Tears Between the Altar — E.A. Johnston

A Nation Darkened by Moral Collapse

The days that we live in grow darker and darker every day as debauchery and perversion flood our land like a filthy sewer. The moral fabric of society unravels at the seams while our government legislates God right out of the land.

Instead of being a nation that is a blessing to the earth, we are scourged to it with our blood spilled streets from the slaughter of the unborn and violent crimes that permeate the nation. Violence reigns in the land.

It's as if everyone is angry at one another. It's not even safe to go outside anymore. Evil in society has all the influence, all the prominence in our young people today or a pagan, godless generation hell-bent on pleasure and self-gratification.

The Church's Spiritual Slumber

And where is the church in all of this? She's like an ostrich with her head in the sand, full of indifference, apathy, while she sleeps comfortably on the pillows of conformity and compromise. Meanwhile, an offended sovereign God sends his remedial judgments upon America through natural disasters with rapidity and severity, and the daily news reads like a page from the Old Testament.

Joel's Locust Plague and God's Call to Repentance

The Jews in the days of the prophet Joel were a rebellious and wayward people, and God was trying to get their attention by sending them financial hardship in the form of a repeated crop failure from the devastation of locust invasions.

A plague of desert locusts were sent to devour their crops because the people of God had forgotten that from God came their prosperity. They had become self-reliant. And as we read over in Joel chapter 2, God's demonstration of mercy toward them by sending them his message through his prophet Joel, God desired his rebellious people to respond to the severe judgments that were upon them by responding in heartfelt repentance toward God and a return to him.

God is always ready to respond with two sincere repentance friends, and God in his mercy lays out a plan of action for them to take, and it's a pattern for us today in the church to follow as well. We are a sinful people full of pride, self-righteousness, and self-reliance.

The Church's Dependence on God and Holy Ghost Power

The church has seemed to have gone its own way, and it's no longer a beacon to society because we figured out we can get the job done with money and manpower. We don't need God and holy ghost power. But pastors in former days understood the necessity of having nights of desperation in their churches, nights of solemn assembly in their congregations to call the people to a time of humility and repentance before an offended sovereign.

Joel's Two-Part Call to National Repentance

I want to divide Joel chapter 2 friends into two sections for us, beginning in verses 1 -16 and then in verses 17 -19. Here now is the word of God, and may the Spirit of the Lord attend the reading of his holy word.

I will pause here friends to say, why does God ask the people to rend their heart and turn to him with all their heart, to fast, to weep, and to mourn? He states that because the hardness of their heart, because of their multiplied sins, they cared little if the nation had fallen away from God.

They cared little if their personal lives were an offense to God. All they cared about was their material welfare and money. They were carelessly sinning when they should have been on their knees before God in continual brokenness and thanksgiving to him, and weeping over the sins of the land, mourning the loss of God's presence in their midst.

For he had withdrawn himself from among them, he had sent judgments upon them, yet they still refused to repent and turn back to him. So in his mercy, he sends his messenger to them, the prophet Joel, to give them a way back to him.

A Ministry Calling the Church Back to God

For the last 10 years of my ministry, I've spent it calling the modern church back to God and repentance toward him. If you look at the bulk of my 2 ,000 sermons, you'll find that there's a repeated theme over and over again, calling the church to repent for a revival to come, because that's what God's called me to.

It's a ministry of rejection because it goes against the tide of mainstream Christianity, and I often feel I'm standing alone in a desert crying to the wind, but I'll keep preaching these messages until the church does repent and turn back to the God of the Bible and this nation repents and returns to the living God of the Bible.

Wholehearted Devotion Rather Than a Divided Heart

God tells the people to turn back to him with all their hearts. Why? Because they've been serving him with a divided heart, one foot in the sanctuary and the other foot in the world. God won't honor that.

He sent his son to die as a bloody sacrifice for sin, and Jesus held nothing back at Calvary. How can we hold anything back from him if we call ourselves his followers? Well, let's look at verses 14 to 16, friends.

Who knoweth if he will return and repent and leave a blessing behind him, even a meat offering and a drink offering unto the Lord your God? Blow the trumpet in Zion. Sanctify fast. Call Asylum Assembly.

Gather the people. Sanctify the congregation. Assemble the elders. Gather the children and those that suck the breasts. Let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber and the bride out of her closet. Let me pause here to say notice the importance and urgency of this command from God.

The Urgency of a Solemn Assembly

Blow a trumpet. Stand on the watchtower. Sound the alarm. Go grab your children. Go grab your babies. Even those who are newlyweds need to drop what you're doing. This is a far more urgent matter than what you're doing now.

Assemble yourselves. Get the elders. Sanctify the congregation. Listen, this is a crisis. Wake up. Pay attention. Hear, that demands something. It demands your full attention and quick action, a quick response.

Priests Weeping Between the Porch and the Altar

And we read in verses 17 through 19. Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar. And let them say, spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them.

Wherefore should they say among the people, where is their God? Isn't that our exact situation today, friends? The church has lost her voice of authority in the land. Society used to fear God and look to the church for guidance and direction.

But the church lost her influence with society when she invited society into the church. She modernized herself. She stopped singing hymns about the blood because she stopped preaching about sin and man's duty of repentance.

She even changed the way she viewed God by shrinking him down to man's size and preaching a man-centered gospel instead of a God-centered gospel. She took salvation out of the hands of God and placed it in the hands of men.

Pastors Called to Prayer, Mourning, and Revival

Instead of recognizing the seriousness of this desperate hour and calling the churches to nights of solemn assembly where the people of God humble themselves before God and cry out to God in sincere repentance, weeping over the sins of the land and mourning over their own personal sins.

Listen, friends, it breaks my heart to even have to preach this message to you. But many pastors spend their time improving their golf handicap or watching their favorite sports team instead of being on their knees and their Bibles broken before a holy God.

I was sitting in a hotel room years ago with my good friend, Richard Owen Roberts, and we were talking about revival. And I said to him, Brother, do you know what mystifies me? And he said, No, what mystifies you?

And I said, What mystifies me are all the sleepy-headed pastors who refuse to acknowledge God's remedial judgments upon the land and their apathy to do anything about it, their lack of duty of calling the people together in a solemn assembly to pray corporately and to mourn and weep over the sins of the land.

And he said that mystified him, too. We just can't understand it. In the midst of a nation coming apart at the seams, why aren't the pastors of the land calling their people to times of solemn assembly to cry out to God in nights of desperation for forgiveness, for mercy, for God to heal our land?

God's Promise of Mercy and Restoration

What's it going to take to get the church's attention? Will it have to be a nuclear war that wipes out half our society? Look at God's response to the people of Sodom in earnest desperation. Then will the Lord be jealous for His land and pity His people?

Yea, the Lord will answer and say to His people, Behold, I will send you corn and wine and oil. Ye shall be satisfied therewith, and I will no more make you reproach among the heathen. Listen, friends, the church once again has power and authority here because she's in a right relationship with the Almighty.

That's what we need. That's what we need today. May some pastor listening to this message be stirred enough and concerned enough to go and do likewise. God have mercy on us all.