No, I didn't lose my testimony. Greetings from Columbia, South Carolina. That's where the real South is. That's Dixieland. I'm glad to be here for the first time and have this opportunity to preach the Word of God to you. You've had a long weekend. This is the last day in a series of meetings. You've been coming out every night, and you were, of course, here late last night. That means everybody's tired, worn out, and sleepy. and the preacher has a job on his hands make sure everybody stays awake during the time i trust that you will fight sleep uh... i don't have any option i've got to stay awake up here tonight you'll fight sleep and tiredness and just ask god to have a word in season for you all this evening from the word of god i was raised as so many of our ministers were and a independent baptist church in the eastern shore of maryland and uh... brought to Sunday school, heard all the Bible stories, didn't really have any interest in them until the summer of the year I was going to turn 12. And during that gospel morning service, the preacher, not a great fiery preacher, but just preached a very simple, direct message on heaven and upon hell. And I knew that Sunday morning that if I were to step out on that very busy sidewalk, which is on a major boulevard in that city, and I was hit by a car, I would go straight into hell. I knew that. There were specific sins that were coming to my mind that Sunday morning. I knew I was a sinner. I'd been taught that all my life, but that's something far different than being under the conviction of sin. And I was with fear and trembling. During that meeting and when he asked if anyone was concerned about their souls to raise their hand I fearfully shakingly raised my hand and then the clunker fell Because this man never gave altar calls Unusual for a Baptist preacher not to do that, but he never did He said for all those that raised their hands. I'd like you to stay behind and talk with me Well, I stayed behind, not knowing what I was going to face, but there was no one else there. I was the only one, I guess, that raised his hand that morning. And he took me to the back room behind the pulpit. And there, just went over the God's gospel and asked if I wanted to be saved. I said I did. And he did something that, at that point in time, I learned from, but it troubled me for many, many years. He asked me the question, do you want to pray yourself Or do you want to pray after me and of course 12 year old boy still shaking in his boots I said well you go ahead and I'll pray after you and I repeated his prayer the call upon the Lord to save me I went out of that meeting my father was out in the car and On air you might say and knowing that God had saved me that my sins were forgiven I stood up in the Sunday evening service and and publicly profess Christ as my Savior. My mother knew nothing about this at all, but there she was in the back on the left, just tears rolling down her faces at her 12-year-old boy who was always arguing with her. I know that Dr. Cairns can't believe that I was an arguer as a teenager, but that's all I did with my mother. I fought her tooth and nail at every turn, and I was determined that Sunday when I would go back, things would be different. Well, they were for a while. But the excitement, the emotion wears off. My father had a mental breakdown that year and was put in the hospital for a good season. The home life was sort of in shatters. A lot of emotional upheaval. I was in a public school and wanted to be accepted by my peers. And so I adopted, began to adopt their language and cursing and foul mouth, because that was cool. Nothing changes. The terms may change, but still, young people want to be cool. They want to be accepted by their peers. I was no different. And so I began to run with the boys and tell their dirty jokes and everything else. But, you know, I was still going to church. And every now and then that preacher would bring in these evangelists, and my, they were red-hot meetings. And at the end, of course, there was an altar call, and then one wants to, is backslidden and wants to get right with God, come down the aisle. I can't tell you how many times I walked down an aisle of the church to rededicate my life to the Lord. It was in my senior year that I was getting all grown up now and making my own decisions, I thought, that I walked away from church altogether. I quit going. I was in utter rebellion against my parents. I felt, what's the point of me coming to church? I'm nothing but a hypocrite and coming. Why am I playing like I'm some kind of a Christian when I'm head over heels in the world? Of course, rock and roll music was all a big part of it. And that introduced me into all the people and to the drug scene. For the next three years, to my shame, I was deeply involved in drugs and alcohol. I was your typical long-haired hippie. You would think that, looking at me now, I was very skinny in those days, believe it or not. Long hair, but my, I was living for the world as hard as I could live for the world. The nightclub scene and everything else that went with it. But you see, all during those three years, I was in utter misery. I did the drugs to forget about the misery, to try to squash my conscience, which was telling me heaven is real and hell is real. In my first year in a secular college, I was seeking to be an actor in Broadway. That was my aspirations. at that point in time. But the director of the theater in that college saw I was a troubled young teenager. I was about, I guess, 18, 19, about that point in time. And he began to talk with me. He's lost, was lost. But he knew I was upset, and he said, well, let's just sit down and we'll talk. Well, for the next year, he got me involved in counseling sessions. It was about three hours once a week. And he did all he knew to do, and that was Freudian psychology. I had to tell him all of my past. From as far back as I could remember, this man knew more than anyone has ever known about me, personally. There's no one on this earth that knew as much about me as Dr. Starnes knew. Of course, during that period, I told him about my salvation experience. I denied all that now at that point in time. I told him about my salvation experience, and when the whole thing was all said and done, at the end of it all, he said one afternoon up there in the college room we met once a week, he said, John, I think you need to go talk to your pastor. This was a lost man. And this was the same pastor that led me to the Lord when I was a boy of 12. Still in town, still the same small town. When I heard that, I bolted out of the room. Just ran out three stories down to the basement into the men's bathroom and sat on the floor. I was there probably half an hour and it was basically the experience of God telling me, you're on a dead end street and this is going nowhere. You need to go talk to your pastor. So I got up and I went back to that room and he was still sitting there at the desk. Half an hour later, he hadn't left. And I said, would you call Pastor Bradley? And that was a turning point for me. He did that. I met with Pastor Bradley probably a week or so later. And I already made up my mind what was going to happen then. At that juncture, I knew what I had to do. You see, during those three years, I used to pace my floor in my apartment at nighttime And I had my own apartment and just pacing the floor up and down, utter depression and utter misery, because I knew all those things. I knew the gospel was true, but I was fighting it tooth and nail. And I would be afraid to go to sleep at night time. I'm in a cold sweat because I'm afraid I'm not going to wake up. I'm going to end up in hell. That's how real this was to me. But once I met with him, Turning point, came home, poured my drugs down the toilet and flushed them. I broke up all my rock and roll music, wanted nothing to do with that anymore. And from that point on we began to meet with me in council and the Lord began to move once again in my soul. I felt I wanted to go finish my college in a Christian college, went off to Bob Jones there, met my wife in zoology class and married her after we got out of college. The Lord brought me to the Free Church in 1983 through the tapes of Dr. Alan Cairns. David Brain was sending me the tapes. And I was a salesman on the road in those days. I had all kinds of time to drive around and listen to preaching. And I heard this preaching and I was deeply moved by it. I said, I want to hear that preaching. So the Reverend John Greer was being installed in 1983 in March up at Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. And I got a phone call the night of his installation and said, why don't you come over to this installation? And I went by myself at that point in time. Dark, cold, rainy night up in Pennsylvania. I made it in. And I knew that this was the place for me when I stepped in and just heard these men pray and heard them preach. This was something I had never, ever experienced. And the rest is, as they say in France, histoire. The Lord called me to the ministry in 1986. I went to Orlando in 1989 and was there for 14 years, and then the Lord two and a half years ago called me to Columbia, South Carolina. So that's my testimony. It's all because of the grace of God. If you had told me back in 1977, 1976, when I was walking around an empty warehouse in Fort Knox, Kentucky in the Army, that I was going to be a preacher one day, I'd have laughed you to scorn. But God specializes in things thought impossible. He does the things others cannot do. Right. Would you turn your Bibles with me this evening to Exodus chapter 14? Exodus chapter 14. I want to break in at verse 10. I'll have an abbreviated reading for the sake of time. Exodus chapter 14, commencing the reading of God's Word, in verse 10. Let's all hear God's Word. And when Pharaoh Drunei, the children of Israel, lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians marched after them, and they were sore afraid. And the children of Israel cried out unto the LORD. And they said unto Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt? Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness. And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show to you today. For the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more forever. The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace. And the Lord said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me? Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward. Amen. And God will add his own blessing to that public reading from his word to our hearts for his name's sake. Will you bow your head with me, please, in just a brief word of prayer? Will you ask God to speak tonight to your own soul? Let's all pray. Our eternal God and our loving Father, It's time now for the preaching of the Word of God. It's Thy Word that declares there is power in preaching. And we pray that Thou wilt honor that promise to us. We need our God of power tonight that's from heaven and not from the earth and not from the flesh. O Lord, we pray that Thou wilt corral wandering thoughts, that Thou wilt give renewed strength where it's weak, We pray especially, Father, that there will be a word in season for this congregation, that thou wilt give liberty in preaching. We pray, our Father, that we will have the enjoyment of Christ drawing near to us, and that we would all have the experience of the still, small voice speaking to our souls. Lord, speak, we pray. We are thy sheep. We are thy people. This is thy work. Lead it onward now, we ask thee. In Christ's name, Amen. Amen. I was struck this evening when Mr. Finot was reading the Word of God to the Thessalonian church and they called to the people to stand fast. That echoed to me of last night's message when you heard Dr. Cairns speak and exhort you and encourage you to hold true to the doctrines of the Word of God, and to stand fast for the Lord Jesus Christ, the stand of the free church on separation, to not let pressure to get numbers in any way cause you to compromise what we are. I thought of that and I said, what a paradox as to what the Lord laid upon my heart this evening. Because what I want to speak to you this evening for a few moments about is about going forward, not standing fast. but about going forward. It is the flip side of the same coin. You see, every church must do both. Every church must stand fast. And it's going to be as you stand fast that you really do go forward. It's so in your own personal life. It's as you are standing fast upon the Gospel, standing fast with the Lord Jesus Christ, as you are fixed in your relationship with Him and your understanding of the Gospel, as you stand upon the Word of God, then you will be enabled to go forward in your own Christian life. When you began to slip and slide, that's when you fail to go forward. So these are really twin truths that are joined together, and I want to turn your attention to them this evening. Especially so because now we have come tonight to the end of this special time in the life of this church. It's a great time. You've had all kinds of guest preachers that have come in and I have no doubt that your hearts have been stirred by that. But you see the danger always is, one of the peculiar dangers that God's people face during times like this, is that after the meetings are over, after the guest preachers have come and have gone, and after life, both in your individual homes and in the church, gets back to the routine, the fear is, and the danger is, that we will go back to some kind of a rut. And it's for that reason that I want to say a couple of things this evening about what God says to Moses in verse 15. Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward. Those words came to his people some 3,500 years ago and they come afresh to this church tonight. Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward. And what you must do now is go forward as a church, and that will only happen as you go forward as individual believers in your life. Do not think for a moment that this church will advance spiritually, it will advance numerically, if you as individual Christians within it are not advancing and are not going forward. in your walk with the Lord. There is no magic wand that gets waved over you when you come in that front door. It requires that we take to heart tonight what God said to Moses to say to the children of Israel so long ago. Speak unto them. You've been praying to me. You've been crying unto me. Moses, you're talking to the wrong one right now. You need to go to the people and tell them it's time to go forward. That's the theme I want to speak for a bit on tonight, going forward with God. Three simple thoughts I have. Number one, God's people must go forward, no matter how impossible going forward may seem. If you'll just consider for a moment the scene that they were facing, you know that they're at the edge of the Red Sea, the army of Pharaoh, that cloud of dust is getting bigger and bigger upon the horizon as he gets closer and closer to the encampment of some two million people. And they seem to be in a place of no escape. And it's right here that God tells Israel, standing at the edge of the Red Sea, He tells these people, one of the strangest commands that the human ear has ever heard, go forward. Not backward to fight the armies, not sideways in escape to the foothills or the mountains, go forward. The Red Sea is there. Why, Moses, you've told us to do some very crazy things already. But now you're telling us, God is saying, go forward. There's the Red Sea. I gather from that, therefore, that God's people must go forward no matter how impossible going forward may seem. There's a few things I want to look at about this path. that God put them on to go forward. The first place that the path that God sets before this church just now is a very distinct path. It's distinct. God made it very clear the direction He wanted Israel to take. And He makes it very clear to you this evening from this portion of His Word the direction He wants you to take. Wherever you are, whatever you're facing, God is saying to this church, go forward. Not tread water. Not try to maintain where you are. Not try to keep your head above water, but go forward. Therefore, you can be dead on sure that no matter how impossible it may seem to you to go forward in the things of God, the Word of the Lord is very clear and distinct. Now, you might respond by saying something like along the lines, well, preacher, that's easy for you to say. You don't know my problems. You don't know my home life. You don't know my trials. You don't know my temptations. You don't know what I have to face every day. And I have to say to you tonight, it doesn't matter what your, and I put it in quotes, it doesn't matter what your Red Sea is. God says, go forward. The devil, you know, is a master at convincing God's people that the situation is absolutely impossible. He is a master at painting red seas, whatever that form those red seas may take, as something that you will never ever be able to get across. That somehow you are locked in to where you are spiritually, and you never, therefore He wants you to think this, you never expect anything different for yourself. You never think that you can rise above where you are spiritually, that you can rise above what you're doing right now in your service to God, in your walk with the Lord Jesus Christ. He is a master at doing that. And yet, no matter what you face, the Lord comes to us tonight and says, go forward. No matter how impossible it may seem. I know we're living in dark days. I happen to be an historic pre-millennialist. And as one, I believe the scriptures, prophecies about things waxing worse and worse are true. As we heard last night, however, that does not mean I don't believe in revival or I don't pray for revival. I do believe that God will revive His church. I personally believe that. I don't know to what degree, but I believe that. But I have to confess as well as I look around me, as I look at my country, things are bad and they're getting worse. Paganism is filling this land from shore to shore. Wickedness, the enemy has come in like a flood into this country. I believe that. I'm convinced of that. And men's hearts are hard. and Satan is having a heyday. I understand all of that. And you may be locked into thinking it's something you have to fight, that, well, you know, the best thing that we can do here in Lee's Summit is try to maintain where we are and keep our little group together. And never imagine that there's something that God tells us to do is to go forward. You see, the one thing that I have found, and it's a danger, I think every pioneer work faces. You can get to a point in church life where you get used to seeing God do nothing. You just get used to it. And you don't expect Him to do anything. And you don't expect things to change. And you certainly don't expect God to open up the Red Seas for you. That's the danger, especially, I say, in pioneer work. I have to say to you, brothers and sisters, that if all we are going to do is to look at the reasons why we can't go forward as individuals in the work of Christ, or as a congregation, or as a denomination, let me put it like that. If all that we're going to look at is the reasons why we can't go forward, I'll tell you one thing, we're not going to go forward. We're never going to advance. God says go forward. The path I'm saying now is distinct. There's no mistake about it. God's telling you, go forward. I have to point out something else. It was also a dark path. I have to point out it was at night time. I didn't get to read verse 20. It came to pass And it came between the camp of this pillory cloud of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel. And there was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these, so that the one came not near the other all the night. And it was during the morning watch, that is, during the dawn, that Pharaoh's army was overthrown in the midst of the Red Sea." In other words, God sent these people across the Red Sea at night. It was a dark path. Wouldn't it have been better, you think, to go with the break of day? When the sun is shining and we see what we're doing, wouldn't it be better then? We simply can't do this at night. But God told them to go forward, even though it was as dark as night. Of course, they had the cloud, the pillory cloud, before them. And that's the point, isn't it? No matter how dark the day may be in which we live, and we are living in a dark day, no matter how dark this world, indeed no matter how dark things may be in the Church of Jesus Christ, it is the will of God, it is the will of God that we go forward. And we must pray God to burn that truth into our souls. I've never found any time that God's people set themselves to going forward that there's not going to be opposition. You are rattling the cage of hell when you seek to go forward. So expect dark times as it were. You may feel that it's night time in your own soul personally. Things are dark. You haven't perhaps seen the light of God's face in a long time, if you were to be honest. You come to church, you sing, you listen to sermons, you take notes, you pray, you read your Bible. But if you were dead honest with me, you'd have to say, Preacher, it's been a long, long time since I've seen the light of His face. You wonder how in the world, that being the case, you can go forward in your spiritual life when you can't see any light at the end of the tunnel. I want to tell you whether or not you see the light it is there and for Israel that light of course was that pillar of cloud and fire that was going to lead them each step of the way and across this river which seemed to them at that point in time to be something impossible to cross and no matter how much in the dark you may be right now even about the will of God No matter how ignorant you may be of God's truth and of how to go forward when going forward seems impossible, I have the promise of my shepherd that he will lead you all the way. And you will hear a voice behind you saying, here's the way, walk ye in it. The path forward. And here's the difficult part. The path forward for Israel was a downward path. All you have to do is imagine the massive Red Sea that's been divided. They're going across on dry ground, but you know that the sea would have been shaped just like this up higher on the banks. But as they come, they've got to go down before they begin to go up. Of course I'm spiritualizing. That's okay. But they had to go down before they could go up. The way to the crown has always been to the cross. It was Peter who said, Humble yourselves therefore into the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time. I have to say that I have always been struck with that great promised text on revival. If my people which are called by my name, the first thing that the Holy Ghost mentions is humble yourselves. And I believe, I believe, brothers and sisters, that the Church of Jesus Christ in this country is, before she's going to go forward, is going to have to be humbled. I mean brought down. I mean brought to her knees. I think we're a proud bunch. And I don't say that harshly, but our sense of utter dependence upon God, we acknowledge this in our confessions of faith, but to actually feel our utter dependence upon God, where, Lord, I can't go if you don't come with me. And I don't know, I meant to talk to Dr. Cairns about this in our talks we've had together these few days but I think it's going to take some old-fashioned praying and fasting I have to say that my flesh as you can see by the size of it does not like to think about fasting but I find it in the Bible I find Paul with some fastings off. And I think it's something we're going to have to go back to as a denomination in our churches. And I think part of the fasting is to humble ourselves before God. The path that God set them on took them down before it took them up. You may say to yourself, Preacher, we're pretty low already, aren't we? I will tell you that the Lord has ways you and I never dreamed of to bring us lower so that he might bring us higher into blessing. You ever found yourself just getting before God and just weeping before him and say, Lord, would you humble me? Because I am proud. Would you just humble me? I'll tell you one thing, the Lord will take it, and He'll answer that request. You might not like it when it happens, but what in the world do we have to be proud about? My Bible tells me that God, those that are proud, He knows afar off, but He gives grace to the humble. And I have to say, I don't know all that it means, but there's one thing I do know. We are going to need to be humbled under the mighty hand of God if we're going to go forward. Second thought from this passage, there are certain steps There are certain steps we must take as God's people in order to go forward. I doubt that any of us here would want something different for this church or for our own lives. I believe that beating at the heart of every child of God is a desire, at least if they're not bachelors, but it's a desire to get to higher ground and greater blessing and greater usefulness. I believe that. The path forward, you see, is going to take place by certain clearly definable steps. In other words, there are certain key areas in our lives in which we have to take steps to get to a forward direction. And as we take those steps, we will go forward with God. So I would, number one, encourage you this evening to go forward. Take the steps in going forward in your faith. But from our standpoint, this does lie at the very foundation of any and all progress that this church is going to make from this special event forward by faith. The Israelites were staring the Red Sea in the face and it seemed impossible to overcome apart from faith. It was because Moses believed God that he lifted up his rod and the Red Sea parted. And it's going to be by faith that we're going to see our Red Seas parted. It's going to require just childlike faith in the promises of God's Word. It's going to require faith in the power of God. And faith in the love that Christ has for His church and for His people. That's all part and parcel to it. Believing the just shall live by faith. That's not simply a matter of well, I got justified the day that I put my faith in Christ. It means it has this idea of, you know, God's people really began to live. They live by faith. They really began to live. You know, there are churches that are filled with Christians who are kind of just existing. They come and they go and they listen to sermons, but it's, oh, oh, um, this, this doesn't really interest me. And their life's going nowhere. And there's not any usefulness to the Lord. But it's going to be as that child of God lives by faith that he really does begin to live. So going forward in faith is going to be a necessary step. I'll talk about more how to go get there in a minute, but you also want to go forward in the church in your fellowship. First in your fellowship with God and then in your fellowship with each other. There's a means of grace that God has given you. You want to be stronger in faith, that's great, but you're going to have to go forward in your fellowship with Christ to get that. You're not going to be able to get by. How many of us have tried it? The Lord knows. You're not going to get by with ten minutes here and there. It's just not going to happen. Ten minutes on your knees before God and five minutes in the Word of God and expect you're going to have a growing faith or a growing experience of faith, if you will. It's not going to happen. It's fellowshipping. If we abide in Him, the Lord said, and my word abides in you, you shall bring forth much fruit. And that idea about abiding and remaining is being in fellowship, yes, first off in union with Jesus Christ, that's the root of it all, but it is dwelling in Him. Back to chapter 14 with Peter, you know, didn't want the Lord to wash his feet, they said, if I don't wash your feet, Peter, if I, in other words, you don't get this cleansing daily from me, you don't have any fellowship with me. You have no part with me. So, for the church to go forward, and for those sermons that that man preaches to you every Lord's Day to have any kind of a lasting impact upon your life, you're going to have to go forward in your fellowship. Are you content with where you are right now? In your fellowship with the Lord, are you content with it? Is there something more to be had? There are places of closeness to Christ we haven't even dreamed about. You don't have to go forward in your fellowship with each other. I don't know anything about this church, my first time here. I trust everybody's on the same page. I trust your homes are open to each other. But let it grow. You know, Paul remarked about the church of Thessalonica. He commended them for their love for one another. But he called upon them to show more of it. to grow in it. I mean, just having the families over. More and more. Fellowshiping in the work of God. Getting together in the things of God. You're going to have to take some steps in your families as well. There's the family altar. The family altar. Do you have one? Do you have one? a time where moms and dads, you sit down with the family every day and you open up the Word of God and you read the Word of God, you explain the Word of God to your children and you teach the children to pray and you pray. Is that in the home? Must be for the church to go forward. The family altar. Flick the television off. Flick the computer off. Whatever you got to flick off, do it. But don't let Your children be raised in a home where there is not a family altar. You know, that's where they really learn to come to church and to sit still and to listen. when they have to, are taught, from the time they're little tykes, to sit still every day, get up on the couch, you open the Bible up, you read to them, you teach them to pray, you ask them the questions, to make sure they're listening critically to what you're reading. You know, that begins to transfer over into a Lord's Day service. And you won't need junior church. I'm not, you know, blasting junior church when they're time of little age. You've got to be somewhere because they're too noisy in the sanctuary. But there comes certainly a point in time And it's much earlier than most people think when they can sit down and listen and have respect for the world. What do you think they get that? Moms and dads at the family altar. I mean also going forward in marriages. I don't know about you husbands and wives. I don't know. I don't know this church, so let me step out here for a bit. You ever noticed how hell seemed to break loose on a Sunday morning? How there's an impatience on a Sunday morning between husband and wife? What do you think that is? Just a coincidence? I don't think so. It's really kind of hard You know, to come to the Lord's house when there's a lack of submission on the wife or a husband in the home and the husband failing to love his wife as Christ loved the church, it's kind of hard really to go forward until the marriage is right. You've got to go forward there. I also mean the families by training up your children in the way they should go. Children need to have their backsides burned up at times. They need to have their backsides burned up. We're living in a generation where that is poo-pooed. You don't do things like that. It's bad. They need to be disciplined, chastened, by yes word, By rebuke, by reproof, by instruction, and by exhortation. Because a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame, the scripture says. I just know because I was there. I was there. I was a rebellious teenager. I was the one that fought with my mom and dad tooth and nail. I was the independent one. Don't tell me what I'm going to do. Well, I would pray that you would pray that Lord, family altar, that our marriage is right and that our children are being trained to go the way of God, not the way of the world, whether they want it or not. you're going to do what God says let's go forward brothers and sisters in our fight I'm told I have a historian in my church PhD in history he has some interesting stories for all of his years he liked World War I, World War II that's his particular area but he told me of a certain battle it was an American battleship that had been hit by torpedoes and it was going down And it was out in sea. These men were going to die. That was all there was to it. And the captain of the ship told the men, I want all guns firing. We're going to go down with all guns firing. I like that spirit, you know. I like that mentality. We're not just going to sink and quit. We're going to go down blazing our guns. And that is the kind of spirit that every church, whether pioneer or not, needs. We're going to fight for the cause of Christ. There's a battle to be fought. There's an enemy that wants to devour us. There's a cause, there's a truth, there's a doctrine, there's a Christ that calls upon His people to stand up and fight and not be mealy-mouthed about it. The Lord saved us from mealy-mouthed preachers and mealy-mouthed Christians. We're not ashamed of the gospel. And when the cause needs to be, you stand up and you speak for Christ. You know, years ago in Newtown Square, John Greer and I, it was very early days. We had about, I don't know, 18 people going to the church at that point in time. And we were talking about pioneer work. And he said to me something I've never forgotten. He said to me, John, in pioneer work you need people who will go down with the ship. And that just stuck with me. I want to know, is that your spirit, is that your heart? I'm not saying the ship's going to go down, that's not my implication, but that's the kind of heart you have to have. If the ship goes down, we're going down with it. We're not going to abandon ship. We will go down with all of our guns blazing. Those are steps you take to go forward. You also Take the step in going forward from your failures. We all fail. Preachers fail just like you do. Preachers don't like to tell you those things. We like to be up here in our ivory palaces and perhaps communicate the idea, whether insidiously or no, that we are above the struggles that you have. But folks, I want to tell you something. It ain't so. We fail. And we fail the Lord. What has to be done is you go forward from your failures. You don't wallow in self-pity. You don't try to hide and cover it up. You acknowledge it. And you say, Lord, I thank you. that Christ's blood covers my failures. Now let's go on. Let's go on. My time's away. Third point. When God's people go forward, they will discover the path forward has already been prepared. When they go forward, they discover the path forward has already been prepared. You got to believe that fear was gripping their hearts. Here comes Pharaoh's army. It's getting closer and closer. You hear the hoof beats, the ground's thundering. It's a massive army sent against them. And there's the Red Sea. But you see, the Lord had already prepared the path forward for his people. He was already prepared. And let me say the same holds true for us. The path forward for you and me and our spiritual lives and the way forward for this church has already been prepared by the Lord. You may fear. You may fear that we can't do it, but the path is already there. You see, God's already planned this path. I want you to note that God had put them in the very spot where they were just now. all for the preparation of going forward. God brought this point. God did it. To have been in any other place would have meant that they would have missed seeing this wonderful intervention of God. God brought them to the Red Sea. God brought them to an impossible situation. I want you to remember that, because you might feel right now on the hiatus of the past three days, hey, it's great guns, man, we're going for it, but I'll tell you one thing, you're going to face the Red Sea not far down the road. I don't know what it's going to be, but you're going to face it. And what are you going to do? You come back into your number, wait a minute, God has put this red sea in front of me and it's all part of going forward. We must remember that God has sovereignly and providentially put us right in the situation that we're in, not to send us backward but to take us forward. You folks understand what I'm saying tonight. I don't know what situation you're in right now. It might not be one that's very pleasant, it might cause you a lot of fear and concern and anxiety, but I have to point out to you tonight that it is God Almighty in His providence that has brought you exactly where you are. And He's brought you here that you might go forward, not that you might go backward. The Israelites found out that when they did go forward, God led them every step of the way. The pillar of fire went before them all night, leading them, and whatever is before you, whatever red seas are over the horizon, I don't know, but one thing I do know is this, Christ, who's being typified by that pillar of fire and that pillar of smoke, that cloud, is going to lead you. I do know that. I know there are times when you won't feel like it. But my Bible says He will never leave me nor forsake me. My Bible says He is the Good Shepherd and He will lead and He will lead and He will lead right to the end. Then I ask you the question, why can't you go forward? That's the case. That's the facts. Why can't you go forward? You know when they went forward The greatest obstacles and fears vanished before their very eyes when they went forward. When they went forward. Not standing still, folks. Nothing happened. It's when they went forward that the thing that they were so afraid of disappeared. What's your Red Sea? What is it? What's the thing that's scaring you? It's causing you anxiety. It seems like an impossible situation to get through and to actually, actually go forward from it and through it. Well, there's only one thing for it. You gotta go forward. And then the thing that you think is so dreadful and impossible, God just removes. I don't know how. I don't know when. But he removes it. What was the chorus of Mark ever sung here or not? God, any rivers you think are uncrossable? God, any mountains you can't tunnel through? God specializes in things thought impossible. He does the things others cannot do. Brothers and sisters, go forward. Just go on with God. He'll lead every step of the way. Amen. May God write His word upon our hearts for His name's sake.