Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2426
“Will You not revive us again that Your people may rejoice in You” Psalm 85:6.
BRETHREN, if you will pray this prayer, it will be better than my preaching from it! And my only motive in preaching from it is that you may pray it. Oh, that at once, before I have uttered more than a few sentences, we might begin to pray by crying, yes, groaning deep down in our souls,” Will You not revive us again that Your people may rejoice in You?”
Notice the style of the praying here—it is in the form of a question and in the shape of a plea. There are very few words and none that can be spared. Godly men, when they prayed of old, meant it! They did not pray for form’s sake, neither were they very particular about uttering goodly words and fine-sounding sentences—they came to close grips with God. They questioned Him, they pleaded with Him. They drove home the nail and tried to clinch it. I see that in the very shape of the prayer, “Will You not—will You not—will You not revive us again that Your people may rejoice in You?” Oh, that we knew how to pray! I fear that we do not. We are missing the sacred art, we are losing the heavenly mystery—we are but apprentice hands in prayer. Compared with such a man as John Knox, whose prayers were worth more than an army of ten thousand men, or compared with the prayers of Luther, how few of us can pray!
Luther was a man of whom they said, as they pointed at him in the street, “There goes a man who can have anything he likes to ask of God.” He was the man who, by his prayer, dragged Melancthon back from the very gates of death and, what was more, the man who could shake upon her seven hills the harlot of Rome as she never had been shaken before, because he was mighty with God in prayer! Oh, that I could but stir up my Brothers and Sisters to be instant in season and out of season, if there is such a thing as out of season with God in prayer! Let us get away to our closets! Let us cry mightily to Him! Let us come to close quarters with Him and say, “Will You not revive us again that Your people may rejoice in You?
I. To come at once to the text, let us ask, WHAT IS THE TIME FOR SUCH A PRAYER AS THIS?
We shall have to look at the Psalm, itself, to help us in the answer. What is the time for offering such a prayer as this? It is, dear Friends, when we can remember some gracious acts of God in the past. Read—“Lord, You have been favorable unto Your land. You have brought back the captivity of Jacob…Will You not revive us again that Your people may rejoice in You?” Ah, now, some of you can remember grand times, when you were younger than you now are, when the Lord was present with His people in a very glorious fashion—when He laid bare His arm and the people were made to feel His Divine Presence in the preaching of the Word. Do you remember it? The 44th Psalm begins, “We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us what work You did in their days, in the times of old.” None of us can remember the early Methodist days—they were over before we were born—but they were very wonderful times when the preaching of the Word of God was like fire in the midst of the people!
[Our friends need not be troubled by the flying of a dove. It will soon go out of the window, no doubt. Let us believe that it has come as a messenger of good. Oh, that the blessed Dove would, Himself, come from Heaven and bring salvation in His wings!]
Well, I was saying that those first Methodist times were brave days, so our fathers have told us, though we cannot remember them. But some of you can remember when you were members of a happy congregation, all united, all earnest, all pleading with God and there were grand Sabbaths, then! You can never forget those days of the Son of Man upon the earth, when conversions were numerous and all the people of God rejoiced and were ready to shout for joy. If you have any recollection of such days as those, pray this prayer, “Lord, what You have done, You can do! Will You not revive us again? You can outdo all we have yet seen of Your work. Come, now, we beseech You, and repeat Your mercies in the eyes of Your people.”
After some mercy drops, then, it becomes us to cry for showers of blessing. Pray again the petition that we sang just now—
“Revive Your work, OLord, And give refreshing showers, The glory shall be all Your own, The blessing, Lord, be ours.”
Another time for such a prayer is after tokens of Divine displeasure, when we are somewhat under a cloud. Thus the Psalmist says, “Will You be angry with us forever? Will You draw out Your anger to all generations? Will You not revive us again that Your people may rejoice in You?” I feel that the Church of God is generally, at this time, in a very sad state and though I am told that I am a croaker, and too nervous, and so on, yet I know what I know, and I speak not without clear information nor without a heart that is heavy at knowing so much of the evil of the times! And, because the times are dark and God’s Gospel is at a discount, and prayerfulness of spirit and holiness of life are things not so common among us as they should be, therefore I think that it is time to cry to the Lord, “Will You not revive us again?” I entreat God’s people to pray, now, if they have ever prayed in their lives! This is a dark hour of the night—now cry mightily unto the Lord, the God of our salvation—that He will turn our captivity and send the daystar which shall herald that day that shall never know a night! It is good to pray when you have seen good days and it is equally right to pray when you think that the days are not what they should be.