A Guilty Rebel in Submission to a King — E.A. Johnston

The Need to Recover the True Gospel

Years ago, I witnessed to an ice cream man and led him in a prayer to receive Christ. But looking back on that time, I fear I did him more harm than good. I was very zealous to see souls saved in those days, but I did not understand the gospel as I do now.

And I'm afraid I did a lot more damage than I did good in the name of Christ. And I'm afraid many today, through ignorance, just don't know what the true gospel of the Son of God is. And they offer people Jesus as casually as they'd offer him a piece of bubble gum.

And those people take our Jesus and chew on him for a little while, but later they spit him out. And that's where much of our evangelism is today. And it's a crying shame we don't know the gospel better in our day, and we do men great harm instead of good.

We offer Jesus to every mother's child without ever telling them why they need a Savior. But men in former days knew better. But in our day, we have perverted the gospel to such a degree, it doesn't even resemble the biblical gospel anymore.

The Guilty Rebel and Submission to the King

We preachers have diluted the gospel message to make it more palatable to sinful man. We've removed all the offense out of it so not to offend the tender feelings of modern man. And we have ceased to warn men of the dangers they lie in.

We have failed in our duty to inform man who he is, a guilty rebel. And we have neglected to show that guilty rebel that salvation is submission to a king. It's being reconciled back to an offended creator.

Today's weak evangelism wants to candy coat what a sinner is. We don't even call a sinner a sinner anymore. We refer to him as the unchurched. Listen friends, let's not mince words. A sinner is just a guilty rebel, a lawbreaker, someone who's committed treason against the crown.

My message today is entitled, a guilty rebel in submission to a king. It's high time in America that we quit this politically correct nonsense and call a spade a spade. And call sin black and hell hot.

The Coming Judgment and the Wrath to Come

It's high time we evangelists begin being honest with men and warn them to flee from the wrath to come. There is a day coming when all of mankind shall stand before the creator of heaven and earth. And all their works will be brought before him under the searching spotlight of his presence.

He who has eyes of fire will judge every man's work and test it by fire. To see whether it is gold, silver, precious stones, or if it be wood, hay, and stubble. The judge of all the earth will sit on that throne.

And every law-breaking rebel will be dragged before him to face a day of judgment. If any man stands there before that judge in his own merit, he will be sentenced to the lake of fire, burning with brimstone.

Malachi's Warning of the Day That Burns

Allow me to read you our passage of scripture from the book of Malachi in chapter 4 and verse 1. Listen to what the word of God declares. For behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven. And all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly shall be stubble.

And the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. Those words speak of a coming day of judgment. And the next crime we have committed in your day and mine in regard to evangelism is failing to preach the gospel in all its demands.

Jesus Christ as Sovereign King

We've turned Jesus into an insurance salesman who stands impotently at the door of your heart. He is knocking and knocking. Won't you please let him in? Won't you pretty please let him in? And if you do, you will go to heaven, even if you continue in your course of sin.

But Jesus is no impotent man begging you to accept him into your heart. Rather, he is a sovereign king who sits on a heavenly throne at the right hand of the Father. And he got there by way of a bloody cross.

And you don't treat a king like a peasant and mistreat him and slander him and disobey him without swift consequences. The Jesus that is presented from the majority of the pulpits in the land is not the Jesus of the Bible.

Christ's Warning About the Final Separation

Listen to the Jesus of the Bible as he speaks about a sinner's doom. This is from the gospel of Matthew, not the gospel of prosperity, not the gospel of conformity. But the gospel of the Son of God is seen in Matthew chapter 13, verses 49 and 50.

So shall it be at the end of the world. The angel shall come forth and sever the wicked from among the just and shall cast them into the furnace of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Listen, friends.

The true gospel warns men to flee from the wrath to come. It does not candy coat the words of Jesus and make them less than what he declared. Jesus warned his hearers of a coming day of judgment for all mankind, where every single person will be arraigned before a just and holy God.

And if that person is outside of Christ and standing in their own merits, they are guilty lawbreakers who will be sentenced to an eternal place of damnation and punishment and be cast into that furnace of fire by the strong arms of angels.

Their terror will be so horrifying that they will wail and gnash their teeth. Wailing speaks of great loss and grief. Gnashing of teeth signifies great anger and regret. You will regret the times you spurned the wounds of the Holy Spirit through gospel invitations and tracts being handed to you.

You will regret that you put off something so important as your eternal destiny. You will wail and cry out over your ruin and stupidity and great loss. You were never safely brought to Christ and you remain what you are, a rebel against the crown.

And a holy God will have no rebels in his kingdom. Jesus came to save us from our sins, not to give us a free ticket to heaven so we can remain in our filthy sins. No, sir, surely the evangelism of our day has done injustice to both God and man.

The Gospel Must Include Warnings and Repentance

I wish I could place a moratorium on all the preaching going on in this land until we get it right, until we are honest with men and warn them of their great danger, until we inform sinful man that he is a rebel who hates all things that are holy and of God Almighty, until we call sin black and hell hot and warn men not to go there, that sinful man must be reconciled back to a holy God or he will surely go to hell and be cast in there by strong angels, carrying out the sentence of a supreme judge and a sovereign king.

That coming to Christ does not mean your acceptance of him, but his acceptance of you, that you must kneel in submission to a sovereign king. That God was under no obligation to send his son to die for guilty rebels against himself, and that man is a rebel and lawbreaker, is a subject of Satan, who has blinded his eyes to the truth of the gospel, that to be saved means you forsake one kingdom for another, that you throw down your shotgun of rebellion and kneel at the pierced feet of that king who hung on a bloody cross because of your rotten sins.

Christ's Substitutionary Suffering for Sin

That God in his mercy has sent his only begotten son into the world to stand in the place of sinful man and to experience the wrath of God on our behalf and to suffer the turned face of the Father because of our sins.

God didn't send his precious pearl of great price to be treated like a concert ticket that you can either accept or toss away because it has little worth, but today we have reduced the God of the universe down to our size and have diluted the truth of the gospel of the Son of God so not to offend sinful man, and in the process we have angered a holy God and have offended him with the gospel of your day and mine.

The Severity of God's Holy Law

Is that too hard for you? You're so accustomed to eating sugary foods you can't swallow the realities of scripture without some preacher putting honey on them. Listen, friends, somewhere in the last 40 years in America, the gospel became a diluted gospel, one that was easier to swallow, and evangelists have fed that perverted gospel to the masses and have committed a great crime.

They've not been honest with folks and have not told them how black sin is and what danger people lie in. They have not held them up against the strictness and severity of God's holy law, which will condemn every man who is outside of Christ.

I know I am a sinner, and I need a sin substitute in the person of Jesus Christ, and so do you, friend, so do you. You need to be aware of the nature of God. He is a sovereign king who rules the universe, and his very name is holy.

The Danger of Minimizing Sin

He will have no rebels in his kingdom. He will not allow his son to be trampled on and rejected without swift punishment. For all of mankind stands guilty before this holy God. Men are guilty rebels before a holy God, and until a sinner recognizes his dangerous position outside of Christ, he will go on sinning with reckless abandon because he drinks iniquity like it's water.

George Whitefield, the great British evangelist, used to refer to a sinner as half man and half beast. He called them monsters of iniquity, rebels. But today we use nice little words to sugarcoat everything so not to offend anyone.

So we don't, but we offend God. But if we evangelists started being honest with men and warned them of their danger, surely everyone who is not determined to fully persevere in sin will think it a great mercy to be told of his danger and to be warned to flee from that wrath to come.

The Moral Duty to Warn Sinners

In hell, the condemned are cursing the evangelists who sugarcoated the gospel and did not point them savingly to Christ. Listen, if you were in your vehicle with your family and you were about to cross a bridge, would you not want to be warned if the bridge was out?

You would not want to plunge to your deaths. How would you feel if you drove by a person who knew the bridge was out and they did not flag you down and warn you? It's a crime to withhold important information if it's life-threatening.

But today we've turned God into a big loving teddy bear who wouldn't hurt a fly. But listen to what the God of the Bible declares from Ezekiel 33 verse 29. Then shall they know that I am the Lord, when I have laid the land most desolate because of all their abominations which they have committed.

National Judgment and the Call to Repentance

Listen, friends, America has sent herself into the judgments of an offended God. We stand under the withdrawn presence of God in the land because there is no fear of God in the land anymore. And God sends His remedial judgments to us in a loving way to get our attention, to get us to repent and turn back to Him.

But we fail to listen to Him because our God just wouldn't act that way. We don't worship the God of the Bible but a God of our own creations. But if we who stand in the pulpits of this land fail to be truthful and honest with men and warn them to flee from the holy wrath of avenging God who is a sovereign king and He will not tolerate having His crown thrown into dust or His Son ridiculed and abused without dire consequences coming from His righteous right hand.

A Pastor Who Never Preached Sin or Repentance

I sat listening to a popular pastor in the South. I sat in his congregation for several weeks and I heard him use big words and he was very gifted as a speaker and he held his audience's attention. They just seemed to love his addresses from the pulpit.

This man had quite an intellect and obviously an intellectual congregation and it was obvious from listening to him he was preaching to the intellectuals sitting out there for he used words I had not even heard before.

And I have two earned doctorates but I never once heard how you could get to heaven. I never once heard him mention sin or mention repentance or mention a place called hell. He never once spoke of the blood or the cross.

I sat there and wondered as I wondered how anybody in this man's congregation could ever get to Christ savingly when it was obvious this minister did not know how to point them there. You see friends, we preachers today are criminals in the sense if we fail to warn sinners of their great danger in being exposed to the wrath of God because of sin.

The Pastor's Duty to Proclaim the Full Gospel

If we fail to inform sinners of their duty of repentance and submission to a sovereign king that the gospel has in it both invitations and warnings. John 3 .16 speaks of an eternal heaven but it also warns of perishing and everlasting burnings.

Listen brother pastor, you can dance around the scriptures all you want to and be pleased in the man's ears so not to upset anybody in your congregation. You can preach nice little sermons that keep your people loving you for your brilliance but you better pay attention to the following passage from the book of Ezekiel because you will one day answer for how you've preached the gospel because if you fail to tell sinful man that he is a guilty rebel who needs to be reconciled back to a holy God because of sin then the following passage of scripture will indict you.

Ezekiel's Watchman Warning to Preachers

Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel. Therefore hear the word at my mouth and give them warning from me. 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 ways to save his life, the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity but his blood will I require at thine hand.