Lincoln Memorial – 28 August 1963
Martin Luther King
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
Union Buildings - 10 May 1994
Nelson Mandela
Today we can begin to dream. Today we can begin to cast our eyes forward to tomorrow.
The time for the healing of the wounds has come.
The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come.
The time to build is upon us.
We have, at last, achieved our political emancipation. We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.
We succeeded to take our last steps to freedom in conditions of relative peace. We commit ourselves to the construction of a complete, just and lasting peace.
Both great men – both men with great vision.
MY VISION
I definitely do not put myself in their shoes, but I would to share a dream, a vision with you this morning.
I dream of a church.
A church that has Jesus Christ as its leader. A church that leads people to Christ not to swell numbers, but to build kingdom.
A church that fulfills community needs simply because Christ’s love compels it to.
I dream of a church where relationship with God is its all.
A place where children laugh, learn and grow. Families are built, friends are found and every single person here are my brothers and sisters.
I dream of a church where nothing comes between its members. Where fellowship is the order of the day and support and love follow naturally.
I dream of a church where the thought of the great commission causes an excitement. Where the thought of working for Christ causes anticipation.
I dream of a church where revival is constant, the Holy Spirit evident, Jesus’s leadership a given and the Hand of God in our lives our theme.
I dream of Riversong. I dream of our church.
LOOKING AT PROPERTY – NOTICED THE NEWNESS
This week I have spent the week looking at property. As I looked for property for the church.
My IMAX Imagination kicked in and I began to have some dreams about what we could get done for God here at Riversong. And boy did it excite me!
CHANGE
One thing that I realized though is that this church is going through a change. Have you noticed it. Have noticed the winds of the Holy Spirit blowing afresh in your life recently.
Have you noticed that there is a freshness, a change in how and what we do at church.
MESSAGE OF RELATIONSHIP
Well listen up church because with this renewal, revival happening right here at Riversong.
With the Riversong tomorrow promising the realization of our dreams, God has a message for Riversong church this morning! God is saying to us – I will refresh you through a new and deeper relationship.
YOU WILL BE MY PEOPLE
God’s desire is for an intimate relationship with us that makes us new, revived people.
He said, (Jeremiah 31:33). “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people” There you have it all: transformation, a new heart and a new relationship.
STORY OF JOSIAH
To understand this transformation, this new heart, this new relationship I want to tell you a story.
BACKGROUND FACTS - FILTH
One of the most unusual in the Old Testament in many ways.
King of Judah,
He was only eight years old when he took the throne.
He is one of the last kings to reign before the nation was overrun by the Babylonians.
The Temple was in a disastrous state, and it symbolized the calamitous spiritual condition of the people.
Josiah’s father and grandfather were evil kings, but in the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, he decided to repair and restore the Temple of the Lord.
Let me just list some of the things, recorded in 2 Kings 23, that Josiah had to do to in order to clean out the Temple area and repair the Temple itself. He had to have the priests remove all the articles and altars dedicated to pagan gods, including Baal and Asherah,
which means there was child sacrifice taking place there in the Temple area.
Josiah had to remove all the pagan priests that now served in the Temple.
Homosexual male prostitutes had actually set up their quarters in the Temple.
Other rooms in the Temple were occupied by women making religious objects for the goddess Asherah.
Josiah had to remove the chariots and images of horses that past kings had dedicated to the sun.
He had to rid Jerusalem of the mediums and spiritists.
He told the people to get rid of their personal household gods. He tore down the high places all over the land of Judah and Israel where people worshiped pagan gods and offered human sacrifices.
THE TORAH FOUND – JUDGMENT TO FOLLOW
As young Josiah got working, he asked the priests to clean it all out. As happened as the priests were cleaning out the Temple. A scroll was found. And not just any scroll — it was the Torah, the book of the law, the Scriptures of the Jewish people.
In following the practices of the world and worshiping pagan gods, the people had first ignored and then lost the Word of God.
It was buried under a pile of debris somewhere in the Temple. Hilkiah the priest gave the scroll to the king’s secretary. The king had the scroll read to him, and when it was read, he tore his robes, because he knew the people had broken every command in the book of the law, and judgment was sure to follow.
BEGAN TO GET M ORE VIGILENT - REVIVAL
So Josiah extended his reforms from just removing the pagan altars and repulsive religious practices from the Temple.
He restored the worship of the true God, and had the people return to the religious feasts and rituals which were a part of their history.
The Scripture tells us that Passover was observed in Israel for the first time since the days of the judges. None of the other kings of Israel or Judah had celebrated the Passover. Great reforms were taking place. There was revival.
REVIVAL OF ONE
But something seems to be missing in the story. The people are told to turn back to the Lord, and begin once again to observe the holy days and religious rituals of their faith, but they are never told to repent for all the things they had done.
He does not tell them to seek God with all their hearts, only to follow the rituals and feasts from their past history. The priests read the law to the people, but it does not have the effect of causing them to grieve over their sin.
There is no concern about how they have sinned against God. There are no tears of repentance. They begin to observe the feast of Passover, but it is mostly out of respect for Josiah, the king, who tells them to do it.
There was no renewal in relationship with God.
2 Chronicles 34:31 - 32
, “The king stood by his pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord — to follow the Lord and keep his commands, regulations and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, and to obey the words of the covenant written in this book”, “Then he had everyone in Jerusalem and Benjamin pledge themselves to it.”
JOSIAH WAS RELIGIOUSLY PASSIONATE
Josiah is faithful to do this, but it doesn’t seem to translate into the hearts of the people. Josiah is a great king and a great man of God. The Bible says, “Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did” (2 Kings 23:25). That means he sought the Lord and was more faithful to him than David or Solomon.
BUT IT WAS ONLY HIS PASSION NO CHANGED HEARTS
Under Josiah’s leadership there is a great reform, but there is no revival, because reform is never enough.
This why the Lord did not change his mind about bringing an end to the nation. The people’s hearts were unchanged, and therefore God’s heart was unchanged.
The Scripture says, “Nevertheless, the Lord did not turn away from the heat of his fierce anger, which burned against Judah. . . So the Lord said, ‘I will remove Judah also from my presence as I removed Israel, and I will reject Jerusalem, the city I chose, and this temple, about which I said, “There shall my Name be”’” (2 Kings 23:26-27).
REFORM NOT GOOD ENOUGH –REVIVAL OF REALTIONSHIP
What does it take for real revival to happen? What would it take for there to be a spiritual awakening in Riversong, and across the RSA?
CALL TO PRAYER
There are several things we could talk about, but the most important of these is that, first of all, a spiritual awakening comes when there is: A Call to Prayer.
I wonder what would have happened if Josiah had ensured that the people did not just pray ritually but rather sought a relationship with God through prayer.
It was not enough for Josiah to experience a personal spiritual renewal, even though he was king; it had to spread to the people of the land. What if he had called for fasting, prayer and seeking God, rather than reinstating the rituals and festivals of Israel’s history?
VOID
Reform simply creates a void
Revival fills that void with God
This is why we go through these spiritual highs in our relationship with God and then drop out to lows.
We try and reform - explain
Not long, because it takes more than sweeping your life clean of evil and immoral things — it takes praying for a new heart that will love God more than it loves sin.
The unoccupied house must be filled with the Holy Spirit. There is a vast difference between obedience that is perfunctory and an obedience of the heart. There is a difference between an obedience that is coerced and an obedience that springs from a heart that loves God and wants to do his will. It takes seeking God as fervently and passionately. It takes more than just putting some religious ritual in your life, it takes praying that God will give you a new love for him.
WHAT TO PRAY FOR CTD FROM ABOVE
You have to pray that you will love righteousness more than you loved the immorality in which you were involved.
You have to pray for more than a new lifestyle; you have to pray for a new way of thinking, new attitudes, new motivations — a new heart.
Pray, and keep praying until you break through.
Pray until a real change comes. God is on your side.
“For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13).
THE WORD – LOST
Secondly, a spiritual awakening comes when there is: A reemergence of God’s Word. The Word of God must again become important in people’s lives.
Things started happening when God’s Word was discovered and read.
Maybe your Bible isn’t buried under a pile of rubble in the house, but it might as well be if you never read it.
The people of Israel had been so busy serving other gods that they not only lost the Scripture, they had forgotten about it altogether. No one even missed it. No one ever asked where the scroll was.
NO BOOK NO RELATIONSHIP
We don’t know how to enter into that relationship unless we open his Book. We will never really know who God is, who we are, and what he wants from us, unless we read the Scroll.
Getting out the Word of God and reading it is very important, because you can’t believe just anything you want and still be a Christian.
The Christian faith is defined by a specific set of beliefs, and you need to read the Word to know what they are.
TRY TO DO IT ON YOUR OWN
The problem with many people is that they think they know what it is all about without reading the Bible.
They really believe they can figure things out and live the Christian life on their own.
Especially in this culture where we depend on our feelings more than our brain. We don’t want to take the time and trouble to dig for God’s truth.
THE HOW I FEEL SENSE
Stephen Carter, a professor of law at Yale University says, “Faith is dead, reason is dying, but ‘how I feel’ is going strong.”
We are not interested in the Word of God because we are not interested in the truth. We are not interested in God’s will, because we are wrapped up in our will and doing what we want to do.
We want to go by our feelings which are much more to our liking. The Word of God must reemerge in our lives.
CONVICTION AND REPENTANCE
The third point is that a spiritual awakening comes when there is: A sense of conviction and repentance. This is nothing less than a realization of the truth about ourselves.
Conviction means that we are convinced that what God says about us is true. When you hear what you know to be the truth, you have to respond to the truth.
PENTECOST EG
When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, Peter began preaching to the crowds. He boldly warned them of the consequences of their sin of rejecting Christ and having him crucified.
The Bible says, “When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’” (Acts 2:37).
Peter’s response was, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). And when they repented and turned from their sin, the Holy Spirit came upon them.
When this happened there was a deep inner change, and their lives became different.
CHRISTIANITY TODAY
I become concerned sometimes about the pop Christianity of this culture which is so flippant and shallow.
There is a lot of lip service without much to back it up.
We complain about the Ten Commandments not being displayed in our courts, and we can’t even name all ten — and keep fewer of them than we can name.
We whine about there being no prayer or Bible reading in our schools, and then we don’t pray or read the Bible in our homes.
We complain about gay marriages causing a decline in family values, when the divorce rate among Bible-believing Christians is the same as rest of the culture.
TRUE RELATIONSHIP WILL CHANGE YOU = REVIVAL.
The Bible says, “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him” (1 John 3:6).
If this is true in your life, then I call on you to repent. We need to live differently.
But Christianity is more than just a reformation of morals. It is not about just trying harder to be good. It must be a turning from our sin and asking for a touch from God that makes us new people.
God’s desire is for an intimate relationship with us that makes us new people. He said, (Jeremiah 31:33). There you have it all: transformation, a new heart and a new relationship.
Mere reform is not enough, there must be a transformation of who we are. When we open ourselves to that kind of deep renovation, God meets us and makes us new.
