In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of standing firm in the Word of God during times of crisis. He references Proverbs 24:10-12, which speaks about the need for strength and delivering those in danger. The preacher urges believers to love their neighbors and intervene when they see injustice or harm. He also highlights the responsibility of teaching obedience to everything that Jesus has commanded, emphasizing the Great Commission to disciple all nations. The sermon concludes with the importance of complete submission to God and the role of education in fulfilling the Great Commission.

Just preach the gospel. How many times have we heard that refrain? Let us turn the Word of God to Proverbs chapter 24. We read Proverbs 24 verses 10 to 12. We see the Word of the Living God is found in Proverbs 24 starting in verse 10. If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small. Deliver those who are drawn toward death, and hold back those stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, Surely we did not know this, does not he who weighs the heart consider it? He who keeps your soul, does he not know it? And will he not render to each man according to his deeds? This is the Word of God. We know what strength we are in a time of crisis. You know the flavor of a tea bag when it gets into hot water. If we faint in the day of adversity, our strength is small. It is in a time of crisis that we must stand, stand firm, and be deeply rooted in the Word of God. As we read earlier in Psalm 1, tree planted by streams of water roots deep down into the Word of God. Deliver those being drawn toward death, hold back those stumbling to the slaughter. We are commanded to love our neighbor, to do to others we want to be done unto, to be just and fair towards those in need. And when we see someone being drawn towards an unjust death, those being drawn towards slaughter, we should warn, we should interpose, we should intervene. Verse 12, but if you say, Surely we did not know this, does not he who weighs your heart consider it? God knows our thoughts and our motives. Does not he who keeps your soul know it? This is something of a threat. God is our creator and our eternal judge, and he is the Lord, the sovereign God of the universe, and so this is something of a threat. He who determines whether you live or die, and when you die, and how you die. He is saying, if you are going to turn your heart and your eyes away from those in need, like the Levite and the priest walking by on the other side of the road, the scribe, not getting involved, we need to be like the Good Samaritan, doing what needs to be done to rescue those lying in the gutter bleeding. Will he not render to each man according to his deeds? Now these are principles you see throughout the scripture, but when you tell people that blasphemy is in the cinemas, and there's crime and violence in the city, and farmers are being subjected to terror attacks, there's drugs at school, and there's pornography on smartphones, and there's legalized abortion, what is the average person's reaction? Just preach the gospel. All you can do is pray. All we can do is preach the gospel. Just preach the gospel. Government schools are promoting secular humanism, situation ethics, evolutionism, humanism, sex education programs which are perverse, gender confusion, the gay agenda, the interfaith movement, witchcraft, even occultism is part of school curriculums, and responsible to many is, just preach the gospel. Which seems like a convenient excuse for disobedience to the word of God, and an excuse to do nothing. Because when many people say just preach the gospel, are they even preaching the gospel? God is a holy God. God hates sin. We have violated his law. Christ came and lived a perfect life, and died a sinless death. He died and shed his blood for our sins, and we need to repent of our sins, and we need to trust in Christ alone for our eternal salvation, and we need to take up a cross, deny the world, forsake ourselves, and follow Christ. But are many even preaching the full gospel of God? Do we really believe that our Lord Jesus Christ would have us stand passively by, while God-hating pagans are exploiting women made in the image of God, degrading what God is meant to be holy, making public what God is meant to be private, making common what God is meant to be special, corrupting young minds, corrupting morals, and corrupting marriages? Do you really believe that God would expect us to stand by and do nothing, while the very foundations of Christian civilization are eroded, subverted, and sabotaged? Just preach the gospel is a convenient excuse for disobedience, laziness, and cowardice. Would God have us idly stand by while a murderer rips the arms and legs of a baby and crushes it? Which is what abortion is. Which servant of God in the Bible limited himself to just preaching the gospel? Was Elijah wrong to confront and expose the pornographic child-sacrificing religion of the prophets of Baal, 1 Kings 18 on Mount Carmel? Was John the Baptist wrong to have publicly confronted the immorality of King Herod, 1 Kings 18 on Mount Carmel? Could our Lord Jesus Christ have been in error when he confronted the corruption in the temple, overturning the tables of the moneylenders and driving out these money changers with a whip? Why didn't he just preach the gospel? A careful reading of the Great Commission in Matthew 28 makes it clear that we are called to do far, far more than just preach the gospel. All authority in heaven and earth has been given unto me, Jesus said. The Lordship of Christ in all areas of life must be proclaimed and it must be practiced. We need to apply the Lordship of Christ to all areas of life. There's no area of life that should not be in submission to our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations. We're not called to just make decisions. We're not just to make converts. We're called to make disciples, and not only disciples of individuals and of congregations, that's essential, that's the foundation, but also of communities and of countries, in fact of nations, of all nations. Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, complete submission to Almighty God is essential. And teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you. Education is an essential part of the Great Commission. We're not just to teach a few of our favorite things in faith and tithing. We are meant to teach, we're commanded by Lord Jesus Christ himself to teach obedience to everything that he has commanded, the whole counsel of God. The whole church should be taking the whole gospel to the whole world. The Great Commission is great. It contains a great truth, Jesus Christ is Lord of all areas of life. It contains a great commission to disciple all nations. It contains a great command to teach obedience to everything the Lord has commanded, and it includes a great truth, Jesus Christ will be with us to the end of time, forever. The parable of the Good Samaritan concludes, go and do likewise. The coming day of judgment is described in Matthew 25 by the Lord Jesus as mostly on the basis of the good that we failed to do, rather than the bad that we did. Interesting in Matthew 25, the Lord does not speak in terms of, you smoked, you drank alcohol, you did drugs, you stole, and all these other evil things, bad as hell. But it's, you did not visit the prisoners in prison for their faith, you did not care for those who are sick, you did not give clothes to the naked, you did not give food to the hungry, you did not give drink to the thirsty, you did not care. And to them the Lord says, depart from me, cursed in the lake of fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. For whatever you did not do unto one of the least of these, my brethren, you did not do it to me. Whatever you did unto one of the least of these, my brethren, you did it to me. And so the Lord is describing the day of judgment overwhelmingly in terms of the good things that we should do. Sins of omission more than sins of commission. And so we read in James 4 verse 17, to know the good that you ought to do and to fail to do it, that is sin. The definition in the Bible of true religion before God is given in James 1 verse 27, to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted or corrupted by the world. All these and many other scriptures expose the just preach the gospel fallacy. This fallacy of just preach gospel is an attempt to limit the impact of the gospel on earth. It's absolutely wicked to try and limit the influence of the church and our great commission of you to love your neighbors yourself, and this includes loving your pre-born neighbor. We're called to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, not just the salt of the salt cellar or of the church, not just the light of the church, but the light of the world, the salt of the earth. And we've been taught to pray as we have prayed earlier in the Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Thy kingdom come. And so when we are having people say just preach the gospel, what they're trying to do is devalue and censor and dismiss the vast majority of the Bible, even the vast majority of the gospels. And then you come across those people who the moment you try to suggest march to parliament for the right to love pre-born babies, sanctity to life Sunday, or something like this, you get people saying you must obey the government. Romans 13, submit to the government. All governments have been placed there by God. But wait a minute. Muslim and communist governments forbid Bibles, forbid evangelism, forbid missions. What about the great commission? Do they have higher authority than Christ? Can they countermand the commands of Christ? When we lost, 25 years ago, one of our missionaries in the field, Anthony Duncan, when he died after successfully being part of the team that smuggled a ton of medicines and Bibles into Angola, in breach of international law, the United Nations blockade on Angola, we had Job's comforters phoning us from as far as England saying this is God's judgment on you because you broke the law. If God wanted Bibles and medicines to go into Angola, he wouldn't have placed a government there that forbids it. So because the communist government forbids us to cross the border and help the United Freedom Fighters and the people free Angola, liberate Angola, with the medicines and Bibles they need and desire and are praying for, therefore we are in breach of God's law. Interesting. I have to say to this gentleman, who had once even been our treasurer in our mission, that he didn't understand the Bible or church history. Missions is always illegal until the gospel succeeds. Originally, there was no religious freedom or freedom of conscience anywhere in the world. If you were in a Buddhist country, you had to be Buddhist. If you were in a Muslim country, you had to be Muslim. In a Hindu country, you had to be Hindu. Roman Catholic country, you had to be Roman Catholic back before the Reformation. And the first great missionary of the modern missionary age, William Carey, was illegal. And the work he did in India was illegal for decades. Even according to the laws of Great Britain, Britain's parliaments had forbidden missionaries to go to India unless they had the permission of the East India Company, which they weren't going to give. They said they expressly wouldn't because they didn't want missionaries interfering with their trade and their businesses going on in Hindu India. And so William Carey had to do his work with subterfuge and with ingenuity, basing himself in the Danish enclave of Serampore and doing his work illegally into British-controlled India. In fact, missions is always illegal in the frontiers of missions, because religious freedom is a fruit of Christianity, especially the Protestant faith. How can anyone countermand the Great Commission of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has greater authority than the creator of the universe, the Eternal Judge, the Sovereign Lord? So when the Lord is given the Great Commission, who has the right to say, but you've got to stop at the bamboo curtain or the iron curtain or the barbed wire fence or the minefield? This isn't logical. This isn't biblical. Forcible abortion is mandated by the Chinese government. One-child policy, sterilizations and abortions thereafter. Yet the response of all too many Christians is, you must obey the government no matter what. This is statism. This is idolatry. This is cowardice. This is disobedience. This is, in the terms of military law, cowardice in the face of the enemy. God has instituted force here as a government. Self-government, family government, church government and civil government. Now, self-government, our conscience is the symbol of self-government, we're meant to be self-disciplined. And the more self-disciplined and self-governed we are, the less external government you need. A parent doesn't need to drag the child out of the bed, onto the floor, if they get up on their own. The parent doesn't have to forcibly brush the child's teeth if the child brushes their own teeth. If the child can tie his own shoelaces, the parent doesn't have to do his shoelaces, and so on. The more reliable and self-disciplined the child is, the less family government they experience. Family government is symbolized by the role of discipline. Now, it's not the only way of discipline, but that's the ultimate or extreme. And then you get church government, and church is the keys of the kingdom. It means they can excommunicate a member or bar from the Lord's table those who refuse their discipline. Now, you also get civil government, and they have the sword of justice. Now, is it possible for you to be mistaken? Could your conscience deceive you? Yes, it is all too possible to be sincerely wrong. There are many people who are wholeheartedly, enthusiastically sincere, but they're completely wrong. I'm sure many of the jihadists believe that doing their suicide bombings, or their murders, or beheading infidels is in keeping with the will of their Allah. Many of them, their conscience probably tells them they're doing something good. Of course, they're wrong. The person who the church saw believed he was serving God by killing Christians. He was sincere, but he's sincerely wrong. There is a way that seems right unto man, but the end thereof is death. So, while we must obey our conscience, our conscience needs to be kept to the word of God, because we could be wrong. Just like a compass could come into the interference of a magnet, for example, and no one would give an accurate reading, so our conscience, because our conscience is affected by our thoughts and our feelings, it is possible if we have been brainwashed by the world, indoctrinated by the world's media, by the world's education system and secular humanism, you might be in a position such as those abortionists depicted in the unplanned fullness of, we're doing God's work. The way Abby Johnson, who came from a Christian pro-life family, believed that in serving in Planned Parenthood, she was actually helping the girls, and she was actually doing God's will, even praying that if it be God's will that she gets the position of Director of Planned Parenthood, her conscience may have said you're doing a good thing, but her conscience was distorted. That is why Martin Luther said, your conscience must be kept to the word of God. What about families? Is it possible for parents to abuse their children? Sadly, it is. The Bible even says, can a mother forget her nursing child? And I thought that was a hypothetical question, because of course, what mother could? And yet many mothers do. There are mothers who abort their children. Worse than that, you get mothers who actually enthusiastically strap on suicide bombing vests and send out their kids to be homicide bombers. And there are those who encourage their children to grow up to become jihadists and so on. So yes, you get parents who even abuse their children for drug trafficking, human trafficking, sell their children into the sex slave trade, such as happens in Thailand, as was shown in that film against human trafficking last year. And so we know that family government, it can be abused. What about church government? Is it possible to have false shepherds, false teachers, and false prophets in the church? Sadly, lots. We are not to submit to false teachers or false shepherds. False doctrine, gross immorality, misappropriation of funds would all disqualify church leaders. We had a reformation about that. And so why is it that many Christians, when it comes to civil government, think, oh well, with civil government, God gives a blank check. While self-government must be having our conscience kept to the word of God, while family government must be in the Lord and accordance with the word of God. And church government, well, you get disqualified if you violate God's laws and don't preach his word faithfully. But when it comes to civil government, oh well, even an atheist, God-hating person in the church government has the authority of God. Nonsense. Not at all. As in all other spheres of government, civil authorities are not permitted to be a law unto themselves. Our Lord Jesus Christ said in Pontius Pilate, you would have no authority of me unless it had been given to you from above. All authority is limited authority. All authority is delegated by God. All authority is answerable to God. No authority is absolute except God's authority, the Creator. Everyone else's authority is limited. And that is why in a good country, you would have laws that enable you to impeach a president. In fact, in Britain, they even put the king, King Charles I, on trial for treason because he had violated his coronation oath. He had violated Magna Carta. He had been a tyrant. He had abused his people. He had been interfering with religious freedom. He had not just been executing but torturing his citizens, having them stamped with soul of sedition branding on their faces, having their ears and nose slit, doing all kinds of hideous things. He was a tyrant, and Charles I was put on trial and executed, showing that even the king is under the law. It's not rex lex. The king is the law. It's lex rex. The law is the king. The king is under the law. The king is subject to the law. And so it is important for us to recognize that no authority is absolute. All authority is delegated by God. All authority is answerable to God. And therefore, when people say you must obey the government no matter what, well, does this mean that a family in China must have an abortion if they have gone over one child and that they've got to obey the government? Would it be wrong for them to do what the mother of Moses did, which is to hide a child which was meant to be executed by order of Pharaoh? Well, in fact, in Hebrews 11 you see that the midwives who disobeyed Pharaoh and rescued the babies from being killed are commended. And so it is that we have pharaohs today and people like King Herod want to kill the babies. It is not obedience to God to submit to these evil antichrist authorities which are against God. And this should be so obvious. Now, back in 1992, I was invited to Wits University for a debate on blasphemy. Now, it just so happened, showing the importance of intelligence and people informing us of what they know, somebody had informed me that Wits University had sought and obtained from the de Klerk government's permission to show The Last Temptation of Christ, which is one of the most blasphemous evil films ever produced, and which was banned in South Africa, but Wits University had applied for and received a permission from the Publications Control Board, or the Censure Board as we often call it, to screen The Last Temptation of Christ in an academic setting at Wits University for the purposes of debate on the condition that they had a debate where at least one of the people on the panel was against The Last Temptation of Christ, so that there might be a debate on the merits and demerits of this film. Well, they must have tried a few people and failed to get anyone willing, and so they phoned me. And they didn't tell me that this was about The Last Temptation of Christ, they didn't tell me that this was before a screening, but I knew the context already. And so they said, would I be willing to come up to Wits to debate the subject of blasphemy? And the Dutch reformed Dermini, who was running Creutzendrink, would be chairing the debate. Well, I knew that he was a blasphemous anti-Christ person who didn't believe anything effectively from the Bible because of the evil things Creutzendrink had been showing on SATV. And I knew this Dermini, I didn't know all the others that stacked on the debate for me, but I understood I was walking into a trap, but forewarned is forearmed. I phoned Reverend Charles Olsen and Financer Vesey at Christ the Man of Christ and Truth and said, could you rally some support for us? We need some people in the audience up at Wits University where the audience will be obviously overwhelmingly pro-blasphemy, pro-Last Temptation of Christ. I need some people on-site. They bussed up a whole busload of Zulus and others to come and support me at Wits. Good to have friends like that. Now, the De Klerk government had given them permission to scream the blasphemous Last Temptation of Christ from them. Final, Charles and I were determined not to let them show it. Now, we were effectively going against the government, going against the law, but we were convinced that there's a higher law, God's law. You shall not take the name of your Lord your God in vain. God will not hold anyone guiltless. He does so. And so we went into debate and this debate was so unbalanced, it was unbelievable. And this wicked do-many who ran Christ and Clinique actually came out with the saying, as everything is made in the image of God, to censor anything is blasphemy. So the only blasphemy in the world is that which tries to censor pornography and blasphemy, for example. Very illogical, but that was his idea, that I was the real blasphemer because I was trying to censor the image of God and that even blasphemy and pornography can't be the image of God because it's out there. In the moment it's out there, then it's part of what God has created, which is so riddled with inconsistencies and self-contradictions. But we had quite a rip-roaring debate in this theater at Fitts University and at a certain point they had carried on the charade long enough, I think the debate had gone on about an hour, and so they said we are now going to screen the Last Temptation of Christ film, a big smug, smirking grins at myself, and I stood up and said we cannot allow that because this is blasphemous, and I said we have government permission, and Farnus Abissi stood up and said this is unacceptable, and so did Chell and a whole lot of other Christians for Truth people came and stood in front of the screen to obscure the screening of the film, and we started to sing hymns. They were quite flustered, they hadn't expected this, and so they came to us, this Germany who was organizing the event, and said we are going to unleash the angry youth of Soweto on you. Now that was the name of a particular song group apparently, and said go ahead, and in came toy-toying these apparently angry youth of Soweto group, and they came in an intimidating dance, and when they saw these Zulus and Afrikaners standing there with folded arms in front there, they just turned and ran, and now there was pandemonium. We just kept singing hymns. They ordered us to clear the theater, called for the police, go around here, please call the police, and so this carried on until midnight, and finally after midnight the Southern police arrived, and the police captain, I think he was, came up to me and said excuse me sir, would you please be willing to vacate the building? I said certainly, and so we all went outside, and a policeman informed us their permit is only to screen the film on this day, and the permit expires at midnight, so you've accomplished your purposes, and we then had a pre-meeting and singing on the stairs of the outside of the auditorium with the police joining in, all of the police joined in. They had deliberately delayed their response long enough for us to get there, so the government made an unjust law. They allowed an exception to the banning of this blasphemous pornographic film, Last Temptation of Christ. We interposed as citizens, and we did what would be called civil disobedience. We refused to allow them to show the film. The police also dragged their heels and took something like an hour and a half to respond to the call, in order to make sure that their time had expired by the time we got there. Now some people had said that was wrong, we should have just preached the gospel, we shouldn't be involved in pro-life demos, we shouldn't be marching to Parliament, we shouldn't be standing at the gates of Parliament calling on the government to repent, and so on, but here are the questions that we need to ask. Whose law is eternal? God's law or man's law? Does anyone think the Southern Constitution will be quoted on the Day of Judgment? Do you think it's going to be a basis? Oh, oh you lived under the Southern Government Constitution where abortion was legalised, oh well let's judge you in accordance with that law. Do you think God's going to judge us on Day of Judgment in accordance with American law, European law, South African law, or his law? Whose law is eternal? God's or man's? Can God's law be rescinded by anyone? Can God's law be revised by anyone? Can God's law be improved on by anyone? Is it possible for anyone to improve on the law of God? Considering God is eternal, all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect, the greatest eternal judge, highly unlikely anyone could improve on God's law. Does God want his people to obey his law or man's law when the two are in conflict? For example, if you're a Christian in China and the government's law at that time is one-child policy, any others must be aborted, whose law do you obey? God's law or Red China's law? Does God hold all rulers in all nations, including non-Christians, to be accountable to his law, summarised in the same commands, or are the laws free to do what they want? Other Christians say, oh God's law only applies to God's people. Other people say, you shouldn't be protesting against blasphemy because it's only blasphemy if we take God's name in vain, but not for those for whom they don't submit to God. So a person who doesn't call himself a Christian, a person for whom the Lord isn't his God, doesn't need to obey the command against blasphemy. But what does that third command say? You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain for God will not hold anyone godless who misuses his name. It doesn't matter whether you recognise God or not, the law applies. You don't take God's law in vain, and for blasphemer who is an atheist to take God's name in vain, is obviously culpable and will bring judgment from God. If the lost are free to do as they please, to what standard will God hold them accountable on the day of judgment? By what standard will God judge them? God will not judge people by the United Nations Bill of Rights. He will judge people by his law, as summarised in 10 Commandments. How can the Holy Spirit convict people of sin if the measure of sin, the law of God, is taken away and removed? The Apostle Peter said before the Sanhedrin, who had crucified Christ, who had commanded him not to speak in the name of our Lord Jesus, he said we must obey God rather than man. Hence, for this reason, we smuggle Bibles into communist and Muslim countries. No one can count them on the great commission of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are not to stop at the iron curtain, the bamboo curtain, the Islamic curtain, the barbed wire fence, the minefield, the river, or whichever is the boundary, because Christ's authority supersedes all man's authority. Speak up for those who cannot speak themselves. Protect the rights of all who are helpless, Proverbs 31 verse 8. And the verse that we began with, Proverbs 24 verse 10 to 12, deliver those who are drawn towards death, hold back those staggering towards torture. This is God's command. This is what we're called to do. We are not to be those kind of people who find excuses, including super spiritual excuses for disobedience, laziness, and cowardice, saying I need to pray about this. Well, I believe we can just pray to God. All we can do is preach gospel. All we can do is pray. We must obey the government no matter what. I say all of those can be excuses for disobedience, passivity, and inactivity, for cowardice in the face of the enemy. We need to stand for God. We need to be those who will march for life. Coming up on the 30th of January in Cape Town, we're marching for life on the day closest to when Nelson Mandela legalized abortion on the 1st of February 1997. It's interesting that F. W. DeKlerk in his Red Friday speech on 2nd of February, was it, in 1990, along with unbanning the ANC and unbanning the Southern Communist Party and suspending the different laws dealing with suppression of Communism Act, Incident and Security Act, and so on, he also mentioned liberalizing the abortion laws and relaxing the censorship laws. In other words, most people missed it, but we picked it up. He's talking about allowing pornography in the country and allowing abortion in the country, and that's why Africa Christian Action was launched, to counter attempts by the government, the nationalist government under F. W. DeKlerk, of legalizing abortion and pornography, and we fought a lot of battles with them, but ultimately abortion was legalized 1st of February 1997 by Nelson Mandela, and since then 1.6 million babies officially had been killed, almost all with taxpayers' money, in this country since 1997, and so we organized life chains to stand for life, marches for life, National Days of Repentance, close to the date when it was legalized to march to Parliament and have a plaque of prayer protest outside Parliament, and the scripture says, when innocent blood is shed and a guilty murderer cannot be brought to justice, the elders of the city are to gather at the gates of the city, and the gates of the city is where the laws are made, so the gates of Parliament is pretty appropriate for what the scripture means by the gates of the city, often would speak about the judges sitting in the gates, because that's where judgments were made, at a busy thoroughfare, and the scripture says that at the crossroads of the city, at the gateways of the city, wisdom must cry out and shout aloud, and so we marched to Parliament, and in accordance with the law of God and numbers, we make it clear that this innocent blood is not on our hands, we dissociate ourselves publicly from it, if we do not, we share the judgments on the whole nation, because when innocent blood is shed, then a curse comes on land, and no atonement can be made for innocent blood except the blood of the one who shed it, in other words, only capital punishments can remove the guilt of an entire society for innocent blood being shed, we have a lot of innocent blood shed in this country, something in the region of 25,000 murders a year, and when it comes to abortions, something in the region of 800,000, it's 80,000 a year, so far 1.6 million since 1997, so it's, there's a lot of innocent blood, praise God, the unplanned film is after a lot of pressure, after Sturkine Corps and New Metro saying there's no market here, but through a lot of pressure to be mobilized, they plan to release it to the big screen, Sturkine Corps is on the 28th of February, but later than we would like, but still, it's good to get this on the big screen to try and encourage people to go and see this film, which is probably the most effective expose on the abortion industry yet, coming as it does from the true story of a person, Abbie Johnson, who was involved in Planned Parenthood for eight years, got Planned Parenthood Employee of the Year Award, and was the youngest director of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in history, and she came over to the other side and is now pro-life, and so that screening is part of it. Also, on the 2nd of February, we're calling on churches to observe a Sanctity Life Sunday, the closest Sunday to the legalization of abortion anniversary in this country, calling on people to stand for life, to preach on what the Bible teaches about innocent life, when life begins, and our duty to rescue the perishing, to speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. Who will rise up for me against the wicked? Who will make a stand for me against the workers of inequity? Let us pray. Lord God, we want to thank and praise you for your word, the Bible, your inerrant, infallible word. Your word is truth, your word is milk and meat for our soul. It is like a hammer that breaks the rocks in pieces. It is sharp in the double-edged sword. It is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Help us, Lord God, be more biblical. Help us, Lord God, be more faithful to your word and more brave and bold in standing up for you and speaking out against evil and injustice around us. Lord, we pray, help us to preach the whole gospel, and we pray, Lord, that the day will come that the whole church would proclaim the whole gospel to the whole world. We pray this in Jesus' precious and holy name. Amen.