A homeless man, in the downtown of the small town where I live, set up camp in front of a store on the sidewalk. He had stretched a dirty brown blanket between two newspaper dispensers as a shelter. All his belongings were piled in a shopping cart. A policeman had come and told this man he had to move on. The man responded by yelling, screaming, shaking his fist, and throwing stones at the policeman in an impotent rage. The policeman retreated to call for help in dealing with the situation. The man was so mad and full of rage that when I saw this heartbreaking scene, I figured drugs and mental illness had deprived him of his reason.
Another Scene
This is one scene of impotent rage. Let me draw your attention to a second scene of impotent rage.
Imagine what it will be like when sinners who have left God out of their lives and lived all their lives at odds with Him come into judgment with the living God. God surely had called them to repentance at some time in their lives, but they resisted and refused His grace. Before God, who is holy, just and good, they must now appear in judgment and give account of their lives.
“We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that everyone may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10).
They might have been respectable members of their society, they might have been famous and highly esteemed, there might have been thousands living in far worse sins than themselves, but because they rejected God’s grace, God will judge them. What a terrible, final, awful judgment it will be. From His presence, He will separate them not for a day, nor for a lifetime, but for eternity. At God’s great white throne judgment every mouth will be stopped.
Sinners will rage in their hearts against this judgment! But their rage will be impotent. It won’t bring about the least bit of deliverance for them. Afterwards they may grimace in pain. They may shake their fists in anger at God! They may yell and scream and cry out in bitterness! But their rage will not help them in the least to escape the punishment they will be enduring in hell.
The time to change was in this life! The time to repent was while they lived in this world. After death it will be too late. If they had cried out to the Savior of sinners for mercy, He would have received them and had mercy on them. But this they never did!
Will their anger help them? Not a bit. For the endless ages of eternity their hatred against God will make them gnash and grind their teeth in rage. Matthew 13:5050And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 13:50) reads, “Shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”
I don’t know how the poor homeless man ever ended up as he did. Maybe his downward slide began when he was a boy and he didn’t listen to the advice of his teachers in school or his parents at home. Perhaps it began in a home that was abusive. Perhaps his downward path began with some gateway drug that seemed harmless enough to start with, but led to worse drugs that damaged his mind. But what a sad state of affairs his life had come to.
How Do People Get in Such a Condition?
How do those who end up in the sad state of a Christless eternity begin? Is it by not listening to those who would point them to the Savior? Is it by throwing off any convictions of what is right and wrong? Is it by justifying sinful acts by saying everybody else is doing it? Is it by a subtle and almost imperceptible hardening of their heart towards God?
But what insanity the hardening of the heart leads to! Do you know that those who reject God’s mercy for their souls are destroying themselves? By their refusal of God’s grace, they are committing spiritual destruction. Is there anything mentally healthy about destroying one’s self? And why do they do it? Perhaps they indulge themselves in the horrible vanity that they know what is best for their own lives, and nobody can tell them any differently. Perhaps thoughts like, “I am the boss of my own life. I am not going to let anybody, even God Himself, tell me what to do!” run through their minds. Like the homeless man, they make themselves a world unto themselves and lose sight of the greater reality all around them. An astute observer of life once said, “The smallest package in the world is a man all wrapped up in himself.” They seek to have life on their own terms and leave the God who made them and the world they live in out of their lives!
Don’t Make the Same Mistake!
But don’t make the tragic mistake of leaving God out of your life. If you do, you will end up in one unending episode of impotent rage. Instead, come to Christ by faith. Lay open your heart to Him and tell Him you need Him. On the cross, He suffered, bled and died, so that anyone may return to God. “Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit” (1 Peter 3:18).
As long as you are alive, it is not too late to change. Come to the Savior of sinners so that you never have to experience the impotent rage of the lost when they must come into judgment for their sins.
God wants to bring you to His heavenly home. Only God can give the gift of eternal life. “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:2323For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:23)). Don’t go on insisting on doing your own will and having your own way. If you do, you will end up homeless and lost in the darkness of hell forever. Jude described the lost as “raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever” (Jude 13).
The Lord Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me” (John 14:66Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:6)). Come to Him by faith so that you may find a home in His love both in this life and the life to come.
Separation from others is painful, but separation from God would be far worse. It doesn’t need to be that way. Read Ah, Look at All the Lonely People ...