Shall Not the Judge of All the Earth Do Right?

This is Wednesday night, largely a church family, we're part of it. Those who are not working, all are indisposed. Not so many visitors.

Thus far we've not had any great judgment of God upon the community. But get the attention of people that still are sweating. I want to make two or three suggestions to you.

I won't charge you a thing for these suggestions. This is a word that after two visits with you I think maybe I could say and you'd listen to me. I'd love to see this church get involved in the issues that are crossing the path of the gospel.

I think that's our biggest trouble. You are not acquainted with people. You do not set traps as much as I think you want to.

Set traps and go after people. Well, let me give you an illustration. I have a friend in a northern state that seeks to win one person to himself and then to the Lord each year.

You won anybody this year? Well, if you could win one, that'd be more than most of us are doing now. Amen? This man is a big businessman and he goes after millionaires. Most people neglect them.

He and his wife set aside one night a week to go either and visit in the home of this unsaved couple or have them visit in their home. They have coffee and cake like you Yankees do and they just visit. They don't try to sell them anything.

They just try to get acquainted with them. And I know another businessman in town that this man has been laying for him for five years to my knowledge. Every time I go there, he has me go down and have him look at my teeth.

The unsaved man, he's a church member, is a dentist. And this friend of mine says, you go let him look at your teeth so you can talk to him. And see, definitely get in this business.

Then his son and some other young married couples have recently found the Lord in one particular church. They set aside one night a week. They're busy folks.

And they go somewhere and go into a home that they've got acquainted with and play one of my tapes. They're trying to get acquainted with people. If you folks haven't found out, just knocking on a door and inviting people, preaching, that used to work but it don't now.

You're going to have to get in this thing a lot more seriously than we are involved now. Amen? You're going to have to get on the ball and quit using the last days as an alibi. First place, you don't know whether the last days are not.

And second place, even if they are, we're still to occupy for the Lord till he comes. Amen? All right. There's a church in Winston-Salem that I think a lot of.

You would think they do not have very good gospel. The boy preaches all he knows. And I hope preaches enough that if people believed it, they could be saved.

But the thing I like about the church is that there isn't a beer tavern, a bad house of any kind, an open, not supposed to have an open saloon, but any place, gaming, roadhouse, restaurant, just name it, that his people aren't in every night of the week, different groups of them, one by one, talking to people about their soul. They're baptizing drunkards and harlots and everything else. They're going after folks.

They're going after folks. Do you folks do much like that? Come on now, do you? That's the reason you're about to blow away. You're getting so orthodox.

Let's put some feet in this thing and get out here and get involved with people where they are, knee-deep in sin. Amen? Why, I'm manning up men here tonight to get involved, get in the stream of what's sucking the souls of this generation, taking them on to hell. Double dog day or cheek dog day to begin to get involved with sinful men and women all about you.

Amen? Now, you're going to have to put yourself to it. This won't come on you accidentally. This is a matter of going after people and seeking to find out what nice little Christian people.

We just well joined as Roman Catholics, bless the Lord, built us some monasteries. I hear all over the country, down our way, they're building Christian high schools and Christian day schools, and we're going to keep our blessed little children removed from this world until they wind up in hell. No, God left His people in this world to be a witness, and we mustn't withdraw from it.

Amen? Let's get involved. Let's go after people. I know a church in Washington, D.C. that every member of that church, they will not allow the church to grow above 70 members.

And when it gets bigger than that, they start another one. Seventy members is big enough for anybody's church if all of them are working. And they've all got something to do.

I hear a lot about, you've got a New Testament Baptist church around here, I believe it, when your members go to work. Whenever one of you is a preacher. Amen? Preaching to you now.

Eh? Yes, sir. That church does more missionary work, more soul-lending, than any church in America. It's just got 70 members.

That's right, brother. They went down to the heart of Washington, D.C. and rented a building, have a coffee house down there where you can come in and buy coffee. And always assure several of the members of the church that it's your night to work in the coffee shop tonight because they come in there and buy coffee and sit there and the Christian people sit down by.

Next thing you know, there's an open door and they're preaching Christ to them. But they're not waiting until the folks come to them. You see, there's so many ways that we could get in the mainstream of what's going on around.

If you're mad at me, I wish you'd get at it, brother. Get at it. They didn't have any sitters and listeners in the New Testament church.

They had people who went everywhere gossiping Christ. Amen. Set and plan.

That's right. Well, I don't know whether I'll do any good or not, but I hope that, well, God bless you, go after people. They can be had, but not the ordinary ways.

They're all going down the drain now. Amen. That's right.

Well, tonight, if you'll turn, I'm going to try to save my body a little and let's press the battle as much as we can the rest of the week. And we've had so many visitors. We're glad.

We're doing the best we can, rejoicing in the Lord and still praying that he'll still bring something to the attention of this community that men would begin to wonder whether there's a living God or not, begin to seek him. In the 22nd chapter, the last book of the Bible, I want to read two verses, verse 14 and 15. 22nd chapter, the book of Revelation.

Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. Now, that's one crowd. This is the wind up.

This is after the trees have fallen. And then verse 15. For without are dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and murderers and idolaters and whosoever love it and make it alive.

If words mean anything at all. If the Bible wasn't written for smart people but for just people. These two verses describe two different places and two different existences in eternity.

Verse 14, we've got God's people. Verse 15, we've got those who are without. Without the city, haven't been able to enter into the gate, have no right to the tree of life.

Rather, they are out there with dogs or dogs and sorcerers and all of that line of. And the Lord is the one who says this. Verse 16, I, Jesus, have sent mine angel to testify unto these things in the churches.

You turn in the word to the book of Genesis. Chapter 18. In the light of these verses that I just read in your hearing, I want to call your attention to somewhat of an argument that a man by the name of Abraham, whom God called his friend, hath with Almighty God.

The 18th chapter of Genesis is the record of God deciding, having looked down on what was going on down in the wicked city of Sodom, he says, I'll tell you what I guess I'm going to have to do. I guess I'll just have to go down there and wipe them off the face of the earth. And then the Lord, God, thought a little bit.

This is in human language. And in verse 17, God said, Well, I can't do this without telling Abraham about it. He said, I can't do this.

Shall I hide from Abraham that which I do? He said, And then he bragged on Abraham a good bit, and finally came into the presence of Abraham. In verse 20, the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous, I'll go down now and see whether they've done altogether according to the cry of it which has come unto me. And if not, I'll know.

And the men turned their faces from thence and went toward Sodom. But Abraham stood yet before the Lord, stood yet before the Lord. And Abraham drew near and said, Will thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Is that what you're going to do now? He said, You're going to go down and destroy those cities.

Abraham, a friend of God now, he said, Won't you tell me you're going to destroy the righteous with the wicked? And then he said, By adventure, suppose there be fifty righteous within the city. Wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? And then he hears the controversy that right at the present between Abraham and God has to be resolved. He said, He's talking to God.

It's plain talk. Man to God and friend of God. That be far from thee to do after this manner.

He said, That's not like you. That wouldn't be like you to destroy the righteous with the wicked. That be far from thee after this manner to do after this manner to slay the righteous with the wicked.

And that the righteous should be as the wicked. Here we've got the same contrast we had in the last book of the Bible. God's judgment has taken effect.

And some people now in glory and some are without the city in Revelation 22. And over here, the principle of God's judgment. The righteous should not be as the wicked.

Two classes of people in the sight of God in time and they'll be so in eternity. According to the word of God. Now he says, That be far from thee that the righteous shall be as the wicked.

And then, Abraham makes this statement, asks this question. It's more of a statement, a matter of fact. And it says much to describe the character of the God of the Bible.

Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? This is a place to drive some stakes down. In a generation where the holiness of God is unknown. Where the word hell is a cuss word instead of the eternal home of the doomed and the damned.

Where this generation, reasoning in its head, comes up with the thought that if there is a God, he certainly wouldn't punish men through a long eternity. The only answer that I can give is that whatever the God of all of us does has to be right. And although I cannot receive the doctrine of eternal hell in my head, I rebel against it to think that any human being who had nothing to do with being a human being.

You didn't born yourself. And you don't have too much to do with how long you'll be around here. And you're here in the language of the Bible at the best for only a little while.

And then the tree falls and lies through eternity like a tale in this book from cover to cover. Says the two kinds of people, righteous and wicked. And God's not going to treat them alike.

And when the final stroke of God's judgment has fallen on the whole outfit of the last center, there'll be two crowds. One will have earned the right to enter in the gate of the city. The other without.

The other without. The judge of all the earth must do right. Let me bring you four or five simple facts tonight.

If the judge of all the earth must do right, and he must or he's not worth, I wouldn't worship a God that showed favorites, would you? I couldn't worship a God that did wrong, could you? I couldn't trust myself in time, eternity to a God the Bible talks about. He's a crook. He don't treat people right.

And he's unfair. But the Bible tells us that the God of all, the judge of all the earth, the judge, He alone must do right. And if He must do right, He can't treat the righteous and the wicked alike.

If He must do right, there must be a separation before the judgment comes so that judgment not fall on the righteous and the wicked at the same time. If the judge of all the earth will do right, I thank God for four or five teachings of the Word of God first. The God of the Bible who must do right does not want to send anybody to hell.

The God of the Bible is the God of John 3.16, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. The God of the Bible will tell us in 1 Timothy chapter 2 that He will have all men to be saved. The God of the Bible says I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked but that the wicked turn from his way and live.

In the Bible read that the Lord is not slack concerning His promises. Some men count slackness but as longsuffering to us but not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. You listen to me.

Don't you get you a doctrine that makes God or hymns Him up. Don't you read these books and believe everything and swallow everything they say that have got us a God now who is a respecter of persons but the God of the Bible isn't. Don't you let anybody take away from you the broadness and the wideness of the love of God.

It's a whole lot broader than any of us can ever agree. Don't you think that you've got to help defend the character of God when I make this statement that the heart of the gospel shows God yearning after the salvation of every man. John Calvin wrestled with this paradox of the Bible and his followers haven't wrestled with it and have got a hard-shelled doctrine.

Listen to me now. John Calvin saw that God Almighty yearns and the gospel tells of His yearning and that we can tell every human being in the world that God wants to save you. And he had to wrestle with the fact that He chose only some for salvation.

How could that square with what I'm preaching now? And if you read them you'll find out it won't square. They're just both so. They're just both so.

God's will is divided three ways. He has a will of command. That's the law.

And He commands all men to keep His law. But He suffers that law to be broken. Amen? God has a will of desire and that's the gospel and He longs to save every human being.

But He suffers that will to be broken or defeated. And then God has His will of decree and that can't be defeated. But oh, don't you ever meet a human being that you have any qualms about representing God and telling the truth of Him.

That person, the gospel comes to him as God's reach to save him from hell. He takes no pleasure. He'd rather save than damned.

Yes, sir. Don't you let any kind of doctrine eat at your heart to where there isn't something akin to God in you that you have a longing in your soul to see the filthiest wretch that ever arrived and wriggled on his road to hell made a child of God. God sincerely desires the salvation of all and does not wish men to be sent to hell.

The God of the Bible who sends men to hell doesn't desire to send men to hell. In the second place, no one will be sent to hell if God can keep him out. Let me repeat it.

No one will be sent to hell if God can save him from hell. If God Almighty doesn't save a man, nobody can. And if God can still be God, He'll save you.

But He will not save you at the expense of resigning as the governor of the universe and the Christ Holy God. He'll save you if He can and still hold a truffle in His hands and Him be God. And you'll be a man prostrated at His feet.

If God can, He's going to save you. When somebody says, you're limiting God, no, God limits Himself. For instance, God Almighty wants to save every human being.

He hasn't up till now. Why hadn't He? Why hadn't He? Because He couldn't and still be God if He'd put me in holy, if He'd resign as the moral governor of the universe, if He'd abolish His Christ Holy Law, and we kept sin and rebellion. If He could do all that, you'd be a white horse of a different color.

Well, He won't do that. He won't do that. Oh, if you think that through, it'd be a whole lot better that God stayed God than that rebellious sinners be saved and continue in their rebellion.

If the Judge of all the earth does right, if He sends a man to hell, He'll send a man to hell to pay for your own sins, not somebody else's. They had a proverb in the Old Testament, the Book of Ezekiel talks about it, that the children got sharp teeth. The sharp teeth, you know, because their granddaddies ate so and so.

But the Word of the Lord said, No! The soul that sinneth, that shall die. Somebody says, Well, God's going to send somebody to hell because his granddaddy's dead. No! If He sends you to hell, it'll be to punish you for your... Somebody told me one time, said, Brother Barney, I don't believe God ought to punish man for Adam's sin.

I don't either. And the Bible don't teach it. The Bible don't teach that I'm going to be sent to hell because Adam transgressed God's law.

It teaches, I'm going to be sent to hell because I was in Adam and I reached up and tried to shake God off of the throne. Listen to me. If Ralph Barney winds up in hell, it'll not be to pay for somebody else's sin.

It'll be to pay for mine. Be to pay for mine. If you go to hell, God will send you to hell to punish you for your sin.

Not somebody else's. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. It shall die.

If God sends you to hell, He'll treat you right there. The Bible definitely teaches that no two people are going to have the same hell and the grief. That God's punishment of sin will be tempered or added to by the light against which you rebelled and transgressed.

The Bible teaches definitely that at the judgment some folks are going to rise up in condemnation against other people. And even goes so far, the Bible says that if, my Lord will say it, Matthew 11, if the magic works that have been done in your presence had been done in the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, they would have repented. The Scriptures teach that men's judgment and men's punishment shall be done by God who must do right according to the light against which they sinned.

I remember a young fellow in a northern city. He started coming to hear me preach in a revival campaign. The reason he did this was he was dating a young lady and she professed to be a Christian and she wouldn't give him a date unless he brought her to the services.

And so he endured them so he could be with his girlfriend. And one night, somebody talked to him after the service and he got all pretty hot about it. He mouthed around considerably about how he wished they'd leave him alone.

He didn't want any of that stuff. And forth, forth, forth, forth, forth. But the next night, in order to date his girl, he was back again.

And I waylaid him before he got out of the services. Somebody told me, she told me what he said. And I said, son, a fellow gives advice to a fool and a fellow takes advice twice to a fool, but I'm going to give you some advice.

You take this girl home, kiss her goodnight. She'll let you tell her goodbye. And you go if you've got any money.

And you get to New York City the best you can. And then if you've got money left, you buy a ticket. If you can't, you stow away on a vessel and you go over to Africa and you get off the boat, step on the ground, hire you a mule and go as far as that mule will take you.

Till you run out of money, the mule gives out. And finally, you get in the jungle where you can walk as far as you can and crawl the rest of the way and get right in the middle of Africa and dig a hole in the ground and jump in it and put it in on top of you. It'll already be hot enough for you without you hanging around for more.

Well, it made him mad and God saved him. He got so mad that he began to think, but how terrible! How terrible to live another day in rebellion against the God who sends the lightning to dispel the darkness and shows you the way. And because you're not willing to do the will of God, you hide behind your excuses and go on to hell.

There's but one reason under God's shining sun does anybody have an eye. If it's not a Christian, one is you never have heard the gospel, but the other is you're not willing to do the will of God. That's right, brother.

It ain't your false understanding. It's your will, brother. You're not willing for the will of God to be central in your life.

If any man wants to know whether my teaching's so, said the Lord Jesus, what's he got to do? That he's willing to do the will of God. And you'll find out. Anybody who wants to know whether there's a living God or not, that you come to the place that you will to do God's will, and God will reveal Himself to you.

There is a living God. And there's no excuses or alibis that'll get the job done. Men's sin against life is a man walking down a road pitch dark, midnight dark, not a star or sun or moon, nothing.

There's a big old chasm right down the road. He don't know it. Whatever step he takes, he's getting one step closer to destruction.

He's irresponsible. He don't know the chasm's down there. It's dark and he can't see.

And God Almighty sends a stroke of lightning and lights his way and he sees where he's headed. Is he responsible now? You bet your bottom dollar. That is it.

This is all. Get out. Down to the back.

Headed for hell. And every time God turns the light on and shows you your way, you reach up and turn it off and keep on going. You're going to split hell wide open and have nobody to blame.

God punishes people in hell according to the light against which they've sinned. And then he punishes people in hell according to the number of sins they've committed. Hebrews 2, verses 1 and 2. If every transgression and disobedience received a what? A just recompensable reward.

Everyone I'm going to receive a just recompensable reward. You better pray for your little children to die when they're young and go to hell pretty early. Wouldn't it be a whole lot better to go to hell than having lived the last time of sin against God? And every last one of those sins have to endure the stroke of God Almighty's wrath throughout all eternity.

In the Bible, not only are men going to be punished in hell according to the light that God put on their ways, according to the sins of which they're guilty, but men are going to be punished in hell according to the sins they commit in hell. Have you ever thought about it? The only thing on earth people do in hell is sin. Ain't nothing else to do.

Just keep sinning. Sin on, sin on, sin on! Sin on! That's what people do in hell. Sin on! Let him that is unjust be unjust.

Oh, nothing down there to keep the hell that's inside of a man from coming out. No good influences. No wonder the Scripture talks about everlasting contempt.

Everybody in hell hates everybody else. And all they do in hell is sin. And how long is God going to punish men? How long is their sin? How long are they going to sin? Forever and ever in hell.

Nothing else to do. And so the mill just keeps grinding. My, that's all.

Glory to God whosoever by faith is joined in living faith to a living Lord who died on the cross. Whoever is joined to Him is not going to be sent to hell. Hallelujah.

Hallelujah. Oh, if salvation is bleeding some facts it would be a different thing. But salvation being joined to a person and that marriage is united by the Holy Ghost in the realm of faith, not by sight.

Oh, to be joined to Him the bone of His bones, blood of His blood, flesh of His flesh, whoever is joined to the Lord is not going to be sent to hell. I'm a preacher, but hell be full of preachers. I'm not trusting that.

I had an experience. I've had lots of them, but I wouldn't trust my experience by a second. It wouldn't take a million dollars for them, but I wouldn't trust them.

My only hope is that whosoever is joined to Jesus Christ, that's what faith does. It forms a union. Shall not be judged.

That's all the religion I've got. That's all I want. Somebody walked up to the old nigger preacher John Jasper.

Said, Mr. Jasper, suppose you've been wrong. Suppose you die, you go to hell. Find out what you've been preaching is not so.

Old John Jasper said, well, supposing I die and wind up in hell. Soon as I get both feet on the ground, I'm going to start praising the Lord Jesus Christ, but die for me. And said, the devil can't stand that, and he'll run me out of here.

That's my gospel, brother. That's the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let's bow our heads and stand quietly to our feet, please.

If anybody here wants help, if you need help, sometimes lost people desperately need help. God's people love to help. If anybody's interested, we're going to stand here and just hum a chorus if I can hear my Savior calling.

And if you will, you just walk down this aisle and tell us what's on your heart. I don't want you to go to hell. God don't want to send you to hell, but he'll have to.

And he will. The wicked child will be turned into hell if you bypass his son, get by the cross and the throne. God bless you if you're interested.

If you want prayer, if you want help, anything on earth, God's people can do for a seeking sinner. You want it enough, come tell us about it. We'll stay here with you all night if it takes it.

God, just speak to your soul. This Reformation audio track is a production of Stillwater's Revival Books. SWRB makes thousands of classic Reformation resources available, free and for sale, in audio, video, and printed formats.

Our many free resources, as well as our complete mail-order catalog, containing thousands of classic and contemporary Puritan and Reform books, tapes, and videos at great discounts, is on the web at www.swrb.com We can also be reached by email at swrb at swrb dot com by phone at 780-450-3730 by fax at 780-468-1096 or by mail at 4710-37A Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6L 3T5 You may also request a free printed catalog. And remember that John Calvin, in defending the Reformation's regulative principle of worship, or what is sometimes called the scriptural law of worship, commenting on the words of God, which I commanded them not, neither came into my heart. From his commentary on Jeremiah 7.31, writes, God here cuts off from men every occasion for making evasions, since he condemns by this one phrase, I have not commanded them, whatever the Jews devised.

There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions than that they are not commanded by God. For when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to his commands, they pervert true religion. And if this principle was adopted by the papists, all those fictitious modes of worship in which they absurdly exercise themselves would fall to the ground.

It is indeed a horrible thing for the papists to seek to discharge their duties towards God by performing their own superstitions. There is an immense number of them, as it is well known, and as it manifestly appears. Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying his word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error.

The prophet's words then are very important, when he says that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to his mind. As though he had said that men assume too much wisdom when they devise what he never required, nay, what he never knew.