Let's turn this evening to Psalm
29, to the 29th Psalm. And let's read this together. And you won't have any difficulty
as we read this in understanding why I would entitle this message,
The Voice of the Lord. The Voice of the Lord. Psalm
29, verse 1. Give unto the Lord, O ye mighty,
give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord
the glory due unto his name. Worship the Lord in the beauty
of holiness. The voice of the Lord is upon
the waters. The God of glory thundereth. The Lord is upon many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full
of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaketh
the cedars. Yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars
of Lebanon. He maketh him also to skip like
a calf, Lebanon and Syrian like a young unicorn. The voice of
the Lord divided the flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shaketh
the wilderness. The Lord shaketh the wilderness
of Kedesh. The voice of the Lord maketh,
that's the hinds of the cows to calve, and discovereth the
forests, and in his temple doth everyone speak of his glory. The Lord sitteth upon the flood.
Yea, the Lord sitteth king forever. The Lord will give strength unto
his people. The Lord will bless his people
with peace. Notice in verses one and two
that the word give, give is used three times. And give here does
not mean like a Christmas present. It doesn't mean to make a gift
of or to bestow glory and strength. And unbelievers, you see, have
no glory of strength. So this is not even addressed
to them. But if a believer has any glory of strength, we know
where they got it. We got it from the Lord. So why
would he command us to give it back? So that's not what this
means. Give here means to acknowledge
or to ascribe glory, and strength. And to help clarify that for
you young folks, I, a while back, got to meet the governor of Kentucky.
Now his name is Stephen Beshear. What do you think it would have
been like had I gone up to him and offered him a fist bump and
said, hey Stevie baby, how you doing? I mean, that gives me, that makes
me be embarrassed right now to even think about it. You see,
that would have been insulting and ridiculous. Let me tell you
those who say things like, ah, me and Jesus got a good thing
going. I wouldn't put one of those bracelets on that goes
WWJD. Now, you see, that does not give
or ascribe the glory due unto the Lord Jesus Christ. When I
met the governor, I put my hand out to see if he would take it
and said, Good evening, Governor Beshear, out of respect for his
position. Who will give or acknowledge
glory to the Lord? The answer is right there in
verse 1. Given to the Lord, Oh ye mighty. And does your center
reference indicate given to the Lord ye sons of the mighty? Who are the sons of the mighty?
The sons of God. The children of God do give. They acknowledge. They're eager to give the Lord glory, to give
His name glory. This is addressed to God's people,
the sons of the Lord. And only they are commanded to
do this, because only they are enabled to do this, as we'll
see. In verse 2 it says, Give the
glory due unto His name. That word is D-U-E, not D-O,
but D-U-E. And that means that the Lord,
He's due, He deserves honor. He's earned the honor. And all
of us, We're due something too. You know what we're due? We're
due the wages of sin, which is eternal death. We better hope
we don't get what we're due. But we better give the Lord the
glory He's due. He's earned it. Christ is due
what He earned and deserves. He saved His people from their
sin by His perfect life. And He is due All the glory for
having put away all our sin. All the sin of all His people.
He deserves honor and glory. His name is Due Glory. And here's
His name if you want to hear it spoken the right way. He's Jesus Christ the Lord. He's Jesus, for He shall save
His people from their sin. He's the Christ because He's
the God-Man, the Anointed One, the Messiah. He's the Lord. He's God in human flesh. He's
the Supreme Ruler. He's the King. He is the Lord
Jesus Christ. And give His name the glory that
is due. Verse 2 also says, Worship the
Lord. And I looked up that word worship
in the concordance and listen to what it says. It says,
fall down. It says, kneel down. It says,
crouch down. It says, depress down. Go prostrate. For you kids, that means lay
flat on your belly. It says, do reverence. It means
get down. Why exactly must we be commanded
to get down and worship? Because we think so highly of
ourselves. We think so up of ourselves.
We think we're so high and mighty. It's hard for us to bow down.
And nobody does it unless the Lord shows us who He is and who
we are. Then we'll get down. But God
does this for His people. For the sons of the mighty, He
does this. He shows us how wretched and unholy we are, that we're
depraved. He shows us how glorious and
beautifully holy Christ is. While we stand in awe of what
the Lord's done, we bow in gratitude and reverence for what He's done.
You see, Christ, He's not just, you know, we look at somebody
and we think, she has lovely hair. But her chin's a little
funny. She's got a nice nose, but her,
you know, she's got a big neck. You know, nobody's perfect in
our sight, is it? Despite how hard everyone aspires
in our day to be that way. Let me tell you, the Lord Jesus
Christ, He's altogether lovely. Give Him what He's due. Christ is altogether loving.
He's pure and undefiled. And if we ever see the Lord,
that He's pure and holy, He's pure in His wisdom, He's pure
in His grace, He's pure in His love, He's pure in His mercy,
He's pure in His righteousness, He's pure in His holiness. Then
and only then will we worship Him and give Him glory, honor,
and strength. Now verses 3 through 10 picture
the voice of the Lord, and it pictures it as a great and mighty
storm. You know, I'm almost disappointed
that it's not clouding up out there this afternoon. Wednesday
night, when brother Todd was preaching, I had this on my mind.
I thought, boy, if it'd start thundering like that, and that
big storm had come through while I'm preaching, that'd be great.
Well, it didn't happen that way, so you're just going to have
to imagine this great storm. This massive, massive storm. It's bigger than any tornado
or hurricane. You ever see one of those pictures
from outer space of one of those hurricanes coming across the
ocean? Let me tell you, that's just like a dust devil compared
to the Lord Jesus Christ. He's a mighty storm. And you
see in verse 3, it says, The voice of the Lord is upon the
waters. Now, I've stood with Brother
Chuck five o'clock in the morning at Lake Erie, and we were getting
ready to go fishing, and here's some fellas already out there,
and it's the stillness of the morning, there's not a wave or
a sound out there, and we just stand in there thinking about
pretty soon we'd be catching fish, and one of those fellas
may be a hundred yards out, two hundred yards out, will say something
to his buddy in his boat, like, hand me that pair of pliers.
And it's just like you were in the boat with him, isn't it,
Chuck? Boy, sound goes across water like you can't believe.
I've stood on the beach of the ocean early in the morning, and
it's still out there. It's foggy, and you can't see
anything. But out there somewhere, I hear
somebody say, hand me the net. And it's just like I was in the
boat with him. You see, you don't have to see the one who's speaking
to hear the voice. When the Lord speaks, you don't
have to see His face. You just have to hear His voice. And He speaks like He's on the
water. It'll go just as far as He needs it to. It'll be just
as clear to God's people, the sons of the mighty, as if He
were standing right next to you. The Spirit of God causes His
voice to travel as far as it must to reach the ears of His
children. And it's always as clear to them as God intends
it to be. Verse 3 also says, The Lord is
upon many waters, great waters. You ever think you're so far
removed from Him? Across the ocean. There's a great gulf fixed. You think you'd never get to
me. If He speaks to you, you will.
He can speak across that. You know, there's many waters. There's ponds, there's lakes,
there's rivers, there's even oceans. But our Lord may use
many men to proclaim His Word, but if it's His voice, He's in
them, and He will be heard. Brother Bill Clark used to tell
a story about, he was a missionary from England to Africa. all of French-speaking Africa.
And he had the radio station do this. They can take it and
bring it down to a narrow band and give a directional signal
to a specific area. And he was trying to reach the
Ivory Coast, and here's England, and here's Africa, and he had
them narrow down that band so those folks could hear him down
there. But the funny thing is he kept getting mail from India. And he thought, what's that about?
And he went to the radio station and they said, oh, well, you
know, if you bring that band down like this, it forces a lot
of the band in a backblast out the far side. What's on the other
side? India. India. You know, sometimes we get up
here and preach and we're speaking to this one or that one or, well,
you never know who's going to get the backblast. That camera
up there, sermonaudio.com, it's going all over the world. That's
amazing, isn't it? But you see, the voice of the
Lord goes over many waters. It'll go where He sends it. It'll
accomplish its purpose. Isn't that encouraging? Sometimes we see our children
grow up and they're gone. Some of them came down here from
Ashland years ago and I thought, well, they're gone. Well, I got
down here and found out some of them are right ear. They heard
after all. So, let's hold our children up
before the Lord, because our Lord's voice is likened, you
see, to thunder. You see there in verse 3, the
God of glory thunders. Now, when it thunders, there's
two groups of people. The first group, sometimes they
barely notice or pay it any mind. Occasionally, it can get too
close to them. When there was a storm way off,
I had an aunt and a cousin. It didn't bother them. But boy,
if it got close and there was a big boom, they would jump up,
run in the bedroom, and crawl under the bed. And you think,
what's that about? Well, it terrified them. It was
too close to them. And it is a temporary concern. But once it was gone, they'd
get out and they'd never talk about the thunder again. But there's a
second group. You know what they do? They rejoice
to hear the thunder. For them, it always is the sound
that comes before the rain, the refreshing showers of mercy.
Weren't you glad to hear it last week start thundering? You thought,
maybe it's going to rain. All those big cracks across my
front yard, they're gone now. They're gone because the rain
came. I was glad to see it rain. But now that first group, They
will be one day. They didn't have time paying
attention to it. It wasn't of interest to them.
It was just noise. They will one day be struck by
the lightning that comes before the thunder. The fire of the
thunderous voice they ignored will consume them. For them,
you see, it came upon them too soon and too suddenly. But now
that second group, You know what? They can hardly wait when they
hear that thunder, the voice of the Lord. They can hardly
wait to see the face from which that voice comes forth. The older
I get, the less it bothers me that I'm going to go soon because
the first thing I'm going to see is the face of the voice
of the Lord that thundered from heaven. Won't that be a great
day? It shouldn't make us be frightened. Look then to verse 4. You see,
the voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full
of majesty. To God's people, His voice, His word is not full
of terror, but it's full of powerful mercy. Great mercy. To God's people, His voice is
not full of wrath, but rather full of the majesty of grace. Now, verses five through 10,
each declare what the voice of the Lord will do. His voice is
going to do some things. Now watch what he'll do. In verse
five, we read, the voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars, yea,
the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon. One time, I was standing
at the back door of my house, and there was a telephone pole
way back in the far corner of the yard. And it had a transformer
on it. And it was a big lightning storm
off in the distance. And it was amazing to watch. And that lightning had come down,
and boom. And I'm telling you, all of a
sudden, lightning struck that pole. I'm telling you, it blew
that transformer That phone pole, it was worse
than the batter who hit the ball and it shattered the bat. That
pole, it was gone. Just gone. And I'll tell you
why that ought to encourage us. And it'll break even the strongest
seeder, the ones of Lebanon. They were the strongest ones
in the world. And the voice of the Lord will just crack them
like a matchstick. And I'll tell you what that tells us. It does
not matter how hard our heart is. If God intends to break it,
His voice can do it. Nobody's too far gone. Nobody's
too far hardened. If the Lord Jesus Christ reaches
down, He crushes us in a minute. Breaks our heart. Verse 6, it
says, He maketh them also to skip like a calf, and that's
skip like a deer or an antelope. And Lebanon and Syrian, it'll
make them skip like a young unicorn or like a mountain sheep. Now,
you ever see these programs on TV where the guys are going hunting?
Well, I tell you, they don't run across the field going, there's
one, there's one, doing all this, no. They set up a blind, don't
they? and they build it up in a tree
or whatever. And here comes the deer across the field, munching
away, and boy, they're getting ready. And they never say a word,
do they? There's a reason for that. And
these fellows hunting mountain sheep, they don't go, be still. No, they don't do anything. They
just wait till he comes in the scope and they shoot it, right?
Let me tell you what we are. We are sheep. out grazing through
this life. Every one of us is just grazing
through the life. We're goats or sheep. And one
of these days, it'll end. It'll end. Unless we turn. You know why we turn? The Lord
speaks. If you speak up there, that mountain
sheep, it doesn't just keep going right on down to the... Oh, it
turns and it runs. It runs away. The deer coming
across the field feeding. If the guy draws back and says
something, the deer turns and it runs. God won't let His people
walk off the cliff. No, He speaks. And when He does,
we turn. You know what turn means? Repent.
We repent of our sin, we turn to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now
turn to Acts chapter 2 with me. And as you're turning there,
let me read you the 7th verse of Psalm 29. It says, the voice
of the Lord divideth the flames of fire. Divideth there means
to cut with flames of fire. Y'all ever, if you've ever watched
any lightning storm, you never see this. You never see, like
you took a ruler and the lightning starts here and it runs in a
straight line down here and strikes somewhere. You've never seen
that, I promise. If lightning comes out of the clouds, the
way it does is it goes like that, doesn't it? It runs some real
weird, odd course, and then it hits its target. And sometimes
it does this. It starts like this, and then
it goes like that, doesn't it? It hits two places. And sometimes
it hits four places. The voice of the Lord, you don't
know where it's coming from, and you don't know who it's going
to hit. It'll hit just one person. You remember the Lord sent Philip
where? Down in the wilderness. And the best I can tell, he spoke
to one man, a eunuch, on his way to Egypt. He spoke to just
one man. But then we read here in the
Scriptures about another situation. Have you got Acts 2? Look at
verse 1. And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they
were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came
a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, a storm came up,
and it filled all the house where they were sitting. The wind blew
through. And verse 3, and there appeared
unto them cloven tongues like as of fire. You know what that
is? Lightning. Lightning. You know what follows
lightning? Boom! Thunder. And there appeared unto
them cloven tongues like as a fire, and it sat upon each of them.
And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to
speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
And you know what the result of this message was? Lightning
struck 3,000 on that day at Pentecost. The Lord revealed Himself by
His voice to 3,000 at one time. Now, what that means is that
to be struck by lightning of the voice of the Lord rather
than the lightning of His wrath is what we want. We don't want
to be struck by the lightning of His wrath. Verse 8, look what
it says. But ye shall... Let me go back
to Psalm 29, verse 8. The voice of the Lord shakes
the wilderness. The Lord shakes the wilderness
of Kadesh. And shake here means to tremble.
The voice of the Lord rarely bothers those who live in houses
of self-righteous religion. And the Lord rarely speaks to
the rich and powerful. But those who live in the wilderness
of their sin, them He shakes, them He awakens, them He causes
to tremble in His presence. And you know what you do when
you tremble? If you tremble enough, if your legs start to tremble
enough, you'll go down. You'll worship Him. You'll fall
at His feet and praise His name. Trembling will bring us down
to our knees. In verse 9, we see the voice
of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve. and discovereth the
forest, and in his temple doth everyone speak of his glory.
The voice of the Lord will make the cows to calve." You know,
cows are no different than any other mammal. They get with child
and they go along that way. and then they have a calf. I
was down at Donnie Bell's one time, and he kept sitting there
and just fidgeting. I said, what's wrong? He said,
I had a cow out there that should have had a calf here three days
ago or whatever it was. And all of a sudden, we could
hear all the way through the wall of his house, moo. Boy, we ran out there. And I
tell you what, that cow went down and had a calf in about
30 seconds. It was amazing. Let me tell you, the voice of
the Lord comes suddenly. When it does, it just shows He's
been preparing you all your life to hear His voice, to become
His child. That's called being born again.
And there's a reference here that the voice of the Lord discovers
the forest. You know, as winter makes the
forest trees bare of leaves, The voice of the Lord strips
us of all our righteousness and causes us to seek the Lord Jesus
Christ who is righteous. He knows how to strip us. And
He'll do that. Then it says, in His temple.
Now, that's where the Lord is worshiped. And whose temple is
it? It's His temple. We didn't build
this place. This is His temple. He had it
built. And I tell you what, His people speak of His glory and
only of His glory in this temple. Now, verse 10, we read, The Lord
sitteth upon the flood, yea, the Lord sitteth king forever.
In Noah's day, how many were saved? Eight. And you know who
they were? They were His people. And where
were they safe? In the ark on the water. Want
to be safe one day when the wrath of God comes? Be in the Lord
Jesus Christ. Be in Him. Doesn't matter how
severe the storm is, we're safe in Him. And most folks would
say one of the most dangerous places on earth to be is in the
middle of an open field during a thunderstorm. And you kids,
that'd be wise. Don't go play underneath this
big tree out here in this open field if we've got a thunderstorm.
That's not a smart thing to do. But turn over to Mark chapter
7 with me. Mark chapter 7. I would contend
that the most dangerous place in America today is in the congregation
of most so-called churches. Why? The voice coming from the
pulpit is not the voice of the Lord. You say, how can you say that?
Will you listen to what I'm about to say and you tell me if I'm
not speaking the truth? Anyone, anyone can get up here
and make their voice heard by the natural ears. How? I could yell a lot, or I could
be real eloquent, or I could do a lot of things. You'd hear
my voice with these ears. Anyone can do that. There are
some who can actually make their voice heard by the natural mind. How? By being clever, or logical,
or even deceptive, telling some of the truth, or even most of
the truth, but omitting part of the truth. And there's a few
who can even make their voice heard by the natural heart, by
the emotions. How? How? We tell some sentimental
stories or ask you to think about mama and where she is now and
appear sincere. We can, there's a few who can
actually get to the heart that way. But you listen to me now,
there's only one, only one who can make a deaf man hear. Only one. You see it here in
Mark chapter 7, verse 31. And again, departing from the
coast of Tyre and Sidon, the Lord Jesus Christ came unto the
Sea of Galilee through the midst of the coast of Decapolis. And
they brought unto Him one that was deaf, and had an impediment
in his speech, he couldn't talk right. And they beseeched the
Lord to put His hand upon him, So the Lord took this man aside
from the multitude and notice what he did. He put his fingers
in his ears and he spit on his hand and touch this man's tongue.
Now that had been enough for most folks right there. You ain't
spitting in my mouth. This man wanted to hear. This man wanted to speak. You do whatever you got to do,
Lord. Just do it. Do it. Please do it. I beg you
to do it. And you see in verse 34, And
looking up to heaven, the Lord sighed and said unto this man,
Ephaphatha, that is, be opened. Be open. What happened when the
Lord said that? Straightway this man's ears were
opened, and the string of his tongue was loosened, and he spake
plain. Let me tell you what happened.
Here was a deaf, dumb man. That's a great picture of us
by nature, isn't it? We are the biggest... I mean,
this earth is populated with deaf, dumb, blind, ignorant sinners. Isn't that what we are? I tell you what, He can spit
in my mouth, He can ram His fingers in my ears, He can do anything
He needs to or wants to to me, just let me hear His voice. Let me hear Him speak to me. Please tell me my sin is gone. Please tell me I have the righteousness
I need to come into the presence of God. Please tell me that. I tell you what, if He speaks
to you, if He ever speaks to you, you know what will happen?
You'll not only hear, but you'll leave speaking of His glory. This man left, and he could,
what's it say there in verse 37? And they were beyond measure
astonished, saying, He done all things well. He make it both
the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak. Tell you what, if He's
made me hear and made me speak, that's amazing. I have no doubt
He can do it for you. I'm the deafest, dumbest person
you ever met. And in order to hear His voice,
the voice of the Lord, we need new ears, new mind, new heart,
And only Christ by the power of His Holy Spirit can give us
that. That's what being born again means. It's not some crazy
term a bunch of religious freaks made up. No, it's real. We must
have these things. Turn to John chapter 12. How can you and I tell If we've
got new ears, a new heart, a new mind, how can we tell if we've
been born again? Well, the answer to that, what
do you hear when the Lord speaks? What do you hear? Believers and unbelievers hear
two different things, totally different things when the Lord
speaks. And the evidence of that is in John 12, verse 23, Jesus answered them, saying,
The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the
ground and die, it abideth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth
much fruit. Now He's speaking of His death.
You know if you take a kernel of corn, you put it in the ground,
it's going to rot, die, whatever it is. But here comes the new
shoot. And it comes up a stalk of corn
and here's ears on that. There's hundreds or thousands.
of kernels, just like the one that went in the ground. That's
a picture. The Lord Jesus Christ came down
here and died so that God the Father will have thousands, hundreds
of thousands, millions, I don't know how many, just like His
Son. That's what Christ is teaching
here in verse 25. It says, He that loveth his life
shall lose it. Those who won't hear His voice
and won't bow at His feet, won't come down, well, you got the
life you lived here, that's all there is. But, he that hateth
his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. And
that doesn't mean we go around going, I'm so miserable and unhappy
and nothing ever happens good to me and I'm so, I don't like
any how it is. No, no, that's not what, even
God's people are happy people. You see in a minute, He makes
us joyous and happy in Christ. But what it means is that this
is not my long home. This is not where I want to be
forever. No, I want to be with Him one day. I'm happy to give
up this life to go to the next one. Verse 26, And if any man
serve me, let him follow me. And where I am, there shall also
my servant be. If any man serve me, him will
my father honor. Now is my soul troubled. You
say, what's the Lord got to be troubled about? He was going
to Calvary, and it's understandable. He knows what he's about to go
through. And that's what he's referencing.
And he says, what shall I say? Father saved me from this hour,
but for this cause came I into the world. He's not going to...
If he'd asked God to deliver him from this, I suppose he would.
But he said, I'm not going to do that. He said, the salvation
of my brothers and sisters, of God's children is dependent on
this. He said, I wouldn't ask that.
But he says in verse 28, Father, glorify thy name. And then came
there a voice from heaven. Now we all know whose voice this
is, right? This is God speaking. And there came a voice from heaven
saying, I have both glorified it, thy name, and I will glorify
it again. He says, I've glorified it in
your life, and I'm going to glorify it in your death. I'm going to
glorify it in your resurrection. I'm going to glorify it eternally
when you sit on your throne in the presence of your people.
In verse 29, and the people therefore that stood by and heard it, there's
two groups here. Here they are. The first group
said, it thundered. It thundered. They didn't hear
the voice of God. They heard thunder. They just
heard noise. That's all it was. But look at
this other group. Others said an angel spake to him. A divine voice spoke to him. And I've never heard one of those
directly. I don't know what it must have
sounded like to them, but they were mistaken in what they thought. It was not an angel. And our
Lord corrects them right away. He tells them who it is. Verse
30 says, Jesus answered and said, this voice came not because of
me, but for your sake. You know why our pastor gets
up here and preaches the gospel day after day, after week, after
year. You know why he does that? It's
not because Jesus Christ needs more glory. He's already got
it all. He's doing it for our sake. for
the sake of God's people. That's why he calls out men and
gives them the gift to speak like thunder from heaven. It's
for our benefit. To the unbeliever, the voice
of God is like thunder. It's unwelcome noise. Oh, it
might be, they might be frightened briefly or give occasional cause
for concern, but it's heard with natural ears and soon forgotten.
But to the believer, the voice of God, here's what it is. It's
the voice of a divine being. By His voice, we're awakened.
By His voice, we're made alive. By His voice, we're taught and
enlightened. By His voice, we're encouraged
and comforted, given hope and rest. And then back in our text,
look at verse 11. The Lord will give strength unto
His people. The Lord will bless his people
with peace. How blessed are we? How are we
given strength? By his voice, by his word, by
the preaching of the gospel. And strength here means prevailing,
prevailing. We prevail over our great sin
by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Give here doesn't mean
what it did up in verse 1, where we acknowledge God's glory and
strength and might and all that. No, here it means God gives us,
He bestows upon us all we need to prevail against our sin, to
come into His presence. And I love this about the last
word in the verse and in the psalm says, He'll bless His people
with peace. The Lord bestows peace. And listen to what this word
means. If this doesn't bless you, I don't know how to do it.
The Lord, through his voice, gives us prosperity, happiness,
health, favor, rest, safety, wholeness, welfare, perfection. It means temporal peace. That's
right now. It means spiritual peace. That's
inside. It means heavenly peace, that's
eternal peace. It means outward peace, the blessings
of God. It means inward peace, the grace
of God. It means everlasting peace, the
glory of God. You say that one word means all
that? No, the one person means all that. It's not a word, it's
a person. Christ is peace, and in Him we
have all that. The Lord Jesus Christ means all
that and more because he is all and in all. You say, where'd
you get all that? Well, I read a lot of old men
who'd heard his voice. I heard his voice. I heard his
voice in his word, from the scriptures, by the preaching of the gospel.
The question is, have you heard his voice? Anybody here heard
his voice? or is it just like thunder, noise? I'm going to give you one more
scripture. Turn over to Mark 3. I hope this is the right thing
to do. I've debated about it, but I'm going to make this a
little personal. There's something going on here,
and I think most of you are aware of it, but for those who might
not be, the most first Saturdays of every month, our pastor is
having what he's calling a preacher school. And as if he didn't have
enough, I mean, he preaches, you know, Sunday morning, Sunday
school, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, four
messages a week, and every other week, two TV messages. How he
has time to do this, God's got to enable him to do it, because
he's doing it well. But what's happening is that
there's a group of young men. Sometimes there's over 20 there. And there's a few of us old geezers
there too. I mean, Mark and Marvin and Neil
come down from West Virginia, but it's a blessing. It does
just to get to be there. But let me tell you what Todd's doing
there. The greatest blessing in all
the world is to have a pastor who speaks with the voice of
God. The next great blessing is that God would raise up other
men in the midst of that man who go forth to preach the gospel.
And everybody in here has a part in this. You support your pastor
with your prayers and your gifts and your best wishes and your
love and affection and kindness and every other thing. But I
want to show you just how important this is and who just might be
in that class. Our Lord here in Mark 3 verse
14 says, The Lord ordained twelve that they should be with Him,
and that He might send them forth to preach. Oh, let's see, the
Lord did this? Maybe we should endeavor in like
manner. And he said, and to have power
to heal sicknesses and to cast out devils. And Simon the Lord
surnamed Peter. He used to be Simon. Oh, but
he's a new person now. And he's going to call him Peter.
And I'll tell you what, I don't want to be known as Bob when
I get to glory. I just want to be a son of God.
That's all I want to be. But look what James, the son
of Zebedee, and John, his brother, Look what the Lord surnamed them,
Bewanergees. Bewanergees. And look what it
says that means. They were the sons of thunder.
Whoa. I'd like to have heard them preach,
wouldn't you? I got news for you. There are sons of thunder
in this day. I had the great joy of sitting
under Henry Mahan, who I promise was a son of thunder. He spoke
with the voice of God. And now I get to sit under Todd
Kniper. He's Boanerges. He's a son of
thunder. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the
Lord would raise up some more sons of thunder to go forth from
this place? First thing to do, is beg God
to let you hear His voice. After that, ask Him to raise
up another man, a son of thunder, that others might hear His voice.
I pray He'll do that for us. All right.