Sin is Costly

I have a very solemn message for you this evening, friends, and it's a very difficult message to preach, and a hard one to hear, but hear it you must, because I don't believe there are many churches out there who today have a pastor who is honest with your soul. Oh, there is a few, but the majority are just some nice guys in the pulpit. They figured out a long time ago how to run a church successfully by keeping their people happy and busy.

They are good men. They teach truth. They love God, but they don't love your soul.

If they did, they would preach hard against sin, and warn you about hell's punishment for sin. They would tell you about your need for repentance. Instead, they just talk a lot about heaven and how nice it will be to get there.

But you listen to this old preacher, friends, because what I have to say to you this evening can alter your life here while you're still in this world, and your destiny when you leave it. I never tried to climb the religious ladder of my denomination by becoming a popular preacher. I'm anything but that.

Most churches wouldn't have me speak in their pulpit because they're afraid I would upset their members, and we can't have that. That's why most pastors preach nice little messages that don't offend anybody, why disturb the good deacons, and get them all riled up. But I have a message for you tonight, friend, that if you will listen to me with an open heart, it may do your soul some good, because I will be true to your soul, even though most men won't have anything to do with me.

The title of my message tonight, friends, is Sin is Costly, and my text can be found in the book of Isaiah, in chapter 59, and in verse 2, which reads, But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you that he will not hear. I believe the typical institution that we call church today is a body of people who are either truly regenerate and are living for the Lord through lives of holiness unto him as they bring glory to the Father, or it's a body of unrepentant, unregenerate people who name the name of Christ but who are strangers to him. I believe that's why so many churches are spiritually powerless and can't crack heaven open with their prayers, because a holy God won't listen to a bunch of lying hypocrites.

Your sins have hid God's face from you. He's got his back turned toward you. He's not listening.

That's what our text says in Isaiah. God's not paying any attention to us because of our sins. That's why in so many towns and communities across this land, we have a church on every corner, and the town grows more wicked every day while its residents just go on to hell.

Well, that's my introduction, friends, and before I begin the heart of my message, I want to share a story with you. I was having a conversation with a fellow evangelist as we sat having lunch at a local restaurant. He's a veteran evangelist who's been preaching for several decades, and he was sharing with me a sad story about his father.

He said his father was a pastor who had fallen into moral failure and committed adultery. This man lost his church. He lost his reputation, and he lost it all for eventually this former pastor became homeless.

Then my friend looked away into the distance, and his eyes became sad as he related this tragic story as a warning to every one of us, and he made the following comment. He looked at me, and he said, sin is costly, and I chewed on those words for a while, and they stuck with me for several days. Sin is costly, for I know that a fact, I know for a fact it is, and I could not let loose of those three striking words without making them the framework of my message to you tonight, friends, which is entitled Sin is Costly.

You pay close attention to me, friend, and get the wax out of your ears, because before this message is ended, you will have heard in no uncertain terms the reality that sin is costly. I want these words to haunt you tonight, friends, while you lay on your bed and try to go to sleep, that sin is costly, sin is costly, sin is costly. Listen to me, friends.

Sin will always take you further than you want to go. It will leave you longer there than you want to stay, and it will cost you more than you ever realized. When I think about how sin costs dearly, my thoughts run to King David in my Bible.

He was a man favored by God, who foolishly turned his back on God and sin, by taking another man's wife, and then having that man killed, adultery and murder are ugly sins. But the same man David, who penned such heaven-soaring psalms, committed such atrocious sins. Sin is costly, King David soon learned, as it cost him his family.

All hell broke out in King David's family as a consequence of his sin. Ammon raped Tamar. Absalom killed Ammon.

Then David's choice son Absalom turns in rebellion against his father in a coup attempt to overthrow him, and he is killed. And we see King David's heart break as he laments at the news of his son's death, and it is recorded in 2 Samuel chapter 18. And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber, over the gate, and wept.

And as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom, O good God, I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son. And as David sobbed the sob of grief, those three words appeared in bloody colors to him, sin is costly, sin is costly, sin is costly. Every time I walk by a graveyard, those three words haunt me, sin is costly.

And the text from Genesis comes to my mind, where God told Adam, In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground. The solemn fact, friend, is that all men taste death, and you yourself will one day lie motionless in a coffin, while they lower your body into the ground, and your loved ones weep over you. Sin is costly.

If you call yourself a Christian, and hang on to your filthy, dirty sins, you're playing with fire. Sin is costly. I'll never forget my good friend, whom I looked up to with great respect, as he was a leader in my church.

He soon became one of my biggest warnings to me, but he had a good job, a fine home, an affectionate Christian wife, and several beautiful children. Then one day, he hired a pretty young secretary, who was half his age. I remember running into him in the church parking lot after church one day, and he had a funny look on his face, and he avoided eye contact with me, and something inside me told me something.

And I went home, and told my wife what happened, that I saw this man, and I felt that he was having an affair on his wife. My wife said I had to be mistaken, for this friend of ours had such good Christian character, that it'd be the last thing in the world what would happen. But the news soon got out that this man had fallen into adultery with this woman.

His sin cost him his marriage, for it ended in divorce. His sin cost him his reputation, and good Christian testimony, for the scandal spread throughout the church, and his sin eventually cost him his family, as a couple of his children went to the world, and to the devil, as they saw what a hypocrite their father was. But the most tragic thing out of all this, was I ran into him on two occasions, long after that.

Once I found him sitting in the bar of a restaurant, drinking alcohol like he was right at home on the end of a barstool. Then I ran into him in an elevator, and he acted like he didn't know me. This man has never repented, and has had one girlfriend after another through the years, to where now he has to fly them in from Russia.

You tell me, friend, that sin isn't costly. Sin drowned the old world, sin burned up Sodom, and sin will arraign you at a future judgment, for if you die in your sins, you will surely go to hell. You want to go to church, and still play footsie with the world? You want to name the name of Christ, and still hug your darling sins? Jesus came into the world, doing good, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind.

He fed the hungry, and gave rest to the weary. Yet what happened? Sinful men cried, away with him, and nailed him to a cross, as Roman soldiers drove nails into his innocent hands and feet, as they fastened the Son of God to that tree. Every stroke of the hammer sounded out three words that run all down throughout eternity.

Our church kids, who grew up in church, but who saw no reality of God in the lives of their parents, have now gone out into the world, and many of them have gone to the devil. When will we face the fact that sin is costly? But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.