Welcome to From the Pulpit in Classic Sermons.
Each week we bring you a different message
from some of history's greatest speakers in the
Christian faith, and powerful sermons for modern preachers
too.
This week we have Leonard Ravenhill with his
message on Hebrews chapter 1.
And then the assistant pastor said, that was
a beautiful meeting.
I said, there was a lovely spirit there.
Didn't you enjoy it all?
I said, no, why not?
I said, how is it that three people
spoke in tongues and nobody interpreted?
And it was a huge audience.
He said, there's only one person in this
church has the interpretation, that's the pastor.
And when he's away, I said, are you
telling me the Holy Ghost moved somebody and
then the Holy Ghost couldn't get an interpretation?
Doesn't make sense.
There's no waste in the economy of God.
Either she's totally out of gear, or else
the pastor's out of gear being somewhere else.
If this really operated in the power of
the Spirit, signs and wonders and miracles and
divers gifts of the Holy Ghost, we'd still
move the world for God.
Of course, when you get holy fire, you
get false fire.
You read the report of the coming of
the Spirit, what was it, Azusa Street, 1905,
I think it was.
Every crackpot in the country went.
One of the leading prophets was a man
in a faded old swallowtail coat, with a
white beard, tobacco juice all down one side,
it was deep brown.
And they had to push him away from
the front every day.
He had a new revelation, a new prophecy.
And they got out of him and huddled
him out into another room.
He came back, he had that hope that
never fails, you know.
Of course, you get some false fire.
But brother, I'd rather get the false fire,
with the Holy Ghost fire around, than have
no fire at all.
If holy fire is there, God will give
the necessary wisdom.
Now, if you didn't get Dave Wilson's tape
for, was it week last Sunday, Martha?
Week last Sunday?
Yeah, on the fire, did you get it?
Did you play it again?
Oh, that was a fantastic message on Zechariah.
God being a wall of fire round about,
and the glory in the midst.
Usually, he asked me to close in prayer.
If he'd done that that Sunday morning, I'd
have choked, I couldn't have done it.
I'd have been on the floor myself.
High youngsters going to church, and other people
laughing, merry.
Doesn't make any difference to them.
They don't expect to be awed with God.
As I've said once or twice Sunday morning,
did you come here to meet God, or
do you come here to hear a sermon
about him?
I preach in audiences when there have been
two or three thousand, and ask that question.
Nobody has ever come up to me yet.
Even the pastor often says, well brother, I'm
afraid I don't come to meet God.
I come to deliver what I feel is
the word of God.
Brother, you've been saying that for the last
twenty years.
When are we going to have a divine
invasion, that will leave us stunned with his
majesty, with his glory, with his beauty, with
his power, with his love, with his authority?
The Methodists used to have a hymn that
said, Lord, how much longer shall we live
at this poor dying rate?
I think we ought to sing that every
Sunday.
So great salvation.
He tells you how great it is.
Don't look how I quote it.
From Hebrews 7.25, he is able to
save to the uttermost.
You better get that lodged in your mind,
in case God shunts you up the Amazon,
where there's some virgin territory, where people have
been waiting for a thousand years for the
gospel, and nobody's gone.
I remember a missionary coming to England.
He said, I went up the Amazon in
a boat, that was bought for me by
a Pentecostal group in England.
He put the boat on top of a,
almost an ocean liner that can go right
up the Amazon, for nearly a thousand miles.
Then they lifted the boat off, and he
went up further, till he couldn't go any
further.
And he rented a man there, and his
boat, and he paddled up the, well, he
went up the Amazon, then there's a branch
of the Amazon called the Orinoco, and he
went up the Orinoco paddling for days, and
then he went up the next bend in
the river, and he said, I was saying
to myself, well, oh boy, I feel almost
like the apostle.
Here I am, I'm going up here.
I'll have to work.
Oh, the arrows keep swishing across the boat
there, but Lord will preserve me, of course.
But anyhow, he said, I'm possibly the first
white man they've ever seen up here.
And he said, we went round the bend,
and there was a big tree hanging with
a sign on.
What did it say?
What was Rockefeller's company?
Oil company?
Standard Oil, I think that was it, thank
you.
Standard Oil.
What?
I thought I was the first one.
Oh, we've had Standard Oil more than five
years, nearly ten years.
Oh, he said, I felt like jumping in
the river.
Oh, coming back and blazing, and said, do
you know there are tens of thousands of
Indians up there?
And nobody had ever reached them yet.
The other night there was a lady singing,
I like to hear these good singers, I
confess.
Here she is.
She was somewhere up in, where, Alabama, in
a poverty-stricken shack, and she thought she'd
like to play the piano, so her neighbor
said, well, come in and play.
And one day as she played, she sang.
Now she said, I was going to pay
for you to be a pianist.
You won't get a penny.
I will train, have you train.
I think she's singing Wednesday night, this one,
Liam Tone Price.
But they say, has a voice, one, what
is it, in a hundred years, and one
in a hundred millions, a fantastic voice.
She'd have been washing dishes, or scrubbing a
floor in some little, you know, place up
there.
But they got hold of her and trained
her.
To sing?
Yes.
French, she sings in five languages.
I say, my God, what are our people
doing?
You young folk, get hold of another language.
How do you know God wants you staying
in a stuffy country like America or England?
Come on, master it.
Master a language while you're young, while your
mind is plastic, so to speak.
Receptive.
Come on.
Think of the vastness of the world, the
vastness of the world of Spanish.
I was reading today, Spain has, pardon me,
Brazil.
I think they speak Spanish in Brazil.
Portuguese, that's right, I just remembered.
Because where Phil, Paul was, they were speaking
Spanish, and then over the border, Portuguese.
It's the fifth largest nation in the world.
It has the largest potential outside of China
or Russia.
How many people are going?
If kids can give up basketball and other
stupid things, and get away and start learning,
ooh, I'm going to be an opera star.
Oh, I'm getting ready.
They showed a girl in the news the
other night, or was it the other morning
news?
Little thing, only about 12 years of age.
I'm going to the Olympics in 1988.
I'm not 14 yet, but I'm going to
win a gold medal at least when I
get there.
I'm giving all the hours of the day,
I don't care what it costs, how I
keep my body fit, I reject chocolates, I
won't eat cookies, I won't drink this, that,
the other.
I'm going to get myself in line.
For what?
I'm glad she's got the discipline.
That's unusual for our day.
But every time they talked about these men
winning these medals, I thought, yes, what Paul
said, they run for what?
A corruptible crown.
But we for an incorruptible.
So great salvation, you better get that on
your eyeballs if you're going up the Amazon.
I remember the first time I went in
a leper colony in the north part of
Thailand.
You talk about everything, you're coming in, you're
turning over.
Talk about the stink.
A hog stye is a perfume factory compared
to decaying flesh.
Where people had no limbs, where the end
of their arms were masses of corruption, dripping
pus on the floor and blood.
People had no cheeks, they'd been eaten away
with leprosy.
You'd better go with something better than John
3.16 and a few little choruses.
We've got to witness that great salvation ourselves,
not just to erase our rotten record that's
there in eternity, and God in infinite mercy
wipes it out, but to do something in
us.
So that we're not only forgiven our sins,
but we're cleansed from sin.
We remove all the internal territory that the
devil can work on.
You know, there's nothing more awesome in the
whole world than preaching the gospel.
Such a great salvation.
I must wind up, my time's almost up.
I remember the other day, an event that
happened after World War I, 1914, 1918.
Prince of Wales, he was a great runabout
boy, you know, and he was always dressed
immaculately in his breeches.
He did go to the front lines and
won the hearts of men because he went
up to his niece in slush and mud
and blood and where there was shots and
firing and risked his life.
But when he got home, his father didn't
like what he'd been doing and he reprimanded
him somewhat.
Oh, well, he said, Daddy, I'm going to
a military hospital.
I must go see some of the men
they'd brought home.
He got into this war that had about
50 beds all around, a huge place, and
at the end there was a screen.
They took the prince round and said, this
is private so-and-so, this is sergeant
so-and-so, this dear man lost one
leg.
Notice this man lost both his arms.
This man lost two legs.
This man lost a leg and an arm.
He went round saying all the horrible things
that had happened to this man.
And they took him past the screen and
the prince said nothing.
Oh, they whispered, we managed it all right.
He said, excuse me, you took me round
about 50 beds but he said there's a
screen and you didn't show me the man
behind the screen.
Well, Your Excellency, we are forbidden to show
you that man.
I'm the Prince of Wales.
I assert my royal prerogative that, sir, he's
repulsive.
There's hardly any man left.
He was right near a mine when it
blew up.
They took him out and he marched up
with his smart stripe.
They took the screen and on one side
there was a man.
He had no face.
He had two bits of skin holding his
eyeballs in place.
The prince looked at him and could see
right down his throat to where his tongue
was joined there in his throat.
The other parts of his head were great
big sores that he hadn't had the right
attention and his hands were all messed up.
They saw him wept.
They turned away.
The prince looked down, put his hand on
his shoulder and he bent down and kissed
him.
And the doctors and nurses and everybody wept.
He said, why not?
Why not?
He did that for me.
He did that for you.
Don't you think we ought to reverse that
so often and see the suffering of Jesus
see what he did in our place?
The old hymn says Bearing shame and scoffing
rude in my place condemned he stood and
see to my pardon with his blood.
What a gospel.
There's nothing like it in the whole world.
Is Buddha able to save Thutmose?
Can save himself?
Said before his death I've been searching all
my time all my life for truth.
Jesus started that.
Brothers, we're totally inexcusable.
What did the psalmist say?
Thy word is truth.
What did Jesus say?
I'm the way, the truth.
What did he say about the Holy Ghost?
When he, the spirit of truth, is come.
I read a dreadful thing this week.
I'll quote it and finish.
I'll try to find it.
Remind me, Martha, dear, tomorrow.
I can't find where I read it.
But I read this.
It was from a very reputable preacher.
He said heresy.
Pardon me, no.
He said apostasy, an apostate is not a
man who has got heresy and is running
all over the country with it.
An apostate is a man who has had
light and refuses to walk in it.
Dear God, that made me gasp.
Somebody told me about a preacher down there
in Thailand who recently said, you know, the
Old Testament, it's not relevant to our day.
The story of Jonah, of course, is a
fish story.
That man signed up in his denomination to
be a fundamentalist preacher and gets a good
wage for it.
He's a double-dyed hypocrite.
He's an apostate.
I'd like to talk to him about it.
How shall we escape if we hide our
lives under a bushel?
What's the bushel?
You often bury your light with business.
Or you put the light under a bed,
symbolic of laziness and indifference.
Come on, friends.
How shall we escape when we know such
a message of love, such a message of
infinite mercy, such a message of measureless grace,
such a message of the dazzling, blinding holiness
of God?
I had to get away from that wonderful
hymn written by Oliver Wendell Holmes II.
His father lived in Westleesday.
Oliver Wendell Holmes lived about 1802, maybe.
Lord of all beings thrown afar, thy flowering
flame from sun and star, center and soul
of every sphere, yet to each loving heart
our dear.
He says, our midnight is thy smile withdrawn.
Do you ever feel that?
Do you feel God has hidden himself?
And when he withdraws his smile, you're in
darkness?
Then he goes on to say this staggering
thought, before thine ever blazing throne we have
no luster of our own.
He adds, grant us thy truth to make
us free and kindling hearts that burn for
thee till all thy living altars flame one
holy light.
One heavenly blaze.
God has nothing to add to the gospel.
How shall we escape if we neglect preaching
the judgment of God which we all have
to go to finally, saints or sinners.
Two different judgments, but there they are.
How shall we stay as we are?
Well, get that passion that consumed in the
heart of the apostle Paul.
Woe is me if I preach not the
gospel.
Or again, can I just quote one thing
here?
I have about three minutes left.
Now, faith is a substance of things hoped
for.
Is this a definition or a description of
faith?
Does it matter?
Hebrews 11.1, faith is a substance of
things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen, for by it the elders obtained a
good report.
Through faith we understand that the worlds were
framed by the word of God.
You know, that isn't a good translation.
I believe the worlds were framed by God.
What did they say yesterday?
Jupiter, they've just rediscovered some new moons around
it.
I think it has 17 already.
And they've sent that thing, the Voyager into
space.
They don't know where it's going to end.
Scientists don't believe in eternity, but they believe
in infinity.
It's already done about 250,000 miles in
that staggering.
It's still going on with it.
Some momentum they put in it.
We think of the world.
I don't think that's the right word here.
Through faith we understand that the ages were
framed by the word of God.
What was the first age?
The age of innocence.
Well, sin ended that.
We moved into another age, the age of
conscience.
From the age of conscience we moved on
to the call of Abraham, which was the
age of faith, and that lasted for centuries.
Then when the age of faith went out,
the age of law came in, and that
existed till the day of Christ.
But all these ages were under the control
of a sovereign God.
He measured them out as he will.
I can't explain it to you.
I can't explain it to myself.
But I know that all those ages were
there, and one stops and another starts.
Now we're in the most amazing age of
all, the age of the Holy Ghost.
The Holy Spirit is totally, I wish I
could say that in letters six feet high,
He's totally incapable of anything small.
This world was a ball of mud wrapped
up in the universe.
Here it is.
And the Spirit brooded over it.
And out of chaos He brought cosmos, and
out of disorder He brought order.
The Holy Spirit brooded over this misshapen world,
and God is glorified in it.
And then He brooded over the barren womb
of a young Jewish lady by the name
of Mary the Virgin.
All His works, as one hymn writer says,
in all His works most wonderful.
What a wonderful world we live in.
Somebody recently discovered, I don't know how or
where, somewhere in Egypt, I think it was
Pharaoh's brother, Amenhotep II, I guess you like
his proper name, King Tut.
You know they brought all his gold and
displayed it in Dallas a few months ago.
He used to use penicillin.
We thought it was something new, discovered by,
I forgot the name of the man, but
anyhow, all the glorious things in this world
we haven't yet discovered.
Science is bringing us into a new world,
a terrible world too.
If you had told your grandpa you'd sit
in a room one day and you'd be
looking on a piece of glass, you see
the man walking on that snow?
That's not snow.
He's walking on the moon.
I think you're loony, walking on the moon.
But wait a minute, let me turn this
knob.
Now he's talking to us.
You did that, I did that.
I sat in a house and listened to
a man walking on the moon and talking
on the moon.
Julius Caesar could have done that but he
didn't know where to find the stuff.
Shakespeare could have written his plays out on
a printing out thing, what do you call
it?
Computer thing.
All the resources were there but they weren't
put together.
That makes me ask the question, why are
we honoring God tonight that we're not touching?
Do you wonder Paul yearns and he says
I want you to know the height and
the depth and the length and the breadth
of the love of God that passes knowledge?
I want you to get such a vision
of the majesty of God that you didn't
say nay, you didn't sit down, you didn't
refuse to use all you have.
Of material resources, intellectual resources, spiritual resources, or
if you're brave enough, go into China.
Or if you want to live shorter, go
into Russia.
And I'll go to a stinking hole and
ask these precious folk here, Ray and Robbie,
before they go back to India again.
We're so smug, we're so contented, we're so
happy to be saved from sins and a
few dirty habits we had and a few
unclean things but oh I wonder how often
it burns with us, this great salvation.
Marvellous grace of our loving God.
Grace that exceeds our guilt and our sin.
All there for a lost world.
And two thousand years after he died and
made it available to us.
We haven't explored again what I call the
possibilities of grace.
As you leave would you take one of
these?
You can have it, they're free.
Brother Dale's going to give them out.
If you're by yourself you can have one
of course.
If you can make it one for the
family that will make them to go around
more.
Father bless us as we explore your word.
As one said, write it deeply in our
hearts with an eternal pen.
We're terribly obligated to our generation.
We're awfully guilty if we withhold anything at
any time in any way.
Help us to see the majesty of our
Lord Jesus.
Help us to realize Lord that this word
which quickened the pioneers of faith and some
who didn't have their word of God.
This word is our God.
This word is your word.
Still valid.
Still powerful, quick and powerful, sharper than any
twedged sword.
We ask in Jesus name.
Amen.
You've been listening to the From the Pulpit
and Classic Sermon series.
Last week you heard Leonard Ravenhill with his
message on Hebrews chapter 1.
Tune in next week to hear Jonathan Cahn
talk about the mystery of the bride and
the bridegroom on From the Pulpit and Classic
Sermons.