Roger Ellsworth — Roger Ellsworth

Thank you, Brother Don. Please find Psalm 126, Psalm 126. It's a joy and delight to be with you today and to share with you the burden for God-given revival, how desperately we need it, and how we should be urgently praying that God would indeed rend the heavens and come down.

Revival Through the Lens of Psalm 126

I'm asking you to think with me about this 126th Psalm and to look at it through the lens of revival. Psalm 126. When the Lord brought back the captivity of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing.

Then they said among the nations, The Lord has done great things for them. The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad. Bring back our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the south. Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy.

He who continually goes forth weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. I should like to divide the psalm for you this morning into three parts.

The Psalmist Remembers God's Past Deliverance

In verses 1 -3, we find the psalmist speaking to his fellow worshippers about the past. I say fellow worshippers, you no doubt have noticed as you have looked at this psalm that it is one of the songs of ascents.

Songs of ascending, if you please. You know that these psalms, beginning back here in Psalm 120 and going through Psalm 134, were used as pilgrims went up to Jerusalem. They had to ascend to get up to the city of Jerusalem, and they would sing these pilgrimage songs as they went up to Jerusalem.

And not only did they have to physically ascend up to Jerusalem, but they also found their spirits ascending as they anticipated the worship that was lying ahead of them there in the city of God. And so in these first three verses, the psalmist, an unnamed psalmist by the way, speaks to his fellow worshippers, and he speaks to them about the past.

And then in verse 4, we have the psalmist speaking to the Lord about the present. And then in verses 5 and 6, we have the Lord speaking to the psalmist about repentance. And so that is my three-fold vision for this psalm.

And I'd like to ask you to think with me first of all now about this first vision, the psalmist speaking to his fellow worshippers about the past. And most of you, I'm sure, are very well aware of the history of the people of God.

But let's press the rewind button for just a moment and go back to that time when God brought the people of Israel out of Egypt, and under the leadership of Moses, he constituted them as a nation. And you know that God gave them his laws, and you also know that God told them that they must live in obedience to his laws.

And this point is made so very plainly and powerfully in the book of Deuteronomy. God pledged that if they would live in obedience to his laws, that he would bring blessing into their lives. And God also promised that if they refused to live according to his laws, that he would bring discipline, judgment upon them.

And he specifically warned them, as you know, about the terrible sin of idolatry. And he was also very specific about the form that his judgment would take if they turned their backs upon him and disobeyed his laws.

God specifically said, I will bring foreign nations in upon you, and they will take you into captivity. Well, the people of Israel had their ups and downs from the time that they were constituted as a nation.

We think about the period of Judges, which was a down time. And you remember that during that time, the people often did that which was right in their own eyes. Almost sounds like a page from today, doesn't it?

People doing that which is right in their own eyes. But then God graciously blessed them with the leadership of Samuel, and later with the leadership of David. And then, of course, things began to deteriorate while Solomon was reigning over the people of Israel.

And after Solomon died, the nation was divided into two parts. David's house continued to rule over two tribes known as the Kingdom of Judah, and the other ten tribes were known as the Kingdom of Israel.

And both kingdoms, ladies and gentlemen, as you well recall, disobeyed the commandments of the Lord. And God kept his promises. After sending prophet after prophet to the Kingdom of Israel, God brought in the Assyrians in 722 BC, and Israel ceased to exist as a separate kingdom, and most of the people were carried away into captivity.

And in 586 BC, you will recall, the Babylonians came in against the Kingdom of Judah and destroyed the beautiful city of Jerusalem, and tore down the temple, leveled the walls, left Jerusalem in ruins, and carried most of the people into captivity.

And these captivities were not just unusual twists in political fortunes, these captivities, ladies and gentlemen, were the fulfillments of God's promises to these people. God had sent them prophet after prophet after prophet to tell them that they were straying from him, that they were breaking his laws, and that they must turn back to God, they must repent, or these terrible calamities would befall them.

But these people in both kingdoms turned heedless ears to the prophets of God and refused to repent, continued long in their sins. We find a terrible catalog of their sins in the books of the prophets.

Just go through the prophecy of Jeremiah, and you will find several things listed. There was idolatry, of course, there was immorality of the most shocking sort, there was materialism and greed, there was oppression of the poor.

There were the religious leaders failing in their responsibilities to lead the people of God in the way that they were supposed to lead. I think that we can summarize the sins of the kingdom of Judah and also the kingdom of Israel in four categories.

We can talk about religious compromise, we can talk about moral collapse, we can talk about spiritual callousness, and political corruption. And it's important to have all of these things in mind when we come to this particular psalm.

This psalm, ladies and gentlemen, is an unusual psalm. Most of the psalms, as you know, were written by David. But this is a psalm that was written centuries after David, and it was added to the collection of psalms.

I say that this psalm was written by an individual who had come out of the Babylonian captivity. And I draw that conclusion from the opening words of the psalm where he says, When the Lord brought back the captivity of Zion.

He's talking about that time when the people of Israel were released, the people of Judah were released from their captivity in Babylon, and they returned home. And he is now calling his fellow worshipers, as they journeyed together to worship God, to think about that time when they were released from captivity, and they received the glorious good news that they were going to be able to return home.

And he characterizes that time here. He says there in verse 1, we were like those who dream. The news that we were going to be released and return home was just, well, it was just too good to be true.

It was like, it was like a dream. It was like it wasn't real. And he further characterizes it by saying,. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing. He says the joy was just inexpressible and irrepressible.

The joy of knowing that our captivity was over. And he further says there in verse 3, verse 2,. Then they said among the nations, The Lord has done great things for them. This was a result of the people of Judah being released from captivity in Babylon.

That was never expected, ladies and gentlemen. And when it happened, all the surrounding nations were caught off guard. They thought that Judah had forever ceased to be a nation, that she would never be reconstituted as a nation.

The Babylonians were just too powerful. The circumstances were all against Judah. And now here they are going back to their homeland, and the nations are compelled to say, God has done great things for them.

And this psalmist adds his own word of testimony there in verse 3. He says, The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad. And I suggest to you now, brothers and sisters in Christ, that we have here in these characteristics of that time, we have here a picture of true revival.

The Marks of Genuine Revival

I would go so far as to say that any time that there is a genuine moving of the Spirit of God, you will find these things to be present. Any time there's true revival, you will find the people of God saying, it's just too good to be true.

It's like a dream. It's too good to be true. You'll find the people of God filled with joy, inexpressible and full of glory. Most of you have read enough of the history of revivals to know that any time a revival breaks out, this is one of the most prominent characteristics.

One of the most prominent features is joy among the people of God. And true revival does not fail to catch the attention of people around. This is another characteristic, I say, of genuine revival. It causes people around to take notice, unbelievers, and to say, God is really moving among those people.

He has indeed done great things for them. We today know all about churches promoting their ministries, and we know all about churches including in their budgets great sums of money for advertisement and promotion.

I say to you, when genuine revival breaks out, you never have to advertise it. You never have to promote it. People know about it. You can't keep them from knowing about it. And the people of God themselves give their own testimony.

They say, the Lord has indeed done great things for us. I hope just reading, and there are many other characteristics of revival as well. This man is characterizing what was true of the people of God when they were released from captivity, and I'm simply saying to you that you will find these same things to be true any time God moves in power upon his people.

In times of revival, the people of God can join their voices to the voice of this psalmist and say, yes, it's like a dream, yes, joy inexpressible is ours, yes, the nations have been arrested by what God is doing in our midst.

These things are always found in every true revival. And I want to just say a word about this thing of joy for a moment. One of the reasons that joy is so characteristic of a genuine moving of the Spirit of God is because invariably, ladies and gentlemen, Christians get the gospel back in times of revival.

I say to you that this is one of the reasons that we should be earnestly desiring God to move powerfully in our midst, so we can get the gospel back. And when the gospel comes back to the people of God, it always brings great joy.

You may find this hard to believe, but there is today, even among evangelical churches that profess to believe in the gospel, there is a large-scale abandonment of the gospel. It's almost impossible to hear the gospel in many so-called Bible-believing churches.

The Gospel Must Be Restored

One of my favorite Old Testament passages of Scripture has to do with that time when Absalom rebelled against David. And you know how that Absalom won the hearts of the people of Israel. And you recall that Absalom raised a tremendous army and tried to wrest the throne from King David.

And David was obliged to leave the city of Jerusalem with the men who were loyal to him, and a great battle ensued. And you recall how that the battle turned against Absalom. And this, of course, was due to the hand of God and the grace of God.

It was God being good to his servant David. And Absalom then was forced to flee. He was in the battle. And as the tide turned against him, he tried to escape. And the Bible tells us that he was riding along, and he rode under a tree with a low-hanging limb, and he had this massive head of hair, beautiful head of hair.

I've never liked Absalom. And you probably don't need any word of explanation. And there he was hanging between heaven and earth, and I think it's Matthew Henry the great commentator who said, as if he were fit for neither.

And Absalom was indeed a vile, despicable, detestable human being. And here he was now hanging by the hair of his head, and Joab comes along, Joab the captain of David's army. And he dispatches Absalom into eternity by throwing three spears into him.

And Absalom dies as he's hanging there from this tree. And then two men who are obscure, I mean they're not prominent in the Bible, two men enter the story. One of them is the Cushite, and the other is Ahimaaz.

And Joab designates the Cushite to carry the news of the battle and Absalom's death to King David, who was waiting for the outcome of the battle. But Ahimaaz is all excited about the things that he has seen, and he wants to take the news to David.

And so you can kind of get the picture of Ahimaaz, he's one of these eager, excited people and he was the type of person if you'd spend ten minutes with him you'd feel like you needed to lie down and take a nap.

And a very energetic, and he keeps saying to Captain Joab, I want to run, I want to run. And Joab says to him, you have no news ready. And he says, I don't care, I want to run anyway. Well, I've already sent the Cushite, I don't care, I want to run anyway.

And finally Joab in sheer exasperation says to Ahimaaz, run, please run, just go, get away from me, run. And so Ahimaaz begins to run, the Cushite had a head start on him. But Ahimaaz was the faster runner.

And so he overtakes the Cushite, passes him, and he reaches King David first. And he begins to blurt out the news about the outcome of the battle. May all your enemies be defeated even as Absalom's forces have been defeated.

But there was one piece of news in particular that David was most interested in hearing. And that piece of news had to do with Absalom himself. And he asked Ahimaaz, what about Absalom? Now I can't tell you what happened.

I don't know whether Ahimaaz did not know the truth about Absalom. Joab specifically said the king's son is dead. But perhaps in the excitement and the confusion of it all, Ahimaaz had not heard that.

Or it could be that standing there in the presence of King David, he simply lost his courage and he could not tell the king what the king most needed to hear. And then the Cushite arrived. And, of course, David put the question to him, what about the young man Absalom?

And the Cushite essentially said, may all the king's enemies be like unto that young man. And David knew then that his son Absalom was dead. And I want to simply say to you that I have appreciated that story for a very long time because it inevitably confronts me with a principle that I find to be very helpful.

I share it with you. It does not matter how fast we run if we don't have the message people most need to hear. I'll say it again. It doesn't matter how fast we run if we don't have the message people most need to hear.

And from my observation today, brothers and sisters in Christ, there are many churches that are running exceedingly fast. They've got all kinds of programs, all kinds of promotions. But the thing that is missing is the gospel.

And this is the message that people need to hear. It's God's own message. What is the gospel? Oh, let us be clear on this. The gospel is the good news of what God has done in and through His Son, Jesus Christ, to rescue sinners from their sins, to give them right standing with God, and eventually to give them eternal glory.

That's the gospel. I recall the testimony of the great Charles Spurgeon, who was awakened as to his sinful condition as a young man, and he went from church to church. He talked about being lost among the saints because he went from church to church to hear the way of salvation.

And wherever he went, he could not find a message making the way of salvation clear. I dare say if Spurgeon were alive today, he would have the same experience. He'd have to go from church to church to church before he could hear the way of salvation presented.

And finally, one evening he intended to go to a church, but as many of you will recall, he encountered a terrible snowstorm. And so instead of going to the church that he intended, he had to turn down to a little back street here.

There was a church there with a tiny group of believers present, and the storm was so bad that even the pastor was not able to arrive. And finally, after waiting for a few moments, the people realized the pastor was not going to arrive.

And one of the men in the church stood up and took as a text the words from Isaiah, look unto me and be you saved all ends of the earth. And spoke just a few words, singled Spurgeon out and said, look, young man, you're very miserable tonight.

Look to Jesus and be saved. And Spurgeon was gloriously converted to the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, I say to you, my friends, that joy is always a characteristic of God moving in revival. And one of the reasons that joy overflows and abounds in time of revival is because the gospel of Jesus Christ becomes inexpressibly precious to people.

They get the gospel back, and they join the Apostle Paul in saying, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. Oh, my friends, how we need today to glory once more in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

One could easily get the impression being in churches today that we are in fact ashamed of the gospel. Revival will correct that. Revival will cause us to glory in what God has done in and through his son, to rescue sinners from their sins, to give them right standing with him, and to give them eternal glory.

How we should rejoice and glory in the gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But after pressing the replay button and calling upon his fellow worshipers to remember what it was like when they were released from their captivity.

Repentance and the Prayer for Renewed Revival

And may I just simply say before I leave that point that there was genuine repentance during the captivity. The captivity, I'm speaking primarily of the Babylonian captivity, and the captivity was designed by God to cause his people to finally see their sins and to finally break with those sins.

To do in captivity what they had been unwilling to do all during those long years that the prophets had come and preached to them. Oh, my friends, God can get our attention, can't he? I used to hear an old preacher say, God can kick out the props faster than you can set them up.

And God in captivity achieved repentance. He brought his people to repentance, and after they repented in captivity, then God gave them the glorious joy of release, and they came home. And so he's just pressed, as I said, the replay button, and he's asked his fellow worshipers to think with him about the past.

But now in verse four, we come to the second thing, and here we find the psalmist offering a prayer. It's a very short prayer, and it may seem to you to be a very strange prayer. He says, bring back our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the south.

It almost sounds as if the psalmist here was asking God to take them back into captivity. But in reality, he was praying for God to do today for his people what he had done for them in captivity. He's saying, take us back to that time.

I've already told you that they're in captivity. The people repented. They experienced real revival from God, and now when this psalmist wrote this particular psalm, he carried a heavy heart because the truth of the matter is that after the people had been out of captivity and back in their homeland for a time, there was some erosion that took place.

There was some slippage that took place. All you have to do to see this is read the prophecies of Haggai and Malachi. Haggai talks about how the people of God returned with great enthusiasm, and they took up the work of rebuilding the temple, and then they got occupied with their own affairs.

And for a period of several years, the temple was just lying there in disrepair. Nothing was being done because the people became concerned with—they put their personal interest above the work of God.

And Malachi is even more devastating and descriptive in his presentation of the condition of the people. He talks about how the people were bringing lame and sick animals to sacrifice to God, and they were sighing as they went about their religious activities, saying, oh, how wearisome, how tiresome it is.

And Malachi talked about how the religious leaders had slipped in their spiritual vitality and were not going about their work as they should have. Malachi documents how the people were not bringing the tithe to the Lord and how that their families were not being given priority as they should.

And what I'm saying to you is this man who wrote this song experienced the joy of being released from captivity, and he shared in that joy, and now he's been back in the land with his people, and he has seen this slippage take place.

He has seen this erosion occur. And so now he's saying to God, oh, God, we need for you to do for us what you did back there toward the end of the captivity. We need for you to visit us again today. Do for us again what you did at that time.

You and I can find plenty of instances, if we care to read church history, we can find plenty of instances of God moving in mighty power, and it should be our prayer today, oh, God, do it again. Do it again.

And that's essentially what this man is saying. And then he finds his mind drawn to the southern region of the country, and that southern region was a dry and barren and arid region, but there would be from time to time floods that would come, and that barren region would be filled with water, and this man is saying, oh, God, do for us in our spiritual barrenness what you do for the southern region which is so dry and barren when you send floods of water upon the land.

That's what we need. We need a flood of spiritual power. We need a flood of the Spirit of God upon us. We need a flood of revival to sweep away our barrenness, our dryness. Oh, I tell you, my friends, the thing that I observe so very frequently among the people of God today is that we are content with the trickle of God's blessing, and we should be desiring the torrent.

Don't be content with the trickle. Earnestly crave and earnestly seek the torrent of God's blessing. We used to sing in the churches in which I grew up, that old hymn, There Shall Be Showers of Blessing, and there's a line in there about mercy drops round us are falling, but for the showers we plead.

And I'm simply saying to you that at any time in the life of the church, she can identify mercy drops. She can say, well, there's a drop of mercy over there, and here's one over here, and there's one back there, and we should always thank God for the mercy drops.

Mercy drops round us are falling. But while we thank God for the mercy drops, we should never be content with mere drops here and there. We should long for the outpouring of God's spirit. We should long for the showers of blessing.

And that's what this man is doing here in verse 4. He's praying. He's saying, oh God, we need to be blessed again as you blessed us back there when you released us from captivity. We knew your presence.

We were filled with joy. We had the testimony of surrounding people that you were moving mightily in our midst, and we knew it ourselves. But now here we are years later, and we're cold, and we're barren.

Our hearts are not right with God. We've allowed sins into our lives that do not belong there. Oh God, take us back to that time. Do for us again what you did for us then, and flood us with spiritual power.

Flood us with true revival. And then, ladies and gentlemen, the psalm ends with God answering the psalmist's prayer. He says, those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. He who continually goes forth weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.

Sowing Repentance to Reap Revival

May I put it to you in these words? It's as if the Lord said to the psalmist, am I to understand, dear psalmist, that you want your people to experience something today like what they experienced when they came out of captivity?

Am I to understand that you want an outpouring of God's spirit today as you had back then? Am I to understand that you want something that will sweep away the barrenness and the dryness of your soul? Well, here's my answer to you, dear psalmist.

Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. He essentially here tells the psalmist, go back again in your mind to that time when you all were in captivity and think about what happened then. There in captivity, you finally faced your sins and you repented of your sins.

You were broken over your sins. You shed tears of repentance, and that is when the revival came. And may I simply say to you, my friends, God never revives his people without breaking their hearts over their sins.

And he says that that thing of repentance is just as inextricably linked to revival as a farmer's sowing is to his reaping. And if you want the harvest of revival, you've got to sow the seeds of repentance.

Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. And so we are face to face again with that truth that the Bible calls us to face so often, and that is the need to repent, the need to repent. How broken are we over our sins today?

Isaiah's Vision and the Church's Need for Repentance

I think of Isaiah chapter 6, which relates the call of the prophet to the prophetic ministry. You remember Isaiah said in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up. He saw the seraphim there and he heard them crying, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

The whole earth is full of his glory. And Isaiah's response to the glory of that vision was to cry out, woe is me. I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. My friends, if we seriously desire revival, we have got to join Isaiah in saying, woe is me.

The church today rather enjoys pointing here and pointing there and pointing over there and saying, woe to that person and woe to those people. And we have our list of villains in these days, don't we?

And we don't mind talking about the villains and we don't mind saying, well, if we could just get the right people elected to political office, if we just get the right people appointed to the Supreme Court, if we can just get those people out there in Hollywood to clean up their act.

And here we are scurrying about these days and we've got our petitions and we're asking people to sign our petitions. And we're essentially pointing fingers of blame at various ones in society, but the time has come for the church to look at herself and each individual Christian, to look at himself or herself and to say with Isaiah, woe is me.

I'm the one. I'm guilty. I tell you what's going on in our churches today is very much like the people back there who were in the Babylonian captivity. They could have blamed the Babylonians. They could have said, well, we're in this mess because of these mean old Babylonians.

But the revival came and release from captivity came because the people did not blame the Babylonians. They recognized that the Babylonians were the instruments in God's hands, that God had used the Babylonians as instruments of judgment because of the sins of his people.

And when they faced their sins, repentance, in true repentance, that's when the revival came. That's when release from captivity came. And all my friends, the business of repentance is still ever before the church today.

It's so easy to pay lip service to revival, isn't it? Oh, we need great revival. We do. But my friends, revival will not come by simply paying lip service to it. You and I must confront our sins. Now, there's good news when, by the grace of God, we come to that point where we confront our sins.

God's Forgiveness and the Joy of the Prodigal

There's marvelous news. God forgives the sins of his people. He says, if we confess, the Bible says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. And to cleanse us from all iniquity.

You never get tired of the story of the prodigal son, do you? I am never weary of reading it, hearing about it. Here's the young man, he's taken leave of his father. He's essentially pointed his finger in his father's face and he has said, I wish today was the day of your funeral and we were dividing up the inheritance.

What a shocking, audacious thing to say. That's essentially what he said when he said, give me the portion of goods that falls to me. And then he made his journey down to the far country. There he spent all that he had in what the Bible calls riotous living.

And he's finally reduced to a most miserable existence because now he's down here feeding the swine and he himself is eating the very husk that he's feeding the swine. But he comes to himself. This is what repentance is, isn't it?

Repentance is thinking again. He's thinking again now. And his thoughts are much different now than they were whenever he took his leave of his dad. And he now says, I'm going to arise and go to my father.

And I'm going to say, father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Just make me one of your hired servants. And so he makes his way down the long road.

And you know how the story ends. Father, who we can imagine often lifting his eyes from his work to look down the road to just see if he could possibly catch a glimpse of his son returning, on this occasion sees his son and he meets him with a stern countenance and a chilly disposition.

And he says to him, I told you so. And now, yes, I'm going to make you a hired servant because you're not worthy to be called my son. Oh, my friend, I can identify with the prodigal son. I've spent my time down in the far country.

I don't know very many of you, but many of you look familiar to me. I think it's probably because I saw you down there in the far country. My coldness toward the Lord, my sins are so great that I oftentimes tell myself that God will want nothing more to do with me.

That now, finally, my sins have triumphed over the grace of God. And now, finally, he will wash his hands of me and say, that's it. You have put yourself beyond the reach of my grace. I know enough about the devil to tell you this.

The devil rather enjoys sitting on our shoulders. And that's what he likes to say to the Christian who has gone deep into sin and strayed far from the Lord. The devil will sit there and he'll say, well, you've done it this time.

This is it. God's through with you now. He wants nothing more to do with you. Will you listen to me this morning as I tell you, get up and go to your father and see what he says. And we read in the parable that when he saw his son, his son was still a great way off.

And the father ran to him, embraced him. And he said, bring a robe and put it on his shoulders. Put a ring on his finger and put shoes on his feet. All of which was to say, my son has returned home and I'm receiving my son as my son.

And there was great rejoicing there. And I want you to know my friend that no matter how great your sin today, your sin is not greater than the grace of God. Another hymn we used to sing in the church I came up in was grace greater than our sin.

Marvelous, infinite, matchless grace, freely bestowed on all who believe. And oh, if you will today sow the seeds of repentance, you will reap the crop of joy. If you'll sow in tears, you'll reap in joy as God revives your soul.

And I know some of you have been a pastor a long time. I've been a pastor long enough to know that as I talk to you about the forgiving grace of God, some of you are saying, well, if you only knew, if you only knew how far I've strayed, if you only knew what I've done.

Oh, I want to assure you today that the grace of God is so great. The Bible says that he cast our sins as far from us as the east is from the west. Never to be remembered against us anymore. Now, I remember my sins, and the devil has a very long memory.

If you'll let him, he'll make sure you have a long memory. And he will constantly parade your sins before your eyes. But if you've repented of those sins, when you come back again to the Lord with those same sins, God will say, I don't know what you're talking about.

And you'll say, oh, yes, Lord, you know, that coldness of heart, that deadness of spirit, that terrible thing that I said, that terrible thing that I did back there five years ago, six weeks ago, 10 years ago.

God will say, no, I don't know what you're talking about. I'll check my book. No, there's no record of it here. Oh, my friend, God cast our sins away from us as far as the east is from the west. And he doesn't remember them anymore.