How God Brings Men to Salvation — Rolfe Barnard

The Shame of Empty Seats and the Need for Revival

Now, I share with you, every child of God that's here tonight, I share with you the shame, the distress of soul, the heartbreak at the empty seats. An empty seat in the house of God now is terrible. I'm not satisfied with empty seats, are you?

I'm not sounding a low note. But I don't want us to get used to defeat. I want us to claim victory, and I want us to press for it. I picked up a book some time ago, written by my friend, a preacher of the Holiness Group of Scotland and Britain, Leonard Ravenhill.

I've had the joy of getting personally acquainted with him. He's a saint of God, and he's doing some provocative writing now, and calling mourners. And in one of his little books, he made this statement, and I've been under conviction about it.

It's haunted me. He said, some of these days, a simple child of God is going to pick up the Word of God and read it and believe it, and when that person does, he'll make the rest of us ashamed of ourselves.

Did you get it? One of these days, some simple child of God is going to pick up God's Word and not try to understand it, not try to get all the pieces fit together, not to harmonize all the doctrines, not to square everything by your pet doctrine, but he's just going to read it and believe it.

My soul wasn't the one that we could get converted to become his little children, just believe the book. Where we can't understand it, we just worship and set us on fire. There's any crowd of people under God's shining sun that ought to have tears and fire and war.

There's people who try to believe in the grace of God. I believe that all of the sects and all of the movements today away from the Bible are the result of dead orthodoxy. People who say they believe the Bible in their head, but doesn't control our tear ducts and our prayer life, deadness, the most terrible thing this side of here is a fellow that's orthodox in his head and doesn't have a broken heart.

Christian Zeal in a Hostile Culture

I want us to get excited about the Lord. I believe we ought to cross swords with every enemy of the gospel that crosses the path of the gospel. But revival would be people excited about the Lord. You're going to lose in every one of your other battles, but the blissful knows he's fighting a losing cause.

I'm for him. I rejoice in what the Lord's doing through him, but he's going to lose. He knows it. That's none of our business. This thing's gone. You're not going to save America. God's going to judge us.

You got that much sense? There are not enough Christians in this country to control the politics of this land. It's gone. The church is going underground. Hallelujah. When it gets there, we'll learn how to pray.

We'll learn how to weep. Then we'll see victory. Amen? Is there any way on earth we could generate, not put on, some excitement about the Lord? We've got nothing to apologize for if we know him. Because God's answer for all the wiles of men was to put his Son on the throne where men can't get to him and turn the world over to him.

We ought to have a holy bonus. It's time we quit apologizing for being believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and work up our zeal. The most exciting thing in this world is still the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm trying to encourage you to get excited and to begin to put your money where your mouth is, your witness, and to begin to feel Birmingham full of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Breaking Up the Fallow Ground of the Heart

Talking about everything else now. I told you what the hour is ripe, and I rejoice in it. If you believe what your young pastor preaches, why don't you get on fire about it? Do you know what it is to mourn?

Do you? You nice little Orthodox Calvinists, do you know what it is to weep? Do you? How long has it been since your old heart just broke? You see, the scriptures teach God's people to break up the foul ground in their own hearts.

And yours looked to me like it could stand a good eel of plow. Have you learned yet that this world won't give a hoot if you are Orthodox? They don't care. Have you learned yet this world isn't interested in what you believe?

They don't care. Now, this is a day of demonstration. Amen? Television has changed the whole advertising world. They don't tell you now, they show you. Now is the time to put in the tears and sweat and witness what we say we believe.

Brother, get something you believe in. Believe in it all over. I used to quote a little limerick when I was a boy. I had a little dog, his name was Rover. When he died, he died all over. For God's sake, get excited.

Give the nicest little people in the army a flea. Get excited. If you can't get excited about the Lord, join the Communist Party. Get excited about there in America. Get excited about something. Under God, I'm talking.

Amen? And let's open our mouth. Are you mad at me? Do you think that this world is going to be won by truth? No, no. It has to be saturated in tears and in blood. Your blood and mine. And in the power of the Holy Ghost.

Do you weep over lost men? Do you, sister? Or are you one of these nice, orthodox people? If you don't weep because of the way the claims of my Lord are despised today, you need to pay a little attention to the Scripture to afflict yourself and the Lord and to break up the foul ground in your heart.

Amen? I want you to get excited. Suppose we saved America, but we ain't going to do it. And all went to hell. It'd be a bad swap. Because he turned us a lot longer. In a few little days, you got left here on this earth.

Get excited. I was up in Pennsylvania the other day. I'm going to spend a little time finding courage. I'm not standing on the outside throwing stones. But you nice people, I go from place to place. You got your doctrine pretty straight in your head.

And you're cold as ice. And you have no passion for souls. You're afraid you're going to be unorthodox. You're going to let your own kinfolk go to hell. Unwept over and unprayed for. Don't be afraid to make a theological mistake.

I made one 31 years ago. Haven't made any sense. But I lived over it. I'm trying to say that what we say we believe, we must get to where we believe it all over. It's the greatest thing, or it doesn't amount to a hill of beans.

Urgency in Pleading with Sinners

I wish we'd get excited about it. I wish the people could note excitement and passion and urgency and tears in our voices as we plead with men to be reconciled to the Lord Jesus. How long been since you've pled?

I mean pled like a lawyer pleading to get his client acquitted. You've pled with somebody to be reconciled to the Lord. Is that good scripture? We beg you, Paul said. We beg you. I can see the heart throb of it.

We plead with you. This is urgent. We need it. We beg you in Christ's name. You one of these folks think you'd get that old sinner straightened out on his doctrine, he'd go to heaven. No, he'd just learn your doctrine and go on to hell.

Well, let's get excited. I had a happy letter the day I got back home Thursday and left Friday at noon to come up here. And I had a letter waiting for me from Pennsylvania. I'm going to take this time.

I ain't got much to preach about tonight, anyhow. I want to fill these seats, and I want Mr. Weddye to start coming back to the Minor Heights Baptist Church. Well, what would have happened to Brother Weddye, Mr. A. May?

Scotching for the truth. Holding up the hands of truth. And Bud said, Long, Mr. Weddye, Mr. A. May, don't come to church. We're not going to have God with us. I mean hearts that melt like my Lord. They were moved with compassion.

Oh, for a heart a little like his. And I got this letter. I've been up in Pennsylvania, and they took down all the messages on tape. And now they've got a stenographer, and they're taking all the messages down on tape, and they're mimeographing them.

And they claim they're going to put one in the hands of everybody in that city of 130 ,000 people. And they're taking the tape and making copies of them and going into unsaved homes and asking people if they'll let them play a sermon for them.

They're beginning to believe what they say they believe. If you believed it, Brother, you'd want everybody to hear it. I was in, I tell you, you folks have been sitting, you know, and you sound as a dog and you're dead as old hay.

And you need, you remind me of old cows when I was a boy. And we had this uanna. It's awful rich stuff. We fed the cows, mixed it with cottonseed husk. An old cow broke in the crib one day and ate about a half a bushel of that high-powered stuff.

She was sick for two weeks. You see, what truth you keep for yourself, you will lose. You've got to pass it on. Amen. I love to build a fire. Now let's see a fire burn. Let's start in somebody's heart and then it'll spread.

And we'll get excited about our Lord and what God's turned over to him and the issues involved and the gifts he has in his hands. We'll get excited about it and we'll begin to have a note of urgency and compassion.

And God help us, agony in our voices, as a membership of our churches that know Christ, go out from the house of God to witness a good confession and to plead with men and women whose paths they've crossed in the name of their eternity bound souls, please.

I beg you. You too good to that? My Lord, does all day long have I stretched out my hands to a disobedient and gang-saying people? You're not too good to stretch out your hands and beg sinners, are you?

Are you? Are you? That's the spirit of Christ. Let's fill mine of heights full of tears and urgency and compassion. Amen? That's it. Build a fire in your heart, brother. Break up the foul of ground in your heart, sister.

Get the way you can weep over souls. You can't weep over, you can't win them, I'll tell you that. Can't win them. Can't win them. I want to talk to you a little while tonight from the 107th Psalm, and I frankly am going to preach tonight so I can preach tomorrow night.

The Need to Tell Sinners the Truth About Themselves

God willing, tomorrow night I want to speak on how God gets men lost. How God gets men lost. The message tomorrow night breaks my heart every time I speak along that line, for I share a crushed and broken heart, brother Griswold, for the preachers of America and for my own part in lying to sinners.

I charge that with filled America full of church people who are not hypocrites, but they do not know my Lord, and it's almost impossible to see anybody saved if they've ever had some kind of religious experience or made some sort of profession or been around some sort of decision.

Chances are they'll go to hell, drinking water at that empty cistern and thinking they're being satisfied. And I do not preach down to brother preachers, but usually a pastor has to get on the mourner's bench with them.

I don't believe we've told this generation the truth about themselves, and I don't believe we've preached the gospel to this generation. It breaks my heart. When I first started out preaching, that great crowd was getting littler all the time.

Everybody was so tired up before they got to see it. We'd all like to go to heaven, but we just ain't got time. I think most of us are going to wind up in hell because we're so busy killing ourselves, paying for our luxuries that Mom and Papa never heard of.

And we're just going to have to go to hell because we ain't got time to seek God. And our employers own us, and the school teachers own us, and somebody else owns us. If the scripture says we'll enter the kingdom through much tribulation, that's exactly what it says.

It may be that a new note needs to be sounded. We need to tell people the awful truth about themselves. For that reason, I slip up on the subject tonight, and I just have one purpose in mind in speaking as I do tonight, and that's to encourage and beg you, after everything else I've asked you tonight, to be in great agony in session.

For the preacher, in order to tell men the truth about themselves, they'll never be interested in the truth about Christ if they're not faced with the truth about themselves. And they'll never become seekers after the Lord until they're facing with the truth about themselves.

And I've preached all my life to generations where we thought that we could get people saved by keeping the truth from them. Now we've got a monstrosity. I want to encourage you to be in agony of prayer, and that's what I'm going to preach for tonight.

Prayerlessness and the Two Weapons of the Church

With your Bibles open, will you turn to the 107th Psalm? May I see? I think maybe you've got Bibles, haven't you? Would you mind lifting them? I'd be very happy if you'd share it with that person next to you, for tonight it's going to be largely reading the Scripture.

And what I have in mind now may fail, but ladies and gentlemen, you've got to listen to me. A sure mark of spiritual death is prayerlessness. And if that's the true statement, I am scared to death about church people today.

If that's the mark of death, if the very life of Christianity is one great leaping out after and seeking out after the Lord, that's our life pursued, and that's what prayer is. I want to talk to you a little while tonight to encourage you to quit making your prayers fruitless because you're asking God to work in a way that he won't work.

If we've just got two weapons, the proclamation of the Word of God and intercessory prayer, and that's all the tools we've got. All the other things ain't worth a dime. If we don't have these, all your tricks won't work.

All your promotion won't work. We offer lollipops to fill these seats. That won't work. We've got to stick to just two things. And that's not simply the proclamation of truth from this pulpit, but the proclamation of truth from this pulpit and from your lips.

Amen? And prayer. I want you to notice how God is bringing men to salvation tonight from the 107th Psalm, verse 3 verses. I trust this is very familiar to you. And I want to give you an outline. Verse 1 of 107th Psalm speaks of the work of God the Father in the salvation of sinners.

The Mercy of God the Father in Salvation

Now you who study the Bible much will understand that we're bringing an application, not an interpretation tonight, but the scriptures will allow it. If you could preach from this chapter, if God would ever save a nation, which he's never done so far, he'd go about saving that nation just exactly like he outlines in this psalm.

If God ever were to save a church, make a power out of a church, save it from its deadness, and we're facing that now. Every godly pastor cries all the time inside over the deadness that's in our heart.

Isn't that awful? Or if God saved an individual, he'd go about it exactly as outlined here in this 107th Psalm. Verse 1 speaks of the mercy of Almighty God. No one will ever be saved unless God Almighty makes him an object of his saving mercy.

We're in mystery here. We cannot understand it. Nobody needs to understand it. Nobody can understand it. But after you get saved, you'll naturally start tracing back where it came from and head right back to God.

Oh, give thanks unto the Lord for his mercy for us. The word endureth, if you have the authorized version before you, as I do, is in italics. The schoolchildren can tell us what that means. It means it ought not to be there.

Is that right? And the men who translated this thought it would help the meaning, but to ruin it. I wish you would rejoice with me just a little bit before we get down to the burdens that we have to face or make a mockery out of setting aside days to try to get men under the influence of the gospel.

Just rejoice. Oh, give thanks unto the Lord for his mercy forever. In the providence of God, there is a cross in the heart of God forever. Some people get afraid of some of the terminology of the scripture.

If I tried to understand them, they'd scare me. But I don't try to understand them. I worship at them. For instance, suppose I'd get somebody else that thinks he knows goody about the Bible and give you fifteen hours to explain such an expression as from before the foundation of the world.

You couldn't do it, save your life. But to me it means that this business of salvation isn't a happen-so or an aftermath or a second thought. It's forever in the heart of God. Or take the expression Jesus Christ was as a lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.

You understand that? All I can get out of it is that it is in the heart of God and still must be. Yet in time you had to go to a cross. But I can tell you now that the cross will never be erased. It's still at the center of the heart of God.

And so is his mercy. So is his mercy. I wish we wouldn't try to be theologians and we'd just rejoice in the wideness and the wonder and the glory of the mercy of God. I wish that it would thrill our hearts again and again and again that he showed mercy to us.

Compassion for Sinners and the Heart of Christ

And I wish it would so thrill us and melt us and tenderize us, if that's a good word, that we'd come up with this solution that if Almighty God would set his affections on such a worm as I am, surely the wickedest sinner that ever arrived and wriggled his way to hell need not be discouraged.

For if it should please God, he wouldn't have any trouble showing mercy on anybody else. And the reason I know it, I have felt the power of being an object of his mercy in my own soul. And if he showed mercy to me, there isn't a sinner in Birmingham too big for God.

Not a single one. I remember my seminary professor, I mean president, Dr. L .R. Scarborough. He was a man who could weep over soul. God will help you if you ever get to where you came. You are terror, you are scourge, you are disgrace to the name of my Christ.

If you can handle the great truths of eternity without a tear in your heart. If you can talk to lost men and women, they cannot bear a tear and a tear and a heartbeat and a heartache and agony and urgency.

As you talk to them, you need to pray, pray, pray, and weep, weep, weep, that God will break your heart. And then break it again, and keep on breaking it. Until you share some of the compassion of him who looked in on the multitudes was filled with compassion.

And the meaning is he pulled out his heart and let it bleed over them. Dr. Scarborough could weep. He told a story of when he was a pastor in his young days in Abilene, Texas. He preached one Sunday morning, came home and lying down flat on his back on the bed while the wife was preparing the Sunday noon meal.

Resting a little from the message. And said this little six year old boy climbed up on the bed and straddled his stomach and was jumping up and down to help him relax, you know. And finally the boy said, Daddy, I didn't believe what some school teachers had to say.

Dr. Scarborough said, You didn't. He said, No. And the preacher said, Well, Sonny, what did the teacher say that you didn't believe? Why, he said, You know, Daddy, the teacher told us about a big old fish by the name of Jeff that I don't believe in.

I said, I don't believe there ever was a fish big enough to swallow a man. And the preacher said, He said to himself, Yeah, I got a rebellion in my own right. See what I can do about it. Boy, he's doubtful.

And he racked my brain. He said, Well, Jimmy, there's a boy's name. He said, Suppose that God made the man and suppose that God made the fish. Don't you suppose that God could make a fish big enough to swallow a man?

And the little boy said, Now, Daddy, if you're going to bring God in it, that's different. Well, thank God, that's where it is. God is in this fish. Well, of course. And what part to have in speaking about the power of God in salvation when we're always humiliated by being born in a cow's stable and crucified in the most terrible death that the mind of man can conceive.

Buried in a man's grave, he wrapped him by his pole, perfumed in spices he couldn't pay for. And now he gives repentance to the vile that sent her out of hell and grants the knowledge of forgiveness to everybody.

It pleases him. My, if you ever soak your soul in that, you can spit amber juice in the devil's face and tell him to go back to hell. We're going to occupy some territory for this exalted Christ. And we can look at every man in the face and know in every man the grace of repentance and the gift of the forgiveness of sins because that's what he's raised for.

And if he'd show mercy to me, he wouldn't have any trouble showing mercy to somebody else. Give thanks, ladies and gentlemen. What happened to the praise our fathers knew about this praising the Lord?

Out of your heart. It just bubbles. Come hell or high water. Give thanks to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Redeemer. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. People praise whom he hath redeemed.

Got some scars in my body and in my old spirit and soul as I've tried to battle for one truth that a Christian is not simply somebody that's done something. But a Christian is the product of the redeeming, reigning, sanctifying, keeping praise of Almighty God on the basis of the presence and the work of Almighty God the Son.

The Work of the Holy Ghost in Gathering the Redeemed

The most terrible sin I find in the catalog of the Bible is taking the name of the Lord by God in vain. And if this abuse yourself of the idea that that happened down in the garages and business places and on the streets as men did what we did, cursed.

No, no. That means to dare to stand up. Listen to me. To stand up in a hostile world and take his name on you unless you've got a right to. God bless your heart. If there's one thing you ought to be dead certain you don't rush into, it's this business of daring to claim.

Look at me. Look at me. I'm not my own. I'm bought with a price. I'm the apple of God's eye. I'm the object of his affection. I'm his magnificent obsession. His inheritance. His inheritance in the same.

See what a powerful thought we have. The mercy of God. How it was a difference of nature. I'm not the end of a proposition or the result of a formula. I'm a miracle. You can't make a flea or grow a tree dead in Christ Jesus.

But if you are King of the Lords. Not somebody that cooperated. God did part and you did the other. But God's always the giver and you're always the receiver. I'm a child of the King. I am what I am by the grace of God.

Just look and set it free. A stone in his heart. Wait a minute. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. Give you testimony that we don't know him, folks. He said, Brother Barney, I'm Lord of the church. Can't be Lord of the church unless you head over heels in love with the head of the church.

And I said, How about the head? Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. And verse 3 is the work of the Holy Ghost. The work of the Holy Ghost. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. Whom he has redeemed from the hands of the enemy and gathered.

That's the Holy Ghost word. Gathered them out of the lands from the east and from the west and from the north and from the south. I can just see God the Holy Ghost. He uses me. He's going out here rounding them up.

Amen. Going over here rounding them up. He's gathering them. The Holy Spirit. In order for man to be saved, he becomes an object of God's mercy. He becomes an object of the dying of my Lord and his resurrection.

He becomes one for whom the Holy Ghost goes out. Bring them in! The work of the Holy Ghost. And the rest of the psalm. Here's the most beautiful thing in the sketch. It's showing how the Holy Ghost gathers the objects of God's mercy and the objects of the work and person of my Lord into the fold.

The Four Ways God Brings Sinners to Trouble

Have you ever read these lines? Let's read them. Then we'll go home. Verse 4. Here's how the Holy Ghost works. These folks, the object of God's mercy. These folks, the subjects of Christ's death. Here's the Holy Ghost gathering them in.

How's he doing? He brings them, as verse 6 says. And verse 13. We'll read them in a minute. And verse 19 and verse 28. Four different times. He brings them from different ways, the Holy Ghost. Using this means and that.

No two people ever have exactly the same experience. You can't get your little recipe not as long as you're preaching a great God. I've had to fight for this. They say, well our custom here is so and so.

And I've actually had people come up to me and say, Brother Barnum, you ought to give people a chance to be saved. And they mean by that that we ought to stand and sing a song and give what we call a public invitation.

People can't be saved unless you do that. And that's the poor people they've been taught that. But isn't that terrible? The poor little old fellow like me has got to do something for a sinner. Got a chance to be saved.

That's serious. And yet we've had to battle him. Other people say, well, I tell you, I believe you've got to go to the mourner's bench. I'm not against any of these things. Any way on God's earth you can get into a living relationship where you touch the living Christ and P-O-W-E-R, power, supernatural power flows from a living Christ into your life and makes you a brand new, utterly different person.

Any way you can get that's all right with me. I ain't going to worry about which way you will go at it. I'm just simply saying that you can't get all fixed up and say God's got to work this way. And here in this chapter he always brings a person to a certain place if he's saved.

And that place, verse 6, tells us the Holy Ghost and this is what I want you to see afresh tonight, beloved. He brings people to the place of trouble and he brings them into the place of such terrible trouble that they'll do what they'll never do.

Otherwise, they'll call on the Lord. Then, we'll go back and see how he brought them there in a minute. Then, as some things took place, you see, they cried unto the Lord in that place. Wouldn't cry and got in trouble.

There's one place I know, brother Barnett, knows what he's talking about. If God Almighty doesn't cross your path and whittle you down and take all your peace away from you and rob you of all your assurance and get you down to where there's not a wiggle left in you and hem you up where you've got no way of getting out except to look up.

He don't, in mercy, deal with you that way. You're going to go to hell as sure as rock, Barnett. A worker came, God bless him. I wish you the personal worker. I don't think you're a Christian unless you are.

But a misguided personal worker comes to that old boy in trouble and quotes him a verse of scripture and gives him assurance of salvation. And the boy goes to hell. He's going to the Lord and the Spirit using the means of God's grace bring you to such terrible trouble you'll take not for an answer.

Nobody on God's earth will have to pump you up and assure you every six months that you're a Christian. Our Baptist churches have to have revival every six months to get the people to rededicate themselves.

They never have experience in deliverance and so they don't know whether they're saved or not. They're awful. So they have to get the backsliders to come back and the people to rededicate themselves. And I've been going up and down the land for 37 years.

Nearly every place I go at three or four nights the people say, Well, if what he's preaching is so, I don't know whether I'm saved or not. Well, God bless your heart. I'm looking you straight in the face and telling you this.

This ain't no make-sham stuff. Salvation is deliverance from the spirit of this evil age. Salvation is deliverance in the end. That power comes into your life that wasn't there. God will get you in such trouble, you'll cry to him and you'll keep on crying until experience delivers.

Till you do. Till you do. In God's name, don't go to hell trusting the doctrine. In God's name, keep tugging at the coattails of the rest of the Lord until with his nail-pierced hands he delivers you from the guilt and burden of sin.

That's right. Notice carefully and I'll let you go. Verse 4. Look how the Holy Spirit goes to work. That's how I want you to start praying around here and witnessing as you never have done before. Be an instrument in the hands of the Holy Ghost.

Wandering in the Wilderness Before Calling on the Lord

Well, he begins to deal with men and he makes wanderers of them. They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way. They had a revival meeting and they got converted. You see, this generation's got converted, but they never got acquainted with Christ.

They can tell you when they're saved, but they don't know the law. We isolated, we separated salvation from Christ about 50 years ago and made salvation an act. And people get salvation, they never get Christ.

How about you? They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way. Right here. But the Holy Spirit comes, take a stick and punch him, cut him up. And then the next meeting they regurgitated themselves and that made them feel good for a week or two.

But the Holy Ghost came, took all of that away and they started looking for something else. Changed churches and went to listen to some other different preaching. Gave a dine to the baker and did this and did that and did the other.

Wouldn't let them alone, praise this. They couldn't find any place to lie. They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way and they could find no city to dwell in, no place for foundation. And they wandered.

Then they cried unto the Lord. They trusted Brother Graceville. Said, how many of you folks want me to pray for you? And you lifted your hand. And we trust old Brother Graceville's prayer. And you go on home and go to sleep while he stays up all night and prays for you.

Trust anything on God's earth. Don't look to the Lord. Until the Holy Spirit with the truth at his disposal He just routes you out, pushes you out. You're wandering. You get hungry. You've got no strength.

Then when all hope is gone. One of the most glorious times I've ever had. This side of eternity. Salvation's been all time. It's in His hands. And the ascended Lord. And the form of life is there. If you do not have supernatural power in your life.

You're not in touch with the source of power. That's the living Lord. Sitting on the throne. Four times in this chapter. He comes out in different directions. But he brings people to the place of trouble.

I pray as I go up and down the land, Lord. Whittle us down as church people. We're not hungry. They're hungry yet. We'll still sleep well, eat well, live well. While the power of God's still not on us.

We're not very hungry yet. None of us are. We're not very thirsty for a living God. Lord, maybe I'll live to see the day in America. We'll have to meet underground. Maybe we'll start looking to Him. I love seeing old sinners.

In deep trouble. That just tickles the fool out of me. I love to see them. Can't sleep. Can't eat. I'm fixing to happen. They love getting in such trouble. They'll call on the Lord. And that's where blessing's been all time.

He's got it, brother. And isn't it great? It's one to do. Doesn't have to. But he delivers them. Amen. And I want to close by reading you verse 7, 8, and 9. And then I think one other verse. How does this do here for a picture of what it means to be a child of God?

Deliverance, Praise, and the Desired Haven

There's in deep trouble and they call on Him. He delivers them. He delivers them. Now the ladder's stretching. And that's enough. He didn't quit. He rose. That they might go to a city of hesitation. So that men would praise the Lord for His goodness.

And for His wonderful works to the children of men. And then say amen to this next verse. For He satisfies the longing soul. Filleth the hungry soul with goodness. He does it. He does it. I think I want you to turn to verse 29.

I'm going to keep you another minute and tell you a story. Verse 28 is then they cry unto the Lord four times there. He goes at men from different directions. But He gets them in a place of trouble. And then He delivers them.