This sermon emphasizes the importance of feeling the overwhelming love of Christ, being compelled to live a holy and blameless life, and experiencing the power of the cross and resurrection in a tangible and real way. It challenges believers to not be casual with the Word of God but to recognize its significance and the accountability they will face before the judgment seat of Christ. The message urges Christians to work out their salvation with fear and trembling, emphasizing the seriousness of walking away from God and His truth.

Men don't like this God, men don't like this Word, because it scares them, and it ought to. Don't you want to be able to wake up in the morning and face life with a sense of the love of Christ that is so overwhelming, and so compelling, and so moving in you, and fills you with such excitement, and faith, and trust, and joy, and fear, and sometimes dread, of even defiling that relationship, that you feel a compulsion to do right, and to be right, and to be holy, and to be blameless in your family, in your work, in your church, in your life. Brethren, don't you want that? Don't you want to feel the power of the cross, the power of resurrection, surging inside of you in a way that is real, it is tangible, it is experiential, you know it. It's not a mystery, it's not something that, well, you try to force yourself to feel, you see it in other people, or you hear it in the Word, so you try to convince yourself that it's true, when all the time you know it's not. All the time you know what's really driving you is passions for this world, passions for these things. Don't you really want to know that? Don't you want to know those movings, those sensations of love, that grip you, and grasp you, and hold you, and compel you, and move you? Don't you want that? Does anybody here want just a lifeless, dead, useless religion? God forbid, brethren, be done with that. Brethren, I am afraid, I am afraid that our lives, among some, they tend to be sloppy, because we don't have this. We're casual with the Word of God. We have so many Bibles in this country, most of us have multiple versions, got it on our computers, got it on our bookshelves, got it on our coffee tables. Have we forgotten what we hold in our hands? Maybe we'd be better off in a day where there was only one Bible in a church. It might give us a sense that when that book was opened, it was special. There have been days, my brothers and sisters, when men and women have shook before this book. Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. To some of your minds, you think, well, yes, we persuade lost men. That's not where Paul's going there. Paul's not saying, oh yeah, the case of lost men is so fearful, we need to persuade them to come to Christ. We should do that. That's not what he's saying there. He's talking to Christians. And do you know what he says to them? He says, dear Christian brothers and sisters, make it your aim to please the Lord. Why? Because we all are going to have to stand before the judgment seat of Christ and give an account. And you will be judged by that word. He's going to flippantly throw it over there? When Paul says, look, look, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. If you're lost outside here, but he's coming to the Christians, and he's saying, look, make it the aim of your life to please the Lord, because you will stand before the judgment seat of Christ, knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord. He's not talking about the terror of the Lord that will be experienced by the lost. He's saying, man, woman, you that profess to be children of God, do you not know that no matter if your sins be forgiven or not, that to go before Christ on that day is an awful thing? Every one of your works will be examined. You will come before those eyes and before the God who gave you a standard to live by. And you will be judged. Yes, brethren, there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ. But Paul does not back off, because he says that to the Romans, back off from telling the Corinthians that there is terror, there is fear. Brethren, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Why? Brethren, you should fear. You should tremble, lest you walk away from God. Lest you walk away from His Word. Brethren, people, when they come to a place where they realize what God wants them to do, and they just kind of flippantly say, well, yeah, I know, but... He'll understand. He's forgiving. We should tremble, lest we walk away from God. You should tremble if you feel any inclination to leave this God, leave His Word, walk away from His truth. Because if you walk away, there is a certainty of destruction. There is certainty. It is a fearful thing.