Understandeth thou what thou readest. Understandeth thou what thou readest. That's in the Bible. I'm quoting the Bible, King James. Anyway, 2 Timothy 2.15 says, Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, Rightly dividing the Word of Truth. Something I saw yesterday studying. Sometimes you think dividing means you take the good from the bad. Like you take the white meat from the dark meat, right? But this says divide the Word of Truth. Everything in my King James Bible here is the Word of Truth. There are no mistakes in it. It's all true. What Paul, our apostle, says, and actually King James is the only version, the only Bible that says study. All the other ones say something different. But that says study to show thyself approved. Don't be ashamed. And also, I want to make sure y'all know this, God does not need His Word defended. I mean, I'm not defending His Word. His Word will stand no matter what I do. It's going to be here forever. Amen? So make sure we understand that part of it. To the text, Acts 8. Acts 8.26. Acts 8.26. God's Word will stand on its own. Acts 8.26. The Bible says, And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south, unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert. And he rose and went, and behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority, unto Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure, had come to Jerusalem for the worship. So he must have been a believer. He's come to Jerusalem to worship. He was returning and sitting in his chariot reading Isaiah as the prophet. Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near and join thyself to his chariot. Okay. And Philip ran thither to him and heard him read the prophet Isaiah and said, Understandest thou what thou readest? So see, he's reading it out loud. Yeah, I want y'all we got to go there. You got to get that He's and Philip comes up and he's reading out of the out of what Isaiah said I've what the prophet said and he said you understand that thou what thou readest and the eunuch said How can I accept some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him. How can somebody helps me? Well, can you come up and help me? That's what he says The place of the scripture which you read was this. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter and like a lamb done before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth. In his humiliation, his judgment was taken away, and who shall declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth. And the eunuch answered Philip and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? Of himself? Isaiah or some other man then Philip opened his mouth and began the same scripture and preached unto him Jesus He says I'm reading this who's he talking about the prophet or some other man Philip explained him is talking about Jesus pretty simple how could do you understand what you reading and No. We had a man here last week that sat over there and he was a right divider. Y'all might not know that. But he's a right divider. We talked to him a little bit. And this is about three or four, my understanding is they're meeting somewhere around here somewhere. And he said, I just heard about you guys. I can't believe it. And so anyway, we don't know how it all works out. But see, We talked about it, and I have never, right to this point, I have never met anybody who come to the understanding of right division who read it. Every person that comes to right division that I've talked to, it got talked, it got spoken to them. They didn't read it in the book. It's important to have, to be taught. That's including me. I didn't read in the book. Somebody came to me and told me. Remember the guy came to my front yard at that time, and he said, hey, doing the yard sale. He said, hey, did you know all the Bible wasn't written to you? Yeah, but it's all written for me. He said, oh, right divider. Knew right off the bat, so it's important. It's important somebody teach you. Listen, what you understand, what you believe today is what you've been taught. You've been taught by different people, different types, school teachers. Look at what they're teaching kids in other places, you know, in other schools and colleges. I mean, they're teaching things that are not godly. You know that. That's what they believe. That's why they're trying to get to the kids, because you get them all mixed up and then it goes on from there pretty big. Reading is the starting point, but there's a huge difference in what somebody's taught me would have been read. Reading is your starting point. They were reading, and then he's taught it. The Ethiopian is reading, he didn't really understand it, and he was taught by Philip. Amen? We gotta... I don't know about you, but how many times have we lately, or in the last year or so, talked about how much we don't really read the Bible? Or we, you know, y'all got, some of y'all, you got a reading program, but how many of y'all just sit down and just sort of read it? You don't really think about it, you don't really study it, you just read it. I got my three chapters done today, I'm good to go. But how many of us actually read the Bible? And I've told you over and over when I read it, it's amazing to me that I see the things today that I've read probably 100 times before. I go, man, I never saw that. And y'all know the same thing. You know the same thing if you read it. That's your basis for everything. The problem, I'm guilty. I'm guilty. I got plenty of guilt on me for that, not reading. I mean, I would read stuff, like I might be taught something by some other preacher, and I would read my Bible and go, well, I know what he said. I'm going to believe him. Because when I read my Bible, it didn't really say what he taught me. That's why you have to go back to the Bible yourself. Don't just take my word for it. I mean, I could be in error, but you got to read your Bible. Your Bible is guaranteed. And I've told you, I don't know if I told you this, but there are different, we believe here the King James Version is the authorized Word of God. We believe it's legitimate, inspired. Now, you might not know this yet, but I've made several references. There are really two versions of the King James that you can pretty much hang your hat on. It's either got to be the Cambridge or the Oxford. Zondervan doesn't count. Holman doesn't count. I mean, I'm just telling you the truth. You can get whatever you want to buy, but those two virgins made by Cambridge and Oxford, and there's another one too, the Trinitarian, but I'll leave that alone, it's not widely known. But it's like between the Cambridge and Oxford translations there are a couple of differences like a big S for spirit, little s for spirit, apostrophe after theirs, he and ye, there's a few little differences. And so you can, I'm going to quibble over those, but for the most part from what I've studied, and Gail Ripplinger is I think the world's authority on Bible translation. She lives in Ararat, Virginia. That's where she lives now. She's done so much study on the King James. If you want to study for yourself, go look up Gayle Repplinger on YouTube. She might not be alive today. Anyway, she used to live in Arat, okay? But you'll be amazed at what you learn going through her and all the debates that she's done. So if you get one of those versions, then I know you're good. Amen? To me she is, and I've spent hours and hours researching it, and I've got books on it. I'm going to probably bring you some stuff and pass it out later on. You need to be convinced what you're reading is true. There's some Bibles that do have errors in them. They refer back to the wrong scripture. I can prove it to you. I can prove it to you. Well, now, if I got that Bible, and it says, as it said in Isaiah, and it really was said in Malachi, well, if I can see the error, I go, well, that's a mistake. Why would I, I mean, how many more are in there? So, the King James is not that way. I'm just trying to help you. You know, my nephew went, and he said, hey, he called me up, and he said, they called me to come preach at a church. And I said, OK. And he said, it's a Baptist church. We're going to come preach to him. And he said, I want to use my ESV Bible. He said, what do you think? This was even years ago. I mean, this is 10 years ago. I had enough sense back then to say, sir, I think it's his name, if you're going to a guest to speak at another church that's not yours, carry the King James Bible, they can't be mad at you. They can't say, oh, that's the wrong one. But if you go in with the NIV or something else like that, they could say, they could just turn off. You follow me? Even back then, my guts knew, my heart even knew before. I mean, I used to laugh at the King James. You heard me make fun of it. Funny how that all works out. But your guts know, you know what you're doing. You know right and wrong, right? You know that's wrong, that's right. Most of the time with the truth. The truth oftentimes is misunderstood, it's misrepresented, it's attacked, and usually by Christians. That's where the attack hurts the most, right? blinded to the gospel, the gospel of grace, dispensation of grace because you've heard your whole life about a counterfeit gospel. Well you need to be water baptized to be saved. People believe that still today. There are people that teach that today. I like some of the people that teach it. I like it. I mean I like them as people. But that's not biblical. They have not learned to rightly divide. They're still trying to go in the gospels and apply that in dispensation of grace with Paul's gospel. can't it's not not accurate satan always opposes what god's doing he is the great deceiver there's none there's no greater deceiver than he even deceived himself right he even thought he could be exalted that's how good a deceiver he is he deceived himself you know how many of y'all think have ever been deceived before three well did you know you were deceived when you were deceived Did you know it? No, you didn't know it. You thought, I mean, this is great. I mean, no, this is, oh, no. But then all of a sudden you go, man, I was deceived. How did I get deceived? What happened? We live in a fallen world. Satan is the ruler of this world. He's doing everything he can to deceive you, destroy your walk, I mean, you think he attacks, he's not attacking his own. They're good. I got these people. That's why you look around and sometimes you want to go back to the other side because you could probably live a lot better on earth. But there's going to be an ending and it won't be good. Will not be good. He had the highest authority. Was he an angel? Show me the Bible. Show me the Bible where he was an angel. You can't. Just hang on a second, because I know now you're paying attention there. You woke up. He's a cherubim. He's a cherubim. Cherubims have wings. Angels don't. Can you be a female angel? According to the Word, no. He was a cherubim. He was one of the highest ranking. Apparently there were four there at the throne, but he was, man, he was up there at the top, and it didn't work out too good for him. All right, go to 2 Thessalonians 2. 2 Thessalonians 2, 9. We're going to talk about some deception today, what to do about it, how to pay attention to it, how to recognize it. 2 Thessalonians 2, 9. Even him who's coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders. Satan can copy pretty much anything God can do. He counterfeits it. That's his job. Most of you, I'm assuming, are born again. You're saved. Your eternal security is done. But if He can get you where you do not want to gain any more knowledge of the truth, you can be walking out alive the rest of your life. You're still going to go to heaven. I mean, that's what I, you know, but you're not going to be a lot of use and you're going to live in turmoil and not understanding what's going on because you've been deceived. He's worked hard. I think, my personal opinion, is I think his greatest tool to deception is just these false Bibles, these fake Bibles. these Alexandrian Bibles, these new versions, I believe that's probably his greatest tool. Because if he can change the Word of God, like in some of the Bibles, I told you, if it says, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, if you say heavens, then that's a throw the Bible away. Right at the very first sentence, he's changed it. He only made one heaven and one earth in the beginning. Then he divided it in creation. Remember? I taught you that. Remember? Let's see some examples. 1 Timothy 4. 1 Timothy 4. 1 Timothy 4. 1. Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron. In the latter days, in latter times, some shall depart. That's pretty plain. 2 Timothy 3, 12. 2 Timothy 3, 12. Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. Oh no! I don't like that! The Bible says, all that live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution, but evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them. You have to be versed in the Word of God. That is your only anchor. That's the only solid rock you've got, is His Word. That's it. We don't know we're being deceived. Remember last week, 1 Timothy 2.4, 1 Timothy 2. God's will for us is to have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. He wants all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. That's what we're trying to do. Colossians 1.23. Colossians 1.23. The Bible says, If ye continue in the faith grounded, and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, which was preached to every creatures under heaven, whereof I, Paul, am made a minister who now rejoice in my sufferings for you. Can you think of anybody that suffered more than Paul? Anybody that suffered more than Paul? Jesus Christ, I guess, but I mean, Paul suffered. I mean, my goodness. Whom I made a minister according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you to fulfill the word of God. Even the mystery which has been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to the saints, to his believers. to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery by the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory, whom we preach wanting every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may represent, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. The mystery that was revealed is now Christ can live in you. That's the whole point. That's the mystery. Before, that didn't happen in Israel. But now, in the dispensation of grace, the Holy Spirit God can live inside of us. That's how it is. All men to be saved that come to the mystery of the truth. You know, does Satan have a plan for you? Does he have a plan for you? 2 Corinthians 4. 2 Corinthians 4. 3, 2 Corinthians 4, 3. Pay attention, but if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost. See a lost person hasn't seen the gospel, that's the gospel. But the gospel be hid, in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." Satan will blind you to where you can't see the gospel, and he'll do everything he can to stop you receiving knowledge of the truth. I'm convinced that's how he comes through. And I think if you look around at rightly dividing, I think he attacks those people right and left. He attacks us right and left because I believe that we are teaching the knowledge of the truth. If you can't see what we're teaching, you'll go, man, this is awesome. I finally understand my Bible now. It all makes sense. I've not all whacked out other things yet. But he'll do anything he can to deceive you to where you can't see that. You can be deceived when you believe a different word. You know, when people start talking about, you know, water baptism is required for your salvation, we know different than that, don't we? It's not required for your salvation. You say by faith through not of yourselves, it's the gift of God, not of works, that you start bragging about it. But see, we all want to make it a work. We won't make it to work. I look at this, I was talking about the people that teach lordship salvation. Like you tell somebody save, you're not saved till we see what you're doing. That's lordship salvation. We gotta see your salvation in what you're doing. That's not true. Don't you know people that are Christians that don't act like Christians? Huh? Of course you do. They're still saved. None of us are perfect in what we're doing. I hope you don't think that. We got all these different people, and like I told you last week about the guy at the post office, he comes through the same, he says, hey, preacher. I said, can a woman be a pastor? And people, I said, what does the Bible say? He said, the Bible says they can't. I said, well, that settles it. I'm telling you, you can solve so many things that you deal with if you refer back to the Bible. You go back to the Bible, you can solve so many things. Whether you believe it or not, it don't matter. What the Bible says is true. It's true. He'll blind sinners to the gospel of grace. Satan will blind saved people. Born again, he will blind saints to the mystery of the body of Christ. He will blind saints to rightly dividing. as I was blinded, as were you. See, today there's so many, the mainline denominations, I think this is pretty accurate, for the most part, the mainline denominations, they believe today the church has replaced Israel. The mainline, they believe the church has replaced Israel, and they are God's people with all of Israel's earthly promises and blessings. That's where the Word of Faith sort of got their stuff. Because we've replaced them and now it's on us now to take over the world and prayer walk and change the atmosphere and all these things. That's where it comes from. You're taking Israel's promises and applying to you as a believer. That's not accurate. That's what they believe. where your health and your wealth and your prosperity, all those things, a lot of things that I believed in the past, the charismatic stuff, it came because I did not know how to rightly divide Israel's program with the Gentile program. I didn't know how to divide them and how to separate them, and so I just blended them all together and got a big mess and got confused, read the Bible and not know what's going on. We are a mid-ax dispensationalist church. We do understand there's a difference between Israel's program and the body of Christ. Israel's prophetic program has been put on hold because they rejected the Holy Spirit with Stephen. They rejected God through John the Baptist. They rejected Jesus. And then when Stephen made his proclamation there, they rejected the Holy Spirit. At that point, that's when God pulled away. He called Paul out. He started the dispensation of grace, the mystery program. And at some point, God's going to decide the dispensation of grace is over. we're going to go back to the prophetic program of Israel. Israel's going to rule, they're going to go back to making sacrifices, everything just like they did before. That's going to be the Tribulation, the Thousand Year Reign, etc. Second Coming, all those kind of things. Galatians 1, 11. Galatians 1, 11 and 12. But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. So what Paul is preaching, he didn't get it from a man. He says, For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ spent three years with Paul in the Arabian desert teaching him this gospel. I've taught y'all that. Three years he spent, just like he did with the disciples, he spent three years with Paul by himself. He didn't read it in the book, he didn't read it in Scripture. It says right there, unless you think the Bible's not true, he says, I didn't get it out of a man, I was not taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. That's how he got it. Now, if I had to summarize Paul's ministry for us, I'd go to Galatians 3, 1. I think it pretty much summarizes everything. You know, in Ephesians, the first part of the book, it talks about all our spiritual blessings in heavenly places. At the end of Ephesians, it talks about spiritual warfare, battles in high places. Ephesians 3, 1, For this cause I, Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, if you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you, how that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery, as he wrote before in a few words, whereby when you read you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men." Obviously this plan was not in the process. Only God knew about the plan. He revealed it to Paul. It is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs. See, before the dispensation of grace, if you were a Gentile, which you all were Gentiles, we all are, how did you get saved? What'd you say? Exactly. Only you could get saved when you became a Jew. That was it. So you still had a path. Still a path, right? before we cut out, whereof I was made a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given me by the effectual working of his power. Unto me whom have less than the least of all saints, Paul's saying this, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all men see what is the mystery, the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things in Christ Jesus. See, our problem is this mystery was revealed and it's been revealed to you now. You all have seen it. It's been demonstrated to you. It's in the Bible. You can't deny it. It's been hid, but now it shows up. We've got to get a different mindset. Last week we talked about playing games. We need, I'm going to address this later on, but we need men who have courage. We need men who know how to spiritually lead their families. We're lacking there. We're lacking there. Not we, but it's the church. We need spiritual men to step up and lead as God's called them to lead. Just take a look at the church. A lot of churches are run by women. I mean, some churches wouldn't even exist. We don't have enough men. Look at your family. Look at your marriage. Who's leading? Who is leading your family? Who is leading your marriage? Is your wife your head? You're supposed to be her head. Jesus supposed to be your head and when you start getting that I was talking to you. I was talking to a counselor At a high school and He this I couldn't even believe what I was hearing He said now he said all the young men have become feminine And all the girls have become masculine and I mean, not all, you understand. He said, years ago, he said, the graduating people, he said, I could look at the guys, and I could say, most of those guys could probably lead their family. Most of them. He said, now, in the whole school, he said, there may be two young men that I think will be successful when they leave out of the whole school. Because they've all become feminine. He said, they cry more than the girls do. I don't want to cry, you know what I'm saying, I mean, don't get in my way, that kind of thing. He said the girls become men. What do you expect? I mean, don't you see how, I mean, we talk about, am I a guy or a girl? I feel like a girl today, I want to be a guy. I mean, can you see how it's all mixed up? We don't even know, God said He created male and female. You're either a male or a female. If you don't like that, then take it up with him. You can't be something different. And I heard it. I said, oh my gosh. And then you wonder, see, these young men are going to be the men later on. And you're going to wonder why the marriage is all mixed up. That will destroy that. And we're doing it. And a lot of it has to do with me and you. How are you raising your kids? How are you raising your kids? How are you raising your boys and girls? Are you teaching them to become men or to be sissies? What do they see you doing at home? They come home and they look around, they go, well, I know one thing, mama runs this place, daddy got nothing to do, he just tucks his tail. Don't you think your kids see that? They see that. And then you wonder down the road, what happened? And this same person told me, he said, any time something happens in school in there, where normally, say, something happened, I'd go see the parent. See, it's involved my kids. I'd go see the parent. I'd tell you, hey, you know, we had a fight or whatever going on. But now they don't do it anymore. They come to the school. But they blame the school for everything. See, the school is now the parent. They come in and fuss about things. We go, we don't, that ain't got nothing to do with us. We don't have that. We don't have the phone. We can't control who texts to what. They blame the school for that. Parents would even take responsibility for their own children. I mean, have y'all messed up raising kids? Would you do it different today? Would you do it different today? Well, sure you would. You learn stuff. But you still gotta try. You don't just quit. I have a hard time. We babysit the kids sometimes. I got a hard time because everybody in the household doesn't see things like I see them. Oh, it don't matter? Yeah, go ahead and do that. No, no, we can't do these things. It's not appropriate. We gotta have headship. We gotta have headship again. You know a song that's stuck in my head all week? Y'all gonna make fun of me. Now, all y'all might not know this song. Y'all ever heard of Tom Petty? You've heard of Tom Petty, haven't you? Well, he's young. He's a young guy, man. Alright, when you leave here, go play. All you men, this might be our theme song. This might become our theme song for the church. I won't back down. He said, I stand before the gates of hell, and I won't back down. I said, wow. I mean, I don't know how it happened this week. I don't have any music on my phone, but anyway. I've been singing it all week. I won't back down. I'll stand my ground. No matter what happens, I'm standing my ground. Some of us, all we gotta do is just stand. The Bible says when you've done all you can do, just stand. Let God fight your battle. You gotta be given armor for crying out loud. He told you to put it on. And then we can't, some of y'all, some of you men, I'm just gonna sit down, I'm done, I'm tired, I can't fight anymore. What's wrong with you? What's wrong with me? You can't fight. What are you? Are you a sissy? Are you something wrong with you? You are a man of God. You've been given responsibility. I'm throwing a towel in, it's done, I'm over, I'm gonna give in. And you watch how your family turns. Watch it, look at other people, how their family turns out. It'd be total disorder. We can't do these things. If you'd been in my house sometimes, you'd go, I don't know what's gonna happen in there. Oh, I'm serious. I wish you were here. Well, maybe I don't. I don't know. But sometime you're not going to be popular. You're going to be hated. I'm talking about as a husband, as a father. Everybody's going to turn against you. Y'all ever watch that movie Beethoven? I know you haven't seen that one. Y'all watch Beethoven? Remember Beethoven with the dog? Remember how they hated, I mean, everybody turned against the daddy? You know, and he gave in, right? Well, okay. It's a good movie. I mean, that movie's 37 years old. It's still a pretty good movie. It works out good in the end. I'm telling you, sometimes you gotta stand your ground. A long time ago, we had fellowship. We had men's fellowship and women's fellowship, and then they got convoluted, and then people wanted, they didn't like sharing their feelings, they didn't want to do this, the ladies want to do that, and so then we tried to blend it to where we had part fellowship and part Bible study. Well, that failed. You can't blend the two. It's either one or the other. We got a plan. Say, he's got a plan. He's got a plan. Try it again. He's got a plan. He's got a plan. We'll see. I don't know. I don't know. What did God give us to help in these battles we're fighting? What did he give us? Armor. Yeah, that's right. Come on. Armor. Excellent. Go to Ephesians 6.10. Ephesians 6.10. We touched on it last week. Ephesians 6, 10. Finally, my brethren, brethren means believers. He's right to us. Be strong in the Lord and the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wow. Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of God. That's the second time So it's important you put it all on that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand. So at some point, you need to put all the armor on and all you got to do is stand. How many times you try fighting a battle and it didn't work out good? Many times. And then you turn around and say, well, I need some help here. I need some help here. Stand therefore having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Above all, taking the shield of faith wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. Take the help of salvation, the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And praying always, in all prayer and supplication, in the Spirit and watching there into with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. Pray for other people. Remember what Miss Edens used to say when she'd get depressed, not feeling good, Miss Edens would go and find somebody to help. That changed everything in her whole life. She said it over and over and over. But see, we are so selfish. All we think about is, I mean look someplace else, all we think about is us. We blame everybody else what's wrong with me. And you know we do. They didn't do that. They didn't say that. They didn't do this. Nobody said that. And we blame everybody else for all of our things that we lack and we feel like we're owed or we deserved. We can't ever take our responsibility. We can't take responsibility for what we've done. It's always somebody else. And that's how you can tell when you're off track because the problem is, see, you're just thinking about you. You ain't really thinking about anybody else. You're just thinking about poor pitiful me. Nobody called me. Nobody cares about me. That's not true. That's a lie. That's an absolute lie. Bible says here, the whole armor of God. If you leave off a piece, I bet the enemy finds a gap. You leave off some of it, I bet he finds a hole. God provides it for us, but we got to put it on. The shield of faith. Faith is everything. Spiritual war and these spiritual weapons. And I told you last week, we only got one offensive weapon, it's the Word of God. How did Jesus defeat the enemy when he's in the wilderness? What did he do to defeat him? The Word. And the devil several times tried to twist the Word just a little bit. Just twist it a little bit. like made a new version of the Bible. You're going to see more of those come because people love to make money. I promise you're going to see new versions of the Bible come up every three or four years. Oh, we've got more manuscripts. Well, God said he's going to preserve it. So what about what we already got? He said he would preserve it. It's been preserved. It's the King James Version of the Bible. You'll never change my mind on that. the temptation of Jesus, three times the devil tempted him. And every time all Jesus did, he didn't fight, he didn't punch him, he came back with the Word. That's why you need to know the Word in your battles that you're fighting. Your Word is your weapon. Your faith is part of your defense mechanism, but your Word's your weapon. See, faith ain't passive. How many of y'all think parenting is easy? How many of you think it's hard? It's hard. You think it's hard, Nate? Did you raise your hand too? It's hard, man. It ain't easy to do that. It's hard, ain't it? You try to do things to get things right. We're in battles, man. We're in a battle. We're in an absolute battle. And it's our faith is what we're going to need to sustain ourselves. The Word of God and our faith is what we're going to have to have. It's not passive. Romans 10, 16. Romans 10, 16. But they have not all obeyed the gospel, for Isaiah said, Lord, who hath believed with our report? The Bible says, Romans 10, 17. So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. That's why it's important for you to be in church, to be someplace where you can hear the Word of God, to establish your faith. I still stand by it. Probably many people disagree. I don't think you grow your faith. You either have faith or you don't have faith. You may not have faith for this, but you have faith for that. When you are your weakest is when God can show his greatest strength. When you think you're done, it's over, what's the thing that Kathleen used to say to me? Hang on. Hold on. Don't let go. Don't let go, and you're going to fall. Your life and your walk depends on your faith, on the Word of God. So, do you understand what you're reading? No. Would you help me? I don't think I do. Well sure, I'll try to help you. And then what comes after that, 2 Timothy 2.7. 2 Timothy 2.7. I'll leave you with this. 2 Timothy 2.7. Consider what I say, and the Lord give thee understanding in all things. They didn't say just believe everything I said, they said consider what I just said. Consider what I said and may the Lord give you understanding. May the Lord give you the proper understanding. We have got to, and I'm preaching, well actually, it's a double-edged sword to a certain respect, but we must have, the body of Christ must have men who stand up and act like men, spiritual leaders of the family. I didn't say you tell your wife what to do and don't let her pick out the car she wants. I'm not saying that. I'm talking about being a spiritual leader of your home. Some things, you got to take a stand. I don't care what she says. You got to take a stand. You're not going to hurt somebody. We're not trying to hurt somebody, whatever. But see, the problem is, it's hard. I know it's hard. Because if we end up in society with masculine women and feminine men, this ain't going to work out good. It ain't going to work out good. And so then what happens is you've got some serious issues going on right there. And you've got boys and girls that have no clue. They see all this and they get confused. Your son or your daughter needs to look at you, men, fathers, and say, my daddy is ahead of my house. If they say, no, my mama's ahead, then there's something wrong with you as a man. You're not doing the right thing in your house. I didn't get too many amens on that. Can you fix it? Well, sure you can. Well, sure you can. Fix it. God gave us principles to live by and to go by, instructions on how a marriage should be. You know, some of y'all, I want my, I want my husband, I'm gonna talk about the women there, all right? Can I talk about, can you hear me talk about women? Okay. I wouldn't have, I should have said that, because she'll think I'm talking about her now. But, okay, disregard. Man, I wish my husband would leave my family. Why don't you let him? Why don't you let him? I wish he would take the spiritual head and do this to me. You gotta let him. What's he gonna do, beat you over the head? Get you in a half Nelson like I did in my turkey before I put him on the roaster? You don't throw the wings behind the head. We got problems, the church has got problems. but we don't have to have them, we don't have to have them. We really don't. We got plans, say Patch has got, y'all say Patch has got plans. Patch has got plans. So we'll see how it works out. You're gonna have to at least give me a B for effort. At least give me a B, maybe not an A, but we'll see how it works out, all right? Father, we just thank you, Lord Jesus. Father, I pray for the marriages in this church. I pray for the families in this church. I pray for those that are listening on the sermon audio. Father, some things are hard to hear, but the truth ain't always easy to hear. And all of us have plenty of shortcomings. All of us have made so many mistakes, we can't even count them on all our fingers and toes. But Father, I pray that we minimize those mistakes. I pray that we let Your Word rule our lives. Your actual written Word rule our lives. That's what we base our lives upon. And Lord, we thank You for that. We trust you, Lord. We trust you. We trust you by faith that you'll do that. Lord, please help us. In Jesus' name.