What does the Bible talk a lot about? You know what it talks a lot about? The wrath
and judgment of God. Now people who don't read the whole Bible, they don't know this
because they're listening to a lot of soft, soap, positive type sermons and they're
getting the most Bible from Hallmark greeting cards that they receive in the mail because
they're not reading the Bible, so the most Bible they read is on a greeting card at Christmas
or their birthday or Easter or something like that, and so those are really positive,
uplifting cards. The most Bible they get is on a calendar that they read in the office
with a picture of nature and a Bible verse. But when you actually read the whole
Bible, you know what you're going to find page after page after page of the wrath
and judgment of God. Look at the longest books in the Bible. What's the longest
book in the Old Testament? Jeremiah, right? Slightly longer than Psalms, even though
Psalms has 150 short chapters, Jeremiah has 52 long chapters. That's got to be the
most negative book in the whole Bible, the book of Jeremiah. And you just read
page after page in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel of the wrath of God, the punishment of
God, the justice of God. It just goes on and on and on, and then you finally
think, man, we're through the major prophets. Then you get to the minor
prophets, and it just gets more negative. It's just negative, negative,
negative, negative. Are we just going to ignore all that and just preach
sweetness and light? Look, how much of the Bible is negative versus how much
of the Bible is positive, and then now let's go to the average church today
and see how much of the preaching is positive versus how much of the
preaching is negative. Does it match today? I don't think it matches. I think
churches today are preaching way too much positivity, and the Bible has got
a lot of negativity, and the fact of the matter is that Jesus talked a lot
more about hell than he did about heaven. Why? Because he didn't want
anybody to go there, and he brought it up, and he brought it up. Look, if
I asked you to describe hell, you would be able to do a pretty good job. If I
asked any Christian to describe hell, they'd probably be able to do a pretty
good job. It's pretty easy for us to describe because the Bible talks a lot
about it. We've got all kinds of words that would roll off our tongue.
Well, it's the lake of fire. It's darkness. There's weeping. There's
gnashing of teeth. There's no rest day or night. If we were asked to
describe heaven, we might have to think a little bit. We'd struggle because the
Bible doesn't tell us as much. We don't have as much detail, but let me tell you
something. We need to emphasize what God emphasizes, and so we need some hellfire
and damnation preaching all over the world, whether it's the United States or
Canada. Hard preaching is what God had done in the Old Testament. Hard
preaching is what God had done in the ministry of Jesus Christ. Hard
preaching got it done in the book of Acts. We need to preach the whole
counsel of God, and we need to emphasize what God emphasizes. We need to
emphasize salvation by faith. Yes, we need to emphasize soul winning. Yes, we
need to emphasize getting out there and doing some work for the Lord after
we're saved. Yes, but we also need to preach some negative sermons. Why?
Because the Bible is filled with chapters about the wrath of God. If it's
being emphasized in the Bible, let's emphasize it.