Solemn Warning

I have a somber message to bring before you this evening, friends. For a fear many my hearers are yet in their sins, and sleep asleep to death as they lay upon pillows, puffed up with a good opinion of themselves, and rest upon a cracked foundation of an unsound conversion that you believe yourself to be a saved individual, and you will fight anyone who challenges the soundness of your salvation experience. You have considered yourself a Christian now for a number of years, and you can point to a long track record of service in the church, and you have a fervency for your religion, and you've established a reputation for yourself, proving your faith in God.

So did the Jews, the religious leaders in the time of Christ's earthly ministry. The Pharisees had established reputations as men of God, and they could testify to their knowledge of the scriptures, and to their long standing as respected religious individuals. But the Christ of the Gospels denounces them all as frauds, fakes, and hypocrites, their outward displays of a religious life was a mere pretense and a false plaster, a false covering of wicked hearts that hated the Christ sent from heaven, who was to be a propitiation for sin.

We will be in John's Gospel in chapter 8. For the length and breadth of this chapter, the Son of God is pitted against the religious individuals whose hearts are unsound in that they have no love to God, and therefore will die without God. John chapter 8 begins with the Jewish religious leaders wanting to stone an adulterous woman to death, and the chapter ends with the Jewish religious leaders wanting to stone God's own son to death. And although these Jews testified they were sons of Abraham, and therefore sons of God, they actually were sons of the devil, who were filled with hatred toward God.

God and Satan divide the world of mankind, friends, for all unsaved individuals are children of the devil, and deep down in their hearts they hate all things holy, and they hate God's authority. The title of my message this evening, friends, is Solemn Warning, because the sermon is a trumpet blast to all those deeply religious individuals who were deceived by the devil into believing themselves to be saved, when in reality they merely have a religious covering for a testimony birthed out of self-love, while they are in love with their sins. Let me ask you a question, friend.

If you were deceived and on your way to hell, wouldn't you want to know it now before it was too late? The apostle Paul exhorts us to do this very same thing in 2 Corinthians 13, 5. He says, Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith. Prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates.

Dear friends, if you have not the life of God in you, through the supernatural act of the new birth, then you are none of his. You are yet in your sins, and, if you remain in your present condition, you will surely die in your sins and be separated from God forever. This sermon is a solemn warning preached to awaken you to your lost condition and your perilous position, and to reveal to you that your empty religious profession will only damn you because you are yet unchanged.

Though you claim the name of Christ, he does not know you. You have never truly repented of your sins, and you do not possess a disposition of holiness, which can only be implanted in you by the Spirit of God through the new birth. You must be born again, or you will surely die in your sins.

In John's Gospel, in chapter 8, in verse 21, Jesus tells the Pharisees, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and ye shall die in your sins. Whither I go, you cannot come. Meaning, although they were hourly religious men with solid reputations among men, and although they claimed to be children of God and children of Abraham, they would die apart from God and be separated from him for all eternity.

Ye shall seek me, but ye cannot come where I go, Jesus tells them, because he goes back to heaven, and they go down to hell. The Jewish religious leaders were offended in Christ, and they argued against him by declaring to him, in verse 39, they answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father, Jesus saith unto them, if ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But these unsaved religionists did only the works of Satan, for deep down they did not love God.

Jesus tells them in verse 42, if God were your father, ye would love me. They did not love God because they had a hate-filled heart toward Jesus, the Son of God. Jesus states three facts about them which condemned them.

Number one, he warns them that, if they remain in their present spiritual condition, they will die in their sins unchanged. Number two, he warns them that, they do not know God because they do not love God, but merely love their sins beneath a religious covering. And that's true of every unsaved church member who operates under an unsound religious covering, which outwardly claims to serve God, but inwardly serves only self and sin.

And number three, Jesus warns them that, they are really the children of Satan. We see this in verse 44, where Jesus plainly tells them, ye are your father, the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.

When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar, and the father of it. Listen to me, friend. All unregenerate men are the devil's offspring.

You lie, you lust, you hate. You commit evil because you live and breathe in a kingdom of darkness that has you chained to your lusts, and in love with your sins. You say you love Jesus with your lips, but you hate the rule and reign of Christ's Lordship over your daily life.

Somewhere in your past, you came unto the hearing of the modern false gospel of only believe, and you walked an aisle and said a prayer, and you were baptized, and you joined the church, believing church membership was salvation, but it's not, and although you cleaned yourself up on the outside somewhat through personal reformation, and at times you can pray like an angel, you still have a covetous eye, your heart is full of hatred, your body is nothing more than an oven of lust that burns with unholy desires, and your boasting and self-promotion stems from sensual pride that refuses to submit to God's authority. You're always confessing, but never repenting, for you have no real desire to break off from your sins. Rather, you hug your little darlings closely to you and feed them greedily.

But when God is giving a man a new heart, he's not one person at church and another in the home. Rather, he is a changed man entirely with a new disposition for holiness unto God, for a truly saved individual pursues a holy life unto God, for we show our love to God by keeping his commands. In Hebrews, God's word declares, follow peace with all men, and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.

A true convert will see sin as a lonesome thing to be avoided like a dangerous viper and will not allow himself in a known way of sin. Rather, he is engaged against sin in his life and cast upon God for mercy and grace to mortify sin and to crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts. If greed is a damning sin, then why are there so many greed-filled individuals who sit on communities in church? Why are so many so-called Christians in love with the world? Should not a crucified Christ have crucified followers? An unsaved individual will enjoy wicked company, sinful practices, and filthy delights, but the hypocrite pretends to be for Christ.

But if you will finally see him alone in his home, you'll seldom find him alone on his knees and in his Bible because the true convert makes Christ the supremacy of his life because Christ is in him through the new birth and he has a new disposition implanted within by the Holy Spirit to love and obey God with a heart-passion that has a jealousy for God. Converting grace puts God on the throne. A truly saved individual has dethroned self and another is enthroned there, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus told the God-hating Jews that they would die in their sins because they did not love God. The proof of this is seen in the last verse of John 8, which states, Then they took up stones to cast at him. But Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.

Dear unconverted church member, do not let Jesus pass you by while others are being saved. Jesus is hid in the bosom of the Father and only God can reveal him to you through saving faith and only God can give you saving faith, friend. You must be born again.

You must receive a revealed Christ. You must be united by faith to a living Lord. You must repent of your sins and believe on Christ and own him as Lord.

Jesus told the unsaved Jews, Ye do the deeds of your Father. Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me. In John chapter 10 and verses 26 and following, Jesus declared, But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep.

As I said unto you, My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish. Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

My Father which gave them to me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. Listen to me, friend. If you get saved from this message, it's not because you've heard my shaky voice, but you have heard his voice as it comes to you in all power, majesty, and authority.

Prove your own selves that Christ be in you, or you will die in your sins. If you die in your present unsafe condition, you will seek God in another world and never find him. You cannot go to where he is.

A great gulf of hell separates you from heaven. You must be washed in his blood and born from above. Unless you repent, you will die in your sins.

And unless you are born again, you will never enter the kingdom of God, which is his holy heaven, for he will have no rebels there. In Hebrews chapter 12 it declares, Wherefore sin we also are compassed about with, so great a cloud of witnesses. Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Listen, dear awakened sinner, Jesus hung naked on a cross of humiliation for you, and every nail pounded into his quivering flesh was an explanation point that God must punish sin. God must punish sin. God must punish sin.

And if you die in your sins, you will be sent to an everlasting place of torment called hell, because the sentencing of the law must be carried out upon all guilty sinners. Your only hope is in the merits of another who is a sin substitute, the person of Jesus Christ, who suffered and died and rose again, and who now sits at the right hand of the Father, and he earned that right by way of a bloody cross. Do not let Jesus pass you by, friend.

My Bible declares from Isaiah, Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

Listen, dear sinner, friend, there isn't a sinner this side of hell too bad to be saved. Come to Christ, look unto him, and lay your burden down. Isaiah 45-22 declares, it speaks of Christ, the Christ of the cross, who died so sinners could live.

Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else. Listen, friend, this sermon is my solemn warning to you. God requires men everywhere to repent, and Jesus declared, marvel not that I say unto you, ye must be born again.

Hell is a terror-filled region, full of the anguished screams of the damned. Don't join their company. I beg you, turn from your sins, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, or you should be like the self-righteous Jews who died in their sins.

Jesus is the pearl of great price, who's worth selling all for, and losing all for. He said, for whosoever shall save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Let us pray.