The Fear Of The Lord Malachi's Resurgence

Him is something he hates. You are no different than Malachi. In fact, worse. You don't even give him that which is blind, that which is lame, that which is diseased. You don't give him any sacrifice at all, except your sin. Why was Jesus Christ crucified? From man's point of view. Oh, we know from God's point of view it pleased the Lord to bruise him. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. But why did man crucify him? Jesus told us in Luke chapter 19, he says there was a certain nobleman, referring to himself, who went into a far country talking about the world. And he went to establish a kingdom. And after he departed, the inhabitants got together and they said, we will not have this man rule over us. Crucify him. That's why Jesus Christ was crucified. They did not want his lordship, they did not want his ownership, his rulership over their lives. We will not have this king reign over us. What do we do? We come along, we look at the cross, we say, Savior, I need you. I can't get to heaven without you. I need your shed blood. Thank you for your grace. But let's get one thing straight. Now that I'm cleansed, I will not have you rule over me. Oh, we don't preach it. We don't preach it. We just neglect it. It's not important to us because it's all about me. It's all about me getting through the pearly gates. It's not about him having a claim to my life. It's not about me bowing to the King of kings and Lord of lords and saying Jesus rule and reign over all the kingdoms of my heart. And we present that which is defiled. 2nd Peter, let me shock you a little bit more. In 2nd Peter chapter 2, Peter is warning the church here. He says in verse 1, false prophets have arisen, past tense. In other words, we have had a problem in the church with false prophets, just as there will be. Future, this is a prophetic statement. We've had a problem in the past. It's already come and gone in one sense, but there is coming an even greater problem, false teaching, Peter says. And it will come in, and it will come in secretly. You will not be unaware. You will be totally unaware of it. It will be so subtle, and it will bring with it damnable doctrines, destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them. False teaching. False teaching. The idea that you can accept Jesus Christ as your Savior and deny him access as Lord and Master is a false teaching, according to the Word of God. He is the King. We need to give him, again, all of our life. Jesus be the Lord of all the kingdoms of my heart. What do we mean by the fear of God? Listen to what Webster says. I've taken this from his 1828 edition of the dictionary. You can still purchase it. They've republished it. In good men, the fear of God is a holy awe or reverence of God and his laws, which springs from a just view and a real love of the divine character, leading the subjects of it to hate and shun everything that can offend a holy being, and inclining them to aim at perfect obedience. A. W. Tozer summarized it this way, it is to love what God loves and hate what God hates. Love what he loves and hate what he hates. God is looking for a people as his own possession, a people that will respond to the very slightest word. When Paul got saved on that Damascus road, the very first thing out of his mouth was not, Savior, thank you for lifting that burden of sin. The very first word out of his mouth, Lord, what will you have me to do? Lord. He recognized there was somebody vaster, greater, more powerful, somebody they had to bow in obedience to. Lord, what would you have me to do? God says, get off your feet and I'll tell you. Going to such and such a city, he's prophesied over. I've set you apart. I've got a calling on your life. I believe for every single one of us here there is a call. You know what it is? You see, if you don't accept him as your Lord, you'll never know. Again, it is that holy awe, that reverence, that regard, that respect, that reverential love. I remember as a young teenager, even before I got saved, I had such a love for my father that in high school, as I was confronted back in the late 50s, 60s, when then there was every temptation again, smoking, drinking, dancing, you know, sexual activity, all those things available, and yet every time I was confronted with one of those things, I thought if my father found out that I was involved in any one of those things, it would literally break his heart. Everything that he stands for, everything that he represents, everything that he's ever taught, I would be violating that, and if he found out that his son was doing those things, it would literally kill him, and every time I was faced with one of those temptations, by the grace of God, I turned from it. I wasn't even born again. When I got saved, at the age of 18, finally after a few years, going through Bible College, and landed down in New Zealand in about 1966, my wife and I lived on an island off the coast of New Zealand called the Great Barrier Island. I listened one day, and it is the first time in my life where I heard an entire message devoted to the fear of God. I can honestly say from that day in 1966, Christmas, to this day, this is the only other time I've heard an entire message on the fear of God. In all those years of going to conferences, sitting under men and women of God, at the end of that meeting, I gathered together some of the leaders that were on that little island. We gathered in the little hut that was not more than eight feet long and maybe six feet wide, sitting there just down near the edge of the beach, and I called in Lauren Cunningham, the director of Youth with a Mission today, Joy Dawson, who has written a number of books on prayer and intercession, some other men of God, the man that gave that message, who happened to be a former brethren minister, Milton Smith was his name, and I said, listen, I don't know if this is appropriate or not, but I said to them, I have known all my life that sin is wrong, but I said I've never had a fear of sin, I've never had a hatred of sin, and I said, would you be willing to lay hands on me? And I knelt down there on that simple old floor in that hut, and those men and that lady laid hands on me, and I said, would you pray the fear of God would come into my life? And over the years, I've renewed that vow many, many times. God put the fear of God into my life. Give me a hatred of sin. We know sin is wrong, but you know when you hate something, there's an automatic deterrent to it. Isn't that right? If you hate electricity, you're not going to go near it. If you hate heights, you're not going to stand on the edge of a 50-foot drop. If you hate spiders, nobody's going to say, you know, would you look after my tarantula for me? You hate it, and the thing you hate, you stay away from. We need a holy hatred of sin. We need the fear of God to come in out to our life, that reverential love. Oh, it's not that cringing sort of a fear, it's such a love. It's like, it's like, why would I ever consider cheating on my wife? I love her dearly. I would never look at some other woman or some other man. Why? Because I have eyes only for you. It's the same thing when it comes to the spiritual realm. God, I have such a love for you, such a respect for you, that I would never think of doing anything else. The second thing was the fear of God was missing from their preaching. Notice now we go into chapter 2 of Malachi. In chapter 2, he is addressing the priests. Verse 1, and now this commandment is for you, oh priests, pastors, leaders, spiritual leaders. In fact, he says, if you don't listen right now, if you don't take to heart what I'm about to tell you, God says, I will curse your blessings. In fact, he says, I've already cursed them. Not only that, God says, and I will take the dung from the floor of the temple where all the animals would come in to be slain, and you had all the manure. If you were raised on a farm like I was, you know what that's all about. God says, I'll take that dung and I'll smear it all over your faces. Anybody know that sort of a God? Maybe Rob Bell needs to meet him. Oh, this warm fuzzy love, you know. We all parrot it out, don't we? God is good all the time, and all the parrots say all the time, God is good. I don't recall saying that when my mother would take my pants down and give me a good hiding as a kid if I did something wrong. I don't remember singing, mommy's good all the time, all the time, mommy's good. Oh, she was, but not the way it was demonstrated, at least from my perspective. Yes, God is good all the time, but he's a God that is an angry God sometimes, a righteous anger, and he's angry at his priests, he's angry at his leaders, and he begins to say, listen, I chose Levi for one reason, because he stood in awe of my name. Verse 5, that's why I chose, that's why I made a covenant with Levi, because he had the fear of God, he stood in awe of my name. You recall the reason God chose the tribe of Levi above all the other tribes, incidentally, initially, you had every tribe that can function as a priest, you realize that? That was not God's highest, that was God's second best, I believe. When God told the children of Israel to kill the Passover lamb, they did not have to wait for a Levite to come down the street to kill that lamb. The head of every house was a priest, the head of every house could function as a priest, and slit the throat of that animal and apply the blood of the lamb. That was God's intention, but there came a day when when Moses was in the presence of God, and the children of Israel left there in the hands of Aaron, that the people got out of control, they put pressure on Aaron, and you know the story, he made the golden calf, and around that golden calf is basically a sexual orgy that was going on. They stripped themselves naked, they were giving themselves to every conceivable passion and desire. God looks at that situation, he says to Moses, you get down that mountain right away, your people, not my people, your people, that came out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves, they've turned aside from the way which I commanded them. And Moses goes down that mountain and there is that great mass of immorality and idolatry and perversion and everything else going on, and he issues the first altar call in history, and he says, will you separate yourself and stand with me on God's side? And the tribe of Levi separated themselves. It was the only tribe out of the 12 tribes that says, we will serve God as for me and my house, so to speak, and they separated themselves, but there was still a remnant that did not separate themselves, and then there is the follow-up to the altar call. As God says through Moses, I want you now to take your sword, go right back into that mass of immorality and so on, and slay every man, his brother and sister and mother and father. Not every man because the entire nation would have been killed, but there was a remnant of their own people that refused to separate themselves, and they went back in and God says, because you have done this, I will bestow a blessing upon you today. That blessing we read out there in Deuteronomy chapter 33, where he says because of this, as Moses begins to prophetically announce his blessing on each of the tribes of Israel that they would have their own particular peculiar calling and so on, he comes to the tribe of Levi and he reminds them, because you did not consider your brother, your mother, your sister, your friend, and so on, but you stood in awe of my name, therefore you shall teach my law to Israel. That was why God chose the tribe of Levi, based on separation. God is looking for a people today, especially in leadership, that will have a holy hatred of sin. You should not be in the pastorate, you should not be in the ministry, unless you have that fierce loyalty to the Word of God. Today we're more afraid of offending people than we are of offending God. We no longer preach against sin. Why? Because somebody may leave. We have a whole new way of presenting the gospel, this seeker-sensitive way, again, in which God is this great big warm fuzzy love wins no matter what type thing. Notice in verse 6, he says true instruction was in his mouth, talking about Levi, and unrighteousness was not found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and in uprightness, and he turned back many from iniquity. He turned back many from iniquity. That is the job of those in leadership, to turn you from sin. Thou shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people, not in their sin, but from their sin. And we come up with all sorts of doctrines today that give people the security that they can sin and continue on. Yes, I'm an Arminian. The very first lie the enemy ever concocted was there in the Garden of Eden, when he says, listen, you will not die. And we have bought into that lock, stock, and barrel. We promoted it. We've done everything we can to say, listen, you cannot lose it. You're safe. You'll never die. Go ahead, sin. Go ahead and disobey God. Live like the devil if you want. And man found the consequences, driven out of the presence of God, banished from the Garden of Eden. The land cursed as a result, the only way back in through the atoning blood of an animal. Separated from God. Far too many people have bought into that. I had a man come to me in Holland a number of years ago, lived in a neighboring state to where we are right now. He said to me, my wife and I were in a Baptist Church for two years. The pastor knew us well. We were living, unmarried, in a state of living in sin. And never once was I confronted. Never once. Nobody said it was wrong. Nobody preached against that. I was welcome in the church. I'm not saying that's in every church, but believe me, it's popular. Very, very, very popular. My father used to say, if you want one of these one-liners, we spend more time convincing the saved that they can't be lost than we do convincing the lost they can be saved. Let me say it again. We spend more time convincing the saved that they can't be lost than convincing the lost they can be saved. Notice what these leaders were doing. Verse 17, you have wearied the Lord with your words. How have we wearied him? Here is this retort. Lord, we don't believe you. In that you say, everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them. God says, listen, you are telling people it doesn't matter how they live. These are God's people. And that everybody that does evil is good in the sight of the Lord. Not only that, but God delights in them. What sort of grace is that? God delights in your sin? I don't think so. But all of a sudden, evil now is good? I don't think so. Again, something is wrong. God assured his people. Notice in verse chapter 1 for a moment, he opens this wonderful little book with, I have loved you. There is an emphatic declaration of God's love, God's unconditional love, I have loved you. But you go down into verse 10 and he says, I am not pleased with you. I think there are far too many Christians basking in the security of God's love and realizing they are breaking his heart. I'm not pleased with you. Jesus said, I do only do the things that please the Father. Paul says, I have as my ambition, whether at home or abroad, to be pleasing to the Lord. The Father said, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. Let me ask you this, is your life bringing him pleasure? Oh, I've raised three daughters. I would love them unconditionally regardless of what they did. But I tell you this, it was many a morning when I walked by their bedroom and the place was a mess and they know better than to leave the room that way and they were supposed to make their bed and clean up and so on. I was not pleased with them. And many times we, you know, we bask again in this false security. God loves me regardless, but I'll tell you this, he's not pleased with me. In fact, the strongest language regarding the false security is found in typology. One of the strongest typologies in the Bible is the Passover. And Robert Govett, a man who Spurgeon admired to the point where he says, the day will come when Robert Govett's writings will be worth their weight in gold. That is quite a recommendation from somebody who was considered the world's greatest preacher. And Robert Govett says this, there were two ways in which an Israelite could lose his salvation. One, if he failed to put the blood on the doorpost. That was the first one. The death angel would have got him. Failure to apply the blood. But then he says, after applying the blood, if he failed to rid his house of leaven, the Bible says you're cut off. You see, God was establishing in typology that when I save you from sin, I can keep you from sin. And seven represents totality. Seven represents completion. For the next seven days, you are to remain free from any leaven in your house. If you don't, you're cut off. Two ways established in typology. Very powerful. Paul follows that through in 1 Corinthians 5, where he deals with a man who's living with his father's wife. Remember, and he says, I am going to have to deliver you over to Satan for the destruction of your flesh that your soul might be saved. Well, if his soul can't be lost, why go through the process? And he ends up by saying, if there isn't any change, you have to remove such a man. Cut him off. And in between there, he says, let us celebrate the Passover, not with the unleavened bread, but rather with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. He's dealing with that very typology. And he sees a man who is born again, who refused to remove leaven from his house. It's a serious thing. You've wearied the Lord. Wearied the Lord. In that, you say everyone that does good is fine in the sight of the Lord. Oh, I know we have our little doctrines, our little ways of saying, you know, God puts on his rose-colored glasses, and all he sees is rose. Tell that to the seven churches of Revelation for me. Repent, repent, repent, repent. The fear of God was missing from their daily lives, number three. Getting quiet. Verse 11, Judah, chapter 2. Judah is dealt treacherously, and an abomination is being committed in Israel and in Jerusalem, for both Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord. Listen, there is an abomination, God says, that is being committed in Israel. Not only that, but he says the house of God has been profaned. Why? Because Judah has married a foreign God. In other words, Israel had begun to mingle with the nations. Israel had begun to adopt their practices and adopt their ways. Psalm 106 talks about that. You mingle with the nations, you learn their ways, which became an abomination to you, and so on and so forth. Here they were, practicing what the nations were practicing, and as a result of that they were ditching their Jewish wives and they were marrying the wives of foreign gods. And it is in the context of this compromise, this worldly standard that God says, I hate divorce. We need to see it in the context. I'm not saying there's any other context, I'm just simply saying it is in the midst of worldly compromise. Where do we hear anymore a message, come out from among them and be yourself. We are no different today than the world is. The Bible says, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loved the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Again, he's coming back for a church without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. And yet today we live, not only in the world, but we are of the world. Jesus said, you know, you are in the world, but you're not to be of the world. There's very little difference, rather, between our standards in the church and the standards in the world. We have married a foreign God, we've adapted the ways, we get more excited about the ball games and football games than the house of God. We really do. We put God on a back burner. We've done that as a nation. We're like Haggai of old. God, your house is not important, you are not important anymore. Our ways are more important than your ways, and God says, okay, I'll riddle your purse with holes. That's what's happening in America right now. I don't care who they bring in. Nobody's going to be able to patch the holes. God can put bigger ones in. This economy is going down. There is no question about it. And all the king's horses and all the king's men will not put it back together. Why? Because we put God on the back burner. We don't want you in our schools, we don't want you here, we don't want you there, and the church is no different in the world. Again, come out from among them, be you separate, touch not the unclean thing, then I will welcome you, God says, and I will be a father unto you and you shall be sons and daughters unto me, saith the Lord. There are standards for calling God father. You cannot say he's my father unless you've separated yourself from the Lord. God says, I will renounce you. I don't want kids who are living in sin and then saying I belong to God. You're going to destroy the family's reputation, so to speak. Jesus Christ is coming back again for a church that is pure, a church that is passionate. When he came to the disciples there just prior to the crucifixion, he brought, as you recall, that bowl of water and laid aside his garments and he took a towel and began to wash their feet and he comes to Peter and he says, Peter, let me wash your feet and Peter says, no way. And Jesus makes a statement, Peter, if you don't let me wash you, you will have no part of me. I believe Jesus Christ today is coming to the church and he's standing at your feet and my feet and he says one simple thing, if you won't let me wash you, you'll have no part of me. Again, he wants a pure bride. He's not looking for some whore that spends most of her time in bed with the world. He's looking for ones that have a singleness of eye, a love for God that is supreme. They found their satisfaction again in his presence. In his presence is fullness of joy. He's not watching the NFL. I'm not saying that's wrong. I tell you, we're more devoted to those things than we are to the house of God. Number four, the fear of God was missing from their relationship with God. We're over into chapter three now. Verse seven, he says, from the days of your fathers, you've turned aside from my statutes, you've not kept them. Return to me. Return to me. This is the real issue. When you no longer have a love for God, you no longer honor the one you don't love. That person loses all respect in your eyes. Why? Because you no longer love them. Israel had lost their love relationship with God. In fact, they got to the place where it says in verse 14, it is vain to serve God. In verse, in chapter one, in verse 13, they said how tiresome it is. It's just weariness to serve God. Listen, when you do not have a love relationship with God, then it becomes weariness. It becomes time. As you go through all the rituals and the rules and the regulations and so on, but there's no relationship. It's just a form of godliness. Remember what it says about Jacob in the Old Testament, that after serving seven years for Rachel, seven years under that man's rule, Laban was not the easiest man to be under. Seven years, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, after year, after year, after year, after year, after year. Seven years. And the Bible says it seemed but a few days because of his love for him. Listen, if you don't have a love for him, it's going to be a long seven years. Love makes all the difference, doesn't it? Oh, he loved that woman. And those days just seemed to fly by. The months seemed to fly by. The years seemed to fly by. What an honor to serve the King of Kings. It's not tiresome. It's not wearisome. You see, God is looking for a passion-driven church, not a purpose-driven church. Oh, I'm not trying to be funny, but you know so often we're purpose-driven. We do it out of a sense of obligation, a sense of duty, instead of devotion. The Ephesian church, you study the Ephesian church, the very first church that Jesus puts on his list. Revelation chapter 2. I know your deeds. I know your toil. I know your perseverance. G. Campbell Morgan, I think it is, it says those words they have as their essence sort of sweat, muscle ache, fatigue. Every pastor, and I don't know how many pastors we have here are listening, but every pastor would love to have a church of people made up of men and women that are involved to the point where they are absolutely exhausted. Every muscle in their body aches, so to speak, because they're involved in the things of God. Not only that, but it was a squeaky-clean church evangelically. They try those, say they're apostles. Not everybody stood in the pulpit of that church. They were screened out. They were men of holiness, men of integrity, and so on and so forth, men that refused to compromise. And then Jesus drops the bombshell, and he says, but I have this one thing against you. You have left your first love. And you want to know how serious that is. Look at the judgment that he places on them. He says, I'm going to take that candlestick, and I will remove it. I'll remove it. It was a purpose-driven church, but not a passion for it. Oh, you haven't lost your first love, because that's accidental. You've left your first love. That's volitional. Or you may go to the mall with your little two-year-old, and maybe it's a busy shopping season like that which is coming up, Christmas season, and momentarily you begin to look at something. You turn around. Your little two-year-old has wandered off. You've lost him. But I tell you, you go into panic mode, don't you? Man, all of a sudden, if you can't find him, you make an announcement. There's a little boy running around, you know, red hair and whatever, white t-shirt and brown shorts or something. If you see him, you know, I mean, you are panicked. You want to recover that little kid that belongs to you. You love that child, but you've lost him. I tell you, if you go to the mall to leave your child, you'll get arrested. You've left your first love. You've got so enamored with purpose. You've got so caught up, again, like Martha, who is so cumbered about that she's lost, sitting at my feet in adoration. Now, I'm not suggesting that we have to give up deeds. The Bible says, first of all, thou shalt love the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve. It is not the other way around. If the love relationship is missing, it's going to be nothing but drudgery for you to go to church, for you to pray, for you to read your Bible and so on and so forth. But I tell you, when you're in love, I remember when I was dating my wife back before the development of the Internet, no emails, snail mail, no tweets, no whatever's. And I'd be on vacation with my parents and a letter would come. Or my girlfriend was on vacation. She'd gone back from Bible school to home and she would write me letters. And I don't ever recall my mother saying, you know, Nancy just wrote you a letter. I don't ever recall my response being, Mom, do I have to read it? I don't think so. Man, I grabbed that thing from her as fast as she could. And I was in the bedroom. I'd read that thing inside out, upside down. I'd put words in there. I mean, I devoured it. And you tell me that this has lost your interest? Do I have to read it? Do I have to correspond to the one that wrote it? Do I have to get back to him? He's looking for a relationship. Song of Solomon. You remember how that book begins? Kiss me with the kisses of your mouth. Your love is better than wine. Oh, she's found something that exhilarates and intoxicates better than wine. Wine is what the world uses to drown its sorrows. Wine is what the world uses when there's some sort of catastrophe. When you're diagnosed with some terminal illness or whatever, you take the wine again to take the edge off, but it doesn't really. It just takes care of you for an hour or so. But she says, listen, kiss me with the kisses of your mouth. Your love satisfies. It stimulates. It exhilarates. It satisfies more than anything the world has to offer. And they begin their relationship, and then you get to chapter five. And he comes along one night in chapter five, and he says, open to me, my darling, my dove, my perfect one. My head is drenched with dew. My locks with the damp of the night. There he is, longing to come in. This is the one that he set apart for himself. This is the one that he's going to marry one day. Maybe he's been on a journey. I don't know. Maybe they've agreed, listen, next, when you get back into town, I know you're going to be away. No telephones, of course, in those days. Listen, as soon as you get back into town, please come around. Let me know you're here. Can't wait to see you again. And so he shows up. Oh, yes, it's the nighttime. She's already gone to bed. And as he is knocking on the door, her mind is saying this. I've taken off my dress. How can I put it on again? I've washed my feet. How can I dirty them again? In other words, should I get up right now? I'm comfortable just the way I am. And if I get up, I'm going to have to get my feet dirty. And after he goes, I'm going to have to wash my feet and go back to bed and, you know, just leave me alone right now. And he stands pleading. And finally, and we don't know how long the distance is, whether it was 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 minutes, she may have been that sort of a woman that every, you know, piece needs to be in place, so to speak. But by the time she opens the door, he's gone. And she has to get up in the middle of the night and begin the search for him. Thank God she doesn't go back to bed. You see, her problem, if I can cut the story short, was this. She was clean, and there's nothing wrong with being clean. Jesus said, if I wash your feet, all of you is clean. She says, I've washed my feet. But she was comfortable. The most dangerous place a church can get into is to be comfortable, stagnant in spirit, lukewarm. We have the identical story repeated in Revelation chapter 3. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. God longing to come in to renew that friendship, that fellowship, that intimacy. And the response of the bride is, not now. I'm rich. I'm increased with goods. I don't need you. What a tragedy. Listen, let me close. The conclusion of this book really is there in chapter 3. What is the answer? What is God's answer? He says in verse 1, behold, I will send my messenger, and he will clear the way. In other words, he will straighten things out. And the Lord whom you seek. He is announcing the coming of two men. The announcing of John the Baptist's ministry. The announcing of the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. And both of those men came in the power of the Holy Ghost. The answer is a heaven-sent revival. The outpouring of the Spirit of God. Notice in verse 4, then, he says, the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord. Oh, listen, it is going to take the dynamic of the Spirit of God at work in the lives of these people. In this case, John the Baptist, full of the Holy Ghost. Jesus Christ, full of the Holy Ghost. The Word of God is not just sufficient in and of itself. The Word became flesh. But before that Word could have an effect, that Word, that pure, unadulterated Word of God that became flesh and dwelt among us, had to be anointed with the Spirit of God. If you look at the tabernacle in the Old Testament, after every single piece was placed in its rightful place, made exactly as God says according to the pattern, there was one thing that still was lacking. And God said to the children of Israel, he said to Moses, now, now that everything is in place, take the anointing oil and anoint this tabernacle. Anoint the men that serve in it. And he says this, and their anointing will qualify them for the priesthood. Their anointing, not their education, their anointing. And Jesus Christ came and he tabernacled amongst us. But before that tabernacle could begin his ministry, he stood in the Jordan and the anointing of the Spirit of God came upon the Word of God. And that's why he was so effective. My father used to tell the story of the great revival in the Hebrides, where something like 75% of those people got saved outside of the house of God. So powerful was the Spirit's presence on those little islands. People would wake up in the middle of night under conviction of sin, giving their lives to God, walking home from school, come under conviction of sin, tumble into the grass or the heather at the side of the road, crying out for mercy. And in the middle of that revival, the man that was Duncan Campbell, had a dream one night. And in his dream, he sees himself going into one of these villages. And there is a large crowd of people and somebody is preaching the gospel. That was a common affair, I guess. And in his dream, he stands there listening to the Word of God being proclaimed. And then he doesn't understand who it is that's preaching. And so he makes his way through the crowd and he comes to the devil. And after the crowd dispersed in his dream, he goes up to the devil and he says, you're the devil, aren't you? And he says, yes, I am. He says, what are you doing preaching the gospel? And the devil says, Duncan Campbell, don't you know, the greatest weapon I have is the preaching of the Word of God without the anointing of the Spirit. Because the letter kills and the Spirit gives life. And I don't understand, and I don't mean to step on toes, but I do not understand why there is such fear of the Holy Ghost. I honestly don't. Why it is that every other member of the Godhead we welcome, but there's something about the Holy Ghost. Somebody's just written a book now, The Forgotten God. The Forgotten God. Listen, the enemy has one strategy, and that is to have an impure church and a powerless church. Because then he can accomplish his goals without any fear of opposition. And it is the Holy Ghost that convicts of sin. And you eliminate the effectiveness of the Spirit of God from our preaching, from our theology, and you have a sinning church because there is no longer conviction. But you also have a powerless church. You shall receive power after the Holy Ghost has come upon you. And I do not understand. Well, I do. I've been to seminary, at least Bible school. We have so dispensationalized this word that the Spirit of God can no longer do what the Spirit of God was sent to do. Listen, there are three categories of believers in this auditorium when it comes to the Spirit of God. There's the incarcerated, there is the inoculated, and there's the intoxicated. Incarcerated, if you are incarcerated, you are placed in certain confinement. There is a limited space that you are in. You are confined. You are restricted. You are bound. You can't get out of, if you like, that box, that prison, if you like. You're incarcerated. And I tell you, there are people in this room that you would rather listen to dispensational teaching rather than be honest about what the Apostle Paul wrote. And you would rather buy into some man's theology. And the Bible says the natural mind understands not the things of the Spirit of God because it's foolishness. And because it's foolishness, we throw the baby out with the back foot. And you are incarcerated. You know there's more. But the Bible warns us, whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven. And Jesus addressed the rule of his day, and he says you bind people with your teaching. You bind them so that they will never break out of that area. I wish I had time to develop it. Incarcerated. And then you have the inoculated. I do meetings in Baptist churches and Mennonite churches and Pentecostal churches. Pentecostal churches, charismatic churches, you have a lot of people that are inoculated. This is the time of the year. We're approaching winter, where people are lining up now to get their flu shots. What do they do? They put such a tiny little amount of that flu bug into you that you build up an immunity so you never get the real thing. And we have done the same thing spiritually. You say a few syllables that you don't understand, brother, you've got it. My Bible says you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, not the gift of tongues. And I don't want to belittle that because God never belittles it. Every good and perfect gift comes from above. Every good. But it is the promise of the Holy Spirit that God promised. The Holy Spirit. I will send you somebody exactly like me. Another comforter. The word another in the Greek can be translated two ways. If I bite into an apple and it's rotten to the core, and I spit it out, and somebody says, have another. That means another of a different kind. On the other hand, if I bite into an apple and it's absolutely delicious, and I said, boy, that is the best apple I ever tasted. They said, have another. It means another of the same kind. When Jesus used the word another, it meant exactly like me. And if you think you can function with somebody, or without somebody, I should say, exactly like Jesus Christ, there's something wrong. Again, we've been inoculated. And then there are those who are intoxicated. The D.L. Moody's, the John Wesley's, the Smith Wigglesworth's, the Charles Finney's, the William Booth's, the A.B. Simpson's, the R.A. Torrey's, A.W. Tozer's, and so on. Men, if you study their lives, have had an encounter with the Holy Ghost after their conversion, if you got it all when you got it, great. I'm not going to talk you out of it. I tell you, my Bible says beyond being filled. Jesus stood and he addressed the Sadducees, and he says, you are in deception, is the word that he used, the word error. You're in error, not knowing the scriptures, number one, or the power of God. Now notice, you're in error if you don't know the word of God, but you're equally in error without the power of the Spirit. And if you have the scriptures without the power, you end up being a fundamentalist. If you have the power without the scriptures, you end up being a fanaticist. If you have the scriptures and the power, you're an evangelist. My time is gone. Let me take one moment. The other guys all took 20. I'm trying to set an example as a father figure. 1 Corinthians 12, for a moment. I know this is forbidden territory for many of you, but it is the word of God. It is the word of God, and it's just as inspired and just as relevant today as it ever was. Notice how Paul introduces the gifts of the Spirit. Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you ignorant. I don't want you ignorant. I don't want you lacking in this knowledge. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to dumb idols, however you were led. In other words, Paul opens up this whole dimension of spiritual gifts and the Spirit of God, and he reminds them, he says, listen, let me take you back a few years or a few months. You were pagans. He does not say you were atheists. He does not say you were agnostics. He says you are pagans, and as pagans, you were spiritual. Not the way we know spirituality. Maybe I should use the word religious, because he says you went into idol temples. You were worshipers of idols, and then he says, but there was one distinguishing thing about those idols you were worshiping. They were dumb. They were dumb. Now unfortunately, the word dumb today is being corrupted, and we think of the word dumb as being stupid. Paul is not saying you worship stupid gods. He is saying you worship gods that never ever spoke. You never heard that God speak to you. Therefore, I make known to you that nobody speaking by the Spirit of God says. In other words, the God that you have now is a God that speaks. He communicates his wisdom through a word of wisdom, his knowledge through a word of knowledge, his compassion through healing, his prophecy of his encouragement through prophecy, his might and his power through signs and wonders, and so on and so forth, and the great tragedy in the church of Jesus Christ today is we have a dumb God. He no longer speaks because dispensationally we put tape over his mouth and say, God, if you speak in tongues in this church, you're not welcome. If you do any healing in this church, you're not welcome. If there's a prophecy in this church, make sure the elders or the, you know, the janitor or somebody drag him out of the place. I don't know about you, but I am thankful for one thing about my father. Never ever ever in his 87 years or almost 70 years in my life, never once did he demise the work of the Spirit of God. Prayed for the sick and saw some amazing healings. They may not be in the book, but they're there. Always encourage me. Go after God. Go after God. I'm going to encourage you. Go after God.