This morning in your RMM readings you would have read this:
Isaiah 51:1-2 (ESV)
1 “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the LORD: look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.
2 Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him.
This passage reminds us that very often in the Christian life “back is the way forward”. This text is a challenge to our notions of progress and social evolution. It suggests that we tend to travel on a downward spiral into sin and away from God; therefore, back is the way forward and also the way up.
Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones preached a series of sermons reflecting upon the 100 year anniversary of the Great Revival In Wales that was very much based on the understanding of humanity, history and revival presented in Isaiah 51:1-2. Many of the sermon titles and headings are drawn from a similar passage, which says:
Genesis 26:18 (NKJV)
18 And Isaac dug again the wells of water which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham. He called them by the names which his father had called them.
Jones saw in that passage a call to the church of his day to dig again the wells of their spiritual fathers – that is to go back in time to the beginnings of Protestantism, the English Reformers, the Puritans, and to see why it was that such men were spiritual oaks while the people of his day were spiritual shrubs. For Jones, back was the way forward. He said that the Welsh Revival was really a revival of Puritan spirituality. It was experiential and “Puritanical”; that is to say it was focused on personal holiness as well as spiritual intimacy. We need that type of revival again! We need to dig again the wells of our fathers.
Jones’ sermons were eventually collected and edited into a book called “Revival”. It is bar none the best book on spiritual renewal and revival I have ever read. We have copies on sale at a discount in Guest Central or you can order it online (click here).
As we work through our present sermon series, “They Speak Of Me” we are operating on the basis of some similar convictions. We too believe that the Bible has a single author and that the “old” stories tell THE STORY, the story of how to enter and enjoy a right relationship with God through Jesus Christ. We too believe that when God does something for the first time (like calling a person and teaching him how to walk with him in holiness and service) he lays down a pattern and an outline for future generations. In a sense, for the last several Sundays, we have been digging the wells of our father Abraham and we have been returning to the Rock from which we were hewn. May God in Christ continue to multiply us as he multiplied Abraham, and may he make us a blessing to the nations here in Orillia, and even to the ends of the earth.
SDG
Paul Carter