Pulpits with Baptism of Fire

When I study the sermons of preachers from 150 to 175 years ago and compare them to what passes for preaching today, I feel ashamed at our lack. A man of former days knew full well the wicked windings of the human heart and the rude nature of a sinner. They preached awakening sermons to awaken a person to their lost condition and preached up the great doctrines of grace with such power and influence that it shut men up to a holy God for salvation to the point where the sinner was confronted with the law of God as it was thundered in his ears and the Holy Spirit would attend that kind of preaching with such authority and conviction of sin that a sinner would quake and tremble before Sinai all on a smoke.

I want to talk to you tonight, friends, about pulpits with the baptism of fire and that's the title of my message and my text can be found in the book of Psalms. You can turn in your Bible there now, friends. We will be in Psalm 18 and verse 7. Let me read that to us at this time as we read about the terrible majesty of the Almighty and may the Spirit of the Lord attend His holy word.

Then the earth shook and trembled. The foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because He was wroth. I will stop there, friends.

I fear in our day we have shrunken God down to man's size and put Him on our level and we've cheapened the gospel message by diluting it to make it easier to swallow by sinful man. But old-time preachers weren't afraid to call sin black and hell hot, and they warned about a future judgment that awaited all mankind. They preached up God in His terrible majesty and portrayed man as nothing but a guilty rebel who deserved punishment for sin.

That man was born under a curse and with a poison in his blood. And if you want to be saved from a burning hell, then you must get under the blood of a crucified Christ who died for sin. These old-time preacher boys knew how to get a man lost and under conviction of sin so they could see their need of a Savior from sin.

I want to take time now, friends, to read you a sermon extract from one of these old preachers from long ago, and I want you to see the vast difference between it and how we preach today. You see, today, friends, we have mostly teachers in our pulpits and teaching informs, but preaching transforms, and there's a big difference. The man I'd like to read about today to you is a man from Scotland in the 19th century who God used in mighty revivals.

His name was Robert French, and I want to take his sermon from one of these revival sermons that this man preached. He died a young man, very tragically, but his sermon touched so many and saved so many in Glasgow, Scotland. Here now is a sermon extract, and pay attention as I proceed for you're in for a treat, friends, and maybe, just maybe, somebody listening to it might get saved this evening.

The conversion of sinners is to be secured only by the Spirit of God. For it is not by power, nor by might, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. Suppose we saw an army sitting down before a granite fort, and they told us they intended to batter it down.

We might ask them how. They point to a cannon-ball. Well, there's no power in that.

It is heavy, but not more than a hundred weight. If all the men in the army hurled it against the fort, they would make no impression. They say, but look at the cannon.

Well, there is no power in that. A child may ride upon it, and a bird may perch upon it. It is a machine, and nothing more.

But look at the powder, they say. But there is no power in that. A child may play with it, and a sparrow may peck it.

Yet this powerless powder and powerless ball are put into the powerless cannon, and one spark of fire enters it, and then, in the twinkling of an eye, that powder is a flash of lightning, and that ball a thunderbolt, which smites as if it had been sent from heaven. So it is with our church machinery. We have all the instruments necessary for pulling down strongholds, and, oh, for the baptism of fire! No church, therefore, can prosper without the presence of the Holy Spirit.

No sinner can be turned from the errors of his ways without his aid. It is the Spirit who regenerates and sanctifies. The Spirit is like the spark of fire to the loaded cannon.

Without it, we just have machinery. I will stop there, friends. Did you like that vivid imagery, that message of a God-centered gospel, whereby God is the one who saves? I praise God.

It is my prayer that our pulpits today will have a baptism of fire in these desperate days in which we live. Let us pray along these lines, friends, as we go to the Almighty in prayer. Let us pray.