I was talking with a Christian about the
subject of hell and the fact that hell
is a place of punishment of everlasting duration
and she looked at me strangely and commented,
I have been in dozens of churches and
I have never heard a sermon on hell.
I just hear feel-good messages from the
majority of the pulpits in this town.
I believe that person is right in her
assessment of churches and that reflects the land
as a whole.
When a pastor preaches only feel-good messages,
he reveals the fact that he is an
unfaithful minister who cares little for your soul.
In the book of Ezekiel, God addresses those
who represent him as ambassadors and he speaks
of those unfaithful ministers who fail to warn
the wicked of their great danger of dying
in their sins and being cast into hell.
Please turn in your Bibles to the book
of Ezekiel and go to chapter 3.
We will read verses 17 through 20.
And friends, listen carefully to this striking passage
of the great responsibility of those who are
soul winners and those who preach the gospel.
Son of man, I have made thee a
watchman unto the house of Israel.
Therefore hear the word at my mouth and
give them warning from me.
When I say unto the wicked, thou shalt
surely die, and thou givest him not warning,
nor speakest to warn the wicked from his
wicked way to save his life.
The same wicked man shall die in his
iniquity, but his blood will I require at
thine hand.
Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he
turn not from his wickedness, nor from his
wicked way, he shall surely die in his
iniquity, but thou hast delivered thy soul.
Again, when a righteous man doth turn from
his righteousness and commit iniquity, and I lay
a stumbling block before him, he shall die.
Because thou hast not given him warning, he
shall die in his sin, and his righteousness,
which he hath done shall not be remembered,
but his blood will I require at thine
hand.
Listen, friends, these are sobering words which should
alarm us who stand in pulpits in the
land.
If we preachers fail to warn the wicked
of their great and grave danger of dying
in their sins, and entering a crisis eternity,
then we shall be held responsible.
Their blood will be on our hands.
For the last several years, I have visited
countless churches, and I have listened to many
messages from preachers who cared more about their
reputation than the souls of their hearers.
They were for the most part funny men
who wanted your applause and approval.
They wanted you to like their message and
acknowledge that you liked it.
They needed acceptance from their hearers, and they
crafted their sermons to be entertaining and amusing.
It's like having cancer, and you go to
the cancer specialist, and instead of him treating
your cancer, he hands you a bag of
candy and changes the subject and never addresses
the fact that you are in grave danger
of dying a painful death.
Rather, he just tells you a few jokes
on the way out of his clinic, and
he makes you laugh a little, and gives
you that bag of candy to give you
a sugar high that will soon fade away.
That, friends, is your average preacher in America
today.
We have pygmies in the pulpit who preach
pleasant little messages to pew potatoes who love
to be entertained by their pastor.
But years ago, there used to be giants
in the land, preachers who warned men of
their great danger, and who weren't afraid to
preach up the blood and the cross and
call sin black and hell hot.
They cared little about pleasing you with their
sermons because they were greatly concerned about your
souls.
I'll be honest with you.
In the last few years, I've gotten up
and walked out of more church services than
I've actually been able to sit through.
I just can't take the nonsense that passes
for church anymore.
When did the church become a nightclub?
When did the church become a house of
entertainment rather than a house of prayer?
When did preachers change their message to please
their congregations rather than alarm and awaken them
to their great danger?
How many pastors today are more like a
Jay Leno than a Jonathan Edwards?
Can you just imagine Jonathan Edwards warming up
his congregation with a few funny jokes and
stories before he preached on the everlasting burnings
of hell?
But today, we have more pygmies and pulpits
than giants and more pew potatoes who are
nothing more than unconverted church members who desire
to be entertained.
The church in America today, for the most
part, will not warn you to flee from
the wrath to come.
And in regard to these pew potatoes, I
remember Vance Havner saying, we have more babies
in the sanctuary than in the nursery.
And these 200-pound babies cry and fuss
when they get a new pastor because he
changed their formula.
The main problem, I believe, is we've built
such enormous church campuses that need a high
income stream to support them.
You cannot risk preaching unpopular messages because the
numbers will fall off.
And there goes your nice church campus with
all the ball fields and lakes and picnic
areas.
So we water down the message not to
offend anybody.
And people get used to that kind of
preaching.
And it becomes their main staple and diet.
And if you try to take them off
of it with preaching the full counsel of
God, they will scream bloody murder.
But our text in Ezekiel says that if
we fail to warn the wicked of his
wicked ways and he dies in his iniquities,
his blood will be on our hands.
We don't think of that when we enter
the pulpit on Sunday.
Rather, we're too nervous about whether the crowd's
gonna be entertained at our funny stories or
not.
After all, we have to keep them happy
or they will move their membership.
And we can't have that.
This generation of church members wants to be
entertained.
So we give them what they want rather
than give them what they need.
We have lost sight of eternity and the
God of eternity.
For there is a coming day of judgment
for all mankind.
And in the midst of that terrible day
is a great white throne that is so
terrifying that earth and sky flee from its
presence.
The judge of all the earth sits upon
that white throne, which speaks of holiness and
purity.
Christ Jesus will judge every man according to
the works he has done, whether good or
bad.
It's not a wholesale consignment where all are
judged equally.
Rather, each case will be reviewed individually.
Cases will be tried.
Evidence presented in that grand courtroom scene.
Men's lives will be held up against the
strictness and severity of the law of God.
God requires perfection to get to his heaven.
And we are not perfect.
Rather, we are all lawbreakers and guilty rebels
who deserve punishment for breaking that law.
I know I'm a sinner and I need
a sin substitute in the person of Jesus
Christ.
But on that day of judgment, earthly kings
and rulers will tremble at the authority and
majesty before them on that great white throne.
Allow me to read you that scene taken
from the book of Revelation in chapter 20.
And I saw a great white throne and
him that sat on it from whose face
the earth and heaven fled away and there
was found no place for them.
And I saw the dead, small and great,
stand before God.
And the books were opened.
And another book was opened, which is the
book of life.
And the dead were judged out of those
things which were written in the books according
to their works.
And the sea gave up the dead which
were in it.
And death and hell delivered up the dead
which were in them.
And they were judged every man according to
their works.
And death and hell were cast into the
lake of fire.
This is the second death.
And whosoever was not found written in the
book of life was cast into the lake
of fire.
Listen, friends, this describes a huge crowd of
dead people.
They are all dead.
Great and small, famous and obscure, rich and
poor.
But they all have one thing in common.
Their lives on earth as they knew it
has ended.
They now face eternity and the God of
that eternity.
And many of them stand there because they
were not warned not to go there.
Rather, they just heard funny stories at their
church on Sunday morning.
And they were made to feel a little
better about themselves before they went to lunch.
And now there are no more lunches and
no more church services for it is all
ended in death.
As a tree falls, so it shall lay,
says the word of God.
He that is unjust, let him be unjust
still.
And he which is filthy, let him be
filthy still.
And he that is righteous, let him be
righteous still.
And he that is holy, let him be
holy still.
Let me ask you, how many sermons have
you heard on hell this year?
How many sermons have you heard on the
need of repentance and the necessity of regeneration?
Has the law been thundered in your ears
to awaken you off your false foundation of
carnal security?
Have you been shown a bloody cross and
the Prince of Glory who suffered and died
there?
There is a big crowd in hell, friends.
It's been estimated that 83 people a minute
die without Christ.
They die in their sins.
When you add that up, that's about 5
,000 people an hour.
It's 119,000 a day who die in
their sins and enter a Christless eternity.
That means during the course of this week
alone, 836,000 persons perished without Christ.
Do the math, and that comes out to
be 3.3 million a month that drop
into the torments of hell.
Do you realize, brother preacher, brother evangelist, that
there are over 40 million persons a year
who die and open their eyes in hell
and its regions?
Now think of all the people who've lived
on earth since the beginning of mankind and
how those crowds of people fill the regions
of hell with their cries and shrieks day
and night.
Hell is a noisy, crowded place of torments,
and it's forever lasting.
But have we done our job as soul
winners and warned the wicked not to go
there?
Have we preached the full counsel of God
and shown man his duty of repentance and
his necessity of regeneration through the new birth?
Or have we watered down the gospel so
much that it can't save a flea, much
less a sinner from hell?
When we stand before that judge, will our
hands be clean of the blood of our
hearers, or will their blood be on our
hands for failing to warn the wicked?
I remember a day in America years and
years ago when you could enter a church
and hear a sermon about hell.
I remember a day in America when you
would hear a sermon on sin, when you
would hear about a bloody cross and a
redeemer who died there because of sin.
I remember preachers preaching up the duty of
repentance, and unless you repent, you shall all
likewise perish.
Preachers weren't afraid of men back in those
days, but they sure feared the Almighty.
But now we get a bunch of jokes
and funny stories and comedy and entertainment, and
we drop one by one into hell and
its fires.
I long for a day when revival comes
to America once again, when the pulpits of
this land are on fire with the Holy
Spirit and men are bowed down under the
awful presence of God.
I long for the day of anointed preaching
where men and women and boys and girls
cry out in alarm, what must I do
to be saved?
I long for a God consciousness in our
sanctuaries once again.
I pray every day for those days to
return to this sin-soaked nation that has
turned its back on God.
I long for the day when the church
is revived and each member is consumed with
eternity and their motto is, only one life,
t'will soon be past, only what's done
for Christ will last.
I long for God to raise up a
new generation of preachers who aren't pygmies in
the pulpit, but men of a different stamp.
I long for God to raise up these
kind of men, The Apostle Paul, Luther, Wesley,
Whitfield, Knox, Edwards, Finney, Spurgeon, Moody, each shared
a common denominator, a fire in their belly.
They were each so eaten up with the
gospel and thirsty for Christ and filled with
the Holy Ghost.
They could not stand idly by while others
perished.
They saw nothing but eternity, worshiped the Holy
God and served the risen Christ, living not
for earth nor its gains, but living only
for heaven and its rewards.
When they preached, they linked the devil with
sin and the cross with salvation.
They preached hell and its fire and Christ
and him crucified.
Not one of them feared king, queen, or
pope, and not one of them sought the
compliments of men.