In 1857 there was a 46 year old man named Jeremiah Lamphere who lived in New York City. Jeremiah loved the Lord tremendously, but he didn’t feel that he could do much for the Lord until he began to feel a burden for the lost and accepted an invitation from his church to be an inner city missionary. So in July of 1857 he started walking up and down the streets of New York passing out tracts and talking to people about Jesus, but he wasn’t having any success. Then God put it on his heart to try prayer. So he printed up a bunch of tracts, and he passed them out to anyone and everyone met. He invited anyone who wanted to come to the 3rd floor of the Old North Dutch Reform Church on Fulton St. in New York City from 12 to 1 on Wednesday to pray. He passed out hundreds and hundreds of fliers and put up posters everywhere he could.
Wednesday day came and at Noon nobody showed up. So Jeremiah got on his knees and started praying. For 30 minutes he prayed by himself when finally five other people walked in. The next week 20 people came. The next week between 30 and 40 people came. They then decided to meet every day from 12:00 to 1:00 to pray for the city. Before long a few ministers started coming and they said, "We need to start this at our churches". Within six months there were over 5000 prayer groups meeting everyday in N.Y. Soon the word spread all over the country. Prayer meetings were started in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Washington D.C. In fact President Franklin Pierce started going almost every day to a noonday prayer meeting. By 1859 some 15,000 cities in America were having downtown prayer meetings everyday at noon and thousands were brought to Christ. The great thing about this revival is that there is not a famous preacher associated with it. It was all started by one man wanting to pray. People have been seeking God, and seeking a relationship with God through Jesus Christ for centuries.
The text this morning is a familiar one from 2 Chronicles chapter 7, verses 14 through 16; “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to prayer made in this place. For now I have chosen and sanctified this house, that My name may be there forever; and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually.” If we pray and seek God’s face. We have been searching for the face of God since time began.
Historically, Jesus Christ’s physical appearance remains a mystery. No one knows what he actually looked like. Nowhere in the Gospel accounts is he described, and no likeness of him of any kind in any form can be dated conclusively to the years of His life on earth. Yet, His face is the most familiar and recognizable, certainly in Western culture if not to the world at large.
There are many descriptions of who Jesus was in the Gospels. Matthew, Mark and Luke describe His birth in detail. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John describe His teachings, His actions, His followers, His prayer life, His many miracles, His loving compassion, His sufferings, His crucifixion, and His resurrection. And both Mark and Luke write of Christ’s ascension to heaven. All of the Gospels describe His forgiveness, which translates into hope for us all. But there is so much that is not written and not described. The Gospel writer John, one of Jesus’ first chosen disciples, one of the inner four, who described himself as the one whom Jesus loved concludes his Gospel with these words, chapter 21, verse 25; “And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen!”
So why is it that we know so much about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, yet we do not know what He actually looked like? Artists from the fourth century to the twenty-first century have created moving images of Christ from infancy to death, in Spirit following His resurrection and scenes that foresee the last judgment. The world’s greatest artists have attempted to depict the face of Jesus Christ with vitality, power, compassion, in prayer, as a youth, in suffering and in death. Why?
Perhaps it is because throughout the ages, man has had such a strong desire to comprehend and touch the divine.
I believe God’s timing is perfect and has been since the beginning of God’s creation. The birth of Jesus fulfilled prophesy and came at a time when the future teachings of Christ could be spread throughout the regions. The Roman Empire was experiencing what is known as “Pax Romana” (Latin for Roman peace) during the first and second centuries, so it was relatively safe to travel. Good roads and highways were built between major cities, so news was accessible and available. Yet, Jesus Christ walked this earth during a time before photography, before artistic renderings. Why? And why is there no physical description of Jesus throughout the entire New Testament?
I strongly believe that Jesus wanted us to focus on a much bigger picture. Jesus wanted us to worship Him as the Son of God in Spirit and in truth. For us to understand that God surrounds us, and we are to worship the Creator and not what God has created.
Ever since God created man and woman, we have been obsessed with idolatry and the need for icons. If you read through the Old Testament, there are hundreds of examples of idol worship and explicit teachings against it. In fact, God’s chosen nation of Israel was overthrown because of idol worship and disobedience to God, the northern kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians in 722 BC and the southern kingdom of Judah to the Babylonians in 586 BC.
And we still have our icons and idols today, although we call them by different names.
If Jesus had left behind a physical description, throughout the ages we would have created icons that depicted Him, and we would have worshipped them. Our focus would have been on the power we receive from holding something in our hands instead of what God has put in our hearts.
How many times have we read about the face of Jesus appearing somewhere, to someone, and hundreds if not thousands of people spending hours standing in line just to view the image?
We have a strong desire to know all we can about Jesus as the Son of God, and that includes our passion to apply a physical description.
I believe artists throughout the centuries have created images of Jesus Christ as a form of worship. God certainly inspires us and gifts us in many ways. Painting is an art form, a gift from God, which allows us freedom of expression. Think of the musical works of the great composers and the inspired hymn writers over the centuries? Handel’s Messiah is inspired by the words of Isaiah, the book of Job, the Gospel accounts of Matthew and John and Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. When we come together to worship on Sunday mornings, our music draws us closer to God. When we sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness”, “How Great Thou Art”, “Amazing Grace”, “In The Garden”, “Change My heart O God” and others, music prepares our heart for worship, doesn’t it? But we don’t worship the music, just as we don’t worship the inspired artistic renderings of Jesus Christ.
As we saw in the short presentation, hundreds of years ago, many paintings of Jesus Christ were first exhibited in churches largely for those who were not literate or too poor to afford books. In the view of the church, painted and sculpted images served to teach the message of Christ and to strengthen one’s faith and belief in God’s Word.
We have been seeking the face of God, the face of Christ since the beginning of time. We want to know God, we want to know more about God. We want to know that God is with us through all of life’s challenges. We want to know that we will spend eternity in the glorious presence of God and His Son Jesus Christ.
I started by telling you about the great prayer revival of 1857. It moved from New York to Detroit, Buffalo, Washington D.C. and it moved to Philadelphia in a powerful way. One of the leaders in Philadelphia was a young man, a Pastor named Dudley Tyng. He started a noonday prayer meeting at the YMCA, and some days 5000 people would come at noon and pray.
One day Dudley stood up and he read Exodus 10:11, "Go ye that are men and serve the Lord." He then said, "I had rather my right arm cut off than not give you that Word." Later that week Dudley went out into the country to see some friends. While in a barn at his friend’s place he got his arm caught in a corn threshing machine and the main artery in his arm was severed. They took him to a bed and tried to save his life but he had lost too much blood. So his friends gathered around him and asked him what he would like to say. He said, "Tell them to stand up for Jesus." So the next Sunday his good friend George Duffield stood up at church and preached in memory of his friend. He said, "I just finished writing a poem in honor of Dudley and I want to read it to you." Stand up, Stand up for Jesus, ye solders of the cross. Lift high His royal banner, it must not suffer loss. From victory unto victory His army shall He lead, till every foe is vanquished, for Christ is Lord indeed.”
