The sermon begins with a personal story about a dog on a farm, leading into a reflection on Ezekiel 8:12. The speaker then prays for God's word to impact the listeners' lives and reveal His will. A cautionary tale is shared about deception within the family, tying into the warning in 2 Corinthians 11:26 about false brethren. The sermon concludes with a plea for God's work in the conference and a prayer in Jesus Christ's name.

Well, good evening to every single one of you. Again, most of your faces I know. One or two I've only met recently, shall we say. But it's wonderful to be here at the first meeting of these youth meetings for 2017. And I'm going to preach tonight on a sermon, obviously out of the Bible. But you can open up your Bibles at Ezekiel 8 verse 12. Now, I remember when I was a very little boy, I was on my grandfather's farm. And I remember when I was on my grandfather's farm, he had three farms. He's dead now. There was this dog called, a black dog called Jackie. And I don't know what type of breed he was. I just know he was a very nice dog. And I was five or six years old. And I used to go and look at the monkeys as the sun came up, stealing the citrus oranges and nachis and all those different things, and try and chase them away as if I could help the situation. And there's cactuses there, cacti. In America, you've got the big ones. We've got these little ones. I don't know what you call them in America. But when they get into your leg, they suck into your leg and they're very painful. And as a little boy, I got one of these in my leg. And I was too cowardly to take it out of my leg. So I looked at my dog. And not my dog, this dog I considered my dog, Jackie. And I had great respect for this dog. I believed this dog could do anything. And so I looked down at this dog. And I explained the situation to the dog. And I told the dog to go and get help. And that was my first very disappointing moment in this dog's and my relationship. Because as a six-year-old, this dog listened to me very attentively. But after it listened to me, it just carried on looking at me with its tongue hanging up and its tail wagging. And I really lost respect. You know, the Bible says, be careful how you yelp. And I appreciate it if everybody listens to the Word of God tonight and doesn't disappoint me like that dog. And really listens attentively. But also try to apply the message to your life. Not because I'm speaking, but because behind this Word is the Creator of heaven and earth. And so let us read this morning, Ezekiel 8 verse 12, before we go over to prayer. Ezekiel 8 verse 12. Then said he unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients, the ancients of the house of Israel, do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his imagery? For they say, The Lord seeth us not. The Lord hath forsaken the earth. Yeah, we have the ancients of Israel, not young people, but old people who do things in the dark. And they say that God cannot see because he has forsaken the earth. With that let us go over to prayer. Dear Father, thank you so much that you love every single person sitting here. And every, even the sinners out there, so much that you gave us 66 books of the Bible so that we can know thy will for our lives. And who you are, and who we are, and where we stand with thee. You've given us this great light. And it's the word of God that created the heaven and the earth. And it's the word of the God that sustains all life and this universe. And it's the word of God by which one day we will be judged. And I just ask thee in thy mercy that you alone, I cannot do this, but that you would make thy word a two-edged sword and a balm and Gilead. That you would help us to see what is thy will for our lives. That you would shine upon every single person sitting here, and me, and show us our need and be the answer to that need through the person of Jesus Christ. And I ask this not in my own merit, but in the name of Jesus Christ alone. Amen. I have some very interesting family in South Africa. And I remember one of my, I'm not going to mention names in case they get crossed with me, but I have a family member, you know, uncles and aunts and cousins and whatever. I have one, let's say an uncle who was in the special forces of South Africa back in the day when they were special forces and not just getting fat. And he basically, I've been at his house, they've got video cameras up and a whole lot of stuff because people, even this year, people robbed them and beat up people staying on the property. It's quite scary to stay there. But my uncle, shall we say, is a very strict father. Now I don't know how many of you have had this problem when you're a little child, but how many of you have, and I've had this problem once or twice, you think that there's somebody under your bed, but there's nobody under your bed. And so you long that mommy or daddy would come there, or you long to call mommy or daddy, but you're scared you'll get the person under your bed to come and attack you, so you don't know what to do. Now my family member, the child of this person, had this problem. He thought as a little boy that there was someone under his bed. And so he said, daddy, please help me. And daddy didn't hear, so he walked down the passage and he went to his dad's room and he came to his daddy there in the bed late at night and he said, daddy, I think that there's somebody under my bed. And that father doesn't take nonsense. He spanked me. He's not my father, but he even spanked me and spanked everybody basically who does anything wrong through life. And this child was in trouble because the father said, listen, you better get back to bed right now. And so the father went off to bed. A little bit later the son came again and came into the room and said to the father, father, I think there's somebody under my bed. And the father said, you get to bed right now. This happened about three or four times, and eventually the father got exasperated. He didn't want to be woken up again and again. And so he said to his son, listen, I'm going to come to your bed and I'm going to look under that bed, but if there's nobody on your bed, you're getting the spanking of your life. So he went with his son and went to the room and it really happened. And he looked under the bed and there was a person under his bed. It was a thief. And this poor trembling soul that wanted to steal from their house had obviously found out that there were people there and in absolute fear of these little children and the father, obviously, he got under the bed and he was very frightened. My family member took him and held him up in the air and took him outside and obviously called the police. Now that's a funny story. It's a true story. But you'll be shocked and amazed to find out all the things that even people you respect at times and in church have done in the darkness. To find out what is in the darkness of their life, those places that they don't expose to other people that they want respect from and they don't expose to the public in general. Now I'm going to preach tonight on three attributes of God. Last year Timothy was sick and he said to me, Roy, I don't think I'll, he said basically his wife said that he never ever for sickness misses preaching, but he said this might be the first time. And so he said he was going to preach on the fact that God knows everything and sees everything. And so I sat down and I decided to work out a sermon on the same topic. And I worked out a sermon and then he, in the end of the day, did preach last year and he preached on those topics and I was very glad to hear that he didn't preach my sermon so I can preach it this evening. Now these three attributes of God, there are many attributes of God, wonderful attributes to the Bible and the Bible concentrates on who God is in so many wonderful ways. I don't know if you've noticed, but the Bible is a God-centered book and God is not just a name. He is a person who has attributes and characteristics and a personality. He is someone. He hates certain things and he loves certain other things. He's not just the name of Jesus or the name of God the Father. And the three main attributes I'd like to look at tonight which are connected to each other are God is everywhere, God sees everything, and God knows everything. God is everywhere, God sees everything, and God knows everything. And I'm sure if you've got a analytical brain or you're just a normal person even, you'll realize these things flow out of each other. The fact that God is everywhere means in the past, in the future, and everywhere spatially means that he sees everything. And the fact that he sees everything means he knows everything and that is who God is. And this is not just something that I say or can figure out. It's something the Bible says very clearly. Let's look at this carefully. God is everywhere. In the Bible in Psalm 138, 39, verse 8, it says, if I ascend up to heaven, thou art there. And if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. God says he is everywhere. Now the Hindus and the Eastern religion, they have the belief contrary of a billion people that is different to Christianity. They believe God is everywhere in another sense. They believe that there was an original God who split and that this two gods basically had a relationship with each other and out of this relationship came everything. And so just like you'd have a sexual relationship between a man and woman and they would have children, so everything in the universe comes out of this original God who split and then had this relationship. So all the trees come from God. All the people come from God. Everything you see around you comes from God and therefore is God. We are a blob of what the original blob that God is was. And that's different to Christianity. In the Bible, the very first verse of the Bible says, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. God sustains creation but he separates himself in essence and who he is from creation. No tree out there, according to the Bible, is God. Not one person on earth, not one mountain, not one star, not anything in creation is God because he is the creator and we are the creation. Now God sustains everything. He is everywhere. But another thing that we have to understand, and this is what the Eastern religions believe contrary wise, is that even though physically and spatially God is everywhere, he is not in, spiritually, the heart of men. Because we are born sinners and there's a wall between us and God and that wall is our sin. And God, though he can see in our hearts, spiritually does not dwell in our hearts. And that's something you can use in the gospel for over one billion people out there. Now, Isaiah 59 verse 1 and 2 says this clearly, Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, neither is it heavy that it cannot bear, but your iniquities have separated between you and your God. So there's a separation. Though God is everywhere, he is not in the heart of sinful men because your sins have hid his face from you and he will not hear, the Bible says. God is everywhere, but not, he sustains all things, but he does not spiritually dwell in the hearts of sinful men. Secondly, God sees everything. Hebrews 4 verse 13, you can give hundreds of verses, it says, Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Jeremiah 23 verse 24 says, Can any hide himself in secret places that God speak and that I shall not see him save the Lord? Do not I fill the heaven and the earth? You know what God's saying here, it's what I said earlier. I said these attributes flow into each other. God says, I see everything because I fill everything. The fact that I'm everywhere means I see everything. God says it. And the third thing which flows out of that is that God knows everything. 1 John 3 verse 24, If our heart condemns, God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things. There are people out there who say Jesus was not God, because he did not know everything. They say Jesus did not know, according to Mark 13 verse 32, that when his second coming would be. And I'm not going to go into that, that could be a long conversation, but the answer would be the same as you give to a Jehovah's Witness who says that Jesus couldn't be God, because he said he's God, my father is greater than I. And you can read Hebrews 2 verse 7 to 9 to see why he said that. But now God is everywhere, sees everything, and knows everything. And this God who sees is everywhere, who sees everything, and he knows everything, he ponders your hearts. Now the Queen of England, she's not thinking about me, because I'm not that important. But God ponders everything that you ever do, if you're a fisherman, if you're a plumber, if you work at Golden Harvest, if you build wooden boats for a long time and share it on Facebook continuously so that everybody can talk about it. No matter what you're doing, God's thinking about what you're doing. And I don't just say that, that's what the Bible says, and I believe the Bible with all my heart. It's the book that changed me through Jesus Christ. Proverbs 5 verse 21 says these words, for the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goings. In other words, God's saying, I'm thinking about everything that you're doing. When you're driving that car, I'm thinking about you. When you fly on an airplane, I'm thinking about you. As you're making that thing that Brandon makes out of dough, I'm thinking about you. The attitudes of your heart towards others, I'm thinking about you. He's pondering, he's deeply thinking about everything that you're doing, and that's something that God can do. Now Proverbs 21 verse 2 says every way of man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord pondereth the hearts. God looks at whether you're upright towards him, not that you think you're right. Now the Bible says that there are people out there who actually ask a very stupid question, and we find this stupid question in Psalm 73 verse 11. It says these words, and they say, how doth God know, and is there knowledge in the Most High? How doth God know, and is there knowledge in the Most High? And the reason that this is a very stupid question is, if you knew from the Scriptures who God is, the fact that He is everywhere, the fact that He sees everything, and the fact that He therefore will know everything, then it's stupid to ask, well, how does He know? Well, He knows because He's everywhere, and He sees everything, and He knows everything. That's why He knows. But there's still people out there that ask the question, you know, no one can see me, but how does He know? Well, because He sees what other men cannot see. My granny is now almost a cabbage in a bed. I phoned her, I think it was this morning, and lovely to speak to my one last grandparent that's alive after the rest of them have died, but my granny, I used to believe had special powers, not because I believed in magic, but because she had this amazing ability to know when I had done something wrong. Some kids can look at you and have a perfectly straight face and get away with it. Perhaps Brandon was like that when he was a kid, but me, when I tried to look innocent when I was a child, I just made it worse because I looked totally guilty, they say. And I remember as a child when I'd done something wrong and people asked me questions, I would put on this very extremely innocent face and I never got away with it mostly. Now my granny, she really was good at this and I remember once many years back on a farm that they no longer own, but I was running down the passage and I can't remember what I did, but it was very naughty and I thought nobody knew about it. My granny stopped me and she looked down at me and I put one of those innocent faces on and she says, what have you done wrong? And I was like, how did you know? She says, never mind, just tell me. And so I told her because I thought she had these amazing powers and knew anyway. Of course I got a big spanking after that. My granny had a wooden spoon and I remember that wooden spoon for a very good reason. Now, I don't know if you know the illustration that many preachers use of the little child and the little child basically was told not to eat a cookie. You can imagine Ezra being like this, but he probably would have gotten spanked badly. And you're told not to have a little cookie and you look at the cookie and you think, what must I do? I want to eat the cookie, but I'm not allowed to eat the cookie. And so you put your hand over your face and you put your arm out and you take the cookie and with his big ugly mouth, he put it into his mouth and swallowed it after biting it for a while. Now why did the little child do that? Because it thought that if I cannot see my mom, my mom cannot see me. And every single person sitting here would admit that's pretty stupid. But how many people don't do that to God? I can't see God, so no one can see me. I can't see anybody in the dark, so I can do stuff and nobody sees me, even though God can see you even in the dark. Now the Bible actually in 1 John 4 verse 20 talks of God that is not seen. In Africa there's a subculture among many of the poor people and the criminal element where they will bring up their children and unfortunately they're in poverty and so they feel that they have to steal and so on and many of them will take their children and it's been known that of them, will put them at a table as young four-year-olds and three-year-olds and five-year-olds and they'll basically starve them for three days and after starving them for three days, they will put food in front of them and they'll teach them that you only get into trouble if you're seen. And so that little child that has not eaten for three days will ravenously start to eat the food and the mother father will turn its head away and then turn it back and as the mother father's head turns and it can see the child, it smacks the child in the face. And the purpose is to teach it when I can't see you, you're fine to eat, when I can see you, you're not fine to eat. And I know shop owners in some parts of Africa said literally what they were taught as little children, you can see in them as adults, because they'll be in the shop and they'll put their hand towards the thing that they're going to steal and when they see the shop owner looking, they'll put their hand away and when the shop owner looks away but can still see them, they put their hand again to take it to steal. And I could go on and on as to what that has affected many people in many places. One person actually had read Ray Comfort's whole best-kept secret in South Africa about many, many, many years back and he phoned me. He was going from door to door trying to witness to people and he was in a state, a young Christian, and he called me and said, Roy, I need your help. I don't know what to do. And so I said, okay, where are you? He explained where he was and I went down the road and I found the house that he was at. I knocked on the door and there was this oldest lady and he was standing there exasperated, this young Christian. He said, I don't know what to do. I've been through the Ten Commandments. I've been through parts of the Sermon on the Mount showing that it's in your heart. If you hate it, it's the same as murder and lust is the same as adultery and she hasn't committed any of them. I was like, okay. And I sat down with this lady and I found out that like many other people, she basically believed that if nobody ever saw her, she hadn't done it. As long as you're not caught, as long as nobody knows, you didn't even do it. How many of you have listened to the Pineapple Story? Old Otto Koenig. I don't know how to pronounce that in American. Most of you. Do you remember how at one point they had a revelation? He'd been really struggling for a long time with the people that he was preaching to on those islands of Papua New Guinea, wherever it was. And eventually it came to the point where they realized that God sees in the dark. And when they realized that God sees in the dark, it was a turning point where after that, through that revelation, they started to respect, fear God, and actually quite a lot of them got saved. In missionary stories, in my life, in many other people's lives, and even in culture that you find in many countries, it is so important when you bring the gospel for people to realize that God sees everything. What you think in your heart, what you do behind closed doors, not just how you are in church, whatever you are and whatever you do, God knows. And not only in life and in famous missionaries and in different places of the world is this one very important when it comes as an aspect of who God is for God-centered gospel to reach people, but in the Bible we see very clearly that it was very important to God and very powerful as a tool, this concept, in people coming to the realization that they needed Jesus Christ. And I'd just like to give you a few examples from scripture before we carry on of people where God used the fact that he knows, that he sees, to bring them to the revelation of who he was and the need of him. Let's start with Nathanael. Nathanael in the Bible there in John chapter 1 verses 45 to 50, you'll see that there was this man and Philip came to him and Philip told him of Jesus of Nazareth and the son of Joseph and how this was the person that Moses spoke of in the law. And though he was a religious person, he was skeptical. He was a skeptic. He didn't just believe that this was the person of whom Moses spoke in the law and he asked a question. He said, can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? And he followed and he came to this person that the people were talking about and called Jesus, not really knowing who this person was. And then something amazing happened because Jesus said to him, behold an Israelite in whom is no guile. And Nathanael was a bit confused because he said, how do you know me? And Jesus said, before that Philip called thee when thou was under the fig tree, I saw thee. And in response to this, the person who was skeptical, who basically didn't believe, I don't really know who this Jesus is that you're talking about. He suddenly said these words, rabbi, thou art the son of God, thou art the king of Israel. How did he turn from someone who was skeptical to someone who said, you are the son of God. Well, Jesus revealed the fact that I know who you are. And that's what God used. It's in missionary life. It's an evangelism. It's in subculture and it's in the Bible that this is important to God and that God uses it. There was a woman at a well, John 4 verse 29. And before we quickly mention that, there's some false churches out there and they will get you to put at the back of the church, there's a little box where you put prayer requests of things you're struggling with in life. And the preacher will have a teleprompter, a little thing in his ear that you can hear what his wife is telling him. So as you walk in there, she goes to the back and she sits there and she tells the pastor all the prayer requests and they can't believe that he knows. Oh, he said, there's someone sitting in this room who has a baby who just died. There's someone sitting in this room who's got arthritis. There's someone sitting in this room who can't get over their bad looks, whatever it is. And they cannot believe. How did he know? I mean, he's at the front and I put the prayer requests in the back, but somehow he knows what's in those prayer requests. And then they catch them out. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about a God who really knows, not is playing tricks with us. In John 4 verse 29, we said, come, a lady said, come and see a man who's told me all things, whatever I did is not this the Christ. He has a woman who, according to the Bible, she didn't just believe Jesus is God when he first came there. She was a skeptic. She believed him to be a Jew. A little later, she believed him to be prophet. And a little later, she believed him to be the Messiah. Now, how on earth in a few moments that a woman who was sleeping with a man who had had how many husbands that were not hers anymore, how, how, how on earth did a woman who was a great sinner like that, uh, suddenly believe. And then a man, she first thought it was a Jew was then a prophet. And then the Messiah in such a short time, well, the answer is simple. He showed her, I know you. And that's the words I just read. Come see a man which told me all things that ever I did. Zacchaeus in Luke 19 verse 5, a little man, he gets up into the tree and he's waiting for Jesus to come past. He's heard about Jesus. Like we've heard about the Queen of England, but the Queen of England hasn't heard about me. Not yet. Hope to meet her in heaven if she gets saved, or is saved. But there was a moment where his life changed. There was a moment when he wasn't just an interesting bystander anymore, hoping to see this famous person coming past who'd been healing people and whatever as he heard, but didn't quite know. And, and, and, and that moment that changed his life was when he heard one word, and that's the word of Jesus Christ saying, Zacchaeus. Because the moment that Jesus said that word, his name, he realized this person that I've never met before knows me. He knows my name. And so he came back and down and he followed Jesus Christ. His life was changed. The fact that God knows you is a powerful truth that should put fear in the hearts of sinful men and hope in the hearts of those who would be saved. I'd like to read a quote, a famous old quote that I made up. Man can fool man, but God is no man's fool. Man can fool man, but God is no man's fool. Little Glenn, I was taking a break from missionary work in South Africa and evangelism stuff, and I went to this place where they, for free, let us stay in a little hut and near where elephants were and stuff. And I was very excited about this, although it's kind of a three-room place. And I remember coming there and I had an apple in my hand, and I wanted to give that to my, my daughter Ruth. And I think Glenn was about four years old at that stage, and I gave him the apple and said, go find Ruth. And he thought she was at the back of the house, so he went running off to do what daddy said, which doesn't always happen. But in this case, he ran around the house and I couldn't see him anymore. And of course, little Glenn running around this big house, his stomach starts speaking to him, and he decided daddy can't see me. And obviously that makes it right to just have a little quick bite. And so he bit from the apple and came around the other side of the house a few seconds later, and he gave me an apple and said, I couldn't find Ruth. And he thought he was safe, because I couldn't see him. But unfortunately for a four-year-old little boy, he didn't realize that when there's a kind of a mouth mark the size of his teeth in that apple, it's pretty obvious what he did in the dark behind that house. Now, I might be intellectual enough to not be fooled by a little four-year-old most times, but I've been fooled in my life. I remember once, this is just one example of many times that I've been fooled. I remember, and this is in spite of the fact that I have sometimes hours praying and reading my Bible, I still get fooled at times by people. I remember late at night I went shopping, and outside the shop in South Africa, I got into at that stage, we've got a nicer car now, but at that stage a 33-year-old little car, and I got into the car with my wife sitting there, and there was a car next door, and they opened their window, and they started talking to me in the dark. And they said, it was about four or five young people, teenagers or something, and they started laughing at me, and they said, listen brother, your hubcaps are the nicest hubcaps that has ever been in the history of time. You know what hubcaps are? Those things in the wheels. And I said, that's nice. I said, listen, we want to buy it. We want to buy your hubcaps. Please, let me have your hubcaps. We will pay for it at a big price. I said, actually, I don't know if I can get more of these things. I don't want to sell my hubcaps. They spent 10 minutes in between laughing at me, and they said, please, sell me your hubcaps. And after 10 minutes, they drove off laughing. And it was only after 10 minutes, being a very slow person, that I got a little suspicious. And I opened up the window again, and I looked out, and I saw that my hubcaps were gone. Now, I don't know how many of you would be this brazen. You steal a person's hubcaps, and then for 10 minutes you try to buy them. That is amazing. Now, like I say, you can fool me, but you can't fool God. Deal Moody was once asked, what is character? And he answered, character is what you are in the dark. There was a boy, and there's a preacher in America, and he basically, I think, had an aunt or grandmother there, and allowed this preacher into the house, and the preacher took the preacher to the room where this boy was, and talked of how wonderful this child was, how amazingly spiritual this child was. This child read its Bible for hours. This child listened to hymns for hours. This child was absolutely phenomenally amazing. And the preacher was listening. But then, the American preacher, after the aunt or grandmother, I don't know which, left the room, he went and he found that there where the CD player was with all the Christian hymns, there was a wire from the earphones around that and under the bed to another section where there was another CD player which was full of rock music. And he found the magazines and other things that that child was busy with. But he was putting on a front. He had fooled that godly woman, at least that she had a fear of God and wanted him to follow God. He had fooled her. One day he would stand before God. He knows everything, and is not just an old lady, and he would not be fooled. I remember going to one town in South Africa, and I came to the house, and I sat down with this minister, and the minister looked at me and just told me how wonderful his son was. He said it's just so wonderful and such a blessing to me that I have a son that loves God, that I have a son that is reading his Bible, that I have a son that is telling other people about Jesus, that I have a son that wants what I want for him because I love him, I want him to follow Jesus Christ. And what was breaking my heart at that moment is I'd just seen his son outside with his bad friends smoking and doing other bad stuff, while his father was telling me how wonderful his son was. He was fooling his father. You can fool me. You can steal my hubcaps. You can fool an old lady, or your aunt, or your grandmother, your mother. You can fool your father as a minister, but let me tell you something. You cannot fool God. I don't know if I once told you in Pennsylvania of the boys that I caught at a drunken party, called the police. We've got fun. They didn't believe I would. But they were fooling the old man upstairs because they believed that he was deaf, and they were right. And so they were using the property of a godly man who in my, I've known for many years, who hates sin. It's a little bit strange at times, but he stands up against evil and for good. And because he was a bit deaf, they decided downstairs in his property to have a party with drugs and drink. And then they would be in church on Sunday. Of course, being younger, I could smell what they were doing, and I could hear what they were doing, and a whole lot of other stuff, so it wasn't too hard for me to go downstairs and realize that they were being stupid. But they thought they could fool that old guy. Tyndale made his death because of a man by the name of Henry Phillips. And of course, many of you will know the stories. He had the Tyndale Bible, and he was importing Bibles to England or whatever from Europe. And they got him back to, they wanted to get him so that they could execute him, but they knew they had to deceive him. So they got a guy to act like a Christian and basically deceive Tyndale in his good work that he was doing to come back to England. There he was killed. The Bible talks about this, people who on the outside look like Christians, but on the inside, they hide in the fact that they don't know God. And in 2 Corinthians 11, verse 26, it talks about being in peril among false brethren. I've been fooled by people who really acted like amazing Christians before. Paul knew that very good Christians could be fooled, so he warned them. But there's a hymn, the Judgment Morning hymn, and oh, what a weeping and wailing as the lost were told of their fate. They cried for the rocks and the mountains. They prayed, but their prayers were too late. Why did they cry for the rocks and the mountains? Why are people who are proud down here one day going to cry for the rocks and the mountains? I'll tell you why they're going to cry, because they're going to meet a God who knows exactly who they are, who they can't be hypocrites before, because he knows exactly what they've done and what they thought and where they've been. In fact, we read of him in Hebrews 4, verse 13, neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, but all things are naked and open under the eyes of him with whom we have to do. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 5, verse 5, judge not before the time until the Lord come, who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness. Now, the Bible says in 1 Peter 4, verse 5, that he's ready to judge. God is ready to judge. You know why earthly judges are not ready to judge? They stand up and you have people coming in, and then you have lawyers, and the lawyers try to bring evidence to say, did he do it? Didn't he do it? And what is it merit of? In other words, is it according to the law worthy of being punished in a certain way? God does not suffer as earthly judges. He doesn't sit there and have to listen to evidence from both sides and figure out exactly what was done. God knows what you've done. When you stand before him as judge, he knows your entire life, he knows your heart, he knows everything about you and what you did in the darkness, and you can't use a lawyer to get out of it. Not only is he ready to judge because of that, he knows what you've done through your entire life and your heart and deeds, he also knows by what measure you should be judged. An earthly judge, as the law changes, now he must change how he judges people. And different countries have different ways. You've got death sentences in certain states and other parts of the world, they say no death sentences, and they all call themselves Western nations. God knows exactly the punishment that should be meted out for what you've done. He is ready to judge. He knows everything about you. You are condemned already when you stand before him, and you've got no chance to get away. You might have fooled many people on earth, but you are not going to fool the person who's ready to judge. Now at this point in the sermon, I'd like to bring a little bit of what I call my secret life. It sounds terrifying, but I started to think back when I prepared this sermon. Many preachers stand up and they basically just preach all the victories, like the stories of the great revivalists, and you only read the parts where they had victory and not the parts where they failed. And they were honest many times, but the nice books give you a bad, incorrect impression of their lives. But I was saved around about at the age of 19 years old. Now I've tried to remember back from the youngest possible, and that's very hard for me because I haven't got this amazing memory like Timothy, like an elephant. And I try to remember back when was the first time that I can remember where I started to do things in darkness that I didn't want other people to know about. Where I started to apply what my sinful heart wanted me to do, which was hide from the light. And the Bible says that is what an unsaved person is. He hides from the light, according to John. We'll come to that later. Now I was saved at 19 years old. Many people like to quote the verse, and I have wonderful parents. They spanked me. They spanked me a lot. They disciplined me. They taught me how to make up my bed. They told me Bible stories in the evening. They taught me biblical principles. They taught me the gospel of Jesus Christ. But I was born, in spite of all that, I was born with a sinful heart. And in spite of the fact that the scripture says that if you train up a child in the way it should go, it shall not depart from him when he's old, whatever. In spite of that verse, I can guarantee you that because you are born with a sinful heart, until the day that you are saved, there's going to be times when that sinful heart, no matter how you trained, no matter what you taught, no matter what wonderful examples your parents are, until you saved and received a new heart, that heart is going to show itself at times. It's gonna. Ezekiel 36 verse 26, a new heart also will I give you. Now God knew this about me, but man did not always know this, that I had a sinful heart. You see, I had my first false foundation at age seven. I prayed, Jesus, please come into my heart because I don't want to go to hell. Because I didn't want to be spanked by God. Not because I was sorry about a life which I lived unto myself. Not because I was sorry about my sin that came out of that heart that did not love God. Not because I was living outside of God's life, a life in his authority, but because I didn't want to get spanked. And so I said, Jesus, come into my life and nothing happened. I only got saved at the age of 19, truly. Now, remembering back, the first thing I can remember with my limited capacity is that at the age of seven, I stole a tractor. Now, I was on my grandfather's farm and I decided with some workers to take this tractor and borrow it without permission for a certain amount of time. And so I went up there into the mountains as a seven-year-old driving this tractor. And I remember having a little bit of a problem because after I'd enjoyed myself driving this tractor without permission at seven years old in the wilds up there next to a lion park, I remember traveling down towards the farm again through the wild and I was on this little path and suddenly I saw in front of me about 200 yards ahead my grandfather coming in a pickup truck in the opposite direction. Now, there were two things that made my heart sink. Number one, my grandfather could spank like you cannot believe. I mean, you felt it for a long time. And number two, I knew that I'd hurt him because he would be hurt by the fact that I'd done this behind his back. And the problem was I couldn't turn to the left and I couldn't turn to the right. I couldn't get anywhere. I was slowly, those tractors go so slow in Africa, I was just going so slowly forward towards my judgment. And he was slowly coming towards me and I could see his eyes and there was nowhere that I could hide or get to. It was just, it was just horrible. And eventually we met and obviously stopped and he got out and gave me the spanking of my life at that stage, I suppose. But you know, you have to understand something. You cannot escape from the fact that there is going to be a day, you're heading towards it, an appointed time, where after death, you're going to face God. And when you face God, you will not be able to escape it, that everyone, even the people you love, that you don't want to know, you don't want them to know what you've done in the dark, they will know. And God will let it be known, the hidden works of darkness in your life. It's coming. It's coming. Maybe today you read the Bible, you've got tracts like I did before, I was saved. You're still not Christian to many people, but what you are in the dark, whether it's the deeds that you do or whether it's in your heart, that you know that you don't have fruit. You know that you're not truly saved. You know that there's no life. Everybody else, you act perfectly. It's going to come out on that day. I remember at public school, as a teenager, behind my dad's back, I was exposed to pornography. And I remember, it's not like today, where you have a cell phone, which basically you can press a button and you've got it immediately. You have to have got an effort to get bad stuff. And I didn't, most of the time, it was very rarely that I got true pornography. It was more like, I would find a magazine and look for adverts or something very, still evil, but not like today, where you just had it at your fingertips. And I remember I used to, I started doing this as a teenager, and I did it in the dark. I did not want my dad to know. My dad saw a little boy who was reading his Bible up to 20 chapters a day. My dad saw a little boy who sang in church and answered the questions that the minister asked, and I knew the answers many times, more than the other little kids. My dad saw a little boy who would be talked about at camps as this wonderful influence on the other kids. He did not know what I was doing in darkness, and I didn't want him to know, because I love my dad. My dad sang me to sleep. I didn't want the dad who sang me to sleep, and I loved to know what would hurt his heart. There was once, my dad didn't have a television, but I found this VHS player, and I found this video, and I started watching it, and in the middle of the video, there was this, at some place, there was this bad scene. And I remember watching this bad scene as an unsaved person to everybody else, I was this wonderful Christian, and I stopped the video at that point, and someone walked into the room, and I didn't know what to do, because there I was, there was the screen, and there was what I was watching, and there was him. What can I say? He looked at me, and he was shocked, and he said, don't ever do this again. And I just hoped, oh, I hoped he wouldn't tell my dad. Oh, there was a time later, a few years later, he went to my dad, and he said, Keith, you think your child is such a wonderful boy, but I want to tell you what he's really like. You know, I remember that day, I was upstairs, dad was downstairs. I heard my dad cry. I'd hurt his heart. I wasn't who he thought I was, and it was very, very hard to know that I'd done that. You know, in public school, I was the goody goody boy in my grade. 900 kids at school, I was 130 in my grade. I was about the only boy who did not get drunk every weekend. I was about the only boy who did not go to parties and sleep around. But you know, there was times I would sit there, and they'd tell stories of how they slept with girls, and they did this, and they did that. And I wanted it. And there was only two reasons that I didn't do it. I didn't go with my friends who longed to have one more person who got drunk and do whatever. The only two reasons I did not go into sin, only two reasons, was not because I loved God. I didn't know God at that stage. It was, I thought to myself, if only, I longed, I said, God, if only I know that God doesn't know, that God would turn a blind eye on me just for half an hour, just for an hour. And if I knew that my parents wouldn't find out, if somehow it could be written in stone, that I knew my parents would not find out ever, and I knew that God wouldn't see, then I would do it. That was the only thing that held me back. I remember at age 13 was the first time a girl offered herself to me, and I praise God's mercy. I never, before marriage, and even after marriage, but before marriage, I never did evil with a girl physically, but they do that at school. They offer themselves. And the only reason I didn't sin with that girl was because, I didn't know how. Some people aren't as lucky as me and blessed as me in their unsaved days, and they don't have those things which keep them back in those moments of terrifying weakness. They go on and do great evil, even though their parents sometimes taught them otherwise. Many of them you meet, they come from religious Christian homes. They were actually evilly, not like me, who would be in the end of the world if that happened to me. They actually defend what they do. They say, it's right. It's Christianity. We find this in Proverbs 7 verse 14 and 19, where there's a woman, and she says, I have peace offerings with me, this day have I paid my vows. And in Proverbs 7 verse 19, sorry, for it says, for the good man is not at home, he has gone on a long journey. In other words, this woman is saying two things to this man in front of her, who is not her husband. Come in here. You know why you can come in here? Number one, God doesn't mind. God doesn't mind. You don't have to worry about God, because I paid my vows. And number two, man's not going to find out, because the good man has gone on a long journey. Nobody's going to know. God doesn't mind. Nobody's going to know. So come into the dark and do stuff and enjoy yourself. And so Satan works. I met one girl in South Africa, and she used to have four o'clock in the morning quiet times, read the Bible, pray. And her parents, I know those parents, they really taught her about the Bible and about the Word, and they spanked her, and they disciplined her. She went after, at public school, after a guy who was not saved. And the excuse she used when her parents begged her not to is she said, I want him to be saved. She used religion as an excuse to sin. I want to win his heart. I'll date him. You know how many people, and this is something you will, many of you will have experienced, I believe, if you ever did soul winning. You'll meet people who will even sleep around, and they'll say, you say, how can you do that? And they say, I prayed for God to give me peace, and he gave me peace about it. I'm marrying an unsaved person. Well, God gave me peace. We have a family member on Jerusalem's side that basically ran away with a girl, and you know what he told us afterwards? He said, I went to my knees with that girl, and I prayed, and God gave me peace, and gave her peace. I remember the days when God used to give him peace for strange rules. The same God gave him peace to do sin, using religion as an excuse to sin. You know what the danger is when you're caught? You come from a conservative background. You go to a conservative church, whatever that means. You're not just coming to church in a miniskirt, running around doing rock music, and then saying it's fine to sleep around and get drunk. You have this conservative church, and everybody thinks you're wonderful, and you've got a reputation, and so you're kind of aware of that. You're not going around saying, look, I'm proud like a Pharisee, but you're aware of the fact that you've got a reputation, but in the dark you're doing sin, and then one day you get caught out. And I've seen this. I've seen this in this last year. People I know, song leaders, preachers, in this last year, and how they will weep. You know why they're weeping? And this I know because of what happened afterwards. You don't always know at the time. They're weeping not because they sinned, but because they've been caught out. They're weeping not because they've lost fellowship with God, or they never had fellowship with God. They're weeping because they've lost the esteem of men around them that once used to look up to them as good Christians, and so they weep. And I've heard people around them say, oh, they're obviously wonderfully repentant, and then it turns out afterwards they were never repentant. They carried on doing evil in the dark. Deal Moody used to talk of a ship, and he said, beware when people cry to think that they're really repentant. He said, because you can be on a ship, and this is what happened basically, was this ship of cutthroat evil sailors who were swearing and drinking and everything, and as they were being swept by a storm towards rocks, they started to weep and say, God, just get us out of this. If you save us today, we'll serve you for the rest of our lives. Where, where, where, where, where? And then the wind comes and blows them the other way, and they get saved, and the next day they drank. Saul was like that. He blamed the people. 1 Samuel 15 verse 21, but the people took up the spoil, he said. And then he said, I've sinned, verse 24, and then he went on, though he sounded like he repented and was so sorry. All that he was sorry about was that he'd lost his position as king, potentially. But then there was a man called David in Psalm 51 verse 4, against thee the only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight. You know what sin does to you? In the Bible we actually have degrees of sin. Sin is like a hook. I experienced that with certain things before I was saved. You start and it's just fun, and then after a while you figure out if you want to stop doing it, you can't many times, because it's got a hook in your heart. But oh how glorious that John 8 verse 36 says these words, that if the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. And I've experienced that. That's what God does through Jesus Christ. And the answer to someone who is sitting in the dark, or in darkness, openly, whatever you are, is to come to the light. But I'd like to caution at this moment, something that I've seen across the churches of America, and I'm not joking, I'm not saying across the churches of America, it's not across the churches of America, there's a horrible thing happening. There's a movement out there that believe that we should come to a light. And what they mean by that is basically we must not be Pharisees, because all those people who failed, they were with all their rules and everything, and then it came out afterwards that they were actually doing evil. So we don't want to be like that. We want to be transparent. We want to be real. Keep it real. Keep it real. And I met them and they say, they go to church and they say, keep it real. Well I can also say that, keep it real. Whatever. You know what they mean by that? I am myself. And I'm going to tell people about it. I'm going to be honest. So they believe coming to a light makes you a Christian. It makes you not a Pharisee. So if I get drunk, well I just admit, I struggle with drink. If I sleep around, well sometimes I do that. You don't keep it in the darkness. You bring it to a light where now you're a wonderful Christian because everybody knows about it. That's not what the Bible says. The Bible says if you name the name of Christ you should depart from iniquity. You come to the light of who God is. A holy God who hates sin, yet loves sinners so much that he died for them. How beautiful that he knows me, yet he loves me. Romans 5 verse 8, but God commended his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He knows me, yet he loves me. And that love doesn't mean I'm saved and going to heaven, but it's a hope because he in love did something to make it possible for me to be reconciled unto God. Now in my life, some of you will know one or two of these things. In my life, I, when I was compromised in the dark, the Bible was a dry book to me. I had no relationship with God. I was never saved. And I really felt like God didn't care about me. And that was how God should have been. I mean I deserved hell. But we serve a God who cares for the lost sheep. We serve a God who when we in pride, he actually looks for us. Paul was not looking for God. God looked for him. God came to him on that road and met him. My pride kept me back from the foot of the cross. But Jesus was seeking his sheep that was lost. And that's the story of my life. Because they went through a long time where I wasn't thinking about God in some ways. I wasn't seeking God that I felt bad about what I was doing. And he came and showed me that he cared about me. Now I don't like strange leadings. I don't like these false prophets that make people fall over backwards. I don't like people coming and say, I get led to China. But they unfortunately don't get led to obey the Bible, which is the thing that you should be basing your life upon. But I can say one thing. I have no idea why. This is just what happened to me. When I was unsaved at school, there were a few occasions where I felt that God showed me that he actually was thinking about me. And I don't like to speak about these occasions because it makes me sound like I'm a charismat, and I'm not. But when I was at school, I remember being in school and my parents and my dad had been through three months, three months where he had struggled financially. He got us together as a family. He didn't know what I was doing in the darkness. And he got us together as a family, said let's pray. And we called out to God because of the financial strain that we were going through. I remember coming, before I came out of school, I was in one of these corridors, and suddenly it got an impression upon my heart in a way that was obviously not me. Something impressioned upon my heart. Everything has been planned in a way that was obviously not just a thought. And I thought that is very weird. And I walked out of that door, and I walked to the other side of the street. And I remember coming to the other side of the street, and I walk around the car to my dad, and my dad looked me in the face and said, Roy, everything's been paid. And I just realized at that moment, I don't know if that was demonic, I don't know if it was God. God never told me. I read the Bible. I don't get these strange messages from heaven that tells me. But I'll tell you this, I realized something bigger than me knows about me and cares. Samuel heard his name three times. You know, before I got saved, before I got saved, I was at Bible college, and they thought I was the most wonderful student, they thought. But you know, I had the most horrible dreams while I was at Bible college. While I was preaching and people would weep, while I was preaching and people would be jealous of me as a preacher for some strange reason, I was unsaved, on my way to hell, and they were jealous. But I remember having these dreams where I would literally, it was almost like demonic experiences, where I'd wake up in a sweat, and there was these spiders crawling all over me, and I'd read that you're drunk and have hallucinations. But literally, I was petrified to go back to bed. I didn't want to fall asleep in case I faced whatever that was. And then Bible college, I don't know what it was, but I heard my name a few times. Now, I don't understand that. I don't want to go into it. You don't have to have that to get saved. You just need Jesus Christ to be saved, trust me. But one thing I know is the moment I got saved through Jesus Christ, I never had a dream like that ever again. I'm not saying if you have bad dreams, you're not saved. I'm just saying those things, horrible that they were, that I could not face, the moment I met with God, I never had them again. Never heard another voice. I've told you the story of how I almost drowned in the church in front of everybody. I could answer the questions. I was this wonderful Christian, but there in the water with fear going down my spine and too proud to cry out because the fat person next to me might think, thin Roy can't swim. I remember realizing I'm going to heaven or hell and I don't know where I'm going. And nobody around me knew that. Nobody in church. I knew it. God knew it. There was a lady at Bible college, old lady, Joyce. And Joyce, everybody around me was saying, Roy, you're such a wonderful Christian. They say it a bit better than that, because you say it that way, they know you, they get you proud, but they just compliment you and tell you in so many different ways that you're the best thing that ever happened to them. Now I was on my way to hell and I was the best thing that ever happened to them. But there was a lady that came to me, an old prayer warrior. And she said, Roy, I've got a verse for you. Now I don't like charismatic come with verses, but I'll tell you this, this verse, she brought me a verse in Psalm and it talked of a man who needed his sins to be forgiven. And I thought to myself, how did she know what I'm going through? I once stood up to testify in a church as an unsaved person. My mother came to me, she gave me a spanking, the last spanking I got. She told me I'm unsaved. And I burst into tears because I knew she was right. And I didn't want someone I love to tell me that because it made me feel worse. Then oh glory, the day I came, you know, Job 31 verse 33 says, if I covered my transgression with Adam by hiding my iniquity in my bosom, if I covered my transgression, if I kept my sin in the dark and didn't bring it to the light, then I'm bad, Job said. It was the day I came, not just to escape the spanking, but the day I came, not covering like Adam my darkness with good works, throwing away every good work I'd ever done, every sermon I'd ever preached, every person I'd ever witnessed, every Muslim I've ever witnessed in total Jesus Christ, coming with only who I was, a sinner, going my own way, doing my own thing, not in a relationship with God, deserving hell for eternity, not with the conservatism of the nice clothes I wore and the songs I sang, the old hymns that I clung to, just my sin and myself before a God who is light. That moment I remember, I'll never forget, in one moment Jesus did what my dead religion could never do, he saved me, he changed me. I gave him my past and my present and my future and he gave me himself. I gave him old tattered garments, he gave me a robe of pure white. It is done, the great transaction is done. I am my Lord and he is mine. I didn't come with perfect words. I found that he was ready to forgive, he's ready to judge, he's ready to forgive. Psalm 96 verse 5. It's so wonderful, I don't believe that you can get saved by another Jesus. I don't believe you can get saved by Jesus who believes that sleeping around is fine before marriage or homosexuality, all these different things is fine. That Jesus can't save you, the Jesus of the Bible can save you. But having said that, you don't have to know much to be saved. You just have to know that you're a sinner and that Jesus is the answer. Isaiah 53 verse 11 says, by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many. Not by my knowledge, perfect understanding. God, just the same God who knows exactly what you've done through life and is ready to judge and knows the standard by which you should be judged and will condemn you immediately on the judgment day. That same judge knows exactly what Jesus did on the cross when he died, knows exactly how he rose from the dead, knows exactly how to apply that to your life and what it means that he's your righteousness. He knows by his knowledge, not my knowledge, shall my righteous servant justify many. There was a woman who came to Jesus, she didn't even say any word, she just knelt down and wept and God said her sins which are many are forgiven her. She was a sinner and she met the one who a sinner's need could meet. There was a woman at the well, I've mentioned this before, John chapter 4, and this woman was told by Jesus that if you knew the gift of God and who it is that speaketh to you, you would have asked and I would have given you living water. Two things that you need to know, God's gift and who's speaking. I'd like to ask a question of every single one of you. What are you in the dark? To some of you that will be a question, what are you in the dark out there where no man sees? To others you might be living a pretty good life, but what are you in your heart? You do stuff at church but you've got no fruit and you've got no relationship with God and you act like a Christian in front of everybody else. Before you compare yourself to others, just remember again the message, God knows you. Religious people love to compare themselves to others. John 8 verse 7, so when they continued to ask him, he lifted up himself and said unto them, he that is without sin let him cast the first stone. Jesus said when there was an adulterous woman that came to him, not that she should carry on in adultery, he said go and sin no more, but he showed these religious people with their nice clothing and everything else they had and places they went to of religious worship, that you, I know you, I know you've got sin, and if you without sin cast the first stone, he knew they all had sin and they knew about it, so they left. But her sin was in the open, her sin was caught out, there you are, you're the man, the woman, you've been caught out, but their sin was hidden in their hearts, hidden in their hearts, but God knew them. Jesus showed religious people, I know you in the Sermon on the Mount, you condemn adulterers, but I know when you lust it, you condemn murderers, but I know when you hate it, and then he said many will profess unto me that they, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in their name, and all the different things that they did. We're basically good churchgoers, we've got power, we cast out demons, we preach, and we've done many wonderful things in the name of Jesus Christ, but he said I never knew, depart from me, you're that work, iniquity, you're going your own way still, you're that lost sheep, and everybody around you thinks you're a very spiritual person, but I know that you're that lost sheep, and you're still going your own way, and that's how you died, and that's how you're standing before me, and you've got to depart now, and go to hell for eternity, because people thought you wonderful, and you thought you wonderful, but I know who you are in your heart. How glorious when we meet with God, when we come to them light, not a light, we just say, well, I want to admit that I'm drunk, or I did this, or I have these struggles, but you come to the light. Then 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 5 says, you're all the children of light. Colossians 1 verse 13 says, for who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear son. Then John 8 verse 12 says, then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world, he that followeth me shall not dwell in, walk in darkness. That's beautiful. I'm coming towards the end of my sermon. I'd like to ask a few quick questions. Number one, how do you know you've got light in your life? I have explained this before, and I will not go into every single point of one, John, but there is a reason why Jesus, sorry, why John wrote in the Bible, and God through him, the words in 1 John 5 verse 13, you can hear it a hundred times, it never becomes boring to me. These things have I written unto you that believe in the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life. Most people, most preachers who ever preach that verse, ignore these things and just say, well, that means you can know. It means you can have certainty, and there will be drunkards who say, I have certainty, when they're not saved. But these things that you need to have in your life to prove that you are saved, that you're in the light, that you know Jesus, are 11 different areas which are given in the book of 1 John. And I'm not going to go through all those today. One of them would be, just one of them, 1 John 2 verse 9, he that saith he is in the light and hateth his brother is in darkness even until now. If you hate your brother, especially Christians, you are not saved. It goes on the next verse 20 to say, you're a liar if you say you know God and you hate your brother, so-called Christian brother. I'd like to ask a question. I said I had two or three to ask. Why do you serve God? Why, and this I'm going to bring up tomorrow even more, why do you serve God? Why, five times a week, or once a week, or once a month, or once a year, do you go to church? Why? 2 Chronicles 24 verse 22 says, And Joash did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, listen to these words, all the days of Jehoiada the priest. He has a man who served God as long as there was someone alive in his life, but as soon as that person died, he no longer served God. He has a man who cleaned out the evil things in the land as best he could, who literally went against the sin in the land, who stood up for right, who reinstated things. Basically, if you look to this guy, you'll say, man, this guy has, he's following God. He's clearing out the sin. He's doing everything with all his heart, it seems, to make this land follow God. And the only reason he was doing that was because there was a man in his life that he respected. The only reason that I was a Christian for so many years was my parents, but I never met with God. And I'd like to ask a simple question. Take away every false motivation of the people, your fear of hell, everybody around you, your family, your pastor, the community. Some people, it's not that they fear what other people will think of them. They love the community aspect of church, that I can go to church and enjoy the people around me. Take away the fear of what your parents would think about you if you weren't in church or other people, and ask yourself the question, why do you come? Why do you go? Why do you do? And if you took away every single person so that they wouldn't know what you were doing, and you would not follow God without the people there, then you're not saved. You know, the church is a necessary part of Christianity, and if the body of Christ is there to edify us, it's there to point us back to Christ. But if you follow the church to follow God, and not follow Jesus and then go to church to follow him more, then you've got a big problem. Because my Bible says, for those who believe, Jesus is precious to them. And to you who believe, he is precious. So many people believe in their heads, and the only reason they're doing stuff is the people around them. But they'd never had that day when they met with God. They never had the day when they came through Jesus. They never had that day when they gave up their life outside the authority of God in his life, and they knelt down. It doesn't have to be kneeling down, you can be standing up, but in their hearts they knelt down before a sovereign God, and he saved them, and their hearts were changed, and Jesus was precious. I end off with two verses and a thought. John 3 verse 19 to 21, I won't read all of them, but there it says these words in verse 20, for everyone that doeth evil, for everyone that doeth evil, hateth the light, hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth, cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God. If you are of the light, you will be coming to the light, else you're not of the light. What does that mean? I've been to, I like, I'm sorry I use the word conservative churches, I just mean there's not, you know, those obvious unsaved people who are so unconservative that they basically believe you can sleep around and get drunk and grace saves you. But churches where they preach the gospel, they preach repentance, they preach the Bible, and you've got the Christians there and I sit down with them and I see that they're involved with false prophets that are obviously according to the scripture false prophets, and I'll come to them and I'll say to them, look, yeah, it's obvious. I'm not telling you that you should wear blue dresses to go to heaven. I'm not saying that you have to run up and down the steps 50 times. I'm saying this guy is lying. This guy is saying that you have to fall over backwards and blah blah blah. And I can show you in scripture that's wrong. You know what, in their hundreds they tell me when I sit down with them through the years, Roy, the Bible says that if we walk in the light as he is in the light, then he forgives our sins in 1 John. We have fellowship with him. So I have my light and you have your light. And you know there's some truth in that. It is true that if I think that I should wear a hot jacket, then that's my stupidity and I don't have to force that upon you. I understand that. But if the Bible says you shall not murder, if the Bible says your body is not your own property, if the Bible says that you need to repent, be born again, all the different things the Bible says and it says it and I just say well consider it and you say I don't even want to hear it because I've got my light and you've got your light, then I've got a huge problem. And it's simply this, my Bible says if you are in the light then you'll want more light. Not sit there and everything that everybody ever says to you, comb your hair left, I think God wants you to comb your hair left or comb your hair right or wear a blue dress. Not that you'll be stupid and just yes I'll do whatever you say, but you will consider and go to the scriptures when people speak to you and you'll say well if, unless it's something stupid like ride a tractor to go to heaven, you'll say well if I want to find out if the Bible says this because if it's saying it I want to change. Because I want to find out where I'm doing wrong. I want to know where I'm wrong and God is right. If you don't have that in your life you're not saved. That's what my Bible says. He that doeth truth cometh to the light. If the conservative churches you find people who don't have this, they don't care what they don't know. They don't want to know because they don't want their deeds to be reproved. For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light. Oh you don't hate church for the social activities, you don't hate church for the few good messages that make you feel good, but you hate the light. Why? Not because you're an insect, but because your deeds should be reproved. You don't like for your toes to be stepped on by the word. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light. That his deeds may be made manifest that they're wrought in God. You are coming, and James talks about this a forgetful year, you're coming to the mirror and you're not just looking at the mirror, seeing what the Bible shows what's wrong in your life, walking away and just forgetting about it, but you are looking for where God can change you. Because where you're doing wrong, you have to make right. 2 Corinthians 4 verse 2 speaks about a very rare breed of people. Those who have renounced, disowned the hidden things of dishonesty. This is not me, because I'm in Christ. I'm for Christ, not for myself, and for what makes me feel comfortable in church. I'm for him, and I disown anything dark. Let us pray. Dear Father, I don't know the people sitting in front of me. Some of them I think I know after many years, but my father didn't know me when I read my Bible for many chapters a day. He didn't know what I did in the darkness, or what I was in the darkness, or the fears I had in my heart, or the struggles I had in my heart. He didn't know that I didn't have life in my heart because I acted so well, just like that man who wrote the Bible in English and got killed by a person he thought was a Christian, in peril among false brethren. Father, it's so easy to sit in a church and act like the people around you, and yet in your heart you don't know God. You blame it on others. You blame God for what others have done. Father, I just ask thee in thy mercy, I ask thee in thy mercy that you would work in every single person sitting here. That if they're not saved, that you would help them to realize you can't just say, Jesus come into my life, and you're trying to miss hell, but you haven't surrendered to the king. And you can't just come to a light where you just say, this is what I've done wrong, and then you don't deal with it before a holy God at the foot of the cross. And you can't fool God because one day that's the person you're going to meet on the judgment day. Father, please help those who are backslidden, who met with God, but they've somehow allowed into their heart this stupid, evil thought that perhaps they think God doesn't see the things they do in darkness, or perhaps they think that it doesn't matter so much what I don't know because I'm walking in my light. Father, I just ask for every person like that, that you will work mightily in their heart to come to you and to make right. Thank you that you love us in spite of knowing us, and that you're seeking us even when you don't seek you. And that doesn't mean we write with God, but it does mean that when we want to come to you on your terms, you are willing and able through Jesus Christ. And I ask this, that you would work in this conference further. In Jesus Christ's name, amen.