Willie Robertson at BattleCreek

[Music] how you guys doing this morning [Music] deliverance is in my heart who fights for me lord of every victory hallelujah say hallelujah hallelujah [Music] is hallelujah [Music] hallelujah [Music] hallelujah [Applause] hallelujah lift your hands like this [Music] come on let's get excited this morning let's wake up a little bit y'all ready and [Music] [Music] and now i will not [Music] [Music] is how [Music] hallelujah come on [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] this morning we get to celebrate the goodness of god we get to celebrate that we've gone from death to life and so as we sing this next song i'd encourage you to sing from victory and to worship and to praise god for what he's done in our lives we know that he's good and we've seen the end so we're gonna sing this together come on [Music] walking [Music] i around by now they fall but you have never failed me and waiting for change to come knowing the battles are for you have never failed me yet we sing it your promise still stands your promise still stands great is your faithfulness your faithfulness i'm still in your hands this is my confidence [Music] and we believe it you never failed i know the night won't last [Music] my heart will sing your praise again [Music] jesus keep me within your love my heart will sing your praise again your promise still stands great is your faithfulness [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] this is [Music] all our faith in our hope in the name of jesus all across this room we sing it i see you move hey i've seen you move you made again where there was no way [Music] mountains [Music] i see you doing [Music] again your promise still stands great is your faithful singing [Music] [Music] oh you've never failed you promised [Music] is [Music] [Music] i'll never forget your goodness god [Music] come on let's just continue to sing about our good father this morning [Music] let's sing this out live [Music] [Music] is [Music] come on [Music] is [Music] is [Music] is [Music] [Applause] is [Music] you're good [Music] we believe [Music] now [Music] me you're never gonna go [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] me [Music] me [Music] you could [Music] [Music] oh [Music] god of abraham you're the god of covenant with faithful promises [Music] and time and time again you have proved that [Music] the word it will come to pass is your faithfulness to me from the rising sun to the settings i will praise great is [Music] [Music] there's nothing you can't do [Music] [Music] and let my heart [Music] is [Music] is name [Music] is your faithfulness is [Music] he'll never let [Music] foundation you'll never let me down i say i'll put my faith in jesus faith in jesus he'll never let me down [Music] [Music] settings [Applause] [Music] [Music] is [Music] is [Music] will is your name and grace is your faith come on we need to believe that this morning that he is faithful he's faithful saying great great [Music] he remains faithful and two from the [Music] is to me now we thank you that you're faithful or that you're dependable that we can trust you in every circumstance never situation spot of discouragement it's about of doubt shame healed god we can trust you in it all [Music] now we thank you that we can rest in that this morning we thank you that we can rest in that truth this morning god that you're faithful and you was faithful when you forever will be faithful we say all these things in your holy and precious name amen you guys can be seated what is up guys it is so good to be back with you here at oh boy battle creek battle creek is that right yeah yeah i did it so apparently the last time i was here i met i i got screwed up on the name you know it was the church at but you know but i hear that since i've been here and made fun of it that they changed the name so thank you that was a good call good job alex so uh i had a friend call me like thursday and he goes hey man i'm not going to be there he lives in this area he said i'm not going to be able to make it but do you remember last year when you got up and totally didn't know where you were and i said well i'd believe me i've got it fixed and i can't wait to be at battlefield and he went you screwed it up again that's the wrong name so anyway so good to be back um i hate missing alex which ergo that's why i'm here uh cause he's not here and uh but i hate to i hated to miss him i love that guy you guys got a great pastor a great team here i've been working with these guys and gals i want to thank the worship team they were so good because i've been to some places not so much but you guys uh got a great team great energy i just love this church love being here i have uh i was my wife just sent me something i guess they put up last time and i forgot what i talked about i think i mentioned evangelism uh we will talk about that some as well uh some of you guys wondering what's going on oh by the way i i got a haircut i don't know if you noticed that yeah it's uh it's starting to get really nice the hotter it gets and so i'm like oh you know it's good for that to be gone um and uh what else is going on oh i had a grandbaby this week um yeah john luke and mary kate had their second and so i got to see her for just a second before i came up here and i actually got to see when they you know because of cove now when they brought her home which actually they're staying with us right now i got to see her and her brother uh meet each other for the first time and i said i call him woody i said woody your life's never going to be the same you just became second yeah but that was a lot of fun sadie's uh pregnant she'll be due just in a few weeks i know she's spoken here just tell all of you hello and uh yeah so man i've had a i've had quite the time um i have a new tv show uh it's called at home with the robertsons it's on facebook watch and it's an interview show it so it's kind of moving interviews so we do some talk and then we go out and do some fun stuff kind of some louisiana stuff we did crawfishing and and that's been fun i was uh i was watching i was actually sitting at a coffee shop the other day waiting on my coffee and i'm watching a cut of one of the episodes right on my phone and this young african-american guy came up he's like this face planted on my window and he had a tent on him and uh he looked like he was without home i was didn't want to make an assumption but that's what it looked like he taps on the window and i said hey buddy what's going on he said you got ain't changed for a homeless man i said oh man you're in luck i got a lot of change so i grab all this change and he he looks down at my phone he goes i can see you're a big fan of duck dynasty [Applause] i said you know what i loved that show it was one of my favorite shows he was like oh that was a good show it was a good show and he goes uh this next thing i don't know if this is true or not this is what he said not me he goes i'll tell you them boys their fashion sense has spread to the hood i said really he was like oh yeah i see a lot of camouflage i said that's awesome man and so i didn't i wanted to give him something more than just change and so i had this book i was reading i didn't want to i had my bible i needed it at the time so i was like here i had a spiritual book i was reading i said here man why don't you take this book and read he goes yeah well and so i never forget he's just walking off reading this book with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and i guess technically i paid for the cigarette now that i think about it i didn't thought about that but uh anyway so you never know we do have new shows out um it's kind of it's hot topics it's like uh you know just feel good things that everybody wants to talk about like racism and you know kneeling for the flag and there's a lot of stuff we discussed but we we really wanted to do a show to try to be a bright light i realize it uh you know it's a funky time and everybody's arguing at each other and yelling and screaming so corey and i my family we just wanted to do something that maybe could help that maybe bridge that gap and so that was the the interesting thing uh for us was to do that and so um so yeah we've launched into that and um i'm gonna launch into this little lesson today and uh i just pray that you hear uh from god today uh less of me but more of him for sure anyway uh i did a reality tv show for about five years if you don't know who i am and uh it's called duck dynasty i played willie on the show uh that was my character really helped launch my career it was a great uh show to start out with but if you if you go all the way back i learned this in reality tv um and here's kind of how it works i don't know if any of you guys have been on a show some of you look like you should but um so here's how it goes you kind of like i mean the next day you kind of got an idea of kind of what you're going to do you know it's planned out and true reality tv is a hidden camera like that they'll really get you there but if you want to do a show where you know you've got a film it's got to have a beginning and an end and so you know there's cameras right there uh and invariably something would happen that was totally like you didn't even see it coming and it looked like it was going to ruin the entire shoot of what you were doing and it was like oh no this whole day's ruined because of this because this happened and but i learned doing tv wait a minute when something happens like that usually that's what the show's about like make it about that and so you have to spin and go okay this happened we didn't think we were going to get it done and now we're going to do some make something good out of it and so i'll tell you a story the first time we ever shot so this is by even before duck dynasty this was a show on outdoor channel called duck commander so we had set this up i talked to uh my father and i said hey look these guys want to shoot a show it's gonna kind of be like a reality show and uh and he goes nah that's not gonna work and i was like well we can i mean we'll probably sell more duck calls and he really wasn't into it and i said well let's just you know let's try so he says okay we get jace we get psy and the opening scene was going to be in the duck blind so we're just going to hunt and uh so everything's set up uh the call time was probably five o'clock in the morning to meet up at the boats and uh now for me the night before i'd stayed up late i'd had an issue i was dealing with with another person so i'd stayed up late kind of on the phone with them i set my alarm and go to bed well my phone at like 3 13 my phone just went zip and it stayed at 3 13. it didn't keep counting time all right and so therefore i totally overslept so i remember open my eyes thinking oh what a beautiful day that i can see outside everything the sun and i shouldn't be seeing the sun i should be somewhere else at this moment have you ever had that like panic or you're like oh no i really screwed this up and so now let me go back when i was supposed to be there this is at the boats that morning the film crew's there they're getting all the stuff in the boats dad's there jace is there everybody's getting set up and then the director realizes they're fixing to push the boats off and he's like willie's not here and he goes whoa whoa where's willie and my father without eve i mean never even his heartbeat didn't raise a bit and he looked he said oh imagine he's laid up in bed right now sleeping [Applause] and the director goes well we can't film the show like that's that's part of the show and phil goes well i'm going hunting y'all can turn the cameras on you don't have to turn them on i can leave you here i'm going hunting i know where i'll be and the director's like this whole day is ruined like i mean this is over and so they go out to the blind and they're gonna do what they do so about nine o'clock i make that phone call to jace i said jace dude i overslept he was like you think i said yeah man my alarm clock got stuck at 3 13. it's something's wrong with you yeah yeah i said no anyway i'm coming down i'm coming there i need uh can you come get me no i'm not coming to get you i said well i need a boat where's a boat so in louisiana we i don't know if you've seen these we have these little piros they're little uh small boats that you get in a paddle and uh it's a maybe a cajun thing but it's a really really small boat and he goes i think there's a p row behind the shed so grab the p row paddle out there and i said all right so i'm burning it down there i get i get to my parents house i go behind the shed and i'm i'm looking that it's a p row but it's half of a p row like literally where the seat would be that's gone and there's a back it's i mean it's literally that big and i'm looking thinking what in the world how are they riding like i've never even seen this thing i found out later it's for pulling behind your boat for carrying things or a small dog it's not made for this i mean ever there's no seat and i'm thinking well i gotta get out there i mean this is this was the option i guess i guess they're riding these i don't know so i get it now guys i've done some incredible things in my life what i pulled off was the most incredible thing by getting in this boat without it tipping over so i i snuggle in this thing and i realize whoa i can't move i probably got this much free board all the way around and i have a little tiny paddle and so what they do is when you paddle it it just totally goes this way because a normal boat you know moves like this all right this guy just does this so i go uh and here i go off like this through the woods and then the shots started firing out yeah they're still hunting so stop chase i'm in the woods stop shooting okay willy's in the woods he's fixing to pop out somewhere and when i popped out guys i popped out on the open water my father said it just looked like a fat man sliding on top of water because you couldn't see the boat at all and they're like what is he riding there like we have no idea his arms are moving but it looks like he's just floating on water oh so i'll pull up and i'm thinking the director is going to be furious with me and he goes willie thank you you just made the show like we couldn't have scripted or made up or come up with anything better than what you just did see because what we were gonna do was not gonna be near as great as what happened and and we never saw it coming right we took something bad and then here comes something else and so that was the way it was not actually over years and years of doing tv stuff like that happened a lot you'd run out of gas something would happen it'd be like oh no we can't do what we're going to do but then usually that's what you need to work on and so that's kind of the idea today i was thinking about with us even in our personal lives has has something like that ever happened to you one has your clock ever just got stuck have you felt like in life man my clock's been stuck and i'm sleeping when i should be awake and um i'm just i'm i'm held back and maybe it's something else totally like i didn't plan my phone to go out in fact that's never happened and has something come up to where it's like you didn't see it coming but then that's maybe what you need to deal with and i've had things like that if you're married i guarantee you that's happened if you have children 100 like you didn't plan it and now but it's it's what you have to deal with and so that's what happens to in our marriages as well something'll come up and you just don't want to deal with it but maybe that's really what you're supposed to be dealing with and so i've seen this happen in my own life and so i want to to check ourselves today and think about it and then i even thought about our our country um does it just seem like something is way off you get that sense uh maybe it's just me but it's like something's wrong something's weird something's happening uh and so i was trying to figure this out and uh you know and we have this show now so we're talking about these issues and so i try to come up with what are these things and so i i've got a few and i'm gonna give you this idea i'm gonna call it worldly wisdom all right worldly wisdom so there's two kinds of wisdoms what i want to talk about here for a second is worldly wisdom so you think about the different areas you know that we deal with in our lives think about uh big tech all right does that scare any of you guys i mean when i'm standing there and i look at my phone it goes you want a doughnut don't you yes go 400 yards up the road there's one right there on the right maybe that's a terrible example because 99 of you could assume i wanted a doughnut so maybe the maybe the phone's not that accurate but have you noticed that the big tech these are intellectual people these are really smart people who have figured out really smart things with really big bases of data and they can start moving even people and they can start suggesting perhaps what you think what you think about where you go to you'll get patterned what you should read and and you see that moving and it kind of frightens me i'm like whoa because i don't even realize i'm being led and i'm being marketed to i'm being studied with the data that's big tech that's smart people intellectuals thinking we know what's best for you and that kind of frightens me it's worldly wisdom it's worldly stuff because it doesn't lead me uh oftentimes to godly things they're not thinking about my spiritual life how about education how about our scholars uh do you trust these guys they're smart they got degrees uh think about our universities even our high schools now what they're teaching our children what is being taught uh what is being done there i have kids in college and so yeah it frightens me when i'm thinking like they've got my my kid for four years of putting what they think needs to be in their brain it's kind of frightening because i don't know if we have the same ideas about how we live life so education scares me a little bit um all right now this one this one doesn't have any problems how about politics oh my god that make my eyes cross there something's off something's way off right it just doesn't seem like this have we has it been like this or is it just man it just seems such a wide gap we're so far away from each other it's the world so where we vote people in but it's the world you're seeing the reflection of worldly wisdom mute now i'm really going to start sounding old so young guys are going to be like what how about music see something seem off there i would read you some of the i mean some of the top hits from the last year i can't even read them in church actually i can't read them anywhere i mean some of the lyrics it just seems off about what we're singing about fashion um all right now somebody i know a lot of you have heard this story surely somebody though they showed up here to church anybody see the devil shoes yeah so it's shoot somebody's like what's these like devil shoes yeah they made a pair of devil shoes a company did they were six six six they made 666 of them there was a bible verse where satan was thrown down into heaven from heaven um yeah it was basically worshipping the devil they were over a thousand dollars and you would say well who would buy that 665 people bought a pair i guess one didn't get out so nike sued them but that's one piece of fashion don't even get me started on the other fashion they're making a little bit of material go a little bit of way so but we see that we see that worldliness right reflected in that just think about journalism heck even scientists and even doctors like i just don't know sometimes i don't know who i can trust i don't know what their what exactly they're doing just seems like a lot of worldly wisdom and maybe guys maybe that's what we should be focusing on because here's the thing we can talk about it but do we have any answers do we have any rebuttals do we have something that's better that's different or are we just going to gripe and complain so ah you know this place is going down this actually came up a couple of thousand years ago as well we'll go to romans 1 romans 1 21 he says for although they knew god they neither glorified him as god nor gave thanks to him and their thinking became futile and their hearts were darkened therefore god gave them over in their sinful desires of their heart so if you're if your gut's telling you or something spiritual inside of you is telling you something is up with the world it's it's right you're right it is and you can see right here in romans notice notice the downward it's usually not straight down it's a slide it's going down you start here then it gets dark and then god gives the people over but you can see it like this the slide it decays all right and it's all this worldly thinking it's not godly thinking at all first corinthians 1 verse 18. we're going to kind of camp out here in first corinthians at the early beginning of it this is where paul is writing to the church at corinth once again we're going to see this same idea this is 2000 years ago by the way this is in america today you can make that decision it says for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing i just want to stay right there one second the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing so the message of the cross what we're doing here what we sing about here who we sing our praises to where we show up the message of the cross it's foolishness because how much of the message of the cross are you sitting getting played in all the areas that i told you about you see a lot of the message there's a cross coming out of there i don't in fact it's like ah it's foolishness oh that's the what's that the whole bible thing yeah yeah let's move on to something more important right and that's what paul is saying he says but to us us probably most of us some of us in here but to us who are being saved it is the power of god for it is written i will destroy the wisdom of the wise the intelligence of the intelligent i will frustrate there's your intellects where is the wise person where is the teacher of the law where is the philosopher of this age has god not made foolish the wisdom of the world do you believe that guys see we've got to figure out whether we're going to do worldly wisdom or we're going to do god's wisdom all right we got to get back to god's wisdom not just get back to normal all right because i'm afraid that what some of us are doing is we're just we're getting trying to get back to something we're just getting back to the wrong thing because we're thinking oh back when it was normal okay so you can take what's going on right now everybody's heard of cove at 19. all right we got to get back to normal we got to get back to before when this happened but my question is was before when this happened was there a problem or not i'm saying no there were problems way before this happened in fact and some of the problems like whoa i've even seen bigger problems that we needed to deal with but that were there before we just didn't notice them because everything seemed normal and so therefore we try to get back to normal uh covet is interesting and uh and i'm 100 percent saddened and i know people have passed away i know people who have passed away i know people have been the hospital um but it almost i mean almost to me became like uh the the little worldly religion it turned into religion right it uh you could um uh the vaccine was like the resurrection of jesus christ all right we hope we don't know maybe we're not sure your savior you could pick that was it the former president is it the next president is the savior fauci is it someone else is it so you could kind of pick whatever flavor of savior you wanted the leaders that told us what to do seem really hypocritical because they would preach one thing and then you would see them as soon as they were out with their family or wait a minute hang on you're not doing what you just told me to do so it seemed like religion i don't know about you guys up in oklahoma was there any judging going on oh my god i didn't i wasn't quarantining because i was scared of getting cold but i was quarantined just because everybody was judging each other so much i was like i can't even do it i called my father about about a month into the quarantine i said phil how you doing during the quarantine you okay you need anything he said will i've been quarantining for about three decades [Applause] i said yes you have guys we got to get back to god's wisdom not just getting back to normal that's not our goal is to get back to normal because i'm telling you you're getting back before it was earthly with worldly wisdom as well and even in the church we're kind of like well we need well people there's many people here i liked when everybody showed up there was more people let me just tell you if you're if your line that you're trying to hit if you're defining principle is whether or not you can show up for one hour on a day that most of us don't work and that's where you've got the line of real christianity you have missed the whole message of the new testament okay it ain't about that that is one speck of this whole thing which is whether or not we show up and in fact if you threw your whole faith away because of the global pandemic i've got a question was it there before anyway or not right i mean that's going to make you you know we'll stand here and say you know i trust in jesus he's the way i put my faith and hope in him and then we almost seemed to run out going ah i'm gonna die i'm so scared i used that coveted thing for so many people it was a such a great starter this was i'm scared to death i'm going to die and it just was like a wide open door going what's the fear what what are we so scared of and then boom we can talk right into that life because our faith was built for things like this the message of the cross is built for times like this that's what the message of the cross is for [Applause] i mean just think about it think about when the message of the cross came out right after the the jesus came out came back from the dead the faith was out there look the there's it's we're not talking about a slight chance the people who follow jesus his disciples they didn't have a slight chance they may die they had a 100 chance they died because of the name of jesus this message this cross has been through way harder things than that people have been steadfast continued to preach the gospel had it not guys we wouldn't be sitting here because it happened halfway across the planet at a whole other country that's where this happened the message had spread all the way for a couple of thousand years and made it right here right here to where we're at the message of the cross god's wisdom wins the day guys we can't end up acting and thinking like the world [Applause] this is why this is important to me i'm i'm i'm the evangelism director at my church this is new i don't get paid so i think i'm paying them but anyway so i'm the evangelism director because i'm passionate about evangelism and so what we did was we had a there was a next steps room where you could go in and learn more about the church you know if you joined the crew and uh i said no we need something different so we came up with a first step i'm mentioning that guy making that first step first step to what first step to faith there's got to be a first step right so i want people who've got questions you got questions we got answers we got the answers to what this is and people would even raise their hand rather give their life to the lord at the end of a sermon but i was convinced some of them didn't know what they were doing because i'd see them raise their hand jesus is going to be the lord of my life and they get in the lobby and go like all right let's go to captain d's i was like well hang on now let's make sure we got this right let's make sure we walk through with people and talk so i say we got this room so people come in this room with all kind of questions it's the funnest room in the church building believe me it's right where the world is meeting the gospel and it's uh exciting to me it may scare some of you have to death it's fun it's weird people come in messy had a lady come in uh with her guy they're sitting there and i start preaching the gospel and she's she's telling me about a lot of worldly wisdom she said she had tried to commit suicide that week on the interstate which brought other people into play she said she was trying to kill herself and the dude the dude doesn't say anything he's just staring at me the whole time i just go and he's just staring at me i said you got a relationship with jesus he's like nope that's all right you need this and then we went to her a lot of worldly wisdom drugs stuff from the world right stuff in the world's like hey feel bad take this do this she had bought into it and they'd go on their way had another lady come in and she said i can't get baptized i can't get baptized so why not she goes because of this relationship i'm in i said let me guess he's not your husband she said i'm living in sin i said you hey the first spiritual thing you said so far but i had this girl come in i'm gonna call her melanie this one this one took the cake for me so it was like like we got two services like this so normally things happen at the end of service they come in so it was during the second service during pastor was out preaching and i'm actually just sitting in the room just kind of getting things prepared getting ready and this girl this real strange girl she like sticks her head in the room and so it's me and a pastor sitting there she's looking around the room like this and i can tell she ain't been in no church building she looking around she said what room is this so she's wandering during the preachings basically what she's doing i said this is where you make the first step for jesus christ and she went o-s-h vowel in another letter and i just died laughing that pastor got out of there so fast you'd have thought there was a buffet going on he yeah let me go willie good luck with that one let me get out of here and that's how that conversation started i said i i told her i said you don't know who i am but i'm going to tell that story to a few people because why do we expect worldly people to act like believers in god they i don't expect it when they do stuff like that and she came in i said come in let's talk and she was out there man she said i don't believe in this religion i believe in energy that's ah energy um and she went through just i mean she had actually studied but it was a lot of just worldly stuff on the internet just stuff she'd come up with and she goes i hate churches it's religion was started by white people i said ah melanie you're incorrect they were brown white people got on board somewhere there along the way but i just listened to all this worldly that's why this is important to me because do we have answers or we don't are we just going like huh i have no idea we got to know what to get back to first corinthians three yeah i was thinking about when she came in that room and before we could first came to that room i was thinking about coming into to rooms and being awkward we were on this duck hunt one time in oregon and we stay at this real fancy motel as one you could drive right up to your door had a full glass uh look like it was it was nasty so it's me and but it was me and phil and jason scott we were nasty too it fit us well so we all had our own rooms right and um phil's in his my dad's in his bed and um phil's a well i was just wearing all i had on was my armor all which meant under armor uh it was under armour underwear is what he had on i knew i knew where i was okay so phil's just sitting there on his bed lights are out and as you can see from the parking lot there was a light there and phil said something started jiggling the door doorknob so somebody's coming into his room so there's a guy coming into phil's room now if you don't know who my dad is if we've got a picture all right can you imagine walking in a room and that's in there well like my father does his shotgun was right beside him so he said i just grabbed my shotgun and phil's just sitting with his back up on the wall on his bed he said this old boy comes in there we don't know if he was trying to steal something we don't know what why he was in this room okay and the guy's looking like this and he hadn't noticed he's looking he sees phil and he just gets down like this and his hands go like this and he said uh he looks at film phil goes what's your story son and the boy goes wrong room and phil said he kept doing this he closed the door and he said i looked down the parking lot 50 yards he's still doing this [Laughter] you want to talk about an osa that moment yeah that would have that would have been one right there but she came in first corinthians 3 1 brothers i could not addre address you as spiritual but as worldly mere infants in christ i gave you milk not solid food for you're still not ready for it indeed you're still not ready you are still worldly are you not acting like mere men i love them paul just gets right to the point you're still worldly that's first corinthians three chapter one he addressed him as brothers and kind of bragged on them and in three he said you're still acting worldly guys we gotta we gotta realize we gotta be careful not to think and act just like the world because that's a struggle so as the bible say we're in the world but we're not of the world because we got to live here we're moving on man this is just we're just coming through but if we don't watch it we'll caught up we'll start acting just like them we'll start thinking just like them we'll get caught up in their fears and their anxiety and all the things of the world and we as believers get caught up in that same thing we got to make sure it doesn't come in our church where we're at where we're not thinking and acting just like the world because i think are you this guy are you do you for sure know this person that says you know we got to get back to we got to get back to the old days back when it was good things were a lot better you ever heard that we that's what we need to go back to no we don't need to go back to the old days we need to go back to god's wisdom because the old days so what you're doing it's like it's some kind of heaven on earth we had at some point when i was a kid we because what we fail to realize is what you're looking back at that you're saying those were the good old days someone else is looking at thinking those were the good old terrible days this is bad for somebody else and it's confusing i think to non-believers as they look at us going well yeah but you thought that was a good time in history and we need to answer for that because we need to look back and say no no that yeah there was that yeah there was yeah it was bad for these people yeah it was bad for women so you keep going back going how far do you want to go back when was it good no it was still worldly it's still worldly wisdom you can go all the way back well let's go back 2 000 years we would all be killed for doing what we're doing today okay don't go back there all right let's go somewhere and i'm telling you if you go through the history of time you're not going to find it you're not going to find it because god never promised that here god said that's up here that's not down there so we got to make sure we're not thinking and acting like we got to go back to something that's really not there because what will happen is it's just a pipe dream it's not leading you anywhere it's not going to motivate you we're going to march around the streets and let's go back to the old days when things were bad now it's guys it's moving it's moving and what you'll become is you'll just become really negative you won't be productive and then you'll get a sense of apathy and you know what you'll do mostly nothing just sit there and gripe about it there's whole world's going to hell in a handbasket you're probably right are you going to do something about it or you're just going to be the one to let everybody know what's going on i think we all see what's going on we've got to have answers we got to realize we got to get back to what is our motivation what was paul's motivation first corinthians 1 4 14 said i thank god that i did not baptize any of you except christmas and gaius so that no one can say you were baptized in my name yes i also baptized a household of stephanus beyond that i don't remember if i baptized anyone else that's one of my favorite verses in the bible we're pogba you see them sitting there going did i baptize somebody who goes nobody hey hey who did i baptize how about we live our lives so good that we forget the good things we do how about for christ not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel not with wisdom and eloquence lest the cross of christ be emptied of its power there's paul's motivation he came to preach about jesus everything he did all the letters that he wrote he came to do that the right motivation that's going to guide your path that's going to keep you out of that worldly wisdom and for paul it was preaching the message of the cross now you may be sitting i ain't a preacher can you tell about what jesus has done in your life can you tell about where you were where you are now of course you can you have a mouth i guarantee you talk about other things we've got to get to where that's our motivation ladies and gentlemen if you were in christ your sins have been washed away congratulations now let's go tell someone else about that because someone told you or someone told your mom or your dad or whoever it was that got you here so we've got to go out there and that's got to be your motivation it's got to be all our motivations first corinthians 15. it's my favorite chapter i like how it starts and i like how it ends it starts right here now brothers and sisters i want to remind you of the gospel and this is my reminder to you guys i preached to you paul preached to them you received and on which you have taken your stand by this gospel you are saved if you hold firmly to the word i preach to you otherwise you've believed in vain there's an if and otherwise there goes if otherwise otherwise you're in the worldly wisdom otherwise you fell away otherwise you forgot the importance of it for what paul received he passed on to them as of first importance didn't say prayer didn't say going to church paul says this is the most important thing right here what is it willie that christ died for our sins according to scriptures that he was buried and that he was raised thank god on the third day according to the scriptures that death that burial that resurrection of jesus paul says that is the most important thing that is number one that is what we tell people that is what we get back to that is what we got to get back to it's not the things of this world it's that message right there it's simple don't over complicate it and everybody i sit with and we talk we start right there and we say well that's our standard right there now how does that reflect in your life i've watched people all morning reenact that romans 6 says when we die to our sin we in that water of baptism there's a death a symbolic burial and you're raised to a new life so when guys come around you're like what are you telling willie i'll go well how's your life with god let's hear it what's your story what's your story and they start talking and i start writing and then i say well here's the gospel how does your life reflect that where's the new life because see someone boy comes in and says hey yeah i think i was six years old i got baptized some church camp okay great how's it been since then [Music] well now i'm 32 and it ain't been good so we get that message out the message of the gospel out i will say this the guy that was sitting there beside the girl that was going to commit suicide two weeks later he came back up to the church he got baptized and he didn't say a word and i thought that boy wouldn't listen to me at all melanie came back as well she didn't come to the room she came back up that was her first time ever in a church building is when she walked in that room stuck her head in there first time ever to a church building she came back one of my team members saw her said hey we missed you i'm glad you came back tears welled up in her eyes she goes i'm so embarrassed i was in there and y'all were willie was talking about jesus and the holy spirit and there was another one i can't remember what it was and she goes i was so embarrassed y'all probably just thought i was crazy and she said no i don't think you're crazy you're searching for something shows change for you shows change for you and tears start falling around she goes i just want connection i'm just desperately looking for something to connect because she bought in to what the world was telling her she bought in and she looks up and she's miserable [Music] guys why do we think that's going to somehow solve our problems we get caught up in it too even as the church you're not going to be effective out there we're telling the gospel message if you look just like what you're saying you need to be out of you should look way different people should look at you going whoa why are you smiling why are you happy where's that joy coming from where's that hope coming from because see first corinthians 15 first corinthians 15. you know it ends where or death is your victory where old death is your sting hey we're talking about beating death [Music] because we're all going to die covet has gotten some people cancer will get a lot of people in here cars will get somebody in here we're all going to die when are we going to start investing in something beyond here and telling people about that maybe at times today i know people there's people in here that alarm clock been stuck for a while you've been at 313 for a long time [Music] you may not even know it the person sitting beside you probably does see the show needs to change for you so you're doing you're trying to go back for what you thought you were going to do but it needs to change you need to refocus that can happen today people are listening to me online that can happen i'm a product of a guy that scary guy on that screen he was a guy who had he not turned his life around my life wouldn't have turned around so make that today make that decision today if you want to get baptized today i'm going to hang around we'll be out there make the decision bury that old man bury that old person start living again live for something that these people that are so miserable in the world give them something that they can see jesus is living in us it's the only way they can see it make that decision today father i just thank you for this group of people father i know you move in so many mysterious ways and but in some ways father you just move in obvious ways father i just pray that we're not worldly that we go back to your wisdom we trust you father we believe in you we worship you today pour our hearts out to you just for a short time and we'll do it again over and over but thank you for never giving up on us thank you father for giving us hope in a life that seems so dark father help us be bright lights help this church body here to be a bright light in this community father i pray if there's people who need to make decisions for you father i pray that they do it today i pray that they come down front they ask for help father they look to seek you we love you father we're desperately longing for you thank you for saving us thank you for forgiving our sins we give you everything we have through jesus christ we pray amen thank you guys you

Channel: BattleCreek Church

Views: 4,130

Rating: 4.9506173 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: qC4FB7AGtB4

Length: 71min 40sec (4300 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 11 2021