Sermon Tone Analysis

The Gun With 31,173 Bullets

A Pocket Paper \\ from \\ The Donelson Fellowship \\ *______________*

*Robert J. Morgan \\ *July 26, 1998

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*The Bible is a gun with 31,173 bullets,* for that’s how many verses it contains, and every one of them has your name on it, and mine.

Today I’d like to take you on a short tour of the Bible, from Genesis to 2 Timothy, showing you a handful of these verses and promises God has used in the lives of his children, beginning with Genesis 28:15.

In this passage, Jacob stopped for the night at Bethel, and there he dreamed of a stairway reaching to heaven with the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

From the top of the staircase, the Lord Jehovah spoke these words to Jacob: /I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land.

I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you./

My wife and I had the privilege, along with some of you, of knowing the remarkable woman who became the first missionary among modern Free Will Baptists and who launched our denominational missions program.

Her name was Laura Belle Barnard of Glennville, Georgia.

She was a deeply southern and very proper woman, who, as a young lady, shocked her family and friends by declaring she was going to India as a missionary.

She did go, and for several years she poured herself body-and-soul into her work.

Her first furlough approached just as World War II erupted, and she was faced with a dilemma.

If she stayed, she would miss her badly needed furlough, but if she left she might be unable to return to India because of the widening war.

The dilemma was solved, she later wrote, when /God gave me a word and confirmed it twice.

I had been reading from a certain devotional book, and that morning I was especially asking God to give me clear understanding as to whether or not I should leave India at that time.

This was the verse for the day in that devotional book: "And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of" (Genesis 28:15, KJV)./

Shortly after, a friend unexpectedly urged the same verse on her.

Then another friend sent her an envelope marked, "To be opened as you leave the shores of India."

Aboard ship, Laura Belle opened the letter and read these words: /I asked the Lord to give me a word of encouragement for you as my farewell message.

This passage, as I was reading my Bible this morning, seemed meant for you.

I pass it on with the confidence that it is the Lord’s word to you now." /It was Genesis 28:15.

The war delayed Laura Bell Barnard’s return for five long years.

But she never lost confidence that God would keep his thrice-given promise, to watch over her and bring her again into this land—which he did, allowing her to spend a lifetime there.

Bible verses are not magic wands that we can wave over certain situations, changing them as if by abracadabra, but the Word of God /is/ a two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and it is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

The stories of how God uses his Word in the lives of his children is remarkable. 2 Peter 1 says that in the Bible God has given us very great and precious promises so that through them we may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

Psalm 145:13 says, "The Lord is faithful to his promises."

We meet and master the crises of life only by sinking our fingernails deeply into God’s promises and hanging on for dear life.

Hudson Taylor once quipped during a trying time, "We have twenty-five cents—and all the promises of God." Charles Spurgeon said that when troubled, he would find a promise of God, hammer it out into gold-leaf and plate his whole existence with joy from it.

The old Puritan Thomas Watson put it very quaintly in a sermon to his little congregation in England on Sunday, August 17, 1662:

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Trade much in the promises.

The promises are great supports to faith.

Faith lives in a promise, as the fish lives in the water.

The promises are both comforting and quickening, the very breast of the gospel; as the child by sucking the breasts gets strength, so faith by sucking the breast of a promises gets strength and revives.

The promises of God are bladders (flotation devices) to keep us from sinking when we come to the waters of affliction.

O! trade much in the promises, there is no condition that you can be in, but you have a promise.

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J. I. Packer comes round to the same point in his book /Knowing God:/

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In the days when the Bible was universally acknowledged in the churches as "God’s Word written," it was clearly understood that the promises recorded in Scripture were the proper, God-given basis for all our life of faith, and that the way to strengthen one’s faith was to focus it upon particular promises that spoke to one’s condition.

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When Peter Marshall, the famous chaplain of the U. S. Senate, died suddenly of a heart attack, he left his young wife Catherine a widow with a small son.

She almost lost her mind from grief and worry.

But she remembered Peter’s habit of finding a specific promise in the Bible that applied to his need and then claiming it as a definite transaction between himself and his God.

The Lord gave her Romans 8:28 for her verse, and she claimed it by faith.

It not only sustained her, it proved true in every way.

*I Kings 17:7*

Sometimes the Lord speaks to us in unexpected passages.

Look at this passage, 1 Kings 17:1ff: /Now Elijah the Tishbite, from Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab: "As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.

Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah: "Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan.

You will drink from the brook, and I have ordered the ravens to feed you there."

So he did what the Lord had told him.

He went to the Kerith Ravine, east of Jordan, and stayed there.

The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook."/

But now something interesting happened.

Verse 7 says, /Some time later the brook dried up.

/God had provided a brook to give him water, but the brook dried up.

Why?

Well, the Lord had another place for Elijah to go, another miracle for him to do, and it took the drying up of the brook to move him out of one spot and into another.

Allan Emery was a business man who had inherited the family wool business from his father, carefully tended and passed down, father-to-son.

But every year saw fewer customers, for wool was being replaced with synthetic fibers.

Allen grew discouraged, and one evening he arrived at his hotel after midnight.

It had been a long day, and he brooded over his meeting next morning with a customer.

He expected to lose the account and be displaced as the firm’s supplier.

Allan laid his Bible on the nightstand, tempted to go to bed without reading it.

But while saying his prayers, he pled, "Lord, if you have something to say to me, some encouragement, let me have it now."

Opening the book, he read 1 Kings 17. Elijah had felt secure by the brook Kerith, but one day the little stream dried up.

God had allowed it.

The dried-up brook was a guidepost telling Elijah it was time to move on.

Allan recognized that his brook, too, was drying up.

As he thought and prayed about it, he decided at length to liquidate the wool business.

He helped employees find other jobs, then wondered what he himself should do.

Some time later, Allan met Ken Hansen of ServiceMaster Industries (who was also a professor of mine in business management at Wheaton College).

The two hit it off, and soon Emery was with the firm.

In time, he became a director, and he was also able to devote himself to many evangelical causes, serving as president of the Billy Graham Association and a trustee of Wheaton College.

For many years, he and his wife hosted a Bible study in their expansive home, attended by 100 young people.

"I thought back to my questioning God’s wisdom and faithfulness," he said.

"I saw why it was necessary for my brook to dry up to make me leave its security to begin a new and wonderful ministry."

*Job 5:19*

Let me tell you how another businessman found strength in the Scriptures, this time from Job 5:19, the verse that says: /From six calamities he will rescue you; in seven no harm will befall you./

Have you ever heard of Henry Crowell?

When he was 9, his father died from tuberculosis, and when he was 17, Henry himself contracted the disease.

He appeared to be dying as he attended D. L. Moody’s campaign in Cleveland, Ohio.

He listened carefully as Moody thundered: "The world has yet to see what God can do through a man fully dedicated to him."

Crowell determined to be God’s man.

/To be sure, I would never preach like Moody.

But I could make money and support the labors of men like Moody.

I resolved, "Oh God, if you preserve my life and allow me to make money to be used in your service, I will keep my name out of it so you will have the glory."/

Shortly thereafter Henry found Job 5:19: "He shall deliver you in six troubles, Yes, in seven no evil shall touch you."

The Lord seemed to assure him of healing through that verse.

Henry grew stronger and began honing his business instincts, shrewdly investing his family’s wealth.

He started companies, purchased properties, and introduced innovations to the marketplace.

When a mill owned by nearby Quakers became available, Henry purchased it and began dreaming of modern cereal products for American homes.

Thus Quaker Oats Company was born.

The money rolled in—and it rolled out.

Henry consistently gave 65 to 70 percent of his income to Christian causes, and he was especially instrumental in the survival and development of the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago.

*Psalm 107:26-29*

Now let's travel on to the Psalms, and let me share a story from Psalm 107:26-29: /Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out of their distress.

He stilled the storm to a whisper, the waves of the sea were hushed.

They were glad when it grew calm, and he guided them to their desired haven.

Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love, and his wonderful deeds to men./

Alexander Duff, first foreign missionary of the Church of Scotland, got off to a rough start.

He was young, only 23, and bright and innovative.