Sunday PM
Date: February 5, 2023
I was here probably about a year ago. I brought a fellow from Vietnam, a Filipino missionary over in Vietnam, Javier Garcia, and he spoke here. You may remember that. I think that’s the only time I’ve been actually at the church. We’ve been good friends, of course. We’re from Commonwealth Baptist College, Lexington, Kentucky. Our president is Dr. Jeff Fuget, and I’m vice president there. I oversee the day-to-day operations of the school. The school is going very well.
Two of our graduates, Brother Anthony and Ms. Cotora Aaron, toured with us. My wife and I used to take tour groups out. We retired from that when we hit 70, but we took tour groups out for quite a while, and Cotora toured with us a couple years. We appreciate her, and I’ve become good friends with them. I appreciate Brother Chisgar. Of course, we had Sarah in college up there, too. She’s still down in Florida, as I understand it, working with Brother Carter and doing a good job down there. I get word about her every once in a while. It’s exciting to be here. It’s exciting to serve God. I brought a few things along. First off, from the college, just to say a word about that. Again, we’re…
Independent Fundamental, King James soul-winning separated Baptist College, a four-year school. Most of our students get a job and work their way through. The job market in Lexington is very good. I think most of them right now are starting somewhere between $12 and $15 an hour, some a little less, some a little more. I don’t know anybody recently started under $10. But again, most of them, I think, around $11 or $12.
Tuition, room, board, and fees are low: $7,940 for a full academic year. That’s tuition, room, board, fees, everything. It comes out a little over $700 a month.
Sometimes I say if you’re having trouble with your rent or anything, think about coming to Bible college. I mean, $700 a month, all you can eat, an education too, a place to sleep, utilities paid—it’s really a pretty good deal. We’ve got a brochure here that’s free, back on the table. I brought several CDs from the college. I didn’t think to repack and pull a couple of them that Cotora was in. We do have four of the CDs back there. The CDs are $10 each. If you’re in middle school, high school, or a recent high school graduate, we’d like to get you on our mailing list. Or if you’ve got grandkids, nieces, nephews, or somebody you’d like to get on our mailing list, you’ll want to fill in one of these for them. Cards are available back there on the table.
A year of Bible school is good for everybody finishing up high school. It’s a great transition into whatever you’re going to do next in life. When you go to Bible school, the whole emphasis, though there is pressure as you’re out on your own pretty much, is that you’ve got guidance there, but the atmosphere and the influences are to do right. If you’re determined, you can slip out and do wrong still, but the emphasis is on doing right. If you go almost anywhere else—secular college, military, whatever—you can do right in those situations, and you should, but on the other hand, all the pressure is to do wrong. I think Bible school is good for everybody when they finish up high school, and even better if you stay longer.
Then I’ve written one book that I’ve brought along. It’s called Should I? Bible Answers to Questions of Personal Separation. There are about 45 or 50 pages of principles for making decisions about right and wrong according to the Bible, and then about 45 or 50 pages of application: “I don’t drink, I don’t listen to rock music, this is how I dress,” et cetera. It covers all the issues that differentiate us as independent fundamental Baptists and gives you what I understand from the Bible in terms of answers to those questions. Of course, it is God who sets the standards, not us. It is up to us to figure out what he said and try to follow that. If you’re interested in Bible answers to those questions, these books are $5 each. You can pick those up after the service.
Brother Chisgar mentioned Dr. Wendell Evans from Hyles-Anderson. He has been my mentor. He was my boss when I started in Christian education down at Tennessee Temple; he was still dean down there at that time. He has a brief book on American history, Some Thoughts on American History. I sell those for $8. Whatever money comes in from the CDs goes to the college. Whatever money comes in from the books, I give away, just trying to get the truth out, covering my cost, of course, and then giving the rest away. At $5 a book, you’re not making much on them anyway. My goal is to get the truth out, not necessarily make money. It is not copyrighted if you want to copy pages of it and pass it around. If you buy a quantity, you can get them really cheap and save yourself all that trouble.
When I was at Tennessee Temple, Dr. Robertson was there. I remember him saying again and again, “Straight down the line, never vary.” That’s right. Some of you in this area are sure under Dr. Robertson’s influence. My wife’s dad was Sunday school superintendent there for close to 20 years back in the heyday of the ministry, and he was a strong influence from Dr. Robertson in my life. And, of course, then others: Brother Hiles, Dr. John Rice, and I was close to his family and others around in this neighborhood. All of them taught me that you just ought to keep going, keep going the same. Don’t change. You want to keep doing what you were taught to do. You want to keep doing what’s right. You want to keep doing what God’s Word says.
With that in mind, and praying about what to preach, I felt like God led me to preach a message I have preached quite a bit before. Why don’t you turn your Bible, stand up, get a stretch at the beginning to make sure you’re awake when I start, and turn in your Bible to Psalm 108. We’ll read a couple of different passages here in Psalms, pretty much the same context, similar texts. Psalm 108, verse 1: The psalmist writes, “O God, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give praise, even with my glory.”
That phrase at the beginning of the verse, “O God, my heart is fixed,” appears again if you look back at Psalm 57, verse 7. Psalm 57, verse 7, says, “My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give praise.” And then over in Psalm 112, verse 7, the same phrase again: “He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.”
You can go ahead and be seated. I’m having trouble reading that back in the back, so I’ll try to watch here a little bit. I usually preach less than two hours, so just let you know that. Normally, it’s about 30 minutes. One girl is leaving already when I said less than two hours! But 30 minutes is less than two hours, isn’t it? I’m going to be looking at probably right at 30 minutes from now. We are trying to drive back to Lexington tonight.
The Bible says, “God, my heart is fixed.” I think America needs churches that would say, “God, our heart is fixed on some things.” We need churches and pastors and leaders in churches that would say, “God, my heart is fixed on some things.” Every city needs churches. Every church needs deacons and choir members and Sunday school teachers and bus workers that would say, “God, our heart is fixed on some things.”
The world tells you today that you shouldn’t be sure about anything—that everything is up in the air, everything is moving, everything is changing. Truth is changing; truth is relative. What is true for you might not be true for you, and you just have to decide truth for yourself. But according to the Word of God, truth is settled forever in heaven. God gave us truth in His Word, and truth is not relative; truth is absolute, according to the Word of God. Truth does not change. It is settled.
Again, the world tells us today everything is changing. You have to keep an open mind. Who’s to say this isn’t right? I know you were brought up thinking this was wrong or that was wrong, but that’s just what your parents said. Somebody else’s parents told them something different. This is a new day, new age, new decade, new century, and you have to be open-minded. I can be open-minded on some things. We ordered a couple of new sofas for our family room the other day, and I was very open-minded. I didn’t care if they were blue or brown or red. Now, my wife had an opinion, and so that’s what we went with. But I’d be open-minded.
When you are going to paint the church auditorium, or should we repaint it, or get a different color, or redecorate, or how do we want to set up our budget? There are some things in a budget that are fixed. But beyond that, how much do I want to spend on housing? How much do I want to spend on food? I’d be open-minded about a lot of things. But on the other hand, there are some things where I am not open-minded, because it is not my opinion that matters; it is God’s opinion that matters. For the big decisions in my life, I do not make them based on what I think; I want to make them according to what the Word of God teaches. There ought to be some things about which a Christian would say, “God, my heart is fixed on that. I am not changing.”
Again, you go back to Dr. Robertson: “Straight down the line, never vary.” This is it; don’t change. Keep going.
I’ve been teaching college for a long time. Sometimes I prepare my test for this year by looking at last year’s test and redoing it a little bit. Every once in a while, I’ll find something on last year’s test that I forgot to teach this year. It is good and important, and it’s a good question. This is a quiz or a short test, and I’m getting ready for a longer test. I think I’ve decided I’ll just throw that question in there anyhow, even though I didn’t teach it, but I’ll also put in the answer. Everybody will get number 34 right because I put the answer in there on the test. Wouldn’t somebody be kind of dumb to say, “Well, I just don’t agree with that. I’m going to change it to something else”? I think the capital of Kentucky is Frankfort, and so I put that in. But somebody else says, “I don’t know, I think it’s Louisville.” He changes the answer he put down. That would be dumb. If somebody is dumb enough to do that, I guess you’d get it wrong even though I gave you the answer.
God has given us the answers in His book, and there is no debate on what God says. Good people can sometimes disagree on what God teaches, but some things are just absolute and straight and clear. There is some stuff that good people can disagree about, but only one of them can be right because God is the one who decides what is right. We ought to have our heart fixed on some things. Somebody says, “What kind of things are you talking about, Brother Jordanson?” Well, I’ll give you a list of things I fixed my heart on years ago. My heart is fixed on my King James Bible.
I believe that the Bible I hold in my hand is the inspired, preserved Word of God for English-speaking people. When I was a lad, my mother handed me a King James Bible. She said, “Son, this is the Word of God. It is right about everything.” God is right about everything, and she said this is God’s Word. I have gotten older. I have studied Hebrew and taught Greek at Tennessee Temple while I was going to seminary. I was teaching Greek in the college, and I just believe my mama was right. I believe that the King James Bible is the inspired, infallible, preserved Word of God for English-speaking people.
I think any higher education that would cause you to doubt the infallibility of the Word of God is wrong. 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” God gave it. Second Peter 1:21 says, “Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” When they wrote down the words of this book—Peter and Paul and Moses and everybody else—God told them what to write. God gave them the very words.
They expressed the emotions of those people. When Paul writes, “My brother, and my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved,” I don’t think he was sleeping or yawning or saying, “How many more chapters, God? I’m ready to call it a night.” I think he was burdened, expressing the divine feelings of his heart and the burden of his heart, but I think he did so in words that were inspired by God, the Holy Spirit of God. God told him what to write, and he wrote it down, and I have a copy of it. My heart is fixed on my King James Bible. Somebody says, “What about this? What about that?” My heart is fixed on my King James Bible; I am not open to changing it.
A preacher mentioned—and sometimes I say this in the introduction—that I went to Princeton and majored in mathematics there. In math, you only get one answer when you work a problem; it is not six or seven. When I graduated, the president of the university, Dr. Robert Goheen at that time, gave the commencement address to the graduates. The address was basically, “Gentlemen, you have got to understand that truth is always changing, and nobody has a corner on truth. You have got to realize that the things you have studied here and everything you’ve learned here are not necessarily true or going to remain true because truth is always changing.” I thought, “Wow. Somebody paid a whole lot of money, and I studied awfully hard to learn a lot of things he wasn’t even sure were true.” That doesn’t make sense. We may learn truths that we didn’t know last year, but truth is true. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Jesus said, “Sanctify them through thy word: thy word is truth.” God’s word is true. God is right about everything. We can agree or disagree about God’s word, but God’s word is right about everything. If I do not know what to do, all I have to do is get my Bible out and read. If I can get some direction out of the Word of God, that is what I ought to do. My heart is fixed on my King James Bible.
Number two, my heart is fixed on door-to-door soul winning. Acts 5:42 says, “And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.” I believe in old-fashioned, confrontational soul-winning, where you go up to somebody and say, “I have a gospel tract here, a little pamphlet from our church. I would like to invite you to the church services.” There is a map on the back and the times. Here is a picture of our pastor. Then there are Bible verses that let you know how you could go to heaven. Sometimes I will say, “Wouldn’t that be a good thing to know?” Some people say, “Yeah, it would,” or “Sure.” Some people say, “Oh, I already got that.” Some people say, “I’m busy.” But some people say, “Yeah, I would like to know that.” You go through the gospel with them, and they will pray and trust Christ as Savior. I believe in that.
Some say, “Well, people do like that and they pray, and it’s quick. Do they really get saved if they believe?” How long did it take Jesus to lead Nicodemus to the Lord in John 3? Read that passage real slowly. You can assume some other things were said that didn’t get written down, but it still was not three hours. He got saved. Then in Chapter 4, He wins a woman at the well. They probably chatted there and talked about other things, but when He got down to giving the gospel, it did not take hours and hours. That lady got saved and went out and got a bunch of her unsaved friends and brought them out to see Jesus, and they got saved. I believe in confrontational door-to-door soul winning.
We had a big soul-winning emphasis day. We go soul winning all the time at the college, our church, and so on, but we had an emphasis with the college last Saturday. We call it “Each One Reach One.” The goal is that everybody in the college—faculty, staff, student body—would have at least one person saved on that Saturday. It was October 17 this year. We do not reach that goal; we never have reached it, but we get a lot closer than if we didn’t try. We did have about not quite 200 saved. We had 119 different students, staff, and others lead at least one person to Christ that day. Four people—a couple of high school kids, a college girl—that doesn’t make four, but anyhow, four people altogether said they won their first soul to Christ that day.
I believe in soul winning. Somebody says, “That’s fine, but we don’t do it that way anymore. We’ve got a TV program now. We’re on YouTube now. We’re on live stream Facebook.” I am not against any of that. Our church does all that stuff. We do have a TV program, we live stream, we have a radio show. I am in favor of doing anything you can to get the gospel out to people. But none of that replaces talking to an individual, going up to them and saying, “If you died today, would you go to heaven or would you go to hell, or don’t you even know?” My heart is fixed on dealing with soul winning; I believe in it.
Somebody says, “It doesn’t work.” Look, the results are up to God. It is up to me to pray and to go, and the power of the Holy Spirit handles the results. The Bible does say, Dr. Dreis’s verse, “He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.” God does promise some results. Not everybody to whom I witness gets saved, and not every Saturday do I see somebody saved, but I do see people saved. There is nothing like the thrill of walking away from last Saturday. A young mother in her 30s, two teenage daughters, prayed in unison—which is a little unusual for me to have a family like that—and the mother and two daughters prayed in unison out loud, standing there on a little driveway beside where they were living, and trusted Christ as their Savior. Did they really get saved? If they believed, they did.
My heart is fixed on confrontational door-to-door soul winning. I believe the reason God leaves us on earth after we are saved is so we can win people to Christ. My goal is to glorify God and serve Him. When I get to heaven, I am going to glorify God and serve Him there. The Bible says, “His servants shall serve Him.” That is me; it is all of us who are saved. I am going to serve Him in heaven. When I get to heaven, I will not have this old sin nature anymore. I will not have all the problems of the flesh. That would be a good day. I will be able to serve Him better in heaven than I can here because I will not have my old nature anymore. So why would God leave me here if my goal is to serve Him and I could serve Him better there than I can here? It is so I can witness to others, I believe. So I am being a testimony to others. So I am trying to get more people saved and help more people. My heart is fixed on soul winning. I believe in it, and that ought to be our goal as a Christian.
My heart is fixed on number three, preaching. 1 Corinthians 1:21 says, “It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” I believe in old-fashioned, leather-lung, confrontational preaching. Clubs, donuts, and Starbucks—that kind of stuff is fine. If you want to witness to somebody at Starbucks, that is fine. But I believe in preaching. You can set up and serve coffee and donuts in the lobby or the fellowship hall, or whatever you want to do or don’t want to do. But I believe in preaching. As far as that goes, I believe in the local church, but I believe in the preaching of the Word of God.
Somebody said, “Man, you’ve got to be careful when you preach. You don’t offend anybody.” That is a lot of the new direction today—just don’t offend anybody in your preaching. It is supposed to be all about love; don’t preach anything that could be construed as negative. Somebody forgot to tell Jesus that. What about when He went into the temple in Matthew 21 and said, “My house shall be called a house of prayer,” but you have made it a den of thieves? He might have offended somebody; probably did. What about when Peter got up on Pentecost and said, basically, “You guys just killed the Messiah”? That is in-your-face preaching. He might have offended somebody, and he probably did offend some people, but 3,000 got saved and baptized.
I believe in preaching. Somebody said to me—and I know he was joking—“Bring good messages, don’t step on my toes.” As a preacher, my goal is just to preach the truth. I like it when people like me. I do not want to offend people; I do not want to get people upset. But my goal is to preach the Word of God. Ultimately, I have to please Him. If I please Him, that is my responsibility. I believe in the preaching of the Word of God, not the suave little talks and musicals and plays. I am not against those things, but none of them replace the preaching of the Word of God. We have a Christmas cantata at our church every year. We have school plays. The academy will put on plays. I traveled with tour groups 11 years, and they did a lot of singing. All that is good, but none of it replaces the preaching of the Word of God.
My heart is fixed on old-time preaching. 2 Timothy 4 says, “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and godly teaching.” My heart is fixed on the preaching of the Word of God.
My heart is fixed on, I said number one, my heart is fixed on my King James Bible. Number two, my heart is fixed on door-to-door soul winning. My heart is fixed on preaching. My heart is fixed on the bus ministry and reaching poor people. I mean, I love the bus ministry. Psalm 41 says, “Blessed is he that considereth the poor.” If you read your Bible much at all, you can’t get away from the fact that God cares about poor people. It seems like sometimes we’re interested in the wealthy. We don’t want to hang out with the people that can’t give anything to us. We’re not trying to build a church of a bunch of people that you pick up here and there, areas where you’re not comfortable being all the time. But if you read the Word of God, God blesses the church that cares about poor people. God blesses the individual that cares about poor people. God blesses people that care about the poor. My heart is fixed on the bus ministry and reaching poor people.
My wife and I, both in our 70s now, have been for a few years. You get introduced like this; everybody says, “Brother Jorgensen’s been at this for decades,” and it’s a nice way of saying he’s getting really old. At least Brother Chisgar didn’t say, “Now, you young people sit up and listen carefully, Brother Jorgensen, he’s getting up there. You don’t know how many times you may be able to hear him again.” I appreciate that you didn’t say that tonight. We visit on a bus route just about every Saturday we’re in Lexington. I love bus ministry. Some of you ought to think about getting involved in the bus ministry. My wife and I have spent our lives caring for our three kids, our college kids, and our bus kids. We’ve let God take care of us. God’s done a marvelous job, much better than we have. In terms of blessings or finances or anything else, God has taken very good care of us. You spend your time giving your life away, especially to people.
I’m good friends with Dr. Russell Anderson of Hyles-Anderson College, a multi-millionaire who has given, I don’t know, $35 million or something like that to God’s work. By my standards, he is very wealthy. When you do something for Dr. Anderson, somebody like that, you can’t help but think, “I wonder if he’ll…” I’ve seen him just hand people $100 bills. You wonder if you’ll get something out of this. You can’t help but think that. You go out and do something for a poor person, somebody who’s got nothing to give you. You are serving that person, and then he gives. That is better than Russell Anderson’s money or anybody else’s money, as far as that goes; you do rewards that are a whole lot better than money.
Brother Fuget said a while back, when we get to the place in our fundamental movement where we just count tithers—how many did you have in church today? How many came on buses? Well, the bus ones don’t count so much. Why not? They are souls; they are going to be in heaven or hell. I said to Brother Fuget one day, how come we have so many wealthy people in the church when we have a real emphasis on the bus ministry and reaching poor people? I was sitting on a platform one night, and these guys are my age. I don’t know their net worth, but they talk about their boats and their condos in Florida and their businesses. But if you had said, “Well, that’s the way it always is: you go after the poor, God sends the wealthy to you.” That is what it was in Jesus’ life. He went to the poor; the wealthy came to Him. God blesses the individual who cares for poor people. I love bus ministry. I challenge some of you to say, “I could help some in the bus ministry.” Talking to Anthony and Cotora last night, they said they could use bus workers here in the church, a couple of routes. Even if you ride on Sunday morning to help take care of the kids, do something. My heart is fixed on the bus ministry reaching poor people.
My heart is fixed on the local church. Jesus said, Matthew 16:18, “On this rock I’ll build my church.” I decided years ago to build my life around the local church. I decided I was going to attend it: Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. I got some of that from Dr. Robertson: “Three to Thrive.” I just don’t know when or how I am going to die, but I am sure it is not going to be on a plane on a Sunday night at 8 o’clock because I am going to be in church. I am going to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. If the Titans make it to the Super Bowl, I am still going to church. I have been a Green Bay Packer fan forever, and they do get to the Super Bowl every once in a while. But I go to church. I wouldn’t miss church to watch a game. I wouldn’t miss church to save a little bit of money on an airplane ticket. I believe in going to church. I believe you ought to support the church. You ought to give financially. Giving ought to be to the church and the ministry. What you spend here stays here. What you invest in God’s work, you will meet up there. I enjoy giving, and my wife and I enjoy giving to God’s work and to God’s people. It is a blessing to be able to do that. My heart is fixed on the local church.
My heart is fixed on righteous living and standards. 2 Peter 2:5 says Noah was a preacher of righteousness. Jesus said in Matthew 6:33, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” I still believe in the old-fashioned standards. What Dr. Robertson taught us was right and wrong when I went down to Tennessee Temple. What I read from Dr. Rice as I got to know him and read The Sword of the Lord—it was all out of the Bible. I believe in righteous living and standards. Jesus did say, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” I believe the separated Christian life is the best life in the world.
When you go out and you see people, and you work in the bus ministry very much, you see a lot of people whose lives are wrecked. If you get into the wealthy homes and high neighborhoods, you see a lot of people whose lives are wrecked too. What makes a successful life? Serving God. I please Him. I please my wife. We serve God together all these years, approaching 50 years of marriage now. Life couldn’t be any better than serving God.
If you live a separated life like that—you have never been to a casino, Brother Jorgensen? No. Wow, you could win a lot of money. You probably lose a lot, but if you did win a lot, it is not the right way to get money. God says you are supposed to work for your money. Somebody says, “Well, you were sitting in an airport in Nevada one day, and two ladies went by.” Airports in Nevada have slot machines. Two ladies walking by, one said, “Did you get rid of all yours yet?” The other said, “No, I’ve still got $8 or something to go.” The other said, “Oh, I managed; I got rid of all mine.” They were playing the slot machines, having designated some money to spend on them. I am thinking, man, if you just want to get rid of it, give it to me; I will take it. But Jorgensen said, “You missed out on that.” I do not know; it does not sound like fun to me. It really does not matter. It is wrong. I can sleep at night. I think the separated Christian life is the best life in the world.
I still believe that marriage is one man and one woman. I still believe that marriage is exclusive and marriage is supposed to be permanent. Sometimes it has not worked out for people in the past, but all of us can resolve from this point forward, “I am going to do what God said.” All of us have things in our past we wish we could change, but the past is past. All I can do is say from this point forward, I am doing what is right. I still believe that men ought to look like men and women ought to look like women. I still believe that alcohol is out of the pit of hell. I think gambling is wrong; it is a horrible misuse of God’s money. I still think you ought to get married pure. I still think that Hollywood is all messed up in the movies and everything they promote. By and large, Hollywood is in favor of everything I am against—everything the Word of God is against.
We are here at a time of an election, and everybody wonders what will happen, our future, this or that. My job is the same. It does not matter who wins the election—it might matter whether I can do it freely or not—but my job is the same. I am supposed to serve God, testify, and witness. My heart is fixed on righteous living and standards. I have added one more: My heart is fixed on loving people.
I believe in loving people. I believe in people. When talking about our college students or anybody, I want to love people. I want to help them grow, help them mature, and help them reach their potential. I am not going to get down on people and say they are a bunch of no good. These students, you know, they are sneaky. Some do sneak around, yeah, but I am not going to look at them that way. I am going to believe in people. I want to love people. I want to try and be a help to people.
I challenge you tonight: fix your heart on some things. We have the Word of God; it never changes. Things that are true are true. Things that are false, things that are a lie, are a lie. It does not change. Society will tell you that everything is changing and everything is different now. Maybe your ideas have changed recently, but what is true is true. Two plus two is four. Sunrise in the east, sets in the west—it is all the same. It never changes. I want to challenge you tonight to fix your heart on some things and decide, “My mind’s made up. I am not going to change. This is where I am going to stay.” When Jesus comes and calls me home, I am going to keep going straight down the line, never vary. Fix my heart on some things.
Original File: Dr. James Jorgenson Sunday PM