And as I said, after this evening, we'll
only have one more study in the book
of Habakkuk.
We're looking this evening at just two verses
from chapter 3, verses 1 and 2.
And then, God willing, next week we hope
to look at verses 3 to 19, the
remainder of the little book and the remainder
of chapter 3.
And let me say before we read these
verses that this message has weighed very heavily
upon my heart, especially today, as I meditated
upon it.
And let me say that I hope that
when I come before you, that each message
that I bring has been pulled, as it
were, through my soul before I bring it
to your soul.
And I can testify this evening that this
message was a hard one to pull through.
Verse 1 and 2.
A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet upon Shigeonoth.
O Lord, I have heard thy speech and
was afraid.
O Lord, revive thy work in the midst
of the years.
In the midst of the years, make known.
In wrath, remember mercy.
If you were to turn with me to
Isaiah chapter 65 and verse 8 this evening,
there is a verse there that displays a
spiritual principle that is applicable not only to
the New Testament church of God, but to
the Old Testament people of God, the children
of Israel.
In Isaiah 65 and verse 8, part of
the verse, we read this.
As soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth
her children.
As soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth
her children.
I want to say that this is the
most fundamental work of God in our world
today.
Where the people of God, the New Testament
people of God, travel and only when they
travel, they go through pain and anguish and
travel, will they bring forth their children.
Let me ask you a natural question this
evening.
Can ordinary children be born without pain?
Of course they can.
The natural world, the natural system is that
childbirth brings pain.
Can there be birth without travel?
The natural world testifies of it, that without
prevailing, without travel, without persistence, without hard sweat,
work and tears, whether it be in the
natural world of childbirth or even in the
natural farming world of harvest, without travel there
will be no harvest, there will be no
fruit, there will be no blessing.
Now the natural world testifies of these things.
Yet how is it as the church of
Jesus Christ, as the children of God, we
ourselves cannot see that it is the same
in the spiritual realm, that nothing is possible
with God without travel.
Do we travel when we see a starving
child upon the television?
Do we travel when a loved one dies
and we watch them as they are lowered
into the grave?
Do we travel in physical, mental, emotional pain
in our lives and the lives of those
we love?
We shed tears, we have anguish, we have
pain, we have the biblical word travel, yet
we can watch as the souls of a
dam enter into eternity, while the world around
us perish and we do not travel.
Was it not Jacob in the Old Testament
that we remember, that it says that he
travelled until he prevailed with God?
But let me ask us all, and let
me ask the church of Jesus Christ at
large today, is anyone doing that now?
Are there any Jacobs of God now?
You remember that his name was changed.
He was changed to Israel because he was
a prince.
He prevailed with men and with God.
But is there any man in our world
today that prevails not just with men, but
with God?
We pray.
We pray for a few moments daily.
We are content to spend a few minutes
a day on our knees and we pride
ourselves in the fact that we have given
some time to God.
And what happens is we expect extraordinary things
from God without extraordinary efforts on our behalf.
What was it the great saint said?
Expect great things from God.
Then attempt great things for God.
Now let me say this.
I believe in the providence of God.
I believe in the absolute sovereignty of God.
And perhaps I would challenge that there is
none who believes it as strong as I.
But let me say that there is a
spiritual law and it is this.
That whatsoever a man soweth, he reaps.
You can sow for good in your life.
Or you can sow for bad.
You can sow with sin.
Or you can sow with prayers and care.
But there is a spiritual law.
Although God is sovereign, although His providence prevails
and everything is according to His will in
this world, there is a law that if
we weep, if we pray, if we shed
tears, if we fast, if we supplicate the
throne of God in prayer, if we sow
in this way, it is inevitable and God
is obliged that we will reap a harvest
and we will reap the Word of God,
it says, in due season if we faint
not.
We ended last Monday evening on the subject
of revival.
We are taking it up again at this
passage.
And our subject this evening is Revive Thy
Work, O God.
If you remember last week, we went through
the minor prophets, some of them, and we
looked at how they presented the children of
God with their sins before they even brought
the message of God, of how they could
be redeemed and brought back from their sin.
Do you remember what was called upon?
The Lord says, Rend your hearts and not
your garments.
He said, I don't want your money.
I don't want your pride.
I don't want your sacrifices or your incense.
I want your broken hearts.
I want them before Me, for they to
obey is better than sacrifice.
Turn with me to the book of Joel.
You have Daniel, then you have Hosea, and
then you have Joel.
And again in this little prophecy, you have
the same pattern within the Word of God.
And in chapter 1, in verse 13 and
14, we have what God expects of His
leaders in the Old Testament, and I believe
what He expects of His leaders now, right
here in this present age.
Verse 13 and 14.
God says, Gird yourselves and lament, cry, ye
priests, how ye ministers of the altar, come
lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of
My God, for the meat offering and the
drink offering is withholden from the house of
your God.
Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly,
gather the elders and all the inhabitants of
the land into the house of the Lord
your God, and cry unto the Lord.
Chapter 2 and verse 15.
Blow the trumpet in Zion.
Sanctify a fast.
Call a solemn assembly.
We read of it in the book of
Daniel, if you were to turn to Daniel
in chapter 9.
We read that God led Daniel to bow
upon His face in chapter 9 in verses
3 and 4.
And we read this, that Daniel testified, And
I set my face unto the Lord God
to seek thy prayer and supplications with fasting
in sackcloth and ashes.
And I prayed unto the Lord my God
and made my confession and said, O Lord,
the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant
and mercy to them that love Him and
to them that keep His commandments, we have
sinned and have committed iniquity and have done
wickedly and have rebelled even by departing from
my precepts and from thy judgment.
I read the story today of the life
of a man called John Smith.
His biographer wrote these words, and I want
you to listen carefully about this man's life.
He said, I have often seen him come
downstairs in the morning after spending several hours
in prayer with his eyes swollen from weeping.
He was seen introduced to the subject of
his anxiety by saying, I am a broken
-hearted man.
Yes, indeed.
I am an unhappy man, not for myself,
but on account of others.
God has given me such a sight of
the value of precious souls that I cannot
live if souls are not saved.
O, give me souls, or else I die.
I believe that Habakkuk was a man with
a spirit like that.
We can tell it from these two verses
that we've read together this evening.
Look at them again.
A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet and his
prayer is found in verse 2.
O Lord, I have heard Thy speech and
was afraid.
O Lord, revive Thy work in the midst
of the years.
In the midst of the years, make known
in wrath, remember mercy.
This is the first thing that I want
us to see this evening from these two
verses.
One, he prayed in faith.
He prayed in faith.
A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet upon Shegionah.
Strange word.
What does it mean?
Well, it seems from Psalm 7, which is
another Shegionah psalm, and remember that this passage
that we're reading this evening, the whole of
chapter 3 is a psalm in itself.
You can see that because three times within
it in verse 3, verse 9, and verse
13, you have the word silah that you
find right throughout the book of Psalms.
And all that means is a little pause,
a musical pause.
But also, this word Shegionah, it seems to
be a musical setting of the psalm, and
you can see that from verse 19, the
second half of it, at the very end
where it says, to the chief singer on
my stringed instruments.
In other words, this was a setting, a
musical setting, a way that this psalm that
Habakkuk had written, a way that it ought
to be played and performed.
The amplified translation of the Bible translates this
word Shegionah.
It means set to wild, enthusiastic, and triumphal
music.
This, as we have found in the book
of Habakkuk, chapter 1 was a burden of
Habakkuk.
Chapter 2 was a vision of Habakkuk.
And chapter 3 is a song of Habakkuk.
What kind of a song is it?
Just as the amplified Bible translates it, it's
a wild song.
It's an enthusiastic song.
It's a victorious, a triumphal song.
And it may even mean, Shegionah, that it
is a song for the wanderers of God.
Whatever this little word Shegionah means, I believe
that it means this.
Confidence.
Habakkuk had confidence.
This psalm that we read from verses 1
-19, the whole of this psalm, is a
psalm of praise, a psalm of assurance towards
his God, that he knew what his God
was doing in the world.
He was sure that God was in control.
Think about it for a moment.
Is that the Habakkuk that we've been familiar
with over the past few weeks?
Is it?
Full of questions.
Asking God, God, what are you doing in
your world?
Why are you raising the Chaldeans?
Why are you picking a more evil people
than your own people to judge them and
to chastise them?
Lord, what are you doing?
Questioning his ways and his works.
But in this beautiful chapter, we have this
rhapsody of faith.
For this man, Habakkuk, has seen what God
is doing in his world because God has
revealed to him that the just shall live
by faith.
So Habakkuk turns and he sings this psalm
of faith that he, in the midst of
all his sorrow, in the midst of the
degradation and impending punishment, that he will trust
his God.
What is this?
We find it in Philippians 4.
You have no need to turn to it.
You know it well.
Philippians 4, verses 6 and 7, where we
read, Be careful for nothing.
Don't be anxious about anything.
But in everything by prayer and supplication, with
thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto
God.
You know, that's the way God wants us
to come to Him.
He doesn't want us to come in doubting.
He doesn't want us to come as double
-minded men and women blowing about.
He doesn't want us coming doubting His power,
His ability, His sovereignty in the world.
But God loves to inhabit the praises of
His people.
He loves to come into our lives, into
our assemblies, into our worlds, into our circumstance,
because we praise Him, because we know the
potential of the God Whom we serve.
No doubt, Habakkuk had formulated this psalm for
the people who would go into captivity in
Babylon.
He had written this psalm for one reason,
to stimulate these people's faith, to bring them
to prayer, that when these things that were
prophesied in the vision in chapter 2 would
come to pass.
Remember, they hadn't come to pass yet.
But once they had come upon Judah, that
they would have some way to approach their
God, that they could pray to their God.
For let's face it, the only answer in
any situation in this life is to turn
to God in prayer.
Do you not notice that Habakkuk's a changed
man?
He's no longer questioning God, but he's trusting
God.
And it's not simply because prayer changes things.
And that's true.
Prayer does change things, but more importantly than
all that, prayer changes people.
In the book of Genesis, in chapter 20,
in verse 7, we read of the man
Abraham.
And Abraham traveled into a foreign land where
there was there a king of Bimelech, and
he lied to the king of Bimelech.
He had a beautiful wife, and he says,
right, we'll say she's my sister, because if
he finds out that she's my wife, she'll
kill me tomorrow.
What happened was that he told that lie,
and God brought a curse on all of
Bimelech's house and the whole nation.
And Bimelech turned to God and asked God
what he was doing, because he was in
ignorance of the sin that he was committing,
going after Abraham's wife.
And you remember that God turned in Genesis
20, in verse 7, and said to him,
He is a prophet, and he shall pray
for thee.
Prophets were praying men.
Prophets were men who worked on their knee.
They were even found at times to pray
for those that they prophesied against.
They were men who were stimulated to pray
because they were prophetic.
They knew in some circumstances what the future
held.
Therefore, they could pray intelligently before God.
And primarily, the fact is this, because they
were men of God, they realized that the
proper object of divine ministry is to obese
the soul in the presence of God, and
to be drawn out in worship, in adoration
and in prayer to Him.
God's Word comes to Habakkuk.
And I want you to see what he
does.
As God's Word comes to this man's soul,
after his waiting upon God, he prostrates himself
before God in an attitude of prayer.
I want you to see that Habakkuk's prayer
is a prayer of God.
Look at chapter 2 and verse 4.
We read there the great promise.
The great promise of all ages.
Behold, his soul which is lifted up is
not upright in him, but the just shall
live by faith.
That was God's answer to prayer to Habakkuk.
He was wanting to know how the children
of Judah were going to get through this
experience.
And you remember that God told him in
verses 1-4, this is the message.
This is the vision.
Write it down.
Tell it abroad that the just shall live
by faith.
That was God's promise to Habakkuk.
What did he do?
He lifted it up.
He took it.
He took God's Word.
And we see in chapter 2 and verse
1 that he sat upon the top of
the watchtower.
And I believe he had that promise.
And he was pleading.
He was asking in faith the promise that
God has given him.
And now in chapter 3 and verse 2,
I believe that he's found the answer to
his problem.
Why?
Look at verse 2.
He says in the first part of it,
O Lord, I have heard Thy speech and
was afraid.
Can I say this gently to us all
here?
I think we underestimate the responsibility that we
have as the children of God.
Why?
Because God judges us upon what He tells
us to do.
In other words, when God reveals something to
us, when God gives us a Word, just
as He gave to Habakkuk, the just shall
live by faith, God would have judged Habakkuk
if he had not have lifted that promise
up, if he had not have claimed it,
if he had not have supplicated before his
God until God brought the realization of that
promise.
He would have been judged.
And here we have another spiritual law that
we find in Proverbs 28 and verse 9.
And let this burn into our souls this
evening.
He that turneth away his ear from hearing
the law, even his prayer shall be an
abomination.
We think it's the homosexuals the abomination, don't
we?
Well, they are.
We think it's the liar.
We think it's the proud.
Look, we think it's those seven sins that
are an abomination to God.
But God is saying to His people this
evening and throughout all eternity, that if you
hear My Word and you disobey it, you
are an abomination.
Your prayers and your iniquities and your sins
have separated between you and your God.
But Habakkuk listened to God's Word and he
pleads in faith, knowing as we found out
last week in chapter 2 and verse 20,
that the God whom he pleads to is
the Lord who is in His holy temple,
that the whole earth keep silence before Him.
His travail produces a sublime rhapsody of faith.
One, because he took his eyes off the
surrounding circumstances in his life.
Two, because he submitted his circumstances to God
in prayer and in faith.
Three, because he patiently waited for the Word
from God upon his request.
Four, because when the Word was revealed, he
accepted it, he claimed it, and his perplexity,
his anxiety disappeared.
Why?
Because he submitted to God.
Believer, let me ask you a simple question.
Have you submitted to God?
But secondly, he knew God's theme.
What do I mean by that?
Well, if you look at the second verse,
it says, O Lord, I have heard Thy
speech.
And what that means is that can be
translated, I have heard Thy theme.
If you look at the margin, it may
say report.
It's the same meaning as Isaiah 53, where
we read there about the report about the
Lord's servant, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The testimony of Him, His theme, His story
about Him.
And here we have in verse 2, I
have heard Thy theme.
Habakkuk knew God's theme.
He knew the record of God's eternal mighty
deeds.
And this record, this testimony of whose God
is, what God is like, and what His
God has done in the past, it fills
him with awe and wonder.
It fills him with praise, because he believes
in faith that what God did in former
days, He is able to do today.
That's what Habakkuk believed then.
Do we believe that now?
Do we?
Remember, in Habakkuk's day, he had to get
over what seemed to be happening.
Remember, God had said to him in chapter
1 and verse 5, Look ye among the
heathen, because I am working a work now,
even though you can't see it.
It's going on behind closed doors in spiritual
senses.
I am working now.
And he was remembering that God, His God,
the One with Whom he would have to
do, was the God of power.
We'll see next week.
But he went into that further in the
psalm from verses 3 to 15.
And if you even look at verse 15,
you see there that he says, Thou didst
walk through the sea with Thine horses through
the heap of the great waters.
And what's he talking about?
He's talking about the great exodus from Egypt.
He is rejoicing in the fact that although
God had said before the time that the
Judeans would go into captivity in Babylon, that
the God Whom they had was the God
Who had delivered them in the past from
Egypt.
If you turn with me to Psalm 44,
you will see there another expression of the
God Whom they adore.
Psalm 44.
In verse 2, we read this.
Lord, how Thou didst drive out the heathen
with Thy hand and plantest them!
How Thou didst afflict the people and cast
them out!
Verse 10.
Thou makest us to turn back from the
enemy, they which hate us spoil for themselves.
Verse 12.
Thou sellest Thy people for naught, and dost
not increase Thy wealth by their price.
Verse 24.
Wherefore hidest thou Thy feasts and forgettest our
affliction and our oppression.
These people are looking to the past saying,
look what You did in years gone by,
Lord, how You delivered Your people.
But we, Thy people, now in this day,
in this present age, are afflicted by the
enemy.
And it seems, Lord, that Your...
Do you know the verse 1 of Psalm
44?
We have heard with our ears, O God,
our fathers have told us what work Thou
didst in their days and in the times
of old.
Verse 9.
But Thou hast cast off and put us
to shame and goest not forth with our
armies.
What do they say?
O God, our help in ages past, but
what about our hope for years to come?
What was their cry?
Was it a cry of despair?
Is it the cry that we find in
Psalm 89 and verse 50 where we read,
Remember, Lord, the reproach of Thy servants, how
I do bear in my bosom the reproach
of all the mighty people.
The whole world, all the nations are laughing
at Thy children.
Lord, where are Thy former lovingkindnesses which Thou
swarest unto David in Thy truth?
Lord, what are You doing in Your world?
Where is Your former glory?
Where is respect and vindication for Thy name?
Is that not our cry tonight?
Is it not?
Sure, we know it all too well.
What the Lord can do.
What the Lord has done in our land
in years gone by.
In our nation.
How God has moved.
We read about 1860 and 1859.
We read about cold rain in that town
that we all know so well.
Where three young men decided to preach in
the open air and incidentally young men know
that there is power in preaching in the
open air.
They walked into that square, that marketplace in
the centre around the town hall.
And they stood in amazement as 15,000
people just crowded into that gathering.
And there was absolute silence.
And you could hear a pin drop and
every word of the preacher was heard by
all.
And out of that silence there went the
cry of a young man as he fell
on his knees in conviction of sin.
And then there was a cry from here.
And a cry from there.
And cries all around of penitent sinners under
the Holy Ghost conviction.
And the town hall was overwhelmed with souls
seeking Christ.
And the ministers couldn't deal with it all.
There was such a move of God in
our land.
That's right.
We know about it in Wales.
For the Spirit of God fell on a
man called Evan Roberts.
And He changed a nation for Christ.
We know all about it in the Hebrides
where a man was lifted up and men
and women were lifted up.
And it says that the souls were falling
even before they got to the churches in
conviction of sin.
They were like the heather all around the
mountains falling before the face of God.
Oh, we know all about it.
May not have seen it with our eyes.
But we know what God can do.
And we may cry today, like this man
Habakkuk.
We may cry like the children of Israel.
We may cry like a man Gideon.
Oh, Lord, if the Lord be with us,
why then has all this befallen us?
And where be all His miracles which our
fathers told us of?
The cry of the world to us this
evening may be, Where is thy God?
Where is He?
But thirdly, Habakkuk had great fear.
This is how he got a spiritual success.
You see, Habakkuk had great fear.
And we read that in verse 2.
O Lord, I have heard Thy theme, Thy
speech, and was afraid.
O Lord, you see, what happened was that
the Word of God filled this man Habakkuk
with fear as he realized something of the
depravity of his own heart.
And remember, he was a prophet of God.
He wasn't one of the ordinary sinners.
But his heart was so filled with his
iniquity and transgression and the state of the
people at large that like Isaiah, he cried
out, Woe is me, for I am undone.
I am a man of unclean lips, and
I dwell in the midst of a people
of unclean lips.
And he realized, and the sooner the better
we realize it, that on the grounds of
merit, we have nothing to plead.
Nothing.
You know what happened?
He learned what the boldest of men of
old learned.
Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Elijah, that when God
speaks, you quit.
When God speaks, you listen.
When you hear, you must fear.
When you hear, you must listen to what
God is saying.
And I wonder, is there some Christian or
unbeliever here, and God has been speaking to
you for some time, and you've been hearing,
but you haven't been fearing?
We must be.
And I believe that it's not the world
that needs to repent.
It's the church of Jesus Christ.
The church of Jesus Christ needs to come
back to their God.
Judgment must begin in the house of God.
They need to begin to hear the Word
of God and fear the Word of God
once more.
And it would do us good to take
a lesson from the godless Babylonian emperor, Belshazzar,
who says of him that when he heard
the Word of God, his countenance changed.
His thoughts troubled him so that the joints
of his loins were loosed and his knees
moved against another.
Habakkuk's success was that he feared.
He feared the Word of God.
But fourthly and finally, not only did he
pray in faith and he knew God's fame
and he had great faith, but he pleaded
for fire.
If you get nothing else, get this.
He said, Revive!
Revive thy working image to the years.
Make known in wrath.
Remember mercy.
What was he asking?
Lord, revive!
What's that word mean?
Well, it simply means to renew, to revive
again, to renew, to regenerate, to put life
into once more.
It's a word that's used in Genesis 7
and verse 3 of the fowls of the
air that went into the ark.
So that when they were deposited again upon
the earth, they would reproduce.
They would produce life.
That's one way the word's used.
Then it's used again in Psalm 80 and
verse 19.
But this time talking about the renewing of
life.
Then it's used again in Genesis 12 and
verse 12 concerning the preserving of life.
This means putting life back into dead bone.
He said, revive thy work.
What is his work?
Well, I suspect that the work he was
talking about was the work that God had
promised him in chapter 1 and verse 5.
Behold ye among the heathen in regard and
wonder marvelously for I will work a work
in your days which ye will not believe
though it were told you.
Verse 6 For though I raise the Chaldeans.
That is the work that is talked about
here.
Habakkuk has now turned from despising what God
was going to do and because of the
infusion of faith that was injected into his
heart from the very Holy Ghost of God,
he could now turn and bless the hand
that had smitten him.
He was now thanking God for a work
that he had once despised.
What else can his work possibly be?
John Calvin, the great reformer, said that it's
probably the condition of his people.
Isn't that right?
That is God's work.
His people, isn't it really?
That is where God works.
Among His people.
And you remember that we have gone in
week after week about the condition of the
Judeans.
How sinful they were.
And Habakkuk is asking God to revive His
name, His reputation among His people.
He's asking Him to do a few things.
First of all, He's asking Him to do
something for His own cause.
Psalm 138, verse 7 and 8, we read
this.
Revive that even when it walks in the
midst of trouble.
And Habakkuk is crying, Lord, even though Thy
people are into the very depths of hell,
metaphorically speaking, in their iniquity and their sin
and in their blasphemy, even in the midst
of their trouble, revive them.
Do something for Thy name.
Know something?
God answered His name.
And in the book of Ezra, chapter 9,
verse 8, we read this.
Ezra 9, verse 8.
We read that once the children, and remember
that God did bring them into captivity.
God didn't stop that because it was in
His will.
But what God did do was in verse
8 of chapter 9 of Ezra, and now
for a little space, grace hath been shewed
from the Lord our God to leave us
a remnant to escape and to give us
a nail in His holy place that our
God may lighten our eyes and give us
a little reviving in our bondage.
God revived a small remnant of us.
God revived them.
And you can even see it in the
fiery furnaces of Babylon.
The Hebrew children, remember they were in the
furnace.
In the midst of the trouble, God didn't
deliver them from Babylon itself, but in the
midst of what He revived, He kept a
people for Himself.
He kept His name clean amongst a remnant.
He said in verse 2, in the midst
of the years.
What does that mean?
In the midst of the years, well, it
could mean from the promise that God was
going to deal with His people to the
actual finishing of the implementation of that judgment.
That's what it could mean.
That in the middle of it, as we
read in Ezra chapter 9, that there would
be a small amount of people that would
remain faithful to God.
John Calvin thought that it meant between Abraham
and Christ.
Because if you think of it, he's right.
Because if the Jewish nation had been wiped
out here because of their sin and God
had judged them, we would not have seen
Christ.
And the seed would have been cut.
Christ's line would have been dead.
And we would have no Savior.
That's why he pleaded, Revive thy work in
the midst of the years from Abraham to
Christ.
But you know what I believe it means
more than anything?
Habakkuk was saying this.
God, grant us a gracious revival before ever
thy ultimate purpose for history is worked out
in its final fulfillment.
Lord, revive us before you come.
You know what I believe?
I believe that that's a warrant for me.
And it's a warrant for you to turn
to our God.
And we cannot halt, we cannot slow down
the return of the Lord Jesus Christ in
one sense.
God's calendar is final.
And as we look around at an evil
world, and we look at the disasters and
the sin and the iniquity that is ripening,
and the cup of iniquity that is almost
full for this world to drink, God is
ready.
He's ready to wrap it up like a
tablecloth.
But I believe here we have a warrant
to ask Him, Lord, just before you do
it, revive us once more.
Make known.
And that's the next thing He asks.
Make thyself known.
That's what it means.
In the midst of the years, make known.
Whatever.
This is what He's saying.
Whatever happens to the nation of Israel and
Judah, let not Israel's God be forgotten.
Whatever happens to the church of Jesus Christ
today, oh, please God, let Thy name be
vindicated.
Let the name of Jehovah, the Holy, Holy,
Holy One, never be trodden in the dust.
And as He asks at the end of
this verse, in wrath remember mercy.
You see, all we can plead, not just
as an unseeved sinner, but as a reconciled,
regenerate child of God, all we can still
plead in the midst of our sin is
the mercy of God.
And as these children were taken into captivity,
and the city of Jerusalem was sacked and
racked, and the walls were demolished, and the
temple was pulled down, and there was starvation,
and there was hunger, and the bodies littered
the streets.
And it says that the mothers took their
very child and boiled them in a pot
to eat them because of the situation.
And Jeremiah the weeping prophet, in the midst
of it all, was crying out to God,
yet he could still say, it is because
of the Lord's mercies that we are not
consumed, because of His compassions feel not.
That's why we're not wiped out.
Because in wrath, and I believe that God
is angry at His church, in wrath He
remembers His mercy.
Know what my prayer is?
And I hope your prayer is this.
The psalmist of Psalm 85, verses 4 and
6.
Turn us.
Turn us, O God, of our salvation, and
cause Thine anger toward us to cease.
Wilt Thou not revive us again that Thy
people may rejoice in Me?
I finish by saying this.
Why is there no revival?
Why?
There is no revival because there is no
prevailing prayer.
Paul said we wrestle not.
And we wrestle not.
There is no revival because there is no
fear of God, but there is fear of
men.
You remember the apostle who stood and declared
before his enemies that there is no other
name under heaven given amongst men.
There was no fear in that man where
Elijah stood before the prophets of Baal and
mocked them and laughed at them, where Gideon
knocked down the high places.
They idolized the statues.
He knocked them down for God.
Men of courage.
Men of no fear.
Why is there no revival?
Because there is no spirit-filled lives.
Be ye filled with the Holy Ghost.
Are you?
There is no revival because there is no
holiness.
And Christians are laughed at now because they
won't go to certain places, because they won't
watch certain films, because they won't hear the
name of the Lord Jesus Christ blasphemed from
their television sets or wherever.
And they are seen as eccentric and strange
and peculiar because they seek to live holy
lives.
Why is there no revival?
Because we have cheated the Gospel to the
nightclub.
Why is there no revival?
Because we take the glory.
It's my church.
My reputation and my books.
My achievements and my learning.
It's me, mine and not thine.
And as someone who says, were we to
walk and were we to be half as
hot as we think we are and a
tenth as powerful as we say we are,
our Christians would be baptized in blood, not
just water and fire.
Why doesn't Christ warm us up?
Why doesn't He?
You know something?
I don't know why, but oh that God
would lift us out of our rut and
out of our rot and that He would
judge us again and bring a mighty revival.
That great evangelist Gypsy Smith was asked on
one occasion, how do you get a revival
in your life, in your personal life?
And he stood there and he said this,
stand where you are, man, and take a
piece of chalk and draw a circle right
around you.
And he said, stay there on your knees
until God revives your soul.
Are you ready for that?
I believe that there is a call upon
every man and woman in this age and
it's the call of the voice of none
other than our Lord Jesus Christ.
And you know what he says?
This is not for the unbeliever now.
This was spoken to a church in the
book of the Revelation.
Believers, behold, Christ says, I stand at the
door and knock.
If any man hear my voice and open
the door, I will come in to him
and will suffer.
And he was me.
Know what that is?
Personal revival in your life and in mine.
Unite with me tonight and unite with Habakkuk
and say this, Lord, revive thy work in
the midst of the year.
In the midst of the years, make known
in wrath, O Lord, and our sins.
Remember thy mercy.
Let us pray.
Pass me not, O gentle Savior.
Hear our humble cry.
While on others thou art blessing, do not
pass us by.
Lord, come and revive the hearts of thy
people, we pray.
Revive us again and let the glory as
thou didst promise in time of old, that
the glory of the latter house may be
greater than the former.
Lord, come and do exceeding abundant, more than
we could ever ask or even think.
Lord, come.
Come to our hearts.
Come into our lives.
Put thy holy finger on the things that
we need to be done with.
Revive us, Lord.
Amen.
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