Slipping Into Darkness — E.A. Johnston

If I can have your attention, friends, I'd like to make a statement. People today, Americans in particular, are accustomed to an add-on society. When we order our morning coffee, we can add on extra shots of espresso or a syrupy flavor to make it taste better.

When we buy an automobile or car tires, we can add on a maintenance policy in case something bad happens. A business owner can take out key man insurance on his business partner in case he dies to protect his business.

We have various means and ways to protect ourselves in a capitalistic society through the use of add-ons. But unfortunately, if we're not careful, this can carry into our religion as well. Many merely take Jesus as an add-on to insure their free ticket to heaven.

Jesus Is Not an Add-On to Life

This is common with Hollywood Christianity, where a celebrity will add on Jesus to their entourage and life and have no problem continuing taking their narcotics and boozing it up with their friends and getting naked in front of a camera.

But they've got peace of mind now because they added on Jesus to their already corrupt lifestyle. The Jews in the Old Testament did this in the same regard by saying with their lips they served Jehovah God, yet at the same time serving Baal, so their crops would be blessed by their idols.

But God had a real problem with that, for His very first commandment to them declared, Thou shalt have no other gods before me, thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them, for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God.

But we modern Christians must be careful because we are so desensitized to sin and seldom hear what the real gospel is. We too can be deceived and accept Jesus as just an add-on to our life and go on living how we please, but Jesus was never meant to be an add-on, but a replacement.

You're either all out for Him or you're not. God will never accept partial obedience. So what is my subject for my sermon tonight, friends? How can I wake you out of your slumber? Some of you need to be frightened out of your carnal security, so my subject tonight is the doctrine of hell.

Jesus's Warnings About Hell

A few preachers today preach on hell, but the best preacher ever preached more on hell than any other, and that was Jesus. The Son of God had much to warn against the dangers of hell. He said it was everlasting, where the worm dieth not.

Jesus said it was a region of complete outer darkness, a place of misery and suffering, where there was wailing and gnashing of teeth, a place so terrible one had to be bound hand and foot to be cast into that lake of fire.

But I can preach up hell all night to you, and many of you are not bothered by it because you are convinced you have escaped it already by some profession of faith in the past that you made in response to an emotional pill, and you swallowed a diluted gospel that you were fed, which was broadened by some minister in ways Jesus never did.

For Jesus said, Enter ye in at the straight gate, for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat, because straight is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

Maybe that few doesn't include you, but if that's true, friends, wouldn't you rather discover that now? Wouldn't you rather know before it's too late? Consider this. What if your profession is nothing more than an empty religious profession that leaves you naked and exposed to these great dangers of damnation in a devil's hell?

You'd want to know about it, wouldn't you? You say you know Jesus, but what say you if he says he doesn't know you? What if you are a stranger to grace? Your works won't save you. For Jesus declares, Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name have cast out devils, and in thy name done many wonderful works?

And then, will I profess unto them, I never knew you, depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Your sandy foundation of faith, friend, won't hold up in a storm. Listen, friend, a false peace is of the devil, for the strong man keeps his goods in peace.

Perhaps God's spirit tonight will awaken some of you and alarm you to your lost condition. Oh, the sad, deceived condition of a lost religious person resting upon the rotten plankboards of carnal security and self-righteousness.

How quick they are to pass judgment on others. How quick they are to point out the faults in others without seeing their own defects. There's nothing more dangerous than a lost religious person, as the scribes and Pharisees proved in their day when they crucified the Lord of Glory.

Fleeing to Christ for Salvation

If the Spirit of God comes in conviction to some here tonight, then and only then will there be some alarm in this congregation. It would be as if the building was ablaze and fallen timbers burning with fire would drop on all around us.

Where would you go then? You'd flee for the exits. You'd trample over your neighbors in the process as you tried to save your very skins. But how many of you awakened sinners would flee to the only refuge for your souls in the person of Christ Jesus, who here would cry aloud like the Philippian jailer and ask, What must I do to be saved?

And flee to Christ's blood as the only remedy for forgiveness of sin? Now friends, allow me some of your time this evening to preach up hell to you and its dangers to lost sinners. Some of you never even heard a sermon on hell, and then after warning you of your dangers of dying in your sins and being confined to a place of everlasting punishment for sin, then preach the good news of the gospel of grace to you, to lost sinners, in the hopes that some of you will flee to your only hope, the Christ of the gospel.

Well that's my little introduction, friends. Let me now get down to business. Let me get down to cases, to my sermon, which is a burden on my heart and a fire in my bones. Years ago, Ian Murray invited me over to his house in Scotland for dinner, and as I was getting ready at my hotel in Edinburgh, I stepped into the shower only to discover it had just been waxed, and my feet began to slip and speed up beneath me, getting no traction, and there was nothing to hang on to, and my feet went faster and faster, until by that force I was propelled upside down out of the shower to where I landed on my head on a hard marble floor.

I broke my fall with my left hand, but in doing so I broke my wrist. I could have broke my head and died there. Many fatalities occur in bathrooms, but instead I had a broken wrist, which was swollen like a tennis ball.

Well, I still had dinner with Ian Murray and his wife, Jean, and enjoyed some fellowship with them, even though I was in constant pain, and regrettably, I had to cut short my trip to Great Britain, and after dinner, I took a train straight from Edinburgh to London and boarded a plane back to the States, but my slipping and falling in the shower was a real-life example of God's Word.

We read in Psalms 73, 18 and 19, where God addresses the wicked, Surely thou didst set them in slippery places, thou castest them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation as in a moment they are utterly consumed with terrors?

I was on my head before I knew it, and it happened in a moment. I didn't see it coming. When the unsaved walk on slippery ground, they will fall. It's not a matter of time. It's a matter of when, and sooner than later, they will lose their balance.

The force of their weight will send them crashing down into the darkness of perdition. The title of my message this evening, friends, is Slipping into Darkness, and I believe the companion verse of this can be found in Isaiah 33, 14, which declares, The sinners in Zion are afraid, for fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites, Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire, Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings.

The False Profession and the Unregenerate Church Member

The sinners in Zion can be a reference, if I may so speak, to baptized heathens that make up a large part of our congregations today. They live under the cloak of church and an empty religious profession.

They were fed a diluted false gospel, and they merely have made a mental assent to Jesus. Their faith is nothing more than a historical faith in a person. They believe in God. They believe that Christ died for sin, but I fear they've never believed on the Christ who died.

They're nothing more than baptized heathens passing as Christians. They're quick to mention all they do for Christ by religious service. They may teach a Bible class. They may serve a deacon committee.

They may even pastor a church, but yet they are strangers to work of grace upon the heart. They know nothing of an experiential Christ. They can tell you where and when they walked and how to accept Jesus, but they can't tell you what it means to know the life of God in the soul of man through the new birth, through a supernatural work of regeneration on the heart by the Spirit of God.

They may know their Bible. They might be experts at theology, but they do not know the God of the Bible nor the Christ of salvation. So they bust hell wide open when they die, even if they are the chairman of the deacons.

So imagine their shock and surprise of entering the dark, bottomless pit of hell and being thrust into a region of the damned whose dreadful screams now fill their ears, who among us shall dwell with everlasting burdens.

Perhaps no one in the New Testament spoke more frequently on hell than Jesus. Oh, he said it was a region of deep darkness. He called it outer darkness, friends. Listen to me. He said it was a place of wailing.

The Darkness and Torment of Hell

Listen to me, friends. When I was a teenager, my Italian grandfather died and my mother took me to his wake. If you've ever been to an Italian wake, you know what a noisy place that is. As we were walking down the hall of the funeral home before we even got to the room where my grandfather lay in his casket, you could hear the piercing shrieks and screams of his loved ones.

It literally curdled my blood and sent chills down my spine. It was chaos and bedlam in that funeral parlor where his corpse lay, people overcome with emotion, and hell is described as a place of chaos and unrest like the troubled sea.

For we read in Isaiah 57, 30, and 31,. But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt, there is no peace, saith my God to the wicked. I live in the state of Florida, friends, and I've survived many hurricanes.

One time I was evacuating with my daughter, and we were in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the causeway, and you could look over and see the ocean rise and fall, and the water was murky as it cast up mire and dirt.

It was scary. The ocean was full of unrest. That's what hell is like all the time, churning and burning and tossing and rolling and boiling. In its immense darkness, its wailing speaks of great grief and loss.

Gnashing the teeth signifies great anger and regret. Oh, how you will curse and damn the pastor or evangelist that fed you a false gospel. His name will be fire on your lips. The regret you'll have over being so deceived will be a bitter harvest of cursing God and creation for all eternity.

That hell is a place of everlasting torment is seen from Revelation 20 .10. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are and shall be tormented day and night forever.

Judgment on the Hypocritical Religious Person

In Matthew's gospel is the parable of the wedding banquet where we read,. And when the king came in to see the gassy, saw there was a man which had not on a wedding garment, and he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?

And he was speechless. Let me pause here to say, friends, this speaks of the baptized hypocrite who hides in the church under an empty religious profession, but in death and judgment will be found out.

He does not get into heaven because he's not clothed with Christ's robe of righteousness. It is not justified in the sight of a thrice holy God. And he is speechless. His mouth is stopped and we continue with our text.

Then said the king to the servants, bind him hand and foot and take him away and cast him into outer darkness. I can't read that passage, friends, without thinking of the passage in God's word in the book of Job, for in Job 18, 18, we read one of the most terrifying verses in all of scripture.

It speaks of the death of an unconverted lost sinner, the death of an unregenerate church member. Oh, earth, hear this solemn declaration. He shall be driven from light into darkness and chased out of the world.

Imagine being in a world of sunshine and blue skies, and suddenly by death, you're swept away, grabbed by angels who bind your hand and foot and chase you out of this world of light and life into a world of darkness and despair.

How can you sit there without any emotion? Don't you have any blood in your veins, friends? Have you ever been in a room where there is no light and you're in total darkness? I visited an iron ore cave up in the upper peninsula of Michigan when I was a little boy, and it was so dark in that cave, you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.

It was terrifying. I sure was glad when I got back outside into the light of day, but there's no exit doors in hell. Listen, friend, once you shut up in there, you shut up in that total darkness forever.

You'll never can escape or to be thrust into the darkness of a bottomless pit. Perhaps I'm speaking to you, friend. Perhaps you've been found out. The cloak you've been wearing is only the cloak of a false profession.

You have a head knowledge of Jesus, all right, but no heart knowledge of him. You're yet in your sins, though you're baptized in a church. You're walking on slippery ground, ground that can give way in any moment.

You walk on thin ice, and it's not a matter of if you will fall, but when. You may not live to see the end of this year, friend. Many of you here may be dead before the year's over. You may not even make it till tomorrow, friend.

You may die in your bed tonight. In the Gospel of Luke, we read of a prosperous farmer who may represent you, friend. We read in Luke chapter 12, the words of Jesus. And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully.

And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do? Because I have no room where to bestow my fruits. And he said, This will I do. I will pull down my barns and build greater. And there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods.

And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years. Take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.

Then who shall those things be which thou hast provided? So it's he that layeth up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. I will stop there, friends. Are you rich toward God? Are you truly saved?

Are you generally converted? Do you have an experiential knowledge of God or just a head knowledge of him? If today was your funeral and you were lying in your casket, where would your soul be? Oh, where would your soul be, friend?

Would you be chased out of this world of light into a region of darkness? The evangelist, Mordecai Ham, told a chilling story of watching a young girl die in her sins. And he always told that story when he preached his famous sermon, Sudden Death.

The Sudden Death of Lulu

And I will give you that story, friends. Right now, Mordecai Ham is best known as the evangelist who led Billy Graham to Christ. Billy was a young, teenage, good, clean church member when he came to the tent that night to hear Mordecai Ham.

And Billy Graham got mad at the preacher for pointing at him and calling him a sinner. Well, Mordecai Ham would later comment, I never pointed at him or called him a sinner, but the Holy Spirit did. Well, Mordecai Ham always told the story of Lulu.

And I will share that story with you now, friends. These are his words. Two sisters were living in a log hut near the church where I was preaching. Both were just young girls and were dying with tuberculosis.

At the start of the meeting, I was asked to pray for them. Which I did, but with no apparent result. I was to visit them on a certain day. The mother of those two girls met me at the door of the little log cabin and begged me to hasten in and do something.

Lulu was dying. The mother sobbed. I hurried to the girl's bedside and tried to talk to her about her need of salvation. I pled with her for a long time, but to no avail. She refused to hearken. Then she closed her eyes in death.

I called to her, Lulu, how is it? A voice came back. Not the voice of one living, but that of one who is in another world. It was a voice that came up from the depths without any sign of movement of the dead girl's lips or throat muscles.

A voice that I have heard only once in my life and that I have never been able to forget. Lost, lost, oh, oh, so dark, so dark. Oh, that story sends chills down my spine, friends. I can't save you, friend.

Salvation is of the Lord. Grace is a free gift from a God who offers mercy to undeserving sinners. Ephesians 2, 8 and 9 declares, for by grace are you saved through faith and not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.

In Isaiah we read, Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters. And he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat. Yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Salvation is receiving a revealed Christ.

The Savior of sinners, the only mediator between God and man, who is Lord both of the dead and the living. He is the sum and substance of the gospel as seen by God the Father, according as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, who drew the plan of salvation and appointed men to it and made a covenant with his Son in which it is provided and secured and sent him into the world to obtain it and engaged him as a surety to effect it by his assuming human nature in suffering and dying on the cross to procure it, and by whose spirit makes men sensible of their need for it, sets before them and applies it to them and gives them faith and hope in it.

But what is grace, friends, but God's act of love toward sinful man? In this was manifested the love of God toward us because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him.

Herein is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Oh, friends, maybe some of you here are here tonight as a good, clean church member like Billy Graham was, but he was just a lost religious person until the Holy Spirit pointed him out as a sinner and showed him his need of a Savior.

Are you a lost religious person? Do you look good on the outside, but on the inside you're just a nest of crawling vipers of bitterness and resentfulness and lust? Don't rest on a false foundation, friend, where your faith is nothing more than a hole in the wall and the futility of attempting to get into heaven by your works and your righteousness is like climbing up to heaven on a rope of sand.

It will only dissolve at last. Oh, friend, you must close with a bloodstained Christ who died for sin. You must be born from above and washed in the blood. In John 14, 6, we hear the words of Jesus, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No man cometh unto the Father but by me. Here, Jesus answers the three greatest questions of the human heart. How can I be saved? Jesus said, I am the way. How can I be sure? Jesus said, I am the truth.

How can I be satisfied? Jesus said, I am the life. And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. Oh, friends, the gospel is for the hungry, the weary, and the thirsty.

Are you hungry for God? Are you sick and tired of your sins? Are you thirsty for Christ? You must feel your need of a savior from sin before you can apply the remedy for sin in the person of Christ Jesus.

Christ's Sacrifice and the Saving Power of the Cross

Oh, let me tell you about Jesus, friend. I could go on about him all night. When Jesus was here in his earthly ministry, he went about doing good. Jesus healed the sick. Jesus fed the hungry. Jesus gave sight to the blind.

He even raised the dead to life. Yet what happened? Men cried, away with him, and nailed him to a cross. Look, look, look at that blessed man on the cross, friend. Look at that man on the cross. See him there with his arms outstretched, beckoning you to come to him and believe on him.

Look at that bloodstained savior for sin, wiggling and writhing under the weight of sin. My filthy sins, your wretched sins. Listen, friends, to this striking passage of scripture from Matthew's gospel.

Oh, God, give me the grace to keep preaching, Father. Give me the strength to do it, Lord. Oh, great King, listen to this passage, friends. 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 plated 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 they took the reed and smote him on the head. And after that, they had mocked him and they took the robe off from him and put his own raiment on him and led him away to crucify him.

Oh, listen, friends. Listen to me. As those cruel Roman soldiers fastened the son of God to that tree, as they lifted their hammers, as they drove those nails into his hands and feet, every stroke of the hammer was an explanation point crying out to God from earth to heaven.

God must punish sin. God must punish sin. God must punish sin. The cross is the place where wicked men try to get rid of him. But by his death, it becomes the place where his saving power flows out to all who come in repentance, confessing they are sinners and own him as Savior and Lord.

Oh, friends, Jesus held nothing back at Calvary. How can we hold anything back from him? You're either all out for God or you're not. Jesus was never meant to be an add-on. God will not accept partial obedience.

He wants all your heart. My sermon is over. I will end it with a final gospel plea. Listen, friends, in John chapter 7, at the great day of the feast, Jesus had something important to say, and he stood up when he said it, and he said it at the top of his voice so all could hear it.

We read, in the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

I'm done, friends. I'm plumb all worn out. You've had an old preacher with a bad heart and a pacemaker pour his heart out to you tonight, friends, as I preach to your bad hearts, bad with the blackness of sin, because I care about your souls.

Like we say in the South, I've given you the oil straight from the can. I preach to you tonight the unvarnished gospel of the cross. May God's grace open some hearts. Let me pray. Great God, may your Holy Spirit take your preached word and apply it to hearts, and that your spirit will come and disturb folks, let a poor sinner see the danger of the realities of damnation and the devil's hell, and the free grace of God in the gift of his son, Jesus, who is the only remedy for sin.

Let us see the reality of Christ, Jesus, as the pearl of great price worth selling all for and losing all for, so he may be gained. May we be confronted with the reality of eternity and the God of that eternity.

I pray these things in the strong name of Jesus Christ. Amen.