We invite you to listen now to a
broadcast of a message preached during the regular
Lord's Day services at Faith Free Presbyterian Church
in Greenville, South Carolina.
Today's message is being preached by the minister
of the church, Dr. Alan Cairns.
Our Bible reading is very brief this morning.
I want to basically to read two texts
of Scripture.
The book of Isaiah chapter 32, we'll read
verses 13 to 15.
And then the prophecy of Micah in chapter
2 and verse 7.
Isaiah chapter 32, reading the three verses 13
to 15.
And then Micah chapter 2 and verse 7.
We'll start in Isaiah 32.
Upon the land of my people shall come
up thorns and briars, yea, upon all the
houses of joy in the joyous city.
Because the palaces shall be forsaken, the multitude
of the city shall be left.
The forts and towers shall be for dens
forever.
A joy of wild asses, a pasture of
flux.
Until the Spirit be poured upon us from
on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful
field, and the fruitful field be counted for
a forest.
Then Micah 2 and verse 7.
O thou that art named the house of
Jacob, is the Spirit of the Lord straightened?
Are these his doings?
Do not my words do good to him
that walketh uprightly?
We have it on divine authority that there
will be times of refreshing and times of
regression in the work of God.
The Apostle Paul admonished Timothy in 2 Timothy
4 and 2 that he would be instant
or urgent, in season and out of season.
We could put that very colloquially.
In good times and in bad or hard
times.
Now this is a perplexity for us.
Given the truth of the fact that the
gospel is the power of God, given the
truth of the fact that the Spirit of
God is promised to the Church of God,
how come that the Church of God so
often does not enjoy the fullness of the
blessing and the fullness of the power and
the mighty outpourings of the Spirit of God
that so effectively quell the onrush of the
devil and establish truth in the land?
Again the question arises, if it be that
the Church hits a period of declension, how
can she get back into blessing?
These questions raise for us the issue, the
vital issue of revival.
We have read two texts of scripture this
morning, each of which has much to say
on the subject of revival and each of
which treats the subject of revival in close
connection with the person and the work of
the Holy Spirit.
And so as we continue in our studies
in the person and work of the Holy
Spirit, I want us today to fasten our
attention on these verses of scripture and to
think upon the spirit of revival.
Now I want to be as simple and
clear as I can possibly be.
There are four very clean observations that we
can make from the texts of scripture before
us.
First and foremost, seasons of declension in the
Church of God are never because of any
failure on the part of the Spirit of
God.
Micah 2 and verse 7 is a scathing
indictment of God's professing people.
O thou that art named the House of
Jacob, is the spirit of the Lord straightened?
Are these His doings?
This strong denunciation should be noted.
It is very, very like the words of
the risen Christ to the church in Sardis
where He said, Thou hast a name that
thou livest and art dead.
Here He comes to these people and He
says, Thou that art named the House of
Jacob.
What a prestigious name.
What a tremendous profession is in that name.
Here is a people standing forth in the
world as God's chosen people, God's redeemed people,
God's covenant people, God's specially blessed people.
They are named with the name of the
House of Jacob.
And yet, though they have that name, they
are far from enjoying the privileges that are
in the name, far from enjoying all the
fullness that God promised, say, in Deuteronomy chapter
8 and in Deuteronomy chapter 11 for the
House of Jacob as they moved into the
promised land.
These people were languishing and there was a
time of national spiritual backsliding and declension.
And as they looked at the awful state
of their land, they would have blamed their
God.
They would have led the onus for the
situation on the lack of movement by the
Spirit of God.
There were other occasions when the House of
Israel did the same thing, in other words.
At one time, and Ezekiel takes them up
on this, at one time they lamented, Our
fathers sinned.
We are bearing the consequences.
Or to use the language of Scripture, our
fathers ate sour grapes and their children's teeth
are set on edge.
In other words, they were blaming God for
what He was doing in their generation.
They were saying things are not good today
because of the lack of activity and powerful
moving on the part of the Spirit of
God.
They obviously were saying these are the Lord's
doings.
Obviously that was their complaint.
Now, we may also be guilty of the
very same sin.
In fact, I find that it is a
very common sin.
We may be guilty of this sin by
lamenting the awful spiritual condition that we find
prevailing around us today without a bitter confession
of our own responsibility for it.
On every hand there are people who are
lamenting the fewness of conversions, real conversions that
we find today.
The shallowness of the work that appears to
be going on in most churches.
So many people are lamenting the wicked state
of the world and the wicked state of
the nation.
And they are lamenting the powerlessness of the
Church of Christ and the preaching of the
Gospel to do anything about it.
But with all those lamentations there is usually
very little confession of sin and very little
brokenness and shedding of tears before the throne
of God.
The question of the text stands, is the
Spirit of the Lord stricken?
Are these His doings?
In other words, the answer to the situation
lies a lot closer home.
We, sad to say, have an awful lot
of the saddest sickness in our day.
The name to live but dead.
How many are called Presbyterians and they luxuriate
in that name.
It has a great history.
But they have none of the life of
the man who were willing to burn to
death for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
They have none of the fire that set
the world ablaze with the power of evangelism.
There are others and they love the name
Baptist.
But where are the Spurgeons, where are the
Bunyans, where are the Keechers, where are the
great Baptists who knew what it was to
trap the land, preaching Christ and winning souls,
going through with God in prayer?
We have a name that we live.
We take such pride in names.
Worst of all, we can say that we
have the name of Jesus Christ.
We walk in a world of sin and
we dare to be known by the name
of the Son of God.
And yet there is little likeness to Christ,
little love for Christ, little of the mighty
enjoyment of Christ, little being taken up with
the Lord.
A name to live and all the time
we are damned.
You think of the prayerlessness that afflicts the
church of Christ today.
And let this question burn into our hearts.
Is this the Lord's doing?
You look at the carelessness about the souls
of men.
The carelessness even about the souls of your
own offspring.
The carelessness about the whole condition of this
nation today that prevails among God's people.
You think of the worldliness that has infested
the church of Jesus Christ.
You think of the materialism that has blighted
and blasted the people of God.
Then ask the question, is this His doing
or is it our doing?
The powerlessness of the church of Jesus Christ
may not under any conditions be led at
the door of the blessed Spirit of God.
Rather, the blame lies upon a carnally minded
people called by the name of the Lord,
but without a heart to go along with
their calling.
Prophet Isaiah, chapter 59, verses 1 and 2,
sums it all up.
He says, The Lord's hand is not shortened
that it cannot see.
His ear is not heavy that it cannot
hear.
But your iniquities are separated between you and
your God.
Your sins have hid His face from you
that He will not hear you.
That's the real trouble in the church today.
Oh, it's true, the Lord can send revival
despite all the coldness and deadness of His
professing people.
But the matter of fact is that the
Lord usually visits a people who are prepared
by grace and are going on with God
with hearts that are deeply burdened for the
blessing of God.
So, one reason for the declension is clear.
It may not be led at the door
of the Spirit of God.
It comes back to the sins of God's
people.
But there's another reason.
We notice from the text, especially in Isaiah
32, that seasons of declension in the church
are directly due to a lack of experience
of the fullness of the Holy Ghost.
We were reading in the 32nd chapter of
Isaiah of the blight that lay upon the
land.
You know, when you look at this spiritually,
you think you could be describing America today.
You could be describing Great Britain or any
of the once great centers of gospel preaching.
Upon the land there are now coming up
thorns and briars.
Those are always the mark of the curse
of sin.
We read that upon all the houses of
joy and in the joyous city, these thorns
and briars are coming up.
Now, you think of that.
You think of churches across England.
And you'll find many of these in New
England as well.
So, the Atlantic obviously hasn't made any difference
to it.
But you think of houses that once were
filled with weeping souls seeking Christ.
Where once hundreds and thousands gathered under the
preaching of the Word of God.
And today they're either boarded up or they're
sold off as warehouses or for some other
carnal means.
What's the reason the thorns and the briars
are coming up in what were the houses
of joy and the joyous cities?
The palaces are forsaken.
The multitude of the city left.
The forts and towers are dens forever.
The defenses are gone.
The wild animals, as it were, are free
to roam.
And the reason they will do this until
the Spirit be poured upon us from on
high.
Isaiah 32 and 15 is a text of
Scripture that should be emphasized in every Christian's
Bible.
It should be much of his heart as
he gets before God in prayer.
It should be a verse that is never
far from your mind as you're pleading with
God.
This situation will persist.
Until when?
Until we get a bigger congregation.
No, sir.
Until we become a richer congregation.
Until we can afford to flood the country
with radio and television programs about the gospel.
No, sir.
All those things may indeed be useful to
God.
But this awful situation will persist until the
Spirit be poured upon us from on high.
Once the Holy Ghost is poured forth, thank
God the death is dispelled.
There's no substitute for a night pouring of
God the Holy Spirit.
I was reading C.
H.
Spurgeon's comments on this subject.
And he said this.
I thought it was a very insightful statement
from a man who had preached his way
through a great revival period.
And indeed, whose entire ministry, you would say,
was lived in the fire of revival.
I suppose there was never a week in
Spurgeon's ministry unless it would have been a
couple of weeks after the great fire in
his first service in Surrey Gardens.
Or the great cry of fire.
For there was no fire in the Surrey
Gardens Music Hall when he was just knocked
out for a couple of weeks.
But I suppose there wasn't a week other
than that.
That people were not coming to Christ.
That there wasn't a tremendous move of the
Holy Ghost.
Here's a man who, for his entire London
ministry, preached not to hundreds, but to thousands.
Six, ten thousand people.
Every service.
Great things were done.
This is what he says.
Whenever the church declines, one of the most
effectual ways of reviving her is to preach
much on the Holy Spirit.
After all, He is the breath of the
church.
Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there
is power.
What a statement.
Do you see why I lament and have
done so again and again through these studies?
That since we started studying the person and
work of the Holy Spirit, I have had
more Christians come and say, I have been
seeing for years, some of them many years,
and they are confessing this is the first
time that any preacher has ever taken time
to go into what the Bible teaches concerning
the person and the work of the Holy
Spirit.
What a tragedy.
Here is the greatest English preacher, possibly of
all time, certainly the greatest English pastor in
modern times.
The greatest soul winner.
And yet, he can say, if we are
going to have revival, we must have an
emphasis on the Holy Spirit.
He is the breath of the church.
But in our day, we have seminars on
methods.
We have books on psychology.
We have everything dreamed up in order to
pump people up.
And all the time, what we need is
the power to pray God down in the
person of the Holy Ghost upon His church.
There is no substitute for the outpouring of
the Spirit of God.
If you read the experience of eminent saints
in revival, you will discover that though the
revivals obviously took place at different times in
history, and under different political and social circumstances,
and though there were many points of divergence
as to their conduct, etc.
Yet, they have certain things in common.
If you look at the men who were
involved in revival, always, without exception, their hearts
were ravished as God the Holy Spirit revealed
Christ to them in all the glorious reality
of His person.
And they were overwhelmed as Christ was made
real and personal and sweet to their souls.
It wasn't just that they believed the doctrine
of the deity of Christ.
It wasn't merely that they believed in the
blood atonement.
It wasn't merely that they would say yes
to His current intercession.
They believed those things.
Naturally, you couldn't be saved without believing them.
But suddenly, these things gripped their heart.
Suddenly, Christ was not a doctrine, but He
was a living Savior.
Suddenly, their hearts were overflowing with Christ's love
to them and their reciprocating love to Christ.
That was always the case.
And along with that mighty, overwhelming, ravishing experience
of Christ, and you'll notice I say an
experience of Christ, not of the Holy Ghost.
Oh, I know they experienced the Holy Ghost,
but any experience that pretends to be an
experience of the Holy Ghost that does not
lead a man to Christ is not an
experience of God's Spirit, but of another spirit.
For we have seen again and again that
the work of the Spirit is to lead
man to Jesus.
But along with that, there was another matter.
Always as the Holy Spirit came upon them,
a fire was kindled in their heart.
A fire of holiness.
That's the first thing.
A fire of holiness.
We have much pretended and professed revival today.
It doesn't take you to be a theologian
to see your way through all the arguments.
I confess that if you were to sit
down and listen to all the conflicting, charismatic
claims of the day, your mind would soon
be in a turmoil.
But I tell you this is a very
simple way to find out whether a movement
is a movement of the reviving power of
the Spirit of God or no.
Revival always produces deep holiness.
There is a fire of holiness.
Our God is a consuming fire.
And people in revival will have the burning,
blazing purity of holiness stamped upon them.
There is also a fire of love.
A love for Christ.
A love for the means of grace.
In revival it's not hard to get people
out to hear the Word of God.
In revival you'll not get people moaning that
the preacher preached too long.
They moan that he didn't preach long enough.
And I tell you if I was the
preacher that would certainly strain credulity.
But still, that's the way it is.
In revival it's not hard to get them
to the prayer meeting.
In revival it's not hard to get them
to pray in a prayer meeting.
In revival the only difficulty is to stop
the prayer meeting.
Oh, there's a fire of love.
A love for the means of grace.
A spiritual love.
Oh, people still have to eat.
They still have to drink.
They still have to clothe their family.
They still have a job to do.
In the Isle of Lewis they said in
the revival that they got more work done.
But they got it done in a lot
less time.
Because the people were not given to materialism
and then adding on the church and its
services to that.
They were given to the Lord and they
just did what they had to do to
be good employers or good employees.
As the case may be.
But then a love for the things of
God.
Then of course there's a love for souls.
There's a love for the perishing.
There's a melting of the heart.
You know, I feel and fear that if
there's one thing missing among God's people today,
it's a love for souls.
We can watch as sinners go to hell
and it never touches our heart.
Once the Holy Ghost comes that changes.
I tell you, it's because of a lack
of the experience of the Holy Spirit filling
our hearts that we can have such an
attitude.
And of course then there's a fire of
boldness.
With holiness and love there will come boldness.
In Acts chapter 4, when the people of
God were wanting the fullness of the Spirit,
what did they pray for?
They prayed for boldness.
I'm not talking about a brass neck.
There are some tactless people who imagine that
their impolite attitude and tactics amount to boldness.
That's all they amount to so often is
foolhardiness.
I'm not talking either about the kind of
notion that says to you, well, I have
to witness to ten people this week and
therefore by hook or by crook I'm going
to do it.
And so just to rid your conscience of
guilt you get through your little spiel.
I'm talking about a people who are so
made like Christ in holiness, who are so
made like Christ in love, whose hearts are
so thrilled with what they have of Christ,
and they're so stamped with what they see
of eternity that they have a boldness to
speak for Him.
And they fear neither man, woman, nor devil
in the cause of Jesus Christ.
That is always the case when there is
an experience of the fullness of the Holy
Ghost.
But sadly, we have too much of a
religion of the head, of the mouth, and
of the hand, but very little of the
heart.
A religion that can think its way through
the deep conundrums of theological questions.
A religion that can profess great things, has
all the vocabulary, but none of the vitality.
A religion of the hand that has the
mechanical doing, but without the heartbeat of a
powerful manifestation of the Spirit of God.
Isaiah says there can be no bettering of
the situation spiritually until the Spirit be poured
upon us from on high.
Declension will dominate until we experience the outpouring
of the Spirit of God.
Thus we can see the cause of the
condition of the declension that we find so
often in the church of Jesus Christ.
But as I look at these texts, thank
God there's hope.
Because in Micah 2 and 7, I have
to note that seasons of declension in the
church are never beyond the power of the
Spirit of God.
The question, is the Spirit of the Lord
straightened?
The answer implied is no.
And then again, do not my words do
good to him that walketh uprightly?
The answer is yes.
Now the Spirit of God is not straightened.
He's not put in any straight jacket of
impotence or idleness.
He's not straightened by the devices of the
wicked world.
He's not straightened by the grip of the
devil and the souls of men.
He's not straightened because of our position in
the program of prophecy.
So many people want me to believe because
of the lateness of the hour, we can't
expect much from God.
I think we must be reading a different
Bible.
He's not straightened by the fury and the
faithlessness of apostates.
All the ecumenists and rationalists and otherists that
are infesting the church today can never straighten
the power and operation of the blessed Spirit
of God.
He's not straightened by the magnitude of the
problem that confronts his church.
In fact, the very opposite could be said
to be true.
In Isaiah chapter 59 and verse 19, there
is that outstanding and immutable promise.
When the enemy shall come in like a
flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall raise
up a standard against him.
Now that's still in my Bible.
I believe it.
The enemy has come in like a flood.
There is a very wicked generation in the
world today.
The grip of the devil and the souls
of men is horrendous and horrific.
We are late in the program of prophetic
truth.
Apostates are on every hand, cursing the work
of God.
The problem is enormous.
When the enemy comes in like a flood,
the Spirit of the Lord shall raise up
a standard against him.
We look with dismay on the current situation.
We have to be honest.
It's very difficult to be optimistic about what
you see going on in the world and
in the church today.
It's difficult to be optimistic.
But when you go back to Ezekiel 37,
now I know this is a prophecy and
it has yet a literal fulfillment.
But I believe also it's an outstanding parable
that has a continuing fulfillment.
In Ezekiel 37, we read, The hand of
the Lord was upon me and he carried
me out in the Spirit of the Lord.
Note those words.
Because it's only in the Spirit that you
can see the rest of Ezekiel 37.
You look at this with the eyes of
the flesh and you'll come to a different
conclusion.
But when you're in the Spirit, you'll see
this.
He set me down in the midst of
the valley which was full of bones and
he caused me to pass by them round
about.
And behold, there were very many in the
open valley, and lo, they were very dry.
Here's the vision of the valley of dry
bones scattered upon the face of the earth.
And he said unto me, here's the question,
Son of Man, can these bones live?
Let's bring it into different language with the
same meaning.
Can God send revival, such a revival as
will bring life to scattered, dead, dry bones?
Ezekiel was not making any strong responses of
faith at this point.
He said, O Lord God, thine owst.
Thine owst.
But the Lord said, prophesy upon these bones
and say unto them, O ye dry bones,
hear the word of the Lord.
Now what could be more stupid than standing
talking to an excavated graveyard with all these
dry bones scattered over the place?
What could be more stupid in the mind
of the flesh than to look at those
bones and start preaching to them?
That's not the way, you would say, to
see anything much done.
But that's God's way.
And I tell you this, my friend, these
bones can live.
And they live first when God gets a
man filled with the Holy Ghost.
And when a man filled with the Holy
Ghost starts doing what the world says is
stupid, and starts preaching to dead bones, telling
them what to do, and by the mighty
power of God, they'll do it.
When the Spirit of God comes in, as
He later does in verse 9, and breathes
life into them, these slain shall live.
So there's nothing could be more discouraging than
the situation that Ezekiel presents, but God could
send revival.
When you think, very often we read history,
you know, with rose-tinted spectacles, everything was
great in the past and everything's gruesome today.
Well, that's not quite true.
Because if you were living back in those
days, they were saying the very same thing.
Well, if you read in the period of
England, just before the Great Awakening, under Whitefield
and Wesley and others of their movement, Delamore
says in his Life of Whitefield that the
life of England between 1730 and 1740 was
foul with moral corruption and crippled by spiritual
decay.
Well, you would think that he was writing
of our day, wouldn't you?
Foul with moral corruption and crippled with spiritual
decay.
If you study that period of English history,
you'll find that there were various great marks
of sin.
There was unfettered uncleanness.
This went back to the restoration of Charles
II to the throne of England, where he
brought in with him a mighty reaction against
Puritanism.
And there was unfettered uncleanness running like a
polluted stream from the court of the king
right through the nation.
There was, starting in 1662, political persecution for
Christians when, in the year of the Great
Ejection, many, many of the greatest ministers England
ever had were thrown out of their pulpits
and forbidden to preach.
Since they couldn't preach, at least in the
places that they once preached, it led them
to great prayer.
And I thoroughly believe that the great awakening
in following generations had largely its roots in
the praying of persecuted saints.
You can't tell me that John Bunyan's twelve
years in Bedford jail, crying to God, were
years that God ignored.
Prayers that God didn't answer, I couldn't believe
that.
Revival came as the result of prayer.
There was political persecution.
There was a deadening deism across the land.
The church was gripped with its form of
rationalism.
These were the people that believed that God
had wound up the universe like a clothmaker
winding up a great cloth, and then He
just left it to take its way through
faith.
But He was not involved.
They didn't want a religion that touched the
heart.
They hated a religion that had what they
called enthusiasm.
Fanaticism.
Now, I don't think that fanaticism is good
in the church of Christ.
But if anybody were to cry, I love
the Lord to these rascals, he was a
fanatic.
If anybody were to feel Christ in his
heart, he was a fanatic.
If anybody were to warn of hell, he
was a fanatic.
Oh, what a curse rationalism is in the
church of Jesus Christ.
We have it today.
Then there was what I would call a
deficient defense of the gospel.
Against deism, the church in England produced some
of the greatest theological minds that it has
ever known.
Many of you have heard of Butler's Analogy,
supposed to be one of the greatest apologetic
works in the history of the Christian church.
Now, I've had that book for years.
I have read parts of it.
And I want to tell you, there are
many things that I would rather do than
have to read the rest of it.
And I confess that I maybe should have
read every page and every line.
But my, it's dry.
It's as dry as dust.
I think it was John Murray in Westminster
used to say when they came to dry
things, and people said, Professor, this is dry
as dust.
He would say, yes, but it's gold dust.
Well, you couldn't say that about Butler's Analogy.
It's just plain, ordinary dust.
That's the kind of defense.
It was very learned.
Very learned.
But it was cold.
And it was Christless.
I have often said that it's my belief
when the church of Jesus Christ sinks into
this kind of logical apologetic that is not
centered on the vitality of the risen Christ,
that it's a sign of her death and
decay.
And it never accomplishes anything.
Oh, we have this deficient defense of the
gospel today.
Devoid of spiritual power.
Do we not find it even in fundamentalist
churches?
Yes, they stand for what's right, thank God.
And I do not for one moment undervalue
the importance of that stand.
But I want to tell you that for
a man to stand up and say, I'm
against Rome, I'm against the World Council of
Churches, I'm against the Communists, I'm against this,
I'm against the other thing, and there is
no preaching of Christ.
There is none of the fire and the
life-transforming power of Christ.
I tell you, for a man to do
that is to add to the problem, not
to solve it.
There were in those days a carnal clergy,
ministers.
Thank God the non-conformist churches weren't nearly
so bad in this regard, but carnal clergy,
ministers who were so taken up with this
world.
Do we not have those men today?
Do we not have this in the pulpit
and in the pew?
People who are more taken up with the
business of this world than they are with
the business of eternity.
We had also the separatists, the non-conformists,
the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Baptists.
They were all there in England in the
18th century, but they were stagnant separatists.
Their preaching was cold.
They were weak many times in theology, and
those who weren't split up with needless divisions.
I don't need to draw the parallel with
today.
It's too plain for anybody to miss.
And the result was a godless nation.
Yes, my friend, that was England before the
Great Awakening.
God in His grace raised a small handful
of men, starting in the University of Oxford,
and in grace in other places, as in
Wales, He was preparing other small handfuls of
men.
At the same time over in New England,
He was dealing with other small numbers of
men, and He was warming their hearts.
They were usually men of great intellect.
Here in the United States, the leader of
the Revival was, at least in New England,
Jonathan Edwards, arguably the greatest philosophical and theological
intellect this country has ever produced.
These were usually men of great intellect.
But it wasn't their intellect that brought revival.
These were men whose hearts God had touched.
Thank God they found that however dark the
day, it was not beyond the power of
the Spirit of God.
He is evil.
You could very easily get disappointed in our
day, but it's not beyond the power of
the Holy Ghost.
Therefore, the final thing I note is this,
that in seasons of declension in the church,
we should be much in prayer for revival
from the Spirit of God.
There is a striking verse toward the end
of the prophecy of Isaiah, chapter 62, verses
6 and 7.
I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O
Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day
nor night.
Ye that make mention of the Lord, margs
no reading, ye that are the Lord's remembrances,
you who are God's reminders, keep not silence
and give Him no rest till He establish
and till He make Jerusalem a praise in
the air.
What an injunction.
Watchmen.
Who are the watchmen?
They are the men who mount the tower
of prayer.
They are the men who are there to
remind God of His covenant.
God says to these prayer warriors, though He
even seems to suffer long with them, He
says, Give your God no rest until He
establishes Jerusalem, until He pours out His Spirit,
until He sends revival.
Why and how can you do that?
The answer, verse 8, The Lord hath sworn
by His right hand and by the arm
of His strength.
And He goes on to give the promise.
We have a God of covenant faithfulness.
We have a God who has given His
promise.
And therefore we ought to pray.
And that without ceasing giving Him no rest
until He send us revival.
You listen to His promise.
Isaiah 41 and 17 When the poor and
needy seek water and there is none, and
their tongue faileth for thirst.
I've often pointed out in reading that verse
in prayer meetings, that these are not just
people who are finding it hard to pray.
These are people who are so weak that
they can hardly utter a word in prayer.
Their tongue fails for thirst.
With spiritual thirst their tongue, as it were,
has swollen in their mouth.
And they are incapable of great wordiness in
prayer, but with a broken heart.
They are before God.
And it says, I, the Lord, will hear
them.
I, the God of Israel, will not forsake
them.
I'll open up the rivers and hide places
and fountains in the midst of the valleys.
I'll make the wilderness a pool of water.
And so on.
Revival promised.
There is a beautiful promise in the 44th
chapter of Isaiah.
How often we need to plead it.
I will pour water on him that is
thirsty.
Floods upon the dry ground.
I will pour My Spirit upon thy seed.
My, here's a promise for every Christian parent
to be pleading.
Here's a promise for every father and every
mother worried about their children growing up in
this sinful and adulterous generation in this day
when the devil is using every act and
every device to damn their souls.
Lord, give me water.
Give me the floods on this dry ground.
And pour out Your Spirit on my seed.
That's the promise that He gives us.
What a promise it is.
Those who have heard the tape of the
Isle of Lewis revival will remember that in
one part of the island as they were
praying and the revival had not broken there,
one old elder of the church got up
in the middle of the night in an
all-night prayer meeting and lifted his heart
to God with these words, Lord, Thou hast
said I will pour water on him that
is thirsty.
Lord, as best I know my heart, I
am thirsty.
And he called on God, yea, challenged God,
that He would now fulfill His covenant promise.
And God did it with immeasurable power.
Therefore, we can pray.
Isaiah prayed in 64 in verse 1, O
that Thou wouldst rend the heavens and come
down that the mountains might flow down at
Thy presence.
When I come to church, when I come
to the meetings, that is very, very frequently
my prayer.
O that Thou wouldst rend the heavens today.
God, take us out of the ordinary.
We were singing from the 85th psalm, the
prayer of the psalmist for revival.
And what did he cry?
Wilt Thou not revive us again that Thy
people may rejoice in Thee?
Habakkuk prayed in chapter 3 in verse 2,
O Lord, revive Thy work in the midst
of the years.
In the midst of the years make known
in wrath, remember mercy.
These are the prayers we ought to be
praying.
And praying them will entail having the Lord
be with us.
As we come to the close of this
meeting this morning, if you're a Christian, I
want you to realize when you pray God
send revival, you're praying that God will start
dealing with your sin and start dealing with
your carnality and start dealing with everything in
your life that's grieving to God.
In the 80th psalm, I commend it much
to your very careful perusal.
Pray through it.
In the 80th psalm, the psalmist is looking
back on what the Lord did.
He's the shepherd of Israel.
He sits between the cherubim.
He led Joseph like a flock.
And yet here they were in an awful
situation.
And what's he praying?
He's praying, Lord, stir Yourself up!
Stir up Your strength before Your people!
Ah, but as soon as he starts to
pray for revival, what happens?
God starts to convict him of sin.
And he prays, Turn us, O God!
Cause Thy face to shine upon us, and
we shall be saved.
Three times in that psalm, he prays, Turn
us, O God!
Then, O Lord God!
And then, O Lord God of hosts, the
three great descriptions of our God.
He's the God of heaven.
He's the God of hosts.
He's the God of the covenant.
And here we're praying, Lord, Turn us to
Yourself.
You know, you can pay all the lip
service you will to revival.
But while you're a carnal man, you're just
a liar before God.
I know that's a strong thing to say
to a Christian, or one who names the
name of Christ.
My friend, if you pay lip service before
God and the things of God, and you
have a heart yet uncircumcised, you have a
heart that's still set on the world, and
you're more interested in jobs and money and
houses and lands and pleasures and pastimes than
you are in your God, then you may
have a name that you live.
You've got to wonder, are you not yet
dead?
If you're going to pray for revival, you're
praying that God will deal with your sin
and the thing that grieves His Holy Spirit.
Judgment must begin at the house of God.
The temple has to be purified.
God must then dedicate it to the Lord.
What a beautiful picture it is.
When Solomon dedicated the temple, the glory of
the Lord filled the house of the Lord.
Your body is the temple of the Holy
Ghost.
This church and every other church that's true
to Christ is a living temple of the
living Christ.
When the temple is cleansed and dedicated to
Christ, then the Spirit of the Lord will
fill the house of the Lord, and we
will then again prove the Holy Spirit to
be the Spirit of revival.
May God make that our real experience.
For His namesake.
29615 We invite you to listen each week
at this same time for a message from
Faith Free Presbyterian Church.