Dr. E.V. Hill was a wonderful black, Baptist pastor whose inimitable preaching style is hard to forget.
I was raised, from age 10, in a Conservative Baptist Church — it was Bible based and rock solid. But the worship style was also very formal.
Not so with Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church of Los Angeles, a predominantly black Baptist church shepherded by Dr. Hill for 42 years. Their “call and response” form of worship is not the beaten path for many of us, but man does it move the spirit and touch the heart.
This excerpt is from one of my favorite E.V. Hill sermons, “Sunday’s Coming,” and I love to listen to it on Good Friday.
Good Friday didn’t seem so good as Jesus was beaten and hung upon a cross like a lowly criminal. As the sky grew dark as night and the Father forsook the Lamb of God.
We live in dark times where it sure seems that evil is winning. Not so unlike that dark Friday 2,000 years ago when satan most likely thought he’d bested the Lord of Hosts. But we were told even millennia before:
And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
Satan thought he had won when he persuaded Adam and Eve to eat of the fruit of the tree of good and evil. But God had a plan. A plan manifest in the person of His son, the living Word. So the evil one thought he devised a means to thwart God’s plan for redemption and reconciliation.
And as God momentarily forsook His son on the cross, the hordes of hell began to celebrate. But the Lamb of God was and is The Life. Death could not contain him. Sunday was coming and mankind would never be the same.
Just listen to this preaching and get ready shout “Amen!”
https://youtu.be/YByT6wfdhJs
1 Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?
2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
8 He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.
9 And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
11 He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
