let me ask you a question what's more important to you truth or tradition do you know how to tell them apart it's amazing how nothing seems to last longer than a really bad idea I am so glad I remember I remember back in the 70s right as soon as I started driving we had the luxury of having um Mr Jimmy Carter as president who decided that the speed limit would be best at 55 miles per hour not 50 not 60 55 I don't is there a number that represents nond deicision more than the number 55 and it's I don't know how many of you have gotten tickets for going over 55 speeding tickets for going over 55 but I think there are probably many of us and it's just a tesate to how bad of an idea 55 mil an hour on the interstate is anyway at least that's my opinion okay um and finally we have speed limits of 70 M an hour which feels like uh I can finally get there in a reasonable amount of time and get out of this car okay now I know a lot of people don't feel that way but I've driven over a million miles in my life I hate being in a vehicle like I I can think of a whole lot of stuff I'd rather do than be sitting in a car and some people think I drive fast because I like to drive fast I actually don't like to drive fast I just want to get there so I can get out I don't know if anybody can relate to that or not maybe you can maybe you can't it's irrelevant so but nothing seems to last longer than a really bad idea do you ever notice how when you're filling out dates on apps and on the internet you can type in the day you can type in the month but you got to scroll back 63 years to find the year you were born like like it's like can I just go 1 n61 please somebody somewhere okay nothing seems to last longer than a bad idea well in this story um not necessarily a bad idea but what what happens in religion is that people start making stuff up and they want to hold other people's feet to the fire on the stuff they made up and and when I say religion I'm going to Define religion CU people say my I know you're a religious person but really I'm not I'm not a religious person here's what I mean when I say religion I don't so I'm going to Define it so by religion I mean something like some rules that somebody said is what you have to do to appease God right so that's what I mean when I say religion so some rules that somebody told me some group of people some individual told me I have to do to appease God but in reality God does not respond to religion favorably generally at all religion is is was introduced in Genesis chter 3 by the serpent when he said for God doth know that the day you eat thereof then ye shall be as Gods knowing good and evil Satan said if you will disregard what God said you will be more like God so he gave he's the first one like the first religion in the history of the world was Hedonism or humanism man becomes God when you do what you want to do instead of what God told you to do then you be get to become God okay and you can decide for yourself what's good and what's evil that's the first religion in the history of the world every other religion is some derivative of that when I say religion some other system by which people are telling you if you do these things you will be accepted by God but this is what God says God says that the just shall live by faith faith is not an action that I take Faith is a gift that I received in order to receive the gift of Grace wait what wait what what just happened faith is a gift that I received in order to receive the gift gift of Grace Grace is a gift so in order for me to receive the gift of Salvation I need faith but I can't conjure up the faith why cuz I'm I'm a sinner I'm not a good person don't look at me like that neither are you we just start we're just sinful people now fortunately we can be righteous people but the righteousness that I do today doesn't undo the unrighteousness I did yesterday or yester year or yester decade right so doing new Good Deeds doesn't erase the bad of the old bad deeds and even if I wound up somehow doing and at the end of my life doing more Good Deeds than I did bad deeds and then when I stand before God or worse yet worse yet the one this is one that's like really fingernails on the chalkboard for me when I get to the Pearly Gates and St Peter opens the door so that's such a goofy thing to say there's St Peter's not opening any doors okay sorry um St Peter like anyway no that's not how this works um and Peter was not the first pope so don't get it twisted um if there would have been a pope if there would have been a pope a first pope and there wasn't that was ordained like there wasn't if there's somebody that God chose to represent if there would have been a pope it wouldn't have been Peter it would have been Paul Paul was the Apostle to the Gentiles not Peter okay so let's don't be confused about what the Bible teaches anyway there's a story about the religious leaders coming to Jesus and they're frustrated with him because his disciples are not keeping the tradition of the elders so Matthew chapter 15 here's what it says then came Jesus I'm sorry then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees which were of Jerusalem saying why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders for they wash not their hands when they eat bread and he answered and said unto them why do ye also transgress the Commandment of God by your traditions for God commanded now God's he's Jesus is I I I'll chase the rabbit in a minute okay for God commanded saying verse four honor thy father and thy mother and he that curseth his father or mother let him die the death but ye say whosoever shall say to his father or his mother it is a gift by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me and honor not honor not his father or his mother he shall be free thus you have made the Commandment of God by none effect by your of none effect by your Traditions hm you've made the Commandment of God of none effect it's a couple things let me let me say what he's not saying before I say what he is saying first of all Jesus isn't saying tradition is automatically bad the Bible is a book of traditions can somebody get that door for me please um the Bible is a book of traditions the Bible is not a book um the Bible is a book that contains Traditions that's a better way of saying it the Bible is a book of truth but it contains Traditions all Traditions are not bad there are some traditions that are really really really really good but they are still Traditions some traditions are founded on Truth some traditions are just founded on somebody's extrapolation or application of Truth are y'all tracking so when I'm when I'm reading this verse that says that says um you've made this tradition the truth of God of none effect by your tradition let me ask you a question how many of you are how many of you are doing that in some aspect of your life you're making the truth of God of none effect by your tradition let me ask you a better question than that when you discover an old truth in God's word that is new to you how resistant are you to change H is that a good question when you discover an old truth in God's word that's new to you an old truth in God's word that's new to you how resistant are you to change because that's the degree to which you make the truth of God of none effect by your Traditions so back in 2018 um I was looking for a church to go to it's amazing in a city as big as Tampa Tampa's a pretty big city how hard it is to find a church that actually is founded on the Bible like they even have Bible in the name some of them and it's just like what are we doing here and I I remember I was at this church and I I was already a little frustrated with the doctrine but I like the church the people seem to be kind the pastors seem to be actually teaching doctrinally sound principles in context not just read a verse in holler and three points in a poem and a bunch of motivational speeches with some Bible verses attached and not being judgmental I'm just being this is what I've observed and I'm like okay cool but one of the problems I had with him with with the church was like he would give an invitation he'd say okay for those of you who want to give your life to Jesus come forward I'm like okay I probably shouldn't leave over this I should go have a conversation with him and say hey Pastor like I'm a little confused and like I did it in a spirit of humility I'm a little confused um because I I I really like coming here but like it feels like you're teaching people not only something that's not biblically accurate but it's the exact opposite of what the Bible teaches and so he was teaching that you get saved you like you have you receive salvation by giving your life to Jesus and I there are this is really a popular thing that preachers are saying these days it's like but it's like I don't know that anything could be more false like there are very few things that a preacher could say behind the pulpit that are more false than salvation is giving your life to Jesus now yes it's a good idea for somebody who has received Christ to give their life to Christ because according to 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse number 14 the love of Christ constraineth us because we thus judge that if one died for all then they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto him which died for them and rose again so because Christ died for me I should live for him so I do give my life to Christ I besee you therefore brother by the mercies of God you present your bodies a Living Sacrifice wholy acceptable unto God which is your reasonable service Romans chapter 1 I mean Romans 12: 1 and 2 um however that's not a prerequisite for salvation it's something we do in response to receiving salvation Salvation is not a gift we give God salvation is a gift God gave us the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ Our Lord how do we receive that gift we receive that gift by faith how do we receive that like where do we get the Faith from do we conjure it up are we just smarter than the people who don't believe no we receive the faith as a gift so that we can receive the grace as a gift how do you know this Philip Ephesians chapters 2: 8 and n it says for by Grace that's a gift are you saved through faith and that that what that faith is not of yourselves it is the gift of God not of Works lest any man should boast so in other words God the scripture teaches me clearly that if I conjured up the faith to believe in Jesus I would have something to brag about when I stand before God are y'all tracking it's like it's clearly like well giving my life here here God you can have my life now I'm saved that's not there's nowhere in the Bible that teaches that and I know like I've even gotten some NE comments on YouTube not that I care cuz a lot of the people who put negative comments on YouTube um they the only Doctrine they ever got was from the church they went to assuming that the pastor studied they assumed that their Pastor studied but if somebody's saying that I know they didn't study because there's no place in the Bible that teaches that salvation is a gift that we receive not a gift that we give God okay anyway so I went to this church so I went to the pastor and I talked to him about it and he's like yeah you know what that um okay I see what you're saying um he was he wasn't resistant but he was like it was like well yeah see I kind of yeah I get what you're saying that's that shows some wisdom I'm like okay cool I can keep coming here well lo and behold a few months later cuz it it it it doesn't get better it's interesting that the scripture says if the foundation be destroyed what can the righteous do like if you if if you're the foundation if your foundational beliefs are off kilter nothing you build on is going to stand well so he says so we're gonna we're g to he he makes this announcement we're going to celebrate Halloween here at the church like you're gonna do what okay Halloween's a pagan holiday but so is Easter and so is Christmas just case like I know some of you ain't going to like that but they're Pagan they're not biblical at all they're not it's not like they're a little biblical they're not biblical at all it's another conversation for a different day that's not that's not why I'm saying this he says we are going to celebrate Halloween and some of you aren't going to like it I get it he says but but and some of you are probably thinking well why don't you just have October Fest he said because people in the community don't know what October Fest is they know what Halloween is we're going to we're going to do and we are here the our objective is to reach people and so we are going to have Halloween here at the church and then he said something that I was just like hoping to hoping to make it out of the building alive he said we're going to sanctify it in Jesus name I said I'm done I am done I will never come here like you can't just make stuff up cuz you're a pastor you're going to sanctify Halloween in Jesus name you are a fool I'm done d u n d o n e however you d u n n however you want to spell done I for one am done and this is no longer fun I'm not coming back here anymore I'm done I've not didn't set foot back in that place since and then they ended up closing down any for another reason for other reasons then I'm like found this other church that I really liked some things about it and then I get an email we're going to have an Easter egg hunt at the church I'm done I'm done okay and and I know some of you for some of you that's not a deal breaker for me that's a deal breaker like Easter is not a I know that y'all believe it is it's a very Catholic holiday but it's not biblical okay like you ask the average believer what Passover is they couldn't tell you to save their grandmother's life but they know what Easter is so my daughter was telling me this was many years ago she's like she's like when she worked at a an office in p pania she's like Hey Dad I didn't know that Easter was like a holiday where people gave gift baskets to each other and stuff and she said this woman came to work and she's like yeah I gave this person this basket for Easter and they gave me this basket for Easter and Dei said wow I didn't know PE she said this this woman she said I didn't know that um people gave Easter baskets as gifts to people on Easter holiday I didn't know people did that and the woman looked at her shocked she said aren't you a Christian the two have nothing to do with each other I promise so I don't know if you know this or not but Easter the origins of Easter are worship of estar the sex goddess that's why there are bunnies CU they reproduce and eggs it's a whole Pagan like holiday it's a pagan lwd holiday and then we said Jesus is the reason for the season no no that sounds good makes you feel better but it's not true it's not true and say my what are you saying I'm saying are you saying that I should not celebrate here's what I'm saying I'm saying uh I don't have shs for other people but it would be a good idea for you to seek the Lord and ask him what he would have you to do like I'm that's not my my point is not me telling you what to do my point is you all of us Allowing God to tell us what to do whatever that is right um and so I'm sure this is not I'm sure this is not going to be my most popular video ever oh well um I'm not running for office so I don't have to be politically correct um and so so we have all of these Traditions that we follow I it and we and we act as if the tradition itself is the truth but the truth is the truth and when the truth punches my tradition in the face and I come to the rescue of the tradition whose side am I really on good I get it so here's the question like did you know Christmas is pagan holiday too but that's a different pagan holiday that's that's based on worship of satalia the son God cuz Jesus wasn't born in December number one and there's no place in the Bible that tells us to celebrate jesus' birth but that's another conversation for a different day I'm not saying like I'm not telling you what to do I'm just I'm making you aware of things to get you to ask some questions that maybe here to before you didn't know to ask and maybe so you can see not so I can see because I'm I'm me so you can see whether or not you have some discomfort in even asking those questions because as I quoted in a video that I recorded earlier today my good friend Joe marolio he said I would rather have questions I can't answer than answers I can't question I don't want to have any answers I can't question like there are people who are afraid to talk to people who have different beliefs than they have because they're but but but we don't agree so we shouldn't talk about it why how how else could we learn something new if we never talk to anybody that we disagree with how can I find like if I if I believe something and I'm right I'm not going to be afraid to talk to people who disagree with me because that'll help me know why I'm right but if I disagree with people if I have a disagreement with with Ryan Cabrera and I'm wrong I'm not oh my goodness but what if I find out when I'm talking to Ryan I'm wrong then I have to change oh no right I don't have that because if I'm wrong if I believe something that's erroneous don't I have a desire to change I mean isn't that the point like well what do you want out of your life what do you want well I want things to get better as long as they can stay the same well technically those are opposing forces either get better or stay the same they're not going to do both okay so here's the question why do people prefer TR tradtion over truth like why do people Elevate tradition over truth because that's what Jesus said why do you teach for Commandments the doctrine of men and by doing so you make the truth of God of none effect why do you why do people do that here's why they do it number one because of who they got the tradition from what does that mean if you got the tradition from someone that you know love and respect you don't want to challenge it because if you do you feel like you're challenging the people that you know love and respect if you find out that something you believed your whole life is erroneous but you got it from your mother whom you love or your father whom you love or your grandmother or grandfather whom you love or your pastor who you love or a Sunday school teacher or a cooworker or a friend or a sibling somebody that you look up to or a mentor and then you find out well wait this ain't right you're afraid if I abandon this thing they taught me then I'm abandoning them so one of the reasons we abandon or that we put truth above tradition is because the teachers that we had in the past were people that we loved and honored and respected and so if I love as long as I love honor and respect them I can't go against what they believed because if I do now I'm I'm invalidating their life no what you're doing is you're invalidating their belief having any more negative impact on your life okay so number one because of the teachers we got it from number two because of the time that we've been believing it well I've been believing this for so long like I don't even know how to stop believing it anymore where I've been believing this I've been believe I've had this belief for so long I remember I I know this hard for y'all like religious people are funny okay so I got invited to go speak to a church and and to their Christian School this is back in the early 2000s and I was traveling as an evangelist and I got there it might have been the late 90s I got to this church and the pastor he's like oh um and I had a mustache I didn't have a beard then I had a mustache the pastor was like oh um I didn't know you had facial hair okay right and yeah you know um I teach against that here so none of my men have facial hair at their church and so it would really create okay so because I agreed to come speak for this pastor and because I'm not I have no desire to create a challenge for him I said okay I'll shave off my mustache yeah I shaved off my mustache right I can grow it'll grow back it'll grow back it will grow back I'll shave it off it won't cause you any problems so okay I'll shave it off but in the moment that I decided to shave off my mustache I also made another decision I will never come back to this church again under any circumstance not well unless there's a different Pastor who doesn't preach against stuff that Jesus did cuz Jesus had facial hair how do I know the Bible says they plucked out his beard you can't pluck out a beard beard that ain't there just saying that's like having a beard was just part of Hebrew culture for men why I don't know why but in fact I was reading in the Bible one day and I don't even remember where I read I think it was in Deuteronomy but I'm not sure it said Thou shalt not round the corners of thy beard I thought that's an odd commandment right that's what I thought to myself but the other conclusion I came to okay Thou shalt not round the corners of thy beard so they had a beard I don't know what round corners are but I know what a beard is and I said you can't not round the corners of the beard you don't have and then I started thinking why would God say don't round the corners of your beard in fact why is it implied that all the men had beards because that's what's implied and then I re living in the age we live in now the what is a man what is a woman age um a beard growing a beard is something that a man can do that a woman can't do and a child can't do generally speaking right oh God is now and always has been interested in and has ordained distinction and a beard is a very distinct like when you look at me nobody's looking at me saying I wonder what her name is no they ain't thinking that no nobody's ever had that thought right okay why cuz there's a difference and so but I shaved off my mustache for this for this Joker for this pastor because I want to I didn't this is your church you you started this church I I'm not here to cause you and by the way the scripture says in honor preferring one another right um look not every man on his own things every man also own his things I could have just said I'm not staying I'm leaving but that would have created some that would have had a negative impact on him my objective is not to have a negative impact on you just cuz you're goofy right and you believe stuff that's not biblical that's your problem you going I'm not going to fix that in a couple days at your church so I'm going to go ahead and go along with it and then I'm out of here and don't invite me back because I ain't coming right okay you say my what you well sometimes it's just the amount of time like we we will repeat behaviors over a long period of time and we will assume that those behaviors are based on truth and they're just based on how long we've been doing them can I get a witness and what we have to do is we have to be willing if you if you are unwilling to abandon tradition in the face of Truth the amount of truth that will be revealed to you will be limited why because the scripture Jesus himself taught If any man will do his will he shall know the doctrine what is that teaching us if I want to learn more from God about what he is saying I need to be doing the last thing he told me the last things he told me if I'm not practicing the principles he's already given me he's not well I'm goingon to give you some more practice some more principles not to practice that's an exercise and futility y'all tracking so so how long have you been trusting in this tradition which who who like how how long has the time period been since you've been believing this there are so many things that I used to erroneously believe I used to believe be one of those Christians who believed you were supposed to be poor I kind of sort of believed it but I knew there was something wrong with it I just didn't know what it was right I didn't know I I could REM I remember though when I was a teenager I came to Christ when I was a teenager received Christ um when I was a teenager and I can remember going to this church and we were the poorest people in the church like my family we were the poorest of the poor and I can remember like the preacher had a brand new Chrysler Cordoba this like in 1978 brand new Chrysler Cordoba lived in a really nice house his wife Drew this mg um uh I think it was an MG that was the name of the car she drove and it was a convertible I'm like they got these cool cars they live in this really nice neighborhood in this nice house and I remember hearing preaching against money I'm like dude you are richer than anybody I've ever seen in my life like I don't even know anybody as rich as you to me like like he he was just a regular middle class guy who was probably making back in the 70s like 30,000 a year or whatever but that was way more money than I like that was way a higher lifestyle than I had ever seen and like he's preaching his money I'm like well okay so what's the number that's the the too much number what's the too much number right because clearly there's a too much number and usually the too the too much number usually the too much number is a number that's associated to somebody else's income not mine can I get a witness right and so when I believed that I was limited I was limited in what I was able to do because my beliefs held me hostage because I thought I was believing them because they were true but the reality is I thought they were true because I believed them I remember I spoke at a church in Pennsylvania and the pastor and the assistant Pastor believed this this is one for the ages here so there's going to be a lot of controversy over this as well but they they believed in predestination and that God chooses us and we don't choose God and I'm thinking to myself n you can't believe that so I talked to a good friend of mine who like I was one of the most solid Bible students I knew and he's a pastor and I'm like David these people believe this how could they believe that he said because it's in the Bible you believe that well you sure I believe it it's Bible like what do you mean what are you talking about bro how could you possibly believe that well it's in the Bible now I'm really confused because my whole life when I came to Christ everything was about evangelism and so it was preached to us in the churches that I came up in you go soul-winning you knock on doors and you witness to people and you but it's like even the term Soul winning right like that phrase is only in the Bible once it's in Proverbs it has nothing to do with the gospel of Salvation right it says um um that he that winth Souls is wise but that's not talking about winning people to Christ that's talking about making friends because our soul is the part of us that relates to other people our spirit relates to God our soul relates to humans and our flesh relates to physicality right anyway so I'm thinking okay so I was taught but you but if you don't preach to them and if you don't teach them the gospel you are sending people to hell so oh yeah it was that intense right and so like so so evangelism and conversions became a contest between churches yeah right and we were all like who had the most salvations who had the most baptisms like and that's how we could tell like if your church was really viable how many people are you reaching cuz like that Pastor said to me we're here to reach people so we're going to sanctify Halloween in Jesus name well first of all the primary purpose of the church is not evangelism it is one of the functions of the church but it's not the primary purpose of the church it's one of the functions of the church the primary function of the church is I the primary purpose of the church is the edifying of the Saints for the work of the ministry but see people who go to your church feel like the work of the ministry is for the pastor their job is to come to the service and be served well but everybody's job in the church is to serve or to minister everybody's job in the family is to serve or Minister everybody's job in the business is to serve and Minister the reason humans are on the earth is so you can have somebody to serve and minister to let's don't let's don't get it confused in our heads that we're here for some other reason we're here to please God and serve people don't be confused by that don't be confused and think the mission is something else anyway so so everything that we did was about Outreach but if if you're taking a function and making it the primary purpose you're going to ca you're it's going to cause you to do some things that are not ideally that are not doctrinally sound and so so I started studying this whole idea of predestination and evangelism was it predestination or was evangelism it's not predestination or evangelism it's both they are both biblical doctrines I am supposed to witness to people and share the gospel of Salvation And The Gospel of the Kingdom with them it's not my job to get them saved I can't do it anyway one Seth another WTH God gives the increase it's not my job to create a conversion it's my job to carry a message and have a conversation and then have enough character that matches the conversation I have so that I don't become a witness that is not credible so that my testimony is admissible when people are listening to me does my life match the words that I'm saying are you is what I'm saying making some sense and so so so like we were guilt tripped into witnessing to people but you don't have to be gu people and witnessing people say my but if you believe in predestination why would you witness to somebody because God told me to I witness to people because me witnessing to people is God's chosen method for reaching people so he told me to witness so I'm going to witness I can't create the conversion but I can carry the message and I can carry the message and be obedient even though I can't create the conversion in fact it takes the responsibility for God's part off of me and only puts the responsibility for my part on me and so what we have to be willing to do regardless of where we find truth we have to be willing to yield to it wherever we find it and however it finds us we have to be willing to yield to it and I'm talking about um if I believe that God has called me to do a thing and it is my responsibility to do that thing then it doesn't matter who face my action are flying in the face of because this is what I'm here for and I can't nav manipulate and navigate the landscape in such a way that I can eat my cake and have it too I have to do what God Said the way God said it when God said to do it if I am to consider myself an obedient child of the king if I'm to consider myself one of the king's Kings and I'd like for my assignment to yield to me I have to be yielded to God in order for my assignment to yield to me when when I'm a when I allow the Bible to just say what it says and mean what it means without me reading anything into it it gives me the opportunity to operate in my life at a much higher level so that I don't find myself like most error most lies in a perpetual self-con contradiction so that my tradition doesn't end up bumping its head on its tail because I was unwilling to yield to the truth as it found me so let's not be people who make the truth of God of none effect by our Traditions when the truth finds us and it exposes to us some aspect of our our lives that is not yielded to the purpose of pleasing God or serving people let's let the word change us immediately and completely hope this word helps you stay blessed by the best and we'll look forward to seeing you next Thursday on the video by the way starting next Thursday our Bible studies will be on a new channel which I'm going to post a short on this channel the day of so you you will know exactly where to go but we're going to post a short on the new channel and it'll tell you where to go for the live Bible study and actually the Bible study next week will be recorded because I will be out of town or on vacation but the video will release on our new channel next Thursday morning at 10: a.m. in the meantime in between time stay blessed by the best and we'll see you on the next video bye for [Applause] now you Avo all the controversy today say it again you know me I'm always sidest stepping the issues bro