The gentleman wrote a book about a hundred years ago. I love old books. We were coming back up out of Georgia. I stopped with Brian and Ron this week and Roger Duncan had told us about a place there that has the largest collection of used books. Sermon books and theological books in the whole state of Kentucky supposedly. So we stopped by there and we were going through. It was amazing. Found a book in there from A.L. Baldrige, the life story of A.L. Baldrige. John Church, a lot of you remember John Church? Used to preach the camp meeting. We probably found 20 or 30 books for John Church up there. And me and Brian were going crazy. And finally, we said, oh, we got a family. We better get home. And Ron got bored with us. He wandered off. But there's nothing like the old riders. A lot of the riders today, I don't mean that disrespectfully, but a lot of it's just fluff and says nothing. And you spend a lot of money on it. And they really don't have their heart in it. There was a fellow by the name of W.N. Thompson that wrote a book nearly 100 years ago. It's called The Land and the Book. He was a missionary's son. He spent the better part of his life in Palestine and recorded a lot of the things that happened, a lot of the customs from what he could find. of that day and probably that's the source, as near as I can tell, some of the things that I'm going to be sharing with you today. In Isaiah 49, Isaiah is that great, great prophet that God gave him unusual sight into a lot of things. We know Isaiah was the prophet that foresaw the coming of the Lord to die on Calvary. The 53rd chapter is probably one of the most powerful chapters in the Old Testament dealing with the coming of Christ. But also, he talked prophetically about how God uses people and why the Lord doesn't use people. And in this particular passage, we'll begin reading with the first verse, if you will. Listen, O Isles, unto me, and hearken, ye people from far. The Lord hath called me from the womb. From the bowels of my mother hath He made mention of my name. And he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword. In the shadow of his hand hath he hid me, and made me a polished shaft in his quiver hath he hid me. And he said unto me, Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified." Verse 3, you find the servant. Verse 2, you find a sword. And also in verse 2, you find the shaft of an arrow. I think that all three of those are really an analysis to us as to how we become a servant. First, there's the sharp sword. He's talking about the mouth. Anytime you refer to the sword in Scripture, we know that it almost always has to do with words. It's funny that the sword wasn't polished, but it was pointed. The sword was sharp. He's not really too concerned about how polished our words are. He's more concerned about how sharp our words are. Now, by sharp and being pointed, that doesn't mean that a lot of preachers stab, but they're dull when they stab. They do a lot of damage with a dull sword. Their words are dull, not sharp. It's easy for a preacher to stand in the pulpit, or a teacher, or a church leader, and really not have the words pointed in the direction that God wants us to have them pointed. And the end result is we do more damage than we do good, because the words are not sharp. When the words are sharp, it goes right to the point. I don't think I have to stand here for hours on end to try to tell you the simple truth, the Word of God. Sometimes you just need to get to the point. and say what it is. Sometimes you don't need to dance around sin. You just need to get to the point and say what it is and say this is sin. Sometimes I think we skirt around so much and we dull our message so much that it's not a pointed message today. But I'll be as pointed as I can be. I'm not here to try to destroy you. I'm not here to try to harm you in any way. But as pointed as I can be, you need to know that without Christ you cannot make heaven your home. Without a salvation experience, a born-again experience, it's impossible to be saved. You may be in a great church. As great as that is, it may be a church that does a lot of wonderful things. But if you do not have a personal born-again experience with the Lord Jesus Christ, you will die lost and you will be lost forever. No hope beyond the grave of ever being saved. And that's as pointed as I could make it today. Sometimes we dull the sword because we don't study enough. We don't see the face of God enough. Therefore, we've got a message prepared, but the man is not prepared. And the end result is the message a lot of times does more harm than good. There's a lot of preachers that have damaged people because of a lack of study when they get up to preach. The end result is they say something off the cuff that they don't mean to say, and every preacher in here would have to admit we've all been guilty of that. But what we sometimes can even be guilty of that's far worse is damaging the sheep in some way because we said something that wasn't accurate. And we weren't prepared to say it. We were trying to feel time. You know, preachers are the world's worst to pick up bywords and feel time. And I'm not being critical on anyone, but if you took the average preacher in America and took their bywords out of their message, you cut their message in half. Because really, it's a lack of preparation of the person. Boy, I know this is pointed, but I always pray, Lord, I don't want to beat around the bush. I don't want to spend my time trying to get you to say amen. I should go ahead and preach whether you say amen or not. And in Zechariah, I run across a passage of preachers that are ill-prepared. The shepherd, if you will, the flock. Look at what happens, what Zechariah 11, 16 says. If you'll allow me to read it to you, if you want to jot it down. It says, For lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land which shall not visit those that be cut off. Neither shall seek the young one, nor heal that that is broken, nor feed that that stand asteel. But he shall eat the flesh of the fat, and tear their claws in pieces." Now here he likens the shepherd unto a shepherd that is the typical preacher today, is a shepherd that is merely into it for the fat of the land, the paycheck. You know, it's easy just to preach for pay. It's easy to be somewhere for the money. Boy, I do think I am preaching this morning. And here's the signs of a shepherd that doesn't really understand their calling. They won't go after that that's cut off. They won't try to restore people. They won't look for broken lambs. They won't look for wandering ones. And they don't care, therefore they don't spend any time preparing themselves, and their words are sharp. And that last phrase, they pull the claws in pieces. Tear them in pieces. Do you know what that's a picture of? It's a picture of a shepherd that pulls the hooves off of lambs. Now, when the shepherd pulls the hoof off of a lamb, the lamb is still a lamb. But the lamb will never walk the same again. Boy, I am feeling God this morning. We've got a lot of preachers today that, you know, they spend their entire time taking the lambs. They never reach anyone. That's what he's talking about. They don't go after anyone that's broken. They don't go after anyone that's lost. But as soon as someone reaches someone that's lost, they come along and they say, well, hey, I'm glad you're going down there at Rubyville and I'm glad you're safe. But you know what you need? You need the Holy Ghost. And that church doesn't have the Holy Ghost. Now, they've never been here. But really what they're saying is that, and I've watched this, there are people in the church world that if I brought them in to any church in America, sat them down, they're in ministry, sat them down, give them no less than five minutes, they'd figure out who the money people are. They would. And they know, boy, I tell you, this feels better all the time. And they use their words sharply to try to manipulate the money people because really they're not out after souls. They're not out after anyone that's injured, anyone that's cut off, anyone that's far away. They don't want to do that. Now your preachers constantly talk about how we're not supposed to go after people that's wounded. You're not supposed to be after those that are cut off. If we're not to reach people and feed people and take care of the flock, what good are we? What good are we in ministry? Our main duty. God didn't have to call me, and God doesn't have to let me do what I do. And I know that I can't be there for everyone all the time, but there's something that I can do, and that's care. And the day that I cease to care about you as a people, the best thing, the best service I can do you is pack my bags and get out. Because if you don't care about the place of ministry that God puts you in, it won't be long until you'll start using words that are dull words, that tear the claws out of the little sheep, until they finally can't walk any further or go any further. You've got to be careful what you say, even as a Christian. You can say something that will damage someone forever. You can be totally in the right in what you're saying. But the way you do it, you can affect them to where they'll never walk right again. Let me move on. It does get better, trust me. But he says, there's the sword. But then he goes on to that shaft of an arrow. The arrow in the Bible is really always a declaration of war. When an arrow is shot, it's a declaration of war. When Elisha was dying, you remember the young king came to him and he said to open the window and he shot the arrow? Do you know what he was saying? He was declaring war on the enemy. Now, we are in a war, friend. There's two or three warfares that we all battle. If you're lost, you'll battle a warfare between getting right with God and not serving the Lord, getting your heart pure with the blood of Christ or not giving your heart to the Lord. That's a battle. Don't you remember when you were under conviction, what did a battle? It was a horrible battle. Then after you get saved, you're in a war against the flesh. There's an inner struggle between what's right with you and what you know is right and what you're not doing. All of those things are a constant struggle. And then there's also the war that we have, the warfare we have with the devil, the principalities, the powers, the darkness, the wickedness. That's a battle as well. We're in a warfare. And the Lord's saying for him to use us. It's one thing for God to save us, but for the Lord to use us as the weapon. Boy, that's a powerful thought right there. God wants to use me as a weapon against the enemy. We always hear the talk about, no weapon formed against me shall prosper. But do you know what? You can be the weapon that God wants to use against the enemy. And there's a process. That wood always symbolizes sin, and there's a picture of sin in Scripture. When you read about wood, it's a type of sin. When Abraham was taking Isaac to the top of the mountain, he transferred the wood onto Isaac's back. That's a picture of sin. The sin was being transferred. Jesus died on a wooden cross. Sin, the sin of the world, was put on His back. But between His back, bless His name, and the sin was the blood. And it's still the blood that makes the difference today. It was the blood that made the difference 2,000 years ago. And this morning in this church and every church in the world, it's the blood of Jesus that saves us and makes us whole. It's a picture of sin. It was the Word. that caused the fire to come about, that the sacrifice was consumed upon. Our sin is consumed by the fire of God and the power of the Holy Ghost. Bless His name. Not only does the blood forgive us and cleanse us, but the fire of the Holy Ghost takes that sin, burns it up, and takes it away forever. So he's saying, I want to make you a weapon. I want you to be used in my arsenal against the devil. You know, any of you, I mentioned Veterans Day coming up, any of you that have served in the military, you know, you know good and well what I'm about to say is true. A soldier spends more time learning about their weapon than they do using their weapon. You don't fire the gun more than you learn about the gun. Part of the process is understanding the safety features of that weapon, the power of that weapon, knowing the limits of that weapon, knowing all about that weapon. In fact, probably a lot of you, if you served in the military, you could probably tell me not only the weapon that you carried, but the weapons that your enemy carried. And you knew the range of that weapon. You knew what that weapon was made out of. You know about weapons. But I'm amazed how few in the army of the Lord knows how God makes us a weapon. How does God make us an arrow to be shot at the enemy? So here it is today. I'm preaching on the arrows of the Almighty. And Thompson says that there's a few things that the shepherd did to make an arrow. If they were going to make an arrow in the Middle East, here's the way it would work. The trees grew in the wilderness, in dry places, in desert. When I was a boy growing up, we used to try to make our own bow and arrow. Did anybody else do that? And when I'd make an arrow, I would look for the straightest limb that I could find. And we'd make the arrow out of that limb. I don't know why we wanted to do that. I mean, it wasn't any good and we could hardly shoot it, but it was fun then. But you know, that's not what God does. He does what He trained them to do in the Middle East. They don't look for the straightest limb. In fact, they look for a thornbush. And because it's desert, it's twisted, it's crooked, it's full of knots, it's full of thorns, the most crooked thornbush makes the best arrow shaft. Did you hear what I said? The most twisted thornbush makes the best arrow shaft. The drier the place of the environment around that thornbush, the more crooked it gets because it's fighting to survive. Do you know something? I hear people all the time say, oh preacher, I've done so many things wrong and God could never use me. Don't you understand that regardless of how twisted your life is, how dry your life is, God says I can look at the most crooked and make the most crooked straight. Oh, glory to God. I don't care how twisted your life is, God says, I've got a way of making you straight once again. So God is saying, I'll use the crooked life. In fact, my experience has been a lot of times it shouldn't be this way, but it is. I think that the Scripture, oh, it's always true, but it's so true when it says, to whom much is given, much is required. And a lot of times people, that their life, was so twisted before they come to the Lord, they have a tendency not to play around with God when they really get right with God. Because they never want to go back to that again. You take people that their life was pretty straight before they met the Lord, and their life wasn't real quick, and for some reason, they take their salvation for granted. But when you take someone that one time was so stooped in sin that they didn't even love their self, and then put their hand in the hand of a God that can say to them, I'll straighten you out. And I'll make you useful, and make your life productive. You give somebody like that to Jesus, and you know what happens? They love the Lord so much, very seldom do they ever think about going back to that lifestyle again, because God did something for them that nobody else could do. So he finds that crooked, twisted tree, and he cuts it down. And he strips the leaves off of it, and the briars off of it, the thorns. Oh, I am feeling the Holy Ghost this morning. When man fell, he cursed the ground. And because man fell, not only was the ground cursed and was woman cursed in childbirth, but you'll find out, thorns came upon the earth. There wasn't a twisted thorn tree until man sinned. And when man sinned, the thorns came about. And he strips away the thorns and he cuts it from the root. The root goes into the ground. The ground is cursed. The source of the curse comes through the roots. Are you hearing what I'm preaching today? I'm about to have a fit this morning. What he's saying is this. He strips us. of the curse. He strips us of the roots that curse us. We're in a place we cannot get out of, and we're in a place that we feel like we're twisted and we can't get free. But the Lord says, Whom the Son shall set free is free indeed. He cuts us from the roots of the curse and strips us from the curse of this world when He takes the thorns off. The curse is gone. Hallelujah. No longer are we attached to the curse. Now we're in the Master's hands. There was a time when we were bound by the curse. But now it's different. We're in His hands. So this is what He does. He takes twelve sticks and drives them into the ground. six on each side at an angle coming down, the length of the shaft of an arrow. And he takes the tree that's now stripped of the curse, and he puts that tree in the strangest place. He builds a big fire, and he starts to put that Stick over the fire Like you would roast a hot dog Just high enough for the flames to hit it But not high enough for it to burn up Oh When it gets hot, you know what happens it gets pliable So he takes the stick out of the fire. He can tell because the end of it, when it starts to get too hot to handle, he knows it's hot enough now. He brings it over and those sticks, six on each side, six the number of men, six on each side, and he'll take that stick and shove it down between those sticks that have been driven in the ground. In other words, he presses it. It's pliable. Those sticks become a mold for what he wants the shaft to be. Oh, glory. It cools down, but it's not straight enough. So he takes it back out and he puts it in the fire again. He takes it out of the fire and presses it back down in the mold that he made with his own hands. I'm preaching this morning. He keeps putting it in until it gets straighter and straighter and straighter. Folks, let me tell you something. You might be on the mountain today and you might feel like running these aisles and say, whoop, glory to God. But you trust me, there'll come a time you'll come out of the fire and you'll cool down. But God's trying to get us to straighten up. God's trying to mold us into something that's useful for Him. So He lays that down until finally it gets straight as what the mold is. You understand this this morning. If you set your pattern for usefulness in the Christian life to my life, you won't be straight enough. You set it to anybody else's life, you won't be straight enough. But if you set it to the mold that the Master has made, it'll be straight enough. Don't compare yourself to me or to anybody else. Compare yourself to what God wants you to be. And if you're what God wants you to be, it'll be straightened out. So he finally gets it straightened out. Boy, I tell you, it takes a while to get it straightened out sometimes. We've had a lot of things that's twisted our life. Turned us in the wrong direction. He's trying to get us straight. So he finally gets it straightened out. It's cooled down. And he takes the sharpest knife that he has and he cuts off the burrs where the thorns were at. Isn't it something when a thorn comes through? Have you ever noticed that? Any of you guys ever? ever peeled the bark off of a limb on a thorn bush? What happens where the thorns are? It leaves a mark, a knot. It's hard. It's scarred. The hardest part of that limb is where that low thorn was. Isn't that something? So he takes that sharp knife and he starts cutting off where the knots were at, where the briars had been. He starts smoothing that down. You know why? because the knots in an arrow shaft would hurt the hand of the archer. See, when you pull it back, if there's burrs on that and it passes through, it could cause the archer's hand to bleed. It would hurt him. So the first thing you have to do is get off the roughest place. My friend, we need to get to a place where we don't want to ever do anything to hurt the Spirit of God. Ever. We don't want to do anything to cause the hands of the Master to bleed again. Jesus bled enough when He died on Calvary. We don't want to have to get to the place where we hurt the hand of the Master that wants to use us. Instead, we need to get those rough places out of our life. There's a time where God's trying to knock off those rough places and we say, well, I don't see anything wrong with it. In fact, sometimes it causes the grain of the wood to look rather beautiful where those thorns have been. But the truth of the matter is, God says, that's not what I want. I want an arrow that can be used, not pretty to look at, but something that's useful to me. Then he comes along and he breaks a vessel. He'll take a vessel, throw it against a rock, and break it. He'll take a piece of that vessel that's curved, that's broken, and he'll start to rub it up and down, up and down. Up and down. And the more he turns it, the harder he rubs. The more friction that's built. You know what he's doing? He's making it smooth. He's making it slick. Because even though the burrs are off, the knife can only do so much. It's that pressure. That's around us. See, you're all the time asking God to take the pressure away. Instead of saying, Lord, that pressure around us, that's making me into something that's useful for you. That's really molding me to a point where I can be effective in your service. You know what he does after he finally gets that as smooth as he wants it? He takes oil. and soaks it. And he'll keep applying the oil. The oil will soak in, he'll apply more. The oil will soak in, he'll apply more. The oil will soak in, he'll apply more. You know what that does? Makes it slick. So when it lays on his hand, it picks up speed coming out of the bow. Now I wondered about this. How much oil does he put on? Do you know how much oil that a master archer puts on a shaft of an arrow? We use shellac ores today to try to make them slick, but do you know what they did in Bible time? He would hold it up in a light, and if he could hold it in a light and see a reflection of himself on the shaft of the arrow, he knew it was finished. Oh, glory! Glory, glory. The Bible is always a picture of the Holy Ghost. Do you know what kind of a church God wants us to be? A church that when the light shines down on us from heaven, God can look down and say, I see the image of my glory in God. I see an image of myself in that church. I see an image of myself in those people. I can see myself when I look at them. God's trying to saturate our life to the place that He can see Himself in us. When He looks at us, He can see Him. Oh, so much of our time is building us up when really what God wants is for us We need to get to the place where everybody that looks at us will say, I see the Lord in that person's life. I see the Lord in that church. We need a church that is saturated with the power of the Holy Ghost. I'm tired of people being afraid of Him, afraid to mention Him, afraid to worship in His power. How can we preach without the power of the Holy Ghost? How can we worship without the power of the Holy Ghost? God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. No other way. So now he can see himself in it. But then he does the strangest thing. You read this passage. After he makes it, he's made it. Then, he hides it. You go through all of that, and God makes you, and then he puts you in a hiding place. Isn't that what the Scripture says? Look in verse 2. In the shadow of his hand, Hathi hid me, and made me a polished shaft. In his quiver, Hathi what? Hid me. Boy, He's making us. He's making us. He's making us. And then when He gets through, He says, I've got you what I want you to be. But now is not the time. So He hides us. The hiding period is a difficult period in our life. For during the hiding period, we've now gone through the fire. We've now been scraped. We've been skinned. We've had the rough places taken off. We're smooth. God has humbled us. God has made us useful. And after we go through all that, God says, now you're useful, but I'm going to put you away. I'm not going to use you right now. God has a special hiding place for all of us. He has a place picked out for us to hide. See, if you're not careful, what you'll do is you'll look at everybody else and you'll say, I can sing as good as that person. I can preach as good as that preacher. I can teach as good as that teacher. Why won't they use me? Because we're not the one that does the using. God does the using. I don't understand why God keeps us in a place where we're hidden. I don't understand why God will take a preacher with the power that Ed Ballou has, and allow him to get to the place where his body is worn out, and he's unable to make several appointments, and why God will only let him go out just once every now and then to be used. I don't understand those things. I'm not about to tell you I understand. And you know what? I don't have to explain it. He's God. I just have to trust Him when it doesn't make sense. That's faith. God's saying, I'm going to use you, but it's in my time. I watch people get more frustrated over that than anything else just about in the ministry. Because what it is, they're so anxious to move to the top that they don't like the hiding place. But when everything else is said and done, we're not in control of it. He hides us. He's got a hiding place. God's been working on some of us, and many of you here, you're just waiting on God to use you at the right time. Just because he spent all of the energy and effort making you into what he wants you to be, it doesn't mean that he doesn't care about you when you're in the hiding place. Funny thing about it, when it comes time for an arrow to be used, the archer pulls the arrow out of the quiver, puts it in the bow, and shoots it. When the arrow is shot, it goes so fast nobody can see it. All of that and nobody still sees you. You know why? Because it's not about you. You're the weapon. It's about the master archer defeating the enemy. The arrow never gets the credit. The archer gets the credit. I had the opportunity one time of going to see He's ranked as supposedly the greatest longbow shot in the world. Some of you guys maybe have seen him. I went to a gathering of hunters and they had turkey callers from all over the country. Boy, it was a great day. I watched this guy shoot this longbow. I'll never forget it. He had the bow to his side and the arrow already in the longbow. And you believe this or not, But I've got a guy that was with me, he saw it and since then I've seen it on TV and probably Danny Walk, he's probably seen the guy. But they had this thing that flipped aspirins up in the air, bare aspirins. And that guy would draw that bow so quick. It was unbelievable. It was like one constant motion, back and letting go at the same time. I could hardly believe how quickly the guy would let the arrow go. The first two attempts he missed. The third attempt, he hit that aspirin and busted that aspirin in pieces. Now you think about that with a long bow. Not a compound bow, a long bow. Man, that crowd went crazy. But you know something, Danny? I never heard anybody ask, what kind of arrow is that? The only thing they talked about was that guy's ability Because if they gave me, it doesn't matter what kind of arrow it was, they could have gave me the same kind of bow and the same kind of arrow and I promise you, you'd run for your life. It's the fact that the arrow and the bow were in a master's hand. When you're the most useful to God, It's when you're in the hands of the Master. Now that fellow, when they asked him, why did you miss the first two? And a guy said it this week. We were in a meeting this week and a preacher made a statement. He didn't know I was, you know, looking at some of this. I was going to pray. I had no idea. But he made a statement. He said, you know when an arrow is shot, the Master Archer, Loses all control of the arrow. And it's really up to the wind. The wind takes control. Now, if you don't think the wind takes control, you ask any golfer in this place. Do you golf the same on your drives when the wind's blowing? Any archer, if you're going to shoot, do you shoot the same way if the wind is strong? Absolutely not. The wind affects the arrow. Oh, glory. We may come out of His hand, but even though we're out of His hand, we're still guided by the wind of His Spirit. He's still in control. He's the only one that not only controls the bow and uses the arrow, but controls the wind that directs the arrow. God will never use you to hit something and then calls the wind of His Spirit to guide it off target. It will hit what God is aiming at every time. If we're off target, it's because we wouldn't yield to the Master's hand, or we refused to be used by Him the way He wants to use us. God doesn't have to make us a weapon, but He does. Some of you are in the process where He's shaping you right now. He's trying to straighten you out. Some of you are still attached to the desert. You're still attached to the roots. You've still got the curse on you. He wants to take you out of the curse. That means you have to strip away some stuff. It means you have to go through some fire. You have to feel the heat and you have to feel pressure sometimes. Pressure is not a bad thing. Pressure is a good thing. Don't look at it as a bad thing. Pressure is a good thing. It makes us what God wants us to be. A lot of times you know good and well if you weren't under the pressure, you wouldn't have done what God wanted you to do. The pressure forced you to do what was right. He's trying to saturate your life with the Spirit. He's trying to see a reflection of Himself in you and in me and in our church. And he's just trying to take control. Will you let him have you? You're always the safest, not when you're attached to the roots of this world. You're always the safest when you're in the Master's hands.