Episode Transcript
All right, if you take God's precious Word and turn the book of Proverbs, please.
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Proverbs 11.
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Proverbs 11.
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God willing, we'll be expounding verse 3.
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Proverbs 11, verse 3.
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Give everyone time to turn there.
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The child of Moses tonight is dedicated to the way.
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Dedicated to the way.
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Proverbs 11, verse 3.
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Now in tonight's verse, Solomon continues to distinguish between those who walk with God and those who don't.
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And the more I read the differences between these two groups, the more resolved I am in my heart that I want to be wholly dedicated to God's way.
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My heart definitely wants that.
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And you can never go wrong following God.
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Someone asked me something the other day and I said, well, you can't go wrong doing A, B, C and D.
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I remember what it was.
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It was someone talking about drinking and it was that attorney I was telling you about, if you remember.
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And I said, I've never met a single person who got into trouble by not drinking.
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Never met a single person, but I've met a bunch of them who've ruined their lives by doing so.
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That's a fact.
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It's a fact.
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You read about him in the Bible, don't you?
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You never read about anyone in the Bible who doesn't.
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Well, in the same way, you'll never read about anyone in the Bible.
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You'll never meet anybody in person who destroyed their lives, who hurt their lives, who had any type of damage come to their life by following God's word.
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So, well, what about John the Baptist?
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He got his head cut off.
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I guarantee you that man gained so much more and he turned into the knee ever lost in that head coming off.
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Jesus said they're going to kill you.
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They're going to imprison you.
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He said, but not a hair of your head will be damaged.
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You won't lose a single hair of your head.
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You're not going to lose anything.
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And I am just so convinced that following God's word is the way to go.
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Proverbs chapter 11, verse three tonight speaks of, if you look in your text, the integrity of the upright, the integrity of the upright.
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I tell you what, if you would, with that word integrity, either in your Bible, if you have enough room or in your margin, if you don't or on your little boat, your notes,
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if you're taking notes with that word integrity, underscore, if you would, the first five letters of the word integrity, the first five letters of the word integrity.
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I enjoyed my study so much and I'm looking forward to teaching God's word tonight.
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I N T E G, integrity, those first five letters.
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Now take your pens and then in your margin or in your notes, write down the word integer.
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I'll spell it for you.
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Brother Shepherd's already smiling, shaking his head.
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He loves words like me.
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I N T E G E R, integer.
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Now, if you look at those two words together, integrity and integer, and you look at what we underline in integrity, then you'll see that integrity and integer come from the same route.
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They're almost the same word even.
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You think, Brother Richard, what is an integer?
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How many of y'all remember what the word integer means?
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When you're a teacher, you better know what integer means.
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You have to go back to your old high school, some of his really old high school math class.
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Well, in math, you're going to have decimal fractions.
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You're going to have fractions with a little slash through them.
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You're going to have fractions of numbers.
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I consider one cow.
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You may have a quarter or one fourth of a cow or 0.25 of a cow or 25 percent of a cow, but it's not a whole cow.
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And an integer in math is a whole number, one whole anything, a whole number, not a fraction, not 85 percent,
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not 95 percent, not one fourth, but one whole number.
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And to understand the word integrity better in our verse tonight, we need to think about what an integer is
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because that's where it comes from.
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Now, with the word integer, those of y'all who have the word integer written down, and I hope you do,
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circled the first two letters, I-N, of integer I-N.
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Now, we'll switch from math class and we'll get over into English grammar class.
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And the letters I-N are a prefix that means not.
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For example, a person may be capable of running a marathon, or a person like me may be incapable of running a marathon.
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I-N means not, not capable.
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Now, if you would, underscore the last four letters of the word integer, T-E-G-E-R.
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The suffix T-E-G-E-R means touched, touched.
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If you want to write that down, touched.
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So, if it's tedger, it's touched. If it's in tedger, it's what? Not touched.
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Isn't this fun? Not touched.
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You say, "Brother Richard, we're not learning anything about the proverb. Hang on."
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My wife prayed tonight, or no, Brother Shepherd prayed tonight.
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My wife and I pray on the way up here, Brother Shepherd prayed tonight, that the simple as well as the deeper people would both be able to understand the teaching.
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Well, here we go. We're going to get it so simple. We're going to get it Baptist, East Texas Baptist simple here.
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Sunday afternoon. Y'all are going to love this illustration.
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Sunday afternoon, we're going to have our dinner on the grounds.
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Now, how many of y'all like chocolate cake?
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Almost everybody likes chocolate cake. That's why I told you to enjoy this illustration.
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Suppose this Sunday, one of the ladies of our church were to make a beautiful homemade chocolate cake.
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And so before church, she sets it down on the dessert table.
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We come in here and we have church. And then after we dismiss, we go over there and we eat.
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And like most ladies would, whatever you bring, you go check your plate or your little warmer or whatever you tray, whatever you brought your food on,
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and you see how much is left and you either throw the scraps away or you wrap it up and take it home with you to give it away.
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And so after we eat, the lady in our church goes over to the dessert table to see how much of her cake is left and the cake hasn't been touched.
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Now, what does it mean when I say the cake has not been touched? What does it mean?
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Am I saying that no one went over there and took their finger and went, is that what I'm saying?
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What am I saying when I say the cake has not been touched?
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Huh? It's still whole. It's still whole.
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I don't mean someone hasn't stuck their finger in it. I mean, there is a whole cake still sitting there.
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Nobody has touched that cake. That cake is not touched. That cake is integer.
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It is a whole cake. No part of that cake has been taken away.
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It is a whole cake that means that cake retains its integrity.
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You see, when God made us, He made us complete. I'm a complete man, not part of a man.
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I believe it was Johnny Cash that sung about a car that they took all these different parts from different cars and made one car out of it.
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That's not the way it is with us. God made 100% of me.
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Now, if God made 100% of me, He made a whole man.
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It doesn't matter if I've even lost my legs or anything like that.
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If you lose a body part, that doesn't make you any less of a whole person.
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You can whack away at your fingers and your arms and your soul is still whole,
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and your body will still be returned and made right, made whole in the end.
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But when God made us, it was not a collaborative effort.
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He didn't get with some other God. He didn't get with some company.
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He didn't get with some other creator and collaborate and say,
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"Well, I'll make the top part. You make the bottom part."
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Or, "I'll make the inside. You make the outside."
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No, God made us 100%. And since God made 100% of us, then we belong to God, what? 100%.
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And if at any time any part of us is not wholly dedicated to God,
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then we have lost our integrity. Make sense?
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That's what he's talking about tonight with integrity.
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Making us complete, God made us completely for himself.
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And God wants us to be like that chocolate cake.
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Not touched.
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1 Corinthians 6, verse 18 through 20, 1 Corinthians 6, verse 18 through 20.
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The Bible says, "Flee fornication, every sin that a man doeth is without the body,
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but he that commeth fornication sinneth against his own body."
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What? "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you,
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which ye have of God." In other words, you got that from God.
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"And ye are not your own." You don't belong to you.
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People say, "My body, my choice." It's not your body. It's not your choice.
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Your body belongs to God. The moment we can make ourselves, we could say,
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"My body, my choice," but we didn't make ourselves. It is God that made us.
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He says, "You are not your own, for ye are bought with a price.
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Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit."
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Look now, which are God's? Your body belongs to God.
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And your spirit belongs to God. Do you know what Paul's saying there?
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Every part of the outside of you, every part of the inside of you completely belongs to God.
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Inside and out we belong to God. Don't let anyone touch God's chocolate cake.
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When a cake has been touched, part of that cake is taken away.
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It's no longer whole. Paul said, "Flee fornication."
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And the reason to flee fornication was, "You're not your own."
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He didn't say flee fornication because fornication is bad for you.
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He didn't say flee fornication because fornication is a sin or because fornication is gross
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or because fornication will get you in some kind of trouble and mess your life up.
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He said, "You flee fornication because your body and your spirit belong to God."
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You see, when someone commits fornication, they're taking things that do not belong to them.
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If I commit fornication with someone, I am giving part of God's chocolate cake away.
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I'm giving my body away, which belongs to God, to someone who doesn't belong to.
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And they're taking something that does not belong to them.
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When you commit fornication, whether it's physical fornication with adultery,
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whether it's spiritual fornication like with the Israelites or with us,
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if we were to commit spiritual fornication, once we commit spiritual fornication, we're no longer whole.
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Why? Because we gave part of ourself away.
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You gave yourself to someone you didn't belong to.
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You lost your integrity.
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You see?
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It's beautiful. Think of the Scriptures, how perfect they are.
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You see, when you give yourself to your husband or your wife, you don't lose any part of you.
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Why? Because the husband and the wife are one flesh.
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You're not giving yourself away at all.
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It's all you.
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It's one flesh, body, and spirit that do become one, and they belong to God.
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What you give to what God gives to you is never lost.
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What you give to what God has not given to you is lost, and you lost your integrity.
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Solomon said that wholeness of one's devotion to God, that integrity that God wants us to have,
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if you look back in your text, it belongs to whom? It belongs to the upright.
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The Hebrew word translated "upright" means to be straight.
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I love how the world uses our words and they don't even realize it.
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You have "gay," you have "straight."
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There's reason for that. It's true.
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People who are gay are no longer walking the straight path that God's laid out for them.
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They're crooked. They veered from the way.
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You see, God's word has drawn a straight line for us to walk.
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And those who walk that straight line, they're upright because they're straight.
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The upright walked that straight line.
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Write this down in your margin, your notes.
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Hebrews 12, verse 13, the Bible says, "And make straight paths for your feet,
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lest that which is laying be turned out of the way."
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That is, lest some part of you that doesn't maintain that straight line,
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it goes out of that straight way that God's given us to walk.
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He said, "But let it rather be healed."
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And you know what happens when it's healed? It's made what?
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It's made whole. That's right, Brother Larry. It's made whole.
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So it wholly commits to God's way, walking that straight path.
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And the upright is walking the straight path,
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and those on the straight path have their integrity
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because they're walking wholly upon that straight road.
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If we walk the straight line of God's word, then we won't turn out of the way of it.
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And we will maintain our integrity being wholly devoted to walk God's path alone,
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devoted to the way.
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And since it is God's path, then that path, look back in your text,
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God said, "Shall guide them. Shall guide them."
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The integrity of the upright, the wholeness of the person
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that wholly devotes himself to walk the straight path that God's laid out for them,
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it shall guide them.
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That wholeness, that devotion to that line shall guide them.
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That is, being wholly committed to the straight path of God's word,
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it means we enjoy the benefits of God's guidance in life.
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There's an online viewer that, without mentioning any names,
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he texted me this week and said that a long-time friend of his showed up at his house.
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He was in the Marine Corps, manly kind of guy, working for an oil rig.
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He says he shows up with wearing makeup, and he tells my friend,
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he tells the online viewer that you all know, he says,
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"God has told me to transition into a woman."
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And of course, it broke my friend's heart.
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My friend, who's your friend too, again without mentioning names,
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but he's an online viewer, he said I was brutally honest with him,
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told him the way things really were.
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And you see, God didn't tell that man to do that.
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That man wasn't walking God's road.
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He wasn't walking the straight line of God's word.
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It's what he wanted, and so he projected his crooked desires onto God.
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"Projection, Brother Shepherd."
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You spoke about that last year, recently.
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"Projection."
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I think God heard back from our online viewer recently,
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and he said that his friend called him back and said,
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"I changed my mind. I'm not going to do it."
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He said, "I guess you all have been praying for me."
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He thought that must have been the reason why.
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Y'all pray for that man.
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He's got to be tormented by the devil to even think that way.
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But when we're wholly committed to God's word,
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if that man knew God's word and he wholly committed to it,
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God wouldn't have told him to do that,
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because God's word tells him not to.
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And so when we commit ourselves wholly to God's word,
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we gain the benefits of God's guidance through life.
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Isaiah 42, verse 16. God says,
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"And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not."
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I love that. I love this.
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We're talking about blind people.
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We're talking about people who can't see, and God says,
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"Give me your hand, and I'm going to bring that blind person by way they did not know."
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Someplace they didn't see where they could walk.
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They didn't even know that path was there.
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"I'm going to take that blind person by the hand.
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I'm going to guide that blind person."
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He says, "I will lead them in paths that they have not known.
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I will make darkness light before them."
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That's what God's word does.
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"I will make darkness light before them and crooked things straight."
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That's what God's word does.
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It gives you light. It gives you guidance.
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It gives you straightness of your steps.
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He says, "These things will I do unto them and not forsake them."
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Well, that is good stuff.
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God's path, God's way in His word, that straight path,
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it brings blind people just like us down roads we never knew existed.
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Man, if it was up to me and I had to go by my heart, my thinking,
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my intuition, my gut,
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I'd be in a mess. I'd be lost in the woods of this world.
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Maybe I'm a little sharper than some other people and I wouldn't be as bad lost.
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Maybe I'd be able to find out how to get a campfire going
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and drink a little water and survive a little bit better than somebody else.
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But you know what?
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You take hold of your hand and you let God guide you
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and you let God lead you down the paths you never knew were there.
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You're not going to be sitting out by a campfire sipping water off some leaves from the dew.
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You're going to be sitting in a five-star hotel, spiritually speaking,
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living life the way it was meant to be.
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God's path brings blind people down roads we never knew existed.
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It makes darkness light to us.
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It makes crooked things straight to us.
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And God is our ever faithful companion on the way.
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Man, as I was saying this, my heart yearned and I thought,
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"Oh God, let me be wholly devoted to your word."
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But on the other hand, look back here in Texas,
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it says, "But the perverseness of transgressors."
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That's a whole different story. It's not so.
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This is the distinction between those who wholly cleave to God's path.
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And listen again, an integer, an integer is a whole number.
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If I have my integrity, that means every decision I make
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is going to be according to God's word.
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What if it's inconvenient for me, or at least seems to be inconvenient?
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Go by God's word.
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You're going to have a whole lot more inconvenience if you don't later on.
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You go by God's word every single time and that will guide you.
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You start splitting off and fractioning your devotion to God
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and you split off over here a little bit.
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You've lost your integrity. You've lost your guidance.
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You've lost part of your light.
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But the perverseness of transgressors.
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Now, the Hebrew word translated "perverseness" here,
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it has the idea of twisting something.
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It actually has the idea of a wrench.
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Now, the reason that tool, wrench, is called a wrench,
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is because the word wrench means to twist.
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So if you have a wrench on a nut or a bolt, you do what?
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You twist it. You twist it on. You twist it off.
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And by the way, this is deep doctrine here,
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and I had to go to years of seminary school for this.
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You all take notes. Here's the kingdom of truth.
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"Radi, Tadi, Lefte, Lucy."
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All right?
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The perverseness of transgressors.
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It means to twist something.
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Transgressors twist God's words, twist God's ideas
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into something they don't say, into something God doesn't think,
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into something God doesn't stand for, like that man when he told
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our online viewer that God's told me to transition into a woman.
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He's twisting. It's perverse.
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He's twisting God's words, twisting God's representation
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to where God is now misrepresented to accommodate
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the twisted path that they desire to take.
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That's the perverseness of transgressors.
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They twist reality, which is revealed by God to all by nature
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into something that is not real at all
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to accommodate their unrighteous lifestyle.
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They twist the good in moral road that lies in every person's conscience
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that God's put in us, our natural conscience,
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to accommodate their lawless departure from morality.
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Now, that's the word perverseness.
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Now, when you think of the word transgressor here,
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sometimes when you look at the word transgressor,
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it has the idea of aggressively crossing a line.
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Like God's put a line here in Scripture,
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and he says, "Do not cross the wrong way. Do not enter."
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And that person trespasses over crossing.
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That's not the transgressor we're looking at tonight.
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Sometimes in the Scripture, that's the way you understand it.
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That's the definition of it.
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But here, the Hebrew word here tonight for transgressor,
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it's a whole different thing.
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It literally means to cover with a garment so you can be covert.
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Now, we're all old enough in here to know exactly what that is.
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Go back to the old Lone Ranger days.
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Go back to where you've got some storekeeper in a western town,
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and everybody respects that storekeeper.
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But that storekeeper is not happy with the money they make working for that store.
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And they know there's a gold shipment coming in on the stagecoach.
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So what do they do?
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They don't just go out and rob that stagecoach.
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How do they rob that stagecoach?
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They cover their face. They put a mask on them.
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They take that bandana, they put that mask on the face, and put that hat down.
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And that's what this word transgressor means.
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It has the idea of a bandit putting a mask on his face so he can go rob.
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He can go defraud somebody.
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And the whole point of covering yourself with this mask,
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with this garment to be covert,
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the whole point of covering your identity is to keep yourself from getting caught
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when you're doing what's wrong.
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That's the idea of a transgressor here.
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Someone who covers their face to keep from getting caught when they're doing what's wrong,
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when they're breaking God's commandments, when they're robbing and pillaging.
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A transgressor, therefore, is someone who seeks to break or to twist
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God's commandments so that they can try to achieve self-gain at the expense of somebody else.
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Well, we have that a lot.
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I read this week, I forgot how many billions of dollars,
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billions of dollars from senior citizens have been stolen from them
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through scams last year.
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It's so sad.
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They get these older people and just scam them.
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And when they do, they don't know their identity.
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They call, someone called my mother the other day saying they were from Publishers Clearing House.
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She won the biggest prize yet.
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She told them they were scammers and she hung up on them.
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But that's not who they were.
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Do you know what that Publishers Clearing House was?
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That was a mask on their face.
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That was the perverseness of a transgressor.
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When someone puts a ski mask on and goes in and robs a store or robs a bank,
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that's the perverseness of a transgressor.
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Someone gets online and tries to draw some child into a relationship
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or tries to get some information from you.
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And they're pretending to be some pretty female
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and it's really some nasty, sweaty Arab on the other side of the world trying to rip you off.
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That's the perverseness of a transgressor.
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When the devil comes into the Garden of Eden and he puts on the smile,
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he says, "You'll be his gods."
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That's the perverseness. He's putting that religious mask on.
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"I'm trying to help you.
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I'm trying to help you elevate yourself and be more holy."
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And the Bible says that the perverseness of those transgressors,
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if you look back in your text, shall destroy them.
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Shall destroy them.
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You see, we have the comparison here between the person that is wholly committed to walking that line.
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Do you understand the contrast here?
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We're not changing subject.
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You've got this person that's wholly committed to walking God's straight line,
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staying straight in his Word.
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Then you've got this other person that acts like they're wholly committed to walking God's straight line.
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But they look off that line over here and they think, "You know what?
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I can go take this.
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I can go commit fornication, take something that doesn't belong to me.
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Get back on the line and nobody knowing any different.
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That way I have all the benefits of the line, plus what I pick up on the side off the line."
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So what do they do?
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In their hypocrisy, they stay on the line and when no one's looking,
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they put the mask on and it has the idea of them stepping off the line,
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try to get a little something extra without being caught, without being held accountable.
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They do this on the side.
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They come back, they get on the line, take the mask off, put it in their pocket,
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say, "Now I've got all the benefits of the line, plus what I've got off the line."
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But God says, "No, when you do that, that's perverseness and you're a transgressor is what you are.
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You're someone who donned the mask.
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You're someone who thought, "I'll get away with this.
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God won't catch me. God won't judge me. People won't notice it and I'll get away
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and I'll have the benefits of both worlds."
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There's only one benefit and that's the benefit of God's way.
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The Bible says that person who goes off the line like that puts the mask on,
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that shall destroy them.
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And ironically, the Hebrew word translated "destroy" here has the idea of a big, tough guy
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robbing you and taking your stuff away.
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A big, tough guy robbing you and taking your stuff.
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So the person who put the mask on to rob is the one getting robbed.
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Boy, isn't that ironic.
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The people who hope to never get caught as mass bandits ended up getting robbed.
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Here's the kingdom truth for you.
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When we take what doesn't belong to us, we are robbing ourselves.
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When we take what doesn't belong to us, we are robbing ourselves.
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Whether we're taking what doesn't belong to us because we steal money from someone,
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whether we take what doesn't belong to us because we commit fornication with someone
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and God did not give that person to us, so we're taking what does not belong to us.
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When we take whatever has not in his sovereignty by his word, put in our path,
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and told us, "This is yours. That's not..."
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You know what Aiken did when he took the cursed thing?
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He was the perverseness of a transgressor.
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He went and hid it among the stuff.
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He tried to stay back and hope no one ever figured out who it was.
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I'll have the benefits of winning the war and having the covenants of being in the Promised Land.
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We're going to get another microphone.
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Brother Rick and I have already talked about it.
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We just wear them out.
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"My heart's my strong preaching. It's difficult for microphones."
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That strong doctrine tears him up.
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Now, I'm kidding.
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He's thinking, "I'll have the benefits of all the stuff God's given us.
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Plus, I'll have this Babylonian garment and this wedge of gold, too."
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What happened was he robbed from God and ended up robbing himself.
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The part was supposed to be dedicated to God.
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The other part was supposed to be destroyed.
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None of it belonged to him.
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But, Pastor, I don't steal from anyone.
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But when people don't give to God what he rightly deserves,
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which is our complete dedication to his Word, we are robbing from God.
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And when we are so foolish to think that we can get away with it,
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we're putting the mask on when we rob him.
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But any time we don't yield to God 100%, we are robbing ourselves.
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We foolishly hope to gain by taking from God,
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yet we are the ones we're taking from.
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And with that, we'll go ahead and close tonight.
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I thank God for his Word.
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I thank God for the clarity and the precision of Scripture
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to always point us the right way.
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Father, we thank you so much, Lord, for your Word.
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Thank you, Father, that you said by your Word,
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you'll take us by the hand like you'd take a blind person by the hand.
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A blind person that doesn't see with a natural eyes,
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and by being taken by your hand, we see with supernatural eyes,
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we see with God's eyes, and you're able to lead us to pass.
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We never even knew we were there.
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And guide us and never forsake us.
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Lord, help us to not look with our flesh.
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Brother Shevard talked about the strong arm of the flesh.
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Help us not to look with the strong arm of our eyes, so to speak,
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or our fleshly eyes as Lot did, as Eve did.
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Help us, Father, to realize, Lord, that we and ourselves as fallen creatures
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are blind, but when our hand is in your hand, Lord,
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darkness is light unto us, and the crooked is made straight.
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We thank you so much in Jesus' precious name. Amen.
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