Nine Characteristics of a Preacher — Rolfe Barnard

...message and the following messages I wish to share with those of you who are young preachers, God's description of his preacher. The subject then of this message, which will be broken up into several messages, about nine I believe, will be God's preacher.

I hope to be able, out of 36 years of seeking to be a preacher of the word of God to lost men, to stir up the gift that's, help you stir up the gift that's in you, and to challenge you that in these days we must be God's preachers.

Nine Characteristics of God's Preacher

And I'm going to just briefly outline with just a little bit of fill-in about nine characteristics of the preacher whom God has called and upon whom God places the anointing of the Holy Spirit. First I want to suggest that God's preacher, and I use this title because Satan has his preachers as we are well aware, God's preacher will certainly preach revival or for the manifestation of the disturbing presence of Jesus Christ in our day.

Revival and the Ministry of the Prophet

Certainly these are days, not for the ministry of the comforter, but for the ministry of the prophet of God calling on men everywhere to face the demands of God in Christ Jesus and turn in contrite repentance and childlike faith to be united to the Lord Jesus Christ and a conscious union of peace to be formed between Christ and the believing sinner.

God's preacher therefore will preach for revival. In the second place we want to suggest that God's preacher will preach for a verdict, all of God's blessed acts of grace toward the sinner and demand that the sinner pronounce his verdict.

Preaching for a Verdict

And we're not just preached to be preaching or to fill up some time or to go through the motions or to carry out the work of the church, but we're to preach for a verdict. In the third place I suggest that in these desperate days, God's preacher will be a John the Baptist for his day calling on men everywhere to surrender in repentance and faith to God's Son and God's King and our Lord.

Preaching as Dying Men to Dying Men

And then I'm going to suggest in the fourth place that God's preacher will preach in these days as a dying man to dying men. It was Mr. Baxter who first used that expression and if that were true of his day, God knows it's true of people of preachers today.

As dying men we must address the message of the living gospel to dying men. And then I'm going to say that God's preacher will preach a God will, not a whosoever will, gospel or salvation. And then in the sixth place I'm going to say that God's preacher in these days of corruption and whittling down and husking the gospel and becoming hucksterers of Christ and trying to get him off our hands into the hands of sinners at the cheapest price, I'm going to say that God's preacher will preach salvation but he'll preach it on God's terms and God's terms alone.

The Straight Gate and the Narrow Road

And then I'm going to say in the seventh place that God's preacher will leave a trail of life and death wherever he goes. Something will happen when God's preacher is in the community. And then surely I ought to say that God's preacher will preach the straight gate, not the easy believism of present-day so-called Christianity.

And that God's preacher in the ninth place will preach that the Christian life is to be walked on a narrow road, not on the broad road of comfortable, easy-going religious profession of this hour. But he'll enter, the sinner will enter in at the S-T-R-A-I-T straight gate and therefore he'll walk in the narrow road that leads to life everlasting.

Jonah's Commission to Preach Revival

Let me therefore, as God shall help me as I sit before this microphone, speak to you first of all on the fact that God's preacher will preach in the hope of and with the goal of producing revival of the presence of Christ in great manifest power in our day.

I'm going to use as a starting, as a text for these messages, the book of Jonah. And I want to call to your attention this passage of scripture that in the first chapter of Jonah, the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Emittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it.

And Jonah rebelled, and you know the story. Note the words that the first commission of God to Jonah was just to go over to Nineveh and cry against it. Anybody can do that, but that is not preaching. And you might differ with me, that'd be all right.

Jonah got saved. After that he was an unsaved religionist, and of course he rebelled against any commission or any display of the fact that he was under God and under his sovereignty. And you read through the book of Jonah, and you'll come in chapter 2 to the salvation, the conversion of this man, Jonah.

Now, it doesn't tell us in the first chapter that he was a prophet. The Lord said he was a prophet, but he became a prophet after he got saved. And I wanted to call your attention to this young preacher because it's just not true that saved people go around refusing to do the bidding of Almighty God.

That's the mark of a rebel, not of one who's been conquered by God's grace. And after old Jonah got saved in the belly of the fish, in chapter 3, the Lord came and gave him a second commission. And that commission, the content of it, is going to form the text for our nine messages that I hope will be challenging the young preachers on God's preacher.

In chapter 3, verse 1, I read these words. And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, I notice, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it. Not against it, not just cry against it, but preach unto it the preaching that did unto it.

Not simply cry against it and preach unto it. What kind of a message? Well, the message that I shall give you. And certainly, therefore, we're on solid, safe ground when we say that the preacher must bury himself in the recorded word of a holy God, and cry to God for the illumination and the anointing and the filling and the fullness of the Holy Spirit, that he may preach unto people that message, therefore, of hope as well as condemnation, and that he shall preach only that message which God bids him to preach.

In other words, preach the right message in the right time for the right occasion. Now, my friends, what kind of preaching is calculated to produce revival in any day and in our day? The kind of preaching that God has always used to bring revival.

We need to remember that the preacher who does not seek to have revival in his time is certainly not the prophet and servant of God that we need in these hours for we perish unless the Lord, if the Lord tarry, unless we have a breath of revival in our day.

We need to remember the place of preaching in the work of God. Our attention has been called many times in these last days to the fact that there are two weapons, and two weapons only, that God Almighty has been pleased to give his servants in these days.

And those weapons are preaching and prayer. If we have one without the other, we're limp. And certainly we've been trying to get along in your generation and mine without both. Oh, the paucity of preaching that dags off and puts some barbed wire in the message and doesn't come with a word of advice but comes with a clarion call of God Almighty demanding decision on the part of all who are confronted with him in Christ Jesus, in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Preaching and prayer must go together. Oh, if you study, my dear young preacher, the times when a breath of the Spirit of God has come on this old parched earth, you'll find it did not come apart from preaching, great preaching, not by great men, but preaching on the great truths of what God has done and what he's doing now and what he yet will do in behalf of sinful men.

Our sore need is a return to great preaching and that that great preaching shall be backed up by intercessory prayer of God's people. Instead of just praying for revival, we need to pray for God to raise up and trust out and open doors for preachers who will preach God's cutting truth and come with tears rolling down their faces but with a holy boldness and demand that men turn from their sinful ways and make utter committal for a lifetime to the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is not, therefore, the day for men-pleasers and for nice priests, but for proclaimers of the great act of Almighty God in the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, we ought, I guess, to remember that revival doesn't have to come.

We must serve God whether it does or not. And we ought in these days especially, I think, to remember that revival's not coming to save America. Revival's not coming to save democracy. Revival's not coming to resist communism.

If revival comes, it'll come to promote the glory of the sovereign Redeemer. We desperately need that. Everybody's got on the radio now and they're coining money and becoming millionaires fighting this and fighting that and opposing that and trying to save this and save that.

But the one motive that we must always have in our mind is the proclamation of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ remembering that this whole earth is just to echo His glory and that everything that rise and wriggle was created for the glory of God and that the God who turns evil into good and gets praise out of the evil actions of men in spite of them, His glory is a big thing and we cannot prostitute this glory to serve our own end.

And then we need to remember that revival, if it came in our day, wouldn't solve our problem, but it'd create problems. God help us not to be preachers who leave no problems. I tell you, if revival, the disturbing presence of Jesus Christ, came in your day and mine, the lines would be drawn as they're not drawn now.

Satan would be aroused. Wouldn't you love to see it as he's not aroused now? If we invaded his territory, we'd experience the enmity of the world and the prince of the power and the God of this world and that awful enmity that lies slumbering because Satan is not being bothered much now by our preaching.

That enmity would be revealed and who knows but what some of us would have learned to experience at least dispel the word persecution because of what we preach. My friends, there's been no revival as yet apart from the right kind of preaching and I say that God's preacher must cry aloud in his own heart in the midnight hours, if you please, that God will give him out of his blessed word an insight into those great truths.

So little preached today that God has been disposed in other days to use to bring on this earth something that we'd call revival. And so I want to just give you this suggestion about the kind of preaching that will bring revival if revival comes in our day.

Preaching the Glory of God and the Cross

Of course, we'd have preached the gospel. No, we'd have preached the gospel of the glory of God. We'd have preached Christ, not part of Christ. We'd have proclaimed the Lord of glory. We'd have preached him who brought us all of truth that God has for this hour.

We'd have preached him yonder on a bloody cross as a bloody offering for sin. We'd have preached him yonder at the right hand of God on a throne forever from which comes all power to transform life. Of course, we'd have preached him.

But before we preach the gospel, the ground must be plowed not only in the hearts of God's people, but in the hearts of sinners preparing for the gospel. A blind man, if he knows he's blind, would be interested in receiving sight.

A sick man, if he realizes he's sick, would be interested in a physician coming to him. A lost man, who realizes he's lost, would be glad to hear what God has done to save sinners. And we must not skip over this.

We must remember that while the gospel is to be preached, first it must be preached in its proper order. And before men will listen to the gospel savingly, their hearts must be plowed, their spirits must be subdued, their will must be energized, and their hearts must be broken.

Three Truths That Produce Revival

And it's interesting to know that the truth least acceptable to the old flesh, your flesh and my flesh and the flesh of unsaved men, are exactly the truth that must be preached today. Let me suggest that three things characterize the kind of preaching that God uses to bring revival.

First, we must in these days preach on the character of God, the God whose character is revealed in the Bible, the God of the Bible, that unknown God, the God of holiness, the God of immutable law, the God whose law must be vindicated, the God whose law must be established, the God whose law must be satisfied, the God who will not save anybody apart from the satisfaction and the magnifying and the vindication of his holy law, the God who will send sinners to hell before he will violate his holy character, the God who raises up some as vessels of mercy and vessels of wrath, the God who is sovereign in salvation and does everything for the glory of his grace, the God of the Bible, not the Nambipambi man upstairs, but the God of the Bible in all of his majesty, in his sovereignty, in his holiness, in his nature, the God who hates sin, the God whose very nature demands that sin has to be punished, that kind of God, not the God of people who treat God's holy day as a holy holiday now, not the God of this generation who's so nice, but the God of all holiness, that God, his character, this generation doesn't know a thing about it.

Oh, young preacher, roll up your sleeves, spit on your hands, and come hell or high water. Let from your pulpit ring out again the teaching of the word of God about the holy character of the God of this earth.

And then revival is promoted not only by the preaching of the character of God, but by the preaching of the condition of man. Men must be preached today, we must tell the truth to men today that they're morally depraved, that they're spiritually dead, that they're hostile to God, that they're in rebellion against the throne rights of the Lord Jesus Christ, that they're already under judgment, that under God they obnoxious to hell, that hell still exists in spite of the denials of nice preachers today, and that men are desperately ill.

They are sickened to death. They are cesspools of hostility to a holy God. They're not coming under judgment. They're already under judgment. They ought to be in hell now. Nothing but the mercy of God keeps them out.

Oh, to preach the truth to sinners today. Men do not know the truth about themselves. They can't find it out in school, in the newspapers, on the radio, on the television, in the paperback books. Mama won't tell the truth.

Papa won't tell the truth. Preachers won't tell the truth. Only the Bible tells us the awful truth that the whole man is covered with filthy sores, that we are obnoxious to the judgment of God, that we're in desperate danger, that we desperately need a neator to deal with God's holy law in our stead, and a Lord to rule over us.

And then we must preach in the third place the destiny that faces men. I've already anticipated that. Oh, hell. Hell is not a place of reformation. Hell is not a place just where people are going to try to do a little better and get a little training.

Hell is a place of punishment. Oh, my soul. Hell is where men spend eternity who did not have Jesus Christ to deal with God's holy law in their stead. Hell. I think the message most calculated to bring men, some men to seek God now, is this awful message that we don't like to talk about.

And I tell you, young preacher, this generation needs to hear the truth about the destiny facing men. What would be some of the results? Well, maybe a lot of the unsaved people that adopt the roles of out-churches might, in the presence of the truth about the character of God and their own condition and their terrible destiny, be moved to seek the Lord in a vital union with Him, instead depending on a dead profession and an empty believism.

Who knows? But we've seen multitudes on our church roads brought into a living relationship with Jesus Christ. And then to the saved. Such preaching would humble us and stir us to make our calling and election sure.

It might deepen our love to Him who rescued us from the horrible pit. I tell you, the preacher must preach until God's people prevail for souls. For no sheep hath ever yet been found unless a saved sheep went out looking for Him.

And then to the unchurched, the unsaved all about us. Oh, pray with me, young preacher, that God will give you the key to reaching those multitudes with the message calculated to produce revival. It's akin to this brief message on the description of God's preacher, namely that He will aim His gun at that kind of preaching that God in other days has been disposed to use for His glory to manifest His power on the earth and produce what we call revival.

Preaching for a Verdict

Let me say in the second place that God's preacher will preach far averted. He'll not just be preaching to walls or to morons. He'll be preaching to eternity-bound men and women and responsible people who are responsible to God and who are going to be existing or living somewhere in eternity as long as God lives.

And He'll preach far averted. God has already pronounced His verdict on the Lord Jesus Christ. He's turned everything over to Him. He's demanded this world listen to Him. He said, This is the Son of my love, hear ye Him.

He's declared Him to be His Son in the spirit of holiness. He's exalted Him, sat Him down at His own right hand. He told Him to sit there until the earth's enemies shall be the stew for His blessed feet.

Oh, we must preach far averted. We must preach unto them as God directed Jonah, the preaching that God bid them to. We must not simply cry against men, but we must not only cry against them, but cry unto them.

Such preaching in Jonah's day let the repentance of the nation. And that is the need of this hour. I want you to consider, and this will be a very brief suggestion and message, this second characteristic of God's preacher, preaching far averted.

I want you to consider, by way of a clear understanding of the need today. First, fallen man, unsaved man, has wrong ideas and thoughts about God and about self and about sin. That's right. The unsaved man is dead wrong about God.

He's dead wrong about himself. He's dead wrong about his destiny. He's dead wrong about his condition. You know, every sinner worships some kind of a God. That's right. You preach to men who have a God, whatever is dearest to their heart is their God.

And all men have some kind of a God. And fallen man creates his own God. He gets his own little pocket knife out and creates a God that will allow him to be comfortable and yet live in God's world as if he were God and as if he were not subject and under the sovereignty of Almighty God.

Now, men and women need to know the character of the God of the Bible. I've said over and over again that the character of the God of the Bible is the unknown quantity of modern day preaching. This God we have today is a nice fellow.

He wouldn't offend anybody. But he does not command the respect, the adoration or the obedience of many people. Men have some kind of a God. Men create their own image of God. And the desperate need of this hour is for men to be informed from the Word of God of the character of the God of the Bible.

We talked some about that in the preceding message. Then, fallen man has wrong ideas about himself. He thinks he's a pretty nice fellow and he's not screaming for a substitute to die on a cross in his stead for a mediator to deal with God's holy law in his stead because he thinks he's a pretty nice fellow.

And the Sunday morning preaching that goes forth from the pulpits of America in the main combs the hair of the nice little sinner and helps him straighten his tie and brush his teeth and makes him feel nice and respectable on his road to hell.

All men will never have a desire for the Lord Jesus Christ as a bloody offering in their stead and as a supreme dictator in their lives until by the sharp word of a holy God in the hands of the Holy Spirit through the lips of a God-anointed preacher their old hearts are cut open and men are able to see from the Word of God in the hands of the Holy Ghost the truth about themselves.

That awful description of man in the book of Romans, first two chapters especially, one and two that describes and part of verse, uh, chapter three. My, that's God's description of men. Men don't like that picture but it's the God's truth and men will not be brought to conviction of their need of a savior and a substitute and a mediator and a lord and master apart from hearing from God's preachers the truth as it is in God's Word about their own self.

And then men are all wrong in their ideas about their eternal destiny. Do you know anybody now that's afraid of going to hell? That's become a cuss word now instead of the Bible word describing the eternal home of the unsaved.

Men are not right in their notions about their eternal destiny and therefore we must preach as I said in the preceding message much on the character of God and the condition of men and the destiny of men and preaching those things preparing the hearts of men plowing the ground if you please.

We must demand what the Bible demands. We must demand a verdict. We must demand that the jury come in with a verdict. We must demand that men make their move. I tell you this must be our goal. We must preach for a verdict.

We're not telling men to repeat repent next week. They don't have next week. They just have today. We're not to tell men to become seekers of the Lord next week. We're to tell men to become seekers of the Lord right now.

We must with a holy boldness preach for a verdict. Too much of our preaching is nice and sinners enjoy hearing us but that's not the kind of preaching that God blesses. The kind of preaching we must have and I trust it will be true of you and me.

Enjoy hearing us but that's not the kind of preaching that God blesses. The kind of preaching we must have and I trust it will be true of you and me. We must bring the great truths of the Bible and then say therefore it's repenting time.

It's believing time. It's seeking time. It's confession time. It's commitment time. Preach for a verdict. God's made His verdict. Demand that sinners bring in theirs. It is a solemn thought, as we demand that men bring in their verdict now on the claims of Jesus Christ for Himself and the claims of God for His Son.

It is a solemn thought that men are not given the choice of bringing in the right verdict. They're just given the choice of when. Someday every man is going to bow to Jesus Christ. The scriptures say every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.

That's what God's been saying all the time. He's given His Son. There are the reigns of men's hearts and the rulership of this world. Ah, you'll have to one day in the grace that while judgment is suspended, the gospel goes forth and men are persuaded now and invited now and commanded now but not forced now to bow their knee to Him and with their tongues confess His Lordship to a hostile world.

Someday you will. Ah, wouldn't it be better to do it now? That's the message the preacher brings in demanding a verdict on the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ from all who listen. Now in the third place, I continue this message on characteristics of God's preacher by saying that God's preacher must have the message of John the Baptist.

John the Baptist must come to town in the pulpits of America. John the Baptist type preaching must become the order of the day. In the book of Luke, we have a blessed description of the message that John the Baptist of this day must preach.

In verse 3 of chapter 3 of verse Luke, he came unto all, well verse 2, in the time of all of those men, we'll not read those, that first verse and second, the word of God came unto John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness.

And he came to John and to all the country about Jordan, preaching, thank God, preaching, preaching, preaching, the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. He came preaching. He didn't come advising.

He came proclaiming and he came preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. And he did it according to prophecy as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah, the prophet saying, and this is from chapter 40 of Isaiah, the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

The voice of one crying in the wilderness. I learned a long time ago that there are two persons in this text, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. The voice is John the Baptist and the one crying in the wilderness, Almighty God.

Oh, young preacher, you're a voice, are you? You're a voice of the one who speaks through you. The one who calls men to repentance is God. He uses your voice. The one who calls men to face the claims of Jesus Christ is God.

He uses your voice. Oh, the blessed privilege of being a voice through which the sovereign God calls men to repent because Christ is here. And so Isaiah prophesied this and John the Baptist came along, fulfilled it, and he was the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make his path straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

And then said he to the multitudes, his preaching got some results. They came to hear him and he said to them as they came forth to be baptized of him, he said, O generation of bipers who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come.

He said, bring therefore fruits worthy of repentance and begin not to stay within yourselves. We have Abraham'd our father by saying to you that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.

And now also the axe is laid under the root of the trees. Every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. Now that kind of preaching had some barbed wire in it.

And people began to ask questions. They said, well, I guess it's my move now. What shall I do? And the people asked him, saying, what shall we do then? This is what I mean in that, young preacher. We must have the message of John the Baptist.

We must arise and put on our preaching clothes, if you please, and get out where people are and talk about the way people, talk about people in their sins today and bring God's demands of repentance because of Jesus Christ in such a way that somebody will say, well, it must be my move now.

Exactly. That's right. What shall we do then? And so he said, he answered and said unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none. And he that hath meat, let him do likewise. Then came also publicans that were baptized and said unto him, Master, what shall we do?

And he said unto them, exact no more than that which is appointed you. And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, you see, different classes of people. And they said, well, guess it's my move. And he told them.

And he said unto them, do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, and be content with your wages. And as the people were in expectation, and all men knew it was in the hearts of John, whether he were Christ or not.

John answered, saying unto them, All I indeed baptize you with water, but one mightier than I cometh, the lecher of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloosen. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire, whose fan is in his hand.

And he will thoroughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner. But the chaff he'll burn with fire unquenchable. And many other things in his exhortation preached he unto the people.

You see, he exhorted people. He preached unto the people. He was a proclaimer. He came preaching repentance. Oh, what God done to man's repentance. This is God's world. He's as cursed as God's Lord. Men are called to repent.

He was commissioned to make a people ready for the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's our job. That's the missing note in our preaching today. Only half of the gospel message of the terms of salvation is faith.

Repentance and faith go together. Mr. Ironside said in his book, On Except You Repent, shallow preaching that does not grapple with the terrible fact of man's sinfulness and guilt. Calling on men everywhere to repent results in shallow conversions.

And so we have myriads of glib-tongued professors today who give no evidence of regeneration whatever. Preaching of salvation by grace. They manifest no grace in their lives. We must have the barbed wire on our message.

We must bring the truth of what God has done and is enduring in Christ. And then demand, as God says, and you let use our voices. He does the calling. He calls men to repent. I think we ought to spend a moment by saying this, that repentance is not an enemy of grace, but it prepares for grace.

You know there's no merit to recognize need. The scriptures say they that behold need no physician, but they that are sick. Now there's no merit for a sick man to call a doctor. The prodigal son said, He didn't merit any pardon, but he put himself in a place to receive pardon.

No sinner is ever saved apart from grace. But a sinner cannot receive that grace until and unless he recognizes a need. God meets the sinner at the place of repentance. We desperately need, and I wish that these messages in this prophet's tape library might help some young preachers of a challenge.

We need some John the Baptist men today to call men to repentance. This is a day of taking God for granted. This is a day of, I believe the Bible, pay no attention to it. This is a day when everybody says he believes in the Lord, but they do not bow to his rule.

This is a day of lawlessness everywhere, the spirit of defiance against all that's high and holy in our churches and in our homes and in our nation. This is the day where we've invented Bible teachers that the Sermon on the Mount is not for today.

It's for another day that the ethical standard of God's song as he gives the characteristics and the requirements of his kingdom, that they're too high for today. I remind you, my friends, that all of the teachings of God's prophet, the Lord Jesus Christ, were meant to be unacceptable to the flesh.

And we just will face it. This is the time when we must throw our popular messages away and bring those withering messages that wither the flesh and shut men up to their naked condition before God. This is a time to demand of all men everywhere right now to repent, to repent and bow to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And this is the kind of preaching that John the Baptist did and we must do. The scriptures say he laid the axe to the root. He didn't bring a little nice message of skin cream. Men are wrong in their hearts and in their wills, and he came as a giant, Kelly, came to slay sinners, to lay the axe at the very root.

No use to dig up the sprouts. The root, the heart, is the thing that's defeatful above all things. And desperately wicked men need new hearts. And you know, John the Baptist crossed men just where they lived.

The Pharisees, they came and said, well, we'll join up. And he said, who warned you, you generation of vipers? That is unpleasant talk. And he said, bring forth fruits worthy of repentance. And then the multitude of people came.

And they said, well, we will be baptized. We'll get in on this. And he said, well, quit being so crooked. And then the publicans came. He said, quit robbing the people of tax money. And then the soldiers came.

And he said, quit being so brutal and throwing people in jail and stealing from your employers. He got right down to where men live. Those are the things that keep men from Christ. Men know that if Christ came in, they'd be changed.

And they don't want to be changed. And we need to come down out of the clouds and cross the paths of men at the plane where they're living, in the deep rebellion and sin which they're engrossed. That's the way John the Baptist did.

You know, rebellion's got to be exposed. And it's got to be routed out and got to be crossed. And it's desperately true that God Almighty always crosses the sinner at the point where rebellion always comes to a head.

And that rebellious will, in that life of rebellion, will be broken and crushed to the center of descent to hell. God give us in these days the spirit of John the Baptist, who will come and deal with men where they are and cross men at the point of their rebellion with the demands of Almighty God to repent.

Preaching as a Dying Man to Dying Men

Continuing this message on God's preacher, I want to say in the fourth place that God's preacher will preach as a dying man to dying men. He will absolutely refuse to be a popular lecturer, a moral advisor, an entertainer, entertaining dying men on their sure road to eternal hell.

God's preacher will preach as a dying man to dying men. The Apostle Paul, of course, is every preacher's divinely given pattern. And there are at least five things that the scriptures reveal about Paul as a pattern for preachers that I want to bring to you right now.

First place, Paul was the kind of preacher that had to pray for open doors. My soul, isn't that something? All the world wasn't crying for his message. The whole religious system of his day boycotted him.

He was driven into the streets and in the book of Acts, you will hear him crying for an effectual door of witness. Young preacher, our message must be sharp. It must be so full of barbed wire. It must be so bold with no equivocation that the pleasant stuff that's called Christianity today will utterly revolt against it.

We must, in our preaching, be like the early church. Everybody was scared to death of it and no man dared to come near it. They were so afraid. But in those days, God added believers by the multitudes.

And our preaching must go against the grain of the religious world of our time. God's preacher will have to pray for open doors. In the second place, the man who has a sobbing his heart and who actually believes the Bible, who believes what the Bible says about the character of God, who believes what the Bible says about the condition of men, who believes what the Bible says about the destiny of men, who believes the Bible, what the Bible says about the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.