In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of relying solely on the Bible for guidance and belief. He urges the audience to not be swayed by charismatic personalities or persuasive voices, but to always check with the Word of God. The preacher highlights the need for the glory of God to be reflected in our attitudes and personalities, through the sacrificial work of Jesus Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. He also emphasizes the importance of keeping and obeying the Word of God, rather than just preaching it. Lastly, the preacher reminds the audience of the urgency to reach out to the world and share the message of salvation, while also growing in hatred for sin and longing for the fulfillment of God's purposes in their generation.

Come on, we're eternity-bound people. Are we absorbing all there is in the risen Christ of God? Is your life reflecting his peace, his peace, his joy, his love? It's all there to be absorbed by us. My peace I live with. Not peace, my peace. Joy? No, my joy. No man taking it from you. Take everything else. Take the shirt off your back. Take the money out of your pocket. Take your friends. You can't take your joy. Joy, he says, your joy, no man taketh it from you. Read the 16th chapter of John. It's his joy, the joy that dominated his life, under pressure, when they threatened him, when they would have killed him. But he was dominated by joy, by peace. And I leave you my peace by joy. And his joy was doing the will of the Father. This is his legacy to his disciples. Did any king die as poor as Jesus? He didn't have any houses he could share? He didn't have any horses to leave them? He didn't have any money? He says, I give you my peace, I'll give you my joy. These are worth a million, million times the other things you have. And if I'm living in less than that, I'm not living where God wants me. And if I'm not living there, I won't reflect his glory, I won't reflect his beauty. Ah, yes. And while we're rejoicing, there's a world outside perishing. The more I see of him, the more I'll hate sin. The more I see of him, the more I long that what Jesus died for will be accomplished in my generation, hasn't been accomplished in any other. You've got the greatest chance in the world to make history. And you'll only do it when you're cleansed and filled with the Spirit of God. You get serious about spiritual matters and you start forsaking all your idols and you start turning the Lord with all your heart. You begin to get absolutely possessed with Jesus. You take your eyes off material things, get your eyes off of everything that's material and start being consumed with Jesus. And you suddenly become a religious fanatic. You're in for the greatest rejection of your lifetime. And I'm going to tell you where it comes from, not out there, but in the backslidden church. Now when you were lukewarm and having just a form of godliness without any power, and when you were not overly sinful or overly holy, but you were in that lukewarm thing just riding along, not too concerned, nobody bothered you. You didn't bother anyone and not even the devil. Because you see, you were just riding down the middle of the road and you weren't making waves. But now you've changed, haven't you? We got a lot of people here who are going to know exactly what I am talking about, because you got hungry for God, you got convicted of your sin, your easy lifestyle, you couldn't play church anymore, you repented, you turned to the Lord with all your heart, and down came your idols, they were busted to powder. You began to dig into God's Word, and you are so into the heart of Jesus now, you came into a new realm of discernment, because when you repent and begin to dig into the Word, the first thing God gives you is back to discernment. So that you know what is profane and you know what is holy, you know what is righteous, and you know what is evil. And you begin to cast down your idols, and then you begin to see things in the church that you never saw before, and the things that never bothered you before bother you now, and the compromise bothers you because you know what it's all about because you were there. And you see it, and the reason it hurts you is because you know what it did to you and your family. And now that God is opening your eyes, you say, why can't it happen to the entire church of Jesus Christ? And it's not because you have a holier-than-thou attitude, it's not because you have a judgmental spirit, but you say, oh God, how could I have been so blind for so long? But instead of your friends rejoicing, you see you're awakened, you're turned around, and you're broken, you're contrite, and God's given you a burden for the church. But instead of your friends rejoicing with you, they think you've lost your mind, you've gone crazy. You go visit them, and if they can, you can't even talk to them because the television's blaring so loud, and you start talking to them about Jesus, and they look at you with that blank expression, what's wrong with you? You don't talk about the Jets, you don't talk about the Cowboys, you talk about Jesus. And there are people that are like that, you know, there's so much mouth that when it's open they're half-naked, and yet they don't let you know what's inside their hearts. They just don't let you know because they're ashamed to. We go around all slicked up, and we learn from Emily Post how to hide what's in us and be unnatural and artificial because we're ashamed of what's inside. But by thy word are we cleansed, says the scriptures. The word I speak unto you cleanses. So we need this cleansing, and that's why we love the word so much. It stands up under the test of cleansing. Let any moral leper in the world come and kneel and take the word and believe the word and meet its terms and see if he doesn't go away clean. There is cleansing in the word of the Lord, and there's quickening, and the reason we need quickening is we're so dead. We're desperately dead, we're dead with a deadness that you can't bury. We're dead with a deadness that nobody can diagnose. It's a moral deadness, a spiritual deadness, and we need quickening. And scripture says that he quickens us by his word, says in the Psalms and elsewhere. The image of God that should be in us restored by the redemptive work of Jesus Christ and by the abiding spirit of the Holy Ghost. You see, God only has one class for his people, only one, and that's holiness. I didn't write it. I like that verse in Hebrews, where it says that we, we, we, we, on this earth, while we're here, as the hymn writer says, in this body pent or tied up, we, while we're here on earth, are supposed to be as holy as Jesus Christ was when he was on earth. He didn't die to leave us, moral cripples leaping around or staggering and falling and stumbling. The ordinary course of the Christian life is victory from morning time you get up to the time you go to bed. It isn't that we can't sin, it's that we don't want to sin. It's not that it's impossible to sin, it's possible not to sin. There's a big difference. I want Jesus Christ expects that you and I to be little Christ while we're here in this world, reflecting the moral and spiritual glory of God in the face, and not just our physical face, but in our display to other people as they read us, as they see us. We don't need veils on our faces. We don't have enough glory, but it should be that the glory of God is reflected in our demeanor, in our actions, in our attitudes, in our personality. There's nothing more revolutionary than the sacrificial work of Jesus Christ made real in us, putting to death the old man and putting on the new man, and then being indwelt by the Spirit of God. That's not super, that's the normal Christian life. You talk about the law, you talk about this, you claim to have the Word of God, but you don't keep it. You claim to be preaching it, but you don't keep it. Your people don't keep it. And see, this two-edged sword was coming into the heart, and they were pricked to the heart. Why are they gnashing on a man of God? You know why? Oh, it's very, very clear if you go to look at verse 55, 7th chapter, verse 55. But he being full of the Holy Ghost, looking up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, he said, Behold, I see the heavens open, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God. What is it that's getting to them? It's a man who has an open heaven. Do you see it? He stands before me and said, I see the heavens opening to me. I see Jesus now standing at the right hand of the Father. And with all their years of training, all their years of doctrine, all their years of talking about a Messiah, they don't even know what he's talking about. And here's a man so far beyond them, it's incomprehensible to them, and he's a rebuke to their carnal, because the Bible says, this man said you're stiff-necked in heart, and he said lust has a hold of your heart. And here comes along a holy man, so given to Jesus, he reproaches the whole system. And the more you draw closer to the heart of Jesus, and the more the heavens are open to you, and the more you see of his power, and his glory, and his holiness, the more you're going to shine forth as a light. And I want you to know when that light comes, you won't go around boasting about it, because when Moses came down from the glory, his face was shining so much that he had to cover his face with a veil. But the Bible said he was not that his face did shine. He wasn't even aware of that. He wasn't flaunting it. He didn't rip it off saying, take a look, I'm a man of God. He put on no prophetic airs. He didn't threaten anybody. He wasn't even aware that he was walking in such holiness. He wasn't aware that his face was so ablaze with the glory and the presence of Almighty God. He didn't even know his face did shine. He was not that his face did shine. The real child of God who walks with the Lord, when he's rebuffed, when he's persecuted, when he's stoned, and when we talk about being stoned, now we're not talking about physical stones. We're not talking about literal stones. You know, the tragic thing about us today is the world can put up with us. It couldn't put up with the early church. The early church was going that way. The world was going that. Now we're running side by side, and God knows, nobody knows. There's no line of demarcation. We're as greedy as the world, as fashionable as the world. We want a place in the sun with our jealousy, our envy, our pride. These men were destitute of all that. Why? Because they gazed on the risen Christ of God. And even though they'd been in jail for days, it didn't brush off. They couldn't be intimidated. Didn't matter what you said to them. They'd seen Jesus. And ungodly men said, there's only one reason why these men are like this. They're like their master. We couldn't intimidate their master. We tried to threaten him. We tried to destroy him. We pushed him over the edge. I tried to push him over the edge of the cliff. And he was as calm as could be. We got men to scream for his death. And he was still the Prince of Peace. He was still placid. And these men have the same kind of spirit in them. They didn't just take notice of them. Look what it says in the middle of verse 13. They marveled. They marveled. They were astonished. They were dumbfounded. They were saying under their breath, what in God's name is the secret of these men? They know better than when we put them in jail. Their hair hasn't changed a different color. They're not at six inches taller. They don't look stronger. They had a living intimate relationship with the risen Son of God. That's why. Well, there's a golden treasure here, this book, this Bible of ours. And that's one criticism I have. You people here at Mahaffey, you don't, you don't study enough. You want to be thrilled. I'd suggest you get a low-powered battery and get a hold of one side, and it'll give you the same kind of thrill out of you want. You want a little electric thrill. And if you want to say, eee, and you feel if you get a little tickle, it makes you squeal, you've been blessed. Well, hell's full of people that had thrills. Now, this is the issue I believe that every Christian in this last day is going to have to face. Whether or not you're going to go with the truth, truth that fingers your sin, truth that rebukes, and reproves, and corrects, and blasts your idols, and gets your eyes off the things of the world, and makes you more like Jesus, makes you hunger and thirst after Him. Whether you go after the truth that produces that in you, or whether you go after the soft message that you can sit there in your sin and iniquity and be comfortable. And that's the choice that God's going to bring every Christian to before it's all over. The truth, the Bible said, sets you free. Now, I'll tell you what it sets you free from. It sets you free from dead churches and dead preachers to start with. Old William Cooper wrote, A glory gills the sacred page, majestic like the sun. It gives a light to every age it gives, but borrows none. The hand that gave it still supplies the gracious light and heat. It cools upon the nation's rise, they rise but never set. Let everlasting thanks be thine for such a bright display as makes a world of darkness shine with beams of heavenly day. That's the Bible. My soul rejoices to pursue the steps of him I love till glory breaks upon my view in brighter worlds above. If it isn't in the book, don't believe it. Believe all that's here, but don't believe anything else. Don't be carried away by personality and a slick voice and black hair and a handsome face. Make them check with the book, to the word and to the testimony. And if you can't find it in the book, turn your back on it. And when you do, you'll turn your face to the light. Amen. Dear friends, dear friends, you and I know enough about ourselves without, without all that to say the only thing that rightly should be done with me is that I should be wiped out. You ever come there? No. No. I put it in this way and I mean it. I mean what I, I say these are not my words. There are times when we could apologize to God for having a being, but we know ourselves. That's no exaggeration. At any rate, if you don't feel like that, I have often felt like that. Master Lord, forgive me for being alive at all. Such a creature as I am. Well, let's start verse six. And Josh was the son of Nun and Caleb, do you have it? Numbers 14, verse six. And Josh was the son of Nun and Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, which were of them that searched the land, rent their clothes. They tore their clothes and they spake unto all the company of the children of Israel saying, the land which we pass through to search it is an exceeding good land. If the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land and give it to us. A land which flows with milk and honey will rebel you not against the Lord. Neither fear you the people of the land, for they're bred for us. They're bred for us. We're going to go eat it up. Their defense has departed from them and the Lord is with us. Fear them not. But all the congregation, what? They've stoned them with stones. Look at me. I'm not concerned about Josh and Caleb because God's with them. They can stand up against everybody now because they're walking with God. They don't have any enemy. There's no weapon that's formed against Josh and Caleb that can have any effect on them. But I'm concerned about those people with the stones in their hand. These are the children of God. This is the great majority. And you say, how can you people who talk about holiness, there's so few of you, how can you be right? Is the whole church, that whole thing you call a haunted church, is that wrong? Well, there are only two of these men with Moses standing. I'm sure there were others. But as far as the leadership, there were two men standing there alone and running their clothes. I don't want to focus on Josh and Caleb and the stoning. I want to know what's provoking them. What's provoking these people to stone them? They've got stones in their hand. And look at the message that's being preached. Let's go all the way. Come on. Grable. There's no giant that can stop us. There's nothing. It's a good land, this land of freedom, this land of righteousness, this land of walking without idolatry. We can go into it. We can possess it. And they gathered stones ready to stone them. How do you answer that? First of all, you don't answer people who stone you by answering back, Jesus said, as a lamb, you open up your mouth. You don't call fire down out of heaven on them either. You know what the scripture says? Why do you not rather take wrong? Why do you not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? Being reviled, we bless. Being persecuted, we suffer, we take it. At verse 16, "'Cause thou art lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth, because thou sayest, I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing. And knowest not that thou art a wretched one, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked? I counsel thee to buy of me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest become rich, and white garments, that thou mayest clothe thyself, that the shame of thy nakedness be not made manifest.'" Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead, but it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. Oh, yes, go ahead. So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.