Yeah. Now if you open up to Psalm 1 The three messages I wanted to preach, after we got done the end-time prophecies, because that was an 18-week series, I didn't want to get right back into Ephesians, so I wanted to take a break. And the first sermon was the one we did on Zoom. So we'll have to try to find out if there's a way that we can at least get the audio out of that. But it was on basically what our attitude should be, since we Christians no longer fit in. and how we have to be ready for persecution. And from the first day that I planted this church in 1988, I've been saying that Christians are going to be persecuted in America like Christians throughout the world. We'll try and see if we can get the audio of that, at least on sermon audio. But today I'm going to talk about the health and wealth heresy, the word of faith movement. And when you turn on the television set, you've got probably an 85% chance that you're going to be looking at a heretic preaching. Now, there's some great guys that preach on television. There's like the John Ankerberg show, Charles Stanley. There's some really good godly preachers of the word. But most of the preachers are into the health and wealth heresy. So we're going to talk about that. And then next week, I'm going to try to give a message on the biblical view of man. Now we should love all mankind and a lot of what's being taught today on the topic is not biblical. And it's teaching us to put each other into different groups. And this group is bad, that group is good. And then there's another group of people who reverse which group is good and which group is bad. Look, we're all in the same boat. We're all created in God's image. We're all fallen. We're all in need of salvation. And Jesus loves us all. So we'll talk about that next week. And hopefully we'll get the audio on. uh... persecution out to everybody and how we should love our neighbors or love our enemies and pray for them and uh... and then uh... uh... after that we'll get back into the ephesians we left off at the close of chapter one so we'll pick it up in ephesians chapter two now if you can open up right now to uh... psalm one psalm one and we'll just read a few verses at the start And as you turn into Psalm 1, we'll go to the Lord once again in a word of prayer for that God anoints the preaching of the word. The Father in Jesus' precious name, we just love you, Lord, and the people that are here, Lord, are here to hear your word, to hear your word, your truth proclaimed. They didn't come to hear the faulty wisdom of man. And so I pray, Lord, that I would not lead anyone astray from this pulpit, but that I would proclaim and correctly interpret your scriptures so that I would not cause a stumbling block to others. I pray, Lord, that you would fill me with your spirit and anoint me to proclaim your truth, that you'd open hearts and minds to receive your truth and that your spirit would empower us to apply these truths to our lives so that we could be all that you call us to be and live for your glory and build your kingdom, not our own. In Jesus' precious name we pray, amen. Okay, so I titled this message, The Health and Wealth Heresy, The Word of Faith Movement, okay? When we try to witness to non-believers in our neighborhood, they often think that this is what we're trying to get them into, okay? In fact, Tal Brook, a leading expert on non-Christian cults out of the Spiritual Counterfeits Project, he actually believes that there's billionaires, anti-Christian billionaires that are financing these guys and gals ministries so that it's kind of really bad publicity for the true Christian gospel, okay? Look at Psalm 1, 1 through 3. That says, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, God's word, and in his law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper. So here we see that word, prosper. So the godly man, the godly woman, who doesn't listen to the lies of the world, but lives by the word of God, God is going to cause them to bear fruit and to prosper. Look at Joshua, Joshua chapter 1 and verse 8. Joshua chapter 1 and verse 8. And God's speaking to Joshua and God says, this book of the law, that was the first five books of Moses, that was the only Bible that was written up to that point except for the book of Job. They probably had a copy. Moses had probably passed on to Joshua a copy of that book. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth. What that means is that when you're talking, you ought to be talking God's word to people. You know, loving them and caring about their lives and talking to weather or sports or whatever, but you've got to bring God's love and God's truth into the picture. This book of the law, the Bible basically, shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night. See, biblical meditation, you focus on the teachings of God's Word. Rather than, you know, Eastern meditation, you empty your mind. You cease to think and you leave yourself vulnerable to demonic infiltration and demonic attack. But this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth will be constantly in your conversation, but you shall meditate in a day and night that you will observe to do according to all that is written in it, for then you will make your way prosperous." There's that word again. Then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Then look at Psalm 37 and verse 4. Psalm 37 and verse 4. Psalm 37 and verse 4, and King David says this, delight yourself also in the Lord and he shall give you the desires of your heart. delight yourself in the Lord, he will give you the desires of your heart. Now, the Christian church for the past 2,000 years hasn't interpreted these passages in such a way that we understand this prosperity means prosperity in the eyes of God, not prosperity in the eyes of man. In the eyes of man, Bill Gates is one of the most prosperous people on the planet Earth. In the eyes of God, if he doesn't know Jesus, and from my understanding what he believes, he doesn't know Jesus, he is a very impoverished man. He needs to acknowledge his spiritual bankruptcy, get off his ego trip, and turn to Jesus for salvation. Otherwise, it's what Jesus said, for what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and yet forfeit his soul? And so basically what I'm saying is that the church for 2,000 years has interpreted the Bible Christocentrically. In other words, we studied the Bible looking for Jesus in the Bible. We learned from the mistake of the Jewish rabbis, they interpreted the Old Testament legalistically. They were like, they were looking for, where's the rules and regulations so I can save myself by works and earn my salvation? Well, no one can. And as long as they were interpreting the Old Testament legalistically, they missed Jesus, the Savior, when he came. They didn't even realize they were sick and in need of a physician. And they didn't realize they were spiritually dead and needed to be born again. They didn't realize they needed to be saved by Jesus. And so Jesus told them, look, if you believe Moses, you believe me because Moses wrote about me. So Jesus gives us the hermeneutic, the proper way to interpret the scriptures. Interpret the Bible Christocentrically. And when you interpret the Bible and you put Jesus at the forefront, When you put Jesus in the center, okay, and interpret the Bible, you're gonna view prosperity through God's eyes, not through the eyes of man. So we don't interpret the Bible legalistically, we don't, you know, we go for the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law. The spirit of the law, Jesus explained, is loving God with everything you got, loving your neighbor as yourself. Now you can't do that unless you come to Jesus on bended knee. You can't do that unless you're saved and the Holy Spirit indwells you, okay? Now let me say this, most of the time the spirit of the law will match up with the letter of the law, but sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes Rahab the harlot has to lie to the governing authorities and not submit to them to save the lives of two innocent Jewish spies, okay? Sometimes the apostles have to say we must obey God rather than men when the government forbids us. to preach God's word. So don't interpret the Bible legalistically, and definitely don't interpret the Bible selfishly. You know, husbands love that passage. You know, guys love saying, oh, wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord. But we just kind of overlook husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. I've met lots of ladies who submit to their husbands. I've never met a guy who loves his wife as much as Christ loves the church. But it's so easy for us to selfishly interpret the Bible. There's a lot of people who go into the Bible to find a verse and say, that's it. That's why I'm messed up because of what this other guy is doing to me. So I knew guys in their 40s. that we're still blaming Mommy and Daddy for all their problems. Like, look, get over it. Even assuming Mommy and Daddy were wrong when they spanked you, which is a big assumption, by the way, because, you know, we're all conceived with this thing called a sin nature. Nobody has to teach us how to do the wrong thing. We're equipped for that. We got that from Adam and Eve, okay? We know how to do the wrong thing. And that's why babies throw tantrums. They think the entire universe revolves around them. It doesn't. It's all about Jesus. It's not about you, it's not about me. We need to get with God's program, and that program is called the Kingdom of God. So whenever we see God's word saying that if you submit your life to the Lord and his word, and you're trusting in Jesus for salvation, and following the guidance of the Holy Spirit, God will make you prosperous. Please interpret that Christocentrically. Look at prosperity through the eyes of Jesus. Did Jesus or did he not give John the Baptist a really good report card? Yeah, he said up until that point there wasn't a man born of woman who was greater than John the Baptist. Yet John the Baptist died without a dime in his bank account. He didn't even have a bank account. Okay? Paul, he didn't go out with a lot of wealth. So you've got to understand prosperity through the eyes of God. Prosperity means a spiritual prosperity where a guy can look back. My Uncle Manuel is not. a poor man. I mean, he's not a rich man. He's got a retirement from where he had worked for about 40 years and all. But he's got tremendous prosperity. He's got kids who love him. And they're still there to take care of him. And he's got people that look up to him, but that's a godly prosperity, okay? A biblical prosperity. And in Psalm 37 forward, delight yourself in the Lord. You know what that means? Make the Lord your greatest joy. Okay? Make the Lord your greatest joy. If you make the Lord your greatest joy, God will give you the desires of your heart. Okay? However, if you make the Lord your greatest joy, then God will change your heart so that you'll begin to desire for yourself what God desires for you. Okay? So don't anybody who preaches a gospel like the health, wealth, and prosperity heretics, anybody who preaches a gospel where God is your servant and you can command God, okay? That's not biblical Christianity. The God of the Bible is not some wimp God. The God of the Bible is the God who created the heavens and the earth. The God of the Bible is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God of the Bible is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The God of the Bible isn't your little servant who will get you whatever you want because you commanded him to. Okay? And you might think, well, nobody would say that we command God. Yes, I'm paraphrasing what these guys have said time and time again. Now, the founder of the Word of Faith movement was a guy named Kenneth Hagen. He was into positive confession. As long as you speak positive words and you can name it and claim it, you can claim a Corvette in Jesus' name. And I heard one of their preachers, he was a little more honest. reality was kind of shaking him from his views, but he'd tell people, he said, man, he was a pastor, he said, I've got my fingerprints all over all the nice church buildings in town, and God says, no, no, I'm not giving you that building. So this guy was laying his hands and naming and claiming Corvettes in Jesus' name, and he'd get a Chevy Chevette. It's not a Corvette. But it's a positive confession. You create your own reality through the power of your mind. This is not biblical Christianity. They teach that any believers who have no unconfessed sin and have no lack of faith, they'll be healthy and wealthy. And that's just plain baloney. I mean, I've seen elderly people in wheelchairs. that have much greater faith than I have. And I'm supposed to think, well, because I'm healthy and maybe I have more money than they have, I must be holier than them. No, that's not biblical Christianity. Now, what Kenneth Hagen did, and this is all documented in a work written by D.R. McConnell, D.R. McConnell, called A Differing Gospel. A different gospel. And he was a student at Oral Roberts University, and Oral Roberts was bringing in these health and wealth preachers. Oral Roberts, by the way, meant well, but he was into a hyper-Pentecostal belief system where he started misinterpreting the scriptures as well so that he found unity with the health and wealth guys. But Kenneth Hagen really started the health and wealth heresy by plagiarizing the works of E.W. Kenyon. E.W. Kenyon was a minister who ministered in the Seattle area in the early 1900s. And what Kenyon was doing, E.W. Kenyon, he was trying to recover Christian healing. He thought that the church had lost the ability to heal, but he saw the mind science cults, the religion science cults, like Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science, which was neither Christian nor scientific. He believed that the whole physical realm doesn't even really exist. Sin doesn't exist. Death doesn't exist. Sickness doesn't exist. And just through the power of your mind, man is God and through the power of your mind, you just got to speak wellness into existence and that type of thing. Unity School of Christianity, a heretical offshoot of Christian science. There was the religion, religious science movement as well, these mind science cults, and there was a lot of psychosomatic healings going on in them. You know, sometimes people who weren't really sick but thought they were because they were so negative in their thinking and these guys through positive affirmations would make them feel better. So they were documenting a bunch of pseudo healings. And so E.W. Kenyon said we're missing that in Christianity. What he decided to do was to try to blend biblical Christianity with the mind science cults to get that healing power back. And he would often say, these mind science, he wouldn't call them cults, he didn't think they were cultists, but these mind science people, if they just would acknowledge that Jesus died on the cross for their sins, physically died on the cross for their sins, they'd have it all. So he thought they were just missing one point. And I used to think of the mind science cults as blending biblical Christianity with Eastern religious thought, with Hinduism and Buddhist-type thinking. That's not the case. The more I studied it, the more I realized there wasn't biblical Christianity. All they were doing was taking Eastern religious thought, kind of like the force be with you, God's a non-personal force, God is everything and man is God, and worship was self, but they would talk Eastern religious thought and proclaim that, and they pulled Bible verses out of context to support that kind of thinking. So the mind science cults are not a blending of biblical Christianity and Eastern religious thought. The mind science cults are Eastern religious thought taught using Christian terminology. But in reality, all the verses are taken out of their context. So when E.W. Kenyon tried to blend The mind science cults with biblical Christianity, that's where Hinduism and Eastern thought gets blended with biblical Christianity. So it is the health, wealth, and prosperity movement that is this heretical hybrid of true biblical Christianity blended with Eastern religious heretical thought. Now, I will say this. I doubt, I'd be very nervous if I was any of the pastors of these churches, these health and wealth churches, I'd be very nervous on a judgment day. I don't really know where they stand with the Lord because they talk out of both sides of their mouth. I would not be surprised if a good portion of their parishioners are saved, they're just you know, trusting in bogus preachers, but they are trusting in Jesus for salvation. I'm telling you, this doesn't work. Hank Hanegraaff, I got a lot of disagreements with Hank Hanegraaff, with the old Bible Answer Man. He told his guys, don't go to church this coming Sunday, and I want you to go. They went to Southern Baptist churches that don't preach this stuff, they preach the Bible. Go to Southern Baptist churches and look at the parking lots of the people and the parking lots of the pastoral staff. Then go, this is in Southern California, then go to the health and wealth churches. and look at the cars in the parking lot and the cars in the pastoral staff. And what they found was the cars in the parking lot and then the parking lot for the pastoral staff at the Southern Baptist Church were not the greatest cars in the world. It didn't look just like a used car dealership. It looked like a used car dealership of problem cars, cars with issues that hadn't been washed in a while. They did not look like a bunch of great cars that you'd want to buy, even in the pastoral staff. When you went to the health and wealth churches, the general parking lot looked the same way. A bunch of dumpy cars in the parking lot until you got to the parking for the pastoral staff. And that's when you saw the brand new, real expensive cars and the fancy cars. And so that's where Hank Hanegraaff argued that health and wealth and prosperity is like a pyramid scheme. It works for the guys on top. But there's a lot of people who walked away from Christianity because they claimed something in Jesus' name and never got it. And so with Kenneth Hagen, what he did was he hired his staffers to plagiarize from the teachings of E.W. Kenyon, who didn't have as big of a following as Hagen had later on a generation later. And so what D.R. McConnell does is he takes both columns, Kenneth Hagen's teachings side by side with E.W. Kenyon, his writings with Kenyon's. And you can see these guys only changed two or three words. They didn't work real hard. I mean, they just pretty much plagiarized the whole thing. And Kenneth Hagin has, you know, some of his disciples are like Kenneth Copeland and Frederick Price, who just passed on not too long ago. Pray for these guys. Pray that they are true believers, that they come to Christ and all. Jim Baker was into this health, wealth, and prosperity stuff, and he went to prison for sexual scandals and financial scandals. And when he was in prison, he said that he found that he was in love with everything on the master's table, but he wasn't in love with the master. And he needed to fall in love with the master. And if you're looking to Jesus for things, you know, I mean, that's like the kind of guy who only makes friends based on what can I get from that guy. You know, I've even known some ministers, some famous ministers, who always attached themselves to somebody who was a couple rungs higher in popularity, and then when that guy died, they would attach themselves to another guy a couple rungs higher, and just using people. Listen, fall in love with Jesus. Okay? By the way, Jesus promises us crowns and thrones. But that's his business. Our business is to pick up, deny ourselves, pick up a cross and follow him. And so basically, that's how the health, wealth, and prosperity movement started. There were also some hyper-Pentecostals. There's Pentecostals that are preaching the meat of the word. But hyper-Pentecostals, when they get so much into the experience, they don't even care about biblical truth anymore. And they pull verses out of context left and right. Let me tell you, because we're fallen, we're selfish. you pull passages out of their proper context, you're probably going to interpret those passages in a selfish way, okay? And that's what Oral Roberts and his guys were doing, and that plus Kenneth Hagen and his guys kind of put together, built the foundation of the health, wealth, and prosperity movement, the word of faith movement, positive confession movement. But the idea that we just name it and claim it, and create our own reality. Now, the Bible does teach if you ask for anything in Jesus' name, you will receive it. What you got to do, though, is find out, well, what in the world does Jesus mean by praying in his name? And the Bible teaches what that means. The health and wealthers think it's an abracadabra, open sesame, magic formula. Let me tell you something. If you're looking for formulas, You know, if you want to turn God into a Coke machine, where, I mean, all I got to do is put in $1.50, hit the Coke button, and boom, out comes the Coke. God's not a Coke machine. OK? The secret of prayer is not dragging God off the throne to do your will. The secret of prayer is maturing in Christ so that you come off the throne of your life and seek God's will. Okay, and the Bible is very clear on that. In fact, the whole concept of faith in the Bible is not having faith in your own faith. You know, somebody asks, how you doing? I said, I'm feeling pretty bad right now. You know, and they'd say, no, no, no negative confession. Just don't acknowledge, just say positive things. And it's like, dude, I'm feeling pretty lousy right now. And what they're doing is the health, wealth, and prosperity heretics, they're putting faith in their own faith. Biblical faith, you put your faith in Jesus and in his will, OK? The mind science cult is putting faith in your faith. And the health, wealth, and prosperity movement is putting faith in your faith. You do not create your own reality with your words and thoughts. God created reality, OK? And sometimes our circumstances will knock us down. But we trust in the God who is sovereign over our circumstances and not in our circumstances. But that doesn't mean we can just name and claim whatever we want. So what are some of the problems, some of the heresies with the Word of Faith movement? First off, there's an anti-intellectualism and hyper-emotionalism. Okay, so they put experience, religious experience, over reason. So there was one time when one of these preachers, a guy was on the ground, he had slain him in the spirit, which there's no biblical basis for that, but he had slain the guy supposedly in the spirit, the guy was on the ground, the guy was praying, and the preacher told him to shut up. God is tired of your prayers. God wants you to just experience him. Where's that in the Bible? That's nowhere in the Bible. God wants us to love him with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength. God wants us to love him with our minds. Mark 12, 30 and 31. And Isaiah 118, God says, come let us reason together. God's given us a mind. He wants us to reason with him. God is not a non-personal force. This is not Star Wars. God's not like electricity, OK? This is not Star Wars, the force be with you. This is biblical Christianity. It's the Lord be with you. Who is the Lord? That is Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. See, that's why Paul says in Philippians 2, work out, not work for, but work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Why? Because it is God who is at work in you. He's God, you're not. Okay? And there's not going to be any switcheroo, okay? You're not going to be commanding the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob around. The Bible is telling us, get with God's program. God's program, his agenda, it's called the kingdom of God. It's not called the kingdom of Phil or the kingdom of Kenneth Copeland or Kenneth Hagin, okay? And God is not this non-personal force, and things aren't all controlled by spiritual laws that even God can't change. This is very Eastern in its thought. Now let me say this, true spirituality, I got this from Francis Schaeffer. He always tried to name the great theologians that you steal stuff from. But I got this from Francis Schaeffer. True spirituality, you could replace that with true Christianity, equals propositional truth. plus personal relationship. So it's not either or. If I just want to memorize scripture and act like because I know with my, you know, you could memorize John 3.16. If you don't apply it to your life and enter into a personal trust love relationship with the Lord Jesus, you're still lost. It just means you go to hell and you memorize John 3.16. So true spirituality, it's propositional truth, Bible doctrines, Bible teachings about yourself, that you're a sinner, you can't save yourself, you need to be saved, about God, that God is three persons, and God is eternal and infinite in his attributes, and God is holy and God is just. about Jesus. Jesus is God, the Son become a man and we have to trust in him for salvation. These are propositional truths, but even if you know the right propositional truths in your head and you quote the right creeds on Sunday morning, okay, If you don't then apply that and have this personal saving encounter with the Lord Jesus and enter into a personal love trust relationship with the Lord Jesus, then you're not truly saved. It is not either or. Some people, I had a couple that used to come to the church and they'd always give me a hard time. I don't know what they were talking about, but he told me, he said, I prayed about it and I found out what your problem is. I said, what's my problem? He said, you're too wise. I said, I'm too wise? He says, yeah, you study the Bible too much. You're too wise. And I said, well, do you think I'm wiser than the Apostle Paul? And he looked at me. He said, of course not. And I said, well, then he's got a bigger problem than I do. And I just walked away. And he didn't get it. He didn't get what I was saying. He's just like, look, I'm like, what, 1 1,000th as wise as the Apostle Paul? And I want to become more like the Apostle Paul, because he told Timothy, imitate me as I imitate Jesus. So true spirituality, you realize there is no believer on earth who knows too much about God's Word. It's impossible to know too much about God's Word. And it's not bad to know lots about God's word. In fact, all of us, I don't care if you teach theology at the world's greatest Christian seminary, you still need to learn more about God's word, about God and about his word. You can never know God too much. The other side of the coin is there's no such thing as a person who experiences God too much. No, that guy, he walks with God too much. He experiences God too much. No, you can't. You can't overdo either. The problem is when you try to do one at the expense of the other. He said, I only want propositional truth. But I don't want to obey Jesus. I don't want to pray. I don't want devotional study of God's word. I don't want to share my faith and love other people. No. True biblical Christianity, you know the propositional truths taught in God's Word, but you also apply them. and enter into that personal relationship with the Lord Jesus who indwells you with the Holy Spirit and then begins to transform your life from within. So true spirituality is propositional truth plus personal relationship. These guys want nothing but the personal relationship or experience. They want a few propositional truths. The problem is they're propositional falsehoods. They're statements, heretical statements, not true biblical statements, okay? This is why Jesus, and we don't have time to look at it, but Jesus told us in Matthew 6, verse 7, when you pray, avoid vain repetition. Okay? Now, some of the Psalms have some repetition. Think about the words. But I'm not big on prescribed prayers. I grew up Roman Catholic. My dad was Roman Catholic. All my relatives back in Jersey are Roman Catholic. I'm not big on prescribed prayers. Because for me, those prescribed prayers, number one, I don't pray to anybody but the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I don't pray to anybody but God. I don't pray to Mary. I don't pray to the saints. But even if I was praying the Our Father, I found myself just repeating the words and not thinking about it. Now, by the way, if you like to pray the Our Father, more power to you. Just think about the words. Okay? When the Fernandes, the Minoquinos and Restainos, when I get together with them, there was no prayer. But when I got, that was my mother's side of the family. My father's side of the family, the Portuguese, they prayed a lot. But when I come to the first RFR, I say, RFR, blah, blah, blah. From there on, I'm thinking Raider football and Muhammad Ali's last fight, OK? And that's not exactly something God's going to be thrilled about, OK? And so avoid vain repetition. Mark 12, we're to love God with everything we've got, which includes loving God with our minds. Isaiah 118, come let us reason together, says the Lord. Look at 2 Peter chapter 3. 2nd Peter chapter 3 Verses 14 to 16 Peter says this the Apostle Peter Therefore beloved looking forward to these things. That's the return of Christ new heavens and new earth Therefore beloved looking forward to these things be diligent to be found by him in peace, without spot and blameless. And consider that the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation, as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand. which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destructure as they do also the rest of the scriptures. The first thing that should jump out at you, Peter and Paul are still alive and Peter's referring to Paul's writings as scripture. So he didn't have to wait for a church council 300 years later. They knew when God was writing Scripture while the ink was still wet on the scroll. But the second thing there is that Peter speaks out against those unstable and untaught people who twist the meaning of Paul's complicated teachings and lead people astray. So I will go on record, I do not believe any uneducated person, any person who is not educated in God's Word should not get behind a pulpit. Now, I am not talking about piece of papers on the wall. A lot of people have dedicated their lives to 10, 12, 15 years of in-depth study of God's Word. Some get heavy into the biblical languages. I focused more on apologetics, defending the Christian faith. But some people feel led. to immerse themselves in studying God's Word at Bible colleges and seminaries and universities. But for me, what I care about is that the guy that gets behind a pulpit, he better be grounded in God's Word. I could care less if he's got a piece of paper on the wall. By the way, it was very difficult in ancient times without going to a rabbinical school to get educated in God's Word. They didn't have the internet. They didn't have television. They didn't have big libraries. They didn't even own the scriptures. They had to go to the synagogue to take out a scroll. Nowadays, you can get the equivalent of a seminary education online, but you got to be set that, by the way, that's the hard way. You got to be real self-disciplined, but only people who are grounded in God's truth should get behind a pulpit. and preach. What we have with the health and wealth heretics, they're really untaught in God's truth. Now they make their own schools and they give out their own doctorate degrees. But these people are being trained by heretics. So they're still untaught, uneducated men. By the way, the opponents of the apostles thought that the apostles were uneducated. They referred to them in the book of Acts as uneducated. And what they failed to realize was they had gone to three and a half years the university of God. Day and night, Jesus taught them for three and a half years. They had the best. Don't ever let anybody tell you that the apostles did not have a good, solid theological education. When God is your only professor, I mean, how many guys can say, I went to seminary and none of my professors ever taught me anything false? They never taught me any error. The only guys who could say that were the guys who sat under Jesus' teachings. You know? But whatever the case, you'll get people who aren't grounding the word pulling verses out of context. You pull a verse out of its context, and guess what? You selfish, fallen human you, you're probably going to interpret the passage selfishly. And so when God says, you submit your life to me, trust in my son for salvation, and live by my word, and I'll make you prosperous, We want to be the next Bill Gates, and that's not what God's Word teaches. Biblical meditation. When you worship God, you don't stop thinking. You empty your mind of your own sinful desires. But you don't empty your mind completely like the Hindus do and you don't stop thinking. Instead, you think about, you empty your mind of your sinful desires and you fill your mind with principles from God's Word. What the Jews would do is, because it was so hot over there in Israel, they would stand in line at the synagogue. When it was their turn, they'd take out a scroll. They'd memorize a passage from Isaiah. Then they'd hand it to the guy behind them. And then they'd go and look for the nearest fig tree, find some shade. And they'd sit down and meditate on God's word under a fig tree. We even know what Nathanael, what passage he was meditating on in John chapter 1. Read the last few verses of John chapter 1. See if you could figure it out. But Jesus said, miraculously seen him under the fig tree meditating on a passage from God's word from the book of Genesis. So should we meditate? Just pull out a Strong's Concordance, or go online and find a concordance of the King James Version, New American Standard, New King James, NIV, and look up the word meditate. We are commanded to meditate on God's word over and over and over again, night and day. So we should meditate more than the Hindus. But the Hindus, they're emptying their minds. They're leaving their minds open to demonic infiltration. We are filling our minds with truths from God's Word. We're allowing God to renew our minds through the Holy Spirit, filling us with God's Word, deep devotional study of God's Word. And so, I really like the Navigators. When I got saved, I went through three years of the Navigator studies. And I was really glad for that because they didn't teach you the Bible, they taught you how to study the Bible. So I got to study the Bible on my own, the proper way, and so over three years I developed my own systematic theology. So by the time I went to Liberty University, because I didn't agree with the professors on everything, I was like the guy who aced all the exams but kind of got passed over. When I got time to talk to guys about, hey, there's an empty pulpit, church of 300 people, why don't you think about filling that pulpit? Well, I disagreed with Liberty on a few things. Loved their professors, but I was taught how to study the Bible not, okay, we studied the Bible and now here we're going to give you all these doctrines, okay, and just accept them. And so, but the navigators would say, you have to hear the word properly preached, you've got to read the word, then you've got to study it. try to figure out what it's saying, then you should memorize scriptures, and then the final stage is meditating on God's Word. So if you've studied a passage and you really understand what it means, then you can memorize it, and then you can sit down and meditate on what that passage means. Most Christians don't meditate on God's Word, because we don't memorize God's Word, because we don't even study God's Word, we'll be lucky if we read it a little bit and hear it preached on Sundays. But whatever the case, Biblical meditation, you focus on teachings from God's word. You don't empty your mind. It has gotten to the point where it's very common in the health, wealth, and prosperity movement to be slain in the spirit. The holy laughter movement, sometimes people get slain in the spirit and then they laugh uncontrollably and that's supposed to be from God. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14, if a non-believer walks in and everybody's speaking in tongues at the same time, or if you have something like this, slain in the spirit and holy laughter, if somebody comes in and thinks you're nuts and leaves, their blood is on your hands. And Paul says that our God is a God of order. So we practice the gifts in an orderly fashion. But the holy laughter has even got to the point where some people will growl, bark like dogs. I remember watching a video. I had to fast forward. It was like seven hours of Hindu meditation. led by Bhagwan Rajneesh out of Oregon, it was Antelope, Oregon, until he got kicked out and sent back to India, and he died over there. But he had his people would stand up, and believe me, this was the real deal. The Hindus call it Bhakti when they get in this trance-like state, and there was nobody to catch them, and they would just drop on the cement floors, And so you'd have about an hour or two of jumping up and down and chanting mantras or Hindu-type singing, disengaging of the mind. Then you had about half an hour to an hour of them dropping to the floors and just laying there. Then after about an hour, they would start laughing uncontrollably. Then they would start barking and howling like dogs. And by about the sixth or seventh hour, it's like blood. It sounds like the soundtrack from hell. blood-curdling screams, okay. That's the direction that a portion of the so-called evangelical church is moving today with this kind of stuff, okay. This is not biblical. Now granted, most Christians were a little bit too stiff, you know. You know, it's like a guy sits down next to me and starts doing this in the praise and worship. I'm like, oh man, It's one of them Pentecostal guys, you know? And then after a while, I start feeling convicted. It's like, come on. If a police officer held a pistol to me, my hands would go up. Why can't my hands go up for God? So then I get like the T-Rex thing, you know? And so our Pentecostal brothers are probably glancing over, thinking, whoa, is this guy even saved? So granted, we need to, you know, it's like, Some Baptist ministers probably, and I love the Baptists, but some Baptist ministers probably get a little concerned. It's like, Lord, please don't let anybody cry during our worship service. They might think we're Pentecostals. And it's just like, look, hey, the Jews were very expressive people. But here's my general rule. Some guys, when they preach, they don't get as excited as I do. But if you see me watching a Raider football game, and I'm screaming at the television, and I'm getting very passionate, then I should get passionate behind the pulpit. I've known guys with their favorite football team. They just sit there and just, and my Uncle Tony, he would listen. He would put on the Mets game because he was a San Francisco Giants fan. Why? Because they started playing in New York. They were the New York Giants. So him and my uncle Manuel, the two ones that are alive, 97-95, to this day they call the New York Giants the New York football Giants. to differentiate them from the New York baseball giants who moved to San Francisco in 1959. But he would listen to the radio because they gave more scores on the radio than on television and watch the Mets game, because every once in a while they'd show the scores on the screen, just to get the updates on the San Francisco Giant scores. So this is a big time fan. Yet, what would he do when the Giants would lose if he was watching the game? He'd sit there like that and he'd just go. And he'd shake his head and then turn the television set off. And that was it, and walk away. And then he got back to the real world. With me, with the Oakland Raiders, it was like two days a morning for every loss. I'm glad they were good back then, because now that'd be a lot of mourning. But whatever the case, if your personality, if you're a real excitable person, I shouldn't be surprised to see you get excited at church. If you're real stoic, calm, then maybe you worship God being real stoic and calm. But this idea that anybody who gets all excited about the Lord, man, that guy's got issues. No, no. But it's got to be done in an orderly fashion so we don't cause stumbling blocks for those outside the church. Also, the health and wealthers confuse spiritual prosperity with financial prosperity. The prosperity that Joshua 1, 8 and Psalm 1, 1 to 3 talk about, that is a spiritual prosperity, not a financial prosperity. There is that passage in Isaiah 53, talks about, by his stripes, we are healed. By Jesus' suffering and death, we are healed. But the biblical authors understood that in a spiritual, as a spiritual healing. Now there will be, by the way, I will say this, Jesus died for us to save us, redeem us physically, spiritually, emotionally, the whole ball of wax. However, we have to wait until Jesus comes back for that to be fully realized. So in this fallen world, we suffer just like those in the world suffer. You know, the difference between Christians and non-Christians, when we suffer, we suffer just like the world suffers. But when we suffer, we don't suffer alone. Our God is with us in the midst of our sufferings, and he uses our sufferings to bring us closer to him. uh... by the way if you make a lot of money i mean uh... i'll be honest with you you got somebody's making minimum wage here in america compared to the rest of the people on planet earth you actually make a lot of money because there are some people trying to live on fifty cents a month in some countries. But this is not a message to say if you're wealthy, you're sinful, and if you're poor, you're holy. No, no. Your financial bank account does not equal your spiritual bank account. Now, having said that, the more God blesses you with, the more accountable you are. God always blesses us to be a blessing to others. And if part of those blessings are finances, then we need to be giving. I don't think God ever blesses somebody financially. Now, some guys are getting it because their God is the God of this age, Satan himself. But if God blesses a guy or a gal with wealth, I believe he's also going to bless them with the gift of giving. Okay? And so don't confuse spiritual prosperity with financial prosperity. Let's take a look at praying in Jesus' name. Look at John chapter 5, the Gospel of John chapter 5. The Bible does teach, you know, true or false, anything you ask for in Jesus' name, you'll receive. The answer is true. The problem is we don't know what that means, okay? John 5 verse 43, Jesus said, I have come in my father's name, and you did not receive me. If another comes in his own name, him you will receive. OK, so what does that mean? Well, you just look at John 6.38. He says the same thing using different words. What does Jesus coming in the Father's name mean? Verse 38, for I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me, the Father. So when Jesus says, I come in my Father's name, that is the same as saying, I come to do my Father's will. So a true prayer in Jesus' name doesn't just have the magic formula there. It means you're praying in accordance with the Father's will, okay? So the secret of prayer is not to drag God off the throne to do your bidding, but is you to spiritually mature and rise up to the throne of God to where you desire what God desires, okay? Look at 1 John chapter 5. 1 John chapter 5. verses 14 and 15. Now this is the confidence, 1 John 5, 14 and 15. Now this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of him. So what John is saying is any prayer that you pray in accordance with God's will, he will give you. Now, this even goes to the point of anything you ask for, any good thing you pray for, God will give to you. I'll go so far to say that. That's why he says in Matthew 7, 7 to 11, asking it will be given to you, seeking you shall find, knocking the door shall be opened to you. And then Jesus said, don't earthly fathers know how to give good gifts? If earthly fathers know how to give their sons good gifts, if a son asked for a piece of bread, the father's not going to give him a serpent. Your heavenly father, he's better than your earthly father. He knows how to give good gifts too. But you compare that with the parallel passage, Luke 11, nine to 13. After Jesus gets done saying that, whatever good gift you ask for, the father will give you. And then Jesus says, well, let's look at Luke 11. Luke 11. 9 to 13. This is why we should not quote verses out of context. Luke 11, 9 to 13. So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? If he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? Notice, he doesn't have the sons asking for scorpions, serpents. You know, if a little boy asks his dad for a loaded gun, The father's not going to give the little boy a loaded gun. What the father's going to do, maybe you might get him a toy gun, might get him something else. But the fact of the matter is, if you ask for a good gift, God will give it to you. Verse 13, if you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask? That's the best gift. The best gift is the Holy Spirit. There's a lot of other good gifts besides. I've been praying for a church building. And for all I know, you could pray for a lot of things. Some guys pray for their ministries to get bigger and bigger and bigger and reach more and more people. That seems like a good thing. But look at how many Christian leaders have fallen into gross sin. Because they couldn't handle that power and that fame and that wealth. And so that's why I like, you know, health and wealth is what's on. Whenever I end a prayer, I end it in G. And not my will, but your will be done, Lord. And the health and wealth will act like that's a lack of faith. No, it isn't. My Savior prayed that same way. He said, look, if there's any other way to save mankind other than me going through this cup of suffering, please take it from me. But if not, not my will, but your will be done. And so it's like, Lord, I think Trinity Bible Fellowship needs its own church building. But not my will, but your will be done. Okay? God knows what's best. And let's just close. I think we're going to have to pick this up next week because there's so much else that is here that we need to know. And the practical application of this is off the charts. We've got to stop. We've got to stop living to build our own kingdoms. We've got to live to build the Lord's kingdom. It's not about us. Spiritual prosperity is being a godly man and a godly woman who impacts others for the cause of righteousness. It's not being richer than your next-door neighbor. And so we'll close with Romans 8, 26 to 28. Romans 8, 26 to 28. Likewise, the Apostle Paul says this, likewise the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us, the Holy Spirit prays for us, with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now, he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. See, now, if the Holy Spirit is praying for you, and he knows what you really need, and he's praying in accordance with the will of God, That's the kind of prayer that gets answered. What is the outcome of that? Verse 28, and we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. So God promises because the Holy Spirit is praying for us, we also find out in this chapter Jesus is praying for us as well. Because the Holy Spirit is praying for us, God will work all things in our life for our good. Now, does that mean everything that happens to us is going to be good? No. But it means whether things are good or bad, God's going to work them for our good. Okay? You know, I had to attend my mom's funeral and my dad's funeral. That's not good. When God created Adam and Eve, he didn't intend for them to die. But God promises that if I love him, and I'm trusting in Jesus for salvation, and I'm serving the Lord, God's going to work even the deaths of my parents for my good. God promises to meet our needs. But what we think, he promises to give us good things. But what we think is good, and what God knows is good, More times than not are totally different things. Okay? Let God be God. He does a really good job at it. Does a perfect job at being God because he is God. Okay? These guys are telling us we're gods with a small g. And that comes right from E.W. Kenyon and Kenneth Hagen plagiarized that, too, and then acted like it was new revelation. OK? God of the Bible, Isaiah 43, 10, before me there was no God formed, nor there will be one after me. If you haven't been God from all eternity, you're not going to become him. OK? So the first two things you've got to learn in life, there is a God, and you're not him. OK? It's his universe. And so you think you need something, You ask God, if he says no, you just keep serving God. But this idea that God's promised us health, wealth, and prosperity now, no. He's promised us health, wealth, and prosperity, crowns and thrones, and we'll reign with him when he comes back. Until that time, as we navigate through this cursed creation, We experience the same type of trials and sufferings and death that non-believers suffer. We have a tremendous amount of common ground to where we can grab them by the hand and then tell them, I want to take you where you need to go. You need Jesus. And I remember that my grandson Nathan, that big snowstorm that we had, and all the power went out. So I had to walk a mile in the snow to go and get him. And I thought he was going to be afraid. Instead, he was dressed up like for winter warfare. goggles and Coats and everything he was ready to go and when we came back a tree was down that had knocked down the power lines And so I told him I had a flashlight I told him don't go near those power lines and this and that and and so he went through and I somebody was behind me so I helped them through in the middle of the snowstorm and then all sudden people started coming up to me and saying I excuse me, are you Nathan's grandfather? And I say, yeah. And he said, well, yeah, he told us you'd tell us where the lines are. And I say, yeah, yeah, they're right here. Just stay away from these. And so they're down tree with all the branches. And then they'd get through to go where they needed to go. And then a few minutes later, somebody else would say, excuse me, are you Nathan's grandfather? And I was supposed to show them the way. And so they, hey, we got that opportunity right now. Why? Because we found wealth? No. We found health? No. Because we found Jesus. And so we can help others. Let's not just go to heaven alone. Let's bring a few people with us. But the fact that we suffer like they suffer means we got an open door with them. And we can show them when I suffer, I don't suffer alone. Come to Jesus. and you'll never suffer alone again. Let's close with a word of prayer. Father, in Jesus' precious name, I just pray, Lord, that we would trust in your son, Jesus, for salvation, realize there's salvation in no one else. And I pray, Lord, that we would live for your son, Jesus, not ourselves. We would live to build your kingdom, not our own. that we would live to bring glory to you, not ourselves. And so I pray, Lord, that we know you can't serve two masters. You're going to love one and hate the other or the other way around. We can't love both God and wealth. So help us, Lord. to love you and to serve you with everything that we have. Lord, if you've blessed us abundantly, help us to use that prosperity to love others and to build your kingdom. And for those of us who don't have much money, I just pray, Lord, that we would understand that contentment, if we're in your will, we should be content. no matter what economic class we fall into. So help us, Lord, to be all that you called us to be. If you called us to be the President of the United States, then don't allow us to be content with pumping gas in Oregon. But if you called us to pump gas in Oregon, then may we be content with that so long as we serve you. And so help us, Lord, to find our contentment not in that which this world has to offer, but help us to find contentment in the triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Empower us to live for you and to build your kingdom through the power of the Holy Spirit and for your glory. In Jesus' precious name we pray, amen. All right, God bless you everybody. Oh