Pray for Revival - Isaiah 64 1–5

Would you turn in your Bibles with me to Isaiah chapter 64, the book of Isaiah and chapter 64. And as you're turning there, I'll just say that it really is a privilege for us to be here with you all today. It's a privilege and a joy. And we visited you a month or two ago. It was great to be back and to sing to our Lord together. And now we get to feast on his word together. And you know, a thing I see the Lord doing right now in Maine is breaking down barriers between churches and actually calling Christians to get together and join arms together. I know that we have a brother and sister here from Gray, a church in Gray, Maine, and our church is here visiting you all. And I think there's something very special going on there. Usually when God prepares to bring a revival to a nation, he starts to break down denominational barriers and he starts to break down the barriers between churches. And I believe we're seeing just a little glimpse of that in Maine. Which brings us to the subject of our text. I want to ask you just one thing today, that you would pray for revival. That you would pray for revival. Some of you might hear this message today and it might, you might say, I already do pray for revival. Amen. Praise God. Pray more. Some of you might say, I've never really thought about revival. Amen. Praise God. Go think about it. Go watch a documentary on it. We can refer you to some good things to watch. And some of you just might be stirred to start praying for two minutes every day for revival or one hour in the week for revival. My prayer is that the Lord would use this message to touch each of your hearts individually and put all of us on our knees until we see him invade the state of Maine with his spirit. Amen. Isaiah chapter 64 verses one through five, oh, that you would rend the heavens, that you 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. And we'll stop right there. Amen. Lord Jesus, again, I just pray that you get me out of the way entirely and that we hear from God this morning. We do not need to hear the thoughts of man this morning, Lord. We need to hear your thoughts. We need to convict, be convicted by your spirit, Lord. And I beg you, Lord, show up here. Tear open the heavens and come down, Lord, and be present in this assembly right here and touch our hearts and change us forever, Lord. In your mighty name we pray. Amen. I'm asking you all from this text to pray for revival. Revival in the United States, revival in the state of Maine, revival in our churches, revival in the world. And as I ask you that, some objections might come to mind. So let's work through those objections first, and then we'll dive into our text here. A first objection might be, well, preacher, I'm too busy. We just had a nice Thanksgiving. I'm full. Now I'm going to work for a few more weeks, and then Christmas is coming, and I just want to relax, and I'm too busy to start praying for something else. There's a song that says, oh, our hearts, as busy as Bethlehem, hear him knock. Don't say there's no room in the inn. I love that lyric. It's telling us don't ever get to a place in your life, Christian, where you're too busy to pray for Jesus to come in more. Don't let this holiday season be a time where we get too busy to pray for Jesus to come. Christmas is supposed to be a time where we celebrate his coming to earth, no? So may this be a time where we never get too busy or too full of shopping or anything like that. I was out walking with my dad right before Thanksgiving, and we were walking through the woods together, and he's not a believer, and the Lord just started to make my heart swell with love for him, and I basically started to pray in my heart for my dad. Now what was going on there? I was celebrating Thanksgiving while praying for salvation. Can you do that, Christians? I want to beg you to do that in this Christmas season. This is a time when we're around our families, everyone's around us, and we can be praying, Lord, who's saved at this table? Lord, can I imagine that cousin next year to come into your kingdom? A second objection, you might say, I'm too young. I'm not a pastor. I'm not that spiritual. I'm not the sort of Christian who prays for revival, and I want to tell you all this morning that revival is for any Christian who longs to see more of God. Are there any Christians here today who long to see more of God? Then this prayer is for all of us. You don't need to be a pastor, you don't need to be some super spiritual person, but if you feel an ache in your heart, if you feel a need for God, then praying for revival is for you. And how do we know that? We know that because the text in front of us is very simple. Look at that first verse, Isaiah says, Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down. What's he saying? What does rend mean? It means tear, break open the heavens. And all of us can understand that, right? We don't need a PhD in theology to understand that. We can all understand that, Lord, I don't have enough of you. I need you to break open the heavens and come down. That's a prayer for all of us. Amen. And a third objection, you might say, but what is revival anyway? Leonard Ravenhill used to say that the two most abused words in the church of God are faith and revival. Because we've come to see, we've come to think that if we want revival, we can just have revival meetings. We can just get together for three days straight and revival will come. So what is revival? Let me give you two definitions, and that will bring us into our text here. A theologian named J.F. Thornberry from the 1960s said this, revival is not just a series of special meetings, but a genuine spiritual upheaval in which the interests of Christians are raised to great heights and large numbers of sinners are converted. Amen. So it's not just a meeting. It's not something where we can just work up a bunch of excitement, but revival is when God comes down to his people. And here's Duncan Campbell's definition. He was a preacher on the Isle of Lewis in 1949 when they saw massive revival. Duncan Campbell, he said this, revival is when God steps down in answer to the prayers of his people. When God steps down in answer to the prayers of his people, that's revival. That's what I'm asking you. That's what I'm begging you to go home and pray for today, brothers and sisters. So let's dive into our text, and I want you from this text to remember three things. Three things. The prayer, the expectation, and the meantime. What I mean by that is how do we pray for revival? Secondly, what should we expect out of revival? And thirdly, what shall we do in the meantime? If revival doesn't come tomorrow, then what do we do in the coming days? So let's study this text together, and I pray the Lord will bless it to your souls. I know he will. First, the prayer. Look at Isaiah chapter 64 and verse 1. Oh, that you would rend the heavens, that you would come down, that the mountains might shake at your presence. First, if you want to pray for revival, you need this oh in your heart. This is the heartache of the Christian who knows that he needs more of God. Does anybody here have that oh in their heart? That sense of oh, Lord, we need more. Look at the state of the world, Christian. Look at how sin is accelerating in the world around us. I just saw an interview where a pastor said, you know, we don't even think about the fact that our country supports gay marriage anymore. It's almost like a thing of the past. We've moved on to new topics now. That should make all of our hearts go, oh, how could it be? This country we live in supports gay marriage. And if you read Romans chapter 1, that's an indication that God is judging our country. That's very serious. It should make all of our hearts go, oh, oh. This Hebrew word right here, oh, is very powerful. It's L-U in the Hebrew, lu. You could remember it like the sound of a loon. You've all heard the loons on the lakes of Maine. It's that loon sound in Hebrew. And so here Isaiah is crying out. And we have things in our country like gay marriage normalized. Even the church is sort of done thinking about it. And now we've moved on to thinking about transgender. We're seeing very young children having gender reassignment surgery. And whenever we see that, a boy trying to become a girl, a girl trying to become a boy, it should cause this ache in our heart. We should say, oh, that God would tear open the heavens. Lord, where are you? Why are you letting this happen? And then what about the state of the church? When I've talked to pastors all throughout the state of Maine, there's one common denominator that we find. No commitment. There's no commitment among the people of God. There's a sense that we can just go church shopping, that I'm a consumer of churches. I'll just look for the church to suit me. But in the Bible, it tells us to bear with one another. It tells us to commit to the local church. It tells us to stay together, to hang together. There's a sense of worldliness creeping into the church. There's a sense of, I don't need the church. I can worship God at home. I don't need to commit to the people of God. All of that should cause us to cry out with Isaiah here. Oh, Lord, what's going on? And then finally, look at the state of your own heart. Do you ever look inside of yourself and say, oh, oh, oh, Lord, there must be something more for me. Lord, why am I still stuck in that sin? Why am I still falling into that lust? I know I could be walking in more freedom. Lord, what's going on? I need more of you. Christian, that's when we have to cry out with Isaiah here. Oh, that God would tear open the heavens and come down. And notice the second thing about this prayer. It's all about God. Read it with me again. Oh, that you would rend the heavens, that you 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. Brothers and sisters, what are you asking God for? We can get into a pattern of asking God for things that are lesser than himself. We can ask him to put a few conservatives into government. We can ask him to clean up a few minor problems in Portland, Maine. We can ask him to change a few things in our families. But what does Isaiah pray for right here? He prays for God himself. He prays for the presence of the living God himself. Christians, may our prayers never fall short of that. We're asking God, all of God, to come down. We're asking God in all of his presence to invade this place. Amen. We need all of God. That's what we're asking for. And that's what Isaiah asks for here. The presence of God. The presence of God. Under Edward Payson, 200 years ago, when revival first came to Maine, Edward Payson's buried at that cemetery right down the street. What started to happen there was that God's presence would show up in little pockets. It would show up. He would show up in one church. And then he'd show up among the sailors out on a boat. And then he'd show up among their wives back in their houses. And he just started to drop his presence everywhere throughout the state of Maine until, boom, he came in great power and saved multitudes, and the whole city was aware of his presence. Pray for nothing short of the very presence of God himself. Secondly, the expectation. Let's look at verses 3 and 4. It says, When you did awesome things for which we did not look. Brethren, circle that phrase and read on. 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. The key words here are things which we did not look for and men have not heard. What Isaiah is telling us right here is that when revival comes, it will exceed our expectations. Our God will give us things that we didn't even look for. He'll do things that we didn't even imagine. Let me try to explain this to you because this can really enliven our faith in our Lord and in what he can do in revival. Some of you might know that my wife, Kiara, and I are expecting a baby boy in January. January 11th is the due date, so please pray for us. When people find out that she's pregnant, what's the one comment we almost always get? Can anybody guess? People will say, Your life is going to be so different. Has anybody heard that? You don't know what to expect. Things are going to be so up. Just be glad for the amount of sleep you get now. That type of thing, right? And then I'm always tempted to say, No, no, no, but we're getting ready. We're reading all the books we can, and we're talking to our moms, and we're ready. We're planning. We know what's coming. It's a boy, right? And then people will say, No, you have no idea what's coming. You have no idea what to expect. And honestly, I just don't have that wisdom yet. I don't know what it's going to be like, so please do pray for me. But that is what the Lord says right here. He says, You did awesome things that we weren't even looking for. That's what it's going to be like when God brings revival to us. Right now, we might be praying, Lord, if we could just see 10 people walk through that door. And the Lord has 100 people waiting for us. Let me tell you one more story here. Go back in your minds with me to the Isle of Lewis. This is off the northwest coast of Scotland. And in 1949, revival began to break out there. But throughout the 1940s, there were two women named Peggy and Christine. They were age 82 and 84. And after the Second World War, they were very, very burdened to pray for revival. So they would pray for two whole nights every week throughout the late 1940s. Praying from 10 o'clock at night until 4 o'clock in the morning. They were praying and praying and praying for revival for years. And they were the type of saints that are spoken of in Psalm 25. The secret of the Lord is with them that fear God. These women had secrets revealed to them. And this is what the Lord told them. He basically told them there's a man coming to the island who will help with the revival. And then they saw visions of many young people being saved. Just many young people. Listen, Christians, that was their expectation, right? One man coming to the island and many young people coming in. 1949 comes. And a man named Duncan Campbell arrives at the island. The elders of the church meet him right at his boat. And they say, Reverend Campbell, welcome. One of them actually asked him, are you walking with the Lord? And he said, well, I can tell you I fear the Lord. And the elder said to him, okay, let's go. And then as they were walking, they're walking to the church. And the elders said to him, Reverend Campbell, your dinner is prepared at the manse. And it's hot and it's ready for you. But would you mind if we stop at the church first? And there are about 150 people there and they'd like you to meet with them. Just give them a brief message and then we'll get you back for your supper. He said, of course. So he went to the church. They had a meeting with 150 people or so. And Duncan Campbell records that that meeting was not very spectacular. It was very normal. Not much happened, but there was the joy of the Lord. They sang hymns. And they left that meeting somewhat dejected. They thought, well, revival isn't coming. Nothing's happening. Duncan Campbell started to walk out the door. And the deacon called him back. And said, Reverend, would you come pray with us? They gathered about 10 people in the back room. And they started praying. And the deacon said, I know that the spirit is hovering over us. And he wants to drop. I know that the spirit is hovering over us and he wants to drop. And he kept telling Duncan Campbell that. They prayed for a half an hour and for an hour. And then they said, okay, let's go home. Let's pray more tomorrow. They go out to leave the church. They open the door. And they see 700 people gathering around the church outside. Who start singing Psalm number 126. When the Lord took back the captivity of Zion, we were like them, that dream. And they were singing and singing and singing. And these 700 people streamed into the church. And they just worshipped the Lord and worshipped the Lord all throughout that night. And Duncan Campbell said that he finally got his meal at 3 o'clock in the morning. And let me tell you this, Christians. Duncan Campbell expected to go to the Isle of Lewis for two weeks. Does anybody know how long he stayed there? Three years. The Lord poured out revival for three years on that island. In such a way that it still touches us today, actually. There are still people ministering on the face of this earth. Who were saved in that revival. It's incredible. So think about that. Think about the expectations there. Those women were expecting what? One man and many youth to be saved. And in the end, they had revival come for three years. And at least 3,000 people were brought into the kingdom of God in that time. Praise God. Hallelujah. Why am I telling you all of that? Because we need to have this sort of expectation that Isaiah is talking about here. That God is going to do awesome things for us for which we did not even look. Can we pray bigger, Christians? If you're praying for ten people now, if we're praying for one baptism for the next year, will you pray bigger? Will you pray for the presence of the Lord? Will you pray for revival to come down on Portland, Maine? That the nations may know him. That his adversaries in this city would just tremble at his presence. Are people trembling at the Lord right now out on the streets of Portland? They're not. They're not. Pray for him to invade our city. Pray for him to invade our state, please. And I'll leave you with a few applications here. The final thing is the meantime. Look at verse five. It says, you meet him who rejoices and does righteousness, who remembers you in your ways. Is revival just an unpredictable thing where God is just going to come unpredictably whenever he wants? No. Isaiah tells us right here, God meets a certain type of people. God meets a certain type of Christian. And Isaiah actually puts conditions on revival right here. And this is very important. If anybody here gets stirred today to pray for revival, I want to tell you that the Bible tells us there are conditions that we have to meet if we want revival to come. Look at our text right here. It says, you meet who? Him who rejoices. OK, so Christians, are we meeting that requirement? Are we rejoicing in the Lord? Secondly, what does he say? And does righteousness. So are we doing righteousness? Are we doing good works? Are we showing God's justice to the city of Portland? Many of us are, but let's do more. What does it say next? Who remembers you in your ways. Now, again, these are conditions for revival. On Thanksgiving Day, my brother and I made a big bonfire in the backyard. And my wife might tell you that we like making bonfires a little bit too much. But if you came up to me and said, Sam, how do I make a big bonfire like that? And I just said to you, OK, go outside and put your hands together and wish for a bonfire. Would that work? No, there are conditions you have to meet. You have to go outside and gather wood. And you have to get some matches. And you have to roll up some newspaper and put that toward the bottom of the wood. And you have to put some cinder blocks around it or something like that. To hold the fire in and to get that wind going up through it. There are conditions we have to meet. And right here, Isaiah is giving us those conditions. So if anybody in this room wants to go home and get serious about revival, I would ask you to go home and meet these conditions. Rejoice in the Lord. Do righteousness. Remember God in all of your ways. Let me close with a few thoughts. First of all, let me just ask you this. Have you seen any signs of revival in the last year? Have you seen any glimmers that the Lord might be starting to work in Portland, Maine? If you have, please testify about them. Please tell your neighbors about them. Let me just mention a few things that I see going on. A few signs of revival. First of all, that our church met your church. Like I said before, I think that is a sign that God wants to bless his people. And I'm seeing it happening all over the state of Maine. Baptists are saying, hey, we could get along with those Presbyterians. Pentecostals are saying, hey, we could get along with those Baptists. We sort of need to join forces here, right? What else are we seeing? Pastor Don has had this Freedom For Me seminar going on. And it's happened in your church. And there's another one happening the first week of December. That to me is a sign of coming revival. And I would ask all of you to go to that seminar. It was incredibly powerful. I went to one of them. And I would say I feel a thousand times better as a Christian than I did before I went. And why is that a mark of revival? Because if you study the Bible more and what it says about what happens in revival, there's another condition that comes in. And it's this. God wants a people who have a whole heart. God wants a people who worship him with a whole heart. And in those Freedom For Me seminars, what are they praying for every single night? That people would have their hearts restored. That people would have healed hearts. And I see that as one of those conditions of revival that's laid out in the Bible. Go to that, Christians. Get your hearts healed. God will bless us with that. A few other signs. We have a dear friend named John who's trying to start a church on Congress Street right near the Planned Parenthood in Portland, Maine. To me, I say, he's got a vision. He's got something he wants to do. We need to take that ground right next to Planned Parenthood. That's a sign of coming revival. What else? There's a church up in Vienna, Maine. And I visited them a few weeks ago. And they put out a sign right outside of their church. It used to just say prayer meetings on Tuesdays. You know what it says now? Pray for revival. And one of their members is getting visions of a coming revival. He started to say, I'm going to pray tonight like I've never prayed before, Lord. He's saying that every time I see him. I'm going to pray today like I've never prayed before, Lord. What are other signs? There's a revival prayer meeting going on in Westbrook at noon on Thursdays every week. That started in the last year. A year ago, that wasn't happening. I don't know if anyone else sees signs of revival. But please pray, Christians. Please pray. I'll leave you with just a few thoughts here. Three things. Start with personal revival. Start with personal revival. We're praying for the Lord to tear open the heavens and come down. But pray for him to do that in your prayer closet. Pray for him to do that when you're alone. Pray for him to take over in your heart before he takes over in this church. And before he takes over in Portland, Maine. Amen? Secondly, let your heartache for revival burn during this holiday season. I've said that before, but please, Christians. As you go to see your family this December, scan your family. Scan your church. Scan your community and say, Lord, what would it be like if you brought revival here? What would it be like if you saved all these people? And third, one more thing we need to notice about our text. Meditate on the first time that God answered Isaiah's prayer. Look again at Isaiah chapter 64, verse 1. What does he say? Oh, that you would rend the heavens, that you would come down, that the mountains might shake at your presence. When was the first time that God answered that prayer of Isaiah? It was in a little manger in a place called Bethlehem, a little podunk town in Jerusalem. And God tore open the heavens, and he came down, and he conceived the incarnate Son of God in the womb of the Virgin Mary. That was the first time he answered this prayer. He tore open the heavens, and in a meek and in a quiet and in a silent way, God took on flesh and dwelt among us. As you look at Christmas, as you celebrate Christmas for the next month, could you see Christmas in the time that Jesus became incarnate and dwelt among us? See that as the first revival in the church. And now we're praying for that to happen again. We're praying for that to happen again. We know from what happened in the incarnation that our God comes down. We know from what happened in the incarnation that our God delights to dwell with us. And it's on that basis that we pray for him to do it again. Amen? Let's pray. Lord, this message will have been useless unless you, by your Spirit, stir up your saints to actually get on their knees and to actually pray for revival. Lord, we desperately need it, and we ask you to hear the aching need of our hearts. Please, God. Please, God. Please make your people humble and put us on our knees and set us about crying for revival. Until you hear us, Lord. Until you hear us. Amen.