The sermon of this post is from the YouTube site, MLJTrust.
Video-page link: https://www.youtube.com/@MLJTrust/videos
Playlist-page link: https://www.youtube.com/@MLJTrust/playlists
Sermon Description [from MLJTrust; divided into smaller units for this post]:
The condition of the church today suggests that her need is as urgent as it has ever been. In this sermon on Genesis 26.17–18 titled “Revival Sermon: The Modern Philistine,” Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones expands on the great and urgent need for revival and reawakening.
Genesis 26.17–18 “So Isaac departed from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar and settled there. And Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of Abraham his father, which the Philistines had stopped after the death of Abraham. And he gave them the names…
To influence this, he says, the church must follow Isaac, who dug again the wells of his father Abraham: “The essence of wisdom for the church at a time like this is to look back into her own history.”
When she does this, what will she find?
She will find that no revival has ever been known in history that denied the fundamentals of the Christian faith or neglected such vital truths. These truths are constantly buried by “the rubbish of the Philistines.”
Dr. Lloyd-Jones explains the vital truths and doctrines denied by the Philistines: the sovereignty of God, the authority of the Bible, the doctrine of sin, and the wrath of God. Revival cannot happen without the proclamation of these truths.
It is with arrogance, pride, and the tendency to glorify oneself rather than God that stands between us and His mighty blessings of revival.
Sermon Breakdown [from MLJTrust]:
[The following points are basically a sermon outline; his sermon fills in the blanks; I added a few things from his sermon, to further explain some of the more important points]:
*The church today is in a desperate state and urgently needs revival and awakening.
- Isaac needed water to live, just as the church needs revival to live. The problem is a matter of life or death.
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The situation is as dire as it’s ever been. The church is fighting for its life.
Isaac didn’t waste time speculating or searching for answers. He went back to the wells dug in Abraham’s day.
- The church should look to its history to see how God revived His people in the past.
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God and human sin don’t change, so the solutions of the past still apply today.
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Concealing or neglecting vital truths always marks times of decline in the church.
[He explains that before the Protestant Reformation, during the dark ages and the time leading to the 16th century, the great characteristic of the church was that the vital truths of salvation could not be seen… the people were kept in spiritual darkness]
- No revival has come to churches that deny essential truths. Unitarians and Catholics have never had revivals.
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Such churches always oppose revival and persecute those experiencing it. They see revival as devilish.
[Facts of history, not his opinion]
- Rediscovering vital truths has always led to revival. The Reformation came from rediscovering justification by faith.
[Below, he talks about how the discovery the doctrine of justification by faith alone impacted Westley and Whitfield. – see below these points for a bit more explanation of the apostle Paul’s work in Romans and Galatians, how he explained that Abraham, the “father of the faithful” was justified by faith; that all true believers come to God the same way.]
- The 18th century revival came from rediscovering vital doctrines obscured by rationalism and deism.
[Deism cut God off from an active interest in His own universe: the watch-maker theory, that God created the world and then He withdrew and let it run via the laws He built into it.]
- The 1859 revival came as the church rejected Arianism and rediscovered the deity of Christ.
[Arianism denied the Godhead of the Lord Jesus Christ, believing He was a created being and not co-equal with the Father – the JW’s and Mormons of today hold such unbiblical beliefs.]
- Vital doctrines must be believed for revival. Their denial prohibits revival.
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The first vital truth is the sovereign, living, transcendent God who acts in the world.
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God is not an abstraction or philosophical concept. He is life and the author of all being.
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The “God in all” view sees God as imminent but not transcendent. It denies God’s sovereignty.
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Deism sees God as creator but not involved in the world. It cuts God off from acting in His universe.
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A deistic or philosophical view of God makes prayer meaningless and revival impossible.
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The second vital truth is the authority of Scripture. The Philistines deny revelation and inspiration.
[Theological liberalism denies the supernatural aspects of scripture, emphasizing the ideas/doctrines of man over God’s word. For a bit more on that topic, see below MLJTrust points.]
- They rely on human reason, not God’s revelation. They see man searching for God, not God for man.
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Apart from Scripture, we have no knowledge of God or how to find blessing. We must submit to its authority.
[The common idea that man can go on a quest to find God and actually do that is very unbiblical. No person from the pages of scripture did that. I read through the Bible several times before that registered on me. Abraham, Moses, all the prophets, and the apostles experienced an encounter wherein God revealed Himself to them. The most dramatic examples of that were Moses and the burning bush (Ex. 3) and the Apostle Paul’s Damascus-road conversion (Acts 9); Paul was a Pharisee of high standing in Judaism, he wrongly thought he knew God before His conversion. He talks about that in Philippians 3.]
- The third vital truth is man’s sin and God’s wrath. Natural man hates these doctrines and calls them insulting.
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Sin is explained away psychologically. God’s wrath is seen as incompatible with His love.
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But revival reveals man’s sinfulness and God’s wrath. Men see their vileness and fear God’s wrath.
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Jesus and the New Testament also teach sin and wrath. God’s wrath is terrifying, especially the wrath of the Lamb.
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Until we humble ourselves before God’s holiness and wrath, there is no hope of revival. Our arrogance must go.
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We must start with a right view of God and Scripture before considering other doctrines.
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We must clear away the rubbish of the Philistines to find the water of life again.
End of points from MLJTrust.
ON JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH ALONE:
The apostle Paul explained that doctrine in Romans 4 and Galatians; therein he tied it to Genesis 15:6, how our father Abraham believed God; Paul stated that those who believe are the children of Abraham…:
Gen 15:6 And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.
Rom 4:11 He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, Rom 4:12 and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.]
That is, those who believe by faith, since Abraham, are his true children. Another name for those people is the church; those elect whom God chose before the foundation of the world [Eph. 1:3ff], and has been calling out of the world via covenant with Abraham: Gen 15:18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates…
The promises of the covenant come via faith:
Rom 4:13 For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.
Rom 4:14 For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void.
Rom 4:15 For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.
ON THEOLOGICAL LIBERALISM:
Since Spurgeon’s day, Theological Liberalism (TL) has been corrupting churches. Adherents of TL, do not accept the supernatural aspects of scripture: miracles; sovereignty of God; biblical inerrancy; that the Bible was divinely inspired….
Today, that movement is called, the ‘postmodern church,’ or the ‘progressive’ church. Very recently, Megan Basham published a book, Shepherds for Sale which provides a glimpse into how pastors are currently obscuring the precious truths that Lloyd-Jones is discussing herein. Another book that explains how it is that Theological liberalism is NOT Christianity, is J. G. Machen’s, Christianity and Liberalism.
Wikipedia: The conservative Presbyterian biblical scholar J. Gresham Machen criticized what he termed “naturalistic liberalism” in his 1923 book, Christianity and Liberalism, in which he intended to show that “despite the liberal use of traditional phraseology modern liberalism not only is a different religion from Christianity but belongs in a totally different class of religions”.[8] The Anglican Christian apologist C. S. Lewis voiced a similar view in the mid-20th century, arguing that “theology of the liberal type” amounted to a complete re-invention of Christianity and a rejection of Christianity as understood by its own founders [Christ and His apostles].
[The above is lacking much, it merely provides a glimpse of Theological Liberalism.]
OTHER LINKS THAT ACCOMPANIED THE ABOVE VIDEO AT YOUTUBE:
A sermon by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones on Genesis 26.17-18 https://www.mljtrust.org/sermons/revi…
” Revival playlist: • Diagnosing the Need―A Sermon on the N…