Thank you.
All right, well I know it's late and
I'm kind of glad that it's late.
It kind of ties into what I want
to speak to you about.
How many of you right here right now
consider yourself to be either a veteran or
an aspiring street preacher?
Let me see your hands.
It's mostly everybody here.
How many of you are right now saying,
get this thing over with so I can
go out on Flatbush Avenue and lift up
the name of Jesus Christ?
The seven most important words that you could
ever hear on the street as a preacher
and the seven most important words that you
can ever say as a person?
Here they are.
What must I do to be saved?
Seven most important words that we can hear
as a preacher and the seven most important
words that we could say, that people can
say, any human being alive.
But before I pray, I want to ask
you this.
Why don't we hear those words out on
the street?
Why don't we hear those words?
Jesus, we pray to you right now, Father.
Lord God, we pray to you that you
would rain down righteousness on this place, Lord.
That you would open up our eyes, you
would open up our hearts to receive this
word, God.
Father, this is a difficult word to give,
Lord.
But I pray that you, I know, Lord,
that you brought these people here to hear
what you have to say before they go
out on the street, Lord, and myself as
well.
So God, please do something here tonight, Lord.
Please do something here tonight.
Let us walk out of here bleeding tonight
from your word, Lord.
Father, let this not just be another message
that I give tonight, Lord.
Let it be the very words of your
Son, Jesus Christ.
He is the Word, Lord.
Father, we bow down before you.
I pray, God, for help.
I pray for help right now, God.
And I know you will give it to
me, Father.
In your name, your Son's name, we pray.
Amen.
So with that said, it's okay.
With that said, I want you to listen,
street preachers.
Please listen to me.
Aspiring street preachers, listen.
Listen.
I don't say this lightly.
I don't say this to become controversial.
I don't say this to be popular.
I don't say this for any other reason,
but because as sure as I'm standing here
right now, I believe Jesus Christ wants you
to hear these words.
So you can believe I'm either lying or
it's from Him.
And I believe we've made street preaching an
idol.
I believe that we have made street preaching
an idol.
Street preachers have made street preaching, and they've
shaped it like the golden calf, and they've
danced around it, and they've cherished it, and
they've celebrated around it, and now our leader
is coming down, and he's going to slay
3,000.
We cannot replace, we cannot take Jesus Christ
out of the picture.
We cannot take Jesus and put street preaching
in, and that's exactly what we've done.
That's exactly what we've done.
I would say that 90% of us
in this room have done that, and I'm
gonna ask you several things today before you
go out on that street to make sure
that you get your head right, that you
repent.
And the Bible says that repentance is something
that you change about yourself that displeases you.
It's not just the change of action, because
we can all do that.
We can all change our actions, but sometimes
we change our actions when we're still pleased
with the thing we turn from.
You need to walk out of here today,
and I pray by the Word of God,
by the power of the Holy Spirit, you
will walk out of here today, and street
preaching will no longer be an idol.
Street preaching will not be an idol.
Now you know, most of you know in
this room, there's not many of you here,
I believe, that walked in and didn't notice
we have a DVD that's coming out that's
exactly, pretty much opposite of what I'm telling
you right now.
Go stand and speak.
Go out there.
Do it.
And God is raising up an army right
now throughout the world.
Throughout the world right now there's an uprising.
There is an apostolic uprising that is happening
right now, but what's happening is that that
apostolic uprising we've shot over.
My little daughter recently, coloring on my desk
with her magic marker, that big old fat
black magic marker.
The first thing I do is, look, she
went right through, and that's what we've done
with street preaching.
That's what we've done with our doctrines.
That's what we've done with our anger towards
the modern church.
That's what we've done with calling people to
Jesus Christ.
We've eliminated Christ, and we've rolled in the
idol of street preaching.
So that's what I want to talk to
you about.
That's what I want to ask you about
before you leave here today.
Don't walk out of these doors unless you've
been like Gideon and you've torn those idols
down and replaced it with an altar to
God.
Now my text is going to be, I'm
going to start out with some of the
dangers about what we're talking about here.
So I want you to, you don't have
to go, we can just, you know the
scripture, Ephesians 5 chapter 5 verse 23.
I'll start at verse 22.
Wives, submit yourselves unto your husband as unto
the Lord.
For the husband is the wife's head, even
as Christ is the head of the church.
And the same is the Savior of the
body.
Christ is the head of the church.
Now we've been pounded with this scripture in
the context of marriage, but I want you
to imagine right now if you were to
take the head of Jesus Christ off of
his church.
Take the head of Jesus Christ off of
his church.
Take the head of the husband and decapitate
him and watch that family start to crumble.
Is anyone here, you don't put your hands
up and do you have a spouse that,
as the Bible says, is that dripping faucet?
Wives, do you have a husband that just
does not want to hear about Jesus Christ?
He won't lead.
He's a headless horseman.
How hard is it to live?
How hard is it?
Is the power of the gospel reigning in
your house right now?
No, it's not.
Maybe through you and through your faithfulness, God
is going to work.
Yes, I'm not saying that, but the power
is gone.
The power of the gospel is gone when
we remove Christ out of the picture and
we roll in street preaching as the idol.
You know, I was talking to somebody recently
about the Leathernecks.
Is there any ex-Marines?
Steve, you're an ex-Marine.
The Leathernecks, it's a nickname for the Marines,
but that nickname started back in 1798 when,
during that time, right after the Revolutionary War,
people used to fight with muskets, cannons, and
swords.
As soon as the battle got close, the
swords would come out.
So typically what would happen is, as a
warrior, the first thing somebody would do is
they would pull out that sword and they
would have different moves and maneuvers.
And what they would try to do is
they would try to get you to drop
your guard so that they can go directly
for where it's going to count, and that
is for the neck.
They would go to decapitate the soldier, and
if they didn't decapitate the soldier, they seriously
wounded the soldier where it hit his jugular
vein, and it was only a matter of
minutes until he was out on the ground
and the blood was drained out of his
body and he was dead.
These were called the Leathernecks.
They said, we need to do something here,
so they went out and they maneuvered their
outfits and they maneuvered their uniforms to put
a strip of leather around.
So now they were able to withstand the
blow of the sword.
They can go into battle more fiercely with
these leather strips.
After a few years, they got rid of
it until the year 1899, when we were
for four years in a war over in
the Philippines.
It was called the Filipino-American War, and
the United States Army had faced something that
they had not faced since the Revolutionary War,
and that was a sword fight.
And what was happening was these incredibly passionate
Moro warriors would charge through the battle lines,
and the American soldiers that were in the
bunker, they would pull out their pistols, and
they were using a .38 handgun, and they
would start to fire at the person, the
Moro warrior coming at them.
Now this Moro warrior had nothing but a
sword and a crazy attitude, and he would
scream, and he would run in, and he
would dive into the trench, and those soldiers
would fire their weapons.
They would unload clips into these people, and
they realized that it's getting close, because when
we fire these sharp, little, tiny, fierce, speeding
bullets into these people, it's barely affecting them.
It's killing them, but they're getting too close,
until finally the Moro warriors got smart, and
they said they're using these .38s. So when
you go in, go directly for the neck.
So they would charge in with this sword,
and they had all the maneuvers down, and
American soldiers would take out their gun, and
they would fire, and it would do absolutely
nothing in time to stop them from getting
their heads chopped right off.
Their heads would just, it would just be
gone.
If you look it up, you'll see, on
several occasions, soldiers got decapitated, because their power
of their, the power of their handgun, the
impact of the bullet, it was powerless against
these people.
They got smart.
They went to the .45. Now if you
see a .45 handgun, and you run full
speed, and I shoot a .45 handgun at
your chest, and you've just run 10 feet
towards me, that bullet is going to hit
you and send you 10 feet back.
That's the power of the gospel, when Christ
is at the head.
But when Christ is not at the head,
we can fire all the bullets that we
want.
We can have all the training that we
want, and it's going to do absolutely nothing.
This has been a common theme throughout the
day.
If you look in the book of Acts,
chapter 5, verse 20, it says, we know
that the apostles were jailed, and they were
miraculously released by the angel of the Lord.
And in Acts 5.20, it says, go
your way and stand in the temple, the
doors being open, in verse 19, and speak
to the people all the words of this
life.
All the words of this life.
Talking about the gospel message, the full gospel
message.
But what is very unique about this chapter
in Acts, chapter 5, verse 20, if you
just go back one chapter to Acts, chapter
4, verse 20, you'll see the true power
and the true motivating force behind these disciples.
Look at Acts, chapter 4, verse 20.
It's very simple.
They're in front of the Sanhedrin.
They're getting questioned.
If you look up at verse 13, these
people looked at these, they looked at the
apostles and they said, these guys are bald.
These guys are bald, and they're unlearned.
They don't have anything outward that would make
them be so confident and so bold with
this message that they're preaching.
This message that they're preaching is coming with
unusual power.
They're upbraiding the whole entire city.
As a matter of fact, we have to
be careful on what we do right now
because the whole entire city will turn against
us if we treat them wrong.
So let's call them over.
And they call them over in verse 18,
and they commanded them that no wise should
you speak or teach in the name of
Jesus.
And Peter and John, I can imagine, looking
at each other and just answering and saying,
well, whether it be right in the sight
of God to obey you rather than God,
judge ye.
Huh.
You make the call.
Should we obey you or God?
And then they go on in verse 20
and show you the key to their evangelistic
preaching.
The key to their apostolic movement was right
here.
The key to go, stand, speak, all the
words of this life.
The key to the power of the gospel
in God using you.
God is the power of the gospel.
Christ is the power of the gospel.
I'm not putting the power of the gospel
in your hands, but we know that God
uses human instruments, which we're going to talk
about in a second.
He uses human instruments, and he judges human
instruments, and he's faithful to reward human instruments.
As a matter of fact, he's not even
looking for instruments.
He's looking for one man.
He's looking for one man to stand in
the gap.
He's not sitting back saying, well, I can
do everything because I deliberately cause every single
movement in the universe anyway, so I don't
need anybody, any person at all.
He's not saying that.
No, he's saying I'm searching to and fro
throughout the earth for someone whose heart is
turned towards me.
Who is it?
Is he over there?
Is it over there?
And the person that can look at the
person condemning in them and say, do whatever
you want because I cannot but speak that
which I've seen and that which I've heard.
And that's what I believe that many of
you cannot say.
I believe that many of us here have
not been able to say that.
We've been propped up.
We've been propped up by four-point questions
and five-point presos.
I know I came from a world of
sales where I could take anybody in this
audience right now and beat you with a
presentation for long enough and you'll go out
there and you'll recite it and you'll sell.
How many of you know about that?
Listen, presentations are great.
It's biblical to go out there and prepare.
It's biblical to be an apologist.
It's biblical to go out there and defend
and to rebuke and to have it all
in your mind.
It's biblical.
You cannot get there unless you first can
say that you've seen Jesus.
He is Jesus.
He's not just Christ.
He's Jesus.
He's a real person.
He's a real person in heaven at the
right hand of God, in the realm with
God.
He's not going to be physically here until
he returns, but his spirit is here.
And we are to point people.
Person of Christ preaching is what we must
get back to.
It's been a theme at the conference, but
we've had so much training.
We've had so many things thrown at us.
So many conferences.
So many things where people are saying, I
have the answer over here.
If you come to this conference, you can
really get amped up, and then we'll go
out on the street, and we'll stand up,
and we'll have the preaching tournament.
I've been to so many of them.
That's why I'm glad this is running late.
I pray you don't go out and preach
the gospel tonight.
We have to get right with Christ.
He doesn't need us out on the street
in Brooklyn.
He doesn't need us to go out there
and tell people you need to...
He doesn't need us at all.
He wants you and Him.
He wants you to kiss the Son.
That's what He wants.
You need to change your mind.
If street preaching has become an idol, so
many of you are so precious.
I am so excited about the thing that
God is doing here with street preaching.
Praise God.
It's never happened like this before.
Not in Whitefield's time.
Not in Spurgeon's time.
It's never been like this.
Those guys had to go out and preach.
You couldn't go out and preach during the
time of Whitefield on the street, because you
would be flagged.
You'd be yanked right out of there.
You would need a preaching license.
You would be arrested.
There are people in congregations where I live
in Freehold, New Jersey, that if they listen
to another preacher out on the street, that
preacher would be fined, and they would get
church discipline for listening to somebody other than
their pastor.
It's never been like this.
We have street preachers popping up like weeds
everywhere.
No matter where I look on the internet,
there's another street preacher.
But you know what?
We're all saying the same thing.
We're all using the same script, and you
know what happens?
I see anger.
I see angry militant zeal.
I see superiority.
I see people saying, oh, did you see
that?
I'm going to preach, and yell, and convict
you of sin, and do all these things,
and then when you walk away, I'm going
to slap my boys, high-five, and laugh,
and talk about how I just made that
person feel stupid.
Preaching at the train station, we would have,
you could see the picture of Sean Holes
back there at the desk.
We have a train station that has 4
,000 people every morning right at our fingertips,
and I always remember when new people come
out to the train station with us.
We'll get done preaching.
We have about five minutes to preach to
them across the tracks, and we're pouring our
heart out, and then the train comes, and
then they get on the train, and then
typically what happens is the preachers all congregate,
and typically when they come over to speak,
I ignore them, but I keep my head
down, or I'll talk like this because I
know all those people on the train are
watching me.
They're watching me.
What is he doing?
He was just yelling at me and telling
me that I am under God's wrath, that
I'm a sinner.
He was pleading for me, and now look
at him laughing about the exchange that he
just had with me.
The sin about this is we have street
preaching as an idol, and it's devastating.
It's a devastating blow to the kingdom of
God.
It's the devastating blow to any war.
Now, I'm from Freehold, New Jersey.
There's so much great, rich Christian history in
Freehold, New Jersey.
We have the Tenet Church in Freehold, New
Jersey right in my backyard.
I often drive up there on Sundays with
my daughter peeking through, looking at the old
pulpit.
It's way up in the sky.
William Tenet is buried right in the middle
under the center aisle.
There's bloodstains from the Battle of Monmouth on
the pews.
I think of the pastor, John Whittle, who
was during that time.
He pastored that church, and the year before
the Battle of Monmouth, William Tenet Sr. died,
and he came in to pastor the church.
But as soon as the battle came, he
left the pulpit and went out on the
battlefield as a chaplain.
And the stories about this man.
We heard of Molly Pitcher.
Maybe you have, maybe you haven't.
Well, this man picked up the cannons on
a few occasions as well.
Battle of Monmouth was a very unique battle.
It started with a group of 17,000
soldiers in Valley Forge that were an absolute
mess.
Many of them didn't have any clothes.
Some of them had sheets wrapped around them
with no underwear, with no clothes, with no
socks in the dead of winter.
Many of them were sick.
They started out about six months before the
Battle of Monmouth with 17,000 soldiers.
Up to the time that they went in
and marched from Valley Forge, they ended up
with about 6,000.
Most of them deserted.
Many of them fell dead.
Some of them died of sickness.
Some of them were incapacitated because they were
sick.
So George Washington, the general at the time,
had a very tough decision to make.
He says, we need somebody to train these
troops.
So you know what he did?
He got the best military general in the
whole entire world at the time.
His name was General von Steuben.
He was a general from Germany.
And he was sent, he came from Germany,
got into the army, got into the Continental
Army.
George Washington sends him there and he was
meticulous in training these soldiers.
The best absolute training.
But George Washington made a big mistake.
What he did is he put somebody named
General Lee in as charge of that army.
General Lee was a man who had just
been released from the British camp as a
prisoner.
We didn't find out till six years after,
but General Lee had sold secrets to the
British army.
And he said, listen, this is how the
army is going to move.
They're going to go up this way and
they're going to do that.
And he's telling all the British army how
the Americans are going to maneuver.
And then he comes back to the War
Council at Valley Forge a few days before
the Battle of Monmouth.
And he sees that George Washington is going
to meet the British army in Monmouth County
on the Monmouth battlefield.
And he knows that that doesn't go according
to the plan that he told the British.
So he tries to maneuver.
He tries to finagle.
And he says, listen, you shouldn't do it.
So George Washington says, listen, you seem awful
convinced that this plan isn't going to work.
So he yanks him out and he puts
a new general in.
Halfway marching to the battle for some crazy
reason.
One of the biggest mistakes that George Washington
ever did is he responded to a letter
from General Lee pleading that he wanted to
be back in control of that army.
Because he was looking at this from a
selfish perspective.
He knew that there was going to be
a big giant battle.
He wanted to get the credit for it.
So George Washington says, listen, I want you
just to meet up General Lafayette.
Just meet up with him.
You're a general.
He's a major general.
So you'll have charge of it.
I don't want to offend him in anything
like that.
So you guys go ahead and you blend
in together.
And he did that.
Well, listen, halfway through the battle with the
finest army that the Continental Army ever produced,
the finest soldiers, General von Steuben got people
to load their muskets, fire their muskets, clean
their muskets in half the amount of time.
He taught them how to maneuver on the
battlefield.
It wasn't just left flank, right flank.
It was about like a linebacker.
You know how a linebacker, an NFL linebacker
can back up and he can sense any
defensive play.
He can sense where the offense is coming.
That's what he taught them.
He taught them how to fight guerrilla style.
But guess what happened in the middle of
the battle?
General Lee retreated when he was ordered to
go and fight.
In the middle of the Battle of Monmouth,
General Lee calls a retreat and it just
so happens that at the same time as
he's calling the retreat, General Washington, if you
know the area, comes up from Englishtown with
his soldiers, a whole brigade of 2,000
and sees this retreat and goes ballistic.
Goes ballistic, grabs General Lee.
General Lee ends up getting court-martialed and
tried for treason down the road.
But it was just amazing what General Washington
did.
He ran to the retreating troops.
He got them all recruited.
He got them all back and they ended
up winning the Battle of Monmouth.
Now why am I telling you all this?
Very simple.
Training means absolutely nothing without being consecrated to
the cause.
Training means absolutely nothing.
I tell you all that to tell you
this.
As a personal trainer for my whole life,
as Jeff said before, 17 years, 20 years,
I remember the frustration of training people, of
giving them the best the best diet, the
best equipment, the best plan, but their commitment
would fail.
This is what I believe we're at right
now as Christians, street preachers.
We are in a time where God is
sparking up.
He's shaking up doctrines that have been buried
and lost.
The doctrines of grace.
How many of us have ever heard of
Puritan paperbacks 10 years ago?
He's stirring up evangelism.
He's stirring up boot camps.
He's stirring up training systems.
And what's happening is people are going forward
without first being consecrated to the cause.
And that consecration is Christ, Jesus.
We must be consecrated to Jesus.
It means to make sacred.
It means to set apart.
It means to be devoted.
Now what happened in the Old Testament with
the priests?
When they were consecrated, there was a ritual.
If you look back in Exodus, you don't
have to go there, Exodus 29, and this
is what you shall do to them, to
hollow them for ministering to me as priests.
You're a priest before God.
Listen to this.
Listen what he had him do.
First of all in Exodus 30 chapter 30
verse 22 to 30 says, you shall consecrate
them that they may be most holy.
Whatever touches them must be holy.
And you shall anoint Aaron.
Here's what I want you to get before
you go out and street preach again.
Anoint Aaron and consecrate them that they may
minister to me.
And how did they do it?
Every day for seven days a ram was
offered for the priest and a special ceremony
was given.
What would happen is they would lay, they
would take the lamb, they would kill it,
they would take some blood, and they would
take the blood and they would put it
on the earlobes, they would put it on
the toes, and they would put it on
the hands of the priests.
The earlobes, what do we do with our
ears?
We hear our hands.
See in the Psalms, I believe it says
that they have ears but they hear not,
and they have eyes but they see not,
and mouths but they speak not, and hands
but they handle not, and those that worship
them are not unlike them.
See we need to make sure that our
eyes, our ears, our feet, our feet is
walking in the path of Jesus.
You ought to walk as he walked, says
first John.
What we look at with our eyes, when
I don't understand how so many in this
room can spend so much time on the
internet.
I'm not trying to be nitpicking, I'm not
trying to beat you up.
Listen, the internet is great.
It's great.
I have an internet business that I run,
and you know what?
We service different industries.
I'm not in it anymore as much.
My brother runs it full-time but he
still gets the same thing.
You know what happens when we deal with
different doctors and so forth when they come
and purchase our product?
You know what they end up doing?
They make a big mistake.
Instead of using the internet to build their
business and make their life easier, they try
to get into the internet and make it
a business.
And that's what you're doing.
That's what you're doing.
Now listen, it's a tool to promote the
gospel.
It's a tool to research.
But if you're on that internet and you
are spending time looking at images that cause
you to stumble, if you are looking at
images that cause you to stumble and you
believe that it's just okay in the name
of Jesus, like we do out in street
preach, we say it's okay that I'm not
consecrated to Christ because I'm going out and
we ease our conscience when we step up
on the ladder and we preach and we
get back and we feel better.
And we do the same thing when we
go out on the internet.
Well I'm doing it for ministry purposes.
I'm doing it because I want to post
on Facebook and let everybody see my preaching.
Could you imagine if Wesleyan Whitfield came up
from the dead or Paul and said, why
are you so focused on your own videos?
Why do you think everybody needs to see
every sermon that you preach?
There's because street preaching has become an idol.
I believe it's become an idol.
One of my favorite preachers of all is
Gilbert Tennant, who was preaching around the Great
Awakening, 1747.
As a matter of fact, for the Battle
of Monmouth, Gilbert Tennant preached a sermon years
before that.
Battle of Monmouth happened in 1779.
Gilbert Tennant was 1747.
He had been dead by the time of
the Battle of Monmouth, but he had preached
a sermon.
There's a popular sermon by Gilbert Tennant called
The Dangers of an Unconverted Ministry.
But he preached actually another sermon that was
just as popular, but because he wasn't pummeling
people with it and because it didn't cause
as much controversy as the Unconverted Ministry sermon,
it didn't get well known.
It was called The Lawfulness of a Defense
of War.
The Lawfulness of a Defense of War.
Benjamin Franklin, who was a printer, as we
know, made copies of this sermon.
He hand-delivered to the artillery barracks in
Philadelphia just a few weeks before the Battle
of Monmouth.
There was about as many people that are
in this room right here, 70 to 100
women, who were working for the cause behind
the scenes.
They were in the warehouse and they were
taking the ammunition that was going to get
sent to the Battle of Monmouth.
They took every ammunition, every round of bullet,
and they wrapped it, because it had to
be sealed, in a copy of this sermon
by Gilbert Tennant to encourage the troops.
Now Gilbert Tennant preached in 1747.
He walked up to a congregation in Maryland
and of course he had his black gown
on and he had his white wig and
he was preaching to a church that was
looking for a pastor.
He took that gown off, everyone looked, and
he lassoed it around his shoulder and tied
it on his waist with a belt.
He took his wig off, he shook his
hair out, and he says, today I am
going to preach to you like John the
Baptist, the dangers of an unconverted ministry.
He went on and told them, and here's
the two points from his message.
He said, number one, and here's street preacher
what I want to say to you right
now, no cause can produce an effect above
its own power.
You know that.
You apologetic guys know that.
No cause can produce an effect beyond its
own power.
So you can go out and preach and
post and do all the things you want
to do, street preaching wise, but you're not
going to be able to replicate anything other
than what you are.
And if you are not converted, if you
are not converted and know Jesus Christ, where
you could say I cannot but speak that
which I've seen and heard, then you're absolutely
powerless out there.
Absolutely powerless and foolish.
Foolish.
Did you ever hear of Tite Sufra, Stephen
Ocean?
January 30th, 2010.
Two men that were called to street preach,
called by God.
I spoke to Tite Sufra, not his wife,
but his wife's best friend this week, and
I said, before he got killed on the
street, what was his attitude towards street preaching?
She said, well, I'm going to paraphrase.
She says, he knew the dangers of it.
He would go into the areas, into gang
territories where he was from.
He was converted.
He was ordained a pastor at 24 years
old, and he knew the dangers.
January 30th, he went out, him and Stephen
Ocean, street preaching on the corner.
They were talking to a man named Jeriah
Woody, who is in jail right now, 18
years old, and they were sharing with him.
They were presenting the gospel, and he said,
you know what, you're manipulating me.
Stop trying to manipulate me, and he walks
away.
He comes back with a sawed-off shotgun
and points it right at Stephen Ocean, right
at his chest, and pulls the trigger.
Tite Sufra sits there and looks at his
best friend, laying on the ground, and says,
listen, man, we don't know.
All we know is that he spoke to
him for a few more minutes.
I'm assuming he told him, he was sharing
with him, probably offering forgiveness, knowing this guy's
history.
This guy said no, shot him, and then
put one right behind his head, execution style.
I don't tell you this to try to
get you emotional or anything like that.
I'm trying to tell you that it's foolish
to go out and not be called.
It's absolutely foolish.
America is so far gone when it's conception
of what it means to go out and
preach the gospel.
We have absolutely no risk, and we make
it a tournament.
I want to give you what the Scriptures
say about preaching, and what the Scriptures say
about how we should go out and preach
the gospel, not with idolatry, not with a
mentality that if I don't go out and
preach today, I'm not going to be as
spiritual.
I am going to flagellate myself because I
didn't go out and preach.
What's wrong, honey?
How come you're so sad?
Leave me alone.
What's wrong?
Oh, you must not have preached today, did
you?
Oh, I can't believe I didn't go out
today.
It's terrible.
Does that happen in your house?
Oh, man, I can't believe I didn't give
that guy a track.
I'm not spiritual.
That's what happens.
I know because it's me.
I know because it happened to me.
You can ask my close friends about that
situation.
In the middle of production to this film
that Eric and I were doing, you know
what I did?
I quit street preaching.
I just said, I'm not going out anymore.
I'm absolutely, completely sick and tired of Christless
preaching.
I preached one, my last sermon, I preached
so hard, I just, I went crazy out
on the train station.
Pastor John comes up to me and says,
Pat, brother, you were preaching in a, I
don't know, brother, he just, Pastor John's so
gracious, so for him to say that.
He's never said that.
I said, man, and I just really felt
that that was the Lord.
And I looked at myself and I said,
why am I going out and street preaching?
Have I really been called to do this?
Is this something that I've really been called
to do?
I can't do it if I'm not called
to it.
Can you stop preaching right now?
Can you not street preach anymore?
Is it aggravating you that I'm saying that
you're idolatrous with street preaching?
If it is, you probably are idolatrous with
street preaching.
It's probably an idol if it's bothering you.
If you could say, I won't go out
anymore and street preach.
I don't have to do it.
If I'm not called, I will step down.
Then that, I praise God for you.
We don't see it in the scriptures.
We don't see Jeremiah sitting there saying, okay,
where can I go?
I'm ready to go.
No, I don't want to sit here and
listen to you, God.
I want to get out on the streets.
Oh, man, I can't go out on the
streets and preach today.
Bam, bam, bam.
He doesn't do that.
He just says, oh man.
Isaiah says, woe is me.
I'm a man of unclean lips.
I can't do this.
These days we say, give me the, I
have to do this.
I have to do this.
I've been studying.
I know the presentation.
I'm ready.
Give me the pulpit.
Give me the step.
Give me the ladder.
I go up and I say my thing
and I get down and I cheer that
I did it.
Where is Christ?
Where is Jesus in this?
You know what I'm talking about.
I believe a lot has to do, a
lot of this has to do with our
training, but I believe a lot of this
has to do with hyper-Calvinism as well
that's going on in street preaching.
Now, don't get me wrong.
I guarantee that nobody is going to say,
well, that's right, Pat, hyper-Calvinism is correct
and I'm doing that.
Or you may look at hyper-Calvinism and
say, no, I believe, you know, the gospel,
you know, it should be preached to everybody.
See, hyper-Calvinists don't believe that.
They don't believe that the gospel is for
everyone.
I believe it's only for the elect.
They don't believe that faith is a duty
for you.
They don't believe that.
They don't believe in God's common grace, not
provenient grace, not that everybody has enough grace
where they can choose.
No, no man is able to choose, but
common grace.
God has benevolent love for everyone.
A hyper-Calvinist will say no, but yet
that's what we've done in a sense as
street preachers because we've taken, again, we've taken
street preaching and we've said, Jesus, move out
of the way.
Here comes street preaching for me, and we've
also done this too.
Take prayer.
Get this out of the way, God, because
I'm a Calvinist now.
Take faith, Lord, and put that over here
because I'm a Reformed theologian now.
Get rid of that Holy Spirit, God, because
I know it's really not available today other
than just being inside me.
Don't give me any Holy Spirit.
Don't give me any faith.
Don't give me any prayer.
Just give me amazing grace.
That's what happens.
That's what's happening.
We have to take out our predestination.
We have to take out our election, and
we have to look at them and cherish
them and say, praise you, God, for what
you've done.
We have to look at the atonement of
Christ and say, yes, Jesus, you looked at
me and saw absolutely nothing.
There's nothing good in me, and on top
of that, you need nothing.
There's nothing that can make you more satisfied
than you already are, but yet you've applied
it to me.
But then do not expect God to do
something for you that he's commanded you to
do.
Go out and call people to Christ.
It's okay.
It's okay to invite them to come.
We're so afraid of our Arminianism.
We're so afraid of those Pelagians over there.
See them over there?
I'll never preach with them.
I challenge you to read Finney.
That's right.
I said the word in a Reformed Baptist
church.
Finney, Finney, Finney, Finney, Finney.
I believe that if every solid believer here
that knows Jesus Christ that's a Reformed street
preacher, if they were to pick up Revivals
of Religion by Charles Finney and read about
preaching and read Jonathan Speed's going, oh no,
he just didn't say that.
I just threw out 50 copies of that.
No, but listen, listen, skip all the theology
in it, but we would do well to
learn because we're not going out there and
calling people to Christ.
We're professional seed sowers.
We're afraid to invite anybody to Christ.
Don't follow Finney, and if you don't know
who Finney is, don't look him up, but
I'm trying to communicate something to you.
We need to call people to Jesus Christ.
Did you know how an Eskimo kills a
wolf up in Alaska?
He takes a razor-sharp blade.
Those Eskimos that live out in the igloos,
you know that we always imagine in our
mind.
He takes a razor-sharp blade and he
dips it in animal blood and sticks it
in the ground and goes to sleep.
The wolf comes and smells out the blood
and starts licking the blade, and you can
imagine what happens.
He licks and licks and licks until the
blood of the animal is all gone.
The blade penetrates his own tongue and he
starts drinking himself to death, and that's what
we've done with our doctrines.
It sucked the love of God right out
of our preaching.
We must get back to the love, compassion
of Jesus in our preaching.
Whatever you have to do, do that.
The only way it's gonna happen is if
you could say, I cannot but speak.
I've seen him.
I've heard him.
I've seen him and I've heard him, so
I'm gonna go out and preach him.
Now, listen.
How do you get this?
See, again, this is a very difficult concept,
but we must wait, we must tarry, and
we must pray.
You being evil, giving your children good gifts,
how much more will your Father in heaven
give those who ask the Holy Spirit?
Holy Spirit, I refuse to get up from
my knees until you make me what I
need to be.
Holy Spirit, Jesus, I'm not going out again
until I know it's from you.
I'm not gonna go out and proclaim.
If I don't know for sure, I'm not
going out again on that ladder unless I
know that I've seen you and I've heard
from you.
Go!
That's where we must get because we're filtering
out the militia right now.
The militia.
We're filtering it out.
You know what the militia was known for?
They were a bunch of farmers.
You know what set them apart from everything
else?
Their enthusiasm.
George Washington hated the militia.
He said, man, these guys are crazy.
They're patriots.
They're enthusiastic, but until they get trained up,
and when they got trained up, they picked
them right out.
He said, you, you, you, you, you, you're
coming.
Minute men.
Continental Army.
Minute men were known for their radical, enthusiastic
commitment to the cause.
You see, we have a bunch of militia
that we're just saying, oh, you want to
evangelize?
Great!
Come on up.
Yeah, come on.
Come on on the pulpit.
Yeah, you can do it.
Come on, you can do it.
Oh, hi everyone.
My name is Pat.
I did it!
We don't see that.
We don't see that in Scripture.
It's the opposite in Scripture.
It's being drugged.
It's being cornered.
That's what street preaching is.
That's what we must get to.
We must eliminate substitutes.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 117, for Christ
sent me not to baptize, but to preach
the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest
the cross of Christ should be of none
effect.
And you know what that means in the
Greek?
Just as it means in the English, as
Dr. White said.
It means no effect.
You're not going to affect everyone when you
go out there with enticing words.
And in the Greek, I believe that that
means not that we can't talk intelligently.
It doesn't mean that we can't go out
and speak well, but it means like an
extravagant overemphasis on the oratory of your presentation.
That's not what Paul did.
He knew one thing and one thing only.
Christ and him crucified.
So what does that mean?
It means the redemption that he provided for
us.
He bought us out of slavery.
Preach it.
Preach the Lamb of God has been slain
since the foundation of the world.
Preach justification by faith, but then invite people
to come to Christ.
Not come and repeat after me.
I'm so, so sick of hearing street preachers
beat up on the modern church.
It's gotten so popular to beat up on
the modern church that the modern church is
actually now beating up on the modern church.
You see Betty Hinn beating up on Joel
Osteen.
Benny Hinn beating up on Joel Osteen.
It's gotten so popular to beat up on
the modern church that Joel Osteen is getting
beat up on by Benny Hinn.
I'll punch him right out, man.
He listened to Paul Washer once and Benny
Hinn's like, get me the cameras.
I'm gonna beat up on Joel Osteen.
We must be Christlike.
I want to explain to you what I
mean by this.
Go to Acts chapter 18 verse 24.
Acts 18 verse 24.
One of my heroes.
Acts 18 24.
And a certain Jew named Apollos, born at
Alexandria, came to Ephesus.
An eloquent man.
It's okay to be eloquent.
And mighty in the Scriptures.
The same was instructed in the way of
the Lord, and he spake fervently in the
Spirit, and taught diligently the things of the
Lord, and knew but the baptism of John
only.
And he began to speak boldly in the
synagogue, whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard,
they took him unto them and expounded unto
him a way of God more perfectly.
Assuming, speaking to him about the baptism of
the Holy Spirit.
In verse 27 it says, and when he
was minded to go into Achaia, the brethren
exhorting him wrote to the disciples to receive
him.
And after he was come thither, he helped
them much which had believed through grace.
Now here's what I wanted to get to.
Verse 28.
For mightily he confuted publicly the Jews with
great vehemency, showing by the Scriptures that Jesus
was the Christ.
He publicly confuted, he went out and battled
with them, and pleaded with them about Christ.
I'm not talking about saying, go out and
be like the modern church.
I'm not saying go out and invite sinners
to do something.
But no, we are to command people to
come.
We are to command them to come to
God, to come to Christ, to come to
the cross and be saved.
And what must I do to be saved?
When you start doing that, God will start
moving.
When you start praying for that and not
going out until you know that you're called,
and the idolatry of street preaching is left,
and you don't care if you street preach
or not, and it becomes something that you
don't care you're gonna do it, no matter
if anybody knows about it, no matter if
you never get recognition, no matter if you
never receive a pat on the back, no
matter if you never make it up to
a pulpit or a conference or anything, you're
gonna do it because you cannot but speak
that which you've seen and heard.
Now go to Revelation chapter 2.
I believe this is so applicable to street
preachers.
And this is what I want to say
before I read this.
God does not put your love for Jesus
Christ.
He does not put your love for Jesus
Christ higher, I'm sorry, lower than your anger
against heresy.
So in other words, your love, your passionate
love for Jesus, your passionate love for that
man, that God-man that laid his life
down, chose you, laid his life down for
you, that's what's number one to God.
It's more important than doctrine.
It's more important than your hate for those
that hate God.
It's more important of your righteous anger.
It's more important than everything.
And it says it right here.
Listen, I know thy works, street preacher.
I see you go out to the train
stations.
I see you go out to the street
corners.
I see you travel across the countries and
across the oceans.
I know your labor.
I know your patience.
How you cannot bear with them that are
evil.
Oh, I cannot stand the wickedness.
I can't stand it when they blaspheme God.
And you've examined them which say that they
are apostles.
You're being a heretic when you preach that.
You cannot say those things about my God
on television and out on the street corner.
He knows that.
Jesus knows your passion there.
He knows that you have been burdened and
you have patience for his namesake.
You have labored.
You have not fainted.
You've been persistent.
He loves it.
He's happy with it.
But nevertheless, he has something against you.
You've left your first love.
We know it.
You've left.
You've left your first love.
You've walked away.
You haven't divorced him.
You haven't said, I'm done.
Although I have to say right now, if
I look back over the past year, I
could tell you many street preachers that have,
that were amped up.
They were amped up.
They were preaching last summer.
Some of you know people even here as
well.
You've told me.
Men that I stood and preached with last
summer in New York City who sat up
and in the middle of Union Square and
just being just amazing with their apologetic preaching,
sold everything, did everything that you would look
at and say, man this guy is on
fire for the Lord and now he's gone.
He's gone.
That's happened many times.
Why?
Because street preaching was an idol.
It wasn't something that they had to speak
about.
It was an idol.
I leave you with Gideon.
Let's go to Judges chapter 6.
This is what we must do.
Now I wish I had time here to
tell you the whole story of Gideon, but
I pray that you would go to Gideon
tonight and I pray that I'm going to
talk to you tomorrow in the morning, first
thing tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock, about
what I believe is the most important element
in street preaching.
If you can be here tomorrow morning at
10 o'clock, please come tomorrow at 10.
I believe the Lord would have you come.
But Gideon was a man that was called
by God.
Gideon was a man that had what we
would say every reason not to be called
by God.
He was found hiding from the Midianites because
the Midianites were surrounding the Jewish camp and
he was threshing wheat for his family because
he knew if the Midianites saw it they
would just come up and take it.
And the angel of the Lord appeared unto
Gideon and said, oh valiant man.
He was like, what?
Humility!
Don't you know?
No one even knows my father.
I'm nothing but a farm boy.
He says, no you're going to deliver the
Israelites.
So then Gideon goes through this process that
I believe each one of us must go
through.
And then number one, the number one thing
that Gideon did is that he immediately went
to God with a sacrifice and God set
it afire.
And that's what we must do.
He said right here in verse 19, he
said Gideon went in and he made ready
a kid and unleavened bread of an epau
of flour and put the flesh in a
basket and put the broth in the pot.
He brought a whole thing that he prepared.
He brought all his skills.
He brought all his resources.
He brought all his ingredients and God said,
no.
What I want you to do is take
all that and lay it upon this stone.
We see that in Scripture a lot.
God's always looking for a rock or a
stone to do something on because he wants
the human element completely eliminated when he's about
to do his work.
So what does he do?
He says, take all that, pour out the
broth and throw that upon the stone.
And then the angel of the Lord put
forth the end of the staff and he
held it in his hand.
He touched the flesh and the unleavened bread
and there arose up fire out of the
stone.
That's what God must do before you go
out.
Don't go out tonight unless you can say
that God has done this to you.
Has he set you a fire for this?
Has he taken your sacrifice, your consecration, laid
it on the stone and set you aflame?
That's number one.
Number two, Gideon perceived that it was the
angel of the Lord after this happened.
He says, I've seen the Lord, I'm gonna
die.
This is verse 22.
The Lord said, peace, fear not, you're not
gonna die.
And Gideon made an altar and called it
Jehovah Shalom.
And that same night, the Lord, that same
night the Lord said unto him, take thy
father's young bullock and another bullock of seven
years old and destroy the altar of Baal
that thy father hath and cut down the
grove and build an altar unto the Lord
thy God upon this rock in a plain
place, in a place where everyone can see
it.
Publicly proclaim what I am going to show
you.
And he says, to offer a burnt offering
with the wood of the grove.
This is what he did.
He says, take the idols and use that
as fuel to burn the sacrifice.
Take the idol of street preaching and don't
give up.
Don't have a pity party.
Don't say, well I just must not be
called God if you're not going to come
down and appear to me and set me
on fire.
No, get rid of it and do it
just for Christ and that will be fuel
to send you out.
Now, what he did was after that, the
men of the city went into an uprising.
What happened here?
How could you do this?
Everybody went to turn against Gideon and then
the Spirit of the Lord came.
And when you see a trumpet, when you
see the shofar, the shofar in the Bible
is the ram's horn that God usually uses
to do some serious business.
He uses it to simulate or to announce
victory.
He uses it as a battle call.
He uses it to rally the troops, but
he also uses it to proclaim his judgment.
Many times it's happened through Scripture, as we
know Joshua.
What happened during Joshua?
When Joshua went around and they blew the
trumpets, the wall fell.
But something very unique happened in Joshua.
I'm sorry, in Gideon.
Guys, I know.
Listen, cut the videos.
I don't care.
All right, just cut them.
This is what God did in Gideon.
Okay, it said verse, let's check this out.
He cuts his army down to 300.
He says, look, I'm gonna make you an
army.
I'm gonna give you help.
He sounded the shofar.
I got to tell you this.
I got distracted, but listen.
He sounded the shofar.
He sounded the trumpet.
The Spirit of the Lord came in first.
He blew the trumpet and all of the
people, all of the tribes around him came,
including the ones that were against him for
tearing down the altars.
Are you getting what I'm saying?
Then Gideon was just excited.
He was on fire.
He was about to get an army built
for him, but God took this huge army,
this tremendous thousands, and cuts it down to
300.
And who does he take?
He takes the ones that walk by the
pond to get water and just slap it
in their mouth.
The ones that are quick, not the whiners,
the low-maintenance, the ones that are willing
to forsake it.
Not the ones that bend down on the
knee, that go down and lick it down
and eat just like a dog would do.
Not those.
The ones that just scoop it up.
That's what he did.
But what I'm getting at is that he
says, Gideon's still upset.
He's still afraid.
He says, you know, God, you know, I'm
nervous about this.
So Gideon says, go down to the camp
and bring one of your servants.
Go down to the camp and listen to
what he says.
Listen in the camp, in the tent.