Joel 2:17
Famine in the Land
Introduction
In his second letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul said,
“I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; preach the word…”
Peter, writing in his first letter, said,
“If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.”
In other words,
“If any man speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God, speaking to the fullest or the best of the ability that God has given him, that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.”
Brethren, people are starving today for the greatness of God. I know and you know that they don’t realize that their greatest need is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ: a genuine, life-changing, intimate and dynamic relationship with Jesus Christ, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. They don’t know they’re starving for His greatness. They don’t know they’re starving for His holiness. They don’t know they’re starving for His righteousness, for His presence, for His purpose and for His power. They’re literally starving to death and don’t know it.
“The greatness and the glory of God are relevant. It doesn’t matter if surveys turn up a list of perceived needs that doesn’t include the supreme greatness of the sovereign God of grace. That is the deepest need. Our people are starving for God.” He is the Bread of Life for the starving soul. He is the Living Water; He and He alone can quench the thirsty soul. Brethren, our job is to serve Him up, to present Him in such a manner that people see their hunger and feel their thirst and give the Holy Spirit room to work and draw and convict. And I am convinced of this: people want what Jesus has to offer. We are living in a time in history when spirituality is at an all time high. It’s on television, on the radio, in print, on the Internet, in the book stores, and everywhere else you turn its there. Oh, it may not be the spirituality that you and I know about, but the fact is that people are searching, they’re longing, they’re starving for a taste of that living bread and thirsting for a long drink from the well that never can run dry, and brethren, let’s be honest about something this morning: there’s a famine in the land today from which those starving multitudes are dying.
A few years ago, Dr. Carl F. Henry, founder and editor of Christianity Today, sent out a questionnaire to what he considered to be twenty of the leading intellectual preachers in the country. The question that he sent out was this: “What do you see for the church of Jesus Christ by the year 2000?” Now you and I all know what he meant by the church and we all know what we believe about it, so listen to one of the responses given by a Quaker by the name of Elton Trueblood. He said, “By the year 2000 the church will be a conscious minority surrounded by an arrogant, militant paganism.” Think about that for a moment. Chew on it a while before you spit it out. The Lord’s churches, His work, surrounded by an arrogant, militant paganism.
I don’t know about you, but I think the man was right. Perhaps you might ask, what does that have to do with there being a famine in the land? My time is short today, so let me just get to the point and be frank with you. I believe that our work and our churches are in trouble. You’ve been in enough of them and I’ve been in enough of them to see it. You talk to enough pastors and church members to know it. I think that just by where your thoughts have gone already will prove the point. You think I’m talking about the ABA or Missionary Baptist churches. Perhaps you think I am talking about associational loyalty and things of that nature. Brethren, what I’m talking about this morning has nothing to do with what name is on your church sign or what version of the Bible you use.
The trouble I’m talking about this morning has to do with a lack of spiritual vitality among God’s people and a great love and zeal for knowing the Lord Jesus Christ and zealously living for Him! I’m not talking about the people in the pews either; they aren’t here this morning. Brethren, I’m talking about you and me – God’s men – you and I who have been called by Him to pray and to preach and to pour our souls out as sweet smelling savors unto the Lord, offerings of a glad willingness to first be the people He longs for us to be and then and only then to do the things He has planned for us to do.
People are starving in the land for the glory and the greatness of God, and so far as I can see, we are like the disciples in John 4, those men who went into Samaria to buy food. Those men were followers of Christ; God-called preachers, walking and talking with the Lord in person, and they went into town and came back out with a sack of bologna sandwiches. The Samaritan woman went into the same town and brought back a host of men and women. Why didn’t they bring back those people? They knew the same Jesus, knew what He offered and that He could meet their deepest spiritual needs. Why didn’t they bring the crowd back? Let me tell you why – because they were playing around.
In his book titled Why Revival Tarries, Leonard Ravenhill makes the statement: “People who are not praying are straying; and preachers who are not praying are playing…We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers, lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.”
I am bothered by the state of today’s pastoral ministry. We were hearing about moral failures among pastors long before we heard about moral failures among presidents. In just the few short years that I have been introduced to church and preaching, I am amazed at the negative spirit that is sweeping us up. I am alarmed at the spirit of competition and criticism. So what if I don’t look like you or preach like you? So what if you want to use this program or that program? So what if you want blacks in your church or if you want a woman to lead your singing? Brother Ellison’s attempt at the ABA Discussions email group was a vivid example of how this spirit is attacking us. Just before I graduated from seminary last spring, a seasoned pastor said to me, “Do you know what associational Baptist means? It means if you don’t think like us and act like us we won’t associate with you.” I laughed at what he said, but I think you all know its true. What have we made our work out to be? What have we made the ministry out to be? Brethren, while the people “out there” are starving and dying, we’ve replaced the Great Commission by holing up in our Baptist monasteries so we can hold out faithful until the end.
“Christianity wasn’t served up to the world on a silver platter. Christianity was born in a sophisticated, totalitarian society. The early church was walled in on one side with the mightiest military machine in history, the power of Rome. It was walled in on the other side with Greek intellectualism. It was blocked ahead by the monopoly the Jews thought they had on God. Those men who turned the world upside down had no colossal intellectual ability. They had no great financial backing. They had no social standing. They were about the most despised men in and around Jerusalem, and yet they broke out somehow – and later it was said that they turned the whole world upside down.
Think about what J.B. Phillips said, “This is the church of Jesus Christ before it became fat and out of breath by its prosperity. This is the church of Jesus Christ before it became muscle bound by over organization. This is the church of Jesus Christ where they didn’t gather together a group of intellectuals to study psycho-sematic medicine, they just healed the sick. This is the church of Jesus Christ where they didn’t just say prayers, they were filled with the Spirit of God and they prayed.”
The tragedy in our day is that we’ve become a people who know the Word of God, but are not turning the world in any direction. Gospel preaching in the Bible got preachers killed and chased out of town. Nobody even knows we exist today. We’ve become ineffective in what we’re doing, so the question today is this: You know the Word of God, but do you know the God of the Word? “When [the people] saw the boldness of Peter and John…they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.” Brethren, I’m not questioning your salvation – I’m questioning your intimacy with Jesus Christ.
How is it that we read these fantastic reports of salvation in the book of Acts, and we see these photos of hundreds coming to Christ not so many years ago, but now we have whole Sundays go by and all of us put together don’t get a response? Listen, what do you think bothers the Lord more? That people aren’t bothered by our preaching? Or that we aren’t bothered that they aren’t bothered? We’re not even fazed by what is going on. We write up a little sermon, or all too often just pull one out of a drawer that we haven’t preached in years, preach it, say a prayer and we’re off to Golden Corral.
· The Lord’s churches used to be a lightning bolt, now we act more like a cruise ship.
· We’re not marching to Zion – we’re sailing there with ease.
· In the Bible folk were amazed at the passion and conviction with which the Word was proclaimed, now they’re only slightly amused.
· I think about Jesus weeping over the people, praying and preaching. You can see Him agonizing over cities like Capernaum and Jerusalem; where is the weeping and praying and passion today?
· We have mistaken rattle for revival, doling out dry lectures for worship, and action for unction.
You look around most of our churches and the men are bored to death and the ladies are tired and exhausted from having to do what the men ought to be doing but won’t. We’ve traded the Christ of the Bible for some effeminate, Mr. Rogers wimp, then we tell our men to be like Him and our women to follow after Him, and then we all get together in meetings like this and wonder why we’re not reaching people.
What God wants is not to fill up empty pews. He is not concerned about filling empty churches; He is concerned about filling empty hearts and empty lives and empty eyes that have no vision. He wants to fill empty hearts that have no passion and empty wills that have no purpose. And now I ask you this: how does God intend to do those things? It won’t be with the “wisdom of [your] words, lest the cross of Christ be made of none effect. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.” Brethren, it is by preaching, the preaching of Jesus Christ, the preaching of the cross; by the preaching of the glory and the greatness of God that lives will be changed and hearts will be touched and souls will be satisfied.
Now, I daresay that we are not reaching the dying multitudes in our preaching. Why? Let me give you three things I am convinced today’s pulpit lacks, then I’ll conclude with what I believe the Lord would have you and I to do.
We Lack Passion
When you think of Jesus the preacher, what comes to mind? I’ve been preaching some of Jesus’ encounters with different people through John’s gospel, and if there’s one thing that stands out in His life that is lacking in our ministries today it is passion. I think of the movies about Jesus that I’ve seen and you’ve seen. They all make Jesus out to be so passive and mild. While the world is in an uproar around Him, Jesus acts like He’s on Prozac. I don’t read that in my Bible. I read about a man who was marked by passion, a man who didn’t aim just for the head, but also for the heart. He wasn’t just concerned about dispensing truth – He was revolutionizing the world, ushering in a new kingdom, and He was looking for men and women who would follow Him in that venture.
Think of the difference passion makes. Jesus walks into the temple in John 2,
“and found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of the money sitting: and when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables; and said unto them that sold doves, take these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise.”
That’s passion! Several weeks later Jesus walks up to a man lying at a pool. He is passionate about reaching folk, so He walks up and heals this man, asking nothing in return: not faith, not love: nothing. He just heals this man and leaves it up to him to respond in faith. The man walks off and the preachers scold him for carrying his bedroll. They’re so worried about maintaining an image they don’t even realize the man is walking around!
The other night I was playing softball in our church league, and after a questionable call, the pastor of the other team came alive and argued with the umpire. He was passionate about his game. Why aren’t we as passionate about our ministries? We get all worked up about whether people are singing the right songs or dressing a certain way. We get all worked up about clapping and shorts and being Missionary Baptist, but where is our passion for souls? Where is our intensity?
We Lack Prayer
“Poverty-stricken as our churches are today in many things, they are most stricken here, in the place of prayer.” Brethren, how many times have we scolded our people from the pulpit about their lack of prayer, knowing all the while that our own prayer life is not what it ought to be?
A few years ago, I painted a 1970 Mustang fastback for a good friend of mine. We had been restoring it for several months, and I was doing the work for free. He had bought an extra Mustang during the process, and when my work was done, he gave me the second one! Man I was proud. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was a classic 1970 Mustang fastback! I told my friends about it, dreamed of cruising the drag in it, showed it to my girlfriend and all that good stuff. So far as I was concerned, I had a show car. There was a major problem with the car though – it didn’t have a motor! I never moved that car off the blocks it rested on in that spot. I moved out of the area and so far as I know it still sits there. You know, it wouldn’t have mattered how awesome that car could have looked – I learned right away that what matters most may not always be the most apparent.
You know what I mean by this. It doesn’t matter what kind of shiny accessories you have to dress up your preaching or your pastoral ministries. None of those things have the power to drive anything you preach or model into the hearts of your hearers. Our sermons may look good on paper, they may sound good in the pulpit, you may look good and everybody call you “pastor” or “reverend” or whatever, but you can bet that your words will never sink into the hearts of your hearers the way they ought to without prayer. I’ve got a seminary degree now, but the driving force behind my ministry doesn’t have anything to do with what’s hanging on the wall – it’s about whether I’m in communion with Christ, whether I’m abiding in Him.
As E.M. Bounds observes:
“A ministry may be a very thoughtful ministry without prayer; the preacher may secure fame and popularity without prayer; the whole machinery of the preacher’s life and work may be run without the oil of prayer or with scarcely enough to grease one cog; but no ministry can be a spiritual one, securing holiness in the preacher and in his people, without prayer being made an evident and controlling force.”
What did Jesus say? “Without me you can’t do anything.” If Jesus taught us anything about prayer, He taught us that prayer is nothing more than your admission of absolute dependence on God. “Give us this day our daily bread”? Pray for two or three slices of bread? You’ve got to be kidding! What’s He mean by that? He means that you can’t even meet the most basic needs you’ve got, and that applies especially to everything you do in your pastoral ministries.
Without prayer, you’re nothing more than a white-washed tomb, full of dead men’s bones.
Unction
I’ve wondered a lot about how unction plays such a vital role in our ministries. What is it anyway? I like what one man said. He says to his preacher one day, “Preacher, you need some unction!” The preacher was caught off guard. He said to the man, “Unction? What is unction?” The man looked at him and said, “I don’t know. But I know you ain’t got it!”
The tragedy of this hour is that we have too many dead men in the pulpits giving out dead sermons to too many dead people. Unction may be hard to define – the dictionary is vague and talks about being anointed. I’m not talking about charismatic stuff here – I’m saying that if you’ll be honest you know just like I do that there are too many times that we go through the motions of preaching without the presence of God, without “power from on high.”
Charles Spurgeon one time said,
“I wonder how long we might beat our brains before we could plainly put into word what is meant by preaching with unction. Yet he who preaches knows its presence, and he who hears soon detects its absence. Samaria in famine typifies a discourse without it. Jerusalem with her feast of fat things, full of marrow, may represent a sermon enriched with it…Unction is a thing that you cannot manufacture, and its counterfeits are worse than worthless. Yet it is in itself priceless, and beyond measure if you would edify believers and bring sinners to Christ.”
I read in the Scriptures verses like Acts 4:8, which says,
“Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them…”
Or Acts 4:31,
“And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.” Paul told the Thessalonians “For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance; as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake.”
How our world is starving for men who are filled with the Holy Ghost, preaching and proclaiming the message of the gospel with power and passion and conviction and unction!
Now brethren, what’s the real problem? Why is it that we lack passion and prayer, purpose and vision, urgency and unction in our ministries and in our pulpits? I think it all boils down to one thing: we lack personal intimacy with Christ. So long as we fill our schedules with endless meetings and lunches and planning sessions and counseling and hospitals and on and on and on, forsaking our daily need for intimacy with Jesus Christ, our ministries are going to lack the passion and urgency and unction they need to be effective, and our lives are going to be nothing more than flickering lights in a world of darkness. Who wants what you have when it looks just like what they’ve already got?
Conclusion
What is the answer? Brethren, the answer is revival, but its not revival in our churches that’s needed yet; it’s revival in the pulpit. Pastoral ministry today is in need of genuine, Spirit led revival, and while there are many elements that lead to revival, I want to especially draw your attention to two.
Brokenness
Read with me at Joel 1:8-13
“Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. The meat offering and the drink offering is cut off from the house of the Lord; the priests, the Lord’s ministers, mourn. The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth. Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen; howl, O ye vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley; because the harvest of the field is perished. The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men. Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God.”
Now look over at chapter 2:17,
“Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God?”
Look around you! In the midst of this most spiritual of generations, the field is wasted and the land mourns, and I ask you this: when was the last time any of us wept about it? Why do we watch the heresies of false preachers on television for entertainment and laugh when we ought to be weeping over the multitudes who are held captive? When the Lord pointed out the condition of the land, what was God’s answer? “Gird yourselves, weep, howl, and lie all night in sackcloth.” It’s time we began to weep, not for our people alone, but for our apathy and uncaring hearts.
Brethren, its time we wept between the porch and the altar and begged the Lord God for change – not for change out there – but change in here, in our hearts. It’s time for a spirit of renewal concerning our personal relationships with Jesus Christ, for us to realize our desperate need for a fresh encounter with the God of the Word,
· for us first to have our cups filled so that others might drink from them…
· for us to come alive with purpose and passion…
· for us to be filled with the person and presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in our personal and public lives.
· for you and I to quit being posers, to quit being fake and shallow and instead be broken before the Lord.
I don’t care how educated you are. I don’t care how much longer you’ve been in the ministry than I have. I don’t care how many sermons you’ve preached or how much better you can preach them than me. Your need is the same need I have, and that’s to be broken over our condition before God. Years ago, Samuel Chadwick said,
“Go back! Back to that upper room; back to your knees; back to searching of heart and habit, though and life; back to pleading, praying, waiting, till the Spirit of the Lord floods the soul with light, and you are endued with power from on high. Then go forth…”
David said, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” The spirit we long to see in our people must first be present in our own lives.
Communion with Christ
Somebody said one time that men are looking for better methods, God is looking for better men. I don’t know if you’ve been looking for better methods or not. Maybe you’ve not been looking for anything, you’ve grown content to build your two or three sermons every week, visit the sick, take your check, and do it all over again the next week. I don’t know what you have or haven’t been doing, but I know this: there’s a famine in the land today, and while we’ve got all the outward signs of religion, we lack all the life-giving force of real communion with Christ. What did the men in Acts deduce from the ministries of Peter and John? That they had been with Jesus!
Can anyone tell you’ve been with Jesus? Are you spending time with Him? Are you encountering Him? “Abide in me, and I in you…You can’t do anything otherwise.” We have become so busy being administrators that we are neglecting our personal relationships with Jesus Christ. We have become so entangled in our web of religiosity that we lack the power of relation. Men, maybe you need to take off the suit, clear the planner, and go aside a while into that deserted place in your life where you can get alone and commune with God. If Jesus, the perfect, sinless Son of God took time to do it, what makes us think we can get by without it? Samuel Rutherford said,
“I urge upon you communion with Christ, a growing communion. There are curtains to be drawn aside in Christ that we never saw, and new foldings of love in Him. I despair that I shall ever win to the far end of that love, there are so many plies in it. Therefore dig deep, and sweat and labor and take pains for him, and set by as much time in the day for Him as you can. We will be won in the labor.”
I asked a Christian friend what he thought about our current condition, about the current condition of churches and pastoral ministry, and this is what he said:
We do not reach people because we really don’t care. The lambs of God’s flock are content in our little Christian sub-culture with our own terminology and "way of living". Salvation today is treated more like a club membership than a matter of the heart. We are not concerned with teaching and helping others find their way. It’s really more like taking cattle that are free grazing and fencing them in with "our rules of religion". What we lack is example. What we lack are lambs that are willing to roar. What we lack are pastors that are willing to go to the mat for their people, God’s people. A lot of pastors practice a political type Christianity. We are more concerned about the public perception of us and our churches than we are concerned about the un-churched.
You can take that for what its worth, and when it really gets right down to it you can do what you want with this message. Those of you who have preached these meetings know the dilemma: you can get up here and preach a sugar-stick amen sermon, or you can preach what is on your heart. That is what I have tried to do today, now you can do what you want with it. Would you characterize your ministry as being passionate about the things that really matter? Not your soapbox things – but the things of Christ? Or have you been fatigued with the daily administrational duties, the weekly upkeep, and the endless running? Is your ministry in general and your preaching in particular lacking that spiritual umph that you long for? When you finish your message do you feel that emptiness inside that says something is missing?
When was the last time you wept over the apathy that runs wild in our work? What about prayer? Does your preaching lack that holy unction that only comes from intimacy with God and being filled with His Spirit? Better yet, what would your people say? Do they see a man that is passionate and prayerful and intense? What do the people out there see? And what do they hear?
The world doesn’t need more dry sermons – it needs men like you to experience revival and come alive! There is a famine in the land, and you and I are like those lepers in 2 Kings 7 who went into the abandoned camp of the Syrian army. While their people were starving and eating their own children back in the city, those lepers held in their hands the food and drink the people needed. They ate and drank for a while before they realized, “Men, we do not well – what we have found is too great not to share.” The people out there are starving for the glory and greatness of God. It’s time we realize that we’re not doing well and share.
Works Cited:
Piper, John. The Supremacy of God in Preaching (Baker Book House Co.: Grand Rapids, MI) 1990 p. 9
Ravenhill, Leonard. Weeping Between the Porch and the Altar. www.ravenhill.org/weeping1.htm
Ravenhill, Leonard. Why Revival Tarries (Bethany House Publishers: Bloomington, Minnesota) 1979
Ravenhill, Leonard. Weeping Between the Porch and the Altar. www.ravenhill.org/weeping1.htm
Acts 4:13
op. cit. Adapted from same sermon
1 Corinthians 1:17
Ravenhill. Why Revival Tarries. op. cit.
Fabarez, Michael. Preaching That Changes Lives (Thomas Nelson Publishers: Nashville, TN) 2002
Bounds, E.M. The Classic Collection on Prayer (Bridge-Logos Publishers: Gainesville, FL) 2001
ibid
Psalm 51:17
Bounds. op. cit. p. 619
