Hebrews 1 - Leonard Ravenhill — From the Pulpit & Classic Sermons

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This week we have Leonard Ravenhill with this message on Hebrews chapter 1.

Spiritual Gifts and the Power of the Holy Spirit

The assistant pastor said, that was a beautiful meeting, I said, there was a lovely spirit there. Didn't you enjoy it all? I said, no, why not? I said, how is it that three people spoke in tongues and nobody interpreted?

And it was a huge audience. He said, there's only one person in this church who has the interpretation, that's the pastor, and when he's away. I said, are you telling me the Holy Ghost moved somebody and then the Holy Ghost couldn't get an interpretation?

It doesn't make sense. There's no waste in the economy of God. Either she's totally out of gear, or else the pastor's out of gear being somewhere else. If this really operated in the power of the Spirit, signs and wonders and miracles and divers gifts of the Holy Ghost, we'd still move the world for God.

Holy Fire and False Fire

Of course, when you get holy fire, you get false fire. You read the report of the coming of the Spirit, what is it, Azusa Street, 1905, I think it was. Every crackpot in the country went. One of the leading prophets was a man in a faded old swallowtail coat, with a white beard, tobacco juice all down one side, it was deep brown, and they had to push him away from the front every day.

He had a new revelation, a new prophecy, and they got out of him and huddled him out into another room. He came back. He had that hope that never fails, you know. Of course, you get some false fire, but brother, I'd rather be the false fire with Holy Ghost fire around than have no fire at all.

If holy fire is there, God will give the necessary wisdom. Now, if you didn't get Dave Wilson's tape, oh, was it week last Sunday, Martha? Week last Sunday? Yeah. On the fire. Did you get it? Did you play it again?

Oh, that was a fantastic message on Zechariah. God being a wall of fire round about and the glory in the midst. Usually he asked me to close in prayer. If he'd done that that Sunday morning, I'd have choked, I couldn't have done it.

I'd have been on the floor myself. High youngsters going to church and other people laughing, merry, doesn't make any difference to them. They don't expect to be awed with God, as I've said once or twice Sunday morning.

Meeting God Rather Than Merely Hearing About Him

Did you come here to meet God or do you come here to hear a sermon about him? I preach in audiences when there have been two or three thousand and ask that question. Nobody has ever come up to me yet.

Even the pastor often says, well, Brother Reagan, I'm afraid I don't come to meet God. I come to deliver what I feel is the word of God. Brother, you've been saying that for the last 20 years. When are we going to have a divine invasion that will leave us stunned with his majesty, with his glory, with his beauty, with his power, with his love, with his authority?

The Methodists used to have a hymn that said, Lord, how much longer shall we live at this poor dying rate? I think we ought to sing that every Sunday. So great salvation. He tells you how great it is, don't look, I'll quote it.

The Great Salvation and the Unreached World

From Hebrews 7 .25, he is able to save to the uttermost. You better get that lodged in your mind in case God shunts you up the Amazon, where there's some virgin territory, where people have been waiting for a thousand years for the gospel and nobody's gone.

I remember a missionary coming to England, he said, I went up the Amazon in a boat that was bought for me by a Pentecostal group in England. He put the boat on top of almost an ocean liner that can go right up the Amazon for nearly a thousand miles.

Then they lifted the boat off and he went up further, till he couldn't go any further. And he rented a man there and his boat, and he paddled up the, well, he went up the Amazon. Then there's a branch of the Amazon called the Orinoco.

And he went up the Orinoco paddling for days, and then he went up the next bend in the river. And he said, I was saying to myself, oh boy, I feel almost like the Apostle, here I am, I'm going up here.

I'll have to work, ooh, the arrows keep swishing across the boat there. But Lord will preserve me, of course. But anyhow, he said, I'm possibly the first white man they've ever seen up here. And he said, we went round the bend and there was a big tree hanging with a sign on.

What did it say? What was Rockefeller's company, oil company? Standard Oil, I think that was it, thank you. Standard Oil, what? I thought I was the first one, oh, we've had Standard Oil more than five years, nearly ten years.

Oh, he said, I felt like jumping in the river. Oh, coming back and blazing, and said, do you know there are tens of thousands of Indians up there? And nobody had ever reached them yet. The other night there was a lady singing on, I like to hear these good singers, I confess.

Here she is, she was somewhere up in, where, Alabama, in a poverty stricken shack. And she thought she'd like to play the piano, so her neighbor said, well, come in and play. And one day as she played, she sang.

Now she said, I was going to pay for you to be a pianist, you won't get a penny. I will train, have you train, I think she's singing Wednesday night, this way, Liam Tone Price. But they say he has a voice, one, what is it, in a hundred years, one in a hundred million, a fantastic voice.

She'd have been washing dishes or scrubbing a floor in some little, you know, place up there. But they got hold of her and trained her. To sing, yes, French, she sings in five languages. I say, my God, what are our people doing?

Sacrificial Discipline for Gospel Mission

You young folk, get hold of another language. How do you know God wants you staying in a stuffy country like America or England? Come on, master it, master a language while you're young, while your mind is plastic, so to speak, receptive.

Come on, think the vastness of the world, the vastness of the world of Spanish. I was reading today, Spain has, pardon me, Brazil, I think they speak Spanish in Brazil. Portuguese, that's right, I just remembered, because Phil, Paul was, they were speaking Spanish and then over the border Portuguese.

It's the fifth largest nation in the world. It has the largest potential outside of China or Russia. How many people are going? If kids can give up basketball and other stupid things and get away and start learning, oh, I'm going to be an opera star, oh, I'm getting ready.

They showed a girl in the news the other night, or was it the other morning news, little thing only about 12 years of age, I'm going to the Olympics in 1988. I'm not 14 yet, but I'm going to win a gold medal at least when I get there.

I'm giving all the hours of the day, I don't care what it costs, how I keep my body fit, I reject chocolates, I won't eat cookies, I won't drink this, that, the other, I'm going to get myself in line, for what?

I'm glad she's got the discipline, that's unusual for our day. But every time they talked about these men winning these medals, I thought, yes, what Paul say, they run for what? A corruptible crowd, but we for an incorruptible.

So great salvation, you better get that on your eyeballs if you're going up the Amazon. I remember the first time I went in a leper colony in the north part of Thailand. You talk about everything in you turning over.

Talk about the stink. A hog stye is a perfume factory compared to decaying flesh, where people have no limbs, where the end of their arms are masses of corruption, dripping pus on the floor and blood.

People have no cheeks, they'd been eaten away with leprosy. You better go with something better than John 3 .16 and a few little choruses. We've got to witness that great salvation ourselves, not just to erase our rotten record that's there in eternity, and God in infinite mercy wipes it out, but to do something in us so that we're not only forgiven our sins, but we're cleansed from sin.

We remove all the internal territory that the devil can work on. You know, there's nothing more awesome in the whole world than preaching the gospel. Such a great salvation. I must wind up, my times are almost out.

Christ's Suffering and Penal Substitution

I remember the other day, an event that happened after World War I, 1914 -1918. Prince of Wales is a great runabout boy, you know, and he was always dressed immaculately in his breeches. He did go to the front lines and won the hearts of men because he went up to his knees in slush and mud and blood and where there were shots and firing and risked his life.

But when he got home, his father didn't like what he'd been doing and he reprimanded him somewhat. Oh, well, he said, Daddy, I'm going to a military hospital. I must go see some of the men they've brought home.

He got into this wall that had about 50 beds all around, a huge place, and at the end there was a screen. They took the prince round and said, this is private so-and-so, this is sergeant so-and-so, this is lieutenant so-and-so.

This dear man lost one leg. Notice this man lost both his arms. This man lost two legs. This man lost a leg and an arm. He went round saying all the horrible things that had happened to this man. And they took him past the screen.

And the prince said nothing. Oh. They whispered, we managed it all right. He said, excuse me, you took me round about 50 beds, but he said there's a screen and you didn't show me the man behind the screen.

Well, Your Excellency, we are forbidden to show you that man. He said, I'm the Prince of Wales. I assert my royal prerogative. But, sir, he's repulsive. There's hardly any man left. He was right near a mine when it blew up.

I shall see him now. And he marched up with his smart stride. They took the screen. On one side there was a man. He had no face. He had two bits of skin holding his eyeballs in place. The prince looked at him.

He could see right down his throat to where his tongue was joined there in his throat. The other parts of his head were great big sores that he hadn't had the right attention. And his hands were all messed up.

Everybody that saw him wept. They turned away. The prince looked down, put his hand on his shoulder. And he bent down and kissed him. And the doctors and nurses and everybody wept. He said, why not? Why not?

He did that for me. He did that for you. Don't you think we ought to reverse that so often and see the suffering of Jesus? See what he did in our place? The old hymn says, Bearing shame and scoffing rude, In my place condemned he stood, And sealed my pardon with his blood.

What a gospel! There's nothing like it in the whole world. Is Buddha able to save Thutmose? Couldn't save himself. Said before his death, I've been searching all my life for truth. Jesus started that.

Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life

I am the way, the truth. Brothers, this, we're totally inexcusable. What did the psalmist say? Thy word is truth. What did Jesus say? I'm the way, the truth. What did he say about the Holy Ghost? When he, the spirit of truth, is come.

Apostasy and the Rejection of Biblical Truth

I read a dreadful thing this week. I'll quote it and finish. I'll try to find it. Remember, Martha dear, tomorrow. I can't find where I read it. But I read this. It was from a very reputable teacher. He said, heresy, pardon me, no.

He said, apostasy, an apostate is not a man who has got heresy and is running all over the country with it. An apostate is a man who has had light and refuses to walk in it. Dear God, that made me gasp.

So we had a preacher down there in Thailand who recently said, you know the Old Testament, it's not relevant to our day. The story of Jonah, of course, is a fish story. That man signed up in his denomination to be a fundamentalist preacher and gets a good wage for it.

He's a double-dyed hypocrite and he's an apostate. I'd like to talk to him about it. How shall we escape if we hide our light under a bushel? What's the bushel? Sign of business. You often bury your light with business.

Or you put the light under a bed. Symbolic of laziness and indifference. Come on, friends. How shall we escape when we know such a message of love, such a message of infinite mercy, such a message of measureless grace, such a message of the dazzling, blinding holiness of God?

The Call to Preach the Gospel

I had to get away from that wonderful hymn written by Oliver Wendell Holmes II. His father lived in Wesley's day. Oliver Wendell Holmes lived about 1802, maybe. Lord of all, being thrown afar, thy flames from sun and star, center and soul of every sphere, yet to each loving heart our dear.

He says, Our midnight is thy smile withdrawn. Do you ever feel that? Do you feel God has hidden himself? And when he withdraws his smile, you're in darkness? Then he goes on to say this staggering thought, Before thine ever blazing throne we have no luster of our own.

He adds, Grant us thy truth to make us free and kindling hearts that burn for thee. Till all thy living altars flame, one holy light, one heavenly blaze. God hath nothing to add to the gospel. How shall we escape if we neglect preaching the judgment of God, which we all have to go to, finally, saints or sinners.

Two different judgments, but there they are. How shall we stay as we are? Well, get that passion that consumed in the heart of the apostle Paul. Woe is me if I preach not the gospel. Or again, can I just quote one thing here?

I have about three minutes left. Now, faith is a substance of things hoped for. Is this a definition or a description of faith? Does it matter? Hebrews 11 .1, Faith is a substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

For by the elders obtained a good report. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God. You know, that isn't a good translation. I believe the worlds were framed by God. What did they say yesterday?

Faith, Creation, and the Ages of God's Sovereignty

Jupiter, they've just rediscovered some new moons around it. I think it has 17 already. And they've sent that thing, the Voyager, on into space. They don't know where it's going to end. Scientists don't believe in eternity, but they believe in infinity.

It's already done about 250 ,000 miles in that staggering. It's still going on with it. Some momentum they put in it. We think of the world. I don't think that's the right word here. Through faith we understand that the ages were framed by the word of God.

What was the first age? The age of innocence. Well, sin ended that. We moved into another age, the age of conscience. From the age of conscience we moved on to the call of Abraham, which was the age of faith, and that lasted for centuries.

Then when the age of faith went out, the age of law came in, and that existed till the day of Christ. But all these ages were under the control of a sovereign God. He measured them out as he will. I can't explain it to you.

I can't explain it to myself. But I know that all those ages were there, and one stops and another starts. Now we're in the most amazing age of all, the age of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Spirit is totally, I wish I could say that in letters six feet high, he's totally incapable of anything small.

The Holy Spirit and the Resources of God

This world was a ball of mud wrapped up in the universe. Here it is. And the Spirit brooded over it. And out of chaos he brought cosmos, and out of disorder he brought order. The Holy Spirit brooded over this misshapen world, and God is glorified in it.

And then he brooded over the barren womb of a young Jewish lady by the name of Mary the Virgin. All his works, as one hymn writer says, in all his works most wonderful. What a wonderful world we live in.

Somebody recently discovered, I don't know how or where, somewhere in Egypt, they discovered that, I think it was Pharaoh's brother, Amenhotep II, I guess you like his proper name, King Tut. You know, they brought all his gold and displayed it in Dallas a few months ago.

He used to use penicillin. We thought it was something new, discovered by, I forgot the name of the man, but anyhow. All the glorious things in this world we haven't yet discovered. Science is bringing us into a new world, a terrible world too.

If you had told your grandpa you'd sit in a room one day and you'd be looking on a piece of glass, you see the man walking on that snow? That's not snow. He's walking on the moon. I think you're loony, walking on the moon.

But wait a minute, let me turn this knob. Now he's talking to us. You did that, I did that. I sat in a house and listened to a man walking on the moon and talking on the moon. Julius Caesar could have done that, but he didn't know where to find the stuff.

Shakespeare could have written his plays out on a printing out thing, what do you call it? Computer thing. All the resources were there, but they weren't put together. That makes me ask the question, what resources are there in God tonight that we're not touching?

Do you wonder Paul yearns and he says, I want you to know the height and the depth and the length and the breadth of the love of God that passes knowledge. I want you to get such a vision of the majesty of God that you didn't say nay, you didn't sit down, you didn't refuse to use all you have.

Grace, Calling, and Responsibility to the Lost

Of material resources, intellectual resources, spiritual resources, get them all together and go burn out in some hell hole up the Amazon. Or if you're brave enough, go into China. Or if you want to live shorter, go into Russia.

Or go to a stinking hole and ask these precious folk here, Ray and Robbie, before they go back to India again. We're so smug. We're so contented. We're so happy to be saved from sins and a few dirty habits we had and a few unclean things.

But oh, I wonder how often it burns there with us, this great salvation, marvelous grace of our loving God, grace that exceeds our guilt and our sin. All there for a lost world. And 2 ,000 years after he died and made it available to us.

We haven't explored again what I call the possibilities of grace. As you leave, would you take one of these? You can have it. They're free. Brother Dale's going to give them out. One for a family. If you're by yourself, you can have one, of course.

If you can make it one for the family, that will make them to go around more. Father, bless us as we explore your word. As one said, write it deeply in our hearts with an eternal pen. We're terribly obligated to our generation.

We're awfully guilty if we withhold anything at any time in any way. Help us to see the majesty of our Lord Jesus. Help us to realize, Lord, that this word, which quickened the pioneers of faith and some who didn't have the word of God, this word is our God.

This word is your word. Still valid. Still powerful. Quick and powerful. Sharper than any twedged sword. We ask in Jesus' name.

Amen. You've been listening to the From the Pulpit and Classic Sermon series. This week you heard Leonard Ravenhill with his message on Hebrews chapter 1. Tune in next week to hear Jonathan Cahn talk about the mystery of the bride and the bridegroom on From the Pulpit and Classic Sermons.