I would like to call your attention this morning to the words that are to be found in the book of Genesis chapter 26 and verses 17 and 18. Verses 17 and 18 in the 26th chapter of the book of Genesis. And Isaac departed thence, and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there. And Isaac digged again, the wells of water which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father. For the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham, and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them. Now, those who were here last Sunday morning will realize we are continuing a theme and a subject which we began considering on that occasion. I am calling attention to this incident in the life of Isaac because of the light which it seems to me to throw upon the whole condition of the Church today, and especially in connection with this great and urgent need of revival and of reawakening. Now, let me just remind you of the general picture. We have seen certain things. We have emphasised the desperate character of the mead. Isaac was looking for water, and without water you can't live. And the problem confronting the Church today is the whole question of her life, her continuance, her real being and existence as the Church of the Living God. We are not interested in secondary and third-rate matters. The spiritual conflict that is going on in the world at the present time is desperate. And if we as Christian people fail to realize that, we cannot possibly be functioning as we are meant to do as members of the Christian Church at this present time. The need is indeed as urgent as it can possibly be. It is as urgent as it has ever been. All the authorities are prepared to agree in the statement that the church today is in a sense fighting and fighting for her life in a way that she has not had to do perhaps since the first centuries of her being and existence. The position is really desperate. Then we saw what Isaac didn't do in this situation. He didn't send for the prospectors and the diviners. The thing was too urgent for that. He must have a supply. And likewise, we see that you and I today have no time to be indulging in vain speculation or inquiries after truth so-called. The need is urgent, and therefore we must follow Isaac in what he actually did. He went back to the wells that they had digged in the days of Abraham his father. And I am suggesting that the essence of wisdom for the Church at a time like this is to look back into her own history. And as she does so, she will see very clearly that there have been similar periods of declension. Sometimes, as I say, as bad as the present, sometimes not as bad as the present. But there have been periods of declension. And it is important we should go back and read them and study them. For we shall find that in spite of the declension, God has again visited his people and has revived his church and his cause. So we dwelt upon the value of the history of the past as we face the problems of today. The mentality, the outlook, which takes it for granted that the past has got nothing to teach us is just not Christian. Christianity works on this principle, that what was revealed nearly two thousand years ago is what is needed most today, and that the problem is always the same. because God doesn't change and man in sin doesn't change. Very well, Isaac went back again to the wells that they had digged in the days of Abraham, his father. But when he did that and got there, he found that the Philistines had been there and had stopped these wells. They had thrown earth and all kinds of refuse into these wells. They had filled them with earth, we are told in verse 15. And that was the point at which we left off last Sunday morning. The proposition I am laying down, in other words, is this, that the trouble today in the Christian church, and the failure of the church to deal with the whole problem of sin in the world outside, is entirely due to the rubbish and the earth that the modern Philistines have thrown into the wells of God, and have thereby stopped them. Now, that is my proposition, which I must proceed to demonstrate and to elaborate. Now, the evidence, it seems to me, that is provided by the history of the Church herself, establishes this point, this principle that I am enunciating to you. beyond any doubt whatsoever. Now, I say that what history, the history of the Church manifests and demonstrates is this, that the trouble always has been due to this same activity of the Philistines, who have stopped the wells, thrown in material that's is there between the people in their need and the supply of water that is there down at the bottom. Now then, let me give you the evidence. I can summarize, I think, the history of the Christian church in this respect, in this way. The concealing and the neglect of certain truths and certain aspects of Christian truth has always been the chief characteristic of every period of declension in the long history of the Church. There is my first proposal, my first principle. You read the history of the Church and look at these periods of declension when the Church was moribund and didn't seem to count at all, and you will find that without a single exception, the thing that has most characterized the life of the Church at such a time has been either a denial or else a concealing or else a neglect of certain vital truths which are essential to the whole Christian position. Now, I could illustrate this at great length. Let me just pick out the most notable examples. Take, for instance, the period before the Protestant Reformation. The Dark Ages followed by that period. leading up to the Reformation in the 16th century. What was the great characteristic of the Church then? Well, it was this precise thing to which I am adverting. The vital truths of salvation could not be seen. They were entirely hidden, cluttered up, covered over by all that mass of teaching which characterized the Roman Catholic Church at that time. The people had no spiritual life. They were kept in darkness and in ignorance. They didn't know the great truths of the gospel and of salvation. Why not? Well, they were covered over by these other things. That was the great characteristic of the life of the church at that time. But then when you come forward to the 18th century, you'll find exactly the same thing. Before that great evangelical awakening of the 18th century, that great revival which we associate with the names of Whitefield and the Westleys particularly in this country. Before that great revival, the condition of the Church was again exactly as I'm describing it to you. It was murib and it was useless. The vast majority of people didn't attend a place of worship. There was little evidence at all of any vital Christianity. What was it due to? Well, the whole state of the Church at that time was again a repetition more or less of that which obtained before the Reformation, in a slightly different form of course. What was it? Well, it was that these great cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith were not being preached. They were not believed. What was the controlling climate? It was this. It was what was called deism. Deism. That's a system of truth which more or less, as I shall show you in a few moments, cuts God off from an active interest in his own universe. Deism and rationalism were in control. There were certain men who were disturbed about this. There was the great Bishop Butler, who wrote his famous Analogy of Religion. He wrote that book in order to try to counter this deadness of deism and of rationalism. But you see, that was the state of the Church. The living water of salvation was hidden, covered over, cluttered up by all this rationalism and philosophy that was covering it up. And then, in a most interesting way, when you come to read the history preceding the outbreak of the Great Revival of 1859, and particularly in Ireland, you will find exactly the same thing. Now this, as I say, is 1959, and we're all, I trust, thinking of that great revival that broke out in 1857 in the United States, and then later, end of 58 and 59, in Northern Ireland and in Wales and in Scotland, and even in Sweden and other places. You read the history, and incidentally, let me say in passing that There is one very excellent book available on the history of that revival in Northern Ireland, and if we can help you by supplying copies, we shall be glad to do so. We are going to obtain them, A History of the Revival of 1859 in Northern Ireland. But now this is what you'll find, that the period before the revival was again characterized by this same deadness, terrible deadness. And it took a particular form. The Presbyterian Church in Northern Ireland, years before that revival, I'm thinking particularly of the 20s and the 30s, had gone astray in its doctrine. It had espoused a doctrine which is called Arianism. And what Arianism is, is this. It denies the eternity and the Godhead of the Lord Jesus Christ. Arius taught. that the Lord Jesus Christ was a created being, that he was not co-equal and co-eternal with the Father. It denied him his Godhood. Now, that was the cause of the state of the Church, its utter deadness and uselessness. And it was only when that was corrected and swept aside, and the Church came back to the true doctrine, that the revival broke forth amongst the people. Well, now there is my first bit of evidence. The concealing and the neglect of certain vital truths has always been the chief characteristic of the life of the Church in every period of deadness and of declension. Secondly, no revival has ever been known in the history of churches which deny or ignore certain essential truths. Now I regard that as an astoundingly important point. You have never heard of a revival in churches so called which deny the cardinal and fundamental articles of our Christian faith. For instance, you have never heard of a revival amongst the Unitarians. And you've never heard of it because there's never been one. There has never been a revival amongst those who call themselves Unitarians. No, that's a sheer fact of history, and surely it behoves us to face that fact. In exactly the same way, there has never been a revival in the Roman Catholic Church. Thank God there have been individuals who were brought up and born as Roman Catholics who, having seen the truth, have been revived, but it has led invariably to their leaving that church. You've never had a revival in the Church as such. The thing is impossible because of the neglect and the covering over of these vital truths. Thirdly, you will find in the history of the Church very clearly that such churches have always opposed and have always persecuted those who have been in the midst of revival. Now, this is sheer history. This isn't my opinion. A hundred years ago, when this great revival broke out, the Unitarians opposed it in the United States, in Northern Ireland, everywhere. They always oppose revival. They're bound to be consistent with themselves. They're rationalists, and they hate it. Likewise, the Roman Catholics have always opposed revival, and have always persecuted bitterly those who have experienced it. You will read in the history of Northern Ireland, for instance, a hundred years ago, that they were actually putting on sale their so-called holy water and urging people to sprinkle it upon themselves and even to drink it in order to avoid and to evade this horrible, devilish thing which was being called revival. That is the attitude of that church always to a truly spiritual religion. Now, I'm not saying these things because it gives me any pleasure to say these things about the Roman Catholic Church or about the Unitarians, I'm adverting to them for one reason only, that if we really are concerned about revival, we've got to discover the things that hinder revival. And it is the concealing of vital truths and doctrines, you see, that has always done this. And then I come to my last principle under this heading, which is this. Without a single exception, It is the rediscovery of these cardinal doctrines that has always led ultimately to revival. There is always a preliminary to revival. A revival appears to come suddenly, and in a sense it does. But if you look carefully into the history, you will always find that there was something going on quietly. There was a preliminary. There was a preparation, unobserved by people. And the preparation, invariably, has been a rediscovery of these grand and glorious central truths. Now, take the history of the Protestant Reformation. Surely everybody knows, however ignorant we may be of church history, that it was when Martin Luther suddenly saw that grand truth of justification by faith only It was after he'd seen that that the Protestant revival came. Reformation precedes revival. It was getting back to that truth in the epistles to the Galatians and the Romans that prepared the way for the shedding of the Spirit. It happened in this country. It happened in every country where the Reformation spread. It was the same in the seventeenth century, not to the same degree, but it was the emphasis upon these truths that led to the great blessing that was experienced in the Puritan era. And then everybody surely must know that that was what happened in the 18th century. There you had that deadness, I say. Bishop Butler wrote his book, The Analogy of Religion. They'd started their Boyle lectures in an attempt to counter this rationalism, but it availed nothing. Then suddenly the revival seemed to come. Whitfield, Wesley's, and the others. Yes, but how did it come through these men? Well, everybody knows the story. What really made it possible for John Wesley to have the experience he had in Aldersgate Street, when his heart was strangely warmed by the Holy Spirit, was the fact that three months before, you see, he had the experience in Aldersgate Street on May 24, 1738. Yes, but in March 1738, his eyes were opened to the truth of justification by faith only. The famous conversation between here and Oxford, between Wesley and Peter Burler, it was all about justification by faith only. It was only after it seemed that, and it had gripped him, that the Holy Spirit came upon him and began to use him. And this is not only true of Wesley. The same thing had already happened, in a sense, to Whitefield. And certainly, if you go to Wales at that time, the greatest preacher there at that time was a man called Daniel Rowland, of whom Bishop Royal ventures to say that he was possibly the greatest preacher since the apostles. Well, his story was precisely the same thing. He was a curate, he was a preacher, but it was useless, it was dead, and nothing happened under his ministry. Then he went and listened to a great preacher called Griffith Jones one day, and he was convinced and convicted of the truth of justification by faith only. And it was only after seeing that and realizing it, though he hadn't felt its power, it was a few months after that, that suddenly one day, as he was taking his communion service, the Holy Spirit came upon him and filled him, and the great revival broke out in that country in the 18th century. Now this is, I say, always the case, and as I've already reminded you, it was the same a hundred years ago, and particularly in Northern Ireland. It was as they got rid of this Aryanism and saw the importance of the full truth concerning the person of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ that the mighty blessing came. There are then, I am urging, and doing so on the basis of history, certain truths which are absolutely essential to revival. And while these truths are denied or are neglected or ignored, we have no right to expect the blessing of revival. The Philistines keep on coming, and they throw in their earth and their rubbish, and the water of life is hidden out of sight. I confess freely that if I consulted my own inclinations and my own desires, I would not be referring to these things. I know that I am again exposing myself to the charge of censoriousness and criticism of others, and of separatism, and of individualism, and non-cooperation. But after all, if a man goes into a pulpit simply to consult his own feelings and his own reputation, he has no business to be there. It's no pleasant task to me to have to say the things I'm saying. I'm saying them for one reason only, that I have this profound conviction on the basis of the Scripture, supported to the hilt, as I've been showing you, by the history of the Christian Church, that while these truths are neglected, denied, or even ignored, you cannot have revival. We've got to start with this work of the Philistines. It's no use saying, let's pray for revival. There's something we have to do before that. The work of the Philistines has got to be cleared out. That's what Isaac did. They digged again the wells which they had digged in the days of Abram, his father. They cleared out the rubbish and the refuse and the earth, and there was the water as before. Every revival, I say, indicates and shows clearly that that preliminary work has always been done. And therefore, I have certain things which I must put before you. There are certain truths which must be believed. And I've given you my evidence for that statement. It isn't my opinion. It's history that says that. The Bible says it. There are certain truths that must be believed. There's never been revival until they have been believed. And the denial of them is a blank prohibition of revival. It cannot happen while these truths are denied. Therefore, I say we must look at them and we must take them in the right order. Now then, what are the truths that are denied by the Philistines? What are these fundamental truths that are concealed by the nefarious work of the Philistines? Here is the first, the truth concerning the sovereign, transcendent, living God who acts and who intervenes and erupts into the history of the Church. and of individuals. I must start with that. It is the foundation of all doctrine. Look at the apostle writing there to Timothy. Ah, things were difficult. Timothy was troubled. He was losing hope. He was wondering what the future was going to hold. Paul was aged and was dying. And here was Timothy frightened and alarmed. And Paul writes to him and says, well, what you're saying is very true. I know about these people who are denying the truths and so on. And what does he say to him? Nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure. The basis of everything is the sovereign, transcendent, living God, who in his eternal glorious freedom acts, intervenes in, erupts into, interferes the life of the whole Church and of individuals. And if there is anything that is more obvious than anything else in the life of the Church today, it is the failure to start with and to believe that truth. What have we today? We have the God of the philosophers. And the God of the philosophers is not the sovereign, living, transcendent God. He's an abstraction. They talk about the absolute and the uncaused cause. What a way to speak of God. God's not an abstraction. God's not a philosophic concept. God is, and he alone is. He is life and the author of all life and being. And they argue about him with their pipes in their mouths, and talk about him as if he's a term that they can handle and bambi about. You'll never have revival in such conditions. God, I say, is not an abstraction. Someone to be argued and thought about and fitted into our schemes. Philosophy has always been the curse in the life of the Church. and is the curse today. Another way in which this glorious truth about God is being concealed is by what they call their philosophy of immanence. God in everything. Not God transcendent, but God immanent. You see, they say God is in everything. God is in the whole of nature. It isn't exactly a pantheism, but it comes very near to it. But you see, the argument is that because God is in everything, you don't expect God to act from the outside. God's everywhere, in everything. Everything's sacred, and they dislike the distinction between the sacred and the secular. That's another way of denying His sovereignty and His eternal transcendence. And then this other thing which I've referred to as deism. And it's very common today, though it isn't often given that name. It was given the name 200 years ago, but it should be given the name today. It is a belief about God which believes in Him as the Creator only. But it says that God, having created the world, has no further interest in the world. It admits a kind of divine providence, but only in the realm of things material, not at all in the realm of the moral, and not at all in the realm of the spiritual. God, as it were, shut out of his own universe. He made it like a great watchmaker making a watch, and winding it up, and having done so, he just allows it to go on on its own. Deism. I don't want to stop with this, but I do ask you to examine even your own thoughts, and to realize the thoughts that are controlling There are so many in the Christian Church today, their idea of God is that He is a God who does not intervene. He is a God who does not act. He is a God who is passive. He is a God whom they are always having to approach. They are always moving. He remains away in some distant eternity, absolutely impassive, unmovable and not moving. He is this remote God. And they consequently don't believe in revival, because that means essentially God acting, God coming in, God breaking him. And so if we have the God of the philosophers and the God of the deists and the rationalists We shall never experience revival. Indeed, prayer almost becomes a waste of time and quite ridiculous, and how often that is precisely what is true to say about prayer. It's something formal and mechanical. You either read your prayers or you mutter them up. It's a formality. There's no living contact. Nothing's expected. God is banished into his own eternity, and man occupies the center of the stage, and it's his thoughts about God that matter, not God's thoughts about him. What is your belief in God, my friend? Do you believe in the sovereign, transcendent, everlasting God of the universe, who is active in his control still? Our Lord said, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Not your immanentist idea. neither some transcendence that banishes him out of the universe almost, but both God above and yet in, acting, interfering, the God that visits his people. How can we pray truly unless we are clear and correct in our ideas of the sovereign, living, transcendent God? You see, the work of the Philistines has been to obscure that, and it must be got rid of before we can get back again to the water. But let me hurry to a second thing. It follows from the first, the authority of this book, the authority of the Bible. The work of the Philistines is invariably this. I've got to speak generally because there are groups and divisions even amongst the Philistines, but I've got to put it generally to save time, otherwise this will occupy us for months and we must hurry on. They deny revelation. Revelation. Of course, if their view of God is what I've been describing, you cannot have revelation. They don't believe in revelation. They don't believe in inspiration. They don't really believe that God has revealed the truth concerning himself in propositions and in statements as they're recorded in this book which we call the Bible. They don't believe it. Well, what is their position? How do they arrive at truth? Ah, well, they say that they arrive at truth by searching for it, by their reason, by their understanding, by their speculation. Now, this can be put very simply. The whole emphasis today is upon man's search for God, as if God had never revealed himself at all. The whole case of the Bible is that God is searching for men, and that God has revealed himself to men because men, by searching, cannot find God. That's its fundamental proposition. But that, you see, is being denied. Everything today is being governed and controlled by the philosophers and the thinkers. It's what they think about God, and they define God, and they make God after their own image. And He is not God. He is an idol. Now, my argument is that as long as this is the case, we have no right to talk about revival or to expect it, still less to hope for it. What is our final authority in all these matters? What do I know about God and the possibility of blessing apart from what I have in this book? And do I claim that my mind and reason can select what's right in this and what's wrong in this, and that I only hold on to what I happen to agree with? That makes me the authority, not this. That makes my reason, not God's revelation. You go back and read the history of all the revivals of the past, and you will find that there have been periods when men and women have believed this book to be the word of God. They have believed it literally. They have accepted it. They have regarded this as the revelation of God and the truth concerning him and men's relationship to him and all that is involved. And they believe that this book has been written by men who have been divinely inspired. They've submitted themselves to it. They haven't stood above it as judges and as those who can decide what is right and what is wrong. The Philistines have been terribly active during the last 150 years. And the conditions are as they are today because people have got no authority at all. They've denied the authority of the scripture. They've set up their own opinions, philosophy, science, learning, all these things. The supernatural element is discounted. Miracles are disbelieved in. Science is supposed to be incompatible with them. All these things have been covered over. Any direct activity on the part of God is suspect. because it doesn't fit into the systems of the philosophers. My dear friends, these are urgent matters. I plead with you, go back and read the history of the past, and I think you will discover that there has never been a revival when men have put their ideas and opinions before the authority of the Word of God. And that brings me to my next, which is this. The third great cardinal article of belief—man in sin and under the wrath of God. Here is a doctrine that the natural man hates, detests, abominates. He feels it's insulting to him. He has always been like this. You go back again, I say, and read these histories, and you'll find in all those periods of deadness and of declension, people didn't believe in sin in that way. They didn't believe in the wrath of God. And I suppose there are no two things in connection with the Christian faith that are so abominated today as the doctrine of sin and the doctrine of the wrath of God. They're attempting to explain away sin in terms of psychology. They say it's insulting to mankind. And this idea of the wrath of God, why they say it's not God at all, that's the tribal God of the Old Testament. As one prominent preacher put it not so long ago, he said he didn't believe in that God of the Old Testament that sat on the top of Mount Sinai, shouting out his wrath and his condemnation. He said he believed in the God of Jesus. They say that the idea of the wrath of God is incompatible with the doctrine of God as love. Why am I calling these statements the work of the Philistines? For this reason, that the mere history of every revival brings this out immediately and on the very surface. that men and women in the midst of revival are conscious of two things at first. One, their own unutterable sinfulness. When you have a revival, you see men and women groaning, agonizing, under conviction of sin. They are so conscious of their unworthiness and their foulness and their vileness that they feel they cannot live. They don't know what to do with themselves. They can't sleep. They're in an agony of soul. Read the history, my dear friends. That's the thing that comes out. The thing that's taught in the Bible, in other words, that the human heart is desperately wicked and deceitful. Who can know it? In me, says the Apostle Paul, that is to say in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing, O wretched men that I am." Now in the Bible men and women feel their own sinfulness, their own unutterable unworthiness, their vileness, their foulness, their perversion. They see it, they are horrified at it, and cry out for deliverance. But then that confronts them with the wrath of a holy God. And that is the cause of their intensest agony. They know they're deserving of this wrath. And that God, to be God, must hate sin with all the intensity of His divine nature and being. And that He does so. He has said so in His Word. It's in the Old Testament and in the New. The Jesus whom people put up against the Old Testament, He taught about the wrath of God. He spoke about hell. He spoke about the place where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. It is He who uttered these thoughts. It's everywhere in the New Testament as well as in the Old. And I know of nothing that is so terrifying in the whole of the Bible as that statement there in that last book, in the book of Revelation, in chapter 6. which tells us of those men and women who at the end, when they will see him, will call to the mountains and the rocks to fall upon them and to hide them from what? From the wrath of the Lamb? The wrath of the Lamb? The Lamb of God, the incarnation of His love, it is His wrath that is the most terrifying thing of all. That is what happens in every period of revival and of reawakening. Men quake in the presence of the living and the holy God. And as they see their own sinfulness and unworthiness and vileness, they know not what to do nor where to turn. And there they are perhaps in agony for days and days. That's what you get in revival, you know. And yet I just put it to you simply, is not this the very truth that is being denied and hated and abominated at the present time? Isn't this the thing, perhaps above all things, on which the Philistines have cast their earth and their refuse and their rubbish? Oh, I'm not just contending for doctrines. God forbid that I should. I'm not anxious to strive. The very epistle I read at the beginning has told me not to strive. And I don't want to strive, but I'm speaking with urgency because of this profound conviction, I say again, that until men and women in the Christian church—I'm talking to men and women in the Christian church, I'm not thinking of those who are outside—I say, until men and women in the Christian church are humbled, abased, and fall to the earth before this holy, righteous—yea, to use the term of Jonathan Edwards—angry God. I see no hope of revival. It is our arrogance, it is our pride. It is this tendency to set ourselves up and to define God after our own image, instead of falling and prostrating ourselves before him. It is that which stands between us and these mighty blessings. Well, my dear friends, our time has gone. And I must needs perforce come to an end this morning. I could go on, I'm not halfway through the list of doctrines that I have to hold before you. But perhaps it's just as well that we leave it at this point for this occasion. Because if we haven't this foundation, there's no point in proceeding. You see, it isn't enough just to say, you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, I'm coming on to the doctrine of his person and his work. But you can't believe in him truly unless you start with that sovereign, transcendent, holy God who is and who acts. If you don't submit yourself entirely to the revelation that he's given, and if you're not aware of the plague of your own heart, and the vileness and the foulness of the nature that you've inherited originally from Adam, if you don't see your hopelessness and your utter despair before this holy righteous God who hates sin with the whole of his being. I say you have no right to talk about revival or to pray for it. What revival reveals above everything else is the sovereignty of God and the iniquity, the helplessness, the hopelessness of man in sin. May God give us grace to meditate upon these things. How do you think of God? How do you approach God? What's your attitude in His presence? Let us start with ourselves. This is personal. It's for every one of us. In revival, God takes hold of unknown men that nobody's ever heard of, insignificant so-called members of the Church. And it's through such people that he's often done his mightiest works. Who knows, it may be someone in this congregation whose name has never been heard, who may be the very instrument of God in the revival for which we long. Therefore, I appeal to you one by one, consider these things. Are you clear about them? Is there any evidence of the work of the Philistines in your life and in your heart? If there is, clear it out! Come back to these foundations. Amen. 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