INTRODUCTION...Today, what I want to offer you is a launching pad...one that lights the FIRE of the HOLY GHOST in each of you with PRICKED HEARTS...the same PRICKED HEARTS they had at Pentecost.
What does it mean to have a PRICKED HEART? It is the act of your heart being pierced by “GOD”...ACTS 2:37 says... “Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?” These men heard the word of God and asked “What shall we do?”
And Peter in VERSES 38 said to them... “38 ...Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”
First it says...Repent and be baptizes...then second receive the gift of the Holy Ghost...that is TRUE SALVATION!
And here is where I may get in trouble...but somewhere along the way we forgot the second part!
Again I must say these 2 things...
FIRST... “The world has lost the power to blush over its vice; the Church has lost her power to weep over it.”
SECOND... “I believe that today the world is going to HELL FIRE because the church has lost the HOLY GHOST FIRE, it’s as simple as that.” LETS PRAY!
MESSAGE FOCUS AND PASSAGES...Today we will focus on these 2 verses and the message they provide for us...
JOEL 1:13says..."Gird yourselves, and lament ye priests, howl ye ministers of the altar. Come, lay all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God. For the meat offering and the drink offering is witholden from the house of your God. Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly."
Then to JOEL 2:17...“Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare Thy people O Lord, and give not Thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them. Wherefore should they say among the people, Where is your God?"
This world lays in the clutches of sin today...we are fat, bloated, and have forgotten how to weep for the sinfulness that lays all around us and I lay the blame at the feet of God's chosen messengers...the ministers.
We tell them what they want to hear...that God will forgive them if they repent...but we conveniently forget to tell them how to repent...we do not lay out God's righteous and true plan for repentance.
Dr. Carl F. Henry, founder and editor of Christianity Today, sent out a questionnaire to what he called... "Twenty of the most learned and leading intellectual preachers in the country of my day" and he got many responses back.
One of the question that he sent out was this: "What do you see for the church of Jesus Christ by the year 2000."
Now the year 2000 has already passed so we can see just how true the answers were.
One reply stood out...it was given by Elton Trueblood, a noted Quaker philosopher and He said... "By the year 2000 the church will be a conscious minority surrounded by arrogant and militant paganism."
Sound familiar? Christianity is surrounded by militant paganism...Islam...and we may be in the minority.
Leonard Ravenhill a great outdoor revivalist said... “I swallowed that hook, line, and sinker and I woke up about 2 o'clock in the morning with mental and spiritual indigestion. Then I began to remind myself that Christianity was not served up on a silver platter at the start. Christianity in the early church was walled in on one side with the mightiest military machine in history, the power of Rome. It was walled in on the other side by Greek intellectualism. It was blocked ahead by the monopoly the Jews thought they had on God.”
And it is similar today...the faithful few are walled in on one side by mighty armies, ours included, and we have wars and rumors of wars...the Church today is walled in on the other side by the intellectuals in government and everyday life...and it is being blocked by the doctrine and laws coming from the denominations of today's church and the monopoly they think they have on God.
Never before...not even in Jesus time...has the church been so blind and hardened by doctrine and the religious ideas of a few who spout a “Jesus is Love-forgiveness” doctrine of FAITH than today.
Yet for God the sins of the world break His heart...the blindness to true repentance breaks His heart...the arrogance and bloated condition of the church breaks His heart...and the lack of the Holy Ghost' influence in our midst BREAKS HIS HEART!!!
See today we say come to Jesus and He will forgive...and if you come in true repentance He certainly will.
But we forget to tell them that He said after finding Faith...we are to “Go and sin no more”!
We need to get back to the Church God founded thru Peter and Stephen over 2000 years ago. AMEN!!!
Those men of Pentecost and that first church literally turned the world upside down because they had...
NO COLOSSAL INTELLECTUAL CAPACITY...they did not think, they followed the lead of the HOLY GHOST!
NO GREAT FINANCIAL BACKING...they experienced a Biblical Revival which only cost BROKEN HEARTS!
NO SOCIAL STANDING...they were common people who were WORKING FOR AN UNCOMMON CAUSE!
In Jerusalem at the time they were about the most despised men.
And yet they broke out somehow...and it was later said that they turned the world upside-down.
If we, as Saints of God, are to do the same thing today...we need to rediscover what they had...and that was the FIRE and the POWER of the HOLY GHOST.
I think at least once a week...sometimes once a day about what Dr. J. B. Phillips, who gave us the Phillips New Testament...said about the first chapters of Acts...and I pray often about those concerns...listen... "The First Church is the church of Jesus Christ before it became fat and out of breath by prosperity. This is the church of Jesus Christ before it became muscle bound by over organization. This is the church of Jesus Christ where they didn't gather together a group of intellectuals to study psycho somatic medicine, they just healed the sick, ministered to the lost, and spread the Word of our Lord. This is the church of Jesus Christ where they did not say prayers, but they prayed prayers...and always in the Holy Ghost."
Therein lies a great difference between the first Church and today's Church...the tragedy in our colleges and seminaries right now is that we turn men out who know the word of God and that...just knowing the Word of God...is never going to turn the world upside down...not then and not NOW!.
FIRST...THE QUESTION IS NOT DO THEY KNOW THE WORD OF GOD...BUT DO THEY KNOW THE GOD OF THE WORD?
Just to give a man a license to preach because he has academic ability is like giving a blind man a driving license.
If he doesn't know God, why is he in this business?! Harsh...but by Biblical standards...TRUE!
HEAR ME... WE HAVE TO MAKE UP OUR MINDS IF THIS BOOK IS ABSOLUTE OR OBSOLETE.
The Gospel is neither a discussion nor a debate...it is an announcement...AMEN!!!
If the truth was that at Pentecost “cloven tongues like as of fire...sat upon each of them...” then it is true now!
The God of the Word has got the answer for this generation or any other generation...or we can just forget it.
We have to make up our minds that preaching is not a profession, it's a passion.
I heard this story about Hugh Price Hughes who at one time he was the king of the Methodist pulpit in England. His daughter gave us a huge biography of her father. And in it she said, “When he came back from a Sunday night service, if no one had been saved, he would be inconsolable. You couldn't comfort him. He wouldn't eat, he wouldn't drink. He wouldn't even take his long coat off. He threw himself across his bed and cried uncontrollably and said, Why? Why? Why? And then He prayed ALL NIGHT!"
Isn't it staggering when you think that one sermon on the day of Pentecost produced 3000 people for God?
And we had some cities last Sunday where 3000 sermons were preached and nobody was saved...and it doesn't even faze us...how many ministers do you think actually went home and cried?
THE CHURCH USED TO BE A LIGHTNING BOLT, NOW IT'S A CRUISE SHIP.
WE ARE NOT MARCHING TO ZION...WE ARE SAILING THERE WITH EASE.
MOST CHRISTIAN ARE JUST SITTING AND WAITING TO BE RAPTURED. SO WHAT IS WRONG WITH US?
In the APOSTOLIC CHURCH (the Pentecost Church) it says they were all amazed...and now in our churches everybody wants to be amused...every minister has got to have a catch in his sermon...a joke to get started.
Listen to me...the church began in the upper room with a bunch of men agonizing after being BREATHED UPON BY THE SPIRIT...and it's ending in the supper room with a bunch of people just organizing.
We mistake a little rattle for revival, and commotion for creation, and action for unction.
In the Pentecost Church...they never gave an invitation at the end of a sermon...NEVER...people were just CONVICTED...their hearts were just PRICKED...and they just came...AMEN!!!
SECOND...I THINK THIS IS A CRITICAL HOUR IN OUR HISTORY, THE MOST CRITICAL HOUR IN OUR HISTORY EVER!
The Middle East is ready to blow up...the prestige of this nation has gone down...and Islam is getting mightier!
“A pastor I know said he was old enough to remember the years prior to the Vietnam conflict. His cousin had been to their house about a month before he was to go, as straight as a ram-rod. He had joined up and proudly wore his marine uniform. This pastor said as a child he looked at him and thought... 'My, what a marvelous thing to be a soldier.' Then the cousin went to Vietnam and he came back a physical and emotional wreck.”
Why do I tell you that...Beloved...hear me...war is not only unchristian...it is uncivilized...yet because of the state of the world we feel it is necessary...and we've been involved in war after war since that war.
I want you right now to in your minds go back to prior to World War I...we called that the “War to end all wars”.
Before the war England had a group of intellectuals called “Fabian Socialists”.
These red bearded man...all great minds...gave us plays like Pygmalion and My fair lady … George Bernard Shaw was one of these super intellectuals but really, the leader was a self anointed and self-appointed prophet of a new world order and his name was H. G. Wells and he was a cocky little man.
These men did not talk about redemption or about sin ... they were just rationalists...just humanists.
Away back in 1912, two years before the 1914 war, H. G. Wells had said... "It is possible for us to have a new race of people by intellectual and biological processes. We don't need the Bible, we don't need the church, we can pull down the hills of wealth, we can fill up the valleys of poverty."
He didn't talk about sin and redemption and wickedness...he talked about the adequacy of materialism...he talked about the inevitability of progress...he talked about the self-sufficiency of man.
They were going to bring in a new era...new age...new world order...but then a shadow came over the sky.
We had the 1914-18 war...WWI and at the end H. G. Wells and the gang were not so sure anymore.
And then in 1939 came another world war...World War II and Hitler also came spouting a super race.
Well, H. G. Wells had written his outline of history, but the last book he wrote in the middle of World War II was not about this same rosy optimism...his last book was titled... “Mind at the end of it's Tether”.
See his heart had changed and he said this... "There is no hope for humanity."...and then he said one more sensible thing... "There is a little cavity somewhere in the human breast which can be filled by God and only by God." AMEN!!!
THIRD...WE FEEL A LITTLE NERVOUS THESE DAYS OF TALKING ABOUT HUMAN DEPRAVITY...TALKING ABOUT THE GRAVENESS OF OUR SINFULNESS!
Well, heaven knows, there has never been as much depravity...as much sinfulness around as we have today.
Look at the iniquity that was on the earth when the prophet Elijah came on the scene.
The nation was in bondage to idolatry, and impurity, and infidelity, and indifference.
And this great Prophet stepped out and gave the people what God revealed to him.
And it is my contention this morning that this pulpit is no place for puppets...we've got to do the same.
In this day in which we live WE NEED MORE BIBLICALLY INSPIRED PROPHETS and less preaching!
A Jewish scholar says... "The prophet, by the very nature of his calling, is a tragic figure. He has a fierce loyalty toward God and he has a broken heart over a lost and spiritually broken nation."
Minister...is you heart broken today...then stand up and preach like it...and weep for the lost.
We miss the mark when we tell people who are morally good, and there are some out there, that Jesus Christ came into the world to make bad men good. HE DID NOT. THAT'S JUST A FRINGE BENEFIT.
The first argument God has with a man is not that he's bad, it's that he is DEAD in trespasses and in sin!
We've got to get in Pulpits in America today and start preaching true SALVATION...HOLY GHOST SALVATION!
Jesus did not only come to the world as a human just to die and SAVE YOU...He also came to this world as a human to SAVE YOU FROM YOUR SIN...YES...FROM YOUR SINFUL NATURE.
Again...for the woman caught in adultery and dragged before Jesus by the Pharisees our LORD said to her in JOHN 8:11... “Neither do I condemn thee, go sin no more.”
Ministers in pulpits every Sunday need to be filled with and preaching that TRUTH!!! AMEN!!!
And for that to happen we must first LIVE IN GOD (be saved) and then God must through the Holy Ghost live in us because that is how you are saved from sinfulness...from your sinful nature.
And Christianity is the only Gospel or message in the world where a man's God comes and lives inside of him...comes and dwells in inside him...and through that indwelling we have the ability to sin no more.
Where is the brooding of the Holy Ghost these days...He just does not live inside people anymore?
When revival comes you don't say... "Joe Smith is coming to preach this week, and he'll finish Sunday night. And we are gonna have a great Revival.” NO!
Where in the world did we get the idea that the Holy Spirit only comes at 11 am Sunday morning and you send Him home at 12...then you want Him back from 7-8 pm and we don't need Him again 'til Wed. night.
Beloved...when revival comes the lights don't go out in the sanctuary for weeks and weeks and weeks.
Ministers today have a hard time talking about things like this but Ravenhill did not...he says... “I once spent an afternoon with an old man who had been one of the right hand men in the Salvation Army revival back in the 1880's. The man was eighty years of age. He told me about the amazing things that happened in their revivals. The men that would sit in the back seats, almost the scum of the earth, came in just to get warm, but they would get so worried when the old preacher William Booth was preaching one of his hell-fire messages. Begby, in his definitive work on William Booth, in the first volume I think, talks about those holiness meetings. And he said, 'When the Holy Ghost came down and men resisted the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God would lift people from the back of the sanctuary and carry them over the audience and drop them at the altar.' And we think we've seen everything because 2 or 3 people get saved.” An I do praise God for those 2 or 3.
Now...many of you will say... “Man, I cannot believe that” and yet I quote Jesus as authority in MATTHEW 19:26... “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.” Is this book obsolete or absolute.
THROUGH THE FIRE AND POWER OF THE HOLY GHOST … YOU CANNOT STANDARDIZE REVIVAL.
And I am not thinking of a church revival; I'm thinking of a BIBLICAL REVIVAL...A HOLY GHOST REVIVAL!
There is only one hope for America and that is that we have a Divine intervention in this nation.
Our government...our political parties...so many of our churches are broken...politically Republicans and Democrats are morally corrupt...so forget about government...forget about the “God is Love...God will forgive” doctrine being preached today...yes He loves you...He died for you...but He is angry...mad as Hell!
Instead start demanding and embracing a “quit sinning” doctrine that needs to be preached.
Beloved...forget your denomination...ministers forget your empty seats...quit preaching to fill empty seats.
Why? Because if you preach the Holy Ghost...God will fill them...ministers, preach the HOLY GHOST!!!
Do you think they took a count of the people in attendance at Pentecost...ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!
Did they report it to a denominational body...ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!
They just let God take the head count...see He already knew it...we are concentrating on all the wrong things today...we need to concentrate on as Paul says... “This one thing” ...the God of the WORD.
And if nobody is saved...go home and cry...then pray...AND BEG HIM TO SEND THE HOLY GHOST!!!
FOURTH...LET'S SEE HOW GOD GRIEVES OVER THE SINS OF THE PEOPLE!
After all, when you look in the Old Testament, God's argument was not with the Amalekites or Hittites or any of the other "ites"...God's problem in the Old Testament was with Israel...His problem was with His Chosen People”.
And God's problem today is not communism, Mormonism, Moonism, Islamism or any other "ism" because they are not His...hear that...they are not His...God's problem is His church and our worldliness.
And He is Sad...and Mad...He wants to spit us out of His mouth...to remove our lampstand.
We think so much about great big old revivals...about city wide crusades that can cost two million dollars.
Hear me...REVIVAL DOESN'T COST A RED CENT … IT ONLY COST BROKEN HEARTS. IS YOURS BROKEN TODAY?
You can stage your revival; you can stage a city wide crusade ... YOU CANNOT STAGE A BIBLICAL REVIVAL.
Revival is a mysterious and divine intervention.
I think one of the most awesome tasks given a man was given to John Baptist, when God said... "PREPARE YE THE WAY OF THE LORD." And yet...that one thing ALONE is what he did!
You know, you talk about revival in this country and everybody has got tunnel vision.
They think revival must come through a planned event but that is not how it came at Pentecost and it is not how it will come today.
It is a new day...iniquity has never swaggered like it does now...our world has never been as corrupt.
You know what has happened in the last 50 years or so in this world?
In the last 50 years or so in this world the Muslims have built mosque after mosque and at the same time they were building these mosques Christians have become bastions of materiality.
Does it drive us to despair? No, we bask in it...say look at the missions we support...lives we help.
Beloved...there are more people lost in this world at this very moment than in any period in history.
And yet we go on as if we are really making a difference instead of on the edge of judgment.
The Muslin revolution is winning and Satan is leading the charge...SO WHY?
We haven't sold out to God...we do not live life like Paul did, like Peter did, like John the Baptist did...we don't live life like Judgment is near.
We are not sold out to God's will...God's way...God's path...God's righteousness.
We are not saying as Paul said... “THIS ONE THING I DO...THIS ONE THING!”
I believe the key to revival is given here in Joel... "Let the priests, the ministers of God, weep between the altar and the door posts."
When was the last time you wept as you prayed about the state of this world.
We are not embracing this concept of the Apostle Paul...he did not scream against government...he screamed against sin.
He did not fight government...he fought SIN! And we need to also!
When did it become the job of the government to spiritually prepare and instruct our children.
Why do we not have family devotions like we used to...God said for parents to raise their children in the ways of the Lord...and yet we chastise government...instead of doing what God wants us to do.
Paul was an intercessor and he believed... "The thing will happen through me. I have to stand in the gap."
You know, when you talk about intercessors we always go back and say... "Well, America's had some of the best intercessors." You're right; we had.”
How many of you have spent hour upon hour on your knees lately?
How many of you have a groove worn in the carpet where you pray?
You want to know how spiritual you are...do you spend more time on FB, Twitter, MySpace, playing games, and in front of a TV watching Fox, CNN, or just a TV show than you do talking with God?
How much time you spend in prayer with God will define just how Spiritual you are.
And we are failing...Beloved...we are failing miserably...but Islam is not!
You know, the first thing that really moved me to God after I quit running from Him and embraced His Holy Ghost in my life?
Somebody gave me book about the great men of my day and I could not take read it because I could not believe these men could be so utterly selfless?
The thing that is crippling us today is our prosperity...materialism is choking the church as well as the world...we want ease and comfort.
When I read of a young man that can walk out in the snow, snow up to his chin sometimes, wrestling in prayer from sunrise to sunset with a tubercular body...
When I read about a man named Leonard Ravenhill who night after night wept and spent hour upon hour on his knees praying for a REVIVAL...I am humbled to action...are you?
This type revival will only come because we pray for it. No other way. We cannot buy it...we cannot preach it...we cannot evangelize it...we have to pray to God to send it through the Ghost.
But in the last thirty years America has had more healing crusades than all the nations of the world put together and we still don't have that type of Revival.
WHAT WE NEED NOW IS....
A REVIVAL OF HOLINESS...AMEN!!! A REVIVAL OF CHRIST LIKE CHARACTER...AMEN!!!
A REVIVAL OF EARNEST...HOLY GHOST FILLED PRAYER FOR THIS HOLINESS AND CHARACTER...AMEN!!!
And...A REVIVAL OF PEOPLE WHO ARE UTTERLY SELFLESS AND PREPARED TO LAY THEIR LIVES ON THE ALTAR FOR GOD...AND MINISTERS WHO WEEP BETWEEN THE PORCH AND THE ALTAR...AMEN!!!
CONCLUSION...
No man ... I don't care how colossal his intellect - No man is greater than his prayer life.
To stand before men on behalf of God is one thing...to stand before God on behalf of men is entirely different.
We've urged people to tithe, haven't we? But we only mean their money.
See, we want a "revival" that is a painless Pentecost...something that won't disturb our everyday lives.
It's "easy street" everywhere else, so why not here?
There never has been a revival I can trace, that has not been birthed by the true intercession of the HOLY GHOST.
Will you join me today in prayer for that kind of Revival...a follower of Mohammed prays religiously four times a day and he carries his prayer rug with him...what are you going to do?
No invitation...JUST PRAYER!
