In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes that God is a God of justice, holiness, purity, but also of pardon, grace, love, mercy, and compassion. He highlights that God does not take pleasure in the doom of sinners and loves sinners so much that he sent his beloved son to die for them on the cross. The preacher references the apostle Peter's words in 2 Peter 3:3-9, warning about scoffers in the last days and reminding listeners of God's patience and desire for all to repent. The sermon also explores stories from the Bible, including the judgment of sinful man, the importance of choosing the fear of the Lord, and the blasphemous feast of King Belshazzar in Daniel chapter 5.

You'll find an authorized version of the Word of God in the English language in front of you in the pew. Pick it up and turn with me to the Gospel, or rather turn with me to the Old Testament Scripture that you'll find in Joshua at the chapter 10. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and then Joshua in the Old Testament. The 10th chapter of the book of Joshua, I'm reading from verse 6. And the men of Gibeon sent unto Joshua to the camp to Gilgal, saying, Slack not thy hand from thy servants. Come up to us quickly, and save us, and help us. For all the kings of the Amorites that dwell in the mountains are gathered together against us. So Joshua ascended from Gilgal, he and all the people of war with him, and all the mighty men of valor. And the Lord said unto Joshua, Fear them not, for I have delivered them into thine hand, and there shall not a man of them stand before thee. Joshua therefore came unto them suddenly, and went up from Gilgal all night. And the Lord discomfited them before Israel, and slew them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, and chased them along the way that goeth to Bethphoron, and smote them at Isaacah, and to Mekedah. And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, and were going down to Bethphoron, that the Lord cast great stones from heaven upon them unto Isaacah, and they died. There were more which died with heel stones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword. Then spake Joshua to the Lord, in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel. And he said in the sight of Israel, Son, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou moon in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day. And there was no day like that before it, or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man. For the Lord fought for Israel. And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, unto the camp to Gilgal. And these five kings fled, and hid themselves in a cave at Machedah. And it was told Joshua, saying, The five kings are found hid in a cave at Machedah. And Joshua said, Roll back the stones from the mouth of the cave, and set men by it for to keep them. And stay ye not, but pursue after your enemies, and smite the hindermost of them. Suffer them not to enter into their cities, for the Lord your God hath delivered them into your hand. And it came to pass, when Joshua and the children of Israel had made an end of slaying them with a very great slaughter, till they were consumed, that the rest which remained of them entered into thin cities. And all the people returned to the camp, to Joshua, at Machedah in peace. None moved his tongue against any of the children of Israel. Then said Joshua, Open the mouth of the cave, and bring out those five kings unto me out of the cave. And they did so. And brought forth those five kings unto him out of the cave, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Shammuth, the king of Lattice, and the king of Aegon. And it came to pass, when they brought out those kings unto Joshua, that Joshua called for all the men of Israel, and said unto the captains of the men of war which went with him, Come near, put your feet upon the necks of these kings. And they came near, and put their feet upon the necks of them. And Joshua said unto them, Fear not, nor be discouraged, be strong and of good courage, for thus shall the Lord do to all your enemies against whom ye fight. And afterward Joshua smote them, and slew them, and hanged them on five trees, and they were hanging upon the trees until the evening. And it came to pass at the time of the going down of the sun, that Joshua commanded, and they took them down off the trees, and cast them into the cave wherein they had been hid, and laid great stones to the cave's mouth, which remained until this very day. And that day Joshua took Makeda, and smote it with the edge of the sword. And the king thereof he utterly destroyed, them and all the souls that were therein. He let none remain, and he did to the king of Makeda as he did unto the king of Jericho. Ending our lesson at the verse twenty-eight, God shall stamp his infallible book with his infallible seal of divine approval and blessing. I want to speak tonight upon a very intriguing and exciting subject, the five kings gobsmacked by God's spokesman. A proud man is hard to stop in his arrogance and in his bitterness against God. But when a man becomes a monarch and is clothed in the robes of the king, then he expects all other persons to grovel before his feet. This word of God, this book that records the narratives of the gobsmacking of the kings of the earth, has some intriguing stories to tell. In Psalm 2 we read the question, Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his knowledge. I want you to turn with me to the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, and you will find the king of Sodom gobsmacked by Abraham, the friend of God. The first proud king to be gobsmacked by God's man was the notorious monarch and potentate of sin city itself, the filthy city of Sodom. After Abraham's deliverance of the king of Sodom from his enemies, that proud upstart with the crown upon his head said to Abraham, Give me the persons, and take the goods to thyself. Notice the lust of Sodom's king. He wanted the persons to destroy their bodies in the curse and perversion of sin city. His city was a place for the body and souls of men and women and children. What did Abraham do? He lifted his hand to the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth, and he gobsmacked the lecherous king with a sodomite. You read about it in Genesis 14, and at verse 23, And I will not take from you a thread, even to a shoelatcher, and that I will not take anything that is thine, lest thou shouldst say, I have made Abraham rich. God in the next chapter approved what his servant had done. And God appeared unto him in a vision and said, Fear not, Abraham, I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. And he brought Abraham out, and he told him to survey the innumerable stars in the heavens. And he said, Your seed, Abraham, is going to be like that. Abraham got the indivisible riches of heaven. But what did the king of Sodom got? He got the bankruptcy of hell. A short time after that, Abraham went out and looked to the place where he himself had stood before the Lord. And looked to Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward the land of the Pleiades, And behold, and lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. Today there is one Pleiades on this earth which is a testimony to the awful judgment of God, and that is the Dead Sea. For in that sea there lies the ruins of Sodom and the cities of the Pleiades. God save us from being in any way poxed with the king of Sodom's sin. But as we turn over the book of Genesis, we come to another king. The king of the Philistines. King Abimelech. He was a wicked king. So wicked he was that when Abraham visited his country, and when Isaac visited his country, they were afraid to profess that they were married men. And they had to lie about their wives because this country was a wicked country. The king said to Isaac, Why did you lie? I have seen your country. There is no honor in your country for marriage and for the sanctity of the home. He said, What is more, I knew that you would have forced my wife, Rebekah, to commit adultery, and you would have murdered me into the bargain. I know you, king. The king was so gobsmacked by Isaac's word that he drove Isaac out and told him to depart from his territory. The king of the Philistines had found out the truth of the word, Be sure your sin will find you out. But turn from Genesis to the book of Exodus. And there we read in the first chapters of that book, the gobsmacking by Moses of the king of Egypt. The book of Exodus is the book about the meekest man who ever pilgrimaged on the earth. Moses was the meekest man in all the earth. But it, however, records a whole series of gobsmacks which Moses dealt to the pharaoh of Egypt. The king of Egypt was a tyrant. He was a persecutor. He was a murderer. He sought not only to destroy Moses, but he sought to destroy the whole nation of Israel. Above all, he was the greatest procrastinator in all history. And he was great in the great sin of always breaking. But the meek man, Moses, was no weak man. And he was able to shut the mouth of this lion of hell. At first, Noah pretended he could ignore Moses altogether. But something happened. The chief man and wise man of Egypt met Moses and Aaron face to face. And Moses cast down his rod, and it became a serpent. And the magicians of Egypt cast down their rods, and they became serpents. But suddenly, the rod of Moses decided it was breakfast time. And so the rod of Moses swallowed all the other rods. Someone asked me one day, did they really turn their rods into serpents? Well, Moses certainly did. But you see, these crafty men of Egypt had their serpents trained, so that the head of the serpent became the handle. And the serpent, as the master, controlled it, controlled it as a rod. And so, I don't think there was a miracle wrought by the chief man. They were conjurers and conmen. But the miracle came from God's man, who had a living serpent. And it certainly swallowed the other serpents. And you never read of the rod ever eating anyone else. So it must have been a very satisfying breakfast it had that day, to the confusion of a pharaoh. How true it is, you cannot contend with God and win. God is always the victor. And He always carries the day. I was reading with you tonight, The Cobb Smacking of the Kings of Cana by Giorgio. This was one of the most special days in all history. It was a day that was prolonged. God, through His servant, stopped the sun and stopped the moon and stopped the clock of time. It has never been stopped like that again. It never was stopped like that before. The long day. And the chronologists have used their skills. And they have produced the date of that day. And it dates to the time of Joshua. For the Bible is always right and never wrong. And the Bible is right. What a day was this, when the five great kings decided that they would finish with Joshua and his invading army. I have read with you what happened. And Joshua was able to bring those five great kings from the cave. He was able for his people. Why? Because God led them. God intervened. And greater is He that is in us, that we know God, than he who is in the world. Joshua's leader Moses could sing, My Father's God, I will exalt Him. The Lord is a man of war. The Lord is His name. Thy right hand has become glorious in power. Thy right hand hath dashed power. And Thy right hand hath dashed the enemies to pieces. What a God is our God. But we come last of all to another king. You will find all about him in Daniel chapter 5. King Belshazzar. He called a shameless and godless feast. And he made it as a platform of insult and blasphemy to the one true and living God. And then he decided he would take a deeper step into blasphemy. So he called upon his people to bring all the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God at Jerusalem, to bring them into the banqueting palace so that they might praise the gods of wood and silver and gold and of brass and iron and stone. And as he was calling this orgy of drunkenness and shamefulness, something happened. A man's hand appeared on the wall in front of the king's feet. And the hand wrote certain words on the wall. And the king's knees beat against one another. And the king's house, the king's body rather, became stilled and peeled. And deaf Jews arose upon his brow. And he said, send for someone to read what it said. And the writing of God's man was called Old Man Daniel. He was the only man in Babylon who could read the writing on the wall. It pronounced Belshazzar's death sentence. It pronounced that that very night he would die. And he would join the banqueting sinners who banquet on the fires of coals and the torments of the damned in the place called Eternal Hell's Midnight. Thou art weighed in the balances and art found. Thou art weighed, Belshazzar, in the balances and you're found wanting. The red lights of doom opened with terrible glare on the faces of the unhappy king and all those in the banquet with him. Why? Because God is a God of infinite justice. He's a God of impregnable holiness. He's a God of spotless purity. But thank God, He is also the God of pardon, the God of grace, the God of love, the God of mercy, the God of compassion, and the God of loving kindness. God takes no pleasure in the doom of sinners. Let me repeat that. Because God loves sinners, He gave all He could to save them from hell when He sent His well-beloved Son to die for us sinners on the cross. Listen to these words penned by the Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 3, verses 3 to 9. Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water. For by the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, preserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day when the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day, the Lord is not slack concerning His promise. As some men count slackness, but as longsuffering to us were, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. O God, the longsuffering of the Lord can be, and I pray God it will be, your salvation. What is your eternity going to be when you're gobsmacked forever? Because we read that the judgment day no man could open his mouth or defend his place before God. Every tongue spills, every voice ceases when God takes in hand the judgment of sinful man. The apostle Paul cried out, I pray you in Christ's death be reconciled to God. The first chapter of Proverbs, a terrible language, it says, Turn you at my reproof, behold I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you. Because I called and ye refused, I have stretched out my hand and no man regardeth. But ye have set it not all my counsel. I also will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh. When your fear cometh as desolation and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind, then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer. They shall seek me early, but they shall not find me. For that they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord. They would have known of my counsel. They despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way and be filled with their own devices. The turning away of the simple shall slay them. I like to say a word to the children of those whose parents are the offspring of God. Mr. Spurgeon in one of his great sermons tells of a godly mother who dreamed that she was at the judgment bar of God in the great day of final judgment. She was there and her children, all of whom were unconverted, were standing. And the judge, our Lord Jesus Christ, she dreamed, said, Mother, you are my beloved child. You are my sheep, although your children are still goats. They have no saving interest in me as their Savior, but you have. Enter you into the joy of heaven. The woman says she witnessed the shrieking of her children, but all was in vain. Christ claimed the mother and before she left them, she was caused to say, Children, though I love you, I must say amen to your eternal damnation. Pronounced by my Savior, depart from me, ye cursed, I never knew you. But where do sinners lost depart to? They are cast out into outer darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Cast out from your mother and your father, God. Cast out from your father and mother, Savior. Down to the pit of hell. Down to a night without a morning. Down to unending wrath. The pit of hell is bottomless. Yes, bottomless. You are going to be falling down and down forever. There are no coaching stages or steps in hell's decline. This is a land where there is no hope, no sunrise. The fires of the everlasting hell have burned into eternal death's horizon. These words, they flash forever before the weeping eyes of lost souls. Forever. Forever. Forever. Do you burn in hell the moment you arrive there? Yes, you do. After twelve months in hell, you will still be tormented. After twelve hundred years in hell, you will still be tormented. After twelve thousand years in hell, you will still be tormented. After twelve million years in hell, you will still be tormented. That's what this book and that's what Jesus Christ has said. Christ is no deceiver. He calls you to flee from the wrath. You will be in hell forever, ungodly sinner. Oh, what a weeping and wailing when lost ones heard of their fate. They fled to the rocks and the mountains. But our fleeing, alas, was too late. You older men and women, you will not escape the damnation of hell either. I and you middle-aged people, unbelieving as you are, will not escape the torments of the everlasting burning. If men do not turn, they will burn. And they will burn in a fire lit by God that never goes out. It's not a venture to venture on Christ. It is an assurance. It's unsurpassing safety. It is eternal hope and eternal life. Trust Christ right now. In that pure, say then, O my Lord, prepare my soul for that great day. Wash me in the precious blood. And take. Thank God He will do it. Only trust Him. Only trust Him. Only trust Him now. He will see of you. Hallelujah! He will see of you now. For Jesus shed His precious blood. Rich blessings to bestow. Plunge now into the precious blood that washes white. Amen and Amen. Let's bow our heads. Father, we have been looking into the darkness of a lost sinner's hell. We're looking up at mouths that were stopped. Men who were obeyed during their lifetime. But suddenly it all came to an end. The unending end of a damned soul in hell. The riches didn't matter. Their royalty didn't matter. Their power didn't matter. They were lost. O God, may every sinner here seek the Lord while He may be found. And call upon Him while He is near. May they turn to Christ freely offered to them in the gospel. In Jesus' name. From the people of God's hand. Amen.