The Preacher's Fire

We are in the Preaching Institutes of Evangelism Awakening and we will now enter upon session two, The Preacher's Fire. I was sitting at my seminary graduation table the evening before I received my Ph.D. and it was testimony time. Students could stand at the microphone and give a testimony if they liked and I remember a young evangelist jumped up there and told the crowd that last month he held a crusade in a certain city and he got 1,200 people saved and everybody in that room began to hoot and holler and clap their hands and shout hallelujah.

That is everybody except me. I just sat there in disbelief that our man-centered humanistic tactics that we use in modern evangelism can get us as many converts as we want but we must ask ourselves some burning questions. Is God the agent of salvation or is man? Are men saved as a result of a decision they make or as the result of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit? Where are all the supposed converts of mass evangelism from the last 30 or 40 years? Where are they today? Are they living godly lives separated unto God and spreading the gospel in their generation or are they still in the world they never came out from to begin with? God declares in Jeremiah 23 39.

It's not my word like as a fire saith the Lord. Today we will examine this important aspect of the preached word where it is like a fire. Too much for preaching today I'm afraid.

It's like a damp dish rag in stagnant soapy water. People leave the sanctuary the same way they came in unchanged. Let me ask you a question friend.

What does fire do? It awakens in alarms. If you were asleep in bed and your house was on fire you would suddenly be awakened and alarmed. Searching preaching should have the same effect on our hearers.

When the preached word of God comes in as a fire sinners should be awakened to their lost condition and alarmed of the terrors of a broken law. A fire also throws light on a subject and exposes all the cockroaches crawling in the heart. In first Corinthians 3 we read every man's work shall be made manifest for the day shall declare it because it should be revealed by fire and consequently a fire also tests the quality of a thing.

Silver and gold are placed into the refiners fire to test their quality and to purge out all dross and impurities. Again first Corinthians chapter 3 reads and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. I remember years ago I was preaching on a Sunday morning to a church that was in great division.

The church was split between two factions and there was much infighting among the members. The text I chose that particular morning was revelation chapter 20 and my subject was the final judgment day and as I described the purity of that great white throne and the terrible judge who sat there on it with eyes of fire with as intense scrutiny as he revealed and reviewed every man's work and how I elaborated on my theme how the dead the small and the great will stand there completely stripped before a holy god while the flashes of a burning lake cast a red glowing glare behind them. I could see the faces of my audience suddenly change and their looks were altered.

God had come in like a fire by his spirit and brought them to the very verge of eternity and set their consciences on flame. When the word of God is preached in its purity and proper order men and women and boys and girls will become alarmed to their danger of dying in their sins and being damned in a devil's hell. Hellfire will flash upon their soul and they will feel the heat of it and their perilous position in it of dying outside Christ's blood.

The preacher's fire will both illuminate and illustrate their danger. I remember when I was conducting my research on my definitive biography of Azahel Nettleton. I traveled to 60 locations throughout three states to the very scenes of historical revival which took place under the mighty preaching of Nettleton at the height of the second great awakening.

Azahel Nettleton was a holy man of God full of the Holy Ghost and when he preached he preached with fire. In Luke's gospel chapter 3 John the Baptist declared, I indeed baptize you with water but one mightier than I cometh the lachet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.

I have known some men who preached with fire and when I started to study the life and ministry of Azahel Nettleton I soon learned he was a remarkable man who preached with a Holy Ghost fire. One evening during the second great awakening Azahel Nettleton was preaching out of Genesis chapter 19 and he was describing to his audience in vivid detail the burning of Sodom. How the buildings crumbled as they fell in smoke and ashes.

How flames shot up among the inhabitants and consumed them of that doomed city. How brimstone came crashing down through the roofs and burned them up in intense flames of fire and as he spoke an eyewitness recorded that Nettleton's imagery was so real and compelling that as he described Sodom on fire and he pointed out across the crowd the people turned about in their seats and looked to the windows to witness the conflagration. Good preaching will do that friends.

It will unsettle you, disturb you, get under your skin so piercingly and annoyingly that you will look away from yourself and look up to a holy sovereign God who holds salvation in his hands. But for you to preach like that brother preacher you must be anointed with a power from on high. God must speak through you by his spirit and attend the preaching of his word.

He must have an anointing of the spirit of God. D.L. Moody yearned and prayed for that fire and one day while walking the streets New York City he said that God fell upon him and he rushed into a nearby friend's house to a solitary bedroom where he locked the door while God's spirit was poured out upon him. He received the baptism of the spirit that day and Moody said at that time it was too sacred of an experience to go into much detail about it.

Moody commented after that I preached the same sermons but they had a altogether different effect upon my hearers. Lives were suddenly changed for eternity. Well this ends our lesson today friends.

We will prepare our hearts for the third lecture the preacher's sword.