There are a few sermons that my dad would preach that, as an adult, I still remember from my childhood. A few that he would preach multiple times. His favorites, I’m sure. He was a quintessential pentecostal preacher. He would refer to himself as a dinosaur - one of the few preachers left who was as likely to be halfway down the aisle as he was to be on the platform. Actually, he was more likely to be halfway down the aisle than on the platform. Revened Gary Bruce was a shoutin’, spittin’, yellin’, hootin’& hollerin’ pentecostal preacher. 

That’s not to say that he didn’t study or prepare. No. He was no shallow preacher. He would dig int to the text and preach it like it was a fresh word from the Throne of God. He was a master orator. A powerful communicator. A demonstrative preacher. And if he was preaching one of those favorites, you knew his excitement for the passage, love of the story, and zeal for the sermon would combine with his mighty anointing as a preacher and the congregation was in for a powerful word. I can still see him pausing to do what he would jokingly call a Cherokee war dance under the power of the Holy Ghost while preaching. Holy Ghost. Yes, he still used the term Ghost. A dinosaur, remember? 

His favorite sermons, the ones he would preach whenever given the opportunity? Those were usually sermons from the Old Testament. Abraham and the ram in the thicket. Jesus is the better ram. And God has already prepared a ram in the thicket of your trial and test. God won’t abandon you. Or David, Ahimelech, and the Sword of Goliath. That there was no sword like that sword. It was a sword of testimony to the power and faithfulness of God. And we can trust God to deliver us from every battle like he delivered David from Goliath. Grab that sword. Hold fast to that testimony. It will give you confidence that God won’t forsake you. Swing it at the Enemy. He also loved to preach about Elijah. He probably preached about Elijah more than he preached about any on character in scripture other than Jesus. He would preach on Elijah and the prophets of Baal. How Elijah challenged them to contest to determine whose god was the true God. He would act out the story. Every eye on him as he preached. 

He also loved the story of Elijah calling down fire from Heaven to consume Ahaziah’s military commanders. How one by one Ahaziah’s commanders set out from Samaria to find and capture Elijah. And one by one Elijah calls down fire to consume them. Ahaziah had received a message from the prophet he didn’t like and he wanted to confront Elijah. Elijah finally agreed to go Ahaziah. Here’s the story from 2 Kings 1.

1After Ahab’s death, Moab rebelled against Israel. 2 Now Ahaziah had fallen through the lattice of his upper room in Samaria and injured himself. So he sent messengers, saying to them, “Go and consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron, to see if I will recover from this injury.”

3 But the angel of the Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite, “Go up and meet the messengers of the king of Samaria and ask them, ‘Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going off to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron?’ 4 Therefore this is what the Lord says: ‘You will not leave the bed you are lying on. You will certainly die!’” So Elijah went.

5 When the messengers returned to the king, he asked them, “Why have you come back?”

6 “A man came to meet us,” they replied. “And he said to us, ‘Go back to the king who sent you and tell him, “This is what the Lord says: Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending messengers to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron? Therefore you will not leave the bed you are lying on. You will certainly die!”’”

7 The king asked them, “What kind of man was it who came to meet you and told you this?”

8 They replied, “He had a garment of hair[a] and had a leather belt around his waist.”

The king said, “That was Elijah the Tishbite.”

9 Then he sent to Elijah a captain with his company of fifty men. The captain went up to Elijah, who was sitting on the top of a hill, and said to him, “Man of God, the king says, ‘Come down!’”

10 Elijah answered the captain, “If I am a man of God, may fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty men!” Then fire fell from heaven and consumed the captain and his men.

11 At this the king sent to Elijah another captain with his fifty men. The captain said to him, “Man of God, this is what the king says, ‘Come down at once!’”

12 “If I am a man of God,” Elijah replied, “may fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty men!” Then the fire of God fell from heaven and consumed him and his fifty men.

13 So the king sent a third captain with his fifty men. This third captain went up and fell on his knees before Elijah. “Man of God,” he begged, “please have respect for my life and the lives of these fifty men, your servants! 14 See, fire has fallen from heaven and consumed the first two captains and all their men. But now have respect for my life!”

15 The angel of the Lord said to Elijah, “Go down with him; do not be afraid of him.” So Elijah got up and went down with him to the king.

16 He told the king, “This is what the Lord says: Is it because there is no God in Israel for you to consult that you have sent messengers to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron? Because you have done this, you will never leave the bed you are lying on. You will certainly die!” 17 So he died, according to the word of the Lord that Elijah had spoken.

Because Ahaziah had no son, Joram succeeded him as king in the second year of Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat king of Judah. 18 As for all the other events of Ahaziah’s reign, and what he did, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel?”

My dad loved that story. The fire of God consuming the enemy. The show of force. The destruction of the wicked. Baal-Zebub, the god of flies, being shown to be no god at all. Elijah, the prophet, the one who spoke the Word of the LORD a hero. The God of Israel showing himself in power once again. If he preached it once he preached it a hundred times. 

I’ll never forget the last time I heard him preach it sitting in revival service at Ringgold Church of God. Pastor Carroll Allen has invited my dad to preach. It was actually one of the last sermons my dad preached before he got too sick from cancer to continue preaching. He would pass away in 2018. But this night he preached from this text. And did he preach! It was this story of Elijah calling down fire from heaven to destroy the armies of Ahaziah. From Samaria Ahaziah had ordered his commanders to seize the prophet.

Like I said, my dad loved Elijah. Loved preaching these stories of Elijah demonstrating the power of God over the wicked kings and false gods. But on this night in April of 2016 he preached this message in a way I had never heard him preach it before. A few years earlier mom and dad had divorced.

I wont get into the specifics, but it left both of them broken and hurt in many ways. Dad struggled to move on and forgive. He probably would have loved to call fire down on some people. Forgiveness and letting go was hard for him, especially this.

 

But on this night when he preached on calling down fire he actually didn’t preach on calling down fire. He pointed us to Luke’s gospel, chapter 9, where in Samaria Jesus is rejected. The disciples are angry, frustrated, and they already felt the Samaritans were beneath them.

 

The disciples thought they should defend Jesus’ honor and send a message, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” They knew their history. If Elijah could do it, one greater than Elijah could. Right here in Samaria. They deserve it.But Jesus turned and rebuked them.

 

My dad turned the whole story of Elijah on its head. I had never heard him preach it that way. It was beautiful. It went from a story of power and vengeance to a sermon on power in forgiveness. Jesus could have called down fire like Elijah that day. But he wasn’t there to destroy his enemies.

Jesus was there to include his enemies in the Gospel of the Kingdom. Jesus demonstration of power and authority wasn’t in calling down fire, it was in not calling down fire.

 

That night my dad preached his best sermon ever, because that night the power and the fire weren’t about consuming his enemies, it was about allowing the power and the fire to consume the enemy within. My dad preached Elijah differently that night because through all of his anger and pain he finally came to realize that power isn’t in vengeance, power is in letting it go.