Would you turn with me to a number of Scriptures? First, in the New Covenant, in the New Testament: the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 3, and just one verse, Verse 16.
John answered, saying unto them all,
I indeed baptize you with water;
but there cometh He that is mightier than I,
the latchet of Whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose:
He shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire.
Then, if you will turn to the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, and the book of Exodus, Chapter 3, from Verse 1.
Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian:
and he led the flock to the back of the wilderness,
and came to the mountain of God, unto Horeb.
And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush:
and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
And Moses said, I will turn aside now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.
And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses.
And he said, Here am I.
And He said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet,
for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.
If you will turn back to the New Testament, and to Acts—the book of the Acts of the Holy Spirit—and Chapter 2. Chapter 2, I am sorry, from Verse 1.
And when the day of Pentecost was now come,
they were all together in one place.
And suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind,
and it filled all the house where they were sitting.
And there appeared unto them tongues parting asunder, like as of fire;
and it sat upon each one of them.
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit,
and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
And then again, in the New Testament, Romans—the Roman letter of the apostle Paul—and Chapter 12. Romans 12, from Verse 1.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God,
which is your spiritually intelligent service and worship.
And be not fashioned according to this world:
but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
For I say, through the grace that was given me, to every man that is among you,
not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think;
but so to think as to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith.
For even as we have many members in one body, and all the members have not the same office:
so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.
And having gifts differing according to the grace that was given to us,
whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of our faith;
or ministry, let us give ourselves to our ministry;
or he that teacheth, to his teaching;
or he that exhorteth, to his exhorting:
he that giveth, let him do it with liberality;
he that ruleth, with diligence;
he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness.
Just a further word of prayer.
Beloved Lord, we are so thankful that we are gathered here. We thank You for Your grace and mercy toward us. We thank You, dear Lord, that we believe that the prayer Jerry has just prayed, You will answer, and that You will meet us in Your Word.
Make Your Word a living reality to every one of us this evening, from the youngest to the eldest. Meet us, Lord. We are living in days of enormous turmoil, conflict, shaking, and trouble. And, Lord, we feel in our bones that it is not going to get better.
Now, Lord, all we can do is ask that, in Your mercy, You will meet with us. Where we are complacent, wake us up. Where we are lukewarm, make us white hot. Where our love has somehow died, give us back our first love. Where the passion has long since departed—our zeal for the Lord’s house—restore it.
Lord, do something in our hearts this evening, and we shall be careful to give You all the praise and the glory.
Dear Father, we stand by faith this evening in the anointing which our Lord Jesus won for us at Calvary: both for the speaking of Your Word, for the translating of it, and for the hearing of it.
Hear this our prayer, which we ask in the name of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah. Amen.
I think you all know by now that the theme of this conference has been preparing the way for the coming again of the Lord. My responsibility in this has been the way of Christ. I do not want to go over what I have already said on the last two occasions, but I want to ask one simple question.
Where is the fire of God? Where is the fire of God?
All through the history of the church, every time the Lord Jesus has launched a new initiative by His Holy Spirit, there has been fire that has burned within those upon whom the Lord Jesus came by the Spirit.
It was a fire that turned human society upside down. It was a fire that led thousands to the Lord. It was a fire that brought about an expression of the church in that day—a building of the church.
And then traditionalism, organizationalism, denominationalism, and all the other isms slowly took over. The fire went out. And the interesting thing is that it seemed that nobody noticed it. The fire had gone.
Dear child of God, how in the world are we to prepare the way for the coming again of the Lord without the fire of God?
I am not talking about strange fire, foreign fire, or occult fire. I am talking about the fire that was in the heart of the Lord Jesus when He came into this world and was born of a woman, endured those thirty years of contradiction and gainsaying, and finally, by that fire of the Spirit, offered Himself up to God on the cross.
It was that fire of the Spirit of God that raised up Messiah Jesus from the dead.
It was that fire that was poured out on the Day of Pentecost—not just the fire in the Lord Jesus, the zeal that was in the Lord Jesus, but the fire that was to dwell in one hundred and twenty very ordinary, very usual human beings.
It is a very interesting thing that we hardly know any of their names—just a handful of names we know. But on that day, when the Holy Spirit was poured out by a risen, glorified, enthroned Messiah, something happened on this planet which had never happened before in the long years of its history.
One hundred and twenty saved human beings were joined to a Head at the right hand of God. It was as if head and body—an organism—had been created by the Holy Spirit, by the coming of the Holy Spirit, by that fire of God that came into all one hundred and twenty of them.
Dear children of God, listen to me. That fire in those dear people, within hours, had brought about three thousand conversions. There were three thousand one hundred and twenty, and that fire burned within them.
Within weeks it was five thousand. Within more weeks and more months, it was eight thousand. Even a great company of the priests and Levites believed.
The whole encrusted establishment of the temple, of the priesthood, of the scribes, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees—they could not do anything about it.
It turned Jerusalem upside down. It turned the whole of Judea upside down. It turned Samaria upside down. And, for the first time, those who were Samaritans, saved by the grace of God—the fire dwelt in them.
And the Jews, who had despised the Samaritans so greatly, were joined together.
Within a short time, the apostle Peter stood in that drawing room—or whatever room it was—of that centurion officer’s home in Caesarea, the military headquarters of the Roman occupying force.
A whole number of Gentile officers from the Roman army were present, and the Messianic Jews stood. For the first time, Peter preached the gospel to Gentiles—full-blooded Gentiles.
And as he was speaking, something happened in that meeting. The fire of God that was in Peter burned within him, and suddenly he became aware that they were no longer listening to him.
This is not so strange a thing for us preachers—only sometimes for other reasons. Would to God it were the same reason as Peter’s.
He certainly realized they were not listening to him. Something had happened. The fire of the Spirit of God had jumped from Peter into full-blooded Gentiles and saved them.
It was the beginning of the most successful evangelistic crusade ever launched. It was to take the whole world.
It went as far north as Armenia; as far east as southern India; as far south as Ethiopia and beyond, in Africa; and as far west as Spain, France, and Britain.
The gospel was preached in London—it was then called Londinium—fourteen years after the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. According to church tradition, Joseph of Arimathea preached the gospel for the first time in Britain. If it is true—but not all tradition is nonsense.
It was the fire of God.
Now, my dear friends, wherever we look in the Bible, we find that fire is the expression of the presence of God.
When He spoke with Moses, the whole mountain was enveloped in fire. We could say so much more about this, but it is everywhere in the Bible.
At one of the great turning points in divine history, Moses—dear Moses—was eighty years of age, doing what he had done for forty years: looking after smelly, unhygienic goats and sheep and camels and donkeys. It was in the backside of the desert, so called in our dear old version.
And he saw a fire.
I suppose it had been a day like any other day for Moses. After all, he had forty years of them. He probably thought to himself, “It is a thorn bush—a dead old thorn bush—spontaneously ignited by the sun.”
But he looked back ten minutes later, and it was still burning. He thought, “That bush must be quite a big bush.” Half an hour later, he looked back, and it was still burning.
Then he said, “I think I had better go across and see this great sight—this huge bush.” These thorn bushes are two a penny in the desert. When one dies, it often just goes up spontaneously in fire. I have seen it myself.
But as Moses came near, God spoke to him out of the bush, out of the fire, and He said, “Moses, Moses, do not come any nearer. Take the shoes from off your feet, for the ground whereon you stand is holy.”
It was one of the great turning points in divine history. Moses was about to meet with God.
Only the Lord, with His great humour, could have arranged and appointed such a meeting. After all, we might have expected the Lord to take a stately palm tree, with its marvellous form. Just imagine it: the fire up there, and Moses looking and saying, “Goodness, that palm tree is on fire!”
Then the Lord speaks to Moses: “Moses, take the shoes from off your feet.” The ground—very magnificent. It all speaks of royalty, of magnificent royalty.
Or He could have taken what is called in the King James Version the shittim tree—the acacia of the desert. This was the tree from which the wood for the furniture of the tabernacle was made.
Would it not have been marvellous if the Lord had burst, as it were, into fire in a shittim tree, in an acacia tree? Moses would have said, “Oh, my!” And later he would have said, “Isn’t this amazing, this typology? I mean, this is the house of God; there is the dwelling place of God. It is wonderful.”
But the Lord, if I may put it reverently, put God Himself into a thorn bush—not even taller than Moses’ waist. And from the ground, God spoke up to Moses: “This is holy ground.”
Furthermore, it was a dead thorn bush. It had lived its life, expended its energy, and died. You would have thought the Lord would at least have got a green thorn bush. They even have flowers—very ordinary little blossoms. But at least you would have thought the Lord would have been decent and taken a nice green thorn bush.
But it was as if God was saying to Moses, “You are eighty years of age. You have lived your life, expended your energy, and, as far as you are concerned, you are going to die in this desert. In fact, this is the beginning of your ministry.”
“This thorn bush is you. This fire is Me. And I will use you. You are the bush that burns with fire and is not consumed. And I will speak through you again and again and again.”
“I will speak to Pharaoh and warn the leaders of Egypt. I will speak to the children of Israel. You are the bush that is dead, and I am the fire.”
When the fire and the human vessel that knows it is nothing get together, something happens. Divine history is made.
It matters not where you turn: you will see this illustrated everywhere in the Bible.
But it was not just Moses and his God-given service. It was as if the Lord was saying, “Moses, this bush—dead, with thorns and prickles—is Israel. And I am the fire in this bush. Never forget it.”
Moses did, on one occasion. He was so angry with them that he struck the rock with his staff and said, “Ye rebels!” He forgot that God was in the bush. And God said, “You shall not go over into the land, but you shall see it from afar.”
It is amazing that Israel, with all her faults and all her failings and all her weaknesses, through the long years of her history, has been kept by the grace of God.
And finally, after the greatest tragedy in her long history of suffering—the Holocaust—she was born as a recreated state and nation amongst the nations of the world. It is amazing.
The flame has never died. It has dimmed. It has almost gone out. It has almost been extinguished. But even in its most terrible times, there has always been a Daniel, a Nehemiah, an Esther, or an Ezra—all the way through.
If you have followed me so far, let me take you a step further. It is as if the Lord is saying, “This old thorn bush is the church.”
You cannot have been in the church for too long to discover that it has a lot of thorns. You get easily scratched in fellowship.
But the fire is there because, as our brother Stephen has underlined twice at least, the Lord Jesus said, “You are Peter.” He had even said, “Oh, you are going to deny Me three times.”
“But upon you—you are a little pebble, Petros—but upon the massif of the rock, Petra, I will build My church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
It is amazing to me that the church is still alive today. When we look at church history, we see the most extraordinary things. I have to curb myself because of time, but it is amazing.
Ever since the Lord Jesus made this declaration, the gates of hell have sought again and again to prevail against the building work of the Lord Jesus. And there are times—we have to say it—when they seem to have been successful.
There are times when it seems as if the fire has gone, the zeal has gone, and the understanding has gone; when the church has died into a human organization, often the persecutor of real children of God.
But then the Lord has been, as always, faithful to His promise: “The gates of hell.”
I personally do not like the word Hades. I know it is the correct Greek word, but I wonder what it means, especially to you young people. I mean, “the gates of Hades.” Well, then I say to you, “There are the gates of the departed dead.” That does not help you very much, does it?
“Well, it is the forces of death.” Well, that is good. But I think the old King James Version, when Tyndale put hell, is much more descriptive of what the Lord meant: “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
That is, all the strategies of Satan, all the purposes of Satan, all the goals and aims of Satan—they will not prevail against the building work of the Messiah.
If you look through church history, you will discover again and again that the Lord Jesus, from the throne of God, launches a new initiative by the Holy Spirit. And once again there is fire.
It does not matter what you call them: Montanists, Donatists, Paulicians, Albigenses, Bogomils. These strange names were given to these people by others; they never took those names.
It was a fire that burned, and once again the church came back to its original foundation and its original character. There was the headship of Jesus by the Holy Spirit. There was fellowship. There was growth. There was salvation. There was the preaching of the gospel.
You take the Reformation. There was a fire in the Reformation, whatever you may feel about anything else. When Martin Luther—that Roman Catholic man—God saved him, a fire burned within him and nothing would stop him.
The Catholic Church called him “that drunken monk.” But there was a fire and a passion and a zeal within him. Could you believe that the almighty Roman Catholic system could be turned upside down and inside out by the Word of God, preached by people like Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin, and others?
It was a fire. Then it died.
Then you have the Anabaptists. In Salzburg, there is not a single fountain in which Anabaptist children of God were not drowned—tied up in sacks, babies, children, parents, and drowned.
But a fire burned with the Anabaptists. Whether you call them Mennonites, Stundists, or General Baptists does not really matter. The fact is, a fire burned until it became an organization.
Or again, something happened. I can only tell you a few of these things. Something happened when this young aristocrat wandered around the museum, and suddenly he saw an oil painting.
It was an oil painting of the crucified Messiah. It transfixed him. He stood before it for one solid hour without moving.
And his eyes could not get away from the words underneath the painting:
I have done all this for you.
What have you done for Me?
Into Nicholas von Zinzendorf’s heart came the Holy Spirit. The fire burned within him. He went back to his estates in Moravia, opened his castle and all the estates to refugees—of which there were thousands—fleeing from Catholic persecution.
It is an amazing story. They even had troubles. Well, I just said it is a thorn bush—this church, a dead old thorn bush, with plenty of thorns and prickles. They were having a bad time.
And then they thought the best thing to do was to seek the Lord. The Holy Spirit fell upon the whole crowd—not the mount; laid them flat—and the flame of fire got into them all.
It was the beginning of the hundred-year prayer meeting.
They went everywhere. The fire so burned within them that they chose to go to the most difficult places on the planet: up into the mountains of the Himalayas, into the Arctic.
They actually caught leprosy from caring for the lepers and rejoiced, because they said, “Now we are lepers; they will understand us.”
They sold themselves as slaves to reach the slaves being brought over from Africa to the colonies, to the Caribbean, and to the colonies, in order to reach slaves. There was nothing that the Moravian brethren would not do.
John Wesley was a legalist of the first order. But at least he believed the Word, and he read very clearly about going into all the world and preaching the gospel. He felt very clearly from that that he should go as a missionary to these colonies—now the United States of America.
You have just had the celebration of your Independence Day. And he came as a missionary to the Red Indians. He wrote in his journal, “Oh God, I have come to convert the Red Indians, but who can convert me?”
But on the way over, he went to Holland to get the boat to the colonies. In the middle of the Atlantic, an enormous storm arose, and it looked as if the ship was going to go down with everybody on board.
It was clear to John Wesley that the sailors, the captain—everybody—believed they were doomed.
And then, in the lower part of the ship, Wesley heard the sound of singing. He thought, “Oh, the ship has gone down. I am in heaven.”
But then he saw a light shining through a door that was ajar. Gingerly, he went over and pushed open the door.
There were forty Moravians fleeing from Europe to the colonies. They had babies in arms, children on their laps, and they were singing.
And Wesley thought, “Oh God, if I only had the faith that these people had.”
So Wesley went to the States, and a few years later he returned to Britain as a failed missionary. He had been unable to convert anybody.
Then he heard of a meeting in Fetter Lane in the City of London. He heard that a Moravian preacher was going to preach, and he thought, “I will go to hear this man.”
Sitting there, he listened to one of the Moravian preachers reading the preface to one of Martin Luther’s commentaries. As he listened, he said, “I felt a strange warming in my heart.” It was the fire.
So amazing was it: John Wesley had been saved.
It was the beginning of the Great Awakening that swept through Britain and swept millions into the kingdom of God. He and his brother Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, went everywhere through Britain, through these colonies, and elsewhere, preaching the gospel.
Millions came to the Lord, even those considered to be subhuman, like the miners in Britain. It changed Britain, and historians today believe that it saved Britain from the French Revolution.
It was a fire. At ninety-four years of age, dear Wesley still preached four times a day in different places, riding from one place to another on horseback in the ghastly British weather.
When he died, King George—who had lost the colonies, thank God—King George, who had lost the colonies, no believer in God, decreed three days of mourning for Wesley and agreed that he should be buried in Westminster Abbey.
There is no end to this story once the fire gets in.
I think of George Fox, who could not find salvation until God met him on the hill.
George Fox began what was then called the Society of Friends, because he did not want to call them Christians, because he said some were seekers. It was Cromwell who said, “It is good to be a seeker, but it is much better to be a finder.”
The Quaker movement spread over Britain and over these colonies and changed society. At one time, one-third of all the Quaker preachers were in prison.
So what did they do? They turned the prisons into Bible schools. Criminals in prison found the Lord, were trained, and went out as preachers. So, in the end, there were more Quaker preachers.
It is an amazing story. Through the Quakers came nursing. Through the Quakers came child reform. Through the Quakers came prison reform.
Dear friends, I could go on and on. I could talk about the brethren and the fire that came into the brethren. It was amazing. They stopped children being sent up chimneys by Act of Parliament.
This fire of God, when it gets into believers, is tremendous. The trouble is, it disappears. Complacency, affluence, being comfortable, and a Laodicean condition take over, and the church dies.
Well, dear friends, I do not know if I have bored you stiff with all my stories. But I want to tell you something.
If the fire of God does not get into us, there is absolutely no way whatsoever of preparing the way for the coming again of the Lord. It is as simple as that.
I do not really know what more to say to you, only that you and I need that fire.
Charles Wesley wrote a hymn after he heard his brother preach on the fire:
O Thou Who camest from above,
The pure celestial fire to impart,
Kindle a sacred flame of love
On the mean altar of my heart.There let it burn for Thee
With inextinguishable blaze,
And trembling to its source return,
In humble prayer and fervent praise.Jesus, confirm my heart’s desire
To work, and speak, and think for Thee;
Still let me guard the holy fire,
And still stir up Thy gift in me.Ready for all Thy perfect will,
My acts of faith and love repeat;
Till death Thine endless mercies seal,
And make the sacrifice complete.
Dear, dear people of God, it is a continuous source of amazement to me that the apostle Paul, writing the Roman letter, sums up everything in this one word:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
to present your bodies a living sacrifice,
which is your spiritually intelligent worship and service.
He had spent eight chapters expounding the gospel, from Chapter 1 to Chapter 8. He spent three chapters expounding election—the election of the church and the election of the Jewish people.
And he summed it all up in these words: “I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable.”
In other words, what he was saying—if I may put it in my own words—was this: the goal of the gospel is that you should be a living sacrifice.
“Oh,” you say, “do not say that. That is dreadful to say. I thought the goal of the gospel was that we should be happy, joyful, skipping like lambs.”
“Did you say sacrifice? Well, I did not get saved to be a sacrifice. I got saved to have all my needs met. I got saved to be satisfied.”
But the goal and aim of the gospel is that you should be a living sacrifice. It is the goal and aim of election.
In other words, the reason God has chosen you, the reason He has foreordained you for this thing, is that you should serve Him.
Now, let us be honest. Our biggest problem is our self-life. I spoke about it yesterday evening. I am not going to speak about it again, except to say this: our problem is our self-life.
My will, not His. My way, not His way. My agenda, not His agenda. Is that not the problem?
When you and I present our bodies a living sacrifice, we have taken all the different problems and, in one single act, finished them.
No longer my will: His will. Listen.
I had better read it, because I am getting old now, I am sorry to say, and sometimes I misquote. Here it is:
And be not fashioned according to this world:
but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.
I want to be honest. I want to tell you, it is very simple: all of us have conformed to the fashion of this world. It is our natural habitat, and it is only natural because we are born with that kind of constitution.
So it is only natural for us. We think like the world. We act like the world. We are supposed to be Christians. Of course, we are Christians. We are converted. We are baptized. We go to church at least once a week.
But we actually act like the world. We are fashioned according to it. How can we break the mould?
Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.
The only way that can happen is when you are a living sacrifice. And here is the second thing:
That ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Let us be honest again. Why do we have such a problem with the will of God? We are only happy with the will of God if it falls into line with our will. Ah, yes, we are so happy.
We cannot prove what is the good, perfect, and acceptable will of God unless we are a living sacrifice.
Something else: we shall never know the fellowship of the house of God, never know the fellowship of the body of Christ, unless we are living sacrifices.
It is not just that Paul’s mind is wandering here, and now he speaks about us being many members, but all one body in Christ. You notice that? We are one body in Christ. It comes out of being a sacrifice.
Dear child of God, that is really all I have got to say this evening.
These conferences have been going, I am told, either for thirty-six years or thirty-eight years. There seems to be a slight discrepancy between our brothers on this matter. But it is either thirty-eight or thirty-six years.
What did you say? Thirty-seven? Well, I have got another one now. The three brothers had different ideas, but still, that does not matter. Thirty-seven years.
I think we are in the middle-age spread.
We have got so much, we have almost become saturated with the truth. With that, we have become complacent, comfortable, and very happy.
The condition of the church in Laodicea—I hope it cannot be written over us:
I am rich, and have gotten riches,
and have need of nothing.
The Lord’s estimate of these people is totally different:
Thou knowest not that thou art wretched,
and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.
Is it possible to think we have need of nothing and, in fact, are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked?
“Well,” you say, “I do not think it is possible with us because we are alive to the Lord.”
Well, I think the church of Laodicea thought it was alive. Where do you think they got the riches? How do you think they got them? Why do you think they said, “We have need of nothing”?
Dear folks, we need the Lord. We need that fire of God to burn within our hearts, whether you are the youngest person in this auditorium this evening or the oldest.
We need the fire of God.
The end of the finished work of the Lord Jesus was to pour out the Spirit upon that one hundred and twenty. There was one flame of fire upon every one of the one hundred and twenty.
You cannot live in someone else’s zeal, someone else’s fire. You have to have that fire yourself.
Now listen to this word: I think the Lord is calling us to be living sacrifices.
Are you ready?
Why do we not have a word of prayer and ask the Lord to speak to us? Shall we bow our heads?
Lord, You have heard all that I have said this evening. You alone can apply it to each of our lives.
Will You do something this evening in us? Will You challenge us? Will You meet with us in a new way? Will You restore our first love? Will You kindle again that fire of Yours in our spirit? Hear us, Lord.
Now, while your heads are bowed, is there anyone here who has the courage to stand up, simply by standing up to say, “I am lukewarm. I need the Lord anew.” Please stand up.
Now, maybe also there are those of you who are alive to the Lord, but you feel in your heart that you are not a living sacrifice. You may be standing already, but if you want to join these folks, do so.
Dear Lord, You see everyone who in their heart has made a transaction with You. You are the only One who can make this real in us all.
Lord, we need that fire of Your love, the flame of Your love, burning once again upon the mean altars of our hearts. We need that first love, Lord. Let Your Holy Spirit come upon us all.
Make the Lord Jesus a living reality to every single one. And, Lord, this lukewarmness—it is dangerous. You said You would vomit us out of Your mouth. Lord, make us white hot for You.
No matter what the problems are that we are moving into, no matter what the economic or financial conditions might be, no matter what the climatic conditions might be, Lord, make this a real transaction.
Fire us with the fire of Your love. Bring us back to where we were at the beginning. Help us to repent for our lukewarmness.
We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Do business with the Lord.