The Unsaved Religionist

Lord Jesus, it is my prayer that you use this message for your glory. I'm nothing apart from you. There's nothing good in me, great God, except your dear Son.

Break up the false foundation of some of my hearers and show them they are lost and outside of Christ. And in your grace and mercy, get them to Jesus and save them from the perdition and punishment of hell's fire. Perform a work of grace, I pray in the strong name of Jesus Christ the King.

Amen. I probably don't have a sermon, friends, that makes folks more angry than this one you are about to hear. This message will get under the skin of some unsaved church member, and they'll give me a lecture.

This message will rile up some unsaved preacher, and he will chastise me to my face. And this message will make the eyes of some unsaved deacons go blood-red against me. But I'd rather have you mad at me and be true to your soul than lie to you and let you go on to hell and your sins.

Most folks don't like me anyhow, so I'm not preaching to win your approval. So long as Jesus is pleased, that's what matters to me. When we all stand at the judgment, I don't want your blood on my hands.

So fasten your seatbelt, friends, because I'm taking off now with an old-fashioned gospel message that calls sin black and hell hot, that holds a sinner up to the strict and severe law of God, that demands repentance or you'll surely go to hell, even if you wrote four volumes of systematic theology. The title of my message today, friends, is The Unsaved Religionist, and my text can be found in Matthew's Gospel in chapter seven. You can turn in your Bibles there now.

We will begin in verse 21 in a little while. Years ago, when I was a unsaved religionist, if you had questioned me about the validity of my salvation, I would have done one of three things. Number one, I would have dismissed you as a nut.

Number two, I would have proved to you my salvation. And number three, if you pressed me further, I would have punched you in the jaw. Why, how could you dare question my salvation when I was a Sunday school teacher for 15 years, and I could tell you all about the time when I was 14 years old and came forward in a evangelistic meeting and invited Jesus into my heart and made it public? I still remember the name of that evangelist.

I was a disciple maker and held a weekly discipleship group in my home for years. Oh, why, I was even a church planner and a preacher. Oh, why, I made it a regular practice to be at church every time the doors were open, and I was there even when they were closed, holding prayer meetings in the chapel and sanctuary.

I handed out tracts daily and witnessed the folks regularly. I thought nothing of going in the neighborhood and ringing doorbells and telling folks about Jesus. I shed real tears when I prayed with compassion for the lost, and my tears were proof of my salvation.

I had a burden for revival and loved to study it and pray for it to come. These were all proofs of my salvation. Why, God was using me so many ways.

I surely thought I was saved. I tithed and gave generously to ministries to spread the gospel. I was always looking for ways for God to use me more and more, and there was always the cry of my heart to Him to use me more.

I enrolled in a preaching institute and graduated with a certificate of graduation. Why, I had even graduated from seminary, and not one seminary but two. I had five earned degrees, and two of them were doctorates.

How dare you question the validity of my salvation? Why, I knew my Bible from cover to cover. Why, if you dared question whether my salvation was real or not, I'd think you were a madman. That's how sure I was that I was saved.

But I was dead wrong, for I was still dead in trespasses and sins, and that's how your basic unsaved religionist will act if you press him on his salvation. Why, you'll have a fight on your hands. But listen to me friends, it's easy to be deceived.

It's easy to get an impression or have a vision or a feeling, and mistake that for salvation. The devil can give you a vision. He can give you a feeling.

He can give you a false peace to keep you as captive. The devil controls many of the pulpits in this land, and he controls many congregations and denominations into thinking they have salvation, when in reality, all they have is a religion without Christ. The devil can lead you into making the decision for Jesus, and put you right to work in the church.

And he, if he can get you serving in some capacity at church, that will strengthen your decision for Christ as a proof of your salvation. And he will constantly fight to keep and guard his goods, until a strong man comes to set them free. Vince Havner used to say, I could have led a lot more people to the Lord, had they not already joined the church.

And it's true friends, you hand an unsaved religionist a track, and try to witness to him, and he'll brush you off with, I've already done that. The best way Satan can keep his slave in possession, is to make you as religious as he possibly can. Satan loves religion, so long as he is the one being served.

The Pharisees in Jesus' day, thought no one was more saved than they. Listen to me friend, only God can show you that you were lost. I cannot convince you that you were yet an unsaved church member, or an unsaved pastor.

Only God, by his spirit, can reveal to you that you were lost, and still in your sins. Still an enemy of God, still under his wrath and condemnation, still walking a dark slippery path that leads right on to hell itself. Jesus said, it was a narrow way, and few there be that find it.

He said, straight is the gate, and you must strive to enter, and that the kingdom was taken by violence. You don't get saved friends, by just walking an aisle, in response to the preacher's invitation to accept Jesus. You don't get saved by reciting the sinner's prayer, why that's not even in my Bible.

You don't get saved by believing John 3 16 to be true. You don't get saved by a feeling or a vision. I had an old friend tell me his testimony was, when he was reading his Bible in the woods, he looked up and saw an owl in a tree, and that was God's way of telling him he just was saved.

No friend, the damned don't give a hoot in hell about visions, and dreams, and feelings, and decisions for Jesus. The unconverted church member in hell, can tell you all about their testimony for Jesus. If you are not joined to a living Lord, by repentance and faith, and living to bring him pleasure on his throne, then you are deceived, and yet in your sins, and I don't care how good your testimony sounds, or how long a track record of service you have, in the name of Jesus.

For every work you've done in the flesh for God, is Cain worship. You did it for acknowledgement, and recognition, and it was of the flesh. God rejected Cain's offering, because it had no blood on it.

Listen to me friend, it doesn't matter how long you've been a deacon, or how many mission trips you've been on, if your sins are not washed in Christ's blood. You're only an unsaved religionist working his way to hell. Oh, I know what I'm talking about.

I've been there for years. You're on sinking sand, and as you sit in church each Sunday, your pew is nothing more than a rotten plank over the smoking pit, ready to crack and break, and down you'll go. I don't care how many sermons you preach brother pastor, if you've never called your congregation to their duty of repentance toward God, then you probably have never truly experienced repentance yourself.

How in the world can someone sitting under you preach and get saved, if you don't know the way yourself? If you're just preaching up the glory of God, but you are derelict in calling sinners to repentance, and if your congregation dies in their sins because of your failure, then their blood is on your hands for not warning them. That's what my Bible says in Ezekiel 3 18. It states, when I say unto the wicked, thou shalt surely die, and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life.

The same wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thine hand. Look at your hands brother. Go on and look at your bloody hands.

On the other hand, today we have elevated man and putting me on a pedestal, but my Bible says in Ephesians that a man is dead and trespasses in sin, and now we have to answer a vital question, because if you get off on the wrong foot here, you walk astray and end up in a ditch. Did Adam in the Garden of Eden just trip and skin his knee a little, or did he fall headlong in sin? Is man really dead and trespasses in sin, or is he only partially dead? Listen friend, you're either dead or alive, there's no in-between. Salvation is either in your hands, or in the hands of God.

Now we have to answer that correctly, based on what the Bible says about man, because the pulpits of today tend to glorify man. They preach a man-centered gospel. The church today exists solely for the happiness of man.

All the coffee bars and comfortable lounge chairs are there for your comfort, as you listen to a message on comfortable Christianity, about how Jesus came to make you happy. But my Bible does not flatter man like most preachers do. My Bible calls man a worm.

That's what it says in Isaiah, and it refers to him as a dog licking his vomit and enjoying it. My Bible declares in Job that man drinks iniquity like water, and in Peter he refers to man as a sow in his wallow. My Bible says in Jeremiah that the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.

Who can know it? And if you really want to see a true picture of man as described by God, then go read Romans chapter 1 and 2 on that for a while, if you think you're something special. If you're saved, friend, it's because God gave you saving faith. God gave you the grace of repentance.

My Bible says in Jonah, salvation is of the Lord, and in John 6 44, Jesus declares, no man can come to me except the Father, which has sent me. Draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day. My Bible says in 1 John 4 19, we love him because he first loved us.

I remember listening to Parris Reedhead as he addressed a large congregation. He first asked them to raise their hand if they knew they were saved, and just about everybody in that room raised their hand. Then he asked them a second question, which was, how many of you were ever lost? Let me see your hands.

And only four people raised their hand. Then Parris Reedhead made this comment. He said, how can you know you were truly saved if you have never been lost? Oh, that stuck with me, friends, for Jesus declared, for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.

Let me ask you a question, friend. Can you think in your mind and go back to a time where you took your place as a lost sinner before Almighty God? Can you traverse the past and find the place in your life where you realized you were lost as a guilty rebel before God, and not only were you on your way to hell, but that you agreed with God that you deserved to go there? Now I want you to chew on that for a while, friends. I'll tell you what, we don't know salvation a day like we should.

Someone will tell you to walk an aisle and take your hand, and then pat you on the back and tell you that you're saved. But that's not salvation, friend. It breaks my heart to even say it.

Listen, only God can open your eyes and reveal your true condition, and show you your great danger of dying in your sins. And he does this when you come under Holy Spirit conviction, without which no one can ever be saved. Listen, friend, if you miss Holy Spirit conviction, you miss repentance.

If you miss repentance, you miss faith. If you miss faith, you miss the new birth. And if you miss the new birth, you miss Christ.

And if you miss Christ, you miss heaven. And if you miss heaven, you're doomed and damned to a devil's hell. You don't realize how much the devil can transform himself into an angel of light, and deceive your heart into believing that you were saved when you've never gotten to Christ.

The devil wants to keep his goods and drag you in chains of sin down to hell. God looks at your self-righteousness as a dirty, filthy, stinking rag. It makes him sick.

If you only knew how many millions of unsafe church members are in hell tonight, it would scare you out of your wits. It would bring you off your false security. We live in a day where it's hard to hear true gospel preaching.

We live in a day of great apostasy in both denominations and congregations. We live in a day where a good majority of pastors are unsaved religionists. They are blind guides who cannot point you savingly to Jesus because they're not joined to him by faith themselves.

They have religion without Christ. They can talk about Jesus in heaven all day, and boast and brag about how God has used them. But they fall into that dreadful category found in Matthew's gospel in chapter 7, beginning in verse 21, where Jesus says, "...not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.

But he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name have cast out devils, and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then I will profess unto them, I never knew you. Depart from me, ye that work iniquity." Oh dear friend, can you go back to the time when you took your place as a lost sinner before a holy God? Can you? This is where you begin to argue with me in an attempt to defend yourself and your salvation, much like I used to do when I was an unsaved religionist. An unsaved religionist would be the Pharisee of the Pharisees.

He will denounce all who don't walk the way he walks, or believes what he believes. He'll fight you tooth and nail, and do all he can to destroy you if he can. Listen to me, friend.

I don't care how sound a person's theology is. Satan's preachers will ignore Christ's blood, redemption, atonement, and they will neglect to preach against sin, and warn sinners not to go to hell, and they will not preach man's duty of repentance, and they will persecute all true ministers of the gospel. If a preacher will not call sinners to repent of their unbelief and sinful depravity, they are nothing but unsaved false prophets, according to Jesus Christ.

Most preachers today broaden the way of salvation in ways Jesus never did, and they don't preach holy living. Listen to me, some of you new Calvinists. Jesus never preached a sin in religion, and if you do, then you don't know him.

An unsaved religionist will not pursue a life of holiness, but will hide under a robe of self-righteousness. Have you ever been lost, friend? If you haven't, then how do you know that you're really saved? The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now I'm found. I was blind, but now I see. Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.

How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed. Friend, if you're sitting on a rotten plank of self-deception, wouldn't you want to learn that now before it's too late? I remember Leonard Ravenhill saying right before he died that, in his opinion about the Christians in America, he felt only five percent of church people were really saved, and at the time I heard him say that, I did not agree with him. I thought he was over-exaggerating the numbers, but now that I know what I know about salvation, I'd have to agree with him.

I believe that 95% of those who claim to be Christians in this country are nothing more than unsaved religionists. They have religion, but they missed Christ. I know firsthand how a person can be religious, and have a zeal for the gospel, and the lost, and yet be lost himself.

No man convinced me I was lost, and an unsaved preacher, but God in his mercy sure did. God showed me I was lost, and resting on a false foundation of carnal security and unbelief. The vast, the vast horde of demons in hell believe Jesus to be the Son of God, but they are damned forever.

Don't join them, friend. Don't let the fear of losing your reputation keep you out of heaven. Who cares what sinful man thinks, so long as you are truly saved.

When I got saved, I called my brother preachers, and shared the news with them. Some of them rejoiced, but many of them turned their backs on me, and walked away. I have learned to walk alone, so long as I walk with Jesus.

I'd rather be a saved preacher, with his blood on my soul, and lose my reputation here, than keep it and wind up in hell. As an unsaved man, it is my prayer, friend, that if you are yet deceived, and yet unsaved, that the Holy Spirit will bring you under conviction, and show you your true condition outside of Christ. Oh, what a terrible thing it is to be outside of Christ, and facing that great danger.

It's a perilous position, friend. Jesus declared, I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me, shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me, shall never thirst.

Christ invites lost sinners to come to him, and be saved. Are you a lost sinner? Oh, friends, let us pray.