Pouring Water for the Thirsty

Sermon Transcript

Let us pray. Our Father, what would the believing people of thine do without a mercy seat? What would this consulate do if they did not have the throne of grace to which to come, and the bread of life on which to feed, and the fountain of cleansing in which to bathe, and the water of life from which to drink? O Lord Jesus, thou art made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. For truly thou art the great I Am.

Thou art the bread of life. Thou art the light of the world. Thou art the door by which we enter and go out in green pastures.

Thou art the shepherd who died in our place. Thou art the resurrection and the life. And thou art the way, the truth, and the life, and no man cometh unto the Father but by thee.

And thou art the true vine. I am the true vine, you said, and ye are the branches. And we thank thee tonight that all of these things thou art, and all of these things thou art unto us and to our hearts, and we thank you for it.

Now, our Father, we come back again tonight to hear thy precious word, that word which thou hast definitely laid upon our hearts for tonight. As we waited before you, you gave us the text and you gave us the words to speak, and so may we speak them in power and demonstration of the Holy Spirit, and may they find a lodging place in our hearts, is our cry. Our Father, we pray especially tonight for the Thule family in Illinois.

You know their needs. Oh, Father, how precious the conversation with the dear soul the week before last meant to my soul, and we hear they're in trouble, and they need thee, and so will you meet that need tonight by thy grace and by thy mercy, as thou alone can meet the needs of each and every one of our hearts. Be with them, comfort them, guide them, and lead them is our prayer.

And our Father, the dear prisoner who wrote in and said he would have given up a year's packages coming into his cell to get the one Bible that he did that he needed for his soul, we pray for him. Those who have written in that they're lost, those who are praying that you will move in their place, we pray for the chaplains, our Father, that get the booklets and the tracts and the books for the men. Watch over them and keep them.

Bless the material that's gone to three prisons these past two weeks, our Father, great quantities of it for distribution among thousands of men. Oh, will you pour out thy Spirit upon them, for you said that you'll pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground, and you'll pour out thy Spirit upon our seed and a blessing upon our offspring. You said they shall spring up as grass among the willows where the water courses, and they shall say I am of the Lord.

So we trust you tonight to do what you said that you would do. Bless in our homes, thou knowest our needs in our homes. Thou knowest those who are sin sick.

Oh, my Father, that you would heal them from the hurt of sin. Thou knowest those who are sick in body. Have mercy upon them and may thy healing hand rest upon them.

Have mercy upon us in these dark days of the war. Be with our President, those in authority. Give them wisdom and understanding.

May they not be deceived, but may they have wisdom to know what to do in this hour. We trust you and look to you that thy word will find a lodging place in their hearts, and that they will turn to thee. For it is in Christ's name that we pray.

Amen. We want you to turn with us in your Bibles tonight to the book of Isaiah, chapter 44. I'd like to read to you the first six verses, and our text will be found in that context.

Yet now hear, O Jacob, my servant, and Israel, whom I have chosen. Thus saith the Lord that made thee and formed thee from the womb, which will help thee, fear not, O Jacob, my servant, and thou, Jerusalem, whom I have chosen. For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground, and I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring, and they shall spring up as among the grasses, willows by the watercourses.

One shall say, I am the Lord's, and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob, and another shall subscribe with his hand unto the Lord, and surname himself by the name of Israel. Thus saith the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts. I am the first, and I am the last, and beside me there is no God.

In waiting before the Lord for the message tonight, these verses of Scripture just popped out into my soul, and I could not get away from them. And they came on the verge of, certainly, upon the verge of an attack of Satan after the service this morning, as we were sitting in the chair after dinner, meditating and crying to the Lord for mercy and for guidance and leadership. And then the attack of Satan to quit, to turn back, to let somebody else do it, just go off and forget about everything, and with nothing but a failure anyway, and that's all we've ever been and always will be.

And then these verses of Scripture came to my heart and my mouth, and I want you to notice who is the one that speaks these words. It is the one spoken of in verse 6, as thus saith the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts. I am the first, and I am the last, and beside me there is no God.

The one who speaks this word into our hearts is the Lord God Almighty, who sits upon the throne, the sovereign God, who does as he pleases in the armies of heaven and among the sons of men, and none can say his name. I want you to notice to whom the promise of verses 3 and 4 are spoken to. They are spoken to Jacob, God's servant.

They are spoken to Israel, God's chosen. Now, there are those who tell us we can't use these promises of the Old Testament because they were for the Jews and the Jews only, but I don't believe that. I believe that the believing people of God are the true Israel of God, and that the promises spoken to Israel are for the seed, and that seed is in Christ, because Christ is that seed.

And so therefore we can pray, and we can look to the Lord. Now, verses 3 and 4 have been a prayer of mine for decades. I have prayed this prayer for my family over and over again, and I have written by my Bible, the promise may be long delayed but cannot come too late.

I've also got another notation that the blood of the Lamb has sealed this promise, and I've got another quotation from the Word of God that all the promises are yea and amen in Christ. They are fulfilled in Him. Now I want you to look at what he says, and I want to go into it with you tonight for the grace of God, and let's pray that God will take it home to our hearts because I believe we all fit in here and certainly can use these promises in our own soul.

And the promise is this, "'Fear not, O Jacob, my servant, in thou Jerusalem,' another name for Israel, "'whom I have chosen.'" We're His chosen ones. "'For I.'" God's going to do something. He said, "'I will pour water upon him that is thirsty.' He said, "'I will pour floods upon the dry ground.' He said, "'I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed.'" Talking about those who belong to us.

"'And my blessing upon thine offspring.'" And then wherever we see that God says, "'I will,' you can always reckon that there's going to be an, "'They shall.'" It always follows where God says, "'I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new Spirit within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and put a new heart of flesh in you, and then you shall obey my commandments and walk into my way. I will pour upon the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and of supplication, and they shall mourn apart.'" The house of David, the king, the house of Levi, the priest, the house of Nathan, the prophet, and the house of Shimei, the out-and-out sinner. He's going to pour out his Spirit of grace and of supplication wherever God says, "'I will,' we can reckon, "'that we shall.'" So look at it in that light.

God says, "'I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground. I will pour out my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring, and they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the watercourses, and they shall say, I am of the Lord.'" So that's the promise. You can take this promise to be a revival promise.

You can take this to be a promise for our children, for our loved ones, our families. You can take this to be a promise for the whole church, the whole body of God. However you want to take it, it is a promise that God says He will perform.

Now, I believe that each and every one of us in this house tonight will agree, if there were ever a time in our lives or in the history of our country when we need the fulfillment of this word, these words, it is now. I don't believe any of you will dispute with me tonight if there ever was a time in our lives or in the history of our country or the world when we need the fulfillment of these words, it is right now. We need the promise fulfilled in our lives as God's children, and especially in the lives of those who have never tasted that the Lord is gracious.

That promise of revival, that promise of sending the Holy Spirit. And I want you to notice that He says He was going to pour out His Spirit upon our seed and a blessing upon our offspring. And if we know anything tonight, and we have ever been taught by the Spirit of God anything, we have been taught this one thing, that without Him, without the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, we can do nothing.

And unless God pours, confusion will continue to reign. Misunderstanding will be in our midst. Slander and backbiting and hatred and malice will only continue to plague our hearts unless God pours out His Spirit upon us.

And there's not a one of us tonight, but that has been here in the last year or so, understands and knows that if ever a people and an assembly and a church and a pastor needs this promise, we need this promise. I believe this with all my soul tonight. I believe it.

But I believe God has not gone off and left us. No matter how rough the road may seem, what the misunderstanding may be, or how the confusion may reign, or what else has gone on before, I don't believe that God has gone off and left us. For I believe that He has given us this promise for our souls to plead even tonight.

We need the Holy Spirit working in our hearts. If there was ever a people that needed the Spirit of God to work in their hearts, it is us. I'm not talking about anybody else.

I am saying tonight that if ever there was a people that needed the Holy Spirit of God to work in their hearts, we need the Spirit of God to work in our hearts. I need Him to work in mine. If ever there was a people who needed revival in their souls, it is this small assembly.

I don't believe there is one in this house tonight that would stand up and argue with me in regard to that statement that we made. As a church, as an assembly, we need the Spirit of God to work in us. If there was ever a people who needed the Spirit of grace and supplication to fill our hearts, we need it.

We need that Spirit of grace and of supplication to work in our hearts. If there was ever a people that needed to turn to God in confession and repentance and heart searching, we need this. I need this.

Until God comes and meets with us from above the mercy seat as never before. We need the Holy Spirit to break our hearts. We need the Holy Spirit to bring us to confession of sin.

We need the Holy Spirit poured out upon us through the seeking of the face of our Lord and to break all that is of the world in our hearts that we might walk in the pathway of righteousness and true holiness. I speak that with all the fervor of my soul tonight. I need the Holy Spirit in revival in my soul, and I believe that you do.

Therefore, we have in these verses of Scripture one of those unconditional promises of God's Word, and there are many of them. There is no, oh I praise God for this, there is no requirements here whatsoever. For if we are thirsty, and we know that our souls are parched in the dry ground, we have an unconditional promise that God said, I will pour.

I thank God for the unconditional promises of His Word. So first of all tonight then, we have this great covenant blessing that God says He would pour out upon His people. I will give them the gift of the Holy Spirit.

For if we be an evil, know how to give good gifts unto our children, how much more shall God give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. Now, there was the initial coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, but as you began to read through Acts, and I read a few chapters in there this afternoon. In chapter 4, it is said that as they prayed after the first wave of persecution, they were filled with the Spirit.

In chapter 5, after the second wave of persecution, it is said that they prayed and they were filled with the Spirit. This means to me exactly what Paul says in Ephesians 5, to be filled with the Spirit. Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit.

Speak unto yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord. So there then is the gift of the Holy Spirit, the filling, the constant filling that we need of the Holy Spirit. If there is to be an awakening or revival in our hearts, if there is to be an awakening or the revival in our homes, in our midst, it must be by the Holy Spirit who alone is that refreshing, life-giving, fertilizing life of water, water of life from above.

Do I believe this? Do I know this to be true? I will pour water. I will pour my Spirit. I want you to know this, the promise, I will pour.

You and I can rest assured, as we come to the Word of God, with all the confidence that if God has promised a thing, we can be confident of receiving that blessing which God has promised to us. Now this is exactly what he tells us in 1 John chapter 5, and it is no more or no less than the believing of the promise of the Word of God, for he says that this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. And if we know that He heareth us whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.

And here is a promise. Here is the thing that we ask for, and we receive it, and we know that He will give it, and we have the confidence in Him that He will give it, because He has spoken to us these precious words, I will pour. It is a promise that faith can lay hold of.

It is something that we can take to the throne of God's grace and place our finger upon it, and we can say like the psalmist Lord, remember the word or the promise that you have caused thy servant to trust in or confide in. Have you ever read that in Psalm 119? David did, and this is what he says. I might not have quoted it, but remember the word unto thy servant which thou hast caused me to hope.

Remember the word of thy servant upon which thou hast caused me to hope. That is the same thing. We bring the word, we put our fingers upon it, and we remind him, remember the word that you have spoken unto thy servant upon which thou hast caused me to hope.

And that we can take another promise like the one given in Numbers 23.19, that God is not a man that He should lie, neither the Son of Man that He should repent. Hath He said, and shall He not do it? Or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good? God cannot lie. Let us come then and put our finger upon it and remind Him that His word is forever settled in heaven.

Remind Him of this, that He has promised it, He has spoken to it. And on our knees or walking or standing or sitting or wherever it is, we can remind Him that He cannot lie. He will never revoke His word.

The gifts and callings of God are without repentance. He does not repent of what He has promised. And I told you that I had written on the fly leaf of my Bible, the blood of the Lamb has sealed this promise.

And oh how He loves for us to plead the promise with the blood. And that the promise is mine because it is sealed with the blood of Christ. Christ has bought it for me.

And therefore I can come and I can look to Him. I would like to ask you a question. When springtime comes, does God ask man to help him in melting the snow and the ice? You don't see it down here, but I certainly saw it when we lived up north.

We didn't have to go out in the fields or the pastures or in the places that were snowed in or iced in, like the playgrounds and things during the winter. We didn't have to go there and melt them. Come the last days of March and the first days of April, and as April got on in the middle of the month and the end of the month, and especially as May came along, by then the lakes were unfrozen.

God does not ask man to help in melting the ice and the snow and to get the chill out of the air. All He does is send the south wind. And it begins to blow.

You know why our cold spell didn't last but one night here this time? I talked to my daughter-in-law last night in Minnesota, and she said it was 44 up there yesterday. Well, the day before it had been 14 below zero. And the reason our cold front didn't last, and I could tell during the night, I don't know about you, but I woke up during the night and I could tell that the weather had changed.

For when I went to bed, or the habit I have when I go to bed at night, I get the weather report right there by my bed, and what it's going to be during the night. And it was 38 degrees last night when I went to bed. And I woke up this morning and it was 56.

I knew during the night that the covers got heavy and the room got kind of stuffy because it was not cold anymore. And the reason our cold spell didn't last is because up there where it comes from, it had already changed. And God doesn't need man to do this.

All He does is speak by His power. And beloved, that's all we need tonight. I will pour water upon him that is thirsty.

Let's believe in the power of God. He can blow the spirit upon the dry bones. He can cause us to live.

He can speak that word and cause our souls to be revived and send us revival in our midst. I will, and that third verse, it's a double thing. For I will pour water.

I will pour my spirit. Twice He mentions it unto us. And we are certain that the Lord can and will pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground.

He can make deaf sinners hear. And He can cause them to seek His face. And He can cause our hearts to pray.

And He can cause us to turn from the world and the things of the world and to seek His face. And that's what we need tonight and pray for this. Above all things that we need, beloved, we need the promise of this word tonight.

Above all of our needs. Many a time on the radio, I never ask for money, but I will tell them time after time, I said the greatest gift that you can give to this ministry is to pray for it. I tell them that over and over again.

Pray for us. Pray for us. And this is the greatest need that God can give, is to send the Holy Spirit in convicting power.

For we are ships without sails. We are cars without motors. We are a big plant without electricity.

Unless the Spirit of God moves in our hearts and in our lives, I will pour water upon him that is thirsty. You know, it's good to be thirsty. Good to be thirsty.

Thirsty after the things of the Lord. We have a need. Those who have a need, to them will He come.

Are you thirsty tonight? Do you need the water of life? Do you need the Lord to come into your life? Is your life parched? Are you a valley of dry bones? Do you feel your soul to be dead and lifeless? Then He said that He will come. It is upon the thirsty land, upon the hearts which cry unto Him, O Lord, my barrenness. O Lord, I confess unto Thee my unworthiness.

I am not worthy of the least of Your mercies, and I am so barren, I need You. My soul needs to be revived. He will come if there is a thirst in the soul.

And then that daily crying unto Him out of the poverty and the barrenness of our souls. Beloved, we are poverty stricken without the Lord. We have nothing without Him.

And our needs are not weekly, they are daily and they are hourly. For it is when we see ourselves to be wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked that we will plead, O Lord, pour, pour Thy Spirit out upon us. May divine mercy and may divine grace come into our souls.

Do we pray like this? May God give us that prayer. And then we can rest assured that when He comes and He pours, it will be effectual. His working is most effectual to supply all of our needs.

When He does come, He will not leave one need unmet. He will come not with a trickle, but He will come with a stream. And beloved, wherever God the Spirit is poured out and working and moving, there is life, there is health, there is spirituality.

The people may be few. The man that God uses may be like Moses, stammered in his speech, or like Paul, his personal appearance may be awful, his speech contemptible. But when the Spirit of God comes, it makes no difference, because He begins to deal with heart.

The group may be small. The messenger that He uses may be like Moses with stammering lips, like Paul, that speech they said was contemptible. But when He comes, that is what we need.

I can't go on without Him. I guess I've told Him that a thousand times this week. Lord, I can't go on without You.

I can't go on without You. I can't do nothing without You. And we must go on.

We must trust the Lord to do it, because He makes us willing in the day of His power. And He will get all the glory. He pours His water, He pours His Spirit out upon it.

He doesn't use the methods that man would use. He uses simple individuals who like Moses said, Lord, I'm of uncircumcised lips, and who am I to stand before Pharaoh? If the children of Israel won't hear me, how is Pharaoh going to pay any attention to me? If you haven't read the first fifteen chapters of Exodus lately, you ought to read them and see the power of God in dealing with that hoady monarch called Pharaoh. And you know they were the greatest nation all the world, and do you know that was millenniums ago? And Egypt has never been the same since.

There's never been a power reckoned among the powers of the nations again when God got through with Him and with that hoady monarch to send His people out. All He had to do was to speak. He raised Him up to show forth His power.

His glory. Now God has so many ways to work, but I want you to notice that God doesn't give like man gives. Man gives stingerly, holds back and grasps.

But God gives when He gives, He gives liberally and upbraideth not. He gives different than man. The Lord pours.

I want you to notice those words. I will pour water. I will pour my spirit as if He's going to give us an abundance when He comes.

And where sin abound, grace will much more abound. Where there's been the parched ground and the thirsty ground and the dry ground, He will send a deluge. And wherever the water is, there is always the trees and the grass.

I never will forget a scene that I saw as long as I live. One Saturday morning in January of 1940, 1956 I believe it was, I was flying from Great Falls to New York Falls, Montana to Minneapolis on a plane. And we must have been at least 30-35,000 feet high.

If you know anything about the geography of the United States, when you come out of the state of Montana, you come into the state of North Dakota. And if you know anything about that region, you know that the badlands, what they call the badlands, the rugged badlands start in South Dakota and go on up into North Dakota. And I had been in the badlands in 1974 and I knew what they looked like.

Even from this height I could see the badlands of North Dakota as we went across them that morning. But one thing struck me, and I'm telling you, my heart just overflowed with praise and with thanksgiving and this promise came to my mind. I looked down and as I was watching, I saw winding through those canyons and the badlands of North Dakota, trees, a string of trees.

I could see them from way up nearly 6,000, 7,000 feet high and I knew for those trees to be there, there had to be a stream of water. Had to be a stream of water. And I'm telling you, until I got completely out of sight and couldn't see that scene no more, this promise just flooded my soul over and over again.

I said, that is truth, Lord, for you pour, then there will be the springing up among the grass as the willows by the water courses. And wherever the water course was, there were the trees and the grass. And that's what the prophet was thinking of in the desert land of Israel, in the south of Israel, toward the desert.

Wherever the stream was, there was willow trees there. And did you know that where willow trees are, have you ever dealt with a willow? Do you know anything about willow trees? You can cut a branch off and stick it in the ground where there's water, it'll sprout. You can't hardly kill a willow tree, despite you practically got to dig it up.

And where there's water, it'll keep springing up. And that's why he likens to what he does, and they shall spring up as among the grass as willows by the water courses. He said he would do it.

He said he would do it. He said so we can take that as a promise for our family, for our children. We can take that as a promise that we might bring before the throne of God's grace.

We might take it as a covenant promise from the Lord, that he will pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground, and his spirit upon our seed, and a blessing upon our offspring. And then let's watch for the results. They shall spring up as among the grass as willows by the water courses.

Wherever the Spirit of God comes, there will be life in our midst, life in the ministry, there will be life in prayer, there will be life in our efforts, there will be life in holiness, there will be life in brotherly love, and the love will flow from heart to heart. And do we need that? You better believe we need it. It was never before we need it.

So let's cry, Lord, you promised. You promised. And let us plead together.

Let us plead together. He says there's going to be grass, plenty of grass, because these willow trees are going to spring up among the grass. Can you count the blades of grass? Why couldn't God, in the days in which we're living, pour out? My friend, Brother Michael, handed me something that he, I thought if I got through preaching on Ecclesiastes this morning, he says, I was in the library the other day and he said, I've never copied anything out of a magazine in a library yet, but I had to copy this to bring to you.

It was right where you were talking about. And the article was on Ted Turner, the man who owns cable television, CNN, and a big station in Atlanta. And he's a humanist.

And he was standing before this great crowd of humanists at their 46th anniversary and he was the man of the year for 1990 as a humanist. He went back in his life and showed that he was brought up in Sunday school. He was brought into the Presbyterian church when he was 17.

He said God didn't answer his prayers and he began to rethink all of this. And then in his mind he began to reason and think it all out. And he says, that's all a bunch of hogwash that God would send his son to die for sinners and that we are good people.

And he went on and on and on, blaspheming God. Well God is able to do for sinners in spite of what he has to say and all that he can write and all the blasphemous literature against the power of God in this day. God is able to take his word home to our hearts.

He is able to cause souls to spring up as among the grass, as willows by the water courses. And he is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask by the power that worketh in him. And so this is our prayer and this is our hope and this is our plea.

Let man in all of his infidelity and atheism and blasphemy against the Lord God of glory and against his holy child Jesus. As Peter said to that Sanhedrin, after the Sanhedrin told him not to speak in that name, they went back with their crowd, their group, they began to pray and it said, they have blasphemed the name of thy holy child Jesus. Show them.

Just show them that in that name you are able to do mighty and wonderful works. And let's see if God will work as never before. But as we send out this material that God has given us, oh I wish you could have seen the two chaplains that came in here a week before last and each one of them took, they took nearly a whole truckload of books and tracts and booklets back to them for their prisoners.

And we shipped out Friday over $600 worth of tracts and booklets for one chaplain out in California for 3,000 men that he ministers to. Pre-charge. Pray that God will use this in spite of man.

Pray that God will pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground. And then we will hear them say, I am of the Lord. And that's what we want to hear.

I am of the Lord. You know, God had mercy upon my never dying soul, we'll hear them say. That which was impossible with us is possible with God.

They will say, I've been washed in his blood from head to foot, body and soul. I belong to him. He's mine.

He has saved me. We'll hear them say, I am of the Lord. We will hear them say like Philip Doddridge said, tis done, the great transaction's done.

I am my Lord's and he is mine. He drew me and I followed on, charmed to obey the voice divine. He is mine.

Isn't that what we want to hear? Well, let's pray to it. God has sifted us in the past year and a half, hasn't he? Oh, he's sifted us. But can he still bless? Has he gone off and left us? He said, I will pour.

And let's put him to the test. Let's see that he will, let's pray that we will yet hear those that come in. We heard a man stand right down there and tell us that God had gone off and left this place.

We told, he told us that there would never be another soul in this place again, just nothing but a bunch of old people. We heard that with our own ears. I did.

You were here and you heard it too. And we were told that we were going to go under. God had left us.

But let us pray that God will take those words and use them as boomerangs and that we will believe that God is able to do exactly exceedingly, abundantly above all that we ask or think with the power that we are condensed. Will you? Here's the promise. God is able to do it.

You believe that? I pray that God will take it home to our hearts. Let's cultivate prayer. Let us bring this promise to the Lord and let us pray it with the fervency of our souls.

Put our fingers upon it and remind him of it. All of us. Lord, do it.

Do it. Lord, do it is our prayer. Brother Michael, will you lead us in closing prayer?