By Justin Edwards
This message is for church people. If you consider yourself a Christian, then you must watch this. You will either be edified, convicted, or your heart will be further hardened from the truth.
Transcript below:
The Fire
Have you ever thought that there would be people that have gone to hell today that never thought that they would get there? I mean, they might have thought that they would go there but they never really believed that they will go to hell. They never actually knew what hell is going to be like. They never actually believed that someday they would go there and that probably they were good – you know?
But after all, they’re Christians. Of course they never thought that they would go there, but they are there. Right now. Many of them cursing God because some preacher told them that God was love and that love was tolerance and that God would never let them feel condemned.
Ever heard the phrase, a sugar makes the medicine go down. More like a little truth makes deception acceptable.
I want to be very clear on something: I have a heart for every soul – lost and saved. But this video from the very first idea of it until the very last edit that I’ve made was made for church people. I have spoken out in the past and I think it’s funny because a lot of church people have come up to me and they say, “You’re gonna turn off the lost people off.” or “you would make sinners want nothing to do with you.” They missed the whole point. I am talking to you. I am talking to church people. The people that already think they believe in Christ. The people that serve in churches. The people that evangelize the lost. The people of the Church.
And you say things like that but you keep on doing all of the evil you can. You intentionally indulge in your favorite sin. And when there is still time to stop. While there is still time for you to just think about and say “No I do not want to do it”. In the same breath you say, “Boy I am sure God is merciful”.
But Christ seated at the right hand of the Father looks down from Heaven and He says, “Do you have any idea what your forgiveness cost me? I’ve had my flesh tore out my neck, and back and legs. I had thorns jammed into my head. I was stabbed in the side. gore gushed from my hands and from my feet and from my back just to cover the thing you so lightly indulge in. But in truth, this thing that I went in the physical. They were nothing compared to what I was going through the spiritual. If you multiply all of these physical things that I’ve gone through times a thousand. It still cannot cover your one sin.
Don’t you know that God, the Father, beated me to pieces? He obliterated me beyond recognition. He took the cup of Wrath that had your name on it and He splashed it on my perfect, sinless and bleedy face. And what is worst, God did this to me with a smile. It pleased Him to crush me for you.
That’s what your forgiveness cost me.”
Most professing Christians have never realized their actually need for Christ. They have been invited to Him in such a way that seems like, “oh I am doing God a favor just to believe in Christ.” They have never been told that the very first level of Christianity is a complete denial to all of your desires and to everything that you ever being. They have never been clearly shown that whosoever doesn’t wake up in the morning in die to every one of his desires is not even worthy of walking in Jesus’ footsteps.
They do not understand that being a Christian means that they are crucified to the world and that the world is crucified to them. That means the world thinks of you as a fool that has nothing to contribute to society and that there is nothing that the world offers that you desire. Thet you have now nothing to do with sin and everything to do with God.
It has been told by many professing Christians that Jesus said and meant, no one can serve two masters. You will hate one and love the other every time. If you do not mind very much when people use His glorious Name in vain. If you do not mind of seeing places that are build on sin. If you do not feel deeply offended at the fornication in your favorite movies. At the scoffing of the glorious Name of Jesus and the jokes that defile his very throne and slap His face in rebellion, then you hate Him. It is not very hard to figure out because Jesus said, you will hate the one and love the other always.
If you love the world, you hate Him or else Jesus was wrong. But you say, “No that isn’t truth. I love Jesus. Jesus is Lord.” But who are you trying to convince? Isn’t interesting when anyone brings a word of correction about your sin. You immediately pass them off as unChrist-like and judgmental. It is digusting that it is more of a scandal to this church culture to reprove sin than is to laugh at it. The one who says, sin is wrong is judgmental and the one who commits it and encourages others to do it is Christ-like – how disgusting!
You do not want to be like God. You just want people to back off when they are starting to reprove the very thing you were in love most with.
Truth love for God means truth hatred for sin.
In Matthew 7 and in Luke 13, Jesus says that many will be telling Him on that Day that He is the actual Lord of their life. But He will say, “Depart from Me, I never knew you.”
Your profess faith in Jesus means absolutely nothing.
You say, well you know that you really can’t judge a book by it’s cover. Well I heard a great preacher recently say that that whole idea is invented of Satan. Because Jesus said, you can judge a book by it’s cover because in John 15, He said, you will know false prophets by their fruit.
Tell me how long will it actually take you if you walk to a apple tree and there were fruits of apples all over for you to say, “It’s a apple tree”? A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. That’s what Jesus said. Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire…” (John 15:5-6)
No one has to hear what you have been through. No one has to know that from what you have been saved. All they have to do is look at your fruit. You have been serving in church your whole life but look at your fruit for a second. What about the things that come out your mouth when you talked to people in conversations? What are your affections set toward – are they God things?
You can tell Him that you have sit in church, you can tell Him that He is Lord. But if you die without bearing Christ’s fruits, you will go to hell for all of eternity. And ten millions years will pass and you will be under the weight of this thing that no human on earth can bare for even a second. And, it will be like no time has past in eternity – no time. A hundred years pass and is the same – you are there. There you are suffering the Wrath of God because you believed some lying preacher that was a wolf in sheep clothing that just tried to encourage you and so you are maybe saying as many already have,
“Hey, you are judgmental.” “You are unChrist-like.” “You are condescending.” “You are heavy.”
“You are turning people off by they way that you talk.” Can’t you see that I want you to live?
As the main purpose of your existence to live. That is God number one desire. The biggest problem in the Bible if you would read it that God is faced with is that if He just, He cannot forgive you.
Go talk to the lost people on the streets and see if they don’t tell you that God is forgiving. They have heard of the trenmendous love of God and yet, they are still with the very sin that crushed and murdered Him. And so are many of you.
“Hey let’s watch a movie tonight! What there is nudity and there is 12 ‘GD’s'? A hundred and forty ‘F’ words? That’s alright, I’ve freedom in Christ.” Freedom from what? Freedom to let the worst words that can be spilled out of a human mouth serve you. Entertainment and yet, you still claim that you love Him with your whole heart? You make lau- you make jesters at the very things that murdered Him? Not only that, but you spit in the bloody face of the Lamb of God as He hangs on a jack of wood taking your wrath and you say, “Don’t worry! He forgives.” Do you know the character of the god you serve? In the book of Jeremiah, God’s people have been wicked by serving other gods and having their affection set on other things and willfully sinning and not saying that they have sinned.
And not acknowledging their need for God. We find in Jeremiah chapter 14 repenting genuine biblical repentance for the people of God and he said, “Lord, we confess our wickedness and that of our ancestors, too. We all have sinned against You. For the sake of Your reputation, Lord, do not abandon us. Do not disgrace Your Own glorious throne. Please remember us, and do not break Your covenant with us.” (Jeremiah 14:20-22).
It’s really good repentance it’s really genuine. It’s better than most of you had prayed. But what may shock you is God’s response, “Even if Moses and Samuel stood before Me pleading for these people, I wouldn’t help them. Away with then! Get then out of my sight!” (Jeremiah 15:1). Then He told Jeremiah, “Do not go to funerals to mourn and show sympathy for these people, for I have removed My peace and protection from them. I have taken away My unfailing love and My mercy.” (Jeremiah 16:5).
These weren’t the lost people of the world. These were His people.
So you are maybe questioning, “Hey, why are you saying this to me? To me you still sound judgmental.” Well I heard a story of a young man that was dying on his deathbed. His brother was there next to him. And, he said, “Brother, why have you been so indifferent to me about my soul as you have been?” Brother said, “Indifferent? I haven’t been indifferent to you! I’ve spoken to you often about it.” Brother said, “Yeah, you’ve spoken but I think if you would remember that I was going down to hell you would have been more earnest with me.”
Every time you hear a sermon and you see a video, or you hear a song that is convicting or anything. You have chance to either to repent or to harden your heart. Some of you have watched a video that I’ve made in the past and you’ve thought, “Man, that’s very good or maybe you’ve told me hey, I will start changing. Thank you for this, and this but you really haven’t decided to change and tap in in the grace of God. You’re hardening your heart against Him. You are making it harder for yourself. Don’t make your judgment twice as bad for hearing the Word of Lord and then ignoring it.
I am telling you about hell and I am you that some of you are going there unless you repent. But, if you harden your heart in your whole life and die without repenting. You will look back in the day that you have watched this video and from the flames of hell, you will curse. You will curse the day you were born. You will curse this day and you will say, I wish I’ve even never watched because now I know that he was right. Now I know that hell is real, that he wasn’t just to scare me and that I was going. I was going to burn there for all of eternity. Now I see the truth. Now I see.
I got to tell you something very solemn, there is nothing in this life that you can do that will take away the glory of God. And, in the end He will be glorified in your life.
There’s a verse in Scripture that talks about that for all of eternity, the lake of fire will be open for people to come and see the fierce wrath of God. And that they will be able to observe how majestic He is and they will see in awe of their hearts and they will come back and worship Him. The line of heart stops their enemies as their blood sprinkles all over their robes and they will come bow before Him and say Holy holy holy is the Lamb which taketh the sin of the world. But, do you know what mercy is? Mercy is that you can choose. And, so, you choose will God be glorified by your damnation and eternal punishment or will He be glorified by your salvation and your worship.
I’ve realized that a lot of you think that I am crazy. I was told that. But ask yourself , What is going to matter when you are on your deathbed- if you get one, and when you are just a few breath away from death. What is going to matter? Is it going to matter whether or not you have been in college? No. It will not matter if I have written a song. Or, whether or not, I’ve painted a picture and done anything. Nothing is going to matter when you are breaths away from eternity.
Don’t you think that you have wished that you, when that time comes, that you would love God the way you said you did? Would you actually flip the tv off, a little more, to study His Godly scriptures? I know I will. No matter how much I have done then I wish I would have done more.
But the good news is: Christ is calling. He is calling loud within the streets. He is calling for you to come. He is holding the door of mercy as wide as it can be open and He is saying, “Come and dine with Me!”
To dine with Him you have to die to you. The One whose Name you have abused and whose cross you have mocked by the way that you lived is alive and He is coming. But you may die before He does.
All you have is now!
“Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; Nor His ear heavy, that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.” (Isaiah 59:1-2)
(HT: Sermonjamtranscript)
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