INTRODUCTION
When preaching on revival – great frustration, because how do you describe revival? I know when it’s happening easier than know how to explain what’s happening. Feel like the guy who loaned money to another guy to get some plastic surgery. The second guy never paid him back so he decided to go look for him but couldn’t recognize him. How do you recognize revival? What are you looking for?
Maybe there’s a better question than “What are we looking for when we talk about revival?” Maybe better question is “What is God looking for before he grants revival?” The key can be found in 2 Chronicles 7:14. READ.
I. FIRST: HUMBLE YOURSELVES
One of the great personal revivals in the Bible was a king called Manasseh. Now few kings lived more evil than Manasseh. And got brought judgment just as he promised. The Babylonians came and literally put a hook through his nose and drug him to Babylon. But look what happened to this man in 2 Chronicles 33:12. READ.
When we humble ourselves God promises to hear and respond. And he never breaks that promise. Look with me at Daniel 10:12. READ. You will not find a time in the Bible where men humbled themselves before God that he does not hear and respond. Not one time. But I want you to notice that God puts the responsibility to humble ourselves on us. The command is not to feel humble. The command is not to praise humility. The command is to intentionally humble ourselves.
God doesn’t send revival until we humble ourselves. Look at 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.” And I have to tell you something; the same God who revives the lowly in spirit is the same God who removes the prouded heart. Peter says in I Peter 5:5b-7. “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand”.
That word oppose was the word for a general lining up his army about to go into battle. In otherwords, I want to say to all of us, if you’re going to be proud before God; rebellious before God; you know what he wants but in your stiff-necked rebellion you won’t do it, God says I’ll line up my resources against you and God doesn’t lose battles. If you don’t humble yourself before God, he will humble you.
We make mistake in the church today. We think many times when something bad happens to us it’s always spiritual warfare, battling with Satan. Listen, many times it is God’s discipline. God keeping his promise to humble the haughty spirit. In fact, in the end, the Bible says that God will humble all who do not humble themselves. I’ll put it to you this way, if you will not fall flat on your face before God, he’ll put you flat on your back, but one way or another your going down.
Remember King Nebekannzer In the O.T? Dan. 4:37 King Nebuchadnezzar said, “I learned a great lesson, I learned that all those who walk in pride, he is able to humble.” The Bible says one day that every knee will bow. That’s not the issue. The only issue is when. That’s what we’re talking about today. We’re not talking about whether or not you will be humble before God. We’re just talking about when. Revival is waiting for you to humble yourself now.
II. SECOND: PRAY & SEEK HIS FACE
You don’t have revival by seeking revival, but by seeking God. God says “if you will pray and seek my face, I will hear and heal your land.” One thing every revival has in common: All revivals share a passionate commitment to praying for God to return. REPEAT. Now let me make it clear when I say for God to return God is not the one who left. The reason revival is needed is because his people have gotten negligent. His people have left. But if God is going to return and be with his people it’s going to be because they asked him to.
I think that’s why Satan will do anything to keep us from getting together to pray. I think we can have all potlucks, fellowship times, class parties we want to have. Satan doesn’t care just as long as we don’t get together and pray. Revival delays because prayer decays. I’ve not studied a revival in history that started as an organized move of the church. Not a single revival where a bunch of officials got together and said, “Okay, let’s start up a committee to start a revival next year.” Revival never starts because of organizing, it starts because of agonizing. Because some people get on their knees and humble themselves and seek God and ask him to come.
The Bible doesn’t say, “Preach without ceasing.” It doesn’t say sing without ceasing.” It says “Pray without ceasing.” I think when the disciples said to Jesus, “Teach us to pray”, notice they didn’t just say, “Teach us what to pray.” In think what they were saying was, “Teach us to have you passion for prayer. We understand from being with you that what drives you and motivates you is your prayer life with God. Teach us to have a passion to pray like you do. And right out that grew to the two parables on prayer. About the guy who wanted bread in the middle of the night. I’ll sum up that parable in three words: DON’T GIVE UP!
The main thing Jesus taught about prayer was this: Don’t Give Up! Keep praying. We need to be like Jacob. Remember? He saw an angel of the Lord at the brook Jabbok. And he wrestled with him all night. And do you remember the angel in the morning said, “Let me go.” And what did Jacob say in Gen. 32:26, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” Church, I challenge you to pray that way. I challenge for you to pray for God to come powerfully to Puerto Rico to touch the lives of the people in this community and say, “God, I’m not going to give up until it comes.” Bombard heaven until the answer comes.
III. THIRD: TURN FROM YOUR EVIL WAYS
STORY: Wife goes with husband to doctor. Not good, husband has but one week to live. Extend time by cooking, rubbing feet, back, take to baseball games, fishing, etc. Be as affectionate as when you were first married. This might extend his life. “Honey, what did doctor say?” He said you’ve got one week to live.
You see many people do not get healed, not because their condition is incurable, but their not healed because they do not want to follow the doctors orders. And I want to suggest to you that many nations are not healed for the same reason. God is his word has said clearly, “I am the Great Physician and I can heal the land.” The question really is do we want to follow the doctors orders. Because here’ what they are 2 Chronicles 7:14. READ.
The issue is not whether or not God can heal a land. The issue is whether the people will swallow the prescription and the last pill is the hardest of all. The first piece of medicine wasn’t easy: humbling ourselves is not something we do readily. The second was no easier to swallow: Pray and earnestly seek the face of God. But the third pill is the hardest of all to get down: We must turn from our wicked ways, and God says “Then, after you turn, then will I hear.”
We arrogantly assume we can turn our backs on God and it will not affect our communication with him. And what we forget is that when we choose sin God turns his back on us. God will not look at sin. That’s why on the cross his own son, as the sky went dark, screamed, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” What Jesus feared most about the cross was not the pain of the nails or the taunts and insults of the crowd. What made him tremble was the thought that when sin was on him, God would turn his back. God will not look at sin, even when it is on his own son. And until America, and until you and I come to grips with that basic truth, we won’t have revival. Because we won’t have revival until God comes & God is going to turn back when we turn around.
God said in Malachi 3:7, “Return to me and I will return to you, says the Lord Almighty.” You cannot reverse that order. Word in the Bible for this turning around: REPENTENCE. So look with me at Hebrews 6:1-2 at one of the first things we’ve got to repent of. READ. Now these are things that are basics to Christianity that you should be grounded in if you’re going to grow as a Christian. And first thing the writer mentions is “repentance from acts that lead to death”.
Now literally in the Greek it says, “Repentance from dead works.” And if you have a KJV, RSV, NASV that’s what it says in your Bible. Literally, he says the beginning point with Christianity, a foundational principle is this: You must learn to repent from dead works.” In otherwords, one of the first things you need to know as a new Christian is that God is unmoved by the dutiful performance of religious deeds if the heart is not engaged.
You need to know that no matter what you do, no matter what you perform in the name of religion, if your heart is cold and dead toward God, God is unimpressed with the activity. Listen, if all that mattered was external cleanliness Jesus didn’t have to come and die. If all we needed was a religious system to perform then Judaism was good enough. We could just keep doing that. If all we needed was something to make us look good on the outside.
But the writer says in Hebrews 9:13-14, “The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences (here it is again) from dead works, so that we may serve the living God.”
The blood of Jesus reveals the fact that the problem isn’t on the outside, it’s on the inside. And we need to be cleansed, we need to repent, we need to turn away from church that just goes through the motions with a heart detached from God.
I Timothy 2:8. Paul says, “I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer.” That verse doesn’t say what many have wanted it to say. Holding up hands for the sake of doing so is not the point of the verse. The key word is “HOLY”. I want men to lift up holy hands.” In otherwords, hands that are clean before God, not clutching on to anything. He’s looking for holy people to start praying for a nation.
The Bible say in Isaiah 55:6-7, “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God for he will freely pardon.” God will tune in when we turn around
SUPER BOWL: The plan was that from the very top of the ceiling a bungee jumper was going to jump and perform an amazing jump to the delight of the crowd. Dorito in his mouth and down into a jar of salsa. They were having rehearsal and the poor jumper over-estimated the length of rope and so rather than getting caught by the tension and swinging back up he went straight to the ground, hit head first on the 50 yard line, killed instantly. He made the horrible mistake of giving himself too much slack with something that was deadly. Now that’s what we do with sin. Something that is deadly, something that can send us to hell, and we play games and we give ourselves an amazingly scary amount of slack. I wonder if you’ve been doing that? You don’t need me right now to name the sin, God has already put in on your heart, and the question is why are you giving yourself so much slack with something Jesus died for?
The Bible say in Isaiah 55:6-7, “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God for he will freely pardon.” God will tune in when we turn around
And I’ll tell you what the greatest barrier is going to be. I tell you right now it’s going to be pride. Pride is going to keep you from wanting to confess to God and to confess to your church what your sin is. That’s why God said the very first thing you have to do before revival can come is to humble yourselves. If you’re not humbling yourself before God you’re never going to deal with sin.
There’s a lining around your heart that’s very, very thin that’s called the pericardium. Sometimes that lining will expand up to ¾” thick. When that happens your heart is constricted. it simply cannot beat and function like God designed it. doctor has to do something radical: open up your chest and take his knife, and slit that pericardium so that the heart can be released to expand and beat like God wants it to. Now sin in your life is like a wall around your heart. And your not going to be able to love God, and feel for God, have a passion for God, have a fire for God until that heart is released to beat for God like he intended. Until you get radical about sin. And that’s why the Bible says in Acts 3:19, “Repent then and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, so that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.” My guess is this morning that there’s many of us who need to be refreshed from the Lord. And the refreshing comes after the repentance. It’s time to do business with God. Let’s Pray.
(Fashioned for my audience from a series by Rich Atchley)
