The word microcosm, literally means, “little world.”   A garden is a microcosm – a little world which often poignantly illustrates spiritual truths.   Perhaps this is why Jesus often taught about life in the Kingdom of God using parables from gardening.   My own gardening ritual is predictable – it begins by checking on my vines: my watermelon and my pumpkins.   I find great joy watching these vines grow and flower and produce.   They are the first things I check in the morning and the last things I check in the evening.   Of all the growing things in our garden, these bring me the greatest pleasure.   Yet, just as Adam and Eve had pestilence stalking in their garden, so do I – squash bugs, the mortal enemies of my beloved pumpkin vines, and so my own mortal enemies as well.   They are the most resilient of pests, impervious to the most malevolent schemes we can devise.  Melanie and I have asked around, we have researched on the internet; we have tried remedies both folk and chemical to eradicate these pests.   Finally, they are starting to dwindle and to my great delight I found a volunteer pumpkin growing hidden among my sweet potato vines.  And as I rejoiced in my seeming triumph over the insidious squash bug, a strange scripture came to my mind – “do you have a right to be angry about the vine?”  

Remember how angry Jonah was when the Lord sent a pest to destroy his beloved vine?   God’s indictment of Jonah was searing – literally!   He had loved a vine more than he had loved the lost!   He had more care and concern over a vine, than for men and women, boys and girls perishing without hope and without Christ.   Then the question came to mind – am I as sorrowful over the destruction of the lost as I am over the destruction of my pumpkin vines?   What about you?  What daily inconveniences, what annoying trifles, give you more grief than the fact that your neighbor’s life is in the relentless grip of sin and desolation?   The next time you are in your own garden and you behold the desolation of the squash bug or the corn worm or the scorching heat – remember your neighbor and commit to pray for him, to love him as yourself, and to share the good news of Jesus Christ.

The winter sunset is beautiful.   The deep red held in relief against the sillouette of the bare trees reveals every lovely shape and every deformity within.   With no leaves, all is exposed.  As we observed such a sunset this week I thought of these words from William Bridge in his sermon, A Word to the Aged.   I encourage you to read this short sermon which draws attention to the spiritual pit-falls planted for the aged by the enemy of our souls.

Scottish divine, Thomas Chalmers noted the same effect between the entertaining, self-help, power-of-positive-thinking type preaching of his day and the spiritual poverty of the people.   He aptly remarked that  such preaching was “like a winter’s day, short and clear and cold. The brevity is good, the clarity is better; the coldness is fatal. Moonlight preaching ripens no harvest.”  

Chalmers could have been describing the preaching of our day and the consequent spiritual poverty evident in our own society.  We say we long for revival in our nation, but am skeptical that we are patient enough for it.  We want some mass hysteria; a divine lightening bolt that suddenly reverses the spiritual polarity of our nation.  Yet our God is a God of means.   He is a God who uses history for the unfolding of his redemptive purposes.  History reveals that revival follows reformation and that reformation follows the recovery of expository, gospel preaching.  

The Middle Ages, steeped in superstition and error, had no lack of interesting preaching.   Its art and rhetoric; its value as entertainment was without rival in the frivolities of Medieval life.   Yet it lacked the sunlight of the gospel.  It had the form of godliness but was bereft of gospel power.   Calvin describes this preaching in his “Reply to Sadolet.”

“Indeed what one sermon was theere from which old wives might not carry off more fantasies than they could devise at their own fireside in a month?  For, as sermons were then usually divided, the first half was dovted to the misty questions of the schools which might astonish the rude populace, while the second contained smooth storeis, or not unamusing speculations, by which the people might be excited to cheerfulness.   Only a few expressions were thrown in from the Word of God, that by their majesty they might procure credit for these frivolities.   But as soon as the Reformers raised the standard, all these absurdities in a moment disappeared from among us.” 

The Reformation grew in the soil of expository, gospel preaching.   Calvin’s description bears out the truth of Solomon’s words that there is nothing new under the sun.   Today’s preaching often aims merely to excite the hearers to cheerfulness and tell a few smooth stories.   Yet such moonlight preaching ripens no harvest.  

Do you want revival?    Then “delight yourself in the Law of the Lord.”  How eager are you to be in worship and hear God’s Word preached?  Are you complaining with your lips or your feet or you mind because your preacher dares to carve a thick slab of the meat of the Word and keep you past noon to chew on it?   Are you following Paul’s admonition in Ephesians 6:19, to “pray also for [your pastor], that words may be given to [him] in opening [his] mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel?”    How willing are you to be examined by the living and active Word which penetrates to the deepest thoughts and intents of the heart?   

There is an inseperable connection between preaching and revival.   Instances in the Scriptures and in history are to numerous to recount.  The Spirit is the agent, but the Word is the instrument.   Revival is wrought by the agency of the Spirit through the instrumentality of the Word.  If you are praying for revival, then you are praying for the preaching and hearing of the Word.  Pray that your pastor will preach boldly.   Pray that he will have time to study.   Pray that he will not become discouraged.   Pray that you will be ready to listen and bear fruit and serve the body of Christ.  

For moonlight is lovely to behold, but it ripens no fruit.

Life changing prayer often arises from the crucible of affliction.   Yet our tendency is to run away from crisis rather than pray through it.  We are, by nature,  pain avoiding creatures.  Yet, relief and peace are not the same thing.   The Christian life will be one of grueling and grappling spiritual conflict.    Relief can come from escape, but peace comes only from Christ. 

Scottish pastor Ralph Erskine put it this way,” some may bless themselves they were never assaulted by the devil and yet they are but sleeping, as it were, in the devil’s cradle and he is rocking them.” ( The Comer’s Conflict ) 

Those who fall asleep in that cradle will never awake.   May we be careful to “watch and pray” when we would rather “whine and bail out. ”  “Consider it pure joy my brothers when you face trials of many kinds, becaue you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.  Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1:2-3