Worship God for the Asbury Revival

Let's open our Bibles to Lamentations chapter three. The book of Lamentations comes after the book of Jeremiah. Let's open to Lamentations chapter three. And we'll read verses 31 through 41. And I'm super encouraged by all these babies. I'm glad to have you guys joining us today. The Lord is very good to us. Let's read Lamentations chapter three, verses 31 to 41. For the Lord will not cast off forever. Praise God for that. But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men. To crush under his feet all the prisoners of the earth, to turn aside the right of a man before the face of the Most High, to subvert a man in his cause, the Lord approveth not. Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not? Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not evil and good? Wherefore doth the living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins? Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord. Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens. Amen, amen. I'll pray again for us. Lord Jesus, Prince of Peace, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, God of Gods, our bright and morning star, Lord, arise upon us today as we study this text. Arise upon us, Lord, and make our hearts bubble up with fervent love and joy, Lord, in your presence. Lord, let us love you and exalt you today. And I'm talking about Jesus. I'm talking about you, Lord, the one who gave us our first love, the one who saved us whenever it was in each of our lives personally, Lord. We're here with you again today, and we're asking you for a special touch of your presence, Lord. We need you. Lord Jesus, speak to us through your word here, please. Lord, be exalted, be exalted, be exalted. Are you here with us, Jesus? Then if so, show yourself, please. Amen. I had to take a break from studying the Sermon on the Mouth because I don't understand the next few verses. And also, I wanted to turn to Lamentation chapter 3 because there is this revival going on in Aspern, Kentucky. And there are a lot of questions about it. And I think we need to stare some of those questions straight in the face. And you can call this sermon, if you like, Let Us Worship. Let Us Worship. Let Us Worship. And the subtitle would be Worship God For Aspern. For whatever is going on there, worship God for it. Let Us Worship. And we're going to focus here in Lamentations 3 on verse 41. Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens. Will you all get that image with me for a second? What is it saying? Let us lift up our heart. And literally in the Hebrew, it's let us lift up our heart to our hands, to our God in the heavens. So do you all see that little staircase there? Lift up our heart, where? To our hands, where? To our God in the heavens. It's a beautiful, beautiful image, is it not? And just by way of coincidence in Hebrew, the word to is the same word as the word God. So this verse sounds really beautiful in the Hebrew. And it almost sounds like Jeremiah is saying God over and over again here. Let us lift up our heart to our hands, to our God in the heavens. And my exhortation to us today is let us worship. Let us worship. Let's break out in worship. Let's worship our God. How are you reacting to the revival in Aspern? This is a big question. And this actually says everything about you. How have you reacted? How have you observed things? How are you figuring things out? There are many options, no? One is we could say, well, I don't care. It's just far away. Or we could say, I'm being cautious. I'm not sure what's going on. We could also say, I don't care because there's just too much going on in my life personally. So hearing about a revival halfway across the country doesn't matter much to me. We could say, I'm going to wait some years to assess, probably at least a decade or so before we see how this all turns out. Or we could say, well, I'm momentarily excited about it, but then I forgot about it and I went about my merry way. Or we could say, I'm all in. I'm excited. I want to hear more. You see that great spectrum of reactions? And I wonder where you fall along that spectrum. For me, I have to say that this revival going on in Asbury, Kentucky, is the greatest news event of my lifetime. I was born in 1984, and this is the greatest thing I've ever heard about in the news. It's absolutely incredible, and it's making me, in a healthy way, lose my mind. It's really shocking me and challenging my soul. And I feel as if we are in a new era. For those of us who have been Christians but haven't seen revival, if now we can say, I've been a Christian and there might be a revival going on 16 hours away from here, that's a whole new era. That's a whole new thing that the Lord is doing in this earth. It ought to shock us. It ought to make us ask some questions, no? I do want to exhort us to embrace the revival. I do want to exhort us that you don't want to miss this. You don't want it to go by and you've just sat back and not thought about it or maybe just critiqued it. And even more than that, all of us unitedly should be asking for it to spread. Even if there is just one or two people who are experiencing actual revival in Kentucky, we should be asking for it to spread, no? Everybody with me? Let's get a few things straight. Well, let me ask this. If something like what you've heard about in Asbury started happening here in Portland, would we even participate? Would we attend? It's a big question. We might hear that at that revival over in Kentucky, they're singing Hill song songs. So would we in our reformed tradition say, no way, I'm not going. That's a big question. We ought to examine our hearts there. Would that be a reason to miss out on what God might be doing? There was, you know, Matthew Henry, the commentator who wrote that big, beautiful commentary? His father was Philip Henry and he was an ejected minister, ejected from his church, a nonconformist. And in that time, people wondered why he kept going to other men's Anglican services. And Philip Henry very wisely said, they might not be doing their duty, but I'm doing mine. I'm going to attend. So he said, I'm gonna keep going to church. And then Philip Henry said this, I can suck honey from a carcass. You all think about that spiritually? Can you do that in your Christian life? Can you say, there might be error going on there. There might be problems there, but I can get honey from it. I can suck honey from a carcass. That's the generous Christian soul's response to people who might not even agree with them. You all see that? Well, let's get a few things straight and I'm getting to our text, but I wanna give us this preface around what's happening in the news because it's so, so very important. Let's get a few things straight. First of all, all revivals have error. All revivals in human history have error mixed in with them. If you go back to the book of Acts, to Pentecost, and you read a few chapters after that, you'll find error and confusion. And you'll find Simon Magus, Simon the sorcerer, right? He's trying to buy those gifts from the godly men and he abuses them. And then you find the sons of Sceva who come along and they try to cast out demons just using the name of Jesus in a cheap way, right? So right there, right in Pentecost history, right in the book of Acts, we get true revival and false fire showing up at the very same time. It's very important that we understand that. Secondly, some things to get straight. Revival is not a sacred word. This is important. I've read so much criticism online of the Asbury revival and people are saying, well, be cautious. Wait before you apply the word revival to it. And I just wonder, where do people get this idea? It's almost like a superstitious idea that we're not gonna use the word revival until we've fully stamped it for our reformed approval, something like that. The word, well, let me just say that again. Revival itself is not a sacred word. It's okay if you say there might be a revival happening and you get excited about it. And in a while we find out that there was some error in it. That's okay. It's okay to be excited. Here's another thing. Revival involves human agency. Some people have criticized this revival and said, ah, see, the president told the students that there was a chapel meeting going on. So it wasn't God and his sovereignty moving that event. That's a wrong view of how God's sovereignty works. God's sovereignty works through human instruments. You see Paul at times beckoning people to listen to him. You see Jesus at times speaking up and beckoning people to listen to him, right? We see people in the Bible persuading people. It's okay if human agency is involved in a work of God. In fact, human agency must be involved. We even see that in our verse right here, verse 41. It says, let us, let us do something. That means that God's sovereignty works through us hearing God's commands and saying, I'll do something. I'll participate in the work of the Holy Spirit in this earth. You all see the point I'm trying to make? A few amazing quotes that have come out of this revival. Dan Biser said, do not pay attention to armchair quarterbacks writing and critiquing Asbury Revival. They are much like Uzzah putting their hand on the ark. Let God do in this and through this moment what he desires and wills. Greg Gordon said, this revival is revealing the hearts that have lost intimacy with the Lord. He's talking about people who have only met the revival with criticism. Now we should stop and say, discernment is good. Godly discernment is always good, is it not? But does our discernment come from a place of love, a place of praise, a place of hearing God might be working and I want to say hallelujah. And then I'm also discerning at the very same time. You see that? Or is our discernment just, I'm gonna judge that and I'm gonna cut that down. And there's no way that could be happening. Shane Eidelman said this, to revival critics, the very thing you need is the very thing you're running from. At the very least, we could all agree about this. Whatever's going on over there in Kentucky, something's happening. I don't think it's the work of the devil. And at the very least, we can say that America is not cursed. America is not forsaken by God. Some of us have wondered if this is just gonna be doom and gloom all the way to the end. God is absolutely telling us through this, take courage, Christians. Take courage. He is still willing to pour out his mercy on this land. Amen? Amen. But I want to encourage us today to go even a step deeper. Not only should we embrace intellectually, I think what's going on there. And let me add this. If we're not embracing in some sense what's going on in Kentucky, what we might need to do is to get even more biblical and think through the things that I just said. We need to think about what revival looks like in the Bible and think about how much there is error in with it. And we need to, and this is the other thing. You see revival working in the Bible as an upheaval. Revival, as spelled out, for example, in Acts chapter three, verse 19, is a time of refreshing that comes from the presence of the Lord. It's not the same as the weekly means of grace. Revival is a time that's weird. That's an upheaval. It does something different to us. Many other critics are looking at this revival and saying, if it's real, then it should be just producing the normal means of grace. That's not quite right. If it's real, everyone from there should be bearing the fruit of wanting to go back to their church and being a giving member and enjoying the normal means of grace. That's true. But also, if it's real, it would be right for it to look like a time of upheaval, a time when things get questioned, a time when some of our traditions get overturned, a time when there's true refreshing from a presence of the Lord that we haven't been experiencing previously. Do you all see what I'm talking about? I wanna call us today, not only to embrace what's happening intellectually, but to fall on our knees in worship for what God is doing. That's the deeper point. Not only that we can sit back and say, yeah, maybe it's a revival, yeah, maybe it's not a revival, but to worship God that he's moving, to worship God that he's reviving this land. Leonard Ravenhill said that most ministers lack three things, a prayer life, discipline, and the ability to worship. And we should ask ourselves as Christians, Noah, do we lack these things? A prayer life, discipline, and the ability to worship. As we look at this text here, let's probe ourselves for our ability to worship. Are we able to worship? Have we met this news of revival with a spirit of worship? Worship. Let's look at this verse here, and there are five elements in it, and we'll just go straight through it. First element, let us. Y'all with me? Lamentations chapter three and verse 41. Let us. Let us. Those two words teach us that worship is active. Worship engages the will, and it also teaches us that worship can be taught, and worship can be practiced. Here Jeremiah says, let us do something. Now listen, there's a big problem in the church of God today, and it's a problem that I hear about in our church as well. People will say, I'm only gonna pray if I'm led, or people will say, I'm only going to lift up my hands and worship if I'm led to do so. We ought to notice that the Bible doesn't tell us to do that. Right here, Jeremiah says, let us lift up our heart to our hands. Worship is not something we only do when we're led. It's something we do because we're commanded to do it, and it involves us putting our agency, our guts into it. That's point one. Point two, lift up. Let us lift up our heart to our hands. Lift up. Those words teach us that worship has to do with offering, with giving, with giving up, with surrendering, with getting rid of our embarrassment. What's behind this word right here? Let us lift up. Behind our ability to lift anything up to God is the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. It's only Christ giving us his resurrection power, Christ giving us his spirit that enables us to lift up our heart with our hands. Amen? Now, let me ask you this. Are you willing to lift up your heart to God? Much of this has to do with us being willing to experience deeper levels of blessing. When we think of lifting up our heart, we can say, I have a new heart, I've been regenerate, I'm always lifting up my heart to God. But what Jeremiah is pressing us to do is to say, you give that heart, that new heart, and you lift it up further. You lift it up more. You give it to God more and more every day. And here's how we know if we're doing this. Are you willing to experience deeper and deeper levels of blessing in your Christian life? Or are you stagnant? Are you saying my heart is here and the next day my heart is here and the next day my heart is here? There was this man who met Smith Wigglesworth, who was a Pentecostal that most of us wouldn't agree with almost at all. But Smith Wigglesworth was a conservative and a biblical Christian. And I believe we will see him in heaven. No doubt, no doubt. This man would meet with Smith Wigglesworth and every time they would meet, Wigglesworth would say, what's in your arm right there? And the man would have a newspaper. And Wigglesworth would say, cast that thing to the ground. Don't bring that into my house. I don't allow lies in my house. He would go into Wigglesworth's house and all he had and all he read was the Bible. And he would sit this man down and he would sort of freak him out a little bit because he would just read the Bible for 30 minutes straight. And he would say, young man, I want to read to you. And then he would say, young man, I want to pray for you. He would pray. And then he'd say, young man, I want to read to you again. He would read. And then at the end of their time together, Wigglesworth would say, young man, I want to bless you. And every time this student left his house, Wigglesworth would put his hands on him and bless him and say a blessing over him, give a benediction to his life. And this man would visit him repeatedly. Every single time Wigglesworth would say, young man, I want to bless you more. I want to bless you more. And he was calling him to go from blessing to blessing, to go from blessing to blessing. And this is what this young man said. Please listen. This is very important. I believe this is what the Lord is pressing us to through this revival that's going on right now. He said, this is the young man who met Smith Wigglesworth. He said, there's one thing I wish to share with you so strong. Most people are not able and not capable of going from blessing to blessing. You all hear that? That's very deep. Most Christians are not able and not capable of going from blessing to blessing. Most of them, all denominations and most people die in the same first revelation they received from God. Is that not frightful? The people that call themselves Lutherans today are living in the same blessing that Luther had 400 years ago. You see? The people that call themselves Wesleyans and Methodists, they're living in the blessing of Wesley a couple of hundred years ago. You see? It's very difficult to get out of a groove. It's very difficult, you know, to get out of a system. You have so many friends there and you've had so much fellowship there. So do you all hear what I'm saying here? I'm trying to outline for you the difficulty of lifting up our heart to God. Of saying, Lord, I want more. I want more blessing. I wanna go to the next level. And often it makes us feel very uncomfortable. And I actually think that's what's going on right now with this revival. God is saying to critical people, He's saying, do you want any more of me? Do you wanna be more childlike, like those university students who are just throwing up their hands in worship? Or do you wanna just stay at the level you're at? Do you wanna just keep your heart right there? Or are you willing to challenge yourself a bit, lift your heart a little bit higher for me? A critical spirit must go. A critical spirit must go. And I fear at times that there is a critical spirit even among us in this church. And brothers and sisters, I'm just gonna say this in case this is true. I've seen reformed people online just tearing this revival to shreds. Reformed people just criticizing it from all angles. What if revival comes to Maine and the reformed people are the ones who are left out of it? That thought absolutely terrifies me. Can we not be like that? Can we say, yes, we're striving for good doctrine? Yes, we're striving for good practice, but we want an extra blessing. We want to go up to the next level of blessing. We wanna lift up our hearts higher. And in every single revival throughout all of church history there have been critical people and judgmental people who have just stood back and have critiqued the whole thing. And I fear for those people's souls. We don't wanna become like them. Here's a quote from Shane Idleman. He said, critical people will never experience revival since it is birthed in the womb of humility. That really ought to give us pause. What if some of our discernment is good but then it shades over into being so critical that we're no longer humble and therefore when revival comes, God will pass over us. That really terrifies me. I feel like this sermon is sort of haphazard and all over the place, but it's vital. So I'm gonna go on. Verse 41, let us lift up our heart. What's the heart? The heart is the seed of affections. The heart is the thing that in worship must be what? Lifted up. The heart must be melted and given up to God. First of all, I ask you, do you have a born again heart? Do you have a heart that's been changed by the Holy Spirit? Do you have a new heart that can be given up to God? Only people with a new heart can give their hearts to God. And this can give us great assurance that as God moves in revival, the only people who are actually worshiping are those with a new heart, amen? The only people in any church anywhere are those with a regenerate heart. Those are the only ones worshiping. The only ones actually able to lift up their heart. But then we must offer a born again heart and we must offer a beating heart, a heart that's melted. And I ask you today, what do you do in your life to melt your heart? What do you do in your life to offer up your heart to God on the altar? We need to actually have experiences that melt our hearts. We need to do things in our Christian life that melt our hearts. For me recently, just looking at baby Shiloh has been the thing that melts my heart all the time. And I need to realize as I do that, I'm looking at him, this is part of worship. My heart's getting melted. I'm getting what Paul talks about in Romans chapter one as storge, natural affection. You look at a baby and your heart is melting. And when your heart gets melted, say to the Lord, let me lift up my heart to my hands. Let me lift this heart up. Let this be an act of worship. There was a time when I was teaching at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto and it was much like Asbury Seminary in Kentucky. There was a bunch of bad doctrine being taught and a bunch of good doctrine being taught. And I had already become very critical of Hillsong songs. And I had said, I'm never gonna sing those songs again because of what that church has been involved in. And there was a day when I was so very discouraged. I had a prayer meeting with the students there. I came into it and they could just see my countenance was falling and I was ready to give up. I don't know, just ready to give up on my Christian life. And they all gathered around me and started to sing a Hillsong song. And I was like, oh, I think I hate that song, right? And they just sang it and sang it and I couldn't stop them. And it just melted my heart. And I can tell you that gave me the ability to go on for months and months after that. And it was because out of the mouths of people who were probably less mature than me was coming true worship. And it was making my heart melt. And then I was finally able to give my heart back to God. But it took God questioning that critical spirit in me. Look again at this image here. Let us lift up our hearts to our hands. Please consider if you lift up your heart, are there any ropes that are still tied to it? You lift up your heart, but is your heart still tied to your bank account? You lift up your heart, but is your heart still tied to this dirty movie over here? You lift up your heart, but is your heart still tied to some wrong affection over here? We have to cut all of those cords. We have to lift up a pure heart. We have to lift up a melting heart. We have to lift up an uncritical heart. I'm gonna say this again. If there is a critical spirit among us, it has to go. And I believe this revival is going to call us to get rid of it. So that we can do what? Lift up that heart fully to God. Fourth thing, look at our verse. Let us lift up our heart to our hands. It's literally lift up the heart to the hands unto God in the heavens. To our hands. There, Jeremiah is telling us that when we truly worship, there are postures, there are ways that we hold our body. When we worship, sometimes we have to kneel. Sometimes we have to close the door, like it says in Matthew six. Sometimes we have to lift our hands. Sometimes we have to lie down prostrate. Sometimes we have to be clothed in sackcloth and ashes. Do you take the prayer postures of the Bible seriously? When we see Paul kneeling, do we say, maybe I should try kneeling? When we see Jeremiah telling us, lift up your hands, do we say, maybe I should actually try lifting up my hands? And what I love here is, what he's telling us is that this posture does something for us. I lift up my heart to my hands, to my God in heaven. What does lifting up holy hands do for us? It tells us in first Timothy chapter two, verse eight. Paul says, I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands. Does anybody know this verse? Without wrath or doubting. Paul's telling us, pray everywhere, lift up holy hands, and coming with that is without wrath or doubting. Now, wrath and doubting are particularly man problems. We as men get angry and we get doubtful. And so Paul looks in first Timothy chapter two, verse eight, explicitly to the men, and it's literally men there, not just all humans. And he says, I desire that men, this is what men are supposed to do. Men lift up holy hands without wrath or doubting. If we're called to truly worship, we as men, and especially the men here, we ought to try physically lifting up our hands. Because in doing so, we're declaring, Lord, I want no more wrath, no more anger in me, no more of this meanness, Lord, no more of this just judgmental spirit in me. That has to go. And then as we lift up our holy hands, we're also saying without doubting, no more doubting, Lord, no more unbelief, Lord. And isn't that posture itself, it's sort of embarrassing, right? You lift up holy hands, and it's like you're giving it all you got. In doing this, we're saying, I don't want to be angry anymore. I don't want to be wrathful anymore. I don't want to be unbelieving anymore, Lord. Finally, to God in the heavens. Let us lift up our heart to our hands, to God in the heavens. What is the fact that God is in the heavens? What does that mean for us? What does that mean for how we worship? You could take the phrase God in the heavens as a shorthand for sovereignty. God who is sovereign. We lift up our hands to God who's in the heavens. In Psalm 115, verse three, what does it say? Our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases. I think it's that place in scripture that shows God to be sovereign, to be holy, to be completely different from us, to dwell not here but up there. And whenever we remember, oh, my God is in the heavens, we should remember he's not like me. He does whatever he pleases. And that's the capstone on Jeremiah's call to worship right here. I hope you all get this. Everything we do in worship has to go through God's sovereignty. Consider this. All of God's attributes as they come to us, they come to us through his sovereignty. What do I mean? We can lift up our hands and say God is love, God is love. But we have to add this part. Our God in the heavens is love, which reminds us God is love in whatever way he pleases to be. God is love however he pleases to be. You see what I'm saying? This is a vital element of worship because we can lift up our hands and worship God and say God is justice, God is just. But God replies, I am sovereign in my justice. I do whatever I want, whatever I please. And we need to see all of our worship coming through his sovereignty. Again, think of the revival. We can say God promises to send revival in his scripture. God promises to bless his people. But we should add our God who is in the heavens promises to bless his people, meaning he's gonna bless his people however he wants and whenever he wants and in whatever way he wants. And that's part of what's happening right now. A lot of people are just angry that God's not blessing his people in the way that we want. We all could say, why isn't he in Maine? We all could say, why isn't he coming to the reformed churches? We all could say, why isn't he coming to older people? But our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases, right? You see? So we need to lift up our heart to our hands, to our God in the heavens. And we always need that element of worship. We always need that element of worship. All of God's attributes come to us through his sovereignty. Finally, I'll ask us these simple questions. What is impeding you from worship? What is impeding you from giving all of your life in worship to God? Go home, make a list. Write down how you've reacted to this revival. Write down how you're reacting to God's word, to singing his songs in church. And ask yourself, what's impeding me? What's getting in the way of this sort of loose and free ability to lift up my heart to my hands, to God in heaven? What's making it so I'm not there, Lord? I'm not zealous to do it. My heart is not wide open to you. What's impeding? What's getting in the way? Please search your heart on that question. And then secondly, what helps you to cultivate a spirit of worship? What are the things in your life where you say, after I do that, I know I'm with the Lord. After I do that, I know he's with me. I know he's in the room. After I sing that song in the morning to my baby, my heart is aflame for God. I'll end with a few more quotes about what's happening in Kentucky. And here again is my exhortation. Please, saints, worship God for what's going on in Aspern. Worship God that he may very well be sending us revival. Worship God to the point of asking him that it spreads and spreads and spreads and spreads. Because if we don't worship him, if we quench the spirit, if we say this is all a joke, then it may very well not spread. Greg Gordon said this, pray for personal revival and first love to Jesus. He said this about what's going on in Kentucky. No fancy lights, no timers, no perfect productions, no leader and no teams, no hierarchy or competition, literally no structure whatsoever. Apparently the only thing needed to attract people to God is God. He said this too, revival is Jesus. Time to renew your first love. Cry out to him where you are, get oil. 225 hours into the revival and God's manifest presence is even growing stronger. So many lives touched, five overflow buildings. God can do more in a moment than we can do in a lifetime. Ask God for personal revival in your heart today, amen.