We need to let the Word speak for itself. We let God reveal Himself to us, and we’re called then to represent Him as He’s revealed Himself to us.  We’re called to keep all of His commandments.  They’re not always easy.  Do you think it was an easy thing for those armies, as they were going into possess the land and to take their promise?  At times, to have to pull their swords and kill infants and pregnant women, to go into households and not only slay fathers and mothers and children, but even their livestock?  God’s holy; amen?  He is awesome in His being.  He is absolutely separate from all of man’s natural reasoning.  His justice is beyond our comprehension.  His love is beyond the natural mind.  The finite mind can never comprehend the love of God.  We can only get glimpses of this love through the revelation of His Word and through the indwelling person of Jesus, the Holy Spirit dwelling inside of us.  So, all that we know of God and all that we do for God is in conjunction with our knowledge of the Scriptures.  We need to know the Word of God that we might know God, that we might rightfully keep His commandments; because otherwise we’re keeping commandments that we’ve added to or diminished and there is no power and, in fact, we’re in conflict with God, and He will destroy us as we try to apply our gospel instead of His.  Hence, He said at the end of the ministry of the gospel, this age of grace that we’re living in at this moment, people refer to it that way, God’s grace has always been evident and available.

But there will be those that come to Him, we know, in that last day and say, “Lord, Lord, didn’t we do all of these things for you?”  And He said, “I never approved of what you did. Depart from Me, I never knew you.”  And that boggles our minds many times, but we have to know through that, to bring that kind of a judgement upon these people that were doing all of those things, what was it that they were doing amiss?  They were adding to or diminishing from the pure Word that He gave them, which is this gospel.  Simple though it is to partake of, to represent it in our lives is not so simple of a thing; amen?  Have you found that?  We don’t live every day, every moment victoriously, though our faith is the victory, praise God!  So, we’re confessing about ourselves what God has declared about us in His finished work.

So, you’re going to be asked to do some difficult things.  None more difficult than this. You know, we may think that some of these difficult things, we’ve seen them go and slay the enemy, as we were talking about, in Israel.  Difficult things such as Abraham called to offer up his son, Isaac.  And many of us are taken aback by that and we almost stand aghast at even the thought of it, but God requires you to do the same thing.  He said, “If you don’t love Me more than mothers and fathers and houses and land and children, you’re not worthy of Me”; amen?  And then He bumps it up a notch and says, “And not only that, if you would come to know Me and fellowship with Me, here’s the commandments I give you,” and we’re talking about keeping the commandments of God today.  Obedience, that brings divine blessings with them.  If any man would come unto Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, die daily, and follow Me.  The most difficult thing: a daily death.  That’s harder to accomplish than a natural, physical death that’s over in a moment.  It’s easier to die once than every day, amen, and get it behind you.  But every day self must be crucified.  Every day we must realize that we’re not our own, we’ve been bought with a price.  Every day we have hanging over us this awesome statement, and I mean by “awesome” I’m talking about the weightiness of it.  Because we, every day, have to answer that same question that was answered in that judgement that Jesus brought upon those who said, they had labored in His presence, they labored in the streets, they did all of these things in His name and He said, “I never knew you.”