The Man of God's Arsenal Fire Hammer and Sword

The great British evangelist George Whitefield was once asked permission for his sermon to be printed. His reply was, yes sir, as long as you do not omit the thunder, the lightning, and the rainbow. Do you get his illustration, friends? Thunder awakens and alarms.

This is the preached law of God thundered about the ears of the hearers to awaken them to their lost condition and great danger of dying in their sins. Flashes of lightning speak of the Holy Spirit bringing conviction of sin as the spotlight of the Spirit of God shines into the dark places of sin in a person's life. And the rainbow speaks of peace with God through reconciliation and the forgiveness of sins as found in the loveliness of the person of Jesus Christ.

When George Whitefield preached, he was like Mount Sinai for he was altogether on a smoke. But when some of us preach today, our hearers get up to leave to go out and have a smoke. Our preaching lacks power from on high.

It lacks the search and spotlight of the Holy Spirit in conviction of sin, and it lacks saving power in the person of Jesus Christ. The reason for this impotency in the pulpit is due to the fact that somewhere along the way, your average pastor has misplaced a few important items. He has misplaced his hammer.

He cannot find his sword, and he has no fire because he's like Samson who went out as before time and shook himself. But the Spirit of the Lord had departed from him, and he knew it not. Let me ask you a question, brother preacher.

Is your preaching setting anyone on fire for God? There is an arsenal available to us preachers and gospel workers, which if used properly can make us an effectual weapon in the hand of God. We will be able to tear down spiritual strongholds of sin and set the captives free. Of which I speak is the arsenal of the hammer, the sword, and the fire.

And that's the title of my message tonight, friends. A fire, a hammer, and a sword. The man of God's arsenal.

And my text can be found in several passages this evening. We will be in the book of Jeremiah in chapter 23. You can turn in your bibles there now.

We have a description of the power of the word as found in verse 29. Allow me to read that to us at this time. And may the Spirit of the Lord attend the reading of his holy word.

It's not my word like as a fire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces. Our text compares God's word with both fire and a hammer. I want to address this first aspect, friends, of the hammer of God's word.

There are very few churches out there which have any real soul-winning power. Oh, they make enough of their own converts with a watered-down gospel and an easy-to-believe invitation. But the result is a membership which is predominantly unsaved and there's no power in the pulpit.

There's little spiritual activity transpiring in the average Sunday morning service in this country. People come in the sanctuary one way and they leave the same way, unchanged. What goes on in most churches is either a form of religion through liturgy and lecture or a house of entertainment with laughter and applause.

I was recently in a large megachurch where the visiting preacher knew how to work a crowd through emotion and audience participation. And he had them clapping and laughing so much you thought you were at the circus. And a circus can draw a crowd.

But where is the power of God in a meeting today? Listen, friends, I believe the answer to our impotency in our pulpits today lies in our unused arsenal of the hammer, the sword, and the fire. Allow me to explain. In Jeremiah in our text, God declares that his word is like a hammer that does what? It breaks the rock in pieces, smashes it.

And that's what our preaching should be doing. It should be breaking up the false foundation of an unconverted individual. The preached word should chip away at all self-righteousness and good works.

It should smash all pride and self-reliance to where one is shut up entirely to God for salvation. It was said of Leonard Ravenhill that when he preached, he was like a shotgun because he hit you all over. And when Rolf Barnard preached, he held a Bible in one hand and a stick of dynamite in the other.

And Mordecai Ham, when he preached, you felt like you were flattened with a baseball bat. These men knew how to use the preached word of God effectually, where it broke up the false foundations of carnal security. They each preached with a big hammer in their hand.

And Rolf Barnard's preaching laid people out like they were hitting the head with a hammer, for several of them had to be carried out of a Barnard meeting on stretchers because they were insensible. When a preacher brings out his next tool in his arsenal, he sets people afire. In Jeremiah, God says that his word is like a fire.

What does a fire do, friend? It alarms. It awakes. It awakens someone to their great danger of being burned.

And that's what good preaching should do. It should awaken someone to their lost condition. Listen, brother preacher, when we preach, we should preach up the law of God into a sinner's ears so much that the heat is turned up on high.

The preach law should startle a person like a fire would and alarm them to their great danger of dying in their sins and burning in a hot hell. When a person is shown that God requires perfection to get to his heaven and his litmus test is a strict and severe law, all will fail that test because no one is perfect. So the preached word becomes a fire to awaken and alarm a sinner to his great danger of being on the wrong side of God because all men and all women are guilty rebels who have broken the strict law of God.

Sin is a crime. It's treason against the sovereign king and lawbreakers deserve punishment for the sentence of the law must be carried out by a just judge. Do you want to start setting your church on fire, brother pastor? Then start preaching with a lit torch in your hand.

Preach up the strict law of God and hold up the severe word of God of the gospel with all its rights and claims on a person. And you have some deacons hot on your trail to run you out of your church, but it'd be worth it because maybe, just maybe somebody will get saved in the process. Our preaching today is like a damp dish rag and many preachers are all wet.

Oh when, oh when will we get back to our bibles and the great doctrines of our bibles and begin preaching them with the arsenal that's at our disposal of the fire, the hammer, and the sword. And that brings us to our next weapon in the man of God's arsenal, which is the sword. Turn in your bibles to the book Hebrews in chapter 4 and verse 12.

Listen to this description of the word of God as a sword, friends. For the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the divide and asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and attempts of the heart. Brother pastor, is your preaching like a sword that cuts one's conscious with conviction of sin? Or you hear as being stabbed in the heart with conviction and crying out, oh what must I do to be saved? When I would sit under the preaching of Stephen Oldford, I felt as if I was being run through with a claymore.

The preached word of God in Dr. Oldford's hands was a mighty sword which he pierced you through with. Listen friends, a sword kills and that's what good preaching should do. It should kill people.

Show them they are dead and trespasses and sin, and their only hope of life is in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Preachers in former times knew how to properly wield this sword of God in the conviction of sinners. I'll never forget a story I read about Charles Fanny.

In fact, I put it in my first book on revival. Reality is a revival. Let me read you part of that chapter now, which Fanny is relating a story about a sermon he preached one time in a village in upstate New York, where the people there were openly wicked.

You couldn't walk down the sidewalk without hearing vile speech and cursing and cussing and taking the name of God in vain. Here now are Fanny's words. I had taken no thought with regard to a text upon which to preach, but waited to see the congregation, as I was in the habit of doing in those days before I selected a text.

As soon as I had done praying, I rose from my knees and said, Up, get ye out of this place, for the Lord will destroy this city. I said I did not recollect where the text was, but I told them very nearly where they would find it, and then went on to explain it. I said that there was such a man as Abraham, and also who he was, and that there was such a man as Lot, and who he was.

Their relations to each other, they're separating from each other on account of differences between their herdmen, and that Abraham took the hill country, and Lot settled in the vale of Sodom. I then told them how exceedingly wicked Sodom became, and what abominable practices they fell into. I told them that the Lord decided to destroy Sodom, and visited Abraham, and informed him what he was about to do, that Abraham prayed to the Lord to spare Sodom if he found so many righteous there, and the Lord promised for their sakes that then Abraham besought him to save it for a certain less number, and the Lord said he would spare it for their sakes, that he kept on reducing the number until he reduced the number of righteous persons to ten, and God promised him that if he found ten righteous persons in the city, he would spare it.

Abraham made no further request, and Jehovah left him, but it was found that there was but one righteous person there, and that was Lot, Abraham's nephew. While I was relating these facts, I observed the people looked as if they were angry. Many of the men were in their shirt sleeves, and they looked at each other, and at me as if they were ready to pitch into me, and chastise me for something on the spot.

I saw their strange and unaccountable looks, and could not understand what I was saying that had offended them. However, it seemed to me that their anger rose higher and higher as I continued the narrative. As soon as I had finished the narrative, I turned upon them and said that I understood that they'd never had a religious meeting in that place, and that, therefore, I had a right to take it for granted, and was compelled to take it for granted that they were an ungodly people.

I pressed that home upon them with more and more energy, with my heart full to bursting. I had not spoken to them in this strain of direct application, I should think, more than a quarter of an hour, when all at once an awful solemnity seemed to settle down upon them, and a something flashed over the congregation, a kind of shimmering, as if there was some agitation in the atmosphere itself. The congregation began to fall from their seats, and they fell in every direction, and cried for mercy.

If I had had a sword in each hand, I could not have cut them off their seats as fast as they fell. Indeed, nearly the whole congregation were either on their knees or prostrate, I should think, in less than two minutes from this first shock that fell upon them. Everyone prayed for himself.

Who was able to speak at all? I, of course, was obliged to stop preaching, for they no longer paid any attention to me. Now that, friends, is a story about a man with the word of God in his hand like a sword, in Finney's case a literal one, that cut them off their seats in conviction of sin. They were yelling and crying for mercy.

Let me ask you, brother preacher, when was the last time you slayed your hearers with the preached word of God like it was a broadsword, cutting them with conviction of sin? I believe if we preachers would just take God at his word, and believe our bibles as we should, and take up those great doctrines of the gospel, and preach them with authority and conviction, and use the arsenal of God's weapons which are at our disposal, the fire, the hammer, and the sword, that maybe, just maybe, the Spirit of the Lord would anoint that kind of preaching with such God-given power that somebody's going to cry out and beg God for mercy, and say, what must I do to be saved? We preachers need to trade in the tools we've been using for the last 40 years because they have lost their edge. We need to put away our joke telling, and funny stories, and alliterated fill-in-the-blank teaching, and get back to the old paths of preaching up the cross, and the blood, and calling sin black, and hell hot, to where our preaching is on fire, and we are warning men, and women, and boys, and girls to flee from the wrath to come, and to seek refuge in the person of Jesus Christ. Let us preachers appropriate the power of God in the preached word, and just maybe, just maybe, we will once again see the power of God in a meeting, all to his glory.

Amen.