Revival Conference 2007 - Part 2

And we can think about how that after they wandered there in the wilderness for forty years, God opened the River Jordan for the people of Israel to cross over, much as he had the Red Sea, and how he caused the walls of Jericho to fall down. And then we can go farther in the history of Israel and find other great instances in which God moved on behalf of his people. We think about David defeating Goliath, and we must understand that this was not just some kind of a personal battle between David and Goliath, that David was fighting on behalf of his people, and it's a glorious picture of the Lord Jesus Christ fighting on behalf of his people, the enemy of their souls, a far greater enemy than Goliath ever was to the people of Israel. And so with these things in mind, we have to ask ourselves this question, why did God do these things? Well, there was no doubt in Isaiah's mind about the answer to that question. He tells us right there in that fifteenth verse, that it was God's zeal, I'm talking about verse 15 of chapter 63, it was God's zeal, it was God's strength, it was the yearning of his heart toward his people. This is the reason that God had done these things for the people of Israel. It wasn't that they were such good people, it was rather that God was zealous on their behalf. That means that God was passionately devoted to his people. It was rather that God was showing his strength, showing himself strong on their behalf. It was rather that God was showing his warm-hearted affection to the people of Israel. Now we come back to that time I've been talking about, that time in which many of the Jews would find themselves in captivity in Babylon. And ladies and gentlemen, the thing that would be very clear to them there in Babylon was that God was now withholding from them the very things that he had so abundantly showered upon them in previous centuries. God had shown his zeal, that he was passionately devoted to his people. God had shown that he was warm-hearted toward his people. God was showing his strength. But there in Babylon, the people would not be seeing evidences of these things. They would be conscious that they had lost these things. And so they would be crying out, Where now is your zeal, O God? Where now is your strength? Where now is the yearning of your heart toward your people? It's not that God did not possess these things any longer. It's rather that God was withholding them from his people. And now we're in a position, I think, brothers and sisters in Christ, to think about the church of Jesus Christ today. And we have to ask ourselves, is God showing himself strong on behalf of his people today? Is God passionately devoted to his people in such a way that is evident to all who are around? Or is God withholding these things from his people today? And if we say God seems to be withholding these things, we must ask ourselves, why is it that God is withholding these things from us? And the answer is very clear in this passage of Scripture. I think most of us would say, as we just look at the church today, as we look at the modern scene, we would have to say that there have been times in which God has shown himself strong on behalf of his church. There have been times when God has shown that he's passionately devoted to his people. But we're not living in such a time now. The church can look upon times in her history when God was at work in a powerful and mighty way, but ladies and gentlemen, it doesn't seem to be that way today. And I could give you all kinds of evidences for that. I could talk to you about how doctrinal preaching has all but vanished from our churches, how that apathy abounds, how that there is very little holiness in our living, and all of these things are evidences that God is withholding from his church today, things that he used to grant them in abundance. Now the thing that troubles me so very much in these days is that we are living in a time of loss, but most of God's people do not seem to be keenly aware of the loss. We're living in a time of loss, but it seems that few really keenly feel that loss. I think the church today is very much like Rehoboam. We read about this in 2 Chronicles. You remember how Rehoboam came to the throne after his father Solomon had died. You remember how the kingdom was divided into two parts, and Rehoboam retained the part of the kingdom known as Judah. And there's an account there about Shishak, king of Egypt, coming up against the nation of Judah, and he takes home with him, he invades the kingdom of Judah, and he takes home with him the beautiful golden shields that Solomon had made and that Rehoboam had inherited from his father. So what does Rehoboam do after Shishak comes in and makes off with these beautiful golden shields? Well, we might expect to read that Rehoboam was incensed by all of this, and he got his army together, and he pursued Shishak, and he took those shields back, but that's not what we read at all. We read rather, ladies and gentlemen, that Rehoboam made brass shields, bronze shields to replace the gold shields. And that leads me to say, that seems to me to be a very wonderful picture of what has taken place in the church the last several years. The church has lost many of her gold shields, we might say, but instead of mourning the loss, instead of mourning the loss of God's power, instead of mourning the loss of holiness, instead of mourning the loss of true biblical preaching, the church is in the business of manufacturing bronze shields and hanging them on the wall and pretending as if she hasn't lost anything at all. The church is putting up today the shield of pop psychology. She's putting up the shield of entertainment. She's putting up the shield of business expertise, and not mourning the loss of God's zeal and God's strength and the affection of God's heart. And so this prayer begins, then, ladies and gentlemen, with a keen awareness of loss. Those people in Babylon would come to the realization, they would not realize it before, but there in captivity in Babylon, they would come to the keen realization that God had not been doing for them what he had done for their fathers, that God had been withholding from them his zeal and his strength and the affection of his heart. And they there in Babylon would finally come to their senses and they would finally begin to mourn the loss, and that's one of the things that feeds this particular prayer. Now that brings me to the second thing that I want to emphasize about this prayer, the second thing that feeds this prayer, and that is a keen awareness of what had produced the loss. Have you followed me up to this point? They could look back to the history of their nation and they could see that God had shown his zeal and his strength and the affection of his heart toward his people.