1 Peter chapter 4. And let's begin reading in verse
12 down through verses 19. Verses 12 through verses 19. Beloved, make it not strange
concerning the fiery trial which is to try you. as though some
strange thing happened to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you are
partakers of Christ's sufferings, that when His glory shall be
revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy. If you be
reproached for the name of Christ, happy are you, for the Spirit
of glory and of God rests upon you. On their part he is evil
spoken of, but on your part he is glorified. But let none of
you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer,
or even a busybody, a meddler in other people's matters. Mind
your own business. Yet if any man suffer as a Christian,
let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God on this behalf. And here is my text. For the
time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God. And
if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of those that
obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely
be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Wherefore
let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the
keeping of their souls to Him in well-doing as unto a faithful
Creator." Judgment has begun. Judgment has begun. Judgment
has already begun at the house of God. This inspired writer
was one of the many other inspired writers that was moved by the
Holy Ghost and It was revealed unto this man that the end was
near. That's what he tells us there
in verse 7. The end of all things is at hand. This man believed in a judgment.
He believed that this world was coming to an end, that there
would be a resurrection, and there would be a judgment. And
he says here, it's at hand. It's at hand. The end is at hand. Now, somebody has asked this
question. They never asked me, but I know that people have asked
this question. Bruce, he must have been wrong,
because this has been almost 2,000 years, and it hasn't happened
yet. How could it possibly have said
that it was at hand? Well, I tell you this much. The
end was at hand for him. All of the fellows that were
living when he wrote that, the end was at hand for them, wasn't
it? And the end came for all of those since then. We look
back over 2,000 years and the end has come for all of those
people that's gone before us. And I'll tell you something else,
brothers and sisters, it's near for us. The end is at hand for
us, isn't it? just a few more years and they'll
say, where's old Bruce Crabtree? He died. He come to the end of
his appointed days, the end of his time. So the end was at hand. But let's look at this in another
way. What's 2,000 years on the scale of eternity? Somebody said
if you had a scale of eternity and you tried to measure time,
you tried to find a dot small enough to put on that measure,
that scale, you could not even see it. When we are out in eternity and
look back upon 6 or 10 or 15 or 20,000 years of time, how
short it would have been. The time is at hand. The end is at hand. Peter here was a man who believed
in the judgment. He spoke so often of the judgment
as he did in the text here. He said in his second epistle,
when he was speaking of the false prophets, he said their judgment
lingereth not And their damnation slumbereth not. And he said,
God spurred not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to
hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, and reserved
them unto judgment. He believed in a judgment that
was to come. And then he went on to say, The
Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation, and
reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished. And
then he went right on to say, the heavens and the earth which
are now are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of
judgment and the perdition of ungodly men. So it was revealed
to this man by the Holy Spirit that there was a day of judgment
coming. And he wrote this down in the
Bible for you and me to learn by. And here in our text, he
says that judgment has already begun. Judgment has already begun,
and it's begun in the house of God. Judgment has already begun
in the house of God. Now, what is this house of God? We have to establish what that
is, don't we? What is the house of God in which
judgment has already begun? God has many houses. This universe
is His house. He fills this universe. He created
the starry universe, and this earth, and He fills it, and this
is His house. And His house shows His glory,
doesn't it? The power that He has, just to
speak, and the starry heaven comes into being, and the moon,
and the sun, and all that's made declares the glory of His power. Heaven itself is said to be God's
house. In my Father's house are many
mansions." That reveals His throne room. Heaven is His throne. That's where He abides. Heaven
is my throne. The earth is my footstool. And
He has another house. And that's the house that Peter's
talking about here. His church. His church. that you may know how you ought
to behave yourself in the house of God, which is the church of
the living God. The church is the house of the
Lord. The church is called the house
of Christ, whose house are ye. And that's where His redeeming
grace and love is revealed, in His house. When we think of a
house, what do we think of? We think of so many things that
applies to God's house when we think of a house. When you think
of a house, what's one of the first things that you think of?
It's something that you build. If you're rich, poor men have
to buy what they can, don't they? They buy a dilapidated house
if they can and remodel it as they can. But you don't have
to do that when you're rich. When you're rich, you can build
your own house, can't you? This is the house the Lord is
building. Upon this rock I will build my
house." God the Father has turned over to His Son the building
of this house. He is the foundation and He is
building upon it His house. And you know something? He is
going to lay the last stone in it. He is going to finish it. He that started it will finish
His house. Secondly, when you think of a
house, you think of the place where you dwell. A house is your
dwelling place, isn't it? They came to the Lord Jesus one
day and said, Where dwelleth thou? And He said, Come and see.
And they followed Him into the house. And they abode with Him
that day. Listen to Psalm 132, 13. For
the Lord has chosen Zion, He hath desired it for His habitation. I will dwell there, He said.
That is where He dwells in His church. Christ is here this morning,
isn't He? Where two or three are gathered
together in My name, there am I in the midst. He is here this
morning. He dwells in the midst of the
seven golden candlesticks. And you know He dwells in the
heart of every believer. Every believer, Christ dwells
in their hearts by faith. Thirdly, when you think about
the house of the Lord, You think about a place of rest. You don't
lay down in the street to rest. You have a house and that's where
you go to. When you get tired, you go there
and you sit down and you rest. The Lord has chosen Zion for
His habitation. This is the place of my rest,
saith the Lord, for I have desired it. He rests in His house. When you think of a house, fourthly,
you think of where the family lives, don't you? This is the
family. When a man marries a wife, they
begin a family, he has a house. And that's where the family lives.
His loved ones lives there, doesn't he? His children live there.
My dad was always good to the neighbor children. And they were
welcome to come for a visit. But we knew that they were just
visitors. They didn't dwell in our house. And they'd stay for
a visit, and they would go home to their house. The Lord has
a house, and His family lives in His house. His blood-bought
ones, His children, live in His house, the house of the Lord.
And every household has a head, doesn't it? It has a head. And who is the head of this house?
The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ is the head of the church. He's the head. So there's your
house. It's those who are redeemed by
the blood of Jesus Christ. It's those who have been regenerated. They've been called. They're
believers. They've been created in righteousness
and true holiness. That's the house of the living
God. And He says here that judgment
must begin at the house of God. Now that seems mysterious, doesn't
it? Judgment begins there. Peter tells us that judgment
is coming, and here in our text he tells us that it's already
begun, even at the house of God. The Lord often judges His people
before He ever judges His enemies. You'll often notice this in the
Scriptures. Jacob's house was living in Canaan,
and boy, they felt the result of that famine before Egyptians
ever felt it. The Jews were oppressed by the
Egyptians long before the Egyptians felt the heavy, heavy hand of
God in judgment. Jerusalem was ransacked, the
temple destroyed, and the Jews taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar.
But that was a precursor of the judgment that was coming upon
Babylon. And the judgment has begun at
the church and it is a precursor of that eternal judgment that
is coming on the world at the end of this age. We have examples
of this in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament.
Listen to Jeremiah chapter 25 and verse 29. God was speaking
here to the nations of the world, and this is what He said, "...Lo,
I will bring evil on the city which is called by My name. And should you be utterly unpunished,
you shall not be unpunished, for I will call for a sword upon
the inhabitants of this earth, saith the Lord of hosts." Yes,
He said, I'm bringing evil on My people, but it's a precursor
of what's coming upon you. And listen to how Proverbs 11
31 says this, If the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth,
much more the wicked and sinners. So that's what's taught here
in our text. And we see this in the destruction
of natural Jerusalem and the physical temple in the New Testament. They were still called the people
of God, weren't they? When the Lord Jesus came to natural
Israel, it was said that He came to His own. And the temple was
still called the Father's house. My Father's house shall be called
a house of prayer." And yet look at the judgment that fell upon
those people. Look at the judgment that came
upon that temple from the Lord. And this was only a precursor
of that judgment that was to come upon a rebellious world. And my meaning is, brothers and
sisters, if the Lord brought judgment upon that place that
had been so precious to Him in the Old Testament, if He brought
judgment upon that place, the world of the ungodly should take
heed because He won't spare it. And that's what Peter is preaching
here to us in our message. Peter tells us in this second
epistle that Sodom and Gomorrah was set forth for an example
of those who should live ungodly. And here in our text, he tells
us that the church is set forth for an example of the ungodly
and sinners. And he's saying this if God sometimes
deals so severely with His own household. And boy, He does,
doesn't He? Man, how severely the Lord deals
sometimes with His own people, with His own household, those
who believe His gospel, those who love Him. If He often chastens
them sore to correct them, if He puts them in the furnace of
affliction to melt them down and refine them, if He crushes
them and tosses them to separate them as chaff is separated from
the wheat, If He brings some of them almost to the end of
themselves, so they won't be condemned with this world. I
say, if He deals with His people so severely sometimes, how will
He deal with the ungodly and with sinners? That's what Peter's
telling us here in our text. Here in our text, we have two
things. We need to rightly divide these things. It's a necessity
that we do. Distinguish the judgment of grace from the judgment of
wrath. Distinguish temporal punishment
from eternal punishment. The Lord tries His people in
different ways and for different reasons. He afflicts His people
and they suffer and they are afflicted. But it's always, listen,
from a judgment of grace No matter how severely the Lord deals with
His people, it is always from a principle of mercy and love. But when He deals with an ungodly
world, it will be without any mixture of mercy, without any
mixture of grace, and without any mixture of love. God has
already severely chastened some of His children. He has put them
under great crosses. and afflicted them with great
losses, not because he hates them, but because he loves them. And so they won't be condemned
with this world." Look what he's done to some of his children.
He killed David's little baby, didn't he? Killed him because
of David's sin. He killed Eli's two sons because
of their sins, and Eli put him up with it. He afflicted the
Corinthians, we are told, in their bodies. They were sick,
they were weak, and many of them died. He has let some of His
little sinning children fall into darkness and torment of
conscience and great doubts and minds because they have entertained
some sin in their heart. As many as I love, I rebuke and
chasten. No chastening for the present
seems to be joyous, but grievous, and yet he afflicts his children
with it. Let the poor chastened saint
be a beacon to those hypocrites who live in secret sin and still
can rest easy in their conscience. If God deals so severely with
His children, how will He deal with them? Judgment has begun
with God's poor saints, but it will not end with them. When
their sufferings are ended, God will turn His hand upon the ungodly
and the sinner. If He deals so harshly with His
vessels of mercy, how will He deal with the vessels of wrath
that's already feeding themselves to destruction? God is always
judging His people, brothers and sisters, in one way or another,
for some reason or other. Peter speaks several times. I
don't think there's another epistle or book that deals with suffering
saints like 1 Peter deals with. He deals with all kinds of suffering.
He tells us in chapter 1 in verse 6 and 7, he talks about the trial
of your faith. Faith being tried with fire.
Look in chapter 1 and look in verse 6. He says, wherein you
greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, you are
in heaviness through manifold temptations for this reason,
that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than
that of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire,
might be found unto praise and honor. and glory of the appearing
of Jesus Christ. God gives a man faith and He
turns around and puts it in the fire. He gave Abraham faith and
says, Abraham, go offer your son for a burnt offering. He
gave Noah faith and says, spend 120 years building an ark. He gives us faith and He tries
it, doesn't He? He puts it in the fire. He gave
Moses faith and sent him to lead a nation out through the wilderness.
He gave Job faith and turned Satan loose on him and he lost
his children and his servants and his cattle and then his hell. And Job said, though he slay
me, yet will I trust in him. Listen, God doesn't give us faith
just for the assurance of salvation. Bless God He does that. But He
gives us faith to live our lives by. And He gives us faith to
die by. Look in chapter 2 and verse 20.
Here's another trial, that sufferings that Peter talks about. Here's
the sufferings of example. Look in chapter 2. And look here
in verse 20. What glory is it When you be
buffeted for your faults, you shall take it patiently. But
if when you do well you suffer for it, and take it patiently,
this is acceptable with God. For even year and two were you
called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example
that you should follow His steps." He suffered for us. And then
in that, He not only atoned for us, but He left us an example. And then in chapter 3, in verse
13 and 14, look at this, suffering for righteousness' sake. And
who is He that will harm you if you be followers of that which
is good? But, and if you suffer for righteousness'
sake, happy are you, and be not afraid of their terror, neither
be afraid. If you are a righteous person,
Then you're suffering because of that. And then suffering because
of union. You see here in the fourth chapter
in verse 13. If you're one with Christ, you'll
suffer because of it. It's His sufferings in you. Look
in verse 13. But rejoice inasmuch as you are
partakers of Christ's sufferings, that when His glory shall be
revealed, you may be glad with exceeding joy. The sufferings
of Christ. You're partaking of His sufferings.
They're not so much punishing you. It's not so much about you. It's Him you're suffering with
and it's Him you're suffering for. And now Peter comes to Artax
and he says this judgment, this judgment that is began at the
house of God, it has to do with sufferings. And it must take
into account chastening of the Lord, the Lord correcting His
people because of their sins, weaning them, wooing them, loving
them, and beating them from this world and the pleasures of it
and cares of it, as Brother Larry said this morning. Every one
of us would be stuck in those thorns and thistles, would we
not? Every one of us would be planted
in that kind of a ground if the Lord did not take in hand to
bring us out of that. We'd all be overwhelmed with
cares. We'd all be overwhelmed with
the deceitfulness of riches and the lust of other things would
overwhelm us all. Why does judgment begin at the
house of God? Because the house of God needs
it. They need wooing. They need chastening. They need
correction. They need to be beat, do they
not? Spare the rod and spoil the child, the scripture tells
us. If any would be tempted to take
this text lightly and to lay little regard to it, I will only
encourage them to look back at the history of the church for
the last 2,000 years. And everywhere we look, brothers
and sisters, we see the judgment of God beginning at the house
of the Lord. Whatever happened to that vibrant
church there at Ephesus? Sometime around the second century
or so, it left the scene. And it hasn't been there since,
has it? That church that Paul said, you step together in heavenly
places in Christ Jesus. He chose you in Christ before
the foundation of the world. And they left their first love,
didn't they? Their love for their Redeemer broke whole. And Christ
threatened judgment, did He not? To remove the candlestick from
them. Where is Luther's Germany? Who had that cry and motto, Christ
alone. Faith alone. Scriptures alone. Where's that Germany at now?
That's gone. That's gone. Or Calvin's Geneva,
who set forth the doctrines of God's free and sovereign grace
to this world. Where's that Geneva at? It's
gone. Or Spurgeon's Tabernacle, who
met every Lord's Day with five or six thousand people. To hear
the gospel of Jesus Christ, and to sing His praises, and to seek
His face. Where is the Virgin's Tabernacle
now? Where are all those communities
in Azahel and Nettleton's day when they were having a revival?
And He says that you could go down the street of several communities
late at night and hear the prayers of men and women seeking the
Lord. Or early in the morning, the souls of Zion were saying,
where are those communities now? Of the house of God, it can be
said so often what is said even about this world and the great
institutions of it. Come behold what desolations
the Lord has made in this earth." You look back two thousand years
at the history of the church, and we can most certainly see
that the Lord's judgment has begun with it. I was over in West Virginia back
last year. I don't even remember the name
of the little town. But Danny Belcher, a friend of
mine, took me way back up in the hills and a little community
where he was raised. And if you go down the streets
of the community, it's so narrow streets, if you meet a vehicle,
you have to either back up or find some place to pull over.
It's an old community. He stopped and he showed me a
huge church building, probably twice as big as this building.
And you could tell at one time it was a nice building. And the
roof was caving in. There hadn't been any worship
service there for years. And he said, this is the reason
I wanted to show you this place. He was a little bit older than
I was. He was probably 70 in his 70s. He said, I went there
when I was young. and heard Henry Mahan preaching
the gospel. I heard Henry Mahan preaching
the gospel. And I could almost hear Henry
in the pulpit preaching the grace of God to a house full of people
in that community. But no more. No more. There was the building ready
to cave in. The people that had heard him
was all but gone. And I thought how indicative,
as I thought of that sentence, how indicative of this is the
history of the church. Look at the history of the church.
And you see where the gospel was once vibrant, where the gospel
was preached, where the gospel was believed and loved. And where
is it now? And what's the cause? Is it not that God visited in
judgment? If judgment begins at the house
of the Lord, and that's where it's beginning at now. I had
a dear brother-in-law of mine who died just a few short years
ago. And he had a couple of sons.
One of them came up at the funeral and reminded us of a motto that
his dad had. When he and his brother was in
their teens, they got pretty rough or tried to. Their dad
was a marine sergeant and he took control of his household. And my nephew said his dad got
them together one time and said this became his motto. And we
knew, we knew he was ready to take control of his household.
He said, listen sons, not in my house. Not in my house. And that's what Peter is telling
us here. God's honor is at stake. He's jealous of His honor. And when His house gets out of
order, when His house becomes neglected and worldly, He will
defend His honor. And boy, when He does, He can
cause some devastation. He can cause some devastation. Job said it like this when he
sat in the ashes with his head shaved, with a posture scratching
his balls, and he had called upon the Lord, and the Lord did
not hear him. He said, He is of one mind, and
who can turn Him? Whatever His soul desires, that
He does. Boy, He comes in judgment sometime
upon His church. And for some reason or another,
He lays her low and nobody can turn Him from it. And that's
what we see in 2,000 years in the history of the church. God's
judgment. God chastening His people. And
I know what some atheists will say. I know what some infidels
will say. Yeah, that's your God. Yeah,
that's your church. That's how He loves His people. Well, I've got only this word
for those people. If He treats His own that way,
if He can judge and chasten His own people so severely sometimes
that He brings them almost to desolation, what's He going to
do to you, you infidel? If he does that to those who
love him and believe his gospel, what's in store for those who
hate him and won't believe his gospel? And that's what Peter's saying.
Yes, the church comes under this temporal judgment of the Lord,
but it's mixed with mercy. And their suffering is temporary.
It will end when they die. But the wicked will face the
hand of God that does not and is not mixed with mercy and no
grace in it. It's unmitigated and unmeasurable
wrath without mercy. Judgment must begin at the house
of God. And boy, as we study the history
of the church, we see it, do we not? And that naturally leads
us into verse 18 in our text. And if the righteous scarcely
be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? And as
we think of verse 17, boy, we begin to realize why Peter would
say here, if the righteous scarcely be saved. Sometimes when the
Lord comes in judgment, sometimes when He tries His people's soul,
they consider Him themselves. Can I be saved? This word scarcely
means with difficulty. And some would add with great
difficulty. But some have looked at this
verse and imagined that the righteous wouldn't be saved. Ain't it amazing
how they jumped to conclusion? This verse doesn't say the righteous
won't be saved. It says the contrary. They'll
have difficulty, but the righteous shall be saved. It proves their
salvation, does it not? And listen, the difficulty is
not on God's part. He has an eternal purpose in
redemption, and that purpose is fixed. He's purposed it, and
He'll do it. Those that He foreknew, He predestinated. Those He predestinated, He called. Them He called, He justified.
And whom He justified, He glorified. That's fixed. It's not difficult
on God's part to save His elect people. And there's no difficulty
with the atonement of our Lord and Savior. Every sin that has
been atoned for will be forgiven. And not one will be brought against
the child of God to condemn him. The difficulty that Peter's speaking
of here lies in our own experience and in our own apprehensions. When we look within at what we're
going through, sometimes we say within ourselves, can I even
make it? How can I get through this? What
about this long valley? I've never faced this hill before.
Sometimes it seems as if God Himself is going to bring us
to the end of ourselves. Job said, though He slay me,
would God slay one of His own? Job seemed to think so. When
He seems to remove His support in hand and our souls sink and
we cry, I sink in deep mire where there's no standing. When He
puts us into the fire and it's though He's going to melt us,
not refine us, but to consume us. And when He puts us into
the deep waters, it seems like we're never going to come up.
That He's going to drown us. We can't get our breath. When
God trials us and breaks us and crushes us, just like they did
the wheat to separate it from the tower, we sometimes think,
oh, this is difficult. This is difficult. Sometimes
God brings us to that place, does He not? Ah, somebody says, fun being
a Christian. I've had a lot of joy in being
a Christian. And I tell you what, I know something about difficulty,
don't you? I know something about difficulty. God puts His children
through the fire, brothers and sisters. He does. He does. He puts them through such fire
and such deep water sometime, they think, this is difficult.
This way is difficult. When you and I consider the experience
of our own hearts, the frames of mind that we're often in,
the ups and downs of our spiritual emotions. One hour we're seeing
everything clearly. The next hour we're as blind
as a bat. Can you relate to that? One hour
we're strong in faith. The next hour our heart is full
of unbelief. One hour we have liberty to pray.
The next hour we can't even groan. One hour we're all for heaven.
and for God's glory, and the next hour we're seeking this
world and fleshly interest. We're so changing, so changeable. One hour we're full of good,
the next hour we're full of evil. One hour we're willing to suffer
for God's glory, the loss of all things, and the next hour
we're willing to suffer nothing in the least. When we consider
what goes on in ourselves, We sometimes say, how difficult
can I even make it? Have you ever been there? Have
you ever felt that? Peter says, if the righteous
with great difficulty are saved, when you and I consider the enormous
enemy, how enormous they are, how many they are, how wise they
are, how cruel they are, and we face them every day, devils,
waiting to destroy us, to attack us. And we don't know when and
where the next attack may come from. And how low it will lay
us. And if we'll even get through
it. We don't know. Will I make it through this one?
What will the end of me be now? Oh, let him that thinketh he
standeth take heed lest he fall. Sometimes in our own apprehensions, poor believers that we are, we
reach the same conclusion the Apostle Paul did in that storm
when he said, ìAll hope that we should be saved has been taken
away.î Iíve been there, havenít you? If the righteous are scarcely
saved, I read a quote from Charles Spurgeon
just this week, and I thought how amazing it was as I read
this quote. And it can only be appreciated,
I think, in the light of what Mr. Spurgeon accomplished in
his lifetime. I have 63 volumes of sermons
that that man preached. Sixty-three volumes! And that's
not all of them. That man was over a preacher's
college. He built an orphanage and supported
it through his ministry. All the things that that man
did, he accomplished so much. And then, when he was dying,
this is his words, I have turned over my sermons in my mind, in
my many labors for the Lord, but there is scarcely one of
them that I dare to think of without tears. They are all mixed
with sin and imperfection. As I think of every act I have
ever done for God, I can only cry, Oh God, forgive! God, forgive the iniquity of
the holy thing. And you take a man like that,
after the labor and the faithfulness that he needed in his lifetime, I read a quote concerning the
epitaph of John Knox, that great reformer, what a faithful man
he was. And it said on his epitaph, here
lies a man who in his life never feared the face of any man. And boy, he didn't. The queen
of his day was more afraid of his prayers than she was of an
invaded army. That's what a godly man he was.
And yet they said on his deathbed he struggled. He struggled. And this was the question upon
his mind until it finally settled. Whether or not I entertain a
good hope of heaven. I'm talking about the righteous,
godly people who sometimes in their life find it difficult
to grasp this thing of salvation and that I'm going to make it.
Luther, that great reformer there in Germany, he said, sometimes
I feel so overwhelmed that I can hardly get out of bed. And brothers and sisters, I'm
just saying this, it shows that when we consider ourselves as
far as we're concerned, on this narrow road to heaven. It's a
difficult road. It's a difficult road. It's a
struggle if the righteous scarcely be saved. But this text is not
meant to discourage us, but it's meant to encourage us. Nothing
in Scriptures is meant to discourage the Lord's people. This text,
first of all, is meant to encourage us. If the righteous are saved
with much difficulty, then let every struggling soul take courage. If you're struggling, you must
be on the right road. If you're having tribulations,
then you must be on the right way, because we must, through
much tribulation, enter into the kingdom of heaven. If you're
flying by, and you have no problems, you have no cares, you have no
concerns, you have no labors, maybe you're not on the road. Secondly, this text is meant
to instruct us. It's meant to instruct all. If
the righteous are saved through much difficulty, even though
they are using the means of grace to keep them, How can those hope to be saved
who hate the means, who blatantly reject the means, who despise
the means, if those who are desiring the sensual milk of the Word
and they want it in their hearts for their assurance and directions,
if they are struggling along the way, What does that say to
those who go and throw their Bible on the shelf and never
open it up and read it to see what it says? If those who are
attending the public worship of the Lord, seeking to be encouraged
and helped, and they're struggling along the way, what does that
say of those who refuse to darken a church house building? They
could care less about hearing the preaching of the gospel or
the fellowship of the saints. Oh, if those who are taking heed
to the means and begging God to bless the means to their hearts
are struggling, what hope do those have of being saved who
disregard blatantly the means? I was watching a video this week
There was a construction worker up on the fifth floor of a new
apartment building. And a fire caught in the bottom
floor and rapidly came up through the building and he had no way
to get off the roof. He was up on the roof. Fifth,
five stories up. And the building was burning.
And he was up there waving and they rushed in a fire truck and
ran it out. upon that story where he was.
And he grabbed a hold of that ladder and just as he swung the
ladder out, the whole building came crushing down and just barely
missed him. But that truck was made for that.
That ladder was manufactured for that very reason to reach
up real high to save somebody in that very situation. And that
was the only way he could be saved. How foolish it would have
been for somebody with a stepstool down on the first floor saying,
I've got you man, I've got you. This is a good instruction for
the world and for those who are neglecting to hear and to seek
the Lord for salvation. There is a means that He's provided. And they're sufficient. And He'll
bless them to our hearts. Take heed to them. Take heed
to them. There is no other means by which we can be saved but
those means that He's provided. I was reading a story about a
shipwreck at the high seas. And the only way they could be
saved was not by another ship, was by a helicopter made to rescue
people, made to rescue people. Some man in a little two-man
fishing boat could not rescue. And what I'm saying is this,
if salvation for the righteous is so difficult, then brothers
and sisters, be sober. Take heed to every means that
God has provided us. We will be saved. The righteous
will be saved. But they'll be saved in a way
that's so difficult to themselves that when they get through this
way into heaven, they'll be amazed that they made it. They'll be
amazed that they made it. And if the righteous scarcely
be saved, where, where shall the ungodly? We don't want to talk much about
that, do we? It's too fearful, isn't it? It's too fearful. If the Lord says, Come ye righteous,
what will He say to the ungodly? If there is a heaven for the
unrighteousness, is there not a place for the ungodly? There
is a place prepared for every man, woman, and boy, and child
in this world. There is a place prepared. There
is no halfway purgatory. There is either a heaven that
those struggle to get there and finally wind up there, then there's
a hell. There's a hell. If the righteous
scarcely be saved, worse shall the ungodly and sinner appear. Let us pray.