God S Last Call

I bring before you tonight, friends, a solemn warning. I fear there are some within the sound of my voice who will taste death before this year is over. Some are yet unconverted, unregenerate individuals who, if they die, will enter a Christless eternity.

Some of you are in the church, but you've been incorrigible under God's dealings with you. Though you named the name of Christ, you refused to part with your beloved sin. God is tender and full of mercy, yet he is a God of justice.

He will not tolerate presumptuous sin in the life of a believer who refuses to be reformed. I have seen God remove Christians early because of their hard necks and stubborn disobedience, after he has long shown them favor, yet they still won't be reformed and changed. A self has to sit and rule on the throne and despise the word of God and despise the God of the word through unrepentant sin.

They told God to keep his hands off an area in their life, and he had to remove them. In Ezekiel, God declares, the soul that sinneth, it shall die. Some of you have gotten out your pocket knives and have carved out for yourself a God, a God you can live with, but he's an imaginary God who tolerates sin, but the God of the Bible won't tolerate sin.

God must punish sin, and he who created you can remove you in the blank of an eye. For his word declares in 1 Samuel, the Lord killeth and maketh alive. I hope you don't mind, friends, if I preach to you tonight as if you're all sinners.

This sermon is a call to come to Christ for salvation. This sermon is a call for backsliders to get right with God, lest he has to remove you early for not heeding his reproofs, to take up your cross and follow him. God is a God of mercy and love, but he also is a God of justice and judgment, and he hates sin.

This sermon may be God's last call to you. In fact, that's the title of this sermon, God's Last Call, and if you ignore it or lessen it or treat it with indifference, then the solemn warnings of God's word in Proverbs 29, 1 may apply to you. He that is often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy, meaning you may die sooner than you realize because you refuse to listen to God and obey him.

I begin my message, friends, with the first book of the Bible in Genesis chapter 6, where God declares, my spirit shall not always strive with man, meaning that God has a timetable of mercy for individuals that runs out beyond a certain point. There is God's last call, that God's spirit strives with sinners by the convictions and admonitions of conscience to turn them from sin to God. If the spirit is resisted, quenched, and striven against, then God might strive long, but he will not strive always.

There will be a final call and no more. The curtain will come down. That person becomes a reprobate marked for destruction.

Listen, friends, if the spirit's willings are continually ignored or slighted or rejected, then the hammer of justice falls on that individual or nation. He that is often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy. We see a vivid picture of this in God drowning the world, the old world, because of sin.

And God said unto Noah, the end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and behold, I will destroy them with the earth, make thee an ark of gopher wood. Well, God told Noah to build an ark, and that preacher of righteousness immediately went to work to warn his neighbors, but they only mocked him. Oh, what a fool he was, they said, to build an ark when it never had stormed before.

What a foolish old man. Noah became the song of drunkards as they ignored his warnings, and deep in the woods was the continuous sound of hammers ringing out a warning, God's last call, God's last call, God's last call. And we see the long suffering of God, as he tells Noah, for yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth 40 days and 40 nights.

God grants them a reprise of seven days longer, as Noah, the preacher of righteousness, had a week of meetings, issuing solemn warnings, but the people remained indifferent and secure in their sins, eating and drinking until the day the flood came. He, that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy, God's last call went unheeded. The floods came, and their houses rose and sank, as the world was drowned in judgment, and there were, listen to me, there were nail prints on that ark, as desperate sinners tried to hang on, as they dug their nails into that gopher wood, trying to get a footing, trying to get a handle, until they were swept away to a watery grave, God's last call.

And God sent angels to wicked Sodom to warn Lot and his family of a coming judgment, and Lot ran right over to his son's house, his son's-in-law's house, to warn them, up, get you out of this place, for the Lord will destroy the city. But he seemed as one that mocked, why, they laughed in his face. It was God's last call.

He, that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy. As the sun rose on Sodom, hell rained down from heaven in fire and brimstone, and burned up the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah in the cities of the plain, reducing them to smoke and runes and ashes. We get a picture of this from Abraham's vantage point up on the mountain, and he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.

You can just picture that raging infernal, friends, of God's wrath pouring down on sin, the black smoke billowing upwards from their burned houses and charred bodies. God's last call. Dio Mudi, the great evangelist, was finishing his sermon to a Chicago congregation, and he asked them to think on the words, What will you do with Christ? He prayed and demissed his congregation, and later that evening, the great Chicago fire began, and that city became a burning inferno that killed hundreds and displaced a hundred thousand people out of their homes.

Lives were ruined. Lives were lost. Mudi never saw that congregation again.

It was God to some that night. It was God's last call. He that is often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.

Oh, friends, you don't want to die an unsaved person. You don't want to die and go to hell. Hell is a terrible region of outer darkness, oppressive heat, fire, torments, and suffering.

It's endless misery. My message to you may be God's last call. I've known many friends to die suddenly and unexpectedly.

Little did they dream that they were going to lay in their bed for the last time that evening. Little did they realize they were living their last days on earth, to be torn from their families and friends and business and home, to be thrust into eternity. And I appear this evening, friends, to some of you in what may indeed be God's last call.

And to some of you, you may be mocking me or not listening to me or not heeding to me, but it's not me begging you or warning you. It's God's spirit through me striving with you. Listen, I've got a burden for your souls, friend.

God is saying my spirit will not always strive with men. Let me ask you a question, friend. Is God's spirit striving with you during this message? Oh, two men were crucified alongside the Son of God.

One man mocked and the other man didn't. He was a penitent. He came to Christ and Jesus told him, today you will be with me in paradise.

It was God's last call. One went to an eternal hell, the other to a paradise with Jesus forever. Let me tell you about Jesus, friend.

Jesus is the Son of God who left heaven to come down here so we can go up there. When he was here in his earthly ministry he went about doing good. He was healing the sick and feeding the hungry, giving sight to the blind while he even raised the dead to life.

Yet what happened? Men cried, away with him, and nailed him to a cross. The cross was the place where men sought to get rid of him, but by his death it becomes the place where his saving power flows out to all who come in repentance, confessing they are sinners and own him as their Savior and Lord. Look, look, friend.

Look at that man on the cross. See him there with his arms outstretched, beckoning you to come to him and believe on him. Look at that bloodstained Savior for sin.

God says, come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they should be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they should be as wool.

In Luke's gospel we have the parables of the lost, the lost sheep that the shepherd searched high and low for until he was found. And the angels rejoiced over one sinner that repented more than 99 just persons which need no repentance. We also see in Luke's gospel the woman searching diligently for the lost coin.

She looks and looks with a candle in one hand, in a broom in the other, one for light and one for sweeping. The parable of the lost coin represents the various means and methods God makes use of to bring lost souls home to himself. And lastly, in Luke, we see the famous parable of the lost son.

Did you know, friend, this son can both represent the lost sinner and the backslider. Both needed to come home to the Father. Both needed to return to the Father in repentance.

But either way, whether a backslider or lost, we read, and he arose and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. Oh, it breaks me up every time I read it, friends.

The mercy and compassion and love of the Father. Oh, friend, won't you turn and give it all to Jesus? Jesus held nothing back at Calvary. How can we hold anything back from him? Give it all to him, friend.

Come to him in absolute surrender. Now, I've spoken to you plainly tonight under a burden for the souls of men. I've warned you, and I'm free from your blood on my hands.

I believe my Bible when it says the soul that sinneth, it shall die. I believe God is a God of love, but I also believe God is also a God who must punish sin. You better believe it, too, friend, before it's too late.

Or if you've not trusted this blessed Savior, receive him now before it's too late, and it's God's last call to you. Soon he will come in judgment on this world when his anger shall burn as an oven, and then you shall meet him as your judge. Hear in his love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Listen, friend, I know I am a sinner, and I need a substitute for sin. So do you, friend. So do you.

As there were hammers of warning ringing in the woods in Noah's day while he built the ark before destruction came, there are hammers of justice now that God brings down on sin. Listen carefully to this striking passage of Scripture from Matthew's gospel about the Son of God, and listen and see how Jesus gave himself so we can live. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers, and they stripped him and put on him a scarlet robe.

And when they had plated a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head and a reed in his right hand, and they bowed the knee before him and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews! And they spit upon him and took the reed and smote him on the head. And after that they had mocked him and they took the robe off from him and put his own raiment on him and led him away to crucify him. Listen, friends, as those cruel Roman soldiers fastened the Son of God to that cross, as they hammered nails into his hands and feet, every stroke of the hammer was an explanation point.

God must punish sin. God must punish sin. God must punish sin.

Oh, friends, it's time to do business with God. Come to Jesus, friend, and surrender your heart to him. Get serious with God, friend, and he will get serious with you.

Come, come to Jesus for forgiveness of sin. The gospel is a call to come to him. Bring to him your heartache.

Bring to him your tears. Bring to him your failures. Come to Jesus.

Lay yourself on him. Receive him as your savior. Oh, friend, this may be God's last call to you personally.

Don't delay. I beg you. Come.

Listen to this final plea. And the Spirit and the bride say, come. And let him that heareth say, come.

And let him that is a thirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.