The Divine Sledgehammer

We live in a day of a powerless pulpit that's occupied by professionals who know how to please their congregations with clever essays or by humor and entertainment. And because of this, very few are truly saved today. Congregations are full of the unconverted.

But there used to be a time in this country years ago where the pulpits were occupied by holy men of God who preached hell and its torments and man's duty of repentance and his necessity of regeneration. They could thunder the law about the ears of their hearers until they saw Sinai flash with lightning as it was altogether on a smoke. Their preaching would make strong men tremble.

Men like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Charles Finney, and Asahel Nettleton. Their preaching was so powerful that the sentences that dropped from their lips fell like hailstones from Revelation. The great George Whitefield could hold 20,000 people spellbound in the open air on Boston Common and some of his hearers would become so overcome with the message that they would drop dead in 1740 in Enfield, Connecticut when Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

His hearers felt the soles of their shoes warmed from the fires of hell below and an eyewitness account that evening recorded Ye minister had to desist from preaching because of all the shrieks and groans throughout the meeting house. It was said of Asahel Nettleton that when he preached from Genesis about Sodom being burned up that his words so gripped his hearers that their heads were turned towards the windows of the church to see Sodom all in flames. A man of God, anointed with the Spirit of God can be used by the hand of God to awaken dead men to life.

Through preaching we'll walk you over to the very verge of eternity then lift the lid off the bottomless pit so you can hear the groans and cries of the damned. In Jeremiah 23, 29 we read It's not by word like as a fire, sayeth the Lord and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces. Let me ask you, friend what does a house fire do? Well, it awakens in alarms in the word of God in the hands of the right preacher can smash all false foundations of an empty religious profession and show men their danger of dying in their sins and dropping into the burning regions of hell.

A man full of the Holy Ghost whose burden with the souls of man can be a divine sledgehammer in the hands of a holy God. And that's the title of my message today, friends The Divine Sledgehammer and I want to take the time to read us an account from the second great awakening where Charles Fanny was preaching in a schoolhouse and all hell broke loose. It's taken from his memoir and I want to take the time to give you his recording of that event today.

I had taken no thought with regard to a text upon which to preach but waited to see the congregation as I was in the habit of doing in those days before I selected a text. As soon as I had done praying I rose from my knees and said Up, get ye out of this place for the Lord will destroy the city. I said I did not recollect where the text was but I told them very nearly where they could find it and then went on to explain it.

I said that there was such a man as Abraham and also who he was and there was such a man as Lot and who he was. Their relations to each other their separating from each other on account of differences between their herdmen and that Abraham took the hill country and Lot settled in the vale of Sodom. I then told them how exceedingly wicked Sodom became and what abominable practices they fell into.

I told them that the Lord decided to destroy Sodom and visited Abraham and informed him what he was about to do that Abraham prayed to the Lord to spare Sodom if he found so many righteous there and the Lord promised to do so for their sakes that then Abraham besought him to save it for a certain less number and the Lord said he would spare it for their sakes that he kept on reducing the number until he reduced the number of righteous persons to ten and God promised him that if he found ten righteous persons in the city he would spare it. Abraham made no further request and Jehovah left him but it was found that there was but one righteous person there and that was Lot, Abraham's nephew and the man said to Lot hast thou here any besides son-in-law and the sons and the daughters and whatsoever thou hast in the city bring them out of this place for we will destroy this place because the cry of them is waxing great before the face of the Lord and the Lord has sent us to destroy it and Lot went and spoke unto his sons-in-law which married his daughters and said get ye out of this place for the Lord will destroy the city but he seemed as though one that mocked unto his sons-in-law while I was relating these facts I observed the people looked as if they were angry many of the men were in their shirt sleeves and they looked at each other and at me as if they were ready to pitch into me and chastise me for something on the spot I saw their strange and unaccountable looks and could not understand what I was saying that had offended them however it seemed to me that their anger rose higher and higher as I continued the narrative as soon as I'd finished the narrative I turned upon them and said that I understood that they never had a religious meeting in that place and therefore I had a right to take it for granted and was compelled to take it for granted that they were an ungodly people I pressed that home upon them with more and more energy with my heart full to bursting I had not spoken to them in this strain of direct application I should think more than a quarter of an hour when all at once an awful solemnity seemed to settle down upon them and as some thing flashed over the congregation a kind of shimmering as there was some agitation in the atmosphere itself the congregation began to fall from their seats and to fill in every direction and cried for mercy if I'd had a sword in each hand I could not have cut them off their seats as fast as they fell indeed the whole congregation were either on their knees or prostrate I should think in less than two minutes from this first shock that fell upon them everyone prayed for himself who was able to speak at all I, of course, was obliged to stop preaching for the no longer paid any attention to me