A Wrecked House — E.A. Johnston

The Urgency of Eternal Destiny

I have a very serious message for us tonight, friends. I fear for many of your immortal souls. Some of you are so careless regarding the things of Christ in eternity. I fear for you. You spend more time on your sports and amusements than you do on your eternal destiny.

I'm going to be straight as a ruler with you tonight, friends. Like we say in the South, I'm going to give you the oil straight from the can because I preach an undiluted gospel of the Son of God that has power to save.

The world grows worse and worse as the days grow darker and darker, and our country has become a dangerous place to live with all the floods and fires and tornadoes. Why, it looks like a page out of the Old Testament.

God's judging this country, and the blood of violence spills out on our city streets, perversion and society spinning out of control, and the spirit of Antichrist is already in the land. And where is the church in all of this?

She's sound asleep on the pillows of conformity and compromise. The church quit preaching the gospel years ago, and few are getting saved. Most big churches today are just a baptized pagan country club as our religious denominations grow moss in apostasy.

Few live for eternity, but everyone will end up there, either in the bliss of heaven or the miseries of a burning hell. So we're going to get serious with God tonight, friends. It's time to shell the corn down.

The Wise and Foolish Builders

We will look at Jesus' longest sermon tonight. This sermon on the mount begins with blessings of beatitudes, and it ends with a resounding crash of a house broken into pieces upon the rocks. For Jesus ends his long sermon with the striking words of Scripture,.

And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand, and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.

Jesus spoke those words with such divine unction and descriptive power that his hearers could see the white-capped waves as they rose majestically. They could hear when the howl of the wind came as it drove and beat upon those waves.

They could hear the pounding on that house like ten thousand hammers as it's torn apart into pieces with every section of that house crumbling and floating away into the raging sea. His audience could actually hear the creek and the crack of the timber as it fell and was broken asunder.

They went home with the terrible crash of that house in their ears, and the text says,. And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine. Does your preaching, brother preacher, have that kind of effect?

Or is your crowd too busy laughing at your funny stories? If you pay close attention, friends, to Matthew chapter 7, it's one of the most intolerant and unpolitically correct sermons you'll ever encounter.

False Foundations and False Converts

Jesus is wrapping up his sermon with real sledgehammers that are intended to smash all false foundations to pieces and smoke out every sinner from every false refuge. He calls out the hypocrites. He says that very few will be saved, that it's a straight gate and few will squeeze through.

Most everybody is just on the broad road of destruction and very few are on the narrow way which leads to life. Few there be that find it. He calls out false prophets who come in sheep's clothing. He's talking about all the unconverted ministers who are feeding you lies.

Jesus cuts a fine dividing line between a true believer and a false convert in the parable of the good tree and the bad tree. And he says very plainly that every member of a Baptist church is not saved, although they might give them lip service and call them Lord.

They're just lost religious folk who love to sin. And he ends his search and sermon with a vivid illustration of the wise man, the true convert, who builds his house upon a rock. Jesus is that rock. And a fool who builds on sand, even if he is the chairman of the deacons.

Tonight, listen to me, friends. Get the wax out of your ears. Pay attention. We're going to talk about the real and the false tonight. There are many today, I fear, who mistake church membership for salvation.

They only made a mental ascent to Jesus and they go on living like the devil. He's never touched their heart through a supernatural act of regeneration and change them. I believe that because of the decades of a false, he's-believed gospel in man-centered methodologies in our churches throughout the land, that I believe this, friends.

I believe that 99 of a congregation is as lost as a goose in a snowstorm. And I'm including many seminary graduates as well. These are dark days. These are desperate days. We've strayed so far away from God in our personal lives through compromise with the world and conformities to society.

Many in our churches today wouldn't recognize Jesus if He was in a police lineup. They don't know Him. They've never experienced Him. They've never been changed by Him. They live lives of disobedience to Him, yet they still call Him Lord.

Conversion as a Supernatural Change

Listen to me, friends. Becoming a Christian isn't making the decision and joining the church. Rather, conversion is a great change from darkness to light, from death to life. Conversion is the greatest change men undergo in this world.

When Jesus was here in His earthly ministry, as He went about into towns and villages, all who encountered Him experienced change. Old blind Bartimaeus could now see the lepers lost their spots for sure, and they had skin as smooth as a baby.

Little Zacchaeus gave half his goods away, and once he was saved, he stood out in a crowd for the first time in his life. The Apostle Paul went from being the biggest persecutor of the church to the biggest sufferer for it.

He put his neck on the line for sure. Like Christ's sermon illustration, multitudes are ruined by building upon a sandy foundation that just gets washed away. Men must be led into an understanding of the badness of their hearts and the strictness of the law before they can see and be convinced of the preciousness of Christ.

Men must see their illness before they seek a remedy. And our fear, friends, our preaching today is nothing but impotency in the pulpit for the gospel that is preached today is so watered down and broadened that you can't save a flea, much less an old rotten sinner.

Sin, Judgment, and the Need for the Gospel

Men must see themselves as poor and miserable, wretched, blind, and naked before they turn to Christ for gold tried in the fire and white raiment to put on. We need to be honest with folks and warn them of a future judgment that awaits all mankind.

Men need to be told the terrors of the Lord that every single mother's son will be held up to the strictness and severity of God's unbending law and all are guilty because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

We need to warn men to flee from the wrath to come. We need to stop handing out our little Jesus like three pieces of chewing gum where after you chew on it for a while, the flavor goes out of your religion.

Most preachers today are like Eli who refused to rebuke his wicked sons and who coddled them and they ended up and he ended up so fat and clueless to his own danger, he fell backwards off his chair and slipped out of this world with a poor testimony.

A man's hearts are as hard as stone and ministers are derelict in duty by speaking nice, smooth, little messages that don't disturb anyone and awaken no one. But Christ often warned his hearers of the danger of damnation.

The angels shall cast them into a furnace of fire. There should be wailing and gnashing of teeth, but there's little fire in our preaching today because we lost our fire years ago. All preachers should be like those two disciples who were the sons of thunder.

Awakening Sinners from False Security

Men must be smoked out of their false refuges of self-righteousness and good works like you'd smoke a skunk out of your barn. Men must be taken by the hand and driven as Lot was out of Sodom before the whole city goes up in flames.

Unconverted church members need to be awakened to the stark fact of the danger of dying in their sins and being chased out of the world into darkness. Many sit on rotten foundations of carnal security and a good opinion of themselves.

They lie down at night as a spider on a spiderweb, not realizing directly beneath them is the portal to hell and their very weight is enough to bust that flimsy foundation into nothing and go to pieces.

And it's just God's grace that's keeping them from dropping there now. It's His long-suffering forbearance that keeps them out of hell for one more moment. Listen to me, friends. Many's hearts are so hard a cannon will not awaken them to their perilous position in great danger of damnation in the devil's hell.

The Watchman’s Duty to Warn

Listen to me, friends. In Ezekiel, we read of the duty of ministers. Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel. But 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 way to save his life. The same wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thy hand. Fear, friends.

There's going to be a boatload of preachers on Judgment Day standing there with bloody hands. It reminds me of the following story. And I'll close my message this evening because some of you need to go to God and get serious with Him because some of you don't realize you're one step away from hell.

You're yet in your sins. You got one foot in the grave, the other's on a greased banana peel, and you don't even know it. Oh, friends, I wish I could probably open your heart with a crowbar, but I can't.

Only God can open your heart. Salvation is of the Lord. But listen to the story, friends. When I was conducting my research on the life and ministry of the mightily used and mightily abused evangelist, Rolf Barnard, I learned about the following incident in the life of R .G. Lee, who was known for his famous sermon, Payday Someday.

R.G. Lee’s Repentance and the Preaching of the Cross

R .G. Lee shared the following personal story with Rolf Barnard. And I'm going to share it with you tonight, friends. Hear me now. Early in Dr. Lee's ministry, there was a member in his congregation who was an attorney, and he had to travel out of town frequently for business.

But no matter where this lawyer went, he made sure to catch a train back to Memphis on Saturday night so he could listen to R .G. Lee preach on Sunday. Why, he just loved to hear that man preach. Well, this lawyer got cancer, and he was in the hospital dying, and he called for his pastor to come to his bedside.

Dr. Lee entered that hospital room whose window overlooked the Mississippi River. The lawyer looked up at R .G. Lee and said, I want you to know how much I've enjoyed your preaching through the years, and I never missed a Sunday if I could help it.

I lie here dying with only a few weeks left to live, so they tell me, and I want to say something to you. I want to reprimand you, sir, for never showing me how to be saved. Never preached the cross to where I could see it.

Never put the blood out there where I could reach it. I'm a-dying, and I'll dine my sins, and I chastise you, sir, for your lack of duty. Well, R .G. Lee left that man's hospital room with his head down, feeling berated and guilty as charged.

It was now dark outside as he slowly made his way down to the banks of the Mississippi River. There, he got down on his knees in the mud, getting his white suit pants dirty in the process. He sighed a big sigh while he leaned over and dipped his hands into the cold, muddy river.

He knelt there a while, reflecting on what the dying man had just told him. His whole ministry seemed to go up in smoke. It seemed to be just popularity propped up on rotten boards to please his crowd.

And as he stared at the flickering moonlight on the watery waves, he reached down deep in his heart and soul. And right there and then, he promised God from that point forward he would change his message.

He would preach the old rugged cross. Would the bloodstained savior for sin hang in there whose blood alone can wash away all sin. And he changed his message that night. And in three weeks' time, there was such a move of grace at that church that three blocks of downtown Memphis were shaken with revival.

A Final Call to Faithful Evangelism

Oh, friends, the heart that cares for the souls of men will be honest with folks and warn them of their danger. Oh, great God, get a hold of some pastor's heart tonight and wreck havoc there. Show him his lack and his duty.

Remind him of why you called him in the first place. To warn the souls of men. Invade them with your enabling grace and power to change his message to your message of the cross. And to warn men as a watchman on a tower cries at the top of his lungs as the enemy approaches.

Whitefield used to preach for you. And when he did, he'd stomp his feet. He'd cry like a baby over the sins of men. Oh, great God, great Lord of Heaven, give us the spirit of a Whitefield tonight. I pray these things in the strong name of Jesus.

Amen.