All right, Joshua chapter one, verse 10. Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people saying, pass through the host and command the people saying, prepare you vexuals for within three days you shall pass over this Jordan to go in to possess the land which the Lord your God giveth you to possess it. And to the Reubenites and to the Gadites and to half the tribe of Manasseh spake Joshua saying, Remember the word which Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded you, saying, The Lord your God hath given you rest and hath given you this land. Your wives, your little ones, and your cattle shall remain in the land which Moses gave you on this side, Jordan. But ye shall pass before your brethren armed, all the mighty men of valor, and help them. until the Lord have given your brethren rest, as he hath given you, and they also have possessed the land which the Lord your God giveth them. Then ye shall return unto the land of your possession and enjoy it, which Moses the Lord's servant gave you on this side, Jordan, toward the sun rising. I want to preach tonight on straddling the fence, straddling the fence. Of course, that's a euphemism that bears with it the idea of being torn between two opinions, being unsettled, in some cases not being fully committed. And that's really what the second part of our scriptures are dealing with, and I'll remind you of that story as we get into it. But there's just a couple of thoughts I want to share tonight that I hope the Lord will help us. And if you are straddling the fence of Christianity tonight, I pray that the Lord would help you make up your mind that you're going to go on and serve the Lord. You're not going to be double-minded. The Bible says a double-minded man is unstable in all of his ways. You cannot serve God and mammon. That's the world, the Bible says. You must choose. And that's exactly what Joshua will later say, choose ye this day whom you will serve. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Now, if you remember, last Wednesday night, we looked at the commitment that we should have to God's word. And we saw Joshua's commission and how his commission is the same commission to every one of us who are God's children in this day and age. We are to observe the Word of God. We are to talk about the Word of God. We are to obey the Word of God. We are to meditate upon the Word of God. And when we apply the Word of God to our lives and it has a place, a bearing upon our decision-making, upon what we do and how we do it, upon how we live, how we act, how we talk, how we deal with people, it will cause us to be victorious in our Christian life. Let me just remind us there is no victory in the Christian life apart from the Word of God. We need God's Word. We need a steady, daily diet of the Word of God. And there's no land that we're unable to conquer. There is no obstacles we cannot overcome, and there is no enemies that we cannot conquer if we have the Word of God in our life. It's sad to say there's a majority of Christians today who do not seem to be willing to obey the Word of God in its entirety. And therefore, there are many who are living defeated Christian lives as a result. Many Christians have sold short their inheritance in Jesus Christ, and God desires to bless us, doesn't he? Isn't that what he says in Ephesians 1, verse 3, that we've been blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus? But it seems so many are content to live in the spiritual wilderness in this life, and instead of obtaining and and enjoying victory, they go from defeat to defeat to defeat. God would have us to be victorious. And so, just as a reminder, we need the Word of God. And then we come to our text that's before us tonight. There were those among the twelve tribes of Israel who, because of past compromise, they had sold short their inheritance and accepted a dwelling place far below what the Lord had intended, what He wanted them to have. They are what I would call today Christians who are straddling the fence. You might call them a borderline Christian. They're saved from Egypt out of sin. They've been brought through the Red Sea by the Passover lamb and by the victory that Jehovah brought against Egypt, but they've never gone in to possess the lamb that God had for them. And just a reminder tonight how Israel stands as an illustration, they are a metaphor of the Christian life. Israel and Egypt was a picture of God's people in bondage to sin. The Passover land is a picture of God's provision for his people to bring them out of that sin, out of that bondage. And as they escaped out of Egypt, you remember, God told them to get up and to flee, to go. They weren't even to pack their bags. They were to get out of Dodge, if you will. And in fact, God had so sorely punished Egypt for holding His people and not letting them go with the plagues, they were throwing their goods upon the people of Israel as they left and said, Here, take our wealth and take our cattle and take our gold. Just get out of here. We don't want God's judgment any longer. And God blessed them. They came to the Red Sea, and God blessed in bringing them through the Red Sea. Again, a picture there of baptism and identifying with the salvation that Jehovah had provided. And then they were to go into Canaan land. And we all know the story again. They picked out 12 men to go in and spy out the land. Caleb and Joshua came back with a good and an honest report. and said, yes, there are giants and yes, there are walled cities, but we can take them through the power of our God. But the other ten spies came back with an evil report, doubting God and doubting His promises and said, no, we can't do it. And you've just brought us out of Egypt to bring us into this land that's possessed by giants and walled cities, and we're going to die, and our children aren't going to live, and we'd be better off, Moses, had you just left us back in Egypt. You remember God cursed them, and He told them that all of the people age 20 and up would die, but under that age would live. And now we're at that generation. That's where they are, and they're fixing to go in and possess the land. And they are here at this moment, but there is a group of these Israelites who have already, if you will, obtained their inheritance, and we see that in our text tonight. And as we look at these verses, I would just pray and ask you to ask yourself this question tonight. As you hear God's Word, am I straddling the fence? Am I sold out for God? Am I going all the way with Jesus or am I holding back in any areas? And I remember a term that was common when I was a young man. I was in my 18, 19, early 20s and the Lord was moving and we were seeing young folks saved and young men called to preach and I remember hearing this phrase over and over and probably more so because of the area that I was from and the mountains, but you'd always hear them say, have you sold out? Lock, stock, and barrel. Lock, stock, and barrel. Now most of y'all probably don't know what that means. Some of you older ones do. But the idea of a musket, lock, stock, and barrel, you're sold out completely. God has it all. You're not holding anything back. And you understand God wants everything that we have to be sold out, not to straddle the fence, not to be double-minded, not to say, okay, Lord, you can have access to these areas of my life, but you know, these areas are off limits. I'd like to keep that for myself. And so ask yourself, are you straddling the fence? And I want to just notice two things from our text this evening. Number one, I see a message of promise in the first two verses that we read. And then number two, I see a mistake of the people. And we'll see this as we go through, and I'll try to hasten and be done with this as quick as possible. Number one, the message of promise. The Bible tells us, then Joshua commanded the officers of the people saying, pass through the host, command the people saying, prepare your vegetables for within three days, you shall pass over this Jordan to go into possess the land, which the Lord your God giveth you to possess it. And so we find here that he is now giving the marching orders to Israel that he has received from God. God has just told him, look, I want you to be strong, be very courageous, be strong, be courageous, be strong, be very courageous. That was repeated three times leading up to this portion of scripture. And he's telling Joshua, no enemy shall be able to stand before thee. I'm going to go with you. You're going to have victory. It's time to go in and take the land. And so we see here, this leader, Joshua, is bringing before the people the commands and the promises of God. And we notice how he did this. We see that he begins to share with them what God has given to him." And I want to say this is a good mark of any good and true leadership. Good biblical leadership will always bring to bear upon the conscience of God's people what the Word of God says. We will bring forth, thus saith the Lord. This is what he has said. This is what he has commanded and expects And this is what He will do should we obey. And it's always important for those of us in any type of leadership, whether you're a pastor in a church, a deacon in a church, a Sunday school teacher, you're leading a Bible study, whatever it may be, is knowing that when God speaks to your heart and gives you direction from His Word, you, if you're a good leader, will vocalize and you will share that vision and that burden with God's people so that they can follow that leadership. God brings men and even women into leadership roles to lead his people. And I think about as a child growing up the women's Sunday school teachers I had who brought to bear upon my heart the Word of God as a young child, and then as I got older, the men I had as teenagers in my Sunday school classes and Bible studies, and then the pastors that God sent in my life to preach to me the Word of God, and they constantly brought to bear upon my heart the Word of God. I was always confronted with what God had to say about every situation and issue in life, and it made it easy to know how I was to live as a Christian. They didn't leave any guesswork. I didn't have to go around wondering, how am I supposed to react in this situation? What am I supposed to do when I face this temptation? But I always had that clear direction from the Word of God. How important it is for us to be always giving the truth that God gives to us. God does not reveal anything concerning Himself to us for us to hoard up and keep to ourselves. but he gives it to us for our benefit and then for us to turn around and share it with others so that they too can benefit from it. I think about the message of promise and how it invoked unity. We see there was unity around what God had said. And here you have God's man, Joshua, and he is instructing the officers, and then they are to instruct the people. I thought about this unity that was required in getting the message out. strong and of good courage, to be not afraid, neither dismayed, for the Lord would be with them whithersoever they went. And how that he was to command these officers and then the officers, the people, so that they might pass through and know the word of the Lord and know what they were supposed to do. I think about the unity required in this. I thought about here, can you imagine? I mean, they're getting about 1.5 million people ready to move. It's hard enough to get a Baptist church the size of ours all on the same page and ready to do something. Could you imagine trying to get 1.5 million people going? I mean, you talk about chaos. If you wanna know just a small example of what this is like, come to youth camp next summer. Be responsible for herding 15 or 20 young people in the same direction at the same time, getting them where they're supposed to be, getting them packed up at the end of camp, loaded up, ready to go, and everything done on time. And that'll just be a very small taste. Of what it must have been for Joshua and the overwhelming feeling, I've got to get 1.5 million people ready to move in three days. They couldn't get into the promised land in 40 years under Moses's leadership. How's he supposed to do that in three days? This was a massive undertaking and yet through unity. They were able to get the word out and share the vision that God had given, press upon them the responsibility to react to God's word, and move. I thought about how unity is possible through delegation and communication. You notice how he delegated. He went to the officers, told them. Then he relied upon those officers to go and tell the people. And whenever you've got anybody in ministry that's trying to do it all themselves, you've got a setup for failure. But when there's communication, when there's delegation, when you hand off this responsibility and you don't worry about it. When you communicate with one another and you talk and you let people know what's going on, it's amazing how smooth things work. Isn't that true in the business? How many of you got jobs working with people? Some of you might have some jobs where you ain't got to work with nobody. That's the best kind of job, isn't it? You ain't got to deal with people. You take people out of the equation, things get so much smoother. But you throw a bunch of people in the equation and, oh man, if you don't communicate and you don't delegate, you're going to have issues. There's going to be some mess ups and there's going to be some jams. And I remember in the meat industry in Oklahoma, working there in that facility that we built, sometimes there was very bad communication from the one side to the other. And things were getting rolled over that weren't ready to be rolled over, and things were getting passed over to one side that shouldn't be over there. And you talk about mass confusion, and then all of a sudden you got somebody picking up meat that's not their meat. And somebody else comes to get their meat, but their meat's been given to the wrong person. You see what kind of problem that can cause? Communication, delegation. And listen, the church is not void of such problems when we lack communication. and the ability to delegate what needs to happen. We see here, I believe, a mark of successful ministry when other men are inspired to equal commitment and obedience to the Word of God as their leader. And when those men are able to take personal ownership of the Word of God and they have an equal passion and desire to see the Lord work and move in such a way. So we see their unity in this message. We see their urgency in this message. I think something that's always true is anytime God's people hear the word of God, there ought to be an urgency about obeying it. If God ever speaks to your heart, if God ever reveals truth of any kind to you, and it crosses you at some point, and you are convicted and made aware that you're not in compliance with the Word of God, there ought to be an urgency to get right with God, to start doing what God has just pointed out in your life. There was an urgency here. As Joshua tells them what God has commanded, he says three days. He gave them a number. He set a time frame. There was urgency. There must be obedience to the command of God. And when God speaks, it's time to rise up in obedience and immediately begin following the direction of God's word. A.W. Pink said, is it not evident that the readiness or tardiness of our obedience is a good index to the state of our hearts? When we hear the word of God, if we can just pass it off and give it no attention and have no concern, that's a problem. We're cold. We need to be stirred like the song that I didn't know that we sung about. We need the word of God active in our hearts again so that when we hear it, we're ready to obey it. And every time we're confronted with the truth of God's word, we are expected to begin following it immediately. Notice within three days of the deliverance of this command, the people were expected to be ready to move out. We see the unity, we see how they came together in this to get the message out, the urgency. But then we noticed the undertaking. What an undertaking. Again, 1.5 million people ready to move out. And we see here that they began to prepare vectuals, and that just means they began to prepare their food. They began to put provisions together for the journey. to go across Jordan. And I thought about how interesting it was. It didn't say that they went and strapped on their sword or they went and they got their bow and arrow and they began to pull the bowstring and make sure it was tight. They didn't put on their marching boots or put on their armor for warfare. They didn't do any of that because God had already commanded, I will fight this battle for you. I will be your strength. I will be your protector. And so they began to obey as God had mentioned. And it's the same for a Christian warrior. If we're going to war, a good warfare. As the Bible says in 1 Timothy 1.18, we've got to be well nourished in the word of God. Listen, our warfare is not in flesh and blood. We don't wrestle against flesh and blood. We don't fight the carnal, but ours is a spiritual, it's a spiritual battle. And it's mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. And if we're going to overcome spiritual enemies, we must be spiritually nourished. And the way we're spiritually nourished, you guessed it, the Word of God, the Word of God. And so they prepared vectuals. Notice that the food was supplied by God. but the people were commanded to prepare it. One of the things I love about the Bible is how God, over and over, perfectly welds together. He weds together sovereignty and responsibility. It was like that in the wilderness, wasn't it? Did the Israelites feed themselves every day? Did they actually produce what they ate every day in the wilderness? No. God provided it in the form of manna. And every morning when the dew came, it would be laid out upon the ground. But did God pick them up by the nap of their neck, drag them out of their tent, shove their face in it and make them eat? No, they had to go out every day and gather up enough to feed themselves for that day and twice as much on Friday to have enough for the Sabbath day when it came on Saturday. See, that's the thing. God provided sovereignly, but they had a responsibility to go and partake. At this point, God is still providing sovereignly for His people, but they had to prepare those vectuals. They had to get it ready. And we see here God's sovereignty working on behalf of His people, but the responsibility that's upon each and every one of us to obey the Word of God. God can speak to your heart tonight. And listen, without Him speaking to your heart, you will not hear from God. But when He speaks, you are responsible to respond to what He's saying. Isn't that true? Isn't that how it was in the gospel when the Lord saved you? He sovereignly came to where I was. He pointed out my sinful condition. He showed me my destiny was a destiny of suffering and sorrow in a place called hell. But then He revealed to my heart that Jesus Christ had gone to the cross at Calvary and died on the cross for my sin, that He bore my shame, and He died in my place, and by faith in what Christ had done, God's righteous law would be appeased, His holy justice would be satisfied, and I would be saved forevermore through the redemptive work of Christ. Isn't that beautiful, the gospel of Jesus Christ? But yet, the thing is, nobody's ever been saved apart from believing upon Jesus Christ. There's a responsibility. You have to believe. And yet, every one of us who have believed, you know what we don't do? I've never heard a genuine Christian get up and say, well, I want to thank the Lord for letting me save myself tonight. You know, I was on the way to hell, and I realized just how bad I was, and I decided I was going to live for Jesus. No, I've never heard anybody testify like that. I've heard him get up and say, I want to thank the Lord for saving me tonight. I remember when he came to where I was and showed me my need. And he saved my soul. See, that's the thing. God is the one that does it. He gets all the glory. But at the end of the day, you and I are responsible to respond and to do what he tells us to do, what he commands us to do. So they prepared vectuals. In three days, you'll pass over this Jordan. It was important for Joshua to put this time limit on their preparation to move forward. They'd wondered for 50 years, and he knew if he just left it open-ended, they'd never go in. He had to give them a time limit, so he set it upon them to go so they would move with urgency. What an undertaking. Whatever you face tonight, if you're a child of God, did you know you have the same promises that the children of Israel have? That they had right here as Joshua was gonna lead them in? Joshua verse five of chapter one says, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. And isn't that what Hebrews chapter 13 verse five says? I'll never leave thee nor forsake thee. We've got the same promises they had. We can overcome the same way that they did. And so we see here this message of promise. Notice secondly tonight, the mistake of the people. Now this is really where we get the idea for our title, Straddling the Fence, Living Life on the Border. There were two and a half tribes. If you notice when we read from 12 to 15, verse 12 identifies two and a half tribes. The Reubenites, the Gadites, and half the tribe of Manasseh. And these two and a half tribes made a terrible mistake Early on they had sold themselves short of their inheritance. This compromise happened in Numbers chapter number 32. After Israel had conquered the Amorites and Bashan, they came to Moses. These two and a half tribes wanting their inheritance. And this is what they said in Numbers 32 verse 19. Give us our inheritance on this side of the Jordan eastward. They decided that they did not want a part of the inheritance of Canaan land, but would rather stay on the other side of Jordan. They didn't want to go in. They just wanted to be close to it. They didn't want to cross over the river. They just wanted to live on the border. They wanted to be fence riders. They wanted to be right there where they were close enough to identify with their brethren, but far enough away that they didn't have to get their hands dirty. Isn't that a lot of Christians today in the day and age in which we live? Now, I know I'm preaching the choir tonight, so I'm not going to bash you over the head. You're the ones here on a Wednesday night, and I know there's others that would be here and can't be for various reasons, sickness, other things that come up in life. but I'm not gonna bash you for your faithfulness. You're here tonight. But I just wanna say there's a lot of Christians out there that they wanna be as close to Christianity, as close to Christ, as close to his word as they can without full committal. They wanna name the name of Christ. They wanna wear the cross around their neck. They wanna wear the WWJD bracelet. I just told you how old I was, didn't I? Y'all don't wear those no more. There's different stuff now. But point is they want to do all those things, but they don't want to be committed to Christ. They don't want to be committed to his word. They've walled off areas of their life saying, you know what, the Lord, you can have this, but no more. And so we find here, this was what was going on with these two and a half tribes. They wanted to stay on the border. They said, we'll just stay on this east side of Jordan, just east of the will of God. And you'll remember if you know your Bible, Moses was exceedingly very angry with them, but he permitted the request that they had made because they refused to receive their part of the inheritance of Canaan. They did not agree to help fight the conquest of Canaan. They agreed that they would not come back to their houses or lands until the nation had successfully overcome their enemies. And in this text, Joshua is reminding the two and a half tribes of their commitment. He's reminding them that they had said that they would observe to do the whole law. which the Lord's servant Moses had commanded them. And so Moses had warned them, and when the time came for battle, they had better be good on their promise. He had told them in 32 verse 23, But if you will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the Lord, and be sure your sin will find you out. And so what they had to do was leave their family there, and they were to go over Jordan with Israel, and they were to help Israel defeat all the enemies and then come back, cross Jordan again, and live with their families in what they had claimed as their inheritance, just on the border, just outside of Israel. And I thought about this, and I'll just give you a couple of thoughts for application and be done. How dangerous it is. when any group of people decide to live, straddling the fence. The congregation of Israel was weakened. When Israel went out to fight, all the young men, age 20 and above, made up the army. And the record shows that these two and a half tribes made up 136,930 men of fighting age. Almost 140,000 standing man army. That's a pretty big army. Let me put that in perspective for you. That's more men than we had in our entire armed forces in 1917 before we entered World War I. That's why the draft was enacted in 1917, because we didn't have enough men to go fight in the European theater. We needed more soldiers. That's a lot of men, 140,000. And of that 140,000, you know how many kept the promise and actually went across the river to help their brothers fight over in the land of Canaan? Only 40,000. 96,930 of them stayed on the east side of Jordan to protect their houses and their land. What are you saying? I'm saying Israel was shorted almost 100,000 soldiers to go into battle with them every time they would fight because these people wanted to stay on the other side of Jordan. Their partial obedience compromised the strength of the nation. And let me just say tonight, anytime you've got a church and there's any people in that church that are straddling the fence, that are living on the border, you're doing harm to the whole congregation. The whole congregation suffers. It's made weak. When our concerns are wrapped up in self-interest instead of the glory of God, We have become fence straddlers, borderline Christians. We've weakened the body. And listen, partial obedience is disobedience. They disobeyed, and as a result, they all suffered. And listen, whenever you've got anybody in a church that's living in open sin and disobedience, the whole body suffers. The whole church suffers. The testimony of Christ suffers. Our witness suffers. And so if you're on the border tonight, if you're straddling the fence, I plead with you, fully commit to God. Sell out lock, stock, and barrel and go on with the Lord tonight and stop holding back. their congregation was weak. And we also notice their concerns were worldly. Numbers 32, verse 1, verse 4, verse 16. We don't have time to turn to these, but these verses reveal that the reason that these two and a half tribes wanted to settle down on the outside part of Canaan was because it was a good place for cattle. Got any cattlemen here tonight? Had quite a few in Oklahoma. That's big business there, cattle country. I can understand, you ever go through a drought, you're looking for good pasture land, you're looking for cheap pay. Children of Israel were herdsmen, they were cattlemen, they were sheep herders, goat herders. This was a part of their livelihood. But what's sad is when our livelihood becomes our main concern, and that became their main concern. That's why they wanted to be east of Jordan. They wanted the well-watered plains of Jordan. Sounds like somebody else I read about in the Bible who chose the well-watered plains of Jordan. Lot did, and you remember what it cost him? It cost him his family, his testimony, his life. And we only find out that he was saved when we get to the New Testament and read that he vexed his righteous soul. They had chosen worldliness and the concern for what was best for them over what was best for the glory of God. This is a mistake that many people make, living on the border, straddling the fence. They weaken the congregation and their concerns that are worldly and self-centered become their focus all to the point that they harm the rest of what God's doing. But then they lack commitment to worship. We see there are a couple of facts that reveal that these two-and-a-half tribes were not serious about the worship of Jehovah. After the conquest of Canaan, these two-and-a-half tribes settled on the east side of Jordan's river, and yet the temple was on the other side. The temple was in the promised land. Now, where did God require His people to go to worship Him? To the temple. Well, how are they going to get across Jordan? get to the temple, not an easy feat, not easy to do. And so we find that because of their compromise, they lacked a commitment to the worship of God. And we learn that these people made their decision to live where the cattle could graze instead of where Jehovah would be praised. A lot of people have chosen to not have a better income, to have a better house, to have a better this, or to have a better life than they did as a child, but a lot of times that comes with a price, and it can come with the price of having to compromise your convictions and back up on the Lord. After the conquest of Canaan, Joshua 22 reveals that Joshua released the two and a half tribes to return across Jordan back to their inheritance. We see that in Joshua 22 verse 10, they go back and they're able to go to their land. And the Bible records that whenever they did that, that they erected a memorial. They built a temple, or not a temple, an altar. And it almost incited a civil war in Israel. All because of this altar. The nine and a half tribes thought that these two and a half tribes were performing idolatry. That they were building an altar that was against the instruction of Jehovah God. And they went out to destroy their own brethren. Listen to the response of the two and a half tribes when they were confronted with war after they built this altar. This is in Joshua 22, 24 through 27. And if we have not rather done it for fear of this thing saying, in time to come your children might speak unto our children saying, what have ye to do with the Lord God of Israel? For the Lord hath made Jordan a border between us and you, you children of Reuben and children of Gad. You have no part in the Lord, and your children shall not make or serve the true and living God. You shall cease from fearing the Lord. Therefore, we said, let us now prepare to build us an altar, not for burnt offering, not for sacrifice, but that it might be a witness between us that you and our generations after us that we might do the service of the Lord before him with burnt offerings and with sacrifices and with peace offerings that your children may not say to our children in time to come, you have no part in the Lord. Let me just break down what's being said here. The truth is that this altar had not been built out of idolatry, but as a memorial. because they were afraid that the future generations of Israel in the land of Canaan would say that the future generations of the Israelites on the other side of Jordan had no part nor right to the worship of Jehovah, that they would eventually disown them and they would no longer be a part of Israel. Now what's sad about that, and this is the sad truth, that this altar would not have been needed and these spheres would not have existed had these two-and-a-half tribes separated themselves from the world, stopped straddling the fence, and went in to the land of Canaan. But because they did it, there was this concern. And let me just say, anytime as a Christian you separate yourself from the people of God and the worship of God, you're going to lose the assurance that you belong to God. One of the greatest robbers of salvation and assurance, not salvation, but the assurance of salvation is sin. Separation from God will bring a lack of assurance. In my Christian experience, the people who struggle with the fact of whether they're saved or not are usually people that have open sin in their life. Somewhere there's sin. And that sin is robbing them of the joy of salvation and the assurance that they know they're saved. That's what it did here. Fear takes over where faith belongs. You remember that. When you're tempted to sin, it will bring about a fear. And when fear takes over, it'll take the place that faith belongs. Being separated from the house of God is straddling the fence. If you're at a guilty distance tonight, I plead with you, get right with the Lord. Do what's necessary to get back in line, get back in fellowship, get back in church. If you don't have a church, let me recommend this church to you. You'll find people here that love you, will teach the word to you, see you grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, where you can have fellowship and encouragement in serving the Lord. Don't straddle the fence any longer, don't halt between two opinions, but choose this day who you're gonna serve. If God be God, if he's the true God, if he's the living God, if he's the all-powerful God, if he's the God that saved your soul, then serve him. For He alone is worthy of your life.