Pure Heart, Pure Church - Part 5 — Leonard Ravenhill

Psalm 23: The Shepherd’s Provision

The Lord's my shepherd I shall not want, so forth. You can turn that round, work on it, they're all in meters the Psalms. Or get a Presbyterian song book, or get a Presbyterian song book. And all the Psalms at the back are in meters.

The Lord's my shepherd I'll not want, he makes me down to lie, in pastures green he leadeth me, the quiet waters by. Goodness and mercy all my life shall surely follow me, and in God's house for evermore my dwelling place shall be.

It's beautiful. He writes the 23rd Psalm, he sings it. But he's in a different situation from when he wrote this Psalm. He says, Thou desirest not sacrifice, thought I would give it. The sacrifice of God out of broken spirit.

What else does he say? In verse 8, make me to hear joy and gladness for the bones which thou hast broken. He hasn't got a broken bone in his body. He's using a figure of speech. In 1951 I jumped out of a burning hotel.

A Life-Threatening Fall and the Need for Restoration

We had had two weeks of revival in Dr. Tozer's church, which he said were the best revival in 25 years. I had a prayer partner, he hadn't been to bed for five nights, dear old Tom Hare. Tremendous one of intercession.

We went to bed on the Friday night, spanned me Saturday night. About half past two I heard fire, fire, fire. I thought, well, oh dear, this is terrible. Somebody's in a building on fire and it's snow outside.

Wouldn't be where I was of course. I mean, how would the church go on if I died? Incredible, surely that couldn't happen. When I die the world will stop or the church will surely. I mean, you know, I've put so much into it.

Well, it happened to be that I was in the frying pan. The hotel we were in was burning. A few weeks ago a boy died from a 30-foot tower in the Olympics. Somebody said to him, how high is the tower? He said, from the ground up, 30 feet.

Went at the top looking down 300 feet. I was 30 feet up in that hotel and I looked down in the middle of the night. There's the floor down there. People shouting, jump. I thought, yeah, that's fine. No problem jumping.

You're putting the brakes on when you get nearly to the bottom. Well, I landed on my heels, crushed my feet. What do you call the oscalsis, the heels? Crushed like fine sugar, the doctor said. My leg was in three pieces, three brakes in my back, both my feet broken.

I'm lying in the gutter outside the hotel and a guy comes around the corner. I said, what are you doing here? Well, obviously playing tennis, aren't I? He said, you can't stay here. I said, I don't want to.

Get up and go away. I said, I can't. My back's broken, my leg's broken, my feet are broken. Oh, I don't think it's so bad. I said, well, I do. Well, he said, listen, you can't stay here. Listen to this humor.

Something will come around the corner and run over you and get hurt. That's all I need. Let me put you over there. Oh, no, no, please don't lift me. He put his hand under my legs here and my back. And, you know, when he did, all those bones just screamed up.

And gracious man, he laid me in about 18 inches of snow. I wasn't ready for refrigeration. I didn't want to stay there. I soon began to shake and quiver. But, you know, I'll tell you what I realized. What this psalm has meant has meant a lot of difference since then.

Broken Bones as a Picture of Spiritual Ruin

When I got all those bones broken and there was no healing for a long while. It wasn't possible to turn. And David says, when I'm out of relationship with God, I'm full of broken bones. And there's no way that they can be healed.

He says, a broken and a contrite heart thou wilt not despise. A broken heart. A contrite heart, a grieving heart, a heart that's restless. He's not finding some temporary antidote. He wants that relationship that he had with God to be restored.

Psalm 51 and the Deadliness of Sin

Now, look at the difference in the psalms. Twenty-third psalm, calm and beautiful. In this psalm, he's like a boy that's, to use a very simple, weak argument, like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Here he is, loathsome in the sight of God. But the hymn writer says, quicken my conscience till it feels the loathsomeness of sin. There are no mild cases of sin, any more than any mild cases of cancer.

They're all deadly. What does he do in this psalm? He says, hide thy face, ease of holier eyes than to behold iniquity. How do you feel God thinks about the average congregation in our churches today, where sin doesn't matter anymore?

Full of adulterers and liars and divorced people and all kinds of crimes that have been done. There's no preaching against sin. Oh, once God exposes his light on human corruption, and only then do men cringe and howl for deliverance.

Realize they've got leprosy, worse than leprosy, worse than cancer in their breasts. David here says, hide thy face from my sins. Do you remember the 139th psalm when he says one of the bravest things I think ever written by man?

Searching the Heart Before God

He says to God, search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way. That was when he was living as close to God as he ever lived, or maybe anybody else ever lived.

He did not fear the searching eyes of God. He hadn't broken the commandments of God. He was walking in total obedience. But here he says, hide thy face from my sin. Don't come with the searching eyes.

And all him says, search me, O God. Like he is talking about himself, search me, O God, my actions try. And let my life appear as seen by thine all-searching eye. To my eyes thy ways make clear. Search all my thoughts, the secret springs, the motives that control.

The chambers where polluted things hold empire o 'er the soul. Search till thy fiery glance hath cast its holy light through all. And I by grace am brought at last before thy face to fall. Search me, O God.

Holiness, Prayer, and the State of the Church

I believe the normal Christian life is a life of holiness. It's easy to sing that hymn holy, and by the way, Melody dear, I've heard that hymn sung round the world. You can't sing it without moving me to tears.

I didn't go to the concert last night, I did something better, I prayed for them. We never sang that hymn with more delight and rapture than when Keith Green thumped it out on that piano in Brown's house.

We didn't have to sing. He had his own interpretation, he put additional words, I was going to say, additional notes into it. I've heard people comment about that, who came... Oh, I remember, a lady came from Arkansas one night.

The meetings we've been having down there in the last days, which we're going to start the last week of this month, I hope being well. You know, people have come from Mobile, 700 miles to come to a prayer meeting.

You know, two lords of them come every Friday night from Oral Roberts University, and say, why don't we have a prayer meeting like that? I said, ask Oral. You know, they come from seminaries. Isn't it a shame that people have to drive four, five, six hundred miles to a meeting that's solely given to prayer?