Spiritually Cold in Sinful Society — E.A. Johnston

Moral Collapse and the Loss of Shame

I've lived long enough to see this nation turn its back on God as a sinful society waxes worse and worse. Our young people today have drugged themselves and sexed themselves into a dull oblivion. Because of the internet, our children are exposed to the worst sexual perversion of any preceding generation in history, and they lose their innocence at an early age.

Good is called evil and evil good, and the nation has exchanged the living God of the Bible for no gods of their own making. There is no shame in society anymore, and there is no fear of God in the land.

The Church's Spiritual Coldness and Compromise

All boundaries of decency have been trampled, and gross perversion runs rampant in the land like a filthy sewer that overflows. In recent years, the church has lost her direction, and she has lost her voice of authority.

I remember in America where preachers preached hard against sin, and they preached up a bloodstained Savior for sin. But I've watched in horror as the people of God have grown more and more spiritually cold as they have lost their first love and sleep soundly on pillows of conformity and compromise.

The spiritually arrogant are in charge of denominations and are more concerned about self-preservation and self-aggrandizement than the souls of men. I've never seen a time in my life where society is so sick morally, and the church is so sound asleep in a spiritual stupor.

Apostasy Before the Return of Christ

It's a shocking picture of a sinking world right before the return of Christ. The church lies in apostasy, and no one seems to notice or even care. The title of my message today, friends, is A Spiritually Cold People in a Sinful Society, and my text can be found in the book of Jeremiah in chapter 44.

Jeremiah 44 and the Backslidden Exiles

You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends. We will be in verses 10 through 11. In Jeremiah, chapter 44, we find the prophet in Egypt as he preaches to a backslidden people who were joined to their idols and who half-heartedly served God.

Judgment and desolation had come to Jerusalem and Judah, and these Jews had fled to Egypt where they felt safe. They believed their security lay in the worship of the Egyptian queen of heaven. In verses 4 and 5, God tells them, I sent unto you, all my servants, the prophets, rising early, and sending them, saying, O, do not this abominable thing that I hate.

But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear to turn from their wickedness, to burn no incense unto other gods. And God, through his prophet Jeremiah, confronts these exiled Jews who were an incorrigible people.

Refusal to Repent and the Coming Judgment

They refused to return to God and repent. And in verses 10 and 11, God speaks clearly regarding this. They are not humbled, even unto this day, neither have they feared, nor walked in my law, nor in my statutes, that I have set before you and before your fathers.

Therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will set my face against you for evil, and to cut off all Judah. I will stop there, friends. Is the church in America prepared to face the turned face of the God of the Bible?

America Under the Warning of God's Judgment

Are we as a people prepared for the coming desolations and destruction that is imminent for our sins? Do we, like the Jews in the days of Jeremiah, foolishly believe that because we are the favored people of God, we can sin all we want to and get away with it?

The severe warnings from God fell on deaf ears, and judgment came swiftly and surely to a disobedient people. How can we, as a people of God, escape what is our due? Have we not turned our backs as well on the living God of the Bible, and hewed out our own cisterns of our own making?

Spiritual Coldness and the Dulling of the Gospel

God set his face against an incorrigible people, and destruction came upon them. If we remain a spiritually cold people in a sinful society, we will dull all attempts at the spread of the gospel and join hands with that society in a collective agreement with it to our own downfall and destruction.

Is anybody out there, and does anybody care?