By the Rev. Neil Cameron, St. Jude’s, Glasgow.
Preached at Edinburgh, on 20th November, 1916.
(Taken down by a Hearer.)
IN meditating upon these words for a short time, we shall consider three things in particular at present. We shall notice, first, the condition in which those who here prayed felt themselves to be in at the time, when they prayed, “Wilt thou not revive us again?” In the second place, they were conscious of the great fact that it is God alone who can revive His own Church as well as individuals. It is not the work of man, it is the work of God. And we shall notice, in the third and last place, a certain effect which they expected would follow this reviving, and the effect was “that thy people may rejoice in thee.” They cannot rejoice while they are dead and disconsolate.
Now, we are to consider, first, a few things in connection with the condition in which those who first offered this prayer found themselves in at the time, and it was a condition that needed reviving. They were conscious that they were dead, and that they needed reviving. You will notice that he uses the word here “again,” and that means that God did revive the Church in the past, but that they had now as much need of being revived, of having the work repeated, as they had at any time in the past.
Seeing that this was so, we shall notice a few things concerning the way in which the Church of God, the visible Church in the world, comes to be in such a condition as that she feels herself dead, and in need of reviving. The first thing we have to notice in connection with that is this:—God did many a time revive His cause in the world by quickening sinners, and by bringing them to repentance. But this is a thing that we ought always to remember, that, although God would have mercy upon one generation and bring many out of them, quickening them and imparting grace to them, yet the children of these men would just be as needful of being revived as their fathers. Grace does not run in the blood. We often felt the force of the statements that we find continually recurring in the Book of Judges. We find there that when God raised a Judge to judge Israel, there was a great reviving, and that continued generally for forty years. It struck us as being very wonderful that forty years was repeating itself so often in the history of the Jews during the time of the Judges, until we began to consider what really was the meaning of this period of forty years, recorded again and again, and we then saw that this was the reason, that, though God did reveal Himself to the generation among whom He raised the Judge, and though they were converted (and those who were not converted continued in the order of worship and other things which God commanded), many of their children who were raised up were ignorant and blind, and went away immediately from God. That is true down through history—that the children of godly parents, if not converted or revived themselves, will be as ignorant of God and of their own everlasting concerns as the heathen are, notwithstanding that God’s book is in their hands.
We shall notice, in the second place, that, notwithstanding men forsake God, they always maintain a form of religion. It is not at all the way of man to cease to hold a form of religion in the world, but it will be a dead form, and there are several reasons concurring to bring about this. The first thing I desire to notice in connection with it is that, when men are raised up to become ministers in the Church who were never revived, who were never converted themselves, they lead the people immediately to something that they can do themselves, to depend for eternity upon their own works, and if not upon their own works, they set before them a mercy in God which never delivered a sinner; “for the natural man,” however educated he may be, “receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, they are foolishness to him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” Any one who wishes to look back into past history will notice this, that it was an unconverted ministry that brought death almost in every instance upon the Church of God. Conversions cease, that is, true conversions, cease in the congregations where such men preach. They may be able to preach more eloquently than those who are taught of God, but not one sinner will ever be quickened or converted under the preaching of an unconverted man, however eloquent he may be, and, even however sound he may be; he brings death upon the congregation and upon individuals. It is not only that an unconverted ministry brings death upon the congregation by preaching to them a way of salvation which is not God’s way, and holding forth that men will go to heaven by their own good works—and, indeed, they would require to have better works than they have—holding out that God is merciful, but they have no place in their doctrine for the atonement. They see no great need for the obedience and suffering and death of the Son of God in order to make atonement for the sins of men; and they see no need of the quickening work and convincing and converting work of the Holy Ghost, and this brings death upon a people.
But the third thing I desire to notice in this connection is, that such men will not continue long until they begin to depart publicly from the great doctrines of God’s truth. That can be proved in the history of the Bible. It can be proved also in profane history that, when the Church was filled with men who did not know for themselves the value, the exceedingly great value, of the atonement made upon Calvary’s cross for poor, lost, perishing sinners, and the exceedingly great need that men had of being quickened by the Spirit of God—as none can quicken “the dead” but God—men went to heresies, and the history of the Church discovers that such heresies brought death, not upon one congregation only, but some heresies in the past (such as the Pelagian heresy, and others), brought death upon the whole of the Churches in the known world. Men were realising then that conversions ceased, and that men were dead and formal in their worship immediately after forsaking the great doctrine of man’s total depravity and lost condition as a sinner by the Fall, so that heresy brings extraordinary death upon men. They become dead to eternal things, dead to their own concerns as lost sinners, dead as to their need of having a saving interest in Christ, and, as I shall have to notice afterwards, none can deliver from this death but God himself.
We shall notice, in the fourth place, under this head, how the death that reigns in this country came to reign in it. If you will look into it, you will find that it just came exactly as we have been showing. A whole host of ministers were raised up who did not realise the value of God’s word, and who never realised in their own experience the infinite need of the atonement and intercession of the Lord Jesus Christ, who never realised in their own experience their need of the Spirit of Grace and Supplications to quicken and to change man’s nature, and to cause sinners to repent and believe in Christ. Men rose who looked upon these things as antiquated doctrines, and who were quite prepared to drink in their fill of the rationalism of Germany. The ministry of this country, we say, drank their fill of the rationalism of Germany. They began to preach that there were many things in the Bible which were not right; that there were many things in it which were even immoral, the Book which God claims as His Own Book, and the Book of which Christ said, “Until the heavens and earth pass away, not one jot or tittle shall pass away from the law until all be fulfilled.” Now, the effect of that was in this country—first, a demand to cast out of the Creed what these men did not realise as necessary. There was not to be a word in it about man’s total depravity, there was not to be a word in it about election, there was not to be a word in it about a particular atonement or about the application of the redemption purchased by Christ by the Holy Ghost to the souls of sinners whom God purposed to save. These, and other doctrines also, were thrown entirely out of the Creed of the Free Church about twenty-four years ago. I ask any man, however dead we were twenty-four years ago, I ask that man to look upon Scotland, and see whether we are not more dead now than we were then. The effect of it has been that the most of the people of this country—I mean just now, Scotland—have been converted to infidelity. Some of them go the length of boasting that they are atheists. The half of the people of this country never darken the door of a church. The cause of the whole thing was that men, ignorant of God and His Church, of themselves as sinners, and of the great doctrines of the grace of God, destroyed the Creed of the Church and taught lies to the people. The Spirit of God never acknowledges anything but truth. Men have made efforts again and again to have revivals, being conscious of the fact that their congregations were gone to the four winds, and that they would require now to have a revival. Instead of looking to heaven and praying to God in the name of Christ to send His Holy Spirit to revive and change men, they looked to America. It is from there that we are expecting, as a country, to get something to revive us! If men are not more dead after these Americans go away than they were before they came, they are certainly not more living to the things of eternity and their everlasting concerns. If there be any in Scotland to-day who see how things have gone back in this country to death and darkness, it is time, my friends, that we should begin to pray with the Church of old, “Wilt thou not revive us again?” Otherwise we are undone. Men may like to go on in the pleasures of sin, men may enjoy these, but God tells us that the end of these things is death, death eternal, and anyone who has any idea of what it is to be a sinner, and a sinner’s need of being saved, must realise that, in our day, the most are dead and going to a lost eternity. But, before I leave this, I must mention one thing, and it is that we do not believe that God, my friends, will forsake his own people, however few they may be, and however antiquated they may be looked upon, who will cling to God’s truth and to His way of salvation, by the gospel of His grace. Certainly, in the midst of death, He will give them a reviving.
Let us notice, in the second place, how they are conscious that they could not revive themselves, but had full confidence that God could revive them. Just like the leper that came to Christ and said to Him, “If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean,” and He answered, “I will, be thou clean.” You will see that the question that is asked here—”Wilt thou not revive us?”—means that they believed that He had the power, but could not say what His will was as regards the day in which the Psalm was written, and the same thing is true now. None who knows God savingly can have the least doubt in his or her mind but that God is able to quicken the dead—to revive not only one soul, but to revive millions of them at a time—in a moment, if that be His will, but what His will is is a thing that men do not know. He reveals a great deal of His will. We know a great deal that certainly will be accomplished, but what He is going to do with the present generation is a thing that no one can say; but you can go the length of praying with the Church, “Wilt thou not revive us?”
Now, I desire to notice two or three things in connection with this second head, and the first thing is this—that God did revive His own cause, His own Church, in days when things were very low in the past, and He did it also when men did not expect it. You find in one place that when God revived His Church, those who lived at that time described their experience passing through this great work, as “men that dreamed.”
“When Sion’s bondage God turned back,
We were like men that dreamed.”
They could hardly believe that what they were seeing with their eyes was actually a fact, when God began the work mightily by His Word and Spirit in the souls of men.
I desire, in connection with this, to instance three or four cases in which this happened.
I desire to go back just now to the time of Hezekiah, King of Judah. Things were very low then. If you read the beginning of the prophecy of Isaiah you will see how dark things looked—how really low things were—for He calls the people there, “Sodom and Gomorrah,” and their rulers, “rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah.” He declares their sins were red as scarlet, and crimson, just as if you were depicting the condition of this country at the present time. Our rulers are not better than the people; our sins are as scarlet, yea, as crimson, but He invites us to come and reason with Him. About four years after the seven tribes on the west of Jordan—called Israel in those days—were taken away captive by the King of Assyria, Hezekiah and his princes resolved to hold the feast of the Passover at Jerusalem, and that messengers should be sent through the land of Israel to invite those who were left of these tribes to come to that feast. You find that those who went were mocked by the people, but notwithstanding that most of the people mocked these messengers, there were a few out of these tribes who humbled themselves and came, and that shows that it was pride that caused the rest not to come. And when the seven days of the feast were finished, such was the experience of these men and women of God’s infinite love and pity towards them, that they could not separate, but began to plead that they should have other seven days. When these were over they went and broke down all the idolatry—the idols and the idol-worship—in the land of Judah, and went on till they reached Dan. That was God’s work. You will notice that it was just through the means that God revives men, just by the means—the word preached and read, the sacraments administered (we do not mean by that that the Sacrament of the Supper is a converting ordinance at all)—and you find that this reviving which He gave to the Church in the days of Hezekiah continued for a considerable time.
Again, how low things were in the visible Church when our Lord Jesus Christ was upon the earth! He had to describe the professors of that day—those who were the most strict—as hypocrites over and over again. That is how God Himself, when He appeared in the world in human nature, had to describe the Church, and you may depend upon it that it was not bigotry nor narrowness that caused Him to do it, but because truth demanded it. He described them as having taken away the key of knowledge, as having not entered themselves into the kingdom of heaven, and as having prevented those who would enter into it. On the Day of Pentecost God revived His Church by the doctrines of grace. Peter charged the people with the very sins which they had committed, and the Spirit of God made those charges that the Apostle levelled against his audience as pricks in their consciences. He convinced them of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, and we read that three thousand were added to the Church in one day of such as should be saved. That was decidedly not the work of man; it was God’s work—God the Holy Ghost making use of the word of truth, for He will never use any other instrument but His own sword. And that reviving which began in Jerusalem went over the whole Roman Empire, even within twenty years after the Day of Pentecost, and the Gospel He sent went to the ends of the earth, because God’s Spirit accompanied the word and made it effectual unto salvation to the souls of poor, lost, perishing sinners.
I desire to notice, again, a third instance. See you how dead, exceedingly dead—perhaps I would not be wrong in saying that in the history of time, since the beginning of time, perhaps even in the days of Noah, things were not lower than they were before the Reformation broke out in Europe. It is set before us in the Book of Revelation as a time in which the witnesses were dead on the streets of the city, and the people rejoiced because these witnesses, who tormented them who lived on the earth—that is, who told them that their sins, if continued in, would bring them down lower than the grave, to weeping and gnashing of teeth—had now ceased; and they sent presents to one another in their rejoicing. But after a dark, long night the witness became alive, when the breath of the Holy Ghost breathed into men; and we had the first effects of it in this country itself. John Wycliffe was about the first who raised his voice against the iniquities of the Church of Rome. You have John Huss immediately after. You have also Jerome of Prague. You have, one hundred years later, Luther, whom God quickened by His Word and Spirit in a cell down in the basement of a monastery in Germany, and made him realise that he was a sinner, that God was angry with him, and that he would be lost for ever unless he received forgiveness of sins. He went through all the inventions of the Church of Rome, and that conscientiously, trying to see if he could attain to peace of conscience—to forgiveness of sins—but he never could attain to it. He was only getting worse and worse, when the Scripture came to him three times: “The just shall live by faith.” But Luther did not know God’s voice, like Samuel. But the third time it came he was just in the very act of trying to obtain eternal life by his own merits. It was by faith upon Christ that he was saved. Now, when Luther received Christ as He was offered to him in the Gospel as his own Saviour, and without any merit of his own, he rested upon Christ alone for salvation. Faith, my friends, is just like an empty hand. It is not a thing that brings anything to God, but it comes empty, needful, to receive from God what it needs, and that is forgiveness through the blood of Christ for all sins—past, present, and future. Now, when God raised this man and when he saw how many millions were going to eternity dead in trespasses and sins, deceived by the Church of Rome, by the Papacy, he immediately began to preach to his fellowmen that there was no merit in man’s works, but that the whole foundation of man’s salvation was Christ, the Son of God, in the glory of His person, and in the glory of His offices as the Prophet and the Priest and the King of the Church, and that in the glory of the merit of His blood He washed away the sins of the guiltiest sinner who would come to him. There was a reviving of God’s Church. Men and women were rising up, day after day, who were throwing away from them their idols and their superstition and their works of darkness, and they showed in their life and conversation in the world that they were living men—living for eternity and not for time only. This reviving took place also in our own country.
But before I leave this second head I desire to point out this, my friends, that if you look at this country to-day, are we not in need of reviving as much as ever we were in our past history? Are we not perishing—going to a lost eternity—pleased with ourselves, having plenty to flatter us to our ruin, calling out, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace? Are men not sinning against God on Sabbath-days and week-days, refusing to give the place to the Son of God which the Father gave Him, and from which no creature can dislodge Him; refusing to give the place to the Holy Ghost, whom the Father and the Son gave to be the Comforter of the Church? It was He who was to convince of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. It was He who was to glorify Christ by taking of the things that are His and revealing them to lost men. Since we have taken the work of the Spirit into our own hands what death has come over us! Although we should speak with tongues even as angels, if God’s Spirit will not make use of that, it is nothing better than sounding brass. It may please the ears at the time, but it is from God the increase must come. Even although Paul himself should plant and although Apollos should water, it is God, my friends, that must give the increase. While we are looking for the increase anywhere else than from God, from Jesus Christ, who is exalted a Prince and a Saviour at the right hand of God, and who is there at this moment for this purpose, that He might give repentance to Israel and remission of sins, we shall remain dead. We have much reason, much cause, why we should in our day pray this prayer over again from the bottom of our hearts, “Wilt thou not revive us again?”
But, as time will not allow me to enlarge, we shall notice now, in the third place, a few things as to the effect in the hearts of those who would see and also realise such a work as this—God reviving His people, reviving the dead, converting sinners and turning them from the ways in which destroyers go into the way of truth and salvation. He says “that thy people may rejoice in thee.”
Now, I desire to notice in connection with this three or four things, and the first thing is this:—Our text brings God Himself before us as the great object of the rejoicing of His people (not excluding at all other things), but it is a fact that true godliness rejoices in God Himself, as you find the Virgin Mary saying when she went to see her cousin Elizabeth. She said her soul was rejoicing in God her Saviour. They who have God—the three Persons—for time and for eternity, have ample cause why they should rejoice, for it matters very little to those who have God as their own God whether it should be death or life, as neither of these things can separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, consequently the Church cannot rejoice in God, except He revives them. And I may mention, in connection with this, that it is not only that death that came upon all men by the Fall, but a deeper death, I fear, than the ordinary. All by nature are dead in trespasses and sins, but there seem to be times in which men are more dead in their minds, as if they could not think at all about things that are spiritual, things that are eternal; as if they had become so materialistic in their minds that they cannot think of anything but this present life and the things of the world. Well, at such times as these, when men live and spend their time providing for the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, and the pride of life, it is a common thing that the people of God themselves become more dead; and, if you look at the professors of our own day and compare them with those who professed religion, say, forty years ago, what do you see? At that time men and women would warn sinners seriously, advise them, bring them to a private corner, and speak seriously to them; rebuke them for Sabbath desecration, and other sins. And we remember well when boys, if playing on God’s day, would run away as fast as they could if they saw one of God’s people coming the way, but how are they now? They laugh in your face. Well, a part of that effect is just what I mentioned already. How it is lying like mountains of brass upon the souls of those who are dead in trespasses and sins! But there is a part of this deadness lying upon the souls of God’s own people, and, if we are not deceived, some are conscious of being dead, more dead than they believe those who fear God ought to be, so dead that they will be sometimes questioning if they have been revived at all. So you see that they have a cause why they should pray for reviving for themselves, and for the true Church. How much do we need to pray, “Wilt thou not revive us?” and, if He will do that, men then could rejoice in Him; for it is the living that praise Him in that day.
The first cause of rejoicing, as I said already, is God Himself, what He is in His own Being, a God of infinite love, infinite mercy, infinite pity towards lost men; while, at the same time, He is a holy and just, and an eternal God. When those who are revived can behold the glory of the Lord in the Bible, as a man looking at a friend’s face in a glass, they begin to rejoice in Him, for what He is in Himself and what He is to them as their own God, their portion for time and for eternity.
I desire to notice another reason why they rejoice in Him. We are told that He knows well who are His, whether men know them or not. They rejoice in His salvation, not only in Himself. I remember reading in Dr. Owen’s writings about times of trial, when men would be put to the test, as to whether they would follow Christ and forsake all. He said that no man or woman, for any opinion or knowledge he or she might have of Christ, could follow Him and part with things they had seen or handled, who had only a notional knowledge; but those who behold His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, who were enabled to receive Him as their own Saviour, he said that neither death nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, could ever separate these from Christ. Now they rejoice in His salvation at a time when He revives His Church, and when their own faith is revived and strengthened, and when they can say “I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine.” They can rejoice that day in their portion, they can rejoice in what He is; but, when they look upon perishing sinners in the world, they would have to fold their hands and conclude they were all lost but for what they know of God’s salvation. How suitable it is for perishing men, and how God is able to make the most careless sinner begin to seek with all his or her heart God in Christ as their own portion. They rejoice in this, and what a cause of rejoicing they have. When they look upon their own families, or congregations, should they be ministers, they could have nothing but mournings, were it not that they know that God is able to revive and bring to life again the dead souls of men, and that He is able to make a people willing in a day of His power, and that He is able to cause men to forsake the ways of sin, and of the world. If you have the grace of God in your heart, when you look at your son or your daughter without grace, you cannot rejoice in anything that they can do, and you cannot rejoice in anything that they possess, but in this one thing that God is merciful, and that, for Christ’s sake, He may, to His own glory, save your son or daughter. If we know anything at all, when we look at immortal souls we have no other cause of rejoicing in the world but this—that we know assuredly that God can quicken the dead and that He is just when He justifies the ungodly; that He invites sinners to come to Him to receive life, to come with an empty hand and stretch it forth to receive eternal life in the gift of God through Jesus Christ, without money and without price, and that is a cause of rejoicing.
But I desire to notice one other thing, before I stop, as a cause why God’s people rejoice in Him, and especially at times when He revives His Church again and revives themselves. There is such a thing as enjoyment in the things of God. If you never could say that you found any joy in God’s house, and if you be dead in trespasses and sins, it is more than probable that you never felt anything in God’s house but the coldest house that ever you were in. The flesh can get something in the picture-house, in the theatre, at the dance, at the vain song, but the flesh can get nothing in God’s house unless you bring the song and the play into it. If you do this you can get something for carnal men and women to enjoy, but a spiritual worship is tastelessness itself, a weariness to the carnal mind, but it is not so to those who are revived. David could testify by his own experience that he would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of his God than dwell in the tents of iniquity, and that was the name he gave to the house in which he dwelt himself, for he says, “The Lord is a sun and a shield, and he will give grace and he will give glory, and he will withhold no good thing from them that walk uprightly.” He was revived in his very heart in God’s house and in the means of grace in private. He says, “It is good for me to draw near unto God.” How is it with you? Well, my friends, God can make His own people rejoice in drawing nigh unto Him in secret, in their own secret closet, and He may make them rejoice in the public means. They said before, “Master, it is good for us to be here.” It is called a feast of fat things; not at all, my friends, of inferior things, but of the best, of wine on the lees, well refined, and this is the wine of God’s infinite mercy and pity towards perishing men. He is offering this to sinners who will accept of Christ as He is freely offered in the Gospel. That has many a time caused men to rejoice in Him, and to rejoice in Him more than the world could rejoice when their corn and wine did abound.
But I must not be detaining you. But would to God, my friends, that He would answer this prayer again to our beloved country; that He would revive us again, and you would see if that were to take place, how the people of this country would turn their back immediately upon all their own inventions; how they would cast away their idols to the moles and the bats, and how they would devote themselves with their whole heart to worship God according to His own Word, and that, in one day, would make union in Scotland which men could not break down, but nothing else will do it. No; men may make unions merely for policy’s sake; putting things together which cannot be joined. When God begins this work He can warm men’s hearts by His Spirit, by His love, and He can unite men in their hearts to one another in such a way that the power of Satan and of men cannot separate them. That is a union which we would, with all our heart, pray for, a union in the love of God, in the love of Christ; a union in the Holy Ghost, a union in the Word of God, in every syllable of it. We would pray for it, rejoice at seeing it, and, if we are not deceived altogether, would like to see it to-morrow. But other efforts by dead men to put two pieces of cold iron together will be as unavailing as anything man ever tried, for it is impossible, my friends, to join men unless there be love in the union, and love makes an honourable union, and a lasting union, and a profitable union. May the Lord bless anything consistent with His Word!