So today is Father's Day. We're going to continue working on the first epistle of John. We're up to chapter 4. James, Peter, and John are books with meat. They are books that you need to cut up, like before you eat steak, you need to cut them up to digest them. and you really need to take a chapter at a time. So you read the book completely, and then you break it down a chapter at a time. It is loaded with information. This is your main Bible commentary. This should be your main Bible study. Well, that's the word to find the word. If you want commentary on the Gospels, if you want commentary on the Old Testament, and other parts of scripture, first look to the Bible itself. God didn't have James, Peter, and John, Jude, all of Paul's letters. He didn't have this happen by accident. He wanted to give us teachers that were truly inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit and what they were writing. And that's why we have these books. So that's what we're going to turn to today and continue to work on. First, let us pray. Almighty God, we pray, Lord, that Your Holy Spirit would descend upon this building, Lord, that You would protect the real Church, which is the people inside. We pray, dear God, that You would seal that door, that You would keep all evil far away from us, that for this short time we can read Your Word and glorify Your Son. And on this Father's Day, Lord, that we remember our true Father, which is You. the father that will not disappoint us, break our hearts at times, a father that's perfect and always loves us, and a father that loves us so much that he gave his own son to die on the cross like a dog. That's how much we love this Lord. We thank you that he was raised, that death couldn't hold him. He was raised from the dead. It's a real event in history. It's not just a story. We thank you, dear God, that we are justified by our faith and we have salvation through your Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. So, I want to read you a couple of statistics on this Father's Day. The status of this nation, how far we have fallen, and then we will go into what is the real Gospel. Everybody has competing Gospels today and a different Jesus. and many different movements, what's the real deal? What is the gospel, simply put? What did the early Christians die for? Was it for a myth? Was it for a liberal joke, like the liberals who made the gospel today? Why did the reformers allow themselves to be chased down by criminals to help give us the Bible that we hold in our hands today? Is there a reason for it? What was that reason? We're going to go into that today. Now, first, let's talk about this fatherhood problem. And there was census with fatherhood statistics. Now, these are even worse. I'm reading you numbers that are a little bit old. It's even worse today. But on Father's Day, we need to do this. If you don't define the problem, You can't look for a solution. The fatherless generation, and someone runs a great website on this title. Statistics. 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes. U.S. Department of Health Census. These are not Bible people trying to make an argument that there should be a father in the home in traditional marriage. This is straight science. The way I like it. Plain facts. 90%, 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes, 32% times the average. 85% of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes. 80%, 80% of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes. 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes, nine times the average. Father factor in education. Fatherless children are twice as likely to drop out of school. Children with fathers who are involved are 40% less likely to repeat a grade in school. Children with fathers who are involved are 70% less likely to drop out of school. And it goes on and on and on. 75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes. Father factor in drug and alcohol abuse. Researchers at Columbia University, that was once Christian, found that children living in two-parent households with a poor relationship with their fathers are 68% more likely to smoke, drink, or use drugs compared to all teens. in two-parent households. Teens in single-mother households are at a 30% higher risk than those in two-parent households. So, in other words, even if your dad isn't the greatest thing, you might not be the cream of the crop right now, it's still better than not having one there. And all of us that have gone through periods of not having a father in the home, we definitely know how this feels. Some fatherhood statistics. Since 1970, The number of single fathers in 1970 was 400,000. It's now 2.5 million. This means fathers that are sharing custody. There's no mother in the home. Again, I don't want to keep going through this ad nauseum, but we get the point. Father factor in crime. A study of 109 juvenile offenders indicated that family structure significantly predicts delinquency. Adolescents, particularly boys in single-parent families, were at higher risk of status property and personal delinquencies. Moreover, students attending schools with a high proportion of children of single parents are also at risk. A study of 13,986 women in prison showed that more than half grew up without their father, 42% grew up in a single-mother household, and 60% lived with neither parent. child abuse, everything, incarceration. Even after controlling for income, people say it's the money, that's why people get into trouble, that's not true. Even after controlling for income, youths in father-absent households still had significantly higher odds of incarceration than those in mother-father families. Youths who never had a father in the household experienced the highest odds. A 2002 Department of Justice survey of 7,000 inmates revealed that 39% of jail inmates lived in mother-only households. Approximately 46% of jail inmates in 2002 had a previously incarcerated family member, one-fifth experienced a father in prison or jail. These rates are higher. These are old. They're even worse. They just try to bury them. So you wonder why the streets are filled with these young boys running into the gangs, You're wondering why pornography is on the rise, the exploitation of little girls and women is on the rise. It's because the father has left the home. And even more than that, we do not have the fathers that are in the home pointing their wives and their children to the true father in heaven. America has stopped standing upon the rock which is Jesus Christ and his beautiful gospel, and we're paying for it. So next time you adventure into your neighborhood and you say, man, this ain't what it used to be, don't let them fool you. Because straight science and statistics and data show it's because we have left the Lord, and when you have broken marriages, you have broken families, and broken children. Now what happened? It goes back to education. Let's look at how this country once was. Just the colleges. Religious denominations established most early colleges in order to train ministers. That's how colleges started in this country. Not to get a job at the stock market, not to get a job at a Fortune 500 company, so people would hear the gospel from confident ministers. Religious denominations established most early colleges in order to train ministers. In New England, there was an emphasis on literacy so that people could read the Bible. Harvard College was founded by the colonial legislature in 1636 and named after an early benefactor. Mr. Harvard donated his library, and that's how that school, which is godless now, started, to train ministers that loved the gospel. Most of the funding came from the colony, but early on the college began to build an endowment. Harvard at first focused on training young men for the ministry, but many alumni went into law, medicine, government, or business. So even your people that went into other areas of expertise, or even your politicians, had training in the gospel before they came out of the college. William and Mary College was founded by Virginia, government in 1693, with 20,000 acres of lands for an endowment, and a penny tax on every pound of tobacco, together with an annual appropriation. James Blair, the leading Anglican minister in a colony, was president for 50 years, and the college won the broad support of the Virginia gentry, most of whom were Anglicans. It trained many of the lawyers, politicians, and leading planters. Students headed for the ministry were given free tuition. Did you hear that? What happened to separation of church and state and separation of God from education and everything else? They wanted to motivate you to go into the ministry. If you were going into something else, you had to pay. If you were going to glorify God through his gospel and his son Jesus Christ, you went to the college for free. Yale College was founded in 1701 and in 1716 was relocated to New Haven, Connecticut. The conservative Puritan ministers of Connecticut, if I can close your mind, had grown dissatisfied with the more liberal theology of Harvard and wanted their own school to train Orthodox ministers. New side Presbyterians in 1747 set up the College of New Jersey in the town of Princeton. Much later, it was renamed Princeton University. Rhode Island College was begun by the Baptists in 1764. And in 1804, it was renamed Brown University in honor of a benefactor. Brown was especially liberal in welcoming young men from other denominations. In New York City, yes, even in New York at one time, The Anglicans set up King's College in 1746 with its president Samuel Johnson, the only teacher. It closed during the American Revolution and reopened in 1784 under the name of Columbia College. It is now Columbia University. Godless Columbia was started as a Christian endeavor at one time. The Academy of Pennsylvania was created in 1749 by Benjamin Franklin, who was my favorite founding father, and I'll tell you why. and other civic-minded leaders in Philadelphia, and unlike the others, was not oriented toward the training of ministers. It was renamed the University of Pennsylvania in 1791. So it goes on and on and on. Now why do I like Benjamin Franklin? Because he made no bones about it. He was not a Bible believer. We can deal with that. He wasn't tricking people. He wasn't running for president or office going, God, God, God, God, God, God, and then sitting in on Masonic meetings and in the Hellfire Club. He told you the way it was. He believed in man. He believed in the reason of man. He believed in a God that once created this universe and now he's gone. And we can respect that. We can't respect a guy like that who says, God, God, God, and then teaches at a seminary or in the churches and is undercover. And that's why, where everybody likes the other founding fathers, I like Benjamin Franklin. Like God said, be it hot or cold, and I can work with you. Don't be Luke Wall! Now, very interesting. Remember we commented on this, and this will be the last thing about the schools. Check this out. All the schools were small with a limited undergraduate curriculum oriented on the liberal arts. Students were drilled in Greek, Latin, geometry, ancient history, logic, ethics, and rhetoric, with few discussions, little homework, and no lab sessions. The college president typically tried to enforce strict discipline, and the upperclassmen enjoyed hazing the freshmen. It was still college. But listen to this. Many students were younger than 17, and most of the colleges also operated on a preparatory school. There were no organized sports, or Greek letter fraternities, but the literary societies were active. When they were Christian, they worshiped Christ. They didn't worship basketball. They didn't worship football. They didn't care how tall you were, if you were a big girl, and you could pop that volleyball over the net. You went to get an education. You went to learn about Jesus Christ. They were focused on literacy. They didn't care if you could dunk a basketball and you were going to sign a $300 million contract with the New York Knicks. They cared about you as a person being cultivated in the Gospel, being able to read and read your Bible. We have a phone system for degenerates and for entertainment now in the colleges. When it was Christian, you definitely would not have a fraternity. They would not have Greek letters and run from the Bible and go back to Greek mysticism and ceremonies with a wooly goat and all this other garbage. It was not about partying and drinking and having sex before marriage, which is basically what college has become. Why do kids want to go away? To act like freaks and come home with an education. And then you wonder why, especially Christian parents, After all the training you've done in the Bible, they come back from college and they're different people. All of a sudden the Bible's not historical anymore. Because you give them over to the devil's playground, which is the modern university today. Godless Columbia, Godless Harvard, all the most prestigious Ivy League schools, all the schools of this type have turned on their God. Now, we're going to read John chapter 4. We're going to see how can we recover a proper sense of fatherhood. How can we set this thing off on Father's Day this year? And that's the way you do it. Fathers, honor your Father in Heaven. Push your family towards Him. Let them know the gospel and give them a Christian education. Don't worry about how much money you're going to make after they graduate. Worry if they're going to have their soul left after they graduate from these godless schools. Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. have I, know ye, the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. And this is that spirit of Antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world. Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world. They are of the world, therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God. He that knoweth God heareth us. He that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Here it is, our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, Because as He is so, are we in this world. There is no fear in love. But perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God and hateth his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God loveth his brother also. Amazing chapter, packed with information. We are being told to test the spirits. And the title of today's sermon is, A Fighter Like My Father. A Fighter Like My Father. We have a God that fights for righteousness. Our God is not tolerant of evil like the spirit of this age. When Satan rebelled in heaven, God did not set up a counseling program for him. God did not send a peace treaty. I am righteous, I created you, I love you, and you rebelled against me, leave. Did Satan just leave? Did God not expect a fight? Satan was cast down from heaven. Satan was able to grab a third of the angels. He and his godless rascals rebelled. There was war in heaven. Am I making this up? There was war in heaven. There was intolerance. You know what? We'll make our own section in heaven for the perverts and the freaks and the people that rape children and kill women and all that stuff. You'll have your own little corner because we don't want to be intolerant. Get out of here! That was the message. And when he didn't leave, there was a battle. He came crashing down. When our first parents declared war on God by siding with the devil, what did God do? He cut us off from the tree of life. We declared war on Him? No problem. He's going to take care of that. Like I like to say, you knocked on the door, God's going to answer. You came a knocking. And then we see this continue through history. What happened with Cain when he killed his brother Abel? There was no judgment. God said, all right, Cain, sin is a tough thing. Don't worry about it. I'm not even going to talk to you about it. When Cain came out like a wise guy, am I my brother's keeper? Did God say, what did it? I didn't build yourself esteem enough? Esteem enough? Is that why he killed you? But no, he said, your brother's blood cries to me from the ground. The whole story of the Bible is God's war on evil. And He loved us so much that He's able to redeem crazy people like us who rebelled against Him through the blood of His Son. How can you test the spirits if you don't know the Bible and you don't know the Gospel? We don't rant and rave and want to pick up things and slam them against the wall for nothing. It's because people are being deceived. We don't even know the true gospel anymore. Now I want to show you something very simple, and I took time so you could read my chicken scratch. We are saved by faith. This is the gospel. Right here is the gospel, then we're going to go into the Judaizers when Paul went against the Galatians and what we have today in many denominations, and then the godless liberals. Okay? So this is the gospel. Jesus Christ, his death, burial, and resurrection, a real Jesus in history, really came down to earth because he really loved us and accepted this mission from the Father and really died for us. He was really buried in a tomb, a real tomb. He truly rose from the dead. Like Paul said, if Jesus Christ didn't rise from the dead, eat, drink, and be merry, baby, because tomorrow we die. Don't play games. So a real Jesus came into history. He died, he was buried, he was resurrected. All I have to do to start the journey That doesn't matter if you're Calvinist or you're Arminian. We're not going to argue about the particulars. The whole point is, it's faith. What the Reformation brought back, sola fide, is by faith. So I believe in what Jesus did for me, and after that, I'm justified. We are justified by faith, plus nothing else. Do you get that? Once you get away from that, you're in bondage. This is a real Jesus in history. I believe in Him and I'm justified. And then, after justification, sanctification comes. This is why we're not legalists. I want you to see the difference today. After I'm born again, I'm so grateful the Holy Spirit is in me. Now I want to keep Christ's commands. That's the true gospel. I believe in what a real Savior did. And now, because I'm so grateful, I want to keep His commands. Now, this is the garbage, so much for the first pope, this is the garbage that Paul ran into in the letter to the Galatians, the dispute between him and Peter. Peter was beautiful, and he was crazy, and God did use him, and Peter was the first to make that confession, the rock which the church is built on, that Jesus Christ is Lord. But there was a problem. Peter was human just like us. We don't beat up on him. People fall into heresy at times. What Peter was saying was, he went with the Judaizers. When the Jews came, he started to hang out with them. He had more in common with them. They seemed a little more righteous than the other people, because they still kept a lot of the aspects of the Jewish law. We got that so far? So now, it seems very close, but it's so different. This is not the gospel. We don't believe in Jesus. and it's death, burial, and resurrection, okay? And then, try and keep his commandments, and then see in the end if we're justified. You see the difference? Once you get into this, you get into bondage. Yeah, I believe in Jesus, and I'm going to keep his commandments, and I'm going to be justified, you know, the way it works out in the end. Oh, really? What's the measure? Is there a certain number of people you have to feed? A certain number of shirts you gotta give out to those who don't have clothes? A certain amount of drink to people that are thirsty? You see how we get trapped in this? This is what the Roman Catholics got trapped in by the Middle Ages. It wasn't always this way. They became perverted over time. Just like your Lutherans are not Martin Luther's Lutherans. Okay, so let's play fair when we argue. the Catholics weren't always this bad, just like Lutherans and the Reformers weren't always that bad. But that's a slippery slope. I believe what Jesus did for me, by my faith I'm saved, and then through the Holy Spirit I'm motivated to keep his commandments. I don't say, oh yeah, Jesus is great, he is the Messiah, and we gotta keep his commandments, and then depending on how I do that, I'll be justified in the end. That's heresy. This is what Paul came against. They were throwing Peter was throwing sanctification before justification. Now we have an even bigger problem today with the liberals. The liberal Protestant Church, God help us, is worse than what we ran into with the Catholics. Because they don't even have an historical death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. They deny all these things. It's all a story or a myth. It's just like reading the tale from the Venus. or something of Buddhist wisdom, or what the Taoists read. It's not historical, it's not real. It's a moral story. Just like Adam and Eve weren't real, Noah's Ark wasn't real. It's just a mystic book, like something you could read when you joined the Rosicrucians. It's a mystical story, it's not real. They don't have the death, burial, and resurrection. They don't give a hoot about keeping Christ's command, and they just justify everybody. And I just summed up the emergent church and all of these false gospels. If the Bible isn't inerrant and infallible and beautiful and perfect and totally true, you have nothing to stand on. If you make all these stories allegorical or symbolic, if you say there's no Adam and Eve and there's no Jesus that really went and died on the cross, it's just a moral story, then you do not have a Christian faith. That's it. So don't let anyone trap you in this. We talk a lot about how people need church discipline. We need to love people enough that once they're justified by faith, they want to be sanctified. They want to learn the word. I want to serve Christ. I would never tell somebody because they backslidden that they're not a Christian. I don't pick on regular people, but I am called by God and so are you. to point out when someone is not teaching the gospel. That's what we're called to do. The most dangerous people in the universe are the priest, the minister, the reverend. It is not the guy with the machine gun. He could kill a hundred Christians and will inherit eternal life anyway. It's the guy in the pulpit who graduated from a godless seminary, who doesn't believe in the Bible, that kills the soul! He partners with the devil to destroy souls! He teaches you doctrines of men! You don't get the real gospel. Now, once you have the real gospel, that I'm saved by my faith, I don't have to jump through hoops, or do every single thing that my church tells me to do to be saved, now we can understand John chapter 4. Now we know how to test the spirits and learn heresy. If you don't know the gospel, how do you know what heresy is? Now here's a point I make in point number one. Christians must know the authentic gospel taught by Jesus Christ himself. This is the only way we can test the spirits of Bible teachers. We cannot know every form of heresy, but we can know the authentic gospel. A famous example that's made when you learn apologetics. When the FBI trains people to spot counterfeit money, they don't go and get 100,000 pieces of funny money because it would take your whole life. Just like I don't just study every different heresy. They give them a real piece of money and then make them learn that. How it feels, how it smells, how it bends, how it looks. If you know what real money is, you'll be able to discern all the funny money. And that's why we don't need to spend our entire life studying every single cult and heresy that's out there. If you know the true gospel, you can smell heresy a mile away. Doesn't that make things simple? Thank God we don't have to spend hours going into every different heresy. But this was something that happened even in John's time. That's why we read in verses 1 through 3, Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God, and this is that spirit of Antichrist. Whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already it is in the world. So when someone comes to my door as a Jehovah's Witness and they want to hand me their little program, the Watchtower, and they tell me that they're Bible students and all this stuff, and I go, okay, I'm a Bible student too. Thank God that I'm saved by my faith. Thank God Jesus came. He died, he was buried, he was resurrected. Oh, Jesus was a great man, the Bible says. But it doesn't say that he was God. And I say, well, if you want, you can come to a Bible study at my church. Other than that, you are not welcome in my house. Because you're destroying souls. You are preaching a false gospel. That's how you test the spirits. Someone tells you, you know why Jesus came? to make you happy. You're missing something in your heart. Only Jesus can fill it. That's why Jesus came. You're doing okay as you are. You're doing pretty good in your life. You know, you got the good job in the house and these other things. That's fine. But why aren't you happy? Because you need Jesus to make you happy. Jesus came to destroy the work of the devil. Jesus does much more than make me happy. He saves my soul. Why would Jesus, when I read the Bible, tell me to get ready for trials and temptations? Since I came to Jesus, I have never had more dirty looks, more people not like me, more angry emails, more people confront me when I talk about the Word. And this is amongst Christians. If I wanted the peace of my life, I would resign tomorrow, just sit there with my wife and kids, go to the most church-emerging church I could find and just go, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then go make all the money I wanted and relax. So that's not why Jesus came. He didn't come to make you happy. He didn't even come to glorify you. He came to glorify Himself and His Father. You're teaching humanism. And the church emergent is a perfect name. The church emergent is church emergent. It is going to emerge like throw up from God's mouth. God is going to spit it, spew it from his mouth, like he threatened to do with the church allowed to see him. They start out like sheep, but they're wolves in sheep's clothing. That's why Rob Bell comes out and betrays everyone after 10, 15 years of preaching, and now starts saying, well, The church has to get with it. Marriage can be a man and a man, or a woman and a woman. A once faithful evangelical minister. Now whether he's saved or not, that's not my business. But he is teaching garbage. He is teaching a false gospel. Well, you can't name names. You're right. That's why Paul said, Alexander and Hymenaeus, I handed them over to Satan, that they might be saved. Because we're not supposed to name names. Point number two. Christian fathers must fight for King Jesus. We can overcome false teachers by the guidance of the Holy Spirit through God's word. Fathers must be Christian leaders in their own homes for the church to be revived. Everybody wants a revival. Why doesn't it come? How are you going to revive humanism? How are you going to revive a false gospel? It starts in the home. If I do everything I can in this church and act like a godless rat in my home for my six children and Lord willing, number seven on the way, I have failed. It doesn't matter. how popular a sermon might be, a ministry might be, I am a dog. I don't even lead and show my own children the love of God. That's what we need, that's what's missing. It's not getting you a king, an iPad, an iPhone, an Xbox, a guitar, I won't say a set of drums, I don't want to get beat up, a keyboard, any of these things. Those things are fine and they're useful. I love my technology, but give them the gospel first. How about that? They get everything on Christmas but the gospel. That is not leading in your home. The beauty of the Reformation, it took the gospel out of the hands of the Judaizers that were corrupting it and gave it to the dad in his home. That's how you change a society. That's how we explode with creativity again. That's how you get people to actually have some focus in life again. Treat each other the right way. The dads have to do the right thing in the home. You don't have to be a bible fucker. When I was young, my dad left. I had a stepdad. If I did anything crazy, he let me know what time it is. I was not allowed to walk into my house thinking I was going to smoke funny cigarettes or bring disgusting magazines or videos or things in my home because God forbid my stepfather found out my heart would be broken that I broke his heart. We have to be moral again with whatever Jesus has given us we got to be moral. So Christian fathers must fight. 1 John 4, verses 4-6, Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because the greater is He, the Holy Spirit, that is in you, than he that is in the world. They are of the world, therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God. He that knoweth God heareth us, he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. I want to read you something. There's a great quote. Everybody likes to read Homer in college. Homer, the Iliad, and the Odyssey. Even Paul himself quotes some pagan philosophers in the Bible. It's something very useful to remember. You want to know why the church is infinite? You want to know why the church is not filled with men anymore? This is Homer. Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing, and dancing sooner than war. We have turned the church into a country club. We have turned it into a knitting class. Men don't go to knitting classes. Men don't go to self-help groups. We don't even go to the doctor. If you're a man with testosterone, you don't even want to learn this. I'll fix it myself. Your finger's hanging off. Ah, I got spread in the trunk. You got this huge bulge from your body. I'll drink more orange juice, it'll go away. Leave me alone, I gotta work. Men want to fight. Men are to fight. Not with swords, not like some stupid Conan or Rambo movie, but a real fight. The way God fought for us. A fight of sacrifice. You cannot get men into a church with a false gospel that tries to turn them into women. That makes them soft. That turns it into a psychotherapy class. That wants to just nurture, give birth to a child. We don't do that stuff. We fight. And that's what we have to show the men. You'll fight for your job. You'll fight for your weed. You'll fight for your partying. You'll fight for the alcohol. You'll fight for the bonuses at work. You'll fight over who makes more money, Kanye West or Jay-Z. You'll fight over who's better, the Yankees or the Mets. Fight for the gospel and be a man! Care enough about your family to fight for the gospel. I don't care if you notice statistics for the Yankee team. I want to know, you know, who was on God's team. I want men to know who the apostles were and what they did in history and how they fought and died like men. That's why there's women in the pastorate. It's a judgment on us. We made it so soft that they could be pastors. When the Beatties come back and we're dragged out into the street again, and I'm eating my Wheaties because I know it's coming back. Then it will become a position for men again. It's not being chauvinistic. I don't want my daughter to be a minister in a hostile country and get the living daylight speed out of her. They're made for a different purpose. My son, he can hold that. That's what he was made for, to fight. The men are made to fight. When you don't fight, you die. When you don't fight, your brain shrivels up. When you don't fight, your life has no meaning. You live your life through something else. You live your life through the Dallas Cowboys. You live your life through the Miami Heat. And what are you doing? You're sitting there and you're watching these men filled with testosterone, jumping around, banging each other around because you're living through that instead of living through Christ. That's what we're doing. That's what worship is. You're worshiping the idol, you're living through that. And I'm telling you, the people that shook the world, none of the 12 apostles could slam a basketball, they weren't going to hit 60 home runs in a year, but I'll tell you something, they shook the world. They made it better for everybody. Every ethnic group in the history of the world has experienced slavery. And where the Bible is consistent, they're all let free. We spoke about it last year, about God's sense of humor. We had slaves in this country. We had people that were slaves simply because of the color of their skin. And let's remember something, so this isn't just beating up on certain ethnic groups. The ones who sold them into slavery, not one white slave trader ever went into internal Africa. They were always brought out to them by other Africans who sold them out. But there was slavery in this country. And what did God do? Those slaves, through the beatings, and the torture, and the whippings, and the godless work they had to do, they kept their family structure together. You see what happened with black America early on? Something got thrown into the pot that the devil didn't expect, the gospel of Jesus Christ. You had black men that fought with everything they had to keep their family together. Don't you separate me from my wife and children. She's not for sale. My kids are not for sale. And when the time came, even though you won't read about it in your history books, they even fought. They fought in the Civil War. You had black regiments that were fighting for God and for family and for country. And we had a man that gained their freedom. And who signed that? You think God doesn't have a sense of humor? Who signed that piece of paper for them? Their father, Abraham. And we went from that man filled with testosterone and a heart and gospel muscles to Jay-Z and Kanye West. coming out with songs, black skinhead, and videos of chasing a white man through a church and then hanging him from a tree. That's what we've gone from. We went from a people that strove with the gospel. They had brains, intellect, they fought. Your history books won't tell you when you have black politicians, black leadership. Nobody knew that. I guarantee you didn't know that. That's the leadership they had with nothing. We have everything, and you gotta pass laws to get people to pick up their pants. You had Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister, who believes in the gospel. Don't listen to garbage FBI reports. Does anybody trust the FBI now? He would preach the night before. He would deliver his sermon. He would go out there with a suit and a tie on like a man. And he would walk on and on and have his head handed to him. And that's how we change the country. You try and get these kids to wear a suit today anywhere. You try and get them to take a beating for any righteousness. Remember, they have a different Jesus now. It's the Jesus that wants to make you happy. It's the Jesus that wants to make you comfortable. You think Martin would be on TVN today? You think Martin would be welcome in any church, anywhere, like churches today? I had Christian leadership like Martin Luther King Jr. Now I got Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson? That's what we've gone through. That's what a father used to be. Who in their right mind wouldn't want a father like Martin Luther King Jr.? My dad prays, he loves the people, he loves all people. He's not just marching for our tribe, he's marching for all the tribes of the earth. So humbly, he even went to the lowly Indians when he saw that Gandhi, a Hindu, was using Christian principles to free his nation. That's a man. That's a father. I don't care how many home runs you hit, how many touchdowns you score, or how many silly women who didn't have a father that you seduce and sleep with. That's not impressive. Shake a nation like Martin did, and then I'll be impressed. Fathers, fulfill their calling. when they glorify our true Father in Heaven and His Son Jesus. They must teach their family to love the way Christ loved through their everyday actions. John 7-14 Beloved let us love one another for love is of God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth and knoweth not God for God's love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son, here we go with the Gospel again, into the world that we might live through him. Here in his love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we are also to love one another. No man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Amen. You've got to build your family on Christ. If you're a true father, you point them to their Father in Heaven. That's all I'm trying to do, and that's all you should be trying to do. Any authority you have, what am I doing? I would never come up here, God forbid, and promote me. If I ever do that, let me be killed. I don't want to die in hell because I promoted me. I promote the Son of God. I glorify Him, what He's done. If the Spirit left me today, I'd never have the courage to be a Christian again. Fathers must build their house upon the confession that Jesus Christ is Lord. Point number four. The Holy Spirit will cast out fear and strengthen us to do battle for Christ. We must be a fighter like our Father in Heaven and never surrender the truth of God's Word. Never. That's the message. Can you imagine if Tyndale got scared and didn't try to provide the Bible in English? Can you imagine if Erasmus backed down and didn't come out with his translation? Can you imagine if Martin Luther, whom Martin Luther King was named after, the father of one of the fathers of the Reformation, one who set it up. Can you imagine if Martin Luther, he was in the same situation we were. He had a huge, powerful church. He had Emperor Charles with him. He had all the delegates in Europe surrounding this one little man, Martin Luther. And what did Luther finish up with? Here I stand. I can do no other. And he was living in a time where they'd drag you right out. You'd be hung up. You'd be quartered. You'd have your head drilled open and lead poured in to teach you a lesson. You'd go to the Iron Maiden, the rack. And he had the courage to do that. And we think nothing is at stake today. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, Because as he is so, are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him because he first loved us. If a man sayeth, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar. But he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, that he loveth God, that he who loveth God loveth his brother also. If we do not, as Christians, call out people in the entertainment industry, and point out their error, how can we say we love them? Who loves these rock and metal, I'm not just picking on hip-hop. The white musicians did it first. The revolution started in the late 50s and 1960s, with the British invasion. They brought their music, they brought the occult with them, they brought free love, they brought a lot of trash with them. Okay? But the point is this, if we don't call them out, you don't love them. Who loves them more? The guy who runs out and buys their record and never gives them the gospel? Or someone that calls out the heresy and the wickedness of what they're doing? Are you going to stand up for Jesus? That's the question. Fathers, are you going to be a father and fight for your family? Are you going to have MTV and the public school raise your children? Or are they going to be able to have a dinner with you, even if it's 12 o'clock at night or 9 o'clock in the morning, whenever you're home, are you going to speak to your children and to your wife and give them the gospel? The choice is yours. But I know what we need to do. You want this thing to be revived? You want to see a new reformation? Fight like your father fought for you. Your father in heaven. Amen. Almighty God, we pray, Lord, that your words will touch our heart. We pray dear God that there would be a revival and it would start where it started in the Reformation with the father in the home as a true leader of his family. Not wanting comforts in life, but willing to sacrifice. Willing to bring his wife and his children a word because he loves them. Please, dear God, give the Father strength to resist the temptation of the devil of flesh in the world. We pray, dear God, that you always be by our side. We thank you, Lord, that the darkness is starting to separate from the light. We pray, dear God, that men would no longer be in these chains which are worse than physical change, spiritual chains of bondage. We pray, dear God, that the true gospel, once again, would be proclaimed in the land without compromise. We thank you in the name of your conquering King and Son, the Lord of the Universe, Jesus Christ. Amen.