Now I share with you, every child of
God that's here tonight, I share with you
the shame, the distress of soul, the heartbreak
at the empty seats.
An empty seat in the house of God
now is terrible.
I'm not satisfied with empty seats, are you?
I'm not sounding a low note, but I
don't want us to get used to defeat.
I want us to claim victory, and I
want us to press for it.
I picked up a book some time ago,
written by my friend, a preacher of the
holiness group of Scotland and Britain, Leonard Ravenhill.
I've had the joy of getting personally acquainted
with him.
He's a saint of God, and he's doing
some provocative writing now, and calling mourners.
And he, in one of his little books,
he made this statement, and I've been under
conviction about it.
It's haunted me.
He said, some of these days, a simple
child of God is going to pick up
the word of God and read it and
believe it.
And when that person does, he'll make the
rest of us ashamed of ourselves.
Did you get it?
One of these days, some simple child of
God is going to pick up God's word
and not try to understand it, not try
to get it all to pieces, fit together,
not to harmonize all the doctrine, not to
square everything by your pet doctrine, but he's
just going to read it and believe it.
My soul wasn't the one that could get
converted to become his little children, just believe
the book.
Where we can't understand it, we just worship
and set us on fire.
There's any crowd of people under God's shining
sun that ought to have tears and fire
and war with people who try to believe
in the grace of God.
I believe that all of this sex and
all of the movements today away from the
Bible are a result of dead orthodoxy.
People who say they believe the Bible in
their head, but doesn't control our tear ducts
and our prayer life, deadness, the most terrible
thing that's out here, a fellow that's orthodox
in his head and doesn't have a broken
heart.
I want us to get excited about the
Lord.
I believe we ought to cross swords with
every enemy of the gospel that crosses the
path of the gospel, but revival would be
people excited about the Lord.
You're going to lose in every one of
your other battles, but a blissful knows he's
fighting a losing cause.
I'm for it.
I rejoice in what the Lord's doing through
it, but he's going to lose.
He knows it.
That's none of our business.
This thing's gone.
You're not going to save America, God's going
to judge you.
You got that much sense?
There's not enough Christians in this country to
control the politics of this land.
It's gone.
The Church is going underground.
Hallelujah.
When it gets there, we'll learn how to
pray.
We'll learn how to weep, and then we'll
see victory.
Amen?
Is there any way on earth we could
generate, not put on, some excitement about the
Lord?
We've got nothing to apologize for if we
know it, because God's answer for all the
wiser men was to put his Son on
the throne where men can't get to him
and turn the world over to him.
We ought to have a holy bonus.
It's time we quit apologizing for being believers
in the Lord Jesus Christ and work up
our zeal.
The most exciting thing in this world is
still the Lord Jesus Christ.
I'm trying to encourage you to get excited
and to begin to put your money where
your mouth is, your witness, and to begin
to fill Birmingham full of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Talking about everything else now, I told what
the Irish write and I rejoice in it.
If you believe what your young pastor preaches,
why don't you get on fire about it?
Do you know what it is to mourn?
Do you?
You nice little Orthodox Calvinists, do you know
what it is to weep?
Do you?
How long been since you?
Your whole heart just broke.
You see, the scriptures teach God's people to
break up the power ground in their own
hearts, and yours looked to me like it
could stand a good deal of plow.
Have you learned yet that this world don't
give a hoot if you are Orthodox?
They don't yet.
Have you learned yet this world isn't interested
in what you believe?
They don't yet.
Now, this is a day of demonstration.
Amen?
Television has changed the whole advertising world.
They don't tell you now, they show you.
Now is the time for us to put
in the tears and sweat and prayer and
witness what we say we believe.
Brother, get something you believe in.
Believe in it all over.
I used to quote a little limerick when
I was a boy.
I had a little dog, his name was
Rover.
When he died, he died all over.
For God's sake, get excited.
With the nicest little people in the army,
get excited.
If you can't get excited about the Lord,
join the Communist Party.
Get excited about there in America.
Get excited about something.
Under God, I'm telling you.
Amen?
And let's open our mouth.
Are you mad at me?
Do you think that this world is going
to be won by truth?
No, no.
It has to be saturated in tears and
in blood.
Your blood and mine.
And in the power of the Holy Ghost.
Do you weep over lost men?
Do you, sister?
Or are you one of these nice, orthodox
people?
If you don't weep because of the way
the claims of my Lord are despised today,
you need to pay a little attention to
the scripture to afflict yourself and the Lord
and to break up the foul of ground
in your heart.
Amen?
I want us to get excited.
Suppose we saved America, which we ain't going
to do.
And all went to hell.
It'd be a bad swap.
Because he turned us a lot longer.
In a few little days, you got left
here on this earth.
Get excited.
I was up in Pennsylvania.
I'm going to spend a little time trying
to encourage.
I'm not standing on the outside throwing stones.
But you nice people, I go from place
to place, and you got your doctrine fully
straight in your head.
And you're cold as ice.
And you have no passion for souls.
You're afraid you're going to be unorthodox.
You're going to let your own kinfolk go
to hell, unwept over and unprayed for.
Don't be afraid to make a theological mistake.
I made one 31 years ago.
I haven't made any sense, but I lived
over it.
I'm trying to say that what we say
we believe, we must get to where we
believe it all over.
It's the greatest thing, or it doesn't amount
to a hill of beans.
I wish we'd get excited about it.
I wish the people could note excitement and
passion and urgency and tears in our voices
as we plead with men to be reconciled
to the Lord Jesus Christ.
How long, Benson, since you've pled?
I mean pled like a lawyer pleading to
get his client acquitted.
You've pled with somebody to be reconciled to
the Lord.
Well, is that good scripture?
We beg you, Paul said, we beg you.
I can see the heart throb of it.
We plead with you.
This is doctrine.
We need it.
We beg you in Christ's name to be
reconciled.
You one of these folks think you'd get
that old sinner straightened out on his doctrine,
he'd go to heaven.
No, he'd just learn his doctrine and go
on to hell.
Ah, let's get excited.
I had a happy letter the day I
got back home Thursday and left Friday at
noon to come up here.
And I had a letter waiting for me
from Pennsylvania.
I'm going to take this time.
I ain't got much to preach about tonight
anyhow.
I'm going to fill these seats and I
want Mr. Wetteye to start coming back to
the Minor Heights Baptist Church.
Well, what would have happened to Brother Wetteye?
Mr. Amen, scotching for the truth, holding up
the hands of truth.
Somebody said, Lord, Mr. Wetteye, Mr. Amen, don't
come to church.
We're not going to have God with us.
I mean hearts that melt like my Lord.
They were moved with compassion.
Oh, for a heart a little like his.
And I got this letter.
I've been up in Pennsylvania and they took
down all the messages on tape.
And now they, they've got a stenographer and
they're taking all the messages down on tape
and they're mimeographing them.
And they claim they're going to put one
in the hands of everybody in that city
of 130,000 people.
And they're taking the tape and making copies
of them and going into unsaved homes and
asking people if they'll let them play a
sermon on them.
They're beginning to believe what they say they
believe.
If you believed it, brother, you'd want everybody
to hear it.
I was in, I tell you, you folks
been sitting, you know, you sound as a
dollar and it's dead as old hay.
And you need, you remind me of old
cows.
When I was a boy, we had this,
uh, Uanna.
It's awful rich stuff.
We fed the cows, mixed it with cottonseed
husks.
An old cow broke in the crib one
day and ate about a half a bushel
of that high-powered stuff.
He was sick for two weeks.
You see, what truth you keep for yourself,
you'll lose.
You've got to pass it on.
Amen?
Ah, let's build a fire.
Let's see a fire burn.
Let's start somebody's fire.
And then it'll spread.
And we'll get excited about our Lord and
what God's turned over to him and the
issues involved and the gifts he has in
his hands.
We'll get excited about it and we'll begin
to have a note of urgency and compassion.
And God help us agony in our voices
as the membership of our churches that know
Christ go out from the house of God
to witness a good confession and to plead
with men and women whose paths they crossed
in the name of their eternity bound souls.
Please, I beg you.
You too good to that?
My Lord says all day long, have I
stretched out my hands to a disobedient and
gainsaying people?
You're not too good to stretch out your
hands and beg sinners, are you?
Are you?
That's the spirit of Christ.
Let's fill mine of heights full of tears
and urgency and compassion.
Amen?
That's it.
Build a fire in your heart, brother.
Break up the solid ground in your heart,
sister.
Get the way you can weep over souls.
You can't weep over, you can't win them,
I'll tell you that.
Can't win them.
I won't talk to you a little while
tonight from the 107th Psalm, and I frankly
am going to preach tonight so I can
preach tomorrow night.
God willing, tomorrow night I want to speak
on how God gets men lost.
How God gets men lost.
The message tomorrow night breaks my heart every
time I speak along that line, for I
share a crushed and broken heart, brother Griswold,
for the preachers of America and for my
own part in lying to sinners.
I charge that with filled America full of
church people who are not hypocrites, but they
do not know my Lord.
And it's almost impossible to see anybody saved
if they've ever had some kind of religious
experience or made some sort of profession or
been around some sort of decision.
Chances are they'll go to hell, drinking water
at that empty cistern and thinking they're being
satisfied.
And I do not preach down to brother
preachers, but usually a pastor has to get
on the mourner's bench with me.
I don't think we've told this generation the
truth about themselves, and I don't believe we've
preached the gospel to this generation.
It breaks my heart.
When I first started out preaching, that great
crowd was getting littler all the time.
Everybody's so tied up as far as I
can see.
We'd all like to go to heaven, but
we just ain't got time.
I think most of us are going to
wind up in hell because we're so busy
killing ourselves, paying for our luxuries that mom
and papa never heard of, and we're just
going to have to go to hell because
we ain't got time to see God.
And our employers' owners and school teachers' owners
and somebody else owns us.
If the scripture says we'll enter the kingdom
through much tribulation, that's exactly what it says.
It may be that a new note needs
to be sounded, and we need to tell
people the awful truth about themselves.
For that reason, I slip up on the
subject tonight, and I just have one purpose
in mind in speaking as I do tonight,
and that's to encourage and beg you, after
everything else I've asked you tonight, to be
in grave agony in session.
For the preacher, in order to tell men
the truth about themselves, they'll never be interested
in the truth about Christ if they've not
faced with the truth about themselves.
And they'll never become seekers after the Lord
until they face him with the truth about
themselves.
And I've preached all my life to generations
where we thought that we could get people
saved by keeping the truth from them.
Now we've got a monstrosity.
I want to encourage you to be in
agony of prayer, and that's what I'm going
to preach for tonight.
With your Bibles open, will you turn to
the 107th Psalm?
May I see?
I think maybe you've got Bibles, haven't you?
Would you mind lifting them?
I'd be very happy if you'd share it
with that person next to you, for tonight
it's going to be largely reading the scripture.
And what I have in mind now may
fail, but ladies and gentlemen, but listen to
me.
A sure mark of spiritual death is prayerlessness.
And if that's the true statement, I am
scared to death about church people today.
Prayerlessness.
If that's the mark of death, if the
very life of Christianity is one great leaping
out after and seeking out after the Lord,
that's our life pursued, and that's what prayer
is.
I want to talk to you a little
while tonight to encourage you to quit making
your prayers fruitless, because you're asking God the
Word in a way that he won't work.
If we just got two weapons, and that's
the proclamation of the Word, and then it
says for prayer, and that's all the tools
of God.
All the other things ain't worth a dime
if we don't have these.
All your tricks won't work.
All your promotion won't work.
We offer lollipops to fill these seats, that
won't work.
We've got to stick to just two things.
And that's not sent for the proclamation of
truth from this pulpit, but the proclamation of
truth from this pulpit and from your lips.
Amen?
And prayer.
I want you to notice how God works
at bringing men to salvation tonight from the
107th Psalm, verse 3 verses.
I trust this is very familiar to you,
and I want to give you an outline.
Verse 1 of the 107th Psalm speaks of
the work of God the Father in the
salvation of sinners.
Now you who study the Bible much will
understand that we are bringing an application, not
an interpretation tonight, but the scriptures will allow
it.
You could preach from this chapter, if God
were to ever save a nation, which he's
never done so far, he'd go about saving
that nation just exactly like he outlines in
this psalm.
If God ever were to save a church,
make a power out of a church, save
it from its deadness, and we are facing
that now.
Every godly pastor cries all the time inside
over the deadness that's in our heart in
that offering.
Or if God saved an individual, he'd go
about it exactly as outlined here in this
107th Psalm.
Verse 1 speaks of the mercy of Almighty
God.
No one will ever be saved unless God
Almighty makes him an object of his saving
mercy.
We're in mystery here.
We cannot understand it.
Nobody needs to understand it.
Nobody can understand it.
But after you get saved, you'll naturally start
tracing back where it came from to head
right back to God.
Oh, give thanks unto the Lord for his
mercy forever.
The word endureth, if you have the authorized
version before you, as I do, is in
italics.
The schoolchildren can tell us what that means.
It means it ought not to be there,
is that right?
And the men who translated this thought it
would help the meaning but to ruin.
I wish you would rejoice with me just
a little bit before we get down to
the burdens that we have to face or
make a mockery out of setting aside days
to try to get men under the influence
of the gospel.
Just rejoice.
Oh, give thanks unto the Lord for his
mercy forever.
In the providence of God, there is a
cross in the heart of God forever.
Some people get afraid of some of the
terminology of the scripture.
If I tried to understand them, they'd scare
me.
But I don't try to understand them.
I worship at them.
For instance, suppose I'd get somebody here that
thinks he knows goody about the Bible and
give you 15 hours to explain such an
expression as from before the foundation of the
world.
You couldn't do it, save your life.
But to me, it means that this business
of salvation isn't a happen so or an
aftermath or a second thought.
It's forever in the heart of God.
Or take the expression Jesus Christ was as
a lamb slain from before the foundation of
the world.
You understand that?
All I can get out of it is
that it is in the heart of God
and still must be.
Yet in time you had to go to
a cross.
But I can tell you now that the
cross will never be erased.
It's still at the center of the heart
of God.
And so is his mercy.
So is his mercy.
I wish we wouldn't try to be theologians
and we'd just rejoice in the wideness and
the wonder and the glory of the mercy
of God.
I wish that it would thrill our hearts
again and again and again that he showed
mercy to us.
And I wish it would so thrill us
and melt us and tenderize us, if that's
a good word, that we'd come up with
this solution that if Almighty God would set
his affections on such a worm as I
am, surely the wickedest sinner that ever arrived
and wriggled his way to hell need not
be discouraged.
For if it should please God, he wouldn't
have any trouble showing mercy on anybody else.
And the reason I know it, I have
felt the power of being an object of
his mercy in my own soul.
And if he showed mercy to me, there
isn't a sinner in Birmingham too big for
God, not a single one.
I remember my seminary professor, I mean present,
Dr. L.R. Scarborough.
He was a man who could weep over
soul.
God help you if you ever get where
you came.
You are terror, you are scourge, you are
disgrace to the name of my Christ.
If you can handle the great truths of
eternity without a tear in your heart, if
you can talk to lost men and women,
they cannot hear a tear and a tear
and a heartbeat and a heartache and agony
and urgency as you talk to them.
You need to pray, pray, pray, weep, weep,
weep, that God will break your heart and
then break it again and keep on breaking
it until you share some of the compassion
of him who, looking on the multitudes, was
filled with compassion.
And the meaning is he pulled out his
heart and let it bleed over them.
Dr. Scarborough could weep.
He told a story of when he was
a pastor in his young days in Abilene,
Texas.
He preached one Sunday morning, came home and
lying down flat on his back on the
bed while the wife was preparing the Sunday
noon meal, resting a little from the message.
And said this little six-year-old boy
climbed up on the bed and straddled his
stomach and was jumping up and down to
help him relax, you know.
And finally the boy said, Daddy, I didn't
believe what some school teachers had to say.
Dr. Scarborough said, You didn't.
He said, No.
And the preacher said, Well, Sonny, what did
the teacher say that you didn't believe?
Why, he said, You know, Daddy, the teacher
told us about a big old fish swallowing
man by the name of John.
He said, I don't believe there ever was
a fish big enough to swallow a man.
And the preacher said, He said to himself,
Yeah, I got a rebellion in my own
right.
See what I'd do about it.
Boy, he doubted.
He racked my brain.
He said, Well, Jimmy, there's a boy's name.
He said, Suppose that God made the man.
And suppose that God made the fish.
Don't you suppose that God could make a
fish big enough to swallow a man?
And the little boy said, But now, Daddy,
if you're going to bring God in it,
that's different.
Well, thank God that's where it is.
God is in this business.
Where are the fools?
And what touch, and what jump, and what
expectancy a child of God will have in
speaking to any and everybody about the power
of God in salvation, when we refer to
Jesus Christ, the one who was humiliated by
being born in a cow's stable and crucified
in the most terrible death that the mind
of man can conceive.
Buried in a man's grave, wrapped in borrowed
clothes, perfumed in spices he couldn't pay for.
And now he's been exalted to be a
priest and a savior for a year.
He's got something in his hands.
He can give repentance to the vilest sinner
out of hell and grant the knowledge of
forgiveness to everybody it pleases him.
My, if you ever soak your soul in
that, you can spit amber juice in the
devil's face and tell him to go back
to hell.
We're going to occupy some territory for this
exalted Christ, and we can look at the
man in the face and know that salvation,
the gift of the sovereign redeemer, who grants
to men and women the grace of repentance
and the gift of the forgiveness of sins,
because that's what he's raised for.
And if he'd show mercy to me, he
wouldn't have any trouble showing mercy to somebody
else.
Oh, give thanks unto the Lord.
Ladies and gentlemen, what happened to the praise
our fathers knew about, this praising the Lord,
this praising him.
Brother, plow up your heart, plow up your
heart, until it just bubbles.
Give thanks!
Come on now!
Come on right away!
Wipe the brown off your face!
Stop the defeatism that's characterized us!
Stand up on your hind legs!
Give the joy and the power and the
joy and the enjoyment of an exalted Lord!
And know we can't lose come hell or
high water.
Give thanks unto the Lord.
The second verse speaks of the work of
the Lord Jesus Christ, the redeemer.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.
Get out!
While God's people praise him.
Praise the Lord.
Whom he hath redeemed.
Ah, I've got some scars in my body,
them old spirit and soul, as I've tried
to battle for one truth, that a Christian
is not simply somebody that's done something, but
a Christian is the product of the redeeming,
reigning, sanctifying, keeping, grace of Almighty God, on
the basis of the person and the work
of Almighty God the Son.
The most terrible sin I find in the
catalog of the Bible is taking the name
of the Lord by God in vain.
And it disabuses you of the idea that
that happened down in the garages and business
places and on the streets as men did
what were did, cursed.
No, no.
That means to dare, to stand up, listen
to me, to stand up in a hostile
world and take his name on you, unless
you've got a right to.
God bless your heart.
If there's one thing you ought to be
dead certain you don't rush into, it's this
business of daring to claim, look at me,
look at me.
I'm not my own.
I'm bought with a price.
Look at me!
I'm the apple of God's eye.
I'm the object of his affection.
I'm his magnificent obsession.
I'm part of his inheritance, his inheritance in
this thing.
Look at me!
And see what a powerful God we have.
Look at me!
And see what the mercy of God, how,
what a difference it makes.
Look at me!
I'm not the end of a proposition or
the result of a formula.
I'm the handiwork, I'm the product of the
grace of God.
I'm a miracle.
I'm a new creation.
Only God can create.
You can't make a tree or grow a
tree.
And a Christian is a new creation.
He's created in Christ Jesus, holy and righteous.
God kept us in this tremendous thing, to
claim, to be the product of the grace
of God.
But if you are, let the redeemed of
the Lord say so.
Not somebody that cooperated, God did part and
you did the other.
But God's always the giver and you're always
the receiver.
I'm a child of the King.
I am what I am by the grace
of God.
Just look at me.
What God can do.
Have they power who can take a pile
of sand, make him clean and set him
free.
Put his feet on a rock, establish his
glory and put a song in his heart.
Give him heaven on the way to heaven.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.
Our closed lips give mute testimony that we
don't know him, folks.
You say, Brother Barnard, I'm loyal to the
Church.
You can't be loyal to the Church unless
you head over heels in love with the
head of the Church.
Well, I support the program of the Church!
Well, I know.
How about the head?
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.
In verse 3 is the work of the
Holy Ghost.
The work of the Holy Ghost.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
whom he has redeemed from the hands of
the enemy and gathered, that's the Holy Ghost
word, gathered them out of the land from
the east and from the west and from
the north and from the south.
I can just see God the Holy Ghost.
He uses me.
He's going out here rounding them up.
He's going over here rounding them up, ain't
he?
Going over here rounding them up.
He's gathering them.
The Holy Spirit.
In order for man to be saved, he
becomes an object of God's mercy.
He becomes an object of the dying of
my Lord in his resurrection, God.
He becomes one for whom the Holy Ghost
goes out.
Bring them in!
That's the work of the Holy Ghost.
And the rest of the psalm, here's the
most beautiful thing in the scripture, showing how
the Holy Ghost gathers the objects of God's
mercy, the objects of the work and person
of my Lord, into the fold.
Have you ever read these lines?
Let's read them, and then we'll go home.
Verse 4.
Here's how the Holy Ghost works.
These folks, the object of God's mercy, these
folks, the subjects of Christ's death, here's the
Holy Ghost gathering them in.
And how does he do it?
Well, he brings them, as verse 6 says,
and verse 13, we'll read them in a
minute, and verse 19 and verse 28, four
different times, he brings them from different ways,
the Holy Ghost, using this means and that.
No two people ever have exactly the same
experience.
You can't get your little recipe, not as
long as you're preaching a great God.
I've had to fight for this.
They say, well, our custom here is so
-and-so.
And I've actually had people come up to
me and say, Brother Barnum, you ought to
give people a chance to be saved.
And they mean by that that we ought
to stand and sing a song and give
what we call a public invitation.
People can't be saved unless you do that.
And that's the poor people they've been taught
that.
But isn't that terrible?
The poor little old fellow like me has
got to do something for a sinner, got
a chance to be saved.
That's serious.
And yet we've had to battle them.
Other people say, well, I tell you, I
believe you've got to go to the mourner's
bench.
I'm not against any of these things.
But anyway on God's earth, you can get
into a living relationship where you touch the
living Christ and P-O-W-E-R
power, supernatural power, flows from a living Christ
into your life and makes you a brand
new, utterly different person.
In a way you can get that's all
right with me.
I ain't going to worry about which way
you will go at it.
I'm just simply saying that you can't get
all fixed up and say God's got to
work this way.
And here in this chapter, he always brings
a person to a certain place if he's
saved.
And that place, verse 6, tells us the
Holy Ghost, and this is what I want
you to see afresh tonight, beloved.
He brings people to the place of trouble.
And he brings them into a place of
such terrible trouble that they'll do what they'll
never do.
Otherwise, they'll call on the Lord.
Then, we'll go back and see how he
brought them there in a minute.
Then, that's when things took place, you see.
Then, they cried unto the Lord in that
trouble.
They wouldn't cry until they got in trouble.
Yes, there's one place I know, Brother Barnett
knows what he's talking about.
If God Almighty doesn't cross your path and
whittle you down, and take all your peace
away from you, and rob you of all
your assurance, and get you down to where
there's not a wiggle left in you, and
hem you up where you've got no way
of getting up, except to look up.
He don't, in mercy, deal with you that
way.
You're going to go to hell as sure
as Rothbard was preaching.
Then, they cried in their trouble.
And when God, a personal worker, came, God
bless him.
I wish you, the personal worker, I don't
think you're a Christian unless you are.
But, a misguided personal worker comes to that
old boy in trouble, and quotes him a
verse of scripture, and gives him assurance of
salvation, and the boy goes to hell, trusting
the assurance the personal worker gave him.
But, if God ever saves you, he's going
to, by the work of the Spirit, using
the means of God's grace, bring you to
such terrible trouble, you'll take nothing but the
deliberate power of God for an answer.
Nobody on God's earth will have to pump
you up and assure you every six months
that you're a Christian.
Our Baptist churches have to have revival every
six months to get the people to rededicate
themselves.
They never have experience in deliverance, and so
they don't know whether they're saved or not.
They're awful worried about it.
So they have to get the backsliders to
come back, and the people to rededicate themselves.
I've been going up and down the land
37 years.
Nearly every place I go, at three or
four nights, the people say, well, if what
he's preaching is so, I don't know whether
I'm saved or not.
Well, God bless your heart.
I'm looking you straight in the face and
telling you this.
This ain't no make-sham stuff.
Salvation is deliverance from the spirit of this
evil age.
Salvation is deliverance in the end that power
comes into your life that wasn't there.
I hope God will get you in such
trouble you'll cry to him and you'll keep
on crying until your experience delivers.
Till you do.
In God's name, don't go to hell trusting
the doctrine.
In God's name, keep tugging at the coattails
of the rest of the world until with
his nails pierced hands he delivers you from
the guilt and burden of sin.
Notice, and I'll let you go, verse 4.
Look how the Holy Spirit goes to work.
That's how I want you to start praying
around here and witnessing as you never have
done before.
Be an instrument in the hands of the
Holy Ghost.
What does he do?
He begins to deal with men and he
makes wanderers of them.
They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary
way.
They had a revival meeting and they got
converted.
This generation got converted, but they never got
acquainted with Christ.
They can tell you when they're saved, but
they don't know the law.
We isolated and separated salvation from Christ about
50 years ago and made salvation in hell.
And people get salvation and never get Christ.
How about you?
They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary
way.
Wanderers!
And they'd lie here, but the Holy Spirit
would come and take a stick and punch
them, cut them up.
And then the next meeting, they redacted themselves,
and that made them feel good for a
week or two, but the Holy Ghost came
and took all of that away.
And they started looking for something else.
They changed churches and went to listen to
some other different preachers and gave a dine
to the beggar and did this and did
that and did the other, but praise God
the Holy Spirit wouldn't let them alone.
Praise his name.
They couldn't find any place to lie.
They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary
way and they couldn't find no city to
dwell in, no place for foundation.
And they wandered, couldn't find any resting place
until there were a hundred and thirty and
a bunch of hundred and thirty that their
souls prayed to the ends of the earth
and their wiggles were gone.
And then they cried unto the Lord.
Couldn't do it until then.
They trusted Brother Graceville.
Said, how many of you folks want me
to pray for you?
And you lifted your hand and we trust
old Brother Graceville's prayer and you go on
home and go to sleep while he stays
up all night and prays for you.
Trust anything on God's earth that won't look
to the Lord.
Won't look to the Lord.
Until the Holy Spirit with the truth at
his disposal, he just routes you out and
places you out and you wander and you
get hungry and thirsty and you get so
hungry and thirsty you've got no strength.
Then when all hope is gone, then hallelujah,
the most glorious times I've ever had this
side of eternity.
And when they run out and when they
shut up and they go to call on
the Lord, that first salvation has been all
time.
It's in his hands.
On the ascended Lord.
And all the power to transform a life
is there.
And if you do not have supernatural power
in your life, you're not in touch with
the source of power.
That's the living Lord sitting on the throne.
Four times in this chapter he comes out
in different directions, but he brings people to
the place of trouble.
I pray as I go up and down
the land, Lord, whittle us down as church
people.
We're not very hungry yet.
We'll still sleep well, eat well, live well,
while the power of God's still not on
us.
We're not very hungry yet.
None of us are.
We're not very thirsty for a living God.
Lord, bring us to trouble.
Maybe I'll live to see the day in
America, when the churches will have to meet
underground.
Maybe we'll start looking to Him.
Oh, I do love to see an old
sinner in deep trouble.
That just tickles the fool out of me.
I love to see them in trouble.
Can't sleep, can't eat.
Oh, boy.
If I'm fixing to happen, they'll get in
such trouble, they'll call on the Lord.
And that's where blessing's been all time.
He's got it, brother.
And isn't it the greatest thing to do?
He doesn't have to, but he delivers them.
Amen?
And I want to close by reading you
verses 7, 8, and 9.
And then I think one other verse.
How does this do here for a picture
of what it means to be a child
of God?
There's in deep trouble, and they call on
Him.
He delivers them.
Now, the latter is stressful.
And that's enough.
He didn't quit.
He took them to the Lord.
Praise God.
He led them.
By the R-I-G-H-T, right
praise, that they might go to a city
of hesitation.
Oh, that men would praise the Lord for
His goodness and for His wonderful works to
the children of men.
And then say amen to this next verse.
Amen.
He does it.
I think I want you to turn to
verse 29.
I'm going to keep you another minute and
tell you a story.
Verse 28 is then they cry unto the
Lord four times there.
He goes at men from different directions, but
he gets them in a place of trouble,
and then he delivers them.
And I want you to pray for men
who get in trouble.
Amen?
I've got a right to ask this congregation.
If you haven't had the truth, I'll choose
up and take sides.
There's no excuse for you not knowing the
way God works around here.
Oh, I've got a right to ask you
to salt the truth down with your tears
and intercession.
God brings people to the end of themselves.
He has to, or nobody will ever call
on them.
Isn't that right?
Do you believe that?
We're watered with tears and prayers.
That's our mission note these days.
I want to read you this description of
what it means to be a child of
God.
Verse 29.
They are in deep trouble.
He brings them out of distresses.
He may give the storm a calm.
He does that.
So that the waves thereof are still.
Then are they glad, because they be quiet.
So he bringeth them unto their desired favor.
Isn't that blessed?
He does it.
He leadseth their children along.
Some through the water, some through the flood,
some through the fire, and all through the
flood.
He leads them along.
That they may come to their desired favor.
Amen?
That's blessed.
Pass me not.
Will you stand and sing it, gentle Savior?
Hear my humble cry.
I want nothing to do.
Savior, Savior.
We've got
to rise, my friends.
We've got to rise, my friends, to long
and thirst.
One more time we'll hear men calling on
the Lord.
One more time we'll see a Pentecost repeated
and men screaming, what must we?
We mustn't settle for anything less.
I'm not fussing at God's people.
I'm trying to encourage and face you with
facts.
We must not be willing to settle for
anything less.
We owe it to this confused, religiously cocaine
generation of deceived people to demonstrate that we
can get the attention and air of Almighty
God.
And that in our days men shall feel