 LGBTQI rights are human rights. As a Southern Baptist that grew up reading the Bible, maybe a backslidden Baptist, but I still know the Bible. Jesus never once talked about abortion, never once. I am not talking about religion. I am a Christian, that is my faith. I'm not asking you to be a Christian. If you wanna be one, I can show you how, but it is not required. There's no one way to heaven, no one way to paradise. It's like television. Now it's over 800 channels of cable and they're all pretty entertaining. So I'm pretty sure, man, that to get to heaven, there's gotta be more than one. Christians, would you please stop letting people tell us who we are and who we're not? My biggest pet peeve, and I mean one of my biggest pet peeves is when people attempt to tell Christians what we are, what we're not. As a matter of fact, it's even more bothersome when Christians allow other people to tell us what a Christian is. And I mean non-Christians. I even mean other Christians looking at non-Christians and assuming just because someone says they're a Christian does not mean that they are a Christian. This should be apparently obvious. We've got people all across the spectrum, whether they be in the secular world who want to call themselves Christians, you know the list, the Beyonce's, the Oprah's, the Steve Harvey's, all of these types of people, the Kanye West of the world. These are the people who say I'm a Christian and there's nothing about them that speaks or says anything about Christ. There's no promoting of him. There is just this clear, this clear distortion of who he is. We know about them. Then we've got people who are in the quote Christian world who also are not. The Benny Hens of the world. The people who espouse these different aberrant beliefs, these antithetical gospels, these gospels of works. Those people, the people who look like a Christian who may show up at church, who do all these things, they may know some scriptures and so forth or raise in the church, but their life is anything but that. Stop assuming or taking a person's word for it that they're a Christian. When we look and see their actions, when we look and see their mouths, what they say, and when their heart is clearly evident, let's just stop assuming that anybody that calls themself a Christian is a Christian. And who told us that? Who gave us the pattern to say that not everyone who calls themself a Christian is a Christian? Well, Jesus did. In Matthew 721, Jesus said, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. So clearly not everyone who verbally says the name Lord or calls him Lord is a Christian. Not everyone who calls themself a Christian is. And these will be people who have done some things to look like it. But Jesus makes a statement. I never knew you. And so one, to be a Christian, you have to be known, there has to be this relationship, there has to be this faith placed in Christ by the person in order to be a believer. And Jesus will have indicated. Now we may not see it, but God will. And so it's clear that there are people who think they are, but Jesus never knew them. If he's never known you, well, then we can't come back and say, yes, he did. He knew us for a moment. He knew us for a slight bit, but then we walked away. We left. Jesus indicates, I never knew them. Now, John goes on to say also that these people who are these imposters, these people who go against Christ, they may not look like it in the beginning, but one way that we can find out or know that they were not Christians, nor were they ever Christians, though they said it, because again, as Jesus says, people can say that they are, but they're not. John tells us in chapter two, verse John chapter two, verse 18, he says, it is the last hour. And as you have heard that antichrist is coming, the antichrist is coming. So now many antichrist plural have come. Therefore, we know that this is the last hour. And how do we know? They went out from us, but they were not of us. If they had been of us, they would have continued with us, but that they went out, that it might become plain that they are all not of us. It's straightforward unless you wanna explain it away. He says that these antichrists, and it doesn't mean that these are certain types of folks. The word literally means people that go against Christ. Now you can do it intentionally or unintentionally. These people, it became clear, it became plain that they were never a part of us. And it became plain of that fact when they walked away, that them walking away, leaving made it evident, which brings us to something else. You need to understand the Bible says there's just gonna be this great falling away. That is people who not were Christians and fell away, but people who may have claimed it had an understanding, a knowledge, a head knowledge of it, but fell away in many cases because their only way that they even identified themselves as a believer was because of works. They thought they had to do certain things, live a certain way. And so the Bible said Paul says in Galatians 5, he explains this even more so. In chapter 5 verse 2, Paul says, look, if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. Meaning, as these Jews, these Judaizers came to try to force these believers to become Jewish, to become circumcised and to adhere to tenets of the law. In other words, kind of put in the modern way of looking at it, if you are trying to be saved by doing things, he says that Christ is of no effect. Look what he says though. He says in verse 4, you are severed from Christ. You who would be justified by the law, you have fallen away from grace. Now, look at what he's saying. You are severed, you have fallen away. Who are these people that are severed from Christ? Who are these people that have fallen away? He indicates it pretty clearly. Look at what it says. He says, you who would be justified by the law. The people that would want to be justified by their actions, by their deeds, with what they're doing, since you want to be saved that way, since your actions, you're not sinning as you think, is how you're going to be saved and stay saved. He says you have been severed from Christ. Christ is of no value. You have fallen away. Why? Because it's not Christ's work, but it's your work. And because of that, you have already fallen away. You have fallen out of contention. Let me give you an example. My team right now this year is playing absolutely horrible. As a matter of fact, someone just scored on them just a minute ago. That's how bad it is. And we fell out of contention from the very first week. We fallen out of the playoffs, hadn't even snipped the playoffs, even though the playoffs had not come. Why? Because we're just not, we're not that good. We're not ready. Well, in a same way, just use my little analogy, people who are trying to live a certain way to gain acceptance or entrance, you have already fallen away. You are out of contention. You have been severed. You have been cut off from Christ because that's not how you get to him. You get to him by faith in him. And then once you place your faith in him, then guess what? You are now redeemed. You are now considered his sheep. And he tells us how you can know you're his sheep. Interestingly enough, Jesus gives a description of sheep. So if he gives a description of sheep, stop listening to other people tell you what a sheep is, what a Christian is. Stop following what they say and let's listen to what he says. Now, where does Jesus make this statement? What does he give this declaration? This information, this description as to what a Christian is, what a sheep is in John 10. So let's go to John 10. Let's start in verse three. Speaking of Jesus, to him the gatekeeper opens, the sheep hear his voice. What are the sheep doing? The sheep are accruing. They are hearing his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought all of his own out, he goes before them. And what do the sheep do? The sheep follow him. I call them fag, which means they are following him for they know, which means they know him, they know his voice. Remember, Jesus already made the statement that I've never known you. Well, the sheep know him. Jesus would never make the statement that I never knew you when he just said, just indicated that we know him, which means he knows us, he leads us out. So he could not make that statement about a Christian who then would walk away. He says, a stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him. Why? For they do not know the voice of the strangers. So a couple of things that we have to know about sheep. This is Jesus's description. One, they hear him. Sheep hear him, they keep hearing him. Two, sheep follow him. Three, sheep know him, which means he also knows us. Four, sheep will not follow a stranger. Instead, five, sheep will run away from him. And then six, he indicates, which is a part of five, sheep do not recognize his voice. And to make it clear, Jesus makes this point even more so about Gentile sheep, Gentile believers, which also applies to Jewish believers. Look what he says in John chapter 10, verse 16. He says, I have other sheep that are not of his fold. I must bring them also. And look what he says. They will listen to my voice. So we will listen. So just like what he described about the sheep earlier, it's clear. Sheep listen. Sheep hear, sheep follow, sheep know him. She do not listen to a stranger. She flee from the stranger because they don't know his voice. That is Jesus's description of what I believe he is. So stop letting people say that when a person is involved in sin and living a certain way, that that person is also a Christian. Just like a man who puts on lipstick and a wig and calls himself a woman is not a woman and women, you wouldn't accept that person as being a woman, at least you should not because he's not a real authentic woman. Just because he calls himself one, just because the laws of the world, especially of America will say that, yeah, it's okay for us to call him that and we should treat him like that. We're not gonna do that number one. But number two, the same applies to Christian. Stop letting people who are clearly not Christian call themselves Christian and you assume that we will know them by their fruit, by their love will hear it come out of their mouth. We'll know that if they're preaching a different gospel or not. Stop with this nonsense, this, listen, if I had hair, I would have pulled it out by now because we are perpetrating a fraud upon the public to say that yes, they're part of us. Yes, this person calls himself a Christian and so we accept him. No, that's not the way this works. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, Paul says let everybody examine themselves. Examining yourself, that's why we have these warning passages because there's a lot of people who are fooling themselves and fooling others and we're accepting it. Christians will have a lifestyle of following. Will it be the same level all the way through? Will there be some ups and downs and peaks and valleys? Yes, there will be. But our lifestyle will be descriptive of us following him. How do I know? Because God says so. We go over this passage often. Let's go over it again in Ezekiel 36. He says that I will put my spirit in them. Verse 27, I will put my spirit. I, God, will put my spirit in them. And what will his spirit in us cause us to do? Walk. Will cause us to walk. The Hebrew word here is for asa, or in this word, asatee, wa asatee. And the word for walk is to telku, which means to follow, to walk, in accordance with God's teachings. And so he tells us clearly that the spirit in us that he is gonna put in us is going to cause us to walk. Does that mean perfectly? No, that's not what it means at all. As a matter of fact, we'll cover this in a second, but you can't get past this as well. So we've got these descriptions, these adjectives, if you will, to describe what a Christian is, what a Christian does. When you see people not exhibiting these things, well then Houston, we've got a problem. That's why James makes a statement, I'll show you my faith by my works. I'll show you my faith. The fact that I do have this faith in Christ and I've got the spirit, it will be evident by my works or as God would say, by my walks, then keeping what God wants them to do. Now, if anyone says, doesn't mean that anyone cannot sin, as a matter of fact, he says that everyone is gonna sin. He says in 1 John 1, he says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And look at the way this was written, the word that we have in the Greek is ecumen, which means it's a present active indicative, meaning if we are having, so he says that if we say that we are not having any sin at this moment we're not sinning, then we're lying. So clearly we are going to sin, but the people who have a practice of sinning, let's look at what John says also in 1 John 5, 18, he says, we know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him and the evil one does not touch him. So there's his protection, which is the Holy Spirit that keeps us from this lifestyle. As a matter of fact, he also says in 1 John, let's go back a little bit to chapter three, verse four, he says everyone who makes a practice of sinning and the word for practice is point on. So all those who are doing, who are making the sin, who are doing sin, who are sinning, it's their practice, those are the ones who are not saved. And so we also have not only a description of a person who is a Christian, we also have a description of a person who is not a Christian. Those who do these things live this way, even speak this way, who give these destructive doctrines. As a matter of fact, the ones that Paul refers to that we ought to mark them because of their doctrine that Paul says, they have this strange doctrine, this other gospel that's really not a gospel, he says that they are to be a curse. So we can hear them, we can see them, and we know exactly, matter of fact, the reason why we can, in some cases, know full well about what they're doing is because we ourselves was just that way. We were just like that, but now we are different. So we've got a clear description as to what a non-Christian looks like, acts like though he may say some of the same things, coming in some of the same circles, but after a while, we evidently more so in the fact that he or she will ultimately, or in many cases, will walk away before our eyes, and the Bible calls this the great falling away. People who claim to be, and they are walking, why do you see more and more people in droves who once said, I was a Christian, but I've left the faith, I have deconstructed? Because here we see the beginning of what was stated, but then we also have a description of what a Christian is. Again, again, stop letting people tell you what a Christian is. Christians do not leave the faith. Christians do not fall away. Christians do not stop believing. Christians do not stop hearing. Christians do not follow after another God or another religion, Jesus stated so. And if anyone who does the opposite of what Jesus described as a Christian is not a Christian. Amen.