Baptized Rebels in Burning Hell

I look around today and look at the results of the modern gospel of easy-believism, and I see the church full of baptized rebels whom God never saved. They name the name of Christ, but live in rebellion to his laws and tolerate sin in their daily living. They call themselves Christians even though self sits on the throne of their lives and rules there.

They are yet strangers to repentance and regeneration because before there can be salvation, there must be true submission to God by way of repentance. God will allow no rebels into his holy heaven, yet our churches are full of baptized rebels who refuse to bow to Jesus as Lord. You can't cut Jesus into halves of Savior and Lord and choose the one you want, friend.

Many have gotten out their pocket knives and have carved out for themselves a God they are comfortable with. But Charles Spurgeon put his finger on the sore spot of false professions in his day when he warned his students. Do you imagine that the gospel is magnified or God glorified by going to the worldlings and telling them that they may be saved at this moment by simply accepting Christ as their Savior while they are wedded to their idols and their hearts are still in love with sin? If I do so, I tell them a lie, pervert the gospel, insult Christ, and turn the grace of God into lasciviousness.

Listen to me, friend. There are a lot of well-meaning pastors out there and sincere evangelists out there who mean to do good but who have broadened the way of salvation in ways Jesus never did. Jesus said the way to heaven was through a straight gate and on a narrow way and few there be that find it.

The title of my message today, friends, is baptized rebels in a burning hell because many today are victims of a spurious conversion where they mistook church membership for salvation and many have substituted an emotional religious crisis for a born-again experience. They became Christians to be saved from the consequences of their sins but they refuse to be saved from the love of sin. But Jesus never preached a sin in religion even if we do.

The bottom line is if Jesus is not your Lord then he was never your Savior. You just responded to an emotional appeal and you accepted some faulty theology. Some pastors today are unconverted men themselves who have no idea how to point a sinner to Christ for forgiveness of sin.

I was sitting in a Baptist church when I heard the pastor tell his congregation all you have to do to be saved, friends, is to believe John 3.16. It's that simple. Well, that's a lie from the pit of hell and it has smoke all over it for an unregenerate individual who merely professes Christianity without ever being born again. He's just a baptized rebel on his way to hell.

The prophet Isaiah speaks of the utter astonishment and surprise of a hypocrite found out in hell. The sinners in Zion are afraid. Fearfulness has surprised the hypocrites who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings.

Get down low to the ground, friend. Get down as low as you can go. Get real quiet.

Put your ear to the ground. Can't you hear them? Can't you hear them? Can't you hear the cries of the damned of a baptized rebel in a burning hell? Listen. Help me.

Help me. It's so dark in here. I'm on fire.

I was a deacon in a Baptist church. I don't belong here. Somebody help me.

I'm burning.