In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of recognizing God's mercy and the need to accept Jesus Christ as our Savior. He highlights that God holds the power over life and death in His hands, and it is crucial for people to understand this truth. The preacher also emphasizes the significance of acknowledging our sinfulness and the need for salvation through Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. He concludes by emphasizing the importance of faith in Jesus and the assurance of eternal life in heaven for those who believe in Him.

Power to release thee, humanly speaking, that's so. But notice the answer the Lord gave, the Lord's answer, thou couldst have no power at all against man, except it were given thee from above. Isn't that a solemn scripture? I think what, I said what I think we can do, I think you can preach that God can command the winds and the waves to obey him and everybody else. Boy, that's the kind of God I believe in. I think you can go far enough now to preach and marvel that God can raise men from the dead like he did last, the Lord. And people say, Amen. I think you can preach that God can command the evil spirit like he did in the winter and got the hogs and went and destroyed people. Amen. But if you preach that God has power over man in his inmost being, we got a dogfight on our hands. He said to Abimelech, I kept you from sinning, was Abraham's word. He comes to a man sitting at the post of being a tax collector and said, leave it, come and follow me. The most solemn thought that I ever faced, and I know I don't know how to preach it, it sounds so cruel and so harsh. But I know it's the proof that the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ holds the destiny of man in his hands. And that men ought to find that out in our day. I believe with all of my heart in decision in its proper place. I believe in public profession in its proper place. But I think the missing note that this generation is going to go to hell and never hear, broadly speaking, is that men in relation to God are just exactly like Pilate and the Lord. Pilate can move only as a power bigger than he is allows him to. Men, when all is said and done, are in the hands of Almighty God, who has a right, and he's pleased to exercise it, to do as he will. I do not believe that anybody will ever have much appreciation for God's wondrous mercy until we take it out of the marketplace and place it once again in the blood-stained hand of Christ and start telling men and women, now you can't experience his mercy while you're rejecting him. It's in his hands. The God of the Bible is the God of power, power over man, power over man. I'm this much of an old faker. I can't explain his logistics. Nothing can rise or wriggle apart from him. If we could preach a God who does, who saves people in a way other than grace, people would love it. The God of this Bible, the manufacturer of the great religious revival we've had, it's got everybody believing in God and living in sin. It's different from the God who saves people in spite of. That's the deep meaning of grace. By grace are you saved. If we could preach that men deserve salvation, if we could preach that men do it themselves, but if we preach that it's a gift of God, it must be the truth that we are hostile to God. When we remember that men hate that more than anything this side of his, that our situation is so desperate, our nature to survive, that if God saves us, he has to save us in spite of us. And finally only motive to save sinners within the goodness of his own heart. The God of the Bible is sworn to bring judgment on sin. Surely the popular God won't punish sin. The only commandment people seem to be afraid of now is the 11th, thou shalt not get caught. But the God of the Bible is sworn to be by no means clear for guilty. The God of the Bible is still the same God that says the soul that sinneth it shall die. The God of the Bible is the God who sends men to hell, the wicked shall be sent to hell. And all the nations that forget that the God of the Bible sends men to hell. That's awful that the God of the Bible sends men to hell. The scriptures I think say he sends men to hell for two reasons. First, the God of the Bible sends men to hell to preserve. Thank God to preserve and restrain rebellious rebels would do if he didn't. I do not believe that we do service to the character of God by trying to soften this blow. I'm familiar with that half-truth that God doesn't send men to hell, they send themselves to some truth that's by not any means all the truth. And we do not do service to a God whom we know is the God of love if we do not understand his love is so pure and his love is so holy that he is determined that when he creates the new heavens and the new earth nothing that defile it shall enter in. And to restrain the damage that rebellious men unregenerated by the spirit and uncleaned by the blood would do. God Almighty sends men to hell. There's a verse of scripture, kind of one of my shouting around verses of scripture, I left to quote it now and then when I'm sort of under the juniper tree. Nevertheless, we look according to his promise. What for? New heaven and the new earth. Wherein dwelleth righteousness? If I'm right, you read the book of Psalms, you'll find many times in the book of Psalms terrible judgments come on the enemy that God may be merciful to his people. I don't know. God loves his people. A lot more than his people love him. And he's not gonna let some rebel turn the new Jerusalem into another hell. He's not gonna do it. He's not gonna do it. But the scriptures, of course, are crystal clear that the main reason God judges and sends men to hell is to punish them. Not to correct them, but to punish them. We're here where we only can worship. And I think not in her end. But God said to punish them. To punish all of us put together. Couldn't prove our conception of sin and come close to how highness it must be. If a God who's a God of love is determined to punish sin by sending men to eternal hell, sin must be awful. It must be a terrible thing to be a rebel in God's world and to hate his holiness and to despise his rule and to trample his love. Hell isn't a place of correction. It's the place where a Christ holy God unbears his arm and punishes men for their sins. I was down in Mobile, Alabama. They put me on the radio. It was one of these so-called union meetings. All of that church town got together. We were trying to make an impact. The Lord did give us a little blessing. And the radio got, I don't know, fire struck. And I preached on judgment. I just preached on just hell. I couldn't preach on anything else. It got awful hot. And it got to where people talking on the street and people under conviction. I couldn't get off of it. And finally the big shots in the town, the big religious people, they got on their nerves and began to telephone and write and buttonhole the manager of the station. He wasn't a Christian. And they demanded that they put me off there. That's why our children can't sleep at night. Oh, we can hear all over this city. I'd love to see it happen somewhere else. And the people at least conscious that there might probably be a sin-hating, sin-punishing God. That when he hung his son on the cross, he wasn't exercising a little Sunday afternoon drill. He was doing the only thing that can be done to provide a way of escape from the awful wrath of a holy God against sin. And the manager called me in. He said they've put me fire under there. Threatened to get in touch with the radio commission. They're going to do this and that and the other. They're really making it hot. I said, why? I wouldn't cause you any trouble. And you just, you want to put me off, it's all right. He said, no, sir. He said, preacher, I ain't a Christian. But he said, I sure wish I was. And then he cussed a little bit. He said, if you'll keep on preaching hell, I'll keep you on until hell freezes over. I don't know that they shot you. And he wouldn't put me off. And he got saved before it was over. And I got a letter from a nice, pious church member. And he was very sweet. And he said, young man, he should have been listening to you. And I'm an old man. And I want to offer a word of counsel to you. I hope you'll take it in the spirit which is given. I have no doubt he is well-meaning. He said, young man, it won't do sinners a bitter good for God to send them to hell. And the next day, without mentioning his name, and I think without getting in the flesh myself, I called attention to the fact that I had received a letter from a man. And he told me that it wouldn't do sinners any good for God to send them to hell. And I said, the man was right. But that ain't why God sends men to hell. I know I can't understand it. I couldn't explain it to anybody. I don't want to believe it. The only reason I believe it is because it's in the book. God don't send people to hell to do them good. God help us. I wish our hearts could break without it. I wish our eyesickles would melt. I wish we'd try and get a little alarmed about it. God sends people to hell to punish them. That's why I send people to hell, to punish them. That's why I send people to hell not to do them good, but to punish them. And I used to go on the farm. I had a black shepherd dog. That's the smartest dog anybody ever had. Boy, he was a crackerjack. I taught him every kind of trick he'd mind me do, whatever I told him to do. And one day I passed by him and he snapped at me. And I looked at him and some old white stuff was drooling out of his mouth and it scared me. I just looked over. And I ran to Papa and I said, Papa, something wrong with Shep. And Papa came out of the house and stood on the porch and looked at Shep. And he grabbed me and put me back in the house and said, stay there. And he went up to the mantel and got the shotgun and went out on the porch and he took a bead. And he shot old Shep right square between the eyes. And I cried like my heart would break. My daddy tried to explain to me he never did succeed. He said, Shep's mad. And the only thing you can do as a mad dog is to get rid of him. Oh, men and women, God's not gonna take men to glory to turn it into hell. And the only thing even a holy God can do, else he's a monster. If a man wades through his life here on God's earth, if a man lives the days of his life here on God's earth that has been visited by the man Christ, where every bit of the soil has a little bit of the Shep blood of Jesus Christ that mingled and flowed into Palestine thought. Now the times are spreaded away so that I believe I'm scientific and I say when you go out and step on mother earth, there's a little bit of the Shep blood of Jesus Christ. This is a better world. There's one thing about it that's wonderful. God's taught enough of it to visit it and die on a cross. And if a man wades through that, there's nothing God can do except end in death. The God of the Bible judges sin. The God of the Bible don't punish sin. There's no hope for our foreigners except as I can be united to him who one day in time right here on this earth was nailed to a cross and God planted his spleen, poured out his wrath, and as he took my place he endured my hell. If hell is any more than my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me at hell? My only hope, my only plea is Christ Jesus died and he died for me. An infidel met old John Jasper, the colored preacher, and he said, Brother Jasper, suppose you've been right all this preaching you've done. Suppose when you die you go to hell. Brother John said, suppose it. I dies and goes to hell. Soon as my feet touch down there, I'm going to start a testimony meeting praising the Lord Jesus for dying in my step and said the devil ain't gonna let me stay. Oh, as you've been joined by faith to him. This Reformation audio track is a production of Stillwater's Revival Books. SWRB makes thousands of classic Reformation resources available, free and for sale, in audio, video, and printed formats. Our many free resources, as well as our complete mail order catalog, containing thousands of classic and contemporary Puritan and Reform books, tapes, and videos at great discounts, is on the web at www.swrb.com. We can also be reached by email at swrb.com, by phone at 780-450-3730, by fax at 780-468-1096, or by mail at 4710-37A Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T6L 3T5. You may also request a free printed catalog. And remember that John Calvin, in defending the Reformation's regulative principle of worship, or what is sometimes called the scriptural law of worship, commenting on the words of God, which I commanded them not, neither came into my heart. God here cuts off from men every occasion for making evasions, since he condemns by this one phrase, I have not commanded them, whatever the Jews devised. There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions than that they are not commanded by God. For when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to his commands, they pervert true religion. And if this principle was adopted by the Papists, all those fictitious modes of worship in which they absurdly exercise themselves would fall to the ground. It is indeed a horrible thing for the Papists to seek to discharge their duties towards God by performing their own superstitions. There is an immense number of them, as it is well known, and as it manifestly appears. Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying his word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error. The Prophet's words, then, are very important, when he says that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to his mind, as though he had said that men assume too much wisdom when they devise what he never required, nay, what he never knew.