Let us go to Psalm 37, which is a Psalm of David. It says in Psalm 37:1-40:
Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. Trust in JEHOVAH, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in JEHOVAH; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto JEHOVAH; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass. And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday. Rest in JEHOVAH, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil. For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon JEHOVAH, they shall inherit the earth. For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth. The Lord shall laugh at him: for he seeth that his day is coming. The wicked have drawn out the sword, and have bent their bow, to cast down the poor and needy, and to slay such as be of upright conversation. Their sword shall enter into their own heart, and their bows shall be broken. A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked. For the arms of the wicked shall be broken: but JEHOVAH upholdeth the righteous. JEHOVAH knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be for ever. They shall not be ashamed in the evil time: and in the days of famine they shall be satisfied. But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of JEHOVAH shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away. The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again: but the righteous showeth mercy, and giveth. For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth; and they that be cursed of him shall be cut off. The steps of a good man are ordered by JEHOVAH: and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for JEHOVAH upholdeth him with his hand. I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. He is ever merciful, and lendeth; and his seed is blessed. Depart from evil, and do good; and dwell for evermore. For JEHOVAH loveth judgment, and forsaketh not his saints; they are preserved for ever: but the seed of the wicked shall be cut off. The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein for ever. The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, and his tongue talketh of judgment. The law of his God is in his heart; none of his steps shall slide. The wicked watcheth the righteous, and seeketh to slay him. JEHOVAH will not leave him in his hand, nor condemn him when he is judged. Wait on JEHOVAH, and keep his way, and he shall exalt thee to inherit the land: when the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it. I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found. Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace. But the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off. But the salvation of the righteous is of JEHOVAH: he is their strength in the time of trouble. And JEHOVAH shall help them, and deliver them: he shall deliver them from the wicked, and save them, because they trust in him.
Returning to Psalm 37:1 again, it says:
Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.
This word “fret” is a word that I thought meant “do not worry” or “do not be anxious” or “do not be concerned”:
Fret not thyself…
Actually, this is a word that is translated as “be angry” or “be wroth.” This is a word that has to do with the wrath of God or the anger of God. God is saying here to the child of God, “Do not be angry. Do not get upset. Do not be mad when you see things going on around you that are troubling to you in this world, things that are not fair to you or to others.” He says:
Fret not thyself because of evildoers…
This is referring to all of the people of the world, because everyone is an “evildoer.”
What is evil? Is murder evil? Yes. Is terrorism evil? Yes. Is telling a lie evil? Yes. Is cursing evil? Is having an adulterous thought evil? Yes. Yes. Yes. Evil, basically, is the transgression of the Law of God. When we break the Law of God, this is evil. When we have this definition, who is an “evildoer” then? Everybody: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”
So God is basically saying here that when we look at other people, no matter who they are, they are an “evildoer,” but we are not to get upset by them, even though the soul of the child of God, that pure, new, born-again heart that God has given to the believer, like Lot, could be “vexed…from day to day.” This heart is without sin, and yet it is placed within a sinner who is living in a world that is full of sin; therefore, it can be “vexed,” but God is saying not to get angry about this and not to worry about this.
Psalm 37:1 continues:
…neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.
Envy is when you look at something and you want it. It could be a car or a house. The tendency of people is that when they have a car, they want a better car; when they have a house, they want a better house. Actually, no matter what they have, they will eventually see someone who has something better. The tendency of man, which is a sinful tendency, will be to desire those things and to envy those who have them. If there is someone who lives on the same block and it seems like they have a nice family while your family is in turmoil, you can even envy other’s relationships or their children, or whatever, “If only my family could be like that family.”
This is so prevalent that we do not even realize that we are envying others, and yet we envy everywhere. We look at the world and we see tremendous riches, tremendous things that are in the world, and we want them. It kind of makes us a little sad that we do not have these things, and so we can envy those who do have them. We can get upset about this, but God is saying that we are not to fret because of others and neither should we envy them, because this is something that a true believer can do.
If we go to Psalm 73, which is a Psalm of Asaph, Psalm 73:2-6 says:
But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no bands in their death: but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men. Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment.
We can look at others and even envy that they can sin carefree. They can do things against God’s Law and it does not bother them. They can even joke about it and laugh about it. Here we are troubled all the day long because God has given a spirit to His people that is troubled when it is involved with sin. We can feel sad and mournful and troubled. It seems that we are battling our flesh. We are battling the desires of things around us. Life for a child of God is not easy. This is like the (Isaac Watts) song that says, “Must I be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease?” No; it is through much tribulation that we enter into the Kingdom of God. There is affliction. Today, there is “great affliction [tribulation].”
So there are all kinds of things that are troubling to the child of God, especially our responsibility to carry this information about Judgment Day. Carrying this information is a burden. It is a responsibility. It is a weight, in a sense. Of course, we know that Jesus tells us that we do not have to carry this burden. He says that we are to be about “casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you”; and so we can go to Him when we do feel this burden; but still, when we wake up today and it is February or when we wake up in March or April of 2011, Lord willing, if we live this long, and Judgment Day is getting ever closer, then we are going to feel more and more responsibility as a watchman to sound the trumpet and to warn the people.
Others do not have this burden. They do not have this weight of knowing that Judgment Day is close at hand. They have heard it, but they just dismiss it and continue on in their lives carefree. We could look at this and envy. It would be nice to just relax and to think that we had a lifetime to live, but we do not.
So God is moving Asaph, a believer, to write this and He says in Psalm 73:3:
For I was envious at the foolish…
Then Asaph says in Psalm 73:5:
They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men.
God is not chastening them like he does the believer, because “whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.” They are not receiving chastisement. If they are, they do not recognize it and just continue on in their way.
So envy is a tendency for anyone and for any child of God. What is the solution? Further down in Psalm 73, we read in Psalm 73:16-17:
When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me; Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end.
They have an end. When we realize that they only have three months to live, how can anyone envy them? How can anyone envy someone who only has three months to live? What can you envy? Do you want what they have? Do you envy their possessions? Let them have them. Let them enjoy them, because they are going to die soon. When we understand the end of unsaved man, then it tends to rid us of envy.
Let us go to Proverbs 23. There are a couple of verses that fit with this. We read in Proverbs 23:17:
Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of JEHOVAH all the day long.
This would be referring to each and every day. “The fear of Jehovah” is to do things His way, to be broken, to be humbled “under the mighty hand of God” or under the Word of God, His commandments.
We wake up today and we pray, “O Lord, not my glory, but Thine,” as the Bible says, “Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory.” We want to live and to do everything “heartily, as to the Lord” so that He receives all glory, honor, and praise and not ourselves any longer; and so we are in the “fear of the LORD all the day long.”
Proverbs 23:17 said:
Let not thine heart envy sinners…
Then look at the next verse, Proverbs 23:18:
For surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be cut off.
What is our expectation? It is Heaven. It is everything that the Bible promises: eternal life and the changing of our present physical bodies, bodies that are seeing corruption, into a new resurrected spiritual body without any corruption, new bodies that will live forever. Our expectation is to have physical illness, pain, sorrow, tears, and death, all of the things that are so much a part of this world, be removed, and for God, in their place, to give things that we cannot even begin to imagine concerning love, peace, joy, hope, and goodness, all of the things that the Bible talks about.
This is the child of God’s expectation and our expectation is on May 21st to receive these things, for God to finish what He started, for God to complete His salvation plan, to fulfill the promises of the Bible, and there are many of them. This is the expectation of the true believer, the child of God, and God says that this will not be cut off. He is not going to interfere with this; we will receive them. We will receive them one day and this day is coming quickly. We will one day experience the completion of the salvation plan.
We already have a new resurrected soul, which is a down payment. It is “the earnest expectation” of what is to come. He will complete our salvation by giving us a new body. Then as we move into the future, we are with God, dwelling with Him in the new Heaven and the new earth. Our minds are no longer focused on this world anymore. It is done; as the Bible says: “the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.” We will focus on whatever it will be that God will want us to do in the position that He will want us to be in. We will just be living and reigning with Christ forever, and this expectation will come to pass; but not for the wicked.
Let us read this again. God says in Proverbs 23:18:
For surely there is an end…
This is the reason why we should not allow our hearts to envy sinners. There is an end, and knowledge of this is what removes envy.
I have mentioned this before. We can think of a billionaire. He has everything, and you do not even have to see him in person. Throughout history, it was different. People had to see someone like this with their own eyes to believe it, someone from their own town or village. They had to actually see these things in reality in order to envy; but now with the electronic medium, with television and with the Internet, we do not even have to be there. We can see mansions and tremendously beautiful tropical locations where people vacation. Basically, we can see the whole world at once.
What does this do for us? All this does is foster envy, because we look and we want and we desire; and yet God is saying that we are not to envy sinners since “surely there is an end.”
But if anyone were to envy someone, it would be the billionaire. He has everything. He has an entire fleet of cars. He has a slew of mansions. Anything that anyone could want, he has. He has food, clothing, and money; he has it all.
I used to hear people at work when there was a billionaire in the news. I could hear them talking about how they thought that this person had it all. I could just hear their desire. It was just dripping out of people how much they wanted what he had.
So this billionaire wakes up one day with everyone envying him. He gets out of bed and goes over to his staircase where there is this luxurious rug. He had descended down this staircase many times; but now, one of his children left a skateboard on the top of the steps. He steps on it and goes flying down the steps. He breaks his neck. They take him to the hospital and he is about to die. He is not dead yet, though.
At this point, would you want to trade places with him? Do you want to be him now? He still has all of that money and all of those possessions. He still has a beautiful wife and a beautiful family. He still has it all and it could be yours, and he would be more than willing to trade with you.
So what is the problem? The problem is that, according to the doctor, he only has a few hours left to live and then that will be it. Since we know his end, we know that all of his money and food and clothing, whatever he possesses, will no longer have any meaning to it. It would take the biggest fool in the world to decide to trade positions with him. There you would be, one of the richest men of the world; but after only a few hours, you would die.
This is what God is telling us. We know the end of man and it is May 21, 2011. If this does not cure envy, then nothing will. All of the riches of this world, the things in this world that we perhaps at one time desired and lusted after, should now lose their appeal completely. This has always been vanity, but how much more is this now vanity? We read in Ecclesiastes, “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” This is how it has been throughout the history of this world, but this is true in a much bigger way now at this time; and so God wants us to focus on what is important and to not envy those around us.
Returning to Psalm 37, we read in Psalm 37:1-2:
Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.
There are some verses that I would like to go to that deal with grass. Let us go to Psalm 90. We read in Psalm 90:1-6:
JEHOVAH, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.
This is describing our life. This is your life and this is my life. This is man’s life in this world.
Maybe no one has ever told you the truth about life in this world, but God does. God does in the Bible. Basically, it is an empty and vain thing. At best, the life that man can live on this earth apart from God is empty and vain and of no real significant value at the end of it, because there is an end to man.
So what good does it do a person to live one hundred years if at the end of those years they die and are no more? What good is it if they cease to exist and, like the beast, they perish? What did they accomplish? Maybe in their lives they might have even done a lot of things, but what does it profit them at the end? Solomon referred to this when he spoke of leaving his riches to the one after him who might be a fool.
This is the nature of this world. Death renders everything valueless and everything vain. The only thing that is not vain is what we read in the last verse of 1 Corinthians 15. We read in 1 Corinthians 15:58:
Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.
This is not vanity because it has eternal results. People hear the Gospel. By God’s mercy, they become saved and live forever; and so there is something substantial, there is some meaning and purpose in sharing the Gospel, but not in anything else.
Is there eternal value in sports? Is there eternal value in the philosophies of men? No; when we look at everything, we see that it is all vanity. At best, we are like the grass that grows, and then there is a flower. There is beauty that you can behold and it looks wonderful; but in the evening, it is gone. This is our life; of course, now, much more so, because we are at the end of time.
In Psalm 92, there is another verse that speaks of grass. We read in Psalm 92:7:
When the wicked spring as the grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish; it is that they shall be destroyed for ever:
Grass is something that is very fragile. This is why God uses this to describe us.
Look at Psalm 103. We read in Psalm 103:14-16:
For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.
When life is over, what do we have to show for it? What does anyone have to show for their life apart from working for God, apart from that work which is the only work that is not vain?
There is one more verse I wanted to look at in relation to grass. We read in Isaiah 40:6-8:
The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of JEHOVAH bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.
Here is the contrast. There is the eternal God, like we read in Psalm 90, who is “from everlasting to everlasting.” His Word is eternal, He is eternal, and His salvation is eternal, and then there is everything else that is so temporary; with a snap of the fingers, it is all gone.
Some are upset that their lives are interrupted. They are not going to be able to live out their lives in this world. For some young people, they will not get the chance to grow up. They will not get the chance to have the education or the career that they wanted. They will not get the chance to do the things that they wanted to do. They will not get the chance to have a family.
Because of this, they might think that this is just not fair; but, of course, it is fair. This is fair because we are sinners. If God had destroyed us before any of us had had an opportunity to live at all, it would have been fair and just; but some think that this is not fair because they want to live out their lives and do certain things. This can cause them to be very upset. Yes; but what would have happened after they did these things? They would be right back here with what May 21st is confronting them with, which is the end of their lives.
If you want to live out your life to have and raise children, look around you; there are people who were once young like you. They grew up and they did all of these things, but then they died. This cycle has been continuing on like this since the beginning of time. This has been going on for over 13,000 years.
Where are all of the people of these past generations? They are dead. They were like the grass that flourished. They were like a flower in their beauty for a short period of time; but now, they are under the grass; they are in the ground and they have rotted away, even someone like Methuselah who the Bible says lived for “nine hundred sixty and nine years.” Do you envy Methuselah for having such a long life? He has been dead for thousands of years. What good did it do him to live 969 years?
This is the problem, so here we are confronted with the end of all things; and thank God, because now God can put this earth behind Him and all of its sinful corruption; and the worst thing and the last thing that God will put behind is death. God will destroy the world. Then He will make the new heaven and the new earth and there will be no more death. There will only be eternal life from that point on.
This means that we will be able to love others and to love God and that they will always be there. Nobody is going to die one day in Heaven where all of Heaven will be mourning because they will no longer experience someone again. It is not going to be this way, because God will put an end to death.
Let us go back to Psalm 37:3. It says:
Trust in JEHOVAH, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.
Let us look at dwelling in the land. God promised Abraham, “I will give unto thee…all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession.” Of course, Canaan, the land over in the Middle East, cannot be an “everlasting possession” because this world will burn. The Lord was just using Canaan as a figure of speech to represent Heaven, which is “an everlasting possession” for the true “Israel of God,” those who are born again, the elect.
If we go to Ezekiel 37, we will see how the Lord uses this kind of language. We read in Ezekiel 37:23-25:
Neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions: but I will save them out of all their dwellingplaces, wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them: so shall they be my people, and I will be their God. And David my servant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes, and do them. And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children’s children for ever: and my servant David shall be their prince for ever.
This is referring to Heaven. This is not speaking of the land that is over in the Middle East. David is a figure of Christ here and he will be, of course, in Heaven forever. God’s people, also, will be brought into “the land.”
If you go on to read the next couple of verses in this passage, it mentions “evermore” several times. This is the expectation of the child of God, the expectation of receiving the promise given to Abraham of the land of Canaan “for an everlasting possession.” This means that we will dwell with God in His very presence in whatever the new earth is going to be.
We were fitted and created for this world and this earth, but the new Heaven and the new earth will be a match for our new resurrected bodies, our spiritual bodies. We do not know what these will look like, but we do know that they will be just beyond anything that we could imagine.
Going back to Psalm 37:3, it says:
Trust in JEHOVAH, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.
Spiritual food is what God is talking about. We will be fed in the sense of what we read in Revelation 7, which is that great chapter that speaks of the great multitude suddenly appearing in Heaven. The question is asked, “Whence came they?” The answer is, “These are they which came out of great tribulation,” because God is saving this great multitude now during this time of Great Tribulation. It says in Revelation 7:15-17, regarding this great multitude:
Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple…
This reference to “day and night” has to do with time. It is stated here in order to let us know what the believers will be doing in Heaven for five months. We will be serving God for five months. The new Heaven and the new earth will not be created on May 21st, because this world will still exist. The creation of the new earth will wait until October 21st after God will have destroyed this earth. It is then that He will create the new earth.
So, here, the believers are in Heaven before God and they are serving Him and worshipping Him “day and night,” which points to the five months. It continues:
…and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.
“The Lamb…shall feed them,” as it said in Psalm 37:3:
Trust in JEHOVAH, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily [or truly] thou shalt be fed.
His people will be fed with the spiritual food that will come directly from Christ to His people.
I know how it must appear to people when believers get together at something like a conference. Sometimes someone might bring an unsaved individual along, like a spouse or someone from their family or maybe a friend. They go to a conference where they see that people have their Bibles with them all day long. They have their pens out and they are taking notes as they all read and study the Bible. When the conference breaks, they get together with others to continue talking about the Bible, because it is the nature and the characteristic of the child of God to delight in the Word of God, to be involved in the Word of God constantly; this is the spirit that God has placed within us. But to others, they just do not get this.
At work, I used to always read my Bible at lunchtime. I remember that there was one guy who was a Catholic who was trying to talk to me one day while I was reading the Bible. I probably should have talked to him because he was getting quite annoyed. Then he said to me, “You know, there are other books in the world. There are other books. You do not have to keep reading that Book.”
To tell you the truth, I forget what I said to him. I hope I said something like, “Well, there is no other book like this Book,” because we know that the Bible says, “Never man spake like this man.” This was said by the soldiers who went to take Jesus by the direction and authority of Israel, “Never man spake like this man.”
This is not like any other book. This is a billion times better than all books put together, because this is the Word of God; but God has to give that love and that desire and that opening of the eyes towards it. It is then that they will be able to understand why others would want to read the Bible day and night or all of the time. This is why we want to listen to Family Radio when we are not reading the Bible, so that we can continue to hear Scripture being read and music centered on the Kingdom of God.
This is something that is hard to explain, because God’s people love the Bible. This is because God’s Spirit is in us. Remember that the Bible tells us, “The Word was made flesh.” Could you say that you love Christ but not love the Bible? This is impossible, because He is the Word. If you do not love the Bible, then you do not love Him. If you do not want to do what the Bible says, then you do not want to do what God says.
This is why we look forward to a time when we can have a conference where we can spend time focusing only on the Bible, but then this time is interrupted because we have to go back to work or because we have to go back to school or because we have to do other things; and yet at the first opportunity, the believer wants to hear the Word of God again.
Imagine what Heaven will be like, a place where Christ is amongst His people. He is that living Word; so if we ever want to know something, we can just ask Him; we can just talk to Him in person and He will feed us. He will feed us and teach us personally, like Mary who “sat at Jesus’ feet, and heard his word.” She actually had the experience of sitting in His presence and listening to Him personally, and so will the child of God forever and ever. I do not know what we will learn. We do know that God is so deep and so brilliant that it will not be a problem for Him to teach us about Himself forever and ever and ever into eternity future.
There were a few verses that I wanted to go to about trust, but let us just go to a couple of these and then we will close. Psalm 25:2-3 says:
O my God, I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed, let not mine enemies triumph over me. Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed: let them be ashamed which transgress without cause.
So the believer trusts in God and his prayer is, “Let me not be ashamed on that day,” because it will be the great day of shame. On the other hand, for the people of the world who want nothing to do with Him, let not the believer be ashamed, but let them be ashamed.
One good way of looking at this is when we are out sharing the Gospel. A tactic of the enemy is to try to make the believer feel ashamed for sounding the trumpet, for the shirts and the hats. They want to try to make the true believer feel ashamed because they are declaring a date for the end of the world that is coming from God and from the Bible. This is so alien to the world that there is a tendency to where they would want the believer to be ashamed.
This is like when you are standing at a stadium to pass out tracts. The game is over and people are coming down the ramp towards you en masse. The collective mindset of man is there and you can hear them say a lot of things, things that are designed to make you feel ashamed. Ultimately behind this tactic is Satan; because if you can be ashamed of sharing the truth of the Gospel, then maybe you will go away or maybe you will leave early; maybe you will not even come back. All of this is because someone made you feel ashamed. This is the tactic and it could be nothing more than a look that someone gives you.
I am in my hometown. I recognize the smirks and the looks. I know the words that can be said that are expressly designed to hit on this point, “You should be ashamed for standing here on a Sunday afternoon when the Eagles are playing. It was even a play-off game. You should be ashamed for standing here and trying to warn me about the Gospel!”
No; God says, “Let them be ashamed.” It is a Sunday afternoon. It is the Lord’s Day, not that we are going to point a finger at them, but we can certainly be thinking these things inside, “I am not going to be ashamed, because I am doing exactly what God would want me to do. He is the Creator. He is the One whose opinion matters. He is the One who would have me stand here and witness to these people. They want me to stop, and so, of course, they are going to say all kinds of things to try to get me to stop.”
In 1 Peter 4, this idea comes up. It says in 1 Peter 4:1-2:
Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.
There is a certain will of the world. If you get in line with the world, you will get along fine, because the world will love its own; but there is a certain way of going contrary to the will of the world, which is to bring the Gospel. Anything else is acceptable. People can paint their hair purple or shave it in a Mohawk and put earrings into every possible place in their bodies. These things are all acceptable. Paint yourself green and white and go to a stadium when it is below zero and take off your shirt and scream for three hours. These things are normal and what is accepted, but you are a lunatic and crazy if you take a Gospel tract from the Bible and share it with someone, even though you are of a perfectly sound mind in doing so. But, you see, this is the twist that the world puts on things.
I cannot tell you how many people are writing to us and asking, “Are you crazy? Are you stupid or something?” They say everything else as well, simply because we give a date and because we believe the Gospel.
Let us finish this passage in Peter. It continues on to say in 1 Peter 4:3-4:
For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries: Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you:
Here is the mind of God. He knows exactly what is in man and their mindset and their reaction to someone whom He has translated “from the power of darkness” and “into the kingdom of his dear Son.”
So there is this pull to do what the world wants us to do. They want us to conform to what the world would have us do. From your friends or your family, the pressure is for us to do the will of the nations, to do the will of the Gentiles and not the will of God; but God reverses this and says to do His will and not their will, because they want us to get rid of these May 21st shirts and hats. They want us to stop talking about this, but God speaks of how we are to be watchmen and how we are to not keep silent. We are not to hold our peace. We are to sound the trumpet and warn the people.
If we listen to them, what is this going to get you on the Day of Judgment? From now until then, you will have no problem with your friends because you will still be their buddy; but on the Day of Judgment, we read what is going to happen in 1 Peter 4:5:
Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead.
They are not going to stand in your place and they are not going to experience your torment; you will.
Let us just stop here.