Amen. Take your Bibles and turn to the book of Psalms chapter 80. Psalm chapter 80. The last several weeks, and in case anybody in here is thinking this, I have not forgotten about the series that we were on in terms of the attributes of God. Just as soon as I feel leave to go back to that, we will resume those because they are most certainly needful in all of our lives to have a greater understanding of who God is. But I believe that the Lord is trying to tell us and teach us something together with these messages that we've been looking at the last couple of weeks in terms of revival and in terms of the necessity of revival. Because if you're here this morning and you think that we do not need revival, or if you think that you do not need revival, you are wrong. You are absolutely wrong. And I want to, and I hope that through these, that we have talked about these last couple of weeks, that your heart has been impressed to seek the Lord for revival, because we can't just keep going the way that we've gone for years. Well, I guess, actually, let me rephrase that. We can keep going the way that we have gone for years, and we will continue to be exactly what we've always been. And if we want to truly do anything for the Lord, if we truly want the presence of God manifested in our midst the way that He used to be manifested in times of old that you will hear people talk about who were there back then that remember those things where the Spirit and the power and the presence of God was so real and it was so strong and it was so palpable upon people, that you truly had what the book of Psalms tells us in chapter 1 where sinners could not stand in the congregation of the righteous. Because the power of God was so present to convict people. Has it ever bothered you or occurred to you that we have churches full of people today who are lost and yet they just sit in church and they're perfectly content to just sit in church and they're never bothered? They're never convicted. There are never any tears. There's never any brokenness. So my question is, how do they stand in that congregation if that congregation is a righteous congregation? The way the psalm says that David wrote in chapter 1. And there are some things, if we're going to be honest with ourselves, and if we're going to be honest in our quest to obey God and to please God and to do the things that He would have us to do, we, all of us, are going to have to take an honest and hard look at our own personal lives. Because the body here is just a conglomeration of all of its members. And when there are members who are sick, the body is sick. And when there are members who are unwell, the body is unwell. That's why Paul gave that analogy in the book of 1 Corinthians, because that truly is the way that it works. And so I'm going to draw your attention this morning to Psalm chapter 80, and we're going to read the entirety of this psalm to begin with this morning. Now I want you to notice the repetition that the psalmist uses inside of this chapter. He says, give ear, O shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock, thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth. Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up thy strength and come and save us. Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. O Lord God of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people? Thou feedest them with the bread of tears, and givest them tears to drink in great measure. Thou makest us a strife unto our neighbors, and our enemies laugh among themselves. Turn us again, O God of hosts, and cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt. Thou hast cast out the heathen and planted it. Thou prepared room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land. The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs were like the goodly cedars. She sent out her boughs unto the sea and her branches unto the river. Why hast thou then broken down her hedges? So that all they which pass by the way do pluck her. The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it. Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts, and look down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine. And the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted, and the branch that thou madest strong for thyself, it is burned with fire, it is cut down, and they perish at the rebuke of thy countenance. Let thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand, upon the son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself. So will not we go back from thee? Quicken us, and we will call upon thy name. Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts, cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. Now I want to draw your attention today to what I have called a refrain for the church of today. A refrain for the church of today. A couple of weeks ago, we looked at a song for the church of yesterday. And we discussed out of the Psalms that revival not only was necessary in our lives, in the life of the church, in the life of the country, but not only was it necessary, it is also possible. it is completely possible to have revival. And we looked back in Israel's history and we used Israel as an example. And we saw that God had revived and awakened over and over and over in the past. And since he has done so over and over and over in the past, there is no reason whatsoever to doubt that he will do the same thing again. We are not so wicked that He cannot revive us. And I pointed out that God allowed Israel to go on for 850 years during which He revived repeatedly and showed them mercy by raising up godly leaders and kings and individuals who would lead them into a way of righteousness. And if He suffered then for that long, why in the world would He not be gracious to revive us who've only been here for a measly 248? And then we look the following week at a lament for the church of today. And we looked at the intensity of the burden that would attract God's attention and His care. And we looked at Moses as an example of an individual who was grievously burdened by the sin and the wickedness of the nation of Israel. And when God told him, Moses get out of my way and I'm going to go down there and I'm going to destroy all of them and I'm going to start over with you. And instead of Moses getting out of God's way and letting God do what he had purposed to do, Moses stood in the way. And he made up the gap between God and the destruction of an entire nation of people. And it was Moses' intercession that turned the anger of God away from the nation of Israel. And then Moses went as far as to tell the Lord, if you will not forgive them of their sin, then take me out of the book of eternal life and let me die and let me perish myself. Just forgive them of their sin. And I had mentioned and I had explained that that is the burden that God is looking for. But it is also a burden that you and I cannot manufacture in our own selves. It must be something that God has begun to sovereignly work in our lives as He did in the life of Moses. And then last week, we looked at the importance of being planted in the house of the Lord. We looked at how important it is to be rooted in a local Bible-believing church and serving God actively with the family of God. And I wanna say this this morning, and I know that you understand what I mean when I say this, if you are in a place and something in that place you don't really like, there's just something in there, you love being there, you like the preaching, but there's just something you don't like, don't run away. Don't run away. Pray for how would the Lord use you to help in that situation. And pray the Lord would use you to help in that situation. But to be planted and to be committed to the work of the Lord. And then today in Psalm 80, I want to point out that a refrain is a musical term. that shows a series of repetitious phrases that are sang or said multiple times that explain the theme of a song. Now, in our modern terminology, we would use the term chorus. A refrain is a chorus. The chorus of a song is usually the part of the song that tells you what the song is truly about. It's the part of the song that gets sung the most, it's the part of the song that's normally the easiest to sing, and it's normally the part of the song that's got the greatest amount of truth within it, because it's the part that they want people to understand and to remember. It's usually the easiest part of a song to remember. And what you see and what we're going to look at today in Psalm chapter 80 is Psalm 80 is a hymn that pleads for revival and restoration. It is accentuated by four verses, or I'm sorry, four repetitions of the same refrain, which highlight the five verses of the song in which the psalmist pours out his grief regarding the need for revival. So as we look at this, we're gonna analyze it like a hymn. It has five verses, and there's one chorus that is sung four times. And so we're gonna begin today by looking at verse one of this hymn. And you'll see this in verses one through three. The psalmist begins by addressing God as a shepherd. He begins by addressing him as one who has care and concern over a flock of people. He's calling him the shepherd of Israel, one who leadest, and notice that word leadest is past tense, Joseph. like a flock. And if you look in verse 1 and in verse 2, you'll see the names that are mentioned, Joseph, Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh. And what that shows you is that this psalm was written concerning the northern kingdom of Israel, not the southern kingdom of Judah. And the importance of that is simply this. You remember when the kingdom split after the reign of Solomon, and you had Solomon's son Rehoboam come to the throne, and he made all the people of Israel mad, and they decided, well, we're just going to go our own way, so they took a man by the name of Jeroboam, and they made him king, and northern Israel went to northern Israel, and southern Israel stayed where they were, and you had a nation that split. And in the northern part where Jeroboam reigned, Jeroboam believed in God. He was a man that a prophet had came to and the prophet had told him that you are going to reign because the Lord has appointed for you to reign. Jeroboam knew who God was, but Jeroboam was also a pragmatist. And he began to think and he was like, you know, If I let all of the people in my country go down to Jerusalem to worship the Lord, they're going to eventually want to just be part of that kingdom. And I'm going to lose my rule. So what I'll do is I will make some gods, and I will appoint priests, and we will blend the methods of the house of God with the worship of the world. Does that sound familiar? We will blend the methods of the house of God with the worship of the world and I'll attract and I'll keep all my people here. And what you began to have was a downward spiral from which the Northern kingdom never recovered at all. And so this psalm is addressed to God from those in this situation where they have gross idolatry being presented in the house of God. And he's calling him a shepherd. Thou who leadest, who used to lead Israel like a flock. And if you'll notice that there are four pleas within these first two verses. The first one is give ear. It just simply means, Lord, would you listen? Would you listen? And not only would you listen, would you hear? How many of you know that it is perfectly easy to hear somebody and not listen to them? It is perfectly easy to hear someone but not actually listen to them. But the psalmist is pleading with God, give ear, lend your ear and listen to my prayer, O shepherd of Israel. The second plea he gives in the last part of verse 1, shine forth. He's asking him to show the glory of God and to manifest the presence of God to them again. The third plea is found in verse 2. He's saying, stir up thy strength. Notice that he did not say, stir our strength, O Lord, so we can do this or we can do that. He's not asking, Lord, give us strength so that we can go and do this or this so that then you can come and we can have this revival that we desperately need. He didn't say that. He said, stir up your strength. Why? Because you and I are just a bunch of sheep and we're all wandering around and we have absolutely no ability to lead ourselves. None. And the night that y'all elected me to be your pastor, I made a statement and I want to remind you of it. I'm a sheep just like you are. And half the time I find myself wandering around not having any idea what I am doing. And I need a shepherd. You need a shepherd. Because you want to know, and I'm going to say this in the kindest way possible. Do you know why the Bible calls us repeatedly sheep? Thank you. We are dumb. People are so dumb. Do you want to know what a sheep will do? If a shepherd takes his sheep and puts them out into a pasture, and right over here is the most glorious, flowing, beautiful river of the coolest, refreshing water, and those sheep are so thirsty, But right here is a brackish, stagnant puddle full of all vile bacteria and disease. Those dumb sheep will make a beeline for that puddle and drink themselves to death with the water of life right there. That's why God refers to us as sheep. Because we will do the exact same thing. when we have the water of life right here. So often we won't drink from it, but we'll drink from every other puddle the world has to offer and we have no idea how close to death, spiritual death, we might actually be. So he's imploring God as the shepherd, please come, stir your strength up and save us your last plea. Come and save us. In the same manner, you could not save yourself. You can't revive yourself either. Salvation is wholly a work of God. Revival is wholly a work of God. Come and save us. It's save us by your strength. You must shine. You must hear. And then, verse three, they sing the chorus for the first time. You'll see the refrain sung. Turn us again, O God. The word turn there means to restore. Restore us, O God, and cause thy face to shine. And as we go through and look at this chapter, I want you to notice how many times he asks God to shine upon them. And he says that if you will turn us and you will cause your face to shine, what's going to happen? We shall be saved. So in this chorus, in this refrain, he pleads with God to restore and to save. But then we have the second verse of the song. The first verse highlighted the spiritual need of the psalmist. The second verse highlights godly anger. And you see this shown in verses 4 through 7. He addressed him first as the shepherd of Israel. Now, normally when we think of a shepherd and we think of a scene of a shepherd, whether it be a shepherd in this time or a modern day shepherd, we think of almost a quaint, almost a romantic scene of things being peaceful and things being calm and sheep on the meadow and the shepherd just kind of serenely watching over them. That's kind of what we think of when we think of shepherding. But you'll notice that now God is being addressed not as a shepherd, but as the Lord God of hosts. So the title has changed. Why is this significant? The Lord God of hosts shows us that He is the God of all created order. He is the God of all power. He is the God of all principality. And He is the God of all rule in heaven and in earth. Listen to what Paul wrote in the book of Colossians. He's speaking of Christ. He says, Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things and by Him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence. In other words, he is in charge. And then David wrote in Psalm 46, the heathen raged, the kingdoms removed. In other words, the world was incited. But God uttered his voice and the earth melted. Have you ever realized that even in your own personal life that you and I have not offended just some minor person? We have not broken the law of a county, or a city, or a state, or even a sovereign nation. We have not offended against an earthly father, or an earthly mother, or a principal, or a boss, or even the President of the United States, or even a monarch. And if you got called into question by any one of those people, do you remember when you were a kid, that flutter of fear that you would feel inside? We've not offended against any of those. We have offended the Lord God of hosts with our sin. As the wretches, we are born into this world as we have offended, grossly offended the God of heaven. with our sin. And this is the very same God that when He utters His voice, the earth melts. Do you really think that you can stand against such a God? Do you think that you will have an excuse that will work against such a God as this? But I ask the question, why is God angry? Because if you'll notice, He said, O Lord God of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry? Why is He angry? He's angry with the prayers of His people. That does not say He is angry with the world. It says He is angry with the prayers of His people. So the question would be asked, then why is God angry with the prayers of His people? I thought prayer was important. I thought prayer is something that we were commanded to do. That's how we commune with God. Why would then He be angry against our prayers? I want to sum up the reason. If you want to write this reference down, Psalm chapter 66 and verse 18, there is a simple little verse that we quote fairly frequently. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. And I want to stop right there for just a moment and I want to point this out. There could potentially be people sitting in this congregation this morning that you've been in church for years upon years upon years upon years and you have prayed for years and years and years and years and you've read your Bible for years and years and years and years and God has never heard a single prayer that you've ever prayed. Because down inside of your heart, you have iniquity that you will not take care of. And until you take care of the sin inside of your soul, and until I take care of the sin inside of my soul, we can pray, and pray, and pray, and pray, and God will do nothing but turn a deaf ear to our pleas. That's why he began the psalm with the word, give ear. Because he's recognizing that all we've been doing is praying and we're still in the mess that we're in. So there's got to be a reason why we're still in the mess we're in, why we're seeing nothing happen. There's got to be a reason. Maybe the reason is that you're angry with our prayers. If you harbor anger and bitterness and hatred in your heart for any single person in this world, you can pray all you want to and the Lord will not hear you. He will not hear you. If you harbor lust and pride and foolishness and idolatry inside of your heart, whether nobody else ever knows it or not, you will not be heard when you go to the Lord in prayer. And I had said at the beginning that we're gonna have to take an honest, examining look of ourselves. Is there something in my heart that keeps God from answering my prayers? Because the Bible says, lest any root of bitterness springing up in you, and thereby many be defiled. You see, the presence of sinners in the congregation does not keep God from moving. But it's the presence of saints who harbor sin that keeps God from moving. I'm going to say that again. It's not the presence of sinners. It's not the presence of lost people in the congregation of God that keeps His Spirit from moving. It's the presence of sin in the lives of those who claim to be saints that keeps the Spirit of God from moving. Because when you have people who identify by the name of Christ yet refuse to depart from iniquity and refuse to let go of those things that the Word of God clearly says are wrong, God's not moving in your life until you obey Him. You can come to church all you want. You can raise your hands all you want. You can look as spiritual as it is possible for a person to look, but until we take care of the things His Word says are wrong, that we see in our lives, He will not hear you, and He will not hear me. And if you're sitting in this message or in any other message at all, and you feel bothered by something that a preacher says to you that is out of the Word of God. I'm going to tell you what that bothering is. It's called conviction. And it means there is something in you God is trying to get you to look at. Run to Him! Run to Him! Don't get mad at the person standing up there trying to tell you the truth. Run to Christ and receive forgiveness of your sins. And then look at verse five. Thou, he's still speaking to the Lord here, feedest them with the bread of tears and givest them tears to drink in great measure. How often do we weep? Not over people, not over the way the world is, not over things we wish we could change. How often do we weep over our own sin? How often do we get before God and weep over the sin we see in our own lives? Because what is clear here in this text is that God was giving them nothing but sorrow so that that sorrow could be used to bring them, as Paul writes about in 2 Corinthians 7, to a place of repentance. But sorrow's gonna do one of two things to you. It's either gonna make you repent or it's gonna make you regret. Repentance leads to life, regret just leads to death. And there's an awful lot of people who have a lot of regret for things they've done or things they see within themselves, but there's no sorrow that works repentance that leads to everlasting life. Because all they do is feel sorry that they got caught or they feel sorry that they know what they did was wrong but there's actually no repentance, there's no want to change to lead to life eternal. And then you'll look at verse seven, you see the refrain echoed again, turn us again, oh God of hosts and cause thy face to shine and we shall be saved. He pleads with the same God, that He recognizes that He has offended, that that same God would save Him. As I said, we've not just offended anybody. We've offended the God of eternal glory whose holiness we cannot even begin to fathom. And if we had any idea how detrimentally gross just one sin is in His sight, every single one of us would be in this altar right now. pleading for God to search us and to try us and to know our thoughts, to see if there be any wicked way in us and to lead us in the way everlasting. And so dear friends, I ask you, if you know there is something inside of you that is wrong, if you say you want revival, that's where it has to start. You have to get rid of it. And you've got to do it in the name of Jesus. And then the third verse of the song, we see in verses 8 through 11, it's a revisiting of the glorious past of Israel. He says, Thou brought a vine. You brought a vine out of Egypt. That's in reference to the Exodus. You cast out the heathen. That was in the land of Canaan. You planted that vine. You prepared room for the vine. You caused it to take root and it filled the land. Notice how many times in verses 8 and 9 the word thou is used, showing that Israel did not plant themselves, they did not conquer Canaan, they did not deliver themselves out of Egypt. God did it all. And do you know when the church began in the book of Acts, the miraculous spreading of the message of Jesus Christ in such a short amount of time, was not due to the programs of the apostles and the eloquence of Peter and John. It was to the power of God alone. 3,000 people did not get saved on the day of Pentecost because Peter was a great preacher. And 3,000 people did not get saved on the day of Pentecost because they had the perfect worship program lined up to kick off that service. 3,000 people got saved at Pentecost because the Spirit of God reached down and stuck His finger in their hearts and caused them to see they were vile and wretched sinners. And until God is pleased to take His finger and stick it in the hearts of men again, we're not going to see what they saw at Pentecost. Because now we've turned it into you can just make decisions for Christ. You can just choose to follow Christ anytime you want. There's no drawing, there's no leading, there's no conviction of sin. You can just choose Christ whenever you want. That's not what the Bible says. And so the glorious advancement of Israel, the glorious advancement of the church has only ever been by the hand of God. And when God was not present, they were defeated just like that. Look at what happened to Israel after they had the glorious manifestation of the power of God with the destruction of Jericho. Then they thought, hey man, this won't be bad. Let's go take the smallest, most insignificant little Canaanite city and we don't need many people to do it. And they went in and they got beat by nobody because they left God back where God had just manifested His presence. And so he recounts and he goes on in verse 10 and 11 to describe the blessings that God bestowed upon them. The hills were covered with the shadow of this vine that had grown. The boughs were like the goodly cedars. She sent out her boughs into the sea and her branches unto the river. The church was once respected and it was once adorned with much beauty. And now the modern church is a joke. It's a joke. And all it is, it's a huge circus. And it's a circus that's put on in the name of Christ. And most of what goes on is utter blasphemy. And it's easy to talk about all the nonsense that goes out in the church world, but let us be cautioned to examine our own hearts when we come and sit in this little place right here. Because if we regard iniquity within us, God's not here in us either. We may be little, and I may not be doing nonsensical stuff up here, But if we're sitting here and we're all harboring hatred and iniquity and pride and stubbornness in our heart and we refuse adamantly to make it right where we know it needs to be right, we're honestly not any different. We're not any different. And if you get on your face and you ask the Lord to show you what needs to be done in me, What do I need to take care of so that I can experience revival? If you mean it, God will be gracious enough to reveal it to you. But then when he reveals it to you, now there's a responsibility that becomes yours. You have to go and make it right. And if you refuse to make it right, all that is is pride. And pride is the downfall of every single one of us. All it is is self. And self is a killer of everything spiritual. And it may very well be that you didn't do anything wrong. It may be the other person, people, whatever the situation is. It may be they are in the wrong. but it's going to be up to you to go make it right. It's going to be up to you to go and do the thing of forgiveness. Because let's be honest, if our Lord and Savior could look down from a cross and look at all of the people standing in front of Him, that had spit on Him and slapped Him and whipped Him and beat Him and mocked Him mercilessly, and He could say, Father, forgive them, they know not what they do. You and I are commanded to do the exact same thing. And none of us have been beaten, spit upon, slapped, whipped, or mocked mercilessly the way that He was. And none of us created the people who were doing it to us the way that He did. And He still commands us to forgive. And He goes as far as to say, that if we forgive not those who have wronged us, not let's make it right when I wrong someone else, if we do not forgive those who have wronged us, neither will God forgive us. And can you imagine how absolutely awful it would be to stand in the presence of God one day having spent your entire life in church, And He looks at you and He tells you, I haven't forgiven the thing you've asked Me for the last 50 years. Because you would not forgive so-and-so for what they did against you. What do you think He's going to say to us if that's what He has to tell us? It certainly will not be enter into the joy of your Lord. You see, when we get saved, we're called to a higher way. It's called the way of holiness. And so often we skip over the parts that make us uncomfortable and the parts that irritate and scratch at the self because we don't like them. But if we want revival, it's those very parts that are gonna have to be dealt with and put under the blood of Jesus Christ. or there will be no revival or restoration. And in the fourth verse that we see, beginning in verse 12, the psalmist begins to talk about the remedial judgments. And notice now he's changed the way that he's referring to God again. He is now addressed as the one who has broken down the once glorious nation. Listen to what Isaiah wrote in chapter 5 of his writings. God is speaking here. He says, I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away the hedge, and it shall be eaten up. I will break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down. And I will lay it waste. It shall not be pruned nor digged. But there shall come up briars and thorns, and I will command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. Now all of those things are things that if you garden or if you've got flower beds or whatever at home, you know that if you do not consistently maintain those things, they're going to get taken over by weeds. And the weeds are going to choke the life out of the flowers or out of the fruits. And guess what? Weeds can grow anytime. It doesn't matter. Your grass can be as dead and crispy as a burnt pizza because it is so dry outside and there is no rain whatsoever. And guess what's still thriving and growing? Weeds. They don't need anything to grow except a space. And sin in my life and sin in your life, all it needs is the tiniest little space and it will find a way to flourish and it will find a way to grow. And if we don't get it taken care of, it's gonna start choking the fruit out of our lives. And notice what he's saying here. He says, why have you, God, broken down her hedges? so that all they which pass by do pluck at her. And I wanna make a statement this morning and I want to be understood in the context of what I'm trying to say. We are always very, very quick when something goes wrong to blame the devil. We are incredibly fast to blame the devil for every problem in our lives, are we not? We are very, very fast to throw all the blame on the devil when something bad happens that we do not understand. And I wanna ask you this question, what if it's not the devil? What if it's a remedial judgment of God because of the sin we harbor inside of our own selves that we will not get rid of? What if it's not Satan? What if it's God? Because you'll notice here, it is God who broke them down. It is God who plucked them up. And the scripture I just read to you out of the book of Isaiah, it was God who laid it waste. It was God who removed the protection. It was God who broke the wall down so that all of the outside could come in and eat and trodden down the vineyard. It was God who quit pruning and it was God who quit digging, which means that God withheld his corrective discipline because we quit listening to the corrective discipline and we decided we were going to continue to do our own thing the way we wanted to do it. And when there is no pruning, and when there is no digging of your vineyard or of mine, and all the briars and thorns come up, this is exactly what Christ meant when he said some of the seed falls in the thorny places. And it looks real good, but the moment it begins to grow, those thorns choke it. It chokes the life out of it so that that person becomes unfruitful. Maybe you come to church. Maybe you come to church week after week and you think, man, that was a good message. Man, that was a good message. I really need to take that into account. I need to start praying this, or I need to start doing this. And within 30 minutes after leaving, it's just gone. It's completely gone. You had every intention. but then the thorns sprang up and choked it and choked the life out of it and you never think about it again and there's no fruit that came from what the Lord was trying to get home in your heart. We're very quick to blame the devil for all of our problems when most of our problems were created by our own making. They're created by our own making, because of our own stubbornness, and our own pride, and our own refusal to bow to the correction of the holy God of heaven. And then in verse 14, you see the refrain. He's phrased it slightly differently, but he's saying, return, we beseech thee, as God Christ identified in John 15 is the husbandman, Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts, and look down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine. Come and prune us again. Come dig within this soil again. Root up the weeds, root up the thorns, and make our hearts fit for the Word of God, so it goes in and it brings forth fruit. Because if the husbandman doesn't visit the vine, the fruit can't dig the weeds up. You're never gonna look out your window at your flower bed and see the flowers out there grabbing the weeds and picking them up and throwing them out of the bed. It's not gonna happen. Unless God himself comes and begins the pruning. And maybe it's time for some of us to get alone with God and say, Lord, I understand that what I'm about to ask you may entail some things I don't like. But I need you to prune me. I read a quote, and I won't be able to quote it exactly, but it said, I would rather be a pruned branch than one cut off and ready for the fire. I'd rather be a pruned branch than one cut off and ready for the fire. This is so perfectly illustrated in what we've been looking at on Sunday nights the last couple of weeks in the life of Jacob and in the life of Esau. As far as we know, Esau never had a single care or trouble at all. He had wealth, he had power, he had prosperity, all of those things he had. And if you go back and look at Jacob's life, all Jacob had was trouble. But it's not Esau you see at the end of his life blessing and worshipping the Lord because of the redemption he experienced. It's the man God beat every day of his life that's worshipping God on his deathbed. Because he knows and he sees what the hand of God has wrought in his life. Which one would you rather be? The one God has consistently pruned and digged around and spanked and beat until all of that filthy rotten self is gone. Or the one that he just lets go. To have everything you want and to die and go to hell. Which one do you want for yourself? Isn't it worth being pruned? Wouldn't it be worth the pruning and the correction of the Almighty for the glorious end in His presence? Job said this, for He maketh sore and bindeth up. He woundeth. and his hands make whole. God will never wound you without the intention of healing you when he's done. And every wound he gives, if you will let him and surrender and submit to him, he will bind you up and he will make you better in the end than you were in the beginning. And then lastly this morning, the fifth verse of this song, we see the burdened saints in verses 16 through 19. Verse 16 says, it, still speaking of this vineyard, is burned with fire. It is cut down. They perish at the rebuke of thy countenance. The idea that is conveyed here is that the judgments of God that were talked about in verses 12-15 are true judgments and they are righteous judgments. Because the Bible says all the works of the Lord are done in truth. And there is no unrighteousness with Him. All His ways are holy. All His works are true and they are right. And so if the rebuke of the Lord causes one to perish, then the rebuke of the Lord was given in righteousness and in holiness. And then look at what he says in verse 17. He's acknowledged that the rebuke of the Lord has been the things that caused their problems and caused their tribulations. And he knows that he can do nothing but humbly accept the justice of God's judgment. And with the acknowledgement of this, comes the plea of verse 17, let thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand. In other words, let thy hand be upon the one you will choose, upon the son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself. You remember I told you that there were three things that are necessary for revival to occur. The first thing is intense moral and spiritual decline. The second thing was judgment of God. The third thing was an intensely burdened and broken individual or individuals that God would sovereignly raise up to use to lead His people into revival. And that's exactly what the psalmist is praying for in verse 17. That person or those people that they might be lifted up that the hand of God would be on them, and that God would make them and use them as He sees fit. And then in verse 18, you'll see the attitude of repentance. So will we not go back from thee? And notice what he says, quicken us. The word quicken there is make us alive. How many of you have ever tried to raise somebody from the dead? No one. Because you can't do it. You can't do it. You can scream at them, you can shout at them, you can kick them, you can hit them all you want, and they are not going to come to life. It takes God to raise the dead. It takes God to quicken and make alive. You don't have that power for me. I do not have that power for you. You don't have that power in your own self. I don't have that power in my own self. So that the glory may belong to God alone. He's the only one who can do it. And that is what the psalmist is acknowledging. Quicken us And notice what happens, if you quicken us, we will call upon thy name. And when we call upon thy name, then they sing the chorus one more time, turn us again, oh Lord God of hosts, cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. You see that all throughout this psalm, the psalmist acknowledges that he can't do anything except humbly accept the rebuke that God has justly given unto them. And if God will reach down and enliven him, then he knows he'll be able to call upon the name of the Lord. And he knows that if God does the enlivening, it'll last. And it'll stick. We've had, there's been a lot of trying to be brought to life by men's standards. There's been a lot of trying to be brought to life through programs and great worship services and great this and great that. And people are still dead. Because at the end of the day, life is given by the breath of God and the breath of God alone. And aren't you ready to see Him breathe on people again? To make it where just the church in general is so full of the power of God that sinners have to either run from the place or they fall on their knees crying with the people of Acts chapter 2. Men and brethren, what must we do to be saved? What must we do to be saved? We're going to have to look inward and let God do some digging and some pruning in our lives. Stand with me this morning. Our Father, Lord, we thank you this morning for all that you have done for us. We thank you for your merciful truth. We thank you for your blessings. And we thank you, Heavenly Father, for all that you have given unto us. Father, I thank you for your word. Father, I thank you for the power that your word possesses. And Lord, I do ask in Jesus' name that you would deal with us, Lord, according to your word. Father, I pray that you will give us the measure of grace that is necessary to spend some time alone with you, asking you to honestly search our hearts and to try our thoughts and to see what wicked way Father lies inside of us, because none of us can say we're without sin. Not a single one of us can say that we are without sin. And Lord, if there is something this morning in the life of somebody here who is saved and who is your child, but it has been something, Father, that has kept you from hearing their prayers, And what a blessed relief it would be, Father, to get rid of that, to restore that communion and that fellowship with you. And Lord, I know and I understand that not every situation and not every circumstance that we go through and deal with is a judgment of God on our lives. Sometimes things happen and sometimes Satan does move against us for reasons that we don't know. Lord, I want people to earnestly examine themselves and see if they be in the faith. And I want them to earnestly ask you and seek you in prayer. Lord, if there is something in my life, if these things that I am experiencing are judgments because of something that I don't even know, reveal to me what I need to do and by the grace of God I will see it done. And if you reveal those things to us, immediately what will happen is our self and our flesh is going to rise up. And if we're not very careful, we will harden ourself against your revelation of what we need to do to be right in your sight. And if we harden ourselves, then nothing will happen. Lord, please, if you reveal to us what we need to fix, and it's going to require some humbling and some humiliation to do so, give us the absolute grace and that strength to say, I will not let my flesh win. I will not let it win. I will not let it keep me. from the glory of God. I will not let it keep me from revival. I will not let it keep me from knowing the taste of the Spirit of God. I will not let it keep me from knowing the presence of God. I will not let it keep me from worshiping God. And I will not be the reason the sweet and precious Holy Spirit does not move. and my congregation. Lord, things are more serious than we could possibly understand and we could possibly know. Lord, and I truly do believe that you are trying to tell us something if we will pray for the grace to listen. And Father, you know the hearts of everybody in this room. And you know, Heavenly Father, if there be somebody here, Lord, who is not saved this morning, and who does not have their life right with you, maybe they're indifferent, maybe they're cold, maybe there is no conception of the things of God, maybe they don't care. Maybe they're going on in their rebellion and they think they're right and everybody else is wrong. Lord, if there be somebody in here with that kind of an attitude, then I ask, Lord, graciously, according to your abundant mercy, that you would put your finger in that individual's heart and break them according to your manifold grace that sent the Lord Jesus Christ to die and bleed for them and to take that sin upon Himself. There is freedom and there is abundant grace. Lord, we must bow before Thee. And we must bow our hearts before Thee. No man can save, You alone must save. And I know, Lord, everybody in this room wants this church to grow. And I believe they mean it when they say it. I believe they mean it when they say that they want to see people saved. But Father, thus far that has not happened. Maybe it's not because Satan just keeps attacking us everywhere. Maybe there's some things in our lives that we're going to have to get fixed with you. before you will begin to pour your glory out upon us. Whatever those things are in my own life, please reveal them to me and give me the strength to repent of them. And whatever they are, Lord, in the lives of the congregation, I don't need to know them, but Lord, give them the grace to repent of them. And as we pray this morning, Father, and as the pianist just plays softly, I'm going to invite any and all who will and want to come to pray. Pray for our church, to pray for the day and the hour in which we live, to pray for our own selves, to pray for our family, to pray for our friends, to pray to be given the strength to obey and to follow you and to follow your word. Father, and I pray that your people, Lord, will respond accordingly. Because everybody in this room, Father, has something that they need to get alone with you about. Give us the strength, Heavenly Father, to do your will and to be obedient unto your leading and your calling. In Jesus' name.