How many times I wanted to!

[AI translation] In reading the Bible, especially the Old Testament, I have often been amazed at God's long-suffering. With what true divine patience the Lord bore the many stumbling blocks and wickedness of His chosen people! With so many extraordinary signs and wonders, God had demonstrated to them, almost tangibly, that He loved them, yet time and again the people shook off this divine love, which they felt to be a burden. How many gifts and blessings the Lord showered on His chosen ones, and the response was always more and more repentance. How clearly and plainly God made known His saving will to the people through the fathers and the prophets, and the people never wanted to understand the divine revelation, always wanting something other than what God wanted. No sooner did the Lord forgive His people one sin than they grieved their Heavenly King with another, even greater sin! No father would take so much trouble to bring up his unruly, stubborn, willful, wild child, to set him right, as the Lord did with His ever-disloying people! There is no lover who would strive to win the heart of his chosen mate with such steadfast love and forgiveness as the Lord does His chosen! Only one God is capable of the patience, the fearful love, the renewed forgiveness, the hundredfold repetition, the new beginning, that the two thousand years of Old Testament history have revealed to us. There is therefore a very long and very sad history to this lament of Jesus, which breaks out in tears: 'Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you, how often have I wanted to gather your sons together, as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not!" (Mt 23,37)How much bitterness is in these words! It is as if he were saying that all the trouble, sacrifice, prophetic revelation, punishment, miracles and wonders, Christmas, Good Friday and Easter - all in vain. God's saving will, so carefully and lovingly planned, met with a fatal resistance, frustrated because you did not want it! Is it possible not to want what God wants with impunity! One day God's long-suffering will run out; and what will the Lord of the vine then do to the wicked vine-growers who have abused his goodness and patience for so long? We read, "He will come and take the labourers, and give the vineyard to others." (Mk 12,9) Or in our basic verse Jesus continues, "Behold, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, from now on you will not see me until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'" (Mt 23,38-39) So, the further possibility of salvation will be taken away from you, Jesus will disappear from you, and you will only see Him again when He returns in judgment, but then it will be too late, you will have wasted what He wasted so long to do to you!
It is a terrible thing when a people oppose the will of God, when they do not want in any way what God wants for them and from them. The deepest root of all the miseries of our national life is here - that God has spoken in vain. God has never left us in doubt as to whether the path our nation is on is right or wrong. He has also raised up prophets among us, many times in our millennial history, and in many different ways, to conquer the hearts of this stubborn people: speaking gently, striking with the rod, advising, exhorting, threatening, encouraging, judging, and then forgiving again and again. He is not indifferent to the direction in which the fate of our Hungarian people is heading, and there are a thousand signs of this. He can tell us: O Budapest, O Hungarian people, how many times have I wanted to gather your sons - because he really wanted to, he wanted to many times. So far, then, what is the Word for us. The big question now is whether we have the continuation of the Word, the continuation: 'And you did not want it'?
Can we answer this question if we first examine what Jesus wanted? He says: "How often have I wanted to gather your sons together, as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings." (verse 37) In other words, Jesus wanted to gather this people around Himself. He wanted Him to be the centre of Hungarian life, to organize the whole nation under His direction and authority into a higher unity, into one cohesive, large, family community of life. He wanted the eternal law of God, the Ten Commandments, to have authority and validity in the economic, social, cultural and political spheres of our life. He wanted this people, like little chickens against storms and birds of prey, to find shelter and protection under His almighty wings against the storms of suffering and passion, against extremist currents of thought that seek to snatch us from God and against all kinds of satanic predatory powers. He wanted even more than that! He wanted the Hungarian people to awaken and to find in Him salvation from sin, forgiveness of sins, deliverance, meaning and purpose in their lives, to find in Him the salvation and eternal life prepared for them! Submit to Him as your Lord and King!
Yes, this is what Jesus wanted, this is what He wanted to gather the sons of our people to, and we would not have got to where we are today if this people had wanted the same! The judgment accuses, "How often I have wanted to gather your sons together, as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not"! Can we see all our present miseries, sufferings, and troubles, as the direct consequence of this fatal unwillingness? And can we know that God will answer a further unwillingness with a far more severe and darker judgment than ever before? The most serious response of God to a people who refuse grace in any way is to deprive them of the further possibility of grace. As Jesus so eerily says in our Word, this people will never see Jesus again, God will hide from them and the prophetic word will be fulfilled: "Then they will call on me, but I will not listen; they will seek me, but they will not find me." (Prov 1:28) Or as the prophet Amos says: "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, and I will send a famine upon the land; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the LORD. And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north to the east. They will run to seek the word of the Lord, but they will not find it." (Am 8:11-12) This is how terrible it is when a people now wants in vain what God would have wanted them to do so many times - in vain.
How many times have I wanted to gather you together?" says Jesus. It would not be a miracle indeed if he made no more attempts! If he had left us alone and said: But look! But he says no, and makes another great attempt, preparing an invitation on a scale never before seen in this city! Let me say with joy, my brethren, the Lord is making a stir among us! The fellowship of the evangelical churches of Budapest, that is, the Reformed, Evangelical, Baptist, Methodist and Salvation Army churches, recognizing and obeying God's command, are launching a great joint evangelistic crusade from the end of March to mid-April to evangelize the capital city in the territory of Budapest. After Easter, there will be evangelism in twenty different churches, which will be concluded by a large joint evangelisation, planned for Tattersal. In the meantime, for twenty days, street missionaries will distribute evangelising leaflets to passers-by in various places in the city between 7 and 8 o'clock precisely in the morning. At the same time, at the invitation of the Geneva Ecumenical Council, similar evangelistic campaigns will be held in several European capitals. In our capital alone, hundreds of thousands of people will be reached with the call of Christ during these days. A great net is being cast at the command of the common Lord of the churches, who is making another great attempt to gather many under His protective wing.
In our basic doctrine, Jesus is laying it before the people that He will kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to Him. Let us, the church people of Christ, not kill this cause, and stone His prophets, by looking on with neutral indifference from afar in this great campaign, but let us take part in it. From now on, let us make this cause the focus of our daily prayer, let us make it a matter of our hearts to carry the preparations and the evangelists who will be ministering in our regular prayers, and let us do our best to reach as many people as possible with the great call! Become an active co-worker with Christ in this great renewing gathering of His army! How often have I wanted to gather your sons together!" says Jesus. Now, behold, he wants it again! Is not his grace privileged, after so many vain attempts, to begin again! Beware lest this gathering fail again because you do not want it! You are personally responsible for the success or failure of this attempt to gather an army! Who knows whether this will not be Jesus' last attempt with this city, whether it will not be the very end of His longsuffering, which if we do not want again, we will then be filled with the dark prophecy of never seeing or hearing Him again! Oh that we would hear now this urgent warning of God, "Aaron also, take ye occasion, for the days are evil." (Eph 5:16) And this other, "Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near." (Is 55:6) For the time is coming when he will no longer be found!
And in addition to this great matter, let this Word speak to your heart in a very personal way. "How many times I have wanted," says Jesus, "for you! How many times He has spoken to you personally, how many times He has reached out to you! Can you count how many times? And did he achieve with you what he wanted? Have you found in Him the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, the Saviour, the King, the centre of your life, the new birth and sanctified life? Or did you not want it? Were Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, for you in vain? Someone asked me recently: how can Christ become for me an experiential reality, a personal power, a redeeming Lord? I said: if you really want it! If you want it with desire, with all your heart and soul, then kneel down before His invisible, unknown to you, but real being, and say to Him: Lord, I do not yet really know You, I only know that You exist from the testimony of others, I have heard from the experience and testimony of others that it is possible to meet You in person; do the same for me, speak to me directly, touch me, hold me, take me, I want to be Yours! Get to know me!
My brother, if you really want it, and you do not tire of wanting it for weeks, for months, with the same desire, then you will definitely know your Saviour one day - not only through the words of others, but directly, through a personal encounter. This fateful, great encounter must take place if you really want it, because He wants it!
Amen.
Date: 15 February 1948.