Take Heed, Lest You Fall — Leonard Ravenhill

Peter’s Confession and Denial

Look, just for a moment, at the 16th chapter in the Gospel, as recorded by Matthew. And Simon Peter answered, verse 16, Matthew 16, verse 16. Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

I want to take that for a moment. Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God. This is Peter. I've forgotten the chapter, but in Mark, you have that same man cursing and swearing and saying he didn't know him.

Well, you say, why don't you say that first? Why don't you tell us the bad things and then cover it up with his amazing confession? It's one of the most startling confessions in Scripture. And the other is one of the most startling denials in Scripture.

And I don't change them around for the simple thing, that they didn't happen that way. Here is Peter, verse 13 of chapter 16 again. When Jesus came into the coast of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I am?

I the Son of man am. And they said, Some say thou art John Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. But who do you say I am? Simon said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

And yet in Mark, he turns around and says, I don't even know him. And remember, that's after three years of living with him. Three years of seeing his miracle working. Three years in which he heard the greatest sermon ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount.

Which has the answer for all our problems today. But why do you make the contrast? Because the Scripture makes it. Here he is, this man who is always so right on the, hit the head on the nail, nail on the head if you like.

And yet just as vehemently, he denies his Lord. In an hour when Jesus needed him. What's the story? I think that, I think the story is this, let any man take heed lest he fall. It isn't good to make vows in the, in the warm atmosphere of a church.

It isn't good to make vows when you're on an emotional high. We need to make our vows deliberately, coldly, intelligently, intellectually before God. But here's the interesting thing, whom the men say that I, the Son of Man am.

Some say thou art John Baptist. I guess it's because he prays with the same fiery energy. Some say Elijah, another Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. Notice they, they leave out the mighty Moses with all his miracles.

Moses preached the Sermon on the Mount and brought his sermon notes down, you remember, dropped them. Moses out 40 years in the wilderness, Jesus out 40 days in a place of temptation. But they don't liken him to Moses.

They don't liken him to the inspiring Isaiah. They don't liken him to Zechariah. They liken him mainly here to Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. So let's go back now to Jeremiah. What's the point of identification between Jesus and Jeremiah?

Jeremiah as the Man of Sorrows

Well in my mind that they were both, I believe Jeremiah was the man of sorrows, a man of sorrows until the man of sorrows came. As far as I can see he's the only one of the prophets who gets into immediate fighting with the people, and he stays in a battle scene as it were right through, right to the end of his days.

Maybe the outstanding thing, I hadn't noticed it till meditating a few days ago, actually this book is the greatest book in the Bible on backsliding. It's mentioned 13 times in this book. It's only mentioned three other times, and I believe that's in Hosea.

But he's come to a nation that's just full of backsliding, and full of apostasy. As I read it my way, maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to this man, he's stressing this, that sometimes God sends judgment without mercy.

This man predicts that 70 years the nation is going to be put into bondage. Then they're going to come back, and they're coming back weeping he says. But then they're going to be dispersed again, and it looks as though it's a rather despairing picture, which it really isn't, because if you go to study further in the book you discover that he speaks about the coming of Jesus Christ, and that he is going to come and reign forever and ever.

I would say about this man, let's read here from in chapter 1 verse 4. The Lord of the Lord came unto me saying before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee. You know what? That made me wonder if, does God know every unborn babe in the body of a woman?

Well God Almighty, how are they going to help when God Almighty knows every babe that's there, and a million of them this past year were dragged out of their mother's bellies to use the scripture, and flushed down the john.

They only think of the immediate disgrace if they have any disgrace. I believe every babe is marked in its mother's womb. I can't remember being there, I can't remember the first day, but the first day I was born my mother didn't tell me until the first time I came home from college, she said Len this is a great day in my life.

I said well it's a great man, great day in my life to get home to some good food. No, she said I'm just thinking the first day you were born I laid my hand on you in the bed and said Lord make this boy a preacher or don't let him live.

And I've heard, if I'd have heard that I'd have been a bit scared. But the Lord says to Jeremiah, before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, I ordained thee, fancy there's an ordination, ordained in his mother's womb to be one of the most outstanding men.

In fact one section of Jewry today says that the number one character ever lived amongst the Jews is Jeremiah. He's greater than Moses, he's greater than Isaiah. And he's so like Jesus Christ. Before thou camest out of the womb I sanctified thee and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

The Cost and Calling of a Prophet

A prophet. That's the most thankless task in the world. You know what I think when God is angry with a nation he gives it no prophets. There isn't a prophet in America today I know of. Somebody sent a circular out with my picture on and said I was a prophet, I never claimed that, I didn't give authority for that, it's nonsense.

I was going to say you never find a prophet that's rich, not that I'm rich. You never find a prophet that's the man of the year. Never find a prophet where the red carpet is laid out for him. Immediately he takes up that mantle of prophecy, he gets the full load of the love of God and the full anger of the people.

There's a great Jewish scholar in America years ago by the name of Bucks Basin, he's dead now. He had a brilliant mind, he had a brilliant insight into the Hebrew scriptures. I remember one thing he wrote, it comes back to me every time I read about a prophet.

He said the prophet by the very nature of his calling. Now what did he say? By the prophet by the very nature of his calling is a tragic figure. He has a fierce loyalty to God. I love that word, he has a fierce loyalty, he has a burning loyalty to God and he has a broken heart over a lost nation.

Tell me a man in America that has that, don't get how big his TV station show is. Maybe the nearest to it is Jimmy Swaggart anyhow. He certainly says his piece. Verse 9 says, Then the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth.

I put to the side, I write on the side of my Bible, I've got a friend and I've tried to borrow that Bible, I can't get it, with a lot of notes on it. The Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth and the Lord said, I put my words in thy mouth.

How many preachers will preach God's word? We don't preach the word of God, we preach about the word of God. We don't dare say, thus saith the Lord, because it isn't thus saith the Lord. Most preaching now is passing on opinions.

This is my viewpoint, forget your new viewpoint. Not do I read Time magazine if that's all you want. The Lord put forth his hand and, can you think of that? The fingers of God that chiseled the stone on Mount Sinai and gave the commandments and tender enough to touch the lips of a prophet.

That God will come and put his word in his mouth? Do you wonder he's so full of wisdom, which he is? So full of authority, so full of terrifying words, so full of terrible predictions. Yes, it's great to know the Lord's touched your mouth.

Would you like this? Steve, you better get hold of this, maybe it's for you tonight. It's a tremendous verse, 10. See, this day I have set thee over nations, not over Israel merely, over the nations. You know, there were not as many people in Israel at the time this was written as there are in New York City tonight, or as there are in Chicago.

How can this man's message be to the nation? Because it comes to us now. Seven, 650 years at least before Christ was born. This day I have set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms. Here's his message, to root out, to pull down, to destroy, to throw down, to build and to plant.

Moreover, the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, send a man what seest thou. I'm going to go there to chapter 4. You see, the prophet sees as God sees. He loves as God loves. He hates as God hates.

Notice in chapter 4, verse 19. Again, I say this man has a fierce loyalty to God. He's a brokenhearted man. He says in this chapter 4 and verse 5. My bowels, my bowels, I am pained at my very heart. My heart maketh a noise in me, I cannot hold my peace.

Because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet and the alarm of aught. Now notice he listens with his soul, not just his ears. He's listening in the inner chamber of his being. He's hearing that voice of God speak.

The voice that's the most amazing thing this side of eternity. And because of that I cannot hold my peace. You go over here a minute. Chapter 15 and verse 10. Let me look at that with you. If this man had one complaint, it was this.

He complained he'd never been born. That was his constant complaint. Nothing's going to ease up all the way. He's come in the kingdom for such a time as this. He is a voice crying in the wilderness. His message is one of rebuke.

His message is unveiling the sin, the corruption of the nation. Do you remember what Isaiah starts with? This is a nation, a people full of iniquity, a people full of wounds and putrefying sores that cannot be bound up, neither mollified with ointment.

They're totally incurable unless God in his infinite mercy intervenes. I believe that's the picture of America tonight. We don't need Russia to destroy it. We'll destroy ourselves. Another decade from now there'll be nearly as many people with AIDS as don't have it.

There's another disease now that comes to women and they don't even know. You can get it at 16 years of age. It won't show any rash on your face. It won't show anything. But when it's time to bear children, you'll be barren.

I've talked with a doctor about this recently. I forget there's a character in the Old Testament there where they disobey God and God shut up the wombs of all the women in Israel. Women are throwing their babies down the jam, pardon the phrase, but there it is, down the toilet now.

They'll be screaming to God and when they want them, they won't get them. Whether they're married or single, God is going to shut up their wombs. And there's a penalty that's being put on this precious nation tonight.

Is it awesome that men will still go into that filthy living and know that at the most they have five years to live after they get AIDS and yet they think, well, eat, drink, and be married, tomorrow we die.

The scripture says that. No, it doesn't. The scripture says if there be no resurrection, eat, drink, and be married, but for tomorrow we die. But if there's a resurrection, everything we've done in the past is coming up in the future.

Jeremiah’s Tears Over National Sin

Jeremiah's complaint in 15 and verse 10. He says, Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast made me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth. I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent me on usury, yet every one of them does curse me.

Let's go to chapter 9 and verse 1. I think this is one of the most pathetic verses in the whole of the Word of God. All that my head were waters, that mine eyes were a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slaying of the daughter of my people.

Remember in Psalm 119, is it what, and verse 136, the Psalmist there says, Rivers of water run down mine eyes continually. Why do rivers of water run down his eyes? Continually. Because of the sin of the nation, because of their impurity.

In the previous chapter, verse 20, is one of the saddest texts, I think, in the whole of the Word of God. The harvest is past, the summer is ended, we're not saved. Remember they sing the song of Moses and the Lamb in heaven, don't they?

Which is taken from the 15th chapter of Exodus, when they thought the horses had been thrown over, and all their enemies had been destroyed. And Moses and the children of Israel sang. And there's one of the most perfect verses about the majesty of God in that chapter, in the 11th verse.

Remember it says, is glorious in holiness? What's the next verse? Fearful in praises, doing wonders. Glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, and doing wonders. And these people have retained, time and time again, they've tasted the mercy and the grace of God.

Go back to chapter 2 for a moment there. And verse 3, it says, Israel was, now that's the past tense. Israel was holiness unto the Lord. And the first fruits of his increase, all that devour him shall offend, evil shall come upon them, saith the Lord.

She had walked in holiness, and now she's walking in total unrighteousness, total rebellion, total sinfulness. Verse 13, my people have committed two evils, they have forsaken me. And it's not enough to forsake God, they've hewn them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Again, I remind you that 13 times he calls them a backslidden, wayward, rebellious nation. And here is one man that stands up against them. The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we're not saved.

Do you know where they sing that? In hell. In heaven they sing the song of Moses and the Lamb, there's no tears, there's no grief, there's no blemish. And in hell they sing, the harvest is past. And some of them went right down the main aisle of your favorite church in town, straight to hell.

Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch

They made a simple confession. And the stupid preacher says, I'm the profession of your, I wouldn't baptize anybody in the profession of their faith. You baptize them on the fruits of their faith. Put them on trial for three months.

And everybody comes up usually with the argument, well remember the man that was going down the road and Philip came and found this Ethiopian eunuch? A black man, a wealthy man, an intelligent man, why?

He'd been to Jerusalem for to worship. And bless your life, he wasn't long after Pentecost, he went to Jerusalem and there's nothing there that convinced him. How easily the fires go down. And the man of God goes up and reads, finds this man an intelligent man.

Why? Because he was reading Hebrew. There were no translations of the scripture. A wealthy man, how do you know? Because they were very rare. Remember there's some people called the scribes and they wrote the scriptures.

It took them hours, it took them days, it took them months, took them months, years to write a prophecy. And then he buys one. He's not satisfied with being in the cabinet of Queen Candacy. He's not satisfied with his social standing.

He's not satisfied with the stories he'd heard in Egypt there. He goes all that way, follow it on your map. And remember he didn't go by jet. He goes all the way from Ethiopia, way there across the Red Sea, up there into what was Palestine, now we call Israel.

And he buys this treasure that he has. And it may have taken him a couple of weeks. He's been reading day by day with amazement, wide open eyes, wide open mind, wide open heart. And when the preacher goes along he says, I'm reading.

What are you reading? I say he's intelligent. How could he read Hebrew? He's in a country that didn't use that language in any shape or form. He said, what are you reading? He said, I'm reading Isaiah chapter 53.

I'm reading about somebody says he was wounded for our transgressions and he was bruised for our iniquities. And the chastisement of our peace was upon him and by his stripes we are healed. Is he speaking of himself or of somebody else?

What did he preach unto him? Prophecy? No, he preached unto him Jesus. And that somehow the spirit bore witness in the heart of that man. This is the person you're seeking, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Maybe he took him back a little further in and read to him a virgin should be born. All the prophecies that Isaiah made so beautifully fulfilled in Jesus. And the man of God says, do you believe? He said, yes.

He said, what hinders me from being baptized? Well, there you are. I mean, he made a confession and maybe within an hour of being his confession, he was baptized. Well, listen, you bring me a man that's read Isaiah for three weeks.

I'll baptize him too. If he's read Isaiah and he's convinced that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, I won't send anything to him except make a complete repentance and sever all your connection with the world and declare that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the only Redeemer, that he died for our sins and rose again according to the scripture to ascend to the Father and justify us.

Lamentations and the Prophet’s Broken Heart

I say this man is weighed down with grief. Go on to his next book. You remember that he has a left as a notebook of his. In Lamentations, I say he was the man of sorrows until the man of sorrows came.

He had a preview of history. He knows the torture that these people are going into for 70 years. He knows they're going to come back and then they're going to be dispersed again. And then there's going to be a final gathering.

And finally, Jesus is coming. The Messiah is coming to reign over the world forever and ever. Look in Lamentations chapter one, verse 12. He says, Is it nothing to you all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.

Go down again now into chapter two. It seems to me that in the first chapter of Lamentations, you have a song of a city in mourning. In the second chapter, you have a song of a people with a broken. In the third chapter, you have the song of a prophet who's a brokenhearted prophet.

Now look what he says in verse 11. My eyes fail with tears. That's why later he cries, O that my head were waters. My eyes fail with tears. My bowels are troubled. My liver is poured out on the earth.

We read in the other, if you go back in the previous chapter, chapter one, and verse 20 says, Behold, O Lord, I am in distress. My bowels are troubled. My heart is turned within me. His bowels are troubled.

His heart was turned within him, and his liver is poured forth on the earth. For a moment, go over to the next chapter. In verse 11, what a severe thing he says here. He hath turned aside my ways and pulled me to pieces.

Pulled him to pieces. My bowels are troubled. My liver is poured out. My heart is turned within me. Well, why is he so troubled? As he mentions here in verse 11,. My eyes do foil with tears. My bowels are troubled.

Well, go up the chapter. Let's go up to the fifth verse in that same chapter too. The Lord was as an enemy. He hath swallowed up Israel. He hath swallowed up all her palaces. He hath destroyed his strongholds, and hath increased the daughter of Judah, mourning and lamentation.

He hath violently taken away his tabernacle. God has been stripping them. He's destroyed, taken away the tabernacle as if it were a garden. He hath destroyed his places of the assembly. The Lord hath caused the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised indignation and his anger, and the king of the, and the king, the priest.

The Lord hath cast off his altar. He hath abhorred his sanctuary. Isn't that enough to grieve us? When I read this, I thought of an experience I had about 20 years ago. I preached in a Christian missionary alliance church.

We had some very wonderful meetings. And one night I said, I think we should stay to pray. Some people went, others didn't. There was two or three oldish people at the front. And I said, you know, I, I, I see great danger for America.

Maybe every preacher should preach on this. America, if thou knewest the day of thy visitation. Because before long, as I've said to you, I agree with what Dave Wilkerson said in some ways in his book.

I do not believe the number one threat to America is Russia. The number one threat to America is God. Right. You get to a place, God says, my spirit will not always strive with individuals or with nations.

The scripture says, it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. Robert Louis Stevenson that wrote children's books. He was the one also that wrote, come ill, come well. The cross, the crown, the lightning, or the thunder.

I lay both soul and body down for God to plow them under. And Robert Louis Stevenson said, it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. It's a more fearful thing to fall out of the hands of a living God.

Jeremiah was a man of sorrows. Jeremiah wept. Well, didn't Jesus weep? Who is Jeremiah weeping over? Jerusalem. You know, in the rotation of scripture, you get lamentations, the major prophets of Jeremiah.

And then you come down to the minor prophets, as they're called. The schoolmen call them the minor prophets. I don't think there's much minor in them. They have some awful statements that they make. But actually, Joel lived years and years, more than 150 years before even Jeremiah was around.

And yet God had warned them over and over and over again what he would do. But people don't hear. That terrible landslide in, was it Puerto Rico last week? Somewhere over there, that whole hillside moved.

And people were warned, you better go because the river has broken its banks. It's coming this way. It's going to cut the ground. And washer, oh no, no, no. My grandfather lived in this house. And they showed a pile of mud.

And they said, there are 300 boys and girls and men and women buried under that mud. And they were warned and took no notice. Well, isn't that the task of the prophets? To be a voice crying in the wilderness?

To be crying when nobody wants to hear? The popular man today is a man who tells the people what they want to hear. Or what they already know. But not what God wants them to know. So I'm going back to that verse again there.

Chapter 2, verse 10. The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground and keep silence. They have cast up dust on their heads. They have girded themselves with sackcloth. The virgins of Jerusalem hang their heads down.

Mine eyes fail with tears. My bowels are troubled. My liver is poured out for the destruction of the daughter of my people. I've said to my wife a few times, and one or two other folk maybe. When are we going to get serious about being serious?

The church loves its games. It loves its fun. How many people came to the square dance here a few nights ago? Dozens? Or a hundred or two? Not here tonight. I think jokes are out of place in a funeral parlor, don't you?

Well fun and all the silly stuff that goes on in churches today is out of place in a world that's rushing to hell. Or to use Jimmy Swaggart's common phrase, often these days America is going to hell in a basket.

Used to be when people's bodies were broken they laid them in a long basket chair and wheeled them out. That's what it means. Wheel them out. They're helpless. They're paralyzed. Is there a voice of the prophet in the land?

I think it can be said of us, we've committed two evils. We've forsaken him, the fountain of living water, and we've hewn him out cisterns that can hold no water. Isn't it amazing how rubbish sells? There's a big boy in his glass palace out in the west coast.

What's his name? Bob Shuler. You know his constant argument is, your trouble is you have your self-image is so poor. You need a better self-image. That's not your trouble. Your trouble is your self-image is too good.

Take your self-image to the cross and get it crucified. Get a new one. Self-image is based in pride mainly. It's your ego. We don't need a better self-image. We need to see ourselves corrupt and perverted before God and useless unless he comes with his redemptive power and does a miracle in us.

I'm going over to chapter 9 now. Oh that my head were waters, that mine eyes were a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people. He doesn't just see them needy.

He sees them destroyed. God has removed his tabernacle. God is removing his favor. And there he stands in splendid isolation. What to do? To weep. I say again, when are we going to get serious about being serious?

Five minutes inside the bed and every one of us will be embarrassed that we landed there so poorly when we could have landed there rich. We'll be sorry that we escaped trials and tribulations and didn't volunteer to carry burdens other men wouldn't carry.

Let me use my old phrase again. Revival tarrys for number one reason. We're content to live without it. I thank Christian people that they live from one event to another. We're going to a big concert.

We're going to a conference. We're going here. We're going there. And in between they're half backslidden. Wasn't it what when he wrote a book, The Normal Christian Life? Do you know what the normal Christian life is now?

To be dumb and deaf and speechless. The normal Christian life today is just about to be paralyzed. Just sit in a pew and give an offering and that's it. The old Methodist used to sing a hymn. Blessed are the men of broken heart who mourn for sin with inward smart.

But how many want to do that? I was looking for a book yesterday in my little library. I couldn't find it. And I don't think it was by accident I picked this up. This is the narrative. And there's a picture of that handsome man.

Do you know that is Jonathan Edwards. Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, I talked with him a few times. In London, he said he was the most brilliant intellect America ever had. This may not seem too much, but you know what?

Let me give you some statistics here. If I can find them. Jonathan Edwards entered Yale College, Yale University at the age of 13. At 17, he graduated at the head of his class as a valedictorian. Then he was a tutor for two years in Yale.

Well, then you remember he had an amazing experience with God. He said he was famous in European universities as a philosophical writer. Jonathan Edwards left a glorious legacy of deep spiritual literature to the church.

As the human leader of the religious revival known as the Great Awakening, which visited the colonies, British colonies from Georgia to Maine. At the early age of 10, John manifested his spirituality and intellect at 10 years of age by writing a great tract on the nature of the soul.

One rarely meets his writings. In his writings, any bursts of lofty ecstasy, which are found in the works of Samuel Rutherford and John Howe and Robert Hawker and Andrew Monner. It says the biographical account, it's a very brief biographical account of Jonathan Edwards would not be complete without mentioning his wonderful wife, Sarah.

Sarah Pierre Point Edwards passed from death unto life when she was five years of age, had a conscious relationship with Jesus Christ at five years of age. My God, our kids at 15 go to Sunday school year after year, never get an awakening in their hearts.

Why don't they? Because we now have preachers like Jonathan Edwards. They preach theological slop. They preach about prosperity and all the other junk. You could get in a decent club. Sarah Pierre Point Edwards passed from death unto life, a conscious relationship at five, when only 13, a singular reputation as a youthful Christian was already known to not a few.

They would say there's a young lady in New Haven who is loved of the great being. In other words, she is loved of God, who made the rules of the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this great being comes and visits her.

Isn't that awesome? 13 years of age, she had confrontations with the one who made the world, the being who put those stars, he made the stars, those heavenly flames. He sits on the circle of the earth, the nations that are dropping a bucket, and he, the mighty, lofty God, comes and talks with a 13, 15, 16 year old girl.

It was a preparation for an experience, a life that God was going to build in her and make her a pyramid of strength at the side of her amazing husband, who was going to go see that fantastic revival, then become the head of a university and get kicked out of it because he didn't like what he said.

Excuse me, this horrible dry thought. They say there's a young lady in New Haven who is loved of the great being, who made and still rules the world. There are great seasons, certain seasons, in which this great being, in some way or other, but invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceedingly delight.

She has a strange sweetness in her mind and singular purity in her affections. She seems to be always full of joy and pleasure and nobody knows why. Why, if God came to me once every three months like that, I think I'd know why.

She had a willingness to wait upon God. There's a secret for you. I cannot find words to express how the love of God appeared to me, my safety and happiness and eternal enjoyment in God's immutable love.

Come on, tell me if there's a girl in the whole of Texas can write at 17 years of age of a relationship with God like that. Whose fault is it? The pastor's fault, the church's fault. We just get people saved, they give up smoking, dancing, cursing, and we think that they should get wings and a halo.

I cannot find words to express how certain the love of God appeared to me, my safety, my happiness, my eternal enjoyment in God's immutable love. Most of our 15, 16 year olds couldn't tell you what immutable means.

They think it was an insurance company. This great unchangeable God with an immutable love comes to me. I'm melted and overcome by the sweetness of his assurance. I fall into great flows of tears and cannot forbear weeping aloud.

These words seem to come over and over to my mind. My God, my all, my God, my all. The presence of God is so near and so real I seem scarcely conscious of anything else. I'm going to read a little snapshot as it were here of this revival.