In this sermon, the speaker focuses on the book of Zechariah, specifically chapter 11. He highlights verses that speak about the flock of the slaughter that needs to be fed. The speaker emphasizes the role of Jesus as the beautiful shepherd who ministers to the people. He encourages believers to be unashamed and unafraid in sharing their faith and evangelizing their communities. The sermon also emphasizes the need for spiritual fire and the coming of a great day when God will fulfill His promises.

I'm happy to be with you tonight. I think I've been here once, since those days when we used to have the conferences in the school, or some other building, wasn't it? Way back now. And I can remember wonderful occasions. I believe you must have been one of the young fellows standing on their seats one night in here. And it was a very wonderful occasion. And the prayer, obviously, of our hearts is that it should happen again. Not exactly that, but that the power of the Lord should so work upon us all, including me. I couldn't help noticing the logic with which, I think it was General Booth, wrote that hymn that we sang. You know, it built up to make our weak hearts strong and brave, to live a dying world to save. Hallelujah. But he'd spent several verses before that telling us what we needed to be first. And that is the great logic of it all. He was in the Wesleyan tradition, you know, he was a Methodist. And how wonderful it is. Make us fit to live or die. That sort of thing. And everything that God, I suppose, has charmed our minds with, if not our hearts. But tonight we need to look into truth together, don't we, and share from God's Word. Now, I want to do that, perhaps most of you will not be expecting me to do so, but from the Old Testament, in that I usually spend my time in the New, since the day that God commissioned me to do so. But I want to come with you into the book of Zechariah, the prophet. Now, if you are familiar with Scripture, you will know that this man, Zedekiah, was one of the great prophets that the New Testament writers referred to. They quoted from him. And especially in the closing days of the Lord Jesus Christ. We'll note these things as we look into the Scripture together. Here and there, in the way that the old prophets used to, they put truth, that though it had a reference to what God was doing in Israel, was an eternal word in the sense that its truth recurs again and again. And especially in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, and more than his life, his death. I suppose you know, too, that in the Old Testament there aren't any prophecies dealing with the resurrection. That was way beyond their concept. Those of you who like to study your Bibles, you see there's no thought of resurrection in the Old Testament. All they had was death, the death of animals, of course, and birds, and things like that. So, they never really saw beyond, or immediately beyond, the resurrection and the great period of the church. When the church was going to minister in an entirely new way, way out of their concept of things, because they had no responsibility to the nations outside of themselves. God was just the God of the Jews, of Israel. They had no concept of the Gentiles at all. And you will know in the New Testament, the early apostles hadn't either. God had to raise up Paul to really reach the Gentiles, because the apostles, the early apostles, were stubbornly fixed with their narrow Jewish concept of things. And then Paul came along, and lo, here we are tonight, gathering together. But we're going to look into this prophecy of Zechariah. But even as that man, General Booth, with all his wonderful helpers, went through truth and arrived in the end at evangelization. So, before we're through, we shall probably get there, but I don't mean tonight. But we're going to concentrate on these great truths, that we may see what God has for us. First of all, I want you to look at with me, right in the very end of the prophecy of Zechariah. And in verse 20 we read this. It may be written in capitals in your version, it may not, but in my version it is. It says, In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses holiness unto the Lord. And that, in my version, is written in great big capitals. It may not be in yours, especially if you've got a modern one. And that the pots in the Lord's house shall be like the bowls before the altar. Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the Lord of hosts. And all they that sacrifice shall come and take of them and seize therein. And in that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that, except to point out to you that that was the ultimate concept. The ultimate concept is holiness unto the Lord. That's where it finishes up. Such holiness, not just holiness of persons, that's referring to the Canaanite in the house of the Lord, had even had priests in the temple of God or in the house of God, whatever it was. And they were quite heathen, just Canaanites of the land. They weren't Israelites at all. Israel had become Canaan. Instead of Canaan, them turning Canaan into Israel, they had gone into sin. And they were having all kinds of godless men as priests and so on. And that was heartbreaking to God. But here is the thing. Holiness unto the Lord. Such holiness that even the bells on the harness of the altars were holiness unto the Lord. All the music of Jerusalem was holiness unto the Lord. Hallelujah. And even the sort of common pots in the houses, they were like the pots before the altar. And even the pots in which women cooked the food, they were cooked in holiness. That's what it's all about. That holiness was in every heart, every home. All business transaction. You could liken it today that there would be, I don't know, bells, perhaps the hooters on cars would be holiness unto the Lord. That sort of thing. Of course, the terrible noise that's going on now, enough to deafen you. But God wants us to see this, beloved. Holiness was in the air. It was on the waves. It was in the pots. It was in the cooking. It was in life. It was real. Now, I want to ask you whether that's so in your life or whether it isn't. Because that's the ultimate. It isn't an experience called a holiness experience as an experience per se. It's a life. Whether the pencils in your office are holiness unto the Lord and the hand that takes them up are holy and the writing is holy. See? Whether the noises of your home are holy, whether they're not. That is what it's all about. That is the end. Didn't say, oh, well, I have a holy church or I have a holy temple or I have a holy this once a week stuff. Everything throbbing in your ears. Music. Everything delightful. I wonder if holiness is a delight to you. Whether it's real in your experience. Is it or is it not? That's the challenge. And ultimately it's going to be that because without holiness we shan't even see the Lord. Whatever we've done, whatever we've achieved, we shan't see the Lord without holiness. That's Hebrews chapter 12 if you want to find it for yourself. Very clearly there. We won't even see him. Even though we're calling him a forgiveness experience. Apparently. What a marvelous thing it is to understand what God is really after in all our lives. Amen. Now that has to be achieved. Glory be to God. Just think of it. Just think of it. When you drop a spanner when you're doing your car, is it holiness unto the Lord, the noise it makes? You say, but this is ridiculous. Oh no, it's not ridiculous. Inanimate things have no power of good or evil. They partake of the person that handles them in the sight of God. Money, for instance, it's not moral. It's amoral. It has nothing about it at all. But once it comes into your hand, it can either be holy money or unholy money. Once you touch it. Do you understand that? This is the concept utter holiness. In everything. That's the concept. And God says, you will notice in that end chapter, he says, there's going to be a day when it shall be so. Praise God. Of course, he's particularly prophesying it now concerning Israel after the flesh. It's going to be as God is going to move on to his great climax in the world. But through it all, because it's inevitable, because the Lord Jesus was God himself, the things that happened to him, these things have to be woven into a revival of holiness, whether it be in the Old Testament, whether it be in the future movings of God with Israel, or whether it be in the church now. It all has to be upon the pattern of Jesus Christ. There is no reason, therefore, why you and I, reading this scripture, cannot come into the experience of it here and now. Because our Lord Jesus has always been the eternal principle, the eternal life, the eternal one for which God does everything. God works through his Son. Now, what a marvelous thing it is. And because this is so, beloved, you and I can step right into it tonight. And the purpose of us being together, so far as God's insistence on my heart this day, is that we should come into it and move right into it. Hallelujah. I wonder if I ever told you the story. I don't know whether I did or not. I guess I've told most of my stories, except those that have happened more recently. But there was a man named Rhys Howells. You've all heard of him. What a great man of God he was, and still is. For God's not the God of the dead. He's the God of the living, and Rhys Howells is alive. Okay. I wonder how many of us in this room are as alive as he was, then, leave alone is. Here is the tremendous thing. He was a missionary. He came home to England. And he was asked to speak at the Keswick Convention, I think it was, a big holiness convention, and he did. And it was a day when they make it, it was a sort of missionary day, and he stood up and preached. And when he'd finished, a great silence descended on all the people, and all the others, there was bishops and so on, on the platform, and he just finished, preached, sat down. And somebody whispered to him, Why don't you make an appeal? So Rhys Howells got up and appealed. And the people responded. And from that meeting, 100 people became missionaries. He never preached a missionary message at all. He preached holiness. Once the lives got right, there was no lack of people wanting to go out and serve God. You keep that very clear. How marvelous it is. All he did, all he did, well it was all, he just preached the holiness of the life that's possible to a man or woman that wants to be everything for God. I don't know whether deep in your heart there's a longing for utmost holiness unto the Lord. I don't know whether it's there. You can have a thousand longing to get souls saved, longing to get the church built up, longing to get the tapes printed, sent out, longing to get books sent out, longing to preach sermons, longing to run your business as unto the Lord, and so on and so on. There can be a hundred other things that in the end are not the most vital. Do you know why the Lord Jesus was sent to this earth? To save sinners, become the first great missionary, if you like, because he was holy. Did you know that? A member of the thrice holy trinity. Yes. Glory. He could even say, which of you convinces me of sin? You see, that was it. It was this impeccable, spotless holiness of him that made him the force that he was, and still is, in the earth. What a tremendous, glorious thing it is for us to look at. So I want then, with you, in the Scriptures, to look into these wonderful things that God has put here for us to read. Amen. I was ever so glad that we sang that hymn on Friday. It might have been my fault, because today I was talking a little earlier about the need for the fire, the real fire. I once heard a man, you know, he was during the war, that's before a lot of you people were ever breathing, and I can remember him coming to the little place where I was worshipping God at that time, or not only me, but a company, and he preached on Pentecost, and he said, he summed it up this way, effusion, that is, sound of a mighty rushing wind from heaven, an effusion from heaven. The next point he made was infusion. I've never preached on this, by the way, but it's never left my mind The next was infusion, in other words, they were filled with the Spirit. And the third point he made was fusion. They became one. Now, you've got to be careful of the fire, it'll fuse you into one. There won't be any divisions. Do you understand that? You've got that clear? It burns up wood, hay and stubble and that sort of stuff, junk, but it fuses the metals. Gold and silver and brass and iron, tin, can all become one. Fusion. Never left me. So you need to be careful when you're handling fire. It not only burns, it fuses you. So, may the Lord do something wonderful, in a great and glorious way. Amen. When Jesus prayed they all may be made one, he was praying in view of Pentecost, that the fire was going to come and fuse them into one. He wasn't just praying hopefully. And so the Lord moves in reality of truth, not picking things out of a nest of ideas. He moves on factual things, realities, as they are in God. Now may the Lord then open our hearts and ears and eyes and everything to see the great truth. I want more particularly, to point you to some of these glorious truths in chapter 9 first of all. I want you to see this great word here. One, the burden of the word of the Lord in the land of Hadrach and Damascus and so on. The burden of the Lord. You may have it as an oracle. It could be translated the whisper of the Lord. I don't know whether you've got an ear to hear it. And this man, Zechariah, was ministering under this great burden of the Lord. It was something weighty. It was something that was on him. He could not escape it. He had to preach it. He had to prophesy it. He had to write it. He had to live it. And he never sought to apologize to anybody in doing so. The trouble with these prophets is that they got themselves into trouble by doing so. But blessed is the fearless heart. He has a heart like Jesus. He has a heart that will go to the cross. He has a heart that will burst through death. And here is the great thing. The burden of the Lord. He goes right on, says some marvelous things. And as you read through it, and I want you to do this in your background of reading, you will find there's a great mixture. There's this in the heart of the Lord. He's going to do wonderful things for his people, as we shall see. But side by side, you hear the note coming through a warning. He's got to deal with sin. There has to be punishment. There has to be dealing with this, as Paul says, behold the goodness and the severity of the Lord. Have you read that in Romans chapter 5? He's severe on the sin. He's good to everybody though. And sometimes when he's being severest with you, he's really being his best to you, to make you see that these two things go together. Amen. You do go to dentists, I suppose. That's right. Severe with you at times, but he's doing his best for you. He's not always so perfect as the Lord is, but still. Never mind. This is the way that God moves, beloved. But down in the deeps of his heart, he has great things for his people. Looking on with me again, I trust, down at 9th chapter, you'll find the first reference that we need to make to the Lord Jesus. Here it is. Rejoice greatly, verse 9, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, thy king cometh unto thee. He is just and having salvation, lowly, riding upon an ass, upon a coat, the foal of an ass. Now you will know, and the New Testament writers often did this, that that is slightly changed when it's used in the New Testament. They did that. Glory to God to realize it. For instance, it's like that great text you read from Joel. In the Acts chapter 2, you'll find that, Come to pass, whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. You remember that text? In the Old Testament, it's not written like that. He shall be delivered, and it's spoken in context of the deliverance that Jerusalem needed. But now they take the truth up, they take up the main truth of it, and they apply it to the conditions then prevailing. And that's what I'm going to do tonight. I'm going to apply it to the conditions now reigning. Amen. I have plenty of Bible authority for that. Now may God then open all our hearts. And he was speaking to a people when he said this that were looking for the king to come. They got a completely wrong idea of what the king would do. They were familiar with this writing of Zedekiah. They were all devout Jews. They'd been brought up on Scripture. And the Lord said to them, You keep searching the Scripture. You think in them you'll have eternal life, but you don't come to me. It's terrible to read the Bible and not ever come to Jesus in it. You can't see that Jesus is there, arriving at this conclusion or that conclusion, or something else there, and not seeing that the main point of it all is to find him in it. And these were people looking for the king to come, and undoubtedly shocked that he should come to them riding on an ass. But he did, and he'd come for the point that is said here. In the days when he came, you will find it says in verse 10, he said he was going to cut off the chariot from Ephraim, the horse from Jerusalem, the battle bow shall be cut off, and so on and so on and so on. But when the Lord came to Jerusalem, the Romans were there. But under any other name, he's always speaking of the spirit that's at work. He's always speaking of either the activities of God or the activities of the devil. He may use a different name. He may call them Egyptians. He may call them Assyrians. He may call them, and he didn't do that in the Old Testament because they never dreamed about it, they might have called them Romans. But it's all the same. It's the spirit that's working that is the big thing. If it's the need, say, in Germany against Germans, the spirits of Nazism, he's working against that. Are you getting the truth? Is it coming over to you? Can you begin to see? If not, God open your eyes. He always uses truth, adapts it to the prevailing conditions, never changing it, not the truth. It's a big thing for us to grasp. We say, oh, well, it has nothing to do with us. That has to do with Assyria. That has to do with the Egyptians. That has to do with the Romans. This has to do with the Assyrians. This has to do, you see, and we can't see ourselves. We can't see our own conditions. We're as blind as, blind as, blind as the people that read the Scriptures and couldn't see that it was all to bring to Jesus. He said, you don't come to me. And if you've got your eyes open, you'll see me everywhere. That's the big thing. And I want to tell you this, that in your reading of the Scripture, nothing will lift you unless you begin to see this. Nothing will lift you. You'll need somebody else to come and interpret it to you. You'll need somebody else to preach it to you, unless you see this. Amen. Amen. May God quicken every spirit in this room unto understanding. We're going to do a tremendous thing. Now look at verse 12. Turn you to the stronghold, you prisoners of hope. Even, tremendous truth this, isn't it? Even today do I declare that I will render double unto you. He's talking about the double portion. He's going to do, he's going to give them all these prisoners of hope the double portion. And you know who got the double portion, don't you? The firstborn always got the double portion. You're all going to be firstborn unto me. This is the thing he's saying. Prisoners of hope. I don't know what hopes may be in your hearts. I don't know what hopes you may have about these meetings. I don't know whether you're a prisoner of hope. I do thank God that for his two children he does shut them up in hope castle, not doubting castle. That's where the devil shuts you. He shuts you up in hope castle. And he holds you there until hope turns to faith. You will never be a prisoner of faith. You can always be a prisoner of hope. But once you get to faith, you're liberated and hope becomes reality in your life. Isn't it wonderful that God shuts people up in hope? I ask you again, what are you hoping for? For being in this meeting tonight. What are you hoping will happen as a result of a series of meetings? Amen. Well listen, behold your king's coming. That's the big thing. Hallelujah. And all loyal citizens submit to what the king says. All loyal people to the king and they say, all right Lord Jesus, you're the king. You reign over me. You reign over everything. Just speak to me or even if you don't speak to me, just do something. That's okay by me. It's a blessed place to be in and if people didn't keep on persisting that God should speak to them, they wouldn't get so many people running off on false trails thinking God has spoken to them. That's rife in churches. Hallelujah. It's the difference between trying to exercise faith and living the life of faith. I'll talk to you more about that on another occasion. And it's so wonderful that the Lord wants us to see this, beloved. I'm so thrilled. Amen. That's in that wonderful chapter and we'll trace it through a bit more because I'm not yet at the chapter I'm going to preach about. It's been half an hour and we haven't got there yet. But we must have the correct introduction. I mean all good composers write an introduction. Don't they? Yes. Somebody said, so I guess it's right. Here is the big thing that the Lord wants us to see. We can go down that chapter and then of course we can get through the tenth. And in the eleventh chapter we find some tremendous things that God is speaking. For instance, in the fourth verse he speaks about the flock of the slaughter that has to be fed. You got that? And then he says in verse seven I will feed the flock of slaughter even you, O poor of the flock. And I took unto me two staves it's unusual for a shepherd to have two staves but he took two. The one I called beauty. Now you will know that in John 10 where it speaks about the good shepherd the word should be beautiful shepherd. It's Jesus. I took the staff called beauty. He was beautiful as he moved out in his land ministering to the people glorious, wasn't he? Those people must have thought he was the most beautiful person they'd ever met. And I'm not now talking of facial things. He was absolutely a beautiful man, wasn't he? Sometimes I wish I'd been on the earth then just to have met him. I would have known what a real shepherd was then. Because I didn't have a real good shepherd over me when I was younger. I don't know whether you have had but I didn't. He did his best. He moved in his limitations. He said, well we've all got them. Yes, yes, of course. That's why I mean I would have liked to have met the Lord because he never had anything missing. It was all there. How lovely it is. One of these days he called beauty and the other he called bands. Nowhere near before, don't you? How old people together. He spoke, you remember, there's going to be one flock and one shepherd. John chapter 10 I'm quoting from. The New Testament's in the old if you look for it. And we can go on. And he said this, I fed the flock. Three shepherds also I cut off in one month and my soul loathed them and their soul also abhorred me. Then said I, you say, all these shepherds where does this fit in with the Lord Jesus? Well, Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Herodians. He cut them all off one day. If you read your scriptures just like that, bump. They finished up, they couldn't say anything more. They abhorred him and his soul loathed them. They were the only people that he ever really deeply criticized. And so we go on. Then said he, I will not feed you that that that that dieth, let it die and that that is to be cut off, let it be cut off and let the rest eat every one the flesh of another. And I took my staff, even beauty, and cut it asunder that I might break my covenant which I had made with all the people. He said, well, I don't understand this. God breaking covenants, yes, he was going to end the old covenant. He was finishing that. Breaking it, he was on the earth under the old covenant. Break that all up. They had no responsibility to the rest of the world. They had nothing like that. He was going to finish it. It was only an interim thing. Let's go on. And it was broken in that day, and so the poor of the flock that waited upon me knew that it was the word of the Lord. And I said unto them, if you think good, give me my price, and if not forbear, so they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said unto me, cast it unto the potter a goodly price that I was prized at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord. Then I cut asunder mine other staff, even bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. Amen. And so we couldn't go on. I want to pass on quickly because of the time. Then we come to chapter 12. So now we've reached the point of betrayal. The thirty pieces of silver, it's all working out. See, isn't it marvelous how that can be worked into prophecy and into the happenings to Israel and Judah and Jerusalem. God never departs from it, beloved, He never has. Of course, you all know this, that all the sacrifices in Israel were all worked out upon the sacrifice made at the cross. Everything. But here we see it in the precious Word of God. Now He comes on to the burden. Okay. The burden of the Word of the Lord for Israel saith the Lord which stretcheth forth the heavens and layeth the foundation of the earth and formeth the spirit of man within. Now we're right back in Genesis. We're right back on God's creative power. And He's talking about forming the spirit of man in Him. That's what He's doing. That's what He's doing. I wonder what form your spirit has inside you. I wonder if I could see it, whether it would be ugly, whether it would be beautiful, whether it be genuine or whether it would be sham, whether it be something dressed up in religion, whether it would be old or whether it would be new. If you've been a prisoner of hope and God grant you have, if the need be there, I want to say that you're hearing something now. God can reform your spirit in you. And that's the thing. Unless that happens, it's mere outward reformation. Until God gets hold of the spirit of a man or a woman and until we allow Him to get hold of us and say to Him, Lord, You're the great Creator. I put my hands in You. I need to be reshaped. I need to be reformed. I need to be made anew. Until you get there, something's going to be radically wrong. Suffer me to repeat something I said a week or so ago. I don't know when it was, but the Brethren's Conference. The tragedy with most people in churches is precisely this. They never understand the Scripture. You can recall it. Here it is. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, the very last verse. You needn't turn to it. Where it says that God made our Lord Jesus to be sin. He who knew no sin. Made Him to be sin for us. That we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Now, you've got to come, first of all, to realize that not that you are a sinner, but that you are sin. That's what you've got to say. That you are abhorrent to God. Sin. He had to be made sin because I was sin. I thank God I can say was now. Until you see that, you come on the old system that religions are built up on. Is that you can just go to God and confess your sins and ask Him to forgive you. Oh Lord, I've done it again. Yeah, you get forgiven and you go again. Whole hierarchies and systems are built up on this system because they do not preach that their congregations are sin. You are sin. I am sin. Not just a sinner. I haven't just committed sin. I am sin. And that's why Jesus had to be made sin because until He was made sin, He never reached my state. And I've got to be reformed. Stop trying to get sins forgiven. You'd better go and join a hierarchy that has confessional boxes. That's the whole system, you see. You keep turning God into a father confessor. That's the tragedy. That's what 95% of evangelical churches are missing. They preach to sin. It says He came into the world to save sins. No, He did not really. He came into the world fundamentally to be made sin. That's it. Fundamentally. That we might be made righteousness. Not just righteous, righteousness. Solid righteousness through and through. That's the basis of all holiness. And until that's seen, people can't preach holiness properly. They can't live it. If you're having trouble, you've got to go to God and say, Lord, I'm sin, I know I am. I keep doing this thing again and again. It's my nature. That's right. Not so I've done it, Lord, please forgive me. I know you're loving and tender and gentle and forgiving. And I've been away with sheep and all this. You see? I had a phone message concerning somebody who'd been at that meeting. He was a new man when he got home. Because at last he faced up to it. That he was sin. He said, well, I won't go in. This is private business. Here's the secret. Glory be to God. To understand what it's all about. This is why the Roman Catholic Church gets so many adherents. You see? You're sprinkled when you're a babe. You're made a member of the church. Somebody lays their hands on you when you're 12. You might have come through that system. Or a parallel system. And then after that all we just keep doing is confessing. And that's it. That's okay. Keep confessing. You can never have sin dealt with. They have sins dealt with. And here is the tragedy. Beloved, if you've ever faced up to this, you'd better face up to it right sharp and now. Amen. God has to form your spirit in you. And he won't form it into the form of a sinner. He won't do that. I'm not saying you can't sin after that. That's not what I'm saying. I'm talking of things far more fundamental than that. May the Lord open all our eyes. And this is the way he goes on. And what I want you to see is this. That in this chapter, look at verse 3. Notice it. In that day, verse 4. In that day, verse 6. In that day, verse 8. In that day, verse 9. In that day, verse 1, chapter 13. In that day. And so it goes on to the end of the prophecy. One great day when God is going to do this. Amen. So now you'll know whether you've ever had a day like this. In the day. We, of course, will interpret it, if you like, as the day of salvation. If you want. And put it into a sort of very wide spectrum. It's been going on for near 2,000 years. And so we're back in the gradual position again. But no. There's got to come a day. Blessed be the name of the Lord. When the day came. Let's have a look. He says, in this blessed chapter, what he's going to do. Look. Verse 6. In that day, will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood. And like a torch of fire in a sheep. That's what he's going to do. Amen. Have you had a day, you governors of the churches? You people that move at this level, I've got to include myself in it. Have you ever had a day when God made you a fire? Has it ever happened to you? We're saying, send the fire. Has God ever made you a fire? Why do you think the Holy Ghost came under their Pentecost? Amen. Has it ever happened to you, my precious brother, my precious sister? Especially you leaders. In whatever capacity you may lead. I didn't necessarily say elder, you notice. You people that govern something. Has it ever happened to you? I want you to notice some things here. Verse 1. Form. Verse 6. Fire. Verse 8. All Fs. I didn't write the Bible, it's just come out this way. Feeble, see it? And chapter 1, chapter 13, verse 1. A fountain. You people that like to preach alliteratively, there you are. It's all there for you, in the Bible. You didn't have to try and hash it out at your desk. Open your Bible and read. Wonderful, isn't it? Here it is. Fire. Didn't you know that when you were formed by God, in what your experience of new birth, that you were formed for fire? And did you know you weren't formed except by the fire? That's what Pentecost shouts, written across the pages of the Bible. Some people think they're born again and get the fire ten years afterwards. God made me fire when he baptized me in the Spirit. I'm not boasting, I'm just telling you the truth. In case you say, well, I've never met anybody like that. These approximations to reality are the worst things of all. They blind people. They deafen people. God wants us to see this, beloved. Made me fire. Like a hearth of fire. Not just a match being struck that you can burn your fingers with. A hearth of fire among the wood. Hallelujah. You know what that means, don't you? Conflagration. Have you ever seen a forest fire? Have you? I was in Australia not so long ago, well, several years back. Fires were devastating hundreds, thousands of acres. Like a great tinderbox all going up. It was the blue gun, you know, because it goes off at flashpoint almost. Tremendous. Tremendous. You say, well, no, that's destroyed there. No, strangely enough, it hasn't. Twelve months after you go back, the old blackened trunks are spouting new green. Did you know that? Doesn't burn the trunks right up. That's the strange part of it. I was surprised. Old black trees there standing gorn and dark and burned easily. Green coming out all over them. New life. God burned up the fungus. He burned up the pests. He burned up, oh, everything, the rubbish. There it was. Hallelujah. When did it happen to you? Could it make you a fire, a hearth of fire? A hearth is the place where something keeps burning and burning and burning. Amen. A torch of fire in a sheath. In other words, it's not only to burn up, but it's a light to lighten the way in the darkness, a torch. When did it happen to you? When could you say to people, just do as I do, you be as I am? This is the way Paul talked. This is the way true New Testament people talk. Not boastfully. But knowledgably. So like old Paul, he could stand up before those great men when he was on trial and say, Oh God, you're not only almost, but altogether such as I am, except for these bonds. He rattled his chains, I guess. That's it. Unashamed, unafraid. News on the true ground. No boast. Thankfulness. Glory that you can speak to others. What's it all about? You won't be afraid to talk to your neighbours. You won't be afraid to go and evangelise your street when you're like this. It's shame, fear to hold you back. Said, oh well of course they all know I'm a Christian. Well how do they know you're a Christian? All they know is you take your Bible and go to church or something. Here's the thing, we're needing fire. All the substitutes for it that are being foisted on us. Young people growing up in it. The governors he's talking to. The people that have power and control, rule. They're the ones. God help us. He doesn't let anybody else off the hook, of course. You get fire, you'll soon be a governor of some sort. You may not be recognised as one. That's rather different. What a tremendous thing it is for us to understand what God's talking about. So different here. I missed out one of those F's. We'll look at it in a moment. But we'll read it. Let's go on. Listen. In that day, I'm in verse 8, shall the Lord defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and he that is feeble among them at that day, when the fire comes, shall be as David, and the house of David be as God, as the angel of the Lord before them. How about that one? When the fire comes, when you've been formed, your spirit's been formed by God into what he wants, that's into the very image and likeness of Jesus Christ. You're not talking about being feeble anymore. I can't do this, I'm weak. Feeble. And you say to Saul here, take your armor, I don't want this. That's what you'll say. People are trying to put armor on you, trying to show you how to protect yourself against the devil's attacks. Sermons preached on them to people who've never had the fire. Probably have never recognized that they are sin. And no amount of dressing up sin in armor will ever protect the person inside. None. The feeble be as David. I reckon you'd have slain some of your Goliaths if you had been. What a tremendous truth it is. And the house of David shall be as God. Now you will remember there are certain people in the earth that make a great play on that verse in Acts 15 which says that the tabernacle of David shall be built again. There's a lot built around that in some people's teachings. Of course they want to sing a lot. David was the psalmist. Here is the great thing, beloved. Oh God. If only some of us can have the scales torn away from our eyes. The house of David is going to be as God in the earth. Not a weakling among them. Oh glory be to the name of the Lord. Let's have no more talk about I'm weak or I'm poor this or I'm poor that or I'm something else. Let's have the truth, shall we? When the king comes, as we started off, even Mary would put salt for 30 pieces of silver. I'll tell you something, that's all it was worth. You see, what man, that's all he's worth, he was a slave. He came to be a slave. He came to be your slave and he'll wash your feet. Anything for you I'll do if it's for your good. That's Jesus. Bless him. His spirit is in the earth. In the house of David his spirit is there. He's our David. What a marvelous thing. Isn't he the son over his own house? All scripture in here as it all ties up. You a member of it? As God. As the angel of the Lord before them. Glory be to the name of the Lord. Don't get beguiled. I can do this, I can do that, I can do the other. No, it doesn't do that. You're on the wrong track if you're going that way. If you're there, you're down here humble at his feet. You'll realize that the house of David, the house of slaves, wasn't he a slave only paid 30 pieces of silver for him? How much do you think you're worth? And me? One worth of blood of the Lamb. Yes, I know. He bought me with his blood. He was my slave. My God, my slave. What? This isn't rubbing a lamp and a genie appears. This is understanding what God is doing and wanting. Revolutionary, isn't it? May the Lord open it right out. Listen. Here's something else. Verse 9. It shall come to pass in that day I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplications. Hallelujah. That's what I'll do. If you belong to this house of David, you're a man or a woman that's had the spirit of prayer and supplication poured out upon you, aren't you? I'm not asking you whether you say your prayers with your wife or before you go to bed or go to work in the morning. That's what I'm talking about. Whether the spirit of it has got you. I've been asked several times about an article that I wrote that was in a magazine, a pink thing. I really know, beloved, what this is. I really do thank God. He poured the spirit of grace upon you. See, you've got to have grace to pray unless you can't do it. Oh, I'm not saying you don't say prayers or don't get up and say praying in the meetings. That's not what I'm talking about. The spirit. He's reformed my spirit. He pours the spirit of grace and supplication upon me, the very spirit of it. The power of it. The life of it. The reality of it. Upon us. Pours it. You'll know whether you've been really baptized in the spirit or whether you haven't. God opened our eyes to what it is. Has someone robbed us of the fullness of all this by telling us one angle on it? Have they? That's the trouble with preaching. They put one angle on. One side. And it's got about 999 other angles and sides to it too. The spirit of prayer and supplication. Have you ever sobbed in prayer? Have you ever heard a broken heart praying? Have you? I saw God break a man's heart yesterday. No, he's not in a room, so don't look around. See, beloved. Spirit of prayer. You know what happened? I'll tell you. He could only walk about praying. That's all he could do. Talking to me, to the Lord, talking to me, to the Lord. Spirit of prayer, supplication. Tendered him. Broken him. Made a man of him. Have you ever let God make a woman of you yet? Have you ever let God make a man of you yet? Have you? Hallelujah. Let's read it. The word I missed out was family. Now we're coming on to the families. They shall look upon him who they've pierced me. They'll mourn for him, as one mourners for his only son, shall be embittered for him. You know where that's all quoted, don't you? Yes? No? Well, John's Gospel. Matthew takes it up. Book of the Revelation takes it up. They'll be embittered for him, as one that is embittered for his firstborn. In that day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of hated women in the valley of Megiddom. And the land shall mourn every family apart. So great is the mourning, we won't even be able to come together to pray. Apart. The family of David apart, and their wives apart. Not even a man and woman praying together. See? The family of the house of Levi apart, their wives apart. The family of Shimei apart, and their wives apart. In fact, all human relationships broken up when God pours the spirit of grace and supplication upon you. So I like to gather my family around me to pray. Good on you. There aren't many people in England who do that. But you're only on the outskirts of things. We're talking about the real thing from heaven. When it happens. When the break comes. When it really happens. Say, have you ever seen anybody like that? Yeah, I've seen them. Smashed. You know what for? For God's honor. For God's glory. That was always the order. And then for the state of the world, and for the salvation of souls. That was almost always the order in which I noticed it. What a tremendous thing. Liverpool needs this. Wouldn't you think? Would you say that this church, your church, needs this? What would you say? I say, oh God grant it. And with it all comes the next thing. With the fire, always. Chapter 13, verse 1. The fountains opened. There should be a fountain opened in the house of David. As it inhabits Jerusalem, a sin for uncleanness. It all happens in this day that he's talking about. The fountain opened. Glory to God. The fire and the fountain. All sin, all uncleanness, glory. We sing about it. There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunge beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains. I do believe, I will believe, that Jesus died for me. I've got to lose all my stains. I've got to have it all flooded out of me. I have to drink of the fountain. That's what it says. Opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. Amen. So you see, beloved, the road to holiness on the horse's bells, don't you? Hasn't finished there. So all sin and uncleanness gone. The great picture of it all, beloved, is holiness unto the Lord. I've got to hear it in the streets. I've got to hear it everywhere. I've got to be able to shut my eyes and not dream I'm listening to some fancy fiddler. Hear it everywhere. One of my favorite hymn writers wrote this. I hear the voice of joy and health resounding everywhere. Thou art my portion, O my God, ten thousand voices say. And the music of their grand arrangement shall never die away. Never. Someone was alive. Someone could hear it all. Amen. This is the glory of it all, beloved. Again, Lord's Salvation Army hymn. You can never go wrong on these lines. You know it? No? Yes, you do. You know? About plunging into the flood. It cleanseth me, it cleanseth me, O praise the Lord, it cleanseth me. I see the new creation rise. I hear the speaking blood. It speaks, polluted nature dies. That's the whole thing. Nature is sin. Or nature is holiness, one or the other. What a glorious truth it is for this to grasp, hold on, beloved, to get right hold of us. I thank God for these great truths. And let's go a step further. We're not quite ready to go home yet, are we? I promise not to keep you another hour. In verse 2, It shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts, that I will cut off the name of the idols out of the land. They shall no more be remembered. Listen to this. I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land, and it shall come to pass that when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live, for thou speakest lies in the name of the Lord, and his father and his mother that begat him shall trust him through when he prophesyeth. It shall come to pass in that day that the prophet shall be ashamed, every one of his vision, when he hath prophesied. Neither shall they wear a rough garment to deceive, but he shall say, I am no prophet. I am a husband, and man taught me to keep cattle from my youth. One shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thy hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. Awake, O sword! Think of this in the New Testament. Awake against my shepherd, against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts. Smite the shepherd, the sheep shall be scattered. I will turn mine hand upon the little ones. That's in Matthew. Not quite in the form it's written here. The adaptation to the conditions then prevailing. But the truth is the same. May God teach us this, we who seek to expound Scripture. What a wonderful thing it is, beloved. There won't be any more twaddle spoken out as prophecy. There won't be any more false prophecies, false visions, unclean spirits, all that out of the land. We'll hear the speaking blood. We'll hear it clearly. Washed in it. If it speaks before the throne, it speaks before my heart. It speaks before my understanding and my intelligence. And I pass into the realm of knowledge. For I know I know. Hallelujah. Don't you believe anybody who says you can't go by your own intelligence? You don't go by that in the first place. But you become quite intelligently saved. Not by your intellect, but it's there. And your own intelligence will teach you whether you're clean or whether you're not. Your own intelligence. That's why God doesn't save animals. Your own intelligence will tell you. Quickened by the Holy Ghost. Amen. All right. Beloved, I do declare unto you, and I'm one of them, I declare unto you that it's the prophets and the preachers that have led the vast majority of people astray. I don't mean that I'm one of them saying I'm deliberately leading men astray. I mean, and I prophesy, I preach, I teach. Men and women follow after them. Idle shepherds. If we'd had time, I would have read it to you. It's in these chapters we've read. All about God going to destroy the idle shepherds. Shepherds that become idols. The Corinthian church made either Paul or Apollos or Peter an idol. Followed their prophecies, followed their preachings. Oh Lord. Oh Lord. Cut out names. Cut out him. Cut out that. Lord, it's you. Glorify thyself, Lord. Set the fire. Open the fountain, Lord. Separate these families. Let the men pray apart from their wives. Let the wives pray apart from their husbands. Let them be individuals before God. That's all the church is made up of. The true church. Individuals before God. Men or women, and women too, I should say, have had their spirits formed in them. Amen. And when your spirit's formed, beloved, I want to tell you it's a predestinated thing. It can only go one way if it's going to go the right way. But it won't happen automatically. Keep me clean in the fountain, Lord. I want everything to be holy in the sight of the Lord. Everything. I know then I'll be fit for anything else you want me to do, Lord. Without a boast. Without a boast. Glory. You remember John said this. Little children, keep yourself from idols. That's how he closed his epistle. Keep yourself from idols. But surely Christians didn't have lumps of stone. No, he was meaning men. Keep yourself from them. Hallelujah, Lord. I see what the fire does. Lord, I want you to burn in me. I want you to burn on me. I want you to burn through me. Oh, God. We're saying to burn up every trace of sin. To let the light and glory in. The revolution now begins, Lord. Send the fire. Make my weak heart strong and brave. I want to live a dying world to save. Is that right? I don't really know you, if not. You're not my brother or my sister, if not. Can't be. This isn't the family. If you're just a baby, well, of course, you don't understand. Not yet. But you've got to grow up into this. There's only one thing to grow up into, and that's the biblical pattern. And the biblical pattern is really Jesus. So may God do great things among us in these days, beloved. I want him to come in a big, big way. Glory be to God. What do you want? Don't let's make some nice accepted statement. Say it because it's acceptable to people. Let's be real. That's going to cost you something. I want to tell you this. In your life, you have got to rule. We like to say God's ruling, but you've got to rule. He does not come to take your place. He comes to strengthen you from feebleness so that you can be as a David. You. You. He doesn't come to usurp your position. He loves you. He's come to make a real man of you, a real woman of you, so that you do make the right choices, so that you do go the right way. He loves you. He's no interested in dominating. He's no interested in dominating over you. He's your slave, this king. But you don't get him by rubbing a lamp. Here's the thing. I'll tell you this. We say he's reigning in glory, but I want to tell you he's got the father's slave. And in the end, he hands everything up to the father because it belongs to him. Read it in 1 Corinthians 15. It's all yours, father. That God may be all in all. Isn't this wonderful? Are you in this? Are you really in it? All right. You're in this day, are you? Or can you see it only just dawning over the horizon? I remember, and I think I'm going to finish now, when I was a young man, I didn't know what God had for me in the future. I was in a church where they didn't know anything about the things the Spirit of God taught. But I can remember two successive nights, don't hesitate to say this in case you think this has got to happen to you, two successive nights, I knelt down by my bed. I wasn't born again, but I knew the right way. I'd been put on it in that sense. And on two successive nights, it was as though I was looking through the dark, and just on the horizon, I could see gold just coming into the dark. The sun was rising. I wondered what it was. I know now. I know now. There are lots of people, they sit over the horizon and think as I thought I was a Christian. To be in the full blaze of the day, to be living in the fountain, to have a fire, to become like David, to build a house that's like God in the earth. All right, let's pray. Where are you? Father, when I saw the cleansing fountain open wide for all my sin, I obeyed the Spirit's wooing when he said, Won't thou be clean? Lord, send the fire.