Too many people in our country today are looking for entertainment.  We don’t worship God anymore; we have worship “experiences.”  We have to have strobe lights and smoke, personalities, famous people signing autographs and whatever they sell now.  I just put a few vinyl records away, or they’re going to be put away shortly, so I know it’s not vinyl anymore.  Uh, 8‑tracks are gone.  No more cassettes, CDs.  There’s nothing to autograph anymore.  Can’t you see the people rushing Paul and rushing Peter after the service and saying, “Can we have your autograph?”  What do you think Paul’s response would have been?  “Let him that glories, glory in the Lord.”  Amen?

These bishops that he’s speaking of, he says these are people who are to be blameless, and he said, “I want them to be sober”—lives that are sober, sound, stable.  He said, “I don’t want them to be given to wine,”—here’s a great one, especially in this hour that we’re living—“not greedy of filthy lucre.”  Here’s one—and there are a lot of homes today—we could almost empty half the pulpits in America today, because they don’t have their homes in order.  The wives are not submissive.  Their children are not obedient.  Paul goes on and talks about the fact that these children should be saved, born again.  If they’re not born again, their sin should not be covered before the congregation and hidden.  They, like anybody else, should be reproved and rebuked.  If they’re a responsible age and they’re going to oppose the gospel, then they should be marked and put out of our churches.  I’m talking about the pastors’ kids.

You see, that’s what we’re looking at in these last days.  If men are going to be bringing a word of God to us in these last days, then we want to know they’re qualified men: people whom God is speaking through, that the doctrine and the lives behind the doctrine are sound.  Paul commended them for knowing his doctrine, but he commended them even greater that they knew him and knew his ways; amen?  So, therefore, these leaders should not be separate from the people; they should be among the people and be known for who they really are.  So many of the preachers today set themselves apart from the congregation.  The Lord is our Shepherd; we shall not want.  He told us to come and abide in Him and with Him; amen?  He invites us to Himself.  The good shepherd lays his life down for the flock.  The good shepherd is not one who—as Peter speaks, says these false pastors and bishops and prophets who come among you, he said they’ve come for one reason and that’s to make merchandise out of you.  Hurting sheep are not being embraced by loving pastors and having the oil poured upon them to bring healing.  They’re being fleeced for profit.  What a sad thing to see one of the sheep down, beaten and needing care, and being fleeced when they should be being embraced.  It’s the spirit of the hour.

As we’re coming into this last hour, we’re looking for men of God.  We’re looking for men who are able, who themselves are able to be taught.  Do not listen to a teacher who is not teachable.  Someone who cannot hear and humble themselves and subordinate themselves and let the Word of God be the final authority.  And their books are being sold by the hundreds of thousands and their videos and whatever else it is.  Tragically, if anybody can be full of themselves, it’s so many of us preachers.  You know my testimony, my life.  You’ve been here forever, so I don’t have to go back through that.  I thank God for His delivering me from that destruction of the 1980s.