Will God Kill You Too

Great and dreadful God, I come before you today by the blood of the dear son Jesus, Jesus Christ, who suffered and died and rose again, and who sits by your right hand, and who earned that right by way of a bloody cross. I beseech you, Heavenly Father, to come and walk in our midst today by your pungent presence of your spirit, that you would come and disturb folks, disturb them. I pray out of their carnal security, disturb them.

I pray out of a false profession, disturb them. I pray off their false foundation that they rest upon that will only one day wash away like the sand that it is. Lord, I've seen you move in former times in your congregation, when you've made your word a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces, where you have awakened folks to their lost condition and brought alarm.

I admit I'm bankrupt without you, Lord. I need your power. I need your anointing of the spirit.

Come and touch me. Come in our midst today in your dread presence and show us the badness of our hearts and give us a glimpse of your white throne and a broken law, flash hellfire upon our soul and a warning. Reveal to us a bleeding and dying Christ so we can be saved.

I believe you have much people in this city, Lord, who are yet unsaved. Reach them by the power of your gospel and save them by your redeeming blood. I pray these things in the strong name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus.

Amen. If you let me help you today, friends, I think I can help you. I'm getting riled up over it and I'm getting sick and tired about how many pastors are flat out lying to you about what salvation is.

You better be concerned about where you spend eternity, friend, because hell is no joke and the devil is real and he won't rest until he can drag your soul down to the very bowels of hell and its horrors. But there are the damned in hell right now screaming that their minister lied to them when he told them they were saved when they were still lost. The main reason why so many folks inside the church are going to hell is that we don't know what salvation is.

You think salvation is one thing when it is altogether something different than what you've been told. We live in a day of deep spiritual declension and a watered down gospel and we only know what modern evangelism says about salvation, even if it isn't so. Listen to me, friend, when I say that the Bible says God is the agent of salvation.

Salvation is in the hands of God and not man. If you were saved, friend, it's because God gave you saving faith. Men are not saved as a result of a decision they make, but as the result of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit.

In the last 80 years in this country, we've slid down a theological slide of such a downgrade in orthodoxy that what old Charles Finney preached is more orthodox than most reformed ministers today. Finney preached hard against sin. Finney preached man's duty of repentance.

Finney warned his hearers about hell and a future judgment that awaits all mankind. Finney believed in the power of prayer and he often spent entire days in prayer calling on his God to send the fire down. Picture in your mind a young Charles Finney beside a tree in a grove of woods, his shoulders bent and his body shaken as he's fully engaged in agonizing prayer to God over the souls of men.

And he would labor there in intercessory prayer for many hours. Compare that to the mediocre five minutes you gave God today in prayer. Finney preached hard against worldliness and he believed in the lordship of Christ and Charles Finney believed that men were saved when the Holy Spirit brought conviction of sin and regeneration to the heart.

And Charles Finney said the following words, all ministers ought to be so filled with the Holy Spirit that all who hear them shall be impressed with the conviction that God is in them of a truth. But we evangelists today just try to get folks to accept our little proposition and accept our Jesus as their personal savior. And then we get them to agree with us mentally and we get them emotionally involved and we tell them they're saved even when God doesn't recognize them as such.

Jesus says, away from me, I never knew you, you that work iniquity. Many of us today are just puppeteers with a paper gospel that can't save a flea, much less a person hardened in their sins. I have a message today, friends, that can change your life if you let it and alter your eternal destiny.

And you better get the wax out of your ears and hear me, friend, because I'm going to preach the real gospel to you today. Some of you've never heard it before. And when I'm done, go get in your Bible and get along with God and ask him to show you what his salvation is.

The urgency of the hour is people don't need to hear about our creeds and they need to hear God's immediate demand for repentance. On top of this, we live in a dangerous day. Most communities in this country are so godless that they've become the very borders of hell.

Profanity and drunkenness and lewdness is the norm in adultery and fornication is so widespread that if you are one of the few individuals who abstain from illicit sex, you are abnormal and peculiar. Sexual perversion is accepted and legalized and promoted by the government, glorified by Hollywood and merchandised by corporations. Our young people today live godless lives in a pagan society.

And many of our kids who grew up in church now reject the God of the Bible. And on top of all this moral decay, on top of all this chaos, we live in uncertain times where our mortality is precarious at best because of the great violence in society and the pestilence that's in the land. No country that I know of has yet humbled itself before God to remove this plague from them or to prevent its stroke upon them.

When a land is evil and the people have rebelled against the God of the Bible and rejected his laws for their own lawlessness, then God Almighty's fierce anger is kindled, as is his fiery indignation against sin. Society spins out of control in moral chaos and the churches lie in the grip of materialism and self-preservation. It is times like these where sudden deaths multiply.

The daily news is full of accounts of sudden deaths, deaths by accident, boating accidents and automobile accidents, where people are tragically and suddenly killed. I've seen friends suddenly removed through unexpected accidents. I knew a young man with a young family who one day went to work and while he was operating his forklift, it got caught in the doorway and turned and crushed him to death instantly.

I stood with his widow at his grave. One moment he was in this world going about his daily activity. Then in a moment, without warning, he was suddenly removed from this world into another world.

I had another friend who got in his car one morning to go to work and it began to snow heavily and another car crossed the dividing line and hit him head-on, killing him instantly. He was but 27 years old. He had his whole life ahead of him.

I had another friend hop on his motorcycle after having a fight with his wife and he thought he'd go around the neighborhood and blow off some steam and so he turned the corner. His tires hit an oil slick and he's thrown down on the ground. His head, his forehead hit the curb and it killed him instantly.

He was only 24 years old. The newspapers and television are filled with the hundreds of thousands of reports of people suddenly catching COVID-19 and quickly succumbing to it in a painful death. Others go outside to live their normal routine and suddenly they're gunned down by a madman.

Yes friends, sudden death is all around us. I'm sure you know of someone who's died suddenly, perhaps by a drug overdose or an accident. In the book of Job, I call your attention to God's word in Job 36, 18, which states, because there is wrath, beware lest he take thee away with a stroke.

That means God kills people. Will God have to kill you? And that's the title of my sermon today, friend. Will God kill you too? I believe the God of the Bible kills people, not the God of your imagination that would never hurt a flea, much less a person hardened in their sins, but a thrice holy God who kills and makes alive again.

Our text here in Job speaks a warning that God is a righteous governor who resents all the affronts given him. And that because God has declared in his word that he has revealed his wrath from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness, a man is seen in second Thessalonians chapter one, which states, when the Lord Jesus Christ shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power. This text may be speaking to someone here.

This text may be speaking to you, friend. You're a hearty rebel. You live a life of lawlessness and you detest God and his holiness.

Why doesn't God just go on and cut you down right now? Shouldn't you have reason to fear you were under God's displeasure? Then take heed, lest he take you away suddenly with a stroke because there is wrath. Beware. He take thee away with a stroke.

God is angry with the wicked every day, friends, or text from Job warns. Wouldn't you be wise to make peace with him quickly and get his anger turned away from you? There is both a warning and a duty in this text, a warning to flee from the wrath to come and a duty to flee to Christ, the only refuge from sin, lest he take you away suddenly, lest he snatch you away quickly like a bird in a snare. Ecclesiastes warns of this same notion of sudden death for man also knoweth not his time as the fishes that are taken in an evil net and as the birds that are caught in the snare.

So war the sons of men snared in a evil time when it falleth suddenly upon them. The key warning in that verse is falleth suddenly upon them. That means you wake up in the morning, you get dressed and you go to work.

And between that time and the time you return home, you meet with unexpected death, a car crash, a plane crash, boat accident, a slip on the pavement, a fall down the stairs, you hit your head, a sudden pain in your chest where your heart stops beating, an aneurysm in your brain takes you out of this world. I used to walk every day for an hour the first thing in the morning, and I kept up that habit for most of my life. I'd leave the house just before sunrise and go for a walk in the woods within my neighborhood.

Then I moved to a new city, and I took walks by the beach each day. One morning I was out walking, and I had to rest after five minutes because I couldn't breathe. My chest was heaving.

I had a pain in my shoulder. I didn't know it, but I was having a heart attack. I should have dropped dead right there and then.

For the doctors told me after they examined me that all four of my main arteries were blocked 90 percent. I could have died suddenly. I could have dropped dead that morning without warning.

It could happen to you, friend, where you're just going about your normal routine, and all of a sudden and out of nowhere, death descends upon you. Why? Because there is wrath. Beware, lest he take thee away with his stroke.

The God of the Bible kills people. Will God kill you, too? You've broken God's law because of sin, and God declares the soul that sinneth, it shall die. Man is on the wrong side of God because of sin, and it's because of sin that God comes and kills people.

The Puritans had a more accurate view of the God of the Bible than we do today. The Puritans maintained a high view of God. The Puritan John Owen wrote vividly of this very thing.

He said, When a sinful church or people have passed the utmost bounds of divine patience and forbearance, and they fall into such abominable crimes, sins, and provocations as shall render the utmost vengeance beneath their desserts, so Josephus affirms of this generation, after they had rejected and slain the Lord Christ, that they fell into such a hell of provoking abominations, that if the Romans had not come and destroyed them, God would have sent fire and brimstone upon them from heaven, as he did on Sodom. But those words of John Owen should make our blood go cold in our veins, because the Puritans maintained a proper concept of God as God of vengeance upon sin. I stood at Owen's grave at Bunhill Fields in London, and I can assure you, friends, he'd cry out today against the perverted gospel of our day, against the perverted pastors of our day, against the perverted view of God today as only a God of love.

The Puritans knew full well that Almighty God is a God who must punish sin. Calvary is an old painting of why God must punish sin. The backdrop of the sky is dark, the man on the cross is gray, the color of death, the cross itself is dark red with his blood, the crucified Christ wrestles there under the black weight of sin, because a holy God must punish sin.

When the cruel Roman soldiers took the Son of God and nailed him to a cross as they fastened him there, every stroke of the hammer was an explanation point that God must punish sin. God must punish sin. God must punish sin.

Don't be fooled, friends, because God delays bringing you to justice for your treason against the sovereign. In Ecclesiastes 8.11 we read, because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. You better be honest with yourself, friend, and admit your sinfulness and the evil you have done.

It may not be evil in your eyes, but in the sight of a holy God it was evil. You were on the wrong side of God. Why doesn't he just kill you now and send you to hell? There is a story in the book of Acts about how the early Christians had all things in common, and no one lacked money.

The others made up for it. They sold land. They brought the money to Peter and laid it at the apostles' feet so the funds could be distributed to those who needed help, but were too selfish today to do such things.

But there was a couple of religious characters called Ananias and Sapphira who were married, and they devised a plan to cheat a holy God. They sold their possessions to look good in the eyes of the people, but they went back and they held back part of the price, and his wife was a to it, but Peter found them out as seen in Acts 5 and verses 3 and following. But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost and to keep back part of the price of the land? Whilst it's remained, was it not thine own? And after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? Why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? Thou hast not lied unto man, but unto God.

Ananias, hearing those words, fell down and gave up the ghost, and great fear came upon all of them that heard these things. Let me pause here, friends, to say God made that man's heart stop beating. God made that man drop down dead.

God killed him. That's all it took to kill him. The others, when they heard what happened, a great fear came on them.

But you can listen to that story, and it doesn't faze you. There's no fear of God in you. Your concept of God is one on human terms.

He's on your level. You've shrunken God down to man's size. God will never kill you or send you to hell, because your God wouldn't act that way.

You just have a love God. But listen, friend, God of the Bible will. The God of the Bible kills folks.

Will God have to kill you too? Look what happened to this man's deceitful wife. And when it was about the space of three hours after, when his wife, not knowing what was done, came in, and Peter answered unto her, Tell me, whether ye sold the land for so much? And she said, Yea, for so much. Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, the feet of them which have buried the husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out.

Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost. And the young man came in, and found her dead, and carrying her forth, buried her by her husband. Let me ask you, friend, will you stay in your rebellion until you have to attend your own funeral? You know you're a cheat.

You know you gypped that person in your business dealings. You know you put your interests above your customer, and you made that bigger commission by sticking them in what he really didn't need. Why doesn't God just take you away now, and remove you out of this world? Will God have to kill you to get your attention? Will God have to kill you to make you honest? Why do you live in disobedience to God, in the spread of the gospel? You treat your money as if it's your own.

You do for you and your family selfishly, and nobody else. But it's God who gives power to get wealth, and every dollar in the world, belongs to God. For he declares, the silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the Lord of hosts.

But ministries lie in want, and the gospel does not go out as it should. And Bible translation work suffers, and Bible distribution is hindered. Because you selfishly sit on God's resources that he gave you.

Why doesn't he remove you, and give that money to someone else, who could make better use of it, to advance his kingdom? Sam Jones was walking down the street in his hometown of Cartersville, Georgia, when a saloon keeper approached him, and tapped him on the shoulder, and handed him a hundred dollar bill. Sam Jones thanked the man, and placed the hundred dollar bill in his shirt pocket, and turned to walk away. The man called out, hey Jones, I got that money selling booze.

I just thought you'd want to know where it came from. Sam Jones replied, that's okay. The devil's had it long enough.

It's about time God can use it. People perish by the minute, and drop into hell's torments. They need to hear about a Jesus, who came down here, so you can go up there.

Put your tight-fisted hold on your money, and the love of it will come back to haunt you, at the judgment, when you have to give an account to God, as to how you handled his resources. Will God kill you, with a full bank account, and a rising investment portfolio, that just sits inactive, while natives in Africa, need desperately to have a Bible translation, in their own language, lest they perish, and drop down to hell. But greed controls you.

Why doesn't God just kill you now? Because there is wrath. Beware, lest he take thee away, with a stroke. Christ will come in flaming fire, to try every man's work, by fire.

In Corinthians we read, For of the foundation, can no man lay, than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, every man's work should be made manifest. For the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is.

If any man's work abide, which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved. So as by fire, that text is talking about Christians, at the beam of seat.

If you are a Christian friend, and you lived unto yourself, you paid dearly at that judgment. For God will then open your eyes, and reveal to you the life he meant for you to live, but you rebelled against him. Will you stand there, with the gold and silver and the precious stones, of a life lived for Christ, and a life lived for eternity? Or will you stand there selfishly, knee deep in the ashes of regret, of what could have been? Maybe some of you here are really not saved at all.

You've been sitting upon a false foundation, of an empty religious profession, all these long years. But God knows, God knows the heart. He sees your hypocrisy.

You stand on enemy soil, in a kingdom that's not his. Soon he'll no longer strive with your spirit, and your day of mercy will close, because of your hatred to the lordship of Christ Jesus. You want to go to heaven, and at the same time, sit and rule on the throne of your life.

You can't have it both ways, friend. It's a skinny pancake, that only has one side. Maybe it's high time, you got real with God, and surrendered to Jesus as Lord.

Self must be dethroned, and another enthroned there, at the Lord Christ. I warn you, friend. I plead with you, friend.

Don't spend another minute, on the wrong side of God. Come clean with him, in utter submission to him. If you want Christ, he must be a complete master.

Meaning, your body is not your own. Your time is not your own. Your money is not your own.

Christ must reign over all. He is Lord of all. And if you want to be saved, friend, hear me now.

You must get to Christ, and get your sins, washing his blood, through repentance and faith. And repentance means, the love of sin dies. You must turn from it, and repudiate it, and forsake it, all of it.

And saving faith means, you own Christ as Lord. Don't you take my savior, and refuse him as Lord, and call that salvation. You can't have this world, and Christ too.

Only one of them, for one of them has got to go. You can't have the spirit of this age of Antichrist, and Christ too. One of them has got to go.

You can't have Christ, and hang on to your sins. One of them has got to go. Christ hung on a bloody cross for sin, as a substitute for sin.

I know my sinner, and I need a substitute for sin. And so do you, friend. So do you.

I don't care if you've been a deacon for years. If you're not born again, you'll surely bust hell wide open when you die. Jesus Christ was nailed up on Calvary, for a sinner like me, where he loved me, and gave himself for me.

I'd get saved, when Christ's life is laid down, and applied to me. But I need to be made a willing captive of bloodstained Jesus. Jesus is the pearl of great price, the only remedy for sin.

I can't stand before Almighty God, Him own merits. I must stand in the merits of another, the Lord Jesus Christ. I must come to Christ, and surrender all I am, to all He is.

And you must do the same, friend. Oh, I need His blood on my soul. Oh, I need His blood on my soul.

Dear Jesus, all my sins forgave, and washed, and made me whole. I have sweet peace and joy within. His blood is on my soul.

His blood is on my soul, my soul. His blood is on my soul. I rest securely in His hand.

His blood is on my soul. The tempter cannot overcome, nor gain the least control. I have God's everlasting seal.

Christ's blood is on my soul. His blood is on my soul, my soul. His blood is on my soul.

I rest securely in His hand. His blood is on my soul. I am determined by His grace, to reach bright heaven's goal, and reign with Jesus on His throne.

His blood is on my soul. His blood is on my soul, my soul. His blood is on my soul.

I rest securely in His hand. His blood is on my soul.