Sermon: "Do Not Let Him Rest"

4th in the "Set Your Watch" series.
Delivered January 25, 2009 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Sermon Text: Isaiah 62:6-7

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Well last Monday I was at a prayer meeting. There were about 100 people from nine different counties surrounding Baltimore City that gathered together at John Wesley AME Zion Church, right north of Johns Hopkins Hospital. We gathered together to pray. We were together for about two hours... spent half the time singing and praising and half the time we spent in prayer, praying for God to work in racial reconciliation, praying for the new administration in Washington, praying for God's work in Baltimore, praying for God's work in our churches.

Now it may seem obvious, but we believe, I believe, and a number of other Christians believe that prayer meetings like this are essential to seeing God work in our towns, in our neighborhoods, and in the city. That just having good desires, good organization isn't enough. And I think that since we're in a church few of us would actually disagree with that. Prayer is important, we would say. God is the real change agent, and prayer makes things happen.

We say that prayer is important, but one of the things that I struggle with is even though I say it's important, it's something I struggle with all the time in my personal life... to make enough time to pray about the things that God has shown me, that God has engaged me to serve. So I want to ask that question to you. Not what you say about prayer. I want you to look at your life. When was the last time that you prayed for an hour with other believers about the needs of the city, about your own needs, about the needs of your neighborhood?

In other words, when was the last time you prayed for an hour with other believers that God's will would be done? How about your family? When was the last time you prayed with your spouse or with your children or with a good friend for half that time... for half an hour that God's will would be done? How about your personal life? When was the last time you spent a half an hour or an hour looking into the Word, praying, listening, asking God to fulfill his will in you and in the world around you?

See because it's not what we say about the importance of prayer that matters. It's what we actually do. Do we pray? The passage we're going to read in a few moments is a strong call to prayer. It comes in Isaiah 62, just a few verses after the verses we looked at about two weeks ago. Two weeks ago we looked at the first five verses in Isaiah 62, and in those verses, although Isaiah was telling Israel that they were going to face God's judgment, Isaiah sees beyond that by the Spirit of God, and he sees God's ultimate desire for his people. And God makes it very clear that the long term future for them is one where he will show his delight in them. He will make them fruitful. That that is what his heart is.

So God declares the future. "Yes, it's going to be tough now. Yes, you deserve it, but in the long term picture my heart is for healing. My heart is to show my glory among you and to give you glory. And so the verses that come right before the passage we read today end with the words, 'As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.'"

So let's read these words that come in Isaiah 62, and I'm going to focus on verses 6 and 7.

"I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth."

Let's pray: Lord, thank you for your Word. Open it up to us now. Help us to hear. For we ask it in Jesus' name, Amen.

God declares his future. "Your future is not going to be judgment. Beyond judgment is my delight. Beyond that is the fruitfulness and the wholeness and the healing that I will bring to you, my people." When God declares his future to us, when he lets us know what's on his heart, when he lets us know where history is heading, what's the proper response for us to make?

Now obviously one of the responses we know is wrong is to ignore it. "Okay, sure God. That's what you say, but I have other things on my mind that are more important." We could ignore what God says. Another response we can have though is to take this picture of the future and view it as a road map, and say, "Okay God, so you want to reach out to these other people. You want to do this. You want to do that. Okay, I'll do it." And so we immediately get up and we go out and we try to plan out how to make it happen because we're excited about the goodness of the picture that God paints of the future.

So he declares it and we run out and do it. Where does prayer fit into that? So maybe we know that prayer is important, so we take what God has said and we pray about it. We muster up our faith that we really believe that God's going to do it. We wake up the next morning and say, "God, where is it? I had enough faith. You declared that this is what you want for me. Where is it?" And if God doesn't do it maybe something is wrong with our faith, and so we try to drum up bigger faith. And if it's someone else who is waiting on God maybe we throw a guilt trip on them. "Well, God would be doing it. He declared he wanted to do it. Your faith might not be big enough." We view that prayer is a shortcut.

Maybe because we believe in the sovereignty of God we read a passage that talks about God's future, and we say, "Yes! God can do that. Nothing can stand against our God. No power, no authority, no spiritual or human agency can stand against God. Yay God! I am glad that this beautiful future is going to happen, and I'll check the paper tomorrow and see if it has." And if it hasn't... well, maybe tomorrow. I'll wait and see. But it doesn't engage me because it's going to happen anyway because God is sovereign.

What does this passage say? Because we've just heard in the earlier verses the vision of the future that God declares. He delights in his people. He's going to bring them a fruitfulness. He will rejoice over them like a bridegroom, and so what are they to do? It says right here, first person again, I still think it's God speaking, "I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth."

Watchmen were people that were to stand on the walls and look for trouble, and while they were on duty they weren't supposed to fall asleep, and they were to look out there and if there was an enemy coming, if there was some kind of emergency they were to raise the people... call out and wake them up. It says here that God has sent out a special kind of watchman, a watchman that was going to be looking out not just for the troubles, but for the action of God.

What these people were called to do is to not be silent day or night. They were going to be called, all who were calling upon God, were called to give themselves no rest and give God no rest until he did what he promised to do. That's essentially what's being said here. "I've declared my future. I'm telling you where I'm going. I'm appointing people to look for it to happen, now do not give me rest until it does." God has declared his future, and we are to hear what God says, and to believe it, and then we're to pray towards God's future, to seek him diligently and constantly until he does what he's promised to do.

I don't know about you, but that's not a normal habit for me. God makes plans. He declares his future. And it's so easy for me to just say, "Okay, well do it," or to pray once and expect it to happen. And on my worst days I ignore it altogether. But the pattern here is to call on God, not just once, but until it happens.

We see examples of this all over Scripture, and we see commands that are similar to this in the Old and the New Testaments. I want to focus first, just for a moment, on Daniel. Daniel is a prophet who is living on the other side of the exile that Isaiah and Jeremiah talk about. Isaiah and Jeremiah talk about a time of exile when Israel was going to be dispersed and no longer live in their land, and Daniel is one of the people who was part of that dispersal in exile. And he's lived a long life. And he finds himself in his older years reading the Scripture.

Chapter 9, the book of Daniel, let's take a look at what happens.

"In the first year of Darius son of Xerxes (a Mede by descent), who was made ruler over the Babylonian kingdom - in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years."

Let's stop there for a moment. It doesn't begin with an angelic visitation. It doesn't begin with a vision. It begins with Bible study. He's just reading the Bible, just like us. He's reading the same prophets. He's reading Jeremiah. And as he's reading, he reads something that as he looks at he understands that you can interpret the words of Jeremiah to mean that in 70 years God was going to end the exile. And as he does a little arithmetic he realizes that he's living very close to that 70th year. God has said after 70 years, "I'll start to bring them back."

What does he do? What would I do? I would say, "Praise the Lord. That is so cool. Thank you for helping me understand this from Scripture." And I'd close my Bible and the next day I'd look around. Well, it's not today, but it's going to be soon. And I'd just go on with my life. This is what Daniel does, verse 3.

"So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes."

Now think about the dynamic here. God has already said what he's going to do. God has already said how long it will be. Why not just let it happen? That's not what Daniel does. Daniel knows that he's called to participate and to seek God in this. God has declared it, now he's going to pursue it. He's going to pray towards that future. So he lays out before God all the sin that... that was in the life of Israel that led to them being sent into exile. And then he holds onto God and his promise, looking to God in his promise to fulfill the very thing that God promised to do.

And he does so repeatedly, fasting and waiting over a period of time. And finally he does get an angelic visitation that tells him that your prayer has been heard. It was not for nothing. We see this call from God to pray towards his future in other places. Let's go to the New Testament for a moment. Matthew, chapter 9, it's Jesus talking.

Jesus talking in Matthew, chapter 9, verses 35 through 38.

"Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, 'The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.'"

Jesus is out there showing the very compassion and power of God in his ministry. And when Jesus sees the size of the task and the greatness of the need and the openness among the people, he lets his disciples know that the task is too big for the number of people who are engaged in it right now. God declares that he wants something to happen. He wants these people to be reached.

Now if I heard that, when I was a young Christian I used to struggle with this passage because Jesus leads up to the wrong thing in my mind. He says, "Look at how big the job is. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few, so therefore John, get up, volunteer, and do it. I want you." Now believe me, I do believe God wants me and you, but that's not what Jesus says. What does he say? "I have declared my future. I've declared what my heart is. Now pray that I'll do it. Pray that God will send out the laborers. I'm not just calling you to volunteer. I'm calling you to pray that God will send out people."

Why that extra step? God is sovereign, but in his sovereignty, he chooses to use us. He declares his will, his desire for the world, but then he chooses to make us indispensible partners in that plan. He gives us the right as human beings, given the power of stewardship over this earth, he gives us the right to unlock his plans on earth. He declares what his plans are, and he hands us the keys and he says, "Now wait on me, and unlock the door."

Matthew 16, verses 18 to 19.

"And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."

God confers upon his people, in his sovereignty, a very real authority. An authority to hear the will of God and then to pray,

"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth."

Familiar words. It's everywhere, folks.

Prayer unlocks the will of God on earth. It's his will. He's declared it. It's his power. He achieves it, and he chooses to use us not only as his agents in doing it, but in unlocking it as we trust him to be faithful to his Word. The victory is won in prayer. The future is unlocked in prayer. The fruit is birthed in prayer and then everything we do after that is dependent on the prayer that we've prayed already. So we are called to pray towards God's future.

Now I've been praying with pastors and leaders from churches all over the region for the past four years, asking for God to work in this region and to work in the city. And we believe that God has shown his desired future, a future where he shows his delight and brings fruitfulness and wholeness in the brokenness that's our towns, our counties, and the city of Baltimore.

And when we hear this, it's not time for us to just run ahead and do it any way we think. If human power could bring that wholeness, all the government and church programs that have already existed would have already done it. Plenty of committed people have been out there. It's not time to pray one time and generate enough enthusiasm so that tomorrow we expect it all to happen. And it's certainly not time to say, "Amen God, that is a wonderful plan," and just sit on the sidelines. It's a call to pray, to engage in this essential part of what God is doing.

So churches all over the Baltimore region are committing themselves right now, this year, to raising up altars of prayer in every neighborhood in the city and the counties, looking for families, looking for pairs or groups of friends, looking for small groups who will spend at least a half an hour every week to pray for God's work in them, to pray for God's work in their neighborhood, and to pray for God's work in the darkest most difficult parts of the city... every week, at least a half an hour, seeking God to fulfill his promise.

Every neighborhood in the city, and almost every neighborhood we can manage in the counties surrounding the city... Rogers Forge, Mt. Vernon, Mt. Washington, Fells Point, Lutherville, Cockeysville, Parkville, Idlewild, Hamilton, Sandtown, Mays Chapel... wherever you live, altars of prayer. Consistent prayer. Prayer that focuses in on what God has declared his future to be.

This is God's way. God declares his future and then we pray towards God's future. We ask repeatedly until he does what he's promised and while we're asking he's at work in us. He changes us and he prepares us and then he does something in us and through us far beyond what we could have done on our own. That is God's way.

Last Thursday, the presbytery had a speaker come in, Martha Grace Reese, and she came and talked about evangelism. And she told a story that she heard from a famous speaker on youth issues, Mark Yaconelli. He's director of Youth Ministry and Spirituality Project. And Mark told her a story about a curate. A curate is an associate pastor sort of person in the Episcopalian church. He talks about a curate that he met in Colorado last year. This curate was new to his church. There were about 150 people... fewer than those would actually come on Sunday to worship, and most were older people. In fact, the average age was pushing 80 years old in the church.

And so the curate goes there and he pulls together the leaders and he asks them, "Okay, now what's your vision? What has God put on your heart for this church's future?" And as he talks to them they say, "What God is leading us to is youth ministry." Yeah right. This at a church whose last youth group was now in menopause. But they really believed that that's what God was calling them to, but hadn't a clue, and neither did the curate have a clue what to do, so they just started to pray. Eight people, 80 years old or older meeting every week.

After about a year Mark Yaconelli calls the... yeah, I think he calls the curate and asks him, "How are things going? Anything develop in the youth ministry?" "Well, nothing much has happened yet. We've been studying the Word, we've been praying and the group really has grown close to one another and we're talking a lot more about what God is doing in our lives, but on the youth front, no, not much has happened."

About a month later Mark gets a call from the curate. "You will not believe what's happened in the last month." The curate was sitting in a Starbucks one day when a guy comes walking up to him, a young kid, messed up, dirty, holey jeans, dreadlocks, obviously living on the street. He comes and he says, "Are you... are you one of those guys that can do a funeral even if there's not a body?"

If you watch too many CSIs that could be fairly intimidating. Asked him a little bit about the background... you see one of the kids had died from an overdose, the family immediately flew the body out East. There were about 15 or 16 kids that were grieving, and they wanted to have a funeral. So he says, "Yeah, I'm one of those guys who can do a funeral even if there's no body." And they made an appointment to make it happen on Friday.

He immediately goes back to church, grabs the eight people together and says, "We have to pray." And so they pray about it and they start talking, "What are we going to do?" Now one of the things that became immediately apparent to them is that they had nothing that was cutting edge. They were not relevant in any way. What did they have to offer?

They felt like the only thing they had to offer is that they could offer a place that was comfortable, that felt like grandma's house, that felt warm, where those kids could feel accepted. And so they started to plan what they were going to make for a meal after the funeral service and what kind of, you know, snacks they were going to put out, and they even planned to have those M&Ms out on the doilies for the kids.

Friday came and the 15 kids came - along with 45-50 of their friends. First thing the group did was run to Safeway. They had to double up on everything. Dreadlocks, tattoos, piercings... they stayed five hours, talking, talking about what was going on in their lives, talking about their sorrows. And on the way out they took clothes they needed from the church's clothes closet. And they came back. In fact they... a year later 45-50 kids are still coming twice a month, and they stay every time for hours talking to these grandmas and grandpas.

And after six months or so the kids started to ask, "What's the cross all about? What is it? What does it mean to follow Jesus?" And at that point beyond all shadow of a doubt they knew that God's future had come. Why did it take nearly 13 months? We don't know. Maybe the kids weren't ready. Certainly the church wasn't ready, but God declared his heart, his future plans. They prayed towards God's future and God did the impossible.

I'm asking you to pray toward God's future. I'm asking you to pray about a future where God is at work with power all over this region. I'm asking you to pray about a future where Central is used to lead hundreds or even thousands of people to Christ. Believe me, either of those things would be miraculous. But bigger miracles have happened.

Right now there's a little Episcopal church in Colorado that's made a poster for its youth ministry, and pictured on it is an 80-year-old woman, hunched over with osteoporosis. She's bent over a pot cooking a meal that's going to be fed to 50 spiritually hungry kids off the street. That's the picture of their miracle.

What's the picture of our miracle going to look like? Only God knows what he's going to do, but I believe it will begin soon. And it's going to ultimately involve things that only God can do. So we must, at this point, begin with the essentials. Let's commit ourselves and let's commit our families to pray.

© 2009, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org