I'm fully aware that most people will wake up in hell shocked, literally shocked forever that that's their portion. Most people in this world presume that everything's well between them and God. Most people, I dare say many of you sitting here and you're well instructed, but most people, most people don't really believe there's any such thing as judgment, hell, or eternity. Not really. Not really. Most folks are convinced Whatever lies beyond the grave is just going to be fine. I'm all right with God. God wouldn't possibly look at me and judge me. He wouldn't look at me and condemn me. After all, I'm not so bad.

In fact, most people, according to this book, in religion don't know God. And many, even professing truth, don't know God. Just don't.

So preacher, you're awful pessimistic. You call it what you want to. I want to be honest with your soul if I can. I'll be honest before God if I can. I want to be honest with me if I can.

The scripture talks about the day of judgment this way. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? And in thy name have cast out devils? And in thy name have done many wonderful works. We didn't do a little bit, we've done many wonderful works. And I will profess to them, I never knew you. depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

Now if you care for your soul, listen to this preacher for a few minutes and ask God to speak to your heart. If I am born of God, if you're born of God, there's some things that are true of us. There's some things that just, they're true of all believers. All who are born of God have been convinced of and repent of their sin, all of them. I tell you nay, the Savior said, except you repent, you shall all likewise perish. When God the Holy Spirit comes in convicting power, he convinces you of your sin. If you're without faith in Christ, if you haven't yet fallen down at the throne of mercy and sued for God's grace on the basis of Christ's obedience, there's just one reason how come. Because you don't really need him yet. You hadn't been convinced of your sin.

If ever God Almighty deals with your soul and Holy Spirit conviction, if ever God gives you life, if ever God brings you to faith in Christ, you will confess your sin from the depths of your soul, acknowledging that it's right for God to send you to hell. And if he does it right now, he's put off too long what you would have done long ago. It's right for God to send you to hell. It's right. It's right for God to damn me. It's right for God to damn my family. It's right for God to damn sinners. We are sin! Nothing but sin. But you're not convinced of that, so you'll go on your way until you wake up in hell and say, Lord, what happened? And then you'll be convinced.

If I'm born of God, if you're born of God, We trust Jesus Christ alone as our Savior. I mean Christ alone. Unless I am a liar who is deceived by my own heart and deceived by Satan, this I acknowledge to God and I acknowledge to you and I hope you can get in on it. I have no atonement for my sin to offer God but the blood of Christ. Oscar, I don't trust anything but His blood to make up for my sin. My faith won't do it, my weeping won't do it, my repentance won't do it, my humbling myself won't do it. Nothing I do can make up to God for what I am and what I have done and what I am doing right now. Nothing. Nothing. Only the blood of Christ.

God demands righteousness. God demands it. God demands it. Bill Raleigh and Don Fortner must either be perfectly righteous or forever perish under the wrath of God. God won't accept a good effort. God won't accept good intentions. God won't accept the best you can do. God won't accept the best efforts you can bring. God won't accept the best works of your hands. Your best works, your best notions, your best righteousness, your best ideas about righteousness, your best aspirations, your best dreams of doing good are just filthy rags to God. Just filthy rags. Nothing. Nothing. Just a stench before God. A stench. Repugnant to God. Obnoxious to God. Nauseating to God Almighty. Those things you pop your suspenders and strut. Boy, now look at me. I've done something now. God smells it and vomits. That's exactly right. Is that truth? That's exactly right. Exactly right.

Well, how do you expect to stand before God? Jesus Christ, the Lord, my righteousness. That's all. He'd gone back to the Father, Merle, but not as a private man. He went back as a public man. He's seated on the throne of God, not as a private man, but a public man. He's seated there and accepted in heaven, not as a private man, but a public man, the mediator man. He's seated there as the representative of His people for whom He has established righteousness.

And looking to Him, I'm accepted of God because He put away my sin and He'd given me perfect righteousness. More than that, if we are born of God, if we believe on the Son of God, I know everybody in Baptist churches for the last hundred years got this thing sewed up when they were three or four years old because somebody in some Sunday school class or some Sunday school teacher went through some little religious ritual and walked down in front of the church and said a little prayer and everything was all right. I'm saved, I was there when it happened, everything was okay. I had an experience, I know I was saved.

Let me tell you something. If God saved you, do you hear me? If God saved you, if you know the Son of God, if you've been born of God, you have bowed and continue to bow willingly to Jesus Christ the Lord. You bow to Him. If Christ hadn't conquered your heart, you don't know Christ. If the Son of God doesn't hold dominion over you, you have no experience of His grace. If Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is not Himself your Lord by your willing consent, so that you bow to Him and take His yoke upon you. You take His yoke. You gladly slip under His yoke and find rest for your souls. Otherwise you don't know Him.

This is what the Master said. He said, if any man come to me and hate not his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. I wonder if you could find a preacher. I wonder just how, I wonder how many hours of radio, how many hours of television, how many churches, how many denominations, how many years you'd have to visit churches and preachers in this country to find somebody who'd tell you that. I mean what? Nobody gonna tell you that? Oh no! Salvation! That's the easiest thing in this world. Easy for God, but utterly impossible with you. That's right. You won't bow to Christ. It ain't going to happen. It ain't going to happen. You won't do it. You'd rather go to hell than bow to Him. You're not going to submit to the Son of God. Oh, but He may be pleased graciously to submit you by conquering your will. And that's the only way you'll ever be saved.

Our Lord had his folks come to him and they said, we want to be your disciples, we want to go to heaven with you, we want to walk in your way, we're impressed with you. He said bow. Bow down. Surrender. For what? Everything. Everything. So fully is the surrender, so fully is the demand for surrender that the Son of God says this, You'll hate your family and your own life by comparison. Now, buddy, this is what that means. I don't have any question. This is exactly what that means. If I know Jesus Christ, if I worship Him, if I follow Him, I can't let my love for that lady interfere with it. I can't let my love for my daughter, my son-in-law, my granddaughter interfere with it.

Well, what if? Not gonna interfere. It's not gonna interfere. What they may or may not want has absolutely nothing to do with it. What may or may not be best for their physical welfare has absolutely nothing to do with it. I'm going to follow Him. I'm going to follow Him. What about things that they don't want to? I'm going to follow Him. And I've got news for you. I'm the head of my house. As for me and my house, we're going to follow Him together. That's the way it's going to be. We're going to follow Him. That's what the Master demands.

I'll tell you something else. If I'm born of God, if you're born of God, we love with a genuine, heartfelt, sincere love His people. Love each other. Love each other. I'm not talking about you know, sugar-coated, syrupy, silly, sloppy, sentimental words. No, no, no, no. I'm talking about we know we pass from death unto life because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. That's just the way it is, Gary. Believers love each other. I'm not talking to you about what they ought to do. Folks say, well, this is what believers ought to do. No, no. I'm telling you what they are. Believers love each other. They love each other. They care for each other. They support each other. They defend each other. They forgive each other. They overlook one another's idiosyncrasies and one another's sins. And they are forbearing and long-suffering, not gossiping and tail-bearing. They're forbearing and long-suffering. They love each other.

And if I'm born of God, if you're born of God, Rex, there is a struggle in our souls with sin. The believer, the child of God, is a man or woman at war with himself within himself. Say, Preacher, I don't know anything about what you're talking about. I know. God pity you. I know. You've got everything fixed up. Everything's all right between you and God. Me and Jesus got a good thing going. I've got everything sewed up now. I've had my decisions. I've made my profession. Everything's okay. I'm headed for heaven. I'll swing over hell on a grapevine. Everything's all right. But God's people struggle constantly. I get all kinds of mail and conversation and talk. People, you know, they get involved in a cause. I've got to try to do something to get folks to stay acting religious. Brother Skip said to me the other day, he said, this church has folks to do less than any church I've ever been in my life. And he's exactly right. Because the philosophy of religion is use them or lose them. And, man, we don't want to lose them. Let's use them. Give them something to do. Teach a Sunday school class. Do something. Do something! Or they'll get bored and leave.

Believers are doing something. They're struggling in the depths of their soul with sin. This is how one of them spoke. A better man than Bobby Estes who died in Fortnum. He said, I know that in me, as in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. He said, to will is present with me. Oh yeah. He said, I love the law of God after the inward man. I would do good. I would do good. Always good. Nothing but good. When I would do good, evil is present with me. So I cannot do the things I would. I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. Oh, wretched man that I am.

Today, religion says, oh, wretched man that I was. That man, that woman who knows God, comes to know more and more every day he lives the wretchedness and corruption of his inmost being. Oh, wretched man that I am. The true believer is a person in whom there is a continual growing repentance, faith, and conflict. So when the word of God comes into a person's heart, In the power of the Spirit, that man, that woman, is made a new creature in Christ, transformed by the grace of God. And yet, that transformation is a continual, ongoing process. The Apostle said, be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. We've been transformed by the grace of God, and we are being transformed by His grace.

When God the Holy Spirit comes into a man's soul in saving power and grace, He brings forth fruit. The fellow asked me a week or two ago, he said, if I'm a Christian, isn't there some fruit I ought to be bearing? He said, isn't there some fruit I ought to be producing? I said, no, no. Now that's religion talking. That's religion talking. Religion tells you how you got to start loving, you got to start doing, you got to start giving, you got to start this, you got to start that. The scripture tells us that the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, goodness, faith, temperance, against such there is no law. The fruit's not something you produce. Fruit's something, I got some grapevines out there, man you got to live promise of fruit. The fruit is bearing from the vine, that's all. It's the water and the rain and the sunshine that God sends that produces the fruit. And the fruit of the Spirit, that which is produced in you by God's grace. That's it. It's continually bearing. Continually bearing fruit.

So I know some Christians who don't. No, you don't. No, you don't. No, you don't. Uh-uh. No believers are men and women in whom God works. Now, the fruit of the Spirit in this world is never made perfect. It's never matured in this world. It's never grown to full ripeness in this world. But it's there. Shelby and I planted some corn the other day. Little old bitty kernels. Little old bitty thing. But you know everything, this fall when we go get that stuff, Start to shuck it, silk it, she puts it in there and tastes it. Oh, that good corn. You know, everything, everything that's going to be in that full stalk, in the full ear, in the full harvest is in the seed. Everything. It's already there. It just got to grow. That's all. It just got to grow. And I'm telling you, everything that's in Jesus Christ is in every believer in seed form if you're born of God. It's just growing. It's growing.

When God the Holy Spirit causes a man to come under the rule of Jesus Christ as his voluntary servant, that man, that woman is freed from the dominion of sin and the penalty of it by the power of God's grace and the precious blood of His Son. And yet, while we live in this world, and this is something I, If you know God, Merle J., if you know God, if I know God, I don't have to argue to convince anybody about this. While we live in this world, bowing to Jesus Christ, we are never freed from the being of sin and the influence of sin in us as long as we live in this flesh.

Folks talk about the temptations of the world, you know, and all the people want to keep the kids and shelter them from the world. Now, you mamas and daddies act like you've got good sense. Act like you've got good sense. If you've got good sense, you don't turn your kids over to a bunch of mad dogs. You just, you just don't do that. Turn them over to this world, turn them over to a bunch of mad dogs. You just act like you got some good sense. Raised, Shelby and I driving home last night, got in here late, almost midnight. Little old girl out playing in the street, couldn't be more than three or four years old. Out playing in the street at midnight. And Shelby says, what a pity the way some kids are raised. I said, what a pity the way they're not raised. You're responsible to raise them, to train them, to discipline them.

But you don't even get the hint of a notion that somehow your kids are so nice and so good and so godly and so upright if I can just keep them out of the world. Boy, I can just keep that boy over there next door. Our Lord said Satan came and he said he found nothing in me. The reason Rex, the temptations of the world find plenty to allure us is because everything out there is in us. Everything out there. I've told you before, you know how every mama's son, she's got the one. Now, he's not perfect, but he's as near as they get.

Brother Jack Shakes, he had one of those religious schools. From the time he started it to the time he got out of it, he said it was just a nightmare, but he had to have it. So he got one started and one day this gal called up and she said, Reverend Shanks, she said, my little Johnny, he signed up at your school today and I want you to be careful, be sure he doesn't get in the wrong crowd. And Jack said, ma'am, who did you say your son is? And she told him, he said, honey, your son is the wrong crowd. And I'm telling you, you're the wrong crowd. I'm the wrong crowd. We're just corruption. Just corruption. And believers know it.

While we live in this world, we will never be free from this thing called sin. free from its dominion, free from its penalty, but not from its being, not from its influence. And yet, the believer, that man, that woman who is born of God, is a person who continues steadfast in the faith to the end.

All right, now let's look at this text for just a minute. John chapter 8, verse 31. John chapter 8, verse 31. Back up to verse 30 if you will.

As he spoke these words, as he spoke these words, now try to get the context. Our Lord Jesus is the preacher here. He's just performed a mighty, mighty act of grace. The Pharisees and the scribes, they caught this woman in the act of adultery. And the scriptures are very careful to say they caught her in the very act. Man, they were good religious folks. I don't know who was present, who was there, how they set her up, but somebody set this gal up, and they caught her in the very act of adultery. And they brought her to the mastery because they wanted an excuse to put him to death. They wanted to embarrass him, they wanted to prove his doctrine wrong, so they brought her up there and they said, now what? Moses in the law says let's kill her, what do you say?

And the Lord acted like he didn't hear him. I'm getting pretty good at that. He stooped down on the ground as if he didn't hear him. He just scratched around in the ground. Now, I don't know what he wrote. Nobody else does. Lots of guesses have been made, but he wrote something. And then they spoke to him again. He stooped down. And I was almost pinching. Then he raised his head. Then he looked up. He said, anybody here without sin, go ahead and kill her. But him that is without sin among you cast the first stone. And the scripture says they were convicted in their own consciences. That's a terrible kind of conviction. It'll never save your soul, it just condemns. They were convicted in their own consciences. And they walked out of, away from them. And there was the Lord Jesus alone, listen to this, with the woman standing in the midst.

Oh, what a blessed, blessed day when the Son of God calls out one of his sheep and you shut up alone with Christ and nobody else. He's fixing to do something for you. He looked up at her and said, woman, where are your accusers? And the woman looked around. And she said, well, there's nobody here to accuse me. There's nobody left to accuse me. Nobody left. If the master silences the law for his people, then there's nothing left to condemn. And he looks up at her, and he says, neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more. Oh, what a word of grace.

Well, these folks heard this thing. They saw it. They witnessed what was going on. And then the Lord spoke to him and he said in verse 12, I'm the light of the world. I am. I am the light of the world. Follow me and you'll not walk in darkness. And then in verse 15, he said, you judge after the flesh. I judge no man. Now that doesn't mean he doesn't judge anything. The father committed all judgment to the son. He said, I don't judge like you do. You judge things civilly and politically. You judge things involved in this issue and that. You're religious fools, so you've got to have something to keep you active. You're religious fools, so you've got to have something to cause. And you march and protest, and you judge carnal, fleshly, worldly things in the name of religion, and that's all your concern. He said, I'm not even interested.

He said, now, in verse 22, I go my way. I'm going my way. I'm going right where I came here to go. And by the door of the cross, I'm going up to my Father's house. And I'm going to return to glory. And you can't come. That's what he said. You can't come.

Verse 23, he said the reason you can't come is because you're from beneath. I'm from above. You're of the world. I'm not of this world. And then he says in verse 24, because you believe not that I am he, you're going to die in your sins. Because you don't trust me, you're going to hell. Did you hear him? Because you don't trust me, you're going to hell.

And then in verses 28 and 29 he says, he says, when my blood is dripping from your fingers, When my blood is on your hands, when at last you've done what you wanted to do, you're going to be convinced and you're going to know that I've told you the truth. Look at it. When you've lifted up the Son of Man, then shall you know that I am He. You're going to know. Listen to me. Listen to me. When God sends you to hell, you're gonna know and know forever. I mean know forever. You're gonna know forever that He is the Christ. And His blood's on your hands. And you deserve to go to hell. And you're gonna cry out to the tormenting of your conscience forever.

And then in verse 30, as he spoke these words, many believed on him. They said, oh, we'll follow you. We're going to follow you. We're going to walk with you. We're going to go your way. And the master said, well, all right. Everything's OK. Everything's all right. You come along now. Bless God you're saved. You're sanctified. Everything's OK. Nothing is going to happen to you now. Don't let anybody tell you you're not saved. Only a false prophet will talk like that, not the Son of God.

I heard Ralph Barnett say one time, folks, all the time, they come to me and say, well, I don't have any assurance. Most folks don't have any because they don't, they oughtn't to have any. They oughtn't to have any. He said the only man that will try to convince another man he's saved, the only man that will try to convince a lost man he's saved is another lost man. Now, I'm not going to try to convince you of anything. If God convinced you, it's just another story.

Our master said to those who believed on him, all right, you believe on me? Let's see. If you continue in my word, then you're my disciples indeed. You see, believers are many women who are kept by the grace of God. But being kept by the grace of God, they continue in his word. They begin in faith, and they live in faith, and they die in faith. All of them. All of them.

Sitting here, praying and asking God to enable me to preach to you, I looked into every one of your faces, and I said, Lord, who's going to be here tomorrow? And who's going to be here from now on? Will I? Will you? I'll tell you this, I'll tell you this, and I know mommas and daddies and we get silly, silly notions and attachments to sons and daughters and we say, well, you know, little Johnny, he's not really doing right, but I remember when God saved him. I wish you'd forget when God saved anybody or when you think he did. I'm telling you the truth, I wish you'd just forget it. Just forget it.

I'm going to tell you what, if Gary Baker belongs to God, he's going to continue in his word. And Gary, if you and I don't continue in his word, we don't belong to God. to continue in His Word, His doctrine, His truth, His worship, this rule we follow, because we follow Him. Amen.