Welcome to the From the Pulpit in Classic
Sermon series.
Each week, we bring you a different message
from some of history's greatest speakers in the
Christian faith, and powerful sermons from modern preachers,
too.
This week, we have Parris Reathead with his
message, So Great is Salvation, Awakening.
On your turning, I'd like to exercise the
right that my last birthday gave me to
reminisce just a little.
As I think back in 1954, when Leonard
Ravenhill called me and said, I can't go
to Bethany Fellowship because of some reason.
I do not recall now what it was.
Will you go?
I had no idea what Bethany Fellowship was.
I'd been reared in Minnesota, but when I
left, there was no Bethany Fellowship.
But I went, and I recall Duane Love's
friend and his two then young men, sons,
meeting me at the airport and telling me
about Bethany Fellowship.
We met in what I, last I knew,
was the lounge, and we didn't have the
wall covering on it yet.
We had insulation on the wall.
But you know, we had the presence of
the Lord.
And I recall it was a time of
great spiritual blessing to me.
Pastor Hagley took me downstairs to show me
a room downstairs.
He opened it.
It was what I'd call a large-sized
closet.
And with something of a little apology, he
said, Now this is our printing department.
And there was a used multilith down there.
And I don't know whether it was a
vision or a dream or just boldness, but
I said, Someday you're going to have five
acres under roof, and will be one of
the nation's largest printers of Christian literature.
And I was looking at a used multilith
in the basement when I said it.
How I do thank God for Bethany Fellowship,
for the blessing that it's been to me
and to my family, and to the privilege
of sharing with you in these days together.
Let's bow in prayer.
Father, we thank and praise thee that thou
hast given to us this marvelous gift of
life.
We're grateful to have had that gift of
life at any time, but to be alive
now in this last decade or little more
of this century, when we have so many
tools with which to serve thee, so many
privileges that have never been accorded to other
generations.
We're asking, Father, that somehow because thou art
here and we are here, that the tremendous
investment that thou hast made in us through
the poured out life of the Lord Jesus
Christ will be brought in the fullest possible
measure.
O might it be, our God, that somehow
because of this conference this summer, that there
are decisions made in hearts and lives that
are going to mean that the lamb that
was slain will receive fuller measure of the
reward of his suffering than the other my
wives might have done.
And for this we'll give thee praise in
the worthy name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Some years ago in New York, God led
me to bring a series of messages on
what I then called sobering salvation.
And I was here for a Victorious Life
conference, and Pastor Hedgrey asked me if I
would give something to the message of the
cross.
And all I could think of was this
message, sobering salvation.
And so the notes were sent, my secretary's
notes and the transcript, and it was published
under that little booklet which for many years
was used.
Recently the Spirit of God has been burdening
me again, because I have found that so
generally throughout the body of Christ, salvation is
being reduced down to forgiveness for sin, for
the new birth.
And in so doing, if that is what
we do with this marvelous provision of God's
love in Christ, we rob ourselves of everything
else that God intended to be ours, and
we rob him of all that he intended
to accomplish for us by his death.
In fact, we could be accused of treading
under the feet of our ignorance or our
indifference, that which he purchased with his blood.
And so I bring you back to Hebrews
the second chapter and the third verse, but
to get the significance of the third verse,
I read verses one and two and ask
you to read on your own the first
chapter.
Therefore we ought to give the more earnest
heed to the things which we have heard,
lest at any time we should let them
slip.
For if the word spoken by angels was
steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a
just recompense of reward, how shall we escape
if we neglect so great salvation, which at
the first began to be spoken by the
Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them
that heard him?
So great salvation.
In the middle of the 19th century, a
conflict arose in Europe.
Professors in some of the seminaries that had
been influenced by Charles Darwin and by Nietzsche
and others began to apply these principles of
skepticism to the word of God.
They questioned the process of, or the fact
of, inspiration, and sought to apply an evolutionary
process by which we'd receive the scripture.
They questioned the virgin birth of Christ.
It wasn't scientific.
His sinless life, his atoning death, his bodily
resurrection, his ascension.
We called them modernists.
We called them liberals.
We called them skeptics.
It was at that time that many of
our men who were going to be professors
in our American seminaries had to go to
Europe in order to be Finnish.
And some of them that did go were
certainly Finnish.
And they came back and corrupted the American
seminarians.
There was conflict, recognized as being an open
warfare against the truth of God.
One of the parishioners came to Charles Haddon
Spurgeon and said, Pastor Spurgeon, you've got to
do something about this terrible heresy that's being
preached.
You've got to defend the Bible.
You've got to defend the gospel.
And Pastor Spurgeon, with his characteristic insight, said,
Oh no, I don't.
The Bible is a lie and the gospel
is a lie and just turn it loose.
It'll take care of itself.
Well, it didn't quite take care of itself.
Because that penetration of our seminaries continued.
But at the same time, among the people
of God, we discovered that there were certain
truths that we considered essential to the faith.
And so these were called fundamental truths.
The people that accepted this list of truths
had been born of God, genuinely, wonderfully born
of God.
And they also had a list of truths
that they considered essential to the faith.
But it wasn't long until their children came
along.
And the children of these, many of them
were born of God.
But it was beginning to be thought of
that if you believed in the fundamentals, you
could assume that you were saved.
Now, the third generation came on, and that's
always the dangerous generation.
The third generation came along and they said,
If you subscribe to this list of truths,
if you believe them to be true, that
means you're a Christian.
And the fourth generation, and the fifth, then
getting up around where we are, said that
if you'll say uh-huh to five questions,
if you can walk and write, you are
thereby declared saved.
Until finally it got to the place that
R.G. Lee, the pastor of the great
Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, stated to
the South Carolina Southern Baptist Convention in Spartanburg,
South Carolina in 1950, that in his opinion,
based on 40 years close and careful observation,
probably no more than one out of ten
of the Southern Baptists knew anything experientially about
the new birth.
When a few years later there was a
book written that was edited by Andrew or
by Carl F.H. Henry on contemporary evangelicalism,
and there was a chapter in there by
Andrew Blackwood, who declared that in his estimation,
based on his observation, there were probably no
more than one out of ten of the
members of evangelical churches in America who knew
anything experientially about the new birth.
Many times when Dr. A.W. Tozer was
with me at the tabernacle in New York
City, I've heard him say that in his
estimation, he considered that among the evangelical churches,
and he would say, including the society of
which I am a part, probably no more
than one out of ten know anything experientially
about the new birth.
Now, it's not my intention, if you've heard
me say this before or now, to try
to prove them right or to prove them
wrong, but I am saying that we have
been living through decades of what is known
as easy-believism.
And the consequences is that the great many
people in the churches of America, all-line
denominational and evangelical and perhaps others in the
more recent movements, have everything but light.
They've got a beautiful plan, but it's built
upon sand and not upon the rock.
And our concern, therefore, if we're going to
serve the Lord in these days that comprise
the balance of this century and on into
the next, and I'm intending to do it,
recently I heard Willard Scott on the Today
Show say that the fastest growing community in
America are the people over a hundred years
of age.
And so when I heard that, I immediately
put in my application and have asked the
Lord to renew my youth like the eagle.
Somebody looked at the brochure that we have
for Bible teaching ministry and they claim it's
my high school picture, but it wasn't.
Second year in college, actually.
And they said, we know the Lord is
going to renew your youth, but isn't it
a little presumptuous to put that picture in?
Well, what can you do?
I was too tight to get another one
taken.
Anyway, the fact of the matter is, the
fact of the matter is that if we're
going to serve the Lord today and in
the days that lie ahead, we've got to
recognize that the message that we give on
the subject of salvation is not only one
address to the world and those that are
irreligious and not in attendance upon some church,
but we've also got to address it to
those that are members of churches.
Because sometimes the greatest field for evangelism is
in church membership.
In the course of ministry through the years,
I remember once a man who had been
an elder in a reliance church for 11
years was born of God.
In another case, a woman who'd been the
chairman of the Women's Mission Society of the
Southern Baptist Convention was born of God.
And a graduate student from the Kekoa Falls
Bible Institute who had finished school and was
in his ministry, the music ministry, was born
of God.
And so I'm realizing that many times you're
going to be dealing with people and you
need to know what God does in this
matter of bringing people out of death into
life.
And so we're going to be talking to
you about various phases of people being brought
from death to life.
But we're going to go on because everything
in the Christian life that begins as a
crisis is preceded by a process, is followed
by a process, and in the Christian life,
that process issues into the crisis of the
new birth, followed by a process that issues
into the crisis of the baptism of the
Holy Spirit, and it's followed by a process
of living and walking in the Spirit.
And we need to understand that all of
this is salvation.
Salvation is a great word.
In the Scripture, we have salvation used in
this context.
I have been saved.
I was saved.
I am being saved.
I shall be saved.
It reaches throughout into eternity fast, anchored there
in the loving purpose of God, swoops down
through time into eternity to come, and it's
all called salvation.
It was all purchased and procured for us
by the cross work of Christ.
You see, God purposed that the sacrifice of
the Lord Jesus Christ should procure for us
everything we need to be everything that he
purposed for us to be.
And we call it salvation.
He said, so great salvation.
Do you want to put the amplifiers on?
Do you want so and great to bring
it into meaning?
With what I'm saying, that's all right with
me.
I call it so great salvation too.
It begins with God's great loving purpose to
bring people out of death into life.
Now, I have found that there are three
things that God does when he wants to
bring someone out of death into life.
The first thing he does is to bring
somebody up next to that person dead in
their trespasses and sin to be a sample
of his grace.
Did you know that to someone, you're the
very best Christian that they know?
And if they ever come to Christ, it's
going to be because of you.
To someone, you're a sample of God's grace.
And that's what he does.
He puts someone up next to them as
a sample of what he can do.
The second thing he does is to get
that person or someone to intercede for them.
We'll talk more about that later.
But to understand that intercession is necessary if
God's going to start working in a sinner's
heart.
You see, God gave sinners the right to
go to hell.
He said in the Old Testament, As I
live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure
in the death of the wicked, but that
the wicked turn and live.
Turn ye, turn ye, for why will you
die?
But he gives them the right to die.
He gives them the right to go to
hell.
And they've made a decision that they're going
to walk according to the course of this
world, according to the prince and the power
of the air, and they're going to serve
him and his government.
The prince and the power of the air
is that they can be anarchists and they
can do what they want to do.
And that's the decision sinners have made.
Now, God gives them a right to make
the choice, and he respects the right and
he doesn't interfere until either the sinner asks
him to interfere or the sinner's representative asks
him to interfere.
Now, Revelation 1 and 5 we're told, Unto
him who loved us, washed us in his
blood, and made us to be kings and
priests unto God.
He didn't say, By the way, if you
ever run out of interesting things to do,
would you kind of give a little thought
and attention to the possibility of being a
priest and interceding for a sinner now and
then?
I don't want to burden you, but you...
Oh, none of that.
He's made us to be priests.
He washed you in his blood.
He made you to be a priest.
And the priest has the responsibility to intercede.
And an intercessor goes into the presence of
God in behalf of the sinner, accepts the
condemnation on the sinner, accepts the sinner's guilt,
makes the confession the sinner ought to make,
and then pleads with God to begin to
work in the sinner's heart.
You're the legally appointed, the court-appointed representative
of the sinner.
That's the second thing.
Then he gets somebody to witness to the
sinner.
That's the third thing we can do for
the unsaved.
That's the third thing God does with the
one he wants to see and would love
to see come out of death into life.
Come as a witness.
Now, a witness is a person who tells
what he has seen and heard and experienced
and nothing more.
If you go beyond that, you become a
philosopher or a metaphysician.
And he didn't say, You shall be philosophers
unto me, or you shall be metaphysicians unto
me.
He said, You shall be witnesses unto me.
And a witness can only tell what he
has seen and heard and experienced.
If he goes beyond that, it's hearsay and
it's inadmissible.
Have you ever heard God speak through his
word concerning his holiness and righteousness?
Thou shalt not.
Have you ever seen your own heart?
Seen yourself to be as God declares you
to be, a traitor and a rebel and
an anarchist and a transgressor and an enemy.
Have you ever seen yourself?
Have you ever heard him say, Come unto
me and rest?
Have you come?
Did you find cleansing?
Did you find forgiveness?
Did you experience the new birth?
Have you heard the spirit of God and
the witness of the spirit enabling you to
call almighty God Abba Father?
You're a witness.
Tell him what you've seen and heard and
experienced and that's all.
You don't know the answers to all the
questions.
You don't need to know the answers to
all the questions.
All you need to do is to tell
him, Did you know that you're the world's
greatest expert on you?
There isn't anybody in the world that knows
more about you than you.
And there isn't anybody in the world that
can contradict you.
And if you've had an experience, if you've
really experienced something, you're an authority on you.
And you can speak it to anybody in
the world.
This is what I saw.
This is what I heard.
This is what I experienced.
That's witness.
But when you've done that, you've done all
you can do.
You can't do anymore.
That's all you can do.
Live Christ the foresinner.
Intercede for sinners.
A witness to.
From that moment on, there's something God must
do.
And that is to awaken the sinner.
The sinner tells us a little bit about,
the scripture tells us a little bit about
the sinner.
We need to know we can learn most
of it by remembering our own attitude.
I've already mentioned to you the five things
that we were, traitors and rebels and anarchists
and transgressors and enemies.
But the sinner, the scripture also tells us,
that the God of this world, has blinded
the minds of them which believe not.
Lest the light of the glorious gospel of
Christ, should shine unto them.
Have you ever seen people that try to
take a nap in the middle of the
day, when they can't get the room dark,
and they just put a blindfold on.
Well that's what the God of this world
seems to have done to the lost, and
has blinded their mind.
And it's been done deliberately, has been done
very very effectively.
And so we could say well, and be
exact that the sinner is asleep.
Again in Ephesians the second chapter, he says,
and you who were dead in trespasses and
sin, dead in sin.
So it's not only a sleep, but it's
dead in the sense that, no interest in
the things of God, no sensitivity to the
work and word of God.
And they have to therefore be awakened.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 15 and 34 we
are told, Awake to righteousness.
And in Ephesians 5, 14, Awake thou that
sleepest.
I said you have to be witnesses.
You know I talked with a surgeon this
past weekend, and he was telling me that
the most important person, other than the surgeon
in the operating room, is the surgical nurse.
The function of the surgical nurse is to
know, not in the manner of doing everything,
but know what is to be done, and
what instrument is to be used for what
needs to be done.
The surgical nurse must be, so I'm told,
I know nothing about it.
Every time I've had anything done, they let
me take a nap while they did it,
so I haven't really any first-hand experience.
But I've talked with nurses and I've talked
with doctors, and they said that the surgical
nurse has to know each instrument, and when
it's needed, and how to pick it up
and put it firmly in the hands of
the surgeon, so that there's no fumbling or
dropping of it.
In a sense, you are a surgical nurse
to God the Holy Spirit.
The witness has to be effective.
Now, if you find a sinner that is
unawakened, do you know what of the scalpels
of truth are needed in order to be
effective in awakening that sinner?
There's a class of scriptures that the Holy
Ghost uses.
I'll give you a few, but only as
type.
It's your responsibility to find others, and when
you do, to memorize them, keep them handy,
so that you can use them, because you're
going to run into unawakened sinners.
And you ought to know how to use
the word, and what word to use.
I'll tell you one you don't want to
use, and that's John 3.16. Well, why?
Because, you see, if you tell a sinner
how to be saved, before they need to
be saved, or know they need to be
saved, what you have done is gospel-hardened
them.
I don't know what it was that Paul
and Silas said in that Philippian jail, during
those hours that they were there.
There's no record of it given, and I've
never had anyone explain it to me.
I do know what they didn't say.
They did not tell the people in that
prison how to be saved.
They waited until at least one of that
number that was there when the angel opened
the prison doors and locked all the shackles
that held them, and then bound the people
so they wouldn't bolt and run.
Paul and Silas waited until the Philippian jailer
gave the invitation.
He was awakened, and he had some other
things, and then when he said, What must
I do to be saved?
Paul told him, Now, if I had my
way, then probably it's a good thing I
don't.
But if I did have my way, I
would declare a moratorium on the public preaching
of the plan of salvation in America for
at least 12 months and probably 24 months,
and would call on everyone that has use
of the airwaves and pulpits to preach the
holiness of God and the righteousness of God
and the law of God until such a
time as sinners began to cry out, What
must we do to be saved?
And then I'd take them off in a
corner where no one is here and whisper
the gospel to them.
Because what we have done is to gospel
-harden a generation of sinners by telling them
how before they have any understanding why they
need to be saved.
Well, do you have a class of scriptures
that you can give when you meet someone
that's unawakened?
Perhaps you'd like to just turn to Psalm
73 and 18.
It's worth turning to and it's worth underlining
and certainly worth memorizing.
Psalm 73, 18.
I'd like to have you see it.
I hope you believe it.
He's talking about the wicked.
Surely thou did set them in slippery places.
Thou castest them down into destruction.
Do you think the sinners actually believe that
they're standing in slippery places?
But you know, if you could use that
verse with someone that's unawakened and you could
say, well, I know you said that you're
going to do something about God when you
get old.
But you don't have much confidence about getting
old anymore.
You never did.
Look here, did you realize that in Psalm
73 and 18 the psalmist says, God, thou
did set them, sinners, in slippery places.
You're standing on a side hill with clay
mud that's wet.
You think you're walking on a flat sidewalk,
but that's not what the scripture says.
You're standing in slippery places.
Now don't you think it would be useful
to know that verse and have it on
your tray of scalpels to use with someone
that's unawakened, doesn't know their needs.
And then if you turn to Jeremiah, the
23rd chapter and the 12th verse, this is
the prophet gives us something else about the
same subject.
I'd like to have you see that.
Jeremiah 23, 12.
Wherefore their way shall be unto them as
slippery ways in the darkness.
God has added to it.
Not only standing in slippery places, but slippery
ways in the darkness.
They shall be driven on and fall therein
for I will bring evil upon them even
the year of their visitation says the law.
Now that's the scripture verse that could have
the effect of causing someone complacent in their
sin and unawakened to have a little bit
of thought, take a little bit of care.
How about turning to Isaiah chapter 30?
Isaiah, back to Isaiah chapter 30.
And let the spirit of God speak through
this to your heart.
Verses 12 and 13.
Wherefore thus saith the Holy One of Israel,
because you despise this word and trust in
oppression and perverseness and stay thereon, therefore shall
this iniquity shall be to you as a
breach ready to fall, swelling out in a
high wall which breaketh, coming suddenly at an
instant.
You see, if we can't get the saints
to be concerned about the lostness of the
lost, it's going to be just a little
bit hard to get the lost concerned about
their own state.
And so I'm suggesting that you ought to
take these as very personally, as being describing
your friends, your loved ones, your neighbors, people
you know that you ought to be concerned
about.
And this is their case.
And in Isaiah 47 and verse 11, the
spirit of God has something more to say
about it.
And I'd like to have you see that.
I think you ought to memorize these scriptures.
You ought to have them before you, at
least where you can turn to them quickly.
Isaiah 47, 11.
Therefore shall evil come upon thee, thou shalt
not know from whence it arises, and mischief
shall fall upon thee.
Thou shalt not be able to put it
off, and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly,
which thou shalt not know.
Oh, you say these are all Old Testament
scriptures.
Yeah, you're right, they are.
I'll go to 1 Thessalonians 5, 3.
That might give us a little bit of
insight into what the New Testament had to
say.
1 Thessalonians 5, 3.
For when they shall say peace and safety,
then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as prevail
upon a woman, a child, and they shall
not escape.
Somehow I think we've been brainwashed in the
last few decades into believing that God's righteousness
and God's justice and God's holiness is a
blotch on the divine, a sketch in the
blemish of the divine character.
I don't believe that.
I believe that the God of the Bible
is perfectly God.
He's the God of love as well as
righteousness.
And when it is declared that he is
angry with the wicked every day, if he
turn not he will wet his sword, he
will destroy them.
There is no conflict whatever with the fact
that God loved the world and gave his
son.
You see, sin is not a congenital disease.
Sin is a high treasonous crime against the
Godhead.
The only one big enough and wise enough
and just enough, righteous enough to rule and
govern one made in the image of God
is the God in whose image that one
is made.
And to turn to one's own way and
say I'm going to live as a moral
anarchist in a moral universe is treason.
And it's not just an act of treason,
it's a lifetime of rebellion.
And not just a lifetime of rebellion, but
it's the policy of anarchy.
Now, these are the scriptures that God said.
But you know, I find singularly little burden
for the lost in the average church where
I'm privileged to go and minister.
I've been there for a whole week in
some of our finalized churches in Bible conference
and evangelistic meetings and no one brought one
sinner in or took me out to meet
one lost person.
And I then checked in and found that
most of them didn't even have a lost
man or woman or boy or girl that
they were praying for.
No burden, no concern for the lost.
Come on, brother, God's got to get to
us and help us to understand what has
to happen.
What happened to us?
What must happen to others?
So to focus on that, perhaps to bring
it to your heart, turn to Proverbs 29,
verse one.
Proverbs chapter 29, verse one.
He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck,
shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.
This is the word of God.
This is what God is saying.
These are scriptures that need to be used.
Are the sinners around you, your family, your
friends, the ones you meet and should be
meeting if you're not, are they often reproved?
Yes.
When?
Well, every time they pick up a newspaper
and see an obituary page.
That's a reproof.
Life is short.
Death is certain.
And there's a reproof.
Every time a sinner passes a church with
a steeple and a cross on top, that's
a reproof.
Every time he signs a check and puts
on a date, he's doing it from the
birth of Jesus Christ from which we mark
all our legal documents.
That's a reproof.
Every time of memory.
Every time a gospel song is heard on
the radio or heard through a window.
Every time he flicks the switch on his
television set and sees a gospel program underway
or searches through his radio and hears a
gospel program.
That's a reproof.
It doesn't require an angel to stand there
and warn them to flee from the wrath
to come or a sinner to do it.
All of these things have the effect of
being reproved.
Every highway sign.
Every track that's left.
Anywhere that's seen.
All of these are reproved.
He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck.
You have given, we have given to the
unsaved the idea that they are right.
They've got years and years and years before
them in which they can decide whether or
not they want to come to Christ.
They don't.
They don't have it.
When I was a young man, 21, I
was called to the pastor of the First
Baptist Church of Little Falls, Minnesota.
I was there and ministered part of the
vow of 1941 and 42 and mostly 43.
And I was followed by the Reverend Victor
Ernest.
His wife was Alice, had been Alice Schmoltz
from Anoka.
We didn't have buses when I was there.
We had to board in town.
And I stayed in the home of Schmoltz
and Alice, older daughter, graduate from Bethel College,
was home working.
And she was engaged at that time to
Victor.
And they were married and went into ministry
and then they came to Little Falls.
And one occasion I heard Victor tell of
his experience.
He'd grown up in Bemidji, Minnesota and was
a rebellious young man living for himself, enjoying
all the things that his crowd did, doing
them with gusto and had a job, had
sense enough when he got paid on Friday
night to bring his money home and give
it to his mother and take out a
little bit for the carousing of the weekend.
This particular time, Friday night, he'd gone through
it all and he needed more.
But his mother had gone to evangelistic meeting
in the local church.
And so Victor realized the only way he
could get money or the fastest way or
the best way was to go to the
church and be there when his mother came
out.
Then he could get some money because he
knew she carried it in her purse.
Well, he was there sitting on the running
board of his car in the yard of
the church.
The church door was open, it was warm.
And the preacher said, for some reason, I
don't know why, I feel prompted of the
Lord to stop the sermon I'm giving and
to quote a verse of scripture.
And he quoted, He that being often reproved
hardness his neck shall suddenly be destroyed.
That was our remedy.
And he, I must give it again.
And he gave it a second time.
He tried to turn to, I must give
it a third time.
I don't know why.
At the giving of the third time, Victor
Ernest slid in behind the wheel of the
car, started it and drove up to a
lonely place outside the city.
And he sat there.
He realized God had spoken to his heart.
And he said, I went over on the
other side of the car.
I opened the door.
I got down, used the running board as
an altar.
And he said, I opened my heart to
Jesus Christ.
And I went back to my mother, but
not to take more money for booze, but
to tell her that I'd been born into
the family of God.
Spirit of God used the verse.
The sword is spirit.
I was reading recently that when Jonathan Edwards
was pastor in Massachusetts, that the town
drunkard came to his study at nine o
'clock in the morning.
He said he'd had a dream, a terrible
dream.
In his dream, he had dreamt that he'd
gone to hell.
And he was in hell.
And he was screaming that he could go
back, that he could go back, let me
go back, let me go back.
And so he was released to go back
out of hell on the condition in the
dream, now mind you, it's a dream, that
he could go back to earth, back again
at the time on the condition that he
would reform and that he would be, trust
in Christ.
So he came to Jonathan Edwards early in
the morning.
And he told this perspiration still bursting on
his brow and the awfulness of that moment.
And he said, I'm going to give up
drinking, I'm going to, tell me what I
need to do about God.
And he made a profession of faith, gave
up drinking, attended church, for about four months.
And then somebody coaxed him to have one
drink.
And inside of two more months, he was
right back being the town drunkard.
One night he was in an upstairs room
and had an outside stairway and in his
drunkenness he opened the door and he stumbled
and he hit the railing and it broke
and he fell from that second floor down
and broke his neck and was dead.
And Jonathan Edwards went to his journal and
found it was one year to the day
from the time this man had come saying
he'd had a dream.
He that being often reproved heartless is said,
do you care about the lost?
Somebody cared about you.
Somebody lived Christ before you.
Someone interceded for you.
Someone witnessed to you.
Are you equipped with those verses of scripture
that you can use for the unawakened?
To cause them to realize the danger in
which they stand?
Oh, don't you believe they stand in danger?
We've so twisted the love of God.
We've almost made the God of the Bible
turn into a senile old grandfather that was
very angry with his kids, but he puts
up with an awful lot of nonsense from
his grandkids.
I'll tell you, the God of the Bible
doesn't change.
And he is now as he's ever been.
And the entreaty I press upon your heart
today, first is the one that Paul made
at the church, to the church of Florence
in his second letter when he said, examine
yourself whether you be in the faith, prove
your own self.
Oh, you know you're not your own self.
How let Christ be in you except you
be reprobate.
You see, salvation is not a scheme, it's
not a plan, it's not a decision.
Salvation is a person.
He that hath the Son of Life.
And the second thing I want you to
do is to ask God to forgive you
if it's true that you've been unconcerned about
the loss.
There's no burden for them.
And if you are unequipped with those verses
of scriptures that you could use, honed, honed
in prayer, oiled in love, to use as
the sword of the Spirit to the unawakened
sinner.
We're going to go on from there in
the next service, but right now let's open
our hearts to the Lord in a little
time of prayer.
And you who know me know that I
do not give extended invitations, but I never
want to close a service without giving those
who've been stirred of God an opportunity to
mind God.
And if today or prior to today or
for any reason that you and God know,
God has spoken to your heart and you
have a need, this altar is open and
we invite you to come.
If you're prepared to confess everything that God
has shown you and forsake all that you
confess, and believe that everything you confess He
forgives and pardons, then we invite you to
come.
So we're going to just continue in prayer
and if you're here and the Spirit of
God has spoken, you might be.
Now our Father, we're asking that our minds
may be open to all that Thou would
say to us in these brief days we
spend together.
We thank Thee for what our brother Rocky
has called to our hearts' attention concerning the
sufficiency of Christ, our union with Him.
We thank You for that ministry and now
Lord we meld these ministries together and we're
talking now in this first phase of the
divine operation, the awakening of sinners to their
lostness.
Should there be one here Lord who does
not know experientially Him whom to know is
life, this is the best time in all
their lives to do something about it.
Father, for all that have been indifferent to
the plight of the lost, the concern of
the lost, O God of grace forgive us
and cleanse us from this and give to
us hearts of compassion, hearts of burden for
the lost and a readiness and a willingness
to witness to them as thou hast believed
and as they have need.
Teach us to be skilled in the use
of the word.
Why in applying the truth, the word to
the hearts of men as they are in
their need at the state of dealing with
them.
So to that end Father, seal the word
as we together upon it.
For Jesus our Lord.
You've been listening to the From the Pulpit
and Classic Sermon series.
This week you heard Parrish Reedhead with his
message So Great a Salvation Awakening.
Tune in next week to hear Jim Simbla
with some heart talk on revival on From
the Pulpit and Classic Sermons.