Blessings of Barrenness
by Dr. Tim Green
Tim Green is a local church evangelist out of Day Heights, Ohio
A young man and his wife came to me one night after the service and they said, “Brother Green, could we talk to you for a few minutes or set up an appointment?”
I said, “Come by my room tomorrow at such and such a time.” They both came over and sat down in the room where I was staying. The little lady and her husband sat down, and the moment that that girl sat down, she began to cry. There’s no way in the world to handle a crying woman. It’s impossible!
I looked at her and I looked at him. I said, “What can I do? What has happened?” Everything in the world is going through my mind. They’ve had some tragedy, something bad has happened. I didn’t know what had happened. Finally she calmed down and I said, “What are you here for?” So she started crying again. They hadn’t said a word yet.
Finally she blubbered out, “Brother Green, Brother Green, we’ve been married for four years and we don’t have any children yet. We want to have a baby.” Now someone gave me a doctor’s degree a few years ago, but it wasn’t that kind of doctor’s degree. I didn’t know what to do for these kids. I delicately asked them, “Do you know how to have a baby?” They guaranteed me with great assurance, they knew how to have a baby but they hadn’t had any babies. I had a prayer for them and got them out of there after about 30 or 40 minutes. It was a difficult deal. I don’t know much about that kind of stuff, but I felt for them.
Dr. John Rice, years ago he used to tell about somebody wanting to have a baby and they came to him kind of like that and he anointed them with oil and the next time he met them they had had nine children or something like that. He is a lot better man than I am. I’m not going to get involved in that kind of stuff.
But that young couple got me to thinking about that and this thought came into my mind. There are a lot of barren women in the Bible. These barren women when they finally had children, they brought forth some of the best of men who were greatly used by God. I want to preach today on the blessings of barrenness.
Now you remember Abraham and Sarah. They got up in age. He was 100 and she was 90 and they didn’t have any children. They couldn’t have any children. There is a lot about it over there in Romans 4 amazingly. That’s a great chapter about it. You have in verse 17 the definition of faith. He says, “. . .and calleth those things which be not as though they were.” The next verse continues: “Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations; according to that which was spoken, So shall thy see be.” Against hope believed in hope.
Then you have a demonstration of faith in verse 19, the Bible says that his faith was not weak. “And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara’s womb:”
There’s the determination of faith in verse 20, which says, “He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief;...” In verse 21 there is a great devotion to faith, “And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.”
You can mark it down that God is able. If you don’t believe anything else that I preach today, God help you to know that God is able to do what He says He can do! Abraham in verse 11 is called “...the father of all them that believe...”
Abraham and Sarah couldn’t have any children and it dawned on Sarah one day that it wasn’t Abraham’s fault. It was her fault. She said, “Abe, it’s not your fault. It’s my fault. I think I have the solution.” He said, “What is it?”
She said, “I’ve got this handmaid, a little servant girl by the name of Hagar. Why don’t you go in unto her and have a baby by her?” Now the correct answer to that would have been, “Are you crazy? Woman, have you lost your mind?” But instead Abraham said, “I guess that might be a pretty good idea.” Before you know, he’s over there spending the night with Hagar and the next thing you know they have a little baby boy by the name of Ishmael. That’s been a problem to Israel for centuries now. What a dumb thing to do!
Do you know what the problem is with some of us Christians? We want to help God out, too. We undo in doubt what God wants to do in our lives through faith. We get ourselves in a mess. A lot of us have brought forth some sons but He hasn’t brought them forth. We’ve tried to answer our own prayers and heaped all kinds of heartache and problems on ourselves.
One of the things that discourages us Christians a lot about our soulwinning is that we’re doing it and not letting God do it. I’m just being honest with you. I’ve been preaching a long time. I worry about seeing people walk down the aisle on Sunday morning and get saved and you don’t see them ever again. I believe this. If you’ve got the kind of religion that won’t get you to church, I doubt very seriously that it will get you to Heaven. Salvation makes us new creatures in Christ. All things are become new. We are a part of God’s family, and you don’t want to show up at His house to be fed?
God help us today to get concerned about our barrenness. There are Christians all over that are well and healthy and are out and about day after day and you run into people that you rub shoulders with regularly and it has been months and years since you’ve won anybody to Jesus Christ. It’s been a coon’s age since you’ve walked somebody down the aisle and knelt here at this old fashion altar and took that black Book, the Bible, and won them to Jesus Christ. It’s been ages since you handed someone a Gospel tract or invited them to come to church. God help us.
I also know of some places in America where they’re having all time records in attendance, but they’re having all time lows in holiness. I think you ought to live holy and live right, but I think incorporated in that is the reaching of people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It doesn’t matter what they look like. I’ll be honest with you. Some of us didn’t look too good when God saved us. You say, “I come in here and God only knows what the preacher will say.” So what. God only knows what God can do.
You remember in your Bible, remember Rachel. There are a lot of things in the Bible I don’t understand, but she’s married to a guy named Jacob that had another wife, Leah. He had two concubines on the side, too. Then they all had kids. Jacob had kids with Leah, and he had kids with those two concubines. I guess he learned a bad lesson from Abraham.
He had the girl that he loved, Rachel, and no children. Rachel got concerned about that thing and you hear her crying in Genesis 30:1 she says, “...Give me children, or else I die.” She said, “God, I don’t even want to live if I can’t have a baby, if I can’t have a child. John Knox said about Scotland, “Give me Scotland or I die.
Zinzindorf, I’ve been to his castle. I’ve been to his church. I’ve stood behind his pulpit in what was east Germany. They prayed that God would send a revival to that Moravian movement that he founded. He prayed and prayed and history tells us that on the 13th day of August in 1727 at a prayer meeting at 11:00 in the morning one Wednesday that revival broke out in that place. That revival meeting lasted for one hundred years. God sent missionaries and God sent workers around the world from Zinzindorf’s ministry.
The Sunday school teacher taught a wonderful lesson today. He was teaching about in the book of Acts there in chapter 1 where His witnesses witness in Jerusalem, and Judea, and Samaria, and the uttermost part of the earth. Let me ask you this question. Has anybody here gotten saved in Jerusalem? Do you realize that every single one of us in this room is a product of world missions? We are part of the uttermost. We are a long ways from Jerusalem today, friend. We are a long ways from where it started. Somebody obeyed that command for the Gospel message to get to you.
Here’s something interesting. The first two missionaries that came to the Americas came from came from Zinzindorf’s work. They were the first two European missionaries that came to the Americas. Do you know how they got here? “They went around and raised support and went on deputation.” No, they didn’t at all. They sold themselves as slaves. Those two white men boarded a boat filled with black slaves. They sold themselves as slaves and came to the Americas. They preached to those on the slave ship. They preached there as they worked the plantations in the south. They won souls and reached people and they became so successful in their soulwinning efforts that the slave owners said, “We want you on every shipload of slaves that come over here. We want missionaries who are Moravians.” Those fellows became a lot better workers after they got born again.
God help us today to get concerned about our barrenness. We’ve got all kinds of new techniques and we’ve got all kinds of advantages and advancements today in how to carry the Gospel to the world, but it still takes some travail. It still takes a burdened child of God.
You take these kids now a days that have babies. The husbands go in and watch. I was some place a week or so ago and the grandparents went in and watched. Are you out of your mind? One of the grandmas was in there with a video camera!
I don’t know a lot about it. It’s been a long time since we’ve had any babies around our house, but the best I can remember it took nine months for them to get here. After the time they were conceived, it takes about nine months for that little child to show up on the scene.
You can have all kinds of innovation. You can have all kinds of new ideas. You can have Gospel tracts. They have a Gospel video out now that’s really good, a soulwinning thing that’s 17 minutes long. It’s an excellent tool to win souls. You can have all of that stuff, but it’s still takes a child of God with a burden to reach sinners for Jesus Christ. We have new buildings but no God. We’ve got padded pews but no power. Some of you aren’t even concerned. Some of you, it’s been so long since you won a soul to Christ, it’s been so long since you’ve walked anybody down the aisle. It’s been so long since you rejoiced when someone else had a convert. There is something wrong with you. There are a few people that are concerned about it. I want to ask you a question. What is it that’s keeping you from having God’s power and blessing in your life?
I saw a little thing in Galatians 4:27. “For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband.” You say, “What is that talking about?” Somebody got concerned that nothing was happening in their life in regard to reaching people. If God today could just somehow touch two or three or ten people and say, “You know, Tim’s right. I have been barren. I haven’t been reaching people. I haven’t been winning souls like I used to or like I know I could, and I’m concerned about it, and I want to get busy about it.” Boy, you could change the complexion of a church in a month.
I preach in a little church down in Florida every year. I’ve been there for about 15 years now. There is a woman in that church. She plays the piano. She’s probably about a 60-year-old woman, a very attractive lady. She was an elected official. She was the tax auditor of that county and she won the election year after year. I think she was in close to 20, or maybe over 20 years that she won. Then finally she lost. She had tenure with the state so she was given another job, not an elected position. She was involved and she told me, “I got so concerned. I had knocked on every door in my county soliciting votes. Now that I don’t have to do that any more. I got so concerned. Brother Tim, I am now knocking on every door in my county trying to get people to come to our church.” In one year that woman doubled the attendance of that church by the converts that she brought in. One woman knocked on all the doors to gather votes. I think I’ll knock on some doors for God! That church went from 40 to 80, because of one woman.
You remember Manoah’s wife, Samson’s mother? In Judges 13:2, it says that she was barren. But in verse 24 of that same chapter it says that the child grew and the Lord blessed. She got concerned about her barrenness.
Do you know why revival is needed? Revival is an experience in the church. Revival isn’t for the lost. We’ve kind of confused that in our day of evangelism. You revive somebody that’s already alive. If you’ve been saved, I’m trying to revive you to some spiritual concerns about reaching the lost. Revival is an experience in the church, but evangelism is an expression of the church.
In Mark 11 and Matthew 21, Jesus comes out of a little, old place and there’s a fig tree there and there’s no fruit on it so He curses it. The Bible makes the statement in Mark 11:13, it says, “...nothing but leaves;...” In Matthew 21:19 it says, “...nothing thereon, but leaves only... Many of us have a lot of leaves. We have some things straightened out, some things lined out in our lives from the preaching of the Word of God. We have a lot of good things and we’ve cleaned our lives up and we’re trying to live holy and do what’s pleasing to God Almighty. But God help us not to be looked upon by the Lord as having leaves only. I don’t have this in my life, and I don’t do that, and I don’t wear that, and we don’t go there --- but is that all we have? Do we have any fruit? One of the things that will make the shining, shimmering throne of God more blessed is the stars in your crown for reaching souls.
There’s a woman in the Bible by the name of Hannah. She was married to a man by the name of Elkanah and she had a wife-in-law. That’s a strange thing to me. She had a wife-in-law by the name of Peninnah. Peninnah had children but Hannah had none, the Bible said in 1 Samuel 1 and 2. She had no children. You find her smitten and sobbing in the sanctuary. She makes a wonderful statement in I Samuel 1:10 she says, “...O Lord of hosts...” That’s the first time in the Bible that God is called the Lord of hosts. That means that He is the Lord of the hosts of heaven. That means that He is invincible. That means that He is unconquerable and she says to Him, “God, You are the God that rules and reigns the fiery hosts of heaven and You’re on my side.” I want to tell you something, child of God. When you go out in the field, when you go out in the vineyard, you’re not going alone. You’re going with the Lord of hosts. You say, “I get defeated every time I go. People laugh at me and mock me and nothing much happens.” So what, go with God and God can help you get the job done.
There’s a man that used to be in this church. If you described him, you wouldn’t describe him as a soulwinner. You might describe him as a lot of other things. He was a good, old boy but you wouldn’t describe him as a soulwinner. I remember probably about 1975 or 1976. He went with me one day down to Detroit, Michigan to show “The Burning Hell” film. I was showing it in a big fancy church. It was cold, dead, and dry.
I showed that film in that church and the altars began to fill up. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. I looked out of the corner of my eye and this man, tears flowing down his cheeks, had his arm around a sinner man. Tears were flowing down the other man’s cheeks. He walked that man down the aisle and he said, “Brother Tim, I talked with this fellow and he’d like to get saved.” It about floored me. He was a character at best. He was a nut, but I saw him walk that man down the aisle. If he could walk somebody down the aisle, you could walk somebody down the aisle. You could find somebody. That might be the only person he ever walked down the aisle, I don’t know,c but he got one. When I stand before the Lord, I’d want to have at least one. I’d rather have one than none. I’d rather have two than one. I’d rather have 10 than one. I’d rather have 100 than none. Barren, but I don’t want to stay that way.
There’s a girl in the Bible by the name of Ruth. She was widowed. She didn’t have any children. She had a husband finally. She met a fellow by the name of Boaz and they got married. It’s interesting there in that 4th chapter of the book of Ruth the 13th verse. It says that God gave her conception the very first night of their marriage. She brought forth a little boy by the name of Obed. He had a little boy by the name of Jesse. He had a little boy by the name of David. One day the King of kings and the Lord of lords came from the lineage of that woman. You don’t know what God’s going to do with that sinner that you reach, that one person that you find.
I’ll never forget going to Joe’s house. He had a statue of Mary out there in a half sunken bath tub. I’ll never forget Brother Al and I leading that man to the Lord. Oh, but we get barren, don’t we? We have all kinds of excuses. Do you remember over there in the book of Luke, an old man there by the name of Zacharias and an old woman by the name of Elisabeth, with no kids? She was barren. I guess their excuse was they were old. You can have babies when you’re old. Abraham and Sarah proved that. Elisabeth and Zacharias proved that. Just because you’re old today, just because you’re over 50, 60, or 70, that doesn’t mean you can’t reach somebody with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I preached last summer in Oklahoma City. I got there on a Monday and they were having some kind of preacher’s fellowship. That Monday night there was a man in that audience that’s been a hero in our home my entire life, J. Oscar Wells. He’s up in his 90’s. I went to him and I said, “Brother Wells, you don’t remember me. I’m Tim Green. I’m Don Green’s son.”
“Oh, I remember you Brother Tim. I sure do.” We began to talk and fellowship. His daughter is the girl that was an astronaut here several years ago, Shannon Lucid, that’s his daughter. They have just been wonderful people in our family and we began to talk. He said, “You know I pastored your grandmother.”
I said, “I know that.”
He said, “Brother Tim, every day when I pastored up there in Petosky, Helen would come by and Helen would say, ‘Brother Wells, you got any visits I could make today?’ I’d give her a couple of visits. Every single Sunday that I pastored that church, Helen walked someone down that aisle that she had won to Christ that week, or that needed to get saved.”
My Granny called me up two months before she died. She was crying. I said, “Grandma, what’s the matter?”
She said, “Nothing is the matter, but I thought you’d like to know I was up at the hospital today.”
I said, “What’s wrong?”
She said, “Oh nothing, they were just checking me out. I won two nurses to the Lord.”
She was 80 some years old. She started winning souls when she was a young wife and mother and she was still doing it two months before she died. I tell you what. I wouldn’t mind if I was up in my 80’s and had about two months to go and didn’t know it and walk into heaven two months later and just got done winning a couple people to Christ and then trying to do it my entire life.
Here is the blessing of barrenness. It’s getting stirred and dissatisfied with the condition I’m in, and then doing something about it. You can say, “I’ve heard this before. I’ve heard all about that. I know.” But maybe you can get like Rachel, or maybe you could get like Sarah, or maybe you could get like Elisabeth or maybe you could get like Ruth, just think the baby that you birth, the soul that you bring to Christ, just might be the best. You might win the one God uses most. You might win the last soul that trusts in Christ before the Trumpet sounds. If someone would get busy soulwinning, somewhere in your county is the last soul to get saved. The bride of Christ will be made up and we’ll get out of here. I’m half mad at you for not doing it because I’d like to get out of here! I’m ready to go. Oh God, stir us. It takes work. It takes time. It takes grace. It takes courage. It takes perseverance. It takes prayer and begging God. It takes a broken heart.
One of the boys are going to school out there in Colorado. Their school is right out there in the middle of the desert between two cities about 115,000 people a piece. They knock on every single door in those two cities four times every year. That might be why they have 3,000 going there. You’ve got to do it. You’ve got to go after them. You’ve got to beat those doors. You’ve got to run that shoe leather off your feet. You’ve got to get a burden. You’ve got to get tired of your barrenness.
If just a few folks today would get stirred in your soul. You say, “I haven’t won anybody to Christ this year. I haven’t won anybody in six months. I didn’t win anybody last year. I haven’t won anybody this decade.” If somebody would say, “I don’t want to live like this any more. I don’t like this unconcern. I don’t like this callous attitude. I don’t like my lack of tears. I’m tired of it. I want to get busy reaching some people with the wondrous Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Here is the crucial thought of the whole message. If you get saved, you will go to Heaven when you die. If you don’t, if you live your life 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years on this planet and you never find Jesus Christ and never get born again, when you die you go straight to hell. Do you know what I think happens to some of us good Christians? We forget that.
I stood out at the mailbox Thursday or Friday last week and talked to an old man, my neighbor, about 80 some years of age. When he was a boy, he lived with his grandparents. Billy Sunday stayed in their home every summer and preached a meeting in their little country church when he was a boy. I talked to him a little bit about the Lord. He spit tobacco all around my neighbor’s mailbox. I noticed he didn’t spit any on his mailbox. It was really strange. I don’t think he likes them very much.
I thought about old John. I can’t shake him off his salvation experience, but he doesn’t have much. I think his wife was a good Christian. She’s been in Heaven for 20 years. Every time he starts talking about her, he starts crying. He misses her. She’s been gone 20 years. I’ll tell you something about your neighbor you wave at every day. If he dies without Christ and his wife dies without Christ and his kids die without Christ, they are going to hell. Oh God, stir something up in our hearts today about this barrenness, about this not reaching people. Help us to go and help us to tell them about the wondrous story of the Gospel.
I said, “Come by my room tomorrow at such and such a time.” They both came over and sat down in the room where I was staying. The little lady and her husband sat down, and the moment that that girl sat down, she began to cry. There’s no way in the world to handle a crying woman. It’s impossible!
I looked at her and I looked at him. I said, “What can I do? What has happened?” Everything in the world is going through my mind. They’ve had some tragedy, something bad has happened. I didn’t know what had happened. Finally she calmed down and I said, “What are you here for?” So she started crying again. They hadn’t said a word yet.
Finally she blubbered out, “Brother Green, Brother Green, we’ve been married for four years and we don’t have any children yet. We want to have a baby.” Now someone gave me a doctor’s degree a few years ago, but it wasn’t that kind of doctor’s degree. I didn’t know what to do for these kids. I delicately asked them, “Do you know how to have a baby?” They guaranteed me with great assurance, they knew how to have a baby but they hadn’t had any babies. I had a prayer for them and got them out of there after about 30 or 40 minutes. It was a difficult deal. I don’t know much about that kind of stuff, but I felt for them.
Dr. John Rice, years ago he used to tell about somebody wanting to have a baby and they came to him kind of like that and he anointed them with oil and the next time he met them they had had nine children or something like that. He is a lot better man than I am. I’m not going to get involved in that kind of stuff.
But that young couple got me to thinking about that and this thought came into my mind. There are a lot of barren women in the Bible. These barren women when they finally had children, they brought forth some of the best of men who were greatly used by God. I want to preach today on the blessings of barrenness.
Now you remember Abraham and Sarah. They got up in age. He was 100 and she was 90 and they didn’t have any children. They couldn’t have any children. There is a lot about it over there in Romans 4 amazingly. That’s a great chapter about it. You have in verse 17 the definition of faith. He says, “. . .and calleth those things which be not as though they were.” The next verse continues: “Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations; according to that which was spoken, So shall thy see be.” Against hope believed in hope.
Then you have a demonstration of faith in verse 19, the Bible says that his faith was not weak. “And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara’s womb:”
There’s the determination of faith in verse 20, which says, “He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief;...” In verse 21 there is a great devotion to faith, “And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.”
You can mark it down that God is able. If you don’t believe anything else that I preach today, God help you to know that God is able to do what He says He can do! Abraham in verse 11 is called “...the father of all them that believe...”
Abraham and Sarah couldn’t have any children and it dawned on Sarah one day that it wasn’t Abraham’s fault. It was her fault. She said, “Abe, it’s not your fault. It’s my fault. I think I have the solution.” He said, “What is it?”
She said, “I’ve got this handmaid, a little servant girl by the name of Hagar. Why don’t you go in unto her and have a baby by her?” Now the correct answer to that would have been, “Are you crazy? Woman, have you lost your mind?” But instead Abraham said, “I guess that might be a pretty good idea.” Before you know, he’s over there spending the night with Hagar and the next thing you know they have a little baby boy by the name of Ishmael. That’s been a problem to Israel for centuries now. What a dumb thing to do!
Do you know what the problem is with some of us Christians? We want to help God out, too. We undo in doubt what God wants to do in our lives through faith. We get ourselves in a mess. A lot of us have brought forth some sons but He hasn’t brought them forth. We’ve tried to answer our own prayers and heaped all kinds of heartache and problems on ourselves.
One of the things that discourages us Christians a lot about our soulwinning is that we’re doing it and not letting God do it. I’m just being honest with you. I’ve been preaching a long time. I worry about seeing people walk down the aisle on Sunday morning and get saved and you don’t see them ever again. I believe this. If you’ve got the kind of religion that won’t get you to church, I doubt very seriously that it will get you to Heaven. Salvation makes us new creatures in Christ. All things are become new. We are a part of God’s family, and you don’t want to show up at His house to be fed?
God help us today to get concerned about our barrenness. There are Christians all over that are well and healthy and are out and about day after day and you run into people that you rub shoulders with regularly and it has been months and years since you’ve won anybody to Jesus Christ. It’s been a coon’s age since you’ve walked somebody down the aisle and knelt here at this old fashion altar and took that black Book, the Bible, and won them to Jesus Christ. It’s been ages since you handed someone a Gospel tract or invited them to come to church. God help us.
I also know of some places in America where they’re having all time records in attendance, but they’re having all time lows in holiness. I think you ought to live holy and live right, but I think incorporated in that is the reaching of people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It doesn’t matter what they look like. I’ll be honest with you. Some of us didn’t look too good when God saved us. You say, “I come in here and God only knows what the preacher will say.” So what. God only knows what God can do.
You remember in your Bible, remember Rachel. There are a lot of things in the Bible I don’t understand, but she’s married to a guy named Jacob that had another wife, Leah. He had two concubines on the side, too. Then they all had kids. Jacob had kids with Leah, and he had kids with those two concubines. I guess he learned a bad lesson from Abraham.
He had the girl that he loved, Rachel, and no children. Rachel got concerned about that thing and you hear her crying in Genesis 30:1 she says, “...Give me children, or else I die.” She said, “God, I don’t even want to live if I can’t have a baby, if I can’t have a child. John Knox said about Scotland, “Give me Scotland or I die.
Zinzindorf, I’ve been to his castle. I’ve been to his church. I’ve stood behind his pulpit in what was east Germany. They prayed that God would send a revival to that Moravian movement that he founded. He prayed and prayed and history tells us that on the 13th day of August in 1727 at a prayer meeting at 11:00 in the morning one Wednesday that revival broke out in that place. That revival meeting lasted for one hundred years. God sent missionaries and God sent workers around the world from Zinzindorf’s ministry.
The Sunday school teacher taught a wonderful lesson today. He was teaching about in the book of Acts there in chapter 1 where His witnesses witness in Jerusalem, and Judea, and Samaria, and the uttermost part of the earth. Let me ask you this question. Has anybody here gotten saved in Jerusalem? Do you realize that every single one of us in this room is a product of world missions? We are part of the uttermost. We are a long ways from Jerusalem today, friend. We are a long ways from where it started. Somebody obeyed that command for the Gospel message to get to you.
Here’s something interesting. The first two missionaries that came to the Americas came from came from Zinzindorf’s work. They were the first two European missionaries that came to the Americas. Do you know how they got here? “They went around and raised support and went on deputation.” No, they didn’t at all. They sold themselves as slaves. Those two white men boarded a boat filled with black slaves. They sold themselves as slaves and came to the Americas. They preached to those on the slave ship. They preached there as they worked the plantations in the south. They won souls and reached people and they became so successful in their soulwinning efforts that the slave owners said, “We want you on every shipload of slaves that come over here. We want missionaries who are Moravians.” Those fellows became a lot better workers after they got born again.
God help us today to get concerned about our barrenness. We’ve got all kinds of new techniques and we’ve got all kinds of advantages and advancements today in how to carry the Gospel to the world, but it still takes some travail. It still takes a burdened child of God.
You take these kids now a days that have babies. The husbands go in and watch. I was some place a week or so ago and the grandparents went in and watched. Are you out of your mind? One of the grandmas was in there with a video camera!
I don’t know a lot about it. It’s been a long time since we’ve had any babies around our house, but the best I can remember it took nine months for them to get here. After the time they were conceived, it takes about nine months for that little child to show up on the scene.
You can have all kinds of innovation. You can have all kinds of new ideas. You can have Gospel tracts. They have a Gospel video out now that’s really good, a soulwinning thing that’s 17 minutes long. It’s an excellent tool to win souls. You can have all of that stuff, but it’s still takes a child of God with a burden to reach sinners for Jesus Christ. We have new buildings but no God. We’ve got padded pews but no power. Some of you aren’t even concerned. Some of you, it’s been so long since you won a soul to Christ, it’s been so long since you’ve walked anybody down the aisle. It’s been so long since you rejoiced when someone else had a convert. There is something wrong with you. There are a few people that are concerned about it. I want to ask you a question. What is it that’s keeping you from having God’s power and blessing in your life?
I saw a little thing in Galatians 4:27. “For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband.” You say, “What is that talking about?” Somebody got concerned that nothing was happening in their life in regard to reaching people. If God today could just somehow touch two or three or ten people and say, “You know, Tim’s right. I have been barren. I haven’t been reaching people. I haven’t been winning souls like I used to or like I know I could, and I’m concerned about it, and I want to get busy about it.” Boy, you could change the complexion of a church in a month.
I preach in a little church down in Florida every year. I’ve been there for about 15 years now. There is a woman in that church. She plays the piano. She’s probably about a 60-year-old woman, a very attractive lady. She was an elected official. She was the tax auditor of that county and she won the election year after year. I think she was in close to 20, or maybe over 20 years that she won. Then finally she lost. She had tenure with the state so she was given another job, not an elected position. She was involved and she told me, “I got so concerned. I had knocked on every door in my county soliciting votes. Now that I don’t have to do that any more. I got so concerned. Brother Tim, I am now knocking on every door in my county trying to get people to come to our church.” In one year that woman doubled the attendance of that church by the converts that she brought in. One woman knocked on all the doors to gather votes. I think I’ll knock on some doors for God! That church went from 40 to 80, because of one woman.
You remember Manoah’s wife, Samson’s mother? In Judges 13:2, it says that she was barren. But in verse 24 of that same chapter it says that the child grew and the Lord blessed. She got concerned about her barrenness.
Do you know why revival is needed? Revival is an experience in the church. Revival isn’t for the lost. We’ve kind of confused that in our day of evangelism. You revive somebody that’s already alive. If you’ve been saved, I’m trying to revive you to some spiritual concerns about reaching the lost. Revival is an experience in the church, but evangelism is an expression of the church.
In Mark 11 and Matthew 21, Jesus comes out of a little, old place and there’s a fig tree there and there’s no fruit on it so He curses it. The Bible makes the statement in Mark 11:13, it says, “...nothing but leaves;...” In Matthew 21:19 it says, “...nothing thereon, but leaves only... Many of us have a lot of leaves. We have some things straightened out, some things lined out in our lives from the preaching of the Word of God. We have a lot of good things and we’ve cleaned our lives up and we’re trying to live holy and do what’s pleasing to God Almighty. But God help us not to be looked upon by the Lord as having leaves only. I don’t have this in my life, and I don’t do that, and I don’t wear that, and we don’t go there --- but is that all we have? Do we have any fruit? One of the things that will make the shining, shimmering throne of God more blessed is the stars in your crown for reaching souls.
There’s a woman in the Bible by the name of Hannah. She was married to a man by the name of Elkanah and she had a wife-in-law. That’s a strange thing to me. She had a wife-in-law by the name of Peninnah. Peninnah had children but Hannah had none, the Bible said in 1 Samuel 1 and 2. She had no children. You find her smitten and sobbing in the sanctuary. She makes a wonderful statement in I Samuel 1:10 she says, “...O Lord of hosts...” That’s the first time in the Bible that God is called the Lord of hosts. That means that He is the Lord of the hosts of heaven. That means that He is invincible. That means that He is unconquerable and she says to Him, “God, You are the God that rules and reigns the fiery hosts of heaven and You’re on my side.” I want to tell you something, child of God. When you go out in the field, when you go out in the vineyard, you’re not going alone. You’re going with the Lord of hosts. You say, “I get defeated every time I go. People laugh at me and mock me and nothing much happens.” So what, go with God and God can help you get the job done.
There’s a man that used to be in this church. If you described him, you wouldn’t describe him as a soulwinner. You might describe him as a lot of other things. He was a good, old boy but you wouldn’t describe him as a soulwinner. I remember probably about 1975 or 1976. He went with me one day down to Detroit, Michigan to show “The Burning Hell” film. I was showing it in a big fancy church. It was cold, dead, and dry.
I showed that film in that church and the altars began to fill up. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. I looked out of the corner of my eye and this man, tears flowing down his cheeks, had his arm around a sinner man. Tears were flowing down the other man’s cheeks. He walked that man down the aisle and he said, “Brother Tim, I talked with this fellow and he’d like to get saved.” It about floored me. He was a character at best. He was a nut, but I saw him walk that man down the aisle. If he could walk somebody down the aisle, you could walk somebody down the aisle. You could find somebody. That might be the only person he ever walked down the aisle, I don’t know,c but he got one. When I stand before the Lord, I’d want to have at least one. I’d rather have one than none. I’d rather have two than one. I’d rather have 10 than one. I’d rather have 100 than none. Barren, but I don’t want to stay that way.
There’s a girl in the Bible by the name of Ruth. She was widowed. She didn’t have any children. She had a husband finally. She met a fellow by the name of Boaz and they got married. It’s interesting there in that 4th chapter of the book of Ruth the 13th verse. It says that God gave her conception the very first night of their marriage. She brought forth a little boy by the name of Obed. He had a little boy by the name of Jesse. He had a little boy by the name of David. One day the King of kings and the Lord of lords came from the lineage of that woman. You don’t know what God’s going to do with that sinner that you reach, that one person that you find.
I’ll never forget going to Joe’s house. He had a statue of Mary out there in a half sunken bath tub. I’ll never forget Brother Al and I leading that man to the Lord. Oh, but we get barren, don’t we? We have all kinds of excuses. Do you remember over there in the book of Luke, an old man there by the name of Zacharias and an old woman by the name of Elisabeth, with no kids? She was barren. I guess their excuse was they were old. You can have babies when you’re old. Abraham and Sarah proved that. Elisabeth and Zacharias proved that. Just because you’re old today, just because you’re over 50, 60, or 70, that doesn’t mean you can’t reach somebody with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I preached last summer in Oklahoma City. I got there on a Monday and they were having some kind of preacher’s fellowship. That Monday night there was a man in that audience that’s been a hero in our home my entire life, J. Oscar Wells. He’s up in his 90’s. I went to him and I said, “Brother Wells, you don’t remember me. I’m Tim Green. I’m Don Green’s son.”
“Oh, I remember you Brother Tim. I sure do.” We began to talk and fellowship. His daughter is the girl that was an astronaut here several years ago, Shannon Lucid, that’s his daughter. They have just been wonderful people in our family and we began to talk. He said, “You know I pastored your grandmother.”
I said, “I know that.”
He said, “Brother Tim, every day when I pastored up there in Petosky, Helen would come by and Helen would say, ‘Brother Wells, you got any visits I could make today?’ I’d give her a couple of visits. Every single Sunday that I pastored that church, Helen walked someone down that aisle that she had won to Christ that week, or that needed to get saved.”
My Granny called me up two months before she died. She was crying. I said, “Grandma, what’s the matter?”
She said, “Nothing is the matter, but I thought you’d like to know I was up at the hospital today.”
I said, “What’s wrong?”
She said, “Oh nothing, they were just checking me out. I won two nurses to the Lord.”
She was 80 some years old. She started winning souls when she was a young wife and mother and she was still doing it two months before she died. I tell you what. I wouldn’t mind if I was up in my 80’s and had about two months to go and didn’t know it and walk into heaven two months later and just got done winning a couple people to Christ and then trying to do it my entire life.
Here is the blessing of barrenness. It’s getting stirred and dissatisfied with the condition I’m in, and then doing something about it. You can say, “I’ve heard this before. I’ve heard all about that. I know.” But maybe you can get like Rachel, or maybe you could get like Sarah, or maybe you could get like Elisabeth or maybe you could get like Ruth, just think the baby that you birth, the soul that you bring to Christ, just might be the best. You might win the one God uses most. You might win the last soul that trusts in Christ before the Trumpet sounds. If someone would get busy soulwinning, somewhere in your county is the last soul to get saved. The bride of Christ will be made up and we’ll get out of here. I’m half mad at you for not doing it because I’d like to get out of here! I’m ready to go. Oh God, stir us. It takes work. It takes time. It takes grace. It takes courage. It takes perseverance. It takes prayer and begging God. It takes a broken heart.
One of the boys are going to school out there in Colorado. Their school is right out there in the middle of the desert between two cities about 115,000 people a piece. They knock on every single door in those two cities four times every year. That might be why they have 3,000 going there. You’ve got to do it. You’ve got to go after them. You’ve got to beat those doors. You’ve got to run that shoe leather off your feet. You’ve got to get a burden. You’ve got to get tired of your barrenness.
If just a few folks today would get stirred in your soul. You say, “I haven’t won anybody to Christ this year. I haven’t won anybody in six months. I didn’t win anybody last year. I haven’t won anybody this decade.” If somebody would say, “I don’t want to live like this any more. I don’t like this unconcern. I don’t like this callous attitude. I don’t like my lack of tears. I’m tired of it. I want to get busy reaching some people with the wondrous Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Here is the crucial thought of the whole message. If you get saved, you will go to Heaven when you die. If you don’t, if you live your life 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years on this planet and you never find Jesus Christ and never get born again, when you die you go straight to hell. Do you know what I think happens to some of us good Christians? We forget that.
I stood out at the mailbox Thursday or Friday last week and talked to an old man, my neighbor, about 80 some years of age. When he was a boy, he lived with his grandparents. Billy Sunday stayed in their home every summer and preached a meeting in their little country church when he was a boy. I talked to him a little bit about the Lord. He spit tobacco all around my neighbor’s mailbox. I noticed he didn’t spit any on his mailbox. It was really strange. I don’t think he likes them very much.
I thought about old John. I can’t shake him off his salvation experience, but he doesn’t have much. I think his wife was a good Christian. She’s been in Heaven for 20 years. Every time he starts talking about her, he starts crying. He misses her. She’s been gone 20 years. I’ll tell you something about your neighbor you wave at every day. If he dies without Christ and his wife dies without Christ and his kids die without Christ, they are going to hell. Oh God, stir something up in our hearts today about this barrenness, about this not reaching people. Help us to go and help us to tell them about the wondrous story of the Gospel.
