God's Burden for Souls

I have a very solemn message for you today, friends, and it lays heavy upon my heart. I believe a thrice holy God has to give an evangelist a burden for souls. It's not a natural thing to care about someone dying and slipping into hell.

I believe that burden comes from God. I believe God has a burden for souls. The apostle Peter tells us so.

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness, but is longsuffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. God's burden for souls is evident in Calvary, where his only begotten son hung naked on a bloody cross as a substitute for sin. I believe God's heart broke that day, if I may so speak, when God had to turn his face away from his bloodstained son, as he became a curse for us.

And I believe, friends, that God's heart breaks every time he has to send one of his creation to a smoking furnace of hell. And I believe you are breaking God's heart right now by your rejection of his son and by your willful slavery to sin. By his grace, the Holy Spirit has been wooing you in answer to someone's prayers, and you still strive against the Spirit because of your love for self and sin.

Peter said that God wants all to come to repentance. Maybe you're a good church member who has never repented. Repentance means that the love of sin dies.

Maybe you're sitting in the presumed safety of a church sanctuary, but your legs dangle over hell below. Like I said, I believe God gives grace to an evangelist to have a burden for souls. I've spent entire nights out of bed on my knees, crying out to God with tears streaming down my face that God would break some hardened sinner's heart in the morning service where I was due to preach.

And God did just that. He answered that prayer as a young man came bounding down the aisle, jumping up and down, exclaiming, God saved me. He really saved me.

God saves man because he has a burden for souls. It broke God's heart to kick Adam and Eve out of paradise, but they had become unfit for it because of sin. And man today is unfit for heaven because of the very same thing, sin.

God had such a burden for souls he sent his son to suffer and die in the stead of sinners. Amazing love. Oh, what a burden for souls.

And Christ Jesus was obedient unto death on a bloody cross because of his burden for souls. I have one verse today, friends, from a message, and one verse alone, and I believe this verse says it all. In Ecclesiastes 1.4 we read, one generation passes away and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever.

This tear-soaked earth abides forever as one generation comes and lives and dies, and another generation follows after it. If you want a reminder of the brevity of life and the people who have walked this earth, go take a stroll through your local graveyard and read the names on all those headstones from past generations. Death, friends, is no respecter of persons, for all men die.

There is a calendar up in glory, with a certain date circled in red, and that day is your red-letter day, friend, when it is your turn to die. God knows the end as well as the beginning, and he knows the exact date of your impending death. Death can come to you quite suddenly, without any notice or advance warning.

For man also knoweth not his time, as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare. So are the sons of man snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them. Last December, I was at my daughter's college graduation, and afterwards we went out to celebrate at a local restaurant, and the very next day I was lying in an ambulance on my way to the hospital with a sudden heart attack.

All four of my arteries were blocked ninety-five percent, and I was a ticking time bomb ready to explode. I didn't know previously I had heart trouble until then. Well, I lay in the hospital for the next sixty days, while I had quadruple bypass surgery and a pacemaker put in me, and I say all that, because life is short and unexpected.

For one day I was celebrating a thing, and the next day I was standing on the verge of eternity. One generation passes away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever. It is my prayer, friends, that the Holy Spirit would speak to hearts through this message and disturb someone, that God would take your blinders off and show you where you were going, that the very devils in hell would jump up out of those twisting flames and make a grab at you to get your attention and show you that you deserve nothing but to go to hell.

You are guilty of breaking God's strict holy law, and God says he will in no wise clear the guilty, that there are chains awaiting you in that prison of outer darkness, where the screams and shrieks of the damned will so unsettle you that terror will be your only companion, like Charles Dickens' three spirits that visited Scrooge. I pray that your sins will now rise and appear before you and haunt you and disturb you and bring conviction to awaken and alarm you to your present danger of dying in your sins and being thrust into a Christless eternity, God could remove you, friend, from this earth quite suddenly, especially with a plague in the air. Turn to God and become a seeker of him, and pray that you will receive a revealed Christ for forgiveness of sin.

Jesus is the only remedy for sin, but he can't save unless that remedy is applied. I know I'm a sinner, and the only hope for pitiful little E. A. Johnston is when Christ's life is laid down and applied to me. You must get to Christ, friend, and get under his blood.

Oh, friend, I hope you don't hear only this poor preacher's shaky voice, but that God, in his mercy and by his grace, that you will hear his voice of authority as it comes in power and majesty to you. Only God can raise a dead man to life, but you have to hear from him. God says in Isaiah, Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else.

And Jesus said, I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. The gospel is for the hungry, the weary, and the thirsty.

Let me ask you, friend, are you hungry for God? Are you weary of your sins? Are you thirsty for Christ? Then come to him, and believe on him, and own him as your Savior and Lord. Throw down your shotgun of rebellion at his nail-pierced feet, and surrender all you are to all he is, and he is Lord. He is Lord.

I don't want you to go to hell, friend. I'm being true to your soul. Repent of your sins, and lay that sin burden down, and come clean with God, and come to that bloodstained Christ who is the only refuge and remedy for sin.

Get serious with God, friend, and he will get serious with you. God has a burden for souls. Let us pray.