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The sermon presents biblical and historical accounts of God’s mighty works as grounds for present confidence, arguing that God has not changed and can act suddenly again. Revival and conversion are attributed fundamentally to God’s sovereign Spirit rather than human ability, numbers, reputation, or technique. The church is therefore called to praise God, pray fervently, and expect Him to work. Sinners are warned not to resist conviction but to repent, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and be converted before judgment comes.
Theological center: God is sovereign, unchanging, and able to save and revive through the mighty operation of His Spirit, while sinners are called to repent and believe in Christ.
Applications: Remember God’s mighty works · Pray for revival · Depend on God alone · Expect God to act
Primary texts: Psalm 44:1 · Judges 5:20 · 1 Kings 18:21
“We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what work thou didst in their days, in the times of old.” Psalm 44:1 PERHAPS there are no stories that stick by us so long as those which we hear in our childhood, those tales which are told us by our fathers and in our nurseries. It is a sad reflection that too many of these stories are idle and vain, so that our minds in early infancy are tinctured with fables, and inoculated with strange and lying narratives. Now, among the early Christians and the old believers in the far-off times, nursery tales were far different from what they are now, and the stories with which their children were amused were of a far different class from those which fascinated us in the days of our babyhood. No doubt Abraham would talk to young children about the flood, and tell them how the waters overspread the earth, and how Noah alone was saved in the ark. The ancient Israelites, when they dwelt in their own land, would all of them tell their children about the Red Sea, and the plagues which God wrought in Egypt when He brought His people out of the house of bondage. Among the early Christians we know that it was the custom of parents to recount to their children everything concerning the life of Christ, the acts of the apostles, and the like interesting narratives. Now, among our Puritan ancestors such were the stories that regaled their childhood. Sitting down by the fireside, before those old Dutch tiles with the quaint eccentric drawings upon them of the history of Christ, mothers would teach their children about Jesus walking on the water, or of His multiplying the loaves of bread, or of His marvelous transfiguration, or of the crucifixion of Jesus. Oh, how I would that the like were the tales of the present age, that the stories of our childhood would be again the stories of Christ, and that we would each of us believe that, after all, there can be nothing so interesting as that which is true, and nothing more striking than those stories which are written in Sacred Writ, nothing that can more truly move the heart of a child than the marvelous works of God which He did in the olden times. Now it seems that the psalmist who wrote this most musical ode had heard from his father, handed to him by tradition, the stories of the wondrous things which God had done in his day, and afterwards, this sweet singer in Israel taught it to his children, and so was one generation after another led to call God blessed, remembering His mighty acts. Now, my dear friends, this morning I intend to recall to your minds some of t…