Kill Your God Smash Your Idols — E.A. Johnston

I have a message you're not going to want to miss today, friends. It's a solemn warning and a gospel call rolled into one. Before I begin, let us pray. Great God in heaven, you who dwell among the cherubim, whose name is holy, I come to you right now, Lord, in the name of your dear son, Christ Jesus, who sits on the right hand and who earned that right by way of a bloody cross, great sovereign king, I need your assistance right now.

I need your strength. Need your power. I need your authority. I need, most of all, your presence, Lord. Come, step out of the pages of your book and walk among us today. Come by your spirit and disturb folks, awaken them, those who are lost, those who are in their carnal security, sitting on a false foundation, with a false hope of heaven.

Great God, show mercy. If somebody listening to this message is religious but lost, then show them they are lost. In a need of a bloodstained savior for sin, give us a clear glimpse of Calvary and the crucified Christ, who is the pearl of great price and the only remedy for sin, and by whose blood crimson sin can be washed white as snow.

Anoint me, great God, with your Holy Spirit, I pray. I need you, Lord. I need you for this hour. I pray these things in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. I want to share this story with you, friends. A missionary shared the following story.

He said, you could stand on a cliff in Mexico and gaze down at a certain village of Mexican workers, and 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 take these tortillas down to the open market, and there sell the tortillas for a few pesos and put them away.

They'll come back out to their house, and there they'll 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 up in the mountains where there stands a wooden statue of Jesus.

The terrain to that statue is pretty bad. Why? It's so bad that most of the people will have to crawl on their hands and knees a couple of miles just to get there, and by the time they get to that statue, they are bleeding all over, 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 those people will reach into their little bags and purses and pull out those pesos stained by their own blood and drop that money in a slit in the top of the head of Jesus.

Then the priest prays, 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 so they can grow their corn to make more tortillas to get more pesos to go and give to a dead God that cannot move or hear, but they are satisfied in their religion worshiping their wooden Jesus.

Now, you may say, friends, that that's a pretty pathetic story about some deceived people, but I submit to you that I believe everyone has a God they serve, whether you're a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Catholic, a Southern Baptist, it doesn't matter.

You have a God you serve. It's your very own brand of a wooden Jesus, because I bet your bottom dollar that somewhere in your past, you got out your pocket knife, and you carved out for yourself a God who wouldn't get in the way of your daily living.

You don't want to go to hell, but sure as shooting, you don't want to be united to a holy Christ either, because if you were united to the God of the Bible in saving faith, then you'd have to give up your pet sin, throw down your shotgun of rebellion, and come in complete surrender to a living Lord and live a holy life yourself unto God.

But most religious folks don't want that, but man's got to have a God. He has a need for some kind of religion that eases his mind so he can sleep at night. Most folks want to go to heaven when they die, but on the road there, they still want to sit on the throne of their life and rule there.

I heard a big Baptist preacher say one time, you know friends, God doesn't send you to hell. If you go to hell, it's because you sent yourself there. Well, that's a ridiculous statement, but even though the congregation smiled and nodded their heads, that's what they believed, because that's what that church taught.

That church taught that God is a God of love who won't punish sin. I wonder how many of you dear, sweet people believe in a God who won't punish sin. I bet you if I took a survey among you and handed out cards with two statements on it with a box beside each statement to check, and I asked you to take out your pen and check the box that applied to you and your beliefs, and the two questions were this.

Number one, my God would never send me to hell because my God won't punish sin. Most of you would check that box because question number two is, my God would send me to hell because Jesus said in Matthew 10, 28, but rather fear him, which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

I bet you disagree with Jesus and check box number one, because most folks in the church today just refuse to believe in a God who must punish sin. Why? Their God wouldn't send anybody to hell. Everyone has a God they serve, a God who will allow them to be religious and still live in sin like the Jews of old.

They want to serve God and serve their idols. Do you know the God of the Bible, friend? Do you? In John's Gospel, in chapter 17, Jesus declares, And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

Here, Jesus is stating that eternal life is knowing the only true God and his son Jesus. Eternal life doesn't mean the duration of it, friends, but the quality of it, in knowing God, the one true God of the Bible.

Do you know that God, friend? Do you know God by experience? Has he revealed himself to you? Or do you have a God that does like you want to? This is serious business, friend. Why? Your final destiny hangs in the balance.

You either know the true God or you don't, and if you don't, you're in for hell. If you don't, men have to have a God they serve, one they can live with, so they carve out one that best suits them. I was at a church social, at a Sunday school picnic, and I was witnessing to a lost relative of one of my friends, and I was telling this man about Jesus, who came down here so we can go up there, and he said, I can't accept what you're saying, but if you can get God to make this picnic table rise up and float in the air right now, then I'll believe in him.

This man wanted to see God do a magic trick before he'd trust in him. He thought of God along the lines of a magician doing tricks. He wanted to see that picnic table rise up in the air before he'd believe, and I believe if that picnic table did begin to rise up in the air, he would have run away screaming, because that's not how you come to the God of the Bible.

You don't make demands on him, but surely he has demands on you. He demands you repent and believe on the Christ, the gospel, who has rights and claims on every blood-bought follower of his, but we want God on our terms.

If the rich, young ruler wanted to join a Baptist church today, we'd welcome him with open arms, why, we'd make him the chairman of the deacons, so long as he brought all his money. When I was a young man, for a time, I belonged to a religious cult we met in a home church.

There were only about 20 of us, and the God we served was a mixture of different religions. Why, there was a mix of the Judeo-Christian religion, a mix of Buddhism, and even some New Age thrown in there.

We'd begin our prayer meeting by envisioning a floating, glowing orb in our center of our stomach, and then we'd hold hands and chant the Aum. We'd go Aum. Then we'd read a little scripture, and we'd have a little Bible lesson, and then there were even icons of saints on the wall if you wanted to stare at them for some deep meditation.

It was a mix of Eastern religion, and Western religion, and a little of this, and a little of that. It was a mix of many things. The trouble was, it wasn't the living God of the Bible. As an evangelist, I've had some tough work through the years.

Before a man will accept the true God, you have to kill his God. If you start killing a man's God, why, you have a fight on your hands. I've had lost deacons fighting mad, threatening me, standing in a church sanctuary.

Why, I've got to get out my broadsword and cut their gods down. When you start doing that, you start cutting down somebody's God. He's going to get awful mad, but I actually believe in preaching the full counsel of God, in the great doctrines of the gospel, which are ruin, redemption, repentance, and regeneration.

I believe all preachers should warn men, and women, and boys, and girls about a future judgment that awaits all mankind. I preach that hell is hot, and sin is black, and God demands repentance if you want to get into his holy heaven.

Hear me now! I've faced angry deacons with fire in their eyes, hatred spewing out of their mouths, and that anger was directed at me because I said, if you don't repent, you'll surely go to hell, even if you are the chairman of the deacons.

I don't broaden the way of salvation like some evangelists do. I say, like Jesus, it's a narrow way, and few there be that find it. I'm honest with folks because I have a burden for the souls of men, and I preach the unvarnished gospel of the cross wherever I am, even if it means the church that invited me ends up stiffing me on the love offering.

I preached in a church where the disturbing presence of Christ showed up and it upset some folks and made them mad, and they didn't pay me one dollar for the three days I preached among them, but I got my reward anyway, because while I was ending that last message, a man ran up and down the aisle shouting, I just got saved, I just got saved.

You see, friends, I actually believe God's word in my Bible where it says in Ezekiel, to every God-called preacher, 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 should die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thine hand. I don't want to stand at the judgment with bloody hands, because I was a man-pleaser like some other preachers.

I'd rather be honest with you and warn you of the dangers of damnation in the devil's hell and have you mad at me, rather than hide the gospel truth from you, hide all the rights and claims of Christ that he has on every blood-bought follower of his, just so you give me a big love offering because I made you feel good about yourselves without being honest with you.

A preacher's job is to hold up a bloody Christ to a sinful generation, to believe in him and to warn men to repent or just go on to hell. But before I can do that, friends, I have dirty business to conduct, and that dirty business is where I get out my hammer of the Word of God and I go to smashing people's idols and messing with their stinking pig-pens of sin, warning folks of the wrath of God against all manner of sinners and uncleanliness, exposing by the Spirit of God all your dark and damnable doings, whereby the Word of God I pass to your little gods that you made to suit yourself, because before I can show you the true God of the Bible, I have to kill your God and smash your idols that you made for yourself.

I've got to take the broadsword of God's Word in both my hands like a Scottish claymore and hew down your wooden Jesus, cut that statue down to little pieces, just like the prophet Samuel hewed Agag to pieces.

This message I'm preaching to you now, friends, is going to make some of you mad. Some of you will call me a holy roller. Some of you will be spitting mad. I might have to dodge a couple of shiny shoes that the good deacons throw up at me.

I had a deacon so mad at me for preaching repentance, he wanted to strangle me. Because when you go around killing somebody's God, then you'll have a fight on your hands from lost religious people. Lost religious folks are the most dangerous people on earth, but they crucified the Son of God to get rid of Him.

Why? There's nothing more dangerous than a lost religious person. Maybe you bumped into one yourself. Why? They'll come after you to try to get rid of you. They'll try to run you out of town. But a good number of you baptized people don't believe in a God who must punish sin.

Bless your heart. You believe you send yourself to hell. Well, if that's the case, then tell me, why do the attending angels at the judgment have to bind the wicked hand and feet to cast them into the lake of fire?

Why don't they just jump in there on their own volition? Because men don't want to go to hell, but they sure don't want to be united to a holy Christ either. If you get saved, friend, it's because God gave you saving faith.

It's because God intervened and invaded your corrupt self-life and conquered your old black heart and subdued your rebellion. Everybody has a God they believe in, but it's not necessarily the God of the Bible.

I was talking to a woman the week Michael Jackson died, and she said she believed he was in heaven. And since it was known that Michael Jackson was never a Christian when he was alive, why did she think he went to heaven, I asked her.

And this is what that woman, who was a member of a Baptist church, told me. She believed that after you die, Jesus comes to you and he offers you then to come take you to heaven. And you can choose then, after you're dead, whether you want to go to heaven or not.

That's what that woman believed. That's even better than the Catholic purgatory. You can live like the devil while you're alive, and after you're dead, you can still have a chance to go to heaven if you want to.

That's the kind of God that woman served. That's the love God many believe in today. A God so loving, he won't send anyone to hell. But if that's the God you serve, then it's one you created out of your own imagination.

No friends, if you're serving a God like that, you created him in your mind, and he's not going to be able to keep you out of hell. You go kicking and screaming and yelling and hanging on to your false God all the way there, and that false God will burn up in hell with you.

You better kill your God now. Smash your idols before it's too late, or the devil will get you if he can. You better listen to me, friend. Men want a God of their own making who won't disturb their daily living.

They want their cake and eat it too by saying they're saved by a decision they made, yet they're still sitting on the throne of their life and ruling there. If they're sitting at a big family gathering, they want first grab at the food plate.

They fight to be first in line. They demand recognition. They want to be in control at all times, and they take great pride in what they have, in what they've done, and heaven help the fool who tries to get in their way.

I was standing in a long line at the grocery store, and finally, it was my turn to put my groceries on the conveyor belt, and a young woman came out of nowhere, jumped right in front of me, and cut in front of me in line, and plopped her groceries down.

This brazen woman stole my spot and turned her back to me. I leaned over to get a look at her face, and she seemed strangely familiar to me. I'd seen her somewhere before. Where had I seen this woman before?

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. She had been the soloist at church on Sunday. I reckon if you're going to crave the spotlight at church, you better be like Jesus in your community, but it isn't so, because folks claim they are Christians, but self still has to rule on the throne.

Self still has to have first place, and they demand first place in line wherever they go in life, but if you really listen to me, friend, it chokes me up to say this, because so many of you are deceived.

If you really say, friend, then self is dethroned, and another isn't thrown there. The Lord Jesus Christ, you must be subjects of regeneration to where you exercise repentance toward God and faith in Christ Jesus.

You must, you absolutely must be born from above and washed in the blood of the Lamb, or your religion will go down to hell with you when you die. I'm telling you the truth, friend. Do you know the God of the Bible?

Do you know by experience the true God? That's a serious question, friend. Do you know why so many teenagers turn away from church and religion when they get to go to college age? Often it's because they had parents who said, do as I say rather than do as I do, and the kids saw right through their hypocrisy.

The kids could not accept the God you were talking about because those teenagers couldn't see the reality of God in the lives of their parents. It's just a sham to them. But if you examine your own life and you'd see a nest of vipers hiding there, you'd see chains of sin on your wrists like chains on a prisoner.

You're so in love with your pet sin, you are blind to the evil in it. Why? What is your God's attitude towards sin? What is your God's attitude towards sin, friend? Is it like yours? If you have a God who will let you rest when you know there is sin in your life, then you better watch out.

In Isaiah, God's word declares, all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. And that's what sin is, friend. It's going our way when we know it isn't God's way. And it's because of our sins that a holy Christ had to hang on a bloody cross and become sin for us.

Oh, if you could only see the awful ugliness, the evil, the blackness of sin, you'd hate it like a holy God hates it. It cost him his son. It cost Christ his very blood. The sinfulness of sin isn't preached in our churches anymore because most preachers fear men more than God.

They don't want to run off their biggest givers. Heaven help us in the sad day of spiritual declension in the Church of America now and the outright apostasy in our denominations. I used to belong to a big Baptist church that had 30 ,000 members.

We had 10 ,000 in Sunday school each week. And there I came across all kinds of people from every walk in life. And many of them had the strangest notions about who God was. One couple had a son who was marrying a witch.

And these parents of the son were absolutely okay with it. They even tried to host a wedding shower at church for their son and this witch. But they wouldn't let them use their facilities because of that witch.

But these Christian parents believed the God they served would bless their son's marriage even if it was to a witch. I've seen the craziest notions about how people, church people, view God. They make God out of their own imagination to suit themselves.

They've shrunken God down to their size, put God on their level so he can act like they would act, think like he would think, be tolerant toward sin like they're tolerant toward sin. Because most folks are so blind in their false views of God, they can't see sin for what it really is.

Sin is ugly. Sin stains. Sin takes you further than you want to go, leaves you there longer than you want to stay, and costs you more than you ever realized. It's the God you serve. If he's a sin-tolerating God who will let you live with sin and still go to heaven, you better get rid of that God, friend.

You better get out of club and kill that God, friend. Is your God him or the true God, the one true God who Isaiah says, For thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy.

I dwell in the high and holy place. Is your God the God who has eyes so pure he can't look upon iniquity? He declares he must punish sin because he will in no wise clear the guilty. Yet men believe God won't punish sin, but the book of Ecclesiastes maybe has an answer.

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. That's why this nation can shake its fist in the face of God, legislate God right out of this country, think they can get away with it.

That's why our government can promote evil, call evil good, and God won't do a thing about it. They legalize sin and promote it, but a day is fast approaching, friends, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flame and 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 the glory of his power.

Because there's a judgment day fast approaching, friends, when God will punish sin. Hear me now! You better swap out your little God for the God of the Bible before it's too late and you die in your sins and go to a devil's hell.

Sin is awful. God hates sin. Listen, friend, sin ruined a paradise. God had to judge and punish sin. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it, for cursed is the ground for thy sake.

In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. And God kicked Adam and Eve out of Eden, and from that point man's days were numbered. Why? Because God must punish sin, and sin caused the judgment of God upon an entire civilization.

And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

Why? Because God must punish sin. God sent a terrible judgment of a worldwide flood that drowned all manner of creature in mankind, save Noah and his family. Why? I ask again. Because God must punish sin.

Every nail Noah hammered into that ark echoed from the forest to an entire generation. God must punish sin. And the Lord said, Because the Christ, Sodom, is great, and because their sin is very grievous, listen friends, the sun was risen upon the earth, when light entered into Zohar, then the Lord reigned upon Sodom, and upon Gomorrah, brimstone and fire, from the Lord out of heaven.

And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

And Abraham got up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the Lord, and he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.

Why, friends, did God reign hell out of heaven upon the cities of the plain? Because God is a God who must punish sin. Jesus came into the world doing good. Jesus fed the hungry. Jesus healed the sick.

Jesus gave sight to the blind. Jesus even raised the dead to life. Yet what happened? Men sought to get rid of him. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers.

And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe. And when they had plaited a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand. And they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!

And they spit upon him, and took the reed, and smote him on the head. And after they had mocked him, they took the robe off him, and put his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him. Listen, friends, that crucifixion was so gory and bloody, that if you'd been standing in the crowd that day at the foot of that blood-stained Christ, you would have been sick to your stomach.

Some of you would have keeled right over and passed out from that sickening sight, and that awful smell of blood and gore. Why did Jesus have to go to the cross? I'll tell you why. As those Roman soldiers fastened the Son of God to that tree, every stroke of their hammer was an explanation point, crying out, God must punish sin!

God must punish sin! God must punish sin! When the Son of God finished his sermon on the plain, with the parable of the man who built the house on a false foundation, and he was going to live in that house that he built on a false foundation, but that house had no structure to it, because it was built upon the earth.

Listen to what the Bible says about that passage. Like a man without a foundation built a house upon the earth against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.

And as Jesus, I bet as he closed the sermon that day, he spoke with such authority of heaven, and his words were like hammers which fell with weight, with such anointed power that as his audience dispersed to go home, all they could see was a house being swept away by a great pounding flood.

They saw debris floating, bodies floating, and they heard the sound of creaking and cracking timbers ringing in their ears. Show somebody here, Lord, that their foundation is nothing but sink and sand.

Great God, come among us. If there's a lost person here with a false God on a false foundation, open their eyes. Let them see where they're going. Friends, this is hard for me to preach to you. This message is tearing me up.

I've got to get through with it. Please bear with me. You must believe in the God of the Bible, friend, or you'll go kicking and screaming all the way to hell. Listen, friend, you better kill the God you have and smash your idols and look to Christ alone for salvation.

Look to a bloody Christ hanging on a bloody cross as the only remedy for sin. You better become like little Zacchaeus who sought to see Jesus. Without Christ, you're up a tree just like him. Anyhow, take a good look at Jesus, the only refuge for sinners.

Look at that man on the cross, friend. Look at that bloodstained Savior for sin. See him there with his arms outstretched, beckoning you to come to him and believe on him. Hear him. Look unto me and be ye saved of the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is none else.

Look at that man on the cross, friend. He's your only hope. If you've not trusted in this blessed Savior, receive him now before it's too late. Soon he will come in judgment on this world when his anger shall burn as an oven and then you'll meet him as your judge.

Hear in his love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. If you've been like those Mexican workers worshiping a wooden Jesus, it's high time you throw down your false God, come to the cross of Christ and gaze on a bleeding Savior for sin.

Turn to Jesus, throw down your shotgun of rebellion at his nail-pierced feet and own him as your Savior and Lord. You get down to where you are, surrender to God. Get down right where you are right now, friend, in humility and repentance and beg God to save you.

Surrender to him now, friend. Don't delay. Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

Lord, now indeed I find thy power and thine alone can change the leper's spots and melt the heart of stone. Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin hath left a crimson stain, he washed it white as snow.

For nothing good have I whereby thy grace to claim. I'll wash my garments white in the blood of Calvary's Lamb. Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin hath left a crimson stain, he washed it white as snow.