Good evening, please stand as we sing number 457, to God be the glory. To God be the glory, great things He hath done, So loved He the world that He gave us His Son, Who yielded His life, an atonement for sin, And opened the life-gate that all may go in. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the earth hear his voice. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the people rejoice. O come to the Father, through Jesus the Son, and give him the glory, great things he hath done. O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood To every believer, the promise of God The vilest offender who truly believes That moment from Jesus, a pardon receives Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the earth hear his voice. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the people rejoice. O come to the Father, through Jesus the Son, and give him the glory for great things he hath done. Great things He hath taught us, great things He hath done, and great are rejoicing through Jesus the Son. and higher and greater will be our wonder, our transport when Jesus we see. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the earth hear His voice. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the people rejoice. O come to the Father, Through Jesus the Son And give him the glory Great things he hath done Good to see you back tonight. Let's go to Lord more prayer. Father, we ask every service for your power and father for your blessing. We want that again tonight. Be with our loved ones that are homesick and I pray Lord that you take care of the ones are still in the hospital and those looking forward to surgeries and procedures in the next few days. I pray Lord you just meet with us tonight in Jesus name. Amen, you may be seated. We will be singing love lifted me number 413. I was sinking deep and sane, far from the peaceful shore. Very deep, restrained within, sinking to rise no more. But the master of the sea heard my despairing cry. From the waters lifted me, now safe am I. Love lifted me. Love lifted me when nothing else could help. Love lifted me. Love lifted me. Love lifted me when nothing else could help. Love lifted me. All my heart to Him I give, ever to Him I'll cling. In His blessed presence live, ever His praises sing. Love so mighty and so true, bears my soul's best songs. Faithful, loving, servant still to Him belongs. Love lifted me. Love lifted me when nothing else could help. Love lifted me. Love lifted me. Love lifted me when nothing else could help. Love lifted me. Souls in danger, look above, Jesus completely saved. He will lift you by His love out of the angry waves. He's the master of the sea, billows His will obey. He, your Savior, wants to be besaved today. Love, lift and meet. Several folks we need to keep praying for. Again, continue to pray for Preacher and Cindy. So it goes on. So bringing visitors is what it's all about. So try to get somebody to come to church with you. And again, especially if you have someone that's lost, a good place to get them saved is get them to church and let them hear the Word of God and hopefully they'll let the Holy Spirit work on them. But brother ross will be here for sunday school. He'll be here for church sunday morning. He'll be here sunday night So again, don't forget that the regular stuff going on this week is tomorrow night. So winning 6 45 Uh, and then friday night youth activity 6 to 7 30 saturday bus visitation at 9 30 So winning at 10 45 then back in our place for sunday school and church on sunday morning So again, this week will be brother ross. And again, he's been with us for I don't know, 35, 36 years, a lot of years, and he's been a real friend of Liberty Baptist Church. We love him, so he'll be here to speak with us, to us. And again, Sunday School teachers, if you have fourth, fifth, and sixth grade kids, you can bring them in as long as you sit with them and make sure they behave during the Sunday School time. But Brother Ross will be here for all three services on Sunday. Please stand as we sing number 171 as a volunteer. A call for loyal soldiers comes to one and all. Soldiers for the conflict, will you heed the call? Will you answer quickly with a ready cheer? Will you be enlisted as a volunteer, A volunteer for Jesus, a soldier true? Others have enlisted, why not you? Jesus is the captain, we will never fear. Will you be enlisted as a volunteer? Yes, Jesus calls for soldiers who are filled with power. Soldiers who will serve Him every day and hour. He will not forsake you, He is ever near. Will you be enlisted as a volunteer? A volunteer for Jesus, a soldier true. Others have enlisted, why not you? Jesus is our captain, we will never fear. Will you be enlisted as a volunteer? And when the war is over, in the victory line, He whose heart was broken, broken for mankind. Now, just now, he calls you, calls in accents clear. Will you be enlisted as a volunteer? A volunteer for Jesus, a soldier true. Others have enlisted, why not you? Jesus is our captain, we will never fear. Will you be enlisted as a volunteer? Dear Precious Heavenly Father, we thank you that we can come into your house, Lord. And we ask you to bless the gift and the giver. And Brother Ross says he's coming our way, Lord. Just give him traveling mercies here, Lord, and a good way to get a blessing is by being faithful in our giving. In Jesus' precious holy name, amen. Yeah. Yeah. We will be singing number 490, Revive Us Again. We praise Thee, O God, for the Son of Thy love, For Jesus, who died and is now gone above. Alleluia, Thine the glory! Alleluia, Amen! Alleluia, Thine the glory! Revive us again! We praise Thee, O God, for Thy Spirit of light, Who has shown us our Savior and scattered our night. Alleluia, Thine the glory! Alleluia, Amen! Alleluia, Thine the glory! Revive us again! Revive us again. Fill each heart with Thy love. May each soul be rekindled with fire from above. Alleluia, Thine the glory. Alleluia, Amen. Alleluia, Thine the glory. Revive us again. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found. Was blind, but now I see. T'was grace that brought taught me. I'm sorry guys. It was grace that taught my heart to fear. And grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed. Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come. Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home. The Lord has promised good to me. His word, my hope, secure. and portion be as long as life endures. When your Bible is to 1 Samuel chapter 4, hold a finger there and then we're going to go over to 1 Corinthians chapter 16 and read a verse there and then we'll come back to 1 Samuel. But 1 Samuel chapter 4 and then go over to 1 Corinthians chapter 16. 1 Samuel 4 and 1 Corinthians 16. Started a series last week talking about, again, character. This week we're gonna speak, and again, I don't know if I'll get through it. The good news about having a series, if you don't get through all of it, because I'm like Brother Nichols, I don't have the privilege of going late, because Brother Nichols said, he told both Brother Taylor and I, and the other folks, I can preach as long as I want, and you guys still keep it to an hour. So if you wonder why we get out on that time, it's because the boss said to you, so that's why we do that. But again, we're gonna look at character and quitting tonight. So notice 1 Corinthians 16, notice verse 13. Here's what he says, watch ye, stand fast in the faith. Notice what he then says, quit you like men, be strong. So again, he says, I want you to be a man, and I want you to quit like men. And back then, by the way, men typically didn't quit. They were taught to, and again, to take their job seriously, take their position seriously, and do what they was told. And, again, some of you have heard the story of when I believe it was Mount Vesuvius had erupted. They found some of the Roman soldiers still standing while the lava apparently had came and came around their feet. And, actually, they stood there while the lava was burning their legs and stuff because they had not been told that they could leave their position. They had stayed there in position and they were frozen in that lava. When the lava dried and cooled, they were still there. Again, that's what he's talking about. Quit you like men, be strong. 1 Samuel, I told you to hold your finger there. Notice verse 9 of chapter 4. Now this is actually not even the children of Israel that's being spoken to. This is the Philistines that's being spoken to. They're being attacked by the children of Israel. And because of the fact that the Ark of the Covenant is now brought into battle, they're afraid. By the way, normally that would have been something to be afraid of. The problem is the children of Israel had some folks on their side. You'll see them when you read on down. We don't have time to read on down. young man by the name of Hophni and a young man by the name of Phinehas which was Eli the priest's sons. They were a mess. They were wicked boys and did not take the word of God or the house of God very seriously. But in this case the Philistines thought they were going to lose the battle because they said this is the God that's been defeating enemies all around the land. This is the one that wiped out the folks at the Red Sea. He was having a pep talk with the rest of the Philistines, and here's what he told his men in chapter 4, verse 9. Be strong, quit yourselves like men, O ye Philistines, that ye be not servants unto the Hebrews, as they have been to you. Quit yourselves like men and fight. So what he's saying is, I mean, we may lose. It doesn't look very good, but I want you to stay in there. I want you to do your job, and I want you to continue to fight. So tonight we want to look at this thought character. and quitting. Character and quitting. Let's pray and then we'll get into the lesson. Lord, I ask you for your help tonight and your blessing. I ask, Lord, that you might help me to be able to get across the thoughts that I've read and studied and looked at, and I pray, Lord, that they be a help and a blessing to somebody tonight. In Jesus' name, amen. Dr. Lee Roberson, again, Brother Nicholas mentioned him Sunday, one of his heroes. He was a great preacher for many, many years. He used to travel and preach. We had him here a long time ago, but he made this statement, winners never quit and quitters never win. Now, I can tell you it was one of the best lessons that my father taught me, and my father taught me a lot of lessons. One of the lessons my dad taught me was not to quit. My dad did not allow me to quit. My dad did not ever, I mean, again, if I started something, I was made to finish it, whether I wanted to finish it, whether it didn't matter. Now, it might have started out as fun, but regardless of how I started out, my dad made me stick to it because he was trying to teach me a lesson. I told someone one time, I don't know how to quit. Now, by the way, when I said that, I really do know how to quit. It's easy to quit. Anybody can quit. But what I meant by that was, I haven't been taught to quit. I've been taught not to give up, not to give in. Winners never quit, quitters never wins, what Dr. Lee Robinson said. Now, I want to make a statement real quick because I forgot when I mentioned it. The offerings we take up, when I say the offering goes to Brother Ross, we always take these offerings to help cover the hotel, the gas, the travel and all that, and that way we take the love offerings. Sometimes we give money from these, from the Wednesday night offerings as well, but I did want you to think that when I said this is offering for Brother Ross, I didn't want you to think that I meant that, because not all the love offerings you give on Wednesday night go to him. We always give all the folks that come to us. Brother Nichols has always been very, very good to all the speakers. There's never been a speaker that's ever had reason to complain because Liberty Baptist Church, you guys have always been really good givers and always give great offerings to the speakers. But the offerings on Wednesday night are for the expenses and things for those meetings. Now, we're going to look at several things tonight. And again, I don't usually have three pages of notes, but some of it is just a lot of quick readings, so you'll have to listen on purpose. So those of you that think I normally speak fast, I will speak fast tonight. And I've been trying to slow down and talk slower, but tonight I don't have time, so you'll have to listen quickly. First off, I want to give you some biblical personalities who did not quit. Noah and his wife didn't quit when they lost all in the flood. The children of Israel did not quit when they were enslaved to Pharaoh. Aaron didn't quit after the death of his sons, Nadab and Abihu. Moses did not quit after his sister Miriam's death and when she passed away. Joshua did not quit when he was outnumbered at Jericho. Naomi did not quit after loss of husband and two sons. I'll stop here. I've got something more. I'm going to continue to read in a moment. Some of you may say, well, they did struggle. And by the way, several of these people that we just mentioned did struggle. Here's what you have to keep in mind. Though they struggled, they didn't quit. Remember if you remember the other night when I was talking about the thing I told you that you will get hit and you probably will in your Christian life getting locked down. By the way, the difference is whether you get back up after you get knocked down. So again, some of these folks were knocked down. Some of these folks took a hit, but the fact is they did not stop. They continued to live for the Lord. They got back up and went on. Jonathan did not quit due to others' hatred towards his best friend, David. Elijah didn't quit when King and Queen ordered a warrant out for his arrest. Elisha didn't quit when surrounded by Ben-Hadad's entire army in Dothan. Nehemiah didn't quit when he was building a wall and he had to hold a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other. Mordecai did not quit when Haman tried to destroy his reputation. Job didn't quit when he lost his health, his wealth, his family, and his friends. Jeremiah didn't quit when he had to tell his loved ones that they were away from God. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did not quit when they were faced with the fiery furnace. Hosea did not quit when his wife left him. Joseph and Mary didn't quit when the law was passed that should have resulted in Christ's death. Blind Bartimaeus didn't quit when begging on the roadside for healing by Jesus. Peter didn't quit, again he took a hit, but he didn't quit when he denied the Lord in his moment of weakness. Paul didn't quit after snake bites, imprisonment, beatings, and shipwrecking. I could go on and on. Many women in the Bible who faced, by the way, many things that you and I will face, some of them much worse things than we will face, and the thing that they all shared in common was they didn't let that stop them from living for the Lord. So again, the first thought is, again, that you and I, Biblical personalities who did not quit so there's other men and women who face things and it's always a blessing to me to know that others have experienced what I've experienced that others have went through especially if they've already got past it because it makes me realize while I'm struggling through this thing that you can get through it because they did and it's always again the old saying misery loves company that is really true too it's sometimes it's nice to know that other people have experienced what you've experienced and I can tell you that whatever trouble you're struggling with I might not have experienced it but someone else has Probably a Bible personality, maybe not one that I mentioned, but again, I could have talked forever about men and women in the Bible who experienced things, but they did not quit. These biblical personalities face various circumstances. They faced lost possessions. They faced tragedy to family. They faced impossible battles. They received bad news. They were homesick. They were tired. They faced death. They faced a bleak future. Terrible illness. They were abandoned. Lack of loyalty. They were cheated. But what did they all share in common? They all refused to quit. So again quitting you have to understand quitting should not be an option It shouldn't be something that you don't entertain the thought when it comes to doing right when it comes to living for the Lord You say I'm discouraged today today. It was a tough day. That's all right tomorrow The Sun will shine and hopefully you'll have a better day And by the way tomorrow is a tough day. You just keep on trotting along I can tell you this many a man and woman in life have been out in a desert have been out some other place and because they Decided I'm not going to stop. I'm not going to quit they made it through I One of the stories I read when I was a kid was about, I think his name was Jedediah Smith, I believe was his name, but he fought a grizzly bear and the grizzly bear got the best of him. I mean, tore his scalp half off, I mean, almost killed him, and he ended up killing that grizzly bear with an ax. No one was around, so he spent, I think he walked like 100 miles and crawled part of it to get to help. By the way, he lived through it. You'd think, man, that was tough. But you say, why did he make it? Because he just refused to stop. He refused to give up, he refused to throw in the towel. And by the way, you must, again, make up your mind that that will happen as well. These biblical personalities filled various positions in life. Now, some of us were not in their positions because some were kings. Some were queens. I don't know about you. Now, I know there are folks around here that think they're the king, and there's probably folks that think they're the queen, but none of us are, okay? But there were folks in the Bible, kings and queens, by the way, that were godly men and women that faced some tough things, but they didn't quit. There were fathers. There were sons. There were daughters. There were mothers. There were wives. There were captains, there were farmers, there was adults, there were teenagers, there were children, there was rich, there was poor, there was healthy, there was unhealthy, there was educated, there was uneducated. Again, all those different people, all those different personalities, and by the way, many of us fall in one of those categories or more, and the truth is there was folks that faced difficulties, but they did not quit. You mentioned again to learn the definition of quit. Now, the definition of quit is pretty easy. It simply means to discontinue. It means to leave. It means to abandon. And by the way, those are things when you think about it, to discontinue, to leave, to abandon. In most instances, that's a bad thing. That's a bad thing. I'm going to pick on Sean because Sean loves me enough that I won't hurt his feelings. Sean, is there ever a time to quit? Brother Taylor, is there ever a time to quit? Let me give you the next point, and this is one I'll spend a little time on. To quit doing bad is good. To quit doing bad. I figured Brother Taylor would get it. I knew Sean wouldn't, because I knew Sean would throw out that answer, because I just had said, don't quit. And it's like Sean would say, yeah, don't quit, Brother Block. And I figured Brother Taylor would say, no. I figured he did. I saw the wheels rolling in Brother Taylor's head, but then he gave me the answer that he thought I wanted to hear. But I knew that Sean would throw that one out, because I just had told you not to quit. But there is a time to quit. If folks give you a hard time because you quit the sin you used to do, That's a good time to quit. That's a good thing to quit. Again, let me give you some things that are good. I mean, if you quit these, they would be good. Grab your Bibles, go to Psalm chapter 37. Psalm chapter 37. By the way, if someone calls you quitter for these things, that's a good thing. Most of the time when someone calls you quitter, that's probably going to be a bad thing, but I'm going to give you some things that would be good if we would quit them. Notice Psalm chapter 37, notice verse 8. Psalm 37, 8 says this, cease, what that means is quit. cease from anger and forsake wrath, fret not thyself in any wise to do evil. So what he said is, I want you to stop being angry. Now listen to me, husbands, wives, children, bosses, employees, anger's got a lot of people in trouble throughout the years. Anger's cost a lot of people jobs. It's hurt a lot of marriages. It's caused a lot of fights. Now again, the Bible tells us not to let the sun go down on our wrath. What it means is, you know what? There might be times you get angry, but you need to make sure that you keep that short. that you get past it, you get over it. Now, here's what you have to be careful, when you get angry, usually you get angry because you either actually was, there was a wrong, or there was an implied wrong. You think someone did you wrong. Now, by the way, I said implied wrong, because sometimes they didn't actually do you wrong. You only thought they did you wrong. But the truth is, the more you think about it, the angrier you will get. This was not new with me, but it was a rule that I had at my house. Now, my wife had more of a temper than I did, so my wife sometimes would be mad at somebody, and she'd say, I'm going to call them, and I'd say, no, you're going to go to bed tonight. You're going to sleep on it. If tomorrow you still feel the same way, then you can do something about it. I always made her sleep on it. And by the way, the next day, she might still be angry, but she wasn't near as angry as she was the night before. After a night of rest, after a night of sleep, and after a night of not, again, hopefully when you sleep, your mind quits dwelling on whoever it was or whatever it was that you was angry at, and you get some rest. When you wake up in the morning, lots of times you don't look at it quite the same way you looked at the night before. So I had a rule with the kids and with the wife, if you write someone a mean note, You can write it, but you don't send it. You don't give it to him tonight. You hang on to it. You read it tomorrow morning. If you still want to give it to him, then that's fine. But I can tell you 99% of the time that that note never got given to somebody. It never got sent to the mail because they had changed how they felt. You and I have to be very careful. There are some things we ought to get angry about. There are some things we should get, I mean, we should get angry. And by the way, some things we ought to get angry and stay angry about. I'm talking about abortion and I'm talking about some other, I mean there's some things that we are just, I mean we are not ever let our blood stop boiling over those things. But most things that we get angry about are usually things that somebody did or said to us. It is usually something personal. Brother Howells had a rule, and by the way that's the reason Brother Howells had the temperament he had, he had a rule that he never defended himself. I mean, he would defend others, but he never defended himself. Most people who have an anger issue, they go through life defending number one, this person right here, because someone did this person wrong. Now, I always tell people all the time, There is some times that you ought to fight. You ought to fight for your God. You ought to fight for your country. And you ought to fight for your family. But there are a lot of reasons that fighting doesn't solve anything. And the fight and all the fighting is, by the way, would it make you feel better to punch somebody? Of course it would. Would it make you feel better to cuss them out? Of course it would. But we're not looking at what makes you feel better. We're trying to look at what makes God happy with us. And most of the time, punching somebody or cussing somebody out is not going to please Him. Again, he says, I want you to quit when it comes to your anger. Notice Proverbs chapter 18. And all these verses will be in either Psalms or Proverbs. Notice Proverbs chapter 18. Another thing that we should stop or we should quit, he says in Proverbs 18, 18, the law causes contentions to cease and parted between the mighty. So he said, you know what? I want you to stop those contentions. Again, one was anger. Contention is when you're having a problem with somebody else. When, again, when there's an issue, he says, I want the contentions to stop. Notice Proverbs chapter 19, one chapter over. Proverbs chapter 19, notice verse 27. Proverbs 19 verse 27, here's what he says. That probably covers most every college teacher at most colleges. That probably covers almost everything you hear on the regular news channels. That probably covers almost everything, I mean many things that you read in books. There are a lot of things that would cause you to err, by the way, from the real truth. Again, I love to read. Most of you know that. I haven't read a lot lately, but usually I'll read three or four books a week. I love Westerns. I like science fiction. No, I'm not a romance novel guy. I've got all of Lewis Lamour's books, a hundred and something of them. I read them about once a year. I read them all the way through. I can give you a book report about every one of them because I've had them for 20 years and I've probably read them through 10 or 15 times in those 20 years. I've got a bunch of Don Codesmith. I've got a bunch of others that are, I mean, good books, clean books, and I read them. I keep them so I can read them again. I don't sell them and give them back. I keep them. I've got some science fiction stuff, some stuff where the apocalypse happened. I mean, we dropped nuclear bombs in the world back, I mean, in the code ages, whatever you call it. But I mean, I like to read. But here's the thing. There's a lot of philosophies in a lot of books. that you and I do not need. There's a lot of words in some of those books that you and I do not need. There's a lot of circumstances and situations in those books that you and I do not need. So what he says is, I want you to be careful, again, cease, my son, to hear the instruction that cause it to err from the words of knowledge. If some college teacher or some school teacher tells you that the word of God is not true, you need to cease to listen to that instruction. If they tell you that evolution is true and you and I came from monkeys, then again, you're going to have to understand, if evolution was true, we would still have some individuals in that in-between stage. Now, I've seen some really hairy men. So it is possible that I might believe that, I mean, but you know what? I haven't ever seen any really hairy women. And by the way, the gorilla or the monkey women, they are hairy too. So, I mean, the truth is, lest we just have some women that, I mean, they spend a lot of time shaving their whole body. Evolution is not true. Now, by the way, you don't have to be a rocket scientist. Now, in our, as older folks, back when I was in school, my biology teacher did not believe in evolution. I had a biology teacher that taught it, and by the way, back then, all the books said, it is believed that. They called it a hypothesis. You know what that meant? It's what we think is true, but it hasn't been proven. And by the way, to this day, evolution has still never been proven. If you have someone tell you that you came from monkeys, and you came, I mean that all, now listen to me. I realize you and I have to have faith that God has always existed. But if we didn't believe that God always existed and placed our faith in Him, we'd have to place our faith in the fact that apparently out there in the middle of nowhere was a bunch of gases. And those gases were just floating around with other gases. And all of a sudden, apparently, some of them got angry at each other, and they slammed into each other. And then they caused some stuff to happen, and then stuff happened. And then again, there was amoebas in the ocean, and little one-cells running around all their lives. And all of a sudden, they ran into another one. Apparently, it got real busy down there. And they became a multi-cell organism. I mean, again, you'd have to have a lot of faith to believe that. So yes, you do have to have faith in one, either that God created all this or that evolution created all this. And I can tell you, it takes a lot less faith to believe that God created all this than that evolution is true. Again, I don't wear a watch today. I had one the other night, and you guys didn't think it was very pretty, so I gave it to one of the girls. Someone said this to me years ago. They said, take a watch, one of the Swiss watches, not one of the cheap ones. Take one of the Swiss watches. It has all those pieces and parts in it. Take them all apart and put them inside a jar. Shake them up, pour them out. The chances of them all falling back into the right place and becoming a watch is about what the odds of evolution are. And by the way, the chance of them shaking it up and pulling it back and becoming a watch is an impossibility. And it's an impossibility for evolution to be true as well. I've often said, if evolution really was true, why did we lose our tail? I tell you, there's some times one of our preachers said years ago, there's some times when you're carrying those groceries in the house, a tail would come in handy. You could reach around, open up the screen door, and walk right in. I mean, I can tell you. If they said the tail fell off because it was one of those organs that we didn't need anymore. I can tell you it would be nice if you were walking around and someone mouthed off and you just slapped them with your tail and they're looking at your hands like that wasn't me. But the truth is evolution is not true. And there are a lot of other things again. There are some people that are so smart, the problem is they don't know nothing that's really true. The Bible says they profess themselves to be wise and they become what? fools. They're very, very foolish. And so what he said was, cease, my son. There's some people you'd best not listen to. There's some teachers that they may think they know a lot, but by the way, they don't know what they're talking about. They don't. So he said, cease from the instruction that causes you to err from the words of knowledge. Another thing that we should quit, we're supposed to cease from strife. Proverbs 20, verse 3, And we'll come back to it again for another one as well. But Proverbs 20, verse 3 says, it's an honor for a man to cease from strife, but every fool will be meddling. Again, cease from strife. Now, strife is having, you say, but Mark, I've been having it out with these. Now, I can tell you, my wife's family was one of these groups that did that. Her brothers and sisters fought all the time over silly, stupid stuff. My wife was the one that was the go-between. Her brother would call her and ask her to call her sister and ask her something and she would get the answer and call her brother back. And I would say, good lord, they're grownups. Aren't they big enough? Aren't they grown up enough that they can talk to each other? Why in the world do you have to? And she got real frustrated. Had to be the one that would talk to all of them. She was the negotiator. She was the in-between person. Very frustrating position for her to be in. But they fought all the time. Now, by the way, my brothers and I fought sometimes. But after we fought, guess what? We got up, wiped away the blood, and I mean, had a couple bruises, and went on with life. He says, you know what? I want you to cease from strife, from all that bickering, all that carrying on, all that griping and complaining. I want you to cease from that. It accomplishes very little. And by the way, it does not do the cause of Christ a bit of good. Something else we're supposed to cease from. Notice Proverbs chapter 23. He was in chapter 20. Go to chapter 23. Something else that we should cease from. Notice chapter 23, verse 4. He says here, labor not to be rich. That's not even what I want to look at. But by the way, that would be a good thing for you to quit. If you're trying to get rich, you're trying to become a millionaire. Now, listen to me. You serve God. If he wants you to get rich, he'll make you rich. But if you're out looking for money and your whole life is wrapped up around money, you've got the wrong goals in mind. You're shooting for the wrong stuff. But that's not what I want to look at. Notice where he says, labor not to be rich. And here's where he says, cease from thine own wisdom. You know what he wants us to quit? He wants us to quit being know-it-alls. Now, I can tell you as the male species, We typically think we know it all, okay? It would be good if some of us stood in the mirror. Now, they tell you to stand in the mirror and say, you know, you are wonderful, you are wonderful. Some of us would be good if we stood in the mirror and said, you don't know everything, you don't know everything, you don't know everything. It'd be nice, because there are some men that think they know everything. Now, by the way, you might know a lot, but I guarantee you don't know everything. There are so many things that you and I know nothing about. I've often said. Brother Reese is a mechanic. Now, I can work on lawnmower, I can work on weed eaters. There's some things I learned from having to. But when Brother Reese is talking about mechanics, when he's talking about all the stuff about the car, you know what I'm hearing? Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. Wah, wah, wah, wah. That's what I'm hearing. You know how much of it I understood? that much. You know how much of that I cared to understand? Sorry Brother Reeves, about that much. I mean, when Brother Taylor came to our school to talk about the lungs, he knows what he's talking about. He was standing there talking all this stuff, showing charts and all kinds of stuff, and I was watching the kids. It wasn't for me, it was for the kids, thank goodness, because you know what I heard again? I mean, I told Brother Taylor, I said, man, you're a really smart guy, you know a lot of stuff, but none of it made any sense to me. I understand that your lungs need to go, and I understood that part, but the rest of it, way above my head. Now, understand, there's a lot of things we don't know. Piles of stuff we don't know. So, again, he said, you know what I want you to do? I want you to cease from thinking you know everything. Cease from being full of yourself. Years ago, we had a person that we didn't hire back in our school, and they made this statement to me when they left. You just lost the greatest teacher Liberty Christian Academy ever had. Now, after I recovered my shock from that statement, because it was about the dumbest, I've heard some really dumb statements. That was about the dumbest statement, because I had ladies and other folks who'd been teaching for 20 or 30 years, and this person had taught for a year or two, and by the way, was a mess. Now, they knew a lot, but here's the problem. They thought they knew everything. Told them that for a while I one time they was having some problems And I said you know what if you would learn to laugh at yourself People would like you a lot better I Remember one time I was in school, and I was I had the tendency when I'm doing devotions I'm standing on the pulpit. I'm standing on this little thing I stand on the pulpit I lean on the pulpit and I'm bringing devotions one day I lean too far and the pulpit fell down and I fell down too because I was now the kids all stopped for a second and to make sure I got back up. Once I got up, then they laughed. I mean, they say it was nice enough not to laugh as I fell. They waited till I got back up and then they laughed. Now, you know what I did? I laughed too, because it was dumb on my part. I didn't get up and say, don't you laugh at me. Don't you know who I am? I'm the principal around here. You ought to give me some respect. By the way, if you have to tell folks who you are and demand their respect, you probably don't deserve it. Folks, again, if you're a good leader, folks will follow you. If you're the right kind of instructor, folks will listen to you. But again, he said, I want you to cease from being full of your own wisdom. Stop thinking you know it all. Next, notice Isaiah chapter 1. We're going to be in Isaiah for about three different ones, so go to Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 1, notice verse 16. Isaiah chapter 1, notice verse 16. wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes, cease to do evil. If you've got some bad habit or you've got some sin that you're struggling with, you know what God wants you to do? Stop doing that. Now, the Christian life is one of growth. You will always be a sinner, but the longer we've been saved and the more we've been growing, the less of a sinner we should be. Now, again, you're never gonna master, you're never gonna become sinlessly perfect. And if you think you're about there now, You better just get on your knees tonight and ask God, God, please show me how stupid I really am. Because none of us are there yet. We're not even close. But if we've been saved for 40 years, we should be closer, more Christ-like than we were after we've been saved for 30 years. And if we've been saved for 40 years, we should be a lot more Christ-like than we were when we were saved, I mean, at 20 years and at 10. Again, if we have young people that come to church and get saved, and in a year, they're a better Christian than someone who's been saved for 10 years. Shame on the 10-year-old Christian. Good job for the one, I mean, for the one who's been saved a year and grew so much. But shame on the one who's been saved 10 years and hasn't grown at all. That's why he said over there, that's why he said, you know what? Some of you folks, you bother me. You should be eating meat. You know what you're still doing? You're still drinking milk. You're babies. He didn't always, I mean, he wasn't, he didn't always pull punches. He said, you guys are supposed to be eating meat and you're babies. I'm still having to feed you. I'm still have to give you the bottle and burp you and treat you like a little child. Again, he says, I want you to cease from doing evil. Notice Isaiah chapter 13. Isaiah chapter 13, notice verse 11. Isaiah 13, verse 11, he says, and I will punish the world for their evil and the wicked for their iniquity. And I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. Now God says, I'm gonna put a stop to this. So what you can tell is you can tell the God would want us to stop this. And what he wants us to do is stop being arrogant and proud. One of the verses that always stand out in my mind when I think of the man Saul, I mean the king Saul. Samuel's statement to him when he told him, you're no longer going to be the king, God's not happy with you anymore. Here's what he said, little in thine own sight. What he said was when you didn't think so much of yourself, when you wasn't full of you, when you were so arrogant, when you were the king and realized, I'm only the king because God lets me be the king, not I'm the king because I'm the king. He said, you know what? That's why you lost the kingdom. That's why you lost your position. You lost your position because you became arrogant. Arrogant. He said, I want you to cease from your arrogancy and your pride. Notice Isaiah chapter 31. Isaiah chapter 31. Isaiah chapter 31, he wants us next to stop trusting the world's might to save us. Stop depending on whether it's money or power or something else. Notice chapter 31, verse 1. Now, I guarantee you, if you'd have looked at the battle, if you and I would have been in Vegas and we'd have been given the odds of Jericho against the children of Israel, we'd all been betting on Jericho because Jericho was a mighty city. The difference was Jericho did not have God on their side. If we'd have looked at the Red Sea, if we'd looked at the chariots and the army coming behind the children of Israel, and we looked at the children of Israel, men, women, and children, and again, not an army. It's not like they had an army yet. They've been slaves for years. It's not like they probably had a lot of weapons. They'd been slaves for years. If we'd have been making bets of who was going to win, we'd have bet on Pharaoh and his army. But you know what? Pharaoh and his army didn't have God on their side. So again, we need to quit trusting in all these other things. What he's saying is don't trust in the horses because of their might and the armies because of their strength. Don't trust in that stuff. Trust in me. Place your faith and trust in me. Depend on me. So again, he wants us to stop trusting in the world's might to save us. Notice in Exodus chapter 6. I appreciate your patience. I'm moving fast and you're staying with me. I appreciate that. I'm almost done. Exodus chapter 6. Notice verse 6. He wants us to cease from worshiping any other God other than God. Notice Ezekiel chapter 6 verse 6. In all your dwelling places the cities shall be laid waste and the high places shall be desolate and your altars may be laid waste and made desolate and your idols may be broken and cease and your images may be cut down and your works may be abolished. He said, you know what I'm going to wipe out? All those foreign objects, all those foreign gods, all those false gods that you're worshiping. You go back to Exodus chapter 20 verse 3, here's what he says, Thou shalt have no other gods before me. What he says is, you know what? I'm a jealous God. Now, if you think your wife is jealous, you think your husband is jealous, they have nothing on God. By the way, God has every right to be jealous. He's the one that created us. He's the one that owned us in the first place, and then, by the way, bought us back through the death of His Son and the blood on the cross. He has every right, I mean, for us to expect us to serve Him. Here's what he says, I don't want you serving those other gods. I don't want you counting. I don't want you depending on those foreign gods. I don't want you to trust in those things. And there are people, again, there are people that worship all kinds of gods, sometimes silly stuff. By the way, you can find people that worship the sun. If you've ever been to Mexico, ever taken a trip to Mexico, and you go up on the pyramids, you know what you find up there on the top of the pyramid? People up there, they got their little legs folded, and they're up there doing their thing. I don't remember what you call them, but most of them are New Age people. By the way, there are folks that worship monkeys, there are folks that worship, I mean, animals, there's folks that worship the sun, there's folks that worship the moon, there's folks that worship all kinds of things. Truth is, there's folks that worship men, and some pretty worthless men. Again, he said, you know what, I don't want you to worship all those things. I want you to cease from following after all those other gods. I want you to follow me. And the last thing, and I'll be done, he wants us to stop perverting God's ways. Notice Acts chapter 13 in the Bible, Acts chapter 13, Acts chapter 13, verse 10. And said, O fool of all subtlety and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the ways, the right ways of the Lord? So he doesn't want us to pervert God's ways. So find out, now listen to me, in order to, when we think of pervert, what it simply means is you and I change it, we take it from what it was, it was good, and we make it something else. Now listen to me, that's why we are KJV 611 only, okay? Talked to someone the other day and they said, what you don't understand, Brother Block, is there are some other books that should be in there that's not in there. Let me tell you how many books are supposed to be in the King James 1611. Sixty-six of them. You say, how many is in the King James 1611? Sixty-six of them. Now, there might be some other books of history and there might be some other books that have some information in them that might even be good. But I can tell you, if they ever contradict this, stop listening, stop reading them. Again, we have to be very, very careful. There are a lot of people that pervert the ways of the Lord. And usually it's because what happens is we get thinking that we know more than God does. Now, that can happen to all of us. Years ago, someone fussed at me about something and I said, apparently you're more righteous than God. They didn't appreciate what I said. I said, God says that in the Bible. If God says it, apparently it can't be wrong, because God says it, and God can't do wrong. God can't sin. So I said, you might want to read your Bible. Now, what happens is sometimes, now, I know, let me give you an example that's similar, but not the thing that was, because I'll use what my wife did. My wife used to tell our kids not to say, shut up. Our kids weren't supposed to tell you people to shut up. I said, but Block, do you ever tell people to shut up? Sometimes. I said, well, that's not very nice. Maybe not. By the way, if you're talking during church, shut up, okay? You say, well, Blockie, you should be nice. Okay, fine. Cease from speaking during the time that the preacher is speaking, okay? Please be quiet. I mean, I can be nice, but the truth is, she didn't tell the kids that that was a sin, because by the way, telling someone else to shut up is not a sin. It may not be nice. Now, because one of my teachers had told the kids shut up is a bad word, I had a student come in one day and said, they said a bad word. Now, I know some bad words. I've said some bad words. I thought, ooh, bad word. So I thought the kid was, I mean, you can't say bad words at Liberty Christian Academy. We don't allow cussing at Liberty Christian Academy. So I pulled in the three witnesses, because the kid that I pulled in said, I didn't say a bad word. And he was crying, a grade school kid. And I believed him, and I'm thinking, how is there so many witnesses? And I pulled the other witnesses in. I said, did they say a bad word? And they said, yes, she said a bad word. And I'm thinking, oh, man, cute little kid. I can't believe that must've heard from mom and dad. I mean, I don't know where they got it, but I thought. So then I said, I asked one of the kids, I said, what bad word did they say? And I didn't really want to ask him because I didn't really want him to say the word. If it was a bad word, they said, they said, shut up. You can't believe the relief that came over me at that time. I thought, whew, I thought I was going to have to go home and call that mom and dad and say, your kid's cussing at school. I mean, they said shut up. Now, by the way, shut up isn't a very nice word, and kids probably shouldn't be telling each other to shut up. But it's not a cuss word. So again, I went to the teacher and I said, listen to me, change your vocabulary a little bit. Just tell the kids that's not very nice to say. Don't tell them that's a bad word, because when I think a bad word, I think of other words, not that one, OK? But again, understand, he says, you know what? I don't want you to pervert the ways of the Lord. I just want you to, by the way, read it, follow it, live it. I guarantee you, I mean, there's plenty in here for us to do. By the way, this will change you. If you read the Word of God, it will change you. It will affect you. It will alter you. We don't want to change and affect and alter the Word of God. We want to let the Word of God change and alter us. Again, when it comes to quitting, there are some things, there's a right time to quit. And that's quitting any of the sins, any of the evil things that we have. And by the way, we all have besetting sins. We all have things that, again, the devil knows our weakness and he hits us at that. But as we grow in the Lord, we should get where we used to get knocked down every day. Now we get knocked down every other day. Now we get knocked down once a week. Now we get knocked down. It ought to be that we're growing in the Lord and becoming those men and women, not those little babies still drinking milk. Father, thank you for the word of God. I pray, Lord, you'd help us to realize that quitting And giving up when it comes to most things is a bad thing, but ceasing from sin and ceasing from bad habits and ceasing from things that displease you, that's a good thing.