Calling on the Name of the Lord — Jim Cymbala

Calling on the Name of the Lord in Genesis

I want to take you back for a moment to one of the most important days in the history of the world. More important than when they discovered the wheel, invented the wheel. More important than when they discovered fire.

More important than atomic energy and all that has meant to our society. It's a day that has everlasting effect on our planet and in the world to come. You don't need to turn to it because you could almost memorize it, it's so short.

In the fourth chapter of Genesis we read in the 25th verse,. And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son, and named him Seth. For God had appointed another seed for me instead of Abel, whom Cain killed.

And as for Seth, to him also a son was born, and he named him Enosh. Here's the verse. Somewhere in there, on some day, at some hour, at some point, men and women began to call on the name of the Lord.

That has had a profounder effect than any other thing you could imagine. Men at some given moment began to call out to God. Now, the Bible tells us, as you know, that Cain slew Abel, and now Cain and his seed, independent of God, self-sufficient, we can do it, build a name for ourselves, we can maneuver through life without God.

That ungodly seed was about to dominate. So God raised up a godly seed through the line of Seth, and Seth gave birth to Enosh, and then some revelation came. There were no Bibles, no churches, no choirs, no media, no verses to stand on, no Hebrew and Greek to study, nothing, except there was a God who was the Creator, and somehow adorned by revelation on people, that when you're in trouble, there's a God that if you call out to Him, He'll answer you.

He'll intervene in your situation. That it either happened maybe when a child got sick, because you know how that affects a parent, or it happened maybe when the rains weren't coming down and weren't planting us and the crops were threatened, that men began to get this instinct that they only knew there was a Creator God.

There was a Creator God, but now they learned that this Creator God was also a God who heard and who responded when, and only when, you cried out to Him. Somehow at that moment, men began to call on the name of the Lord, and it's affected the rest of history, and it's a theme that starts there and runs through the whole Bible, and ends up in Revelation.

The Meaning of Calling on God

The word there for call is a word that means to cry out, to treat in treat, to call out to, to beseech, to beg, to plead with all of your heart, and then the word developed another meaning, which means in the same tone, in the same thread, to praise, to worship, to extol with your lips, to exalt, to honor, to celebrate, to commemorate, and then it began to have a meaning also to tell abroad, and to call out, to communicate with another person, to tell somebody else.

The first people who were ever God's people in the Bible were not called Christians or Jews. The first people that ever belonged to God were called those who call on the name of God. The whole seed of everything that we're doing here today began with people calling on God, and then as God responded, they would begin to praise God.

The same mouth and heart that cried out to Him and called on Him for help, when God answered that cry, they would begin then to extol and to honor and to praise God with all of their heart, and then they began to go to other people and say, have you heard about the God who answers when you call on Him?

What are you talking about? We just know there's probably a Creator. No, no, the Creator is a God that when you call out to Him, He doesn't turn a deaf ear. In fact, His ear is always open to our cry, and it doesn't matter what your problem is or what you're facing in your church or in your family, God is a God who's always saying throughout the Bible, call upon Me.

He's entreating us to entreat Him. Call upon Me, and I will answer you, and I'll show you great and mighty things which you've never even imagined. Has anything got into your head what God can do? Now that was the mark.

Forget now your American system of Christianity. Forget what you were born and raised, because a lot of that has meat, but there's some bones in it. And if we just follow and keep punching in what we learn and what people tell us is in the cutting edge, which is not always so.

It's not in the cutting edge. Some of it is just silliness. But if we go back to the Bible, we find out that the first thing that God ever had with people, the first relationship was, call on Me, and I'll help you.

And when you don't know what to do, I'll tell you what to do. And when you're ready to throw up your hands, don't throw them up to Me and put your voice behind it too. And I'll come and I'll help you.

That's how religion began. And God's never changed. You change, maybe I change, but denominations might change. God has never changed. And we can create and stir and redefine all we want. God will never change.

He's not a man that He should change like that. So the relationship He had there was this calling out to God, and you follow through the patriarchs. They built altars, and Abraham called on God. Isaac built an altar.

He called out to God. Jacob. Long before Moses got the worship system of the tabernacle and received the law, men were calling out to God. When Abraham went down to Egypt unwisely, he runs back to that altar at Bethel where he first called upon the Lord.

That's the way it is when we backslide and we get away from the ministry that God wants us. You always have to get back to that altar where you started calling out to God. How many know what I'm talking about?

Say amen. That's where we all go back to. And this became, by the way, the earmark and the sign of God's people. Moses, in his great sermon in the book of Deuteronomy, says this about the people of Israel.

God Draws Near When His People Call

He's getting ready for Joshua to take over as a leader, and he's enjoining the people to remember how special they are. And listen to what he says. He says, And who else of all the people in the world have a God that draws near to them when they call upon?

He says, Who of all the other people? They might have better chariots, if it wasn't allowed to have chariots. They might have better weaponry. But he says to all the people, Forget the Amorites. You don't have to worry about the Jebusites.

Because who has a God like unto our God that draws near to us when we call upon? When we call upon, and how many have found that God draws near to you whenever you call upon Him? You might be a mess and you'll walk with God, but there's something about God here.

When He hears that cry, boom, He goes. So Satan's whole device with us. Don't call. Don't cry. Be clever. Organize. Plan a lot. Depend on talent. Get that computer on. But how many know, how many know, if we're going to do spiritual warfare, the devil doesn't care about computers.

What he gets afraid of is when we lift up our hearts and begin to call out to God, God, You're going to help me. God, You absolutely are going to help me. And that was the sign of Israel. That was the absolute sign of Israel.

Who has a God like unto our God who draws near to us only when, notice, when we call upon Him. All bets are off if we don't call on Him. There's not a promise in the Bible for if you don't call on God, if I forget God.

You can't stand on those promises without calling on God. It's not a mental exercise. It's about this. So put a song in your heart going out to God. And remember, this was the way the prophets operated.

Elijah and the God Who Answers by Fire

Remember when Elijah said with his big thing with King Ahab, he said, look, get all your prophets of Baal. You think Baal is bad? Bring all the prophets of Baal. Get them all over here and I'll stand over here.

I'm all alone. There's nobody left. Get all 450 prophets, right? And here's what. Lay out the sacrifices and in the end, he poured water on the sacrifices of his. And he said, listen, you call out to Baal as long as you want.

And whatever God answers when we call, that'll be God. Oh, and they started early in the morning calling and they cried, O Baal, which tells us what calling is about. It's not some mental exercise. It's about your whole being.

You will call upon me and I will answer you when you call upon me with all of your heart, when you seek for me with all of your heart. And so they're calling, O Baal, O Baal. Nothing's happening. And around noontime, he even gets a little humorous and he says, call louder.

He went out of town or he's busy. He's working on work, you know. And they call, and they call, and they call. And what was the proof that God was God? What was the proof? Because Elijah said, now God, you've been calling you prophets of Baal.

Watch. You call. Nothing. Because it's dead. There's no ear to Baal. He can't answer. But now watch what happens when I call to my God. O God, hear my prayer. And the fire came from heaven. And the fire came from heaven.

That was the sign. That was always the sign. That God hears when you call. He has to. Otherwise, throw away the book. Nothing's true if that's not true. Now, nobody developed this, of course, greater than David, who was a man way ahead of his time.

David's Confidence in Answered Prayer

David lived in the New Testament with his heart and his body was in the Old Testament. And we read Psalm 4, 3. Listen to this. Psalm 4, 3. But know this. The Lord has set apart for himself him who is godly.

The Lord will hear when I call. That was David's whole posture to battle everything. That was an instinct in Israel. It doesn't matter what the opposing armies have. If we call out to God, God gives us the victory.

If we backslide and don't call, then we can be knocked out by 200 soldiers. That was the whole life of the nation of Israel. And David said, The Lord has set apart the godly for himself. Who are the godly?

The Lord will hear when I call. David said, You can chase me. You can persecute me. You can do anything you want. But when I call to God, you're in trouble. Because the Lord will hear when I call to him.

The Lord will hear when I call to him. He developed that even further. It's like the Bible tells us that the definition of evildoers, Psalm 14, 4, workers of iniquity, evildoers, who do not call upon the Lord.

They will not call upon the Lord. That's the definition of the ungodly. They'll do a lot of things, but they will not humble themselves, recognize God's omnipotence, and they won't call upon God. And David says, They're the evildoers in the land.

They won't call upon God. And then further, as you know, we could pick them so many places, Psalm 50, verse 15, repeated over and over in the Bible, Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you, and you will honor me.

God says, I want praise from your life, but the only way fresh praise will come is if you keep calling upon me in days of trouble. And when you forget to call upon me, I'll just send some trouble to remind you how smart you really are.

How many honestly have had that happen in your own life? You start to backslide a little bit, you get a little cocky, you think we can handle everything, and God says, trouble, praise, send some trouble.

And how many know in the same day you can go from thinking you're as bad as can be to, oh, God, help me, Lord. Oh, God, have mercy on me. Help me, Lord. Come on, how many know what I'm talking about? Say amen.

Because notice what the intimation is that until the day of trouble came, David didn't call upon me. In the day of trouble I called upon the Lord and he heard me and he delivered me. In the day of trouble I called upon him.

Trouble is one of God's greatest servants, isn't it? Because it reminds us how much we need the Lord. If there's something about us that gets away from this calling thing, you know, we just want to carry on without this childlike helplessness.

But God won't have it any other way. In fact, revival has everything to do about this. And you don't go by any definition of revival that anybody tells you in the revisionists of the modern church era.

Revival Begins With Prayer

Listen to Psalm 80, verse 18. Revive us, O Lord, and we will call upon your name. That's the sign of revival. When people aren't calling on God's name, I wouldn't care what else was going on. It's not revival.

The thing about revival, whether you study the Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening, the Welsh revival, what happened at Azusa Street, is men got sick and tired of the status quo. Men and women and leaders.

And they began to call on God and they were insistent and that prayer begot revival, which begot more prayer. Because revival, the Holy Spirit, is the spirit of prayer. When we're full of the Holy Spirit, truly, how many know that's the spirit of prayer?

You feel God, the need of God everywhere you turn. You're driving in a car and your spirit starts going up to God with needs and petitions and intercessions. And when our heart gets cold, prayer becomes strange and we try to teach it, symposium, seven ways to a better prayer life.

But none of that's going to happen until God comes. How many know what I'm talking about? When God comes, God bursts the spirit of prayer for we know not how we ought to pray, but the Holy Spirit helps us.

And the sign of revival always is that. If we're prayerless, we're not revived. If our churches don't pray and if people don't have an appetite for God, what does it matter how many are running? How would that impress God?

Or your carpet or your lights or anything else? God's only had one kind of people who called upon the Lord. He's rich in mercy to everyone who what? Calls upon Him. That's Old Testament, New Testament, nothing's changed.

You can't update it. God's not adapting it to our culture. We adapt ourselves to God. He's abounding in mercy and grace to everyone who calls upon Him. And that's why the church was born. Obviously, it was all right.

The Church Was Born in a Prayer Meeting

Guess where the church was born? In a prayer meeting. It makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? The church was born not in a teaching session. The church was born in a prayer meeting. Why? Because God's never going to change.

Go back and tarry in Jerusalem and keep calling on me and waiting between the calling and throw in some thanksgiving and praise in there. And then I'm going to fill you and equip you and you'll find out that the church was born in a prayer meeting.

What does that say about our churches when God had the church born in a prayer meeting and we don't even have prayer meetings? And doesn't anybody beside myself get embarrassed when you hear religious leaders talk about no prayer in schools?

What a joke. Isn't anybody embarrassed when you don't even have a prayer meeting in the church? Why should they have it in the school? I don't even understand that. You would think somebody would say just out of humility, time out.

They didn't have prayer in the Roman schools. They didn't care what Nero was doing. Who cares what Caligula was doing and Emperor Claudius? Let them do whatever they're going to do and who cares about secular humanism or New Age?

How could the demons stop God? How can anybody stop God when God's people pray and call out upon His name? Impossible. I'll tell you what, that embarrasses me. I'm telling you I'm a Christian but I'm embarrassed when I hear these so-called leaders.

Lambasts, you know, President Clinton and the liberals and all that. Who cares what they do? What's that got to do with me? Let the church be the church and I don't care what they do. You don't see Paul bringing his hands and saying in the New Testament what are we going to do?

Caligula's a transvestite. He's dressing up as a woman and I don't know what are we going to do? How are we going to do this? You know what it is? Listen, we're playing games with ourselves. No, I'm serious.

We're playing games with ourselves. We're trying to divert attention away from this weak area of our own church life. We're trying to put the spotlight over there on the world. I don't see any of that in the New Testament.

I read the New Testament constantly. I try to never be six feet away from the New Testament in my life. And I read it every moment I can to get the breath of the New Testament in me. You don't find any hand-wringing about what's going on in Rome and they passed this bad law.

Who cares? They'll do what they want. How could that stop God if God was let loose in the church? How could that possibly stop God? I hear New Age and demons and all this fiction about their demons. Who cares what the demons are doing?

But I'm embarrassed when you hear people say there's no prayer in schools. That embarrasses me. When I talk to pastor after pastor and they tell me privately, Oh, Pastor Simberon, don't tell anybody about it.

I couldn't have prayer meeting in my church. It would be embarrassing. One twentieth the crowd would come. There's somebody who's teaching or singing or carrying on or entertaining. It is preaching that becomes just a form of entertaining.

Just a stick. It's just more mental truth and nobody's acting on it. I want to raise a couple questions to all of us because, you know, when we stand at the judgment seat of Christ, God's not going to ask you what your peers thought of you or if you were on the cutting edge of what some magazine said was what God was doing.

I don't go by any of that. I try to stick with this book. And this book says this, listen, listen, I'm not trying to be humorous. When I stand before Jesus, He's not going to ask me these questions. He's going to ask me, did I continue on in the line of men and women who called upon God?

Leading a Church Through Persistent Prayer

God showed me on a boat in Florida, maybe I'll talk about that in this afternoon session, that if my wife and I would lead the people to call on God, and we had less than a hundred then, number one, every sermon that I would need to preach, which I was insecure about, I've never been trained, I'm not an orator, He would take care of.

Number two, we would have enough money to live and pay the bills in the church, which was touch and go with us for years. I made $3 ,800 the first year in the ministry, $5 ,500 the second year, we took second jobs.

We're in a ghetto. First offering I ever collected as the pastor, $85 morning tithes and offerings. But if we would lead them to call on God, He would take care of the sermons and the money, and we'd never be in a building large enough to contain all the people that God would send in just in answer to people calling on His name.

When I stand before God and you stand before God, I want to ask you, why is that? Why can't we have prayer meetings? They canceled the Sunday night service, now they're prayer meeting, prayer meeting, that went out with high button shoes, nobody's going to come to pray.

Why? Because they're glued to television. They're glued to the television, and they're watching television. And don't give me any other story, I've traveled all over and I know this world just like you do.

They're watching television or sports, they're wedded to it. In fact, you can't even get them for a long Sunday service. I go places, you've got 18 minutes, you've got to get them out of here. We've got to get them out by 5 after 12 or else they'll walk out, their football game's on.

What is that? It's not Christianity. I don't care what doctrine you're teaching, that's not Christianity. That cannot be the religion of the Bible. And why would God send people like that to heaven? Because, no, I'm being very serious.

I think Brother Hayford, no, he's not a legalist, I'm not a legalist either, but I want to ask you a question. If the people in my church don't want to be around God's presence and they don't love God's presence, why would they go to heaven?

It would ruin everything for them. There's nothing, listen, in heaven there's nothing but God. If you don't enjoy His presence, and you don't love to call upon Him and worship Him, I don't care what doctrine you have in your head, you're not the believers that they have in the New Testament.

The Biblical Pattern of a Spirit-Filled Church

Listen, the revisionists, let me close, the revisionists are not in Washington, they're in the church growth movement. They've revised what a church is. The Bible tells me they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine, and in the fellowship, and in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.

They did that by instinct. The church is a spiritual organism with spiritual instincts, and if in your church and mine they don't have those instincts, you don't have a church just because you can get them for an hour on Sunday morning, you know, by doing market research, that doesn't make it a church.

It's not a church. It's not a church. I challenge anybody to show me from the Bible that's a church. It's not a church. It's a bunch of people in a building on a Sunday morning. But the church of Jesus Christ is a spiritual organism full of the Holy Ghost and joy, and loving God's presence, and waiting for His Son to return.

And this is serious, because, you know, this American system you can get by being just, you can retire as a minister and get by in the American system. You can build a huge church without the Holy Spirit a thousand miles from your place.

We fine-tune church growth down to a, almost a terrible edge, but people who call on God. We have a prayer band in our church. They started all-night prayer meetings on Friday night years ago. Then this godly pastor who Brother Hayford, I would love for him to meet him, this associate of mine, he started every night from 11 until 6 in the morning.

Now it's seven days a week, 24 hours a day, there's a band of people in the church praying. I'm not talking about something at home where they pledge to pray. I'm talking about in the building, no matter what the emergency is, if you have a problem and you hand me a little note today, I'll take it home.

They'll pray for 30 days, morning, noon, and night for that request. Well, Brother Ware said to me one day, Pastor Semble, you know, we're not getting through. You're doing good on Sundays, but we need more conviction.

We need more conviction of sin. I said, I know, I feel it, Brother. No, I'm talking serious. We're in New York City now. We're going to have a dozen people HIV positive every meeting. Crack addicts, we got 150 homeless people brought in every single Sunday night.

We just baptized a woman who's raising nine children in a shelter by herself. You'd have to do this with mirrors. It's God or bust. It's God or it's not going to happen. But that's the way it ought to be.

Amen? So he started a prayer. He said he has, to this day, he has 40 people locked in a room. They pray from 1045 to 130, morning service is over. They start at 315 through six something, the afternoon service.

Then we have a night service. They start praying at 715. And sometimes I leave at 10 o 'clock, 1030 in the building. I hear them still pray. God, help them. Protect them. Help them. God, send the glory.

Send the presence of God in the meetings. So you might visit our church and the Lord might really be there and you might really be blessed and you might think it has something to do with me or Carol. No.

Maybe it's just those people praying. And on Tuesday night, of course, which is our main service, we have standing room only using the lobby and every folding chair we can get just for the prayer meeting.

No choir, no guest speaker, nothing, just Jesus. But if they don't come for that, then what kind of church am I pastoring? If they don't come just for Jesus, what am I into? That's it.