The Burdened Watchman
Isaiah 21:11-12
Intr:
Illus.
1. Hattie Wiatt, a little girl, came to a very small Sunday School and asked them inside the church if she would come in.
2. But it was explained to her there was not enough room for her to come.
3. In less than two years she fell ill, and slipped away on her own little pilgrimage.
4. No one guess her strange little secret until they found under her pillow on her bed a torn pocketbook with 57 pennies in it.
5. These pennies were wrapped up in a scrap of paper on which was written,
6. ¡§To Help build the little temple bigger, so that more children can go to Sunday School.¡¨
7. For two years little Hattie had saved and scrimped to gather her pennies for the cause which was nearest to her heart.
8. The pastor told the story to his congregation, and the people began to make donations for the enlargement of their church.
9. The papers told this story far and wide, and within five years those fifty-seven pennies had grown to be $250,000.00 and today in Philadelphia, you can see the Great Baptist Temple, which seats 3,000 people.
10. Besides the church, you can see The Temple College which accommodates more than 1,400 students.
11. A Temple for worship.
12. A Hospital.
13. And a Sunday School so large that all who want to attend can come and there would be room.
14. I don¡¦t know what that story does to you, but it grips my heart to know that any church would be so small that someone couldn¡¦t go to Sunday School.
15. And tonight for our Sunday School time, we have all these empty seats and plenty of room for people to come and attend.
16. It grips my heart this evening that the church building that we sit in Sunday after Sunday could be so much more full than it is.
17. My heart is sensitive to little children that need Jesus.
Illus.
1. I remember when I was on staff at the Lancaster Faith Memorial Church.
2. Every Sunday 16 buses would warm up and a slew of people would come and man those buses and pray and then take off on Sunday morning to go out into the neighborhood to pick up children and youth who wanted to come to Sunday School and Church.
3. There were times when those buses would bring in as many as 500 to 600 children on the average.
4. Those old buses would break down and men would come and work on them, giving their time and effort to make sure the buses would go out on Sunday morning.
18. I don¡¦t know what it¡¦s going to take to get a burden to see more children and teens come to know Jesus Christ.
19. They are now telling us because of the society that we live in that children are most likely to get saved before the age of 12.
20. It used to be age 18.
21. My heart is burdened for Pataskala and our surrounding communities.
22. I want to win this community for Jesus!
23. I want to share with you tonight that my burden is to get people saved.
24. Get them in the church and see them discipled.
25. I want to do something that will make an impact on the Kingdom of God.
26. I ask you tonight: What is your burden?
ƒÞ What moves you?
ƒÞ What makes your heart cry?
ƒÞ Are you sensitive?
ƒÞ Where are your priorities?
27. Do you have a burden tonight for people who are lost without Jesus and headed for a Devil¡¦s hell?
28. The burden that I have read to you tonight comes from Isaiah chapter 21 and verses 11 and 12.
29. In verse 11 it is called THE BURDEN OF DUMAH.
ƒÞ Dumah is better known as Edom ¡V an old enemy of Israel.
ƒÞ First, she is seen as anxiously enquiring for a ray of light.
ƒÞ Second, she is seen as doomed to destruction for the guilt of her crimes.
ƒÞ Thirdly, She is seen as paying an awful penalty for her past.
ƒÞ (People ¡V who anxiously enquiring for a ray of light ¡V doomed to destruction ¡V guilty of sins ¡V paying an awful price for sins unless they come and meet Jesus Christ.)
Lay Out of the Vision:
- In this vision Edom is seen as in Great Anxiety.
- She is sending a message to Zion¡¦s watchman.
- She is enquiring how far the night has gone.
- Have you ever been up all night and wonder how much farther the night has to go before it gets daylight?
- She is enquiring how much longer will the darkness last?
- How much longer will the darkness last?
- Our world today is living in such terrible darkness.
- Do you and I see the lostness of our world?
- Do we see the darkness of our world?
- Is there a Burden?
- Are we broken hearted over the lostness of our world?
- Are we broken hearted over the darkness of our world?
30. There are people/families out there in their homes tonight who are living in terrible darkness.
31. Waiting for someone who cares enough to COME to them and tell them about their only hope.
32. How long will their darkness last?
33. The answer is not encouraging!
34. Statistics tell us that the church today doesn¡¦t care like it once did.
35. People who know tell us that America has become a mission field for those outside of our country.
36. The watchman seems to be having difficulty in finding a sympathetic way to announce it to the one enquiring.
37. he doesn¡¦t know how to give an answer. He¡¦s groping for an answer.
38. Have you ever groped for an answer and you didn¡¦t know how to answer someone?
39. You see ¡V he doesn¡¦t know how soon the light will break into the darkness.
40. It¡¦s a discouraging thing.
41. He¡¦s concerned about the darkness.
42. But yet with a kindly persuasion the Watchman encourages the enquirer to come again.
43. Will you Come Again?
44. Come again and Ask me Again about the Light.
45. Even though this was written so many years ago ¡V there is something very modern and contemporary about this.
46. Edom is still turning to Israel in her hour of need.
47. Right now Israel ¡V Jerusalem is in real darkness.
48. Everyone who is watching the news should be concerned about what is going on in Jerusalem.
49. Our churches should be filling up with people because it just shows the inevitable coming of Christ for His church.
50. All across our nation that we live in right now ¡V we are living in a period of Sore perplexity.
51. We are watching a bewildered world face the darkness and lostness that only comes without God.
52. We are watching a bewildered world face problems which they are powerless to solve.
53. They are asking for someone to give them light.
54. Is there any hope?
55. But what can we say as the church?
56. For each on of us to interpret and give them an answer would be to tell them of impending doom.
57. To tell them of Certain Judgment.
58. To declare to them certain Hell for those who reject the Truth of the Gospel.
59. As the Scripture says ¡V The Handwriting is on the wall.
60. I want to share with you tonight the OUTSTANDING NEED OF THE PRESENT HOUR IS MEN AND WOMEN WITH A REAL SOUL BURDEN.
61. AND THEN THIS BURDEN OF THE SOUL IS THE PRODUCT OF A SYMPATHETIC SPIRITUAL VISION WHICH BECOMES THE PRODUCER OF AN ALL CONSUMING PASSION FOR THE SOULS OF MEN, WOMEN, BOYS AND GIRLS.
I. The Churches Need.
A. What the Church has.
1. We have preachers.
2. We have pastors.
3. We have singers
4. We have teachers
5. We have people in business administration.
6. We have givers.
7. We have those who are faithful.
8. We are a blessed church
9. We have families
10. We have singles
11. The list goes on and on with what we do have.
B. What the Church does not have.
1. There seems to be few ¡V who really know what it means to carry a burden for lost souls.
2. Let me explain to you what Carrying a Burden for the lost means:
3. Maybe you already know what it means.
4. In this case, a Burden for Lost Souls is literally a message which has become a heavy weight.
C. Examples of men and women with burdens.
1. The old time men and women of God preached their messages at tremendous cost to them.
2. They had a Divine Contact with God.
3. The messages which they preached were first worked out and weaved in the fiber of their own being.
4. You might sit in a service and squirm under these sermons these men and women of God preached.
5. They would put you through the wringer.
i.e. Jim Crabtree ¡V Newt Wickline ¡V A.B. Maloy
6. But these men of God wrung out their messages in the agony of their soul.
7. Probably this is the reason why their messages have so endured and lasted while some of our messages are so often forgotten as soon as they are uttered.
8. I am asking God to help me to preach like that. Would you pray for me to have that kind of unction in preaching to reach people that need Jesus?
9. You can find examples of these burdened souls of God both in Scripture and in the History of the church.
10. George Whitfield had such a burden form men and women, boys and girls that he cried out in spiritual agony ¡V ¡§O God give me souls, or take my soul.¡¨
11. Do we ever cry over people who are lost?
12. Do we feel the weight?
13. Do we carry the burden?
14. Have we take the Load on our hearts for the sinner who is lost and damned to hell unless they come to the Savior?
II. The Churches Secret.
A. How does the burden come?
1. How do we get a burden and how can we keep the burden?
2. Now ¡V people ¡V we can¡¦t manufacture it.
3. We can¡¦t work it up.
4. There is nothing we can do in our human nature or efforts that can produce it.
B. The Burden Comes Supernaturally.
1. It comes from a sympathetic spiritual vision given to us from God.
2. Only God can give us a Real and Genuine Burden.
3. And God only gives it to a Prepared Heart.
III. The Call
¡§He calls to me ¡V Watchmen, what of the night?¡¨
- Do you ever wonder why this prophet became so burdened?
- He was a watchman gazing out into the darkness all around him.
- He could see a poor lost soul and hear him calling for a Ray of Light.
- And Yet there was no hand stretched out to help.
- I want us to ask three questions:
A. What do we mean when we speak of Spiritual Vision?
1. Some talk about it in a loose kind of way.
2. A Spiritual Vision is certainly not pious imagination.
3. Nor is it an Overwrought Emotion.
4. What I¡¦m talking about is Divine Revelation come from God the Father.
5. I¡¦m talking about a conviction deeply wrought by the Holy Spirit of God.
B. But How do we possess this Spiritual Vision?
1. Three words will cover this requirement:
ƒÞ Abandonment
ƒÞ Information
ƒÞ Investment
First, there is the necessity of complete abandon-ment.
a. Abandonement to God and to His service.
b. An utter yieldedness which brings a consciousness of entire inward cleansing in our spiritual heart and life.
c. So many today in the church are crippled and they need the physician to heal them spiritually.
Secondly, there must be an acquired Information.
a. Too often facts are not faced.
b. The facts too often are excused.
c. The facts are glossed over.
d. They are explained away.
e. We blame people for not coming and then we show no concern.
f. Concerning the Church of Jesus Christ.
ƒÞ There is worldiness that has crept in.
ƒÞ Modernism has taken the place of God¡¦s Word
ƒÞ In many places you will find smug satisfaction
ƒÞ There is a lostness of spiritual power.
ƒÞ A Great need of Spiritual Revival ¡V and it¡¦s doom without it.
ƒÞ No amount of education and refinement can make up for lost spiritual power.
g. There is also a problem of the corrupt condition of our present civilization.
h. The tragedy of it¡¦s fall in morals.
i. The lack of morals has come to be accepted by the church as inevitable, therefore, the church doesn¡¦t bother to confront it.
j. And what about the lost condition of the heathen world.
ƒÞ It is said that every time the clock ticks, a lost soul passes into eternity without God.
ƒÞ Without Christ ¡V
ƒÞ Without Hope.
ƒÞ Matthew 9:35-36 ¡§He went about all the cities and villages, teaching ¡Kpreaching ¡Khealing ¡Kbut when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.¡¨
ƒÞ Friends, this suggests to me that you can teach.
ƒÞ That you can preach.
ƒÞ You can care for the sick.
ƒÞ You can pray for healing.
ƒÞ And you can do it tenderly
ƒÞ You can do it without a soul passion.
ƒÞ Actually you can do it without a real relation-ship with God.
ƒÞ No realization of a soul¡¦s deeper needs in Christ.
ƒÞ But if we do it Jesus¡¦ way ¡V we¡¦ll carry a burden of compassion.
ƒÞ We¡¦ll weep over the lost and the hurting, the needy.
5. Thirdly, THERE MUST FURTHER BE SOME PERSONAL INVESTMENT.
a. Something of our own must be put into it.
b. Something that means a lot to us.
c. Something that will cost us.
d. Interest only comes with investment in more sense than one.
How much are you and I willing to give to put into the business of seeing boys and girls, moms and dads, men and women get saved from a Christless eternity?
Conclusion:
1. Allow me ask tonight a very serious question to those in this room.
2. In what sense does this Vision become a Passion?
ƒÞ It is not and will not be a continual emotion.
ƒÞ It is rather a settle principle which dedicates itself to a Supreme Calling ¡V a Supreme Task ¡V
ƒÞ That of doing the Divine Will of God.
ƒÞ Jesus said, ¡§I must work ¡K. While it is day, for the night comes ¡K¡¨
3. There are a lot of other things that are important, even necessary, but this is Supreme.
4. An all compelling Burden must drive our souls on and on and on until pain is sweet ¡V until the sacrifice is a delight.
5. Until the old rugged cross of Calvary¡¦s road becomes so ablazed with dazzling glory that to leave it would be a great sacrifice than to remain on it.
6. A commitment and a consecration that would be easier to die than to quit.
