Christ, the Demander — Rolfe Barnard

The Gospel Commands Repentance and Total Surrender

We're on orders to preach the kingdom of God and command all men in the name of the sovereign God, not simply invite them, not suggest to them, but to command them with a holy authority to repent, to take God's side against themselves, their self-righteousness, and their love of sin and their deep-rooted rebellion, and as beggars, bankrupt men and women, receive the kingdom of God as gospel, as good news.

It remains true that the first time any human being hears the gospel, the first time you hear the announcement, God has invaded this universe, he's been here and he's here now in Christ. He's come to have everything under his subjection, to be governed, who has the right, he purchased it by pouring out his lifeblood, he has the right to totalitarian, absolute, despotic rule of the deepest recesses of your soul and heart.

And that sounds good to you. That's when, for the first time in your life, you've heard the gospel, as gospel. Because that's not good news to you. Of course, you haven't heard it, you've missed it. To be commanded to believe.

Proposition, they repeated. Much stuff they call gospel preaching. If you do this, I'll do this. Multiply thousands of ex-G .I .s, finally get to God, in spite of the fact that over yonder in a foxhole, they got out on their knees, when the bombs were bursting, and propositioned God, if you do so and so, I'll do so and so.

But you don't proposition God, you bow to God. You have not yet learned that faith is utter commitment of myself into his keeping, no matter what the consequence. As long as you keep listening to this stuff that says that God will do so and so, provided you do so and so, you're making bargains with God.

You've never been able, by faith, to enter in. The big question is, have I embraced this lovely Lord, where he is, he's on the throne, in a living, day-by-day, obedient faith. We're going to speak tonight on Christ, the demander.

Christ Announces the Kingdom and Demands Repentance

Christ did this earth on mission bent, not to try to do something, but to do something. He began the scripture, say, by making an announcement, promulgating a demand. His announcement was, I'm here. From that time, Jesus began to preach, and his message was, repent.

That was his demand. His announcement was, I repent, I'm here. Every human being, top of his head to the bottom of his feet, God visited this earth, God was manifest in the flesh, God was in Christ, reconciling the world.

Great is the mystery of Godliness. This tremendous visitation of heaven to earth affects every human being. For time and eternity, the very announcement, the kingdom of God, of heaven, is at hand. Repent.

Repent. That's either so or it isn't so. This earth was actually visited by God, manifest in the flesh. God was actually in Christ Jesus, reconciling the world to himself. Great is the mystery. God was manifest in the flesh.

There's no ifs and ands and buts about it. That's so, or it's not so. He began his ministry by making a solemn announcement. The kingdom of heaven, the rule of God, has come down here to penetrate and attack and destroy and conquer the rule of Satan and sin.

His enemies are to be defeated. He will not stop, bless God, until his enemies have made his footstool. One day the victory will be final. He will be brought back under the sovereign rule of Jesus Christ.

And when he does it, his work will be done. And in language that I cannot enter into the depth, he will turn the kingdom back to the Father, that the Godhead may be all in all. Then he will raise the Lord.

The future has been invaded. His rule is now secret. For that blessed time when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess, men right now may taste of the power of the age to come. May receive eternal life.

May be translated from the rule of darkness to the rule and the sphere of God's dear son. May come to know by obedience almighty God. May receive the life of the spirit that every time I had a chance to address people these days, my old brain would click enough that if I didn't say anything, I'd be dead.

I could say again and again and again, let us forever be done with that perversion of gospel preaching. Religious America, the most godless nation this side of hell, that men have been given the privilege of accepting or rejecting Jesus Christ.

They have not. Almighty never did entrust his son to people that way. Men are not given a choice, they're confronted with a demand. Men are not invited to repent, they're commanded to repent. It's not a question, I repeat, of whether you bow to the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's simply a question of when. The very heart of our trouble, I think, in America is our refusal to face the fact that God's ordained that because his son poured out his soul unto death on a glory tree, he's going to bow in recognition.

Not for salvation, but for the glory of God. I wish that some of the urgency of grace, the grace of God means nothing less than now. He's the power of this mighty arm that makes it there, that comes up but ahead of time, right here on this earth.

It's the joy and the sweetness of him in whose hands, yonder at the right hand of God, there to be seen the print of the nail that is Jesus, what a Savior. He came making an announcement and a demand.

Entering the Kingdom Through Knowing God and Christ

How does one enter the kingdom of God ahead of time? Receive eternal life, which is to know by experiencing his power, the only true God and his son Jesus Christ. The righteousness that God requires of us, which imparts the life of the future.

These questions are important. The last three verses of scripture, they all mean the same thing. That would be sufficient tonight to answer our question, how? How can one enter heaven? This is where his rule is sweet.

That's heaven. That's heaven. Surely it is. The principle of the Bible is that what is begun in this life continues in the life to come. And that's so true. How can one enter heaven ahead of time? Be a charter member, bless God, in the rule of God.

Be definite that the commitment of oneself to Jesus Christ, a word that I scarcely use now because it's fallen in such bad company, but it's a good Bible word, in accepting him as Lord and Savior. The commitment of oneself in acceptance of him as my only Savior and my lovely Lord surely is the place to start.

I insist afresh that if it means that the preacher will go to hell himself and you too, faith is commitment of myself. With no reservation to him as my master. But the initial decision, if I can use that much abused word, must be reaffirmed and implemented in the life which follows.

Continuing in Christ's Lordship Rather Than Serving Sin

That's the reason this generation of church members are going to split hell wide open. As ye have therefore received Jesus Christ the Lord, says Paul, tell him goodbye and say, I'm saved, I'm going to get to heaven when I die.

No, no. So walk ye in him. Continue to choose between the Lordship of Christ and the Lordship of sin. The Lord is going to rule your life daily. That we can somehow serve both God and man. Friendship of the world is enmity with God.

The enemy of God. Present day so-called Christianity. But we dare not lie to men. Face them with the truth that men and women cannot negotiate. A special arrangement whereby we serve two masters. God's a jealous God.

The saints which I say. You can't carry water on those shoulders. A little bit for God while hobnobbing with the devil. You can't be a part of his people while giving allegiance either to the world or the flesh or the devil.

This is total war. Ladies and gentlemen, everybody that don't get in this, totally is going to miss it. Nothing gray is black or white. It's all out for Christ or his hell. We keep trying to recover the great doctrines of the word of God, the foundation, this gospel that have been lost because men pressed down the truth that they might live ungodly, unrighteous lives.

It's been the plot of the devil. Your pastor runs around like a chicken with his head cut off, nursing some of you folks who are having trouble. The bottom of this thing is simply this. Leave out total commitment of oneself to the Lord Jesus Christ and your plans and your schemes and your perverted gospel can get men and women to go through the motions.

But only a miracle of God's grace will ever enable any human being to survive or perish, sink or swim, except by the sweet rule of the bloodied Jesus. It just isn't done by the power and strength or will of men.

God has to do it. No wonder we try to strip you and rob you of your assurance and rob you of your faith and rob you of your righteousness and rob you of your profession and rob you of your decision and rob you of everything we can think of loose at one end.

For only those who are thus robbed will ever do the simple thing of life in the look of Scripture. In Romans 10, but what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and thy heart. What word? The word of faith.

Confessing Jesus as Lord and Believing in His Resurrection

What is salvation by grace through faith? What word of faith? The Lord said, if we preach that, if thou shalt confess, now mark it, confession is always to God, never to men. Testimony is to men. It may be true, it may not be true.

I say I love Jesus, that may be so, it may not be so, but confession is never to men, it's to God. And if we confess, we stand upon our hind legs in a godless, lawless age, even in Sunday morning Sunday school classes.

Just a little while is enough to uncover the snakes and the hostility in the hearts of this generation of Sunday morning churchgoers. Not be able to, apart from the Spirit of God, thou shalt confess Jesus is Lord.

Thou shalt believe in thine heart the thing that proves unto the Lord that God hath raised him from the dead. Mercy upon mercy, grace upon grace, although he don't have to do it, in wondrous grace and promising mercy, he says, thou shalt be saved.

In the same chapter he'll say, he who shall ever be ashamed. That's not a different way. And in another place, the 13th verse of that chapter, who shall ever shall call upon the name of the Lord, that's not a different way.

He will make a good confession by revelation that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, and therefore, when the scripture tells about upon the resurrection, he shall be exalted on the throne and give him the job whether they believe it or whether they bow to it or not.

No man makes Jesus Lord. God made him Lord. And to be saved means to agree with God grantly ahead of time before he makes you. That is a calling and a believing. These things are written unto you, that ye might believe the impossible.

Now get through his glorious gospel, separated and elected and selfish, and take it all. That ye might believe something that no human being apart from the work of God's regenerating spirit can possibly believe.

These things are written, you boys and girls, you've made a half-a-dozen professions, you go and sleep on me now, listen to me. These things are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ.

Nobody but a fool has been operated on by the whole history to possibly believe that that fellow Jesus, who was born in an insignificant little town called Bethlehem, nobody that was anybody to have anything to do with him.

Every committee that went out to examine him from the religious world found him wanting and turned from him. He wound up being crucified between two malefactors as a common criminal on a gold retrieve.

He was put in a grave, and as far as this world knows, his body is still resting over yonder in that grave. And you mean to tell me you believe Jesus is the Christ. You ain't got sense enough to come in out of the rain.

Arr, you've been born from above. There it is, folks. That little old, I accept Jesus is my Savior business, that wouldn't save a flea. Brother, it takes a miracle. Why, anybody who's got any sense knows that that fellow Jesus isn't the Christ of God, except somebody that's tarried as a seeker.

The sovereign God, from your blind eyes and by a flash of revelation, you found out who Jesus is. And God says, well, Brother Barnum, if that soul fell a king, it's saved apart from a miracle. That's what I've been trying to get you to face.

That's what this religious world fights till it blew in the face. But that's the God's truth. Soak your soul in this word and cry to God to make Jesus Christ leap out from the pages and be confronted with him in his reality.

And there you can say with a certainty I've met him. He loved many, conquered many, and I'm his forevermore. I think God is not simply a verbal confession. It's not to take his name on our lips. It's not to have a creed and be orthodox and say, I believe he's Lord.

No, sir. This repentance, this confession, this calling, this believing is to offer surrender. And the thing that makes you have a testament, I think this is right. To get under conviction is to try to repent.

I doubled all day to get the job done. You just can't do it if God Almighty has quit barking at your door. You've become a core for myself. Who shall judge you tomorrow? I want you tonight with his. You're alive.

Christ as Both Lord and Savior

In the New Testament, the two words Lord and Savior occur in the same verse only five times in the same verse. In all five times. It's always the reverse of our vocabulary. It's Lord and Savior. No human being is ever able to claim him as Savior from a willingness for his rule to be in your life.

His sovereign demands will be settled or you're going to go to hell. Now, bless God. It's not demanded that I produce my own righteousness. It's demanded that I repent of mine and receive his. It's not demanded that I give myself life.

It's demanded that out of death I cry and he gives me life. It's grace. This is grace. You receive life and blessing forevermore. Ladies and gentlemen, this demanding Christ. I get so sick and tired of all this foolishness going on today.

Bless God, there's a revival worldwide of getting back to the gospel. It's still small, but it's getting bigger. And those who hate this gospel, I know a little bit about what I'm talking about. That tongues are bitter, laws are made, letters are written everywhere I ever go to hold a meeting.

I never get anywhere that somebody doesn't want. Oh, but they can't stop it, not just me, but it's everywhere. I get so sick and tired of all this foolishness about fatalism and loss of passion and all of that.

If you ever face the fact that men or women are going to be plunged into hell unless they're able to make total their commitment, if you've got a heart that's as tender as steel, you have a passion to put your arms around men and women.

Unable to do what they must do, shut them up if you can. They'll look for somebody else to do for them what all their lives they've been taught they did for themselves. But if you put your hand on it, you will ruin it.

Salvation is of the Lord. My Lord said, I'm here, repent. How radical, how resolute, how costly, how eternal this demand. This demand from blood-stained Jesus is no less than a demand for a resolute surrender.

The Cost of Resolute Surrender

With one hand behind your back, see how it comes out, but sink or swim. No bargain business, here I am, Lord. Whatever you do, that's your business, but I turn myself over to you. I still believe that you'll never get saved until you forget all of this business by what you're going to get out of it and turn yourself over to the Lord.

He's got a perfect right to damn you while you're pleading for mercy. That's what they say we preach? Well, there ain't too much wrong with that. He's got a right to send you to hell. If you were screaming, of course you're not doing it.

And he doesn't do it, but he's got a perfect right. He'd be just if he sent the whole outfit tonight to hell, even though we turned this into a giant prayer meeting and begged and pleaded for mercy. He's under no obligation whatsoever.

But he demands a resolute surrender, and it came to pass that as they went in the way a certain man said unto him, Lord, he is orthodox. Oh boy, I will, just look at me, whoo, I will. That little old well of yours worth about 15 cents on the market.

All of these. And Jesus said it, that's so. Foxes have holes, and birds of air have nests. I don't have any place to lay my head tonight. You're talking about great big you. You'll go with me, whatever.

Sort of discouraging, wasn't it? And he said to another, follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. The old man died. Jesus said unto him, let the Kewanee Club bury the dead.

No, let the dead. Let the physical dead, the spiritual dead bury the dead. The life of prevention, the cruelty to animals, and all the do-good societies to the dead. Let them take care of that business.

And you, kingdom, the rule of God. He also said, Lord, I'll follow thee. I've seen a few of them. But let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house. And Jesus said, well, we need you.

We're suffering for some schoolteachers, and we need some more deacons. He didn't say that. He said, no man having put his hand to the plow, this is awful. Ain't no room to turn back. He's set for the kingdom of God.

He demands a resolute surrender. He demands a radical surrender. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffered violence and the violent take it by force. Says the Lord and the prophets were until John.

Since that time, the kingdom of God is free. And every man presses into it. What kind of language is that? You dictate Jesus. Just believe, dear one. Oh, no. Roll up your sleeves. Spit on your hands. My Lord set up against all of this stuff they call gospel preaching.

Counting the Cost of Discipleship

Now this is it. This is radical. A man shall seek to enter heaven with one eye and to go to hell with two. To send peace, but to bring us all. Man's a rat. You know how much it costs a rich young ruler to get sick?

Everything he has. No wonder he went away. You know how much it's going to cost you? Everything you've got. I get sick and tired. These people think they're doing God a favor if they give a time. That's all.

You don't have to go to hell. You own that home of yours. You'll just have to go to hell. No, sir. You're just a steward. The Lord's just letting you occupy that home and use that money. That's what the scriptures teach.

What does it cost? Make this total commitment. Everything you've got costs you life. Mine is his life. He'll lose it. He that loses his life for my sake. Better folks than you have paid for their faith with their lives.

A Christian is a martyr. He's a potential martyr. A few more years, we may learn how to spell that word. Let's surrender. The fact that I'm going against the grain of popular preaching tonight. We've been told that there's a difference between being saved and being committed.

But there isn't. We've been told that Bill's a Christian. Of course, he's not serving the Lord, but he's a Christian. But he's not. He's not. No, my Lord was honest with folks. Brother, this is total war.

He came to bring us over. You may yet find out how much it costs to be a child of God. America may yet contribute to the seat of the church by the blood of men and women. Nothing but the grace and spirit of God keeps this mad house, Houston, from mangling God's people now.

Confessing Christ Before the World

God help us, my Lord, demands an eternal surrender. Brother, the consequences of it are eternal. Also I say unto you, whosoever shall confess me before men, tell the truth, him shall the Son of Man also confess before the angels of God.

For he that denies me before men, get what he says, but he denies the Lord's rule in his life, and he does it publicly, shall be denied before the angels of God. Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him also, shall the Son of Man be ashamed when he cometh in the glory of the Father with the holy angels.

I will make it for him that he enables some to do it, whether he's able to turn himself over now, his time, when it's not popular to do it, when it's going against the grain, when it means goodbye to family lots of times.

Manfest this rapture, repent now, surrender now, radically, resolutely, no man looking back. Today my Lord will appear as the Son of Man in glory, to bring final full salvation to the sons of the kingdom, will be plumbed save then, and at the same time to bring a just condemnation to the sons of darkness.

Meanwhile, sinner throw down your arms now, come under his rule, nobody much doing it, tribulation, we shall enter the kingdom, you say it'll kill me, yes, utter abandonment, utter commitment, it's nothing more, but God help you it's nothing less.

God's Long-Suffering Grace Gives Time to Repent

I think I told it before, but I'll repeat it. As long as the candle burns, the candle of God's long-suffering, that's the only reason it burns, he can get just as many converts if he wraps this thing up tonight.

It forces all men to bow to him, but it's his grace, it's his long-suffering, it's his patience, no man knows how long that candle will burn, it's still burning now. And the gospel comes and says, the glory of the kingdom has been assaulted, and there's no doubt about the issue, and my friend, God is my judge, that's salvation by the unutterable glorious grace of God.

The Closing Appeal to Throw Down Rebellion

My message is done, our Father, press the radical, resolute, costly, eternal demand of your Son. Just be happy, Lord, if one more time somebody here is faced with this demand, they may walk through it at that time when by force they'll be made to bow.

But Lord, be merciful tonight, and face them once more in the power of the Holy Spirit, and hold back the powers of hell, and enable eternity-bound men and women to throw down their weapons of rebellion and doubt of the Lord.

He's the one that was made sin. A young woman came to the moment of crisis, and she went out alone, so many have been doing that these days. Fighting this battle out, that's good news, it is a battle.

She went out and sat on a bank of a little flowing creek. She picked up a pebble and threw it in the creek and said, there goes my pride. After a while she picked up another pebble and threw it in the creek and said, there goes my prejudices.

Finally, with some hesitation, she knew this was it. She picked up a great big pebble and threw it in the creek and said, there goes my self. That's it. There goes my self. I die to self that he may be enthroned.

I beg you, the Spirit may have spoken to you, pressed these demands upon you. If he's speaking to you, that's God's enabling grace, what he demands you to do. Tell us about it. If you can, come and prostrate yourself and cry for mercy, that you can.

Pass me not, O gentle Savior, hear my humble cry, for as thou art calling, do not pass me by. Whatever he's saying during the night, do whatever he's telling you to do.