Amen. Alright, grab your Bibles out. Turn to Romans 14. Romans chapter number 14. Stand with me for a moment here. And give me a moment to get my Bible out. Here you go, Pastor G. Romans 14. Genesis, Exodus, Romans. I'm just kidding. Yeah, in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans. 14. Sorry. Romans 14. You ask me and I'll forget. All right. Verse number five, one man esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. Let's pray. Lord, we thank You for Your Word. Thank You, Lord, for the opportunity to continue looking at our Baptist distinctives. We pray Your blessing on the message tonight. In Jesus' name, Amen. You may be seated. Alright, continuing on our Baptist distinctives. Real quick review. What was the first one? Letter B. What is it? The Bible is our authority. Next. A. Autonomy of the local church. Autonomy of the local church. Next one. The priesthood of the believer. And then, two ordinances. Very good. Baptism and the Lord's Supper. And tonight we're looking at letter I. Does anybody know what it is? I already told you. Individual soul liberty. Not indivisible soul liberty. Individual soul liberty. That's soul liberty for the individual. And so, every person, whether saved or unsaved, has the liberty, this is just defining the term, has the liberty to choose what he believes about God. Baptists have always been opposed to religious persecution. This liberty, however, does not exempt one from the responsibility the responsibility to the Word of God, or from the accountability to God Himself. So, we believe in individual soul liberty. You have the liberty to choose to believe the Bible or reject the Bible during this life. You have full liberty during this short period of time you have on this planet. However, there will be consequences for how you use that liberty. Tonight we started here with Romans 14. So in terms of individual soul liberty, that goes for two things. Number one, it goes for whether or not you accept or reject the Word of God and the God of the Bible. Number two, it goes for how you apply the Bible to your life. So we believe that Christians, or believers, people who do believe in God, have the liberty to choose how they apply the Word of God as well. Now, that does not mean that however you apply it is right. It also does not mean that whether or not you choose God is right or wrong. The only correct and right way is to believe God, the God of the Bible, and apply the Word of God as He has written it. Now, that's the right thing. However, we believe that every person has a right. I hate to use the word right. Every person has liberty to choose right or wrong. whether whether saved or lost choosing to be saved or not to be and then if saved choosing how to apply the word of God. Now we're going to talk about that probably a bit more tonight as I as I read. Romans 14 verse 5 where it says, "...one man esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." If you consider the context of Romans 14, what we're dealing with in Romans 14 is a matter of soul liberty, but it's a matter of liberty among Christians. And this particular verse here is referring to how you deal with days, right? Some people really want to celebrate birthdays. Some people would rather not. Now some people have a conviction one way or the other on it. And so that has to be considered carefully. Now, you know, esteeming a day has to do with celebrating a day, right? Well, I just mentioned birthdays, right? But we also, what other types of days do we celebrate? Christmas? Mother's Day? Father's Day? Thanksgiving? That's probably my favorite day. Veterans Day, New Year's right? I like I like New Year's Eve too because we we have a gathering here on New Year's Eve and we come together and we pray in the new year and it's it's exciting time. We do not have one on Christmas Eve. We usually leave Christmas as a family kind of thing. Now we don't cancel services. If Christmas falls on a Sunday or Wednesday, we still have services as scheduled. But We typically do a pie and praise the day before Thanksgiving. And so like our Wednesday night service for the night before Thanksgiving, we do like everybody brings pies, everybody that can, we bring pies and we have a song service. And praises we do praises like you know praise the Lord for this praise Lord for that and sing a song Or a verse of a song and then when the service is over we go down and eat pie And so that's that's kind of our tradition every year We've been doing that Just about since we've started I think but What's that? We had a resurrection Sunday breakfast at one point, one time. We've done, you know, Christmas things, things like that, so. Passover, yeah, we celebrated Passover this year. That was a fun time. So, you know, there are, now some people are like, eh, every day's a good day, right? Right? Now, I personally would like to celebrate every day. I mean, you know, esteem every day. Now, notice here that there's not an option, in this verse anyways, and I'm being a little facetious, but there's not an option to not celebrate. It's either you can celebrate particular days or every day. You can't, you can't choose not to celebrate though. I'm just messing around. All right. But that's what I mean that it literally is saying that there. It's not, it's not a law, but he's saying here, whatever you're going to do, be persuaded. If it's a matter of conviction that you, that you pick particular days to be important days, then enjoy those, right? We have like spring program and fall program. We just started that like what, four years ago, three years ago, something like that. I knew of another church that did these things, and I was like, that's a good idea. And I went to one of their things, and I was like, how do you guys do this? Nobody would give me an answer. So I was like, ok, whatever, we'll make it up on our own. And then I was at a conference once and I said, hey, we're doing, this is our fall program. And I sent the info to a guy and I said, hey, what do you think of this? He said, I think you're doing a good job there. I'm like, how's it compared to what you're doing? He's like, it's way better than what we're doing. So you just do what you're doing. I was like, cool. And so it's a fun time. It's a fun time, right? We encourage one another. That's for two months. Twice a year. That's four months a year. That's like what? A third of the year that we do those things, right? Yeah, spring program, fall program, we do both. And so, yeah, fall program, September, October. So, we esteem days, right? Typically speaking. There are some, not here, but there are some Christians that are like, And I'm not talking about Jehovah's Witnesses. I'm talking about Christians, alright? That are like, I don't celebrate this or that or whatever. Well, okay. Well, you have to celebrate on that day, but you can celebrate all the other days too. So, it's either particular days or all days. That's the choice. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. That's kind of the idea, though, that I gather from it. I think the option to not esteem days doesn't seem to be there. But esteeming every day alike is saying, you know, every day is a good day, right? I like that. I like that concept. I could probably preach a whole message on that. We could just be like, hey, every day is a good day. And yeah, this is the day which the Lord hath made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. Amen. And so, amen. Amen. I almost want to sing and shout and stuff now. So, that's our opening text there. But the idea here is that there is some liberty. It doesn't have to be just one way in that sense. Now, that goes further, though, in verse 12 here, it says that we're all going to give an account, right? It says, so then every one of us shall give account of himself to God. Now if you look in between there, it begins, the chapter says, him that is weak in the faith, receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations. Now this is something that people will Miss. Understand that there are Christian liberties. We do believe in Christian liberties. And we believe that there are liberties for non-Christians, right? They have the liberty to reject the Gospel. We don't force it on them. Now, we will very strongly go out and evangelize as much as we can and we'll tell the whole world, right? And they may think we're forcing it on them because we're telling them the Gospel. But we're not forcing them to receive it. They have a choice. Well, just the same, we have traditions that we do, right? Our family had a tradition every Sunday night. What we did every Sunday night is we would go home and we would eat pizza. Well, we have forced it on everybody here. No, I'm kidding. We haven't forced it on everybody here. We heard about a thing a while back, and they were like, hey, you could jump in on this, and we can get you free pizza. And I'm like, hey, that sounds like a good deal. And so we decided to welcome everybody into the tradition of Sunday evening pizza. Now, you know where we got that? My old pastor. He would go home every Sunday night. I don't think they do it anymore. Maybe they do. I don't know. But they would go home every Sunday night and they'd eat pizza. Just as a family. It would be a family thing. And we did that. And then we had the opportunity to have free pizza. And we're like, hey, we're going to eat pizza anyways. May as well eat it with everybody else. Now, is that something every church has to do? Are we going to call up New Life once they start having Sunday night services and say, hey, you guys having pizza on Sunday nights? And if they say no, apostate. You guys have departed from the faith. No, no, of course not, right? It's not a matter of must do, right? It's a matter of liberty, right? Now those are simple things. There are some things that are commands from the Word of God. And then there are things that are convictions. Put it that way. I've got a whole series of messages on things that are... What is it? Principles, precepts and preferences, right? And so there are things like that, right? There are things that are preferences. I would say having pizza on Sunday night, that's a preference thing. That's not a, that's not even really a principle thing. Matter of fact, it's probably not very good for us. But once a week, probably fine. But if somebody takes our preference on Sunday night and then like smathers it across the whole week, and they're like, hey, we have pizza on Sunday nights, and so that's good, so we need to do it every night of the week all year long, you're gonna die. Okay, don't do that, don't do that. It will kill you. So it's kinda like if we did like an ice cream social once a month or something, and somebody's like, oh, that's good to do, I'm gonna do that every day. No, it's not good to do, no, you will die, don't do it. Eric, don't eat the ice cream. Sorry I had to do that before Terry did. But individual soul liberty. As you go through chapter 14, it's going to talk about what you eat. It's going to talk about celebrating certain days. It's going to talk about, again, what you eat. And then it's going to say, here's the principle for believers. Here's the direct command. In verse 13, it says, "...let us not therefore judge one another any more." And that's not a blanket statement. It's not saying you can't judge at all. It's saying in this area where we have liberty, we don't judge or condemn one another in this area, but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother's way. Don't put a plate of donuts or brownies in front of Brother Bella. Don't do it. Don't do it. That's a stumbling block. Right? I'm picking on Brother Bella. I love him more than I love all of you. No, I'm kidding. What's that? He asked for it, no. But there's things like, hey, by the way, don't do it to me either. Don't do it to me either. You know, I try to stay away from sugar. And I've gotten to the point where I can, where you can put it up in front of my face and I can say no thank you. What's that? My can? No, it's right there, unopened, unopened. I'm gonna give it to somebody else. that can metabolize it faster. Probably one of the teenagers. Pastor G got me a beverage that's bad for my health. I'm just kidding. I'm just messing with you. It's a little can of pineapple juice. 100% pineapple juice. Pineapple juice has about 75% of your daily recommended value of sugar in one can. And so anything else you eat or drink throughout the day would have to be 100% sugar free because you're gonna end up overdoing it on sugar. So gotta be careful how much of that, if you do drink fruit juices, be careful. And listen, you have liberty. You can drink yourself to diabetes and and insulin resistance and you can have those kind of inconveniences in your life if you would like to. But you don't have to. You have freedom to do it or not do it. So he did it. It wasn't me. All right, my wife's back there like, hey, come on. I'm like, hey, you brought it up. So anyhow, but the idea is not to put a stumbling block. Now here's the thing. I know Pastor G's not offended that I'm not gonna drink it. Thank you for giving it to me. I'm gonna pass it on to someone who can, like I said, can metabolize it better than I can. You know, a younger person that can handle it. But we don't wanna put that stumbling block before in our brother's way that he would fall, right? Or an occasion to fall. There are certain things, certain, as we say, proclivities, things that people have a tendency to fall in certain areas. If you know your brother or sister in Christ, you know what those are for that person. And if you don't, you will get to know them. And so you just have to watch out for those things and look out for the best interest. That's what love is. It's looking out for the best interest of another. It's not just a heartfelt warm feeling toward someone. It's an action. It's looking out for that other person's best interest according to the will of God. Right? If you love somebody, you're not going to put an occasion for them to stumble in their way. And so, now, you might do it by accident, but once you learn that person, you learn that, hey, they might fall. Yes? Okay, but when you're talking about, let us not therefore judge one another, are you talking about in our church? Or with anyone? So, that verse, in its context, is talking about this. If you were to pick up that can, now not in the sanctuary, but if you were to pick up that can of pineapple juice and chug it down with all that sugar in it and stuff, I'm not to condemn you for it. Now I might say, you need to watch out, there's a lot of sugar in that. But at the end of the day, that's your choice to make. So we don't judge in that way. that you know what's wrong, and then I go and talk to like a family member or something about it, is that judging? Because what they're doing is not judging. It depends on your conclusion. If you say, okay, so-and-so said such-and-such, and because of that, they are going to hell. Or they're going to hell. Or they've sinned. Now, if they in fact did sin, and it's objective, then that's fine. But it really should be taken to the person who sinned, not someone else. So that wouldn't be judging in that sense. Now, it would be judging. But it would be lawful judging. But when you take it to someone other than the person who's committed the offense, now it's gossip. If I do that, if I go, Pastor G did something and I go and I tell Brother Bella about it, and I don't go to Pastor G and help him with the problem, the sin that he's committed, then I'm not being loving to him. I am committing a sin against him by going to him instead of him. The person, yes. Right, right. Now, there are some circumstances where you might need help going to the person. So, like, let's say, you know, Brother Phil did something wrong and you don't want to approach Brother Phil directly. So you might say, Pastor, I need to go talk to Brother Phil. Would you go with me and talk to Brother Phil? He's a man. You're a woman. So you might bring it to the pastor and say this is what happened. And we're not skipping a step of church discipline. We're just keeping it above board as far as that goes. And sometimes it's a matter of accountability, too. Or maybe my wife did something and it's like, well, somebody might want to bring it to me to help. and present it to her. You know what I mean? Or I did something. You might go to her. Not go to her to say, hey, the pastor's a numbskull and he did this. Why don't you deal with it? No, instead you say, hey, the pastor did this. Could I talk with him with you about it? Involving another person isn't always bad. unless you're involving the other person without the plan for that person being involved in the solution. So gossip is when you take something to someone who is not part of the solution. But if the person you're bringing it to is part of the solution, then that's fine. Now let me clarify that because here's the thing. Let's say Brother Terry has an issue with, well, of course with Brother Bella, right? And so he goes to every member of the church because He thinks that they're all a part of the solution. We need to help brother Bella. And so don't do it right there And so so he goes to pastor G and he goes brother Phil and he goes to sister Becky and he goes to brother Duvall and and and you know He starts talking to everybody about it because he says listen brother Bella's got this problem We need to pray for him and we need to go help him with this problem That's gossip. And that's sowing discord. So, it's different if it's like, hey, he knows that maybe Pastor G is specifically a part of the solution. And he goes to Pastor G and says, hey, Brother Bell has stomped on my right foot really hard, and I would like for you to help me approach him about how that's wrong. You know, and so then now that's different. But if he just goes and says Brother Brother Bella stepped on my right foot really hard. I think that's wrong. What do you think? See, there's a difference between just talking about it and seeking a solution. Now, Pastor G's a mature believer, he's going to say, man, you know what? I think we should deal with that. Come on over here, let's talk to Brother Bella. And then, let's get it resolved. Now, we've kind of left this idea, but this matter of judging. The matter of judging through the Bible, there's actually three different kinds of judging in the Bible. And so, two of them are good and they're commanded. The third one is not good. It's good, but we're not capable of it. So, the first two are judging or discerning for safety reasons. Whether that's physical or spiritual safety. For example, If you are walking down the street and you see a group of guys with a rope around a piano pulling it up into a second-story window, you have to judge whether it's a good idea to walk under that or around. That's a judgment you have to make. It's discerning. You're saying, oh, that's not safe. I need to go around that. We also have to judge in spiritual matters sometimes. You hear some false doctrine being taught Well, you have to discern that according to the Word of God. Now, you don't come to the conclusion that that person's motive is wrong and that that person is wrong all around, but what you do is you say, ok, according to the Word of God, I can discern that what they're saying is not Scriptural. And so, if it's somebody outside of your church or something, then you just discern to separate yourself from that false doctrine so that you're not affected by it. Right, you just leave it alone. You say, well, you be you over there and I'm going to be me over here. Now if it's in your church, you have to discern how to, and you have to judge, how to then fix the problem. because it needs to be fixed. And so, we have to do that. And that's where the second one comes in, and that's discerning or judging for the purpose of helping. And that's biblical judgment. And that's actually what we dealt with in verse 13. He says not to judge one another anymore, but then it says right after that, but judge. but judge this rather, right? It's like when Jesus said, judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment. So in other words, He says don't just judge according to what you're seeing, but do judge. But judge rightly or righteously. And righteous judgment is it depends on your motive. Why am I judging this matter? If you're judging this matter in order to make yourself look better and make them look worse, or in order to make yourself feel better and them feel worse, or if you're judging to be critical, that's not good judging. But if you're judging in order to help, like genuinely help, Now sometimes people judge to help and they're really just criticizing. And so it's one thing to be critical, it's another thing to judge for help. And it really eventually it kind of shows whether you're actually trying to help or just trying to be picky. Right? Because, you know, we can get that way, can't we? Sometimes. And I've been that way. And sometimes I'll see somebody do something that's wrong or they'll say something wrong or they'll read something wrong or whatever. And I'm like, alright, stop it. Stop it, brain. Leave it alone. It's fine. Just let them do what they're doing. It doesn't have to be perfect. And I do that sometimes. And sometimes, like if somebody reads something wrong, I think I did it to you this morning, so I read something wrong and I'll correct them. I don't always have to correct somebody. We were at the fair yesterday. and we were walking down the road there, and there was this guy dealing with his either late teenager or adult son up against the wall and talking to him. I don't know what was going on, but I heard him all of a sudden turn around and point at the guy in the tent, not at the gospel tent, but down the way a little bit, and he said, don't tell me how to raise my children. I was like, whoa, I'm going to keep on walking. Uh, sometimes people can get really, really, you know, here's the thing. Maybe the guy was just trying to help. Hey, you know, or maybe I don't know what was going on. I didn't really see it all. But maybe the guy dealing with his son was being kind of overly aggressive. I don't know. I don't I don't know the circumstance. And when I say overly aggressive, that can be interpreted a lot of ways. I mean, maybe he was hitting him against the wall or something. I don't know. I don't know what was going on over there. But, I mean, if you happen to look over and see some guy taking his kid and pounding him against a brick wall, you might say something. You might say, hey, everything all right over there? You know, I don't know. Or just be like, all right, I didn't see that. Yeah, we might want to get some attention over here, you know. Right, yeah. So, sometimes it's best just to... It is, you're right. And so, now, there are times for believers, especially in the same church, that if you see something and you just It's unloving to just charity. In 1 Corinthians 13, charity or love in action, it rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth. Charity, real love, isn't going to just look at sin and be like, oh... Now, love covereth a multitude of sins. What that means is not that people can just get away with murder. What it means is if you sin against Me and I love you, My love is going to cover that. But at some point, if I really love you, I'm going to try to help you overcome that sin. Or I'm going to get someone else involved to try to help you overcome that sin. But in that matter of individual soul liberty, there is, at the end of the day, there are some things that there are preferences that you can just allow people to have. They may not be your preferences or my preferences, but they may be their preferences. And so, we let them go ahead with that. Now, there is a difference between a preference and biblical principles. So, someone may think they have a preference in an area that the Bible actually does address. Now, it may not give a direct precept and command about it. But it's going to give some guidance in the area, right? And so where we see that, that's usually where there's a lot of dispute on biblical principle. Like, how do you apply biblical principle? People have different beliefs on how you apply biblical principles. And which principles to apply in New Testament times. Those are things that there's a lot of dispute, and at the end of the day, What we need to judge is that we not put a stumbling block before our brother. Right? And so how do we do that? We look out for what's going to be best for them. And we restrict ourselves. Right? In fact, in another passage, Paul says, If meat maketh my brother to offend, I will eat no meat while the world standeth. Right? And so he's saying, look, if me eating meat is going to cause my brother to stumble or offend or something like that, I won't eat meat. It's kind of like the sugar thing. I can eat sugar. I don't have blood sugar problems. I don't have any of that. But I don't, because I don't want to have those problems, but also because I don't want to put a stumbling block before my brother. If I can, you don't want to put a stumbling block. Yeah. I mean, and that's not, I don't, it wouldn't be sin for me to do that. But, you know, now, and I said that, and immediately my mind went over everything that went in my mouth today. to think about if I have already consumed enough sugar. I had some potatoes in my lunch. That's not sugar, but it's somewhat of a simple carbohydrate. And then I had in my lunch, my wife threw some of those little goldfish crackers in there. that's not great for you either, you know, not on my diet. I try to stick away from, you know, I'm picky about my diet a little bit. And so I pay attention to those things. I'm trying to be healthy. So I'm probably more mindful of those things than most people. But at the same time, it wouldn't be a sin for me to crack that open and to step outside, crack that open and drink it. I'm not saying it would be a sin for me to do it in the sanctuary either. Because I made that rule, alright? It's not a Bible rule, it's a pastor's rule, alright? And the sign's on the door. What's that? Well, everybody follows what the pastor said. I don't know if I decided to take that sign off back there. I think a couple people probably have an issue with it. But most of the time people ask me, you know, here's why we do that. I'll tell you real quick. Here's why we do that. Our old building We had a sanctuary, some bathrooms, and like a couple little rooms to stick kids, all right? And so that's all we had. So when we had our fellowship on Sunday nights, everybody would eat their pizza in the pews. That's the only place we had to eat them, to eat pizza, you know? And so that's the way we did it because it's all we had. So when we got this place, we made sure that we had other places to eat. You know, we've got a fellowship hall downstairs. Hey, we got a trailer out here with a flat tire. I just noticed this guy flat tire. We got a trailer out here that we can sit in and eat. We've got, you know, the front lawn, we've got the front porch, we've got the picnic tables, all these things, right? We can eat while we get eaten outside, right? With the mosquitoes and stuff. But, and so we did that on purpose so that we didn't have the sanctuary used as like a common area, right? Now, someday we may grow to the point where we have to do something like that eventually, but not right now. So we try to keep that out right now. So that's kind of like, well now, you know, there's, there are like very, very small, subtle little allowances that we can have. You know, if somebody has a blood sugar problem, rather than them having to get up and, you know, throughout the service or whatever. If they've got to have something, it depends on how their issue, you know, I mean, obviously, I don't want somebody with a bag of chips, you know, or popcorn, you know, kick back and just popping popcorn during the service, you know, we're not at the theater. Okay. Um, but you know, if somebody needs to keep themselves from crashing, Um, we can make slight allowances, right? Um, and we're and we're also not real super picky. And since it's the home crowd here tonight, I'm gonna say this. If we have a visitor come in with a pop or something, don't correct them, especially not their first time here. What's that? What's that? No, no, no, no. I'm not talking about you. The coffee. Now that's you didn't know. Right. But I know somebody else did. But no, I'm talking about there was another circumstance where where somebody came in and they had they had a pop or whatever. And so I was like, hey, we don't allow drinks in the sanctuary. I was like, that's their first time here. Leave them alone. You know, they'll learn. Give them time, you know. There are a lot of things that we have that there we even have some unspoken or un not on they are spoken But they're unwritten rules right there are some things that most of our congregation looks at as Like that's just the way it ought to be but then there's there's like We don't always correct people on it right like no smoking on the property or within view of the property and Now, is there a sign anywhere that says that? No. And now, if somebody pulls up in their car and they're smoking, that's their car. And sometimes people come to, Pastor, did you see them over...? Hey, you want me to be the smoker police? What's up? We want people to come to church. Now, we don't want our church to be associated with smoking. But when people come for the first few times, even a few months even, We want people to be able to come to church. You don't put every sin off immediately. It takes time to work on those things, right? And so, again, now some of these things, we can go straight to biblical principle and say the Bible says this, so you shouldn't be doing that. But we give people a little bit of grace to learn, right? We're not going to slap them over the head immediately to be like, hey, you don't do that! Give them time. Give them time. Give them time, right? Now, I did, I had a talk with, we had a group of guys from the mission. They were standing right out on the sidewalk, all of them smoking. And I said, and after I waited, and then right before they got ready to leave, everybody came in, and I said, fellas, I'm not trying to jump on you or anything, but I just want to let you know, here's our rule. If we give you a ride here, You don't smoke? No, no, that's not the rule. If we give you a ride here, you don't smoke from the time you're picked up to the time you're dropped off. That's the rule. All right? Now, somebody somewhere said to somebody that it was okay if you go down there and smoke. No, that's, I don't know where that came from. But that's, now that's the rule that the director of the mission made. And we said, we're good with that. And so that's, that's the rule that we keep with. Uh, so now you drive yourself here. What you do in your car is between you and the Lord. Unless it's illegal, then we might call the cops on you. All right. Don't don't do that on the front porch. I'm kidding. And that's good. That's progress. That's good. So I wasn't bringing that up to hammer anybody. I'm just giving an example. Now, by the way, pastor's drinking lemon water tonight. How do you know that? You want to taste it? You want to taste it? Take it outside. Because if you're not preaching, you don't get to have a water bottle. I'm kidding. Now, that's the thing. People say, well, can I have a bottle of water in the sanctuary? I say, well, here's how we deal with that. The answer is no. But if you do, I'm not going to throw anything at you or yell at you, OK? Because I know, I would rather you have a water bottle. Now, if you're doing this, you know, with that water bottle the whole time, no, you can't have it in here. But if you've got one you can drink and it's not loud, I would rather you do that than go back and use the water fountain in the middle of the service. I'd rather you do that, right? So, anyways. But we're dealing here with things, there are liberties, right? Some churches, They have different positions on that. And they have the liberty to have a different position on those things, right? Some churches, the rule is, absolutely nothing. No water, no drinks, no food in the sanctuary. Some churches call their sanctuary an auditorium. I don't really understand that 100%. It's what I grew up hearing, like auditorium, auditorium, and I'm like, I mean... And I think part of the reason for that is because some look at, if you use the word sanctuary, that you're elevating that room above what it ought to be elevated above, because the fact is, the holy place, God's holy place, is the congregation, not the building. And so, however, If we treat the space that we meet in to meet with God, if we treat that space common and in a haphazard way, it will cause us as we come together as a congregation, whether it's here or somewhere else, it will cause us to look at our meeting with God in a haphazard way. I'm not trying to elevate this room above a position Because the fact is this room really is no different than the bathroom in terms of its actual reality, its structure. Now that there's no toilets in here, so it's different in that way. No, no, you can't put a toilet in the sound booth. But it is a common room in the sense of its construction and all of that. but we have it set apart for a specific purpose, right? And so we try to show respect in that way. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah. There's a lot of times I'll do claims and if the person says, you know, I say, do you have any water damage inside or whatever, any storm damage? Like, oh yeah, we've got such and such. I'll stop at the door and I'll say, would you like me to take my shoes off, right? Now, I do that because there was a time when I walked in and they said, could you please take your shoes off? What I thought was funny about that guy is he's walking around with tennis shoes on the whole time. I'm like, why did I take my shoes off and you got yours on? Come to find out, he was Fred Rogers. And so every time he would leave the house or come to the house, he would stop, sing a song, and change his shoes. I'm kidding, he wouldn't sing a song. Y'all remember Mr. Rogers neighborhood. But he would wear, he would have indoor shoes and outdoor shoes. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, well, and there's another thing too. But I've got it memorized, but I'm not gonna sing it for you. And he would change his cardigan, right, to a vest and, you know, and change his shoes and he'd throw one over here and he would make a snappy new day, right? Anyways, so, Yeah. Man, you guys. Just doing that to me. All right, so. But yeah, there are some preferences that I think that we can be careful not to offend one another in your area of preferences. Sorry, you're talking about shoes. I look down and I've got dust on my shoe. So. And hey, I'll give you an example. We had a preacher here one time about a year ago. It's not quite a year ago. What? Probably not. No, no, no. But that's another example. But we had a preacher here. And you know what? He was coming to preach. Before he got up to preach, He had cowboy boots on. He took his boots off and left them here, and he walked up there in his socks. He would not wear his boots on the platform. Where's that come from? Well, for him, Moses and the burning bush. Now, is this space right here Any different physically from that space other than the fact that it's elevated? No, not exactly. Well, the framing right here, actually, y'all didn't know this, I framed this, but right here, there's a cross. I've made a cross in the framing. And right here, where the cross goes across there, it says, preach the Word. Right where I stand here. It does. Well, you've got to tear the floor up and look at the framing to see it. But I've got a picture of it somewhere. I'd have to find it. But it might not say preaching. Maybe it says the preaching of the cross. I'll look it up. I'll look up the picture later and show you. But the Word of God is lifted higher. But his thought process is this is a holy place. Physically, it's not a holy place. But what you're doing from this place is holy. And so, now, I can't stand still, so you know me, and Brother Ramsey knows it because he's back there with the joystick with the camera all the time chasing me around the sanctuary while I'm running around everywhere. My pastor said years ago, he said, watching you preach is like watching a tennis match. And so I try not to pace as much as I used to, but I do move around, right? And part of it's because you all fall asleep, and I need to keep your attention, and so on. Or you're hungry, and I've got to get your mind off of that. But this matter of soul liberty. See, a lot of these things we're talking about, those are matters of liberty. Not every preacher has to holler. Not every preacher has to preach exactly the same way with the same style. Right? Now, I've heard people say, so-and-so's a good preacher, so-and-so's a good preacher. Let me tell you the standard on who's a good preacher and who's not a good preacher. It's not on how they articulate. It's not on how much passion they put behind their message necessarily, although you ought to believe what your message is and you ought to be passionate about it. It's about whether or not they're preaching the Word of God. and preaching the Word of God as it is. So I read a post this afternoon that said that independent Baptists have been spoiled by bad preaching. And I get it. There are a lot of preachers who will read a verse and then tell stories. Now, there's a place for that. You can do that sometimes. But if a group of believers or a church has a regular diet of storytelling only and not preaching. Like, reading the Word and making it plain, making it understood. If you have a regular diet of a little bit of Scripture and a whole lot of storytelling. Now, we've done a lot of conversing tonight and talking back and forth. But it goes back to the Word of God, right? But there are some preferences, right? Sometimes I like to shout sometimes, or I run around a little bit, try to get animated. It's my personality, it's what I do, right? And some people really like that, some people really don't like that, you know? And those people, I usually stand right in front of them, right? slap them around a little bit. Like Brother Quick, he was grabbing on to Pastor Adams. Let me tell you! And we get some preachers in here, they do all kinds of different things, right? But again, these are matters that we have liberty in. Now, as believers, our level of liberty that we have gets limited in various areas for different reasons. We believe in soul liberty. However, if you want to be a member of this church, you have to believe the doctrines of this church. If you want to be a member of this church, there are certain areas of preference that we agree on that you either need to agree on or agree to disagree, but still practice. And so those are things that we do, right? Now, do we run around picking at everybody and checking to make sure that all, no, no. But when it becomes publicly evident, then we deal with it, right? But now, if you're a member of this church and you want to be in leadership in some way, what you're going to be doing in leadership will then further limit the amount of liberties you have. Right? There are things that I, as the pastor, I cannot do. I don't have liberty to do them because I'm the pastor. There are some things that somebody who just joined the church can quote-unquote get away with that the pastor will never be able to. I'm not talking about sin. I'm talking about even just matters of preference. Brother Ramsey called me last Sunday. What time was it? Was it 9.30? 9.40? It was like right before Sunday school. And he's like, hey, are you alright? I'm like, yeah, we just finished up chapel. And he's like, oh, oh yeah. He thought I was skipping church. You thought I got ran over? Must have got ran over, right? I don't, right? By the way, let me say this. When somebody asks me, Pastor, is it ok if I miss church for whatever reason? I say, ok, here's how I determine that. And this is how I determined it before I was a pastor. If I was the pastor of that church, would I miss church for that reason? If I wouldn't, then I don't. And so that's how I figured it. When I was at McGregor Road, and I wasn't the pastor there, I wasn't even a pastor there. I mean, I assisted the pastor. I never had an official title. Well, I did have an official title, Sunday School Superintendent, whatever that is. But so my rule was, if I wake up on Sunday morning and something's going on, If I would expect my pastor to come to church when that was going on in his life, I'd be there too. Now, when my dad died, I actually called my pastor and said, Pastor, my dad died last night, like at my house, Saturday night, alright? And I said, I said, I said, I can still come into church, I just need to make some arrangements. He said, Brother, stay home. I said, okay. So, I mean, I asked him. Now, is that because I believe my pastor can give me permission to come to church or not? No. It's a matter of I want to be in leadership. I want to do what God wants me to do. And so, I'm going to limit my liberties to the extent that I want opportunity. Make sense? And so, Brother Bella, you got your hand up or are you just scratching your head? When I get sick, you don't know it. Usually. Sometimes you do. But most of the time you don't. I've actually only missed church for being sick. What? Once? Twice maybe? What'd you say? Uh, no, I don't know. I mean, no, I've been sick and didn't miss. But, uh, I don't know. There was one time I got food poisoning. I ate a bunch of hot dogs. They were good. They tasted good, but they weren't good. Um, and it was bad. I thought I was going to die. What's that? Um, and so I thought I was gonna die. It may not have been the hot dogs. It might have been the barbecue sauce that I put on them that was really kind of old. So yeah, it was bad. I don't really eat hot dogs anymore though. But anyhow, it's not because of that. Now I put mayonnaise on them, that's right. I can't tell you the last time I had a hot dog. Anyways, my wife probably could. Is that because I'm trying to get a perfect attendance award? No, because I go on vacation sometimes. And by the way, I've learned as a pastor, and being in the ministry for 24 years, 25 years, something like that, and then pastoring for the last 12 years, 13 years, I've learned that that pastors and their families need, need to take time away sometimes. Regularly, like a couple times a year, really. Now there's a difference between taking time away to do a missions trip, and taking time away to recharge. As Brother DeKryter preached a message, entitled, Come Apart Before You Come Apart. And he talked about how Jesus would come apart to spend time with the Lord away from everybody else for a period of time. And he said for the average person or preacher or somebody in the ministry, you need to come apart, away, and rest and recharge so that you don't come apart, you know? And hey, we had like eight years straight of not missing a single service, and then we had an opportunity to go on a vacation for three days, and we missed a Wednesday, and Brother Travis preached for the first time without me here. And part of that has to do with starting a church and then developing that church into faithful members and things. Now, I usually don't tell anyone other than Pastor G and Travis and maybe sometimes Brother Ramsey that I'm going to be traveling. Because sometimes people think, oh, pastor's gone. Me too. Right? But you're not here for me. You're here for the Lord. And so, if I'm not here, it doesn't mean the whole church takes vacation. Right? What's that? We're all going home tonight after church, and we'll come back Wednesday. Yes. And I get it. Man, I've talked to preachers sometimes who are like, you'll rest when you're dead. Yeah, you're right. And it'll happen a whole lot sooner if I don't rest before then. And I try to get Pastor G's used to taking vacations anyways. I'm not picking at you. But as a pastor, though, I tell him, don't stop doing that. Still, you need to do that once in a while. And it's different for our church, because our church is used to me never doing that. But like when we brought you in, the first thing I did before we even made him assistant pastor, I took a vacation. I left for two weeks. And when he came along, he said, I take vacations. I said, hey, I don't, but I do now. And we went all the way to Key West. That's baloney. We're going to serve Him in heaven. We're going to serve Him. What he said? He said some people say that when we die we're going to be resting. But in heaven, We're going to serve God. Now, let me say this though. Let me say this though. However, we rest in Him today. We rest while we labor. You know what's interesting? He says in Hebrews that we labor to enter into rest. That we're resting, yet laboring. But the labor is easy because we have His yoke. And His yoke is easy and His burden is light. If you've got a big burden on you and you're getting worn out, you're carrying it. By the way, that's why a pastor needs to take a break once in a while. Because he's carrying the load and needs to stop carrying the load. Sometimes he needs to go and say, okay, I'm going to take a break. I do attend our services when I'm gone. I watch them online, but I watch them after the service so that I have no ability to get to get involved and fix stuff and whatever or correct people. I was watching and doing like when we were in on the like out west a couple years ago. Pastor Adams was doing I was watching on the I was watching every service. I would get on I would watch our Security feed to see who's here and who's not here I would text you during announcements and say don't forget this or do and and now I'm like no If I were to die, how would our church make it? So if I go on vacation, you know what? It's death practice. No, I'm kidding. I'm leaving. And whoever I put in charge is in charge. And that's the way it is. And if they blow everything apart and mess everything up, we'll come back and put the pieces back together. No big deal. The Lord knows how to take care of His own. He'll take care of it. But in this matter of soul liberty, I know this is going a little long, but in this matter of soul liberty, we have We have liberty, but in that liberty comes responsibility. And by the way, the more we learn to control ourselves in the area of liberty, the more responsibility we can take on. And so, you know, when our life is all about the liberty that we have and we just want to have that liberty and do whatever we want, then our opportunities become limited. When we limit our liberty, then our opportunities become greater. Make sense? So there's a balance to that as well. I know you can't just like. You can't live with zero liberty that that's taking that too far. But there there's there are some things that you do have to give up in terms of your liberty in order to have opportunity, right? If I if I want to go preach in it in some churches that I that I would that You know, if a church is calling me to be their pastor or asking me to preach, here's the thing, we have a unique situation here. This church carries a lot of my identity because we started the church. There are a lot of things that we do as a church that we do because it's what I've taught our church to do. And other churches have the same thing, right? Because whoever started that church, that church got its own culture, and they have their own set of things that they do, and it's how they do things, right? And so if I were to pass and somebody comes along to pastor this church, they would need to limit their liberties to fit in what is expected here. To a certain degree. Because I want to tell y'all that if the day comes that I'm not the pastor here and somebody else is, you need to give them liberty to lead the church. And to shift the culture a little bit if necessary. When I say shift the culture, don't misunderstand me. I'm talking about the culture within the bounds of the Word of God, not like, oh yeah, somebody comes in, we can throw the King James out and we can start, you know, being hippies and whatever. No, we're not doing all that. I'll come back with Jesus and we'll take care of it. It might be after y'all are dead, but anyways. the liberty there. There are a few more passages we could go to, you know, 2 Corinthians 4, Titus 1, you know, you can look at those on your own. 2 Corinthians 4, 2, and then Titus 1, 9 there is listed for this topic. But does that make sense? I went a little longer than I wanted to. But I wanted to make sure that we talked about those things. This is a Bible study kind of format, so I wanted to make sure that we have a little back and forth and discussion.