Jimmy Can'T Come Back If He's Never Been Saved

Years ago, when I was taking a group of men through a weekly time of discipleship in my home, one man raised his hand to ask me a question. He said he believed his brother Jimmy was saved because he had walked an aisle in church one day and made a public profession of faith. He told me he had been praying for his brother Jimmy to come back to the Lord, but he wanted to know what I thought about it because his brother wasn't living for the Lord.

I asked him to tell me more about his brother. He said he was a sound engineer for a rock star and he was on the road all the time traveling around the country with this famous singer who was having a bad influence on him because the rock star wasn't a vowed atheist and his brother was doing some bad things with too much drinking and narcotics and sexual encounters on the road traveling with this rock band. And he asked me if I thought his brother was saved.

My answer was, a tree cannot produce good and evil. You are either one or the other. There was no such thing as a tree that produced ripe apples and rotten tomatoes at the same time.

Well, he didn't like my answer and most church folks who have lost loved ones, who at one time made a decision for Jesus, but who haven't lived for him in the last 10 years, they will keep praying the wrong prayer for that person that God won't hear. They are praying for Jimmy to come back to the Lord when they need to be praying for Jimmy to be saved by the Lord before he dies and bust hell right open. Jimmy can't come back if he's never been saved.

And that's the title of my message this evening, friends. Jimmy can't come back if he's never been saved. My text is found in the book of Ecclesiastes in chapter 11.

You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends. We will be in verse 3, which states a solemn truth. Let me read it to us at this time.

If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth. And if the tree fall toward the south or toward the north in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be. You better be sure, friend, of the spiritual condition of that loved one you've been praying for.

Because if you've been praying wrongly, God won't hear your prayer. If you've been praying for Jimmy to come back to the Lord, he can't come back if he's never been saved. Because where the tree falleth there, it shall lie forever in the condition it was when it fell.

I believe a lot of pastors tell lies at funerals. They'll stand over the casket of a deceased church member and say, Jimmy is no longer suffering, for Jimmy is now with Jesus. But it could be the opposite, that Jimmy is suffering more now than he's ever suffered before.

Because Jimmy is in flames in the torments of hell. I want to read you the Bible commentary, friends, of John Gill, on this verse from Ecclesiastes, because it's very cutting. He said, Where a tree is cut down, let it fall where it will.

There it abides, and is no more fruitful. So when a man is cut off by death, as he was then, so he remains. If a gracious and a good man, he is like a tree that falls to the south.

He enters into the paradise of God, the joys of heaven. And if not a good man, he is like a tree that falls to the north. He goes into a state of darkness, misery, and distress.

O friends, how easy it is to err here and pray the wrong prayers for our loved ones. We see our darling little boy or girl accept Jesus into their heart when they are four or five years old. And we watch them grow up in church.

But once they get to college age, they leave the church and live like the devil and sin all they want to. And we get on our knees by our bedside and we pray the same prayer we've prayed for years or longer. Lord Jesus, please have Jimmy come back to you, for he is strayed away.

But Jimmy can't come back if he's never been saved. They need to be praying to God to strip that person down and reveal their lost condition and show them the hell they are facing and that God will save. God must save them for his glory and for his name's sake.

For where a tree falls, there it shall lay. My ancient mother, who lived to be ninety-seven years old and still had her wits about her, to the day she died, lived all her life as a Catholic. Though she never went to church much and never saw her pray or even read her big red Catholic Bible, she kept on the coffee table in her living room.

This is the same woman who forbade me to go to a Christian church when I was a teenager and who made fun of those Christians. The same woman who disowned me when I married a Baptist girl. When it came time for that good Catholic woman to die, she faced death and it terrified her.

The staff in that nursing home had to dope her up at night to keep her quiet because her shrieks and screams kept the other patients awake at night. I would visit her and ask her if she wanted me to pray for her and she'd say no. A prayer didn't work and then she'd cuss me.

My old mother died and where a tree falls, there it shall lie. I had a man in my Sunday school class years ago who had a beautiful wife and two lovely children and he was faithful to attend that Sunday school class every Sunday morning. But the previous night before he could always be found sitting on the front row of a strip club every Saturday night, his wife would pray for Jimmy to come back to Jesus.

But Jimmy couldn't come back because Jimmy never had been saved. He did like most church folks do. He did what the pastor told him to do and he made a public profession for Jesus and he joined the church and joined my Sunday school class with his lovely family who he abandoned every Saturday night because Jimmy was a sinner who loved his sins.

Now maybe it is time we were more honest with ourselves in regard to how we pray for our lost loved ones who live like an evil tree and bear bad fruit even though they grew up in the church and if they remain in their natural condition and die in that state outside of Christ's redeeming blood, that tree will fall either to the north or south and there will lay for all eternity. We better put down the remote control of our television idol and instead go into the adjoining room and take that time to fall to our faces and cry like a baby over our babies who have grown up and live like the devil and who don't love Jesus because Jimmy can't come back if he's never been saved. Pray for Jimmy so he won't end up screaming and hollering in the combustion of smoke and misery in the devil's hell.