How Revival Comes Part II


Sermon by David Strain on October 25, 2020 Isaiah 62:1-12

Well do please take your own Bibles in hand and turn with me to the prophecy of Isaiah, chapter 62; Isaiah 62. If you don’t have a Bible, we have the passage printed for you in the bulletins. Today, as David reminded us, is Reformation Sunday. We remember how Martin Luther, October 31 – was it 1517? – nailed the 95 Theses to the castle church door in Wittenberg and sparked the recovery of the Gospel around Europe, which in turn led to remarkable seasons of spiritual renewal, revival, and awakening. And that is our theme for the year. We’re thinking about revival and awakening. And we began last time to think about how revival comes to the church – what is looks like; what its elements are. And we saw from Isaiah 66 that revival shakes the people of God out of superficial religion and into earnest, dynamic, spiritual life, into vitality. Believers come to be marked, remember, by humility, by contrite spirits, and we begin to tremble at God’s Word.

And now this week I want us to think about one of the things that invariably marks revival in the church, and it is a renewal of the ministry of prayer. The ministry of prayer. Prayer is both the precursor to revival and it’s one of the great characteristics of revival when it comes. When God intends to bring revival to a church, He sets His people praying. And when revival sweeps in, there are few things the people of God find themselves loving to do, more burdened, more compelled to do than to pour out their hearts to God in prayer. And to help us think more about that, we turn our attention to Isaiah 62. You may remember from last week that the prophet Isaiah is writing prior to the Babylonian captivity, at a time before the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. But here in this chapter, he is looking forward not only to the day when the people of Judah will return out of exile back to the land, but further forward even than that – all the way forward to the age of the new covenant; the age in which we now live, when the fullness of blessing promised to Zion, to the people of God, would be poured out upon the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And the passage before us, you will notice, has two broadly parallel sections, in verses 1 through 5 and then verses 6 through 12. They both begin, verse 1 and verse 6, with people who will not keep silent, but who will pray until the Lord revives His people. And then 2 through 5 and 7 through 12 are parallel descriptions of the character of the revived church living under the blessing of the Lord in answer to those prayers. And all we’re going to do this morning is deal with each of those two sections very simply by considering first of all in verses 1 through 5 the Intercessor, capital “I” – the Intercessor; 1 through 5, the Intercessor; 6 through 12, the intercessors, plural. So the Intercessor, 1 through 5; the intercessors, 6 through 12.

Before we do that together we’ll read the Scriptures, and before we do that, as always, let’s pause once again as we pray.

O God, open our eyes that we may see marvelous things out of Your Law. Give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, amen.

Isaiah 62. This is the Word of God:

“For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch. The nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give. You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her,  and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.

On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent. You who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest, and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth. The Lord has sworn by his right hand and by his mighty arm:  ‘I will not again give your grain to be food for your enemies, and foreigners shall not drink your wine for which you have labored; but those who garner it shall eat it and praise the Lord, and those who gather it shall drink it in the courts of my sanctuary.’

Go through, go through the gates; prepare the way for the people; build up, build up the highway; clear it of stones; lift up a signal over the peoples. Behold, the Lord has proclaimed to the end of the earth:  Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your salvation comes; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.’ And they shall be called The Holy People, The Redeemed of the Lord; and you shall be called Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken.”

Amen, and we praise God that He has spoken in His holy Word.

In 1949, the local presbytery surveyed the spiritual landscape on the Island of Lewis in the outer Hebrides off the northwest coast of Scotland. It’s the island where my wife’s family, her mother, was born and raised. They found a significant spiritual weakness in the churches within their bounds. The apathy of the Christian people caused great lament. The general lack of spiritual concern amongst the lost in their communities was a source of significant worry for them. Things were at a very low spiritual ebb. Just an example, in one high school for example, the children spoke of conversion as a kind of plague, a disease to be avoided at all costs. To be sure, there had been waves of spiritual awakening in the years prior to the Second World War, but by 1949 things were very different on the island.

In the small coastal village of Barvas there lived two ladies, Peggy and Christine Smith, 84 and 82 years old respectively. They knew no English; they were native Gaelic speakers only. Peggy was blind; her sister, Christine, was bent double with arthritis. They could not get out to go to public worship, but they devoted themselves constantly to the ministry of prayer. Eventually they became persuaded that the Lord would soon visit Lewis with renewed revival and they asked their minister, a Reverend James McKay, to gather the elders and deacons together for special seasons of prayer. And so they prayed together in that vein going on for several months. And slowly, the movement of prayer grew. For example, in that same area, a group of men had been gathering regularly to pray out in a barn. At one point, a young deacon rose and read from Psalm 24, “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity nor sworn deceitfully, he shall receive the blessing from the Lord.” “Brethren,” he said, addressing the others in the barn, “it seems to be just so much humbug to be waiting and praying as we are if we ourselves are not rightly related to God.” Then he lifted up his hands and prayed, “O God, are my hands clean? Is my heart pure?” And soon they were all bowed under a sense of the weight of the holiness of the living God and began confessing their sins together.

A series of services were held in the church in Barvas and after the preaching of the Word, a profound conviction of sin fell upon the congregation. When the service ended, the people lingered outside; they didn’t want to go home. And at the same time, it seemed as though something had drawn the people out of every home in the community, so they had all, the whole community, gathered on the doorsteps of the church. Soon, weeping in prayers for divine forgiveness spread amongst them all. And returning to the church, they continued to pray and to sing praises and to hear the Word of God preached for many more hours.

When the minister, Reverend McKay, went to visit Peggy and Christine the next morning, Peggy and Christine, the two sisters, told him how they had spent the previous night, quite unaware of what was happening up at the church, battling in prayer for the Lord’s blessing. When he asked them what sustained their faith in prayer, Peggy replied, “We had a consciousness of God that created a great confidence in our souls which refused to accept defeat.” When revival came, it came carried, as it were, on the prayers of God’s people. The Lord raised up intercessors, and soon an entire movement of prayer, until widespread spiritual renewal dawned. And that typically, as you scan through both Scripture and the histories of revival, is how God is pleased to work.

The Intercessor

And if you look at Isaiah 62, you’ll see that prayer is a major emphasis of our passage for this morning. In fact, it begins with prayer. Look for a moment at the language of verse 1 where the speaker says, “I will not keep silent. I will not be quiet.” Or you could translate it, “I will not be still. I will not rest.” It’s the same vocabulary, actually, we find repeated again in verse 6 where the watchmen on the walls “shall never be silent,” and they do not rest, and they give God no rest, and they “put the Lord in remembrance.” So the activity, this speech in verse 1, is the same as the activity in verse 6. That is to say, it is the speech of prayer and intercession and pleading; putting God in remembrance and giving Him no rest.

And it’s important I think, before we go any further, to determine who this speaker is in verse 1. Who is talking? Who says, “I will not keep silent”? Well, some commentators suggest that it is the prophet, Isaiah, who is speaking. But that makes very little sense of verse 6 where the same speaker appoints watchmen on the walls to intercede for the people. He raises up intercessors. Isaiah could never have done that. In my judgment, the speaker in verse 1 of chapter 62 is the same person whose voice we hear in the previous chapter, chapter 61. The same one who says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound” – is the same one who now says, “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent. For Jerusalem’s sake, I will not be quiet.” Isaiah is talking, isn’t he, about the Lord Jesus Christ.

You remember in Luke chapter 4 that Jesus read these words from the beginning of Isaiah 61 in the synagogue at Capernaum on the Sabbath day. And do you remember how He expounded the text? You remember what He said in His sermon on Isaiah 61, verses 1 and following? Having finished His reading from the scroll, He sat down, and with every eye upon Him, He preached His sermon. He began to say, Luke says, “Today, these words are fulfilled in your hearing. These words are talking about Me.” He is the Lord’s anointed, whose Gospel proclaims liberty from the tyranny of sin in Him. And so in chapter 61, Christ is the great preacher of the good news, while here in chapter 62, Christ is the great Intercessor on behalf of His people. Do you see that? He is now, as the New Testament tells us, at the right hand of God the Father, ever living to make intercession for us. Here in the first place, then, is the Intercessor, capital “I.”

And look at what we learn here about Jesus’ ministry of heavenly intercession. First of all, notice His ceaseless commitment to His people; His ceaseless commitment to His people. “I will not keep silent. I will not be quiet.” Or, “I will not be still. I will take no rest until her righteousness goes forth as brightness.”

You have a final exam at school tomorrow. It counts for 75% of your total grade for that class for the year. It is a big deal. And certainly you’ve been studying, you’ve been working, but now the exam is looming and you can’t stop thinking about it. You’re twitchy and restless. You’re constantly running over the notes you’ve memorized in your mind. You wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it. Until the exam is done, until you’ve written the last answer on the last question, you won’t be able to rest, not really.

That’s something of the picture we’re being given here. Jesus is constant in His activity. His words never cease to flow on behalf of His people. There is a holy restlessness, a sacred burden, that weighs on Him for our sakes and He will not be still. He will not keep silent; He never ceases to plead with God. He ever lives to make intercession for us until the desires of His heart for our sakes are met in full at last. His ceaseless commitment to us in prayer. Do you see it?

And then notice, secondly, the constant concerns that occupy those prayers, those unceasing prayers. What is He praying for? Look at the text. “I will not keep silent. I will not be quiet until her righteousness goes forth as brightness and her salvation as a burning torch.” These are the twin concerns that burden our Savior’s mind whenever He thinks about you, beloved in Christ. These are the two words that He pleads on your behalf before the throne of glory, day and night – righteousness and salvation. He’s praying, isn’t He, for the full realization in us of everything He has done for us in His obedience and sacrifice. He’s praying for our holiness, for our purity, for transformed lives, for renewed minds, for a love for God and the things of God and the people of God and the praise of God. He’s praying for revival and renewal and Christlikeness.

Now you may be, today, ever so discouraged as you look at your own heart and consider your progress or apparent lack of progress in your Christian life. You can see much that defeats you, frustrates you. You could wish that you’re much further along, had many more victories in your daily conflict with sin. Here is deep, strong comfort. Jesus will never quit pleading with God for you till your righteousness goes forth as brightness and your salvation as a burning torch. Our commitment to holiness is fickle and selective and inconstant. Isn’t it? It blows hot and cold. We’re “on again-off again.” But your Savior’s commitment to you, to your holiness, is relentless and unfailing. He will never give up on you. Praise the Lord! He won’t stop until you shine with the brilliant radiance of His reflected character mirrored in your own, in your own character.

And look at the description, very quickly, in verses 2 through 5. We won’t have time to consider the description of the church in verses 7 through 12, but it is parallel to the description that follows here the note about Jesus’ prayers in verses 2 through 5. Here’s how God will answer our Savior’s prayer for us. When God makes our righteousness like brightness and our salvation like a burning torch, when God brings revival, what will that mean? Four things. Let me simply list them.

First, it will mean witness to the world; verse 2. Do you see it in verse 2? “The nations shall see your righteousness and all the kings your glory.” Holiness, real holiness is remarkable, and you can’t hide it. It doesn’t show off. It never needs to be pointed out. But rather, quite naturally, holy people stand out from the crowd. They’re just different. They breathe different air. They come from a different world. And we sense it when we’re around them. People notice. “The nations shall see your righteousness and all the kings your glory.” In revival, the people of God pursue holiness with new resolve and their witness is made mighty as a result. Could it be that our witness here in Jackson, Mississippi is as weak and ineffective as it is because, truth be told, we are not really very holy people. When we pray for revival, we’re praying, “O God, help us to pursue holiness, likeness to Christ, with a new singleness of mind and resolve of heart.” And when we do, people notice; it bears a mighty witness to the watching world.

Secondly, when the Father answers the prayers of the Son in revival, first the world sits up and takes notice in witness, secondly there’s beauty; there’s great beauty. Verse 3, “You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.” A revived church is lovely. It is attractive; it is beautiful. Real holiness, you know, it’s not severe. It doesn’t leave you looking like you’ve been sucking a lemon! Spiritual growth does not produce a scowl. However correct and doctrinaire we might be, a harsh, judgmental spirit is a mark of spiritual immaturity, not godliness. Revival beautifies Christians and it beautifies the Church.

Witness. Beauty. Thirdly, transformation. Here’s the source of that beauty that the world sees and notices. It’s the point of verse 2 when we’re told, “You shall be called by a new name which the Lord will give.” And verse 4 picks up on that and explains, “You shall no longer be termed Forsaken and your land shall no longer be termed Desolate.” Isn’t that how we often feel in the Church – forsaken, desolate, powerless? “O for greater impact. O Lord, come and change our fortunes!” Instead, He says, “You shall be called My Delight Is In Her.” The Hebrew is “Hephzibah.” “And your land shall be called Married,” or “Beulah.” Remember when God called Abram and made a covenant with him. He changed his name to Abraham. When God converted Jacob, He changed his name to Israel. When the Father answers the Son’s prayers for revival and the renewal of His people, He transforms them; they get a new name. That is, they’re renovated and made new. Not Forsaken. Not Desolate. Hephzibah and Beulah – “My Delight Is In Her.” Her land is married.

And that brings us in verse 5 to the last thing revival does. It is a witness to the world. It’s marked by beauty. It involves spiritual transformation. And finally, it is expressed in deep, renewed commitment to the Church. Verse 5 picks up on the name “Beulah; Married,” and explains the message a little more. “For as a young man marries a young woman, so your sons shall marry you.” That is to say, in revival, the people of God are bound to Zion in love like the bonds of covenant marriage; profound commitment. And it’s a bond that will mirror the way God Himself is committed to the Church. “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.” God’s commitment to us, do you see, is not grudging. It’s not dutiful. It is full of joy. He loves the Church as His cherished bride, and when revival comes, in answer to the heavenly intercession of Christ, so will we. We too will love the Church. We won’t be slack in attending the means of grace. We will not see church as a “take it or leave it” outlet for spiritual consumers that provides religious goods and services. Public worship will not be an elective option amidst the week’s many opportunities. We will, rather, delight to be together under the Word of the Lord in the presence of God and nothing will drag us away.

That’s what revival looks like. And for Isaiah, it comes – I hope you can see – in the wake of our Savior’s prayer. Our heavenly Intercessor.

The intercessors

And then notice, in the second half of the chapter, that we return to the theme of prayer, though this time not the prayers of Christ in verses 1 through 5, but the prayers of God’s people beginning in verse 6. Jesus is our Intercessor in heaven, and now we learn about the Church’s intercessors on earth. Historically, as we have said, one of the great marks of revival has always been a growing movement of prayer. Not something planned and orchestrated and programmed, but something that is happening in the heart. A movement of prayer. When God brought revival to Lewis, that’s how it began. He set Peggy and Christine, these two octogenarian prayer warriors, and He set them to praying. And a movement of prayer began to grow like a glorious wildfire through the community.

And that’s precisely what we’re being taught here God typically does, in verses 6 and 7 – look there with me. “On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen, all the day and all the night. They shall never be silent. You who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth.” Now think about that description. They are watchmen. It’s a common enough metaphor in the Old Testament scriptures. Isaiah uses it back in chapter 52, for example. Jeremiah and Micah both use the metaphor. The image, of course, describes a military guard doing sentry duty on the walls of the ancient city; watching against any threat to the security of the people. And so to describe these people here as “watchmen” is a way to emphasize their constant vigilance. That’s the note that’s being struck – constant vigilance.

And notice their specific task. Isaiah says it is to “put the Lord in remembrance” and to “give Him no rest.” What is it they’re to do? They’re to pray, aren’t they? They’re to intercede for Zion, for the people of God. And these two things usually go together in the Bible. Watchfulness and prayerfulness. The classic example is Matthew 26 in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus took with Him Peter, James and John, and He withdrew to pray. When He came back to them He found them asleep and He rebuked them, remember, and He said, “So could you not watch with me for one hour? Watch and pray that you do not fall into temptation.” There’s a kind of spiritual vigilance that faithfulness in prayer requires. It watches for every assault of the enemy and runs for defense to the Lord in prayer. It watches for every sign and token of the Lord’s presence and blessing and pleads with God for more. It watches against sin and it watches for blessing and it does all of this with an eye always toward the glory of God as it pours out its petitions in prayer.

And notice that they do all of this in a way that is closely parallel to the ceaseless intercession that we saw marks Christ’s ministry in heaven. We already pointed out that verse 6 repeats the same verbs used to describe Jesus in verse 1. The watchmen, like Christ, will never be silent. Like Him, they are to take no rest. It’s a mark, you know, of spiritual decline when prayer falls off from the priorities and the pleasures of the people of God. And it is an evidence of spiritual renewal when prayer becomes the burden and the business to which every child of God diligently devotes himself.

In St. Peter’s in Dundee in the first part of the 19th century there was an extraordinary revival under William Chalmers Burns and Robert Murray McCheyne. And one of the things that characterized it was an extraordinary outpouring of the spirit of prayer. In fact, one of the most marked things about it was the way that the people of God began to pray at every age and stage. There were spontaneous prayer meetings found throughout the city called together by children. Nobody organized them. These are school-aged children, elementary-aged children. In one case, more than 100 of them gathered every week to pray for the Lord’s blessing and for the conversion of their friends. Prayer marks revival. We should strive to pray on earth in every way as much like Jesus prays in heaven. We should pray persistently and passionately and urgently. And like Christ who prays “until our righteousness goes forth as brightness.”

We too – notice this in the text – are to pray “until the Lord establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth.” In fact, we are to give God no rest. That’s a fascinating phrase, isn’t it? One of the mocking characterizations of Christians I sometimes hear is that we are “God botherers.” Have you heard that expression? People roll their eyes and talk about, “Don’t worry about him. He’s a God botherer. He’s a serious Christian.” That’s what they’re saying. “A God botherer.” And of course God is never bothered when His children pray or seek His face, but there is something of that here, isn’t there, in verse 7 when we’re said to give God no rest.

It doesn’t mean that our prayers disturb Him, but the image is not very far from the parable of the persistent widow in Luke 18. You remember that story? In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, “Give me justice against my adversary.” For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, “Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.” And the Lord Jesus said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to His elect who cry to Him day and night?” Or the similar story in Luke 11:5-13. “A friend comes to you at midnight,” Jesus says, “and he asks for bread because a guest has arrived far too late. And you tell him at first to go away because everyone is in bed sleeping. But the friend persists.” And the Lord concludes, “I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence” – of the older version, The King James says – “because of his importunity.” It’s not really impudence; it’s persistence, urgent, pleading boldness. “He will rise and give him whatever he needs. I tell you, ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, it will be opened to them.”

What is the point? We are to be God botherers! Importunate, persistent watchmen on the walls who give God no rest, crying to Him day and night till He establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in all the earth.

In 1727, the Moravian community at Herrnhut in Germany was wracked by tensions and divisions. Their leader, count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf, in response, resolved – along with some others from the community – to commit to pray for revival. Revival finally came on the twelfth of May that year. Divisions soon disappeared and many people were converted. In fact, that same spirit of prayer so pervaded the revival at Herrnhut that on August 27, 1727, twenty-four men and twenty-four women covenanted to pray each for one hour in a rotation covering all twenty-four hours of every day. And soon, others joined them in this round the clock vigil so that every hour of every day, the Moravians prayed together – listen to this – for 100 years! By 1791, out of that round the clock prayer vigil, 300 Moravians had been sent to the West Indies, to Turkey, to Greenland, to Lapland to be missionaries. Many of the leaders of the Great Awakening, George Whitefield, John Wesley, were profoundly influenced by their missionary zeal and constant devotion.

In 1747, this mood of prayerfulness had spread wide, and in 1747 Jonathan Edwards, in response to a request from Scottish friends who were seeking to develop and international concert of prayer for revival, wrote a pamphlet with the snappy title which read, only in part because we don’t have time for the whole thing – “An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God’s People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion.” And in response to those efforts, praying societies spread on both sides of the Atlantic. And with them, for the next 150 years, season after season of revival and renewal washed over the Church. The Gospel went to the nations as the great age of global modern missions began and countless people came to know the Lord Jesus Christ as a result.

Look, here is the point; I hope you can see it. When revival comes, God appoints watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem to put the Lord in remembrance, to give Him no rest. He sets His people praying for the Church. If we are to prepare ourselves for revival here, I hope you’ll agree with me that the place to start is with repentance for our low view of the instrumentality of prayer in the fulfillment of God’s design in our midst. Our Savior is interceding for the renewal of the Church without ceasing. And are we going to stay silent? Where are the watchmen for our little section of the walls of Zion here at First Church? Where are the intercessors? Where is the movement of prayer? May the Lord stir us up to pray down heaven and to cry to Him day and night till He makes our righteousness go forth as brightness, till He rends the heavens and comes down.

Let’s pray together.

Our God, we bow before You and confess our prayerlessness. Our lips have been shut, our tongues have been still, our hearts unstirred. While our Savior ever lives to intercede for us, we have not sought Your face as we ought, nor have we been watchmen on the walls. If we’ve been sentries on the walls, we’ve been asleep instead of keeping watch. Please forgive us. Start spark within us in our midst a new movement of urgent, importunate, persistent prayer. And do it for the honor and glory of Your name. O God, revive Your Church that all the nations may see our righteousness and all the kings our glory – the glory of Christ reflected in us. For we ask it in His precious name, amen.

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