It came to pass when Sanballat and Tobiah and Gishom, the Arabian, and the rest of our enemies heard that I had builded the wall and that there was no breach left therein, though at that time I had not set up the doors upon the gates, that Sanballat and Gishom sent unto me, saying, Come, let us meet together in some one of the villages in the plain of Ono. But they thought to do me mischief. And I sent messengers unto them, saying, I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down. Why should the work cease whilst I leave it and come down to you? Yet they sent unto me four times after this sort, and I like this. And I answered them after the same manner. In verse 3, I wrote beside of that verse, Nehemiah is standing. In verse number four, beside that verse, I wrote, now he's withstanding. He didn't just stand, he kept standing, steadfast in this position. For a little while this morning, I want to speak to you on this thought. I'm not going to come down just so we can come together. I'm not gonna come down just so we can come together. Let's pray, God. I pray that you'd speak to our hearts. I pray that you'd help us this morning, God. I pray that we'd be lovers of the truth and contenders for the faith. Thank you for fellowship that's built upon truth. I pray that that would be our desire. Meet the need of the hour in Jesus' name, amen. I think today that we live in a post-Christian society. But not just a post-Christian society, I think we live in an anti-truth society. And because our society is so anti-truth and post-Christian, it's become largely pragmatic. And that might be a big word to you, but what that means is it's somebody who will do anything just to try to get results. We live in a day where everything is fluid. Everything is transitional. There's a push to unify on every front around everything, and there's an assault upon anybody who refuses to unify under that flag. Today, it saddens me that most people are more offended by doctrinal clarity than they are cultural depravity. Absolutes are more offensive to Christians than sin is, it seems like. When I got saved, I got ruined right out of the gate because people gave me bad books and it really messed me up. They gave me books written by people like Oliver B. Green. And they gave me tapes, these old tapes by men like Lester Roloff. And I would listen to those kind of things. And you got to pray for me, it really just messed me up. Because they preached against a lot of things that a lot of you are for today. And it kind of just got put in me at an early age in life. And it's never been something I've gotten over. One of the toughest tasks in the Christian life and in your church life will be to battle to keep yourself out of unequal and unedifying yokes. Or I could say it like this, to battle against the desire of the flesh to have fellowship at the expense of truth. The goal of the child of God and the goal for the church is to be pure, undefiled, and unspotted from the world. My Christianity, my church, ought not be looking like what I find in the culture around me, but rather it ought to mirror an obedience to the word of God. My allegiance today is not to you. It is not to a title. It is not to some sort of a congregation or convention. My allegiance is to the Bible. My loyalty is to truth. And my command is to maintain a biblical distinction in the areas of life, doctrine, and ministry philosophy. My theme song ought to be, the truth is marching There's a push today, and it's a push upon pastors and a pull upon every Christian to come together. The church is supposed to be the pillar and ground of the truth, but now I'm afraid it is a playground of compromise and a breeding ground for heresy. And the word that is causing the trouble is is this word fellowship. That is a big word in this hour. Now it sounds harmless on its face and it seems positive, but I believe that word is a Trojan horse that is being used of the devil to bring us together at the expense and at the cost of Bible truth. My goal is to glorify God and to live inside the boundaries of this book right here. In 2 Thessalonians, Paul said, therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you have been taught, whether by word or by our epistle. Jude wrote and said, he said, I want you to earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. So here is my goal. I am not to pursue fellowship because I am married to the truth. to step out on truth, to have an affair with fellowship. I am bonded, I ought to be, I am married, I am wed to the truth of the word of God. If you listen, if you listen very long to the average pastor's sermon, and if you read the popular books of our day, and if you follow the keyboard theologian on your Facebook, it is easy to see that the banner of truth has been lowered and has been replaced with this banner of fellowship. If you study Christian history and you study Baptist heritage, I'll tell you what brought Christians together. It was their love and common ground found in the scripture. Believers did not just go along to get along so they could avoid any kind of confrontation or trouble, but rather they gathered together around a body of Bible doctrine, and it was that shared love of truth that bonded their hearts in fellowship. I don't have to have fellowship. I have to have truth. I want fellowship, and I desire fellowship, but any fellowship in my life ought to be birthed by a commonality when it comes to Bible doctrine. I do not court fellowship just so I can have a friend. I do not court fellowship just to appease my flesh. I don't allow fellowship to determine where I stand biblically. I let the Bible decide where I stand. Today I'm afraid that we have it backwards. Most Christians come together for fellowship at the expense of doctrinal purity. And that's why you see in just about every town some kind of a ministerial association that yokes up every kind of belief, every kind of background, and has no stand on anything. That's why so many churches are taking Baptist off of their church sign. They use generic language to describe their position. That's why one day they'll shout it out at the Timothy Conference and the next week be somewhere else because they are forsaking truth for fellowship. That is why preachers who know better and in the past they did better are now preaching for and modeling themselves after those who don't even have a Bible. They do not believe the Bible is the word of God. They will not say the words King James. They do not believe in salvation by grace through faith for whosoever will. They do not believe in any standards of separation and holiness and yet they'll yoke up with them just so they don't have to sit at the lunch table by themselves. Tom Malone, the preacher from Michigan, said there are too many preachers wanting to build bridges to every group out there. He said, not me. I'm walking around with a box of matches in my pocket, trying to burn down every bridge that I can burn. And I want you to know today, there's a little bit of hope at most. a little hope for Christians that cannot fend off pressure to compromise because they have to have a friend. In Romans 16, 17, Paul said, now, I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned, and here it is, avoid them. Paul was not a big advocate for fellowship. He was a big advocate for avoidance. It's sad that compromise is to our generation what convictions were to Christians in the book of Acts. They died for their convictions and now we die to compromise. Let's come together. That's what the world says. Let's come together. By the grace of God, I want to respond and say I am not planning to come down just so we can come together. I want to be friendly to everybody. I don't want to be rude. I don't want to be crude. I don't want to be mean or bad-spirited. I want to be friendly to everybody, but I cannot be friends with just anybody. I can be nice to you, but I can't run with you if we're not running the same direction. It's amazing how many folks get offended by that. Every Trump voter is a hypocrite if they cannot take that kind of preaching. If you love a bold brass politician and buck up and pooch out your lip over a bold preacher, you ought to crawl under the carpet and make your way out the back door, amen. The same Bible that tells me to go into all the world and preach the gospel is the same Bible that tells me to come out from this world and to be separate. Coming together is not God's purpose for me. Conforming me to Christ is God's purpose for me, and my obligation is to contend for the faith. Now, let me just say some things. Let me just say, not every church is biblical. Not every Christian book is profitable for you. Not every preacher is right. Not every church is worth following. Not every organization that says it's Christian is Christian. Paul made the statement, O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you? And it's always a who, and that might sound harsh, and I'm not trying to be harsh, but I want to go on record and say I am more worried about my spiritual growth than you liking me. Say amen right there. I am more concerned with a well done one day by the grace of God at the judgment seat than you wanting to be on my fan parade. I could care less about that. I won't stand with you at the judgment, and I won't stand for you at the judgment. I will stand naked and open and ashamed before God, and by the best of my ability, I want to please the Lord with my life. Ephesians 5, 11 says, have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. All right, just for the text sake, let me just show you here. Nehemiah is rebuilding this wall. Now you know the story, we don't have to labor it. And as Nehemiah is up on the wall, rebuilding what has been broken down, and by the way, that's our job, is it not? To build up what's been broken down. As he's up on the wall, all of a sudden these enemies to God and these enemies of Nehemiah come to him, Sanballat and Geshem. Tobiah's in the mix as well. Nehemiah's up on this wall and he is working. And they come to him and here is their petition, here is their flirtation, here is their advance to him. In verse two they say, come, let us meet together in some one of the villages in the plain of Ono. But look at this little statement, but they thought to do me mischief. I want you to see what's happening here in the time we have. The devil is fighting against the work of God, but please listen to this. He is not fighting the work of God with a sword. He is not fighting the work of God with a spear. He is not fighting the work of God with a thousand soldiers. He is fighting against the work of God with an olive branch. He comes to the servants of God, Nehemiah on that wall, and here's what he does. He doesn't try to kill the man physically. He's trying to kill him spiritually. He's trying to get Nehemiah to come off from his perch, to come down from the wall, and just yoke himself together with those who hate his God. They threatened him a little bit. They slandered him and mocked him. But I think the most serious attempt to take Nehemiah out was to come and get him to come off the wall, join with them, and kill his progress. Here's what they wanted. They wanted to build together. They wanted to meet together. And in fact, they did it four times. And they don't just do it once. They kept texting him. They kept liking his post. They kept inviting him to the meeting. They kept sending him a Starbucks card. They kept offering him a little place to preach. They kept saying, if you just do this, you can be in our club. Four times they did that. And Nehemiah, thank God, had enough sense in his head to know he wasn't there He was there to build a wall. He wasn't there for friendship. He was there to build a wall. He wasn't there for fanfare. He was there to build a wall, and I like what he says. He said, I can't come down. He said, there's no way I can come down. Be that far from me. He said, I'm involved in something much bigger than linking arms and holding hands and kumbaya with a bunch of compromisers. I'm on this wall. And he said, I cannot come down. It kind of reminds me of how the serpent approached Eve. It reminds me of how the devil tempted our savior. It reminds me of Pharaoh who said, fine, go and worship, just don't go too far. It reminds me of Ahab who tried to wheel and deal for a vineyard. It reminds me of Simon, a sorcerer, who thought he could buy the power of God. And Nehemiah says, no, thank you. I can hear the voices. Come on, Nehemiah, calm down, calm down. You're too hard-nosed about this thing. You're too narrow. That stuff's not even, that was preferential. All that stuff is preference. Come on down and let's get together. Now listen, in Genesis 1, God instituted this doctrine of separation. really before that when he kicked Lucifer out of heaven. But in Genesis 1, God made a distinction between light and darkness, between dry land and water, between night and day, between flesh and the grass of the field. God is a God who separates righteousness from unrighteousness, sheep from goats, wheat from tares, and I want you to know there's no expiration date on the mandate and the doctrine of both personal and ecclesiastical separation. In the Old Testament it was there. You could not plow with two different animals. You couldn't sew two different pieces of a garment together. Separation was instituted. and it was followed, and that same principle lives on in the New Testament, and I hear it all the time. Can't we all just get along? And I want to say no. Well, I mean, I guess yes, but it's up to you on that. I'll be anybody's friend that's a friend to this book right here. You don't have to do everything just like me, but both of us have to do everything just like that Bible. Our God is a jealous God. Our God created us for Him and His glory. He has bought us with a price. I am not my own. I'm not some prostitute in religious garb running around for a paycheck and a picket fence and a parsonage. I'm not out there so that you'll make a picture of me with my own quote on the back. That is not what I'm after today. I am out for God's glory and His alone. And if it means I preach to five, if it means I preach to me and my wife, I say I'd rather go with God then compromise with the rest of that crowd. I'm on the wall today and I don't want to come down. Not coming down. If whoever it is you run with makes your shout for old time religion a little quieter, then you're running the wrong crowd. Amen. If whoever it is you're running with or listening to makes your testimony for old time religion a little bit weaker, that's the wrong crowd. If your love for God is being stolen away for a love of friendship or a love of attention, then you are going the wrong direction. I believe that is the problem in our country today, that we see so much fluidity. Nobody knows what it is to be an American. All these definitions are being rechanged. We blur our borders. we blur the gender line, there is no absolute, there is no standard anymore, and I tell you what bothers me, the same preacher that'll rip on the transgender for mixing gender lines is blurring ecclesiastical lines every Sunday in his pulpit as he claims to be what we are, and he's getting a paycheck from people who are what we are, and yet he is in that pulpit prostituting himself for that like on Facebook. took off his necktie, traded out his pulpit for a plexiglass podium, darkened the atmosphere, put in all these colored lights like a ballroom, I mean, got contemporary music running around, brings in a Southern Baptist preacher to preach his meeting, puts his arm around the shoulder of an ESV-loving fellow, gets up there and knocks every old-time preacher that you've ever known, talks highly of every compromiser that has ever been, and then wants to shoot at you and I for loving this book right here and saying we're the problem. Last time I checked, it's not the healthy part of the body that is the problem. It is the cancer that kills and that man is a cancer. Amen. Some of you will go and text them right after the service. I'm afraid today that we are living in the bridge building era and we need a wall building generation. Let me just say something. Don't come down. If you believe the King James Bible is the word of God, then just stay on that wall. I don't believe this is the best, all right, maybe I might just get myself out of meetings now, and that'd be a blessing. I don't just believe that this is the best translation we have. I don't just believe that this is as good as we had, but the originals were it. I believe this is the very inspired, preserved word of God. I believe every word of God is pure. From Genesis 1 to the end of Revelation, I believe this book right here is the Bible. I tell you what, That almost makes me want to run away. That almost made me want to put the thing down and just run to see you stand. And I hope that you believe that. I'll be honest with you. I've taught in two or three Bible colleges. I cannot read a word of Greek. I don't know any Hebrew. And I don't even want to know it. And I probably just made myself sound stupid to people. Now, every once in a while, I'll look into a lexicon, but I don't know if they're telling me the truth anyway. How can I tell? I don't know. All I know is what they told me. I mean, honestly, that's all I know. So what do I do? I just, the best I can, let the Holy Ghost of God guide me, and all I know is he speaks to me through that book right there, and I believe it's the Word of God. Now, if you want to look intellectual to a bunch of reprobates in some college someplace, if you want to look academic to a bunch of people who don't love your God, that's your business. But I think I'll just go with the Bible that brought revival to this country, the Bible that birthed me in the family of God, and the Word of God I preach from every day of my life. If you believe Jesus died for whosoever will, then stay on the wall. You don't impress me, you can't even explain yourself when you get too deep into Calvinism, because at the end of the day, you don't even know how it works, amen, right there. You start getting too deep into that, here's the bottom line, we all know God's sovereign, and we all know Jesus died for everybody. That's all I know, and I leave the rest up to God. So I just preach the gospel and let God take care of the savings, amen, right there. If you're a Baptist, would you just stay on the wall? All right, but wait, now let me lose you now. If you're an independent fundamental Baptist, would you just stay on the wall? I'm not a Southern Baptist. I'm not. I'm not an American Baptist. I'm not a free will Baptist. I'm obviously not one of them black missionary Baptists. I mean, I'm just not. That's just, although I would preach, I would like to preach for those fellas. I mean, if that sister called me to preach in her church, I'd be there. But I mean, I love that. But I'm an independent fundamental Baptist. You know why? Because I believe the local church ought to be autonomous. I don't owe my allegiance to some headquarters in some state off in the distance. I don't let somebody else dictate to me how I spend my mission dollars. I don't let somebody else set a direction that I have to give an account for at the judgment seat of God. I'm an independent, fundamental Baptist. Amen. Don't come down. If the music sounds secular and sensual and it's breathy, then don't come down to go listen to it. Now let me help you with something. Let me just be honest with you. I don't know if I ever make it through a service outside like last night where I don't get mad. Because there's at least one bad song sung in every good church I go to. And let me help you, and there's some men here that do good with this, and I think they'd agree with me, Brother Borden's here, Brother Stacy. There's a big responsibility laid on the back of these family singing groups. Because we trust them because they have always been with us. But we are not as plugged in to that mainstream southern gospel thing as they are. So we don't know all these songs. We've never heard them. Listen, there's been stuff happen recently in that community, and it's all over my face. I'm like, I don't even know who those people are. I've never heard of them. I mean, I listen like Primitive Quartet and then stuff like it. I don't know a lot of these other things. I don't know it. So when you sing those songs in our church with your piano, to us at the first hearing, we're like, that sounds a little weird, but not bad. But after you've sung it, you've already poisoned the well in the heart of our people. So could you singers help us preachers out and respect the stand of the pastor you're singing for? And if it flies next week, then sing it next week if you want to, and then leave it up to the guy you were the week before not to have you back. But don't do it to him. I mean, that's just being a friend, isn't it? Come on now. We always ask what's wrong with it and never what's right with it. I tell you what I've noticed here lately. I was in a church not too long ago, and all they sang, and I'm not for all hymns all the time, but all they sang were those hymns, rich hymns. And I tell you what it did, it really moved my spirit. I mean, hear those. old hymns, how great thou art, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. I mean, it just ministered to me, and I thought, man, I've been preaching in all these southern gospel churches, and I like it, because we shout and run, but it's about as deep as, I don't know, about as deep as that a lot of times. And I tell you what, we got into some of those songs written by men who actually were killed for their faith and walked with God, and they might not have believed like us, and we might not have them preach for us today, but there's no question they were at least saved. And most of them didn't have a boyfriend. There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and you hear a song like that, that's kinda where I like to be, right there, right there. Don't come down. Don't come down if you didn't have a track record of honoring God. Don't come down for the wrong books. Don't come down for the wrong buddies. Don't come down for the wrong causes. Now, I gotta just give you this and I'll sit down. I want to a long time, but let me help you. I'm not gonna come down so we can come together. Here's some things I ask myself before I join in fellowship with somebody. Let me just give you seven statements. You know, I don't think anybody wakes up in the morning and says, I wanna be hated. I don't. I want everybody like me. I do. I don't like drama. Do you all like that? I hate that. I like to go to bed at night and not have to worry about anybody else but me in that bed. Come on now. But good night, I'd hope I love God and believe my Bible enough to not just cave on everything. Right, yeah, but they're the most influential family in the church. Oh, okay. That's the problem. They got more influence than the Holy Ghost in your church. Number one here is if I come ask these questions to myself if I come down to come together. Will God be glorified in it? I'm not against caught. Sometimes you got to compromise It's not a bad word all the time. You understand that right because there's some things we can say, you know what that's fine I can give on that but my question is this will God ultimately be glorified if I do this thing? because if it doesn't bring glory to God, then I gotta be out. Most Christians are quick to compromise because of the pragmatic aspect of it. What I mean by that is, well, if I do that, then I'll book a meeting with that man. Or if I go to that youth meeting, then I'll get in with that crowd. If we do this kind of music, our young people won't leave the church. And they leave God out of the equation totally. So number one, if I come down, will God be glorified? Number two, if I come down, will it cost me my convictions? You know what a conviction is? It's a firm or fixed belief. I think it was Curtis Hudson said convictions are spark plugs for action. I think what he meant by that is you do what you do because of what you believe. There's some things that are preferential that me and you can disagree on and we can get along just fine. And then there's some things that I believe are nailed down because the Bible says so, that we cannot give on. So for example, like if a man was having me in to preach and he had like a special series of meetings on certain days during the month, and one of the preachers on that meeting was an ESV or a Southern Baptist, then I have to back out. And here's why. You say, well, you're not maybe gonna preach on the same night. Yeah, but I don't want my face on the same flyer. And it's not because of my pride. It's because of you. You say, what do you mean? Because if my face is on the flyer, that is my endorsement of everybody else on the flyer. And I have just told you, it's safe. It's safe. It's safe. You say, well, maybe if you go, you could help them, not as much as I'd hurt you. There's a lot of older men now trying to help some compromisers who are hurting a lot of other young men to try to help one. Number three, if I come down to come together, will this relationship lead me someplace tomorrow that I'm against today? That's a long statement. Will this relationship lead me someplace tomorrow that I'm against today? Boy, that's the easiest thing in this world to do is compromise. You know what you gotta do to compromise? Nothing. Hold still. It'll happen on its own. And compromise doesn't show up at your door like a roaring lion with its teeth out. It shows up like one of those little gnats that just kind of eats at you a little bit. It's a little annoying thing. It's almost like a little dribble of water. It's not a flood. And then after a while, that erosion happens and the hillside falls. Will this relationship lead me somewhere tomorrow I'm against today? All right, number three, what about this? If I come down to come together, What other relationships will that develop in my life? Because when I start yoking up left, that left is already yoked up further left. And here's the thing about a liberal. It is a lot easier to love a liberal than somebody who's against something. If you fellas want to be busy, never take a stand. Don't preach against anything. I promise you, people love you. They will love you. So you gotta be careful. Even going to coffee or sitting down or getting friendly on the phone call with someone, you're gonna start to like that person because they're gonna be for everything you're for. Now they're not gonna do it, but they're not gonna tell you not to. And the next thing you know, it'll introduce you to another buddy, another buddy on down the left line. All right, what about this? If I come down to come together, will it cause other Christians to stumble? You study in the book, in the letters to Corinthians, about the weaker brother. Mature Christianity is not about what I want. My little son is seven. You know how he does things? Here's what I want. Daddy, can I have this? Me, me, me, me. That's a baby. You know what a man does? Son, what can I do for you? What would be best for him? What does he need? So I have to think about this. Now listen, I could probably go on that thing and preach there. I could probably do that. And man, I'd get an offering. I could probably be a blessing and help some people. But who all's gonna get hurt in the process? Do you all see how important that is? You say, have you ever preached in a, we've talked about this before, have you ever preached in a Southern Baptist church? I have. I've preached in those little ones that are King James only, don't even know they're in the convention. And honestly, when you talk to the pastor there, the reason he even called me is he's trying to get that church out. I've only done that a handful of times, but if they are that way, then I'll go. I'll go try to rescue that place in a hurry. I preached at a big Bible church in Pennsylvania, because the guy called me and said, we're wanting to change our name to such and such as Independent Bible Baptist Church. And I said, you're going to come out? He said, I'm going to come out, but I want you to come help us. Would you preach a week-long revival? Then we're going to vote at the end of the revival to change our church name. I said, hallelujah, brother, I'll preach. And so I came. And we preached, literally preached on basically what I'm preaching on here every night, Baptist distinctives, different reasons to be independent. And at the end of the week, they voted and came out. Come on now. So I'm not telling you we never do that. I'm telling you we use discernment, right? Come on now. All right, let me give you this one. I've got two more. If I come down to come together, will it confuse my generation in regards to who God is? Most Baptist churches are more charismatic than Baptist. Or they're on the other end of the spectrum and they're more Catholic than Baptist. They're so formal, I mean, that it's a fit for a funeral, where they're so charismatic, I mean, you feel like, man, I don't know what, you're gonna have to tap a tambourine and drink some kind of Kool-Aid to make it through the surface. And the reason for that is, it's really the music. I mean, we're using music from charismatic churches and charismatic women preachers, amen, right there. I mean, we're stinking crazy. I mean, we would never let a woman preacher preach in our pulpit, but we'll let her sing and preach through the singing in our church services. And I'm not talking to you like I've got this all down, because listen, every week of my life, I sit through it just like you do. I'm just letting you know this is where we're at. And so I want to be careful about coming down, because I don't want to confuse my generation about who God really is. God is not hip. God is holy. One more statement. If I come down to come together, what kind of church and what kind of Christianity am I leaving my son? And that might not be the most biblical reason, but it's the most important to me. If I come down and I get overnight fame and success because I was willing not to say some things and then to say some other things that people like, Man, it might really give us a good life in the present, but what kind of church is my son gonna go to? What will be left for that boy in 30 years? If we abandon hymns now, what will he even have to sing? If we abandon an authoritative text now, what use is there to go hear anybody preach? If we cut out Sunday night church now, there won't even be Sunday morning church in 30 years. And so I want to be real careful, to be real careful about where I go and what I endorse and things I say at home about other things so that there might be a chance that he can go to church and enjoy it like we've enjoyed it. I just want to challenge you as a friend to friends today. Thank God for every one of you on the wall. but you're gonna be petitioned like a woman on the street corner. Hey, you're gonna be flirted with. To come down off of your perch and to just give a little. And before you know it, that little becomes a lot. Don't come down. Let's pray. God, I pray that you'd help us this morning to stand, to do it right. Help us to love the Bible enough to do right. I pray for these men of God that you'd protect them, please, in Jesus' name.