I looked for a man (Keswick Convention)

Our speaker tonight, Charles Price, is a friend to all of us who are regulars at the Keswick Convention. He's the principal of Cape and Ray Bible School in Carnforth. Cape and Ray is an international Christian missionary organization involved in evangelism and in Bible teaching. The work of Cape and Ray has developed to include Bible schools and conference centers right around the world. Charles leaves in a few days' time to take up a new post as the senior pastor of the People's Church in Toronto, Canada. I'm sure many of us will be praying for Charles and Hilary and the family as they make this transition. The majority of us in the tent this evening, and I include myself in that, have already been challenged and encouraged by Charles' ministry, and we do look forward now to hearing from God through our brother. Please join me in prayer for Charles as he brings God's word to us. Father, we thank you for your servant. I thank you for what he has meant in my own life, and many of us would say the same in this tent today. We commit him to you now, Lord, as he brings your word to us. Speak your word through him by your Holy Spirit. For the glory of your name we pray. Amen. Do you want me to start? Do you want me to sing? I have a very moving voice, so when I sing people move. We have a technical problem, apparently. We could have sung out him after all. Just talk amongst yourselves. No, don't talk. Can I avoid touching the stand with my hand? I'll try. I forget these things when I preach. I don't think of anything else. This is the World Mission Service at the Keswick Convention. When we look at the tremendous needs of our world, and in particular our involvement in them, and we're not merely taking an academic interest in this, at the end of the message I'm going to give you today I'm going to invite you to respond to God, and I want you to know this in advance. There are many folks here, and we believe in all kinds of ways. God has been preparing you for this evening, and I'm going to lead you in a prayer of response at the end, and then we're going to invite you to leave your seats while we sing a hymn, come down here to the front. I'm telling you this now so it won't take you by surprise. There are two reasons for that, a very practical reason. We want to meet with you, pray with you. We want to take a record of your name that we can forward some literature to you in the next few days. There's also a spiritual reason. You remember this event. You look back and say, there was a night I said something to God, and that'll help you to stand with the response you make. I'm going to read a verse from the book of Ezekiel, which is going to be the basis of what I'm going to share with you. It's in Ezekiel chapter 22 and verse 30. God is speaking, and this is what he says, I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it. But I found none. The world of Ezekiel's day was in desperate need of spiritual renewal and revival, as of course is ours today. And God speaking in that situation says, I'm looking for a man, a person who would be my representative and stand in the gap. Now I want to talk about this with you. And we're going to look at three things regarding Ezekiel's world and also regarding our world. First of all, I want to talk about the conditions of the day. It's very important for us to understand the conditions of our day. King David had warriors around him described as the men of Issachar who understood the times and knew what Israel should do. And we need to understand the times and know what we should do within that. Ezekiel world was in turmoil. The Babylonian juggernaut was rolling through the Middle East, crushing nations, dominating states in its path and replacing Assyria which had been the superpower of the region prior to this. It took 20 years and three invasions for the Babylonians to defeat and capture Judah. The first invasion came when the Babylonians moved in, took away some of the royal family and the aristocracy to Babylon. Daniel was one of them. We know his story. Eight or nine years later, there was a second invasion when about 10,000 of the middle classes of Judah were rounded up and all the valuables of the temple taken to Babylon. Only the poorest were left. And then 10 years after that, there was the final invasion when Jerusalem was reduced to rubble and the temple flattened and the rest of the population taken into exile. And it was during this second invasion that Ezekiel was taken to Babylon where they settled by the Kibar River. And for 70 years, they remained in that land, licking their wounds and longing to get back home to Judah once again. And it was a world that was changing politically. All the familiar structures were being removed and changed. It was changing socially. All the old securities and expectations and norms were changing. It was changing spiritually. There had been something of a revival back in Judah after discovery of the book of the law in the temple in Jerusalem, but it had been superficial. It had a form of godliness, but no power. Now, of course, we're separated from Ezekiel's day by two and a half thousand years, but we too live in a day of incredible change. There's huge political change going on right now through Europe, other parts of the world. There's social change, spiritual change, technological changes that leave some of us confused. In 1960, the world population rose to 3 billion. Today, 40 years later, it is in excess of 6 billion. It's doubled in the last 40 years. Currently, the population of the world rises by more than 80 million every year. That means there are almost a quarter of a million people alive today beyond those who have died in the last 24 hours than there were this time yesterday. What kind of world is it that we live in? The world is 6 billion population. Just imagine reducing the world's population to a village of just 100 representative people. I'm going to give you some statistics. I took off the internet, put there by the Wisconsin Returned Peace Corps volunteers. Reducing the world to a village of just 100, you can probably imagine a room, a building. We've got 3,000 here today, but maybe you imagine a room of maybe just 100 people. Let me tell you what the 100 people would look like if they're representative of the 6 billion people of our world. Let me give you the ethnic profile first of all. 58 would be Asian, of which about 30 would be Chinese. 12 would be African. 10 would be Western Europeans. 8 would be Latin Americans. 5 would be from North America, and 1 would be from Australia or New Zealand. The dominant language of that village would be Mandarin. 17 would have that as their mother tongue. 9 would have English as their mother tongue. 8 would speak Hindi or Urdu. 6 would speak Russian. 6, Spanish. 4 would speak Arabic, and the remaining 50 would speak a mixture of Bengali, Portuguese, Indonesian, Japanese, German, French, and 200 other languages. It would be a mess, wouldn't it? Let me give you the religious profile of those 100 people. 29 of them would claim to be Christian. That is the largest religious body in the world. The World Christian Encyclopedia published last month in June this year says, Christianity has become the massively accepted religion of the developing countries in the so-called Third World. There are now 1.9 billion adherents to Christianity out of the 6 billion population, says the World Christian Encyclopedia. However, this takes, of course, in the widest possible definition of a Christian, and the bad news is 23 of those 29 would be nominal. Of those 26 would take it seriously. 14 would be Muslim. 13 would be Hindus. 12 would be Buddhists. 9 would be Confucian or Shinto. 5 would be animists in folk religion. 1 would be Jewish, and 17 would have no religious allegiance. Let me give you the economic profile of that community. 100 people. 80 of them would live in substandard housing. 50 of them would be malnourished. They would not go to bed at night, their stomachs satisfied, they'd go to bed hungry. 50 of them. 33 would have no clean or safe drinking water available to them. 70 of the 100 would be illiterate. Only 1 would have a college education. Only 1 would have a computer. And 60 percent of all the wealth of the village would be in the hands of 6 of those people. These are just some of the physical statistics, but every one of the 6 billion with whom we share this planet is more than just a body. We are spiritual beings designed to know and enjoy the God who created us. And spiritual need can't be measured in these kind of terms, but every man and woman and boy and girl that makes this planet their home was born in a state of separation from God, and needs to know what it means to become reconciled to God. You see this is the primary message of Ezekiel. When God speaks to Ezekiel in the verse I read to you just now, I look for a man among them who'd build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land. Why? So I'd not have to destroy it. But I found none, so I'll pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my anger. Because the message that Ezekiel brings us is that we need to be set free from the judgment of God and the greatest need in the world today. Despite all these other needs is that need for men and women and boys and girls to be reconciled to God, to know Him as a friend, not as a judge. And early in the book of Ezekiel God says, I want you to warn the people, not only of the judgment, it's not a negative message. You need to understand the diagnosis of man's condition and his alienation from God. But God says to Jeremiah, I want you to give him the positive message. There's a way out. I want you to warn him that he may come in repentance and discover the mercy of God. Ezekiel looked ahead, of course, to the messianic age when Jesus Christ would come into this world and make it possible for all men, women, boys, girls to be reconciled to Him. And this is still the primary need of humankind. It is still the primary message of the Christian church. But if that's the conditions of the day, Ezekiel's and ours, let me talk secondly about the call of the hour. Because God says, I looked for a man, a person among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land. Here God is looking. What is He looking for? He's not looking for a new strategy. He's not looking for new methodologies. He's not looking for new tools to get the job done. He's not looking for a message that is up to date. He's looking for a man, for a person. Ian Bounds in his excellent book Power Through Prayer begins that book by saying men are always looking for better methods. God is looking for better men, people. He means that was written 150 years ago before he was sensitive about sexism, as we should be. People. God's strategy in the world is always people. One of the great things that gives human beings dignity, gives us a sense of significance, gives us a sense of purpose, is that the almighty God who created this world not only wants to reconcile us to himself, but then indwell us by his Holy Spirit. And fantastically, he wants to use us in his purposes, allow us to become a participant in his strategy in the world. You see, God doesn't send angels to do his work in the world. God has angels. He never sends angels to the mission fields of the world. He doesn't send angels to evangelize your neighbors. He's got plenty of them. John in the book of Revelation counted them one day or tried to. He said there are 10,000 times 10,000 plus many more that could not be numbered. I think he did pretty well counting the 10,000 times 10,000. That's 100 million. By definition, the name angel means messenger. By definition, an angel is waiting for God to tell them what to do. But he never sends angels to do the work he's given human beings to do. He sent an angel to Philip once in Samaria in the New Testament, told Philip to go to meet a man on the desert road, but he didn't send the angel to meet the Ethiopian on the desert road. It would be a lot more effective, wouldn't it, if God sent angels to the mission field? It may be a lot cheaper, that's for sure. They wouldn't need plane tickets. They wouldn't need visas. They could just disappear if there's any problem. It would be a lot more effective if God sent angels to knock on your neighbor's door, wouldn't it, to talk to them about Christ? You see, when you do it, you're a little embarrassed because they know you. They've heard you shouting at your wife once in a while or your husband. They've seen your cat come flying through your window backwards, upside down. You parked your car in the wrong place. It's a little embarrassing because they know you and they know your failings. Wouldn't it be great if God would send an angel to knock on your neighbor's door, and when they open the door, tuck his wings behind his back and say, I've come to talk to you about Christ, and then to give some credibility, flap his wings in front of them. Don't you think they'd sit up and take notice? God could send angels, wouldn't the work get done, but he doesn't. God's cry in Ezekiel is, I look for a man. God looks for people, and you may be surprised at the very ordinariness of the kind of people that God sends. We asked the question, what kind of people does God send? What kind of people is God looking for, through whom, to accomplish his purposes in the world? And the answer is, it's very, very ordinary people. Look in the Bible. Let me give you some examples. Age doesn't matter. Moses was 80 when God called him and said, I want you to go and release the Israelites from Egypt. That's the time in life when people are saying, I've finished it now. Abraham was 75 years of age, and he wasn't particularly healthy, because the Bible says about him, he was as good as dead. So he wasn't a healthy 75 year old. God said, look up at the sky. He probably didn't lie down to do that. How many stars can you see? Abraham, I've got a fantastic agenda for the rest of your life. And Abraham became one of the great heroes of the Old Testament Scriptures, but it never began until he was 75. God uses old people, but then he uses boys like Samuel, who was just a young boy. And he heard a voice calling one night, and he said, here I am. I'm just a boy. I've been weaned from my parents, but not much more than that. God used Samuel. David was just a teenage boy. Mary was just a teenage girl when an angel appeared to Mary. You're highly favored. And God's biggest plan in history was implemented through a girl probably less than 16 years of age. You see, there may be some here and say, you're saying, maybe I'm too old. Maybe you say, if only it was 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago. God isn't going to say that to you. He's saying who you are now. You may even be 80 like Moses. Or some may say, well, I'm too young. Give me three years. Give me five years. Then I'll find out what God's agenda is. You may miss it altogether if you do that. God writes history with teenagers, you know, again and again in the Bible, not just teenagers, with children again and again. He writes his story. Age didn't matter. Education doesn't matter. Paul was educated. The feet of Gamaliel, one of the most revered teachers in Israel. Moses too had been educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, but the prophet Amos had no education at all. He said, I'm just, I just looked after sycamore trees. I just had a handful of sheep to shepherd around. But God called me, said Amos. It doesn't matter what your educational background is. Jesus called uneducated fishermen. They became the basic tools for which he turned the world upside down. Your social circumstances don't matter. God used aristocracy in the Bible. Men like Daniel who came out of the royal family. He used kings of Judah. He called Queen Esther into the kingdom of Persia. It says for such a time as this, God used the aristocracy, but he used peasants too. Amos was one again and many others. There are people who seem to have their lives all together like Solomon most of the time. There are people whose lives are falling apart. Hosea, whose wife became a prostitute and turned away from him. But God used Hosea even in that situation. There were demon possessed people like Mary Magdalene. There were adulterers like David who found forgiveness and a fresh start and God used him mightily. There were failures like Jonah to whom the word of the Lord came a second time and he got back on track. Now I don't care who you are. You probably find your parallel somewhere in the Bible. You see no one is exempt from this. The eyes of the Lord we're told in the book of 2 Chronicles run to and fro throughout the earth looking for someone whose heart is perfect towards God. That is who will live in dependence on God and obedience to God. And maybe the eyes of the Lord run up and down the rows in this big tent here in Keswick tonight. And he's looking for a woman, a teenager, a young person, looking for a married couple, looking for a man, looking for someone who's retired. I've got a job but I'm looking for somebody that I want to take and choose. You see there may be some of us who have always assumed it's everybody else that God uses but never me. That isn't true. It's you. You that God is looking for. But if they're the conditions of the day and the call of the hour, let me talk thirdly and finally about the crises of the moment. What is the crises of the moment? It's the end of that verse, but I found none. I looked for a man, says God, and to all the exiles from Judah by the Kibar River, I found none. Why could God not find someone? I'll give you three reasons from this chapter. These are the three reasons. They couldn't care they wouldn't share and they didn't dare. Let me explain that to you. They couldn't care enough in verse 7 to 9 of this chapter, Ezekiel 22. I'll read it very quickly to you. In you they have treated father and mother with contempt. In you they have oppressed the alien and mistreated the fatherless and the widow. You have despised my holy things and desecrated my Sabbaths. In you are slanderous men bent on shedding blood. In you are those who eat at the mountain shrines and commit lewd acts. In other words, to sum up those statements there, you are so preoccupied with your own self-interest, with your own self-fulfillment, you're too in love with your own sin that you couldn't care about the needs of others and God's agenda in the world. These are the people of God that he's addressing, by the way. If you read chapter 34 sometime of Ezekiel, he addresses the shepherds there, that is the leaders. The pastors is the word actually, same word. And he says to them in that chapter, you have not strengthened the weak. You have not healed the sick. You have not bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays. You have not searched for the lost. You see, you didn't care. You've not cared about people's needs, is what God says to them. You've not felt their hurts. You've not bound up their wounds. You've not searched for the lost. Let me ask you, is that true of you? You can be at Keswick, you know, but you actually couldn't care about other people. That was the first reason God couldn't find anybody. They couldn't care. Secondly, they wouldn't share. In verse 12, he says there, in you men except bribes to shed blood, you take usury, you, an excessive interest. You make unjust gain from your neighbors by extortion, and you've forgotten me. In other words, all you're interested in is taking. You're greedy. You take bribes. You charge excessive interest. You get unjust gain from your neighbors. You're guilty of extortion and robbery and oppression of the poor, and you mistreat the alien. Here it was in their power to bring relief. It was in their power to bring freedom and justice. Instead, they brought oppression. They wouldn't share the resources that they had. And the third reason is they didn't dare, because in verse 30, when he says, I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land, so that I had to destroy it, but I found none. There was nobody who would have the courage to become my man, my person in that situation. See, it takes courage to become God's man or woman in the world. It means you've got to be willing to stand out from the crowd. It means you've got to be willing to cease being preoccupied with only your own self-interest. You've got to say God, whatever you tell me to do, whatever it takes, I'm going to do it. When God called Moses, he needed courage. Go back to Pharaoh. Moses had been on the wanted list for 40 years. Pharaoh might recognize Moses, and Moses, you'd be arrested. It took courage. When God called Joshua, God promised him he would be with him and take him into the land of Canaan, but he said to him three times. At the time he called him, be strong and courageous, be strong and courageous, and the third time he said, be strong and very courageous, because Joshua, although I, God, am going to be with you, the explanation for the occupation of Canaan will not be your military skills, Joshua. It'll be that God has given you the land, but nevertheless, you're going to need courage, and I'm going to ask some of you to become courageous in stepping out and saying, God, I am willing to obey you. I'm willing to take on my heart your heart. Your concerns are going to become my concerns, and I'm willing for you to lead me to wherever you want me to go. I'm going to be willing to march to a different drumbeat, which has been the theme this year, but this is what it takes to march to a different drumbeat, and I'm going to ask many of you to say to God, maybe for the first time, others of you have said it years ago, but you've slid away from this. I'm going to make myself available to go to any place God might choose, at any time, at any cost, any place, any time, any cost. D.L. Moody was a great evangelist a century ago. He died a hundred years ago this year. He was listening one day in Chicago where he lived to a preacher from Dublin, Henry Morehouse, and Henry Morehouse said, the world has yet to see what God can do through a man wholly yielded to him. D.L. Moody said, by the grace of God, I will be that man. Many of you know how God wonderfully used him to impact the world, particularly in Britain and America, and the knock-on consequences of Moody's ministry continue right down today. There might be somebody here, and God is going to use you significantly to even change the world. In Glasgow there was a young man, his name was Kerr Hardy, who came to Christ through D.L. Moody's ministry. I understand he went to Moody at one stage and said, I don't know how I can serve God. Moody said, as long as there are men without work in Glasgow, as long as there are children without schools, as long as there are people without homes, as long as there are the sick without medicine, God will have something for you to do. Kerr Hardy began a movement to champion the rights of the poor, which became the Labour Party. Our government today can trace its roots back to D.L. Moody. Let me tell you about two ladies in their eighties. One was an aunt of mine. She died just a few months ago. Her friend wrote to me last week. These two ladies, both in their eighties, used to go down to the centre of their town in Norfolk on a Friday night and meet the young people who hung around on the streets. They would stay there till midnight and beyond sometimes. Somebody drove them down because they had a burden for the young people on the streets, but the person who drove them down stayed in the car and waited for them to take them home, didn't have the courage to go on the streets with them. They're both in their eighties. This letter this week talked about some of these people by name, talked about their names and said, this one has been on drugs, this one was drunk the first time we met him. The second time we met him he was abusive to us. The third time we met him he took a piece of literature from us. The fourth time we met him he said, will you pray for me? The fifth time he said, do you pray for me? And we said, yes we do. He said, whatever you're saying, it must be important for you to come down here at night. These are people in their eighties. And this letter this week said some of these boys' hearts have begun to soften. Maybe there were only two people who would ever tell those boys about Christ and those young girls, teenagers, but mainly boys that they talked to. You see, don't tell me there's nothing for you to do. Don't tell me, well, I'm past this. I want to challenge you to open your eyes and ask God to give you a vision. Jesus said to his disciples one day when they came back from passing a woman in the town of Samaria, she had passed them by on the way down to the well to draw water at midday, not the time you normally draw water, but she was an outcast and so she came on her own. And Jesus had waited for her, met her, talked to her. She went back to town, said, I've met the one who I think is the Messiah. Come meet him also. When the disciples came back, they were amazed he was talking to this woman. And Jesus said, I sent you to reap a harvest that you had not labored for. Open your eyes, he said to them, and look, you probably passed this woman and you probably said good morning to her and you probably said to each other after she had passed you by, what a strange time to be going to collect water. It's the heat of the day. But you never saw her with the eyes of God. Open your eyes, said Jesus, and look. I look for a man, says God. I look for someone, a woman, a boy, a girl, a young person, an older person, a middle-aged person. It doesn't matter. Someone, says God, anyone who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I'd not have to destroy it. But I found none. Well, the Lord say at the Keswick Convention, I looked for men and women, young people who've never been part of my strategy in the world and never yet made themselves available to me and I looked for them. Will you find them? Will you find you? Do you care enough? Will you share what you've got? Are you willing to dare? Are you willing to give? Are you willing to be courageous? You say, I can't do very much, but you can. There's a story of a boy walking along a beach with his father one day after a storm had brought an unusually high tide onto the beach and hundreds and hundreds of jellyfish had been swept onto the sand and the tide had gone out, leaving them to dry out in the sun and the returning tide would probably not reach them because of the unusually high tide. And there out of the water for hours they were dying in the sunlight. And seeing these hundreds and hundreds of jellyfish along the beach, the boy began to pick them up and throw them one by one back into the sea. It of course would be an impossible task. There were far too many. His father said to his boy, don't do that. There's too many of them. It's not worth it. And as the boy threw a jellyfish into the sea, he said, dad, it's worth it for that one. It's not likely many of us here will change the world, but how about one here and one there? It'll be worth it for them. The question is, do we care enough? Will we share enough? Will we dare enough? When Isaiah had his vision of God in the temple, he suddenly heard a voice and it was the voice of God. It wasn't addressed to Isaiah, but to anyone who would listen. The voice said, whom shall I send? Who will go for us? You don't have to hear God speaking specifically because God has already spoken about his purposes in our world. And as in Isaiah's day, the voice has already spoken. Who will I send? Who will I go? And Isaiah reached out to the crowd and said, here I am. Send me. And the God said in effect, thank you. Go. And he sent him. Will you say that tonight? I'm not going to ask you to go to the mission field. That isn't my job. That's God's job to tell you where to go. I'm going to ask you to make yourself available to God. Maybe he'll send you across the street. Maybe he'll send you across the world. That's his prerogative. We had read to us earlier. In Acts chapter one, verse eight, you receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you. You'll be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Jerusalem was where they were at the time, where they'd failed. That's the starting place. You heard his voice. Who will I send? And who will go for us? We're going to pray together. Will you pray with me? I'm going to ask you to respond to what God may have said to you tonight. Not just tonight, but through this week, and maybe through previous weeks and months, God has been speaking to you. Maybe preparing you for a night like tonight when God is going to ask you to respond. Isaiah heard the voice. Whom will I send? And who will go for us? And he said, here I am. In a moment of silence, I'm going to ask that there may be people all over this tent, and you need to say, here I am. Send me. Would you pray those words? Lord Jesus Christ, I want to thank you for every man and woman and young person in this tent today. Thank you for the day that you called us to yourself. And we're so grateful for the incredible privilege of being your children, knowing what it is to be forgiven and cleansed and indwelt by the Holy Spirit of Christ. But we realize, Lord Jesus, that your purpose is not just to save us and then leave us somewhere tucked in a corner waiting to go to heaven, but you've enlisted us as part of your work in our world. But forgive us that often we've not been available to you. We haven't cared, nor shared, nor dared enough. And Lord Jesus, for many here tonight, I ask that you'll bring us to the point of fresh submission and surrender to you. That you may take us and find in us a person who can stand in the gap and become your representative, speak your words, fulfill your agenda. Lord Jesus, make this real for many, many people here in a new way tonight, in Jesus' name.