Expository Quotations

Revival is that sometimes strange, ofttimes surprising, but at all times sovereign act of God among the people of God. Revival may issue in evangelism. But evangelism is not revival. Evangelism is going out to reach the lost, those "born dead in trespasses and sin" (Ephesians 1:2), and helping them enter the newness of life everlasting. Revival is something God does on behalf of His people as He restores them, re-animates them and releases them into the fullness of a fresh, new outpouring of His Spirit.

From "The Importance of Having the Right Family Name"
Revival, Evangelism
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"If my people who are called," that is, "accosted by my name." In scripture the names of God always speak about the person of God. They tells us something about who He is, and what He does, that is to say, what He is capable of, and desirous of, doing for us.

In our text God explains: My name reveals my uniqueness. My name reveals my glory. My name reveals my honor. My name reveals my authority. My name reveals my character. Therefore, My name becomes the basis of your expectations of what I am prepared to be and do for you! I took you whom I found huddled together like sheep without a shepherd, and I accosted you. I called you forth to be my flock. To be my special possession. "My people" to whom I am prepared to reveal myself, through "my name." Wow!

From "The Importance of Having the Right Family Name"
God, Name
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In Jeremiah 33:14-16 we read, "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring forth for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will dwell securely. And this is the name by which it will be called: Jehovah Tsidkenu, 'the Lord our righteousness.'"

And what did Jehovah Tsidkenu - - the Lord our righteousness - - promise? Hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, and again at the time of the birth of Jesus, Jehovah Tsidkenu, "the Lord our righteousness," promised a branch of David's line would burst forth. Jesus was that branch and later, when He began His public ministry, the Lord Jesus said, 'Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.'"

Maybe you thought that meant you had to start struggling and straining to be righteous on your own. No. Remember, Jesus is your provider. Jesus is your protector. And Jesus is your righteousness! Paul reaffirms that in Romans 3:22 when he writes, "The righteousness of God (has been made available) through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe."

My friend, you have no greater need than the need for righteousness, which means the state of being right. Right with God so you are at peace with Him. Right with yourself so the internal warfare ceases. Right with your brothers and sisters so there is no strife within the Body. You as an individual, and we as a corporate entity, have no greater need than the need for righteousness. To be right with God. To be right with our self. To be right with one another. Because only when we get right, does God have leverage with which to bring righteousness to the world and to a nation.

When you realize Jesus is Jehovah Tsidkenu, your righteousness, then you have the secret of victory. You not only believe in Jesus, your provider, you belong to Jesus, your defender. As a result, you begin to behave like Jesus, your righteousness, who lives within you and longs to express His righteousness through you.

From "The Importance of Having the Right Family Name"
Righteousness
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Bishop Fulton J. Sheen said "There is only one thing in the world worse than sin and that's denying we are sinners." He went on to say, "There has never been so much sin in the world as there is today, and there has never been so little consciousness of sin as there is today."

Why? Because of pride. It is our pride that causes us to look down on people so we are incapable of looking up to God. And it's only as we look up to God that we are able to see what true righteousness is, what true holiness is, what true character is, and thus comprehend what we are meant to be.

From "The Most Surprising Success Formula Ever Devised"
Sin, Sinners, Pride, Holiness
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A few weeks ago I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Steven Olford preach. I had heard of him and knew of his influential ministry in New York City. What a thrill to sit at the feet of a truly great preacher and hear him, in that piercing, compelling tenor voice of his, speak of this text as "one of the most solemnizing and sanctifying statements in all of scripture."

I shall never forget the impact his words had on me when how he said, "Think of it. The omnipotent God. The omniscient God. The omnipresent God. The Lord God Almighty, stands to oppose the proud. To oppose any man, any woman, any family, any church, any nation which will not humble themselves under His mighty hand."

Do those words reach out and grab your attention as they did mine? Listen to them again. "Think of it. The omnipotent God. The omniscient God. The omnipresent God. The Lord God Almighty, stands to oppose the proud. To oppose any man, any woman, any family, any church, any nation which will not humble themselves under His mighty hand." Does that statement cause you to examine your posture before God?


From "The Most Surprising Success Formula Ever Devised"

God, Man, Grace, Judgement
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What to I mean by that? Well, this not just a play on words to help you remember the sermon. I'm getting at a profound truth, and here it is: God does not ordain everything He allows, but if we let Him, God will use what He allows to fulfill what He ordains.

God did not ordain the drought, pestilence and poverty described in 2 Chronicles 7:13, but He did ordain that His people, Israel, would be continually purified. Israel was the womb out of which the Messiah would one day be born! God was concerned about the health and safety of that womb. So when, as a result of the their defiance and His allowance of their defiance, (what theologians call God's permissive will) drought, poverty and pestilence came upon His people, God was prepared to use those consequences of their defiance creatively and redemptively if, and that's a mighty big if, if in their brokenness His people turned to Him in humility, confession and repentance. As a result of their compliance they would experience revival.

How does this relate to where you are this week? Where is the "so what?" element in this teaching? It's my conviction that the emptiness you may feel today is God's way of preparing you for a revival. But before He can fill you with His Holy Spirit, He must first allow you to be emptied of self. In order to enrich you, He must first allow you to become poor in spirit. Before He can exalt you, He must allow you to be humbled. So He allows those conditions to materialize which help create an atmosphere in which your defiance of Him and His will, is replaced by your reliance on Him and His will.

From "The Most Surprising Success Formula Ever Devised"
God's Will, Will of God, Freewill
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In Jesus you are never expected to be righteous on your own. The righteousness of God is imputed to you as the nature of Jesus is put in you. The righteousness of God is imparted to you as a free gift so you have what it takes to live like Jesus. The righteousness of God is implanted in you so this new life principle is so deeply and securely set in you, righteousness - - the state of being right with God, yourself and those about you - - becomes possible.

Righteousness becomes important to you, not as an ego trip, not as a way of puffing yourself up with pride, not as a little Jack Horner who says, "What a good boy am I." No! Righteousness becomes important to you as a means of expressing genuine humility before God and others, because of what God, through Jesus, is doing in you.

In that moment you are free. You are released forever from trying to live up to your own opinions of yourself. "I have to" is replaced by "I want to." You can relax and let Jesus, your righteousness, live His life through you.

From "The Most Surprising Success Formula Ever Devised"

Righteousness, Holiness
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John Wesley said, "God will do nothing, but in answer to prayer."
S.D. Gordon said, "The greatest thing anyone can do for God and for man is to pray." Then he went on to say, "You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you've prayed." That explains the meaning of the statement, "Prayer is striking the winning blow; service is gathering up the results."

It explains why E.M. Bounds was able to say about prayer, "God spares the world by prayer. The more praying there is in the world, the better the world will be. The mightier the forces against evil. The prayers of God's saints are the capital stock of Heaven by which God conditions the very life and prosperity of His cause on earth through prayer."

If those statements are even close to true, and I believe they are, then obviously prayer should be the main business of the church, because prayer is the single most significant work you can do.

From "The Most Significant Work You Can Do"
Prayer
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Elton Trueblood has said, "It's conceivable that the day may come when there will be enough bread to go around and we won't need to ask God for bread anymore, but there will never be a day in which we will not need to ask God, and others, for forgiveness. Nor will the day ever come when we do not need to extend forgiveness.

From "The Most Significant Work You Can Do"
Forgiveness
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Solomon's prayer in 2 Chronicle 6, and Jesus' prayer in Matthew 6, are made of the same stuff. They have the same elements: honesty, humility, importunity, ministry, and liberty. The words are different, but the substance is the same. And since the Holy Spirit directed the writing of Scripture, we know we are on to something and that these Sundays spent with the Holy Spirit in a school of prayer, can be a glorious experience for us if we take it seriously.

From "The Most Significant Work You Can Do"
Prayer
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Let us pray. Let's agree with Wesley when he said, "After we have prayed, there is much we should do, but until we have prayed, there is nothing more important we can do."
From "The Most Significant Work You Can Do"

Prayer
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Last week we talked about doing the work of honesty in prayer. We discovered that "to judge self continuously," which is the first meaning of the word "pray," is not God's call for you to engage in morbid, neurotic, self-examination. It is an invitation for you to enter into the presence of the living God, by whose name you are called, to get His evaluation of you. Your strengths as well as your weaknesses. Where you are growing in Christ, and where you still need to grow.

Let me add this thought to what I said last week: First person power in prayer grows out of second person praying. That is to say, when you kneel before the living God to whom you pray, and say, "Dear Heavenly Father, you . . ." You search me. You try me. You keep me. You lead me. When you employ "second-person praying," you begin to experience "first-person power." You enter into the reality and joy of prayers which really get off the ground because they move from concern about getting, to concern about growing.

James 5:16 says, "The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects." That can only mean one thing: it is not only important that you pray the right kind of prayers, but that you become the right kind of person!

That's what doing the work of honesty in prayer is all about. It's about becoming the right kind of person. It's about facing up to the fact that when judged in the light of the righteousness of God, the only worthy and objective standard of measurement there is, you cannot pass the test of righteousness unless you let Jesus be your righteousness! Then, when you pray, it is with the power His righteousness makes possible.

Which suggests this paraphrase of James 5:16, "The prayer of a man made righteous by putting on the righteousness of Christ, has exactly the same impact Jesus would have if He were praying that prayer." Wow! Hear that again. "The prayer of a man made righteous by putting on the righteousness of Christ, has exactly the same impact as if Jesus himself were praying that prayer."

From "How to Pray Prayers Which Seem Downright Risky"
Prayer, Honesty
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The will of God is a mystery to many of us. We have it connected up with what we are to do. But, while what we are to do is an important part of God's will, the will of God is really concerned with what we are to be.

There are two verses in the New Testament in which you find the phrase: "This is the will of God." Both of them are in 1 Thessalonians. Let's look at each of them for a moment, and see what they have to say about the will of God as we learn to do the work of humility in prayer.

1 Thessalonians 4:3 says, "For this is the will of God, your sanctification . . ." A moment ago I said honesty in prayer moves you from getting to growing. Now I want you to see how humility in prayer reveals the process by which you grow. It's called sanctification which is a ten dollar word meaning to become supple. Pliable. Malleable. On the practical level it means to bend our will to the will of God.

From "How to Pray Prayers Which Seem Downright Risky"
God's Will, Will of God
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In a powerful article published in Eternity Magazine, Marjorie Summers asks two cogent questions, "Does prayer place you in the driver's seat, or does prayer link your heart with the One behind the wheel?" She goes on to point out that, "Popular opinion suggests prayer is the nerve that moves the muscle in God's mighty arm. It is jerking the sting, calling the shots or placing a dime in the slot." But she adds quite accurately, "The Bible gives no support for this crude notion.

"The believer is neither the source of his own prayer, nor the prime mover behind God's consequent action. Both the Old Testament and New Testament indicate that true prayer grows out of intimate fellowship with God. It springs out of a believer's oneness with Him and His purposes for His people. As long as we think we are free to originate our own requests," she says, "we will be anxious and uncertain as to whether God will answer, and depressed and resentful when He does not grant them. The only solution is to discover the all important relationship between Him and us that leads to true prayer."

From "How to Pray Prayers Which Have Unction"
Prayer, Obedience, Intimacy, Relationships
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Many, if not most of us, miss out on God's best because we are afraid of the blank check of complete surrender. The reason, according to Catherine Marshall, is that deeply engraved in our mind is the mistaken idea God wants to take away our fun. It's at this point that many people refuse to believe or trust the love of God for themselves.

"My own observation," she says, "would prove that what God really wants for each of us is joy, health, productivity in our job, wonderful friends, and fulfilled integrated personalities." To that I say a hearty "amen!"

From "How to Pray Prayers Which are Pure Joy"
Prayer, God's Will, Will of God, Joy
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In an article from Eternity Magazine, Bill Krutz, a layman who conducts weekend conferences on prayer, writes, "Sometimes people pray in general terms because they really haven't decided whether they want God to interfere with their way of living. But when one gets to the level of praying where he's prepared to let God interfere, he learns that God is genuinely concerned about him. He learns God loves someone who doesn't avoid the hard details of life, especially his own sin."

Bill Krutz continues, "If you want to maintain a puny relationship with God, that's your privilege, but if you hunger after knowing Him in especially personal ways, the way we mean when we refer to Christ as our personal Savior and Lord, then you'll be on the lookout to find those practical ideas that will rescue prayer from the theological realm and the rather dusty atmosphere of formal worship situations."

From "How to Pray Prayers Which are Pure Joy"
Prayer, Surrender
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I was deeply moved by a little tract entitled, Others May, You Cannot. Let me read it to you.
"If God has called you to be like Jesus, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility, and put on you such demands of obedience that He will not allow you to follow other Christians, and in many ways He will seem to let other people do things He will not let you do.

"Other Christians who seem very religious and useful may push themselves, pull wires and work schemes to carry out their plans, but you cannot. If you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent.

"The Lord will let others be honored, and put forward, and keep you hid away in obscurity because He wants to produce some fragrant fruit for His coming glory which can only be produced in the shade.

"God will let others be great, but keep you small. He will let others do a work for Him and get the credit for it, but He will make you toil on without knowing how much you are doing. And then, to make your work still more precious, He will let others get the credit for the work you do.

"Settle it forever! You are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, and He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue, or chaining your hand, or closing your eyes in ways others are not dealt with.
But, when you are possessed with the living God in such a way that in your secret heart you are pleased and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of Heaven."

From "How to Pray Prayers Which are Pure Joy"
Commitment, Obedience, Lord
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Someone said, "Repentance is a tear in the eye of faith." That's a lovely phrase, but it is theologically incorrect. Repentance is not a tear in the eye of the faith, that's remorse. True repentance is an ache in the heart of people which causes them to take God's side against their sin. Repentance is knowing you have something to do, and then doing it.

From "Repentance Made Easy"
Repentance
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True repentance is preceded and supported by what Thomas Chambers described in his famous sermon, The Explulsive Power of a New Affection. "The best way to cast out an impure affection," he said, "is to admit a pure one, and by the love of God expel the love of evil. The best way to keep the love of sin out of your heart is to keep the love of God in your heart." That's why, as I said last week, before God calls upon sinners to "turn from their wicked ways," He invites them to "seek my face."

From "Repentance Made Easy"
Repentance, Lord
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Thomas Chambers whom I quoted earlier in this message said, "Knowledge of God is a practical thing. It goes straight to the heart, touches it, penetrates and kindles it with a love of all virtues. He who really knows God cannot fail to possess lively faith, firm hope, filial fear, thorough trust and entire submission. He finds no difficulty in doing God's will, avoiding evil and doing good. He complains of no rigors in God's demands. His body is on earth, but his soul is by thought and desire in Heaven already."

From "Repentance Made Easy"
Knowledge, God
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