't have to raise your hand. You may not find an altar here, but if God will help you somewhere, you can get help. I wonder how many are watching their man of God fall apart. I wonder how much has been put on them that we might have put on them that's causing these things. Instead of bypassing them to get to God, we're missing and we're overloading the very avenue that God initiated. The perils of verse 26, the tolls of verse 27, it put, if she was alive, it put her wife, Paul's wife, in a place of being constantly under pressure. I talk indirectly to preachers and their wives and their families, and it seems like people are living under constant pressure. Pressure to produce, pressure to keep up. You know, this thing of social media, it's a great tool. It's just like radio used to be, TV used to be, but it can be so, and I'm not talking about the pornography, everything, I'm talking about the pressure it puts on. You ever get on on a Monday and it's been dry as everything at your church and the choir was off key and the man of God didn't have nothing and then you get on there and look and everybody had the most dynamic service since Moses stepped up on the mountain and God met with him and 88's got saved and they baptized 400 in the river and you feel that pressure and it seems to wait and to wait and to wait down on you and you feel like you've got pressure to produce. That's not what the ministry is. Paul's stability was depleted. Look at verse number 28. Beside all this, beside those things, pretty much beside everything he said up to now, beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me. Albert Barnes said that phrase, that which cometh upon me, it means it comes continually. It's continually. You lay down at night. If I don't go, I'll just testify for Jimbo, if I don't go to sleep soon as I hit that pillow, here it'll start coming. Families, children, they're going astray, they're going wrong. Homes, preachers, this and that. And that's where Paul was at, that which cometh upon him daily, it was attacking him. continually, but don't you know if there was a Miss Paul laying right there beside of him? She saw every time he turned and got up and went to prayer and made calls and made visits beside everything that was without. They say that phrase there, that cometh upon me daily, that which rushes upon me. It's a word we use in 2018 called anxiety. See, nobody wants to talk about that either. See, if you got cancer, you go to a cancer doctor. If you got a heart problem, you go to a heart doctor. If you've got a chemical problem, God has give doctors. All your mind is is chemicals. And if you get up to like 55 years old, you've exhausted them. You've run, you've stayed up, you've debated, worried, studied, whatever life has brought you away, and what it does is one chemical gets depleted, and that's where they come up with the term an imbalance. It's just a chemical imbalance. And they, God has given doctors wisdom enough to make, You hate to say drugs, but that's what it is that can balance that. We still don't wanna talk about that, and it's 2018. I remember a certain group of preachers told my brother he was battling with all of that, and the doctor was trying to help him. They said, you need to flush that medicine and trust God. He was on a high when they said it first time, and he said, well, why don't you jerk that pacemaker out and flush it? That was when he was up. But in one of the down times, when you'll do anything to get relief, he said, well, maybe God, it's in my faith. And he flushed what the doctor was giving him. And anybody here, and there's probably some here that knows, when you stop that like that, it puts you in a tailspin. That which cometh upon me daily. I can't say that word there. It's epistatious, what it looks like. It means a crowd, a mob. It's a picture as if it pressed on him like it was attacking him. Old Barnes said this is one of Paul's most energetic expressions, and it denotes the incessant anxiety of mind to which he was subject. How that comes continuously, but then there's the care of the churches. We could go through all of the churches. Time won't allow. Some were prejudiced toward Gentiles. Paul had to deal with that. Some had preferences without godliness, and he was having to battle that. Some were persecuted, and there were some that persecuted God's men. There were some that just seemingly had problems, and they were great issues that Paul had to deal with. And it was all laid upon Paul. I wonder if Paul was married. I wonder how she died. There may be a pastor's wife here, an evangelist's wife, a missionary's wife. I'm telling you, in these later years, I'm learning to respect and honor missionaries more than I ever have. We have them, Brother Duane, come in the church, and I'm not being off-colored. You know me better than that, Brother John. but it's sort of like Esther, my daughter, Ahasuerus, when she was brought before the king. And these missionaries come in and it's like they feel if they don't perform, they won't get support. Living in that constant pressure. Have you ever tried to sit down and figure out what these missionaries live off of and then what you live off of? Constant pressure. Raising families. You may not even be a pastor's wife. You may just be a wife in 2018 and the pressures come down. Living under the microscope of scrutiny. It took me a few years. And I'm not saying it arrogantly. I hope you believe that. But I'm not putting my wife and kids under a microscope for anybody. I say that as respectfully if I know. A lot of you have seen me, a lot of you have, well, you know who my wife is, you come from Rock Mart. A lot of you have never even met my wife. I had one preacher ask me, he said, are you married? I said, yeah, I got a ring, I'm married. She's probably watching and she's gonna get upset for me saying anything. Brother Todd, she don't travel with me like she used to. Probably outside my mother and sister Jimmy Lou Allen, the greatest Christian I've ever met was my wife, is my wife. but she put her heart. If you ever get your heart ripped out of you, you ever seen anybody have heart surgery? They don't just jump up, take off running, let's go do this, I'm gonna organize this and do that. No, it takes time. I wish she could be in a lot, I'll go home and I'll say, ma'am, what a service they had. What a service. She said, boy, I prayed. I hope it was well. My daughter's been with me Esther. I tried to take her while I still got her. Ain't nobody getting her unless they got a bigger gun than I got. I told Amanda, time she gets married, she'll have two in diapers. Or time Esther has a first child, she'll have two in diapers, the grandbaby and me. That's how long it's gonna be. But see, it affects your kids, too. Buster told me this years ago. I didn't go to Bible college, but he told me some things. He said, if you ever get around a family, And they're shaking and nodding and doing all that. But he said if their kids withdraw, he said something's going on at home. They don't know how to perform and put on. They're reflecting what they heard at the house. Four o'clock this morning, the Lord nudged us about what he'd have to say if it fell our lot. Maybe there's someone here and you say, preacher, You may be to the point you don't know if you can go on. You may be to the point where if it's possible that she did depart. I'm glad there's help to be had. That's what I love about meetings like this, where you come to get help. It's not a show. I was telling Brother Paul the other day, it's not a show. Somebody say, how you gonna compete with that? We're not here to compete. I'll tell you young preachers something an old timer helped me with. Anytime a preacher calls you to come preach, you've got something he wants his people to hear from you. He don't want you to be this one or that one or the other. My heavenly Father, you place this on our hearts. Lord, I don't know all the people here, but I'm glad you do. Lord, I don't know what's hidden in hearts. Lord, I don't know what may,