Devil at Your Door — E.A. Johnston

I come to you today, friends, with a burden upon my heart. It's a great burden indeed, because I know this message, from personal experience, can change the rest of your life. Hear me now, as I bring it before you, I pray God's Spirit will take it and make a difference in your life for you with it.

The Soul That Sins Shall Die

God makes a statement in Ezekiel 18, verse 4, that pertains specifically to you, friend. Hear now, it's God speaking to you, and you better pay attention. Behold, all souls are mine, as the soul of the Father, so also the soul of the Son is mine.

The soul that sinneth, it shall die. That means hell, and its misery awaits every individual who dies in his or her sins. No exceptions here, friends. The soul that sins shall die. That means eternal damnation and ruin for all eternity by the second death in the lake of fire.

Satan's Hatred and Pursuit of the Sinner

The least little sin you ever did, friend, from your youth up till now, will send you straight to hell. Listen, you have an adversary who absolutely hates you. He hates Christ. He hates the very name of Jesus.

And he hates all men and women who have taken the name of Christian. And so he hates you with a rage and passion and a seething envy. And the devil will stop at nothing to destroy you, and he will not stoop too low to entice you into moral failure and even suicide.

David, Bathsheba, and the Lure of Lust

Satan lurks in the shadows of your life like a serpent hides among the rocks, waiting for his best opportunity to poke out his head and strike his victim. Satan will take a good man like King David and give him rest from all his enemies and peace in his household and riches and reputation and extra sleep upon his sofa and too much self-reliance just so he can place a naked Bathsheba within his eyesight to have him stop just enough to gaze upon her naked flesh long enough to arouse his passions and lust until he is inflamed by them.

So David will stop at nothing now to satisfy his sensual cravings. Even adultery and murder are no longer out of the ballpark with him, but the hiss of Satan bites the nighttime air with the victory of being instrumental in the fall of a good man to his hurt.

Satan will lie in wait for you, friend, and rob you of your sleep and steal your nerve with life's worries and unforeseen disappointments to bring you down emotionally and spiritually to the place of sin and grievously against the very Christ who bled and died for you.

And the hiss of the serpent will bite your nighttime air with the victory of making you his victim. You can bet your bottom dollar, friend, that the devil is coming for you. The tale of my message today is the devil at your door.

Moral Compromise and the Devil's Bargain

He'd like nothing more than to destroy your family and ruin your testimony and clutch you in his claws while he drags you down to hell. I had a very vivid dream some time back that woke me up in the middle of the night.

It was so real and vivid. I dreamed the devil was traveling at lightning speed across a crowded football stadium to end up in a back room behind closed doors with a well-dressed young evangelist. And the young evangelist had his hand extended in a handshake, and in the palm of that young man's hand was a single claw from a hoof.

A deal was made and worldwide fame was given if only the gospel would be compromised. The devil knows how to bring you down, friend, and he will get you to give a little one way or another if you're not on your guard continually.

George Whitefield, the great British evangelist, was bothering the devil in his awakening ministry in London, preaching to 30 ,000 people in the open air at a time, and many unconverted ministers in the Church of England were envious and furious and frustrated by the young Whitefield.

They had closed their pulpits to him, and they sought ways to get rid of him. The Bishop of London suggested to them that if they wanted to put a stop to George Whitefield, all they had to do was to make him a bishop.

But that didn't work for young Whitefield. He'd rather have Christ than a title. Some men are put out of service to God by promotion. Some men are put out of service to God by success. Yes, sir, the devil's coming for you, bud, and you don't see it coming.

The Watchman's Duty and the Judgment of False Prophets

Let there be a final judgment for all mankind. For every mother's son will stand before God and give an account of himself. I feel sorry. It makes me sick to my stomach. For the sleepy-headed pastor, lazy in his ministry and protective of his reputation, with the blood of his congregation on his hands, for failing to warn them, a holy God declares, the soul that sinneth, it shall die.

Why won't he tell them that truth? Why does he hide hell and its punishments from them? Why doesn't he say that hell and its torments await every individual outside of Christ, redeeming blood? God spoke plainly in Ezekiel about the watchman's duty to warn the souls of men.

When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, that thou shalt surely die, if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that that wicked man shall die in his iniquity. But his blood will I require at thine hand.

I tell you, friends, how you can spot a false prophet at the judgment. He'll be standing there with bloody hands, and his baptized congregation will be screaming and hollering in hell. I'm here to tell you, friends, you better get the wax out of your ears.

Biblical Repentance and Saving Faith

I'm going to be honest with your souls today. Like we say in the South, I'm going to give you the oil straight from the can. You hear me now when I say, the soul that sinneth, it shall die. You hear me now when I say, the devil's out to get you.

When you made a public profession of Christ, what you did was to abandon the sins you could get along with, best without. For years you've been carefully concealing the ones you couldn't live without, but they're stacking up against you now, and all it takes is for a man to commit one little sin to qualify for God's declaration that the soul that sinneth, it shall die.

One sin, friend, can bring you down. You're standing upon a bridge, and on one side is heaven, and the other side is hell, and you're a smack dab in the middle, and your time is running out, for the devil is hard at your heels, ready to pounce.

You must decide it's high time you lump your sins in one big pile on that bridge, stack them there, and take a torch to that bridge and say, I will follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back. And once you do that, friends, biblical repentance is when the love of sin dies.

You must repudiate it, turn from it, all of it, and forsake it, and cast yourself upon a bleeding and dying Christ and believe on him, and saving faith means you take Jesus, take Jesus as your Lord as well as your Savior, anything less than this isn't salvation.

For when a man is saved, he undergoes change. The Spirit of God comes and implants a new disposition in him for holiness. He may still slip along the way and go into some backsliding, but the good shepherd will come and pick him up and dust him off and set him back because he's always on the narrow way.

He's always seeking heaven's way. He always wants a better way. Don't be fooled by the devil, friend. He'll get you in the end. I've seen people near the end of their journey go to the devil in smoke and ruin.

Believe me when I say, the soul that sinneth, it shall die. You must get to Christ and get under his blood. In Revelation, we read unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood. I've seen families ruined by the devil.

A Divided Heart and the Danger of Backsliding

I had a good Christian friend who was a leader in his church, and he had a good testimony as a Christian within his community. He had a loving wife and three adorable little children. We would get together often for lunch, and he always just wanted to talk about Jesus and share with me Bible verses that had impacted him that week.

He was one of those individuals that when you were with him, he made you thirsty for Jesus. And as his success in business grew, so did his passion for his business, and we'd have lunch, and oddly, he no longer wanted to talk about Jesus anymore.

He just wanted to talk about work and talk about how much money he was making and how he could travel now and buy this and that now and do this and that for his family now. And the world was crowding out his love for Jesus.

Well, this man hired a pretty new secretary who was half his age, and it wasn't long that we all found out he had fallen into an adulterous relationship with this woman. His moral failure broke up his family, and his marriage ended in divorce, and all he once held dear was taken from him.

He, who was my biggest inspiration, became my biggest warning. You can't live, friend, with one foot with God and the other playing footsie with the world. A divided heart is proof positive of a backslidden heart.

Returning Wholeheartedly to Christ

If you call yourself a Christian and you love your family, then please, I beg you, rededicate your life to Christ today. Get serious with God, friend, and he will get serious with you. Get down on your knees in a quiet place, alone with the Almighty, and admit your laziness and confess your sinfulness and ask him to make you the person he knows you can be by his grace.

Ask God Almighty to put up a hedge around you and your family and to seal it with the blood of his Son to keep the devil out of your home and to keep the devil out of your life and to make you a watchman who does not go to sleep on his watch.

Don't give the devil an inch, friend, because if you do, he will take a mile off your hide. My friend traded his family for a lust-filled affair. Maybe you are walking a chalk line with God and the dividing line is getting fuzzy between good and evil and right and wrong and you're slipping on the other side.

Things are getting blurred. It's not too late, friend, to turn back to God now and give yourself wholeheartedly to him in submission to him and surrender your all to the Lordship of Christ Jesus. Charles Finney, in his book, Lecture on Revival, speaks the backslider in heart who desires to repent and return to God.

Finney quotes Hosea 10 -12,. Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and reign righteousness upon you. Finney goes on to say, The Jews were a nation of farmers. Scripture, therefore, commonly draws illustrations from that line of work and from scenes farmers and shepherds would know well.

So when the prophet Hosea addresses Israel as a nation of backsliders, reproving their idolatry and threatening them with the judgments of God, he uses fallow ground as his illustration. Fallow ground is ground once farmed, but which now lies waste.

It must be broken up again before it is ready to be planted. Sometimes your heart becomes matted down, hard and dry, and fall into waste. It'll bear no fruit until it is broken up. It is this softening of the heart making it feel the truth, which the prophet calls breaking up your fallow ground.

So says our friend Finney. Oh dear friend, don't play with that devil's fire that inflames you and ultimately will ruin you. Jesus, the good shepherd, is on the lookout for his straying sheep. Call upon him now, friend, and break up the fallow ground of your sin, and ask the Christ who saved you to come rescue you and deliver you and carry you back upon his strong shoulders.

Prayer for Protection and Renewal

Let me pray for you now, friend. Great God, I beseech you for your mercy and grace. We need your power from above. We need your protective blood. Say in your heart, friend, say this, friend. Say, Lord Jesus, I give it all to you.

All I have I give to thee. I ask you to watch over me. Make me the person you know I can be. Come, Lord Jesus, and change my life. I lay it all on your altar. I lay everything before thee. Oh, I pray these things, friends, in the strong name of Jesus.

Amen. Dear friend, sing with me in your heart. Sing with me in your heart, friend. I have decided to follow Jesus. I have decided to follow Jesus. I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back, no turning back.

The world behind me, the cross before me. The world behind me, the cross before me. The world behind me, the cross before me. No turning back, no turning back. Hallelujah. Blessed Jesus.