1.3 Heart Cry for Revival — Colin Peckham

Did you notice a shower of rain earlier this morning? Well, the Lord was speaking to you through that shower of rain. He was letting you know it is a Baptist that's cheering the weepers this morning. When you look round about and you see a sea of faces, and you know this one and that one, you're not sure about the other.

Have you ever thought to yourself, these are the blood-bought, redeemed children of the Lord. Isn't the Lord good? We're going to start off our service this morning singing 4 -5 -5. Make me a captive Lord, and then I shall be free.

Force me to render up my sword, and I shall conqueror be. We'll rise and sing 4 -5 -5.

The thought of coming up here. Somebody says to me, have you got butterflies in your stomach? I says, oh no.

I just shared with her brother Colin coming up. I've never butterflies in my stomach coming up here. I have albatrosses. But last night, I never got much sleep. I was looking at the Word of God, and I was thinking of all the word that has been shared with us.

We've had a feast, and I read this in the words of Jeremiah, and we should take that into our own hearts. Jeremiah says this, when your word came, I ate them. They were my joy and my heart's delight, for I bear your name, O Lord God Almighty.

Let's come to the Lord in prayer, shall we? Gracious Heavenly Father, we come in to your lovely presence. And Father, we are so aware we come into the presence of a holy and a righteous God. Father God, not only a God who is a creator God, but Father, you are our Redeemer God.

And Father, as we come into your presence this morning, we come in complete humility, because we know in our hearts that we are your sons and your daughters, and we do not deserve the merit of being in your family.

But Father God, we thank you that we are your sons and your daughters, and that no one, but no one, but no one, will ever be able to separate us from the love of our Savior. Father God, we thank you not only for our salvation, but for the security that we have in our salvation.

Father God, we have heard much about the cross this week in the Keswick Convention, and Father, when we think of the cross, we think of your love for each one of us. Father, when we think of Calvary, we think of your Son, our Savior, who died for us.

Oh, Father God, when we think of what he endured and suffered on our behalf, Father God, what can we say? We can only come with humble hearts and say, Father God, we love you. Not because we loved you first, but because you loved us.

Father God, and as we again hear the word this morning from your servant Colin, Father, we thank you for the beauty of your word. Father, we thank you for the message of your word. Father God, we thank you for the saving grace of your word.

So as your servant comes to us this morning with the word, Father, may he come in the power of the Holy Spirit. Father, may the word that comes from his lips come from the Holy Spirit, and we'd ask you to uphold Colin with the Holy Spirit.

Oh, Father God, you have been so good to us, and we are not deserving it. So, Father God, we'd ask you that everyone this morning might be touched by the hand of the Lord, because it is in his worthy and wonderful saving name that we commend to your presence.

Blessed be the name of Jesus. Amen.

The Psalmist’s Cry for Revival

The subject of heart cry for revival. I'm going to read to you from Psalm 80, 8 -0. Psalm 80, heart cry for revival. I could have taken several passages on this subject. Isaiah 64, Habakkuk and others, but here we have this cry from this man, the Psalmist here.

May I just say that I have this book here still, Sounds from Heaven, which refers to the Lewis revival of 1949 in which Duncan Campbell was involved, and his hitherto unpublished and weekly records from the revival are here with 25 testimonies, so it's easy to read, and it's a wonderful record of the movement of the Spirit there.

We read from Psalm 80. Psalm 80, Psalm 80, O God of hosts, look down from heaven and behold and visit this vine, and the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted in the branch that thou made a strong for thyself, it is burned with fire, it is cut down, they perish at the rebuke of thy countenance.

Let thy hand to be upon the man of thy right hand, upon the son of man whom thou made a strong for thyself. So will not we go back from thee? Quicken us, and we will call upon thy name. Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts.

Cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. Let's bow in prayer. Lord, we're before thee this morning. We need the Holy Ghost. We need the Spirit of God in all these meetings. We need the Spirit of God to saturate the atmosphere.

We need to bend before the Word, before our God. Come to us all and touch all our hearts. May there be a cry from within us. Turn us again, turn us again. O Lord God, cause thy face to shine, and we be saved.

Come to us, Lord. We're a needy people. We're a needy country. We need the mighty moves of the Spirit of God once again. And touch our hearts even now this morning. In thy precious name. Amen. We are living in a day of small things, friends.

The Need for a Fresh Movement of Revival

And if we go from one evangelical fellowship to another, there's warmth and joy, and we don't see how much death there is outside. We're happy and content to be in a warm fellowship here. We go on holiday, we find another warm fellowship.

That's it. We don't realize. Step out of those warm fellowships. And step out into the cold. And you will find that there is death on every hand. And this land needs a touch of God's reviving once again.

In the 1920s, W .P. Nicholson operated in Northern Ireland. One great campaign after another. Lurgan, Portadown, Belfast. Those campaigns resulted in about 13 ,000 people coming to Christ in that short period.

At the same time, Douglas Brown was operating down there in East Anglia, Yarmouth, and Lowestoft, and God mightily blessed him. And the folk from here went down following the fish around Britain those days.

They went down to Lowestoft. And when they got there, they came under the sound of the gospel. And many of them got saved and they wrote back. They wrote back to the people here in this area where we are in the 1920s.

And they got saved down there. And some of them were brought under conviction here and some of them got saved and some of them were still under conviction. And the ships came, bringing them back. And instead of the old songs that they used to sing as they came into the harbour, they were singing the songs of Zion.

And the people on the shore joined them before they'd even met. And God worked around this area. Hopeman, 140 people saved. Fraserborough, 400 people saved. All around here. Right down to Imath and right around almost to Inverness.

This whole area. And what we have today is the result of 1920s. Thank God for the touch of God upon those places. Here, in the North East, down there in East Anglia, over there in Ireland. All at the same time.

And friends, we've come to a stage where we need another move of the Holy Ghost. Because if God doesn't come to us, we're sunk. It is time for thee, Lord, to work, said the psalmist. For the people have made void thy law.

And Isaiah said, Oh, that thou wouldst rend the heavens, that thou wouldst come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence. What a prayer. Habakkuk. Oh, Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years.

Make known in wrath, remember mercy. I heard a quaint exegesis of that. One day a man got up and he said it was in the midst of the years. Not when you're 20 or not when you're 90, but in the midst of the years.

And there are a lot of us in the midst of the years now, aren't we? Lord, in the midst of the years, revive thy work. Yes. And then God says, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.

Joel. I will pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground. Isaiah 44. I will pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it. Malachi. So here is God promising and people crying to him when it was appropriate to do so right down the centuries.

And we've come again to the place where God needs to meet us. Notice this man had a great passion, a great burden upon his heart for the vine which God took out of Egypt, the nation of Israel. The vine which spread abroad and was greatly blessed, but now is trampled underfoot.

God, come and visit this vine again. That's the burden. But before he gets to that, he says there in the first verse, give ear, O shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock, thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth.

The Recognition of God’s Person

So here we have the recognition of God's person. Give ear, O shepherd of Israel. We have the picture of the shepherd guiding, caring, loving, compassionate. The shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock.

Yes, a wonderful picture. And then we have thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth, God, in his glory, shining. So here is a picture of the shepherd of Israel guiding his people, carrying the lambs that need to be carried, bearing them right through that great howling wilderness as they went on from place to place.

He was their guide. He was their compassionate leader. Their shoes didn't wear out. They were protected from their enemies. He gave them manna every morning. I once read a wonderful story about a theologian who suggested that they ate the gum off the cherubim trees that occurred occasionally in the desert here and there.

They ate the gum. That's how they survived in the desert. It must have been some tree to feed two and a half million people and some gum. My, my. No, God saved them. God fed them in the wilderness. The manna was there.

That small thing, that small white thing that they picked up, they said, what is this? Manna, manna, what is this? The picture of Jesus feeding his people. I am the bread of life. So here we have their God looked after them in the wilderness.

He smote the rock, another picture of Jesus. Moses smote the rock, and when the rock was smitten, the water flowed to save the nation in the desert. We are in a desert, friends. This is a desert land.

But he has been smitten, and the water of life flows to us, and we live in the desert by him. We live in him. We live by his life. I'm coming to you. You're my shepherd. You know my needs. And I'm coming to not only the compassionate God, I'm coming to the God of glory.

Shining thou that dwellest between the cherubims. Shine forth. What were the cherubims? The cherubims were those two great winged creatures seated upon the cover, the lid of the mercy seat, which is a box about four foot long, there in the holy of holies in the center of the tabernacle, which was in the center of the whole camp of Israel.

And above that was the cloud of fire by day, and the cloud by day giving them protection, and the fiery pillar at night. They didn't have to wonder whether God was in the midst. All they had to do was to open the flap of their tent, and they see God is still with us.

His presence is here. Why? He is shining in the darkness. Here is the glory of God. Here is the splendor of God. Here is the radiance piercing, piercing the darkness, banishing the darkness. God in his splendor.

God in his glory. The recognition of God's person. He's a compassionate God. He knows my needs, but he's a glorious God. Hallelujah. And then not only the recognition of God's person, but the contemplation of God's power.

Salvation by the Blood of the Lamb

You see there in the eighth verse, we find how that he speaks of salvation. Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt. He's speaking about the nation of Israel. Brought a vine out of Egypt. How did he bring them out?

By a strong and mighty hand, yes. But how did he bring them out? He brought them out by the blood of the lamb. Yes, sir. One plague after another, one plague after another, and Pharaoh hardens his heart and hardens his heart again and again.

Says, I will not let them go. Then God smoked the firstborn of the land. But the Israelites were saved. How? Because there was a substitute which died in the place of the firstborn. Salvation by substitution.

He was there in type. And now our great lamb of God, he has died for us. And we've been set free. He's brought us out of Egypt. Do you remember what you were like back there in Egypt? Do you remember the wonderful joy when you came out of Egypt?

Do you remember the fact that your sins were forgiven? And God brought you out of the devil's territory. Saved by blood, by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Saved, saved, saved. Wonderful word.

Saved by the blood of the lamb. Yes, we were saved. I remember when I was saved. Just a young lad of 14, nearly 15. God saved me. Went into the meeting a child of the devil. And I came out a child of God.

I went in a child of darkness. And I came out a child of light. God changed me in a moment. Anybody here not saved? Anybody here still seeking God? Look, don't go let this convention go through without having dealings with God.

He saves. Jesus saves now. Salvation. Wonderful moment. And not only salvation, but then he says, Thou hast cast out the heathen. There's separation too. You know, salvation by blood means separation from Egypt.

Do you hear me? The line of demarcation between the world and the church has almost disappeared in many places. You look for the church and you find it in the world. And you look for the world and you find it in the church.

Separation from the World

And we're weak as the world now. No, he says, come out from among them and be separate, saith the Lord. And touch not the unclean thing and I will receive you and will be father unto you. And you shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.

And the Lord says, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. And the Lord says, ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship with the world is enmity with God?

He who then would be a friend of the world is an enemy of God. And the Lord says, be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord. And the Lord says, she that dwelleth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.

And the Lord says, this is true religion, to keep oneself unspotted from the world. Yes, there's a call. God wants you for himself. And you see, it's not a case of the crushing of these idols with their terrible pain and smart.

Wrenching away from the things that I so long and desire. No, it's a separation unto. I find my joy in him. And he fills the horizons. He ravishes my heart. He is the one who is supremely the one whom I love, who loves me.

Who fills my horizons. Jesus. Oh. And everything else falls away. Because I found him. That's separation. It's not a hurtful thing. It's a rejoicing. It's a thing of rejoicing. I found something far better.

I found a glorious saviour. A one who loves me. One who comes to me. One who ministers to me. One who takes me up into his great plan of salvation. Separated unto him. He cast out the heathen. And then he said he planted it.

Consolidation and Growth in the Faith

So there's salvation and separation. And then there's consolidation. He says, thou, and he planted it. He planted it. It took deep root. Verse 9. Thou preparest room before it and cause it to take deep root.

Yes. There are your Bible studies. There are your prayer meetings. There are your fellowship gatherings. You're being consolidated. You're taking deep root. The roots are sinking in. And you're learning about the doctrines of the scripture.

And you're learning about the books of the Bible. And their backgrounds and their content. And you're learning about the principles which God gives for us in this book. To live as he wants us to live.

And you're being consolidated and strengthened. Yes. He says you brought a vine out of Egypt. And you've cast out the heathen. And you've planted it. And you've caused it to take deep root. And it's established.

So you've got here salvation and separation. And consolidation. And expansion. Verse 9. It filled the land. Verse 11. She sent out her boughs unto the sea and her branches unto the river. It filled the land.

My word, I think of Scotland. No other country in the world embraced the reformation principles so totally as did Scotland. In every little hamlet. In every little village. In every town and city. They were singing the praises of God.

Why? Look at Glasgow and its motto. Let Glasgow flourish. Ever heard of that? That's not the end of it. You know that? Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the word and the praising of his name. That's how the city was built.

God had established himself. God was working in so many places. It filled the land. The branches. She sent out her boughs unto the sea and her branches to the river. Expansion. Usefulness. Fruitfulness.

The Desolation of God’s People

God has done a wonderful thing. He's brought them out of Egypt and he's established them in the land. So we have the recognition of God's person and we have the contemplation of God's power. Then we have the desolation of God's people.

This is the burden that is upon his heart. He says there, Why hast thou broken down her hedges? So that all they which pass by the way do pluck her. The boar out of the wood doth waste it. The wild beast of the field doth devour it.

Verse 15. The vineyard which thy right hand hath planted and the branch that thou made is strong for thyself. It is burned with fire. It is cut down. They perish at the rebuke of thy countenance. That's the state we're in.

They pluck her. They waste it. The wild beast doth devour it. It is burned with fire. What a state. I was speaking to an Evangelical Church of Scotland minister recently and he said to me, Brother, Christianity is dying in Scotland.

And he quoted a few things. But that statement stayed with me for days. It's dying in Scotland. Fifty years ago, there were 2 ,400 ministers in the Church of Scotland. Today, there are 1 ,200 ministers in the Church of Scotland.

And in three years' time, 27 of the pulpits of the Church of Scotland, this is the national church, will be vacant. Twenty-seven. Twenty-five years ago, there were 260 ,000 children in the Church of Scotland Sunday schools.

Today, there are 70 ,000. That spells death, ladies and gentlemen. Have you seen these big churches closed? Have you seen them turned into a carpet factory or something else? I was driving down Dalry Road in Edinburgh a little while back, and I thought, when I got to the lights, I thought, am I in the right place?

Because there was a big church there. And I checked. Yes, I am in the right place. That church is gone. It's a block of flats now. So we just eliminate here and eliminate there. They pluck her. They waste it.

The wild boar of the field has come in. And desolation is settling upon. We have no longer any strong voice in any of the nation's doings. Years ago, there was a strong Christian voice. It's going and going and going.

So here we have a tragic situation. And if we think or look around and see these things, we wonder what is going to happen. Think of North Africa, right at the very beginning of the early church, one of the strongest places in the world of Christianity.

Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria and Oregon and all these greats. The great library was there. Alexandria, that was the great center of Christianity. Now, all the churches up there, Ephesus and all the others to which John wrote, all in Turkey, it's all Muslim now, trodden underfoot.

What's going to happen? I was listening to a program the other day when they were interviewing a man, a very prominent Catholic theologian on the radio in America. And he was speaking about the Muslim religion in Europe.

And he said, 50 of the cities in France, all the young people under 20 years of age, 50 of those in the cities in France are Muslim. And the French have 2 .1 children per family. And the Muslims have many.

All they have to do is to wait. And it will turn Muslim. What about us? Is this great heritage being trampled underfoot? Is it going? Is it disappearing? God is not dead. God is not dead. And if one place sinks, God has got his hand upon all the places.

I think of Nepal. 1950, they said they didn't know of one Nepalese Christian in Nepal. Now there are about half a million or more. Suddenly something has happened. What about Korea? 3 million to 12 million in 20 years.

Suddenly God has done a marvelous thing in a Buddhist country. What about South America? How God is working there. What about sections of Africa? God is working in a wonderful way. He despised all the open wounds of Africa.

What about China? This is the biggest revival in the history of the world. Who knows how many Christians there are? 60 million, some estimate, and others estimate 100 million. We don't know how many. But it's vast.

It's expanding. It's being gossiped. The gospel is being gossiped. And revival is spreading across the nation. What a fantastic thing. God is alive. His church is alive. His church lives because he lives.

God is there. But the sadness of this man as he gazes upon the church, he says, Oh, the wild boar has come in. The beast of the field is wasting it. Oh, what a tragedy. We look around and we see the situation here is too awful to contemplate.

Prayer as the Pattern for Revival

So we see not only the recognition of God's person. We see the contemplation of God's power. We see the desolation of God's people. And now we see the dedication to God's pattern. What did he do? Well, he prayed.

Can't do much else. Organization fails. Gimmicks fail. All our entertainment fails. What can we do? We can pray. Pray. Notice the direction of his prayer. He prayed there in the 4th verse and the 7th verse and the 14th verse and the 19th verse.

He says, Oh, Lord, God of hosts. Lord, God of hosts. Lord, oh, God of hosts. Oh, God there in the 3rd verse and in the 4th verse. Oh, Lord, God of hosts. He's praying to God. His direction is clear. He's not praying so that other people can hear and appreciate what he's saying.

He's praying to God. And he's praying to the Lord. L-O-R-D is Yahweh, the great covenant-keeping God. He's lifting his heart to God. And he's saying, Lord, I'm coming to you. You are a covenant-keeping God.

You are the self-existent deity. I'm coming to you. You who are the Lord God of the battles, of hosts, you know how to do battle. We can't set this battle in a right. We are going to fail if we're going to go forth against the enemy in this situation.

But you are the God of battles. You are the God of hosts. Come then, God of hosts. Lord, God of hosts. Oh, God, you are the covenant-keeping God. I'm coming to you who are the compassionate God, as we've already seen.

I'm coming to you, the one who is glorious, the one who is arrayed in light which no man can approach unto. The one who is in splendor, whose light penetrates the darkness and banishes it. I'm coming to you, O Lord.

His direction is clear. The direction of his prayer. And notice the desperation of his prayer. My word, he prayed. Folk have prayed in history. Remember how in the Kells revival in Northern Ireland in the 1859 revival, the four men gathered in the little school hall just outside of Ballymena in a little place called Kells.

And they gathered there and they prayed. And they prayed for three months. And God came to Northern Ireland. Across the sea from America, as a matter of fact. Where Lanthier had started a midday prayer meeting in New York and it spread across the nation.

And God used prayer to bring people in. God used prayer in the 39 revival in the island of Lewis. There were no ministers used in that revival. The people, the elders got together and they just called the people and they said, come and pray.

And the people came into their homes and they prayed and they got saved because the people were praying. There in the prayer meetings. It was a move of the spirit of God, 1939. All over Lewis. God uses this great element of prayer.

And so here, notice the desperation of his prayer. And notice that one little word in the verse 1. Oh, shepherd of Israel. Verse 3. Oh, God. Verse 7. Turn us again. Oh, God. Verse 14. Return, we beseech thee.

Oh, God. Verse 19. Oh, Lord God. See, that's the cry from his heart. Oh, Lord. Look at this people. You've brought them out of Egypt. You've established them in this place. And now they're being trampled underfoot.

Now they've got no influence. Now they're of no consequence at all. People are wasting them. They're just burnt. They're perishing in every hand. They're reducing in numbers those who seek thee. Oh, oh, the pain.

Oh, oh. You see, it's like a gushing sob wrenched out of the innermost being. He's crying. It passes words. Brothers and sisters, we have lost the...