Good to be together, brothers and sisters. And I’m glad you made it safely here.
A number of people who came down from New York and New Jersey found the way quite congested, but they’re all glad to be here as well.
I’d like for us to turn to several verses tonight, just to bring before us a theme that I want to share on during the few times I’m speaking. I’d like for us to begin in Isaiah 62.
For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not keep quiet,
until her righteousness goes forth like brightness,
and her salvation like a torch that is burning.The nations will see your righteousness,
and all the kings your glory;
and you will be called by a new name
which the mouth of the Lord will designate.You will also be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.It will no longer be said of you, “Forsaken,”
nor to your land will it any longer be said, “Desolate”;
but you will be called, “My delight is in her,”
and your land, “Married.”For the Lord delights in you,
and to Him your land will be married.For as a young man marries a virgin,
so your sons will marry you;
and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so your God will rejoice over you.On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen;
all day and all night they will never keep silent.
You who remind the Lord,
take no rest for yourselves;
and give Him no rest
until He establishes and makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
“Your words have been arrogant against Me,” says the Lord.
“Yet you say, ‘What have we spoken against You?’“You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God;
and what profit is it that we have kept His charge,
and that we have walked in mourning before the Lord of hosts?’“So now we call the arrogant blessed;
not only are the doers of wickedness built up,
but they also test God and escape.”Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another,
and the Lord gave attention and heard it,
and a book of remembrance was written before Him
for those who fear the Lord and who esteem His name.
You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
And the things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
Remember Jesus Christ.
That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection,
and the fellowship of His sufferings,
being conformed to His death,
in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.Not that I have already obtained it
or have already become perfect,
but I press on so that I may lay hold of that
for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet;
but one thing I do:
forgetting what lies behind
and reaching forward to what lies ahead,
I press on toward the mark
for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude;
and if in anything you have a different attitude,
God will reveal this also to you.However, let us keep living by the same standard
to which we have attained.
Our Father, we come to You tonight. We thank You that we could gather here, and now we have been able to worship You and confess what a great God You are.
And now, Lord, we would ask You to help us by the Holy Spirit, that You would quicken our mortal bodies tonight from a long and tiresome trip, and our minds from the distractions of the things around us. We pray that we might have a time set apart in Your presence, that we might fellowship with one another as those who fear the Lord, and that You may gain Your end from this whole conference in these days before us.
Lord, we commit ourselves unto You, asking for Your anointing and help, for Your strengthening and understanding in the things of God. We commit this whole time unto You. Thank You, Lord, for bringing us together in the name of our precious Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Well, these words in Philippians 3 are familiar to all of us, I’m sure—words of motivation: pressing on toward the mark.
We see Paul, and we see his objective is so clear. We see his motive is so transparent. We see he has taken virtually every obstacle out of the way, forgetting those things and pressing toward the mark. Somehow, we feel sure that he will attain to this high calling, this prize that he seeks after.
And then he also says that there are others who understand this race, understand this fight, who understand that which is to be gained. These are the mature ones—or the perfect, as it says in my translation—who have this same attitude. Praise God for that.
Probably tonight we have many people here who have that same mind: to press on, lay aside things, lay aside any obstacles, keep the motive transparent—their love for the Lord—and the objective clear.
But we have many people here who see this testimony of Paul’s as somewhat of a testimony of a hero, a special person, somebody who has done a very unique thing that few of us feel we could ever match.
But in fact, this testimony is a testimony of what the normal Christian life is like in principle. Not everybody is called upon to face the extremes of persecution and even martyrdom that Paul faced, but all Christians—this is our life. This is the life of pressing forward. This is a gaining, an advance, a warfare, a fight, a race.
The difficulty is always this: if we just say, “Well, this is such a race, it can only be done by the grace of God,” and of course it’s true, then we leave people to admire Paul but not run in the same course.
At various times, the church has taken a second option and told everybody that this kind of course is required: “You must sacrifice your life. You must lay down your money, give it all to the organization. You must listen to your heads, the guys over you, and obey them at all costs.”
They lay a sort of heavy legalism upon us in order that people might indeed gain some ground. But this becomes too heavy, and it becomes artificial, and it eventually breaks down. So now what do we do?
Even just reading this testimony must find some kind of response in us. What are we going to do with this testimony, this pressing toward the mark?
There are some, as Paul stated, who are mature. They already get it, and they have such a mindset. This is clearly a mindset that is sacrificial, a life-laying-down mindset, nothing distracting us from the heavenly goal.
But there are others—many people here—and perhaps we’re not so sure of the goal, of our motives, or if we could possibly attain to something like this.
The theme of my message tonight will be remembering the Lord. As Paul said to Timothy, “Remember Christ Jesus.” I’ll try to explain why that’s the theme for tonight in a little bit.
But to put it very simply, you must have come to know the Lord, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, to have the proper motivation to press on toward the goal. There’s a certain experience, a history, that has to be built in our lives. I’m calling that a memory—a remembering.
Because, as we’ll see in the Scriptures, the Lord brings us to this question often by asking, “Do you remember your first love? Do you remember what it was like when you had the first look at the Lord Jesus?”
By doing such recollections, it stirs something within us to go on and be faithful.
But now, when we gather like this in such an assembly, we have people from many different backgrounds. We have a lot of young people here tonight. Now, they don’t have much memory. You know, they haven’t been around long. Their memory is small. What can they say about their memory of the Lord and His ways?
Well, many of them have heard about the Lord but haven’t really even met Him yet, and they’re here tonight. Most of them have been raised in a wonderful Christian church and were saved at an early age. They have these wonderful sentiments, which lately have been given to us through these songs that are quite wonderful, about how desperate we are for the Lord and how we worship Him entirely, and all such things.
If, by our words, that were the standard of the reality of our lives, we’d all be on the mark.
But many young people, without much memory, do not quite understand this mark, this goal. Church is a given, but not an end. It’s something there, and hopefully enjoyable, but they don’t know too much about it.
And so I had this burden: I want to share some of the remembrances that could spur you on toward the mark.
Then, of course, we have a number of people here who I would call the young working class. You know, they’re out of school now, they’re working at a job, they’ve gotten a good education. Sometimes they’ve gotten a great job. Sometimes, at a very young age, they already have a beautiful house and two kids and a dog.
They see the church—I often feel like, when I talk to them—you know, I like to poll young people to see what they think about this. When I talk to teenagers who have heard a lot about the Lord, and I ask, “What is this mark and everything?” they say, “Yeah, I don’t know.”
I said to somebody recently, “Tell us about your experience of church life.” All they knew to do was talk about their youth group. They don’t know too much, see?
But now there’s this older group, and they’re already in the workplace. The church isn’t a given for them. The church has become their umbrella, as I look at it. Now they understand that, like a good insurance policy by Travelers: you live under this umbrella.
Now, if you want to be blessed, you better stay in this umbrella called the church. There you can get rich, and the Lord will bless you, and the Lord will attain things in your life. So, oh, it’s wonderful, the treasures that even these young, powerful, successful people are already stacking up.
But to talk about this goal and this mark as some kind of battle leaves them a bit confused. “No, no, no, no. This is my umbrella. This is my secret to success,” rather than it being some kind of mark, you know?
Well, then, of course, we’ve got older people like myself—been around a long time. This is my, I think, thirty-third year coming. I’ve heard a lot of stuff.
For older folks who have been around for a while and been embattled a few times, and even been discouraged, frankly, with attaining to the goal and finding out the goal was rotten—you know, that men had gotten in there and messed up the goal, because we had the wrong goal, of course—it gets to the place where the church becomes a sort of security place: a rock, a shelter, a hiding place.
But if this is all we feel regarding the church, we’ll hardly be straining toward this mark that Paul sees. If there’s anybody who should be discouraged by false apostles, things going wrong, persecution, and reversals of fortune, it should be the apostle Paul. But here he is, bound in prison, and he’s just pressing on. There’s just no stopping him.
And so, the questions I’ll be raising in the few times I’m sharing concern this whole matter: what do you remember about the Lord?
Now, you know history has a cycle to it that I’m sure you’re all aware of. When the Lord does something new, something wonderful, something even reviving, but more especially something of recovery, this is the way it usually goes.
He starts with a group of rough people—not many wise, not many noble, not many rich. But they lay hold of some magnificent obsession: a vision of the Lord Jesus, the vision of what He wants to accomplish, and a desire for a testimony.
These people, who have nothing anyway, I guess you could say, lay it all down and pursue the Lord just in the echo of this testimony of the apostle Paul. They lay it down. They sacrifice everything. They go out to six meetings a week, praying, working, witnessing, worshiping, reading the Bible. They want to know the Lord. They’re pressing on, and the Lord does something wonderful, something reviving, something recovering in the church.
If you attend among these rough-hewn people, you’re just so blessed because you sense the presence of the Lord.
Succeeding generations are blessed because of that presence gained. They grow up in that presence, so they have more confidence than these insecure ones who began things. They go to school and get the best education, get properly fitted into the best jobs—very challenging jobs. Somewhere along the way, they become people of stature, people of financial success, people who have wonderful natural, worldly goals.
And somewhere in the transition of the generations, the ark gets lost.
You can find still standing in the same place a tabernacle, still with beautiful furnishings. I mean, you know, these furnishings in the house of God get more beautiful with age. Beautiful ceremonies, the songs we’ve learned and memorized and know—there’s something about them hanging around in the rafters for years that makes them all the more beautiful.
But we just have a tabernacle without the presence of the Lord, nor His ark anymore. Something has been lost.
Now, it doesn’t have to be that way. That’s just the way it is.
But that’s not the end of the history. Because we find this moment that I want to try to capture tonight, if I can.
Even in the decline of that which once was glorious and precious, even as the successive generations have found such a place in the world of comfort and acceptance that the church has become a secondary umbrella or some such thing, if you look closely, there’s still someone who remembers the Lord.
Even with all of the treasures of this world, they remember the Lord.
I gave you just some simple examples. You’ll recognize every one of them.
Who is that old man standing on the walls of a collapsing Jerusalem, reminding the Lord and giving the Lord no rest day and night until Zion becomes a praise in the earth? Who is that old man? And is that his younger son, Shear-jashub, next to him, praying as well in the midst of declining Judah? Who is that man?
Who’s that young brother who, after Paul died, is found there in Ephesus bearing this torch? Paul mentions in 2 Timothy the passing along of the things he has received to others, and being a link toward a new recovery, toward something new the Lord is doing.
Who is this young man who remembers the Lord when so many, as Paul has already said, have turned away? Who is this young man?
Who are these people in Malachi, while the Levites are complaining that there is no profit in serving the Lord? Who is this little band of people who are speaking to one another in the fear of the Lord, praying in the fear of the Lord, studying the Word in the fear of the Lord, and for whom the Lord has written a book of remembrance? Who are these people?
They’re going completely against the tide.
Who is that count in eighteenth-century Germany, despised by all the nobles around him? He’s the butt of every joke because this man has opened up his estate and taken in all kinds of religious refugees—the roughest of characters, you can be sure.
Taking them in, making a place for them to live, gathering them together, he spends time shepherding these people, praying with these people, sacrificing his life for these people. Indeed, in the end, he went bankrupt for the sake of some people. Who is this man?
Who’s that sister—and we just sang a song—that sister there, pretty much on her own, not under missionary support, out on some island around Fuzhou, praying for ten, fifteen, twenty years? Praying, praying, crying out on that wall, remembering, remembering, reminding the Lord. Who are these people?
These are the people that the Bible calls those who remembered the Lord.
The implication is that either in good times or routine times, we tend to forget the Lord.
Now, I’ve just finished studying the book of Isaiah for quite a bit, and one thing I’ve discovered in the book of Isaiah is this: don’t ever say that the people of Judah forgot the Lord. They kept their ceremonies going. They had all the right words. They had all the right things. They were very religious people, a very devoted people, all the time.
But the Lord says, “You know, you’re doing all that stuff, but it’s lip service. Where’s your heart?”
Within Christianity today, we’ve got a lot of people with a lot of great worship lip service. But what’s really going on? Who’s pressing toward the mark? Or, very simply put, who remembers the Lord?
In every generation, every generation, the Lord chooses to have somebody remember His name upon this earth. The Lord has decided that.
And so, in every generation—now, can I prove that there has always been somebody who remembered the Lord in every generation? Well, obviously I can’t. I mean, history is sketchy. Sometimes we see connections, and those who connected and led to that which happened after them. But for the most part, history just gives us a checkered testimony of this continuity.
Even though we can’t prove it, the Word of God reveals a God whose name is so worthy that in every generation there will be somebody upon this earth who remembers Him, who places Him first at total sacrifice. It’s because He’s worthy of that, and really so much more.
Whether it’s a Daniel, alone there in the courts of Babylon; whether it’s the Rechabites amidst the corrupted Levites; whether it’s Anna and Simeon waiting for the consolation of Israel—God will have, in every generation, some people who remember the Lord.
Now, there’s an interesting reason for that, as I would like to suggest tonight.
As we think about what happens in church history, and relate it to what we find in the Word of God, there’s something interesting. I want to use this terminology tonight: when there are those who remember the Lord above all else, then the Bible says there comes a time of a meeting of the memories.
If I could put it this way: when man remembers the Lord above all else, the Lord remembers us.
Have you ever done a study on “the Lord remembered”? It’s quite a wonderful devotional study for anybody who chooses to do so.
When we say, “The Lord remembered,” we’re not talking about some function of His omniscience. He knows everything, so of course He can remember everything. No, what the Bible seems to imply is this: when it talks about the Lord remembering something, it’s saying that the Lord chooses to remember. Sometimes the Lord chooses not to remember.
But whether He’s choosing to remember or to forget the sins of our youth, when He responds by remembering, it’s always a mercy.
As a matter of fact, behind every recovery of God, the Lord was remembering. Behind every revival we have known, the Lord remembered.
So there’s a meeting here. There are men who are called to remember the Lord, women who are called to remember the Lord. You know, in the Bible, need I tell you how many times it says, “Remember”?
Remember the deeds of the Lord. Remember the mercies of the Lord. Remember the mighty acts of the Lord. Remember the ways of the Lord. Remember the covenant of the Lord. And most especially, remember the Lord.
Do this in remembrance of Me.
Man is asked many times to remember, and of course, when we look at the history of man, we see that our memories are quite faulty. If it were up to us to remember, I’m afraid there would not be much to the progress of the Lord’s work.
But very wonderfully, the Bible also says, “The Lord remembers.”
Now, when the Lord remembers, something is released from heaven. Something happens that is merciful and brings God’s people further toward that goal, that purpose, that mark that He has for them.
The first time it says that is in Genesis 8, where it says, “The Lord remembered Noah.” The Lord remembered Abraham. The Lord remembered Rachel. The Lord remembered Hannah. The Lord remembered His children in Egypt—although it actually says He remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Whenever it says that, it is the key trigger for His life and action suddenly to be poured out from heaven.
The Lord remembers.
Dear brothers and sisters, I believe we’re at a time where certainly there must be people on the wall, calling out to the Lord. Surely we can expect the Lord to remember. A very important thing: do we remember the Lord? Then He responds.
If you look in the Scriptures, at least for me so far, I’ve found three different ways man remembers that seem to evoke the Lord remembering.
Here’s the first way: when man truly comes to the end of himself and gets desperate enough, he remembers the Lord.
So, you see what I’m saying? If I’m doing well, and I’m happy, and I’m content and right with where I am and everything, the Bible doesn’t call that remembering the Lord. “Oh, I take the Lord’s table. Oh, Lord, I love You so much,” and then I go on my own sort of secular way. No, no, no.
But when I’m at a point of extremity, and everything else has failed, and I’m a desperate man, I remember the Lord—and He remembers me.
So we have these ones I mentioned. You know, when it says the Lord remembered Noah, here’s the sentence just before that: Noah was shut up in the ark for one hundred and fifty days. Now, do you see the extremity there? Then it says, “And the Lord remembered Noah.”
In Rachel’s case, you know that she was absolutely vexed by the fact that every woman around her was having children and she couldn’t have children. This was killing her. It drove her to desperation. In her desperation, the Lord remembered Rachel.
The same is true for Hannah, of course. Even the children of Israel there in Egypt had to be pressed down, pressed down, pressed down, pressed down.
Then it says in Exodus 2:24, I believe, that the Lord remembered His covenant to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and He looked down and He saw His people.
So, do you see what I’m saying? If we want to talk literally regarding memory, the Lord remembers everything that’s ever happened and everything that ever will happen. We’re not talking about that. This is when the Lord chooses to remember in mercy.
The second type of man’s remembering that brings about the Lord remembering is when wrath has been stored up to such a point that now the wrath has to be poured out, and man remembers. The Lord remembers.
You remember, on the human side, Habakkuk, seeing that the Chaldeans were coming to take away the children of Judah in the Babylonian captivity, prayed, “In wrath, remember mercy.”
In the Old Testament, when it says the Lord remembered Abraham, here is the context: the Lord finally said, “Now is the time I must destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.” Just before He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, it said, “And the Lord remembered Abraham.” So He went down there and got Lot and his family out of there.
You see the mercy there? Right at the edge of wrath, just at that moment our sins are piled up to the sky and everything should be poured upon us. Even when that wrath begins to flow, there’s a remembrance of the Lord upon His people.
The third kind of remembrance that I see the Lord responding to is when there is just a dear saint who sacrifices their all for the Lord, no strings attached, not even seeking reward. They just do something completely out of love, and it says, “The Lord remembers.”
We have as an example that wonderful Psalm 132. It talks about Zion, the Lord’s chosen resting place. It begins, “Lord, remember David in all of his conflict, how he vowed a vow.”
Remember that, Lord. He did that out of the bigness of his heart. He vowed a vow that the house of God must be built. “Lord, remember Zion for the sake of David, Your servant.”
We also know, of course, through history, that there are many people who gave their lives completely for the Lord—whether it’s Mary pouring out her oil on Jesus, or whether it was some saint down through history who gave their whole lives and it seems like there was no payback. But the Lord remembers, and He responds in mercy.
I remember I took one of my Russian evangelist friends down to South Jersey, and we went down there and he shared his testimony. That’s the first time I’d heard this brother share his testimony.
This particular brother went out into a region near Siberia that was not of his choosing. It was the last place any of these students from Bible school wanted to go in Russia. It’s near Siberia; you don’t want to go there.
But the Lord told him to wait and let all the other students put a pin on the map. When it was all said and done, the only place left was this place, Perm, Russia.
Our brother said, “Oh boy, well, I guess I better go. This is my lot—the most unwanted place to go to.”
Of course, he had the greatest evangelistic response of all those who went out when the Iron Curtain fell.
The brother shared his testimony with the saints in South Jersey, and he was very quick to say, “Of course, it had nothing to do with me. It happens that the place where we were sent was a place where all the Christians were martyred in those prisons back in the days of Stalin. It was the blood of the martyrs that was remembered when we preached the gospel.”
The Lord remembers those acts of devotion, people who lay down their lives. He responds, and He remembers as well.
When the Lord remembers, there is a reviving. When the Lord remembers, there is a recovering of those things that were lost. Oh, that the Lord would remember, that He would choose to remember.
But first, it’s us up on the wall, remembering the Lord.
Let’s look at Isaiah 62 for just a minute, because in this whole matter of remembrance and remembering, we have this precious passage that we read earlier.
Here indeed we see the mercies of this remembering of the Lord and this remembering of His children.
By Isaiah 62, we don’t have to spend much time on the context, but you know the situation had gotten quite desperate. Isaiah was privileged to be an intercessor in the days of King Hezekiah, when there was a good revival going in Judah. This king was a faithful king, for the most part, and they had a blessed time of revival.
But when Hezekiah passed away and his son Manasseh took the throne, things went quickly downhill. Jerusalem soon became filled with idols, and everything just went into darkness.
In the midst of this situation, it’s therefore strange that suddenly there is this intercession for Zion. Where does it come from?
When we read Isaiah 62, we see this heart for Zion suddenly calling forth. Now, Isaiah already knows that Jerusalem is going to have to be destroyed and Judah go into captivity, but now they’re praying for Zion.
You see, Zion, which often is just a parallel word for Jerusalem, sometimes has a completely different meaning. That is to say, Zion also speaks of God’s purpose: a dwelling place of God and man in glory. That’s the Zion that’s in God’s heart.
Even as Jerusalem is tottering and soon enough will be destroyed, they’re praying about this reality, this testimony of Zion.
Here we find an interesting thing. First of all, in verse 1, who is interceding here? There’s been much debate among different Bible teachers and scholars.
For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent;
for Jerusalem’s sake I will not keep quiet
until her righteousness goes forth like brightness,
and her salvation like a torch that is burning.
Now, some people say this is Isaiah himself. Some people say, “Well, it’s God.” But I think, if you’ll study the context—and we won’t do that tonight—if you’ll just take my word for it for a minute, in one sense it is the Lord. It is the Messiah Himself.
The Messiah will come and lay down His life. He will be bruised for our iniquities. This wonderful suffering Servant will come, but He’s also the Messiah who yearns for this Zion: this dwelling in Zion, with He the King and His children together in wonderful glory, and the beauty of Zion, and all of her beauty of holiness, and all of her singing, and all of her righteousness. The Messiah longs for that.
If I could suggest, here we have a picture of what is even now going on in heaven. Jesus, our great Intercessor, up in heaven, is interceding for Zion. He’s interceding for Zion, first of all, in the Jewish sense of a Zion restored in the millennium, for sure. He is also interceding for Zion in the heavenly Jerusalem and the bride that is being gathered together to dwell with the saints.
So He’s longing for Zion, and He will not keep quiet. He’ll keep stirring things up until Zion becomes a praise in the earth. You can bet on it. This is the Lord’s prayer and intercession, even now, for His coming and the fulfillment of all the promises.
The interesting part is there for us in verse 6, where on the walls we find that watchmen have been appointed. These watchmen are to, all day and all night, twenty-four-seven, not keep silent.
Then it says there in the second half of verse 6, “You who remind the Lord, take no rest for yourselves, and give Him no rest until He establishes and makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.”
This phrase, “you who remind the Lord,” in my translation, is probably more correctly, “you who are the Lord’s remembrancers.”
Sounds initially like a strange thing, but it’s a verb, “remember,” that is made into a participle or a gerund or something. I don’t know what it is, but anyway, it’s a remembrancer.
Now, remembrancers—there are some people up on the wall as watchmen, twenty-four-seven, and they’re remembrancers. They’re remembering something. They’re calling the Lord to remembrance. Who are these remembrancers?
Well, now it’s interesting that we have some basis in Scripture to understand who these people are.
Indeed, in the courts of the Orient, in the kingdoms and the empires, every king had a remembrancer. This was an appointed man who remembered the promises and had records of all the declarations and proclamations made by a specific king.
Now, you see, the king didn’t have such a good memory. He might have said something a few years ago and he’d forget. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a PIM or a computer or some way of remembering it. Nothing comes up on the chart.
There is a man whose office is to remember all the promises and proclamations made by the lord.
We find, as an example, a remembrancer named Joah in the court of Hezekiah, who came with the announcements of the Assyrians before Hezekiah.
We find in Esther 6—Haman was going to hang Mordecai, but the very night before, the king had a restless night and he went to the remembrance room. He said, “Hey, bring in the scrolls.” They brought in the scrolls, and they found a testimony about Mordecai and how he saved the king from a plot.
So you have these people who remind the Lord. What a high calling this is. The Lord is saying, “I have appointed some people and put them up on the wall, and they’re to remind Me day and night of My promises, of My mercies.”
Oh, this is so precious. This is actually one of the real bases of intercessory prayer.
We know that Isaiah was given to intercession as a watchman on the wall, but we see that a true intercessor was able to come before the Lord and remind the Lord of His mercies, remind Him night and day.
You know something? I think the Lord’s the only one I know who loves to be reminded all the time.
I grow weary when my wife reminds me of things I need to remember. She reminded me of some things which I directly forgot when I came down here today, and we had to go to Walmart and buy some stuff.
I just don’t like being reminded. The Lord loves being reminded.
You remember, as an example, Moses up on the mountain after God revealed His wrath against those children in idolatry. What did Moses say? “Now remember, Lord. Remember what You promised. Remember what You told the whole world You were going to do with these children. You can’t do them in now. Remember?”
Of course, the Lord loves to be reminded of these things.
If we had time, we could look at Isaiah 63 and 64. If you’ll look at them, you’ll see these are remembrancers in action. These are the words of Isaiah and his friends. They’re upon the walls, reminding the Lord of His mercies, reminding the Lord that they are just clay and He is the Potter, reminding the Lord that His wrath has been upon them and that they need some help.
Remembrancers. How the Lord loves remembrancers.
“Lord, we know how good You are, and we know how sinful we are.” See, that makes sense to the Lord.
“Lord, we remember times in the past where You showed mercy to Your children even when they went astray.” The Lord says, “I like that. I remember.”
These remembrancers come before the Lord and call out to Him day and night and day and night until the Lord chooses to remember. Then there’s relief, then there’s mercy, then there’s reviving, and then there’s recovering.
So behind God’s reviving, behind God’s merciful actions, there are those upon the wall—remembrancers. They remember the Lord. They know the Lord well enough to intercede. The Lord remembers and brings down life from heaven.
So we’re to give the Lord no rest until He remembers Zion.
I wonder how you feel about our situation today. We have an amazing way of adjusting to any circumstance until it’s just, “Well, that’s just life.”
I live in Manhattan, where in 9/11 there was no such thing as “that’s just life.” But now people have gotten fully back into, “Well, we’ve adapted to that. We’ve adjusted to that.” Now we’re adjusting to this, adjusting to that, and adjusting to all kinds of immorality in our nation.
But I wonder if anybody is up on the walls saying, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. This is desperate.”
My math is not the best, but I would say that in the matters of reviving and recovery, it’s about time for another open heaven.
The Lord revives and recovers His children, and it seems He does something at least in every generation.
We know in the 1930s there was a great reviving, a great recovering, a whole new level of understanding regarding the centrality of Christ and the reality of the local church.
Then forty years later, we came into the seventies, and God gave us a great reviving again with a charismatic outpouring that absolutely set free so many people who were bound up in a church experience. But by the power of the Spirit, people were set free. All these dimensions of worship and things have been added to us. What a wonderful recovering. What a wonderful reviving among the people of God.
In times of reviving, there comes recovery. Our brother Watchman Nee in China—it was actually a great revival that was stirring the east coast of China, where these revivalists were going up and down the coast and preaching, both men and women. People were being saved, and there was great reviving going on.
But then there were these brothers who stood up and said, “The Lord wants to recover His church as well as revive people and bring them to salvation.” So recovery comes within the context of reviving.
Well, I reckon it’s been about forty years, and I’m desperate. I see decline. I don’t even know how to express it because one of my privileges over the years was to teach the young people very much.
I saw many young people really love the Lord, band themselves together, seek and pursue the Lord. Now I look around. I’m trying to find them. I don’t find them. Where have they gone?
Surely there’s some up on the wall. They’re not satisfied just with an umbrella church, just with church as a given, church as a little rock of protection and shelter.
Surely, you see, this matter of remembering, as we’ll see in the days to come, hopefully, is not a matter of age at all. It’s a matter of remembering the reality of the Lord.
In the times that remain, I’m going to share on three questions. I’ll just present them to you now. I’ve already mentioned them, because to me they are actually key to pressing on toward the mark.
We want to know what motivates people in the end to press on toward the mark. Of course, it’s being apprehended by a Person, even the Lord, and pursuing after Him. But I want to break it down in a simpler way. I hope it helps the young people so that they don’t feel, “Well, I don’t have enough memory yet. I can’t be the Lord’s remembrancer.”
Oh, yes, you can.
But here are the three questions that I want to pose as we end here tonight.
Do you remember your first gaze upon the Lord of glory that absolutely spoils your life?
If you can remember that, and the Lord can cause you to remember, you may find yourself pressing toward the mark. I’ll talk about that next time.
Do you remember that—gazing on the Lord of glory? Of course, we know right away that that’s one of Paul’s primary things he always talks about. He never got over it. That view of the Lord of glory got him pursuing all of these years and still is his motive: to lay hold of that for which he was laid hold of.
That’s the first question. Do you remember that in your experience?
I suppose there are some people here tonight who know the Lord, but I don’t mean that. I say, have you ever—do you remember—that first gaze upon the Lord of glory?
The second question, also regarding the Lord, is this: do you remember your first love?
You know how, in Revelation 2, to the church of Ephesus, the Lord says, “You have left your first love,” but then He says, “Now you have to remember from where you have fallen.”
Well, if you’ve never had first love, you don’t know where you’ve fallen, because you never knew where you were. But have you ever known that first love with the Lord? Then you can remember how far you’ve fallen.
So the important question is: do you remember ever having that kind of first love? We will have to explain that a little bit, but that’s also a great source of motivation as we press on toward the mark.
Finally, I cast the third general question this way: do you remember that first experience of corporate life under an open heaven?
Do you remember that? Have you ever been there? In this, I don’t know how many of us have been there, and that could be defined variously for different individuals.
But do you remember that first life, that first impulse, that Book of Acts, post-Pentecost life in the assembly? Have you ever touched that?
Oh, if you’ve touched that, I’ve got to believe it’s spoiled you for everything that is just make-do.
For most of us, sometimes we quit fighting and just go to something that is just okay. It becomes a matter of bitterness and disappointment, a matter of existence and not life.
Oh, do you remember the first life?
These are the things we would ask the Lord to do, to press us on toward the mark. May the Lord help us.
Unless we’re desperate people—and that doesn’t necessarily mean financially desperate; it means spiritually—we see the score, we sense the thirst, we know that above all else there is something that’s missing. We ask the Lord, and we remind the Lord until He chooses to remember once again.
Let’s pray.
We’re so thankful, Lord, as we gather tonight, that every saint in this room can remember You, Lord. There’s something of Your life that was given to them from the moment they were born again. Whether young or old, we have that memory still.
Oh, but Lord, we pray in these days of meditation, You would stir up our remembering in such a way as to leave us not nostalgic, but motivated to press on toward the mark.
Oh Lord, we pray for higher ground. In this day where there seems to be decline, where there seems to be outward form but a lack of vibrant life, Lord, we come upon the walls of Zion and say, “O Lord, until Zion becomes a praise in the earth, we will not be quiet.”
We’re not satisfied just with this mere existence that we’re in, nor with the decline we sense in our own lives and the lives around us. Oh Lord, would You give us that kind of holy desire?
We remember in days of old how people would move from here to there, would give up professions and jobs, would give up worldly stature and renown, just to be where You are and to be part of what You’re doing.
Oh Lord, we ask You to bring to our remembrance our Lord Jesus in such a way that we would be spoiled of any other kind of pursuit.
O Lord, tear away from us those obstacles that cause our race to go so slow, until we’re following only after Him whom we see before us, encouraging us on the way.
We thank You for our brothers Stephen and Lance as they share, and for myself as well. We pray, Lord, through these days, we can come away pursuing You with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength—for no earthly reward, but because we remember the Lord and, by His mercy, He chooses to remember us.
O Lord, rend the heavens and come down. It’s life that we need, life that we need. Only the Lord can give us that life that we need.
We come to You, our only source, and ask for Your help, in Jesus’ name. Amen.