This sermon emphasizes the importance of truly loving Jesus and not just going through the motions of Christianity. It highlights the need to have a genuine relationship with God, to trust Him, to love other Christians, and to eagerly await His return. The message challenges listeners to examine their hearts, prioritize Jesus above all else, and be prepared for His coming.

I was very encouraged by the message this morning and with the other messages I heard. Brandon on feelings and gut feelings and the other messages that I did happen to hear. This morning with the friend message that was very precious, I just thought to myself, what a wonderful thing to have friends. There's a lot of schools we preach at in South Africa and if someone gets radically saved, if they want to up their standards according to the Bible, they have absolutely not one other Christian in the entire school. Every other child is getting drunk and sometimes their parents are drunkards too. I've gone to witness, I think in Nelstrom, South Africa, I remember going to one little child and he laughed when you talked about the gospel. And I asked to play a game of chess with him and I played a game of chess with him and they would literally carry his mother home, she was so drunk. And yeah, it's wonderful when you can have friends. My mother did not have friends, I think for 15 years, not one Christian friend. And that's what God sometimes allows in a Christian's life. When you have the opportunity to have a Christian friend, you better choose wisely. And it's so precious, don't run away from it to other people. When you've actually got Christian friends to have, take hold of them and don't strangle them. But in love, attempt to be their friends. And that's the wonderful thing though, there's one friend we can always have, even if there's not one other friend around us. And Ezra brought that out very strong in the most important, in the order that it's supposed to be, it's Jesus Christ. And that's so precious, wherever you are, whatever you're facing, if you've got no friends around you like Job, not even little children, not even your wife that wants to smell your breath, then some of us might have that problem anyway. But for another reason, isn't it precious that we've got God and Jesus Christ if we say it? So I'm going to bring a sermon this morning. I'd like to also just thank you in passing. Thank you so much that I can stay at Timothy's house. Thank you for the wonderful conversations with everybody. I'm terrifying at giving thanks. My dad is very good. He has this wonderful voice that he doesn't put on, but that's just who he is. And then he says, thank you so much. It's absolutely wonderful. But I try to say thanks, and all I can say is I mean it from my heart, that I could be much of this tour that I have in America is because of this church, actually. So thank you so much. It means a lot to me. Most people, when they have to fly across the world, then they leave their wife behind. Most preachers across the world, if they have to fly to another country, they will leave their wife and children behind. Then when they get there, the churches complain. Literally. And I've had this happen to me. We had a tour in South Africa, and the one person was saying to me, you're very evil. You're leaving your wife behind for a week. And I said, well, there are two cars, vehicles, and you and your group are in those vehicles. Which of you is going to stay behind for my wife to go with? And he looked at me and he said, well, I'm not staying behind. And I said, well, you're the evil one then. You go to churches and they say, we want to have you. And it's terrifying if you leave your wife behind. I said, are you paying for the tickets? No, you must come alone. And that's how people are. They judge until they have to be part of the answer to the problem. They will judge a problem until they are the answer to the problem. And yet I really thank this little church for all they've meant. They are the reason God has allowed that through the years so far, and I don't take it for granted, that I could actually come with my wife to minister in this land, and my children. So thank you so much. You don't know what it means to me. There's one preacher, I'm not going to mention his name, he's from South Africa. He preaches more than my dad, because that can tell you a lot. And he left his wife an awful lot. And you know, the wife smiles all the time through the years, but she was very depressed at times. But that's all he could do, because that's what, understandably, the churches said they could only afford him. So I really thank you. Okay, I'd like us to open up the Bible to 1 Peter 2, verse 7. 1 Peter 2, verse 7. There in the New Testament, in case you're wondering. 1 Peter 2, verse 7. I'm going to read a part of that verse, the first part. It says, Unto you, therefore, which believe, he, that's Jesus Christ, is precious. Unto you, which believe, he is precious. Before I pray, I'd just like to remind you of something that I've mentioned in passing this weekend, is that it's very sad when you go across the world, you preach at many different churches, you meet many Christians, some of them you get to know them very well, and some people call themselves Christians, many people call themselves Christians. And from the spectrum of liberal to conservative, you'll get people with all these different standards. Some people you know are unsaved just because they are so living a life of sin, and in the name of grace. But then you'll get people who are conservative and look like they're not necessarily just that you can see their eyes, but they're reasonably conservative, they have nice clothes dressed, and they sing old hymns, and they say that they prayed a prayer. But there's something missing in how they handle the Word of God and how they come to the Word of God. They've almost accepted Jesus and the traditions around them and the culture around them of the church of what they feel comfortable with, but when it comes to the Word of God and things that are not in the culture of their church, they don't care. Because they don't love the one who said it. And this is so sad. Because a true Christian, someone who has truly believed, that person, Jesus, will be precious to you. You can't say, I believe. The devils believe and tremble. You can believe intellectually in your head that Jesus Christ died, that God came and became a Jesus, entered into creation, became a little child, lived a perfect life, died on the cross, rose again the third day, ascended up to heaven, He's coming again, sitting on the right hand of power, and that He is our righteousness. You can believe all that in your head and not be saved. Because you haven't taken the step of faith to meet that God, the God the Father through Jesus Christ, and you don't love Him at all. Now, some of you will know, actually, before we go over that, let us pray. Father, I just thank You so much that You've given us the most precious gift that ever could be given. More than all, the gold of Egypt, the gold of China, South African America, the three countries with the most gold of any country in the world. More than all the diamonds in the world, more than anything out there that could be precious to us, whether it's people or achievement or monetary value, You've given us Jesus. With more than the entire creation, You gave us Jesus because You loved us. And I just want to thank You for that. And I know that You want us to love Jesus with all our heart and soul and mind. You want Jesus to be lifted up. You want us to be reminded, like Brandon said, of what Jesus said, John 15, verse 26. You want our life to be surrounded and placed upon a rock and built upon that rock according to Thy Word and the Word of Jesus Christ. And I just want to ask You this morning that You'll speak to us, that You'll come to every single person sitting here, whether it's a Christian that is backslidden in their heart and doesn't love Jesus as they ought to or as someone who is unsaved who never loved Jesus and just has some conformity to Christianity with a day where they said a prayer, Jesus come into my life and nothing happened. God, I just ask You that this morning You would speak to every single one of us, including me, and that Your Word would be a hammer and it would be a turgid sword and it would be a bomb in Gilead. And that You would come. Father, we long for You to come. Oh, that Thou wouldest rend the heavens, that Thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might melt at Thy presence, that there would be a shaking in the hearts of men and women and children that are not thinking of You. As the Scriptures have said, God is not in all their thoughts. Father, that You would awaken us to the reality of who we are before a holy, almighty Creator God. And that it is Your Word that we have to deal with this morning. In Jesus Christ's name, my dear Lord and Savior, Amen. And do you therefore wish to believe He is precious? If He's not, or He never was, you're not saved. Simple. Church can be precious to you because of many reasons. Before I got saved, I remember going to church, and I enjoyed church. And it was kind of precious to me, and not like precious like Jesus is, but it was special to me because I met friendly people who cared about me. Because at Christian camps, we could kick a soccer ball, and the soccer ball actually went through the air, and then everybody screamed, and when they screamed, it was wonderful, and if you happened to score a goal, then you were special, and you had friends, and you got around a fire, and the fire was wonderful, and you had marshmallows, and you had jokes, and it was wonderful. But, even if church is precious to you in that sense, and you have never come to the point where through Jesus Christ you met God, and Jesus became precious to you because your sins were forgiven, and that was a huge mountain that was taken away from your life, then you're not saved. And there's so many people that church is precious to them, but Jesus is not precious to them. And that's sad. I was named after a person called Roy Whip, this is a story I have told. How many of you have heard the story of the guy I was named after? Put your hand up. There'll be quite a few of you. And I'd just like to mention in passing, because it has something to do with this message, old Roy, he was my dad's neighbor back in the days when my dad was on drugs, and they weren't very good friends, his father and Roy. Old man, very, very old man. Thin, strange. And he basically didn't go to church, and his wife didn't go to church, they had no children, and Roy Whip's wife, Mrs. Whip, she was drinking a lot, and she was basically escaping life through drink as best she could, and then these Baptists came along in South Africa, and they started speaking to her, and started becoming her friend, you know, reaching out, like Ezra said, to someone below you in friendliness, and she saw something in them which she wanted. And so she looked at these people and she thought, well they have something I don't have, this love for a person, Jesus Christ, which is supernatural, it doesn't make sense, how they love this Jesus, they have life, not just religion. And so she went to her husband and said to her husband, listen, Roy, I would like to go to this church of these Baptists, they've asked me to go, and Roy looked at her and said, I would rather that you died than that you went to these religious fanatics and became like them. And when she heard those words, she went to her room, she took out a gun, she pointed it at her head, and she pulled the trigger and she killed herself, and he came into that room and he saw the pool of blood there where his wife, dead wife was, and he blamed himself. He should. And after the funeral, he locked himself in the house and he starved himself for weeks. And eventually after many weeks of starving himself, the neighbors noticed and they called, this is how God orchestrates things, they called these Baptists, of all people, and they broke down the door, they rushed him off to hospital, and in hospital, after drips and recuperating himself and all the things that happened, they came to him and they told him about Jesus Christ, the one he did not want his wife to hear about. And somehow, I don't know how God can do this, this is the love of God to a sinner that sent his wife to hell. He somehow realized that he was a sinner on his way to hell, that he was living his own life unto himself without God's authority in life, and he realized that there was an answer, that someone died for him, even for his sins, even for what he did to his wife, even for his rebellion all those years, and he realized that that person died in my place for my sins, and he came to God through Jesus Christ, and he was a new creature, and he was forgiven. He was forgiven much. And my dad, knowing that he had no children, named me after him, and he wept that he had a little child, Roy. He was also thin, by the way, but a very strange sense of humor. But he realized, when he got saved, it wasn't just a prayer, Jesus save me, and nothing happened, God radically came into his life through Jesus Christ and set him free. He used to hate God, and now he loved God. He didn't take it as a little thing, like, oh, I got saved, great, now let's chew gum and go to church for the rest of my life. He was weird in his overreaction to his love for God. When he used to answer the phone, he didn't answer the phone and say, hello, this is Roy Wipp. He answered the phone and he said, the very first question he asked, and it wasn't just joking, he said, oh, sir, madam, are you born again? It was so precious to him, what God had done to him, that he wanted to tell other people about it in a very strange way, even, because the first thing he wanted to tell people about or ask people about is, are you right with God? Do you know my Jesus? And you know, in the Bible, there was a woman that came to Jesus and God said to him, little is forgiven, the same loveth little. And obviously, it's how much is forgiven, the same loveth much. He had been forgiven much. And he loved the person who became his righteousness, who lived inside of him, because he was an utter act of grace and mercy. At Bible College, there's a guy who's dead now, but when he was at Bible College, he came from a very bad background. He used to sleep around and go, he met his wife in a pub, and they got wonderfully saved and they went to Bible College, but he used to weep a lot about the Scripture. He was very broken. And I know other people are broken and don't weep. It's personality driven sometimes, but at the end of the day, he was quite a weeper. And I remember him with tears rolling down his face talking about the Scripture a few years before he died. He said to us, other students there, he said, you're not like me. Many of you come from a religious background. You come from a church background, and you got saved. And you weren't forgiven much, and therefore, because you weren't forgiven much, you don't love God much. And you know, I respect that person, and obviously he's in heaven today, but I don't agree with him. You see, my problem is that's false Christianity. That's people growing up in a conservative church environment, and they say a prayer, and they get this ticket to heaven, and they don't love God, because all this ticket is, is Jesus gets me to heaven, but he's not changed my heart. And they never came to the point where they realized how great their religious sin was against the Holy God, and how much they would be forgiven if he forgave them. And that's why they don't love God much, because they never came as a filthy sinner. They came with a little bit of goodness just to escape hell. And therefore, they don't love God. And you know, according to the Scriptures, what really scares me is how many times one person will be in the bed, and one will be taken, and the other not. How many, with the wheat and the tares, and so many parts of Scripture, you see that you have churches, real good churches, and many people sitting in the church will go to hell! And in that same church, many will go to heaven. I don't know how many people you can look around today who will be in heaven, and how many people you can see around you today who will be in hell. Because that's the Bible that I read. It says sitting in the same place, there will be people going to heaven, and sitting in the same place, there will be people going to hell. Look at the wheat and the tares, and not just the other doctrines of Scripture. You know, I prayed many times. Charles Spurgeon's great grandson said a little prayer. And then many years later, all those years, he didn't love Jesus. But he said a prayer to get to heaven. And then many years later, he realized when reading one of Ray Comfort's books, that he was not saved. And he got radically saved, and then he loved Jesus for the first time. I'm not the only story. There are thousands of people out there like that, who have had false foundations, and later they got saved, and for the first time they loved Jesus. I remember praying many times in my life, and there came a day where I met with God coming with nothing but my sin, and from that day, I loved Jesus. And to you that believe, He is precious. But I'd like to bring about five little points this morning, and just describe what it means that Jesus is precious to you. And also what it means that when Jesus is not precious to you, even if you sit with nice conservative clothes in a church. Number one, if He is precious to you, you will not change Him. If Jesus Christ is precious to you, you will not change Him. I have a daughter, you might have noticed she runs around a lot, she's very talkative, she reminds me of me with some of the things that she says. But at the end of the day, I love her. And that's only at the end of the day though. And she came to me, she's three years old. She came to me this year, and she looked at me, and she said, Daddy, you're my lovey. She said it with a woman voice obviously. And I looked at her and I said, I thought this was so cute, oh, thank you dear. I said, you're my lovey too. You know she got shocked. She thought I was just such an idiot. She looked up at me and she said, but Daddy, stop speaking to yourself. And I was like, okay. Now there was someone in the Bible who did speak to himself, and we find him in Luke 18 verse 11. There was a Pharisee, and this Pharisee stood and prayed with himself. God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortionist, unjust, adulterous, or even as this publican. He was a man who was praying to himself. Very weird, what people in the Bible did. But I'd like to state something today. The more your Christianity in inverted commas, because it can be false Christianity, is about you, about you and not about Jesus, the more you will change Jesus to make him like you, to make him like yourself. The more your Christianity or religion is about you, like that Pharisee, and not about Jesus, the more you will change Jesus to make him like you. The Bible says in Psalm 50 verse 21, Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such as one as thyself. Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself. This is God speaking to man, and he's saying you thought that I'm like you. And that's what you find in the church all over. Unfortunately, we'll get into that a little bit later. I was out street witnessing in New York recently, about a week and a half back, and I remember going for a few hours out there in the street. It's very nice. Israel does that a lot. It can get quite fun in different parts of the world to do street witnessing and meet all the different types of people. America, South Africa is a bit more unique, but America is one of the most unique places that you meet so many different people from so many different backgrounds with so many different reasons for not being a true Christian. But I remember I wanted to find this old Catholic that a year back we'd witnessed to, Ken, and I could not find him. I went to the little group to sing a sermon. I broke away from the group with one of my friends, and I saw two young people sitting there, and I went across the street and I spoke to them, and they basically said that they're not in church. They were teenagers. And I said, why are you not in church? And they said, because I'm real. And I was like, okay, you're real. But what they were saying is we don't want to go to church and pretend we're Christians when we're not Christians. Rather be cold than lukewarm is what they basically were referring to there in Revelation at the end of the day. But there's a problem with what they were saying. Because in the church you will find so many people in conservative and liberal churches who, and I've mentioned this before, they basically come out with this new movement where the young people, you have 30 young people in a church and they're trying to be real. And what they're saying is I want to be true to myself. And when they say I'm true to myself, they mean I don't want to be a Pharisee. I don't want to be someone standing up there and saying I'm something that I'm not. And so when it comes down to me being a Christian, basically, if I'm a drunkard, I'll admit I'm a drunk. If I have tendencies towards wrong things sexually, then I will just admit it. If I am opposed against my parents, well, I don't like my parents and that's it. And I've accepted Jesus Christ into my life, but I'm real. Keep it real, dude. That's what some of them say. Now, that is horrible. I mean, if you think about it, I don't want to be a Pharisee, so I'm going to be myself. Do you know what you mean when you say I'm going to be myself? There's a verse in the Bible, Proverbs 18 verse 2 that says, A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself. A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself. When you meet a person, you say, that person's obviously a true Christian because he's real. He's at least honest about who he is. You are being stupid. Because it's good to be honest, but if that's all you have, then you've got only yourself as a sinful sinner that was born a sinner, you grew up a sinner, you've done sin, and you're on your way to hell, and you've said a prayer. When you discover yourself morally, you're not discovering what God intended you to be, but what sin and the fall of man has made you. Let me repeat that. When you discover yourself morally, then you are not discovering what God intended you to be, but what sin and the fall of man has made you. And that's what these young people are doing. And it goes further. I just like to say that you shouldn't be true to self, you should be true to him. John the Baptist said, this is after salvation, he must increase, but I must decrease. There's an old song which says, more about Jesus would I know, more of his grace to others show, more of his saving fullness see, more of his love who died for me. If Jesus is precious to you, you want more of him and less of yourself. You don't want to discover yourself and not be a Pharisee and be real man, because I want to tell you who I really am. If you find stuff that's wrong in your life according to scripture, you want to change to be like Jesus. And if you don't have that desire, you're not saved. Being real doesn't mean I'm not a Pharisee, therefore hey, hallelujah, I'm a good Christian. I drink and get drunk. Hi everybody, I drink, get drunk, I love Jesus. But I'm not bringing that to the cross so he can set me free. That's a big problem. Satan loves to change God. If we love God, we will not change him. From the very start of scripture, Satan tried to change who God is. There in Genesis chapter 3 we read that the serpent, who was more subtle than all the other animals, came unto Eve and he basically asked a question. He said, had God said, ye shall not eat of all the trees, of every tree of the garden. Now what is Satan doing here? He was taking a God, who we know from scripture to be good, who created a perfect universe and he was trying to make him look ugly. This God is keeping stuff back from you. This God is bad. He's not allowing you to eat of all the trees of the garden. From the start, Satan attacked the character and integrity of God. And you must realize that in a fallen world, since man rebelled against God and sins and this world is cursed and there's sin and disease and suffering, there's so much more ammunition for Satan to use to convince you that God is not good. And he's lying just like he lied to Eve. God is good. And I have people that I know and I grieve about this. I'm thinking about one specifically in one part of America right now, but there are so many of them who think God is an ogre because of something that happens to their parents. Financially. They went to church for years, but now God's an ogre. Because look what God did to good people. And this is what Satan would like us to believe. But not only Satan wants us to change God to be an ogre, to other people he wants us to change God and Jesus Christ to be this lovey-dovey like Ezra said this morning, far of God that doesn't care about the wrong things that you do in your life and will change basically because he loves you and change his conditions of salvation so you can get to heaven your way because he loves you. The Bible I read, Jesus does not change just because he loves you. Matthew 19 verse 22, there was a rich young man that came to Jesus Christ and Jesus showed him his sin and that he wasn't good like he thought he was and that he had to give up his life where he was covetous, living for money and not for God and that young man it says there in Matthew 19 verse 22 he went away sorrowful. And when he went away sorrowful Jesus did not do what many people do. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! I'm sorry! Okay, come back. Come back. I'm sorry. You can just say a prayer. After salvation you can grow out of your money. Okay? You just kneel down here and repeat after me. Thank you. You're a sinner. I'm a sinner. Jesus Christ died for your sins. Jesus Christ died for my sins. I accept you into my life. I accept you into my life. Stand up, you're saved. Now, discipleship. No, Jesus did not call him back. He let him go because Jesus will not change because he cannot change. His conditions stand sure and it might sound ugly to you but it's the truth and you've got to hear it. He will not change. When you sit before him and you say there's the cross and Jesus died and he rose again. But God, I'm going to carry on with these things in my heart that I love. And I'll just accept you because that's the part of the gospel I want. Not to go to hell. You're going to walk away from him with nothing. And he won't be precious to you. You'll just have a false foundation. When the disciples were of them, so called, were offended by his word, Jesus did not call them back and say, hey, I'll just change my word for you. Jesus said to John the Baptist, blessed is he who shall not be offended in me. Because I'm not going to change. You've got to change. And I'm willing to change you if you're willing to be changed. But I'm not going to change just to let you into heaven. If Jesus is precious to you, you will not change him. If Jesus is precious to you, you will not change his word. How many people walk around the streets, they're sleeping around, they get drunk and they've got these ball caps on, Jesus is Lord. And that's about where it ends. Because they say, I follow Jesus with their mouths. But like Titus says, in works they deny him. They talk about Jesus, but they reject his word. Let me tell you something, if you reject his word, you've rejected him. It's as simple as that. The Bible says in Mark 8 verse 30, Therefore, shall be ashamed of me and my words, of him, and this adulterous and sinful generation, of him also, shall the Son of Man be ashamed when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. Jesus said, I am going to be ashamed of you if you're ashamed of, not just my name, not just Jesus on my head, not just I said a prayer, but my words. If you are ashamed of these words, you're ashamed of him. You can't say, I follow a Jesus who disagrees with what he said. Or I can ignore what he said. You follow Jesus, you follow what he said, or not at all. It's as simple as that. The Bible talks of the love of the truth. 2 Thessalonians 2 verse 10 says, They received not the love of the truth that they may be saved. When you receive Jesus, you receive the love of the truth. You know what the truth is according to John 17 verse 17? Jesus says, Thy word is truth. If you don't receive a love for Jesus' word at the same time as receiving him, you never received him. The Bible says, They received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. Unfortunately, people have received the love of happiness. Woo! They go through emotional problems, and then hard times in life, and then they find a Jesus who does not meet them on the conditions that Jesus put forth, but meets their emotional need. And when this Jesus meets their emotional need, they love this false Jesus, and this Jesus cannot agree with many things in Scripture. But it doesn't matter, because he met my emotional need, so he must be real, and I love him. Now, you've heard the story of the angel on the bridge, and the mother that lost her child, that fell off the bridge. And so, she had a dream, and she saw the angel standing there and pushing her child off the bridge. And she said to the angel, But why did you do this? And the angel said, Because I knew that this child would grow up to be a drunkard, and so I wanted her to go to heaven, so I pushed her off the bridge. And she said, Well, I was so emotional, so against God, but now I understand, and now my emotional needs are met. I've been comforted. And for the rest of her life, she clings to that false comfort that angels push little kids off bridges so that they don't become drunkards one day. And because it met her emotional need, you can't tell her the truth! Remember one lady I came to, and she said her child, she prayed for that child for years. And that child was a drunkard, a living drunkard, not just one drunken party, drunk for life. Years and years of drunkenness. And she prayed and got many people to pray and said, Pray for my child to be saved! And the child was in an accident. At a high speed, her son hit a car, sorry, hit a cow. And the cow went over the top of the car, smashed through the windscreen. His head was smashed and smithereens. He was dead in a moment. And she said, this mother looked me in the face, and she said, Roy, that was God's answer to prayer. And it was such a comfort to know that God answered prayer by getting my child up to heaven. It was the only way to set him free. And you know what I had to tell her? The Bible says, your comfort is ridiculous. Your comfort is a lie. Because your child is in hell. And if you believe that's the gospel, you're on the way to hell. And of course they said, but that's cruel! You can't do that! What do you want, her to go to hell too? How cruel to send someone to hell because you want to comfort them? Do you think for the rest of eternity she's going to be thankful that you comforted her? Falsely, while she burns in flames? 2 Timothy 4 verse 3, the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts, after their own lusts, they shall heap to themselves teachers having itching ears. In the end days there will be thousands of preachers all over the church of God. Not the Muslim world, not the Hindus, the church, those who consider themselves Christians who are heaped up, there's mountains of them all over. Now as soon as you start saying is that one of them, is that one of them, people say don't judge. But you have to realize they exist and they're there and there's a lot of them. And they're not just your extreme charismatic preachers, they are in normal churches too. And basically they are there to make you feel comfortable according to what you would like to be. It's not about Jesus, it's not about loving him and doing whatever he says, even if Jesus says that in your head. It's about me, what I want, what I feel comfortable with, and that might be a liberal church where I can go to drunken parties, it might be a conservative church where I can sing hymns, but it is what I feel comfortable with and that is what I want. And there will be a preacher for you. You'll find a church that you fit in with and it'll be about that. You choose a preacher not because he preaches the word, but what you're comfortable with. Some preachers will give you rules to feed your pride so that you can feel better than other people. If you don't like that, you might go to a liberal church where you can feed your lust because you are allowed freedom to do what you want. But it will not be about Jesus Christ. And when it comes to the word of God, some people don't even read the word of God. Some people are backslidden that Jesus used to be precious to you. But there's come a time in your life where you have started to allow that path to your quiet time to grow weeds. And if you look there you'll have to admit, if you could see it physically what is spiritually, that path to where you sit at the feet of Jesus is filled with weeds because you don't walk that path. The years have passed while I cared for things of lesser worth. The things of heaven I let go while minding things of earth. If you had a neighbor and you said, let's just say me and Jerusalem were neighbors and we got married and we had two houses. And in my house, there where my wife for five years stayed next door to me, I decided I want to prove to the world that I love my wife. And so I put up this lovely picture of Jerusalem, even put lipstick on it. And I looked at her and I sat down. Oh, she's a wonderful person. And I sang about her in Jerusalem. You know, like that song. And I enjoyed myself immensely singing and I even started writing tracks about her and handed out those to people who were passing by. Yeah, this is my wife. If you want to read about her, she's really cool. You know, someone might come there and say, Robert, I want to ask you one question. You put money in a little box in front of this picture of your wife. You look at the picture of your wife. You hand out little pamphlets about your wife. But do you ever visit her next door? I'm like, well, I never thought of that. I think that's stupid. That is ridiculous. Nobody would believe I love my wife if I could just walk next door and spend time with her just because I got a picture on the wall. There's something awfully wrong with that relationship and yet we can see it in that ridiculous illustration. But in our own lives, when we go to church and we have a picture of Jesus in the sense that we have our Bibles with us and we have little tracks that we hand out and give a little money and we sing songs, we do all these things for God but we don't spend time with them and we expect people to believe that Jesus is precious to us. Ridiculous. Some people are passengers. I've seen this in so many churches across America. They had something of an awakening of true Christianity. Maybe. And there's something they want to cling to of what they remember of what that was or something they saw in other people or something they grew up as a tradition in an evangelical conservative church and yet they've drawn away from the church and yet they still want to be in it. I've seen this in South Africa. I've seen it in America. It's like the Catholics who basically once a year they attend church but they in evangelical churches and churches that preach the gospel they come there some Sundays, sometimes only Sundays and they're not really in the church. It's not because they're working for a hospital that has hours that you can't come to Wednesday prayer meeting. They basically are coming there because they don't want to totally lose that part of their life. But they want this other life. And they don't have a relationship with God. They're not reading their Bibles much. And they're passengers. And they don't love Jesus. But they don't want to totally give up the idea of Christianity. Some people read the Bible without fear of God. I remember one young man came to me and said Roy, this was a few years back in America, he said Roy, I listened to a sermon on the quiet time and I believe you must really have a quiet time so I read the Bible every day, a few chapters, but it means absolutely nothing to me and I still go out and do my thing and sin. You know Voltaire read the Bible, I think he was an atheist, he was against the, no, he believed he wanted to destroy Christianity and the Bible. But he read through the Bible I think 29 times if I remember right. You can read the Bible a lot and yet not love. And yet not be sitting with that person. I think Francis Chan, I don't agree everything about him, but remember I think he wants to speak to Jehovah's Witness and the Jehovah's Witness was trying to convince him and he just asked a very simple question. He said, if you read the Bible, do you have the right relationship with the, do you come with the right idea of our relationship as man with God? Because he's the creator and we are the creation. He owns us. The very fact that he made us means that he has the right to do with us as he wishes. He is the one in whose hand our breath is. And so when you come to the Bible, I'd like, you want to argue that Jesus is not God, you want to argue all these different things, but let me ask you a simple question. If I could show you from Scripture and Scripture really said it and you believe that Scripture says it, that you should stand in your head if Jesus Christ said you must, then would you do it? He said no. He said then you've got a big problem because you're not actually wanting to come to God to submit to him. You just want to win your argument. It's about you and not Christ. Sometimes people say to me, you know, how can God allow little babies to die and stuff? You know, they misuse truth because at the end of the day you can go into a long conversation about original sin and how it cursed the world and how our sin affects others and there's ultimate justice and the atheists like to actually use the concept of God to fear people with a false fear because they talk of the twin towers and people flying into the twin towers and they think if you talk of a God who's got absolute authority and he's a created God and you must listen to him, then some Christian out there is going to fly into some tower somewhere. And I say that's rubbish because we know the Bible said Christians shouldn't do that. So we know we're safe from that. God has the right to say that but he would not say that because he said he wouldn't. Jesus at the end is coming to lead his armies and Jesus will fight with the sword of his mouth. That's a false fear. But having said that God has the right to do with us as he wishes. Imagine there was an ant here and this ant was walking across the room and it saw Brandon. It thought Brandon, that looks like the nicest hair to lay my eggs in or whatever. And it goes towards Brandon and the nearer it gets the uglier Brandon becomes and it decides that maybe I shouldn't have chosen Brandon but I've got so far, who cares? And I walk here and I look at that ant and I just give it the biggest squish that ever didn't survive in its entire life and I killed it. How many of you would jump up and say Roy! You're a murderer! Anybody? If one of you happened to step on that ant would you now for three days be mourning, not fasting, go to the police station, stand in the police station. I want to just admit that I murdered someone. I said, okay, come here I'll put you in handcuffs. Who was it? It was an ant that was walking on the ground. They said, you're mad. You don't need jail you need a psychologist. Do you know how much we understand that God, that an ant is not a human being. Everybody understand that. And that killing an ant is not killing a human being because it's a lesser being. And yet we treat God as if he was a human being when we judge him. When he is infinitely more higher as a being to us than we are to an ant. He is the creator of the universe. He can do whatever he wishes with it. He could kill every single person sitting in this hall and he'd be righteous. He has that right. And yet while he is sovereign and while we are at his mercy he gave his son to die for us. He didn't have to. In Psalm chapter 2 it says, oh it talks of how God gave all power to Jesus Christ and he said, often ask of me and I shall give you the heathen for thine inheritance and you can do what you want with him basically. Talking about the thousand years of peace probably. But ultimately when God gave all power to Jesus he could do what he wanted with the nations. And what did he do? He sent people to preach the gospel. We read in the New Testament. What beauty. But you have to understand when you come to the Scripture you don't come to a Bible where you try to find arguments to prove that your lusts are correct and how you feel Christianity should be correct. You come to something and say, well what I feel comfortable with I want to find in Scripture and I want to follow that. Whether it's conservatism or whether it's liberalism. You come to the Scripture and it's the creator that you come into and you are the creation and you have to stand on your head if the Scripture says you must. Because he's the creator you're the creation. He's your only source of life he's your only hope of heaven and you better obey. You don't just come and say I'm reading the Bible because someone said I must have a quiet time. Some people circumnavigate the authority of Scripture, of God, of the man behind the message, of the person behind the word that makes it rebellion against God to disobey one verse. And they circumnavigate the authority of God by feelings of peace, gut feelings. I've got this vivid imagination when you talk about gut feelings I think of my stomach. But they literally do this. I had one person working underneath me nine years back as a missionary in South Africa, missionary evangelist, we used to drive around and I would say it's time, I'm the person in authority, that's how they set it up to go to the streets and we're going to go witnessing. And he would say God told me not to. And I'd say it's time now to have our evening prayer time. God told me not to. You know it just frustrated me so much that this horrible person always got led to do what he wanted to do. He always got led to do what he wanted. Now if you take away the God led me then all you were saying is I don't want to listen to you. Which sounds rebellious. But if you add the words God led me then you've closed the bait. And he got peace trust me. Some very godly people get amazing peace sometimes. It's not wrong to have peace as long as it's within the bounds of what scripture allows. But I remember once coming to a place and I drove around to many different conference centers to find a cheap one so we could start a conference in that area. There's different places in Africa where I've by God's grace started conferences that they carried on for a long time with different preachers. And I remember this one missionary said I don't think that's right because God has led me only to work in the schools. I said that's fine. I've been told by higher authority I must do this so I'll go and do it. So I went around and did it. Came back. It was the most wonderful camp. We got my dad to be the first preacher. We had a lot of people coming. We had excitement. There were people who met with God. People who got radically saved. They hadn't been reading their Bibles for years. It was absolutely wonderful. And this person was there and can you believe it after being led for years to only work in schools suddenly Oh dear father I need peace about something else. Great. Roy I've been led to only hold camps. I'm like oh my. That person held 20 camps the next year. It exhausted people in that area. It destroyed what had been done eventually because of these amazing leadings. Now that person is not sinning. That person was not going against authority necessarily but it just I can guarantee you that person was not led. Very impractical. There are people who start a business. Many, many people. And when you go to them and you think you want to give them advice. They're sitting on the other side of the table. And let's just say they want to take a loan from the bank and they want to get a tractor and you want to say to them well there's 100 people in this area of Africa who have tractors. To hire it out what are you going to do? You want to give them a little bit of advice. That's great but as soon as they've said the words I want to hire a tractor because God told me to get a tractor. Oh my. Now you have to be so careful because you're going against God to give them advice. And I know so many people like that. I can name them one by one. There are so many people like that. And it gets so irritating. Many of them are living in sin. God told them to do this. God told them to do that. But they advise people to sleep around. And they call themselves Christians. But you know what? I really shocked me. This is something I've been gathering through different groups because a lot of different churches somehow there's one couple family there that knows another family there that knows another family there that knows another family there. So you get to know a little bit of the interaction between from different sides of certain individuals. And you'll get guys which are the conservatives they hide their liberalism by talking about being led all the time. I'm led here. I'm led there. I got peace. I prayed for hours. Pray for me because I need God's leading in this area. But to the liberals they'll be saying, go to those parties. Sleep around. And then I'll go and sit with true conservatives, people who are saved, people who love the Bible, people who are the fruit of the Scripture. And they don't know this that I know. And they'll look at these people and they'll say, sure, God's really working in his life. And when you go to the liberals they say, that guy's real. That guy's real, man. He's being himself. And I'm like, what is happening to Christianity? You've got good guys believing bad guys who feel comfortable with the good guys and the bad guys. And if you say anything, oh, don't judge. He had peace. God gave him peace. God led him. They're like, what about the Bible? What about the Bible? What about the Bible? Please! And they're like, doesn't count. They don't say that, but when you bring up the Bible you shouldn't have done that if you're actually trying to cause division. And the only way to convince the godly is to actually hurt the name of those people and say, do you know that he's sleeping around? Then that person hears about it and he says, look what he told them! He ruined my name! But if you don't do that, which I don't ever want to do, then it just carries on. The good guys think he's godly. The liberals think he's free. And he's got all these leadings which prove it. Among conservatives he speaks of peace, and among liberals he speaks of freedom. The Bible says in Psalm 12 verse 2, with a double heart do they speak. I believe there might be people sitting in this church who do that. Maybe not as bad, but they do that. My children have dual citizenship. They are South Africans and they are Americans. But among if you have this dual citizenship between the liberals and you feel comfortable with them and you know how to speak the talk that they feel free to do their sin and you know how to sit among the liberals and talk about spirituality and peace and God led me and whatever, you are two-tongued snake. That's all you are. You sitting here today, if you like that, are a two-tongued snake. The Corinthian church had this big problem. They had so many experiences, so much tongues, so much prophecies, so much amazing things that happened that the truly saved among them, and you read there they were saved among them. Chronic Christians many times but they were saved among them. They didn't want to judge the people who were doing very bad sins because they had spiritual experiences. Sometimes they didn't even know about it. They just looked at the guy and he spoke well or he had experiences and they said that must be spiritual. And so the saved were mixing with the unsaved because they would not judge. 1 Corinthians 15 verse 34 says, Awake to righteousness and sin not. Listen to these words, For some have not the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame. With all your wonderful experiences and peace and leadings and miracles, some of you are not saved because your life contradicts the scripture. Simple as that. And so 2 Corinthians 13 verse 5 says, Examine yourselves whether you be in the faith. Thirdly, and these last few points are much faster but you will love Christians. You will not change God or Jesus Christ. You will not change his word because you love him. You will love Christians. And when I say that I'd like to sum this up because it's not just I will love Christians. I mentioned that earlier. When I went to camp I loved Christians because they kicked a soccer ball. I loved Christians because they cared about the things I was going through at school. I loved Christians because it was the in thing to do and I felt part of a club. But I'll tell you, when you're truly saved, 1 John 3 verse 14 we know that we have passed from life to death, from death unto life because we love the brethren. If any man say I love God and hated his brother he is a liar. You are a liar the bible says and I say that in love but you are a liar if you hate true Christians or any true Christian. You don't just love these guys because they have ball caps on which says Jesus is Lord. You don't just love these guys because they've said a prayer and you say I must love other Christians and that guy and that guy and that guy all said a prayer Jesus come into my life. You don't just love them because they have your tradition, your culture from which you came from. You don't just love them because of the social club and attention. You don't love them just because of the emotional support that they give you or the influence that you can have them because you feel a little bit of something of worth because you can influence this guy influence that guy. You love them because they love Jesus and they will not change him. You love them because they love Christ's word, the word of God and they will not change it. You love them because when they come before the bible they will stand on their head if God said so. You love them because they're true Christians and it's those people that you love. Not just the fact that they're in church therefore we love them therefore I'm going to heaven. You can love a whole lot of people in church and you don't have the love that this talks about. It says here in 2 Timothy 2 verse 15 study to show thyself approved unto God a workman that needeth not a shame rightly dividing the word of truth. Number four you'll love him more he'll become more precious as you learn to trust him. As you mentioned in the verse there's a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. You'll find your true friend through the dark times in life but I'd like to qualify that because there will be people who will actually stick with you. I've seen people through the dark times of certain people's lives, sinners who there are people who come next to them and they will help them through those hard times and they will still be in sin, both of them. And they will not encourage them to repent they will not encourage them to submit themselves to scripture, they will not encourage them in the way of righteousness and you have varying degrees of that. You have earthly friends you can have earthly friends who are your eternal enemies as they lead you to hell. And they'll help you with your emotions and they'll help you with your finances and they'll help you with a whole lot of different things, nothing wrong with that but at the end of the day you can't trust them with your soul. A true friend, Proverbs 27 verse 6, faithful the wounds of a friend but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. We are living in a time like never before where your life is your life and my life is my life and if I come to you and I and I know you're about to fall off a wall and die, I was judging thank you for telling me it, spiritually. But a true friend will not you wonderful you're going to heaven when you're not he will not kiss you into hell he'll take out the knife of scripture like a surgeon, knowing that there's ugly pussy stuff underneath that needs to be taken out. He'll take that sharp knife and you might look at that knife and think this guy hates me and he'll put it in so that he can get the bad stuff out. That's what was in Corinthians Paul talked about, his sharpness was like a surgeon. Lastly, if you love him you'll be waiting for him. Luke 12 verse 36 says and yourselves liken to men that wait for their lord the guy who created everything the king. When he will return from the wedding when he cometh and knocketh that he may that when he cometh and knocketh they may open unto him immediately. Isn't it wonderful that we're supposed to be as Christians that he's so precious we're waiting for him. That's what our life is about, he's coming. 1 John 2 3 verse 2 and 3 verse 3 says beloved now are we the sons of God and it does not yet appear what we shall be. But we know that when he shall appear that's Jesus Christ the one we love we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is. And in these words of every man that had this hope in him, purify himself even as he is pure. There's coming a day when our bodies will be changed into glorious bodies like unto the body of Jesus Christ. We will be totally like Jesus in the twinkling of an eye we're going to be changed. Job longed for that day. The Bible through the scriptures talks of that day. In Romans, Corinthians, the Psalms Philippians, you name it the day when we're going to be changed to be like Jesus Christ. But on earth we're preparing for that day. Every man that has this hope that one day we're going to be changed, we're purifying ourselves to be like Jesus through the word of God. We're finding everything we can to submit to God through Jesus Christ and believe in Christ and experience of Christ so that we can be ready when he comes. We are preparing ourselves for our groom as the bride of Christ. 2 Corinthians 11 verse 2 Paul said he had a jealous, I'm jealous of you with a godly jealousy for I have espoused you to one husband that I might present you a chaste virgin unto Christ. He wants you to be pure when Jesus comes. The Bible says no man that woreth and tangleth himself with the affairs of this life. It's amazing. I'm not going to get my heart totally into everything down here. It's going to be about up there. My heart is going to be in heaven. That's what the Bible says. For where your treasure is there will your heart be also. That's not just you give money and then you're laying up treasure in heaven. You can give a lot of money to the church and lay no treasure in heaven because the reason you can give away your money is because your treasure is Christ. Your treasure in heaven is Christ. He which testified these things saith surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so come Lord Jesus. And I'd like to ask the question today to every Christian sitting here. Is this your heart's cry? Is it in your heart right now no matter what I still want to accomplish in life, no matter what my dreams are, there's nothing that has my heart as much as Jesus Christ. Not the two children that I want to have with my wife. Not the business to the degree I want to build it up to. There's nothing that has my heart as the treasure that is Jesus. I'm longing for His coming. Is it written across your life? Even so come Lord Jesus. Is He precious to you? I end up with two illustrations. Back in the days before the new atheists, there was different waves of atheist movements and they used to get these speakers who stood up in the old days and they used to gather big crowds to preach to Christians to try to convince them that the Bible was not true and God is stupid or the concept of God. And so they had a large group of hundreds of people coming together to hear a prominent atheist and he stood up there and he preached and the story goes that nobody would stand up to him but a little girl was there and to this little girl Jesus was precious. She loved Jesus and so she walked to the front she stood up on the stage and she said, she started to sing stand up, stand up for Jesus ye soldiers of the cross and where those men would not stand up for Jesus, he was not precious enough to them. She stood up and when they saw her love for God they started to sing and that atheist walked away. It's another story in Persecuted Lands where a father and son were standing before a soldier and the soldier basically said, if you do not deny Christ I will skin your little boy in front of you. I will kill him. You know, I don't know what I would do if little Glenn was sitting in front of me and this guy looks at me and says, all you have to do is deny Christ and I will let your boy live. That little boy looked up at his dad and said, Daddy if you deny Christ, I will be ashamed of you. And the boy died. You know, if you sit in here and you've said a prayer but Jesus is not precious to you because you just came with a little bit of your own goodness to escape hell, you've got to come to the cross. You've baxed him, he's no longer precious to you and you've allowed idols into your life, whatever those are, that the word of God is not paramount because you love him, therefore you love his word, just stand in your head before your creator. And then you need to come to the cross not to discover your heart, not to not be a Pharisee, but to discover Christ and what he could be to you in his righteousness. And he's knocking on the door. A lot of people don't like using the verse in Revelation where it talks about Jesus knocking. But there are people who radically have been saved through that. I know some. And you have to realize when Jesus is knocking, he's knocking from the outside, though you think you're in the church. And you have to open the door. He wants to come in and he wants to change you and he wants to be your treasure. But you've got to open the door. Let us pray. Dear Father, I want to thank you so much that we could be together here and gather around that precious word. Every single one of the thousands, hundreds of thousands of words in the Bible is precious, precious words because it's the word of God. It's not Roy Daniel speaking, it's not Brandon Brady, I'm sorry, Brandon Martin speaking, it's not Timothy Konderski speaking, it's not D. L. Moody speaking, it's God's word. Every part of Scripture is given by inspiration of God. And dear Father, I know that there's so many people out there and we're living in a very strange world where conservatives are mixed with liberals are mixed with sinners and they all somehow fit together in this horrible mesh because there's so much double-tongued, snake-talking going on out there. I am to you conservative. I am to the other liberal. I know what to say and I know how to say it. I know how to live in Christianity and get by. Father, I call out to thee and ask thee for the Holy Spirit to work through the word of God, to divide between the soul and the spirit, to work in people's lives, to realize in this mixed-up world where everybody seems to be a Christian if they said a prayer and they got a little bit of conservatism that people would realize that it goes beyond that, that if they came to God with their nice clothing and they said to God, how may I inherit eternal life and God showed to them that it was sin that they had to give up as they came to the cross and they were not willing to give up that sin then they would not find a Jesus who would change himself to suit their lusts. That they would walk away without eternal life. That it's totally paid for on the cross but that they can't come on their conditions, they have to come on God's conditions because He is God, He is the Creator and we are the mere creation who are standing at the mercy of God. Help us to come with that, with that attitude, dear Father. Work in our lives for the Holy Spirit, let there be a church of God that rises up again, not living for itself and teaches that are liberal or conservative that suits their needs and makes them feel good or makes them feel free. But a church that trembles with the word of God and that understands the relationship between Creator and creation and that loves Jesus with all their heart and all their soul and all their mind and will not change who He is and will not change what He believes and what He's against and what He's for and will not change His word and is waiting for His coming. Oh God, help every single one of us to seek this through Jesus Christ. In Jesus' name, Amen.