Turn to God Before He Kills You

This message tonight, friends, is a solemn warning. I didn't come here tonight to entertain you or to make you laugh, but to warn you. In Proverbs 28, 13, we read God's Word.

He that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsakes them shall have mercy. That tells us there's a difference between confession and repentance. Saying to God, you're sorry for your sin and then drifting right back into it with repeated frequency and abandon is not repentance, but a sure sign of a deeper problem.

If you are truly a child of God, then He will send chastisement and correction to you in the form of remedial judgments to draw you back into a right relationship with Him. If you fail to heed the warnings and truly repent in reform, then you are walking atop a slippery slope that will eventually throw you down. We read God's warning in Psalm 73 and verses 18 and 19, which states, Surely thou didst set them in slippery places, thou cast them down into destruction, how they are brought into desolation as in a moment, that they are utterly consumed with terrors.

There is a progressive downgrade to sin. Sin's a slippery slope that takes you lower and lower and lower and lower until you commit such evil it would make the devil blush. Let me pray right now, friends.

This message is giving me some opposition. I'm going to face some fierce opposition tonight. I need some help from above.

Please allow me some time now, friends, to address my master. Great God in heaven, you who dwell among the cherubim in a high and lofty place whose name is holy, I need you, Lord. I need your spirit in attending power.

I need you to open hearts and minds tonight and bring conviction and awaken the secure and show them their great danger of being on the wrong side of a holy God, great almighty King. Step out of the pages of your book and walk among us tonight that there may be someone here who will sleep in their bed for the last time tonight, for tomorrow they die. Oh, Lord, show mercy, show mercy if there's someone here who's deceived by the devil into thinking they are saved when in reality they are lost.

In reality, they're on slippery ground. They're one step away from falling into a devil's hell. I pray you awaken them and come by your spirit and disturb folks tonight.

Let the disturbing presence of Christ come among us and turn someone upside down for your sake and for your glory and turn them to Jesus. Take your word like a hammer and smash off false foundations here tonight. Drive out men and women and boys and girls under false refuges of coronal security and a good opinion of themselves.

Oh, Jesus, save somebody here tonight. I come to you now. I pray these things in the strong name of Jesus.

Amen. Oh, well, thank you, friends. Let us now continue with our message as I unburden my heart before you.

I'm going to be honest with your souls tonight, friend. I promise to preach you the true gospel. I'm going to care about your souls.

I don't want you to go to hell and like we say in the south, I'm going to give you the oil, give you the oil straight from the can because I preach a unvarnished, undiluted gospel of the cross of the son of God. I surrendered my soul to God when I was a teenage boy at a revival meeting back in 1967. And since that long time, Jesus has never, ever let me down and never let me go.

As soon as I got saved, the devil came against me. When I gave my heart to Christ, I joined a little band of Christians of solid faith in a little church, and I delighted in their fellowship and worship with them. And I couldn't wait to tell my parents what happened to me, what change had come to me.

And my father called the pastor a queer, and my mother forbade me from ever going back to that church again. And years went by, and the day came when both my parents went the way of the earth, and I took a day out of work to go to the cemetery. And on that hot day, I stood in my suit and I straddled my parents' graves.

I placed one foot on my father's grave, and I spread my stance, and I put my other foot on my mother's grave. And I prayed to God right there out loud to remove the curse of these people from me. I felt relief that day, friends.

Maybe some of you came from a ungodly home like I did. Maybe you feel life has dealt you a bad hand. I want you to take hold of a nail-pierced hand of a Savior tonight, friend, and take a good look at the pearl, a great price, whom I'm going to speak about tonight, and his name is Jesus.

We need to do business with God tonight, because the days are dark, and the time is short, and the spirit of Antichrist is growing in the land. We live in a godless society, in a time of great spiritual declension in the church, an apostasy in our denominations. Few preach the real gospel today of ruin, blood redemption, repentance, and regeneration.

Maybe tonight, friend, will be the night you finally give your heart to God, that you give it all to God, and run the white flag of surrender over your soul. Insubordination and rebellion is the very nature of hell itself, and I beg you to hear me tonight, as this is a message and a solemn warning. Sin is the most awful thing in the universe.

Sin is insubordination to a thrice holy God, and a transgressing of his strict and unbanding law. I want you to carry this sermon home with you tonight, friend. Don't watch TV.

Don't spend the night in foolishness, and foolish talking. I want you to go home quietly. Go to your room with a serious searching of eternal things, like a cow chews on her cud over and over again.

I want you to take the things I say tonight, and chew on this message over and over again when you get home, and if God wakes you up in the middle of the night, I want you to get out of bed, drop on the floor, get on your face before God, and in earnest pray for your very soul. Oh, friend, you might need Jesus tonight in a way you never dreamed of. I'm going to quote a familiar passage of scripture to you, but don't let your familiarity with it blind you to its truth.

Proverbs 29.1 states, He that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy. I always thought this verse only pertained to the lost, to the unsaved person who God was wooing, and they kept rejecting, and part of that is so, but I was also wrong on the other side of this verse. It speaks also not only to the unsaved, but it's a solemn warning to the saved individual who refuses God's correction, and persists in a destructive path of sin.

That Hebrew word for reproved means chastisement and correction, rebuke and pleading. God is speaking to you through your circumstances. He's pleading to you, friend, to turn back to him.

God is trying to get your attention, but you're not listening. If you claim the name of Christ and persist in a sin area in your life that you know is wrong, and you presumptuously and recklessly go further and deeper into that sin with no regard to God and true repentance, then God may have to suddenly remove you, even if you are the chairman of the deacons. There's a point of no return once crossed that God stops speaking to you like he did to King Saul.

God's word declares from 1 Samuel, and when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord answered him not. King Saul fell so deep into sin he visited the witch in Endor, and his spiritual descent was rapid, going to the devil in witchcraft and rebellion, and the result was a tragic sudden removal. Saul is wounded in battle, and he commits suicide, but God's word says, God killed him.

God killed him. The Bible says so in 1 Chronicles 10, verses 13 and 14, which states clearly, so Saul died for his transgression, which he committed against the Lord, even against the word of the Lord, which he kept not. Let me pause here, friends, to say that God's gripe against Saul was disobedience, disobedience to God, disobedience to God's word.

Let us continue with our text, and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit to inquire of it, and inquired not of the Lord, therefore he slew him. God killed him. God is a God who must punish sin.

Do you know that God, friend? Have you ever experienced that God, the God of the Bible, who kills folks? Do you know about sin? Disobedience to God is sin. Disobedience to God's word is sin. Do you know what sin is? Sin will take you lower than you ever thought you would go, leave you there longer than you ever wanted to stay, and cost you more than you ever realized if God's been pleading with you to return to Him in heartfelt repentance and reformation, and all you've done is continue to reject those pleadings by hardening your heart and going deeper into sin.

Then will God have to kill you? I've seen people go to the devil. I've seen God remove folks. I've seen God kill people.

Turn back before God kills you, friend. Turn back to God before God kills you. You better get the wax out of your ears and pay attention to what I'm saying to you tonight, for this may be your last call to turn back to God before He removes you out of this world, takes you away from your loved ones, separates you from your familiar surroundings and comforts.

I've known Christians who've laid down in their beds for the last time and had no clue that in the morning God would remove them. He, that being often reproved. Are you being often reproved of God? Has He been dealing with you? And are you resisting His pleadings? Hardeneth His neck is the next downward progression.

If you refuse correction, you're hardening yourself against God's will and spirit. And what danger comes with that kind of rebellion? It shall suddenly be destroyed. Suddenly means unexpected.

It means quick. It means immediate. No more delay.

Sudden and quick violent removal where you are chased out of this world into darkness. You don't believe that? You better read Job 18.18 which states he shall be driven from light into darkness and chased out of the world. You're playing with fire friend.

You're holding a lit stick of dynamite. It's gonna blow you right out of this world. Turn to God before it kills you.

I had a friend who suddenly became a millionaire through a business merger. And he went out and bought a million dollar home and a million dollar plane. He told me about his plane.

He said it just had one engine. And I asked him, I said, isn't that risky? What if the engine goes out? Then what happens? He just smiled a smile and shrugged his shoulders. I believe he convinced himself that he'd become one of God's favorites, that God had blessed himself in increasing his abundance.

And he believed there was no way on God's earth or in his air that plane would ever go down while he was in it. And one day he kissed his wife goodbye and he got on his plane. And before noon that morning it crashed in the field and he was taken out of this world quite unexpectedly and suddenly and quick.

In Ecclesiastes we read, for man also knoweth not his time as the fishes that are taken in a evil net and as the birds that are caught in a snare. So are the sons of man snared in an evil time when it falleth suddenly upon them. We live in a land of sudden death.

You go to the grocery store and you can be gunned down by a madman. Somebody can stick a knife in you while you're out jogging down the street. This nation is filled with violence today, such violence that blood runs out over every street in America.

We've become a bloody violent people like that generation spoken of in the days of Noah. You don't fear God, friend. Instead you think you're God's favorite just like the Pharisees did in the days of Christ.

Do you believe you're a favorite of God because he's blessed you so? Some Christians get deceived. They start believing they are God's favorite. The church can get that way.

So he'll show them more leniency they think. They think they've got more special privilege that his laws, his commandments don't pertain to them because he loves them so. That because of that love he will indulge them more as a loving parent would spoil a child through special treatment.

But almighty God is not a human parent but the righteous judge of all the earth. And if you keep breaking his law without true repentance then you're just as bad as a criminal who gets parole only to immediately go out and commit the same crime that incarcerated him to begin with. He hasn't been reformed at all.

He's still a criminal at heart and he can't wait to go out and commit some crimes. The last part of our verse is, and that without remedy, that this pertains to those who die outside Christ's redeeming blood. And the rebellion will carry them to hell.

That spirit of insubordination that defies God, that person will lie in flames that burn his soul before he'll ever submit. It's too late for that person. He's gone beyond the help of God, locked up in a region of outer darkness that's jam-packed with the screaming souls of the damned.

You better do business with God right now friend before it's too late and you're taken out of this world, plunged into another world. Altogether it's time to get serious with God. It's time to shell the corn down.

You should be on your face right now friend with tears and sweat begging God to forgive you. Your trouble is you have a wrong view of God. The God you serve is tolerant towards sin.

He's an all-loving God who will never send you to hell even if you deserved hell. Your God is a God who won't punish sin, but your God is not the God of the Bible. There used to be a time in America where fear of God was in the land.

Hollywood had censors because they didn't want to offend the religious majority in the nation back then, but now the wheels have come off this nation in a society that's spinning into moral chaos so fast that if you're not a sexual pervert you will be in a minority. The church is infiltrated with a spirit of worldliness and self-gratification. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a preacher in America today that still preached the doctrine of the cross in the life of a believer.

It's just a man-centered gospel focused on the happiness of man and the fear of God being thrown right out the window. I've even heard a big pastor say that when you come across the verse in your Bible that says, fear God, that only means to have respect towards Him, have reverence to Him, and not a real fear of Him. That big pastor was dead wrong for sure because when you look it up for yourself in the Hebrew and the Greek, the first definition you come to in both languages is to be afraid.

So we don't fear God today in America, but instead we shake our angry fist in His face and legislate Him right out of this land and drive and dare Him to do anything about it. We've kicked Him out of the schoolhouse in prayer. We've kicked Him out of the courthouse.

We've kicked Him out of society. We can cuss God and spit in His face because we have no fear of Him. In Ecclesiastes we read, because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of man is fully set in them to do evil.

Your God would never fill you with dread because you have no fear of God. In Job 13 11 it reads, shall not His excellency make you afraid and His dread fall upon you? I remember years ago when I was losing my business and I was out of town in a rental car and I was thinking about how I was down to my last fifty thousand dollars and soon that would be gone. And suddenly in the car I was filled with dread.

A sense of heavy fearful dread came upon me to such degree I got lost in that city. I didn't even know how to find my way back. Dread was upon me.

If you're out of God, friend, if you're on the wrong side of God because of sin in your life, you better be afraid because God could pull the rug out from beneath you in a skinny minute. The church is shrunken God down to man's size today. But I preach a big God and I preach a God-centered gospel and a God-sized God.

I preach the living God of the Bible and His dear Son Jesus. Listen. 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 plaited 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 they took the reed and smote Him on the head. And after that, they had mocked Him.

They took the robe off from Him and put His own raiment on Him and led Him away to crucify Him. You still don't think God punishes sin, friend? Why did God allow His only begotten Son to hang naked on a bloody cross? Can't you see Him there? And as those Roman soldiers fastened the Son of God to that cross, every stroke of the hammer was an explanation point, crying out, God must punish sin. God must punish sin.

God must punish sin. Oh, look at that man on the cross, friend. Oh, look at that blessed 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 as He rise and wiggles under the terrible weight of sin. My wretched sins, your filthy sins.

One condemned man next to Him rails on Him while the other thief owns his own guilt and seeks mercy. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in paradise.

One look at Jesus was all it took to be saved. Will you turn and look at Him, friend? Will you turn from your filthy idols and rotten sins and get a good look at a bleeding Savior? His blood can wash away your sins. His blood can make you whole.

Listen to God as He pleads with you. Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.

Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. What are you waiting for, friend? You don't have to wait to be better. What are you waiting for? You don't have to wait to be a better person to come to Jesus.

Just come. Come as you are. Come as you is.

Just come and surrender all you are to all He is. And He is Lord. I'm not asking you to walk now.

You don't get saved in a physical act. I'm asking you to come to Christ and close with Him. Come to Christ in your heart, soul, and mind.

Give Him all of you. Don't hold back one skinny inch of your flesh or stubborn will. Give it all to Him.

He held nothing back on that cross. He bled and died for sinners. Are you a lost sinner? I'm going to take this time now, friend, and give you an opportunity to get right with God and turn to Him in absolute surrender.

Listen, Jesus can save the worst sinner in this crowd tonight if you only own up to your sins, own up to your guilt like that thief, and feel your need of Him. On that cross, that thief looked over at Jesus and he owned up to his guilt and Jesus forgave him. He took him to glory.

Take this time, friend, to give yourself completely to Jesus. I beg you to turn to Jesus. Turn to a bleeding Savior.

I'm going to plead with you now, friend. Don't go to bed tonight without settling this. This may be your last opportunity to turn yourself over to God in a full surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ.

I'm going to lean on my God to sing this hymn. I'm flat plum out of energy. I've given you my all tonight.

I've preached my heart out to you. I've warned you. I've pled with you.

Your blood is off my hands, but I can't save you, friend. No man can save you. Only God by His Spirit can save you through faith in Jesus Christ, but I can't preach a better Savior.

Listen, friend. I heard the Savior say, Thy strength indeed is small. Chowd of weakness, watch and pray.

Find in me thine all in all. Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe. Sin hath left a crimson stain.

He washed it white as snow. Lord, now indeed I find Thy power and thine alone can change the leper's spots and melt the heart of stone. Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe.

Sin hath left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. For nothing good have I whereby Thy grace to claim.

I'll wash my garments white in the blood of Calvary's Lamb. Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe. Sin hath left a crimson stain.

He washed it white as snow.