The Plague — E.A. Johnston

In the 13th century, the Black Plague spread across Europe, killing an estimated 200 million people. So many people died by this horrible plague. It was said in some towns there was no one to bury the dead.

The Spiritual Plague in Society and the Church

There is a plague in society today, friends, much worse than the Black Plague, and people are dying from it every day. We live in a day of a morally corrupt society and a spiritually bankrupt church. The majority in our churches today, in both pulpit and pew, are strangers to the work of grace that God performs upon the heart in regeneration.

When sinners cannot see the plague of their hearts, they go and build up a righteousness of their own. They set up a religion of nature improved, but they are still yet in their sins. They are blind, helpless, and utterly corrupt, for they've never experienced change from an encounter with the Christ of Calvary.

They merely made some kind of intellectual ascent to some kind of spiritual truths and joined the church, mistaking church membership for salvation. And dutifully, they've sat in church for years, often growing gray and more hardened in their sins.

They have a form of religion, but to Christ they are strangers, strangers to knowing Christ and strangers to Christ knowing them. These good church members are often the hardest to reach with the saving truths of the gospel because they have generated a God in their minds whom they serve.

And if you're going to try to reach them with the gospel and awaken them to their lost, undone condition, then you first must go kill their gods. You start killing somebody's god and you'll have a fight on your hands.

Their god would never send anyone to hell, and their god would never get in the way of their daily living. They've taken out their pocket knives and have carved out for themselves a god they are comfortable with.

And many churches, friends, are built this way by unconverted men in ministry who grow an unconverted church of nice little church folks who'd try to cut the head off of Almighty God if he got in their way.

The Eternal Danger of Remaining Unconverted

Now that's my introduction, friends, and I can promise you this message won't win me your approval. It'll probably make you mad. I hope it makes you mad enough to take a look at eternity, and maybe, just maybe, the Holy Spirit might touch some of it with a holy spark and make it flame in your hearts and conscience to awaken you to your great danger of dying in your natural condition and spending an eternity in a devil's hell in perdition and damnation.

I don't care if you're the chairman of the deacons. If you've never been born from above and washed in the blood, you will surely bust hell wide open when you die. There's a verse found in the Book of Proverbs which best describes this generation of baptized church members today.

Proverbs 30, 12 speaks of them. There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes and yet is not washed from their filthiness. And that, friends, pretty much sums up what we have today in our churches from pulpit to pew.

Two-legged, unwashed hogs who like to wallow in the mire. They are as religious as the Pope, but don't you dare get in their way and tell them they must repent or just go on to hell. They've never seen two important things.

They've never seen the plague of their hearts, and they've never seen the Christ of Calvary. These religious decisionists don't have a spark of grace in them. They just made a decision somewhere back yonder to become a Christian, and they joined the church, and some went to seminary and ended up in a pulpit over some others who mistake religion for a relationship with Christ Jesus.

Spiritual Heart Failure and False Assurance

My message today, friends, is called the plague because we have a great plague spreading across our church campuses from the East Coast to the West and from the North to the South, and that plague is a religion that is completely void of the reality of a blood-stained Savior from sin.

The main reason is heart failure. Last year, I ended up in the hospital in emergency surgery, and while I was there, I had heart failure. I came real close to death and eternity, and the doctors thought I'd never have the strength to live on my own.

But physical heart failure is one thing, and spiritual heart failure is quite another thing. The main reason why we have multitudes in our churches today who are utter strangers to a work of grace upon the heart by the Holy Spirit in the supernatural act of regeneration is because this generation of nice little church folks have never seen the plague of their hearts, and they rest upon a foundation of their own righteousness that they have built upon and fortified for years that make the Pharisees look like altar boys, for they have a form of religion that will fool you.

But like my text declares from God's holy word, there is a generation that is pure in their own eyes and yet is not washed from their filthiness. I know unconverted evangelists and pastors who, every time they stand up to preach, they will curse you to hell with their preaching about an unknown Christ.

They can't point you to heaven because they don't know the way themselves. Or they can tell some good jokes and keep you entertained with some amusing stories, and you will clap for them when they are done because they gave you a good time in the name of God.

But they are strangers to the plague of their hearts and have never gotten safely to the Christ of Calvary. Through the years, I've come across and have known hundreds and hundreds of nice church folks who I will never see in God's holy heaven because they are pure only in their own eyes and are yet still in their filthiness.

They've never gotten their sins under the blood of the slain lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ. They're in church Sunday after Sunday for years on end, serving and giving and smiling and handshaking, but they don't have a spark of grace in them for they are yet in their natural condition.

And unless God intervenes and implants a new nature within, they will die in their sins while their pastor says a few good words over their corpse at the funeral. He'll say something like, Now, we mustn't mourn old Joe or dear Mary, who's up in heaven now.

And everyone will nod their heads, but when reality is the deceased is below, screaming and shrieking in a devil's hell that smokes like a burning furnace. They never saw themselves as a sinner in need of a savior from sin.

They never knew the plague of their own heart. They never felt their need for a remedy for sin. If you've never been lost, friend, then you've never been saved. I don't care what your pastor told you.

The Necessity of Repentance and Salvation

Jesus said, for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. Listen, friend, I know I'm a sinner and I need a substitute for sin. In the person of Jesus Christ, so do you, friend. So do you.

You must repent or just go on to hell when you die. My Bible says Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. For it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.

God's Justice and Christ's Substitution

People don't believe in a God today who will punish sin. But the God of the Bible will. The sentence of the law will be carried out by His justice. God is a God who must punish sin. When they took the innocent Christ and fashioned Him to that ignoble cross, every stroke of the Roman's hammer was an explanation point that God must punish sin.

God must punish sin. God must punish sin. Listen to me, friend. There is nothing in this world worth having if you get it and still miss Christ and enter a Christless eternity. Jesus said, For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.

The Eternal Cost of Gaining the World

For what is a man profited if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?