The Fall of the Wicked is Certain

We live in a day where sin and evil reign supreme in a society that has turned its back on Almighty God. And we live in a day of an impotent church that has no power or influence upon society because of her compromise with the world. It seems at times that the devil has taken over and pushed the church into a corner, and wickedness runs wild in the streets on every corner of every city in this God-forsaken land.

In a day of uncertainty, there is a certainty to all who die apart from Christ. The title of my message this evening, friends, is The Fall of the Wicked is Certain. And my text can be found in the Book of Jeremiah.

You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends. We will be in chapter 23 and verse 12. Let me read us this frightening passage of scripture to us at this time.

And I speak this evening to any who are unconverted and who stand in terrible danger of dying in your sins and being sent to the chamber of horror which is hell. May the Spirit of the Lord attend this message and awaken you to both your lost condition and your perilous position outside of Christ Jesus, who is your only refuge. My text is Jeremiah 23.12. Here is the word of God.

Wherefore, their way shall be unto them as slippery ways in the darkness. They shall be driven on, and fall therein. For I will bring evil upon them, even the year of their visitation, saith the Lord.

There are several aspects of this passage which I would like to draw out this evening, friends. Number one, the unconverted walk in darkness. They live and exist in the kingdom of darkness, and their father is the devil.

They love what the devil loves. They live like the devil in their sins. George Whitefield, the great British evangelist, was preaching one day out in Moorfields, outside of London, in the open air, to several thousand hearers.

And he said that man was half devil and half beast. And in the middle of Whitefield's sermon, a man climbed a tree and exposed himself to the assembled crowd below. Everyone was shocked.

George Whitefield pointed to the naked man and used him as a real live illustration that disproved his point, that apart from a saving interest in Christ, that man left to himself was a mixture of half devil and half beast. All you have to do, friends, is to take a look at our sin-loving and sin-sick society today, and you will have ample evidence that the unconverted walk in darkness. They are blind to spiritual truths.

They are blind to their lost condition. They walk in darkness and are blind to their perilous position. And that is my second point.

The unconverted walk in slippery places and are unaware of their perilous position. I was in a hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland, and I stepped into a death trap. The bathtub had just been waxed, and it was slippery as ice.

And as soon as I stepped in there, I flipped in the air and landed on a hard floor on my head and arm. I broke my wrist in the fall. I stepped in there, unaware, onto a slippery place and was thrown on my head.

It was God's mercy that I wasn't killed. The unconverted walk, our text from Jeremiah states, in slippery ways, quite unaware of their impending danger. I will use another story by George Whitefield, friends, as it pertains to our text.

Whitefield was preaching to the aristocracy in London, and he was using an illustration that portrayed the darkness and danger that a lost sinner is in. Whitefield said that an unconverted man was like a poor blind beggar who made his way down a perilous path. Here was the blind beggar with his little dog beside him and his walking cane as the old blind man approaches a cliff with a dark precipice below.

The little dog leaves him, and he stumbles on in his darkness, quite unaware of his impending danger. And he gets to the edge of that precipice, and he loses his grip on the cane as it falls into the darkness below, as he totters there back and forth. And Whitefield so enforced his subject with such a vivid picture, the poor blind beggar, and brought it to such life and force that one of his hearers, Lord Chesterfield, jumped to his feet and screamed in alarm, My God, he's gone! So the unconverted walk in darkness, in slippery paths, in unaware of their perilous position.

And our text says they should be driven on and fall therein. And this last aspect, friends, is to me the most terrible for the fall of the wicked is as certain as the sunrise tomorrow. The wicked will die in their sins and be caught unaware of their impending judgment in a Christless eternity.

Listen, friends, to Ecclesiastes 9.12, which states, For a 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 men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them. Listen, friends, sudden death is all around us to-day. You don't hear many sermons these days on sudden death.

But long ago, evangelists of former times preached up that man can be removed suddenly and without warning and sent to a devil's hell. Mordecai Ham had a powerful sermon on sudden death that was used time and time again to shake entire towns for God. And the evangelist Sam Jones was preaching his last sermon to an audience of men in Oklahoma.

And his topic was sudden death. Then Sam Jones got on a train to head home, and he died suddenly in that train car between St. Louis and Memphis. And his sudden death was an explanation point to his sermon.

The wicked will be cut down, and they will surely fall into a devil's hell. The fall of the wicked is a terrible fate of endless misery and torments and hell. Our text in Jeremiah declares, And fall therein, for I will bring evil upon them, even the year of their visitation, saith the Lord.

God will bring their sins upon their heads. When it comes time for them to die, for the reprobate silver will be driven on in their darkness, hardened in their sins, and fueled with their hatred of all things holy. And God, and God will be the cause of their fall.

You can't mock God, friend, and get by. There's a coming day where you will be driven on in your reckless ways, as you travel carelessly down your dark and slippery path. And the end thereof is a great and terrible fall.

They will be snared in an evil time. When it falleth suddenly upon them, that's what God declares. The last words of King Solomon.

In the last book of, in the last verse of Ecclesiastes is this. For God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. You may think, friend, you are getting away with your sins now, because you're in good health and under a sunny sky.

But it was a sunny sky that Solomon and Sodom, when the blue sky turned red with fire and dark with brimstone, as all hell was rained down upon the wicked and Sodom. The fall of the wicked is certain, Jesus declared, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Dear friend, repent immediately, before it's too late.

Let us pray.