The Dead God Who Can'T Save

A missionary shared the following story. He said that you could stand on a cliff in Mexico and gaze down at a certain village of Mexican workers. These people work down in the riverbed in their corn patch.

And there they grow their corn. And when the corn is ready to harvest, they shuck it. And after it dries out, they'll take it and grind it into cornmeal and make tortillas.

And then they take these tortillas down to the open market. And there they'll sell the tortillas for a few pesos and put them away. Then they'll come back out to their house, and there they will live off of lizards.

They'll go out among the rocks and catch these huge, long lizards. And they'll eat those lizards and save that money for a special day. A special day when they will start a pilgrimage to a wooden statue of Jesus Christ up in the mountains.

The terrain to that statue is so bad that most of the people will have to crawl on their hands and knees a couple of miles. And by the time they get there to that statue, they are bleeding all over. And standing beside the statue is a priest.

And that priest is saying, Now, you love God, give to Him, because you show your love to God by giving. And then those people will reach into their little bags and purses and pull out those pesos stained in their own blood and drop that money in a slit in the top of the head of that Jesus. Then the priest prays a long prayer.

And when he is finished, the priest will yell, You have not given enough. Look, Jesus is sad. He is crying.

And all the time there will be another priest hidden in that hollow statue. And with a little hand pump, he will pump water to where it comes out of human-made tear ducts. And that statue is crying.

And there those people will give all they have, crawl down that mountain and go back to eating lizards, growing their corn to make more tortillas, to get more pesos, to go and give to a dead God that cannot move or hear. And they are sincere, honest, and sacrificial in serving their wooden Jesus, whom they serve. Now you say, friends, that that's a sad story, for those workers are deceived as they serve and sacrifice to a dead God and a wooden Jesus.

But I fear some of you are no better than those Mexican workers, for the God you serve is no more alive than that wooden statue that wept false tears. Your foundation is false because your God is not real. Your Jesus is not the Christ of the Bible.

Somewhere along the way, through decision, you've gotten out your pocket knife and have whittled out a God that you feel most comfortable with. A God that won't get in the way of your daily living. Listen, friend, just because you're a deacon in a Baptist church, that won't save you.

Just because you give a lot of money to the cause of God, that won't save you. Just because you've come out and made a public profession of faith and joined the church, that won't save you either. If the God you worship is not the God of the Bible, then you are lost and on your way to hell.

Listen to me, friend. You may be serving a God that will give you a free ticket to heaven and still allow you to run your own life the way you want to. A God that will gladly take second place in your life, so long as you pay homage to Him once in a while.

Oh, and it may be sacrificially like those workers. But it's a God that won't get in the way of your self-gratification and a God that will accommodate the sin in your life. A God that will let you sit and rule on the throne of your life and do as you please when you want to.

He is a God that exists to make you happy. Your happiness is all He wants. And this God of yours is accommodating to the sin in your life, so long as it makes you happy.

And this God that you worship and serve is a God who won't punish sin and won't send anybody to hell because He's too loving to do that. Is your God just another version of that wooden Jesus that you carved out for yourself? Listen, friend. Your public profession may only be an empty religious profession that had only deceived you while you still belong to Satan and live in the kingdom of darkness.

You may hear voices and think it's the Holy Spirit speaking to you, but it's only a demon that leads you here and there in your religious life while you are still lost. I believe Satan, as an angel of light, could make that wooden statue weep real tears if he wanted to. Satan can give you a religious experience.

He can give you a vision. He can give you a feeling. He can give you a sensation of being flooded with a presence.

A white life can engulf you in this religious experience and give you an assurance. Satan will do all he can to keep you lost and keep you religious so long as you never get to Christ. And if you've never gotten to Christ, then you are not saved.

Your sins are not under His blood. You are exposed to the wrath of God as you stand in your own merits of your own religion. Religion won't save you, friend.

A lost Hindu man's no different than a lost Baptist man. Being a Baptist won't save you. There's multitudes of Baptists in hell at this hour, wiggling and writhing and screaming and hollering.

They don't deserve to be there because they served in a Baptist church. Maybe you were told by a minister that to be saved, all you had to do was to accept Jesus as your personal Savior. And you did that.

That all you had to do to be saved was to make a decision for Christ. And you did that. They say, if you'll only accept Christ, you'll have eternal life.

And you accepted Him. And that same minister told you that you now had security because you accepted Jesus because once saved, always saved. And maybe you shed a little tear as you accepted their Jesus.

But all these false shepherds have done is comfort you with a false peace. And you won't ever know the difference until you wake up in hell. Listen to me, friend.

Most of the preaching today soothes and comforts a sinner in his dead spiritual state. Many in our churches will come down the aisle when a visiting evangelist is there to rededicate their lives to God. But they've never come under conviction of the Holy Spirit, and they are religiously lost and serve a false god of their own imagination.

Listen to me, friend. If you've never been awakened by the Spirit of God to the fact that you were lost, if you've missed Holy Spirit conviction, then you have missed Bible repentance. The only believed gospel is a perverted gospel that has damned its millions.

And if you've missed repentance, you've not been pardoned for your sins by the applied blood of Christ. Your sins can only be washed in His blood through sincere biblical repentance. Christ preached a gospel of repentance.

So did His disciples. So did the early church. Listen.

If you have missed repentance, then you have missed faith. If you've missed faith, you have missed the new birth. If you have not had a supernatural act of grace, of regeneration, performed on your heart, taken the heart of stone and making it a heart of flesh, whereby a new disposition of holiness is implanted in you, then you are a baptized lost person who has missed Christ.

The work of the Holy Spirit in salvation is to bring conviction and awaken a person to their lost condition. Man has to have his eyes opened to be brought to a knowledge of himself, a knowledge of his lost condition, that he is separated from a holy God, that he is spiritually dead, spiritually bankrupt, and naked with no covering for his sins. Pastors today want to be successful and have big churches, so they'll get you to make a decision for Jesus and join the church and put you to work and take your money to pay their big bills.

But many are still unsaved and under the power of Satan as they labor in churches as unconverted church members and serve the God that the pastor has held up to them, which is just another version of a Mexican wooden Jesus. Let me ask you, friend, have you ever been made to weep and mourn over your lost ruined condition? Have you ever felt that God was justified in sending you to hell because you agreed with him that you deserved to go there? Or did you just accept Jesus to stay out of hell, but you've never ever gotten to Christ and because of that your sins are not under his blood? Are you a lost church member who's resting on an empty religious profession? The sinner who has come under Holy Spirit conviction has had his eyes opened and he sees that he is lost. He sees his guilt.

He sees his rebellion and the wickedness of his heart. True repentance is agreeing with the word of God and what it says about a lost person who is blind and dead and trespasses and sins and turning from darkness to light and being brought out of Satan's kingdom of darkness and being brought into the kingdom of light and life. And this can only be accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit.

You cannot deliver yourself, friend, because you were bound by sin and Satan. There has to be a work performed in the sinner's heart by the Holy Spirit. Jesus preached that except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish.

And that means you will surely go to hell if you have not exercised biblical repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ. You cannot have faith, friend, without repentance. And if your pastor is telling you otherwise then he is a lost man himself and a blind God with blood on his hands for not warning sinners to repent.

But listen to me, friend. It is the Holy Spirit that performs an inward work on the heart of a sinner and brings them to Christ. A person can fill a church with people by decisionism but you won't get them to Christ by it.

O friends, there has to be Holy Spirit conviction of sin and Bible repentance or you will miss the new birth. And if you miss the new birth you have missed Christ. Then you are no different than those deceived Mexican workers who sacrificed unto an idol and a dead God that could not hear them.

Has God awakened you to the fact that you are a lost sinner? May the Holy Spirit take hold of your heart and convict and awaken you to your great danger of dying in your sins as a religiously lost individual who has been fooled by the modern gospel of our day and the false shepherds who promote it for their own gain and who make merchandise out of the souls of men by not being true to their souls. I have not won a popularity contest today with this message. I don't seek your approval.

It matters little what you think about me because most folks don't like me anyhow. But I have been true to your soul today and I have warned you of your great danger of dying in your sins, facing a future judgment and being cast into an eternal hell for punishment of sin because God requires perfection to get into his heaven and no man is perfect but all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Listen to me, friend.

God's holy law is strict and severe when you and your life's work are held up on that day against the utter strictness and severity of God's holy law. If you stand there in your own merits, you will fail that test and be sent to hell because the sentencing of the law must be carried out by a just judge and shall not the judge of all the earth do right. If you have missed Christ, you will stand before a holy, almighty God and you will be exposed to his wrath because you have no wedding garment of Christ's righteousness.

Listen, friend. I know I am a sinner and I need a substitute for sin in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and so do you, friend. So do you.

You must get to Christ and be saved and get under his blood or you'll surely die on your sins and go to hell. Go to hell with those sins as a mountain of witnesses against you chasing you all the way there. I have preached to you the gospel of the Son of God today.

I don't want your blood on my hands at the judgment. Turn from your wicked ways and turn in repentance to God and exercise faith in his dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ who suffered and died and rose again and who now sits at the right hand of the Father and he earned that right by way of a bloody cross. Get to Christ, friend.

Salvation is Christ. Take your place as a guilty lost sinner at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ and become a seeker. Become a beggar for mercy.

Come empty handed and come to Christ. Jesus said, I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

Let us pray.