00:00
00:00
00:01
Transcript
1/0
any time to stand and preach
the word of God. And I thank God for the privilege
that he's given me to do that today. And I appreciate the pastors
asking us to come and to be with you this week. I trust you'll
be praying for the meeting and praying for the Lord to bless
in this meeting. I hope you've already been praying
and you've come expecting God to speak. Now God does speak,
but oftentimes we don't listen. Now, I wanna say there's times
when God doesn't speak. And when God's not speaking,
that's a sign of judgment. That's what he did to the nation
of Israel for 400 years, there was silence. I don't believe
we've reached that yet in our nation, but I believe we're on
our way there. My prayer is that God would be
merciful to us, and that God would allow us to see revival
in these days. And I am from North Carolina. I am a Tar Heel. Don't throw
your tomatoes. I've done lost half of you. You
won't even be back. My wife's from Georgia. She's
a bulldog. Wait a sec. Don't throw it. lord
allowed us to meet in oklahoma and uh... we were married and
uh... been married five years this
november have our first child and uh... she's uh... she likes
that attention so if you want to show her some attention she'll
take all she can get and uh... they all pray for my wife we're
expecting our second child another little girl so uh... i need all
the advice i can get men on how to live in a house full of women
if you've got anything to share i'm open for all kinds of advice
so Pray for us as we serve the Lord there in Smithville. The
Lord's been good to us. We work there in a very small
church. There's nine members. We're trying
to work to see it grow back. And we also do mission work with
Brother Raymond Johnson. I believe you all support Brother
Raymond and others that are there with the Choctaws and the Choctaw
Nation of Oklahoma. We appreciate your prayers for
us as we serve the Lord. And I want to say it is an honor
to stand in the pulpit of the great Dr. England Collins. Amen. I was schooled this morning
that I needed to refer to Brother Joe as Dr. England. So I'll do
my best to Dr. J. England. I've already messed
it up. Appreciate brother Joe. It's
been a blessing to hear him preach at Bryan station and he's been
a blessing to us And I just hope we can be a blessing in return.
I ask you to take your Bibles this morning and we'll begin
Believe this is what the Lord has laid upon our hearts for
the day psalm 126 the hundred and twenty-six psalm chapter I want to read out of the text
this morning and we'll give some introduction and just try to
follow the Lord as he leads and trust that God will speak to
our hearts this morning. Psalm 126. This is a psalm that There's a song of degrees. There's,
I think, 14 songs that were sung by the children of Israel. Many
times these songs would be sung as they went back to the land
after that God had brought about a turning of their captivity,
after God had granted revival. to the nation of Israel. And
though they had been taken off into bondage and under the judgment
of God, God would remember His covenant with His people. And
He would return unto them and bless them and allow them to
go back home. And this is one of those songs
that they would sing as they returned back to the land, as
they returned back to their native country, a place of memories,
of heritage, of God's blessing. And they returned there to serve
God and to worship in the city of Jerusalem. We find the Bible
says in verse number one, when the Lord turned again the captivity
of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled
with laughter, and our tongue with singing. Then said they
among the heathen, the Lord hath done great things for them, and
the Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad.
Turn again our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the south,
They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth
and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again
with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. As we look
at the text that is before us this morning, Many of us are
very familiar with verse 5 and verse 6. Those are verses that
are often read and preached from from pulpits across this land,
and there's nothing wrong with that. These are verses that we
deal with as it is concerning missions and evangelism. the
work that God has called His local church to do in the world
that is around us. It is the mission field, and
God has called us to go out into a world of sin and wickedness
and sow the precious seed of the gospel message that Jesus
saves. Jesus saves, and He wants us
to go and to do that. But I want to say to you, you
can't sow seed when you're in bondage. You can't sow seed whenever
you're in captivity. And that is the context of the
psalm this morning. The people of Israel are in bondage. They're in Babylonian captivity. The King of Persia, Cyrus, has
taken them in. And you cannot plow. And you
cannot sow. And you cannot tend. And you
cannot water when you're in a strange land. And when you're in captivity. And when you're in bondage. You
need God to set you free. You need God to bring you back.
You need God to turn your life. And only then, and then alone,
will you be able to sow the gospel seed. We find here then the emphasis
is not verse 5 and 6 of our text, but the emphasis is found in
the first part of this psalm, verse 1, 2, 3, and 4. The emphasis is here at the beginning. It's revival. It's God turning
His people back into Himself. It's God doing for them what
they stood in need of, that they may do for God what He had commanded. As I thought about this psalm,
I thought about we're praying for revival this week. Revival
in action is simply New Testament Christianity. Revival isn't some
super spirituality, but revival is just living the way believers
did in the pages of the book of Acts. It's walking with God
and trusting God and living for God every day. One man said modern
believers are so below the standard of New Testament Christianity
that we need revival just to get us back to where we're supposed
to be. And I say amen to that. I don't
believe any of us could open the pages of the book of Acts
and say that we're living just as they did every day of their
lives. where they would meet from day
to day in one another's houses for fellowship and breaking of
bread, where they would go out and have prayer meetings one
with another, where they would street preach on the corners,
open air evangelism, going out into the highways and the hedges
compelling the lost to come in, and God blessing and adding to
His church such as should be saved. I don't see that in the
day that we live in. I don't see our walking with
the Lord closely in communion with the Lord every day. Now
I'm not just preaching to you, but I'm preaching to myself this
morning. Every one of us as God's people
can go further. We can go deeper. We can experience
more of God if we want it. God wants us to experience it. One man said it doesn't matter
if the whole church wants revival or not. If you want revival,
you can experience it. We see that in the book of Revelation
when he stood there at the door of Laodicea and he knocked. If
any man come unto me and sup with me, I will come in and sup
with him. We'll have fellowship. He didn't
say if any church, he said if any man. And that's an encouragement
to me this morning. If you want revival, you can
experience revival in your soul. If you want a closer walk with
the Lord, you can have a closer walk with Jesus. If you want
to experience God's blessing in your family, with your children,
or your grandchildren, or your loved ones that are lost, or
your community around you, your neighbors that you care for,
the condition of our nation that we see before us, if that bothers
you, there's an answer. There's hope. But it comes through
revival. It comes through a closer walk
with God. It comes through the Lord's blessing. When revival
truly comes, it is that which brings about lasting results.
Revival isn't brought by a man in a week's meeting, and then
when we leave, we leave the same way we entered into a meeting.
But true revival, if God will see fit this week to meet with
us in power and to revive us and to move in our midst and
bless us with His presence, It'll be something that will change
our lives forever. And we will never get over seeing
God through the pages of Scripture as He reveals and manifests His
presence to the hearts of His people. Revival is being brought
back to the state of mind, the passionate devotion, the overwhelming
gratitude, the constraining love, and the awareness of God's presence
we had when we were first birthed into the family of God. It is
a going back to that state of mind we had when the Lord first
saved us, where we couldn't read enough, we couldn't pray enough,
we couldn't serve enough, we couldn't give enough, we couldn't
go enough. The pastor could have never asked
us anything that would have been too much for us to do because
we were so in love with Jesus. The fact that He had saved us
by His grace was so fresh in our hearts. and in our minds,
and all we could think to do was, God, give me another avenue
of service. God, open up another door for
me to be able to serve you. God, help me to do whatever I
can to bring glory and honor to your name, for you truly,
Lord, are worthy of such things. So we find here in our text that
there's an emphasis upon revival. I wanna preach with this thought
in mind, and I don't know if we'll get it all finished this
morning. We'll see how the Lord leads. But revival, when dreams
become reality. We find here in verse number
one, the Bible says, when the Lord turned again the captivity
of Zion, we were like them that dream. The idea of the text is,
it was like our dreams came true. That which we had only imagined,
that we dare not even fathom or think upon too long for fear
that it may drift away and become something that's unable to be
a reality, has now become true before our very eyes. Thought
about this text, and to help us to understand it, you could
turn with me to 2 Chronicles 36, verse 14. We find this is
when the nation of Israel is taken off into captivity. God
has judged them, and we notice in our text, he says, when the
Lord turned the captivity of Zion. The emphasis there is captivity. There was bondage. There was
destruction in the lives of God's people. Now I don't know this
morning, but I would dare say if we would take a very close
look at our hearts, there's many of us this morning, if not all
of us, that have some things in our lives that have us in
bondage so that we are not able to worship God, to enjoy God,
and to serve God as He is worthy to be worshiped and adored and
served. Amen? Listen to me. Chapter 36, verse 14, Moreover,
all the chief priests and the people. from the top down in
Jerusalem and in all of Israel, there was corruption, there was
sin. It was the priest, it was the
people, they transgressed very much after all the abominations
of the heathen. They had allowed the world to
creep so much into their lives that they were unable to worship
God and serve God and obey God as His Word had commanded. They
had gone so far into the heathen practices of those cultures that
were around them that they could not serve God and be pleasing
in His sight. Do you hear me this morning?
We are living in a Christian culture, and our churches have
adopted the atmosphere of society, and we're unable to worship God,
and we're unable to experience God's presence, and we're unable
to accomplish the work of God. because we are in bondage!" That's
what he says. They've transgressed. The idea
there is there's a breaking of the law. God hath said, God hath
stated, God hath commanded, and they've said, we don't care what
God has to say on the subject. Don't go whoring after the gods
and the idols of the nations around you. Don't go and commit
adultery on God by worshipping their gods and entering into
their heathen practices. And yet that's exactly what Israel
did. They married into those other
nations and they began to practice their religions and their beliefs
and they began to sin against the Holy God. I see that in the
day that we live in. We go places and do things now
that we would have never done when we first got saved, amen?
We can sit and watch things on TV, and I'm not gonna preach
against TV, I've got one, but we can sit and watch things on
that television set that we normally, in our right frame of mind, spiritually
speaking, would not watch, but we've grown so cold and so complacent. We can listen to things and do
things and be around people and hear jokes and talk in a way
that, oh, it doesn't honor God, it doesn't glorify God. And we
know in our heart that we're breaking the Word of God and
what He's put in our hearts by the blood of Jesus Christ. And
yet we still do it anyway. The transgressed. It's amazing,
he says, very much. They didn't just break the law
a little bit. They had shattered the law of God. He said, well,
I'm not that bad this morning, preacher. I've not done what
some people have done. Let me ask you a question. If
you were to throw a brick through this window right here, would
it be broken? I said, man, you are from North
Carolina. That's a simple question. You don't know the answer to
that? Yeah, that window's broke. What if you're out there mowing
the lawn and that rock flies out from under that blade? Just
a little bitty chip in the very bottom corner of that window.
Is that window broken? Yes, it is. And whether you have
shattered the law of God by rebellion and disobedience and the word
of God you've disobeyed by breaking every commandment you can think
of, or whether you're just in a little part not obeying quite
everything God has said, you've still broken God's law and disobeyed
God's word. That's how the Lord got a hold
of Paul. He said, oh Lord, I've obeyed everything. As touching
the law, I am guiltless. And then the Lord put his finger
on covetousness. He said, if you broke it in one
part, you broke it in all. Where are you at this morning?
Have you transgressed? I know this isn't the kind of
preaching that the masses enjoy. I know that, and I don't believe
you're here for that. I trust that you've come here
to seek the Lord. And to say, Lord, deal with me.
If there's some area of my heart and life that's not right, Lord,
I want you to deal with me. I want to make this thing right.
I want to go further with you. And we find here the Lord dealt
with them. They had transgressed very much. But notice next they
polluted the house of God. It wasn't enough that they broke
the law of God, but then they brought their disobedience and
unbelief into the temple, into worship. And they said, Lord,
you're going to accept and receive our sacrifice whether you like
it or not. And God says, no, I'm not. I've
been in churches where they are going to worship whether God
shows up or not. They're going to work it up and
pump it and prime it until it blows the rafters off the roof
whether God's in it or not, friend. And God, if He's not in it, is
not pleased with it. Then I've been in places too
where we've got sin in our hearts and we come in and we put a good
show on and we're going to do what we're supposed to do because
we know we're supposed to do it and we don't want anybody
to know what's in our heart. And we put on a form of godliness
that denies the power thereof and God is disgusted with such
actions. It is a stench in the nostrils
of God and if he wouldn't accept it from his people Israel in
the Old Testament, he's not going to accept it from his churches
in the New Testament. They polluted the house of God.
They brought their sin into the house of God. And you know what
the Lord did? He's so gracious. He sent Him
preachers. Look at verse 15, "...the Lord
God of their fathers sent to them by His messengers, rising
up betimes." In other words, over and over and over and over,
He sent preacher after preacher, after prophet after prophet,
saying, repent and turn, that you be not cut off from God's
grace and God's mercy. And yet they would not hear the
preacher. God has set you men in this church
from Brother Bobby Lakes to now Brother Joe Collins and how they
have preached to you and preached to you. And I understand that
churches go through phases. And there's high times and low
times. There's spring times, if you
will, and winter times, if you will. And I understand that.
But God has set a man in this pulpit to preach to you, and
he's been preaching to you for revival. Prepare your heart.
Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he
is near. And yet we go on about our lives
unconcerned for the well-being of our own souls, or our children,
or our family members, or our community, or our nation. And we live our lives the way
we always have. unconcerned. We're able to see
and watch the news and instead of it breaking our hearts for
our land, we just say, oh well, nothing we can do. There is something
we can do. We can seek the Lord. We can
pray. We can beg God to have mercy
upon us. We can ask God to let us experience
revival because I promise you, if change comes to this country,
it's not coming from a man. And it will not come from the
top down. If there's ever a change in this country, it's going to
come from the bottom up. It'll be a grassroots revival
among God's people that so stirs in our souls and in our hearts
that we have such an impact on our community that it's felt
and it's widespread across this nation. That is the only hope
our country, our beloved Republic has. But they ignored the preaching.
They ignored the man who stood and declared the Word of God
over and over. Notice what the Bible says. He
did this because he had compassion on his people. As I think of
revival, do you realize this morning that God wants you to
experience revival more than you want to experience revival? God wants you to have a closer
relationship with Him and have the full blessing of God in your
life more than we wanted. But you know what they did? They
mocked. Look at verse 16. But they mocked
the messengers of God and despised His words and misused His prophets
until the wrath of the Lord rose up against the people. It's a sad day when we can sit
in our churches on our pews and hear the pastor preach his heart
out and plead for the souls of men and beg for the church to
draw nigh to God. And we can say amen with our
lips while our hearts are far from him and leave the doors
mocking, saying, oh, that preacher. didn't he know the days we're
living in he's just one of them old timers he's an old fogey
he's one of them extremists a bible thumper revival really I mean
we're doing good look at the bank account look at the look
at the the families we have in here all these young folk what
a blessing what a blessing but friend when you start looking
at that and saying look at what we've done you're already on
the downward spiral You better be looking up and saying, look
what God hath done for us, whereof we are glad. We rejoice in God's
blessing, and we want to bless him with our lives and with our
hearts, and we want to honor him in every way we possibly
can, instead of taking for granted and mocking. Some of the saddest
words in all the Bible have to be at the end of this verse.
The Lord rose up against his people till, notice it says,
there was no remedy. There was no healing. There was
no balm in Gilead to be found. There was no ointment in the
apothecary. It was gone. And judgment had
set in, and God's providence, God's will would be carried out
against his own people. May I say to you this morning,
as a believer, as a church, You can go to such a point that there
is no remedy. As a believer, you can go to
such a point, disobeying God, that he will turn you over to
Satan for the destruction of the body and the salvation of
the soul. As a church, you can go so far that he steps in and
removes the candlestick and writes Ichabod, as it were, over the
doors. The glory of God has departed. I want to say, though, there's
hope for us this morning. Why? Because Jesus lives. He's alive. He loves His church. And he's not left you without
a word this morning. He has given you a pastor with
a burden to see God work in your lives, in your families, among
your young folk. He has sent a preacher this week,
not a very good one. I don't know why I'm here. I'm
being honest. I don't know why Brother Joe called me. There's
many other abler men he could have called, but I'm here nonetheless
and we're looking to God to be merciful. Friend, I believe if
you'll come and you'll seek the Lord, God will do for you what
you have need of this week. Say, my children need a touch
of God in their life, preacher. They're wandering astray. They're
going after the things of the world. When they graduate, I
know they're going to be gone if God doesn't do something in
their heart and their only hope is a visitation of the Holy Ghost
and real revival. I need God to move in this meeting. Then seek God. Beg God. Come to the meeting. Bring your
youngins. Don't give them an option. Don't
let sports come between them and God. Don't let school activity
come between them and God. Put God first. Let them see you
put God first. I remember whenever I was young,
I had a drug problem. Amen. My mom drugged me to church
every service. I didn't have an option in the
going. I was going. Even when I was in college and
I was living technically out on my own, I came in to visit
one weekend and she said, Brandon, there's a youth meeting this
weekend. We're going. I said, no, I'm not. She said, yes, you
are. And I settled it. I wasn't going to argue a mama.
And I thank God for a mother that raised the standard and
said, we're going to serve God in my house. And I went to that
youth meeting. My heart was not where it should
have been with the Lord. The Lord had saved me when I was younger.
I'd gotten college one year, playing college football. My
dream was to be a football coach. I had my life mapped out before
me. The American dream, be a coach. The Lord began working in my
life, and I remember sitting on my bedside one night in my
college dorm room, and the Holy Ghost of God came to where I
was and put His finger on my heart, and He said, Son, what
have you done for me lately? And I had to weep. Brother Joe,
I had to say, I've not done anything for you. I was living my life
so selfishly. I'd never even considered God's
calling in my life and God's desire and will for my life.
It was all about what Brandon wanted to do. And in that youth
meeting, I met a young man, and God hooked me up with him. And
that summer they had a tent meeting, and God blessed and moved. And
in that tent meeting that was scheduled for one week, God so
moved it went seven weeks every night. Souls being saved and
swept into the kingdom of God. Young men surrendering to preach.
My brother got saved in that meeting. God called me to preach
in that meeting. I wasn't looking to serve God.
I was looking to serve myself. But thank God, the God of glory
stepped down in my pathway and He changed my direction and He
gave me something to live for and I'm serving Him today because
of His mercy and His grace. What am I saying? I'm saying
God can do even greater today than what He's done in days gone
by. even greater in this church than maybe revival meetings and
moves of God this church has experienced in its history, God
can do greater today. Well, wouldn't it be wonderful
to see some of the family members and children, loved ones, maybe
a spouse or a parent you've been praying for, to see God bring
them into the fold? Wouldn't it be wonderful to see
God call young men to preach and set them afire for His glory
and send them out and use them? Oh, I think about Sampson tying
them foxtails together. Can you imagine that, 200 foxes?
He wasn't using traps. I believe he's just that fast.
And you're going to have to be a man if you're going to hold
two foxes and tie their tails together. and then set fire in
them and then let them go. Watch what I'm praying this week
though, that God would yoke us up with him and set us on fire
and let us go and let us burn the wheat fields of sin down
all around us and proclaim glory to the name of God. Oh, in their day there was no
remedy and we can go to a place where there's no longer a remedy.
But my prayer is that God in His mercy would visit us. God
in His mercy give us ears to hear what the Spirit is saying
in the church. That we would have a heart of
obedience to turn and to repent and to trust in God and to go
the way He's wanting us to go and to do what He has for us
to do. I thought about this text before us. He says, when the
Lord, when the Lord, it is the Lord who sends revival. It is
a sovereign work of God when He chooses to stir in the hearts
of His people. I'm telling you, I'm encouraged
this week when a pastor calls me and says, My men have been
stirred to pray and we've been meeting every morning to call
upon God. I'm telling you, that encourages
my heart because it tells me that God has something He's wanting
to do among His people. One man said God never sends
revival to a passively waiting people. But when he's ready to
send revival, he'll stir up the hearts of his people and set
them to prayer. And in answer to their prayers,
God will pour out a blessing they don't have room enough to
receive. You do a study of all the great awakenings and the
revivals, both of our nation and of Wales and England, and
you find that it was God sent his people to fasting and prayer,
or one or the other. And it was during that time,
as they called upon God, that God saw fit to answer their prayers. The great missionary movement
of America, second great awakening, all started in a barn. Some college
students couldn't pray in college. The atmosphere and the culture
of America, even at that time, was so wicked, they were afraid
to pray in the colleges because they were afraid they'd be mocked
and beaten. You say, was it that bad then? Yeah, it's getting
that bad now. They would meet in a barn, there
was three or four of them, and they'd pray. And they'd been
praying for weeks on end, begging God to stir and send revival. And all of a sudden, God stepped
down from heaven. Folks started being saved. Churches
started being revived. And the great missionary movement,
you have Adoniram Judson goes out of that movement. William
Carey, of course, he was in England, but he went out and Adoniram
Judson went over as a brethren, wasn't he? He's going to fix
a William Carey on his theology, his ecclesiology, straightened
him out on baptism. He got to studying the Word of
God, he knew he better have an answer for William Carey when
he got over there. And on the way, God turned him into a Baptist.
He got there, said, William, I need to be baptized by you.
Sent his missionary partner back to the States, said, you better
go back and tell them we're not brethren anymore, we're Baptists, we need
mission support. God used them. What did that
come out of? It started with prayer. It started
with some young men getting along with God and begging God to do
what they hadn't ever seen done before. And God did it. Oh, that
God would do that in these days. It's a sovereign work of God.
The Lord turned, denotes a change of direction, denotes repentance.
The Lord granted them a space to repent. He turned their captivity. There was an allowing for them
to come back into the land, to worship the Lord, to be in the
presence of God again in Jerusalem. I thought about this. Notice
the word here again. He turned again, again. That's a simple word, but it's
an encouraging word. It denotes that He's done it
before. And if He's done it before, then
we can take hope this morning that He'll do it again. If He's
saved one, He can save another. If He's revived before, He can
revive again. If He's changed the condition
of our culture and of our nation, He can do it again. brought them out of that bondage
they were in. The judgment of God in their lives because they
had rebelled because of their disobedience. And I'm going to
tell you revival is not just for anybody this morning. It's
for the people of Zion. He turned the captivity of Zion.
The Babylonian Empire didn't experience this. The world cannot
experience revival. They're dead in trespasses and
sin. Revival is for you this morning that are saved. It's
for us who have believed. It's for us who have called upon
the name of the Lord and His marvelous mercy and wonderful
grace has saved us and birthed us into His family. It is for
the local church to experience revival. Revival is what we need. Evangelism
is what the world needs. And that's why you see the order
of it in the text. We need revival if we're going
to evangelize the way we are. I think it was the late, great
Dr. James A. Stewart, used to have
God modeling revival in Eastern Europe, wrote many books on revival
and evangelism. We wouldn't agree with him on
everything, but he had some good stuff to say on evangelism and
revival. And he said this, Revival will
never be the result of evangelism, but evangelism is always the
result of revival. And that's true. When God revives
His people and they get stirred up, they can't help but sing
praises unto God. They can't help but tell the
world around them what God has done for them. Oh, that's what
we're looking for in these days. Oh, we see in our text here,
verse 1, the sovereign preeminence of God and revival. God had a
gracious desire, a desire to see His people turn. And so He
began speaking to them, and God began to grant them repentance.
Oh, God desires for us to experience it. There was a grand deliverance
from captivity. There was a glorious dream that
God would answer for them, and allowing them to go back and
to see their children worship in a land that they had only
heard stories of. Some of you have children, and
you've told them the glorious gospel story. They've sung the
hymns, and they've heard the preacher, and they've sat in
the Sunday school class, and they've come to the VBS, and
they've experienced the youth meetings, and the youth retreats,
and the conferences. But it's all been stories. They've
never entered in themselves. They're living on the story,
and there's nothing wrong with that. They need to hear that. But I'm telling
you, God has no grandchildren. You must be born again. You must
be born again. Their glorious dream. I thought
about dreams, just a little comparison and contrast and how that we
find here this dream, how that it's like for us, it's a comparison
and that the supernatural experience of God that we desire and long
for is so out of this world that it's something that comes out
of a dream. You know something I've dreamed of? Now, y'all may
think I'm crazy when I tell you this, but I dream of preaching,
brother Joe. I do. I'm always a better preacher
in my dreams, though. One day God will let it come
true. But I do, I dream of preaching. I've dreamed before of preaching
in revival. and seeing souls coming to Christ. God's people on their face magnifying
and worship the glorious God of heaven whose presence they
have seen fresh in their heart and soul through the word of
God. I've dreamed about that. And yet that's what the scriptures
tell us. Those dreams that we imagine may never come true,
yet God allows those things to come to pass. I thought how they're
similar in the immensity of their joy. They could not have been
any happier had it been a dream. It was a dream come true. The
comparison of this. But then I thought about how
it's also unlike a dream. Them being saved, their being
brought out of captivity, their being brought back in the land
was not like a dream and the fact that the reality of their
experience was real. And yet when you dream, you must
wake up from that dream and find that dream was only a dream and
will never be reality. But that wasn't the case for
them. This was a reality. It was God's working. They were
free from disappointment. They knew that this was God sovereignly
working and there was a continuing joy that followed this work of
God in their lives. Wasn't something that after they
woke up, it was over. but it was something that continued
with them, the joy of God. I'm bringing it to a close. Revival
is something that only God can do. And maybe, I don't know if
any other purpose this morning was for us to realize that and
for me to exhort you to be much in prayer, to be much in seeking
the face of God, to come back, and seek the Lord and ask God
to move in power and to bless. To ask God to save souls. To
ask God to do something for this church. Because if he does bless
us with revival, it's gonna change our lives forever. It's gonna
change our church and it's going to change the community. It's gonna be felt. There's a
lot that could be said here, and the Lord may let us come
back here tonight. I don't know, I love what he says in verse
number two at the end, though. The Lord hath done great things
for them. When God does a work for his
people, it will be recognized by the world. And they will look
in and say, God hath done great things for them. That's what we're asking God
to do in these days. Do great things for them. The next verse,
they echo, the Lord hath done great things for us, whereof
we are glad. Oh, that God would do some great
things for us. I wanna ask you, do something
for me. Go home this afternoon, after
you eat lunch and fellowship, get along with God and do some
heart searching, do some soul searching. Say, Lord, is there
any transgression? Is there any way that I have
polluted the house of God? Lord, have I mocked and jeered
at the preaching of God's word? Lord, have I disobeyed even though
countless times you've sent a man my way? Am I on the precipice
of being in the same condition Israel found themselves in where
there was no remedy? Seek the Lord. I believe God
will show you things when you really want to know. And believe,
was it Isaiah that said, search me, oh Lord, and try me. Let
there be known if there be a wicked way found in me. And the Lord
did.
You can't sow spiritual seed when in bondage
| Sermon ID | 61162122315 |
| Duration | 40:46 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Psalm 126 |
| Language | English |
© Copyright
2026 SermonAudio.