Your Great Danger of Damnation

We live in a day right before the return of Christ, a day of moral upheaval in society and great apostasy in the church, a time where most of our young people who grew up in church are now godless because they saw right through the hypocrisy in the church. It's a day where most folks have a wrong perception of God, believing him to be just a big joy boy who loves everybody despite their sinful lifestyle. Most church members today only believe in a God of love who would never send anybody to hell.

Very few people on this earth at this hour have any concern about going to hell. They don't believe in a literal hell, and if they did, they believe they're good enough not to be sent there, that hell is reserved only for really evil people and they consider themselves good people compared to others. But listen to me, friend, when you die and your soul goes back to the God who gave it, you won't be compared to other people to see if you're good enough to get to heaven.

You will be held up against one standard, and one standard only. You have to be perfect to get into heaven. God requires perfection to get to his holy heaven, and you are far from perfect.

The standard that you'll be held up against is the law of God in all its strictness and severity, and that's what I want to address this evening because some of you, within the sound of my voice, won't be on earth much longer. You don't know it, but your life will soon be required by God, and you will go the way of all men through death, and they will lay your body in a coffin and lower you down into the ground. Your goodness won't help you then.

Your church membership won't help you either. Neither will your profession of faith. None of it will do you any good.

You will face an arraignment at a future date where the record of your life and how you lived it will be brought before the intense scrutiny of the judge of all the earth. You as a person will be held up alongside the strictness and severity of God's holy law, and if you stand there in your own good merits, you will fail that test. You are not sensible of the great danger you are in of dying in your sins, and the great danger of damnation which you will one day face as the sentencing of the law is carried out upon your guilty head.

Well, that's my introduction to my sermon this evening, friends, entitled Your Great Danger of Damnation. I want to bring before you, like a responsible lawyer would present solid evidence to a judge to convict the guilty of crimes committed and the deserved sentence of prison time meted out. I'm gonna bring this evidence before you from the greatest book in the history of the world, which is my Bible, the word of God.

I will bring my case before you as your prosecuting attorney and prove to you beyond a shadow of a doubt your guilty state and your great danger of damnation. God views any person, no matter how good and honest they believe themselves to be, if that person has never been justified in God's sight for pardon of sin by being washed in the blood of his dear son, Jesus Christ, through repentance toward God and be born from above through the new birth which is regeneration. If you don't have that from God's perspective, your opinion of yourself and your church membership won't matter a hill of beans because your profession of faith is nothing more than a hole in the wall and you're trying to climb up to heaven by your own goodness on a rope of sand.

It's a sad fact and or day a spiritual declension in the pulpits of this land that most preachers don't know how to preach the gospel in its purity and proper order anymore and because of their great lack you've never heard the law, you've never had the law of God thunder about your ears and ringing your ears to alarm you and awaken you to your lost natural condition and although you may even be the chairman of the deacons, you've never been brought under holy spirit conviction, never been awakened to your lost condition to take your place at the foot of the cross as a lost sinner in need of a savior. You've never had your eyes really opened to the plague of your heart and your malady of death that hangs over your head continually like the greek sword of Damocles ready to descend upon you at any moment and send you into eternity that you were quite unprepared for. Let me bring my cases before you at this time and present the evidence of your guilt.

Case number one. All sinners are under a sentence of condemnation. Romans 6 23 declares this about every mother's son outside of the saving blood of Christ.

The wages of sin is death. You are a sinner. You're not a sinner because you sin but rather you sin because you are a big sinner.

That's your nature. You're born with a corrupt nature and a bent towards sin. You're under a curse.

You sit there at this moment in your life under a sentence whether you realize it or not friend and that sentence of condemnation hangs over your guilty head like a black buzzard hovers over a carcass ready to descend and have its feast because the sentencing of the law must be carried out upon all guilty lawbreakers or God will have to turn in his gavel and his robe and resign his position as the judge of all the earth. Case number two. The law shows that the God of the Bible is very angry with ungodly men.

That your sins which you have committed in your body while you've been on this earth will follow you into the grave and chase you into eternity like a black panther would pursue his prey. Psalm 50 and verses 21 through 22 shows us plainly that your sins will rise before you one day like a great mountain of evidence stacked up against you. I will reprove thee and set that sins in order before thee.

Consider this that that forget God lest I tear you in pieces and there be none to deliver. The law in all its strictness and severity will demonstrate to you friend your guilt on that day. The evidence presented against you by your sins will be overwhelming and indisputable of your great guilt and your great danger of damnation.

The faithfulness of God is engaged for the fulfilling of his law. Matthew 5 18 declares the rigidness of God's law. Not one jot or tittle shall pass from the law but all shall be fulfilled.

Your sins will follow you into eternity like a bloodhound on a guilty criminal's trail. Case number three. You must be sensible.

You must be made sensible of your danger of sudden destruction. We live in a violent society of sudden death. It's not safe to venture outside for you can be gunned down by a madman while in the midst of your daily routine sudden death is all around you.

You may be young and think you have a full life ahead of you but all you have to do is go visit your local cemetery and take the time to walk around and read the headstones and you will see that death comes to the very young as much as the old. The apostle Paul warns in 1 Thessalonians 5 3 when they say peace and safety then sudden destruction cometh upon them as travail upon a woman would child and they shall not escape. You may be in perfect health friend like I was until I was rushed into the emergency room and while they were operating on me my heart failed.

I had the pale of death upon me so I'm told. Then my skin was turning gray and it looked like the only way I'd come out of that hospital was on a gurney with a sheet over my face. Like I said you can be in perfect health this moment but tomorrow a virus or food poisoning or a blood clot in your brain can change everything suddenly.

You can be in the ground before this year is over. In Ecclesiastes we read 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 men snared in an evil time when it falls suddenly upon them. Listen to me friends I know I am a sinner and I need a substitute for sin in the person of Jesus Christ and so do you friends so do you.

So many today in our churches mistakenly believe that church membership is salvation. They've made a decision and that's all they got to hang on to. They've never had a work of grace performed on their heart by the spirit of almighty God who is the only one who can take a heart of stone and make it a heart of flesh in regeneration.

You need pardon for sin to get to God's holy heaven or damnation awaits you like a setting sun upon the horizon. 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. Christ Jesus sits on a heavenly throne at the right hand of God the Father and he earned that right by way of a bloody cross.

You must get to Christ friend. Salvation is Christ. You must get your sins washed in his blood.

Let us pray.