12 minute read
My Pulpit Message notes: Hope in the Saviour-Shepherd
from TT 170
by TIMES TODAY
Hope in the Saviour-Shepherd.
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How do we know when revival comes? How does it look like? How do I know when God answers that prayer for revival?
Suggestions of what to expect in revival.
1. Passion for God’s Word.
When God revives His people there’s a new awareness of the greatness, goodness and the holiness of God. God reveals that primarily through His Word, because God is a revealing God. He has revealed Himself to us supremely through the Lord Jesus Christ and we know about Jesus through God’s Word.
2. We will be people of worship and prayer.
Then we will realise that having seen afresh about this holiness and freshness of God, we realise our unworthiness before Him. So there’s confession, repentance and people come to the LORD.
3. God’s people then begin to live lives of holiness, aligning themselves, their actions and everything they do to God’s Word.
That holiness begins to permeate even in the society. So when we talk about transforming nations, it is from what God is doing and has done.
As you look at Scripture, every time there is evidence of revival and renewal, there’s always a passion for God’s Word. There’s Nehemiah. If you look at the reforms of the Old Testament (O.T), there’s Josiah in 2 Kings 22. In the New Testament (N.T) in Acts 6:1, “So the Word of God continued to spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem grew rapidly, a great number of priest came to the faith.”
- The Word of the LORD grew. - The Church grew.
In Scripture, particularly in the N.T in the book of Acts, the Church growing is in the same breadth as the Word of God grew and spread. Acts 12:24, “But the Word of God continues to spread and flourish.” God’s Word spreads, the church spreads. God’s Word flourishes, the church flourishes.
Let’s continue to pray for our own revival, the revival of this church and our country, transforming the nation and the nations.
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In the book of Micah and all the prophetic books, both the major and minor prophets, there’s a sense in which this is a book of doom. But actually it isn’t because the book of Micah and other prophetic books you could says they are divided in three parts:
1. What is the problem? Why is God angry with His people?
2. It gives a diagnosis, but it also says what the judgement is going to be unless they are willing to turn back to Him.
3. There’s always a message of renewal/revival, of transformation when we say yes to Him.
Micah 6
It starts with God being unhappy, because you have heard all these promises God has given to His people, you would think that you would be responding in repentance and gratitude, but they don’t. So the section starts with God asking,
“What have I done to you that makes you treat me like this? Have I not blessed you? Have I not been good to you? I have taken care/provided for you and then you treat me like this? Because you see, the sins they were committing to one another were ultimately sins against God.
Micah 6:1-5
Don’t you remember that I would put a word of blessing instead of a curse in Balaam’s mouth. Don’t you remember. Have I not been good to you? Why do you treat Me like this?
- They responded, perhaps they way we respond. They said,
(Micah 6:6-7)
- LORD aren’t you seeing how we are sacrificing for you. Don’t you see the way we give to your causes. Don’t you see the way we spend and are spent for your causes?
- What does God say to that? Micah 6:8. He says, no, I don’t need your sacrifices. They are meaningless to Me. And don’t think about offering your firstborns. That is what pagans do to their gods. That’s not Me. You cannot buy, or work for your salvation, God is reminding them.
1 Samuel 15:22
God does not require any sacrifice from you.
- Ephesians 2:8-9
- Anyone who does not know the LORD, or you are thinking what could I do to please the LORD? God is not interested in your sacrifices. Whatever we receive from God is through His grace and mercy.
- This response that God is going to give is not for those who do not know Him, unbelievers. It is not for someone wanting to know, what is it that I need to do to know You and have a relationship with You? It is not sacrifices that is required.
Whatever we have from God is by His grace. And so God responds, Here is what I want. What I really want is not sacrifices. It is not the blood of thousands of lambs. God is not interested in ritual, but in righteousness.
- This is what God could not find among the people there, and what God does not find among His people now. Justice is giving people what they deserve. Mercy is giving people what they don’t deserve.
- In summary Micah 6:8 is saying,
act justly. God is asking His people, we who are believers, act justly. Be just and fair with people. Don’t take advantage of one another. Don’t mistreat people. Deal with others honestly, fairly and justly. If there are signs that God is working among us, that we are people who have been redeemed, God is saying this is what I want to see among us.
- Secondly, love mercy, not just like, love it. Be merciful to others in the same way God has been merciful towards you. Don’t punish people for their sins and keep reminding them of the past, but forgiving as Christ has forgiven you. God says, “Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy.” You want mercy? Then show mercy as God is.
- Thirdly, walk humbly with your God. Know your place with God. Be humble about your life. And what you have and have accomplished because it is all from the hand of God and God can take it away as He pleases.
God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. We ought to be quick to repentance from sin, but God honours a broken and contrite heart. He will oppose the proud and the arrogant. We need to walk humbly with God.
Justice and mercy
Justice comes first and then God shows mercy. This is the theme of the book of Micah. The reason for that is that justice can only go so far and the mercy takes over. God is supremely just. He will give everyone what they deserve.
No one will ever be able to say God is unfair, but our God goes beyond justice and gives us what we don’t deserve and that is sheer mercy. Praise be to God!
- This is what God was looking for and He didn’t find it. He got blood of thousands of lambs and they kept the rituals, they kept up on the religious side, but God was looking for more than that.
- The one thing that matters is how men stand with God and one test of whether we stand with God is how we stand with men. Relationships with others.
- We should be glad that God goes beyond justice and shows us His mercy, because none of us would be here if it were not for His mercy. There go I but for the grace and mercy of God.
Why this is so important for God’s people to understand?
Could God have forgiven us without the cross? This is where the cross comes in, because if God forgave us without the cross, He would be merciful and not just. And if He refused to forgive our sins and punished our sins, He wouldn’t be merciful. -
Many of us struggle between justice and mercy and every time around elections we argue between what is more important than the other. Is it justice, or peace? Is it justice, or mercy? For God, both of them are important. The God of righteousness is as concerned about justice as He is about immorality.
- In North America, rightwing politicians and believers are concerned about immorality and those in the leftwing care more about injustice, but God is more concerned about both because righteousness covers about everything that is wrong in God’s sight.
- Pray that there will be more Micahs of today who will raise their voices on behalf of the weak and are exploited and says God is angry about the way we behave/treat one another.
Micah 7
Chapter seven is a glorious passage, but doesn’t start that way because Micah is disappointed. He has said all these wonderful things about God and what God has done and what God will do, but the people are not responding. His prophecy has not brought about change.
He longs to see fruit even the evidence of the first fruit or early figs, but there was none.
- He notes that not one person remains. No one in operating in grace in verse two.Then in verse four, he says that when people get into contact with God’s people, when non believers interact with believers, they find that they are just live everyone else. Among God’s people they find evil, corruption and injustice.
- Micah doesn’t give up and in verse 7, he still persist in hoping in God. This covenant keeping God will hear me.
- This is why we must persist in prayer, asking that God revives us and changes us and our nation.
God’s promise of restoration (Micah 7:18-20)
Micah had been miserable in this cold courtroom and then he realised that God Who is the Judge is not only going to be a just God, but is also going to be a merciful God. That God is the One who is going to declare the sentence, but God is also the One who is going to pay the price.
- God is the One who through His justice is going to judge us, but through His mercy He gives us the Lord Jesus Christ who is able to take away our condemnation and sin so that we can be right with God again.
- So in verses 18-20 he says,
- God will have dominion over our sins. The things that oppress us and make it difficult for us to follow after God. God will conquer. He will have dominion. He will subdue our iniquities. He will cast our sins in the sea of forgetfulness.
- When God hurls and casts our sins into that sea, He puts a sign, ‘no fishing is allowed here’, because God has thrown our sin so far away, they will never be remembered.
- In summary, God is incomparable. There is no other God like our God who does these things. He is a forgiving God, He is a merciful God. He is a compassionate God. He is the God who casts our sins into the sea of forgetfulness.
- Psalm 103:12
- Isaiah 43:25
