There comes a time, in the Christian life when someone no longer know godly sorrow. He may no longer be in the faith. The Lord might have left him.
He can now announce his sins as if they are the sins of a goat.
Godly sorrow is evidence that the Spirit of God is still working in a man. When it is absent, it talks of a very advanced state of depravity.
Sin is a destroyer. When a man goes for years with the same sin, it is likely evident that;
- Either he was never converted or
- God has abandoned him.
Therefore, the person can hide his sin and go on normally;
- Preaching,
- Praying, and
- doing all the other things
because he and God have parted company.
The mark of a true convert is fright and fear each time there is sin committed. But just to keep on sinning, no longer troubled, could indicate that inside, it is now night. Just like night came upon Judas when he went out in his march to go and sell Jesus (John 13:30).
If you hide your sin, God will leave you and demons will seduce you to tell you that you are still a believer. Like Samson, you may not know that the Spirit of God has left you. You may no longer feel guilty. That is the pathway back to the lake of fire.
I am now reading a book about a believer who was taken by the Lord for a visit to hell seven times, so that she may write what is there. There are many people there who spoke in tongues actively, in Pentecostal churches. They once believed but then, they went back to their vomit. Now they are burning in hell. Keep your sins, hide them. Pretend about them. You too will be there.
When there is no more
- fear of sin,
- Hatred of sin,
- Sorrow for sin,
- Repentance from sin,
- Restitution made
- Restoration sought and received
then a man has left the living God.
In Matthew chapter six, verse twenty-two and twenty-three we read, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” When your conscience has been darkened, so that the light in you is dark, how great is the darkness! In great darkness, people go about with sin and are no longer troubled. The sin that they dealt with radically in the past, they now treat with ease. They have become another person completely. The sin that troubled them in the past, they commit it now and they are not troubled. I want to tell all such that they are lost. If you are one such, I want to tell you that you are lost.
The Bible says – outside are the dogs – a man who has returned to the sin he had forsaken. Men who could not even tolerate immorality in their thoughts now abound in immorality. They have denied the narrow way. They have denied the one who died to save them. They are in the church acting, leading local churches – but they are the agents of Satan because they have left the Christ. There is no touch between the living God and them again. The darkness is great. They justify the things they once condemned with all their might. Their strength has become utter weakness.
Will God tell you on that day, “Go and serve the one you served on earth?” Are you that man going to hell, Who once knew, served and was too radical for the living God? Now you are in the total grip of Satan, and you are sinking further and further. You are sinking further and further. Are you such a man? Do you want to own up? Do you want to cry out for help before the fatal crossing, when it is no longer possible to repent?
Those who preach the truths you once preached; you now call them exaggeration. You say God is a God of love. Satan has now taken over completely. The darkness in you has become great. The darkness started in one area, now it is moving into other areas. You are just nothing in increasing domains. Even unbelievers are shocked.
You may want to lay hold on God this day and cry out. You can do so. There is our book True Repentance, I charge you before the living God to get a copy and to read it urgently. Read it many, many times. If you read it crying out to God, there may still be a way out for you.
You may perish; this may be your final opportunity. The ball is in your court. I got a letter from a brother. He believed and carried out very, very costly restitution. The restitution took him to police custody, and he had problems everywhere. He even got London University to change his certificates, because of the false dates. It was a battle. Now he is in backsliding for fourteen years. After all that, he is lost. There is no stage at which a man cannot turn his back to God and go back to the bottomless pit.
There are the acts of repentance by someone in darkness, and he may even carry out some restitution, but the man is yet in darkness. Nothing can happen to him; not even one bit of change.
