Engaging the Lost in an Unholy Time

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Now, in preparation of inviting my brother Jeff up to preach, I had the first opportunity of hearing Jeff this past March when I met him at the Herald Society in Milton, Florida.
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I had an opportunity to hear him preach and also get a taste of what Jeremiah Cry Ministries is all about and was very blessed by that.
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Jeff Rose is the founder of Jeremiah Cry Ministries.
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He became a believer at 28 years of age while involved as a gym owner and personal trainer.
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He left the fitness industry for full-time ministry in 2005.
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Jeff sensed the call to preach the gospel in the open air and to engage the culture with the Word of God, but also felt a great burden to recover the ancient paths of preaching and see it brought back to its original function evangelistically within the local church.
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Jeff also lived in Scotland for two years and preached heavily in the city of Glasgow.
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Jeff was awakened to the reality of the power of God in public proclamation when he personally witnessed many affected by the open air preaching of the gospel and with this vision, Jeremiah Cry Ministries was birthed.
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Giving great attention to the local church, Jeremiah Cry Ministries started the Herald Societies, which take place four times a year.
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This particular event places its focus and emphasis on Christ-centered preaching and reformational principles taught to the body of Christ.
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This event is designed to equip believers to go out into the world armed for battle and see the old apostolic weapon of preaching take its primary place in evangelism and the enemy engaged on every front.
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Jeff and the Jeremiah Cry Ministry team have been all over the world proclaiming the gospel and equipping others to do the same.
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And before I finish this last sentence, I want to remind everyone, I hadn't mentioned it yet, but in March of next year, there is another Herald Society here in Florida, Milton, Florida, and we're going to have flyers for that out on the Narthex table as you're leaving.
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It's March the 16th and 17th? 17th through the 19th in Milton, Florida, and it is a wonderful conference.
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They have some very passionate and powerful speakers there.
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Jeff and his wife Pearl and their seven children.
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I just always like to stop and pause there.
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And I thank you for, I want to say this, I thank you for coming.
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Taking time away from seven children to board a plane, fly down here, and preach to us is a blessing.
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He's coming to us from New Jersey, and so we are thankful that your wife Pearl and your seven children have given you to us for this time.
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So come, brother, and share the word with us.
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Well, it's certainly a great privilege to be able to come and gather with all of you, to be invited to come and just be subjected to some extremely powerful preaching.
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I mean, from yesterday until today, I just feel so unworthy to be placed with such men that are able to bring the word of God with so much unction and so much power.
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I'm humbled to be here and very grateful to be here.
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And I'd like to acknowledge Pastor Keith for having me.
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I'd like to say thank you, Pastor Keith, for allowing me to come.
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I consider it a great privilege, and to all of you who also accepted me here and allowed me to come, I'm very grateful.
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I'd like to thank my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for giving me the opportunity to be here to preach His word, which I'm an unworthy servant to be able to do what I'm doing today, and I recognize that.
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If you'd please stand, I would like to open the word of God to Psalm 120.
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Psalm 120, please.
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I'll be starting with verse 1 and reading the entire chapter, which is only 7 verses.
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Starting in verse 1.
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In my distress, I cried unto the Lord, and He heard me.
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Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips and from a deceitful tongue.
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What shall be given unto Thee, or what shall be done unto Thee, Thou false tongue? Sharp arrows of the mighty with coals of juniper.
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Woe is me that I sojourn in Meshach, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar.
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My soul hath long dwelt with him that hates peace.
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I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war.
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Let us pray.
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Father, I just tremble at Your word.
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And I just thank You for this opportunity to come and to proclaim Your Son.
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Lord, I pray that You'd be glorified, and You'd be worshipped, and You'd be exalted in the midst of Your people today.
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I pray, Father, that the words that proceed from my mouth, Lord, would be pleasing in Your sight.
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I pray, Father, that You'd open the hearts of Your people.
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And I pray, Father, that there would be a mighty stirring again amongst the people of God.
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Not only here in this auditorium, but throughout our nation.
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That the church of Jesus Christ would once again rise up as the beautiful warrior bride of Christ.
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I just commit this time into Your hands.
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I commit these words into Your hands, Lord.
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Be glorified in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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You may be seated.
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I am for peace.
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But when I speak, they are for war.
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For the last decade, we have been out on the streets, all over the world, publicly proclaiming the glory of God to the heathen.
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We have been in Scotland, and England, and Wales, and all over America, and different parts of the country.
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God has given us this great opportunity to be able to go out and worship Him by the proclamation of His Son to all people and to all nations.
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Pastor Keith gave me the title called, Engaging the Lost in an Unholy Time.
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And I like to look at the words of engaging the lost and what exactly does that mean.
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And when I look at the Psalm 120 verse 7, I see a principle at work.
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When the psalmist cries out, he says, I am for peace.
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But when I speak, they are for war.
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Psalm 120, no one really knows for sure who the psalmist is who penned this particular chapter.
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And no one really knows for sure what is actually being described by the title which is given a Song of Degrees.
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Not in the sense of the obvious suffering under wicked men, but why the title of the series of the Psalms is called the Song of Degrees.
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Scholars and theologians alike cannot with certainty give us an exact meaning of what is meant by a Song of Degrees.
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This one particularly is the first of 15 that is given this title.
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Four are actually ascribed to David, one to his son Solomon, and the rest are given by unknown authors.
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Some say the title Degrees is given to describe the journeys and the wanderings and the pilgrimages to Jerusalem.
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Some say that they were penned describing the return from exile, going up to the holy city.
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Rabbis thought maybe that they were sung as they ascended the 15 steps going up to the temple.
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But the most plausible reason given for the name Degrees is for its musical expression.
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That there was actually something special in the scale of the music to which these psalms were sung.
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But that too is now lost to us.
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The psalm now before us has no other title and nothing to designate its author.
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Barnes, the commentator says, we understand this to pertain to a sufferer who calls on the name of the Lord for deliverance.
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This particular trial, it seems, was caused by the tongue, much slander against him.
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The author altogether in this psalm cries out in the midst of ungodly men, in an ungodly and unholy time.
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Not with a slanderous tongue like his enemies, but a tongue indeed, a mouth that speaks peace when all around him they are for war.
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Now let me just tell you, it's not the peace, peace that we hear preached today in American Christianity.
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But it's the peace that's grounded in the word of God, grounded in Christ.
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I would also like to point out that much of the persecution this psalmist faces seems to be directly connected with verse 7, which is his vocalized life in the midst of the ungodly.
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The psalmist here was probably just like the rest of us at one time.
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Isaiah said it best, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of people of unclean lips.
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But Isaiah responds later fervently after the flaming and burning coal of the gospel is laid upon his mouth.
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And he says, he has touched my mouth and said, This has touched your lips, and your iniquity has been taken away, your sin has been purged.
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I remember the first time I spoke up for the Lord.
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Can you remember the first time in your Christian life where you took a stand for Christ? Do you remember that monumental moment, that turning point, that change in your life when you first decided, Listen, I'm going to speak up for Christ.
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I'm going to take a stand for Christ.
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I'm going to open my mouth and proclaim the word of God.
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See, it is clear in Scripture that those who have come in contact with the love and the mercy of the Almighty, that they are filled with Christ.
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They are endued with power from on high.
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They cannot but speak the things which they have seen and heard.
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They are constrained and pressed upon to cry out.
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You see here in the Psalm, it seems that the Psalm says, I am for peace, but when I spoke, they are for war.
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And when we look at the life of a believer who has been constrained and endued with the power of God, he cannot but help speak and confront the world around him.
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In Psalm 39.3 it says, My heart became hot within me.
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As I mused, the fire burned.
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Then I spoke with my tongue.
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What is it in our lives where God brings us to that boiling point? To that point in our lives where, in some sense of the word, we just snap and had enough.
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We're just tired of living as business as usual.
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Singing the songs, doing all the things that Christians do, all the activities.
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But yet we get to that one point in our lives where we are called to the carpet.
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See, I was a personal trainer for 18 years.
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I owned my own gym for 5 years.
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And I remember it was the fifth year before I left the gym business, a lady that I was training, she had handed me a book.
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And the book was just statistics on the church, and it was given the percentages of those who were actively participating in reaching out to the world with missions and evangelism.
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And I remember laying in bed and reading this book at night.
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I became so convicted and so overwhelmed and so stricken in my very being, so convicted, that I said to my wife, I cannot continue to do what I'm doing.
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I just sensed at that moment that God was calling me to a different life.
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It was really that moment where I really felt that I was sick and tired of living in fear.
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I was sick and tired of going out into the world, being a Christian, and being scared of everybody.
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Worried about what I was going to say, being frightened when I talked to other people if I didn't have the right words to say, remaining silent most of the time, hearing other people say things and do things that were contrary to my faith, and not saying anything.
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Over a period of time, it started to build up within me.
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And that continual suppression of being what God has designed us to be, that fire burning inside of you, never being satisfied with business as usual, something had to change, or I'm going to explode.
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And it was that moment when I started stepping out into the culture, and by God's grace, began to lift up my voice, and confront the world with the gospel.
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But I also realized at that point, if God can use me, He can use anybody.
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And I began to search the scriptures, and see that there was a principle at work here.
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That the public proclamation of the gospel could never be substituted by any other means.
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That the principle of public proclamation was God's mean for gathering His people, for saving and gathering His elect.
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And I've seen it from the very front pages of Genesis, all the way to the end in the book of Revelation, that there was a principle at work.
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Not a method, but a principle of public proclamations.
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Methods change, principles never do.
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And the vocalization, the proclamation of God's word to human beings, face to face, toe to toe, nose to nose, will never go away.
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Social media will not erase it.
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The movie theater will never replace the pulpits.
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God uses men to engage the culture with the word of God.
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It's their only hope.
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You want to see a change and transformation in the culture? Then we need to go into the culture and publicly proclaim the word of God to the world.
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Because you see, when we suppress this truth, we know that all of creation knows that God exists.
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But they suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
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They know God exists, but they rebel willfully against the knowledge that they know God exists.
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And they're reduced, as the Bible says, to absurdity.
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But can I tell you today, much of what goes on in American evangelicalism is absurd.
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And I'll tell you why it's absurd.
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It's because they too suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
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Because anytime, anytime you suppress the reality that we are designed and we are the means by which God uses to go into the world to publicly and vocally proclaim Christ to the world as an instrument by which God uses to save His people.
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When we deny that, and we rebel against that principle, and we suppress that truth, we are reduced to all kinds of silly things.
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We're reduced to all kinds of absurdities within the body of Christ.
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This is where you see the program, the programmatic and the pragmatic-driven frenzies that goes on in much of American Christendom.
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Then on the other side, you get Pelagian nonsense and poisonous doctrines.
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You either get one or the other when you suppress not only the means by which God has us to go out, but also how we view the means by which we are called to go out.
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You see, if you reject the means, if you reject God's prescriptive method to go into the world to see men won to Christ, you will reject the Word of God.
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Because the Word of God tells us specifically how God saves people.
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And when you reject the Word of God, you will also reject the means by which God commands it to go forth.
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Now, I'm not telling you that everybody needs to be a street preacher.
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Heavens no.
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I believe that too is a specific call upon people's lives.
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But I do believe that we're all called to go into the world and be witnesses for Christ.
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I've heard people say, well, listen, I don't feel like I'm called to do that.
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And I say, you're right, you're commanded to.
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You're commanded to go into the world and publicly proclaim the Word of God to the world around you.
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Doesn't matter what you do, or where God has placed you, or what kind of influence He's given you, we're to be responsible and we are accountable to go into the world and publicly proclaim Jesus Christ.
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Now, I do compartmentalize the office of an evangelist.
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I do see specific...
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I don't believe everyone's a missionary.
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Methodists are just preached a lot today in the contemporary church.
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I believe that there are specific men who are ordained to go out into the world and publicly proclaim the gospel to the world.
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I believe there's men who are sent to different countries.
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I remember when I was in Glasgow, we did a church plant in Glasgow, and when we started the church plant there, it was just a small church, maybe 20, 30 people.
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But it's interesting because I see the laws of sowing and reaping at work, even in the public proclamation of the gospel.
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You know how sometimes you'll write a check or you'll invest money into something and somewhere out of nowhere, not that we're looking for it, God will bless you in the same way that you blessed others.
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And I've seen a powerful principle at work in church planting.
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We started going out into the streets and publicly proclaiming the gospel as the means and how God was going to fill the church and He did just that.
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Not always just to the people necessarily that we were preaching to, but when we went out, we began to sow seed, we began to preach the gospel, we began to confront the culture with the word of God.
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God began to fill the church.
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And so much so, it went all the way to the back doors and it was just a very just tight and congested church until we came home.
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Actually, we were there for two years.
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I was sent home because I went to Scotland as an Arminian and I came back as a Calvinist.
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And that was part of my demise.
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And that was part of the reason why we came home.
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I intended to be buried in Scottish soil.
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I said, listen, I mean, this is the life for a street preacher.
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If you've never been to Scotland before, if you've been like in Glasgow, if you've ever seen a Batman movie, that's what it looks like.
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It's dark, it's got all the pointed buildings and it is a street preacher's dream.
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Because you can stand up there and because the way the city is carved out, the way the city is created, when you preach, you don't need amplification because the way the city is hollowed out and the acoustics of the building just lift your voice and it just carries.
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And you have no problem drawing very large hostile crowds.
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Now, Scotland is 99.9% unregenerate.
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Less than half percent of those in Scotland are born again.
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It is a very dark city.
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So dark that they even renamed the city to Gangland instead of Scotland.
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You know, the paper said that the police have turned the city over.
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They're no longer calling it Scotland.
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They're calling it Gangland.
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It became the ninth crime capital of all of Europe in 2009.
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So it's just infested with gangs.
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But when you begin to proclaim the gospel on the streets in Glasgow, it's amazing the response and the reaction of the people there.
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Unbelievable.
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Because what happens is when you stand up there, you know, number one, you're preaching the gospel, the light of Christ in a very significantly dark area.
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So the darker it is, the more brighter that gospel just shines.
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But the more confrontational it is as well because the majority of those who are in Scotland are Dakinites.
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It's just infiltrated with atheism.
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So the moment a man stands up and begins to proclaim the gospel, he's got two or three people in his face almost immediately.
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And then the crowds begin to gather, which is really nice about Glasgow is that the whole city, if you've ever been there or you've not been there, is really just for pedestrians to walk up and down the street.
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It's the perfect place because it's called a city center.
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So everybody has to gather.
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If you want to do any kind of shopping or you need anything, you've got to come to the city center.
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So what was really nice about that, you had the ability to really preach to the entire city because everybody came to the city in order to get anything.
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And when you would preach because there was so much standing room and it was so unusual and so unordinary and so foreign, plus an American accent, it was really amazing to see how the crowds would just gather.
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And I remember one time, I don't know if many of you guys are familiar with Mike Stockwell.
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Him and I were up there and we were preaching.
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He went up there and he was just up there just preaching to the crowds and just really going after it.
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And finally this lady came up to him and she had told him, she says, listen, you need to stop preaching.
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And she was screaming and yelling at him and all of that.
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And next thing you know, she just hauled off and just slapped him and knocked him off the ladder.
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Everything just got kind of a holy hush and then Mike kind of regained his composure and got back up on the ladder and began to preach again.
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But as he was preaching, he wasn't really paying attention and as he was really going at it, the ladder slipped up from underneath his feet and he just went horizontal and landed on his back.
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And the whole crowd just went into like a holy hush and then people started coming up to him and we had just a great opportunity to really mix with the people because they actually felt sorry for him because when he hit the ground, he hit hard.
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We didn't know whether to laugh or what to do, but it was amazing to see the response of the people there, good and bad.
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Now Jeremiah seems to echo what the psalmist has to say when he declares, there is in my heart, as it were, a burning fire shut up in my bones.
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He says, I am weary with holding it in and I cannot.
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Paul also said, necessity is laid upon me.
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Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.
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I would like to ask you guys today if you've ever been in a position where you are among others and either in their ignorance or just plain evil have acted or said something that you knew was against the Lord that you loved.
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How you stood there and your insides just burned with an unusual heat which then climbed to a combustible point and you just spoke out.
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You could not hold it in.
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It reminds me of a story that took place in 1948 in the lives of Richard Wurmbrand who was the founder of Voice of the Martyrs Ministries.
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It was said in 1948 that Richard Wurmbrand and his wife Sabina read a pastor's convention during the communist takeover in Romania.
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Sabina sat next to her husband as one Christian leader after the next walked onto the stage and blasphemed the name of Jesus Christ.
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Caving into the demands of the communist officials sitting in the front row her heart began to burn within her.
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She was so passionately in love with Jesus Christ and could not stand to hear such things spoken about him by his own people.
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She turned to her husband and she says will you not wipe the spit from the face of Christ? She asked him.
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Richard pointed to the communist officers and he said if I stand up and speak against their agenda they will kill me.
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Sabina did not hesitate.
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She said I would rather be married to a dead man than a coward.
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It was the infusion of strength Richard needed.
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He rose to his feet sparked by the passion of his wife and thunderously spoke truth in the midst of lies.
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I would rather be married to a dead man than a coward.
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How's that for a wife? I'll tell you what there's no greater blessing than to have a godly wife.
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I've been married for 16 years and I have seven children six daughters and one son.
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We home school all of them and I'll tell you what my wife is a godly woman and she supports the public proclamation of the word of God.
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She can put up with me.
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I'll tell you what she is definitely a prize.
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We have lived in Scotland with our family moved to Scotland uprooted and went and lived in Scotland and she is just so excited about the gospel she's so excited about souls being won to the Lord.
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She's so passionate about the things of God and it makes it so easy for me when we're very lean and we don't have any money and we're trying to continue this ministry and I'm looking at her going do we just quit? Do we just quit? All the criticisms that's coming in people saying Jeff you know what you're shooting yourself in the foot you need to be broader with your ministry you need to appeal to the Armenian circles as well you need to appeal to everybody here not just be a Calvinist reformed preaching ministry.
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See the stand that we have taken with the ministry and the view and the reformation of view we've taken you know it creates a lot of adversity and I don't stand up here and try to conjure up emotions in you to try to look at me a certain way and feel a certain way about our ministry certainly not into promoting the ministry or anything like that just like to let you kind of know what goes on in the ministry over a decade of just preaching the gospel in the open air and the kind of things that you run into I mean we traveled for almost two years in a 1986 RV south wind and nothing in it worked imagine that handful of kids it was like a honeycomb hideout with wheels it was like a fort on wheels and it always broke down and I don't know anything about cars I don't know how many nights I was underneath this thing wiggling wires I had no idea what I was doing had no shower the toilets didn't work and my wife was with me and if anybody's met Pearl I mean she's like any other lady you know you gotta have running water you know you gotta be able to have a fresh change of clothes once in a while but we lived if we came back from Scotland we had no home so a friend of mine gave me his RV he said I got an RV for ya and I'm like really I was thinking maybe it's one of those hundred thousand dollar specials you know what I mean like the rock stars get but then he said it's right over there and I remember looking and I said well hey you know what it's our new home and that would be our home I remember preaching the gospel on the counter of that thing in Walmart parking lots we would pull into a Walmart parking lot in the back the kids would be in the choir they'd start singing the songs and I would get up there and I'd just preach the word of God to them because we didn't really have we had no place to go we just drove across the nation and we had invitations to preach at certain churches and places we'd go to college campuses we'd meet up with other street preachers and this is what we did for almost two years literally brought almost made us insane now you want to know a great way to build character in your marriage 1986 RV with your wife and family for two years straight boy I tell you what that's a great character building situation we call it the wooden spoon of the ministry it was like the you know it was like the beginnings of our ministry really kind of really kind of brought us low and really was a humbling experience but you know what I wouldn't trade any of it for the world it was just a really powerful time for all of us really to see we didn't have anything we didn't really have anything we didn't have any gadgets or money or anything all we had was books and some torn up old RV but we had each other and we had the word of God and we had a dream we had a vision not the American dream but we had a dream that the Lord had laid upon us called Jeremiah Cry Ministries and it was a return to the doctrines of grace these mighty doctrines that many have lived for many have died for it cost people something it cost people their lives we saw the value of the word of God and how desperate the church needed to turn back to the word of God and how desperate we need to take that word of God back into the world and we were so convinced that we're willing to do whatever it takes to see it happen and we surrendered and from that point on the Lord has just done really what He wanted to do and I think every Monday morning I quit I said I just I just really just can't do this anymore but the Lord somehow in some way meets the needs and we just continue moving forward and God has birthed in us to really start the Herald Societies raising up these I hate to say it we're so conferenced out I hate to even use the word conference because we hear it so much but it's really it's an event where preachers and pastors and their families they gather together for the sake of the word of God you're coming and you're making it known that you are taking a stand you are being counted and saying yes and it's a declaration that we are returning to the word of God we're not going to buy in to this whole contemporary whatever modern gospel that's being proclaimed throughout American Christendom today we're taking the other road we're saying no we're turning back to the reformation we're saying no greater time than the present does our nation in need of a revival this nation for a reformation we're not going to become ecumenical we're not going to compromise we're going to take a stand regardless because you know what long after I'm dead with my children's children's children's children's children down the road and they can look back generations and say you know what my great great great great great grandpa he never he he never quit he never quit because you know what there's a good possibility I'll never see what it is that we've started ever come to pass but they can run across my dead back into the legacy that we leave behind I'm not saying it has to be the here and now I'm not saying things have to happen overnight or in the next 10, 20, 30 years but I'm ready to start something I'm not just going to stand around twiddling my thumbs playing games while the world around me is perishing into hell and the church is up to its neck in sin in this country doing absolutely nothing I'm not saying everybody when I say those things I listen I have a great love for the church I'm a local church man I love the local church Jesus died for the local church Jesus died for the I love the local church I'm not a para-church ministry I'm a local church ministry I love the church and there's a remnant that doesn't back down there's a continuing moving forward of the remnant of God I'm not saying that I'm just saying in general the professing church in America has sold their birthright they're playing games and they're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness the great and desperate need to get out into the world and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to lost people and not just the four spiritual laws not just going out there with a good test but taking the very divine act of publicly proclaiming the God to the world as an act of worship the Puritans saw it as worship whether it was inside or outside Spurgeon as well saw the pulpit whether it was indoors or outdoors it was that place where the preacher made contact with God for the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 1.21 that it pleases God by the foolishness of preaching that when we go out into the world and we're handling the word of God that we're carrying these precious truths to the world that we're handling the gospel with our unclean hands and proclaiming a sinless savior through our sinful lips and with sinful communication that God would be pleased to use us for His glory we must take this grand opportunity and this privilege and this great honor and this great work that He's called us to and not despise it or treat it as a light thing or be careless about the word of God we must realize and come to the conclusion and the sobriety that the only hope for men is for them to hear the gospel and be saved there is no other way there's no other way by which men can be saved and I hear it here in the psalmist voice because I am for peace but when I speak they are for war and that's what it's like today inside and outside the retaliation and the agitation from the culture at large when you proclaim the divine righteousness of Jesus Christ to a world gone mad a world in darkness and perversion into a culture of death when you're combating it with the word of God when the kingdom of light clashes with the kingdom of darkness when you come in contact with the world and you're proclaiming the word of God to men and you're honoring God by not watering down the gospel that you're thundering out an uncompromised gospel you know what the worst hecklers are? they're not just normal sinners normally nine times out of ten the worst hecklers that we get are other professing Christians they're usually the worst ones they'll interrupt you they'll call you a bunch of names they'll tell you you're not doing it right Jesus would never do that we've heard it and we've heard it and we've heard it but we continue to persevere until the end we have become bewitched with an expedient gospel which is no gospel at all we want everything to be convenient practical and comfortable the end now justifies the means no pain no danger no worry, no threat we want the safe life certainly not the dangerous life like in the book of Galatians we want to make a fair show in the flesh and avoid speaking up about the true Christ as he's defined in scripture we want to avoid persecution at all cost and boy ladies and gentlemen has that cost us in our nation we would rather make a fair show in the flesh to avoid persecution of proclaiming the truth in Jesus Christ Dietrich Bonhoeffer said silence in the face of evil is itself evil God will not hold us guiltless not to speak is to speak not to act is to act wherever Christians are willfully hushed and purposely quiet you'll always see and experience the onslaught and upsurge of evil within the culture the gospel not only saves folks remember this but also it leavens the culture we have seen also just as a testimony to the power and the grace of God as the gospel is continually proclaimed in a certain portion of the city over a period of time we see all kinds of things begin to shape and transform the culture as the gospel is preached yes we see people who are saved but also we see people who are hardened but also we see all around in the area where the gospel is just continually preached and thundered out we see an actual leavening of the culture as well we see bars being shut down as a matter of fact in West End in a portion of Dallas we preached there for two years and I tell people it's kind of like this it's kind of like having a big boulder and a big sledgehammer and you're just cracking that boulder over and over and over and over again and you just hit it just right and it splits down the middle that's how it was in the corner of West End we preached and we preached and we preached and preached and finally it cracked and they shut down a lot of the gross sin that was going down in that area as a matter of fact that area has literally become a ghost town and it's never recovered since as a matter of fact they even planted a couple churches in that very area where we preached just really amazing to see what God does in a culture with the gospel preached over and over and over being committal staying in one place and doing a work over a period of time and just staying with it as a farmer would a field you never expect a harvest unless you're willing to get your boots muddy and bloody you see a farmer coming off the field and his boots aren't all muddy don't expect a harvest same with the gospel preacher as he's going out into the field he's staying committed with the field over and over and over until God brings a harvest in his own time the psalm broken up broken up into three portions I would like to end here as I'm going to go through these three points quite quickly the first point is he says I am for peace they are for war and we must look at that reality as we are proclaiming the gospel that the Bible says in Ephesians that our feet are shot with the gospel of peace we're not going out there like the jihad threatening people with our lives the Bible says that we are ministers of reconciliation we go out into the world and we confront a hostile world with the gospel of peace that men can be made right with God through Jesus Christ alone we are for peace we're not plaguing creatures we're not out there with sandwich boards saying God hates fags and standing up there and performing all kinds of vile acts and being abusive and trying to draw crowds and being jerks for Jesus we're out there to proclaim Jesus Christ we're out there because we are bringing a peace treaty a peace offering to the people if they would accept the terms of peace they can be made right with God we're out there because we too have been saved and made right with God and we are constrained to go out in hopes that man would be reconciled back to God through the public proclamation of His Word the second point is when I speak when I vocalize when I preach the Word of God in 2 Corinthians it says but having the same spirit of faith according to what is written I believed therefore I spoke we also believe therefore also we speak I believe the number one reason why a majority of the church today in America doesn't go out and preach the Gospel it's not because they're not equipped I believe the number one reason is unbelief in the Gospel's power to save I don't believe they go out because they don't feel necessarily like they're equipped I believe that's some of the reason but the number one reason why they don't go out and proclaim the Gospel to other people is because they do not believe in the Gospel's power to save I think that's why we see people resorting to all kinds of man-made methods and gimmicks to appeal to sinful humanity to get them to come and make some sort of false profession for Jesus Christ because they've lost their trust in the Word of God to save men it's the unbelief in the Gospel I believe it's the number one reason why people don't go out and preach it because they don't believe it God has given us a mouth for a reason not just to eat and drink but to declare His glory among the heathen to sing the anthem of God to the world the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 1.21 that it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe to the world it's foolishness for the preaching of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing but unto us which are saved it is the power of God Paul wasn't retaliated against for his excellent speech and pretty preaching no, he was attacked for his outspoken Christ-centered Christ-honoring sin-confronting Gospel-preaching messages his preaching the Bible calls it was a demonstration of power when Paul preached there was always an uproar and also quoting from a Methodist John Wesley said when I preach there will either be a riot or a revival it was Christ the power of God which the Bible says in Romans 1.16 it is the power of God unto salvation Jesus said I will give you a mouth and wisdom which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict and I'd like to finish with this story about one of my favorite champions of the Gospel and he himself faced many adversaries on many fronts and his name was George Whitefield one of his favorite places to preach was just outside London on a great open track known as the Moorfields he actually had no designated time for his services but whenever he began to preach thousands came to hear whether it was 6am or 8pm not all were his fans either Whitefield testified that he was honored by the crowds with having stones and dirt rotten eggs and pieces of dead cats thrown at him in the morning crowds were some 20,000 that stood and listened and in the evening some 35,000 gathered Whitefield was only 25 years old at the time sometimes crowds up to 80,000 gathered to hear him preach some standing for an hour and a half at times here's a brief picture of what the Moorfields looked like in England in the 18th century it was a place of sporadic open air markets shows with its vendors and its auctions very similar to many of today's attractions in America additionally the homes near the Moorfields were places of the poor and the place had a reputation for harboring highway men as well as brothels and public cruising areas for gay men there actually was a path that ran along the wall that separated the upper and lower fields and it actually acquired the name the Sodomites Walk now we're talking back in the 18th century this sounds like America, modern America we think sometimes that we're the only ones that are being subjected to the dark and gross sin of a nation when it falls into the judgment of God but if you study church history you'll see that there's many nations who also fell into the judgment of God into the darkness of God and God had raised up men to stand up and publicly proclaim the truth and God was pleased to pour out His Spirit, to pour out revival upon these nations and God can do it again today I thoroughly believe that but it was said here is where Whitefield took his stand and attacked the enemy on its own ground right in the path where the celebration of sin was at its highest it is there, the very jugular vein of where the sins were being committed George Whitefield took his stand Godfrey Holden Pike in his classic and open air preaching describes the scene, he says the evangelist's heart is swelling with compassion, his face glow his eyes beam with an enthusiasm kindling within while his clear trumpet-like voice sends the text reverberating around more fields it was said that George Whitefield's preaching could be heard a mile away Whitefield cried out, he said as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up here he was standing before the masses and before the crowds exalting the name of the Lord, Whitefield's burning words now bear down upon the powers of darkness, he exhorts the crowds no longer to submit to the thralldom of sin then by the power of God this blaspheming, joking crowd of pleasure-seekers yield and do homage to the king's herald and prince they before his eyes bend in obedience to an unseen power Whitefield's triumph is complete John Knox said spare no arrows see everybody wants to write about the culture in Christianity but hardly anybody's willing to put it into practice today see tons of books out there people are like fetishes to go and read about the culture and Christianity but very few are willing to go out and brave the rapids is the world hungry for the gospel? ladies and gentlemen, are they hungry for the gospel? you know how many years I was told that my first six years of being a Christian how the world is hungry for the gospel until I went out into the world and found out they weren't hungry for it at all only thing they were hungry for was to take my life selling me the bill of goods they weren't hungry for the gospel they hated God they hated the message and they hated me like everybody else here that goes out into the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ, you're going to find right very quickly that they're not hungry for it, unless God makes them hungry for it but we declare it regardless it'll cost you to stay faithful in such an unholy hour as the present, but you must remain faithful and not buckle, the third and last point they are for war before we go out into the world, proclaim the gospel we must understand the principle that's speaking in Psalms 20, that we know that we are for peace and we're going out, but remember this you're not going to be persecuted for going around doing good works I often wonder whatever happened to true biblical missions of the days of old when men would go to the heathen and preach the gospel to the heathen in hopes they would get saved, and then those cultures would be transformed to the glory of God now we've got other nations with real pretty teeth, mud huts and water wells, which are all great and fine that we should be bringing dental work to these people and doing these types of things but the most important thing is that we're bringing them the gospel of Jesus Christ biblical missions going into the world and proclaiming the gospel to the heathen we must understand that the nature of man has fallen they're not partially good, they're not good people, they're not good in all people men are dead in their sin, they're under the wrath of God, they're haters of God and once we have this understanding of why the nations rage in Psalms 2, we'll have a better understanding of what to look for when we go out into the world to proclaim the gospel.