Amen. I know you were more impressed
the second time through, so that's why I did that, but Amen.
Take your Bibles this morning, if you will, and turn over to
Ecclesiastes chapter 8. Ecclesiastes chapter 8.
I never claimed to be a professional singer.
I just love to sing, especially when you're singing about Jesus.
And I don't know, I don't know what you sing about.
I mean, I know the world has a lot of songs that they've
written, but I don't know what you sing about that'll get you
excited any more than singing about Jesus Christ.
And I tell you, if you're here this morning, you don't know
Jesus Christ as your Savior. You don't know what you're
missing. You don't know what real peace
is. You don't know what real joy is.
You don't know what life is like without Jesus Christ.
And I trust that you'll get that settled this morning.
I'm not necessarily going to preach a message on salvation,
but the whole Bible really revolves around the gospel,
really revolves around Jesus Christ and what he did on the
cross for us. But Ecclesiastes chapter 8, if
you're still looking for it, it's right after Proverbs, and
that's right after Psalm. So if you can find the book of
Psalms, unless you have a New Testament in Psalms, then it's
going to be Matthew after that. But Psalms, Proverbs,
Ecclesiastes in chapter 8. This is a book that was written
by Solomon as well, but he says this in verse #1 Who is as the
wise man, and who knoweth the interpretation of a thing?
A man's wisdom maketh his face to shine, and the boldness of
his face shall be changed. I counsel thee to keep the
King's commandment, and that in regard of the oath of God.
Be not hasty to go out of his sight.
Stand not in an evil thing, for he doeth whatsoever pleaseth
him. Where the word of a king is,
there is power. And who may say unto him, What
do is thou? Whoso keepeth the commandment
shall feel no evil thing. And a wise man's heart
discerneth both time and judgment.
I'm well aware of the fact that this is talking about an earthly
king. That's who.
That's who Solomon is talking about here.
But this is back in the days when kings rule the land, and we
don't have kings anymore. I mean, we do, but most of them
are just symbolic. But it was a very heinous crime
to disobey the command of the king.
And if you valued your life, you didn't disobey the command of
the king. There's, there's places like
that around the world, I suppose that are still that way today.
You disappoint the, the leader or the ruler.
Maybe in some of these communist countries, they don't
necessarily sentence you to death, but you just disappear.
They, the kings back in that day had no problem sentencing you to
death if you disobeyed his command.
It was it was often up to the king to issue a punishment.
But in the case of a of egregious disobedience, many
times the punishment was death and they would just send him
right off to the executioner and by that evening he would be
dead. You did not disobey the command
of the king. The King's command was law, and
you did not want to anger him. Now, let me point you in a
couple verses. Point out a couple verses to you
that will hopefully point us in a little bit of a direction that
we're going this morning. Turn over to Revelation chapter
1. Hopefully after we read a couple
verses here, you'll see the direction that we're going with
this this morning. But in Revelation chapter 1 and
verse #5 that's the last book of the Bible, Revelation chapter 1
and verse #5 the Bible says this.
And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness and the
first begotten of the dead, and the Prince of the kings of the
earth, unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in
his own blood. Turn a few pages over to
Revelation chapter 17. Revelation chapter 17 and the
Bible says this and verse #14. These shall make war with the
Lamb. Capital L is talking about Jesus
Christ, and the Lamb shall overcome them, for He is Lord of
Lords and King of kings, and they that are with Him are
called and chosen and faithful. Chapter 19 of Revelation and
verse #16 talking about Jesus Christ again.
It says in the hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name
written, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
See, our Master is not just a king, He's not just a Lord.
He is the king of kings and he is the Lord of Lords.
We obviously don't live in an age when a king can sentence us
to death, but we have a king capital K that we are
responsible to obey. As much as the ancient
civilizations feared the repercussions of a disobedience
to their sovereign, we ought to feel the fear, the repercussions
of disobedience to our king. He's not just a king.
He is the king of kings and he's the Lord of Lords.
Ecclesiastes chapter 12. In fact, if you will turn.
Over there with me. I should have had you keep your
finger, and now you got to find it again.
But Ecclesiastes chapter 12 and verse #12 the Bible says this.
Now, obviously, we've established that it's important
for us to obey the king. And the king that we have is not
just a king. He is the king of kings, and
he's the Lord of Lords. And then we have this just a
couple pages over from Ecclesiastes chapter 8, where we
were just at. But chapter 12 and verse #12 the
Bible says this. Let us hear the conclusion of
the whole matter. Fear God and keep His
commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.
Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the
whole duty of man. What a tremendous responsibility
we have. We must obey the command of the
King of Kings, the command of the king.
That's the title of my message this morning.
That's what I want to examine in the Word of God.
You know that in the Old Testament there are 613
commands, and in the New Testament there are 1050
commands. That means there's a total of
1663 commands in the Bible. But I just want to look at three
of them this morning. And I think if we look at three
of those, these three really kind of encompass all the rest
of those commands. I think it's makes it much
easier for us to obey the rest of them if we get these three
this morning. 16163 is a lot of commands. 3 is not that bad to
try to focus on. Let's do that this morning.
Can we? Let's pray and then we'll look
in the word of God at a few of these different commands.
Father, again, we thank you so much for your goodness this
morning. Thank you so much for how good
you are to us in the way that you just watch over us and.
Protect us and the way that you continually keep working on us.
God, I thank you for never giving up on me.
Thank you for continuously working in my heart.
I pray that you do that this morning through the message.
I pray that you do the same for everybody else that's here as
well. God, we thank you so much for
all that you do in Jesus name, Amen.
Turn over, if you will, to Mark. Chapter 12, I've got a couple
passages for you to look at this morning.
The commands that we're going to look at are in a couple
different spots in the Bible, all of them in the New
Testament. But Mark chapter #12 the first
command we find there in verse #30 and really, if we were to
follow this command, I think we could follow all the rest of
them with no problem. But Mark chapter 12 and verse
#30 the Bible says this. And thou shalt love the Lord thy
God. Now that word shout means it is
a command. It's something that you don't
have a choice in doing. Now, I obviously, I'm a chaplain
for our Police Department. I do a lot of writing along and
I've asked a lot of questions about different laws and
different, different, different laws that are on the books.
And there's sometimes that says you may do this.
There are sometimes it says you shall do this.
If it says may, you can use your discretion to decide how you
want to handle the situation. If it says shall, you don't have
a choice. You have to do what that that
law says or what that directive says and he says.
This thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.
And with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy
strength. This is the first commandment.
So the first one that we find here.
Then I think it would be hard to make that point #2 So it's #1
this morning. Love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart. See, most Christians are willing
to obey with lip. Service.
If you were to ask most people, do you love God, everybody, I
think I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand, but if I
were this morning, I think everybody would raise your hand
and say, yes, I love God and I love God with all my heart,
right? When you they're willing to put
it on a bumper sticker on the back of their car.
I love Jesus. How many times you've seen that?
And then the guy you cut him off an accident, he runs by beeping
at you and you know, making gestures and all kinds of those
things. I love Jesus on the bumper
sticker, right? That's the way most Christians
are today. Well, they'll, they'll, they'll
say it in Word. They don't have any problems
saying that they love God. But when you ask them to
actually put it into practice, now that's a whole different
matter all together. The truth is that most
Christians don't love the Lord with all their heart and with
all their soul and with all their mind and with all their
strength. That's everything you have.
That's all of you. There's not.
There's nothing left after your heart and soul and mind and
strength. And can you say this morning
that I love the Lord with all my heart, with all my soul, with
all my mind and with all my strength?
If we did, it would change the way that we live.
It was a guy by the name of Russell Herman, died in 1994
when he was 67 years old. And he left a staggering will
behind him. I just a staggering set of, of
bequests in his will. He had $2 billion set aside for
distribution for the city of East Saint Louis, $2 billion,
another billion and 1/2 he gave to the state of Illinois to help
help them try to pay down some of the the debt that the state
had. He left 2 1/2 billion dollars
for the National Forest system and then on top of all of that,
he left $6 trillion to the government to help pay off the
national debt. But there was just one problem.
When Herman died in 1994, the only thing that he actually
owned was a 1983 Oldsmobile. Grand pronouncements, but there
was no real generosity involved. There was nothing there that he
had behind that. His promises were meaningless
because there was nothing to back him up.
And I wonder how many Christians act the same way toward God.
I'll do this for you and I'll do that for you.
And, and I would love to go to Africa and be a missionary.
I'd love to go to some other part of the world and be a
missionary. If that's what you want me to
do. Hey, call me.
Tell me what you want me to do, and I'll do it.
And then God calls. You and you say, well, on second
thought, maybe I'll do something a little bit different.
Hey, let's bring it a little bit closer to home.
And God says, hey, I want you to go across the street and tell
your neighbor about Christ. Oh, I'll do anything, God, I'll
do anything. I want to live for you.
I love you with all my heart and all my soul and all my strength
and all my mind. Tell me what you want me to do
and I'll do it. Hey, get rid of this thing out
of your life. You know, that's holding you
back from being what God wants you to be.
Oh, well, that wasn't part of the agreement.
I was just talking about those things over there.
Right. How many Christians live that
way? They'll say all they want you,
that they love God, but they don't really do it.
They promised to love Him, they promised to serve Him, but they
know they have no intention of actually proving that.
When the Bible says that we should love the Lord our Gods
with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all of
our strength, that means loving us, loving Him with everything
that we have. That little word all is a huge
word. There's a lot involved in all.
That means all our desires belong to Him.
It means all our affections belong to Him.
It means all of our thoughts, all of our dreams, all of our
hopes, everything is directed toward God.
We. Have to give it to Him.
It won't be hard to live for him.
If we do see if we love God with all our heart, it won't be hard
to spend time in God's word. You love God with all your
heart. It's not going to be hard to
spend time with Him in prayer. Oh, how many times people say,
well, I've, I've sat down to pray and it's just, it's just so
hard because I get so distracted and I can only pray for about 5
minutes and my mind is wandering off in different things.
You love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul
and all your mind and all your strength.
It's not hard to pray. You love him with all of you.
It's not going to be hard to stay away from the things that
you should stay away from. Hey, how many people in this
world today and, and, and maybe even in this room today
struggling with pornography? And I'm not even talking about
the stuff that you go searching for on the Internet.
You can find it just about anywhere you're looking today.
And no, I'm not on this website or that website, so I'm not
looking at pornography. But you're watching videos that
have all kinds of that stuff in it.
And because it's not that website, then it's OK.
It's on YouTube, it's on social media, it's everywhere.
What are you doing to protect yourself from those things?
I tell you what, it's not hard to stay away from that stuff if
you love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul
and all your mind and all your strength.
It's not hard to talk right if you love the Lord with all your
heart. Not hard to listen to the right
kind of music and stay away from the wrong kind of music if you
love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and
all your mind and all your strength.
It's not hard to serve God in the ministries if you love him
with all your heart. It's not hard to give to to to
the Lord if you love him with all your heart and all your soul
and all your mind and all your strength.
The problem is the reason those things are hard is because we
really don't love him with all of our hearts and all of our
minds and all of our strength. We say we do, and it's easy to
give lip service because you show up at church and you sit
there in the Pew and you sing out and you open your Bible and
you dress in a suit and you do all the things that Christians
are supposed to do. It's easy to say it, but then
when he asks you to actually do something to prove it, it makes
a whole lot of difference. Very easy to do things for the
ones that we really love. Isn't it you?
Don't have any problem going out and buying something for
somebody if you. Really love them.
They don't have any problem going in and bending over
backwards to do something for somebody if you really love
them. And isn't it amazing that that
we can do that for somebody in this physical life, somebody
that we just met or somebody even maybe that we birthed.
But the one who gave us eternal life, the one who gave us
everything, the one who gives you the very breath that you're
breathing this morning. And he asked us to do those
things for him. And we say, well, that's a
little bit too much. You're asking of me.
You want me to go do that? That's a little bit too much.
This is my life, remember? Who gave you the right to tell
me what to do? Who gave you the access to my
life? And the truth is, God gives
every single one of us a free will.
We can choose whether we're going to accept or reject the
gospel of Jesus Christ. We can choose if we're going to
accept or reject the death of Jesus Christ on the cross.
We can choose if we want to accept Him as our Savior or not,
but once you make the decision to accept Jesus Christ, you have
the choice to decide if you're going to live for him or if
you're going to live for yourself.
Oh, if you're, if you're saved, you're on your way to heaven.
You know that your your eternal destiny is settled.
But what are you doing for Christ?
That's why he left us here on this earth.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all
thy soul and with all thy mind and with all thy strength.
That's not an option. It's a command, and if we would
follow that command, all the rest of them would just fall
right into place. It's not hard to do it if you
love him. It's not hard to do it if you
love him. It's very easy to say when we
get to the reality of it, it's a lot harder to do.
Turn over to John chapter 14, the command of our king.
Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.
The second one we find here in John chapter 14.
This goes right along with that last point.
We should love him. Love him with all our hearts,
love Him with all our soul, love Him with all our mind, love Him
with all our strength. And he says this in John chapter
14 and verse #15 If you love. Me, keep my commandments.
If you love me, keep my commandments.
Well, there's 1663 of them. How can I keep all the
commandments? Hey, love the Lord your God with
all your heart and it's not hard.
He tells you to do it. You're going to do it.
The way you prove your love for God is to obey Him.
Again, easy to say, but hard to do in some ways.
Then in other ways it's we really love God.
It won't be that hard to obey Him.
It won't be that hard to serve Him.
Obedience is naturally going to flow out of a heart of genuine
love. What the first point, and this
one comes down to really, is a strong desire for holiness.
That's what we're lacking in most of our churches today, and
what most Christians are lacking in their hearts today is a
strong desire for holiness. I will get to a certain point in
my Christian life and don't ask me to go any further.
It's amazing to me when somebody gets saved and God changes their
life, God changes their heart completely, and you see them
just do a 180 and they're going in this direction and you can
tell that God did something in their hearts and they turn
around and they're going a completely different direction.
That's what repentance is, by the way.
I was going this direction. I was following the devil's way.
I was doing all the things that He wanted me to do, but when I
got saved, I turned around and I went the opposite direction.
Right by their fruits you shall know them.
There ought to be a difference in your life when you accept
Jesus Christ as your Savior. There ought to be something
different about you. Therefore, if any man be in
Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away.
Behold, all things are become new.
There ought to be something different about you, but it's
amazing to me to watch that change happen in somebody's
life. They were going this direction,
doing their own thing, living their own way, and they turned
their life around and accepted Jesus Christ as their savior.
They got their sins forgiven. They know they're on their way
to heaven and they start making progress.
They get rid of those old friends.
They they get rid of those old habits.
They stop doing the things that they know are displeasing the
God and they start doing the things that God is pleased with.
And they start walking down that way and they get excited, and
everybody's excited because they're growing in their
relationship with Christ. And then they get to a certain
point and they say, no further, I'm done.
I gave you all of that, all of that.
You can have all of that stuff. These things, these are mine.
And they were willing to give him all of that.
And they watched all the blessings that came from
obedience. They watched God change
everything about them. And in in many cases he watched
them change their family and everything else.
They get here and they say. That's enough.
No more. I've given up enough already.
You can't have that. That holiness.
That desire for holiness. That's what'll Dr. you that
extra step, that's what'll push you past all of those things
where you say, God, this is going to cost me so much.
This is going to cost me my reputation.
This is going to cost me who knows what.
Oh, God, I, I want more than anything to be holy the way that
God is holy. And I know it's difficult, but
I'm going to take that step a little farther.
And then God says, all right, now I can bless you.
You did what I need you to do. But here's something else.
And you say, God, I already took that step.
Look what I gave up. And I know, I know I got the
blessings from obedience and I know I got the the the things
that you wanted to give me because I followed you.
But that's a hard step you're asking me to take.
God says just trust me and take the step I, I, I.
Want to be right with God, but that that you're asking me to
give up so much. Say, all right, God, I'll trust
you. You take that step a little
further. And the more you take that step,
the closer you get to the holiness of God.
And we'll never reach that level of the holiness of God.
But he says. Be ye holy, for I am holy, he
tells us. We ought to be trying.
And what you'll find out is that the the the farther along you go
in those steps, the closer you get to the holiness of God, the
easier it becomes to just give up those things because you
realize. Man, I was holding on to that.
That's what I wouldn't let go of.
Why would I not just let go of that?
Why didn't I do that 10 years ago?
Why didn't I just give it to him?
But that's what's lacking in many of our churches, in many of
our in many Christians life, is that desire for holiness.
Long as I'm not asked to give up something that I feel is
important to me, as long as I can claim to be a Christian and
keep living my life the way that I want to live it, I'll be a.
Christian all day long. But when God says, all right,
you're a Christian, you're saved, you're on your way to
heaven. But now I want you to start
taking steps forward. Long as it doesn't cost me
anything, then I'll commit to being holy.
See. A holiness that doesn't cost you
anything. A holiness that doesn't require
sacrifice. A holiness that doesn't pull you
out of your. Comfort zone is not holiness at
all. That's right.
True holiness is going to put you into a very uncomfortable
position, but it's going to put you in a position where you will
love every minute of it. It's mediocre Christianity at
best, and at worst it's a slap in the face to the God who
requires obedience to his commandments to.
Prove our love. True holiness is true
unconditional obedience. True holiness is true
unconditional obedience. It is not holiness if it's not
obedience if God tells you to do it and you say no.
It's not holiness. It can't be.
It can't be because God's holiness and obedience to His
commands go hand in hand. There's a animal that lives in
the forest of eastern of Northern Europe and Asia.
Lives it's, it's a little animal called an ermine.
And maybe you've seen it, it kind of looks a little bit like
a maybe like a ferret, if you know what a ferret is.
But the thing about the ermine is that his his fur, his coat is
pure white. And that ermine will do anything
to keep that coat white. It will not go anywhere close to
mud. Do you know how they catch
ermine? They don't have to set a trap
for the ermine. What they do is they find out
where his little Burrow is and they they coat the whole edge of
that hole with grease and then they stick the dogs on it and
that thing takes off run and it goes back to his hole.
But when it gets to the hole and sees the grease around the edge,
it will not run through that hole because it doesn't want to
get its coat dirty. And so it just sits right
outside of that. And the dogs catch it and that's
how they kill those army. Isn't that amazing?
Wouldn't it be great if some Christians had that same
mindset? I would rather die.
I would rather die than not be clean.
I would rather die than not be pure.
I would rather die than not be holy.
Oh, there's a lot of Christians that would 100% give me the
filth. I'll take it.
I got to preserve my life. What a picture.
You will not be pure, you will not be holy until it is more
precious to you than life. What do you think it is that
allowed those martyrs to go to the stake and be burned?
Oh, don't think, don't think. Oh, I would gladly give up my
life. I'll stand for the truth.
If they tell me they're going to burn me at the stake tomorrow,
I'm going to be the one that stands up for what's right.
Tell me you'd be willing to be burned at the stake for it when
nothing is even on on the line and God's asking you to do it
and you won't. What do you think it is that
allowed them to be drowned or drugged through the streets
behind horses? And.
You start reading through Fox's Book of Martyrs and you see some
of the things that they did to those Christians because they
would not bow and they wouldn't bend on God's Word.
It's amazing. What some of those Christians
went through, and you say, well, I think I would be one of those
Christians. I'd be willing to to have all
four of my limbs tied to four horses and have them run in
every different direction. Let them pull me apart.
Nothing's going to take me away from God's Word.
Nothing's going to make me. Bend except Satan.
He came along this morning and I bent Don't think that you're
going to be one of those ones that standing for Christ if you
can't even do it now when nothing is at stake.
He demands holiness out of us. He demands righteousness, He
demands godliness out of us. And how do you know when you've
reached that true level of holiness?
Well, as much as we try, we're never going to be perfect in
this life, but we're going to be well on our way to looking more
and more like our King every single day.
I heard a story about a father and a son.
They were going to a small western town.
And this guy that the father was looking for his uncle, he had
never met his uncle before. He had heard many stories from
his father about his uncle, but he had never actually met him.
And so this is back in the day before Internet and everything
else. It was just this, back in the
day when there was a lot of Wild West towns and things like that.
And that's where the uncle was. And he'd gotten word that his
uncle was in this little town. He went over there to look for
him, didn't know how he was going to find him.
He figured he would just kind of ask around and see if somebody
knew him or recognize his name, knew where he might be staying.
But this man and his son walked into the town and just as they
walked into the Main Street, the father said, that's my uncle
right there. And the little boy said, how do
you know that your uncle, you've never seen him?
He said he walks exactly like my father.
Isn't that the way that it should be for us as Christians?
If we walk in the Spirit, if we're living in true holiness,
the world should know us by our walk.
We should look like our king. We should walk like our king.
We should talk like our king. Hey, he's given us commands.
Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.
Keep my commandments. The last one I want you to see
is in Mark chapter 16. Mark chapter 16 and verse #15
Mark 16, 15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world,
and preach the gospel to every creature.
If we're loving God with all of our hearts and all of our soul
and all of our mind and all of our strength, and we're proving
it by following His commands, then the natural step next is
going to be to tell everyone we can about Jesus Christ.
You know that they were doing some renovation on the
Washington Monument and they actually found some graffiti
from the 1800s. And when we say graffiti, I
mean, normally you think of the painting, you know, on the side
of a train or on the side of a bridge or something like that.
Graffiti is just anything that's.
Carved in a place or written in a place that it shouldn't be.
And they found some graffiti inside the National Monument
there, the Washington Monument, and it said this Whoever is the
human instrument under God in the conversion of one soul, he
wrecks a monument to his own memory more lofty and enduring
than this. How different the graffiti was
back then than it is today. But it was signed BFB.
Nobody has any idea who BFB was. But you think about that.
Whoever is the human instrument under God, in the conversion of
one soul, he wrecks a monument to his own memory more lofty and
enduring than this. What an amazing thing that is.
J Wilbur Chapman, old preacher of the past, said it this way.
If to be a Christian is worthwhile, then the most
ordinary interest in those with whom we come in contact with
prompt us to speak to them of Christ.
If the New Testament be true, and we know it is, who has?
Given us the right to place the responsibility for soul winning
on other shoulders than our own if they who reject Christ are in
danger, is it not strange that we who are so sympathetic when
the difficulties are physical or temporal, should apparently be
so devoid of interest as to allow our friends and neighbors
and kindred to come into our lives and pass out again without
a word of invitation to accept Christ, to say nothing of
sounding a note of warning because of their peril?
If today is the day of salvation, if tomorrow may never
come, and if life is equally uncertain, how can we eat,
drink, and be merry when those who live with us, work with us,
walk with us, and love us, are unprepared for eternity because
they are unprepared for time? If Jesus called his disciples to
be fishers of men, who gave us the right to be satisfied with
making fishing tackle or pointing the way to the fishing
banks instead of going ourselves to cast out the net until it be
filled? If Jesus himself went seeking
the lost, If Paul the apostle was in agony because his
kinsmen, according to the flesh, knew not Christ, why should we
not consider it worthwhile to go out after the loss until they're
found? If I'm to stand at the judgement
seat of Christ, to render an account for the deeds done in
the body, what shall I say to Him if my children are missing,
if my friends are not saved, or if my employer or employee
should miss the way because I have been faithless?
If I wish to be approved at the last?
And let me remember that no intellectual superiority, no
eloquence in preaching, no absorption in business, no
shrinking temperament, or no spirit of timidity can take the
place of or be an excuse for my not making an honest, sincere,
prayerful effort to win others to Christ.
Hey, the same things that we talked about in the first one.
We can say all we want to love God with all your heart.
Yes, I love God with all my heart.
Keep his commandments. Yes, I'll keep his commandments.
Go be a witness. Yes, I'll go be a witness.
A. Lot of Christians, they will say
that they believe that, but very few actually do it.
Hey, we're putting a huge emphasis on getting these gospel
tracts out with a gospel video on it.
How many of you given out? How many times have you shared
the gospel with somebody, especially if it was somebody
that you knew and somebody that you loved, Somebody that if you
don't share the gospel with them, they're going to die and
spend an eternity in hell. This is not something where they
just go for a short little bit of time and oh, there's a little
bit of punishment. You spend a few years there and
when all of that's said and done, then you get out.
No, Hell is for eternity, and when you really start to think
about how long that is, they're never coming out of that place.
How can we not warn every single person that we run into?
How can we not warn especially those that we claim to love?
How can you not give them the gospel if you truly believe that
hell is as horrible as the Bible says it is?
If you truly believe that, it's for eternity, If you truly
believe that they're never coming out, how can you not tell
them? That that's where they're going.
Pretend that everything's fine. Well, I'm just, that's just not
my personality. I just, I just don't want to
make them feel bad. I'm just, I'm shy.
How much do you have to hate somebody to know that that's
where they're going and you don't tell them how they can get
out of it? Oh, I love them too much to hurt
their feelings. I, I just, I just don't want
them to feel bad. No, you don't love them.
Not if you won't tell them where they're going, Not if you don't
tell them what's coming without Jesus Christ.
You cannot claim to love somebody that's on their way to
hell and not tell them how they can be saved.
It's easy to say that we'll be a witness for Jesus Christ.
It's easy to say that we'll go and do those things.
But when it when the rubber meets the road, when it comes
down to the beautiful feet of them who spread the gospel, we
get cold feet and we don't do it.
Find excuses. Or why they can't actually talk
to somebody about Jesus Christ. This poem is called A Voice from
Hell. You live next door to me.
For years we shared our dreams, our joys and tears.
A friend to me. You were indeed a friend who
helped me when in need. My faith in you was strong and
sure. We had such trust as should
endure. No spats between US ever arose.
Our friends were like. And so our foes with sadness.
Then my friend defined that after all, you weren't so kind.
The day my life on earth did end, I found you weren't a
faithful friend. For all those years we spent on
earth, you never talked of second birth.
You never spoke of my lost soul or of the Christ who would make
me whole. I plead today from Hell's cruel
fire, and tell you now my last desire, You cannot do a thing
for me. No words.
Today my bonds will free. But do not air my friend again.
Do all you can for souls of men. Pray with them now, quite
earnestly, lest they be cast in hell with me.
Let's make sure that we're doing everything we can as Christians
to not just be a Christian who is a Christian in name only.
There's a lot of those. In fact, I think a lot of them
think they're Christians and they're not.
But there's a lot of Christians who truly do know Jesus Christ
as their savior, but they're just Christians in name only.
What is a Christian? A Christian is a little Christ.
That's what Christian means. It was meant to be a derogatory
term to those at Antioch because they were little Christ's
running around. Hey, you accuse me of being a
Christian. That's the best thing you can
accuse me of. Amen.
I want to be a little Christ. So many people are just little
Christs in name only. They don't represent him, They
don't look like him, they don't act like Him, they don't talk
like Him, they don't live like He does.
We've been given commands in the Word of God by our King, by our
King of kings. As with an earthly king, there's
great joy in obeying the commandments of the King,
because you'll find out that when you disappoint the king
doesn't go so well. But when you do the things the
king wants you to do, man, the blessings and the benefits are
so big. In the Middle East, the Arabian
horses are trained out in the desert, many of them.
And obviously they, I've spent a lot of money on most of these
horses. And so they're keeping an eye on
them. They're being very, very careful
with this. But the way they train them is
that they teach these horses to fully obey their master
completely. No, no option to not do it.
So they take these horses out into the desert areas and they
spend several days out there with them and eventually the
horses get very, very thirsty. By the time they're done, they
turn those horses loose and let them run for water.
But just before they get there, they blow the whistle.
And that whistle to the horse means you stop and you turn
around and you come back. And the ones who have been
trained the best stop and they turn around and they come back.
Overcomes that strong desire for that water, overcomes that
strong desire for their own will, Overcomes that strong
desire to do just exactly what they want to do.
And even though they're so close and that whistle means they stop
and they turn around and they come back, and that's how those
trainers know if they've been successful at training their
horse, of course, then they give them all the water they can
handle and they let them drink, and then they're taken very good
care of for the rest of their lives.
Love the Lord with all your heart.
Keep His commandments. Share the gospel. 3 simple
commands that most Christians will rarely do throughout their
lives. Doesn't seem like it should be
that hard to love him, does it? But so few Christians really do.
Doesn't seem like it would be all that hard to keep his
commandments, does it? So Christians rarely do.
Doesn't seem like it's all that hard to share the gospel, does
it? A few Christians rarely do.
Will you be one of them? Will you be one of the
Christians who is going to follow his commands?
Or are you just going to be one of the ones like most of the
rest of the Christians in the world, especially in America,
who just live their lives the way they want to live it, live
their lives in a way that's pleasing to them, with no
thought of whether or not God is pleased?
Are you truly striving for righteousness?
Are you truly striving to be holy the way that God is holy?
Hey, it's probably going to probably going to take a few
things that you have to give up that you just think you can't
let go of right now. But I can promise you, if you
give those things up and you live all out for the Lord,
you'll find a life that you never even dreamed was possible.
That doesn't mean you're going to have all the money you can
handle. Doesn't mean you're going to
have all the things that the world typically use this as a
measure of success, but one of these days you're going to stand
before God. He's not going to say wow, did a
great job with that business. She made a lot of money.
That's great. No, you ain't going to say that.
He's not going to say wow. You had you had a lot of
connections. You were very well connected and
on earth, great job. A lot of people liked you.
That was tremendous. Love the way that you did that.
He's not going to say that either, is he?
I want to hear him say well done, thou good and faithful
servant. But you know how you hear him
say, well done, thou good and faithful servant.
You Live Today so that at the end of today he'll say that, and
you live tomorrow so that the end of tomorrow he'll say that.
A lot of Christians think I'm going to get to the end of my
life and hear him say, well done, no good and faithful
servant. I want to hear him say, well
done, no good and faithful servant.
But you live every day as if he doesn't even exist.
You live every day for yourself. If he can't say it at the end of
today and at the end of tomorrow and at the end of the next day
and the next day and the next day and the next day, then don't
expect that you're going to stand before him.
He's going to say. Oh, you did such a good job for
me. I want to hear him say well
done, How do you do that? Love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind and with
all thy strength. And if you love Him, then keep
his commandments. And if you love Him and you keep
his commandments, then you can do everything you can to share
the gospel with the opportunities and with the time
that we have left. Time is short.
Everything that we see going on in our world today doesn't look
like we got a whole lot of time left.
I'm excited about it, but that means we better get busy with
the time that we have left because you may not have
tomorrow to go tell that person about Jesus Christ.
You may not have next week to share the gospel with your
coworker. You may not have next month.
When you're going to see that person to go talk to him, you
may not, you may not. Are you going to follow the
command of the King or not? Because I tell you this, he's
worthy. He's worthy.
Let's pray. Father, again, we thank you so
much for your goodness to us. We thank you for the opportunity
that you've given us this morning to be here.
Every single person is here for a reason.
Whether this is somebody's first time or whether it's their
hundredth time or even more, we're all here for a reason this
morning. You knew exactly what I was
going to preach. You laid it on my heart to
preach it. You knew exactly who was going
to be here and who needed to hear it.
So God, I pray that whoever this message was intended for that
would reach its target, that you'd work in our hearts, that
you'd give us a great desire to live for you.
You used the message this morning.
We thank you again for all you do for us in Jesus name.
I'd like to ask you to stand at your seats with your.