In the year 1957, I accepted a call
to the University Park Congregational Church in Portland,
Oregon.
I knew that the Lord himself had called
me to the itinerancy, but I was convinced
I needed some experience as a pastor so
that I would be kindly in subsequent years
to men in pastoral ministry.
At the time I first looked over that
church, and they looked over me, it became
quite apparent that there was certainly not more
than one Christian in the church.
As it turned out, I was mistaken in
that, for the person who I felt was
a Christian proved otherwise.
But on the other hand, there did appear
an elderly gentleman, not thought very highly of
by the congregation, but I think in touch
with God.
And he had been praying that the Lord
would send someone just like me.
I went there with the tremendous conviction that
God was going to do something wonderful, that
he was going to use his word as
I preached it.
That conviction had grown out of an experience.
I had been in the seminary.
And had begun to doubt very seriously the
authenticity of the Old Testament scripture.
The nature of the seminary curriculum, really, was
to undermine what little faith existed in the
hearts of the students.
As I grew increasingly troubled by what was
happening to me, and mindful that others around
me were experiencing similar things, many of them
simply dropped out.
Many of them not only dropped out of
preparation for ministry, but out of all interest
in Christian faith.
But eventually, the impact of it on me
was so great that I determined to talk
with the dean of the school, who had
treated me warmly from the time of my
arrival there.
I made an appointment, went to his office,
told him about the heart problem I was
suffering.
And he said to me, I want you
to guarantee me that you will do exactly
what I'm going to do at the end
of the quarter.
I said, what is that?
No, he said, you trusted me enough to
come and talk to me.
I want you to promise me that you
will do exactly what I'm going to do.
No, I said, I cannot, not without knowing
what you're going to do.
He said, I'm going to leave here at
the end of the quarter.
I said, I can do that.
And I did.
I'd had an extensive ministry in the Pacific
Northwest with headquarters in Spokane, Washington.
I returned there, went to the city rescue
mission, and told the superintendent, who had been
a longtime friend, that I had left the
seminary, that my church and my parents were
angry with me for having done so, that
I had no money, that I was in
great personal spiritual difficulty, and that I needed
a place where I could seek the face
of God.
He said, I have a room for you.
You can take your meals with the men
in the dining hall, or one of the
men will bring your meals to your room.
Stay as long as you like.
I holed up in that room for three
months, essentially did nothing but pour over the
scripture.
In particularly, I was comparing the old covenant
with the new.
For where I had been deeply shaken was
in terms of confidence in the Old Testament
scripture.
It became quickly apparent to me that if
I was going to reject the old, I
had to reject the new.
There are so many quotations of the old
in the new, it was simply absurd to
try to hold on to one and not
the other.
But in the providence of God, in those
weeks with my nose in the book and
my knees regularly bent before the throne of
God, I came to the most profound conviction
that this book is his word, that I
could trust every bit of it, that every
bit was as vital as every other bit.
And I vowed to spend the rest of
my life studying and proclaiming what I found
in this book.
So I went to the city of Portland,
Oregon with the conviction that if the people
in the congregational church there could hear the
word of God presented to them in the
power of the Holy Spirit, it would transform
their lives and the church.
On the fourth Sunday, when I was preaching
there as pastor, I saw tears coming down
the cheeks of one person, one person for
sure.
There was a second one that looked very
sober, but the angle where they sat was
such, I couldn't be certain there were tears.
And the third one that I kept glancing
at as I preached, thinking God was truly
at work.
At the end of the sermon, I announced
that I would be in the church that
afternoon at 3.
And if there were any who could no
longer live without the knowledge of sins forgiven,
they could meet me there.
I was so hopeful that at least one
would come.
To my astonishment, there were 13, 11 of
whom over the next seven days were profoundly
converted.
That began the closest thing to a genuine
revival that I have ever personally seen.
Week after week, the Lord was adding to
the church those who were being saved.
And I was gathering them in additional meetings
each week, teaching them the word of God.
But they were all, with the exception of
the one old man, just brand new.
They had been all their lives in a
liberal congregational church where they had never heard
the word of God.
And they were trying to understand.
We can't seem to get a hold of
this.
Why is it now, suddenly, all these things
are so real and so wonderful?
And all the years past, it was just
a lot of silly stuff in which we
were engaged.
And in trying to help them in one
area of understanding in particular, I formulated a
simple statement.
I said to them that those who profess
to be Christians can be divided into three
classes.
Those who we could describe as Bible plus,
those who could be described as Bible minor,
and those who were clearly Bible only.
I explained to them that the Bible plus
were the cults, the Jehovah Witnesses, and the
Seventh-day Adventists, and the Mormons, who all
claim to have belief in the scriptures.
But the scriptures were not enough.
Something had to be added.
And that the Bible minus was our own
congregational denomination.
The Bible minus whatever in the Bible you
don't like.
So you take your scissors, and you clip
this out, and you clip that out, and
you discover at the end that all you've
got is a half a dozen well-threaded
pages.
Now, I had grown up in an area
of the nation where classical liberalism prevailed, and
where indeed the bulk of the churches and
their leadership had been busily chopping the Bible
into bits, and had gladly disregarded it, cast
aside vast portions of scripture.
But in those days, I remind you, I'm
talking about 1957, there was this glorious bunch
of believers who were Bible-only, and who
really believed that every word of God was
indeed given for rebuke, for instruction in righteousness.
But now, who are the Bible-only people?
They're largely nonexistent.
For millions of those who are in that
general category have huge portions of the Bible
of which they know nothing and care nothing.
They may not have many among them with
scissors cutting the Bible into pieces, but because
of sheer stupidity and rebellious spirits, huge portions
of scripture are disregarded as if they have
no consequence.
And one of these vast areas of truth
so largely disregarded by so-called evangelical Christians
is this whole area of the righteous judgments
of God.
Some have seriously wondered why, in the light
of the circumstances, doesn't the church get down
on its face before God and cry out?
Well, my impression is that the bulk of
the church thinks God is doing handstands of
excitement in heaven and cartwheels.
He is so pleased with the church.
And I find very few who have any
serious interest in all of scripture.
The interest is in narrow portions that make
us feel good about ourselves.
We have incredible ability to take the omnipotent
God of scripture and to recreate him in
a midget God a half inch bigger than
ourselves.
And surely, our great hope this weekend is
that we will return to the God of
the Bible.
And as you well understand, it has been
the commitment of the leader to hope and
pray that this return will be greatly helped
by a careful consideration of the remedial judgment
of God.
Now, just to help to give you a
further sense of the magnitude of this matter
in scripture, let me just lay out in
front of you 21 passages in which the
remedial or the final judgments of God are
featured.
I'm not going to go into any detail
on this list of 21.
List of 21 I consider brief.
I understood in early years that sermons were
supposed to have three points.
And I have myself been guilty on an
occasion of a three-point sermon.
But I'm not under the impression that there
is anything necessarily biblical about that.
I don't know, Claude, whether you were there
or not, but I remember one time at
the Maples Conference when we were meeting at
the Congregational Church in Lake Placid.
No, not Lake Placid.
Malone, thank you.
Yes, Malone, New York.
And they had been saying to themselves, now,
if we do this right, maybe we can
get some of these liberal Congregationalists to attend
this Southern Baptist Conference.
Now, let's see, what about getting Roberts to
preach and announcing that he's a Congregationalist?
So I was to speak at the opening
meeting.
I had an 18-point sermon that I
intended to run through three times, looking at
these 18 points from three separate angles.
Well, you can multiply that out.
I think that may come to something like
54.
And to my absolute astonishment, they had 18
individuals who spoke before me who were requested
to give a two- or three-minute
statement, but you know how it is.
And I kept glancing at my watch and
saying, boy, it's bedtime already, and they haven't
come anywhere near the old preacher, and how
is he possibly going to give his 18
points to say nothing of his 54?
And there, and some of you were there,
you remember, the Powerhouse Baptist Church had their
representative to speak.
And I tell you, I could scarcely stand
it.
Powerhouse Baptist Church, it portrayed the most weak
and asinine and ridiculous picture imaginable.
And I tried not to say anything, but
knowing who I am, some of you realize
I was sure to say something, and I
certainly did, the crux of which is the
least you could do is change your name.
But not long ago, someone reported to me
that God had begun a fresh work in
that church and that things were wonderfully improved.
So 21 passages depicting these judgments of God.
Genesis chapter 3, verses 1 to 24, the
fall of Adam and Eve and their expulsion
from the garden.
And in particular, I call to your attention
verses 23 and 24.
Therefore, the Lord God sent him out from
the garden of Eden to cultivate the ground
from which he was taken.
So he drove the man out.
And at the east of the garden of
Eden, he stationed a cherubim and the flaming
sword, which turned in every direction to guard
the way to the tree of life.
Now, there's 24 verses just in that first
episode of a righteous judgment from God, a
remedial judgment in which they were expelled from
the garden but given both time and opportunity
of repentance.
Genesis 4, verses 1 to 16, the record
of Cain.
I remember well preaching here at the cedars
some years ago on the subject of Cain.
And focusing upon that powerful passage, it said,
sin is crouching at your door.
And its desire is toward you.
But you must master it.
Cain never mastered the sin that was crouching
at his door.
And so we read in Genesis 4, 11
and 12, now you are cursed from the
ground which has opened its mouth to receive
your brother's blood from your hand.
When you cultivate the ground, it shall no
longer yield its strength to you.
You shall be a vagrant and a wanderer
on the earth.
Now, Cain didn't like his judgment, and he
protested.
But it stuck.
So there's another 16 verses, and we've only
covered four chapters of Genesis.
I want you to understand, this is a
huge matter.
And I want to ask you, how can
the church remain silent on a subject that
occupies such a significant portion of scripture?
How can so many of us be so
uninformed concerning the righteous judgments of God that
are concurrent with sin?
Don't think for a moment that I'm covering
the whole.
I'm just seeking to give you a wee
sample.
But Genesis 6 and 7, and
even more extensively, Noah and the flood.
But these words from Genesis 6 verses 5
and 7.
Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of
man was great on the earth, and that
every intent and the thoughts of his heart
were only evil continually.
And the Lord was sorry that he had
made man on the earth, and he was
grieved in his heart.
And the Lord said, I will block out
man whom I have created from the face
of the land, from man to animals to
creeping things and to birds of the air,
for I am sorry that I have made
them.
So three entire chapters, 6 to 8, focusing
upon the righteous judgments of God.
Or chapter 11, verses 1 to 9, the
scattering of the people at Babel because of
their grievous wickedness.
Verse 8, so the Lord scattered from abroad
over the face of the whole earth.
And they stopped building the city.
So the judgment of Adam and Eve was
remedial.
The judgment of Cain was remedial.
The judgment in the days of Noah and
in the flood was a combination of final
and remedial.
The bulk of the people obviously taken in
a final judgment, but a handful saved by
the grace of God in the ark.
Now surely God intended that those saved in
the ark should prove radically different from those
destroyed in the flood.
And again, in the scattering of the people
at Babel, another remedial judgment.
We jump over to chapter 19 of Genesis,
verses 1 to 29, in particular, the destruction
of Sodom and Gomorrah.
And I read these words from verses 24
and 25.
Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah
brimstone and fire from the Lord out of
heaven.
And he overthrew those cities.
So once more, like the flood, a combination.
The vast majority destroyed, but a handful saved.
Here's one you may not have thought of,
Genesis chapter 20, verses 1 to 18, involving
Abraham and Abimelech and Sarah and the wives
in Abimelech's household.
We read in verse 18, the Lord had
closed all the wombs in the household of
Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife.
And some of you remember the circumstances.
In an act of cowardice, Abraham pretended Sarah
was not his wife.
Abimelech seized what he thought was an opportunity
and tried to take Sarah into his household.
And in a remedial judgment, God sealed the
wombs of all the women in the household.
In chapter 31 of Genesis, you remember the
circumstances.
Jacob had labored long for a wife and
then was tricked and labored another long season
and was cheated.
So we read in verse 24, God came
to Laban the Syrian in a dream of
the night.
And he said to him, be careful that
you do not speak to Jacob either good
or bad.
Now, you remember, if you recall, the incidents
that Laban was in a rage because he
had agreed that Jacob should get all the
defective animals.
And Jacob had taken the spotted and the
striped and the oddball cattle.
And they had all successfully produced offspring and
the rest did not.
And so Jacob ended with these huge flocks
and herds.
So Laban is going to give Jacob a
piece of what he really thinks of him.
And the Lord in a dream at night
warns him, don't you say anything good or
bad to my servant, Jacob.
And then we read in Genesis 31, verse
42, if the God of my father, the
God of Abraham and the fear of Isaac
had not been for me, this is Jacob
speaking, surely now you would have sent me
away empty-handed.
God has seen my affliction and the toil
of my hands, so he rendered judgment last
night.
Now, God had prospered Jacob's band.
And when Laban determined to take back everything
he was claiming as his own, the Lord
rendered a judgment and said, you leave my
servant alone.
You see, there is considerable variety in these
judgments.
Or consider Exodus, the
plagues on Egypt.
And this is another one of these extensive
passages covering more or less 10 chapters of
Exodus in which the Lord is at work
rendering a judgment in favor of his people
and against Pharaoh and Egypt.
And in verses 26 and 27 of chapter
14, we find not only did the people
escape, but the Lord drowned the army of
the Egyptians.
The Lord said to Moses, stretch out your
hand over the sea so that the waters
may come back over the Egyptians.
Over their chariots, over their horsemen.
Then the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the
midst of the sea.
So we really have two righteous judgments in
this section.
We have that righteous judgment in which Israel
was not only allowed to leave Egypt, but
God put it in the hearts of certain
of the Egyptians to bestow things of great
worth.
Upon the Israelites.
So when they left, they left with a
mighty horde of treasures that were given to
them.
And then when Pharaoh determined to bring them
back, the Lord, in another judgment, took the
lives of those in the Egyptian army in
pursuit of Israel.
And we move along.
One of the most helpful and yet the
most trying of passages dealing with the judgments
of God, Exodus 32, 33, 34, 35, 36,
in which the golden calf was made by
Aaron.
And the people demonstrated their zeal for evil
in the worship of that calf.
But what I would call to your attention,
I know some of you are well familiar
with the passage.
Others may not be.
But we have an extraordinary illustration in this
incident of God first threatening a final judgment.
You remember the words that God spoke to
Moses.
Get out of the way, Moses.
I'm going to go down and utterly destroy
those people.
I will raise up out of you, Moses.
You alone, Moses.
Nobody else, Moses, but you.
I will raise me up a people for
myself.
And without even knowing what God is angry
about, when God says, get out of my
way, Moses instead gets right in God's faith.
And he begins to argue with the Lord.
Why, Lord, if you destroy these people now,
what will the Egyptians say?
They will say, what kind of a mad
god is it that brings a people out
of Egypt by his own mighty arm only
to destroy them in the wilderness a short
time later?
But he also argues, and what about the
promises that you've made that remain unfulfilled?
Promises to Abraham and to Isaac and Jacob,
promises of a seed and of a land.
And God, reversing his threatened final judgment.
Beautiful, beautiful pact, without going into all the
detail.
After Moses himself sees to the death of
3,000 of the ringleaders of this wickedness,
God says, go on, Moses.
Get moving.
I want you to lead my people as
I commanded you, so get going.
But I won't go with you myself.
You are a stiff-necked people.
If I were with you myself, I would
destroy you in the way.
I'll send an angel before you.
But Moses says, nothing doing.
Angels have their place.
But if you don't go with us, we're
not going anywhere.
And God, in his incredible mercy, says, all
right, Moses.
If you won't go without me, I'll go
with you.
Oh, what a profound lesson for us.
We are where we're at because we're willing
to go alone.
When we reach that point where we'll go
nowhere without him, I believe with all my
heart he will gladly come among us.
When we talk about these righteous judgments, and
I believe Henry has made that clear already
this morning, our great problem is not knowing
what to do with these judgments.
We invariably, it seems, end up doing the
wrong thing.
But Moses has it right.
If you don't go with us, we're not
going anywhere.
But let me move on.
I have only mentioned 10.
And I have a few more to go
if I'm going to keep my word.
Third, Leviticus chapter 10, a brief passage, one
to three.
The issue of strange fire of Nadab and
Abihu.
Fire came down from the presence of the
Lord and consumed them.
And they died before the Lord.
But a final judgment, obviously.
And Henry made reference to Deuteronomy chapter 28,
verses 1 to 16.
An incredibly beautiful list of blessings, verses 1
to 14.
And then an almost unbelievable list of curses,
verses 15 to 68.
But the judgments of God in the form
of blessings and cursing.
I move along to my 13th illustration, Judges,
chapters 2 through 16.
I wonder how many of you have acquainted
yourself with what is set in front of
us in that lengthy passage.
Chapter 2 gives the essence of the whole
matter.
The people began in right relationship with God.
But they sin and do not repent.
And so God brings them under judgment.
When they can no longer tolerate the judgment
any longer, they cry out to God.
And when they cry out to God from
the bottom of their hearts with the utmost
of sincerity and earnestness, God raises up a
judge deliverer.
And they're brought back into a relationship with
God.
And for a season, they walk again with
God.
But then that judge dies.
And they sin.
And the whole pattern is repeated.
Between chapters 3 and 16, there are seven
of those full cycle.
All of that whole passage, the first half
of the book of Judges devoted exclusively to
the matter of remedial judgment.
I'm asking you, how can we treat it
as a matter of small consequence when such
a major portion of the Pentateuch is devoted
to this urgent subject?
That's why I said to you, near 50
years ago, evangelicals believed the whole of the
Bible and earnestly preached and proclaimed it in
its entirety.
Now we claim to believe it and earnestly
neglect its greatest portion.
And we move along again.
1 Samuel, chapter 4, verses 1 to 22.
And in actual fact, chapters 1, 2, and
3 are setting it up for the judgment
that is so apparent in chapter 4.
You remember Eli and his wicked son and
their incredibly gross and evil conduct.
And you remember that the ark of God
is taken captive.
And the messenger comes to Eli, chapter 4,
verse 18.
It came about when he mentioned the ark
of God that Eli fell off the stool
backward beside the gate.
And his neck was broken, and he died,
for he was old and heavy, grossly overweight.
And then a daughter-in-law died in
childbirth, verse 21.
And she named the boy as she was
dying Ichabod, saying the glory has departed from
Israel because the ark of God was taken
and because of her father-in-law and
her husband.
So again, a combination, remedial and final.
We come in 1 Samuel, chapter 15, verses
1 to 35, with King Saul and his
rejection.
And again, several chapters are involved in the
matter.
But I read now two verses from chapter
15, verses 28 to 29.
And Samuel said to him, the Lord has
torn the kingdom of Israel from you today
and has given it to your neighbor, who
is better than you.
And also the glory of Israel will not
lie or change his mind, for he is
not a man that he should change his
mind.
And so Saul is rejected by God because
of his pride.
Another remedial judgment.
2 Samuel, chapter 6, verses 1 to 23.
The death of Uzziah and the abandonment of
the ark.
You remember the circumstances.
David set his heart to bring the ark
of God taken in the days of Eli
back to its rightful place.
But like most so-called evangelicals in America
today, he consulted the Philistines instead of God.
When you want to move the ark, how
do you do it?
And the Philistines said, why build a new
cart and get some young animals and pull
it home on the ark?
The disregard of the word of God is
our greatest error.
God has spoken on every single subject that
matters to us.
And we disregard chapter after chapter, book after
book.
And when we want to make the church
go, being so silly as to not even
recognize God, God abandoned us long ago.
We hire some Madison Avenue publicizer to tell
us how to make the church work.
And it does work beautifully.
Right now, having God in your midst is
a hindrance to church growth.
The best thing you can do if you
want to grow a church rapidly is to
make God a midget like yourself.
But in the long run, it's only that
which Christ builds that endure.
And here we have the tragic situation where
because David and the priest and the leaders
of Israel carelessly determined to move the ark
of God without consulting the word of God,
Uzzah was put to death.
And some of you remember how angry David
became.
And he said, this is now Perez Uzzah.
This is the place where the Lord made
a breach among us.
And the simple truth is it was David
that deserved to die.
It was David's great sin that lay behind
all this.
But instead, God took the life of that
poor farm boy who didn't know any better
than to reach out and steady the ark
when it hit a rough place in the
road.
God, in his divine purposes, often spares the
real culprit because he has a plan and
a purpose for that culprit's life.
The fact that you are still here doesn't
prove that you're innocent.
It only proves that God isn't finished with
you.
You better get busy and be the person
God has called you to be while time
and opportunity are still yours.
As I jump to 2 Samuel, chapters 11
and 12, and Psalm 32 and 38 and
51, reference has already been made to this
matter, once again involving David.
And he himself is spared once more, though
he is truly the guilty one.
And it is the child whose life is
taken.
Or 2 Chronicles, a very extensive passage, really,
and involving portions of kings as well.
The warning to Solomon, the dedication of the
temple, and then, indeed, the awful conduct of
Solomon in allowing many wives, and then allowing
these wives to turn his heart away from
God.
And I mention as number 19, Uzziah, that
king of whom we read in 2 Chronicles
26, verse 16, when he became strong, his
heart was so proud that he acted corruptly.
And he was unfaithful to the Lord his
God, for he entered the temple of the
Lord to burn incense on the altar of
incense.
And then in verse 19, Uzziah, with a
censer in his hand for burning incense, was
enraged because the priest rebuked him for his
great evil.
And while the priest was standing there in
front of him, leprosy broke out on his
forehead.
One more of this multitude of remedial judgments
at the hand of God.
While I won't go into detail concerning my
20th reference, Jeremiah, chapters 13, 1 to 19.
I don't remember everything I preached at Cedars,
but I sure remember the day I preached
on Jeremiah 13.
The underwear that was worn, and worn, and
worn, and worn, and never washed.
And when it was so stinky, not even
the prophet himself could get anywhere near it.
He was instructed to go and bury it
in the moist soil along the river bank.
And then later sent to reclaim it.
And all he had was a rotten mask.
You don't bury filthy underwear in moist soil
and expect to retrieve clean and wearable garments,
do you?
And right along with that powerful illustration of
the judgment of God, that incredible passage dealing
with spiritual drunkenness.
If you're not familiar with it, I recommend
one of our little pamphlets entitled Spiritual Drunkenness.
But a very powerful illustration of the righteous
judgments of God.
Finally, illustration 21, the Book of Job, chapters
1 and 2, where we have a twofold
judgment from God, an incredible invasion of locusts,
and a long draft.
I just wanted you to get some sense
that this matter of the righteous judgment of
God is not minor.
I've just touched on a handful.
We could be here the entire day, not
less than 12 hours, just giving quick summaries,
as I have done of only 21 of
these judgments.
But now again, the urgent question, do we
ourselves know how to act?
How to respond to God in the light
of his judgments?
I want to invite you now to open
your Bibles to the Book of Second Chronicles,
and in particular, at chapter 15.
I believe in his first message, Henry drew
verses 1 and 2 of chapter 15 to
our attention.
And I'm ever so grateful that he did.
One of the things that has meant more
to me than I could possibly say is
that at these Caesar's conferences, where there has
never, ever, to my knowledge, been any agreement
or discussion among the speakers as to what
we were going to speak about, almost always,
with one single exception that I can remember,
we all were saying the same thing, the
harmony of the Holy Spirit.
And I'm so grateful, because I've been a
speaker at a lot of conferences that were
almost like preaching contests, and everybody trying to
outdo the other one, and none of them
saying anything cohesive or that made an overall
impact.
But now, as I said, Genesis, or Second
Chronicles 15.
Let me read a larger portion than Brother
Henry read.
Starting at verse 1.
Now the Spirit of God came upon Azariah,
the son of Oded, and he went out
to meet Asa.
And he said to him, listen to me,
Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin, for the
Lord is with you when you are with
him.
And if you seek him, he will let
you find him.
But if you forsake him, he will forsake
you.
And for many days, Israel was without the
true God and without a teaching priest and
without law.
But in their distress, they turned to the
Lord God of Israel, and they sought him,
and he let them find him.
And in those times, there was no peace
to him who went out or to him
who came in, for many disturbances afflicted all
the inhabitants of the land.
And nation was crushed by nation and city
by city, for God troubled them with every
kind of distress.
But you, be strong, and do not lose
courage, for there is reward for your work.
Let's take a few moments to analyze this
passage.
First, to whom these seven verses are addressed.
Well, obviously, to Asa, to all of Judah,
and to all of Benjamin.
Now, let me point out a major problem
that we face.
There is no spokesman for God in a
position to address the nation.
By and large, the men with large audiences,
the TV and the radio preachers and so
on, they're just toying around with silly stuff.
Certainly, a significant issue of prayer is, Lord,
raise up, as you did in the days
of Asa, a man or an army of
men who can proclaim the word of the
Lord to the nation.
Has that been a prayer request of yours?
I got to watch myself here.
I'm knocking down these pictures.
Excuse me.
Why not make that an urgent prayer request?
To be quite honest, it is one of
my most urgent and regular requests.
And I take heart when I visit the
campuses of some of our schools, and I
talk with some of the godly faculty.
And they tell me that they are facing
now, for the first time in their teaching
careers, bodies of urgent, God-seeking young men.
Will you pray?
Pray with all your might that God will
raise up spokesmen who can speak his word
to the nation.
But now, in addition to the audience, the
message needs to be explored.
There are three statements made immediately.
Number one, the Lord is with you when
you are with him.
Number two, if you seek him, he will
let you find him.
And number three, if you forsake him, he
will forsake you.
Now, we're living at a time when the
bulk of the church is absolutely convinced that
God will never leave us nor forsake us
under any circumstance.
We can become as vile as we please.
We can be as neglectful of his word
as we want.
He can't help himself but be with us.
But if he is, it's the first time
in history.
And you'll certainly not find any accounts in
scripture to back up the fact.
And you'll find a whole lot of accounts
like this, where the word is very plainly
stated.
God is with you while you are with
him.
Now, that's a pretty involved matter.
Our Lord, in John 15, in talking about
fruit, said, abide in me and I in
you.
It's got to come both ways.
It's not enough for us to claim God
is with us.
We've got to be in him to such
a degree that he's willing to be with
us.
And when we refuse to do things his
way, it is one awful, reckless sin to
declare he's with us.
For he most certainly is not.
And the prophet is very clear.
The Lord is with you when you are
with him.
And certainly, one of the outgrowths of this
weekend ought to be every single heart determined
to always be with him, never, ever to
even allow a single day to creep in
when we are not with him.
But the second statement is of such profound
consequence.
If you seek him, he will let you
find him.
This word seek is a frequently used term
in scripture.
And God wants us to understand you can't
just stumble down Broadway and trip over God.
God has two dwelling places, the high and
the lofty place that none of us can
reach on our own, and the heart, the
spirit of the broken, and the contrite.
We've got to face realistically the limited habitation
of God.
He is not among the careless and the
reckless.
He's not among the prayerless and the foolish.
He dwells with those who seek him.
What a wonderful assurance.
If you seek him, he will let you
find him.
But don't fail to see the reverse of
that.
If you don't seek him, it is wicked
to suppose that he is with you.
The seeking of the face of God is
a daily pursuit, an hourly pursuit throughout our
lives.
And we must allow the prophet's warning to
grip our hearts.
If you forsake him, he will forsake you.
It is my deep, deep conviction that the
American church has forsaken the God of the
Bible, and thus he has forsaken God.
Amazing that you can go for decades without
any evidence whatsoever of the presence of God
and not even miss it.
We are so much like the Pharisees of
the New Testament that it's amazing, and we
don't even know it.
May God help us to face the realities
as they exist.
Now, we also have a historical portion in
these verses.
And let me draw the statements of this
historical portion to your attention.
Verse 3, for many days, Israel was without
the true God.
And tragically, they didn't know, and they didn't
care.
And that, of course, is the description of
the American church for many days.
We have been without the true God.
I mentioned to you to begin with my
experiences in Portland, Oregon, beginning in 1957.
Those were common in those days.
God was with us.
When we proclaimed his word faithfully in the
power of the Holy Spirit, remarkable things happened.
I've seen entire large congregations bathed in tears
as the Spirit of God, working through the
Word of God, produced conviction and conversion.
Time after time, it's been my joy to
see faces suddenly light up, and afterward, people
to rush up and say, I've been radically
transformed right during the preaching of the Word
of God.
But it seldom happens now.
The most earnest beseeching, the most eager begging,
and the average congregation listens to the Word
and walks out without having even felt a
dent.
Every evidence says God is not with us
as a nation of churches, just as he
was not with Israel for many days.
Notice the second of these historical statements.
They were without a teaching priest.
I pity the multitudes of persons with hungry
hearts who go to church Sunday after Sunday
after Sunday, longing for a word from the
Lord.
But they're without a teaching priest.
They just got some silly fellow prancing around
in the pulpit, pretending to know something, to
say something, and you add up the entirety
of the sermon, and all you've got is
one giant ought.
There's nothing to it.
Nothing of substance, nothing that teeth can be
sunk into, nothing that grips the heart and
transforms the life.
Look at the third.
They were without the written law.
It's not that the law didn't exist, but
the law was not applied to them.
Then we read as well, there was no
peace to him who went out or to
him who came in.
That's the kind of a society we live
in.
Multitudes of places where I go, the people
tell me, we don't dare come to evening
meetings.
We can't leave our homes.
If we left our home that night, it
would surely be ransacked.
There are multitudes of places in this land
where you don't even dare to venture in
the daytime.
It is much too dangerous, especially for a
woman to go along.
We have become like Israel during this sad
period the prophet is describing.
He mentions as well that there are disturbances
which are afflicting all the inhabitants of the
land.
There's not one of us that has not
been affected by 9-11.
Every one of us is being daily affected
by our war against terrorism, as absurd and
silly as the prospect is trying to defeat
an enemy that God has sent against us.
I am of the deeply considered opinion that
God has raised up the Muslim religion for
such a time as this to show his
own people their sin.
Instead, we pretend that with some money and
some arms, we can wipe terrorism out of
the world.
I pity the lunkheads who think that's a
possibility.
If God were on our side, there is
no enemy in all the world that could
be raised up that we've had any cause
whatsoever to fear.
But when God is against us, what does
it matter who's for us?
And we read this awesome statement, nation was
crushed by nation, city by city, for
God.
Verse 6, for God troubled them with every
kind of distress.
The situation that the prophet Azariah, son of
Oded, is describing is a situation that appears
identical to the situation in which we find
ourselves.
If there's any difference, I can't figure out
what that difference is.
But we read that in their distress, they
turned to the Lord God of Israel, and
they sought him.
And I report, and Henry has reported, and
every observant, earnest believer can report the same.
In our distress, we act as if there
is no God, or as if the God
that we supposedly serve is as happy with
the situation and as contented as we are.
We're going to have to face the fact
that what is happening to us is happening
to us at the hand of God.
Let me read again these words from verse
7.
God troubled them with every kind of distress.
And when it's God who is troubling us
with every kind of distress, our only hope
is to return to him.
In their distress, they turned to the Lord
God of Israel, and they sought him.
I took just a moment in going over
Judges 2 to 16 to point out to
you in those seven cycles, in every instance,
it was when they could not bear the
judgment any longer.
And they cried out to God, but God
raised up a judge deliverer.
And in all my travels about the land
for these many decades, I rarely am ever
in a place where people are crying unto
the Lord.
In a typical prayer meeting, which is not
destroyed by dividing it all up into little
pieces, for the life of me, I can't
understand why so many of you think that
a corporate prayer meeting means you bring a
lot of people together in a room and
then divide them all up into little huddles.
I can't track with you folk.
There's just something mystical about what you're doing
that defies my ability to comprehend.
I believe with all my heart that we
ought to spend hours in these cedar conferences
crying unto the Lord as a people.
But indeed, if we had a time of
prayer like that, I can tell you what
will happen.
Some of you would speak in such low
voices that the rest of us would get
discouraged and leave.
We don't know how to cry unto the
Lord.
I mean, when you're crying, can anybody hear
you?
Well, of course.
And these people, in their distraught, cried unto
the Lord.
And the Lord let them find him.
And the word of encouragement is spoken in
verse 7.
But you, Asa, Benjamin, Judah, you be strong.
And do not lose courage, for there is
reward for your work.
I don't think that I've ever engaged in
any work anywhere near as difficult as prayer.
For many years, it was my joyful privilege
to lead an early morning prayer meeting in
my own office in Wheaton.
And there was not one single week that
was an exception to this.
Every Friday night for all those years, I
was more tired on Friday night than any
other day of the week.
You meet together with a group of earnest
people who are crying unto God.
And it drains all the strength you have.
But oh, take courage.
God is awaiting the cry of his people.
Before we leave at this juncture, let us
do two things.
Let us set our heart to cry unto
the Lord, each one without exception.
Some of you might honestly say, I don't
really know how to pray.
Well, thank God it isn't too late.
What a wonderful time to set your heart.
Lord, I don't even know quite all what
it means to seek your face.
But I want you to know, from now
on, you're not going to get any rest
day or night, because I'm going to be
after you.
I'm going to be in your face.
I'm going to be hounding you.
I'm going to let the distress of my
soul be constantly manifested.
I set my heart to seek your face.
And when your own heart is that, why
don't you become an annoyance to others everywhere
you go?
I want everybody that I touch to know
that God is waiting for the cry of
his people for their distress.
Will you set yourself to become an agent
that the Spirit of God uses to turn
multitudes to that path of crying unto God
for their distress?
You say, I'm not anybody.
Well, neither am I.
You say, I'm all.
Some seem to think I am also.
I feel it in my bones.
It's hard to keep quiet.
But we have yet a nation to be
saved that will only be saved if we
cry unto God.
And if there's a chance that I might
yet arouse one more to cry unto the
Lord, I must do it.
And so must you.
So set your heart to seek his face
from now on and determine to bring everyone
with you on the same course who you
can possibly affect for good.
Forgive us our love of Eve, our willingness
to accept an awful situation and try to
live with it.
Forgive us for our prayerlessness.
Forgive us for our prayers that are without
strong cries and tears.
Turn us into a people who give you
no rest day or night until righteousness reigns
in the land.
For the glory of King Jesus.