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Preaching About the Lord's Day (Clip)
Rolfe Barnard
Rolfe P. Barnard (1904 - 1969). American Southern Baptist evangelist and Calvinist preacher born in Guntersville, Alabama. Raised in a Christian home, he rebelled, embracing atheism at 15 while at the University of Texas, leading an atheists’ club mocking the Bible. Converted in 1928 after teaching in Borger, Texas, where a church pressured him to preach, he surrendered to ministry. From the 1930s to 1960s, he traveled across the U.S. and Canada, preaching sovereign grace and repentance, often sparking revivals or controversy. Barnard delivered thousands of sermons, many at Thirteenth Street Baptist Church in Ashland, Kentucky, emphasizing God’s holiness and human depravity. He authored no major books but recorded hundreds of messages, preserved by Chapel Library. Married with at least one daughter, he lived modestly, focusing on itinerant evangelism. His bold style, rejecting “easy-believism,” influenced figures like Bruce Gerencser and shaped 20th-century Reformed Baptist thought.
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Sermon Summary
This sermon emphasizes the importance of dedicating the Lord's Day solely to God, without mixing it with worldly pleasures or distractions. It warns against the danger of treating God's holiness lightly and the consequences of not honoring His commandments. The message calls for a deep examination of one's heart and actions to ensure that God is truly at the center of one's life.
Sermon Transcription
You need to examine yourself. If all about you men are making a holiday out of the Lord's Day, you dead sure need to examine yourself of whether that day is for the Lord in your life. For the Lord and nothing else. Not for the Lord and pleasure. Not for the Lord and going to see Grandma. Not for the Lord and going fishing. Not for the Lord and anything. Just for the Lord. That's his day. Amen. That's the God's truth. You don't believe America's in a mess. You watch the church members making a holiday out of God's holiness. That's a mark of the death of a people that surely Rothbard is preaching to you. You're living in a generation where the Sunday morning Christianity that the stench in the nostrils of the Holy God is making one wonder why God don't burn our church people up every Sunday morning as they get out of that back door in a hurry to go do something that will pamper their flesh the rest of the day. They sit by that television. They go fishing. They do this. They do that. And they go and split hell wide open. A Christian does not knowingly and willfully violate God's holy law. He delights in it. And he meditates in it day and night. And the commandments of the Lord God are not grievous to his children. They're precious. They're delightful.
Preaching About the Lord's Day (Clip)
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Rolfe P. Barnard (1904 - 1969). American Southern Baptist evangelist and Calvinist preacher born in Guntersville, Alabama. Raised in a Christian home, he rebelled, embracing atheism at 15 while at the University of Texas, leading an atheists’ club mocking the Bible. Converted in 1928 after teaching in Borger, Texas, where a church pressured him to preach, he surrendered to ministry. From the 1930s to 1960s, he traveled across the U.S. and Canada, preaching sovereign grace and repentance, often sparking revivals or controversy. Barnard delivered thousands of sermons, many at Thirteenth Street Baptist Church in Ashland, Kentucky, emphasizing God’s holiness and human depravity. He authored no major books but recorded hundreds of messages, preserved by Chapel Library. Married with at least one daughter, he lived modestly, focusing on itinerant evangelism. His bold style, rejecting “easy-believism,” influenced figures like Bruce Gerencser and shaped 20th-century Reformed Baptist thought.