Deuteronomy chapter 32, the 32nd chapter of the
book of Deuteronomy.
Hear, O ye heavens, and hear, O earth,
the words of my mouth.
My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my
speech shall distill as the dew, as the
small rain upon the tender herb, and as
the showers upon the grass, because I will
publish the name of the Lord, ascribe ye
greatness unto our God.
He is the rock, His work is perfect,
for all His ways are judgment.
A God of truth and without iniquity, just
and right is He.
They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not
the spot of His children.
They are a perverse and crooked generation.
Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish
people and unwise?
Is not He thy Father that hath bought
thee?
Hath He not made thee and established thee?
Remember the days of old, consider the years
of many generations.
Ask thy Father, and He will show thee.
Thy elders, and they will tell thee.
We have in this chapter a portion of
the so-called Song of Moses, and I
cannot at this moment read to you the
whole of this song, but let me remind
you that it is the farewell discourse, the
farewell address of the prophet Moses, spoke as
he did now on the occasion when he
was to see the children of Israel proceed
on their journey and to enter into the
land of promise, to cross the Jordan, while
he himself was to rest from his labors
in the hour of death.
And thus knowing by the inspiration of God
that this was his position, he speaks these
final words to the people whom he had
led these many years in the wilderness.
And the subject of this farewell is to
give Israel a kind of preview of their
history, by the inspiration of the Spirit of
God.
He indicates to them not simply that which
God had done.
He calls upon them not only to remember
what their fathers had told them and their
elders had spoken, but he bids them also
to look into the future.
And if you read this chapter, you will
find here written a record of the changing
condition of Israel as it would be in
generations to come.
They would become, he says, the people who
would be self-satisfied and wax fat, who
would be complacent and who would grow indifferent
and who would become unmindful to the God
whom their fathers had known.
And in that day, there would come not
only a departure from the living God, but
they would become an afflicted, burdened people.
And there is the record given of the
judgments of God that would be visited upon
Israel in the days of their backsliding.
That record goes on down to the end
of verse 35.
To me belongeth vengeance and recompense.
Their foot shall slide in due time, for
the day of their calamity is at hand,
and the things that shall come upon them
make haste.
And then in verse 36, there is the
commencement of a new statement.
And it is to the words of verse
36 of this 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy, to
these words I call your attention in this
hour.
For the Lord shall judge His people, and
repent Himself for His servants, when He seeth
that their power is gone, and there is
none shut up or left.
Now I hope in the days of this
week which lie before us, if God will,
to speak in the mornings on the subject
of revival in the history of the church.
I was invited to speak on the subject
of church history, as you know, and it
therefore at once appealed to me that I
should take up this particular aspect of the
history of the church.
And I did not wish to commence, as
it were, lecturing on church history this Lord's
Day evening, but rather I select this text
of the Word of God, which brings together
in a summary form some of the great
features which are embraced in all the revivals
which have marked the history of the church.
We have in these words a statement that
when the church of God, that is Israel
as it then was, when that church turned
aside from the Most High, when she became
indifferent to His Word and complacent in sin,
then God's judgment and wrath would come upon
them.
And we know that it is a truth
that candlesticks have been removed from churches and
fruitful fields have been made barren by unbelief
and by backsliding.
But we also find here in verse 36
that in the midst of a situation of
that kind, there is promise made concerning those
who are still God's servants and who are
still His true people.
Our verse says that the Lord shall judge
His people and repent Himself for His servants.
Now these words we need to be clear
we don't misinterpret.
Having read the words of pronouncement of God's
condemnation in the previous passage, we might too
easily suppose that the word judge in verse
36 is a reference also to that same
judicial work of God in condemnation.
But it is not that.
The word judge, as I am sure you
know, frequently means in scripture to deliver, to
plead for, to act on behalf of.
It would be a great mistake to read
the Old Testament and to interpret the word
judge, wherever it occurs, as an act of
wrath, as an infliction of punishment.
It certainly does mean that in many places.
But it also has this sense of God's
action in terms of protection and deliverance and
defense.
For example, you read in Psalm 10 and
the 18th verse of that Psalm that God
is the judge of the fatherless and the
oppressed.
The orphan, the child that has no human
parent to defend its rights, God, says the
scripture, is its judge.
He will act for that orphan.
He will act for the fatherless.
Or again in that messianic passage in the
prophet Isaiah, the 11th chapter of Isaiah, we
read that when Christ comes that He will,
with righteousness, judge the poor.
He will be the deliverer of the poor
and of those that have no helper.
And the sense, therefore, here is that God
will act on the behalf of His people
for their deliverance.
And that is confirmed by the word that
follows, and He will repent Himself for His
servants.
That is to say, after a dispensation of
sadness and of barrenness and affliction, He will
turn again to His people.
He will repent.
He will turn from affliction.
He will turn to pity.
And He will grant them His mercy.
And when will He do this?
When, we read, when He seeth that their
power is gone and there is none shut
up or left.
When there is no garrison shut up in
the city to defend them, when there is
no soldier left in the field, when there
is none shut up or left, when their
power is gone, when they are at their
lowest state in abject need, then the God
who is their Saviour will plead for His
people and He will repent for His servants
and He will do it when He seeth
that their power is gone.
So that we have in these words a
gracious promise, a promise made to the powerless,
and a promise which not only has had
one fulfilment, but rather which is successively fulfilled
in the purposes of God's redemption in the
history of the Church.
As you know, when the people of God
passed through the waters of the Jordan and
into the land of Canaan, they were a
people endued with strength and power.
The Eternal God is thy refuge and underneath
of the everlasting arms, as thy days God
said, so shall thy strength be.
And in the power of that promise, the
children of Israel entered Canaan, they conquered the
land and they manifested that strength which belonged
to Jehovah and which was given to them.
But, as we turn over the pages of
the Old Testament, we find a very different
scene.
We find days when indeed they send away
their power.
We see Samson blinded by the Philistines in
the prison house of Gaza.
We see the Jews languishing in Babylon as
it were a great valley of dry bones.
Already it seemed in their graves and at
an end of themselves.
And their deliverance from that condition came not
through any activity of their own, but because
God in faithfulness to His own promise did
what He said He would do here, that
when His own people reached this condition of
abject need, then He acted for them and
He revived them.
And this is the history of the New
Testament church.
The church which turned the world upside down.
The church which emptied the temples of the
Greek and Roman world and which added to
the church by thousands under the preaching of
the gospel with the Holy Spirit sent down
from heaven.
That same church we find, do we not,
in later ages languishing and slumbering.
You know the parable of our Lord Jesus,
how while the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered
and slept.
Not only the foolish virgins who had no
oil in their lamps, but the wise also.
And there have been periods in church history
conspicuous for the slumber of the church.
It seemed that they were not alive to
the realities of eternity.
And not only does the Scripture speak of
God's people slumbering, but of God also sleeping.
That is to say times, as we read
in Psalm 78, when God delivered His strength
into the enemy's hands.
When God seemed to abandon His own glory
and then, after a period when God did
not act to vindicate His name, then, says
the psalmist, He awoke.
He awoke as out of sleep.
And like a mighty man that shouteth by
reason of wine, God began to act in
His own cause.
And these are not simply metaphors, but they
represent truths.
There are periods when the Holy Spirit is
poured out in great power and authority.
When the church advances in the world, not
simply by additions to the numbers in ones
and twos, but when it seems as though
nations are born in a day.
When, as on the day of Pentecost, three
thousand were pricked in their hearts and cried,
what must we do to be saved?
And that has happened not once, but many
times in the history of the church.
But then we see also these periods when
the church languishes, when great numbers of her
members seem to be asleep, and when the
truth becomes something that is dealt with coldly.
And then God judges and revives His people
and pours out His Spirit.
This then is the promise of God's Word.
If it were not for that promise, where
should our hopes rest in this day?
But here it is written, and written for
our comfort.
Now, as we look then at these words,
let us consider in the first place, what
is the power that the church is expected
to have?
You note that these words speak of their
power being gone.
It is not possible to judge whether our
power is gone unless we know what that
power actually is.
And it is not enough, I am afraid,
in this day in which we live, to
speak of the necessity of power in the
church.
For we may speak of power, and yet
we may not understand what that power is
that God commands His people to possess.
I believe that as we look at this
passage, and as we open our Bibles, we
find in the first place that the power
which the Holy Spirit gives to the church,
first of all, is the power of His
own Word and His truth.
Power is not initially what you or I
may feel.
It is not what experiences we have.
It is not what feelings we enjoy, but
it is primarily the truth which God has
given to His people.
And if you read this book of Deuteronomy,
you will find again and again that the
exhortation of the Holy Spirit is that these
words, God says, these words shall be in
thy heart, and thou shalt, God says, talk
of them as thou sittest in thine house,
as thou walkest by the way.
It is this Word that shall be taught
to children, for then God says, chapter 4
and verse 40, that these commandments which I
command thee this day, thou shalt keep that
it may go well with thee and with
thy children after thee.
And in this chapter from which we are
reading, chapter 32, when Moses comes to the
end of his words in verse 45, he
says, verse 46, and he said unto them,
set your hearts unto all the words which
I testify among you this day, which ye
shall command your children to observe to do,
all the words of this law, for it
is not a vain thing for you, but
it is your life.
And as we turn over into the book
of Joshua, we find exactly the same truth.
As Joshua was commanded to enter the land
and to conquer, it was with these words
of commission that this book of the law
shall not depart out of thy mouth day
nor night, but thou shalt meditate therein, and
then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and
then thou shalt have good success.
So that the Word of God is the
sword of the Spirit, and it is by
the truth which God has given us, it
is by obedience to that truth, it is
by the proclamation of that Word that the
church finds her strength.
What advantage then hath the Jew, says Paul?
What advantage hath the Jew?
Looking back over the long history of the
Jew, this he says chiefly, that unto them
were committed the oracles of God.
This was their first privilege.
He hath not dealt so, says the psalmist,
with any nation.
He showed his Word unto Jacob.
He gave his statutes unto Israel.
My friends, we are living in a day
when we can no longer assume that everyone
believes this.
Not even every professing evangelical Christian.
We are not living in a time which
is characterized by dependence upon the truth alone.
The way in which the church has reasoned
in the days of her greatest prosperity, the
way in which she reasoned was this, that
we have God's Word.
If we honor that Word wholly and fully,
then no matter what men may do, no
matter what disfavor we may incur from men,
then we will know that God Himself will
honor His own Word.
I do not believe that that is the
prevailing conviction in our churches today.
Just a few weeks ago, there was, as
some of you may know, a great Christian
book-selling congress.
Booksellers were represented from far and wide the
Christian and evangelical booksellers.
And before that congress met, there was a
publication which prepared people for the meeting and
the great sales of books.
And part of this published material was taken
up with an article on the art of
Christian book-selling today.
And the thrust of that article was to
say this, that we are living in a
time when people are not really moved by
what they think.
It's not after all what people think that
matters.
People are emotional beings and they have to
be appealed to emotionally.
We must get through to their senses.
And therefore if we are to sell books,
we are to think in these terms.
Perhaps if we show the attractiveness of literature
in terms of, I believe it listed, even
financial help, certainly how to achieve a reputation
for oneself, how to get confidence, or if
there is a romantic note about it, these
are things which interest people.
Now that is certainly a good pagan observation,
but it's not what the church believes.
And then when you, if you went to
this congress, you were told, well, come to
our bookstall and see what we publish and
you can get free candy from us and
look at our books or buy free balloons
or get free balloons and also look at
our books.
Let me contrast that with this statement by
an American writer of the last century, a
Presbyterian minister in Philadelphia, who in this lengthy
book, as you see, wrote a history of
the log college presbytery in the Pennsylvania area,
the Chamonix Creek, the area which was so
greatly blessed by revival in the 1740s.
This man was a minister in that area
and he traced the presbytery records of all
the churches in that area over a period
of about 80 years after the revival.
And then when he comes to the end
of his book, he draws up certain lessons
which he believes were underscored by this history.
Now let me give you some of his
words.
This is his great conclusion.
Be it therefore the inflexible purpose of every
Christian, every church, and every body of churches
to cling with a grasp that will not
be relaxed to the truth, to the truth
alone, to the whole truth, to the truth
in doctrine, in worship, and in practice.
We can afford to be branded with old
fogeyism if old fogeyism can do what this
history shows us has been done.
We may well say, especially to those who
are at the commencement of their course, cling
to the truth, pure and simple, to the
truth and not to mere feelings or impressions,
to the truth and no tampering with falsehood,
to the truth it is heaven born, to
the truth it is from God, and He
knows best what we should believe and what
do, to the truth it has been well
tested by many a generation, to the truth
it is a rock upon which our all,
both for time and eternity, may be rested,
to the truth it is sure to bring
after it the rich blessings of its author.
God has given us His own word.
And God says of His word, is not
my word like as a fire and like
a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?
We need to add nothing to the word.
We need no entertainment.
We need no humor mixed with the word
of God.
We need the unvarnished word of God preached.
And when that is done, that word is
able to convict and to cleanse and to
purify the life of the church.
When you read of any great revival period,
for example, of the reformation in Europe in
the 16th century, and when you see so
many men and women ready to consign themselves
to death, to execution, to poverty.
When men and women, as it was said
of some of those martyrs, at their funeral
stake, they embraced the flames like a cool
breeze on a hot summer's day.
They did so out of the persuasion that
they had and possessed the truth.
They knew that Christ justified ungodly sinners.
They had no doubt as to God's word.
And they gave their all that that truth
might not be compromised.
I say that this, in the first place,
is the power which the Holy Spirit gives
to the church.
When 3,000 were converted at Pentecost, it
was through nothing other than the preaching of
God's word.
And I believe, with regard to the day
in which we live, that we have wandered
so far from the truth in all its
purity and fullness, that what is needed before
we can expect scenes of great revival, what
is needed is a recovery of the fullness
of the word of God.
And I hope and pray that it is
one of the most encouraging signs of our
day that there is such a work of
recovery going on.
There is a love for the truth.
There is to be seen amongst the young
a hunger to know and to understand and
to fear and to love the God of
whom we read in history and in scripture.
Let us say something then, secondly, on the
power of faith.
And this, of course, is connected with the
word and with truth.
If we really have the truth, that is
to say, if it is in our hearts,
then there is inevitably a response of faith
and that activity of faith gives to the
church all the energy that she needs.
We read of those in Hebrews chapter 11
who through faith subdued kingdoms and wrought righteousness
and obtained promises and quenched the violence of
fire and out of weakness were made strong
and so on.
We do not read of any other great
experiences that they had, of any great feelings
or excitement that they were possessed with, but
that in faith they acted upon the word
of God and with that faith they overcame
and did the work of God.
And this is the emphasis of the scripture.
If thou canst believe, said our Lord Jesus
Christ, all things are possible to him that
believeth.
And this is the victory, says John the
Apostle, that overcometh the world, even our faith.
And so when William Carey with just some
13 pounds sailed to India in 1793 and
when men said it was absurd and impossible
and yet he went and by God's strength
accomplished that work in that vast land, it
was through no other power than the power
of receiving and believing the word of God.
You know how beautifully John Bunyan puts it
when he speaks of Christian and hopeful falling
asleep and falling asleep on the ground of
giant despair and awaking at last to find
themselves in the clutches of this fearful giant
who drags them into doubting castle and throws
them into that dungeon and how they languish
there through the week and are terrified by
the threats of the giant and as he
shows them the bones of pilgrims which he
says he has broken in previous years and
all this goes on until that Saturday night
when Bunyan says Christian and hopeful began to
pray and towards the dawning of the morning
he said Christian jumped up as a man
half amazed and he said to hopeful Oh,
what a fool I've been!
I have in my bosom a key called
promise which is able to open every lock
in doubting castle and hopeful said that's good
news brother pluck it out of thy bosom
and try and so they did but that
is all that faith does we have the
word of God we are to obey that
word in living faith and God will do
his own work and he will open every
door that is necessary for the furtherance of
his kingdom and of course with that must
be indeed linked the power of prayer these
three things are all bound up together when
Moses tells the people that their strength and
their power lies in obedience to God's precepts
he is also one who reminds them by
his personal example that through prayer they could
overcome through prayer they overcame the Amalekites through
prayer Jacob Atheniel had his name changed for
as a prince he wrestled with God till
the breaking of the day and the book
of Hosea says by his strength he had
power with God yea he had power over
the angel and prevailed we cannot understand the
mystery which is involved in prayer but we
know that when hearts are poor and needy
we know that when the Holy Spirit makes
intercession with groanings which cannot be uttered then
it is that God acts and works for
his people as they pray if ye abide
in me and my word abides in you
and notice that that comes first if you
love me and if you cleave to my
truth then said Jesus ye shall ask what
he will and it shall be done unto
you leaving then that consideration what is the
power that God expects us to have these
three things it is commitment and cleaving to
his word and doing that in faith and
in prayer and in dependence upon God's own
strength and power and in every age of
revival in every time when the church has
reached those high water marks of influence and
authority in the world it will ever be
found that these characteristics were most prominent in
her life and similarly in ages of departure
these things have been progressively less seen now
I must pass over my second head but
let me mention it to you and you
can work it out perhaps yourself from this
32nd chapter of Deuteronomy we might have considered
what happens when this power leaves the church
what happens when this power is gone and
you will see here that when that happens
then sinners perish then God himself as we
read laments that men are not wise and
do not know their latter end secondly we
read also in this passage how when that
power is gone the church becomes weak and
effeminate and men pleasing and worse than all
that when that power is gone God himself
is dishonored for the church represents God in
the world when the church is weak and
powerless the name of God is involved in
that weakness my friends we can't this day
divorce ourselves from the countries to which we
belong we belong to great countries our nation
in the British Isles has been favored by
God and God says those that honor me
I will honor and those that do not
honor God shall be likely esteemed and there
has come upon us shame and contempt by
reason of our sin against God and when
the world thinks today of Britain and when
the world thinks also I'm afraid of America
they think do they not of pleasure loving
materialistic society it was not ever thus ours
were lands once where the truth was honored
where men feared God's name when the world
knew that we were lands where his name
was sanctified and where his commandments were upheld
and why is it that our societies have
so greatly changed it is not that there
is any change in the natural man not
at all it is that the change has
come in the church that the church has
no longer been able to command the attention
of the people of our lands there was
a time and I hope to indicate something
of that to you there was a time
in the history of your own nation when
the church was growing faster than the population
when men were added to the church in
such numbers that the influence of the gospel
was making great strides in the whole earth
that is not so in our day however
much we have to thank God and to
observe his hand in the conversion of individuals,
we are not living in days when the
world is being reaped in our lands and
before we imagine that the primary thing to
do then is to begin more earnestly to
evangelize we need to ask ourselves well what
is the church really meant to be and
what is the power that God has given
to the church to do his work and
does that power characterize us is that our
position and the promise of this verse which
we cannot dwell on now is that God
will judge his people and repent himself for
his servants not when he sees that they
begin again to surrender themselves to him or
when they begin to repent but he will
do it, says our verse when he seeth
that their power is gone, that is to
say it will be his own glory that
will prompt him to act it will not
be that we come to a position when
again God can look upon us with favor,
it will be that we undeserving and helpless
as we are, without strength, will be looked
upon by a gracious and omnipotent God who
will pour out his Holy Spirit and by
the Gospel will again build his church and
reap the world which is ripe to harvest,
that is the promise of our verse God
will do this when he seeth that their
power is gone let us then look only
to him and pray him to have mercy
upon us, shall we pray O Lord our
gracious God enable us to bow before thee
knowing that we are truly deserving of nothing
in thy presence and yet grant us that
faith and that hope in thee which comes
through the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ
we thank thee that thou hast raised him
to glory at thy right hand we thank
thee that thine arm is not shortened, that
thou cannot save and we pray that in
this day we may see the evidence of
thy glory and of thy majesty in our
midst do thou O Lord revive us again
in the midst of the years and bless
this night the preaching of thy word amongst
all nations continue with us here grant that
we may have hearts to hear and to
obey thy word and pardon all our sins
as we ask it in the merits of
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Amen