Your Guide to Hell

If you had to cross some dangerous and unknown territory in a distant land you're not familiar with, and no map could help you cross it safely because the terrain of that land was so mountainous and dangerous that the only way to get across was to hire a skilled guide who knew the area well, you'd spare no expense to get the best guide money could buy. But let's say your guide is dropped off by a bus and you notice he walks real slowly with a cane and has a C&I dog beside him and he is completely blind. Would you choose that person to guide you across that terrain? Of course not, you'd both perish if you did.

Jesus said in Matthew 15, 14, let them alone, they'd be blind leaders of the blind, and if the blind lead the blind both shall fall into the ditch. If your pastor friend can't guide you to heaven it's probably because he doesn't know the way himself. Chances are you're being guided to hell by a blind guide and that's subject today friends.

The title of my message is your guide to hell. My test can be found in Matthew's gospel in chapter 23. You can turn in your bibles there now friends.

Jesus is addressing the scribes and the pharisees, the religious leaders of his day, men trained in the religion of their fathers. They were the spiritual guides to the people of Israel but unfortunately they themselves did not know how to get into the kingdom of heaven. In verse 13 Jesus pronounced woes upon them for their dereliction.

But what want to you scribes and pharisees, hypocrites? For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, for you neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are inerrant to go in. Jesus tells the crowd that day that these religious leaders were guiding the people to hell. This is seen in verse 15.

Oh what want to you scribes and pharisees, hypocrites? For you compassionate land to make one proselyte and when he is made you make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. Jesus goes on to refer to them as blind guides as seen in verse 24. Ye blind guides would strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.

Jesus calls them blind a total of five times in this chapter and he denounces them as hypocrites who cannot escape the damnation of hell. And now you better believe friends that when they heard that they couldn't wait to crucify and kill Jesus because he stood in the way of their religion. But I fear the blind guides didn't die out with the scribes and the pharisees.

I myself have sat in many a church in the last 30 years and have heard many pastors damn their congregations by being blind guides themselves. There are some telltale signs that your pastor is a guide to hell. Let's look at these now friends.

Your pastor is your guide to hell when number one he tells you that repentance is not necessary for salvation. All you have to do to be saved is to believe. How many millions of good church members are in hell at this hour because they never exercised repentance toward God.

They failed to turn and forsake their sins. They never received pardon for sin because they never got their sins under the blood. The only believed gospel has guided millions to perdition.

Your pastor is your guide to hell when number two he tells you that you may be saved by just believing John 3 16. I never forget the seminary trained Baptist pastor who I heard tell his congregation that all they had to do to go to heaven was just to believe John 3 16 was true. Believing a text alone won't save you friend.

Textual decisionists fill our churches today because blind guides tell them to believe a text and be saved. I fear many believe Jesus died for their sins without believing on the Christ who died for sin. Your pastor is your guide to hell when number three he tells you that you were saved by inviting Jesus into your heart and it's so easy you can do it right now but you have to make it public friend and come forward and invite Jesus into your heart by repeating a prayer that goes something like this.

Lord Jesus I know you died for my sins I now invite you into my heart and I trust you to save me amen. Then he goes on to tell you you are now a Christian. I listened to a pastor of a big church tell a crowd of people from different religious backgrounds that if they agreed with the fact that Jesus died for them on a cross and rose again that they would be saved.

He asked them to close their eyes and bow their heads and to raise their hand if they agreed with what he just said. Half the room raised their hands and then he told them that they were now saved individuals and they would never have to do that again. It was something you do once and you just did it so don't ever let anybody ever tell you to do it again.

What that false guy did was to double damn them to hell. If someone comes along in the future with a gospel track they are to say no thank you I already did that and that's my fourth and final point friends. Your pastor is your guide to hell when he tells you you are now saved because you did a physical act like raising your hand or walking an aisle or repeating a prayer.

Men do not possess the authority to tell a sinner he is saved. Only the Holy Spirit can tell a person that. Only the Holy Spirit can give you the assurance that you are now sons of God.

For years I sat under pastors who were blind guides who couldn't point out the way to heaven but they could sure lead you to hell. Let us pray.