How Strong Is Your Commitment to God?

I want to invite you now to turn to the word of the Lord. There is a passage that has been stirring in my spirit, and I want to share it with you. Actually, it is more of a theme—a theme that we could approach in different ways. I am going to go to Matthew chapter 25, beginning with verse 14, but I will also go back to some texts that come before it, because it is all part of a larger discourse that the Lord gave on the same theme, and it has to do with us and our commitment to God.

Matthew 25:14: “For the kingdom of heaven is like a man who, before going on a journey, called his servants and entrusted his possessions to them. To one he gave five talents”—let us say that he gave him 1,000 dollars, something like that—“and to another, two”; he gave him 200 or 300 dollars, 400 dollars... “and to another, one”—let us say 100 dollars—“to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received five talents went and traded with them and earned another five talents. Likewise, the one who had received two also earned another two. But the one who had received only one went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money”; he put it under the mattress, as people used to say, right? “After a long time, the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The one who had received five talents came and brought another five talents, saying, ‘Master, you gave me 500 dollars, and here you are; I have earned another 500 dollars on top of what you gave me.’” Verse 21: “His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will put you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ The one who had received two talents also came and said, ‘Master, you entrusted two talents to me; here you are, I have earned another two talents with them.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will put you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ But the one who had received one talent, those 100 dollars, also came and said, ‘Master, I knew that you were a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you did not scatter seed. So I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ His master answered and said to him, ‘You wicked and negligent servant! You knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I did not scatter seed. Therefore, you should have given my money to the bankers, and when I returned, I would have received what is mine with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to the one who has ten talents. For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have more; but from the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the useless servant into the outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth there.’”

May the Lord bless His holy word, amen. Uh, one second. Sam, come here quickly. Excuse me for a moment, brothers and sisters. All right, brothers and sisters, what I want to tell you is that there is something in this text—more like an instinct I have about... something the Lord has been speaking to me about in recent days, specifically concerning seeking revival in our lives and having a greater commitment to the Lord. And I feel that these things need to be remembered from time to time, especially since some people have come to know the Lord recently, and we all want to be united in the same way of thinking.

The Lord told this parable in connection with a theme He had been developing about His second coming. And if you look at the preceding verses, you will notice that everything revolves around two things. Number one: the second coming of the Lord. And just in case there are some who do not understand what this second coming is about because they are not very familiar with this evangelical, biblical language, it refers, of course, to the fact that the first coming of Jesus Christ was when He came in human form and carried out His ministry here on earth. After that, there are many passages in Scripture that tell us there will be a second time when the Lord will come. No longer in the humble, human, and limited form in which He came the first time to proclaim God’s desire to have a relationship with humanity and, through His death, to become the mediator between God and mankind. Rather, at His second coming, the Lord will come in His glorified form. No longer with the human limitations with which He came before, but in all His glory, in all His divine appearance, in all His royalty, in all His authority and lordship. And He will come not as that meek lamb we spoke about here, who allowed Himself to be sacrificed and went up on the cross to be abused and crucified, but He will come as a conqueror and also as a judge.

And the Jesus whom John saw in the book of Revelation, in chapter 3, is a very different Jesus from the Jesus who walked through Galilee. He is a terrifying-looking Jesus, and when John sees Him with His brilliant white hair, His fiery eyes, His tongue that looks like a sword, and His whole being shining with an extraordinary light, John melted and fainted because His appearance was so terrifying. And the church often does not tend to focus very much on that side of Jesus.

I have been reading a great deal, and I have shared this on several occasions when I have preached recently about the gospel in the eighteenth century here in the United States and in the nineteenth century. I have been reading the writings of Jonathan Edwards and of Charles and John Wesley, and lately I have been reading the writings of Charles Finney from the nineteenth century. We are heirs of that gospel, but there has been an evolution in the world regarding the preaching of the gospel, and today, I fear, a gospel is often preached that is so superficial, so mild, and so lacking in biblical nutrients that it has created, I believe, a false sense of security in the church and even a false sense of security in the world, because the church has ceased to proclaim certain important elements of the word of God.

God has not changed His mind; He has not changed His way of thinking. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and the requirements of the Christian life today are the same as they were 200 or 300 years ago. And I believe that the church of Jesus Christ has impoverished itself by setting aside certain doctrines that are very important for our encouragement and our effectiveness. I believe that part of the problem—or at least part of the problem with this society, which has moved farther and farther away from Christian teachings—is a consequence of the church of Jesus Christ growing cold, a consequence of the fact that we have allowed ourselves to be lulled to sleep and now have a truncated gospel, a cut-down gospel that lacks many of the nutrients of the word of God.

Nowadays, we do not talk about certain things that are necessary in order to have that fire, that passion for God, which is what can melt the souls of unbelievers and give the church the authority and power it needs to proclaim an effective gospel—a gospel that touches hearts, a gospel that challenges souls. What we are selling people is really canned food, and we must return to those teachings embraced by those great men and women of God in the eighteenth century and even earlier, during the Reformation. When Martin Luther preached in the sixteenth century, he was part of an entire generation of men who were tired of the religiosity into which Christianity in Europe had sunk. They rekindled the fire of God, and as a consequence of that great Reformation, an awakening came throughout Europe. After that, the gospel began to flow; it came here to the New World, where colonies were established in this part of the Northeast, and then it continued growing in the United States and Canada. Later, missionary movements began reaching different parts of the world. But all of that came from a church that longed for the fire of God.

In the eighteenth century, in the United States and in different parts of Europe—let us say two centuries, almost two centuries, after the Reformation—God once again moved the church to seek more of Him. Bonds of fellowship were established between Christians here in the United States and Christians in Europe, and God sent revival to the United States and to different parts of Europe, and there was a kind of awakening. From that came the great movements, such as that of the Wesley brothers, from which Methodism arose. It was a denomination that was very, very passionate about God and filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit, with a thoroughly biblical foundation and a passion for souls that was very different, in my personal and humble opinion, from what we see today in Methodism here in the United States and in so many other evangelical groups in this nation.

But we must return. And what I see here in this passage is two things. As I was saying, the Lord... spoke about His second coming, and He also spoke about the need for us to live a Christianity that took that second coming into account, for us to live our faith as though He were coming today. We must not allow ourselves to be lulled to sleep by the idea that He will come who knows when... I say that we twenty-first-century Christians have been robbed of two or three of the great doctrines that, humanly speaking, are needed in order to have passion for God. One of them is the doctrine of hell. I myself have had to ask the Lord—and in recent days I have been asking the Lord—to strip away much of the false intellectualism that robs us of the idea of believing that there is a hell.

Now, I am not sure—in fact, I cannot say with complete certainty—that hell is a place where there are little devils with pitchforks poking people while they are surrounded by flames of fire. I am not sure of that, and I do not believe anyone can say it with certainty, because we do not have sufficient clarity in Jesus’ explanations on the subject. But there is one thing about which there is no doubt: there is a dimension—I would call it that—a dimension to which souls, our eternal part, will go after death. Not everything ends here in this world; that is essential to the Christian life.

The Lord Jesus Christ said, “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then we are the most futile of all, and the resurrection is not only for those who will enter eternal life with God, but there is also a resurrection for those who will not have access to the throne of God and the presence of God.” Those beings will also live for eternity, but it will be in a completely different dimension, one devoid of the grace of God, which is the only thing that gives quality to existence.

Imagine a dimension, or a place, however you wish to view it, where the presence, grace, love, warmth, and goodness of God do not penetrate. Imagine this: what would become of the earth—of this planet Earth—if the sun were completely extinguished? In an instant, this earth would become a terribly inhospitable place: frozen, ugly, hostile to life, completely devoid of the warmth that human beings and life need. Imagine an earth without the warmth of the sun, utterly inconceivable as a place for life. Imagine a dimension where the rays of God’s goodness do not penetrate, where there is no meaning to what is good, noble, beautiful, true, and peaceful, where existence is devoid of all those noble things because the grace of God does not enter. That is hell.

And I believe that... I do not need to describe a place with flames of fire or anything like that to understand that no one wants to go to that dimension. Even the demons, the Bible says, have been relegated to a dimension where they await their judgment. And that dimension is so inhospitable to those demons that they try to gain access to the souls of men and dwell in them illegitimately because they need and require human warmth. Somehow, they try to jump the fence, so to speak, and penetrate the world of men, and that is where the contamination we experience comes from, because that place of exile is a place where no one wants to be.

And in these passages—of which the passage I have just read to you forms a part—the Lord Jesus Christ is speaking about a coming judgment. He is also speaking... I believe that another of the great doctrines of which we have been robbed, and which we must begin discussing again out of love for humanity, is this one. Because let me tell you something: nowadays, many churches do not want people to talk about hell because... it’s not politically correct; it is not pleasant, and because they say, “There are so many other things we can talk about. Why not attract people with the good things?” and so on.

Brothers and sisters, humanity often needs to know the bad things. Why do people receive traffic tickets nowadays? Why not simply depend on raising citizens’ awareness that they should not run red lights and stop signs? Because human beings are like that... they need something, and they will need it until Jesus Christ comes. No matter how sophisticated the human race becomes, it needs the fear of punishment.

And there must be justice; there must be consequences. That is simply how it is. If those penalties did not exist, driving would be chaotic. The same is true of the doctrine of hell. I believe the human race needs to be warned, because Christ, the most loving being of all, said it and spoke about it, so why should we not do so as well?

How Strong Is Your Commitment to God?

So the doctrine of hell has been stolen from us, and I believe that, in part, the doctrine of the second coming of Jesus has been stolen from us as well, because nowadays we do not talk much about that. Why? Because two thousand years have passed and Christ still has not come, and because so many people throughout history have given false teachings and gotten ahead of themselves, saying that Christ is about to come, even setting dates and making all sorts of claims that have not come to pass because they have distorted and violated what the Word says: that no one knows either the day or the hour. And because of that, people have also become somewhat fearful.

We pastors have lost our enthusiasm for speaking about the second coming, and because so much time seems to have passed, that idea has gradually diminished in our subconscious. It is as though, yes, we know that Christ is going to come, but who knows when? Perhaps it will be in... and certainly no one knows; it could be in 200 years, or it could be tomorrow. But there is one thing: the Bible calls us to maintain that doctrine as a mode of urgency. Christ can come at any moment, and we have to live as though He were coming tomorrow. Amen.

And that is what it says. Look, for example, right there in these passages. Let us go to Matthew 24, verse 36. And I am going somewhere with all of this, because remember that the passage I read speaks about serving the Lord. These servants to whom the Lord gave 5 talents, 2 talents, and 1 talent reach a point when the Lord comes—the one who gave them those gifts. And who are the servants? We are, each one of us. One day the Lord is going to come and is going to... call us to account. At His second coming, the Lord comes not only to judge the wicked who did not receive Him, but He also comes, in a sense, to call each of the saved to account regarding what we did with the talents and gifts He placed at our disposal. He is speaking about that, about calling them to account.

And we as a church have... there is a day, a day is approaching when Christ will come, and all humanity will be subjected to judgment, and souls will go to hell and souls will go to eternal glory. God has placed the church here; Christ left it here to be the instrument that preaches the gospel, guides the nations, alerts people about what is going to happen, and therefore the church has to remain active. Each one of us belongs, so to speak, to a corporation for which we work, and each one of us is supposed to be productive in that eternal corporation.

You who are there, put your name in your mind right now. And if you are a child of God, God has called you so that your life will count in light of that event that is going to take place—the second coming of Jesus to judge humanity. And God is going to call you to account because that is what the Word says: as a Christian, what did you do while you were here on earth with the talents God gave you? That precious knowledge of Jesus as Lord and Savior, as the only mediator between God and men, is not something you are supposed to keep only to yourself.

I ask the Lord at this time: Father, awaken in me a painful awareness of what hell is and of the souls that are lost. Awaken in me the desire to devote these years of my life to being useful to You, and let nothing else matter in my life except advancing the interests of Your kingdom and being useful to the kingdom of God.

How many have that same desire in their hearts? I hope that all the brothers and sisters here do, that our entire church does, that we will not be a merely religious church, like so many people who live only in maintenance mode. They come to church on Sunday out of habit; that is all, just as they did 20 or 30 years ago. And why do they go to church? Why do we go to church? Is it only to fulfill a social duty, a religious duty? To feel good and respectable? To offer the Lord one hour of worship that is sometimes half-baked? And then we leave exactly as we came, to live once again worried and focused solely on earning money, paying for the house, buying clothes and food, and having a barbecue in the summer, and that is all. What does being a Christian mean to us? How does that penetrate our lives, our consciences? What passion, what degree of passion is there in us to serve the Lord in light of that great coming event—that Christ is coming?

And as I was telling you, we have allowed that doctrine of the second coming of Jesus Christ to be stolen from us. I confess for myself that many times, because I have so much respect for the things of God, I have not wanted, as one might say, to be too insistent about something of which I say, “Well, we do not know when He is going to come.” In the meantime, we have to serve the Lord and work. But I see that the Lord placed great importance on it, and I believe, brothers and sisters—and amen—I cannot be thinking about the others who have said that, “But I feel that the coming of the Lord is definitely very near,” because the Lord did invite us to look at the signs, to look at the times.

If you look at weather forecasts on television nowadays, with radar, satellites, and the highly advanced images provided by the media, you can literally see representations of the clouds. For example, when they are coming from New York, they tell you that by about one in the afternoon we are going to have rain here, because over there in New York the clouds are already... and they calculate the wind speed and this and that, and they look at the signs, they look at the elements of the weather and make calculations, and they say that at such and such a time it looks like it is going to... They do not tell you the exact hour, but they tell you between 1 and 5, or at night, or tomorrow, or over the weekend. They make assertions and estimates.

And the Lord also said that we have to observe the times, and the Lord has nothing against the church using certain signs to determine certain powers of the Holy Spirit. And the Lord said very clearly, it says that “...nation will rise against nation, for example; there will be earthquakes and there will be great famines on the earth....” It speaks of the nations being in turmoil with one another; it speaks of a terrible decline in morality, of the corruption of men; it speaks of people’s laughter concerning his second coming; and all these things... if we look.... It also speaks of apostasy, that is, of a church that will also gradually lose its love for the Lord and become more and more lukewarm and increasingly distant from the truth of God. It says that people will also have itching ears. Listen to me out there, brothers and sisters: there is a great craving for spiritual things. Now what happens is that, it says, teachers will be heaped up to give people what they want to hear.

Nowadays there is a great hunger for spirituality in the world; everyone is longing for something, but what happens? They do not want to hear the truth; they want to hear about spirituality in general terms. Talk to them about angels, and everyone is like, “Oh yes, a little angel over there flying with little wings.” They like that, don’t they? Talk to them about the spirit, and of course there is no problem with the spirit, but talk to them about Jesus Christ—be specific in your preaching—and you will see how suddenly they do not want to hear about that. Why? Because the problem with religion is that it places... true religion places limits on people. I believe we could have many more people here at Lion of Judah if I did not preach certain doctrines and were not as specific as I can sometimes be, because there are many people who do not like being spoken to about morality, about holiness, about dedication to the Lord, about hell, about different areas of moral life, and so on. And to many people those things are, how shall I put it, condemning or legalistic, and they do not like that because...

Nowadays, yes, people have itching ears as never before in history. Nowadays there are philosophies; nowadays all kinds of religions are offered: Buddhism, Hinduism, Satanism, paganism, different branches of Christianity—there is everything. The Word says that in the last days people will have a great itching in their ears, and since they do not want to hear the truth, it says that they will heap up teachers who speak to them according to their own lusts, that is, who preach to them according to what they like and do not preach to them about things they do not like. But all these signs are present nowadays. It also speaks of great advances in science.

In the final chapters of his book, Daniel wrote about great advances in knowledge and science. We are seeing all those things in this time. Things are happening that, I believe, those who announced the coming because there was corruption 200 years ago or whenever it was could never have imagined—that humanity would have reached where it is reaching nowadays. Personally, personally, I believe there is still a little time left, but not much, and we cannot allow that awareness of the coming to be stolen from us.

Look at what the Lord Jesus Christ says in Matthew 24:36, and perhaps I will have to continue with this later, but it says:

“...But no one knows the day or the hour,” Matthew 24:36: “...not even the angels in heaven, but only my Father. But as it was in the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and swept them all away, so also will be the coming of the Son of Man.....,” that is, of Jesus Christ. He is warning about what it will be like; it is a prophetic word from the expert in eschatology, who is Jesus Christ.

It says, “...Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding at a mill; one will be taken and the other left....” Look, it says here: Watch, therefore! The key word here is Watch. It means: Be alert, be vigilant, be prepared, “...because you do not know at what hour your Lord is coming....”

He is speaking here to Christians, to his disciples, to his followers. Nowadays, perhaps, there will not be this business of mills and all that, but put it another way: two women will be in a factory on an assembly line, and suddenly one will be taken and the other will say, “Oops, what happened?” And one will be left. Two will be sleeping, a husband and a wife—I hope that is the case, right?—and one will be taken; it has to be that way for her to be taken, right? And the other will be left.

People will be at parties. There is another passage that says people laugh and say, “Hey... where is this second coming of the Lord? Because since ancient times they have been telling us that Christ is coming, and he never comes.” Why? The apostle Paul says, “Because the Lord delays his coming to see whether the greatest possible number of people will be converted.”

Now, for those who say that hell does not exist, why does the Lord delay his coming? To try to make sure that the greatest possible number of... enter, because God does not want anyone to perish, but everyone to come to salvation, the Word says. And what is this perishing if not... precisely that: perdition.

How Strong Is Your Commitment to God?

Many people say, “No, when people die, if they do not go to heaven, God simply turns out their light; no, they simply become lost in space.” Never let anyone tell you that there is no eternal punishment, because the Bible is full of passages. God knows. God does not want anyone to enter hell. They say, “How can a good God allow such suffering for people?” Well, God does not want anyone to be lost.

God wants everyone to be saved, and in one sense he has made it so easy that simply by receiving Christ as Lord and Savior, opening your heart to him, and identifying yourself with his sacrifice on the cross, you too can receive salvation; and if you are lost, it is because of your own foolishness, not because God is evil.

When a police officer gives you a ticket because you ran a red light or went through a stop sign, the police officer is not evil; the police officer is simply enforcing the law. And so, and so it is: God has established a barrier, some boundaries, and we must be watchful because God does not want anyone to be lost. It says:

“....Watch, therefore, because you do not know at what hour your Lord is to come. But know this: that if the head of the household knew at what hour the thief was to come, he would watch and would not allow his house to be broken into. Therefore, you also be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him....”

And that is how it is. After two thousand years, more than ever humanity says, “Christ is not going to come. Those are symbolic, mystical doctrines. That is simply a sign that yes, one day God—the principles of good—will rule over humanity.” Intellectual theologians have tried to demystify those doctrines, and today there is even a church, and there is a world out there, that says, “Christ is not going to come,” because for two thousand years now the church has been repeating the same old refrain that he is going to come, going to come, going to come; he has not arrived yet, and every day people are sinking more and more into a kind of stupor and sleep. And that is also happening to the church.

Today we come into our nicely perfumed, neatly arranged halls, wearing our ties and our fine clothes; we sit down, hold a service there for an hour and a bit, and if it goes beyond that, we get upset because we have to go watch the ball game or have a barbecue or whatever, and then we go back to our lives again, and the church has grown careless, the church has grown careless. We have lost our passion. Why? Because the truth is that if—if we are honest—if Christ were not coming and if this world were simply all there is, it would simply be something progressive, little by little; humanity, I believe, has already abandoned the idea that the world will keep getting better through science and progressive improvement. That is what is called the postmodern world.

That is to say, there was a time when Western culture believed that the world was going to get better simply as a result of greater knowledge, more education, more science, and a progressive enlightenment of humanity. That doctrine began to be preached during the Enlightenment—in the Enlightenment—in the eighteenth century. And when the twentieth century came, with all its terrible wars and all its genocides—the First World War, the Second World War, Vietnam, uh, the… the great massacres in Russia and all of this—humanity in the twentieth century saw that horrible face of the human being, when millions and millions of people died. Today, with terrorism and all these things, who could possibly believe that the more humanity knows, the better it becomes? It is just the opposite: the more humanity knows, the more cynical and sinister it becomes, and the more tools it invents to destroy itself.

So the world is not getting better. I believe that God understands this, the Word of God understands this, and that is why the church must retain that sense of urgency. Let us not become so sophisticated that we think mere respect for the Bible and for moral and ethical values will give us a passionate church. A passionate church still needs the encouragement of knowing that Christ is coming, that He is coming soon, that souls must be rescued from hell, and that there is also a heaven God has destined for those who enter into covenant with Jesus Christ today, because that is a third doctrine we have also allowed to be stolen from us: the doctrine of heaven, the doctrine of eternal life.

Many of us, if we are honest, have relegated that idea to some distant plane; we keep it somewhere in the back of our minds, our consciousness. The church today, the modern church, does not have that intense sense of the heaven God has promised us, and we must recover that too. We must recover the reality of a reward for those who die in Christ Jesus.

The Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, speaks about this—about not ceasing to do good because we will receive our reward.

And all these things—the doctrine of the Second Coming, the doctrine of hell, the doctrine of heavenly glory—we must recover them. The church must preach about these things in order to recover its sense of urgency, and our own sense of urgency, our need to watch and serve the Lord and work while we are here on earth, so as to rescue the greatest possible number of souls from the clutches of Satan and hell. That does not sound very sophisticated, does it? But it is the Word of God.

And that is what the Lord Jesus Christ says in this series of passages, is it not? Watch. Look at what it says here:

“Know that if the master of the house knew at what hour the thief was coming, he would watch and would not allow his house to be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come...”

This matter of, “If the master of the house knew at what hour…” Who is the master of the house? I believe the church is the master of the house. In one sense—there are many ways to interpret this, but… God has given the church that authority in the world so that the church may be the illuminating force. What does a master of a household do? In that image used by the Lord Jesus Christ, the paterfamilias is the one who watches over the family’s welfare, the person who has authority over the family, the one responsible for providing for the family, instructing it, and using his authority to safeguard the family’s well-being. That is what the church is on this earth. And the church of the twenty-first century has allowed itself to be lulled to sleep, brothers and sisters; we have allowed ourselves to be lulled to sleep, and we do not understand that God has placed us here to warn the world that a day of reckoning is approaching, and that one day the Lord will say to us, “What did you do to prevent all those souls from going to hell?” What are you doing with your life? What part do you play?

There are many of us, brothers and sisters—I ask every one of you this: if you were not in this church, if you stopped coming to church or turned away from the gospel—let us say not merely that you stopped coming to León de Judá, but that you left the gospel—would anyone even notice? Would your absence make any difference? Let us speak specifically about León de Judá and those who come here and consider this their church: if you stopped coming to León de Judá, would this church suffer in any way? Would there be any loss? Many brothers and sisters—and I say this with love; know that I do not say it with even the slightest intention of hurting anyone, and my heart feels no anger; I feel nothing except a healthy pastoral desire to awaken your souls—what are you doing? What difference does your life make to the well-being and advancement of the gospel? What are you giving to rescue souls and promote the health of the church of Jesus Christ, so that the church may carry out the task of protecting humanity and accomplishing the work?

Because notice that in the passage I read to you… and I am almost finished, there are three—three people who receive gifts. They are this man’s servants. It says that he gave to each one according to his ability. And do you know something? God has given everyone here something. Say amen. It does not matter who you are: if you are a servant of the Lord, when you come to know Jesus Christ, the Lord gives you a talent; He gives you something. He gives you an ability, a particular circumstance, a relationship with someone, or some knowledge. There is something in your life that can be useful for the Lord’s work. Some are called to do great and conspicuous things; others may be called simply to carry out an anonymous, collective work, but God gives something to each person. You see, He gave one person 500 dollars; those are perhaps the great evangelists, the leaders of denominations and great endeavors, the highly visible people.

To others He may give four talents, and they may be pastors of large or successful churches or people of influence in the kingdom. To others He may give only one talent, and that person may be a homemaker who perhaps will never teach a Sunday school class, preach a sermon before a crowd, or anything like that. But everyone has a talent, and the Lord expects everyone to use the little or the much they have received to advance the kingdom of God here on earth. And at some point, everyone will have to give an account of what they did.

Now, there is something there, and that is why these passages are very complex, brothers and sisters, because it says here that when the Lord comes at His Second Coming, He gathers His servants and says to them, “Okay, line up here; let us see. What did you do with the five talents?” “Oh, Lord, I took them, invested them, and here are five more.” To the second, “What about the two?” “Well, Lord, I also went out; I did this and that, won souls, took what You gave me and began handing out tracts, or I invited people to church, and I went to seminars or institutes, and I learned, taught Sunday school, worked with the children, and did other things. So, Lord, here is what I did.”

The one to whom He gave one may be, for example, a worker who did nothing very significant in visible terms, and the Lord will say to him, “Johnny, what did you do? Let us see… what did you do with the talent I gave you?” “Well, Lord, You did not give me very much. I could not do much, and I was afraid because I did not know how to preach or teach, I had never read many books, and I was afraid of making a big mess and teaching people wrongly. I did not feel prepared, so I did nothing, Lord.” That was the one who buried the talent in the ground. And do you think the Lord is going to say to you, “Oh, well, that is all right, Johnny. Do not worry. I know that… goodness, I was the one who made a mistake; I did not give you everything I should have given you”? No. The Lord is going to say to you, “Johnny, goodness, why did you not at least tithe? Why did you not at least invite Filomena, the woman from the apartment next door, to church one Sunday? Why did you not take that little boy who was throwing stones outside your building, talk to him, and invite him to Sunday school one day? Why did you not tell someone at your workplace about Jesus Christ? Why did you not support a missionary, even if only by sending an offering so that he could preach the gospel and you could become a partner in that work? Why did you not prepare yourself in some way? Because I would indeed have blessed you with that little bit, and if you had put that little bit you gave into practice, I would have given you more, because whoever has will be given more.”

That is the rule of the gospel: begin with the little you have, and God will use it to give you more and more and more. But if you do not use the little you have, God will take even that little away from you, and one day, when the Lord Jesus Christ comes, He will ask you, “What did you do with what I gave you?”

Notice that He called all three servants to account, and this was not optional, was it? He said, “I have given you something, and I expect you to render it back to Me.” There is no choice, Christian. If you are a child of God, you are supposed to be doing something to advance the kingdom of God; you are supposed to be watching and praying; you are supposed to be eager to do something for the Lord. What are you doing? What are we doing to advance the kingdom of God? What are we doing to prevent souls from entering hell?

God is calling us, brothers and sisters. I believe God wants to bring revival to this nation and to the world. Brothers and sisters, I feel that the greatest visitation of God’s power lies ahead of us in this time; the greatest harvest of souls lies ahead of us now. I feel that God wants to bring a visitation of His power, but the church must get moving. We must return to the ancient paths. I truly believe that now more than ever, the church of Jesus Christ must recover these truths. They are hidden here; they are like those gray dots on the computer, are they not? We cannot operate on them, and we need to wake up.

This morning I want to lift your spirit, to set your spirit on the right path. Some brothers and sisters from Lazo de Amor are going to the Dominican Republic. They are investing their money and their vacation time to go there and do missionary work. That is an example of what can be done. None of them, as far as I know, is a spiritual genius. They are people who love the Lord and are spiritually mature, but they are not waiting for the pastor to commission them and pay for their trip. They felt moved to do it. Glory to the Lord.

And that is what we can do. There is something you can do; there is something you can do. And we must be watching and praying; we must be vigilant. In the name of the Lord, I want to invite you this morning to leave here with a great passion for serving the Lord Jesus Christ. God needs a church on fire for that visitation of His to take place. The church will first have to be revived; for the harvest to come, it must begin with a church burning with fire for the Lord.

“...do not get drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit...” says the Word of the Lord. Let us ask the Lord to revive us, to rekindle the fire of the gift of God within us. Amen!

Let us ask the Lord to remove the blindfolds from our eyes, to make the scales of false religiosity fall from our eyes, and to bring an awakening among the people of God. May this church understand that we are called to live with our eyes fixed on a city not made by human hands, and may we live for the glory of God—a committed church, brothers and sisters, a committed church. We must stop playing at Christianity and internalize God’s calling. I do not want respectable people in my church anymore, brothers and sisters. I want warriors, dangerous people, subversive people, militant people, committed people, brothers and sisters—people who are passionate about the kingdom of God, radical people who are burning with fire for the Lord.

May God allow that fire to spread among us, so that we can rescue souls from hell, brothers and sisters, and restore to the church the dignity it has lost. The church is a sleeping giant, a giant that many tiny men have been tying down with slender cords. It is like Gulliver—I do not know whether you remember the story of Gulliver—tied down by all the little people, is it not? It cannot move. Thousands of threads have bound the church and do not allow it to raise its voice as God wants the church to roar. The church is a trained little cat today; its claws and teeth have been removed. And the church must recover its dignity, it must recover its dangerous character, and that begins with you.

The Lord wants to awaken you. “Awake, you who sleep, and Christ will shine on you,” says the word of the Lord. “Awake, you who sleep, and Christ will shine on you,” says the Lord. In the name of Jesus, we declare a different spirit over this church, a spirit of radical commitment to the Lord. Let us rebuke the spirit of comfort, let us rebuke the spirit of mediocrity, let us rebuke the religious and respectable spirit, and let us put on the armor of God to conquer this world.

God wants to do it, but He needs Gideon to assume his authority and, instead of hiding from the Midianites, to go and tear down the idol that stands in the center of the city and use that idol to build an altar for the worship of the true God. And there will be confrontation, there will be controversy, there will be anger, because the devil will not surrender what he has and what it has cost him so much to gain, and he is very comfortably entrenched. But we need the fire of God to visit the church so that souls may be snatched from the claws of Satan and hell.

Let us stand, in the name of the Lord. I hope this is a recitation—I am not up here reciting, just so you know, all right? This is not a poem; these are not pretty words. I do not want simply to have people say, “Oh, what a beautiful sermon,” and then leave and do the same old things. I want to awaken you in the name of the Lord. May the words of the Holy Spirit pierce your hearts, our hearts, or may this be a life-giving word, the living word of God falling upon the soil of your soul.

Till the soil of your soul right now and say, “Lord, I receive that seed into my life. I receive the seed of Your challenge. I receive the call to live a life that is worthwhile and that counts for the kingdom of God in this time when humanity is being defined,” because this is a time of definition. The filthy will become filthier; the clean will become cleaner. It is a time of definition. I believe Christ is coming to bring division more than unity in this time, so that true natures may be divided: the heretical church will become more heretical, while the pure and clean church will become clearer and more defined, because this is a time in which anyone who is not clearly defined will be lost and will not survive the wave of evil being unleashed upon the earth in this time. Those who are halfhearted, lukewarm, or undefined will not survive what is coming.

That is why we must be very clearly defined and certain of whom we have believed and what gospel we have embraced; otherwise, we are not going to fare well. So, church, awaken, says the Lord; awaken, says the Lord. Fan into flame the gift of God that is within you. Make a commitment in your heart to live for God. Make a commitment to live in holiness. Make a commitment to please the Lord in everything you do. Make a commitment that your money, your time, your property, and your talents will count for God. Oh, may the Lord place a holy fire within us, a passion for souls, and may the Lord begin with me by reviving my awareness of the reality of the eternal perdition of those who are not in Christ Jesus, and may He make it an obsession and an agony within me so that I may impart that same passion, that same commitment, to my people.

Lord, visit us this morning through the word that has been preached; through the word that has been preached, Lord, visit us. Visit Your people, Father; visit Your people with a new sense of commitment and passion for You, Lord, in the name of Jesus. We need, we need Your visitation this morning, Lord.

Father, we reject the spirit of indifference and lukewarmness. Lord, we renounce comfort, we renounce things as they are, we renounce indifference and lukewarmness in the name of Jesus. We pray for the fire of Your Spirit to fill our hearts and our souls, Lord. Cleanse our minds of all that dross, of all that accumulation of false reasoning and sophistication, and give us a mind like a child’s mind—penetrable, porous… sensitive to Your impressions, Father—so that we might return to Your simple truths, which are life.

Oh Lord, visit us with Your power in the name of Jesus. Forgive us, Father; forgive us for making Your gospel so cheap, Lord. Forgive us for watering down the intensity of Your revelation. Forgive us for debasing this sublime experience of communion with You and of worshiping You in spirit and in truth, and turning it into a dead social, religious, ritual activity, Lord. Awaken us, awaken us, Lord. Fan the fire of God within us, and begin with this church. Begin with its pastors, Lord. Begin with its leaders, Lord. Begin with us, Lord. Do a work of awakening, Lord.

We need You, O God; Your church needs You. Father, we pray for Your church in this nation because of all the influence this nation has upon the world. Awaken Your church, O God. Raise up the voice of the prophet in this time, Lord. Let Your voice be heard to awaken Your people, to sound the trumpet of warning, O God, so that a renewed church may reconquer this nation, or perhaps instill a different attitude in it for the first time, Father.

You have periodically revived Your people; You have visited them with fresh rains that have brought a new passion and advanced Your interests on the earth. We ask that this time, Lord, may be a time of such visitation for Your people. Visit Your people in New England, Lord. Visit Your people throughout this nation. Revive Your work in the midst of the times, Lord; revive Your work in the midst of the times, Lord; revive Your work in the midst of the times, Lord; revive Your work in the midst of the times, Lord.

Oh, visit us, visit us, Lord. We need You, Father. We are dry; we are cold. Father, only You can send Your sun, Your warmth, and revive us, Lord. Father, melt the ice that is in our hearts, Father, in the body of Your church. Send Your Spirit, Lord, upon the towns of New England—those beautiful churches that once preached Your pure word, where there were people passionate about You, where Your word was heard with holy reverence, Lord. Now they are violated by the words of demons and by cold, dead teaching, by illegitimate people, Father, whom You have not placed there; they have placed themselves there under the mandates of men and the customs of men.

Lord, remove from Your pulpits every word that is not Yours, Lord, and replace it with a fresh word, a biblical word, a spiritual word, Lord. Take possession of Your pulpits again, Father. Take possession of Your temples, built by God-fearing men and women. Take possession of universities that were founded to promote the advancement of Your gospel, Lord. Take possession of legislatures where paintings and declarations of respect for Your name and Your word still remain, but today are nothing more than archaeological remnants of a faded and dead spirituality, Lord, which no longer has… does not speak, does not exert influence. But, Father, You can revive those voices again, and You can return those places to those who originally built them. And we rebuke the devil who has taken possession of those things, which do not belong to you, Satan, and we demand that you hand them back to the church of Jesus Christ.

Father, revive Your church, revive Your church. Begin with us, Lord; begin with me this morning. Awaken Your people, Father. Place a holy fear within us, Lord. Fan the fire of God among Your people; in the name of Jesus, fan the fire of God within us. We want more, Lord. We want more of You. We want more of You, Father, in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus. Thank You, Lord; thank You, Jesus.

Say amen to the Lord in your spirit. Oh, may the Lord shake the foundations of His people this morning. Hallelujah, amen, brother. Think about the word you have heard; think about the calling, because this is not from man—this is from God. This is the time; this is the time for a great harvest. This is the time for the church of Jesus Christ to put on the full armor of the Spirit and do what God has called it to be, which is to conquer the nations, establish the lordship of Jesus Christ, and prepare the earth for the second coming of the Lord Jesus. Let us conceive a holy zeal for God in our hearts this morning. To God be honor forever and ever, amen and amen. Thank You, Lord.