Welcome to SuccessfulSavior.org, the ministry of Harmony Primitive Baptist Church in Donaldson, Arkansas. This is Elder Neal Phelan, Jr. preaching in our regular Sunday morning service. Good to be in the Lord's house today. Good to have all of our visitors, see the kids here. Hope you'll be praying for me this morning as we look into God's word. I've enjoyed our song service and the fellowship we've enjoyed. Enjoyed our fellowship yesterday when we were here to get the facility ready. It's always a good time to be together. It's good to be laboring in God's kingdom together and have your brothers and sisters in Christ next to you and just be sharing that. There's just something special about knowing that you're you know, trying to do something. There's so many things that we wonder, what can we do in God's kingdom? But there are some things we can do, and we can feel that we have been a part of it. This morning, if you have your Bibles, I'm going to go over to the book of Proverbs. I'm going to take one verse out of this 22nd chapter of the book of Proverbs. I'm going to look at verse 28. Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set. This is a commandment from God, and it must be important, something that we would pay attention to. Remove not the ancient landmark. That word is translated from an old Hebrew word that means a cord or a rope, a boundary line, more specifically a property line is what it means, and we're not to remove those things. I remember when my dad bought some property what we would call down the tracks. I was probably about eight or 10 years old, and we were walking around down there and looking at it, and I noticed some red lines or marks on a tree. And I said, well, what are those marks on that tree? Why did somebody paint a red mark on a tree? He said, well, that's our property line. Our land is over here on this side of the property line, and that over there belongs to somebody else. And so it defines what you own. What rightly belongs to you legally is what a property line does. They're very important. Sometimes we'll get surveyors to come out and redefine those property lines to make sure they are in the right place. We don't want anybody trespassing sometimes on our property and we want to know, make sure that we're, you know, walking around or hunting or whatever we're doing. We want to make sure we're on our own property. And the Bible says a lot about these boundary lines. In Deuteronomy 19, it says, Thou shalt not remove thy neighbor's landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it. So Israel, when they came into the land of Canaan, every tribe, every family had their own property. And it was given to them by inheritance. from God, and they had their boundary lines. Sometimes it'd say down to the river, that's the boundary line. Sometimes we got boundary lines like that right now. It might be a river, or it might just be a creek or something, or it might be a red mark. But Israel knew where their boundary lines were, and according to this, it was given to them by inheritance, something that they received freely. They didn't even have to pay for it. It was just a real blessing for them to have that. It was the fathers, the ancient fathers that had marked those lines out and remembered where they were. And there was another law in Deuteronomy 7.27, it said, cursed be he that removeth thy neighbor's landmark. So there was a curse pronounced upon people that would try to remove that landmark and maybe try to take over somebody else's property. We hear that all the time, that sometimes people try to encroach on somebody else's property by moving a landmark. And you know, it's a real blessing to walk around those landmarks. I don't know if you've been given anything by inheritance. I have. And so you got those landmarks out there and you've been given something to you by inheritance and you like to go out there and walk around those marks and realize my grandfather's got some property up at Malvern and I received that by inheritance 30 acres up there and it's got the marks on it where the property line is and and I like to go up there and walk around those marks. I like to remember and wonder what all was going on on this property. I remember my grandfather, they lived by farming. He didn't have a job, a secular job. Every year he would farm and they would put things back for the winter time and the kids would be all out there working. I remember when I was a kid that he had a big corn crop out there and we'd go out there and play in those rows of corn. We'd ride the horses and play in the creek and all that. Isn't it a blessing when you can go into some of that property and go around those boundary lines and you can think back on your forefathers and everything that they did on that property and how they enjoyed it and the things that happened there with your family before, years ago, just in your mind, imagine it all. And it's still your property and you enjoy it. It's a real special blessing when somebody leaves you a piece of property like that and it's in your family. But while this has a natural truth to it, a natural law, there is a spiritual truth to this as well. And I see this as a beautiful picture of God's church, that we have some boundary lines, some property lines, we have some ancient landmarks that we are not supposed to move. that our forefathers have set before us, those being Jesus Christ and the apostles themselves. We got some boundary lines, some things that define what we have received by inheritance, which is God's church and his kingdom. And these things are very definitive for us in the church. And I want to look at some of those things today. But I wanna remind you that we are, each one of us, we are personal surveyors of this property in which we own. If you own a piece of property, you've probably surveyed your own property, haven't you? Haven't you gone out and walked around and said, okay, this is where this line is. And I'm gonna remember this line because in the event that somebody comes over and starts cutting some timber on my property, I'm gonna know if they've crossed the line. or if they're using your property for something they shouldn't be using it for. And so we need to be surveyors of our property as well here in the church. And so we are encouraged to do so. In the book of Psalms, we read in Psalms 48, it says, walk about Zion and go around about her. Tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks. Consider her palaces, that ye may tell it to the generation following." Now that's an encouragement for every one of us, as members of the church, to survey the church. Survey it out, so that we can tell our children, our grandchildren about it, and they can understand the riches that they have, that they've received by inheritance. They didn't pay a thing for it. freely given to them by God. The word when it says tell the towers, it's talking about to count or observe their, the word tell means to count. And it means to observe their height. When you're looking at David's palace and you're walking around Mount Zion where the city of the great king was back in the days of Israel, there was a beautiful palace that was there. And it was defended, it was built as a city of defense. And the towers were very tall. They were up there so that people could get up on those towers and they could look around, they could see if the enemy was approaching. It was a place that would keep the king safe. And so we are to count these things. Look how many wonderful, powerful blessings that we have a great God. He is someone that watches over us. You know, our God is a mighty fortress, one of the songs says. And so we are to consider that as members of the church. Sometimes when I'm going through a trial, I remind myself, I have a great God. And I have a church that I belong to. I have a Christ that I can pray to. And I'm a member of that. I'm a citizen of that country. So when I'm going through a trial, I remind myself of the things that I have that maybe somebody else might not have. And that is a very powerful thing that we can have as an encouragement in our lives. He says, marquee well her bulwarks. The bulwarks, marquee well means to lay it to heart. And I think sometimes that we can be members of the church and we can have all these blessings as members of it, but we don't really lay it to heart. I think many times God's people take the church for granted. You can take your husband or your wife for granted or even your health for granted. There's a lot of things we take for granted. But we should never take the church of Jesus Christ for granted. It's a great inheritance that has been given to us as a promise for God. We're to lay it to heart, and we're to mark it well. Mark well her bulwarks. Her bulwarks are those... Corners with the trenches around it, you know you see these palaces and they've got the water around it and everything it does care with the thought of a trench and it just shows how that God's house is Protected by God himself Jesus Christ said the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church. We know the Church of Jesus Christ is going to be here and until Jesus Christ returns. And it's in my heart to want it to be right here, in this very spot where I found the Lord Jesus Christ and who I've been worshipping for many years. And consider her palaces, which means it's a high citadel or castle. Did you know that the church is the highest authority on earth? It is. It's the highest authority on earth. It's higher than Congress. It's higher than our president, than any country. The church is the highest place on planet Earth. God regards the truths that we preach here, the things that we believe in above all things. There's a lot of laws that can be made by men and by countries, but the church of Jesus Christ in God's eyes is the highest place on Earth. I was looking at some pictures the other day of some cities, and it is amazing some of the buildings or I would say skyscrapers, that men have made. I thought, how did they build that thing? All the materials it must have taken to build that thing, as high as they did, as ornate as it is. My friends, that is nothing in God's eyes compared to His church, and we need to remember that. We are members of His church, and we are important in God's eyes. Sometimes we may think we're really not important, but I want to tell you, in God's eyes, His church, is very, very important to him. Now, when we're looking at these landmarks, or it says landmark, but landmarks, we know there's a boundary line, but there are boundary lines all around our property. So this morning, I want to just kind of repaint some of those boundary lines for us today that we may see some of those things that are important to God and that define the boundaries of his church. And so one of the first things I want to repaint is to remind you of the doctrines that we have in our church. and we preach on those all the time, and we both talk about election all the time, and that's something you're gonna hear if you come to this church, you're gonna hear about the doctrine of election, but that is something that was given to us by Jesus Christ and by the apostles. I wanna make a real bold red mark right there on that tree, and I want everybody to remember that we have a boundary line, and that's one of those things. If we ever leave that boundary line off, somebody begins to, Mark over that red line. You're gonna have all kinds of problems with defining what your church really is. We see so many people today that are erasing, that's why we preach on it so much, is because we see so many people today that are erasing that wonderful truth in God's word. We always mention Ephesians 1 and 4, according as he has chosen us in him. before the foundation of the world. I mean, I'm gonna mark that right there. You can see that. There's the mark. Look in your book, mark it down, because that's the doctrine of election. We never want to remove that. And it's something very important. Some people have changed the doctrine of election to the doctrine of selection. You know, God selected these people based upon what he saw that they were going to do. Well, that exalts the creature. It debases the person of Jesus Christ and it says that we're able to save ourselves and that Jesus Christ really didn't get the work done. Well, we believe in a successful Savior here that he accomplished our salvation by his finished works. I heard a guy one time, I've told you this before, they were starting a new church. He said, we're gonna start a new church, but we're not gonna have any doctrine. And I thought, well, you just made your first doctrine. You're not gonna have any doctrines. Well, what is a church without a doctrine? You don't have any direction. I guess they're going to be people that don't believe anything. So we're going to go to church, but we're not going to believe anything. And we're not going to have anything to believe. It's like one guy, Spurgeon, asked him what he believed. He said, well, I believe what the church believes. He says, well, what does your church believe? He said, well, they believe what I believe. He said, well, what do you and your church believe? He said, we all believe the same thing. He didn't know what he believed. Some people don't know what they believe. I have to say that the reason some people don't know what they believe in, they've never been taught anything. They've never been to a place where they have been taught the Word of God. Well, that's not the case here. You're gonna be taught some doctrine here, and we've got some landmarks, and we've got our Articles of Faith. Dan mentioned those last Sunday. We've got our Articles of Faith that are posted out on the wall. And as he mentioned, those are not the Bible, although we have scriptures underneath every one of them. You know, the Articles of Faith, One of the reasons they're written is to define the difference in what we believe, the truths that we believe, and things that people have forgotten. In other words, those are red marks on a tree that people have erased. And we're putting them back on there, and we're saying, this is our territory, and this is what we believe, and this is what we live in, and we want everybody to see this is where we are. So we know that you can't put your whole doctrine on a wall. We have to write the whole Bible on the wall if you're gonna hang those kind of doctrines out there. But those basically define what we believe. And those things, our church have stood for those same doctrines since 1903. 1903, that's over 100 years. We haven't had to erase any of them or change any of them. I was visiting with Elder Cagle many, many years ago, and Elder Cagle liked to visit with other people and try to share what we believe with other churches. And there were some Baptist churches out there that had, in the past, had very similar doctrines to what we had, and they weren't primitive Baptist churches anymore. So he walked in the church and he looked upon their articles of faith, and there it says, we believe in the doctrine of election. And so he approached the pastor about it, and they hadn't been teaching that, and they taught the Armenian doctrine, the free will doctrine, and he said, your articles of faith say you believe in the doctrine of election. And the preacher said, well, I didn't even know those were up there. We don't believe that anymore. So over the years, they just changed their doctrine from something that was in the word of God. But do we not see that today in many places? So many things are changing around us today, but God's word will never change. He has some ancient landmarks and we are to believe in them and teach them. The doctrine of predestination was something that I'd never heard before until I came to this church. And I like to study it out and recognize it is one of those ancient landmarks, and you see it there. I remember there was a place in my dad's property, and I wanted to walk around it, and I never walked around the whole property. So I thought, I'm gonna walk around this whole property and see where all these landmarks are. And one of them was back in the middle of the swamp. And I had to go all the way back. It was at a dry time and I could get back there. But back there in that corner, there was a post sitting there. And it had that landmark there. And I was able to say, this property goes all the way back over there. You know, we got some property that goes way back over there. really deep doctrines that a lot of people haven't wandered around enough to find out where they are or what they are. Isn't it amazing how some people will give up their church property, things that God gave them? You know, forget about it, don't worry about it, it's over there somewhere, it's not important to me. but yet it belongs to them. Predestination belongs to God's people that God predetermined to save a people before the world was ever spoken into existence and he did it. You think God predetermined to do something and he didn't do it? What kind of God would that be? God determined to do something but Satan really messed him up and he really couldn't finish the job. So he got these people and he sent them to seminary and he taught them how to do what Jesus couldn't do. Does that make any sense? No. Jesus Christ accomplished what he came to do. He predetermined to save his people from the wrath to come. And you know, there's some other landmarks that are important to us, and some of them are so common, you're thinking, well, Brother Sonny, you're just up there going over the same old stuff that we believed in for years. Well, we need to be reminded of those things. The resurrection of Jesus Christ, that is what everything hangs on. If we preach that many times, if Jesus Christ did not rise from the grave, and according to 1 Corinthians chapter 15, then you're still in your sins, and there ain't no way you're gonna get out of it. I hate to use the word ain't, but you won't get out of your sins if Jesus Christ did not rise from the grave. That's what Paul said, you are yet in your sins. Without the resurrection of Christ, you're going to a cold grave, and that's as far as you're gonna go. You won't go beyond it. There's a lot of ideas out there about the resurrection and things that other people believe in concerning what happens after death. And it's amazing some of the things that people can come up with. Some people say, well, you're going to be maybe a butterfly. You're going to be a butterfly, and you're going to be flying around out there. And the butterfly, you might land on one of your ancestors. And you'll know that that's your ancestor, because that butterfly lit on top of you. And there's actually adult people that believe things like that. Or the cow, that cow over there is one of your ancient ancestors. You know, there is no evidence that any of that is true. It's the idea of people's minds. But see, we've got evidence. We have an empty tomb and a risen Savior. 500 people saw Him at one time after His resurrection. And the things that we preach are not cunningly devised fables. Paul said, we don't preach cunningly devised fables. We preach what we've seen, what we've touched, what we know. And that's what the resurrection of Jesus Christ is. And there's another one, another landmark, the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. That one's being erased today. I don't know why somebody would want to change that. Why would it bother somebody even if it weren't true? Why would it bother anybody that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin? But it is true. And Jesus Christ had to be born of a virgin. If he wasn't, he was born a sinner like the rest of us. Genesis chapter three would be a fable that he was never the seed of a woman because he wasn't born of a virgin. But see these landmarks are things that we must stand for as God's people. We gotta remember where those red marks are on that tree. The new birth. That's another one. It's being marked off the tree. Some people are really not concerned about the new birth. Well, as long as I believe in God, I'm going to heaven, and that's really irrelevant. And you look at how much ink is spent in the Word of God about how people are born again. Now, I don't know about you, but I want to know how I was born again. Do you want to know how you were born naturally? I think we're all pretty interested in that. I remember when I was a kid, my mother told me that my brother came from a stork. Well, I kind of believed that for a little while and I got to thinking about it, you know, and as I got older, I was thinking this just really doesn't make sense that my brother came from a stork. I didn't see the stork. I'd never seen a stork. But you know, you learn some things as you get older. But you know, there are Christians today that, you know, they believe some things like that about the new birth. In John chapter three, Jesus said, marvel not that I said unto thee, you must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth. Thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. So is everyone that's born of the Spirit. Now, if we want to know how people are born of the Spirit, it says everyone there. So if anybody is born of the Spirit, it must be like that. Whether it has to do with King David, Saul, Moses, me, you, the Pope, everybody must be born again the same way. That's the red mark. The red mark's right there. You see it? Right there. It's plainly written on the tree. So the wind blows where it wants to blow, and the wind's always a figure of the spirit of God. And you can see where it, you know, you can hear the sound of it, but you don't know exactly where it comes and where it's going. We have no control over it, right? We just had a storm in Little Rock and around in this area. Did anybody have control over that tornado or those wheels? No. And nobody ever will. Nobody ever will. I remember the tornado that came through Donaldson years ago. And my mother had two pots on her front porch. One pot was blown all across the yard and the other pot was sitting right there. It wasn't even moved. You'd think a tornado would move a pot, but it didn't. And that's the way God's Holy Spirit is. You know, it blows upon one person, and they are born from above. And that person, other person, it just leaves them right where they were. Right where they were. God's Holy Spirit is an amazing thing. We have no control over it. We can't cause it to blow on anybody. I could be ever so eloquent this morning and I could try to preach the best message I could. I could get down here and I could start twisting your arm and telling you, hanging you over the fires of hell. I could try to get you worried about going to bed tonight and if you go to bed tonight and you die and you haven't come up here and did what I said you're supposed to do, you're going to hell. But my friends, that'll never blow the Spirit upon you. It may cause your conscience to feel bad. I can get men to make an emotional decision, but I can't give you life. Only the Holy Spirit can impart life to a person who is dead in trespasses and in sin. That's a red mark right here, how we're born again. ways that people are prescribing today that people become children of God are as preposterous as the stork. One of our kids had a friend and he went to a church camp and they had a clown. And the clown did some tricks and got him to say some things and he said, well, you're a child of God, now you're born again. So now we have clowns in the church that are conferring spiritual life upon children. And people believe it. God's people believe some strange things. I mean, you can give them the truth and they'll reject it. Isn't that amazing? You can give them John chapter three, where the wind blows where it pleases, they'll reject that flat out. But the clown now, you bring the clown up, you've got some power there. You got a clown in the church giving life to people. That's how preposterous things have gotten with so far as the boundary lines are concerned. Well, we could go through a lot of doctrines, you know. Another one I'll mention, too, is just the security of the saints. That's something that I rejoiced in when I came to this church, is the security of the elect family of God. Knowing that God chose me before the world began, that Christ died for my sins upon the cross, and understanding that, I received a security from that that I never had before. I always wondered about my salvation. You know, I wondered a lot about it. Although I was like a lot of Christians, I believe I'd basically given up on Christianity because there were so many different kinds of Christianity. I didn't really know. I thought, well, I've done something, so I guess I'm all right, until I found out that I'm a bankrupt, guilty sinner and that Christ paid for my sins and I had nothing to do with it, that I can surrender myself to that truth and say, Lord, I find my peace in thee. But you know, we have security in God's house, don't we? Jesus said that no man can pluck him from my Father's hand, or I give my life for the sheep, and no man can pluck him from my Father's hand, and no man can pluck him from my hand. You know, that's our security that we find in these landmarks. You know, landmarks give you some security, don't they? They show you what belongs to you and your relationship with God the Father. But we go to not only just the things that we believe in, but what about the practice that we, the way that we conduct our church? I think that's very, very important. What goes on here when you come in? Some people, you know, you walk in, you don't really know what in the world is even going to happen. Well, one of the first things that we think about the practice or how our church is run is who runs the church anyway? Who's running the church? Well, the Lord Jesus Christ should be running it, shouldn't he? I mean, he is the chief shepherd. He's the one that should be directing us, giving us orders, and then we have pastors, we have apostles, and then we've got pastors that we are supposed to be following, leading us so far as how the church is run. But you know, there are some churches, my friends, that are run by a big board in a big city. They receive their orders every week on what they're gonna preach, what's gonna be in their handout, what the other teachers are gonna teach, so that they'll all be teaching the same thing. But it came from a big board somewhere. Now I don't know about you, but I don't want a big city and a big board running our church. We've got a big God that I think is quite capable of running our church, giving us our doctrines and the things that we are supposed to teach. We've got a Holy Ghost that moves in the hearts of men, that brings us to the point, things that we should be preaching about. I'm not saying that everything we say is perfect, or maybe I should be preaching something else today, I don't know. But I'm preaching on this right now, so let's stay here. But, you know, the Lord is the one that always directed the apostles, the ministers, and the Bible. The Bible would say, and the Spirit of God came upon so and so, and he said this and that. You know, they weren't getting to say, well, I need to get my minutes today from the big board at Jerusalem, and I'm gonna find out what I'm gonna preach today at the church. No, the Lord works the same today as he did then. You know, we believe in believer's baptism. Dan mentioned that last Sunday. Believer's baptism. Now, think about this. This is important because before I will baptize you, or Dan, or anybody in our churches are going to baptize you, we must know that you are a believer. That you believe in God, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that he is God and that he paid for your sins. Now that's just a basic belief. Sometimes people come up and they don't say everything they believe. Some people, when they come up to be baptized, they don't know what to say. Because I didn't. But I'd been around enough that they knew what I believed, what I believed. When the Ethiopian eunuch wanted to be baptized to Philip, Philip said, Ask him if he believed. And he said, yeah, I believe. He said, I believe that Jesus Christ is son of God. He claimed he was a believer. Now when you get to that point, you're baptizing believers, then these people become members of the church. Now I'm leading to something here that's important. Because many places you can come into their church And you can come up here and you can become a member of the church, but they don't know if you even believe in God, believe in Jesus Christ, or if you've ever been baptized. And baptism, by the way, is the method by which God has given us as a church for people to confess Christ. Did you know your baptism really is a confession? So I'm gonna be baptized because I confess that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that he paid for my sins upon the cross. When I'm baptized, that's what I'm saying. Now you can say it with your mouth, which we should do. We should confess, according to Romans 10. We should confess. But this is the way we confess it publicly. We're letting the whole world know we're a Christian. We believe in Jesus Christ and many of the Christians back in the early church when they were baptized and confessed Christ to be the Son of God and the only true and living God. The Caesars didn't like it and they put him to death. Nobody's getting put to death these days for confessing Jesus Christ. But there were a people in a day, there was a people in a day that were willing to be put to death if they confess that Jesus Christ was the son of God and that he died for their sins. Now that's somebody that takes their landmarks pretty seriously. Pretty seriously. But that's part of our church practice. That's one of those red marks over there. There's a church near us there in the village. And People just join that church. They've probably got five, 600 members. But the way they're members is they just come up and they become members. It's kind of like a big social club and you just come up and I want to be a member. Okay, you're a member. So that's kind of the way that it is. They don't know anything about their moral life. What kind of life they're living. The things that they might be doing. They have no clue. And I know some of them there and I know that they should not be. a part of a church, the way that they're living, unless they made a few changes in their life. And you see, that's what it's all about, it's making a change. That's why we believe in repentance at our church. Sinners repent. And they come to the knowledge of Christ. And they're forgiven. And they can become members of the church. Which brings me to something else. And that's dealing with sin in the church. We got some red marks there on some trees about that. And it comes from, it's right in here. The red mark's right in here. We can read it in the book of 1 Corinthians where the Corinthian church dealt with a person that was involved in a sexual immorality. And they put the person out of the church. And the beautiful thing about it was, is when they put the person out of the church, the person became sorry about it, repented, and then they restored the person back to the church. That's the red mark. The forgiveness of sinners. And so, we have to remember we got that red mark in the church. It's something that we do to set the church apart from the world. I mean, would the church be any different from the world if we didn't have something like that? It'd be just like the world. But the church is a very, very special place and it's something where we have some red marks and we have to keep reminding people where these boundary lines are and even our song services. There's something that we have in our song service that I believe is a red mark. We believe in acapella singing. That's the way we read it in the New Testament. We're to sing psalms, songs, psalms and hymns, making melody in our hearts and to the Lord. When you're singing and you're making melody in your heart, you're actually worshiping God. Right? That's a part of the worship service. You know, we worship by coming and listening to a message, by singing and by the offering. And that is different ways of which we worship the Lord. Finally, I want to just make a comment, and I've got a few more minutes here, about traditions. Traditions are not landmarks, right? A tradition is not a red mark on a tree. A tradition is something that men started, and so when men start painting these red marks on trees and altering these boundary lines, then the church can become skewed a little bit as to what is right and what is wrong. Now, we've had some traditions that are okay. You know, Paul said, hold fast the traditions which I have taught you, right? Mainly he was referring to doctrines and practices when the apostle Paul said that. But we are to hold fast those things that we find in the scriptures. But there are some traditions that are man-made that even the Pharisees had their traditions. We read of Jesus Christ. He dealt with them all the time with their traditions. He said, full well you reject the commandment of God that you may keep your own tradition. They flat rejected the things that Jesus Christ said. And it's amazing how that the Pharisees with their traditions that They made people angry at Jesus and the apostles with their traditions. They would say, look, just come, this Jesus guy, he's coming in here. He's telling you these things, and this is what we've always taught you. And the people didn't know the scriptures well enough to know the difference between what Jesus was teaching them and the things that they had been listening to by the Pharisees for years and years and years were actually just traditions, just traditions. So we've had some traditions in our churches, and I'm glad to see that some of them are gone. Our churches used to just meet one Sunday a month. That was a tradition. And believe it or not, when they started meeting every Sunday, there were people upset about it. Because this is the way we've always done it. We've always done it this way. This is the way it's supposed to be done. And people would be upset at those ministers that were trying to teach that this is Sunday, we're supposed to have our own church and worship in our own church. But it was amazing that people would actually be upset about that. I remember another tradition that they used to have, and that had to do with being remarried. Used to, if you'd been married more than once and you came to the church, you could forget being a member of the church. You'd done messed up. Folks, we all mess up. People make mistakes. They sin. This is a place of forgiveness and repentance. It's a place where we're supposed to see repentance in a person and forgive them for it. And I always wondered when that was brought up to me, when I became a member of the church, how are you going to justify, we got a man called the Apostle Paul, and he was a murderer of Christians. And he put people to death. He stoned Stephen. And God chose him to be an apostle and write 13 books in the New Testament, but this person over here, and possibly the poor person could have had the worst husband or wife that treated him terribly, maybe unfaithful to him and left him, but yet this person over here can't be a member of the church. I wonder how many people that the church has sent away that would have been great church members, repentant people, that would have been profitable members of the church, received a blessing from God's kingdom, if they would have understood what repentance is. And you know, we make mistakes even when we're in the church. You know? If that's so, then repent of it. And go on with your life. Don't let it hang over your head. Get it right with the Lord. Ask Him to forgive you. When you do that, He's gonna forgive you. Didn't the Bible say He's just and able to forgive us of all of our sins? I believe that. I hang my head on that red stake, that He does forgive us of those things. Some of those traditions. Here's another one that some of you may throw your songbooks at me. By the way, that's another tradition is you gotta have a particular songbook. Which one are you gonna throw at me? We got two. I know you may not believe this, but I actually like the old one better than the new one. But I do. I like singing out of the old songbook. One brother said, they used to have a songbook called, it was called Lloyd's, L-O-Y-D-E-S songbook. And they said if you weren't singing out of Lord's songbook, you weren't singing spiritual songs. Had to be that songbook. There's some songbooks that I don't care for. We all have our preference, but as long as they're scriptural, they're good. Good to sing out of them, but when I came to the church, get your songbook ready. So I came to the church and I found out, you know, I saw those doctrines hanging on the wall up there and there's election. I love election. There's predestination. There's particular redemption. I looked in the Bible, they're all in there. They're right. You know, I did some research after I got in the church. I wanted to know if y'all were really right about those things. You were. I loved it. But then we started having this meeting, had the union meeting and the association. And I asked some people about that, and I said, so, where does this come from? Well, this is, we've always done this. We've always had the association and the union meeting, and I said, oh, okay, well, I got to looking in my Bible for that. Where is the union meeting and the associational meeting? I finally found it. It was right over there by the Sunday school, and the BTC and all this other stuff. There's a compendium over there in the back of the Bible. It's over there. You go look hard enough, you'll find that. Now look, I think we ought to associate. God's people should associate. And there were some good times during some associations. I know you've had them. You've probably got some truth. You may have joined the church during associations. You heard some truth. But I'll tell you, there's some people that's heard some truth in the Sunday school. I don't make it right. I found out that there's a lot of people that would go to war over a Sunday school, over a association. But when it came right down to it, they didn't want to associate. They didn't want to associate with me. I was out of order. I'm still out of order in a lot of places, but I'm glad. I'd rather be out on the outside with Jesus than in order with the Pharisees. Now look, I'm talking about something that you don't have a red mark in the Bible. I wish our churches would associate more. I love going over to our sister churches, but don't put a law on there. Make it legal. that we have to do something. That's when it becomes a boundary mark that's been moved somewhere else. You put something out there that's not so. You know, when we met one Sunday a month, I talked to my grandmother about it, and she was telling me that, you know, on one Sunday, everybody would meet here. The next Sunday they'd be at Macedonia, the next Sunday at Sardis and so forth. And you know, there's a real special thing about that because God's people in this whole area are together on a Sunday. It's a good thing. But when one church begins to usurp the authority of another church, you got a problem there. You got a problem. Each church is autonomous according to the scriptures. And then somebody would tell me, well, you know, our church used to be full on Sunday morning. I said, wait a minute. The reason your church was full on Sunday mornings, you had the other three churches here with you. Did you know we got more members now than we had when this church was constituted? That's true. I think it was constituted with 12 people. That's right. In 1906. Just be faithful and keep coming. Amen. We got a real blessing here at this church. Amen. We got some landmarks. We've got a forgiving God. We've made mistakes. Forgive each other for your mistakes. and we're all trying not to make mistakes. I keep messing up. I'm not worried about my eternal destiny. I'm just worried about staying out of trouble down here. That's my problem. Well, remove not the ancient landmarks, survey them and rejoice in them. Remember that God gave them to us by inheritance. Thank you for your attention today. Amen. More proof that the first Sunday of the month, you're gonna hear some preaching where you hear it any other time. I appreciate that, and I particularly appreciated what Brother Sonny said about the notion of association. That's a tough spot for old Baptists, honestly. I mean, we can get real hard on, well, I got a Sunday school over there. You ain't gonna find a capital A association as it is practiced among the old Baptists in the Bible. You're not going to find it. It doesn't exist. We are at liberty to have meetings with other churches and do all those sorts of things. I make the distinction between what I call Capital A Association, which is where now we got a whole lot of rules and we're going to have ministers trying to tell others what to do. That gets a little dicey. It's certainly not practiced in the New Testament. So that ought to give any of us pause. But we should recognize we're at liberty to associate with other churches and have those types of meetings. And to the extent that you want to be orderly about it, if you want to have some, you know, this is a schedule and this is who's going to preach when, all that stuff is fine. But we need to be careful about how we think about those things. And I appreciate that clarification. And particularly just in this sermon, You know, God is the great surveyor of the property that is the Lord's New Testament church. His survey is perfect. He has lined it out and the document, the survey document is the Bible. This is the document, okay? We have to keep that in mind. We bought property over here outside of Malvern a while back, and we paid a surveyor to go out there and mark the boundaries. So he went to some document that said this is what the boundary of the property is, and he went out there and walked it and marked it. And then he handed us a report of what he believed those boundaries to be. Now, provided that surveyor did his job correctly, that report should be reliable, should it not? By the way, there's bad surveyors on the planet. You see that? So it's not entirely certain that whatever document he gave you is right. The guy might have got out there and drank a case of beer and wandered around on my property for two hours and charged me 500 bucks. That totally happens, okay? So the fact that he handed me a survey document, I trust him, I think he did a good job. But what am I going to do? I'm going to go out and walk the property. I want to see the boundaries he marked up. One of the things that we found out there was the northwest corner of that property is marked by an old car axle. You know, you have to mark these boundaries, and if you put a wooden post in the ground, well, in 50 years, it's probably gonna rot away, and then you gotta put something else out there, so there's a car axle sticking in the ground down there. And you go out there, and sure enough, there's a ribbon on it, and that's the marker of our property. That landmark is in the right place, and it was correct. But I searched the survey, did I not, to see if what was written in that document was so. And that's your relationship to things like our articles of faith. Every church in America's got some articles of faith. They may be sitting in a drawer somewhere. Nobody's read them in 50 years or more. But those articles of faith were written by some surveyor, and not all the surveyors were good. Just because they exist, You should go to the original document. Go walk the property yourself in the Word of God. That's how you find out if these things are so. That's what the Bereans did. They took this and they heard this teaching with all readiness of mind. But you know what? It's not so until I go see that axle in the ground. I went to make sure that it was so. And that's the relationship we have as we think about those property lines. Ultimately, we are responsible to mark out those boundaries. When we hear those things preached from the pulpit or we see them in our articles of faith, go to the original survey. and see if those things are so. And to the extent that you do, you'll be blessed in it. The Bible calls you noble for doing that. You'll be blessed in it because you will know it not just simply because Brother Dan got up there and said it, or because Elder Phelan got up there and said it, or some visiting minister got up there and said it, or because it happens to be on the wall back there. You will know it so because I went and saw that it was so. I went to the original boundary markers in the Word of God and it proved it to me. I pray that's a blessing to you. I love that sermon. Thank you for listening to SuccessfulSavior.org, the ministry of Harmony Primitive Baptist Church. This has been Elder Dan Salmons, preaching in one of our regular meetings. Come and join us as we worship God in the simplicity of Christ every Sunday morning at 416 North Hall Street in Donaldson, Arkansas. At Harmony, we don't have many things you'll find in the popular churches of our day, but we do have a successful Savior. We invite you to come and see.