We were not ever, in this kingdom, given personal rights.  We are under the sovereign rule of the Lord Jesus Christ; amen?  So, if we’re going to stand in this last day, we have to be so convinced in what we believe that all of this noise out there has no effect.  It’s foolishness.  We don’t even give it consideration.  We know the Word of God to protect our hearts and our minds.  “I’ve hidden your Word in my heart that I might not sin against you” (Psalm 119:11).  Amen?  If we’re devouring the Word of God, if we’re living in the Word of God, if the Word of God is living in us, nothing of this world or these false Christians will seduce us.  The moment we begin to consider some of this new doctrine, the ears being tickled, the people loving to have it so, "Preach to us a smooth way."  No, give me the “old time religion;” amen?  Give me the Jesus of the Bible, the One, Himself, being very God, humbled Himself and submitted Himself to the will of the Father.  We think we can come up with alternative ways or applications?

Fear Him—don’t fear men.  Fear Him.  Fear Him!  Can you be truthful with yourself?  Do you fear men’s faces?  Then why are you not bolder a witness?  Why do you waver in the midst of a damned generation who have created and defiled themselves with the idols that they themselves have resurrected?  We left in our last passage with these lines, “And they feared God, and worshiped their idols.”  Sitting in here and listening to the Word of God week after week does not give you independence to go worship your idols in the workplace, nor to put your children in aspects of public education; secondary, college, graduate school.

We’ve done pretty well here, in seeing our children trained online, trained in local institutions so they could continue to be edified in the church and in the body of Christ.  When we are asked to write our papers, then we write papers refuting their ignorance and their foolishness and address whatever the issue is from a biblical worldview.  There are classes in college today, if I was in them, I would delight in.  I would be thankful, for the “F” that professor gives me, because I will not bow my knee to you and your ideology and your “gods.”

The church, the redeemed—Deuteronomy goes on and warns us about making no distinction between the holy and the profane; amen?  Why is that distinction made?  We’re afraid of what men will say, of what men will do, of what reputation we’ll have.  What dead man cares about his reputation?  The moment we begin to care what people think about us, we’ve taken our lives back.  “Well, Pastor, you’re just one of those guys, a hard guy and whatever.”  I absolutely am not a “hard guy.”  I’m one of the most sensitive, caring, gentle people that you can run into, if you don’t make me mad.  That’s the kind of God we serve.  Don’t make Him mad.  He is terrifying.

As we were going along in that statement that I made, I’ll finish the point I was trying to make with that.  I do care what people say; I want to be liked.  I am actually a person that gets my feelings hurt very easily, but I will not compromise the Word of God.  I want to identify with being hated for Jesus.  I don’t mean with an attitude.  I don’t mean with the methods that we might speak.  I’m talking about with the purity of the message that pierces the heart without any absolute, without any variance to the right or to the left, without any adding to or diminishing from the Word of God.  That’s the fear of God.  That’s how we live our lives.  That’s what it means to be a witness.