How wonderful to read in the Word of God, in Ezekiel: “There shall be showers of blessing.” The Lord expects to pour showers out upon us. He is a merciful Lord.
We want to talk about this matter of reviving, and so I want to bring you to some Scriptures. First, what will be sort of the theme verse, I suppose, in Habakkuk 3:2:
O Lord, I have heard the report of Thee, and fear.
O Lord, revive Thy work in the midst of the years;
In the midst of the years make it known;
In wrath remember mercy.
Then let us turn to 2 Chronicles 7:14, a very familiar verse, which people who are desperate for the Lord’s presence and His face shining upon us often pray:
If My people, who are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways;
Then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
Then we want to turn to the book of Isaiah. I think most of you probably suspect I have been in the book of Isaiah recently. To me, I have discovered very rich treasures here. Isaiah 62—the highest calling of Isaiah:
For Zion’s sake will I not hold My peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
Until her righteousness go forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burneth.
And the nations shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory;
And thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name.
Thou shalt also be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
And a royal diadem in the hand of thy God.
Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken;
Neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate:
But thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah;
For the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married.
For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee;
And as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.
I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem;
They shall never hold their peace day nor night:
Ye that are the Lord’s remembrancers, take ye no rest,
And give Him no rest, till He establish, and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
Lord, we thank You for the great consolations and promises of Your precious Word. Within Your Word, we can see Your hand, Your life, Your face moving according to Your purpose, even here on this earth.
But, O Lord, we need an intelligence beyond our natural wisdom. We ask that the Holy Spirit, once again, would help us to understand these things of God—these things for the mature, these things so precious:
Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not,
And which entered not into the heart of man,
Whatsoever things God prepared for them that love Him.
O Lord, make us cognizant of these things, even to the obtaining of those things for which we have been apprehended by You. Lord, we ask that You would help us by the Holy Spirit to be quickened and refreshed in body, mind, and heart; that You might help me as I share, to share with life and with power according to the working of Your Holy Spirit.
We give ourselves to You. We thank You for this precious time of fellowship we have together, one with another. O Lord, let Your presence be upon us, that we might live. We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
I share with you that I have probably, out of the study of Isaiah, to be frank with you, come to this wonderful burden and awareness of the reviving that is necessary for us.
And more wonderfully also, I have seen, as I have traveled even recently—in recent days and recent months—something that to me is very precious to behold. Namely, there is a harbinger of the Lord’s pouring out and reviving that is evident almost everywhere you go now. This harbinger is people who are praying: with desperation, with determination, laying hold of the Lord for His promises for His people.
What a wonderful thing to be together with saints who cry out and say:
O Lord, revive Thy work in the midst of the years;
In the midst of the years make it known;
In wrath remember mercy.
The Lord indeed has shown that, through history, He desires to open the heavens and, by His presence, bring reviving. We shared from Psalm 80 last night, this prayer recited over and over again: “O turn us again, O Lord. Shine Your face upon us, and we will be saved.”
We know that reviving is nothing more than the presence of the living God in our midst. I fear sometimes we sing these choruses without really thinking about their consequence. You know, “When I look upon Your holiness.” Now, I wonder how many of us can just do that. I wonder how many of us would not have a knee-jerk reaction of turning away should His holiness suddenly show up.
He is a holy God. One of the greatest aspects of reviving that is needed—this reviving, this word means life again. You know, revive means life again. Reviving is nothing more than the life of God present among His people. This is reviving indeed, on every level.
But when He comes in true revival, He comes in holiness of presence. It is a discomforting thing to those who are casual, to those who are carnal. His holiness deals mightily with the many things covered up and left undone in our lives, because His holiness comes in great light.
The Lord wants to revive His people, and He is so merciful. He would revive us on every level. He revives us as individuals. Oh, how David prayed so many times, “Lord, revive me according to Your Word. Lord, revive me.”
I am sure there are some here, even in this room tonight, who need an individual reviving—a re-establishment again of the Lord’s presence and mercy and moving in your life.
But revival is to be much more profound than that. The Lord wants to revive His people, His church. And even beyond that, the Lord has a purpose and an end that He revives His people in order to achieve. So reviving comes on all kinds of levels.
Now, I know today we have this word revival, and it can be quite cheap. I opened up last night by sharing that my experience as a Baptist had revival kind of being an annual meeting where people rededicated themselves. But no, no, no—reviving is so much more than that.
In recent days, I do not know if you have heard, but there is a tremendous revival going on, according to the PR reports. However, when I looked into the revival, it was not only smoke and mirrors, but it was not revival at all. It was another one of these cheap-trick gizmos of a brother professing healing, and listening to angels and all alike. I do not even hear the name of Jesus, and I have watched three or four of their revival meetings.
Where is the name of Jesus? “No, an angel came to me and told me that tomorrow somebody is going to be healed,” and blah, blah, blah. Listen, brothers and sisters, that is no reviving of God. If there were true reviving of God, that brother would be flat on his face. That is it. Everybody else would be too.
This is not something you come to—some kind of menagerie, some kind of summertime carnival—that people all excitedly run to. “Oh, over on the East Coast, where there is great revival going on.” You would think it was the hottest thing since potatoes.
People run to these meetings to be part of this atmosphere, and that atmosphere is so charged with human pride, all kinds of boasting, and all kinds of things detestable to the holiness of God. I do not see how it can be called revival.
But there is true reviving. Even as Ezekiel said, “Send us the showers of blessing, O Lord.” This is a promise of God we have for our lives.
I shared last night that, very wonderfully, we have these harbingers, these forerunners of revival, that we can see from place to place: people who are praying, people who really want God to move. Indeed, mercy drops round us are falling, but for the showers we plead.
In every generation, the Lord is consistent in reviving His people. Oh, He revives us, as I said, on so many levels. All the years I have worked with young people, I have discovered that young people need revival about once a year.
You know, I mean, they come to the Lord and they give the Lord everything, and they take it all back by Christmas. The Lord is so merciful: He revives them again next summer.
I have been in many youth camps where the Lord just moved and revived. I see some of the same kids get revived every year, but it does not seem to take. Well, yes, it does take, but they know so little, they have experienced so little, and they do not know how to take hold of these things and have them continue in their lives.
But, oh, for saints who know the Lord, who know the abiding presence. What the Lord revives can stick. His revival is waiting to be poured out upon us, but it depends upon our readiness to receive.
As I have said, in every generation, every forty years or so it seems, God pours Himself out, opens the heavens, pours Himself out. There is a great reviving somewhere, and as a result of that reviving, some recovery of His purpose for His church in the aftermath.
I mentioned that I was fortunate to just get under the wire and be saved in 1964, little knowing that the Lord was getting ready to pour Himself out on our dear country. The Lord remembered us. He had mercy upon us. Many people were saved.
There was a great reviving—the Jesus People movement, whatever you want to call it. All those words are too little to describe the love of God poured out into the hearts of His people throughout the nation. It was a tremendous reviving and even recovery. Many churches and fellowships were established back there in the sixties and seventies as a result of this new encounter with God.
The Lord wants to do that in every generation, but, you see, He needs harbingers. He needs people who are prepared to receive when this refreshing comes, and who know how to channel it in such a way as to recover His work.
You remember, for those of you who are as old as me, in this so-called Jesus movement, when so many were saved, thank God there were people around like Chuck Smith, Jack Hayford, Floyd Police, and others on the East Coast who knew how to take what God was doing and channel it into something for His purpose, so that it would not just be wasted.
Sometimes we have to say revivals are wasted because there is no further direction to them. God moves and we all absorb, but then we go back to our Book of Judges cycle of backsliding and the need for mercy.
But, oh, the Lord wants to lay hold of every generation. I am so impressed. I can say, I believe, with real conviction, that if our assemblies and our past history of these last forty years have done anything, I believe a group of young adults has now been raised up that God wants to pour Himself out upon. May it be the case. Oh, how we need His reviving.
You know, because in the history of what goes on in every generation, there is that which is so living and so precious: we can touch the presence of the Lord. Then there is a stagnation, and the stagnation leads to dissipation, and the dissipation leads to even what appears to be death.
Sometimes great assemblies that really were touched by God and given some measure of vision and purpose have lost their way and even disassembled. With the giving of these days, things have sort of fallen away and seem to die.
But the fact of the matter is, every time the Lord recovers and does something, even when there seems to be dissipation and loss, the Lord is a couple of steps ahead on the chessboard. He has thrown some seed into the ground.
When that seed has germinated in the ground of death and cries out for life, suddenly out of what happened in a past generation, something new springs forth—a new generation, new seed. Where did that come from? It always comes from the old patch. Thus, there is a continuity in the things that God is doing down through the years.
In this meeting, even as our brother shared so wonderfully this morning, we find in this recovery and reviving work of God a strange confluence and cooperation of God’s sovereign pouring out and man’s laying hold of Him for that.
There have to come those lines to the middle—that line our brother DeVern put in the middle of those two extremes—where man meets God in some kind of sovereign way which man cannot dictate, but God determines according to His wisdom. When there is such a divine meeting, there is reviving and recovery, new ground gained for eternity, and, in the end, new seed once again thrown into the ground.
We want to talk a little more about this seed, these harbingers, and use the Scriptures we read tonight in order to make an example of the seed planted, crying out, “Revive Thy work.”
God’s work is accomplished by this cooperation that, in Isaiah, is so wonderfully pictured in Isaiah 62 as a mutual remembering.
What is the harbinger doing as they are upon the walls praying? Remembering. And then the Lord remembers. Let us talk about this for a few minutes.
There is this wonderful phrase found at various places in the Bible—not in too many places, but in each place it is very significant. Here is what it says: “And the Lord remembered so-and-so.”
I can guarantee you, when it says that, you want to be that person. Because when the Lord remembers, of course you say to yourself, “Well, how could the Lord forget? He is omniscient.” But this is not a function of His omniscience. This is a function of His mercy.
When the Lord remembers, remember the Scripture: “The Lord hath remembered His mercy and His truth toward the house of Israel.” The Lord has remembered. Oh, this is a blessed state, if we could put it this way. That is when reviving comes and recovery comes: when the Lord remembers His people.
It is interesting that usually—there is an exception, which I will mention in just a moment—the usual context in which God remembers is this: desperation. It is when people are desperate that the Lord remembers.
Because in that desperation, somehow there is a remembering by that person, and it meets with the Lord, who remembers them. Let me give you some examples of those whom the Lord remembered after a period of extremity, great pressure, and desperation.
The first mention of this phrase is: “The Lord remembered Noah.” Now, you ask why, and you find out what the verse before says. Noah was in the ark with all the smelly animals, with the rain nonstop for 150 days. Now, if you are not in extremity by then, I do not know what is. In that context, it says, “And the Lord remembered Noah.” They mercifully stopped the rain. Praise God.
The second example is where it says, “The Lord remembered Abraham.” I do not know if you remember what that context was, but again it was desperation. You remember how Abraham had interceded regarding Sodom and Gomorrah.
The day came that God was to go down to Sodom and Gomorrah and utterly destroy the city, and God remembered Abraham and snatched Lot and his family out of Sodom before the destruction. What an act of mercy. God remembered Abraham.
Another occasion is when it says, “The Lord remembered Rachel.” I do not even need to tell you the background for that. Rachel was standing around for years—about twelve years at least—watching Leah have all the kids.
Every time Leah gave Jacob a kiss, she had a kid. She was so fertile. There was Bilhah, Zilpah, all having kids, and Rachel could not have a kid. Rachel was at the end of her wits. She was vexed beyond life. “Give me kids or I die,” she said to Jacob. Jacob said, “What have I got to do with it? You can see, I am quite fruitful.” And the Lord remembered Rachel.
We can say the same thing for Hannah. It says that Hannah made a vow to the Lord: “Lord, if You give me a kid, I will give him back.” Then it says, “And the Lord remembered Hannah.”
It says in Exodus 2, as the groanings of Israel in bondage in Egypt came up to the Lord, He heard it, and the Lord remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Then He called Moses.
Every time the Lord remembers, He remembers in mercy. Now, I have to tell you that, at the end, the Lord remembers the wickedness of Babylon and judges it. In the end, the final days of His rememberings are not pleasant. They are remembering all the evils that deserve wrath and eventual pouring out.
But in this present time, when the Lord remembers you, He remembers you in mercy. I think you could probably imagine, if you just think for a while, how much of what has happened in our lives has come because the Lord remembered somebody’s prayer—Grandma’s prayers.
We may never even know the connection until we get to heaven: somebody who agonized over our soul, or we had fallen far from God, and somebody prayed and prayed, and the Lord remembered.
Think of the centurion that Peter visited. He was remembered before the Lord for his kindnesses. This is the only other time when you see the Lord remembering somebody: not only in times of extremity, but, believe it or not, when somebody does a real kindness, the Lord remembers them and sometimes saves them.
Remember the centurion who helped to build the synagogue? The Lord remembered the centurion. So if you understand the Lord’s remembering as a remembering of mercy, oh, that the Lord would remember His people.
When the Lord remembers His people, there are showers of blessing. There is reviving. There is recovery of things that the locusts have eaten. What a wonderful promise this is when the Lord remembers.
But now, what about our remembering? Of course, that is the much weaker side. How long is the Lord’s remembering? A long time. How long do we remember? Well, what is this about our remembering?
The fact of the matter is, this is not a matter of mental facility. When the Lord said regarding the table that we take together, “Do this in remembrance of Me,” He was not just saying, “Oh, remember My name, please,” or, “Remember what I have done for you,” in some kind of objective way.
This remembering of the Lord is remembering Him in a moment of revealed spiritual reality. You remember Him. That is when taking the Lord’s table is precious.
We often do not take it in remembrance of Him, not in the real way. Of course, we start by remembering the thing He has done, but hopefully it leads us into something more precious: remembering the Lord.
So often we find in the Old Testament that the Lord has to fight against His children until they turn and remember Him. Now, what does that mean? “Oh, you remember how the Lord cared for us. Oh, you remember what it was like when we walked along with the assembly into the house of God and worshiped. Oh, I remember.”
The psalmist says in Psalm 137: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.” “Oh Lord, I remember You. With bitter tears, I remember You now that I am in Babylon.”
The Babylonians say, “Hey, hey, play us one of those Zion songs.” How could I play Zion songs in this pitiful place? But, of course, the prayer remembered the Lord.
What does this mean, our remembering the Lord? There is a lot involved with this. Isaiah is one of these rememberers who is on the wall, as we see in Isaiah 62.
Look at verse 6. I want to read it and change one word. Actually, the American Standard Version uses this word, which I will use in this context, because it catches something that my New American Standard just ignores:
Upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen;
They shall never hold their peace day nor night:
Ye that are the Lord’s remembrancers, take ye no rest,
And give Him no rest, till He establish, and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
Isaiah was one of these remembrancers on the wall. Now, in order to be a remembrancer, of course, you have to have some memory of former dealings of the Lord, of a life lived with the Lord, of moments that are precious before the Lord. Otherwise, you have nothing to remember.
The church of Ephesus was told to remember from where they had fallen, because they could remember that first love. Of course, the thing is, you cannot remember until the Lord’s light shines on you. Then suddenly you say, “Oh, I remember now.” Otherwise, we forget.
This is why I said this last night: is it not the strangest word to the church of Sardis? “Remember the things that you have received and heard, and keep them.” Now, they took notes. What do you mean, “Remember the things you have received and heard”?
How many of you know we can have a notebook full of notes and not remember what we have heard? But as soon as our dear Lord, who came to the church in Sardis and has the seven Spirits—that means Spirits with those eyes looking, looking, looking—says, “You know these things, but you do not remember them, and that is why you are about to die.”
Wake up, and suddenly say, “Ah, I remember these things, but I have not been living in the good of them. Somehow, I have gotten distracted from these great truths regarding Christ, and I am living at such a lower level.”
This is just a sign of the depravity of our lives: we cannot even remember the good things of the Lord unless He reminds us of them. Oh, what a wonderful prayer it would be if we woke up in the morning and said, “Oh, Lord, remind me of how precious it was to be with You yesterday. I have already forgotten.”
How many saints go to church, go to a meeting on Sunday, and are almost caught up in the heavenly places; by Monday, they say, “Is there a God?”
There is something about memory. I think in terms of spiritual memory—now, my regular memory is starting to really go—but our spiritual memory, I do not think, was ever intended to be long-term.
As a matter of fact, our spiritual remembering can only be done in a living relationship with the Lord. Then you remember it; you live in the good of it. Then you get out of that relationship, and suddenly you have forgotten. “What are you doing? What are you here for? What is going on? What is my purpose? What are my goals?” You forgot all that stuff.
Until somebody like DeVern comes along and reminds you with a chart: “There you are—here—just some pile of stones.” You say, “Ah, I remember now.” Do we have to be reminded by the Lord? Of course. The Lord is very faithful to do this thing.
Isaiah was a remembrancer. Just think about it: this is his highest calling. The Lord called him unto this. Isaiah started out as a seer. As you remember in Isaiah 6, he saw the Lord high and lifted up. He saw the Lord of glory, and it undid him. What a wonderful place to start.
Then in chapter 12, the Lord said, “Okay, enough of this seeing. Time for you to get up on the walls as a watchman.” Isaiah got up on the walls and observed the nations around him. He saw how the Lord was going to deal with and judge those nations, and he pronounced the prophetic woes upon them.
Each time, he brought those woes back as a cautionary tale to Judah herself: the pride out there is seen in you; the worldliness out in the nations is seen in you. Every time, as a watchman, he saw the Lord enthroned over those nations and what He was going to judge. What a tremendous ministry this is—being a watchman on the walls, as we see in Isaiah 62.
But when you are a watchman on the wall, and you see what the Lord is doing by way of judgment and righteousness, and you see the pitiful condition of God’s children, if you have any heart at all and any relationship with the Lord, you develop a ministry of intercession.
Isaiah’s heart began to break as he saw the continual backslidings of Judah, despite all the blessings that she had undertaken. Isaiah was not only a watchman on the wall, but he became an intercessor for Judah. He began to pray and pray, “Oh God, revive Your people. Revive Your people.”
You know what happens? Many times this happens to us only once in our lifetime. In Isaiah’s lifetime, through four kings of Judah, the Lord raised up King Hezekiah, a godly man, and brought revival to Judah.
They were together, side by side—Isaiah and Hezekiah—praying about everything. Even when Sennacherib came with the Assyrians, 182,000 of them to do in Jerusalem, they fell in one night because of the prayer of these two men.
King Hezekiah—the greatest king of Judah. Now, just Judah; this was divided. The greatest king of Judah. Oh, what wonderful days of reviving.
Hezekiah tore out all the high places, tore out all the idols, took the golden serpent that was being worshiped and threw it out as well. He had a revival in Judah and Jerusalem, and it spread into other cities, which he fortified. He re-established the Passover.
Oh, what a celebration they had. They had such a good time, if I recall correctly, they said, “We will have another seven days.” They had a fourteen-day Passover. They had a wonderful time worshiping the Lord. He brought recovery to the land and revival to His people. What a wonderful intercession.
The one thing you have to hope, if you are an intercessor, is that one time in your lifetime God will actually answer your prayers. Well, that happened. I guess Isaiah was about fifty years old when that time of reviving came. Oh, wonderful time.
Then old Hezzy, you know, got proud. It is a long story, but he got sick, wanted fifteen more years, and the Lord gave him fifteen years. He got proud, showed all his treasures to Babylon, and one thing led to another.
All that reviving went down the hill without any permanent purpose being established. Not only that, but in the final fifteen years of his life, Hezekiah bore a son named Manasseh, who was the worst king in Judah’s history—the best to the worst. Aye, aye, aye.
I do not even want to go into what Manasseh did, but he brought every idol he possibly could into the temple itself. What a wicked man. Of course, he repented at the end. Very interesting story. The Lord remembered—but that is a whole other story.
All of that is part of Isaiah’s history behind him in Isaiah 62. Now a seventy-five-year-old man. Now, you know, when somebody is seventy-five, you need to send them out to pasture. I say that now, feeling a cushion of eleven years for my own due.
But you know what I am saying. Most guys who are smart sort of say, “You know what? I am just going to live in this assembly and be like the Apostle John.”
There is a story in church tradition that says when John the Apostle was finally released from Patmos, he came back to Ephesus in his nineties. Everybody asked him, “Oh John, would you please speak for us?” He came tottering in with the help of other people because he was so old.
Every time he came, he said one thing: “Beloved, love one another.” Of course, when he said it, there was such anointing. That apostle of love had it. That is all he would say from that time on. Every time they asked him to say something: “Beloved, love one another.” It must be one of the highest commodities in church life, I think.
Anyway, Isaiah came to this place where, rather than being in retirement, the Lord did something to him—gave him a vision, a new vision.
What was that vision? What could bring Isaiah out of retirement when he saw the whole thing sliding down? Do not forget, Isaiah 62 is penultimate to the end, and this is the end of his life. Isaiah went out soon after that, killed by this very king Manasseh and sawn in two for his writings.
Leaving that all aside, here was this old man Isaiah climbing up on the walls, being one of these remembrancers. What is the deal here?
This Isaiah, this holy man of God, this precious brother, one day saw something that caused him to say, “Then what am I doing resting?” You know what he saw? He saw there in Isaiah 62:1:
For Zion’s sake will I not hold My peace,
And for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
Until her righteousness go forth as brightness,
And her salvation as a lamp that burneth.
I am not going to spend time arguing with people who have other interpretations. But to me, the sound interpretation of this—and if you study, I think you will agree, the previous chapter and everything—is that this is the Servant of God, the Messiah Himself.
Here is what our Messiah is saying even now up in heaven: “I will not be silent. I am praying for Zion, and I will not be silent until Zion comes to her full purpose and glory.” This is what Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Intercessor, says right now.
He says, “Not only am I not going to be silent; I am appointing watchmen up on the wall. These watchmen are to watch day and night, pray day and night, and be the Lord’s remembrancers. Give the Lord no peace until He brings these things to pass.”
Isaiah got up on that wall, seventy-five years old, and said, “I am going to get up on this wall, and I am not going to give God any peace at all until He does what He has promised He is going to do.” You see, he saw the promise and said, “I am taking that promise.”
He got up there and started praying, and he prayed his life out up there. Do not you believe he was all wilted away; he was in spiritual energy like you could not believe. He took his highest calling there late in his life, when he could have been retired. Instead, he was up on the wall, just gleefully annoying God every day.
Do not you know the Lord loves to be reminded? Do not you know the Lord wants to be reminded of that which His heart wants to do? But do not you know the Lord cannot do it until there are remembrancers who are calling Him to do it?
Then He can do that as a cooperation, as our dear brother shared this morning. Then He can say, “We did it.” “Yeah, we did it. We were on the wall shouting, and then the Lord poured Himself out.” Oh, precious Lord.
Let me explain remembrancer for a moment, because I find that not in the King James or New American Standard, but I find it correct in the ASV as remembrancer.
A remembrancer is actually an office in the Oriental court of the kingdom. A king had a remembrancer.
Those of you who like to look this kind of stuff up, in 2 Kings 18:18 you will actually find the name of the remembrancer in Hezekiah’s day. His name was Joah. It is translated in my New American Standard as “recorder,” but it is this exact same word. He was a remembrancer.
Here is what a remembrancer had to do. The king made proclamations—many proclamations. You remember when Herod said, “I will give you up to a third of my kingdom.” All these kinds of declarations. When a king said that, it became law.
But how is the king ever going to remember all those laws? After all, they did not have a MacBook Air. They did not have a PDA. They did not have, as I have blessedly, an iPhone.
The king could make all kinds of proclamations, but he could not remember all these things. It is true, man. You remember another reporter, another remembrancer, in the story of Esther in chapter 6.
The night before Haman was going to hang Mordecai, the king could not sleep. So he called the remembrancer: “Go get me the documents.” He brought in the document that recalled the time Mordecai had saved the king’s life from a conspiracy—just by coincidence.
That is a remembrancer, and this is a high calling. Isaiah carries this higher than just being a remembrancer for King Manasseh, King Hezekiah, or any earthly king.
He is saying, “You are called, chosen, to be the Lord’s remembrancer: to remind Him of His covenants and His promises, to remind Him of His love, to remind Him of His mercies.”
You remember how Moses was up on the mountain reminding the Lord: “Oh Lord, now wait a minute, wait a minute. You remember how You told everybody, including Egypt, ‘I love these people. I am taking them out. I am going to make them a nation.’ Now, what if You just destroy them all right now in the desert? What would happen? Lord, remember Your promise.”
Of course, the Lord loves to remember His promise. But that is intercession. The highest form of intercession is when you remember the Lord’s heart, know His Word, know His promises, and will not let Him get away without doing it.
Now, He wants to do it, but He wants you to remind Him to do it. The Lord is not ashamed for you to say, “Why are You sleeping? Why are You sleeping?” How many times did David say that in the Book of Psalms? “Why are You asleep?”
Oh, the Lord loves to hear that. The Lord has just been sitting there having a cup of tea, waiting for David to say, “Why are You asleep?” Of course, the Lord never slumbers nor sleeps.
But it would seem as if the Lord has turned His back. It would seem as if the Lord has forgotten in some way, until the remembrancers say, “Hey, hey, we are on the walls here. We are on the walls of Zion. Remember? Remember?”
It is as if the Lord turns around and says, “Ah, yes—Zion.” All the Lord has to do is remember Zion, and His mercy flows, His deliverance comes, and His reviving is known.
They were called upon the walls of Zion. What is this Zion that the Messiah is so adamant about and calls for people to get on the walls and be so adamant about?
Of course, you know Zion is another name for Jerusalem. It is part of Jerusalem; actually, it is a mountain within Jerusalem. We know it is also David’s city, and we know it is a stronghold. We know all these things.
We also know in the Bible that Zion and Jerusalem are often paralleled in Old Testament literature. But we also know from the Scriptures that Zion means the spiritual reality behind Jerusalem.
What is Zion? From the beginning of time, God has desired a dwelling place with man, and He has chosen Zion.
Now, we who believe in the Lord Jesus have come to Mount Zion. But that does not mean the Mount Zion in Israel. It means the spiritual reality of dwelling together with the Lord.
He wants to accomplish this dwelling place in glory. That is the New Jerusalem. One day, Zion, the spiritual reality, will be melded with Jerusalem, the city, and we will have a New Jerusalem full of glory, with God dwelling among His people. This is God’s heart.
Isaiah saw it. “I am going to pray until God makes Zion a praise in the earth.” Of course, he was talking about Jerusalem, but we know so much more. Prophecies had a whole other layer of recovery.
We see the importance of praying on the wall, the importance of one being called into this spiritual intelligence and intercession as a remembrancer. Oh, what a high calling.
Can I show you for a few moments? Wonderfully, in Isaiah 63 and 64, it actually shows the remembrancers on the wall. I picture Isaiah up there with his son, Shear-jashub—“a remnant shall return”—up on that wall and praying away, with others as well.
As they watch Judah decline, as they watch Manasseh throw the whole kingdom away, as they watch and know that Judah is going to go into captivity, they throw their eyes up, looking unto the Messiah. They start shouting for Him to do what He has promised, beyond the captivity. The Lord had a plan, and Isaiah was up on that wall declaring these things.
If we look in Isaiah 63, I will just give you a quick picture of what it means to get up on the wall. We are on the wall; we are remembrancers, intercessors, watchmen. How do we do this?
Suddenly, in Isaiah 63:1-6, we see one reason to get on the wall: Isaiah saw that the Lord was coming back.
Who is this that cometh from Edom,
With dyed garments from Bozrah?
This that is glorious in His apparel,
Travelling in the greatness of His strength?
Who is this who comes from Bozrah with garments red with blood? It is Jesus—not coming in the first coming, believe it or not. It is Jesus coming in the second coming, coming to judge. He saw the second coming, as it were.
Whenever you see a vision of the Lord, it motivates you to get on that wall and start to shout: “I see You coming, Lord. Come, come, Lord Jesus, come.” He sees this, and so he prays.
A second thing we see in this intelligent prayer of remembrancers is that he acknowledges the backsliding and the dealings of God because of it. But let us go to verse 7 first.
The first thing he does is say this:
I will make mention of the lovingkindnesses of the Lord,
And the praises of the Lord,
According to all that the Lord hath bestowed on us.
So first he reminds the Lord: “Lord, I remember Your mercies—Your mercies as of the days of old, Your mercies with Israel all through their sojourn.”
Then in Isaiah 63:9-11, he recognizes their backslidings:
In all their affliction He was afflicted,
And the angel of His presence saved them:
In His love and in His pity He redeemed them;
And He bare them, and carried them all the days of old.
But they rebelled, and grieved His Holy Spirit:
Therefore He was turned to be their enemy, and Himself fought against them.
Imagine the Lord doing that to His people. Why would He do such a thing? Verse 11: “Then He remembered the days of old, Moses, and His people.” Sometimes He has to fight against us, but then we remember Him.
Then the people remember the days of old: “Where is He that brought us up out of the sea?” Oh, the Lord loves to hear that. “Where is God? Where is He? He brought us up out of the sea.” God says, “Ah, now they are remembering Me.”
It just took turning up the heat in the frying pan to bring about this sudden recollection, you see.
The next part of this wonderful prayer, in Isaiah 63:15-17, is that he remembers the promises of the covenant:
Look down from heaven, and behold from Thy holy and glorious habitation:
Where is Thy zeal and Thy mighty acts?
The yearning of Thy heart and Thy compassions are restrained toward me.
For Thou art our Father, though Abraham knoweth us not,
And Israel doth not acknowledge us:
Thou, O Lord, art our Father;
Our Redeemer from everlasting is Thy name.
O Lord, why dost Thou make us to err from Thy ways,
And hardenest our heart from Thy fear?
Now, listen to this remembrancer. Do you have this kind of boldness? Listen to what he says to the Lord. You and I, we have nothing to say to the Lord by way of, “What are You doing?” do we? But remembrancers say this. Of course, they have been dealt with by God.
“Where is Your zeal and Your mighty deeds?” Now he is talking to God. “The stirrings of Your heart and Your compassion are restrained toward me. For You are our Father.” “Why, O Lord, do You cause us to stray from Your ways?”
Now, who is straying from God’s ways? Is God causing them to stray? Of course, speaking as a fool to say that. But if you are a remembrancer, you are talking face to face with God: “Why are You causing us to stray?” God looks down and says, “I am not causing you to stray.”
But, you see, this is all part of the freedom within this wonderful dialogue.
Then you get down to Isaiah 64:1, the great verse that is used in revival preaching:
Oh that Thou wouldest rend the heavens, that Thou wouldest come down,
That the mountains might quake at Thy presence,
As when fire kindleth the brushwood,
And fire causeth the waters to boil—
To make Thy name known to Thine adversaries,
That the nations may tremble at Thy presence!
“Oh God, we are on the walls. Rend the heavens and come down. We know the heavens are sealed up because of our sins. Oh God, rend the heavens. Have mercy upon us.”
As you go through the rest of the chapter, you see again that he reminds the Lord of mercy. Notice a few things. In verse 7, they acknowledge their sin and that the Lord has every right to turn His back:
There is none that calleth upon Thy name,
That stirreth up himself to take hold of Thee:
For Thou hast hid Thy face from us,
And hast consumed us by means of our iniquities.
But then he says what every intercessor knows:
But now, O Lord, Thou art our Father;
We are the clay, and Thou our potter;
And we all are the work of Thy hand.
Be not wroth very sore, O Lord,
Neither remember iniquity for ever:
Behold, look, we beseech Thee, we are all Thy people.
Thy holy cities are become a wilderness;
Zion is become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation.
Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised Thee,
Is burned with fire;
And all our pleasant places are laid waste.
Wilt Thou refrain Thyself for these things, O Lord?
Wilt Thou hold Thy peace, and afflict us very sore?
For the sake of Your city, Your Zion, Your dwelling place—will You remain silent? Forget about us. Okay, we do not deserve it, and we are just Your children. We remember what it was like in the city. Oh God, can You remain silent when Your city is coming to ruin?
This is the prayer of intercession. This is the prayer of a remembrancer. This is the prayer of somebody who knows the Lord’s heart.
It is not at all a question of tit for tat. Isaiah, in his prayers with the other watchmen, is provoking the Lord to remember and pour out His mercy on this kind of situation.
Now, dear brothers and sisters, have you been on the walls and seen the condition of the Lord’s people today?
The things that are being passed off as Christian life sometimes are just abominable—the self-centeredness and everything. I do not think I need to convince you of these things.
When I talk of the condition of the church, I am looking at the whole church, because you and I belong to that whole church, and we are suffering because of it.
Do we realize it is not just for us to fix up our family and go our merry way? As long as somebody in the body is suffering, we are all suffering. That accounts for many multitudes of people who have never heard, out of darkness, even the truth of the things that we have heard and forgotten.
Look at the state of God’s people. I do not know if it moves your heart. Maybe it does not, unless you see God’s desire for His people. There is such a jealousy for His people to become Zion, and there is such a blindness as a whole. Frankly, we do not have to look further than ourselves.
Do we realize those who are in need of reviving? Oh, rend the heavens. Open those heavens. How we need a visitation from God—not just these ephemeral, emotional visitations that are always invited down by excitable people, but a real visitation that can replant us.
Look at our nation. If the Lord does not do something in revival, we are finished. We are finished. Are we going to allow our dear children and grandchildren to be raised up in this kind of situation? Does it not do something in your heart?
Once again, I say to you, it is not just a question of stuff for our sake, but what the Lord wants. Are there those remembrancers up on the wall?
What does it mean to be a remembrancer? Are you a remembrancer?
I would say the first requirement of a remembrancer is that you have had to have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. You have had to have tasted something that spoiled you.
If you have never tasted something great, a hot dog will do just fine. Some of those in here with sophisticated palates—some of these Chinese here who can tell the difference between freshly killed fish and fish that has been frozen when it is served to them—you get spoiled.
It is hard to go down to Captain John’s fried seafood place once you have tasted the real thing.
But, my dear children, I am constrained to believe, because many of you meet in assemblies that are quite free, surely there has been a time when you have tasted heavenly worship.
When the Lord has caught you up in such a way that you have forgotten about yourself and felt like you were in the heavenly places and worshiping. Even more, you felt the Lord was upon you and with you, joining in the worship. Have you ever tasted that?
Oh, it spoils you for all lukewarm worship—people just singing songs without spirit. When you have tasted the real thing.
Have you ever been in a prayer meeting where you actually got into the heavenly places, seated with Christ? You found the Word of the Lord coming to you to bind and to loose, and you lived in it. You just touched that. You just tasted that. Have you ever tasted that?
It spoils you for the old listed prayer meetings: “Okay, now we are going to pray for Myrtle. We need to pray for Myrtle.” Nothing wrong with that. But when are we praying according to the things that are really on the Lord’s heart? Myrtle is no problem for the Lord. He could heal that bunion in a second.
But here we are, all worked up. Nine different people pray for one problem that Myrtle is having, and all the time the church is going to hell in a handbasket. What kind of praying are we doing?
If you have ever tasted the real thing—the binding and loosing of people who rise up into a largeness beyond themselves, touch things in heaven, release things on earth, then come back down and are still the same shy, self-conscious people—you realize, “We have been in the presence of the Majesty.”
Have you ever tasted fellowship life truly controlled under the headship of our precious Lord? Have you noticed the blessedness of its unity and order, of the life flowing from person to person?
Have you ever been in such a time when you certainly felt like the Holy Spirit was symphonizing our meeting? He was so really present.
Have you ever been in fellowship life where people have knocked on the door and the Lord has opened the door? You found a way of ministry, a way of evangelism, a way that bore fruit, and you knew the Lord had done it. He opened the door, and you prayed and saw it open.
Once you see that, just doing some good idea you thought of for reaching people by some kind of novel way gets spoiled by the Lord’s ways.
Are you a remembrancer? Do you remember that? Have you tasted such?
Perhaps some young people here never have. That is why we need a reviving.
As I said before, one thing so precious that has come out of the drudgery of our old lives—the lives of the old guys—is that some of our kids are precious, so precious to the Lord. Yet I have to say, I do not know if they really even know if they have touched those things, if they remember such a time.
We remember them, at least under the light of the Lord. Are you a remembrancer?
Do you sense, if you have tasted and seen that which is truly living in the Lord’s presence, then of course you sense the backsliding going on. Others may be satisfied; others may accommodate. You know, we have this amazing capacity to adjust.
But you are not satisfied. You have come to a spiritual desperation. Even if it is only in your secret closet, you are praying to the Lord that He would give some relief and some life in the midst of the declension we see all around.
Have we been dealt with by the Lord? I do not think we can really be a remembrancer if we have not taken the Lord’s holiness seriously.
I am sorry, but when we climb up on the wall, if we raise our hands and we do not have clean hands and a pure heart, we are not remembrancers. If we have so much compromise and sin in our lives, who are we kidding?
If we say, “Lord, deal with Your church,” He says, “First I will deal with you,” and bring us into remembrance of the things that need to be purged from our own lives.
God help us. We are people that you cannot even tell the difference between Christians and those who are not anymore. What kind of state have we gotten to?
The only way you can tell is when people wear T-shirts. Usually, they only do that in a conference like this. They hide those T-shirts all year long back home between the conferences. Who are we kidding?
Christianity is not a matter of T-shirts. There should be something different in our lives. May the Lord recover and revive us.
He needs remembrancers, though, on the wall. He will not do it. He will wait. As much as He wants to remember His people, He will wait until there are sufficient remembrancers on the wall who have had it, who are desperate, who want the Lord, who remember the life, who say, “Lord, revive us again.”
Then there is that strange and wonderful meeting, and a new generation gets to taste the reality.
Listen, those dear saints here who are over fifty-five years old—perhaps you have kids now who are in their thirties, and they have kids—I cannot think of a better place to go out to be with the Lord than on that wall, praying that the Lord would bring recovery and reviving to this new generation.
What a wonder it would be. This generation is so precious. They have learned some things in church life, and you and I were rough and brutal. We did not know church life back then when the Lord captured us. We had to learn the hard way.
We were men of war like David. We cannot build the house of God like these children of Solomon here. They have some fineness to them. We never had a bunch of old coarse fighters always fighting and knocking each other over the head. We all wanted the same thing, which was also stupid—uncultured.
The Lord has raised up some precious young brothers and sisters. Oh, I have to tell you, I have a jealousy. It gets me angry when I see them being used by some colossal church or some kind of Christian organization, when they are just being used until they get used up, then they get spit out.
As our brother was sharing this morning, what are you going to do? Are you just going to work, go from pile of stone to pile of stone because they pay a salary? Or are you going to be part of something God is bringing together—the house of God, Bethel?
What is our priority? Our young people see that, but oftentimes we hem them in so badly that the only way they can express their gifts is to go outside. It is our loss.
I say, “Lord, recover us and revive us and give them room to move.” We need to see something real and authentic and new.
There is something that can be done through the wisdom of God in the lives of these young people that could never have been done in us. Every time there is a recovery, there is a further recovery. It is not just the same old, same old. Something more is added of spiritual reality among His people. Oh, what a precious thing to see.
The Lord wants to do it. It is time. The generation is upon us. Forty years have passed. Oh Lord, do it again.
The Lord has always had some harbingers, some remembrancers, with every generation. Although we cannot document it through church history—because church history, in the end, the true church history, is quite fragmentary—yet when we look at church history, we can see that there has been some connection to the things going on.
I would like to share with you about prayer and harbingers through four historical examples, and how they were connected to one another.
How many of you have a background in upstate New York? Some of you actually came from there, right? Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, you see, back in 1821—when the people who raised their hands were there—a young lawyer named Charles Finney was soundly saved.
It was part of the swell that came when those wonderful Free Methodists brought over the idea of Scottish camp meetings. They were having camp meetings out in what was the frontier in those days: upstate New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio. That was frontier back in the 1820s.
Old Charles Finney got so soundly saved that the Lord immediately began to use him. He soon had to leave his legal profession and begin to go from place to place preaching the gospel and holding revivals.
As he traveled from place to place, revivals began to burn. People got saved. The wonderful thing about Charles Finney, which was unique to his ministry, was that he had perhaps, of all people—and as much as you can keep records on things which only heaven knows for sure—the highest percentage of people brought into the kingdom who stuck.
He had a very high percentage of people who went on twenty years later, not just people who had moments of love for the Lord and then poofed away. What an amazing preacher. Especially when you read his sermons, you realize he was not hyping people up with emotion; he was speaking directly to their wills.
As he went about upstate New York and Ohio and different places, revivals grew and grew. Occasionally, he went into New England. Next thing you knew, there were sparks flying all over the place.
In 1831, he had a meeting in Rochester which, by the end of that protracted meeting lasting several weeks, saw 100,000 people saved. That was in 1831.
Now, you have heard of Charles Finney, but perhaps you have never heard of Daniel Nash and Abel Clary. Who were Daniel Nash and Abel Clary?
Daniel Nash was an older brother, a minister who maybe was ready to retire. Anyway, he had some little church somewhere that was not very significant. But when he saw what the Lord was doing through Charles Finney, he gave up his ministry to do one thing: pray.
Abel Clary joined him, a younger man. What they would do, two weeks before Charles Finney was scheduled to go to a city, was go there and find a boarding house where they could stay and begin to pray for that city.
They tried to find others who wanted to join them—sometimes a small group of four, sometimes a larger group—and they would pray for two weeks. When Finney came to town and held meetings, they never got to the meetings. They prayed the whole time with fasting. During every meeting, they prayed and fasted.
When you read Charles Finney’s biography, and you look at him as he talks about these revivals and the movings of God that happened in their lives, you know what he talks about? Nash and Clary—not his own preaching, not the power he had over men when he preached.
He said sometimes that Nash and Clary had prayed a place into such a state that he just basically opened his Bible and people started falling out of chairs in conviction of sin. Can you imagine that?
We may remember Charles Finney; maybe you have heard of him, maybe not. But I tell you what: the Lord remembers Nash and Clary. There is the secret, right?
There was a panic in 1857, a financial panic. There was a major bank in Ohio—this was a generation later; I just jumped a generation to show a connection.
In 1857, when this bank closed, it caused a run on the banks. Then in New York, the banking center at that time, they closed down all the banks from October through December just to try to stop the panic.
Thirty thousand men became unemployed in New York City within the stroke of two weeks, and violence broke out in the city. If any of you saw the Gangs of New York movie, those riots in the Five Points took place that very summer of 1857.
There was a merchant there who belonged to a Dutch Reformed church. His name was Jeremiah Lanphier. Strangely, he had been converted in one of Charles Finney’s meetings.
He got together and said, “You know what? We really must pray for New York City. This place is going to the dogs.” So they began to hold a Wednesday noon prayer meeting for whoever wanted to come, from noon to one, to pray for New York City.
That first meeting in 1858 was one hour long, and six people showed up a half hour late. So it began.
But within six months, there were 12,000 people meeting for prayer, and men were getting saved every time they opened the doors. It could not be done in that little Dutch Reformed church right downtown by Five Points, by the way. It was on Fulton Street, but they had to open churches all over the place.
There were 12,000 people praying, and that thing swept down to Philadelphia, swept up to Boston, swept here and swept there. By the time 1858 was over, one million—mostly men—were saved by the grace of God. There were only thirty million in the nation as a population.
It was basically a preacherless revival. Now, there were some preachers involved, but it was prayer that brought all of this in. It brought what they call the Second Evangelical Awakening to the United States in 1858. What an awakening that was.
D. L. Moody was so charged up by what he saw happening through this prayer that, when they asked him to come to the United Kingdom, he said, “I am coming, but I am only going to go to the places where you have people praying beforehand.”
They set up prayer meetings all over Ireland, Scotland, and England. That is when D. L. Moody came. I do not know if you know this, but there was a tremendous awakening in England in those years.
You know who else was there praying? The brethren were there doing gospel work, and they got together with Moody in all this. This was when C. T. Studd and his family got saved. This was when all these wonderful things were happening, with missions increasing. It was a great awakening that took place.
It took place because Moody went over there, preached the gospel, and there were praying groups in every city he went to. I just recently read some accounts. I read the book The Cambridge Seven, about these guys who went off to China, and the effect of those meetings of D. L. Moody.
He was an unlearned man, but oh, how people were moved when he was there. It was because of prayer. Is that not wonderful?
We jump another forty years. That awakening was never forgotten. One of the results of that awakening was really the establishment of the Keswick Convention yearly there in England.
In 1904, after having a wonderful Keswick over there in England, including Andrew Murray, A. T. Pierson, F. B. Meyer, and Evan Hopkins, three of those brothers left there and went over to Wales to have a Keswick convention in Wales.
When they had this Keswick convention, it stirred the people about revival in such a way that they began to pray.
Of course, I guess you know what happened. R. A. Torrey came to Cardiff and preached about the need to be filled and baptized with the Holy Spirit. One of the guys who was there and got so touched by this was Evan Roberts.
That following November, in November of 1904, the Welsh Revival began, where 100,000 people in Wales were saved. Meetings upon meetings, revivings where people would just come together and the Spirit would begin to move in an amazing way.
Oh, what the Lord can do when there are people praying, people claiming the promises. That was 1904.
Of course, you know that revival leaked over to China. Long story short, it got Dora Yu and these people preaching the gospel. Next thing you know, Watchman Nee’s mother got saved, and he got saved. All that came out of 1904 and the Welsh Revival.
Let us go one more generation: 1949, right after the war. Things were really bad in the United Kingdom. So many men had been lost. I do not know how many were lost from the United Kingdom in Great Britain, but I am afraid millions.
The place was downcast and quite upset, as you can imagine. There were two old ladies, eighty-four and eighty-two years old, up there in the Hebrides, islands off Scotland, where all these awakenings and things had not touched the people.
They were just old stubborn Scotch-Irish farmers up there. They did not want to do with this kind of stuff, until these two old ladies began to pray.
They began to pray, and then God began to move. The prayer meeting got larger and larger. One of these ladies said, “You know what? God wants to revive the Hebrides, and He is going to send His servant Duncan Campbell here in two weeks.”
So they wrote—wired, whatever—Duncan Campbell, a wonderful young evangelist and revivalist, and said, “Can you come?” He said, “Oh no, I cannot come. I have other commitments.”
The next day, those commitments quit on him. Strangely, he found himself there. They could not believe it, but in two weeks—these guys have to book a year ahead—he was there in the Hebrides.
I tell you what, he just touched the soil, and revival fell on that place. Those people got under such power of the Holy Spirit they could not move. They could not move.
They would stay all through the meeting, and even at eight forty-five, they still could not move. At twelve o’clock, they still could not move. At four o’clock in the morning, they still could not move. God was upon the Hebrides in such a wonderful way.
It got into the newspaper and got down to London. There was a young pastor of a Baptist church named Alan Redpath. He went up there and saw this revival, came home, and said, “Oh, this is such a tremendous thing. All of this would happen in London.”
There was a young boy and his sister who got that into their hearts: Lance Lambert. They got together with about three or four other teenagers in 1949, and they prayed for six months every night that God would bring the revival from the Hebrides there to England.
That is how they began what we call Halford House and Lance, so the story goes. See this connection—what the Lord does. He desires to recover.
In some strange way—not to make a legalistic thing out of forty years—in every generation, some forty years, the Lord seems first of all to have wrath stored up to the place where it starts to pour out. But the remembrancers pray, “In wrath remember mercy.”
Somehow the Lord, who is righteous and a Judge, lets mercy triumph over judgment. His people are restored, recovered, revived. But it takes some harbingers, some remembrancers up on the wall, who have tasted and seen that the Lord is good and do not want anything less.
They are praying, “Lord, we want Your presence among us. Without Your presence, we have nothing.”
I share this with you because I have already found out that there are some harbingers here. I want to encourage you. The wall is big for Zion.
There are people praying in Russia every day for God to do something here in the United States. Oh, may the Lord bring refreshing and recovery.
People love the Lord so much, and yet we are in such a rut. Only the Lord can blow us into what He has for us. All it is, is more of Christ, more of Christ—His presence, His reality in our midst. This is what we long for.
Why do we not just have a few prayers? As you feel led, just bring this all back to the Lord.
We cannot constrain remembrancers. No, the Lord appoints and pulls them up on the wall.
Oh, let us have a few prayers regarding this very matter tonight.