It's a wonderful blessing to be here.
And it's a wonderful blessing to sit down
at the tables with some of you students,
and to learn where you're coming from, and
where you believe the Lord is going to
take you.
Some of you know, and some of you
don't know.
But you really don't know where we're coming
from.
And so many have asked where we're coming
from, and how we got here.
And I just want to spend a moment
or two in telling you a little bit
about our past ministry, so you'll understand where
we're coming from.
Dorothy and I are rather like the two
ducks you see on the pond.
If you see one, it's not very far
that you have to look before you see
the other.
And our ministry has been knitted together in
the Lord over the years.
I prayed before I got married, a prayer
that I'd read C.P. Studd pray.
I didn't pray the first part very enthusiastically,
because he said, Lord, I don't want to
get married, and I skipped that bit.
But then I got to the next bit,
and it said, but if I do get
married, please give me a red hot poker,
who will be behind me prodding me on
when I want to let up.
And I want to introduce my red hot
poker.
Dorothy, she didn't know I was going to
say this tonight, so I'm going to ask
her to say a word she didn't know
she was going to be asked.
One thing I have learned in the ministry
that I have one qualification I require, and
that is to be an RFA, ready for
anything.
And this is a time I am employing
this RFA.
It's a joy to be here for one
reason.
We want to be here to glorify the
Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, we speak a little differently from you.
As somebody once said to us, we are
the minority group of the redcoats that never
got back.
And we really are delighted to be here.
But accents apart, we have one desire, is
that we magnify the Lord Jesus Christ.
And I don't know about you, but I
have a heart that can cover up an
awful lot of things.
And I want my heart exposed to the
Lord and his word.
We're very conscious that very soon now, some
of you very precious people are going out.
You're going out from here.
Now, typical of girls, I don't know how
boys think, but typical of girls, they kind
of weep and feel so sad about it.
The day hasn't come and they're already all
mushy and oh dear.
And my husband said, well, the way to
stay around is just fail.
I said, yes, but Pastor Chuck will kick
you out if you hang back.
You know, there is something about seeing our
friends go out.
We have no idea what battle they're going
into.
And we're old enough and perhaps experienced enough
having ministered in many Bible schools around the
world to sadly say that many who go
out do not always finish the course.
We're asking that the Holy Spirit will so
work in our midst to glorify the Lord
Jesus, that especially for those who are going
out from this school at the end of
this semester in just a short while now,
that you will go out understanding that the
one person who alone is adequate is the
risen Lord Jesus Christ in you.
And you will finish the course for his
glory.
And that's what we're praying, that we will
be determined that it shall be Christ only.
So behind the way we speak and the
way we act and the way we look,
please listen to the voice of the Spirit
even now and let him meet you in
his word as you respond to him.
And the Lord bless you.
Thank you.
That was a dangerous thing, me letting my
wife speak.
I wondered if I was going to get
in on the session before it was time
for the benediction.
But she will be speaking to some of
you ladies sometime during this time we're with
you.
We haven't worked it out yet, but now
and again I'll be appearing in the chapel
service and now and again, Dorothy, we'll have
a special session probably with the ladies.
You say, what are you?
Well, let me just say this.
I am, I didn't say how old are
you?
I said, what are you?
You want to know I'm nine, eight days
older than Pastor Chuck.
But you know, young people haven't just been
invented.
There were young people around when I was
20.
I remember being a young person and I
just appreciate being with young people because before
long we're going to be handing over the
banner if the Lord Jesus Christ doesn't come.
And my concern is that we shall hand
over those who have understood something of the
deepest significance of the cross.
Christianity is not only a toe tapping hand
waving, knee slapping approach that turns people on.
But it's something much deeper than that.
It's a movement of the Spirit of God
that turns people around.
And what we need to see in our
hearts is as totally turned around for our
Lord Jesus Christ that we shall live always
for his glory.
I suppose you could describe us as pastors
to the wider church.
We were commissioned to this from a church
in England when we were married 40 years
ago.
Subsequently, we were commissioned from a church in
New York City to this ministry.
And it's taken us to different parts of
the world, particularly to the underprivileged, those who
are having hard times and those who are
suffering persecution.
For 20 years, it's our privilege to teach
the word of God over high powered missionary
radio stations, Trans World Radio in Monte Carlo,
a million and a quarter watts.
And for 20 years, we were able to
beam.
It covered all over all the continent of
Europe.
And some of the messages were translated into
Russian.
This was when the Iron Curtain was still
up and the wall was still not broken
down.
And subsequently, we were able to go on
missionary trips to some of these communist countries.
That extended down into Swaziland.
We broadcast from there, just teaching the word
of God, just the two of us.
We had no paid workers.
We had just volunteers who would type and
some then translate the messages.
And then it went to Far Eastern Broadcasting
Corporation and it went into India and it
went into Korea and it went to other
parts of the world.
And it gave us a link with the
body of Christ, not the body of Christ
that we know here, but the body of
Christ that Peter speaks of in his epistle
when he talks about the strangers scattered abroad
from Cappadocia and Bithynia and Asia and Pontus
and how these people were part of the
church of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We know the church as a body.
We're familiar with that.
When one member suffers, we all suffer.
We know the teaching of the scriptures where
the church is likened unto a building fitly
framed together by the Spirit of God.
We know the church as a bride, the
bride that one day before long is going
to be called into the presence of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
And I'm going to be much nicer to
know when I get up there than what
I am down here.
And I can't wait for that moment when
I wake to be like the Lord Jesus
Christ without the limitations of my lethargy and
without the failures and the stumblings that I've
known all too often in life.
What a wonderful day that would be.
But the church is also a brotherhood.
It's a church that's scattered abroad.
And sometimes when we go, we think we
go with all the answers and all the
help that's necessary to the people in far
-flung places.
But I want to tell you that many
of them can teach us a thing or
two as far as their suffering and their
devotion and their discipleship through terrible trials and
tragedies.
In the course of this, after 25 years,
and I'll get round to the sermon in
a minute or two, but after 25 years,
Dorothy and I decided that we wanted to
express our gratitude to God for 25 years
of marriage.
We didn't want to sit at home and
receive a silver plaque.
So we decided that we would write a
little book, Your Quest for God, and send
it to 25,000 people around the world
and trust the Lord somehow or another to
pay for this.
It was a real venture of faith to
do it personally, but we decided we would
do it and we printed the first 25
,000 copies and we sent them to many
of the people who'd been listening in the
radio broadcasts in different countries and on different
continents.
Before long, a request came in that the
book should be translated and we said we
would love to translate that book.
And so today, there are 36 languages of
the little book, Your Quest for God, and
over two million copies have been given away
in countries where people don't have the privilege
of hearing the gospel preached like yourself.
And it's marvelous how the Lord leads.
I could tell you story after story, but
let me tell you the most recent one.
We sent it to, it was translated into,
it translated, first of all, it was translated
into German.
Then it was translated from German into Bulgarian.
And then somebody from Bulgaria sent it to
somebody in Macedonia, which is where all the
trouble is at the moment.
And we find that some of the greatest
harvests today are in the places where there
is tremendous trouble, tremendous persecution, and tremendous hardship.
And we had a letter from Australia asking
if it could be translated into Macedonian.
And then somebody from Australia rang us up
and his name was Paul Dimitrov.
And Paul told us how he came to
Christ and how God rescued him as a
brand from the burning in order to make
him a vehicle of blessing to his own
people in Macedonia, where so much tragedy and
chaos is presently happening.
He and his family had immigrated from Australia,
from Macedonia several years ago, but the family
was in great distress.
And when they got to Australia, Paul Dimitrov
saw how his father was treating his mother,
inflicting tremendous pain, emotional and physical pain upon
his dear mother.
And Paul's heart became so angry with his
father that he decided there was only one
answer to relieve his mother of her sufferings,
and that was for him to kill his
father.
So one day he loaded his gun.
And with everything ready, he had it in
his hand and walked through a park in
Australia, a park that Dorothy and I walked
through only about 12 months ago.
And he was on the way to the
location where his father was, and he was
determined to kill his father.
And as he passed by a little open
-air meeting in the park, a man came
to him and said, won't you stop and
listen to what he's saying?
And Paul said, what is he talking about?
And the man said, he's talking about a
man called Paul who was on his way
to kill people.
I don't need to tell you the end
of the story.
He got gloriously converted.
He's the vehicle that God is using now
to take some of our old broadcasts being
translated into Macedonian, going to the people of
Macedonia right at this very moment, and to
translate the book, Your Quest for God and
Food for Faith into these languages to help
people who've never had the privilege of reading
or understanding these things.
And I could tell you so many stories
like this.
All I know is that I being in
the way, the Lord led me.
And what a thrilling thing it is to
know that when you're in the way, maybe
you don't know where the way is going
to finish up.
You go down this road, you think that
that's where you're going, but you get halfway
down this road and you find that's not
where God wanted you to go at all.
But if you hadn't gone that way, you
would have never come to this corner.
And that's really where God wanted you to
go all the time.
And it's a wonderful, thrilling thing to walk
with the Lord in the light of his
word and to know the glory of God
shining upon our way.
But this evening, my heart is heavy.
And there's been burning on my heart for
several days now, a message that I believe
God wants me to share with you that
was confirmed when I heard that you have
been learning something about the Holy Spirit and
something of his ministry and something of his
person and something of the purpose that he
has in your lives and the various gifts
that he will give you to perform the
work of the ministry.
You see, basically and very simplistically, you look
at the Old Testament and you see primarily
it was God the Father who was directly
dealing with his people, Israel.
Sometimes they feared him when he spoke.
Sometimes they revered him when he spoke.
And sometimes they tried to placate him with
sacrifice and sought to enter into his presence
as God had commanded through the shedding of
precious blood.
But primarily the Old Testament was a period
when God the Father spoke directly with his
people.
But you come to the New Testament, the
Gospels, and you find there's a short period
of time, just 33 years, when God spoke
to people not through his fatherhood, but through
his sonship.
And the Lord Jesus said, "'He that has
seen me has seen the Father.'" And he
said, "'The words that I speak, "'I speak
not of myself, I speak the words "'that
my Father hath given me to speak.'" And
there was a sense in which for 33
years, it was God the Son who proclaimed
the truth of God and taught it meticulously,
principle upon principle, doctrine upon doctrine, in a
methodical way to his disciples while he was
here.
But there came a moment in his life
when he said, "'I have finished the work
that thou gavest me to do.'" And he
went forward to Calvary.
He ascended to heaven.
And there he sits on the right hand
of God the Father.
But he said that, "'There cometh one who
will come along "'and he shall be God
the Holy Spirit.'" And from the day of
Pentecost, we find that primarily moving on the
affairs of men around the world is the
ministry of God the Holy Spirit, convicting the
world of sin, converting men and women, drawing
people into the body of Christ, drawing Bix
into the building, and doing a work that
only he, the Holy Spirit, can do.
But I'm convinced of this, that it could
be in your lifetime, it could even be
in my lifetime, when God the Holy Spirit
lifts his eyes to God the Son and
God the Father.
And he in turn will say, "'I have
finished the work that thou gavest me to
do.'" And he, withdrawn with the Church from
this Christ-rejecting world, will be the last
opportunity that men and women will have to
be born again into the body of Christ.
And because of that, it's so important that
we should be in tune with the Holy
Spirit in what he is doing in the
hour in which we live.
We don't initiate our programs.
We don't evaluate our talents.
We don't determine our preferences.
We don't think what we'd like to do.
But we say, oh Lord, I want to
get into the river of your spirits flowing,
and I want to be carried along in
the place where you are honouring the Lord
Jesus Christ.
At the end of John 15, we read
that the Lord Jesus said that he was
speaking of himself, and he said also that
the Holy Spirit would bear witness of himself.
But then he goes on and he says,
"'Ye also shall bear witness of me.'" And
when we're talking about the person of the
Lord Jesus Christ, we're merging with the ministry
of the Holy Spirit, and we're exalting the
person of our risen Lord.
Now there's a book in the Old Testament,
you've studied it, and I'm not going to
take it in the way you've studied it,
I don't think, this evening.
It's the book of Joel.
And the book of Joel, as you have
already learned, no doubt, is the very name
signifies the meaning of the message.
Joel, Jehovah, Elohim, the Lord, he is God.
And in the book of Joel, we see
something of the sovereignty of God moving in
the hearts of nations.
There are three ways of looking at the
book.
Generally speaking, people will look at it from
one or two perspectives, but I want to
look at it as a third perspective this
evening.
The first way is we look at the
historic event, that's how it begins.
He says at the very beginning, Hear ye
this, old men.
You old men, you've seen something when you
were young that the young people of your
day didn't see, and you need to tell
it them.
And you need not only to tell it
them, but to tell them to tell their
children and their children and their children to
another generation, and let it never be forgotten
what happens when a nation, the nation Israel,
turns away from the living God.
And the historic event was simply that God
had sent a plague of locusts across the
land.
And it's interesting when we read in verse
four that the plague of locusts had four
manifestations.
There was the palmer worm, and that simply
means an insect that gnaws at vegetation.
And then it was a locust, that simply
means that the plague began to multiply as
they went through the land, gnawing at the
vegetation.
And then the canker worm, and that means
in the Hebrew, so I'm told, that those
who have gnawed and those who have multiplied
have little left to sustain their life, so
they are lickers.
They lick every ounce of succulents in the
land.
And the final word is the word devourer.
And we see there is a progressive devastation
that sweeps across the land, and that was
the historic background upon which the whole message
of the Prophet Joel was paced.
He says, I want you to look back
and remember what has happened.
But he says, I want you also to
look forward for I'm going to tell you
prophetically what will happen.
And what has happened to destroy the land
and to cause devastation and desolation in the
land is nothing compared with what will happen,
as we know now, when the Holy Spirit
is withdrawn from moving upon the affairs of
men.
Sometimes Dorothy and I sit on an airport,
and we look at the crowd shuffling hither
and john, and we look into the faces
of bewildered people, and we wonder what they
are headed for in this Christ-rejecting world.
For the background is a picture of the
future day of the Lord.
Now I'm not going to talk very much
about either of these portions this evening, but
what I do want to talk about is
that which laminates both that which is past
and that which is future together.
It's rather like a piece of three-ply
wood.
There's the top piece of wood, and there's
the bottom piece of wood, and there's the
center piece of wood, and they're all laminated
together.
And throughout the prophecy of Joel, there is
a spiritual challenge.
And the spiritual challenge is particularly relevant because
what is happening, even in the day when
Joel wrote this, what was happening was that
there was spiritual declension.
You read in verse nine, the meal offering
and the drink offering are cut off from
the house of the Lord.
The dink offering and the meal offering were
offered as a sacrifice unto God in spiritual
functions back in the Old Testament priesthood.
And the drink offering, which spoke of the,
really it was the wine offering that was
poured when the sacrifice was offered.
The meal offering was that which spoke of
future days when the humanity of the Lord
Jesus Christ should come.
That which spoke of the presence of God
was withdrawn from the assembly of God's people.
Hosea says in his day that God says,
I will withdraw and go to my place
till my people which are called by my
name shall seek my face.
And so often we do not realize with
all our activity in the church that the
real glowing glorious presence of the almighty God
has been withdrawn and we're left to the
bankruptcy of our own talents and our own
abilities in order to try to keep the
boat going.
And God says that there was this spiritual
declension.
But he also said there was physical devastation.
The vine is dried up and the fig
tree languisheth and the pomegranate and the palm
tree also and the apple tree, all these
have been withered up and he says there
was emotional despair and therefore joy is withered
away from the sons of men.
I want to suggest to you that there
is a sense in which in many of
the churches in Europe, in many churches in
America, the immediate presence of God has dissipated.
And so often we go to church the
way we do and we behave in church
the way we do and we leave church
the way we do is because we don't
know why we're there and we don't know
who we've gone to meet once we get
there.
We really don't come to a gathering like
this to meet one another.
We don't even come to a gathering like
this to hear a speaker.
We come to meet the living God.
We come to meet the glorified Christ.
We come to meet him of whom John
saw on the Isle of Patmos when he
said, when I saw him, I fell at
his feet as dead.
You see, revival doesn't begin with the top
blowing off.
It begins with the bottom falling out.
It doesn't begin when we work things up
to a crescendo of emotional excitement.
It begins when we're let down so low
we can go no lower.
And if we're one inch taller than the
feet of Jesus, we're too tall to receive
the blessing that he longs to bestow.
So Joel says, it's about time you sanctify
a fast and call a solemn assembly.
That's a different phrase from what we have
in our modern culture.
We talk about festivals of praise and we
talk about the joy of the Lord, but
before ever the joy was restored to the
assembly of God's people, there had to be
a solemn assembly.
In the course of our ministry, on one
occasion, we called what we called a solemn
assembly in Switzerland.
People came from persecuted churches, about a hundred,
we were there for 10 days.
I asked a pastor to come with me
from America and another pastor from Switzerland and
three of us were there for this ministry.
And in the mornings we would gather for
prayer, the three of us before breakfast.
We'd have a time of prayer and we'd
ask who had a message laid upon their
heart for the first session.
And we had the morning session and then
we had the afternoon session and then we
had the evening session.
And I want to tell you that gradually
the glory of God became so powerful as
we were on our knees most of the
day.
The people in the village began to hear
of this little prayer meeting and they would
come in in the Swiss area.
And right in the midst of those prayer
meetings, some would find the Lord Jesus Christ
as their savior.
The pastor came home to his wife and
she said, what did you think of Switzerland
when you got there?
I've always wanted to go there.
Was it a beautiful country?
He said, when I was there, I saw
one square yard.
And it was the square yard on which
we knelt to seek the face of God
day after day.
What a wonderful thing it was to have
that kind of solemn assembly.
He says, blow the trumpet in Zion.
What does he mean, blow the trumpet?
Well, you've already learned that if you want
to understand the Bible, you have to read
the Bible and gradually the Bible explains the
Bible.
And if you come to something you don't
understand, you read on until you get to
something you do understand.
And gradually what you do understand will help
you to understand what you didn't understand.
And so when you read about a trumpet,
you think, well, I've read about a trumpet
before and I read of it in Numbers
chapter 10.
And in Numbers chapter 10, we do read
about two trumpets that had to be blown.
And Joel is using the background of his
biblical heritage.
And he's saying, blow the trumpet in Zion.
And what was the trumpet to be blown
for?
It to be blown for two purposes, both
of them very valid and very necessary.
In chapter 10 and verse two, make two
trumpets of silver and use them in verse
two for the calling of the assembly and
for the journeying of the camps.
And we read what the calling of the
assembly was in verse nine.
If you go to war in your land
against the enemy that oppresses you, then you
shall blow an alarm with the trumpets.
It was the shout of the warrior.
And when the trumpet was blown, it was
because the army was being called together for
warfare.
But then we also read in verse 10,
also in the day of your gladness and
in your solemn days and in the beginning
of your month, you shall blow with the
trumpets and your burnt offerings.
It was to be blown, the silver trumpet
was to be blown as the song of
the worshipper.
And when the trumpet was blown, it was
either to call the people to gather together
to worship the Lord, or it was to
call the people together to go into warfare.
And you and I are not going to
see the nation's history changed just as we
sing our praises to the Lord in the
confines of an evangelical constituency.
That's very necessary.
The Lord inhabited the praises of his people.
But together with that, there has to be
the shout of the warrior.
Why did the children of Israel cross the
river Jordan in order that they may go
into a land of plenty?
No, it was in order that they may
go into a land to defeat the enemy
and to subdue it for the glory of
God and to cleanse it of all its
pagan practices.
And there was warfare.
And the trumpet was blown when they went
round Jericho.
The trumpet was continually blown as they went
from one battle to another, conquering in the
name of the Lord their God.
The apostle Paul brings up the same theme
in Corinthians talking about tongues.
And he says, if the trumpet give an
uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for the
battle?
When I preach these days, I really don't
want to be clever.
I do want to be clear.
When it's all over, I don't want people
to wonder what the pastor has said.
I pray that somehow or another, somebody somewhere
in the congregation will be able to say,
well, this is what God said to me
tonight.
Because I've blown the trumpet with a clear
sound.
And there are those who are preparing themselves
for the battle because the trumpet is being
blown.
And it's a wicked world out there.
And there are demonic forces on every hand
waiting to thwart and to sidetrack and to
subdue.
And it's time that we blew the trumpet
in Zion.
Not only that we gather together as we
have done so gloriously tonight to worship the
Lord, but that we realize this is not
the end.
But there's a battle out there that's waiting
for soldiers, soldiers of the cross, soldiers who
are clothed with the army of God.
Well, we're getting to the thrust of what
we want to speak about.
We go on in Joel and we see
what happens before ever the promise of the
coming of the Holy Spirit takes place.
For in this solemn assembly, we read that
this is in now in chapter two and
verse 12.
Joel says, therefore, because of this, because of
the situation in which you find yourself today,
not just in the future days, the battle
of Armageddon, which is spoken of later on,
not just in that which is past, which
the old men can remember, but the young
men have no knowledge about.
But because of what is happening today, therefore
also now saith the Lord, turn ye even
to me with all your heart.
What he's talking about is real repentance amongst
the community of God.
Not repentance outside.
It's interesting in the New Testament that when
we read of repentance, it's very seldom repentance
is spoken of to the unconverted crowd.
Peter used it on the day of Pentecost.
Paul used it when he was preaching in
Athens.
But when the Lord Jesus Christ looked at
the seven churches time and time and time
and time again, he said, repent.
He was speaking to the church.
He was talking about the church turning unto
the Lord with all their heart.
I wonder whether you and I are wholehearted
in our turning to the Lord, whether somehow
or another there are certain areas of our
life that we don't want to expose to
the light of his holiness and the incoming
of his glory and the conquering of his
sovereign power.
Turn unto the Lord with all your heart.
Turn unto me with fasting and with weeping
and with mourning.
And then it says, turn unto me and
tear your hearts and not your garments with
a broken heart.
We've been singing about the tears being wiped
away.
There are some tears that are very valid.
And whereas God wipes away the tears and
he will wipe away all tears when we
get to heaven, there is briny water that
flows down the cheek of a broken hearted
Christian that is a very valid experience in
their walk with God.
Over John 1, chapter one, in my old
Bible, over Psalm 51 in my old Bible,
there are water stains, not from one time
when I knelt before God, but from many
times when I've knelt before God.
And with a broken heart, with the understanding
of everything that I am in myself and
everything that I'm capable of without his grace,
I've had to lay my life bare before
the light of his presence.
And it's been a broken hearted experience.
But he says that this is not only
a whole heart, not only a broken heart
that precedes Pentecost, but it's also a tender
heart.
For it says the Lord is slow to
anger, he is gracious, he is full of
mercy.
And it's a wonderful thing for me to
know that when I come in openness and
in light before him, and when I name
the very things that have grieved and quenched
the Holy Spirit in my life, and when
I name them honestly and transparently in his
holy presence, that he is a gracious God
and that he is abundant in mercy and
he welcomes me back into his presence.
But he doesn't allow my fellowship with him
and he doesn't allow the immediate consciousness of
his presence in the daily routine of life
to continue provided I haven't confessed my sin.
And I didn't commit my sin in bundles,
I committed my sins one by one.
And I found that it's a very humbling
thing not to confess my sins in bundles,
but to confess them one by one and
to name them as God names them.
Well you say, who is involved in this?
Well it says here, let the priests and
the ministers of the Lord weep between the
porch and let them say, spare thy people,
O Lord, and give not thine heritage to
repoach.
It's the leaders in the church.
It's the Bible school students in the church.
It's the evangelists in the church.
It's the youth leaders in the church.
It's those who are in the place of
responsibility and privilege in the church.
Let the priests and the ministers of the
Lord weep between the porches and let them
cry unto the Lord and say, spare thy
people and give not thine heritage to reproach.
I think one of the mightiest sermons I
ever heard in all my life lasted for
about four minutes.
Dorothy and I years and years ago went
the Sunday before Christmas with my mother and
father who were living at that time to
their church.
It was an evangelical church of England.
There were many things about the church that
we weren't part of and couldn't agree with,
but the man who preached was a wonderful
expositor of the Word of God.
He had a great English study in a
big, big mansion and the books were too
deep all the way round.
And he was learned and scholarly and meticulous
in his exposition of the Word of God.
And we look forward to hearing the message
that he had to preach.
And he got up and he said, the
text that I've chosen this week is when
iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall
wax cold.
And as he read that verse, his voice
cracked.
And those of us who were near the
front saw a tear roll down from his
eyes, down his nose and splash on his
Bible.
And he cleared his voice and he said,
excuse me.
He said, I'm sorry.
And he tried to get into his sermon.
And as he tried to get into his
sermon, he leaned over the pulpit and he
said, please excuse me.
He said, I've had a hard time preparing
this message this week.
He said, you see, I've been in the
ministry for 20 years.
He said, I've been remembering the early fervor
and the glow that I had as a
young man.
And now he began to sob convulsively.
And he said, in the course of 20
years, how professional I've become.
And he just leaned over the pulpit and
sobbed.
A dignified state church with professional men and
women in the congregation.
And nobody said a word.
And then gradually in the silence, as people
were still to know that God was God,
he saw a handkerchief come out of a
professional businessman and he began to wipe his
eyes.
And you saw a mother.
She began to cry.
And for 10 or 15 minutes, as people
saw that the love of many had waxed
cold, and they'd become professional and pedantic and
they knew what to do and when to
do it and how to do it and
what to say and how to say it.
But their love for the Lord had waxed
cold.
The Spirit of God moved over the entire
congregation.
And then he just simply said, would you
forgive me if I didn't preach this morning?
And somebody came and pronounced the benediction, but
the congregation didn't go home.
All over the church, people silently wept and
sought the face of God as the minister
of the Lord wept between the porches.
That's of course why the founder of the
Salvation Army, Booth, he sent a message, a
telegram to a convention that was on evangelism.
He couldn't go.
Ill health prevented him from going.
And he sent the telegram to this great
convention of 2,000 people who were gathered
to discuss evangelism.
And he just put on the telegram two
things, try tears.
And when you and I are beginning to
be moved with the compassion of the love
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we look
out over the world that's dying, surely it's
not sentimental, surely it's not effeminate for our
eyes to become waters of tears as we
look at the crowds without Christ.
Many years ago, I had a letter from
a missionary.
She was a missionary in Africa.
And she wrote back and she said, last
week I was in my mission compound alone.
And she said there was just a frail,
fragile window and into my compound there came
a demon-possessed, demented maniac foaming at the
mouth.
And she said as he came down my
path, he literally took hold of trees and
pulled them up with a superhuman strength.
Such was his demonic power and force that
he possessed.
And he came and he stood right outside
my window.
And she said at any moment, I thought
he could just break through and tear me
limb from limb.
But she said as I gazed upon him,
it seemed as though a teardrop splashed from
heaven.
And I saw him through its magnifying effect.
No longer a demon-possessed maniac, but a
living soul for whom Christ died.
And she said my heart that had been
pounding for fear a second earlier was now
filled with compassionate love for this poor, lost,
perishing soul.
Try tears.
Let the Spirit of God move you if
you want to be anointed with power.
You see, there are many of us who
want to get to Pentecost before we've been
to Calvary.
We want to get into the Promised Land
before we've gone through the River Jordan.
We want to get to Elim where there's
water and palm trees.
But we don't want the bitter waters that
precede it.
And before ever you and I can know
what it is to be anointed with the
power of the Holy Ghost, it's only going
to be as we're let down low with
our own needs in the presence of the
living, risen Christ.
Now it's after that that God says in
this spiritual challenge that goes through the historic
event and the prophetic implication, he says I
will restore unto you the years, the locusts
have eaten.
How good God is.
How good God is that he's made my
mistakes and my blunders which have been repented
of to be part of the growing process
in my life to bring me to new
dimensions of an understanding of his grace and
glory that I could never have known had
I not failed.
And I've even, of recent days, thank God
for those days of darkness, those days of
sadness, those days of loneliness, those days of
fear, those are the very things that have
driven me to the cross of the Lord
Jesus Christ to understand afresh that when I
walk in the light as he is in
the light, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's
son, cleanseth me from all sin.
We have fellowship, the one with the other.
And tonight, the most marvelous thing is that
I stand before you and underneath my skin
is the living Lord Jesus Christ.
He lives in me to do his own
work.
And I don't want to quench what the
Holy Spirit wants to do through me.
And I want him to restore the years,
the locusts of Eden.
And I want them to become counterproductive to
the plan of Satan who planned them for
my defeat, for my depair, that I should
be sidetracked away from the kingdom of God.
But God has used them to bring me
on into the understanding more and more day
by day of the greatness of his glory
and the greatness of his presence and what
was restored.
Well, it's very interesting.
In verse 14 of Joel chapter 12, right
in the middle of this repentance, he says,
I will restore the meal offering and the
drink offering, the very things that had been
withdrawn when there was a heart of repentance,
they were the things that were restored, the
sense of the presence of God.
What a wonderful thing it is to live
a life in fellowship with God.
Fellowship is not a means to an end.
Fellowship is the end.
And everything springs from fellowship.
The love of God is not a reward
for my performance.
The love of God embraces me right where
I am.
And then the love of God produces a
change to take me to where I was
not.
And the wonderful thing is that when I
truly fall at his feet, and when I
truly have a heart that's broken, and with
all my heart I truly seek him, he
says, I will restore unto you those things
that speak of my presence in your life
and in your fellowship.
But he also says, the years the locusts
had eaten, I will restore.
And he says, the joy that was taken
away, you'll rejoice and be glad and there
will be a true restoration.
And it's only after that that there comes
the promise of Pentecost.
And I want to remind you that when
Peter was being prepared for Pentecost, there was,
first of all, a broken heart.
He denied his Lord.
And when the loving, piercing, unfailing eyes of
the Lord Jesus Christ pierced the gloom and
gazed into the eyes of Peter, with that
look of compassionate love, Peter went out into
the darkness of night and he wept bitterly.
And I believe in holy water.
I believe the holy water is the briny
tears that splash down the face of a
broken-hearted man or woman who knows that
they have brought pain and grief.
In their betrayal of the living, loving Lord
Jesus Christ.
But then Peter was tender in his preparation.
The Lord Jesus said, do you love me?
He said, yes, Lord, you know I love
you.
Do you really love me?
Yes, Lord, you know I really love you.
Do you love me, Peter?
Lord, you know all things, you know that
I love you.
It was the response of love.
Repentance always brings a response of love.
You can't love if you pretend to be
what you're not.
You can only love when you are truly
open to what you are.
I say this of my wife, the perfect
friend is the one who knows the worst
about me and loves me just the same.
And the fact of the matter is there's
only one who loves like that, and Jesus
is his name.
And when that love begins to manifest, there's
the confession, yes, Lord Jesus, you know that
I love you.
Didn't intend to say this, but it's on
my mind.
You've probably heard and read of the great
Welsh revival in 1904, 1905.
How the spirit of God moved through the
Welsh valleys in such convicting power that valleys
that had been full of thievery and drunkenness
and child cruelty and blasphemy and hatred, the
whole atmosphere was totally transformed in a period
of some seven months.
Do you know where it began?
It began in a little prayer meeting where
there were 11 people.
And a little girl had been converted for
just seven weeks, and she'd never given a
testimony before.
And she stood up in this little prayer
meeting and with a croaking, quavering voice, she
just simply said, I love the Lord Jesus
with all of my heart.
And she sat down.
And God so accompanied that testimony with the
restoration of his presence and glory in that
little prayer meeting that it continued all night.
And there was a man by the name
of Seth Joshua who knew that the Welsh
valleys was right for revival.
And he prayed a prayer.
And I met his son, and this is
the prayer that he told me his father
prayed.
His father prayed after that little girl had
given her testimony, Lord, send us a man
who is one of us.
Not an Oxford or a Cambridge graduate, that
when the power comes, we may know from
whom it comes.
And when the praise is given, we may
know to whom the glory goes.
Do you know who God sent?
He sent a Welsh miner.
In seven months, 40,000 people in the
Welsh valleys had been gloriously converted to Christ.
In one year, 100,000 people had been
swept into the kingdom of God by the
power of the spirit of God.
The revival rippled around the world because it's
not by might nor by power, but it
is by my spirit.
But God doesn't send his spirit to self
-sufficient know-hows.
God doesn't send the power of his spirit
to people who've learned the right public speaking
techniques.
God sends the power of his spirit to
broken-hearted failures, those who return to God
with a broken heart, a tender heart, a
whole heart.
And God says, and it shall come to
pass that afterwards I will pour out my
spirit upon all flesh and your sons and
your daughters shall prophesy and your young men
shall dream dreams and your old men shall
dream dreams and your young men shall see
visions.
We know that this was partially fulfilled on
the day of Pentecost following the pattern that
Joel spoke of.
We know that it's going to be completely
fulfilled in future days and probably what God
is doing around the world at this moment
to bring in many in places that haven't
had the privilege of knowing that the gospel
is the only power of God unto salvation,
probably what he's doing today is the pouring
out of his spirit.
Certainly here at Calvary and in all the
ministries of Calvary, one can only stand back
and be amazed and say truly this is
of God.
It's of God.
I listen to the testimonies of you, some
of you young people.
And I just know it's of God that
brought you here.
But the one final thing I have to
say is the key that I want to
leave with you.
For we read that as far as this
and people take it prophetically and interpret it
one way and another and you hear it
carefully analysed and you see it expounded in
different ways as you read different commentaries.
But it says here in verse 20 through,
be glad then ye children of Zion and
rejoice in the Lord.