Watchmen on the Walls 1985

I'd like to begin by reading from Isaiah 62, verses 6 through 9. And the basis of almost everything I would like to say today is going to be right in these verses. Upon your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen all the day and all the night. They shall never be silent.

You who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth. The Lord has sworn by his right hand and his mighty arm, I will not again give your grain to be food for your enemies. And foreigners shall not drink your wine for which you have labored.

But those who garner it shall eat it and praise the Lord. And those who gather it shall drink it in the courts of my sanctuary. The last seven chapters of the book of Isaiah comprise a vision of the restored Jerusalem.

And the important thing to understand is that that vision was given to the people at a time when the city of Jerusalem was very little more than weed cupboard, rat-infested ruins. At a time when it looked like the city would never rise again, comes the vision. This city is going to be glorious.

It's going to be a habitation for the glory of God. It's going to be a crown in the hand of the living God. Foreign armies will never again invade it.

It will be the place of praise and thanksgiving and glory and worship as no city on this earth has ever seen. So here we have the glorious vision. And down here we have the brutal, ugly reality.

What's going to get this vision down into these ruins and raise them from the dead? Hard work? It's a nice thought. And it's necessary. God is always for hard work.

We've got to learn how to work hard and not be lazy. But all the hard work in the world will never do it. I mean, we're talking about a resurrection so glorious that it's absolutely beyond, absolutely beyond the scope and power of human flesh.

Now, the Lord has promised that he would raise this city from the dead. That's the vision. He has sworn by his right hand and his holy arm it's going to be done.

But how? Before this vision can take shape and this city can rise out of its own ruins, there is another miracle of God which must precede it. And that's what we're looking at today. Before this city will be raised from the dead, before the vision will be visible to people, you will first see the ruined walls of the city of Jerusalem peopled.

Every 100 feet or so, there will be another one. Then there's another one. They're standing up.

They're looking out all over the city for miles around on this wall, broken down in many places. You see these people standing, these watchmen. Upon your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen all the day and all the night.

They shall never be silent. What are they doing? What are they doing up there in these walls of this ruined city? Are they looking for more armies to come and invade? No army would waste his time invading there. There's nothing to take.

Are they checking the weather? Who cares what the weather is? It's in ruins already. No. These people, one every 100 feet or so, standing all around on the walls of the city, up there on the ruined walls, are praying.

They've decided that they're going to take no rest, and they're going to give God no rest, until he brings the vision to pass, until they see the thing starting to happen, until they see an Ezra coming from the east, until they see a Nehemiah with his caravan of camels on their way to rebuild those walls. The beginning of the resurrection of the city of Jerusalem, Zion, is the watchmen of the walls. They are the forerunners, and they are the start of the new Jerusalem.

So now today, at a time when the body of Christ on earth is really not much better off than Jerusalem during the days of the exile, at a time when the body of Christ on earth is torn and confused and threatened by the world around it, when the body of Christ is losing its impact, almost every place is on retreat. It's having less and less impact on the world around it, on almost every level, on almost every front. And when things look like this, here comes the vision again.

And the vision is being given to brothers and sisters in the Lord all over the earth today, here and in thousands of other places. Arise, shine, for your light has come. We say, where is it? Glory of the Lord has risen upon you.

Where? Darkness will cover the earth with thick darkness, the people, but the Lord will arise upon you. These walls will be rebuilt. This city will be a glory and a praise in the hand of the living God.

Yes, and the vision is given to this congregation. The Spirit of the Lord is saying to this congregation and has been saying to it, to all of us, your days of obscurity are over. Now it's time for you to get up and manifest the kingdom of God to the world beyond you.

Go out there and give good news to the poor. Deliver and set free the captives. Open the eyes of the blind.

Set free those who are oppressed. Bring to people, preach to them the year of the Lord's favor. Manifest the kingdom.

The time has come for this congregation and others like it to bring people into the kingdom of heaven by the hundreds, perhaps even by the thousands. And you say, how will this be? How will it happen? Who's going to do it? It's going to be done by the watchmen. It's going to be done by the watchmen on the walls.

Upon your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen all the day and all the night. They shall never be silent. You who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth.

It will be done. There will be and is going on now a resurrection of the body of Christ worldwide. And it's being done by people who are called by the spirit of God to take their stations on the ruined walls of the city.

Now, you're free to let the call to be watchmen pass you by. You're free to reject it if you like. But you will, once you have heard it, never be able to say, but I didn't know.

I'm going to wait till the girls make their exit. And I really want to try to discourage as much going back and forth as I can. I think if I don't do that, pretty soon, by the third week of this, everybody's up and going to the bathroom.

And we can't have that. You have a certain length of time to respond to the call that's given to you. And you're either going to be up there on the wall, taking your place, or somebody else is going to be taking your place.

That place will be taken by somebody, you, or me, or somebody else. If we don't do it, God will raise up somebody who will. Now, who are these watchmen? First of all, they are men and women who are not afraid to take their stand in the middle of a desolation.

They don't just sit up on the hillside, looking down over Jerusalem in its devastated state, its wasted state, and criticize it. They're not people who hold themselves aloof from the body of Christ, which is now staggering under judgment from God, and criticize it. They are people who, instead of forever criticizing it, get down in it, and share its wretched crust, and share its pain, and share the anguish of the people.

They don't just talk about it and gripe about it. They taste it. They become part of it.

They identify with the problem. Elijah took the dead body of the son of the widow of Zarephath, and carried this corpse up the steps to the room where he slept, put it down on the bed, and before he prayed for this boy to come back to life, Elijah stretched himself out over that corpse, hand to hand, eyeball to eyeball. What was he doing? He was standing on the walls of that young man's ruined life.

He was identifying with the problem. He allows the death and the cold to be absorbed in his own warm body. He becomes part of it.

Jesus was baptized. Why was he baptized? He had done no sin. He was baptized as a way of standing on the walls of our messed lives.

He becomes one of us. He becomes sin for us. He takes on himself our flesh.

Why does he do that? Why does he take on our flesh? Why does he become sin for us? Why does he hang on that cross and die? That's his way of standing on the wall, becoming one with our pain, our sin, our death, so that he can raise us from the dead. He can't raise us from the dead unless he comes down into our death with us. Now he calls us to do the same.

Lay aside your robes and get down and wash feet. And we're not talking about a ritual. We're talking about day in and day out serving each other.

Are we willing to give up the luxury of our aloofness and get down into the mess that the body of Christ is in right now and taste and eat and sleep and drink and think the problem, become part of it instead of writing about it, blaming it on this one and that one. It's my problem. Second, these watchmen are men and women who have the audacity to trust the vision in the face of all this desolation.

They see the desolation and they see the desolation in the body of Christ as judgment, righteous judgment on a self-righteous church. But they don't just sit there and look at it. They repent for the sins of Zion, which are their sins.

They cry out for forgiveness. And now crying out for forgiveness instead of standing aloof, becoming part of it and crying out for forgiveness. They now begin to see the vision coming near.

The Lord has sworn by his right hand and by his mighty arm, I will not again give your grain to be food for your enemies and foreigners shall not drink your wine for which you have labored. Those who garner it shall eat it and praise the Lord. Those who gather it shall drink it in the courts of my sanctuary.

The word. Notice. Notice that they're not looking at the problem now.

They're looking at the vision. They pray, thy kingdom come and they expect to see it and it comes. The widow of Nain saw the dead body of her son and she wept.

And who wouldn't weep? She was looking at a corpse which the day before was the joy of her life. Plus the only security she had. Jesus looks at that corpse and he sees the kingdom of God coming down into it and raising it from the dead.

So he says to her, don't weep. Young man, get up. And the dead man sits up and begins to speak.

He delivers him to his mother. Jesus brings the vision, grabs the vision with one hand and the corpse with the other and brings them together. He infuses that corpse with life because his eye is on the vision.

See, as long as we sit around and look at all the problems and constantly consume ourselves with the problems, we will be depressed. We ought to be depressed. We deserve to be depressed.

But if we look at the vision we've been given and hang on to that, then we can reach out and take the desolation and quicken in the name of God. Third thing about these watchmen on the walls, they're men and women who are aggressive toward God. They've made up their minds that they're not gonna take any rest.

They're not gonna give God any peace until he brings this vision to fulfillment. Now notice, we're not talking about being aggressive toward everybody else. Not talking about pushing our way so we get the best seats in the bleachers and shoving our way into the elevator and taking cuts to the cafeteria line.

We're not talking about making sure we get the best seat on the plane every time. We're talking about being aggressive toward God, reminding him of the vision he's given us and holding on to that and constantly pressing. That's exactly what he's telling us to do here.

Upon your walls, Lord Jerusalem, I have set watchmen all the day and all the night. Why are they there all day and night? Because they're aggressive. They shall never be silent because they're aggressive.

You who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest, be aggressive. Give him no rest, be aggressive until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise of the earth. Jesus was aggressive on behalf of Peter.

Simon, Simon, Satan has desired to have all of you tonight sift you guys a sweet, but I pray for you, Simon, that your faith will not fail. How does he pray for Peter? 30 seconds of silence? No! You can be sure that Jesus, the Son of God, now the Son of Man in human flesh, cries out to heaven with a long, relentless, relentless, aggressive cry to the Father, don't let this man drift away. Put angels around him, fire down upon his heart, don't let him be lost.

Hold on to him. And that prayer is answered. And that's the kind of prayer that the Spirit of God is bringing about among us.

And if we won't do it, he'll bring the stones up to do it. Somebody's gonna do it. You don't do it, somebody else will.

But there will be, there are now, and there will be more people who pray like that. They carry around in their hearts a yearning to see life. They're not gonna be satisfied until it's happening.

And it will be through them. And finally, these watchmen are men and women whose lives are consumed in worship. Skipping back to Isaiah 61, verse 10.

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. Worship. My soul shall exult in my God.

That's worship. For he has clothed me with the garments of salvation. That's worship.

He has covered me with a robe of righteousness so I can be on display. No, so I can worship God. As a bridegroom decks himself with a garland and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

These watchmen on the wall are offering their bodies as living sacrifices to God all the time. They're up there worshiping God. And Jesus, our Lord, true man, as well as true God, shows us the way.

The primary concern in his life was to please his Father. And his whole life was worship of his Father. For as the earth brings forth its shoots and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all nations.

And he causes righteousness and praise to spring forth before all nations through these watchmen. Through whom he raises Zion from the dead. They're people who are not ashamed to stand on the desolate walls, desolate walls.

They're people who have the audacity to trust the vision even when everything is dark. They're aggressive toward God. Their lives are consumed in worship.

Watchmen, the hour has come for such people to respond to the call, get up there on the wall and start doing it, because it's through them. And they're there and they're going to do it. And they're going to be there and their numbers will be completed very soon.

It is through them that the living God will raise Zion to a glory this earth has never seen. God save us from missing our chance. Let's wait a minute in silence.