I. INTRODUCTION
Song “Revive Us Again”. Many times I’ve wanted to start in the middle of one of my sermons. Story of guy falling asleep, Preacher on hell, how terrible hell would be. Got to point in lesson, pounded his pulpit to emphasize how bad hell was, and said, “In fact, if anybody really wants to go to hell, let him stand up right now!” Well that groggy guy, all he heard was “Stand up right now!” part. And so he did. Church was shocked. He looked around and finally said, “Well preacher. I don’t know what we just voted for but it looks like you and me are the only ones for it.”
Something has always perplexed me how we have talked about church and about worship as being exhausting. As if it would make us tired to do it. You hear people say, “Oh, I’m just so tired. I’m too tired to go to church.” The implication is that church would just wear me out. Church would just make me more exhausted. You never hear people say, “I’m so worn out, so I’m going to go to church to get fired up. I’m going to church to get re-energized and re-animated.” But it seems to me that’s what it ought to do. That an oppty to worship and praise God should get us excited and fired up. David said in Psalm 28:7. “The Lord is my strength and my shield, my heart trusts in Him, and I’m helped. My heart leaps for joy. And I will give thanks to Him in song.”
I think we can all think of times when our hearts leaped for joy like that. When our hearts were aflame for God. But you know that a fire must be re-fueled or it will go out. Look at another Psalm 85:6, “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you.” Maybe this morning you need God to re-light a fire this morning that’s getting a little cold. Maybe what you need, maybe what we need is revival. That’s what we’re going to talk about this fall.
II. WHAT IS REVIVAL?
What is it when God sends revival. Let me tell what it isn’t first:
1) Revival isn’t a set of “CHURCH MEETINGS”. Growing up we had VBS, church retreats and this is when we’re going to have our revival. That’s not revival. It’s a good thing to do. But that’s not revival.
2) Revival is not an “EVANGELISTIC CRUSADE”. That’s not really revival, a church can be growing and not experience revival. Revival implies spiritual declintion and lethergy. In short, revival is for Christians. The very word says something that is alive, but about to die, needs to come back alive before it’s too late. If you’re not a Christian, you don’t need revival, you need regeneration. If you’re not a Christian, the Bible says your dead in your sins and transgressions and you need to come to life. But if you are a Christian, there’s a good chance during the course of your life that you’re going to need a few revivals.
Some of you remember days we had two week long meetings. Reason for doing that? First week for revival, get the church back on fire for God. Second week focus on evangelism. Decided two weeks was too much, cut down to one week and went right to evangelism. Too much, cut it to three nights. Then when we had no fruit so we stopped doing it at all. Maybe it wasn’t fruitful because we tried to do evangelism before we had revival.
You see, when I read the book of Acts I think that’s suppose to be the norm for the church. I think sometimes God’s church is so sub-normal, that normal seems abnormal. Go home this afternoon and think about it. That sometimes we’ve gotten so used to sub-normal, that if normal ever showed up it would seem abnormal to us. I think there is a very real sense that God’s church is like a sleeping giant. And Satan’s motto is, “Let sleeping saints lie”. And so God has to revive His church.
So what is revival? “Revival is experienced when God visits His people to awaken them spiritually.” Rich Atchley When God visits. It’s not something man does. We sang it this morning, “Revive us again. Fill each heart with your love. May each soul be rekindled.” with what? “With fire from above.” Revival happens when God visits His people and He wakes them up spiritually.
One of the most famous revivals of this century was the Wells Revival. 100,000 people came to Christ in 5 months. They had to start closing down bars because no one was going to them. So many miners got converted to Christ, and the mules could only work when they were cussed. Mules didn’t know what to do. There has been many records of this throughout history where God comes to wake up his church. You know what they said about the Wells Revival? They described it this way: “The churches are full of people. And the people are full of God.” The best definition of revival is found in the Bible in Acts 3:19 where Peter says, “Repent then and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out so that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.” That’s what revival is. It’s a time of refreshing that comes from the Lord and wakes his people back up. It rekindles the fire of the Holy Spirit in their souls.
Now, there’s usually a few things that are going to happen in revival:
1) Your going to see the people that have revival get a new passion for prayer, worship and God’s Word. And your not going to have to beg them to come to church.
2) If revival comes your going to see a renewed confession of sin and real renewed commitment to holiness. And a lot of things that God’s people used to tolerate they don’t tolerate in their lives anymore.
3) Then your going to see an increase burden for the lost and an increased emphasis on evangelism. Revival is almost always followed by great numbers of people coming to Christ.
But the amazing thing about revival is that it cannot be manufactured. If it could I would have already bought the kit. And we would have already started the plan. But the revival is heaven sent and not man-made. God can’t be forced to send revival by anything we do. It’s a strange, soveriegn, visitation of God, where he re-animates and restores life into his weak church. He can’t be obligated to send revival. But he longs to send it. He longs to awaken his church. He longs to get that sleeping giant back on it’s feet. So that sub-normal becomes abnormal, and normal comes back. And so we can’t organize a move of the Spirit of God. But we can set ourselves to catch the wind when he blows.
And that’s why this fall I’m going to preach about revival. We’re going to open our Bibles and study 8 or 9 of the revivals in the Bible where God visited His people and woke them up. And that’s why I’m hoping this fall your going to pray for revival. For this church, for this community, for this country; Most of all for your own heart.
III. WHY IS REVIVAL NEEDED?
You see, we need revival, and let me tell you why. Revival is needed because we are prone to let our love for God grow cold. We let the fire get low.
STORY: Maybe you’ve heard the story of country church that used to have a revival meeting every spring. And there was old guy in town that would come every spring and come back to God. He would be hot all during the summer, but he would cool off in the fall, and by winter he would get cold and drop out, but come every spring he would get fired back up again. So first night on back seat, next night up a few rows, next night up a few more rows, by the fourth or fifth night he was on the front row shouting, “Fill me Lord, fill me!” And a lady that knew him well said, “Careful, Lord. He leaks.”
Well the problem is that we all tend to leak. God fills us up with the Holy Spirit, he starts a fire in our heart, but after time that fire just burn as bright at it used to. Man named Robert Robinson was born in 1735 in England. Grew up very, very poor, dad died when he was just eight. He frankly got out of control for his mom. Ran around with gangs and hoodlums. England was having revival under the great preaching of George Whitfield. He was 17 years old and he and a bunch of his thugs thought they would go to the revival and break it up. Well, he went there and George Whitfield’s preaching was so powerful instead of breaking up the revival, he got it. Converted to Christ and decided he would enter the ministry. And at age of 23 he wrote one of great revival hymns: “Come, Thou Fount of Many Blessings”. The interesting thing is, if you look at the 3rd verse of that song, Robert Robinson knew that we let fires go out. The words he actually wrote were, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave, the God I love. Here’s my heart, take and seal it. Seal for thy courts above.”
You see, revival is needed because we often fail to refuel the fire. Jesus said his church at Ephesus in Revelation 2:4, basically said, “I’ve noticed all the good things your doing, your real active, you have good deeds, but you have this one thing wrong: You don’t love me as at first.” The primary reason revival is needed is because of our tendency to neglect our love relationship with God. And it may not be something you’ve noticed. You may not notice that you don’t love God like you use to, but let me tell you something, God does notice.
In Jeremiah 2:2 God said to His people, “I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me.”
I don’t know of bride deeply in love with mate one night, wakes up the next morning she doesn’t love him anymore. That’s not how it happens. What happens is that over time, relationship gets taken for granted, they go through the routine of relationship and suddenly, after time, you realize you just don’t love each other like you did at first. And here’s the thing about God. He is not going to over rule your choice to forsake him. He is not going to stop you from falling out of love with him.
What are some signs that the fire is burning low? Taken from Rich Atchley. You ask yourself if these apply to you.
1) One sign is that prayer is no longer a vital part of your life. It’s just something you do occasionally.
2) One sign is that you’ve grown content with your Biblical understanding and you don’t hunger for more. You’ve acquired about all of the knowledge of the Bible you need.
3) One sign is that when you do study the Bible it’s for information, not transformation. You can sit in class and talk about the Bible for hours, but not be different when it’s through.
4) One sign is that thoughts about eternal things are rare. That the temporary dominates almost all of your thinking.
5) One sure sign is that the gatherings of God’s people is not eagerly anticipated. The preacher can challenge you to come on Sunday nights through the summer but you know in your heart you have absolutely no interest in coming, your not going to think about going. Meeting with God’s people is not just something you can’t wait to do. That’s a sign the fire is low.
6) Another sign is that pointed spiritual discussions embarrass you. It can be your office, in your house, right out in church foyer. Someone gets to talkin’ about Jesus too much and you just want to change the subject.
7) Acquisition of money and things dominate your thinking.
8) Here’s a sure sign. Certain sins can be indulged in without an uproar in your conscience.
9) You can easily mouth hymns and Scriptures and nothing happens in your heart.
10) You can hear God’s name mocked and his standards mocked with no indignation.
11) You can listen to, read and watch morally degrading material in the name of entertainment.
12) Divisions and quarrels within the church fellowship don’t bother you.
13) Your slow to respond when you hear of opptys to minister and serve.
14) Injustice and human misery hardly ever cross your mind.
15) A sure sign is that the lostness of people without Christ never crosses your mind. You never find yourself stop and look at all the people on the freeway or in the mall and thinking, “They don’t have Jesus.”
16) You hardly ever think about or sense God’s presence in your life.
17) That strong desire to just praise him for his grace just hardly ever wells up in your heart. In fact, your heart doesn’t leap for joy because there’s not a song there.
Now, I don’t know if that hits you. The list could be twice as long. But you know today if you have drifted away from the love relationship you use to have with God. Some Christians seem to act like they are in an arranged marriage. Somebody decided long time ago that you and God ought to get together, so they made it happen. And its convenient, certainly has some good things about it. But fact is there is not much passion there. Not much love.
Revival is not just about changing some of your behaviors. Revival is about falling back in love with God. And the thing about God is that he always wants to save the marriage. You see, revival is promised when we return to God. Every revival you’ll study in the Bible or history, involves an intense, and intentional turning back to God. And God has said, if you turn back to me I’ll light the fire again. God said in Malachi 3:7, “Turn to me and I will return to you says the Lord Almighty.”
I want you to know something this morning, God wants revival more than you do. He wants to see his church wake up. He wants to see you wake up. And even though we cannot orchestrate the timing of corporate revival there’s no excuse for you not to experience a personal revival right now.
God and God alone will decide when to send revival to this church, to the Eagleville community, or America, but YOU don’t have to wait for God to send revival to Eagleville, to return to God right now. You can return to God today. You don’t have to go somewhere else to find God. He’ll meet you right where you are. And you can experience a special refreshing from the Lord. But it must be of his terms. And I want to show you what they are very quickly.
Turn to 2 Chronicle 7. This one more than any others explains what must happen for God to send revival. Solomon has just dedicated the temple. He is praying to God, “God, when we sin and turn away from you and confess, will you come back to us?” READ verses 11-14
Before we study the revivals in the Bible we’re going to first spend the next three weeks studying the three things God says he is looking for.
(1) I’m looking for people to humble themselves,
(2) I’m looking for people to pray and seek my face, and
(3) I’m looking for them to turn from their evil ways.
Those are the things I’m looking for when I return to my people.
IV. WHAT HINDERS REVIVAL?
1. A “SUFFICIENT” Spirit. If God is looking for people to humble themselves, that tells me that the first thing that hinders revival is a sufficient spirit. Have you ever seen God’s people corporately repent and humble themselves? Now individual’s do it, but have you ever seen a church or city just corporately repent before God? That’s why we haven’t seen many revivals. There’s just too much of the spirit of the Laodiceans. You remember the church Laodicea, God wrote to that church and said, “You know your so self-sufficient, you say “I’m rich, I don’t have need of anything” and God said what you don’t know is that you wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.” Your problem is that you are so sufficient and so ignorant of how empty you really are.
God said in Isaiah 57:15: “This is what the high and lofty One says, he who lives forever and whose name is holy: I live in a high and holy place. But also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and revive the heart of the contrite.” God can only fill those that are not full of themselves. Revival is hindered by a sufficient spirit, and second it is hinder by:
2. A “COMPLACENT” Heart. God says I will return when you pray and seek my face. I believe the greatest sin of the unrevived church is the sin of prayerlessness. I have yet to study a revival that was not proceeded by the persistent prayers of a select few believers who were burdened and distressed by the lethargy of God’s elect. Revival cannot be manufactured but it must be sought. It must be sought by people who do not want to be comfortable with sub-normal.
See Jeremiah 29:12-13 and Isaiah 55:6-7
3. A “DISOBEDIENT” Walk. Which brings up the third thing that hinders revival and that’s a disobedient walk. God is waiting for people to turn from their wicked ways. Why are you asking for God’s direction if you have no intention of changing your own? In every revival we’re going to study in the Bible, your going to find a profound sense of God’s holiness followed by a thorough confessing of sin. Getting serious about sin and holiness. Is necessary for revival.
I want you to consider the greatest visitation of God to His people. What was it? It was of course when Jesus of Nazareth was on the earth. How did John prepare the people for the coming of God. One simple sermon, Matthew 3: “In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the desert of Judea and saying, ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is near.’” It’s really that simple, REPENT. Make a 180 degree turn from your current life. And you know, that was Jesus’ sermon too, Matthew 4:17 says, “From that time on Jesus began to preach ‘Repent for the Kingdom of heaven is near.’” There’s a lot of people that are praying for revival and don’t know what they’re asking for. Because there is always remorse before there is rejoicing. ALWAYS! If God truly did come and visit this church there would be such amazing confessing of sin. Because the Holy Spirit convicts of sin, and it is painful to come under genuine Holy Spirit conviction. But let me tell you what more painful, and more miserable, and that’s to ignore everything I’m saying today and just get right back in that car and go right back to normal ole half a sleep Christianity. And slowing drift further and further from God.
Finish story about Robert Robinson. Many years on fire for God/effective preacher, but later in his life he proved to be a prophet and his heart began to wander. Left God, left His church. According to the story later in life he was in a carriage with a woman who was humming “Come Thou Fount of Many Blessings”. Robert seemed quite despondent and she began to engage him in discussion and said, “Maybe what you need is the message of this song.” And they say he broke down in tears and he said, “Madam’, I’m the man that wrote the words to that song. And I would give you a thousand worlds if I had them to have those feelings back again.”
I want to ask you this morning if you are thirsty for more of God than you’ve been experiencing lately? Let me tell you what I believe. I believe God will light the fire when you get on the altar. You humble yourself, seek his face, turn from your wicked ways, you get on the altar, God will light the fire. The joy can be rekindled, the heart can burn again with the presence of the Spirit. This morning I’m asking us to go into this fall with this attitude in our heart and our mind that we are going to return to altar where we made our vows. And we’re going to pray, REVIVE US AGAIN”, that your people may rejoice in you. Let’s pray.
(Fashioned for my audience from a series by Rich Atchley)
