WHBC
09/15/2024 - Bro. Charles Hunt - Homecoming Service
all of this together and all those that have a part in it. Turn if you would to Deuteronomy chapter 19, Deuteronomy chapter 19 was just one verse this morning. We'll read a couple of more later on too. I'll give you a couple of more, but I want to think about this morning our landmarks. This is old fashioned Sunday. And so I want us to think this morning about some landmarks. The Bible says in Deuteronomy 19, 14, "Thou shalt not remove thy neighbor's landmark, which they of old time, have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess." This is a tremendous verse here. They're talking, they're still in Egypt. God has promised them the land of milk and honey, the promised land, the land of Canaan. And in that land, there are seven different nations. Every one of those nations literally would wipe Israel out. Even today there are like 250 million Arabs surrounding the group, a little small group of Israel that would like to see them destroy. But God said, "I don't care how strong they are, I don't care how many they are, I'm giving you a land, I'm giving you a possession, I'm giving you a land mark that you can hold on to, and don't mess with the landmarks. When you come to the land of inheritance, do not remove thy neighbor's landmark." Deuteronomy 27, 17 said, "Cursed be he that removeeth his neighbor's landmark, and all the people shall say amen." And Proverb 22, 28, "Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set." Now, of course, we're talking this morning about a spiritual application of landmarks. What does it mean for us? In the land where God's people were going, God gave them landmarks. A landmark would show where every tribe would be in that nation. And those landmarks are like rods of inheritance of the land where the rod would be at the corner. Those would be the landmarks there. And he said, "Don't move it, don't touch it, don't fool with it, don't bother it, leave them there." Because it shows ownership, it shows ownership. God has given us some great landmarks that are not to be moved. I want to tell you folks, we own something as children of God, we own the Bible. This is our Bible. This is the Bible that God wrote to his children. We own this Bible. We own some of the landmarks that God has given us. And I want to be real quickly today and preach about those landmarks. First of all, I want you to note that a landmark can be moved, a landmark can be moved. I think that God has said it. It has to do with the division, the separation of God's people, save people from the rest of the world. In the last 50 years, you may not know it, many of you are not old enough to know it. But there have been a lot of landmarks that have been moved in these last 50 years. Landmarks that meant something one day, and now they've been moved. I want to tell you, I would just, man, the older I get, the more excited I get. Now, you young people in here today, I'm not expecting you to shout and praise the Lord. You ain't been through enough yet to do that. But I tell you, some of us in here have been down that lonely road, and we've been reached down and touched by the master. And the landmark has been sent right there. And I want to tell you, we got something to shout about this morning. We got something to be happy about this morning. And the closer we get to that home, the happier we ought to get. The more excited we ought to be. There's a landmark there. And I discovered many years ago, I remember when I was ordained as a minister. It was on Mother's Day of 1985, and to pastor a church, and they asked me this question. Are you going to persevere? Are you going to stick it out? You're lining up now to preach the Word of God. Are you willing to say that I'm going to please God instead of pleasing people? And I said I will. I said I will. I had always done it. Man, there have been some times, man, I remember in one deacon's meeting we had. It wasn't here, thank God. We had enough here, but that wasn't one of them. One of my deacons is right outside, I know what we ought to do preacher, and you're standing for what's right. But I tell you, if we do that, we're going to stir this woman up and she's going to literally give us bits. So let's don't do it. There's some landmarks. You can move them in several ways, just a little bit. You know anything about construction, I know very little, I'm good at demolishing. You've got a couple of walls that need to come down. But there's a thing called a plumb line, and that plumb line hangs down, and I'll tell you even without the plumb line, if you just start off here and you just say, hey, I'm at 10 foot, it's only 1/8 of an inch off, it won't hurt anything, but when you get on down there a little bit more, it's 1/4, and then it gets to be where it's 1 inch. And you say, how do we get down here? How do we get so far off? As we move the landmarks, we've moved the landmarks, I have it in my notes here because I don't want to misquote it. Beautiful picture of the Pope. Would you like to know what he said this last week? I'm going to quote it to you because I don't want to miss a word. Old Francis in Singapore, "All religions are paths to reach God." There to make a comparison, they are, and he said to make a comparison like different languages, different dialects, to get there. But God is God for everyone. If you start to fight saying, my religion is more important than yours, mine is true and yours isn't. Where will this lead us? There is only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Some are chic, some are Muslims, some are Hindus, some are Christians. They're all different ways to God. Folks, I want to tell you, that ain't just moving the landmark. That's yanking it plumb up. That's taking it completely out altogether. There are people in the world that don't believe in churches and emphasize that a Christian ought to be different. I'm telling you this morning, as a child of God, you ought to be different than this world is. You ought to have a different walk, you ought to have a different dress code, you ought to have a different speech language, you ought to have a different modesty level. There ought to be some difference between you and this world that we're living in today. When somebody comes along and says, "I don't believe Christians ought to be sinning out the gospel to other people." My goodness, we could use that money here at home. We could be feeding people here at home. There's an instance of that in the New Testament when Mary broke open the alabaster of voxel oil there, Judas was the one that said, "Hey, we could have used this here at home." Of course, the Bible says he was lying. He was lying. We got pictures this week. We were in Macedonia just a short while ago. We were disappointed because they were supposed to be putting on the roof. The guy that was in charge of it, in Macedonia, you have a head contractor for every aspect of the building and the head contractor has to be there. The week before we was there, he got an automobile accident in Greece and could not put on the roof. I'm telling you, this week, the roof's on. It's not completely on, but it's going on. I was thinking about it last night sitting out on the back porch. I said, "Lord, I feel kind of like Abraham." When God said, "Take Isaac, your only son Isaac, and take him up and offer him on and alter right there." I'm thinking, "Lord, we're trying to build a school here. We're trying to build churches here. We're trying to go forward here in East Texas. Here we are that is building a church in Sremiste, and Lord, and I was just reminded that the whole time, the whole Abraham was walking up that mountain with Isaac and everything ready to offer him as a sacrifice on the other side of that mountain. God had a perfect lamb walking up the same steps right there. When they got to the top up here, there was the lamb. There God provided the lamb. Folks, when we do the work of God, God will provide the resources. Some people are going to like it, some people are not going to like it, but I'm telling you, we're not here. This is not some Sunday scoop picnic. We're talking about the lives of people. We're talking about the souls of eternity. We've got to do everything we can. The landmark is not where God wants it. The first thing you know, it's been moved there. The children of Israel had to pass over a lamb, and of course, what you did, hey, everybody did it. If you got ready to offer a sacrificial Passover lamb, you'd go out and look at your herd there and you'd say, "Oh, there's a sheep there. He ain't got one eye. Let's give him." Hey, man. That's how you do your offerings a lot of times. Well, here's one over here. He got a crippled back leg. Let's give him as a sacrifice, and then God comes along and he says, "I want you to give a perfect sacrifice, a spotless lamb, someone that is not any deflect whatsoever." Well, Lord, this is just going to be hard to do that, not when the Lord provides it. He provided the lamb. He said, "At this Passover, y'all need to eat up, boys, eat quick. We're in Egypt and we need to get out of here as fast as we can." And they're on their way to the promised land. There are a lot of people today. I've prayed, prayed, prayed, prayed. I want what we do in this church to count for the years to come, not just be here today and have a good time. But I'm talking about building daycare ministry, senior adult ministries, youth ministries, academy ministries that will continually reach people. Listen to me, folks. I don't read the end of the book. It's not going to get better. It's going to get worse. But bless God, those of us who know Jesus know that that's just the getting on time. My, my, my. Let me give you a couple of landmarks and I'm through. I'm convinced and concerned about the landmark of the Christian Sabbath. You say, "Well, we don't have a Sabbath. A Sabbath is on Saturday." No, technically we don't. But it's also been called the Christian Sabbath on Sunday. Sunday is the day that the Lord had been dead three days into tomb and He arose. Sunday is the day, the Holy Ghost came down in the book of Acts. Sunday is the day that He said, "You gathered together on the first day of the week and we've got a landmark here for a Christian Sabbath. We've taken that landmark." Some of you older people, you know exactly what I'm talking about. There was a time when you didn't do anything on the Lord's day. It was set up for you to come to church and to worship and to fellowship and to increase knowledge in the Lord and to further the kingdom of God. But now you can go to any store you want to. You can go to any baseball field you want to. You can go to any soccer field you want to. There are things open all the way. It's another day of the week. The Holy Day has become a holiday. And I'm not talking about the people of the world. I'm talking about the people in the church. We made it that way. There is a landmark there. I tell you one of the worst mistakes that I ever made in my life. In my son, we'll tell you this is true. Years ago I had a son playing, Jason was playing Little League ball. And they came in and said, "Preacher, we know you don't play on Wednesday." I said, "Nope, we don't play on Wednesday." And I said, "Well, Wednesday, you know what? I don't see anything. What's Wednesday?" Well, Wednesday is a landmark that's been set up for Baptist for hundreds of years. You see, God, I think we kind of know. Maybe you don't know, but I want to tell you Wednesday is the mid-week filling station. I mean, you don't hit that thing Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. You need something to pump you up to get you through Thursday and Friday and get you ready. And they said, "It's been a lot of rain. We've got to play on Wednesday night. We've got to have, we've got to have Jason." I said, "Nah, we don't play on Wednesday night." They call back, "Please." And I let it go. I said, "Okay, one time, one time, the biggest mistake I ever made in my life. Well, preacher, you let him play that Wednesday. Why don't you let him play this Wednesday?" Well, preacher, you let him play that Wednesday. We've got a game Sunday afternoon. He won't miss church. No, there's a landmark there, folks. We need to go back and nail that landmark down. The Lord's Day, forget not the gathering of ourselves together as a matter of some is is what he said in Hebrews 10, 25. There is a landmark there upon the Christian Sabbath. I think about the landmark of Christian separation. Could I tell you this morning, if you're a child of God, you ought to have a little different standards than this world has. You ought to dress a little bit different than this world has. Now, listen to me this morning, don't come up in here, I don't come up in here telling me, "Well, you know, that's the best side they've got," you know, then that's wonderful. I was telling somebody this morning, I always loved this time of the year growing up because school had just started. And every year we got two new pair of blue jeans when school started, come from Sears and Roebuck. And my mama would take and she would turn them inside out and she would iron another patch on the knee so they'd last a little bit longer. I'd be coming to church and my blue jeans all dressed up, ready to go. I'm not telling you there ought to be a dress code here. I'm telling you, as a child of God, you ought to put on your best for the Lord today, amen? And I don't have to be a suit, I'm not talking about that, but I'm talking about some folk. And we don't have a big problem of it here, but just don't get that problem, amen? Remember there is a landmark come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord. Be holy because I'm holy, saith the Lord there. You love the praise of men more than the praise of God is what Jesus told the Pharisees. And we've got to get back to the place where we're not interested in pleasing men. We're interested in pleasing God. I want to tell you one of the biggest secrets that I ever learned in my life as a young minister was who is the blessor. Now I know I'm the blessee and I'll be honest with you, many of you have been a blessor to me. You have blessed me. But I'll be honest with you, God's really the one who gave the blessing. You wouldn't have had it to do it, God had to let you have it. It all comes from God. It all comes from God. Well, let me give you another landmark here quickly, the landmark of the Bible. The landmark of the Bible, this Bible is a landmark. Now I'm going to say some things here this morning you're not going to like, but that's all right. That's all right. Remember, I'm not here to please you. I'm here to please God. I'm just here to see the future. Some of you young people don't understand this yet. You don't understand that when you move that landmark a little bit, the devil comes in and he wants to take it more and he wants to carry it farther. He always does that. That's hot. He's a deceiver. He's a liar. He's a thief. That's what Satan is. That's what we deal with every day. In this book right here, people ask me all the time, "Pree, why don't you still preach out of the King James version?" Well, I'm going to give you my opinion. I think it's the version we ought to all be preaching out of. You say, "Well, no, wait a minute, preacher. They're done." See, you hadn't been here long enough to know. I was there when the NIV came out and it was almost exactly like the King James. I mean, people would say, "Oh, I mean, throw a big fit and everything," but you couldn't tell the difference, but you give it 50 years, 20% of the scriptures left out of the NIV if you buy a new one today. This is the only Bible that does not have a copyright. This is the only Bible. If men did not make money, there would not be 35 versions of the Bible. Now, some of you are going to tell me that I just needed in my language. No, what you need to do is learn God's language. Just trying to drag God down to where you are, where you can understand. You ain't never going to understand Him, He's God. You need to lift up and listen to His language and spend a little time and learn what that says. I know there's some thousand of these in there. Now, listen to me. I'm not preaching against any translator. You'd read whatever. I love the EESV. I read it. It's sitting there by my toilet all the time, and I read the EESV a whole lot. I do. I like it. I don't have any problem with all those. I'm just warning you this morning, be careful about the landmark of the Bible because men will try to move it off the center. They'll try to liberalize it. It's been happening for years. Let me give you another landmark real quickly, it's the landmark of soul-winning. Bible says in the Old Testament, He that went with souls is wise. A lot of churches today have given up on soul-winning, but I want to tell you, you need to be involved in winning souls. Every one of us in here are like Peter. Peter failed the Lord. He failed in his fishing. He failed it. The Lord he fell down on his knees, he said, "Depart from me, I'm not even worthy. I'm a sinful man, and what did Jesus say?" "Well, yeah, you're right, so I'm not going to be able to use you anymore." He said, "No, Peter, get up. Fear not, Peter. From henceforth, you're going to be a fisher to catch men." We're here to catch men. We're here to see people saved and not go to hell. Everybody in this auditorium is going to live eternally. You choose where you're going to live eternally. Right now, Martin Luther said, "I've used it a hundred times over. There's two days on my calendar, this day and that day. This day determines where I'll be on that day." You said, "What preacher? That's just not my thing." Well, because you're too prideful to even get on your face and pray about it. You think God can't use you or use the donkey? You think God can't use you? I love that song they sing. I thought I was number one, it's going to be me, but I can't even walk without him holding my hand. God cares. God cares for people. God cares for all people. Let me give you the last thing I'm through. There's a landmark of salvation by faith and we don't need to move from it. I believe only Jesus can save. Only Jesus. No one else. For about grace are you saved through faith, not of yourselves, it's a gift of God. Not a works, lest any man should boast. I know that Jesus said to the woman, "Thy faith has saved me." Thy faith has saved me. The Bible tells us to let our moderation be known unto all men. That word moderation is kindness. Many times at a church like this, that we take a stand and we're not going to be moving the landmarks. People will say they don't love people. No, you really love people when you tell them the truth. To sit here and pat them on the back and say, "Live any way you want to live. Do whatever you want to do. God's going to understand He's going to send them right down that road to hell. God is holy," and He said, "We're to be holy because He's holy. Let your moderation be known unto man." Listen, we ought to love folks. We ought to love the unsaved people. We ought to love the street walkers. We ought to love the gamblers, the homosexuals, the lesbians, the transgenders, addicted to alcohol, addicted to drugs, addicted to porn, addicted to synthetic entanglements. Everybody, we ought to love every one of us, but never, never, never let us compromise because Jesus never touched anybody and said, "Go on and live the way you were living." When He comes in, what a wonderful change in my heart has been made since Jesus came into my life. Don't ever compromise. There's only one way to get to heaven. It's not through the Baptist Church. It's not through the baptism. It's not through the offering plate. It's through Jesus and only the blood of Jesus. They did such a good, I love the purple holes. They did such a good job and they wouldn't let me sing with them. It's almost saying right now. They left out that third verse of the lifeboat, "Now it ain't in harmony, it ain't gonna be nothing like theirs," but you just listen to the words. The lifeboat soon is coming by the eyes of faith I see as she sweeps through the waters to rescue you and me and land us safely in the port with friends we love so dear. When you're ready, cries the captain, "Look, she's almost here. I want to tell you this morning, but keep your eyes on heaven. It's almost here. Then cheer my brother, cheer. Our trials will soon be over. Our loved ones we shall meet upon the golden shore. We're pilgrims and we're strangers here. We're seeking a city to come." The lifeboat soon is coming together his jewels home. Let me just ask you a question. If the lifeboat pulled in right now, would you be on it? Listen, this is just a straight day ever quick. No trick question. I'm just asking a young person, middle-aged senior dog, if the lifeboat pulled in right now to gather his jewels home, would you be on that boat? Now they say in that fourth version, "It's good." He's passing by, the time to get on the boat is when he's passing by. It was Spurgeon that said, "The time to do business with God is when God's doing business with you." He won't always do business with you. I'm asking you this morning, will you be on that boat? Or do you need to come down this morning, take one of us by the hand? You say, "Preach, I don't understand all that." Really the only thing you need to understand is that you're lost and separated from God and you can't save yourself and you have caught in picking things you can do, but the good news is it's already been done. Maybe you need to come down and just say, "I need to be saved today, I need to be saved." Maybe today though, you on that lifeboat, but you'd have to admit, "Boy, you've dug up some landmarks in your lifetime and you've moved them over and you thought they were just going to be just a little bit." But it's turned out to be major and maybe today you don't need anybody to talk to you. What you need to do is fall fresh on your face on this altar here and talk with God and have Him restore those landmarks. There's so many things I've got written here, but I've got to quit. Man, there's a landmark of prayer. There'll be, we've seen 1,000 people here this morning between both services. We'll have 45 to 50 at a prayer meeting Wednesday night. We'll preach your prayers not my thing, or you ought to make it your thing because the power we have comes from prayer. Maybe you've got some landmarks you need to just say, "God, I need some help. I ain't going to be able to do it on my own." Nobody's asking you to. I mean, today you need a church home. You say, "Well, I was ready to join this church, but I'll tell you after that sermon today." I think I'd rather go down the road somewhere and have someone teach me instead of preach to me. There's a difference. We ought to be taught, but I'll tell you, I'm not your teacher, I'm the preacher. I'm the one who's supposed to set you on fire, "Well, Lord, this is your day, we're your people." Oh, Lord, would you let the Holy Ghost fall fresh on this place today? Save those who need to be saved today. Unite us, Lord, use this time to glorify the name of Jesus. We exalt you and lift you up, praise on high. Have your way in every life in Jesus' name. Would you stand with me?