No Fear

(Psalms 27)

For those who want to attend the Discipleship Class, it's never too late. This is an ongoing thing. Wherever you pick up we come right back around to where we started eventually on these particular topics and subjects, so if you want to be in that I can order you a book and we can get you under way. For some of our newer members, as they are added to the church along the way, it really is important that they are in the class and take the book. That really gives you a full insight as to the faith and practice of Bethel Baptist Church. It indoctrinates you really soundly in the Bible. It's a tremendous study, and most of those who are taking the class right now are those who have already been members for a long time but they saw the need to expand in their understanding of the scriptures and they are having a great time. We have a lot of fun there. It's at 4:30 on Sunday afternoons except for today. In fact, we have business meeting and we have deacons meeting at 4:30, men's meeting at 5:00 and then, of course, church at 6:00 and business meeting follows.

Well, this is sort of scary and speaking of scary, the subject I'm going to preach on is fear. (laughter) I promise you that Bro. Randall and I have not talked. We haven't discussed what he is going to teach or what I'm going to preach. Three weeks ago I was just sort of delivered in my presence this subject. I was discussing it with someone and I said, 'You know, I think the first Sunday of the year I'm going to talk a little bit about fear.' So I come here on the first Sunday morning and the Sunday School teacher's lesson moves into the next subject which is about conquering fear. So evidently somebody here needs to hear this. (laughter) Who trembles more than the pastor? (laughter) Who goes home on Sunday nights and says, 'Oh, will it last until next Sunday?' Who more often than the pastor? Amen.

(Psalms 27:1-3) Fear! It's a leading crippler. I've been there. Some of us, maybe all of us, but I know some of us have been there probably more than one time to where we are just beside ourselves in fear. We wonder what's going to happen and how do I do this. We think we have to fix it and all that. That's sort of a husband problem there, you know. Our wives bring us all these things. They just want to tell us about it, and we always think they told us about it so we could fix it and that's not really what it was about. They just get angry about it. (laughter). Sometimes it has to be fixed today, now. It has to happen and if it doesn't we are going to lose this and lose that. This is going to happen and that's going to happen. If we don't be careful, all of a sudden we are running in a rage of fear in our life and probably making some real dumb decisions in the process when we are caught up in fear.

You know, 2004 opens to us a new year with hope of greater and better things for our families in our church. It really does. I love to see a new year come in because there is much to be thought about as far as what can really happen here. We always think about making the new year better than the last year and that's OK. I think we ought to enter each day with new hope in Jesus Christ. Greater things are coming. We know that as God's people. The world is descending and, buddy, we are going up. I mean, it looks like we are just going with the world, maybe, and drug down with all their worry and care and all that stuff. Hey look, that stuff is coming to pass but what else is coming to pass is that we are on the way out of here. We are going up. We have a better year ahead, really.

But we do live in a real world. And the fact that we do live in this real world and it being a world having fallen in sin (we ourselves being certainly intelligent creatures), we know that just as every other year what is to unfold in this new year. It will include hardships, death, disease, financial problems, war, crime, and just every day stumblingblocks. They have not taken a leave of absence, have they? They are not going to go on vacation this year. In the midst of the good there is always the bad. That's just the natural life we walk and live in. This certainly is not heaven. So, the prospects of a great year in some good things must be looked to with wisdom. Knowing that we have an enemy. His name is Satan and his crowd, and just the common problems of the sinful flesh are going to seek to at least bring a cloud over things. At times it is going to take major toll. That's just the facts of lives. It is these particular things that fuel fear in the hearts of men, women, boys, and girls. It just happens that way sometimes. It fuels fear in some hearts.

I want to remind you of a passage that Bro. Randall was quoting this morning in 2 Timothy 1:7 as just a reminder to you and I as born again believers before we go into the message. (2 Timothy 1:7) He quoted that two or three times. It is really clear. Here is our place in the matter of fear. Here's our position as Christians on fear. And here is the mandate of God on the matter of fear. We are not supposed to be the people running in fear. We are not supposed to be the ones who are constantly chewing our fingernails and walking the floor and wringing our hands. We are to be the people who are saying, 'You know what? God has everything under control.' He is having victory whether we can see it or not. He always is winning and all we have to do is what God told us to do today and we will finally see the victory that God is bringing, has brought, and always will bring in our lives and circumstances even of the world.

Fear has a goal. The goal of fear is to steal you away from trusting God and experiencing His victory in your life. Fear's goal is to dislodge your faith in God and cause you to miss the victory. Its purpose is to steal you away from the victory that's going on in your life. I just want to remind you again that when you don't think there is victory in your life, there really is. It's going on. Sometimes we don't see it right away. Sometimes it's going on behind the scenes and sometimes God will make it happen right out in front of you. But somewhere He is going to bring it clear to us if we will just be patient and wait upon Him, He will show you that He has always been working. He has never left us. He has never forsaken us. He has always been doing the work in our life and we need not fear. Even though it looks hopeless, we are God's children and there is nothing hopeless in the life of a child of God. There is always victory on the way or it's already done and God has not shown it to you yet. Victory is ours at all times in the Lord Jesus Christ. So remember, no matter how bad things look, and even if we see no hope of winning or having victory, God is still bringing it all the time.

What do we say about faith? We say what the Bible says. (Hebrews 11:1) In other words, we are to continually have faith in God in the fact that He is doing His work. He hasn't taken a leave of absence like the gods of the prophets of Baal were accused of doing that day. Elijah said, 'Maybe your gods have taken a vacation.' That's what the literal thought is there. They were trying to get their gods to swallow up that sacrifice they had laid out but it didn't happen. They cut themselves up and beat themselves up trying to get it to happen. Elijah said, 'Maybe your god is on a journey. Maybe he has taken a trip. Nananana.' You know, he was just sort of making fun of them. Then when they get done doing all their nonsense, he steps up and puts his sacrifice on the altar. What happens? He does about a 30 second prayer. God? "Boom!" God takes the sacrifice and all the water he had poured over the altar and the great trench of water that had filled around all dried up to dust. God just came right through on that. That's the kind of God we serve. Our God is never on vacation.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things unseen. God is working. He has not left. Just wait and watch. We are not willing to do that sometimes, unfortunately. When we are not willing to do it that's where fear finds its way into our lives. What is fear? Funk and Wagnall says, 'Fear is an agitated feeling aroused by an awareness of actual or threatening danger; trouble; dread; terror. It's an uneasy feeling that something may happen contrary to one's desires. A feeling of deep reverential awe and dread.' It certainly ought to be a fear of God. That's all we are to fear, God. Nobody else. We are not to fear man, not to fear disease, not to fear war, not to fear the Muslim, and not to fear anyone in this world. We are not even to have fear of Satan. We are to fear God and God takes care of Satan. That's the way it works.

Webster says, 'Fear is an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.' He says also its profound reverence in awe toward God. In our Greek text, as we see the word in Greek, it's phobia, and most often it is translated fear in the New Testament but in earlier Greek it meant to put to flight; to run. It says it's always used in the passive voice with the meaning either to fear or be afraid. It means also to show reverential fear. So even the Greek text runs right along with our English translations, etc. In our text today we are looking at Hebrew, aren't we. Well, the root word that we see as fear in Psalm 27 is to fear, morally to revere sometimes, causatively to frighten. It means to frighten or affright. To be afraid. To be dreadful. To see dreadful things. To dread and to fear, etc.

So, sometimes we feel those things. Sometimes we feel dread. Sometimes we just feel like we are being terrorized by something and it won't leave us alone. Fear is such a strange emotion. It's a very strange emotion. And we find that people have a huge range of fears that they face every day. We are a strange creature and with us comes strange fear. No lie, this is some of the things people fear and they have names. Now listen to this. Piladaphobia. Do you know what piladaphobia is, Bro. Randy? It's the fear of baldness or fear of bald people. (laughter) I never knew that. There are people who fear bald people. You're walking down the street, Bro. Randy, and there are people running from you. (laughter). Then there is airophobia. That's the fear of drafts. What about purphoraphobia? That's the fear of the color purple. There are people who actually run around and are petrified of the color purple. These are legitimate diseases. How about the fear of hairy people? (laughter) I can't even pronounce that one. There are people that fear objects on the left side of the body. It's called levaphobia.

Then there is dextraphobia where they fear the objects on the right side of the body. They are always walking like this. (laughter) What about callapraphobia (I can't pronounce that)? It is fear of obscure means. What about the fear of being seated? There is even one of those diseases. There are people who are afraid of being seated. So as people come into church they may say, 'leave me alone I'll seat myself.' (laughter) They have that disease. Then there is the fear of phobia of standing and walking. Here's one: odontophobia, the fear of teeth. Can you imagine that there are people out there afraid of teeth. My goodness. Graphobia: fear of writing in public. They sign their checks before they leave home or something, I don't know what they do. Here's the last one. Phobophobia. That's it, fear of being afraid. Who said that? That was good. The fear of being afraid. Boy are they in trouble. (laughter)

Many are held prisoner by fear. There are people who have acrophobia meaning they are trapped in their houses. They are afraid to go out of their houses and if somehow they can get out, they don't go very far from their house or they go nuts. They just lose it. They are afraid. They are trapped in fear. There was a guy named Yokowai. Now this guy is very important in history. He spent 28 years of his life in prison. It was not a prison of bars and locks and wardens, but a self-imposed prison of fear. He was a Japanese soldier on the island of Guam during WWII, and when the American forces landed he fled into the jungle and found a cave in which he hid for 28 years because he was afraid of being captured by the Americans. He learned that the war was over by reading one of thousands of pamphlets dropped into the jungle but he was afraid. So for 28 years he lived in the cave, coming out only at night to look for roaches and rats, frogs and mangles on which he survived. Finally, some natives found him and convinced him that it would be all right for him to come out of his jungle prison. Now we think, 'what a waste! What a waste!'

Imagine spending 28 years as a prisoner of fear. Yet there are a lot of people who are prisoners of fear just like that. Fear can even make us look pretty foolish. If you don't mind my little story here just to understand. Fear can make us even feel foolish. This lady got in her car. She had left her groceries in the car. It was a hot day. She got in her car and there was a big explosion from behind her head and she was hit directly up behind the head and she went like this, holding the back of her head. She was sitting there afraid to move. She thought her brains were going to fall out. She thought she had been shot in the back of the head. Somebody walked up and said, 'Ma'am, are you all right?" She said, "I've been shot in the head. Would you mind calling an ambulance." "Ma'am, that's dough -- pop biscuits." (laughter) A can of biscuits in the sack behind her had exploded and hit her head. She had captured the dough against her head. She thought she was holding her brains in her head. (laughter) She was afraid.

Fear can even make us do silly things. Is fear good? Should we be afraid? Can fear ever help us grow in Christ? The ultimate question is really this: how can we have victory over fear? This answer will be given to us in Psalm 27. First of all David gives us the suggestion that we ought to focus on God, not our fear. In the first three verses he says to focus on God. 'The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?' It's the Lord. David openly exalts God, speaking out loud when he does, and then having compared God to his fear (that's what he did here, he compared God to his enemy and compared God to the fear that the enemy had brought upon him), and he said 'wait a minute, hold it, time out.' The Lord is my light. The Lord is my salvation, whom shall I fear. 'The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid.' We are invincible in God. You are going to die on time. There is a lot of pain between here and death, I know, and sometimes I think I'm dying. But I'm not going to die until it's time. Look, death cannot even come until God permits it and when it comes, I'm gone. In other words, by the time it arrives I'm out of here because the sting of death is no longer mine. I don't go to the grave; I go to be with the Lord. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. The Lord is my light, He is my salvation, He is my strength, He is the very strength of my life, whom shall I be afraid of.

One of the greatest hurdles to overcome in life certainly is fear. I think that's the most important thing for us to overcome in 2004. It's not to concur with the Muslims in the Muslim world and all that, that's not the priority here. We would like to see that happen, no doubt. It would be a good thing if we would bring all those leaders down and put that thing in place the way we know it ought to be. That would be a great thing. But if I read my Bible correctly, that's not the way it ends, folks. There's no need to even worry about something you can't even fix. But there is no need to be afraid of anything on this earth. We need to know that the hurdle we have to jump this morning is really not as high as fear has made it look. It's just a stepping- stone. We can step by it in faith in Jesus Christ the Lord.

David did not let fear take the song out of his heart, did he. This is a song. This is Psalm 27. It's a song that David wrote. Do you ever feel like something has stolen the song out of your heart? We shouldn't let that happen. Stand in the light in the strength of your life. Stand in Christ and you can sing. You can sing in the midst of the storm. These who have suffered cancer who are children of God, they can tell you that you can even stand in the very midst of cancer as a child of God and sing praises unto God in the midst of that very tragic moment. How is it possible? It becomes possible when we focus on who God is to us. How great He is and what He really does mean to us. We need to focus on that. He is our light. He is our salvation. We are no longer living in the darkness of sin. We are not an enemies of God, we are His friends. He is our friend. We are together with God.

David said in verse 2 and 3, 'When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh they stumbled and fell. Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear though wars should rise against me. In this will I be confident.' I want you to understand something in case I may say it again somewhere along the way. David had to learn this because David spent his share of time in some caves one time hiding from Saul. He ran in fear and hid out. He understands what this thing of fear can do to you. He understands what it means. He learned that you don't have to run and hide in the cave. You can stand in the face of your enemy. You can stand in the face of your circumstance because God stands with you and the circumstance has no power over you. It's God who has power over all of that for you.

Spiritual warfare requires confidence like David's. We have to have confidence in our God. It's not confidence in ourselves. It's confidence in God that I have to learn to get a hold of in my life. How about you? That's the way it works. You see, that confidence cannot be in our strength and ability. It has to be in God. We have to have spiritual confidence in God. Have faith in God. Don't have faith in yourself. Don't have faith in the preacher. Don't have faith in the church. Don't have faith in people. Have faith in God. Our confidence in God is what challenges the enemy, by the way.

You know in school, kids, when the bully comes up. He is always the guy who says, 'I'll knock you out!' You can just say to him, 'Take your best shot, Jack.' You know what's going to happen more often than not? He is going to laugh and walk away or he is just going to walk away. Bullies in school are just what they are; a lot of mouth. You say, 'what if he goes ahead and punches?' Well, and this is a dad speaking, hit the sucker back. (laughter) Then pray for him. Then tell him about Jesus. I would never tell my kids to take a beating over stuff like that; only if they were testifying for the Lord. But you know what; the world is full of bullies. All they want to do is intimidate you, to put fear in you.

The Khadaffy thing just tickles me to death. I mean we intercept some things that give clear evidence they have weapons of mass destruction going down there. Hey, Mr. Khadaffy, just look up there at Iraq a little bit (or whichever direction that is). He has to look. He says, 'Listen, I'll comply. I'll do it. I'll do it.' He has been a little bully over there all these years, you know. He's not much of a bully when he gets faced with that which is more powerful than him. We carry the power of all power in our lives. We walk with the living God and he says all that is before us cannot conquer us. Nothing before us can conquer us. We need not fear.

Peter said 'humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him for He careth for you. Be sober. Be vigilant.' Certainly we need to be alert because your adversary the devil as a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour. We did some lessons on that. How he devours us is in our minds. He steals the very faith that's established in our very make up of Christianity. He steals it away. He wants to devour your thinking so he can destroy your life and bury it in fear.

Defeat. Psychological warfare plays a tremendous role in our battle with the enemy. If Satan and his demons can get believers to fear, they know that they have gone a long way in winning a spiritual battle in our lives. Satan wants us to believe a particular lie. What does Satan want you and me to believe? He wants us to believe that God can't help you in this. This one is bigger than God. God's got blind-sighted by this one. The devil wants us to believe that. He wants us to go into stark raving fear believing that something is before us that God can't handle and we are trapped. David, the veteran warrior, knew the secret to winning the fear game. He said to focus on God. When you do then who can really capture you. Why do you need to be afraid of anyone when you belong to the living God, the very light of your salvation, and strength of your life?

Then he also knew another secret to success in battle against fear. He said to practice consistent fellowship with God. Look at verse 4. He says, 'One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple. For in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion, in the secret of His tabernacle shall He hide me. He shall set me up upon a rock.' I think there is more than one reason to be a member of a New Testament Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. I believe that we are to find the core of our fellowship with God and that this fellowship goes out in our lives wherever we go. But this is the center of fellowship with God on earth: to come to His house: to meet and worship Him in spirit and in truth and take from this place this very fellowship, this very closeness between you and the Lord. How do we come to God's house and not get close to him? I know it happens because of the hearts of people that come in sometimes. Sometimes you and I don't come in with the right heart and we don't get too close to God while we are here. That's our fault, amen?

We are to come here and draw near unto God in a very special way because here we should be able to block out the very influence of the world. Here we should pick up the fullness of the influence of God and fellowship with Him here in prayer, in the Word, and singing, etc. We are to fellowship with God here, to draw off His word, to draw off the moment as He meets with us in the midst of His church, and go out with a strength that only you can find in this place. We should go out with His fellowship and if we do, we will find ourselves more so beating fear that the world and the devil casts upon us.

We need constant fellowship with God. 'One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek. After that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple. That's a big responsibility on the part of us as believers here. Not to overshadow or not to mar the beauty of the presence of the Lord in this place. That means we have to come in with our hearts right. We need to come in with our lives geared to focus upon God and not upon anything else. In that way we can demonstrate and be a part of exposing the beauty of the presence of the Lord in this place, and draw to Him and His Word, and be able again to be strengthened to go back out ready to meet the world who wants us to tremble and fall in fear.

When David said "all the days of my life," he is talking about constant communion with God. He is not talking about coming to God only when he is in trouble but constantly communing with God. He talks about this pavilion in verse 6: 'And now shall my head be lifted up above my enemies round about me, therefore will I offer his tabernacle sacrifices of joy in His tabernacle.' And then he goes on and later speaks of the temple. David is talking about the fact that his communion with Him is mostly built upon his fellowship at the house of God.

Why did David have assurance in times of trouble? I think it was because he not only focused upon God, he saw to it that he had communion with God. You see, before trouble ever got to David he had been dwelling in God's house all the days of his life. He was faithful to that special place of prayer and study of God's Word. He was faithful to God's house. One of the greatest mistakes that you can make in a spiritual warfare is to wait to overcome the battle in the midst of the battle. The time to overcome is before the battle ever begins. That's what the Bible is telling us about how we can conquer fear and how we can conquer the enemies of God out there. Therefore, he says we have to already be on top of the battle before the battle comes. That's why Shadrach, Meschac, and Abednego could do it. That's why Daniel could do it before they were, as he said, ever in captivity. They had already won that battle and so when it came, it was nothing. It was a done deal.

That's where we have to start, before the battle comes into our life. Folks, I can't help it. It starts here. We have to be faithful at the body of Christ and in the body of Christ. We have to be faithful at this place. We meet here that we might meet with the body and find in that body the very victory over the battle. Then go out and meet the battle and we will find that God will have already fought it for us. You have already won. You and I may not fight a more fearsome battle than the battle against fear. That fight has to be fought from God's earthly headquarters of prayer and Bible study.

I think I can start the new year off by saying that one of the best things you can do for your life this year is being faithful to this house. To fail to take a proper stand here guarantees defeat anywhere else you try to take a stand. If you can't stand faithful to the easiest thing on earth you will ever do (and that's go to church), if you can't make that when you are not providentially hindered or when you are not sick or out of town or hindered in some way that you simply can't get to God's house: listen folks, if we can't win over the easiest stand on earth, going to church, I'm telling you right now that it only gets much harder after that no matter what it is. If we are defeated (now listen how your pastor says this) in how we treat the body of Christ, then we are going to be defeated all down the line. We will be defeated if we don't treat the body of Christ (a New Testament Church) with our attendance and faithfulness. We will be defeated if we don't treat it faithfully, if we don't attend it properly ...

There is a family in this church that has been added and I thank the Lord for them. One of the greatest concerns they had was being able to be consistently faithful to this house. I can't tell you how much I respected that opinion. I can't tell you how much I was overjoyed to hear that. That was their main concern. Why? Because they live a distance away and it is a little more difficult to get here but they really believe that God wanted them here. Hallelujah! Hey looks, folks, I don't live very far. I got a phone call this morning from Vietnam. Guess what? Another Tao has been saved. Hallelujah! There are three of them now. What they do is rename them. There is a Mary Tao, then there is a Tao, and then there is an Annie Tao and Annie got saved. She had been coming for many weeks. Finally she said she needed to be saved and was saved. She rides her bike 45 minutes to church one way. That 15-minute drive from Wildwood is tough. (laughter) Amen.

It's not by accident that David mentions about worshipping in his house. I will be in the house of the Lord forever. Then he mentioned the tabernacle. Then he mentions the temple later on. It's not an accident. He is zeroing in on this fact. He says, 'Look, I want to tell you something. I have dwelt in the house of the Lord all the days of my life and then he ends (Psalm 23) and says, 'I'm going to dwell there forever.' David puts a very important emphasis upon the house of God. David made it a consistent practice of his life to attend worship in God's house.

This was a primary preparation for battle against his enemies, his greatest being fear. Fear had run David into hiding (remember I said awhile ago) one time in caves. It was a filthy hideout. Think about that. When you are run into the corner by fear you run into a really filthy place. You know where people are going to commit sin very often is in the midst of their fear. When they allow fear to happen like that their life is going to begin to make corrupt decisions, trying to save themselves. You will find yourself in that survivalist mode and say whatever you have to say to save yourself. Do whatever you have to do to save yourself. You are just trying to save self all of a sudden. That's all that counts. Wait a minute; you have never been in charge of saving yourself. God is the one who is in charge.

David was an excellent warrior of God because he was faithful to the house of God. I'm telling you right now that 21st Century children of God are losing a great battle here, I believe. The church doesn't take the priority in life it used to have, and it gets worse year by year. If there is anything that I would dread about a new year it's because throughout the world the faithfulness of God's house takes a lower place on the list of priority in Christians' lives. Everything about David's life was tied unto God, you see. He used the house of God as a focal point for his relationship to God. Let me say this, some Christians don't see their place of worship that God has given them as being such a benefit. They don't see it that way. Otherwise they would utilize it more. They have allowed God's house to become a place of drudgery. They have made it a kind of dungeon in their own thinking, blaming others for it. Church for you is only what you bring with you to it. Get it? Church is only what you bring here. If you bring the heart ready to worship in spirit and truth then this will be a very wonderful place to be. It won't be a drudgery. If all you bring is a heart thinking of that human nature, it can never be more than that to you. People think it's a dungeon or a drudgery to come to God's house. It's your fault.

When David arrived at God's house he arrived singing. In verse 6 he says, 'Hear Oh Lord when I cry with my voice. Have mercy also upon me and answer me,' . It wasn't the singing, by the way. Oh he came singing, but it wasn't the songs that made David arrive at God's house like that, it was David's heart that was after God's own heart. Church is only as exciting and fulfilling as the heart that comes into it. Nail that one down. More often it is the one entering that needs to get right, not the church. More often that's the case. I told you about the church that voted three times to not forgive a guy and they've not forgiven him yet. I know that church personally. I know the pastor personally. They are in trouble. They're in trouble. Whew! That's pulling candlestick time. I don't pull that. Only God has done that. That's dangerous. That's dangerous territory.

When David cried out to God, God answered him. What was God's answer? He said, 'Seek my face.' Isn't that what He said. He said, 'Seek my face.' and as you read down in the scriptures he says in verse 8, 'When thou saidst seek ye my face, my heart said unto thee, thy face Lord will I seek.' You can't be seeking God's face unless you are utilizing the attendance of His house. You are just going to have to understand that. You say, "I don't get it." Forsake not the assembly of yourselves together; that's the command. The Bible says that those who love Him will keep His commandments. That's a command. We thought there were just 10. Hey, the Bible is full of commandments but this is one that says we ought not forsake it because you go on and read and it says if you find yourself guilty of that then you find yourself trampling the blood of Christ under your feet. Treating the blood of Christ as nothing more than the pavement that you walk and drive on.

Successful worship and exciting worship is dependent upon whether those coming into worship are truly coming seeking God's face, God's will for their lives, or are they just coming in. Kids, don't get trapped in this: just coming to church because you are at home. Just coming to church because mom and dad require it. You are just coming to church, just coming to church. Let me tell you what is going to happen to you. If it's not in your heart to be here, the same as mom and dads, what is going to happen is that one of these days you are going to get your wings and fly away and you are not going to land in church, you are going to land in all kinds of trouble. That's the facts of life. Your preacher cannot nonchalantly run through a house that has just been freshly painted without finally getting paint on him. You cannot run away from God's church, you cannot go to college and desert God's church and keep your life morally straight because it won't be spiritually straight. That's just the facts of life.

What happens if you roll off the building up here? Do you go down or up? Logan, do you go down or up? Down. What's it called? Falling. Scientifically, it is called gravity. You are falling. It's going to happen every time. You cannot run off the edge of a mountain without going down. I'm tell you the Bible shows us and teaches us that if we won't keep the house of God in the center of our life, there is only one way to go in your daily walk and that is down. You can't go down without meeting up with one tragedy after another. It won't work.

So what did you come seeking today? He asks us to seek His face. Are you seeking God's face? If you missed out on that while here, it's your own fault. Some people blame the people, some people blame the pastor, others blame the music, others blame the teachers or anything else their creativity can conjure up as to why church isn't all they just believe it should be to them. That's the problem usually. It's all they, yeah they, believe it should be to them, yeah them. It's not about God it's about them and what they want, and the pastor and the people and music just don't give it to them. They came to be served up and aren't getting served what they want so they have grown cold. Some have even quit coming. Those in this mentality may still be in attendance yet refusing to change, but they too will eventually quit coming. Unless the church serves up what they want, they just can't worship. They will finally quit. They already have. They are just in attendance. They are only here in body not spirit until finally the last straw breaks. Children also, maybe, until finally they get their little wings to fly away then they fly away in the wrong direction.

David said in verse 10, 'When my father and my mother forsake me then the Lord will take me up.' Yes, it's possible that those closest to us will desert us but God never hides His face from His people. His people hide their face from Him and when you do you are in the arena of fear. If you don't know it yet, it will announce itself soon enough and you will be swallowed. Seek the face of the Lord. Be at the house of God.

One final suggestion on the part of this great David. He said live an upright life. In verse 11 he says, 'Teach me Thy way oh Lord and lead me in a plain path because of mine enemies.' The words you see there -- plain path-- are from the authorized version. It could be translated straight or upright. Lead me in your upright way, Lord. Very little is said today about the value of morally good living. You see, it's not politically correct to even say that one way of life is good and another is not. That one action is morale or another is not morale. Today it is an alternate sexual life style. Homosexuality is called an alternate life style. Listen folks, the Bible says it is sin. It's an abomination to God. You can read it all through the Bible. God will not have mercy upon those that would embrace such a wicked thing. God doesn't have mercy upon anybody that embraces any kind of sin whether you see it little or big. He can't; He is holy. He has to judge the sin. If you don't have Christ as your saviour when He judges the sin because you have intended to stay attached to that, He will judge you too and the final judgment is hell unless you get to Christ.

Traditional values in society have been torn down in the name of fairness and tolerance. This has also led to weakness and spiritual warfare. The enemy tries to persuade us that our values are outdated and tolerant. 'You bunch of holy rollers. You holier than thou people' and all that kind of stuff. The names are going to come. The persecution comes. The physical persecution will come if Jesus doesn't come soon but the verbal is well underway, isn't it. David said, 'Deliver me not over until the will of mine enemies for false witnesses are risen up against me and such that breath out cruelty.' They will call you all kinds of things. They are going to verbally abuse you. But he says, 'Deliver me out of the will of mine enemies.' Listen, part of the will of the enemy is certainly to destroy us and bring us down. But part of the will of the enemy in bringing us down is (listen) getting you to believe their way of thinking. Getting you to be sucked into their kind of thinking.

David said, 'That's not what I learned at the house of God.' You see, if you are a child of God you have Christ and you are going to heaven. But as far as your walk in life, as far as finding the victory over your walk in life beyond here, you have to be here to learn and grow. Part of your fellowship here, part of your prayer time, part of your time together here is to strengthen you and uplift you and get you ready for out there, to be able to say no. Christians today are saying yes to things that they know they should be saying no to. It's because even if they were here they didn't listen. They had decided something else. Maybe they are in a drudgery. Maybe they are the ones who came in and said, "Nahhhh, church isn't what it ought to be. It doesn't suit me. It's just not feeding my stuff, man.' Hey, buddy, that happens from the youngest to the oldest in churches all the time.

Let me tell you what's happening to them. They are being set up to be brought down in fear. They are going to come in the face of their enemy. In their case the enemy could very well be their peers. Our enemy sometimes is just peer pressure out there that we have as adults and kids, and sometimes we are afraid to say no in the face of even our work associates and our school associates. We are afraid to do that. Why? It's because we have not learned. Even though you may have come to the house of God, maybe you haven't learned to say, 'That's for me!'

You know what some people come to do? They come just to watch the preacher burn down. Yeah, really. Boy that guy, he tells a story. Boy that guy, he doesn't stay in the pulpit. That guy, he doesn't get trapped behind the pulpit. He raises his voice. He doesn't have monotone. He is exciting. Boy you have to come and hear our preacher. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Then they come and watch the preacher burn down. I think it's important to be interesting. Sometimes I'm not very interesting and I'm the first one to admit to that. But you are not here to watch the preacher burn down. You are not here to watch the preacher preach his message. You are here to receive the mail that God has given me to deliver to you and you need to receive it. But I'm afraid that along with bulletins and notices that get left behind in the pew sometimes (that's not a rebuke but just for the sake of a point), I wonder if alongside those are some other people who have left the sermon laying in the pew as well and they left. They really didn't make their message as well. Because you see, it's God's message for you to make your message.

That's what my preacher believes. I hate that. Why do you believe that? Well, my preacher believes it. You are in trouble. Not everything I believed in my day has been right. I'm going to tell you right now, there are probably some things I need to change in my understanding of the Word of God. We are all in a growing period. You need to do what the Bereans did. You need to go home and see if what I said was so. You need to go home and make this yours. You need to go home making this message this morning yours. If you don't, 2004 will open up some things to you that are going to be ugly and you won't be able to deal with it.

Finally, are you winning life's battle against fear? You can win life's battles against fear in 2004. We have a veteran soldier and king here named David. You need to consider his advice. I'm embracing his advice in my life. Make the adjustments that the Word of God calls for in your life to be victorious over fear. I promise you this: the reason some people do the stupid stuff they do; they may not be screaming in fear, but they are doing it because fear in their hearts has made them make wrong decisions. I'm not the first one that's wanted to run and I'm not the last one that's wanted to run.

We don't have to run. We can stand still and see the great and mighty work of the Lord or we can run and miss the moment of victory that God had already established for us. We can spend 2004 running from something, hiding from something, grieving from something, and be like that Japanese soldier that hid in that cave for 28 years and get down the line and find out that God had already won that thing. Christians don't have to be in fear. No matter what's going on in your life, it can be used as something to glorify God in His power and ability to see you through it no matter what that means.

Here's something else. Maybe in a service this size there is someone who is lost. They are just running their life. It may be a young person or it might be an older person. You know, you can't have victory from God unless you are in Him. You have to get in Christ. How do you do that? The Bible says to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved. If you don't have faith in God, if your salvation is not anchored in Him, if you have not seen to that in your life somewhere, then you are outside. I'm going to give you some advice. If you are outside of Christ, if you have not truly been saved, I'm going to give you some of the best advice I can give. Do everything you can possibly do to stay alive. You know, somewhere that's going to run out. Somewhere you might do a pretty good job eating the right stuff, drinking the right water, getting the right pills, getting the right doctors, or getting the right this and getting the right that. You might be doing it right and be healthy and strong. *I drive out at Wildwood and see people jogging, walking, riding their bikes, and doing whatever. They are trying to stay alive. Maybe they have good reason because if you die without Jesus Christ you fall through life's floor into the pit of hell. You go with your sins. You see, you won't let go of your sins. You won't come to Christ that He might save you from your sins. So when you fall through the floor of life at death you go with your sins into the pit of hell. You don't have to. Instead of going down you can go up. If you leave here without Jesus Christ because you may have a fear of what people may think or what you may look like, or a fear of your peers or whatever fear you may have; it's a fear that the devil has put there. That fear makes you run away from standing up and receiving Christ today. You are running just further down the road to the time that when life's floor opens up in death you will fall into hell. You don't have to. Don't run from Jesus. Come to him and be forever saved.