What’s the philosophy today?  Why don’t we just fear God and do what He told us to do and get on with it; amen?  Because of certain little petty conflicts that we have among ourselves.  The greatest conflict that anybody can have with another person has happened in our fellowship more than once, more than twice.  Yet for both parties, everybody’s still here.  Why?  Because, if we fear God and keep His commandments, it’s the beginning of wisdom, praise God!  “Nobody would counsel you that way.  You’re an idiot.”  Let God be true and every man a liar.  To what degree do we believe the Word of God?

That’s why we were just here in Chapter 13, where we’re told to kill those in our own family if they are trying to seduce us unto other Gods; amen?  If you have rebellious children, you be the first one to stone them.  Who wants to hear that message?  If we’re going to allow that in our midst, why don’t we just bring the transexuals in and the homosexuals in.  Where do you draw the line if you’re not going to let your yea be yea and your nay be nay?  In the fear of God, there is no compromise.

These admonitions that are coming to us—and I got off on the pearl of great price—and the whole issue is, how precious is He to you today?  I think back as that young man, there was not a thought, I didn’t pause for five seconds when I had to choose between my whole family and God.  I’m talking about every person in my natural family turned against me.  I’ve shared with you as I shared with my dad, “Dad, you didn’t die for my sins.”  Thank God, fifty years later, I sat on the bed with my mother and taught her on justification and watched the sin come out of her life and the peace of God enter into her life, praise God!  If somebody had not been an example and gone before them, how can they hear without the preacher, praise God!  

Hookie, all those years ago, came up and prophesied over me when I was twenty years old.  I’d been saved thirty days.  I just loved myself.  I didn’t care if it hurt other people.  I wasn’t so far gone that I had no conscience or no emotions, but I was sure in love with myself.  Prideful, ambitious, my conscience didn’t hurt me at all when I ran over somebody to get what I wanted.  Jesus saved me, praise God!  That old man is that same old man, and I still have to contend with it every day.  “Pastor, are you any better from that rat that you were then?”  Nope.  That old man is still that old man.  That’s who I am without Jesus.  You don’t get any better in your flesh.

So, we crucify our flesh every day.  Don’t give him opportunity to operate.  Don’t recognize his right or his authority.  What a gift He’s given us!  Should we not reverence Him and fear Him and solely give our lives over to Him?  Every breath we take is a breath of God’s grace.  Without Him I can do nothing.  I can’t make myself better, but I can choose to be dead.  You see, you can’t make him dead.  You have to die.  You can’t give any recognition or any place to him.  There’s no control over this old guy (anybody have any idea of what I’m talking about?), whether it’s in thought or deed or whatever else it might be. 

That’s why those of you from School of the Prophets, you remember the key words there in Romans, Chapter 6: know, reckon, yield, and obey; amen?  There’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but know, reckon, yield, and obey.  Fearing Him is dying daily.  Fearing Him is obeying in every aspect of the Word of God.  There are no small sins and there are no large sins.  There is sin and it will kill us.