Watchman Radio Hour

David Sholty: Welcome to the Watchman Radio Hour. Coming to you from Portland, Oregon here in the beautiful Northwest. This is David Sholty, your announcer.

The Watchman Radio Hour is a production of Watchman Radio Ministries International, an evangelistic ministry reaching out to the peoples of the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And now here's our speaker Alex Dodson to bring you this week's message from God's word.

Alex Dodson: The great evangelical awakening in England in the 18th century saw thousands come to Christ in repentance and faith. Great evangelists like Whitfield and Wesley went into the open fields and preached to multitudes of people. Many heard the gospel and believed in their hearts. George Whitfield came to America in the 1740s and he preached throughout the colonies and multitudes came to Christ.

He had a heart to preach the gospel and he did, and he wrote these words: "O that I could do more for Him! O that I was a flame of pure and holy fire and had a thousand lives to spend in the dear Redeemer's service! The sight of so many perishing souls every day affects me much and makes me long to go if possible from pole to pole to proclaim redeeming love."

He saw the fields in America white under harvest and he wrote: "Here are thousands and thousands who ask to spiritual things, know not their right hand from their left." Whitfield preached to thousands in the British Isles. From Scotland he wrote: "I have preached about 90 times since I left London and perhaps to 140,000 people." This was well before the days of the microphone and loudspeaker, yet thousands flocked to hear Whitfield speak in the open air in both Britain and America.

The Countess of Huntington wrote of Whitfield's ministry: "Mr. Whitfield's sermons and exhortations were close, searching, experimental, awful and awakening. His discourses in the neighboring churches were attended with power from on high and the kingdom of darkness trembled before the gospel of Christ." Oh, that we had another George Whitfield in our midst today to preach God's word with mighty power. May God send such a one in our day.

The second great awakening in America started in the late 1700s and lasted, some say, for up to 50 years. Ebenezer Porter wrote about the beginning of this great awakening in New England and what happened from 1798 to 1808. He related the commencement of these revivals was in some cases attended with overwhelming power.

The following statement from Reverend Dr. Griffin respects the people of his charge in Newark, New Jersey and illustrates in a touching manner the foregoing particular as well as this, concerning the beginning of the work in that place. He says: "The appearance was as if a collection of waters long suspended over the town had fallen at once and deluged the whole place. For several weeks the people would stay at the close of every evening service to hear some new exhortation and it seemed impossible to persuade them to depart until those on whose lips they had hung had retired."

"At those seasons you might see a multitude weeping and trembling around their minister and many others standing as astonished spectators of the scene and beginning to tremble themselves. One Sabbath after the second service when I had catechized and dismissed the little children, they gathered around me weeping and inquiring what they should do. I know not but an hundred were in tears at once. The scene was as affecting as it was unexpected. Having prayed with them again and spent some time in exhortation, I attempted to send them away but with all my entreaties I could not prevail on them to depart until night came on and then I was obliged to go out with them and literally force them from me."

"But this incident to the commencement of revivals of religion soon subdued and the work has ever since proceeded but this time in profound silence." God does great and mighty things. He has sent revival in the past to this nation and we must pray that he will do it again.

Our text for today is Isaiah 55:8-9. Let us hear the word of God. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." Our Father in heaven, we thank you for the Bible that you have given to us. We thank you that it's your infallible word that we can put our full confidence in everything that it says. And now, oh Father, we pray that you will send forth the Holy Spirit in great convicting power. In Christ's name we pray, amen.

God is holy and God is merciful. Sin prevails in this nation and we need to be confronted with a holy God to see how sinful we really are. Once we realize our sin, then we can turn to God in repentance and faith and he will be merciful to us. God is holy but he is also merciful. Oh, would you look to him today and come to Christ? He will not turn you away. He came to save sinners, not the righteous. May God send his Holy Spirit into our midst right now and convict of sin and draw us to Christ.

Now let us see in the first place today that God is holy. Verses 8 and 9 again says: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." God is holy. His ways and thoughts are different from ours. We may think we are okay, yet when we see a holy God we will know we are sinners.

E.J. Young in commenting on this passage writes: "God's ways and thoughts, unlike those of the wicked, are righteous, and for that reason the wicked must abandon his own ways and thoughts." J.A. Alexander of Old Princeton wrote: "We have here a reason given why the sinner must forsake his ways and thoughts because they are incurably at variance with those of God himself." God is holy, we are sinful. Through the gospel God confronts us with our sinfulness and his holiness and calls us to repentance.

We are called to adopt God's ways and thoughts. God calls us to a holy life. When we come to Christ, we are called to follow him in holiness. 1 Peter 1:15 says: "But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, for it is written: 'Be holy because I am holy.'" Leviticus 11:44 says: "I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy because I am holy. I am the Lord who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy because I am holy."

In Leviticus 19:1-2 it says: "The Lord said to Moses, 'Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: Be holy because I the Lord your God am holy.'" Leviticus 20:7 it says: "Consecrate yourselves and be holy because I am the Lord your God." Matthew Henry, the great Puritan commentator, wrote: "If we look up to heaven, we find God's counsels there high and transcendent, his thoughts and ways infinitely above ours. The wicked are urged to forsake their evil ways and thoughts and to return to God, that is, to bring their ways and thoughts to concur and comply with his."

Today we are trampling on God's laws and elevating our own laws which are contrary to his. God's word nowhere says it is okay for men to marry men and for women to marry women. On the contrary, God's word condemns such conduct. In Mark 10:6-7 Jesus said: "But at the beginning of creation God made them male and female. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife." Today we are doing things and passing laws about these things that God never intended. Judgment is on us because of this and God calls us as a nation to repent. God is holy and calls us to be holy.

And then let us see in the second place today that God is merciful. Again our text says: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." We may think that God will not forgive our sin, yet God's ways are higher than ours and he will and can forgive our sins.

In the old Geneva Bible note on verse 8 it says: "Although you are not soon reconciled one to another and judge me by yourselves, yet I am most easy to be reconciled. Yea, I offer my mercies to you." E.J. Young writes: "God's mercy and grace are such also as could never have entered the heart of the wicked man apart from special revelation." Matthew Henry writes: "Peter thought it a great deal to forgive seven times, but God meets returning sinners with pardoning mercy. He forgives freely. We forgive and cannot forget, but when God forgives sin, he remembers it no more."

And Calvin wrote: "In short, God is infinitely compassionate and infinitely ready to forgive us, but it ought to be ascribed exclusively to our unbelief if we do not obtain pardon from him." God does forgive sin and he will forgive your sin if you come to him in repentance and faith.

And then let us see that God has made a way to forgive us. God has reached out to us in our sin. He has made a way to be reconciled to us. In Romans 5:6-8 it says: "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, and though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

In Colossians 1:21 it says: "Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation." God has made a way for us to be forgiven of our sins and to be made right with God by the cross of Christ. Christ died for us to bring us to God. You can be forgiven but you must come by way of the cross.

God has reached out to us through Christ's death on the cross. Come to the cross to be forgiven of your sins. Don't wait, come right now. God is reaching down to you right now where you are. He's reaching down to you through the gospel. Don't hesitate another moment to come. John 3:16 says: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

And then let us see in the third place today that we should come to God. Here is an invitation to come to God. He calls you to come to him as you are. In Luke 5:31-32 it says: "Jesus answered them: It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." Makes no difference who you are. Maybe you've sinned a little or maybe you have sinned a lot. Jesus came to save sinners and he came to save you.

In Romans 5:20 it says: "Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound, but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." There is grace for the sinner at the cross. God calls you to come. He calls you to come to the cross. He calls you to come to Christ who died for your sins. Believe on him and be saved.

And then come in repentance in awe of his great holiness. 1 Peter 1:16 again says: "For it is written: Be holy because I am holy." In Job 42:5-6 Job says: "My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes." In Isaiah 6:5 Isaiah says: "Woe to me! I cried. I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty."

God's ways and thoughts are far above ours. We are sinful, but he is holy. Stand in awe of his holiness and repent in dust and ashes. In Luke 5:1-11 it says: "One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, with the people crowding around him and listening to the word of God, he saw at the water's edge two boats, left there by the fishermen who were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. And then he sat down and taught the people from the boat."

"And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon: Put out into the deep water and let down the nets for a catch. Simon answered: Master, we worked hard all night and haven't caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets. And when they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. And so they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that the boats began to sink."

"And when Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus's knees and said: Go away from me, Lord. I am a sinful man. For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon's partners. And then Jesus said to Simon: Don't be afraid; from now on you will catch men. And so they pulled their boats up on shore and left everything and followed him."

"Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man." They were awed by the Lord. They were awed in the presence of a living God. Peter was confronted with the living God, Jesus Christ. He saw his glory, saw this great miracle and he knew that he was a sinful man. When we see God in his great holiness, we know we are sinners. This must drive us to our knees to seek God's mercy. Come, you sinners, come to Christ and be forgiven of your great sins. Only he can save you.

Jesus said: "I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me." George Whitfield preached in the great Cambuslang revival in Scotland in the 1740s where God worked in a marvelous way bringing sinners to faith and repentance. Dallimore writes of that great revival saying: "There was no attempt at sensationalism, showmanship or entertainment. Rather this work was of an opposite nature."

As a report approved by McCulloch, who was one of the leaders of the revival, stated: "This work was begun and carried on under the influence of the great and substantial doctrine of Christianity. The declaration of these great doctrines under McCulloch, Whitfield and others was used to affect a deep consciousness of the reality and character of God and a corresponding awareness of sin. It brought deep and lasting repentance."

Dallimore relates how one of the leaders of the revival assessed the movement after nine years had passed by. He writes: "This work embraced all classes, all ages and all moral conditions. Cursing, swearing, drunkenness were given up by those who had come under its power. It kindled remorse for acts of injustice. It won forgiveness from the vengeful. It bound pastors and people together with a strong bond of sympathy. It raised an altar in the household. It made men students of the word of God and brought them in thought and purpose and effort into communion with their Father in heaven."

Dallimore continues: "And for long years afterwards humble men and women who dated their conversion from the work at Cambuslang walked among their neighbors with an unspotted Christian name and then died peacefully in the arms of one whom they had learned in the revival days to call Lord and Savior."

The first great awakening in America in the 1730s and 40s was a marvelous time in the history of our nation. Today few even know it ever occurred, but it did and multitudes were converted to Christ. Dallimore writes: "The Great Awakening, like the revival at Cambuslang, arose from a new and deeper consciousness of the presence of God. A sense of God in his holiness, majesty and justice seized men's minds and in doing so shattered the usual satisfaction with a mere mindless scent to the existence of a deity and made them crouch for his mercy and to long to know him and love him."

"The message was carried chiefly through preaching. There was a great wave of evangelistic activity with scores of ministers not only preaching with increased frequency and power in their own pulpits but also serving as evangelists in other places." Dallimore goes on to say: "The awakening was manifest above all in transformed lives. And such transformed lives were gradually bringing the transformation of communities in so much that it was asserted that the millennium seemed about to begin."

These then, these mighty spiritual results, this deep new consciousness of God, this sense of human sin and need, this experience of conversion and of a new and holy life were the essential characteristics of the Great Awakening. Whitfield wrote: "One minister called to another to help drag the gospel net and by all accounts one would have imagined the millennium was coming indeed." Songs of joy could be heard as people praised the Lord during the first Great Awakening.

Dallimore relates this about Whitfield traveling through the colonies in 1745: "At New York those strong statements both for and against him were made in the newspapers. Crowds as immense as those of former years flocked to his preaching."