Gtcotr/ss081819
It
has been said, “You can count the apples on a tree, but
you can’t count the apples in a seed.” So it is with the influence of a
single person.
In
a few moments I’ll be reading the text for today from the New Testament book of
Romans. We begin our study of the Bible this morning with a true story about a
man named Mordecai Ham.
Mordecai
Ham was born on April 2, 1877 to Tobias and Ollie McElroy Ham of Scottsville,
Kentucky. Mordecai received Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior at the age of
8 years old.
In
the 1890’s, along about 18 years old, Mordecai enrolled in Ogden College in
Western Kentucky. At 20 years old he took a job in Chicago working for a photo
enlargement firm, where he worked for 3 years. In July 1900, Mordecai married
his sweetheart, Bessie Simmons. Along with the new responsibilities of marriage
at 23 years old, Mordecai also was feeling the call to the ministry and wanted
to be an evangelist.
Finally
in 1901, at 24 years old, Mordecai was given the opportunity to hold his first
revival at Mt. Gilead Baptist Church. This was the first of many more
invitations to come. Times weren’t easy for Bessie and Mordecai, but they
pressed on. On December 4, 1905, Bessie died and left Mordecai on his own. For
the next few years he continued to hold revivals and call sinners to
repentance.
When
Mordecai was 31 years old, he met and married Annie Smith. Over the next few
years they had three girls and one boy. Mordecai was on the road, traveling and
holding revivals much of the time and wanted to settle down to raise his family.
So, in 1927, when he was 40 years old, he accepted the invitation to become the
pastor of the First Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. It provided some
stability for the family for the next 2 years but in some ways, it also limited Mordecai’s opportunities to
travel the United States and hold evangelistic campaigns.
In
1929, at 42 years old, Mordecai struck back out on the evangelistic trail.
During the next few years he went wherever he was invited and preached the life
changing power of Gospel of Christ. One of Mordecai Ham’s favorite practices
was to single out the most well-known sinners in town for personal evangelism.
He wanted the worst sinners to come to Christ and he didn’t mind going through
some conflict to make that happen.
Mordecai
often encountered opposition to his preaching. He endured threats, bodily
assaults and even police arrests. He named names and called them out. His
revivals would often last for weeks eventually leading those worsts elements in
town to the Lord. He wasn’t shy about the power of the Gospel to save sinners.
His
revivals were often plagued by two men, W.O. Saunders and J.T. Ragsdale. He had
offended these men and they followed him from place to place and circulated
critical statements and handed out pamphlets about Ham trying to dissuade
people from attend Ham’s revival services.
In
1934, when Mordecai was 47 years old, a group of Churches and businessmen from
Charlotte North Carolina invited him to hold a revival. A large outdoor sawdust
ground-covered Tabernacle was erected just for the revival and all the
townsfolk were encouraged to attend. Thousands attended to hear this evangelist
who preached six days a week, morning and evening. He didn’t mince his words
about sin. The revival lasted 11 weeks.
Early
on in the revival, one attendee recounts, Mordecai “claimed to have affidavits
from certain students that a house across the street from the school, which was
supposedly offering the boys and girls lunch during noon recess, was actually
giving them some additional pleasures”.
Rumors
flew around town that students angered by his preaching planned to march on the
tabernacle to demonstrate right in front of the platform and that maybe they
would even injure the evangelist. The whole town was getting stirred up and it
looked like a fight was certain to break out at the meetings.
A
few months earlier, one of the families who lived on a farm out of town had
invited a group of businessmen to come out to the farm to pray. As they
gathered in a circle in the pasture on that May day they prayed: “That out of Charlotte the Lord would raise up someone to
preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth.”
This
family had a 15-year-old boy and they wanted to see him saved. But with this
revival now in full swing, stirring up the students, their son refused to
attend and hear this evangelist Mordecai Ham preach. He later wrote: “Everything I heard or read about him made me feel
antagonistic toward the whole affair … It sounded like a religious circus to
me.” No matter what the
parents tried, their son said no.
However, as the rumors grew about students
marching on the tabernacle and perhaps even injuring the preacher, the boy’s
interest was stirred. But, how could he save face if he went now after holding
out for over a month. Finally a friend of the family asked this strapping 15-year-old
boy to come out and hear this fighting preacher. “He’s a fighter? I like a
fighter.” That puts a different slant on things, the boy thought.
Then the friend added another incentive, “If
you go with me, I’ll let you drive my old vegetable truck into town for the
meeting.” That night the friend loaded as many folks in the truck as he could,
and the boy drove them to the revival to see the fight.
When Mordecai began to preach that night that
15-year-old son of a praying North Carolina farmer sat spellbound. Later he
recounted that: “In some indefinable way, he was getting through to me. I was
hearing another voice … the voice of the Holy Spirit.”
The
boy returned the very next night. “All my father’s mules and horses”, he said, “could
not have kept me from getting to the meeting.” He enjoyed hearing the lively
sermons and the Bible made plain. But each night it seemed to him that the
evangelist was pointing his bony finger right at him. He became deeply
convicted about his sinfulness and rebellion.
After
a few nights in an attempt to get the conviction off of him and to keep the
preacher from preaching right at him, he and a school friend cooked up a scheme
to join the choir and just mouth the words. This way they could still hear the
sermons but avoid the glare since the choir sat behind the preacher.
That
seemed like a good plan but a few weeks into the meeting, just a few days short
of his 16th birthday, Billy Graham remembers hearing Dr. Mordecai
quote Romans 5:8 and invite that tabernacle full of people to accept Christ. On
November 1, 1934, that young 15-year-old Billy Graham walked down front feeling
as if he had lead weights attached to his feet.
Here
is a photocopy of the decision card filled out by Billy Graham that November
night. This 15-year-old boy was the answer to the prayer prayed on his father’s
farm just a few short months earlier. “Lord, raise up someone from Charlotte to
preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth!” Later Billy said that “certainly
no one ever thought it would be me.”
No
one ever thinks it might be them. Just as sure as Billy Graham was an answer to
prayer, so are you. Perhaps you just don’t know it yet. Someone has been
praying for God to raise up moms and dads, sons and daughters, pastors and
teachers, evangelists and witnesses to take the Gospel from right here in
Southeast Texas to the ends of the earth. But first someone has to tell them
about God’s love and His plan for their life.
Who
will be the Mordecai Ham? Who will endure the hardships, the disappointments,
the losses and the threats to stand and declare the goodness of God to a lost
generation? Who will dare to be that preacher of righteousness saying God loves
you and wants to save your soul? Will you?
This
is life!
In
his years after giving his life to Jesus, Billy Graham preached to more people
in live audiences than anyone else in history - nearly 215 million people in
more than 185 countries and territories, plus the 2.2 billion who have heard
him preach the gospel on television. But whose to say it would have happened if
it had not been for;
·
Mordecai
Ham, enduring the hardships, or
·
Billy’s
Christian father, being the spiritual leader of his home, or
·
the
praying businessmen of Charlotte, gathered for prayer in a field, or
·
the Churches who invited Mordecai to preach,
and attended night after night, week after week, or
·
those who built that sawdust ground-covered
Tabernacle for the meetings, those nameless, faceless people who labored out in
the cold October of 1934 in Charlotte, North Carolina, or
·
the
friend who found some common ground and invited Billy to come and hear a
fighting preacher, and then enticed him further by letting him drive that old
farm truck?
Have
you found the book of Romans yet?
Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that
while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Let
me be the one who tells you today that God loves you and has a plan for your
life. He wants to save your soul and reach others with your help. Every part of
the work of God is an important part and you have a part to play. Like Billy
Graham said:
“God has done
everything possible to provide salvation. But we must reach out in faith and
accept it.” —Billy Graham
It’s
life!
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