Revival Conference 2007 - Part 1

It is a joy and delight to be with you, and I do thank you for your prayers. I want to call your attention to verses found in the prophecy of Isaiah, the 64th chapter. The dear brother mentioned a moment ago that some years ago I penned a little book based on this prophecy, this chapter of this prophecy. And that little book consists of seven sermons from Isaiah 64. You'll be happy to know that I do not intend to preach all seven of those sermons this morning, but I do want to give you something of an overview of this great chapter. I want to read a few verses from it, Isaiah 64, beginning with the first verse. And the prophet is crying out here to the Lord, and he says, Oh, that ye would rend the heavens, that ye would come down, that the mountains might shake at your presence, as fire burns brushwood, as fire causes water to boil, to make your name known to your adversaries, that the nations may tremble at your presence. When you did awesome things for which we did not look, you came down, the mountains shook at your presence. For since the beginning of the world, men have not heard nor perceived by the ear, nor has the eye seen any God besides you, who acts for the one who waits for him. You meet him who rejoices and does righteousness, who remembers you in your ways. You are indeed angry, for we have sinned. In these ways we continue, and we need to be saved. But we're all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags. We all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. And there is no one who calls on your name, who stirs himself up to take hold of you, for you have hidden your face from us and have consumed us because of our iniquities. But now, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, and you are potter, and all we are the work of your hands. Do not be furious, O Lord, nor remember iniquity forever. Indeed, please look, for we are, we all are your people." As you know, this is a prayer, but it's unlike any other prayer that you and I are probably familiar with. This is a prayer that was prayed years in advance of the captivity that the people of God would experience under Babylon. The prophet Isaiah was, indeed, a prophet, ladies and gentlemen, and he was, by the Spirit of God, enabled to look down the corridor of time, and as he looked down the corridor of time, he could see the Babylonians coming in, he could see them devastating Jerusalem, he could see them destroying the beautiful temple that Solomon had built, and he could also see the Babylonians carrying most of his fellow Jews into captivity. I say that Isaiah was given a preview of this, we might call it a sneak preview. He could see all of this in advance. And the last several chapters of his prophecy were written for the people who would be in captivity. Isaiah himself would not be on the scene at that time. So he's looking down the corridor of time, he's seeing the captivity to come, and the last 27 chapters of his book, I say, are devoted to those years of captivity, and they were intended to encourage the hearts of the people who would be in captivity. I do not doubt for a single moment that what the captives carried with them, the last 27 chapters of Isaiah's prophecy, and they found encouragement and comfort and strength there in the captivity as they read those chapters that we know as chapters 40 through 66. Now, this particular chapter, the 64th chapter of Isaiah, as I said a moment ago, is a prayer. Isaiah penned this prayer years before the captivity took place. But this was, in fact, ladies and gentlemen, the prayer that the captives themselves would be praying in Babylon. You and I are familiar with the connection between revival and prayer. It's right there in that best-known of all revival texts, 2 Chronicles 7:14. If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, I will forgive their sin and I will heal their land. So there is a very definite connection between revival and prayer. Matthew and Henry said, when God intends to bless his people with revival, the first thing he does is set his people to pray. So we have here a prayer for revival. And I say again that this is the prayer that the captives themselves would be praying there in Babylon. There are three things that feed this particular prayer, and these are the three points of my message. Listen carefully. First of all, there is here a keen awareness of loss. That's the first thing that feeds this prayer, a keen awareness of loss. And secondly, there is here a keen awareness of what produced the loss, a keen awareness of what produced the loss. And thirdly, there is here a keen awareness that God could restore what was lost, a keen awareness that God could restore what was lost. Now I want to ask you to think with me about each of these three things. First of all, think with me about this keen awareness of loss. We have to review the history of the nation of Israel for just a bit. And we find as we go back here into the 63rd chapter of this prophecy, look please at verse 15. The prophet is praying here, and he says, Look down from heaven, and see from your habitation, holy and glorious. Where are your zeal and your strength, the yearning of your heart and your mercies toward me? Are they restrained? Well, ladies and gentlemen, let's talk for a moment about the history of the nation of Israel, and I think that this verse that I just read will become plain to us. The history of Israel was a history of God working mightily on behalf of his people. Just press the rewind button for a moment and go back to that time when the people of Israel were in captivity in Egypt, they were in bondage there in Egypt. And they had been in bondage there for over 400 years. It was a very dark and distressing time. But God came into that situation. We might say God looked down, and God came down. And he delivered the people of Israel from their bondage in Egypt, and he did so with a mighty and strong arm. You remember the pledge that he rained down upon the land of Egypt. And you remember how that he finally, after the death angel passed over the land, he finally brought the people out and he miraculously opened the Red Sea before them so that they could cross over on dry ground. And you remember how that he drowned Pharaoh and his army in that same Red Sea. Now, some of you will perhaps recall that there is some skepticism about that particular part of God's dealings with Israel. We're told that it's impossible for us to believe that God would open the Red Sea and allow the people to cross over. What we're told is by some scholars that there is really a very shallow part of the Red Sea. Some scholars suggest that the Red Sea is only about three or four inches deep in this particular place, and this is actually where the people of Israel crossed over. And one man, after hearing that, said, Praise God, God drowned Pharaoh and all of his army in three or four inches of water. And so what it comes down to, brothers and sisters in Christ, is you just simply can't get around the miraculous in the Bible. You should not expect a great and sovereign God to do anything less than great things. And God did this great thing for the people of Israel. He brought them out of Egypt. He opened the Red Sea before them. He drowned Pharaoh and his army. And that set in motion a whole string of things that God did for the people of Israel. We could think, for instance, about how he defeated the army of Amalek. We could think about how God miraculously provided there in the wilderness for the people, feeding them with manna.