I'm looking over the congregation and I'm wondering whether to change my message this morning. You know, we've had visitors in week by week and I felt that the morning should have a gospel emphasis. I'm not quite sure where I'm going now. Let's turn to Genesis. And very early on in Genesis, let's go back to Adam and Eve. Genesis chapter three. Since I know, you know, the background, I'm going to abbreviate the reading. Look at chapter three in verse six. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. Now the chapter begins, Now the serpent was more subtle, than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made, and he said unto the woman, Hath God said. Not for a moment before that had she thought of disobedience, but she disobeyed, and she drew her husband into the disobedience. Let's go on a little further. Chapter four. Let me go back to chapter three for a moment. Verse seven says, and the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons, and they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Has thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the woman, and the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to me, to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. Now go to chapter four. And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. And she again bare his brother Abel, and Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in the process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering. But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very rough, and his countenance fell. And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wrath, and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lieth, or a sin offering lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. And Cain talked with Abel his brother, and he came to pass when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him. And the Lord sent unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not. Am I my brother's keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand. There's not a period there, but we'll stop there for the moment. Now let's go to The epistle of Peter, the first epistle of Peter. And chapter four. Verse fourteen. First Peter four and fourteen. If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye, for the spirit of glory and of God resteth 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 as a busy body in other men's matters. Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God on this behalf. For the time is come. the judgment must begin at the house of God. And if it first begins us, what shall the envy of them that obey not the gospel? 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? Now I realize that all the evidence is in front of me that it's possible for a man to think that he's saved or a woman to think that she's saved and not to be. Now I'm totally thrown off balance this morning because I have in mind a message of challenge to the sinner. I know you're sinners. But you're saved sinners. So you can take a nap because what I have to say has nothing to do with you. Don't believe it. All the way around you, there are men and women on their way to hell. And yet some of us have been saved so long, and I'm speaking to my own heart now. For some reason I don't look with eyes that I used to look with. I used to look at people and say to myself, I wonder if they're saved. I used to look at them and say, I wonder if anybody told them that they're saved. Maybe I ought to be the one. But you know we have a way as we get older of settling down on our leaves and forgetting. about the lost. Now we are on the eve of the last month of the year, but that's not all. We are on the eve of the last month in a millennium. Everybody knows that. They've been talking about it for months, along with the two K-four. You know, I'm wondering what's going to happen to Britain. at midnight, they are four hours ahead of us. Maybe we can learn from some of their experiences. California has a chance too. They're hours behind us. Or is that before us? It's before us. You know, it puzzles me why we are so concerned when long before it hits USA, it'll hit Britain. And before it hits them, it'll hit the people on the wrong side of the globe. I'm puzzled about that. I really am. Well, I hope that we'll be stirred up by myself and you to a new realization of what lies ahead of the sinner that I rub shoulders with who is not saved and therefore on his way to hell. There's been a lot of shopping done. in the last hours, the last couple of days, and it's going to go on hecticly, that's not an easy word to say, up until the new year. I suppose, in fact I know that the shopkeepers, that's an English term, are both ringing their hands and rubbing their palms. They don't do it at the same time. They're ringing their hands because they can't get help, and they are rubbing their hands because they're thinking of the prophets. And that's spelled with an F and not a P-H. I traveled with the pilgrim preachers for a number of years. And there was a little ditty written about the pilgrim preachers. And it went, if I can remember it, something like this. A certain store, with name well known, has branches in most every town. And seems to pilgrims quite a store. For there they feel, for their money they'll get more. The reason isn't hard to find. The store would have you... Keep in mind, in letters red and gold, there's nothing over sixpence sold. That's why the pilgrims frequented Woolworths. Now we know that lots of money is being made these days by these store owners and this busy, busy, busy shopping. Even we contribute to it. We have a bus that does it every week. Taking your ladies to shop. Did you see the picture in the newspaper of four males on a bench in the mall? How many of you saw that picture? One or two of you. You never saw such a downcast lug. Two grown men at the ends, two boys in the middle looking as glum as could be. They were sitting in the mall, but I grant you, they must have had ladies somewhere shopping. But enough about that. These storekeepers have a day of reckoning coming because the IRS is going to be on their track. And so to do stock taking. Now is that what they call it over here? Yes, no. In England it's stock taking. That means you send your minions into the store, they count every object, they list all these things, and then they make comparisons. The start taking to be effective, it has first of all to be systematic, and then it has to be regular, and then it has to be honest. It's a sort of reckoning of one's assets and calculating one's debits. It's viewing the present in light of the future. stock taken. Now it's necessary in the material, for a store owner will get into trouble without it. But it's also as necessary and perhaps more so in the spiritual. Stock taken. I don't know whether you've noticed in the reading, but there were three questions asked. The first one... is one that God uses to arrest men. The second one he uses to accuse men. The third one he uses to advise men. The first one was spoken to Adam. The second one was spoken to Cain. The third one is spoken to believers across the face of the globe. What shall the end be of them that do not surrender to the Lord Jesus? Now the first question is this. Adam and Eve partook of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and they heard the voice of God and they ran. And they hid themselves Among the trees, the Bible says. God comes into the picture and his first question is, Where are thou? That's a good question. I remember a man telling me, No, he wasn't an atheist. He was an agnostic. He wasn't sure about God. He said, I don't understand a God. Think of God and Adam. God made him. God walked with him. And then God lost him. Where art thou? That was a fallacy. Of course, God didn't ask the question because he didn't know where Adam was. He asked the question because Adam didn't know where Adam was. Where art thou? And God used that question to arrest Adam. I heard about a little boy stopped on the street by a grown-up who said to them, can you tell me if Lewis is, that was a big store, if Lewis is up that way? He said, I don't know. Well, do you know if it's down that way? I don't know, he said. Well, said the man, do you know what the time is? I don't know what the time. Do you know anything the man said? The little boy looked at him and said, yes. I know that I'm not lost. The other guy was. I know that I'm not lost. Adam had become lost and didn't realize it. Sin shuts us out from God. And he who had the privilege of walking with God, walking very closely with God, communing with God, is suddenly at odds with God. Where art thou? That's the question that God asks. I can see Adam sputtering as he tries to answer God. The man who said God lost Adam was a foolish man. Trees don't hide from the eyes of God. You remember Zacchaeus? He climbed up into a sycamore tree for the Savior he wanted to see. Remember the chorus? Now a sycamore tree has a lot of foliage. Whether or not it concerned Zacchaeus, that he be hidden, I have no way of knowing. But it didn't hide him from the eyes of the Lord Jesus. He came to the base of the tree and he looked up and he said, Zacchaeus, come down. So it didn't hide a man who was up the tree. Do you remember Elijah? The scripture describes him as being under a tree. Now God looks down from heaven. The Lord Jesus looked up from earth. But you know, Elijah was no less seen than Zacchaeus. Whether God looks up or looks down. He who saw Zacchaeus saw Elijah. Do you remember Nathaniel? The Lord Jesus said, When thou art under the fig tree, I saw thee. Whether it's up a sycamore tree, or under a juniper tree, or behind a fig tree, or under the trees of the wood, which is where Adam hid himself. God sees. He knows, and nothing is hidden from him. God asked the question that Adam might discover where he was. And where was Adam? First of all, he was in trouble. He was guilty of wrongdoing. Disobedience, hast thou eaten of the tree of knowledge and of good and evil? God's asking another question. Because he doesn't know? No, because he knows. But Adam is not aware of the... depth of his sin in disobeying God. The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth. And the eyes of God lit upon Adam in trouble because he was guilty. Where else were he was in hiding? That was because he was afraid of the consequences of his sinning. And then he was in disgrace and he was ashamed of his sin. Now the sinner comes to a good place when he is ashamed of his sin. It's amazing, even believers, it's amazing how we can sin without being ashamed of our sin and sin we do. And yet God has given us a brand new conscience, and somehow we sin against our conscience. And our conscience is meant to make us ashamed, but we are not. I believe that Adam was ashamed of his sin. He suddenly realized he'd not only lost something, but he had lost everything. And that was absolutely true. because they had to turn their back on the garden with all of its beauty and wonder and joy and refreshment into a world that they had ruined. He had need to be ashamed of his sin. Now if I believed they were lost here, I would talk to them at length about the possibility of not knowing really where they were. We live in a remarkable age, you know. You can get a gadget for your car that bounces up upon a satellite in the sky, and you may be as lost as lost can be. But you have a chat with that satellite, and it will show you on a map exactly where you are. What a day and age in which to live. Now the sinner can find out where he is because the Bible is God's gadget for telling him. I use that word to put it into the context that I provided there. The Word of God is a guide to the sinner as where he is. He's in trouble because if he doesn't do something about it, he's going to land in hell. He's in hiding. And it's amazing how sinners find places to hide from God. They never manage it, but however, they'll hide behind a good life. But I don't do any wrong. I'm a good person. How many of you heard that argument? Oh, so many. All of us have heard that argument. We used to work among sinners and to talk to them about the Lord. I'm all right. Oh, you think about Mr. So-and-so. I don't live the way he lives. Mrs. so-and-so, I don't talk the way she talks. I never use a swear word. I'm not lost, but they are. A man has to be awakened to the fact that he is lost and separated from God, and that separation could be just temporary if he trusts Christ, but it's going to be eternal if he doesn't. That's why we should have a constant concern about the people around us. They hide behind the trees of respectability or of religiosity. You know, I go to church, I'm all right. But you and I know better. Going to church never saved a man. Being born in a church wouldn't save him. A baby's born in a garage, she doesn't become an automobile. You have to be born again because the first birth ushered you into a world already that you were already lost. We are born in sin and shaped in in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Haven't you found in your experience that the hardest people to reach are the people who go to church and they are not converted? They're good and they live commendable life, the hardest people to reach because the word S-I-N-N-E-R is not in their vocabulary concerning themselves. I'm not a sinner. A man does one sin, he's a sinner. And that one sin is enough to take him to hell. And when you put it that way, You know, and I know, and others know. They've committed more than one sin. So sinners they are, and the sinner's fate lies before them, unless they take the remedy, which you could tell them, is the blood of Jesus Christ, which taketh away all sin. Where art thou? I don't think a man is going to get saved until he finds out where he is and what he is and why he is, where he is and what he is, because he doesn't have God in his life and he doesn't have Christ in his heart. So that was the question to Adam. Now did you notice the question to Cain? I suggested that God arrested Adam with that question. but he accused Cain with the next one. What hast thou done? Thy brother's blood cryeth out to me from the ground. What hast thou done? I remember, you know, when I first came to this country to live, my wife and I, I have married her, taken her back to England to fill out a program that was arranged before I came to this country. And I've forgotten what I was going to say now. Let's go on here. It's better anyhow. I want you to look at Cain and his experience. There are five things I think that the Cain was affected by. And the first was pride. Now, you cannot tell me that Abel offered up of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof without their having been given instructions to the family what God expected of them. But Caius says, he's the one who produces the lambs and the animals and rears them and so on. That's not my bailiwick. I work in the fields. And he brought of the work of his own hands, and he laid it on the altar. The animal was laid on Abel's altar, and the fires were lit. I think the smoke of one went up, and the smoke of the other went like this, maybe. Somehow... God conveyed to these two men that he saw their sacrifice. He appreciated what they had in mind. But one did it right and one did it wrongly. And the reason why Cain did this was because he was proud. He didn't want to take of Abel's flock. He didn't want to ask for a lamb. Had he not produced wonderful things with his own hands, and these he would offer to God, and God said, I don't want them. And the best things, I think it was St. Augustine, one of the old believers from a bygone age who said, even the finest things we do are but splendid sins. Isn't that a shocking thing? Cain did not have the wherewithal in all that he did and produced to please God with his sacrifice. Abel's was a picture of the Lord Jesus and the future and God's way of salvation. Not all the blood of bulls on Jewish altar slain could give the guilty conscience peace or wash away one stain. We sing that from time to time. But because they pictured the Lord Jesus in their day and age, they were adequate, providing the motive was right. He is a man offering something to God. It's not what God asked for. And so God rejected it. What hast thou done? It started with his pride, mine's as good as it is, and I'll give the best I have to God. God said, I don't want it. That's a shock for a proud person to learn, you know, that God doesn't want anything that you're prepared to do for him. That's not enough to begin with. You do that afterwards, but to begin with, you must come as a sinner, confess your sin, and look away to the cross, God's sacrifice for sin, and in that way be born again. But his pride was followed by envy. You know, when God said no in some way, communicated that to Cain, Cain looked at that smoke, if that was the way God did it, going up, or he heard the voice that received the offering. and he was envious. His didn't suffice. Abel's did. His pride was followed by envy of his brother's lot. God had accepted him while he, Cain, had been rejected. And you know what the third is? This proud and envious man became very, very angry. He became angry. It was his own fault. But he didn't face that. He was not prepared to confess that. Here's a man, and he's angry because God is saying to him, You didn't do what I asked you. Oh, but I gave the very best I had to you. It wasn't what I wanted. I wanted something that would point into the future. when you would have a savior whose work is retroactive as well as present and on into the future very angry and then his anger was followed by deceit I don't know how he did it but he talked to Abel and he persuaded him to walk in the field with him and they are walking together Abel being totally deceived, and Cain lifted up his hand and slew his brother. So pride was at the beginning and murder was at the end. You know, I heard that Mrs. Billy Graham was asked one day by a newspaper reporter if she... Since they were an ordinary couple and sure must have their arguments and disagreements and so on, did you ever think of divorce? She said, no, never. Murder sometimes, but not divorce. Pride leads to murder. That's why God denounces pride in such strong and powerful terms. The proud heart. The proud look. It's pride that can keep sinners from coming to Christ. But pride can also work havoc in our lives as believers. What have you got? What have I got to be proud of? The Word of God says you don't have anything that God didn't give you. What are you proud of? God doesn't like pride. God despises pride because no human being can be justably proud. or forgivably proud. You have to get rid of your pride. You say, well, I don't really think that I'm a proud person. Well, let's get to the next one. Do you ever fly into a rage? Well, no, sometimes I lose my cool. You know, they have wonderful expressions for things like this. I lose my cool. But they ought to say, I'm flaming mad, you know, I lose my cool. envy, deceit. We forget what the end result is of these things, and the sinner certainly does. What I have done, what I have given, how I have worked, how often I go to church, I pray, and it's I, I, I, and I. when it ought to be him and him and him. What hast thou done to the sinner we can say you've done enough to justifiably awaken one day in hell? Enough if you never sinned again there's more than enough sin in your life to drag you down to hell. But there is a remedy. And once again we know There's only one remedy. And that's the Lord Jesus who left the glory, came down here as a man, lived a spotless, holy life, and then offered it up to God upon the cross for your sin and for my sin. It's such a tragedy that men and women can hear the gospel and hear it again. and hear it again and remain unmoved. The thought of God becoming a man in order that he might shed his blood and suffer the tortures of crucifixion. And then after man had done his worst, tear the bars of death asunder and rise from the dead. But it happened because a dying Christ or a dead Christ couldn't save. But it was one who died and rose again that becomes the power to bring new life into the sinner's heart. I don't need to comment much on the last one that we read. It was this. What shall the end be? Take a look at this verse, will you, in First Peter. It's such a solemn verse. For the times come, the judgment must begin at the house of God. Now that's a solemn thought. Maybe I left a little more time and underscored. The time is come when judgment must begin at the house of God. And if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? I don't need to say anymore, what shall the end be? We know what the end will be. There are men and women in hell this morning. There are men and women who will go to hell before the day is done. And going there they'll never leave. Hell is the place of eternal punishment. How gracious of God in spite of our sin to have made a way of escape through us. Adam was banished. Cain was banished. And the sinner will be banished. Adam was banished from the garden. Cain was banished from the family. The sinner is banished eternally from God. What a solemn thought. And I think we'll close with it. Shall we pray? Our Father, we thank you for the loveliness of the gospel of the Lord Jesus. We thank you, Lord, for the the power that there is in the gospel. The gospel is the power of God under salvation. And Lord, we would pray for the many people are among those that have been described for us, whose footsteps are set firmly on the road to hell. Lord, as we come into contact with them, give us a heart for them. Help us, Lord, to be exercised about them. so that they may not go to hell without someone telling them about the way out. We thank you for the Lord Jesus, and we pray a blessing upon this service in His name. Amen.