Open Your Coffin See Rotten Bones

Come with me this evening, friends. Come with me to a cemetery where lies a grave, a grave with your name on the headstone. There you lay below in your coffin.

Did you have a good life, friend? Did you accomplish all that you set out to do in life? The title of my message this evening, friends, is Open Your Coffin, See Your Rotten Bones. Look down in that coffin, friend. Look at the rottenness of your life laying in that soft, cushioned casket.

Look at the skull, which has been filled with the most perversion and lustful thoughts. How many times your cranium was nothing more than a warehouse of filthy merchandise. Look at those empty eye sockets, once filled with venom, crawling one over the other.

Look at those adulterous venom crawl out of those eye sockets. Look at them crawl out, friends. Look at the mouth where lips once had been.

How many lies were told by them. How many dirty jokes and filthy stories spewed forth from that fountain of polluted water, brown with the stains of sand. How many falsehoods came forth from that mouth of an open sepulture of dead man's bones.

Look at those arms and feet dangling there, once swift to evil. How many dishonest trades were carried out by those bleached white hands. How many steps into evil did those feet wander into.

Look at that chest cavity, friends, of that skeleton of yours, where your heart once beat for selfish gain. How full of pride and boasting was that black heart of yours. How many times did it crawl with the vipers of lust and covetousness, deceit and envy, unforgiveness and bitterness.

How your wicked heart would seethe with anger at the sight of another person. How merciless your heart was towards others. Look at those bleached white cage of bones which used to house your very soul.

Open the lid of your coffin and look at those wretched stack of bones that once was your life, a selfish life lived unto itself. What dryness, what rottenness lies there, what emptiness was once housed there in that skin of corruption. Never did you sacrifice for the God who created you.

You just lived unto yourself. Never did you warn the lost around you to flee from the fires of hell. Did you even know about them yourself, friend? Seldom did you crack open a Bible or fall to your knees in prayer and unburden your heart to God for your own sins, let alone the sins of this nation, the lost in your community.

Or did you even spend any time on your knees crying out to God to save a loved one? Oh, what a selfish sack of bones you were, rattling with pride and self-worth. Now how close you are to tumbling into your own casket of velvet and silence to be placed in a cold grave. But where will your soul go? Where will it go? Where will it be sent? If you squandered your life upon yourself, where should your soul go? Does it merit the pleasantries of heaven or does it deserve the miseries of hell? Where should you go as your skeleton is laid in the grave? Oh, what evidence do you have, friend, that you were a Christian? Will your church membership help you now? Will your good reputation among men benefit you in this dark, solemn hour? My Bible has this to say to all men everywhere.

The soul that sinneth, it shall die. In Isaiah, we read about the unconverted religious person who has a rude awakening at death. The sinners in Zion are afraid.

Fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire, who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings. We read about the terrible doom of the unsafe sinner in God's word in Malachi as it compares God's wrath on sinners as a fierce oven. Hear me now.

For behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven, and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly shall be stubble. And the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. Open your coffin, friend, and gaze down at the bones of your life.

See the malice and hatred lying there in a heap. See the lies and deceptions stacked one upon the other like bones sticking out. See the twisted pile of bleached bones now charred black with the sins of your life, stained forever by all the iniquities you carried out while you were in there.

Look at that stack of ruin and regret. Look at the heap of worthless bones like a junkyard of no value and no good to anybody. What a selfish life you lived unto yourself in that house of rattling.

Let your conscience pull away the black curtain of your life and see its nakedness exposed to eternity. What a shameful stack of wasted bones ready for the fire in Luke's gospel we read. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the tree.

Every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is whomed down and cast into the fire. Listen, friends, to the words of Christ Jesus. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee.

For it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not that the whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee. For it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not that the whole body should be cast into hell.

Open your coffin, friend, and look at those offending members that held sin with delight and feasted on it. Look at that stack of accusing bones that were ambassadors to sin. How often they transgressed the God of heaven and trampled over the blood of Christ.

Look at that wretched stack of accusing bones whose very bony fingers point back at you in accusations. They cry against you. You made me sin against God.

You made me participate in evil. You made me vessels of wrath to be poured out upon for all eternity. Where once these bones were consumed with lust, now they will be consumed by fire.

Walk with me, friends. Lean over your casket and scoop up your bones and come with me to the very scene of the final judgment day where you and your bones will stand trial at a tribunal before the judge of all the earth and shall not the judge of all the earth do right? Listen, friend. He will in no wise clear the guilty.

Come, friend. Come along with me and drag your bones behind you and look upon this scene now that you will face soon enough. And I saw a great white throne and him that sat on it from whose face the earth and heaven fled away and there was found no place for them.

And I saw the dead stand before God. Let me pause here, friends, to say that is you and your bag of bones standing there before the judge on that throne. And the books were opened and another book was opened which is the book of life.

And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books according to their works. That means you, friend, all the things you did while you were in your bag of bones called your body when you were alive. Like I said before, here is where your bones will accuse you before God.

Your hands will say as they point an accusing finger at you, he made me do it. He made me to sin. He used these hands for wickedness and evil.

Your legs will buckle as they cry out. He made my feet run to evil. He was quick to sin.

I tell you all your bones, the bones of your sins will accuse you on that day as you stand guilty before a holy God. Let's read on, friends, about this terrible judgment scene. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it.

And death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them. And they were judged, every man, according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.

This is the second death. Now listen to this last verse, friend, as it pertains to you. Hear me now.

And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. What a horrible fate, friend, to be burned. Have you ever burned your hand in a stove fire or in a flame? Oh, the pain of being cast into an unquenchable fire that burns and burns for ever and ever.

Have you opened your coffin and seen your rotten bones, friend? How do they look to you? Will they keep you out of hell and its flames? There is only one who can save you, and his name is Jesus Christ. He stepped out of heaven to come down here so we can go up there. Jesus came to earth on a mission from God to seek and to save that which was lost.

Have you ever been lost, friend? Have you ever seen yourself as a guilty sinner before a holy God? Do your sack of bones condemn you? Do your heap of sins rise up before you in a smoking room? Jesus came doing good, healing the sick and giving sight to the blind. He gave hope to the weary. Yet what happened? Wicked men cried away with him and nailed him to a cross.

First they arrested him, tried him, tried him unjustly. Then they stripped him and beat him. They blindfolded him and slapped his face saying, prophesy who hit you.

They mocked him and spit in his face one after another. They whipped him and placed a crown of thorns on his head. Then they fastened him to that ignoble cross.

He hung there and every stroke of the Roman's hammer was an explanation point that God must punish sin. God must punish sin. God must punish sin.

Oh listen friends, Christ took my sins on him and became a curse, taking the wrath of God in him so I can live. He loved me and gave himself for me. Look at that blessed man on the cross friend.

Jesus is the friend of sinners. Oh listen friend, I know I am a sinner. I need a substitute for sin.

So do you. So do you friend. Look at that man on the cross.

His face is so beaten it looks like a pound of hamburger meat. Blood oozes from his hands. It oozes from his feet.

Look at that bloodstained savior from sin as he hangs suspended on that cross. He says, I if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto me. Look at the crucified Lord hanging there with his arms outstretched.

Will you go to him friend and confess your sins? Will you drag your bag of burdened bones there and lay him at his feet? Unburden yourself to him. Come to Christ, the only remedy and refuge for sin. That cross was the place where men tried to get rid of him.

But by his death it becomes the very place where his saving power flows out to all who come in repentance confessing they are sinners and own them as their savior and Lord. Are you willing to do that friend? Are you willing to come and throw your shotgun of rebellion down and to be conquered by the Lord of glory? Look at that man on the cross. I'm going to close this message friend with a hymn and as I sing it if the spirit of God has been dealing with your heart in conviction of sin then come to the savior for pardon for sin.

I can't make you come to Christ friend. You can't come on your own. He's got to enable you.

He's got to convict you. The Holy Spirit's got to get a hold of you. You got to see yourself as a guilty ruined sinner in need of a savior.

But Jesus says I am the way the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the father but by me. He is the way the only way.

He is the truth the truth that can be trusted. Jesus is the life giving saving life. He gives eternal life to all who come in sincerity of heart to him.

This is your time friend to reconstruct that coffin of accusing bones and have them washed from their stain of sin by the blood of Christ Jesus who loved us and washed our sins in his own blood. Oh come as I sing my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly on Jesus name.

On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.

When darkness fails his lovely face I rest on his unchanging grace. In every high and stormy gale my anchor holds within the veil. On Christ the solid rock I stand.

All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand. When he shall come with trumpet sound.

Oh may I then in him be found. Dressed in his righteousness alone. Faultless to stand before the throne.

On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.