This church service at the fair message teaches how to stand strong while living in a culture of compromise. The speaker opens with Exodus 23, where God tells His people not to follow the crowd in doing evil, and then walks through the warnings Jesus gave in Matthew 24 about deception, lawlessness and love growing cold. His answer is not to run from the times, but to draw closer to Jesus, who gave Himself to deliver us from this present evil age.
Below you will find the full video, a summary of the sermon, the Scripture behind each point (linked to the NKJV on Bible Gateway), a timestamped outline, and practical steps to stand strong without compromise.
Sermon at a Glance
This message was recorded at NTC Ministries’ church service at the fair and runs about 43 minutes. The speaker is not named in the recording, so this summary simply calls him the speaker. His stated goal is clear from the first sentence: he wants to talk about how to stand strong living in a culture of compromise, at a time when people rush toward strange ideas like moths to a flame.
He reminds the listeners that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:12). The pressure is spiritual, and he says it is felt not only in the United States but in every nation. The message closes with a prayer of salvation and an invitation to come forward for healing and prayer.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Speaker | Not named in the recording (the speaker) |
| Series | Stand-alone message |
| Main text | Exodus 23:2 and Matthew 24:4–14 |
| Key theme | How to stand strong in a culture of compromise |
| Length | About 43 minutes, ending in prayer |
Do Not Follow the Crowd: The Text of This Church Service at the Fair
The text of this church service at the fair is Exodus 23:2. He reads it from a modern paraphrase: “Don’t do something just because everyone else is doing it.” Another translation, he notes, says not to follow the masses in doing evil. If a group of people are doing wrong, do not join them, and do not change your testimony just to please a crowd.
He finds that verse strikingly current. God knew, through all of time, the wild and wacky things that would go on in the world, and His exhortation is the same in every age: stand strong, do not give in, do not cave in. The problem, the speaker says, is that much of the church in the western world has already compromised and gone the way of Cain, accepting what Scripture calls evil and treating it as if it does not matter.
He frames the whole sermon around one question that he returns to several times: how do we stay strong living in a culture of compromise? The rest of the message answers it in three movements. First, see the times clearly through the words of Jesus. Second, understand the weight of sin that pushes people to compromise. Third, receive the love of God that holds a heart steady when everything around it grows cold.
The Signs Jesus Gave in Matthew 24
The speaker turns to Matthew 24:4–14, where Jesus says, “Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many.” He points out that no one goes around claiming to be the founder of another religion. The counterfeits always come in the name of Christ, which is exactly why believers must take heed.
Jesus also said His followers would hear of wars and rumors of wars, and told them not to be troubled, because these things must come to pass. The speaker stresses that these events are not something we can simply pray away. They must happen. But there is a way to pray and something we can do that allows us to stand strong in the midst of the mess.
He explains “nation will rise against nation” as social groups rising against social groups and governments against governments. On earthquakes, he says he keeps an app on his phone because of this very Scripture, and he reports the yearly totals he found climbing sharply from 2023 onward. Jesus called all of this “the beginning of sorrows,” and the speaker says that word describes birth pains, the signs that something new is about to be born.
The table below follows how the speaker applies each warning in the passage.
| What Jesus said | Verse | How the speaker applies it |
|---|---|---|
| Take heed that no one deceives you | 24:4–5 | False christs always come using the name of Jesus |
| Wars and rumors of wars; do not be troubled | 24:6 | These things must happen; we cannot pray them away |
| Nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom | 24:7 | Social groups against social groups, governments against governments |
| The beginning of sorrows | 24:8 | Birth pains before a new age and the coming of Jesus |
| Hated by all nations for My name’s sake | 24:9 | Greater persecution of the church than we have known |
| The love of many will grow cold | 24:12 | Lawlessness breaks trust and hardens hearts |
| He who endures to the end will be saved | 24:13 | Walk through it in love, faith and loyalty, without taking offense |
Enduring to the End When Love Grows Cold
Verse 12 is the center of this section: because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. The speaker describes people becoming very hard-hearted because those they were supposed to be able to trust can no longer be trusted. When justice is not served, it is easy for hearts to turn bitter, and bitterness spreads.
Yet verse 13 promises that he who endures to the end shall be saved. The speaker insists that enduring is not crawling across the finish line and saying, “I made it.” To endure means to walk through these times until the end in love, in faith, without taking offense at anything, living right and staying loyal.
He adds the mercy of Matthew 24:22: unless those days were shortened, no one would survive, but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened. God has compassion and understands how hard it is. That is why, the speaker says, we will need to embrace Jesus like we have never embraced Him before. “Going to church religiously ain’t going to cut it anymore.”
Paul gave the same warning in 2 Timothy 3:1–5: in the last days perilous times will come, and men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, unthankful, unholy and lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. The speaker defines perilous as times of despair and great risk, the very times when compromise looks easiest. As hearts harden, he says, the very fabric of mankind begins to deteriorate.
His conclusion is that we stand on four kinds of ground that must not move: a moral ground, a biblical ground, an ethical ground and a common sense ground. To stand strong there without compromise, though, is not something we can do in our own strength. It is impossible, he says, because the real problem underneath the culture is sin.
The Weight of Sin and the Way of Cain
The speaker describes sin as a debt. Anyone who has been in debt knows the weight of that pressure. A debt that keeps compounding daily pushes people to turn away from their beliefs and even from Christian principles and morality. Under that weight, he says, some start drinking heavily, turn to drugs, or look for pleasure in relationships outside of marriage, all looking for relief from the pain.
Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” With sin, the speaker says, man is never good enough. We are born into it, and no amount of effort changes that. There is no relief from that debt outside of Christ, which is why people compromise again and again, even compromising common sense, just to ease the pressure for a moment.
He illustrates this with the first two brothers in Genesis 4:3–8. Cain was a tiller of the ground, and Abel was a keeper of the sheep. The speaker notes that Abel was a keeper, not a producer: it was God who produced the sheep. When the day of offering came, Cain brought the fruit of the ground as if to say, look what I did from the sweat of my brow and the strength of my own hands.
Abel, by contrast, came as if to say, Lord, I have done nothing; You have done this, thank You. Abel’s offering was accepted and Cain’s was rejected. God told Cain that if he did well he would be accepted. But under the pressure of sin, rather than doing what God asked, Cain killed Abel to get rid of the competition. The speaker calls this the way of Cain: trying to appease God by our own works.
The same pattern appears with Adam. After he sinned, he knew he was naked and was afraid, and he and Eve sewed fig leaves to cover themselves. God set that aside as the work of their hands and made them tunics of skin instead (Genesis 3:21). Leviticus 17:11 explains why: the life of the flesh is in the blood, and it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.
Delivered by a Just and Loving King
The good news comes from Galatians 1:3–4: grace and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age. The speaker emphasizes that this deliverance is not escape. Jesus did not promise a place to hide. He promised to carry us through.
Why didn’t Jesus just say, “I forgive you,” and skip the cross? The speaker’s answer is that forgiveness alone would leave us in an endless cycle. We would keep sinning and falling again and again, trapped in guilt and shame. God did not only want to take away our sin. He wanted to deliver us from this present evil world so that we could go through it without compromise and without shame.
He reads Romans 3:20–26: by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified, but the righteousness of God has been revealed through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. We are justified freely by His grace, so that God might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. The speaker underlines the contrast: confidence in Christ, not in our own work, ability or strength of mind, body and emotions.
To show how God can be both perfectly just and perfectly loving, the speaker tells a story of a kingdom in a far-off place. Its king was considered the most just and loving king ever, because he never compromised justice and he always walked in love. One day the royal treasury was robbed, and the king decreed that whoever was caught would receive ten lashes.
The robberies continued, so the penalty rose to twenty lashes, and then to forty, which everyone knew meant death. A couple of weeks later, the thief was finally caught. It was the king’s own daughter. Because he was just, the king said in the sight of the whole kingdom that the sentence had to be fulfilled. The whole kingdom gathered on the day of her execution, wondering what he would do.
As the executioner raised the whip, the king came running out of the crowd shouting, “Stop.” He climbed onto the platform, took off his own shirt and lay down over his daughter. When the executioner hesitated, the king insisted that the sentence be carried out. The forty lashes fell on the king, and he died. The daughter lived.
“God is a just God,” the speaker says, and He is also love. The law could not keep us from sinning; it only showed that we were sinning and that we needed a Savior to take the penalty for us. “The king was just because payment had to be made,” he says. Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13).
Love That Will Never Disappoint
That love is the answer to cold hearts. The speaker observes how hard it has become for people even to hold a conversation without shouting at each other, and he traces it back to Matthew 24:12, the love of many growing cold. “But there’s good news,” he says. Romans 5:5 says hope does not disappoint, “because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.”
The hope is in Him, not in your own strength or ability. Because of that, the speaker says, you do not have to be offended or bitter about anything. You just have to know it is a spiritual war. He prays that his hearers would find in that love a safe haven, and stand strong through these days with courage, joy and peace.
He reads Isaiah 12:2–3: “Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid.” Therefore with joy we draw water from the wells of salvation. Those who give their lives to Christ have the love of God to draw from, and it keeps them afloat above all the problems of this world. They will go through it, he says, guaranteed by God and His love.
The speaker then turns urgent. There is an appointed amount of time beyond which none of us can live, and God is giving this moment of grace right now. Quoting the call not to harden your hearts today (Hebrews 3:15), and that now is the accepted time (2 Corinthians 6:2), he warns that “tomorrow” is a word the enemy uses to trap people in delusion. He calls for repentance from addictions and religious games, and asks what it would profit a person to gain the whole world and lose his soul (Mark 8:36).
Living It Out: Stand Strong This Week
The speaker closes by leading everyone in a prayer of surrender, asking Jesus to take every burden, addiction and compromise and to give the power to endure until the end with love, joy, peace and goodness. Here are practical steps drawn from this church service at the fair message:
- Refuse to follow the crowd. Before you go along with something, ask whether you are doing it only because everyone else is, as Exodus 23:2 warns.
- Read the times through Jesus’ words. Study Matthew 24 so that wars, earthquakes and lawlessness lead you to take heed rather than to fear.
- Endure without offense. Decide in advance not to let injustice harden your heart, and walk through each day in love, faith and loyalty.
- Bring the debt to Christ. Stop trying to relieve the weight of sin with substitutes. Like Abel, thank God for what He has done instead of presenting your own works.
- Draw from the wells of salvation. Spend time each day receiving the love of God that the Holy Spirit pours into your heart, so that hope keeps you afloat.
- Do not wait for tomorrow. If you need to surrender an addiction or a compromise, lay it at the feet of Jesus today.
The speaker’s final invitation was for anyone who needed healing, deliverance or provision to come forward for prayer, because the power of God is present not only to save but to heal, to deliver and to provide.
Timestamped Outline
- 0:00 Standing strong in a culture of compromise
- 1:05 Exodus 23: do not follow the crowd
- 2:05 Matthew 24: take heed that no one deceives you
- 4:11 Nation against nation and earthquakes
- 6:21 The beginning of sorrows as birth pains
- 9:37 Greater persecution of the church
- 12:45 He who endures to the end
- 13:46 Those days will be shortened
- 14:47 2 Timothy 3: perilous times
- 16:59 Sin is a debt
- 18:59 Cain and Abel
- 21:10 Fig leaves and coats of skin
- 22:12 Galatians 1: delivered from this present evil age
- 24:21 Romans 3: justified freely by His grace
- 26:28 The story of the just and loving king
- 29:41 The king takes the lashes
- 30:46 God is love, not lonely
- 33:56 Romans 5:5: hope does not disappoint
- 36:02 Isaiah 12: the wells of salvation
- 38:05 Today is the day of salvation
- 40:07 Prayer of surrender
- 42:12 Invitation for healing and prayer
Frequently Asked Questions
Can prayer stop the events Jesus described in Matthew 24?
The speaker says no. Jesus said these things must come to pass, so they are not something we can simply pray away. What prayer does change is us. There is a way to pray, he says, that allows us to stand strong in the midst of the mess, and God’s compassion is shown in His promise that for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.
Is moving somewhere safer a good way to avoid compromise?
Not according to this message. The speaker describes friends in ministry who moved to another nation out of fear, only to find conditions there were worse. He teaches that there is no place on the planet free of these pressures. Jesus did not promise escape; He gave Himself to deliver us from this present evil age, which means carrying us through it with strength, courage, joy and peace.
What does the speaker mean by “the way of Cain”?
The way of Cain is trying to appease God by our own works. Cain offered what he had produced by his own strength and was rejected, while Abel thanked God for what God had produced and was accepted. The speaker says much of the church has gone this way, and that the pressure only increases when we try to pay a debt only Christ can pay.
Scripture References
All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:
- Exodus 23:2 — do not follow a crowd to do evil
- Matthew 24:4–14 — the beginning of sorrows
- 2 Timothy 3:1–5 — perilous times in the last days
- Genesis 4:3–8 — the offerings of Cain and Abel
- Leviticus 17:11 — the life of the flesh is in the blood
- Galatians 1:3–4 — delivered from this present evil age
- Romans 3:20–26 — justified freely by His grace
- Romans 5:5 — hope does not disappoint
- Isaiah 12:2–3 — the wells of salvation
How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.
Watch More Messages
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