I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit—I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people” (Romans 9:1-3).
We have no problem with, indeed, we even hurry to satisfy our wants, and take care of our business, but what of God’s wants and His business? What of the thousands upon thousands of decaying, dying, and empty churches? What of the multitudes of professing believers who have progressed very little or none in the Christian life since they first believed? What of the multiplied millions of unredeemed, Christ-starved, hell-bound souls, who at this very second, are one missing breath away from eternal damnation, while we feed our earthly desires and ignore God’s desires?
Warren Wiersby, in his 1991 book, The Integrity Crisis, wrote, “Will Rogers was known for his laughter, but he also knew how to weep. One day he was entertaining at the Milton H. Berry Institute in Los Angeles, a hospital that specialized in rehabilitating polio victims and people with broken backs and other extreme physical handicaps. Of course, Rogers had everybody laughing, even patients in really bad condition. Suddenly, he left the platform and hurried to the rest room. Milton Berry followed him to give him a towel. When he opened the door, he saw Will Rogers leaning against the wall, sobbing like a child” (https://sermoncentral.com/sermon-illustrations/28903/will-rogers-was-known-for-his-laughter-but-he-by-john-shearhart). Friends, I dare say that perhaps what reveals the truth of what kind of people we really are is not so much what makes us laugh or whether we can make others laugh but what makes us weep.
The prophet, Jeremiah, lamenting the sinful state of his countrymen, prayed in anguish in Jeremiah 9:1-2: “Oh that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! Oh that I had in the desert a wayfarers’ lodging place; that I might leave my people and go from them! For all of them are adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.” To which God replied in the next verse: “They bend their tongue like their bow; lies and not truth prevail in the land; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know Me.” Jesus, Himself, the Lord of heaven and earth took a whip (John 2:15) and ran arrogant, religious sinners out of the temple, because they turned it into a commercialized den of thieves, when it should have been, in his own words, a house of prayer (Matthew 21:12-13). Shortly afterward, He stood contemplating the spiritual powerhouse that Israel should have been and wept tears of anguish, saying in Matthew 23:37-38: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate.”
The fiery preacher, Leonard Ravenhill, left the Church a stirring, timeless challenge, when he wrote: “The biggest single factor contributing to delayed Holy Ghost revival is this omission of soul travail. We are substituting propaganda for propagation. … The only power that God yields to is that of prayer. We will write about prayer-power, but not fight while in prayer. A title, undeniably true of the Church today, would be, ‘We Wrestle Not!” We will display our gifts, natural or spiritual; we will air our views, political and spiritual; we will preach a sermon or write a book to correct a brother in doctrine. But who will storm hell’s stronghold? Who will say the devil nay? Who will deny himself good food or good company or good rest that hell may gaze upon him wrestling, embarrassing demons, liberating captives, depopulating hell, and leaving, in answer to his travail, a stream of blood-washed souls?” Leonard Ravenhill, Why Revival Tarries (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1987), 61-2].
The apostle, Paul, offers the vivid portrait of the mind and heart of a deeply devoted follower of Jesus toward others who remain separated from God and condemned to hell because of their stubborn, rebellious hearts. In Romans 9:1-3, he wrote: “I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit—I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people.” How could anyone feel this tormented and distraught about their fellow man? Simply put, Ravenhill, like Paul, grasped the horror of sin’s rightful end and the permanency of life eternal in hell receiving the unending wrath of God. Thus, with unusual sorrow, this apostle of Christ felt a rare combination of love, fear, worry, and concern that left him willing to suffer hell’s torment if only his countrymen would turn from their sins, believe in Jesus, take Him as Lord of their lives, be born-again, and become children of God with the promise of eternity in the peace, bliss, comfort, and plenty of heaven.
Some unknown writer left a stirring, gripping, riveting warning: “The loss of a friend is like that of a limb; time may heal the anguish of the wound, but the loss cannot be repaired” (https://sermoncentral.com/sermon-illustrations/54313/the-loss-of-a-friend-is-like-that-of-a-limb-by-sermon-central). Friend, if the loss of a loved one to physical death is painful enough, how much more the loss of him or her to hell? To lose a loved one to death is not eternal separation for true followers of Christ. There is the promised hope of being reunited in heaven. However, for a Christian to lose an unbelieving loved one to death means permanent, eternal separation without even the slimmest hope of seeing him or her again in the afterlife. Remember the promise of Jesus to the rich man who died and went to hell. Peering across the great divide and seeing Lazarus enjoying the peace of heaven, he heard dreadful, unalterable words emanating from heaven recorded in Luke 16:25-26: “He (Lazarus) is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.”
According to Ravenhill, Charlie Peace was a criminal who cared not one iota about the laws of God or man until his arrogant rebellious living caught up with him. He was arrested and condemned to death. On that fatal morning, Peace’s prison door opened, and he was escorted by a guard and the prison chaplain to the death chamber in Armley Jail in Leeds, England. As they walked, the chaplain read Bible verses aloud as was his custom. The criminal asked him what he was reading to which the chaplain replied, “The Consolations of Religion.” Peace was astounded by the chaplain’s professional, cold, unemotional manner in which he read about hell. Ravenhill wondered how any professing Christian could be so unfeeling and remain dry-eyed while escorting an unrepentant sinner to his death and warning him about hell’s bottomless pit into which the man was momentarily going to fall. Ravenhill’s exact words were “could this preacher believe the words that there is an eternal fire that never consumes its victims, and yet slide over the phrase without a tremor? Is a man human at all who can say with no tears, ‘You will be eternally dying and yet never know the relief that death brings’? The whole matter-of-factness was more than Peace could take, so he said to the chaplain, “Sir, if I believed what you and the church of God say that you believe, even if England were covered with glass from coast to coast, I would walk over it, if need be, on hands and knees and think it worthwhile living, just to save one soul from an eternal hell like that!” (Ravenhill, Why Revival Tarries, 33-4).
Would that every child of God knows that kind of intimate and deep anguish over sin that leads to sincere longing for the salvation of their family members, friends, and neighbors. Moreover, may ever child of God come to feel anguish over sin that would lead to thorough repentance of lukewarm, passionless, backslidden Christianity, a higher view of God, sincere worship of God, and holy concern for what God wants. Maybe then, just maybe, we would see a genuine concern for the revitalization and renewal of Christ’s decaying, declining, and dying local churches. Maybe then, we would experience true revival and spiritual awakening in our communities, nation, and world.
Beloved, today is the day of salvation. Today is the day of church revitalization and renewal. Today is the day of renunciation of unfeeling, backslidden Christianity. Today is the day of sacrificial living and giving. Today is the day of revival. Today is the day for God’s people to get on their minds and hearts exactly what is on God’s mind and heart.
Moreover, if not today, when?