Title: Recognizing the neeed for Revival
Text: 2 Chronicles 7:11-22
Date: 7/19/2009
Location: Sulphur Spring Baptist Church
Introduction: In September of 2001 following the terrorist attacks of 9-11, a National day of Prayer and Remembrance service was held in Washington D.C. Billy Graham was invited to speak, and he used the opportunity to stress the need for Revival in our Land. He said, "One of the things we desperately need is a spiritual renewal in this country. We need a spiritual revival in America. And God has told us in His Word, time after time, that we are to repent of our sins and we’re to turn to Him and He will bless us in a new way."
I said it then, and I’ve said it many times since, the only way America is going to survive is if we as a nation experience a good old fashioned Revival and Spiritual Awakening. But before that can take place we as individuals, we as a church, and we as a nation MUST do three things.
I. FIRST WE NEED TO RECOGNIZE THE NEED FOR REVIVAL.
Before the United States of America can experience a Revival, we must recognize the need for Revival, and when I say “WE” I’m talking about those of us who are Christians. Because let’s face it, unbelievers could care less about the spiritual condition of our churches or about the fact that the moral condition of our nation continues to decline.
If someone has a problem with substance abuse, whether its drugs or alcohol the first step they have to take before they can kick the habit is to admit that they’ve got a problem.
If someone is addicted to gambling or internet pornography the only way they will ever overcome that addiction is by first admitting that they’ve got a problem that they cannot overcome without help.
But that won’t happen until we see the need for Revival. It won’t happen until we admit that we’ve got a spiritual problem that only God can cure. Too many of us are in denial. We are like the Pharisee in Jesus day. They considered themselves to be the most holy and righteous people on earth, while at the same time they considered everyone else to be sinners. Jesus told us about a Pharisee who prayed about himself by saying, “Lord I thank you that I am not like that poor tax collector.”
We are more like that than we would like to admit. We don’t even recognize the fact that our relationship to God is not where it needs to be. We are like the person Jesus was talking about when he said, “why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay not attention to the plank in your own eye?....First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck form your brother’s eye.” Matthew 7:3,5
Let me ask you a few questions this morning:
How long has it been since you read the Bible, or spent more than 30 seconds in prayer?
When was the last time you publicly thanked God for answering a prayer?
When was the last time you helped someone in need, without expecting something in return?
When was the last time you prayed for someone who was lost or invited them to come to church?
How long has it been since you shared your faith with anyone, or is that something that you’ve never even attempted?
Now let’s contrast those questions with these:
When was the last time you talked about someone behind their back?
How long has it been since you refused to talk to someone or turned your head when they spoke to you?
When was the last time you watched a movie you shouldn’t have watched or listened to a song that you shouldn’t have listened to?
How long has it been since you cursed or perhaps told an off colored joke?
How long has it been since you wished you had something that your neighbor owns?
Children how long has it been since you disobeyed or talked back to your parents?
When was the last time you purposely said or did something to hurt someone else’s feelings?
So the first thing we need to do is recognize that we need a Revival. Unfortunately we as Christians have been influenced more by the world than the world has been influenced by us.
If you are overweight and want to loose 20-30 pounds, the first thing you’ve got to do is admit to yourself that you are overweight, and that you won’t be able to lose the weight you want to lose unless you make some changes.
In the same way we are not going to see any positive changes in our society until we as Christians start making some changes in the way we live our lives, especially when it comes to our prayer lives.
II. WE MUST RECOGNIZE THE VITAL ROLE PRAYER PLAYS IN BRINGING ABOUT REVIVAL.
It takes disciple too lose weight, and let’s be honest, most of us aren’t very disciplined. (I know I’m not.) We want a quick fix. We want to drink a slim fast shake, or two, and take a few diet pills. But then after just a few days when we step on the scales and see that we’ve only lost a pound or two, most of us get so discouraged that we just give up.
In a way I think that’s kind of the way it is when we start praying for Revival. We get real excited about the possibility for Revival, and for a few days we humble ourselves and pray, and seek his face, and confess our sins to him. But eventually, maybe after a few days for some and a few weeks for others we get discouraged because we don’t see any visible sign that are prayers are making any difference. We don’t see any evidence of Revival in our lives or in the lives of the people around us, so we just give up and stop praying for it.
George Finney, a great Evangelist of the 17th Century once told about a man who lived in a small town that was in desperate need of Revival. The little church that the man attended was nearly dead, and most of the members who did attend were suffering from spiritual apathy, indifference and complacency. The majority of the people in the town were unbelievers and didn’t seem the least bit concerned about spiritual matters.
(I don’t know about you but that sounds very familiar to me). We live in a community where at best 18 percent of the people are attending a church of any kind this morning. And many of those that are in church today are apathetic, indifferent or complacent when it comes to reaching the other 72 percent of the people in Simpson County who aren’t in church.
We need to learn a lesson about the importance of prayer from this old blacksmith that George Finney wrote about. He had such a strong burden to see his church and community experience a Revival and Spiritual Awakening that the closed the doors of his blacksmith shop and spent the entire afternoon in prayer, crying out to God. Asking God to pour out His Spirit on that little church and asking Him to convict people of theirs sins.
After spending the entire afternoon in prayer, the man felt led to go talk to his pastor and ask him to open up the church the next day for a special service.
The pastor tried to talk him out of it because it was a workday and he was afraid no-one would show up, but eventually the pastor reluctantly agreed.
The next day when it came time for the service to begin the pastor was shocked to see that the church was completely full. He didn’t know what to do, since he hadn’t really expected anyone to show up he hadn’t even prepared a message. So they all just sat there in silence for several minutes until one man broke out crying and started begging for someone to pray for him. Others did the same, and before they knew it a Revival had broken out and people’s lives were being changed.
Later someone discovered that people all over town began being convicted of their sinful lifestyles about the same time that the old Blacksmith closed his doors and started praying at his shop.
The Bible tells us if we want God to heal our land, if we want Him to send another Great Revival that we are going to have to pray like we have never prayed before. We are going to have to be so burdened for the lost and for our community that we will go without food, and water, and perhaps even sleep, in order to pray and plead with God to send the convicting power of THE Holy Spirit upon the residents of Simpson County and the surrounding areas.
I don’t know about you but I know I need to lose some weight. I know I need to eat healthier, and get some exercise. But I don’t. Most of the time I try to justify what I eat by saying that we just don’t have time to cook so let’s just go through a drive through.
I also justify my lack of exercise by saying that I’ve got too much work to do and can’t take the time to ‘walk.’ When in reality, the truth of the matter is I want to eat that fast food, and I don’t want to exercise. I’m not proud of it, but the truth hurts.
Well unfortunately many Christians have the same type of attitude when it comes to the Spiritual disciplines of prayer and Bible study. You know you need to spend more time reading God’s Word and praying, but you justify your disobedience by convincing yourself that you’re too busy and that God will understand.
The truth of the matter is that the majority of Christians today don’t want to read the Bible or pray. They want to do what everyone else is doing. They want talk on their cell phones, text, surf the internet, watch t.v., go to the movies, or listen to hours upon hours of music on their Ipods.
About 12 years ago, when I was pastoring Centertown Baptist Church one of our young people came into my office one day and said she wanted to talk to me about something. She was very upset about the lack of morality in our nation. She said something like this, "Even people who claim to be Christians are conforming more and more to the standards of the world."
Perhaps we need to be reminded about what Paul said in Romans 12:1-2, He said, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."
I’m afraid that’s the problem in America today. Too many Christians and too many churches have conformed to pattern of the world.
What do I mean by that? Well, many people today go to church to be entertained, instead of going to worship God. Now don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t see anything wrong with having a good time at church. But, if the only reason a person comes to church is to be entertained then something is definitely wrong with that person’s relationship to God. And if a pastor or any other person in the church does or says anything, for any other reason than to glorify and magnify the Name of Jesus Christ, then He or she is sinning against God.
We as a Nation need to experience another Great Awakening. But before that can happen we have to recognize the need for Revival, and we have to change our attitudes toward spending time in prayer and Bible Study.
In our text God warned Solomon that even though the Temple was very beautiful, that if the Israelites turned their backs on Him that a day would come when people would pass by it’s ruins and say, "Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and to this temple?"
Verse 22 then says, "Because they have forsaken the Lord, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshipping and serving them-that is why he brought all this disaster on them."
The 28th chapter of Deuteronomy also has something important to say to us about God’s covenant with the Nation of Israel.
28:1-3 says, "If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God."
Moses then lists several ways God would bless the nation of Israel. He said that God would bless them economically. That their crops and herds would be bountiful. He also said that God would protect them from their enemies.
It is well documented that our forefather’s founded this nation on Christian principles, and I believe that is the main reason that God has blessed the United States so much during our 233 years of existence. We are without a doubt the richest most powerful nation on earth. Our government, our way of life, and our freedom’s are envied by many people around the world.
But I want you to read with me God’s Warning to the Nation of Israel. In Deuteronomy 28:15 He said, "However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all of his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you." He then goes into great detail concerning these curses. He said He would curse their cities and countryside’s. He said that that He would curse their crops and herds. He said that he would strike them with diseases, and finally he said that He would cause them to be defeated before their enemies.
Unfortunately King Solomon and the Nation of Israel did not heed God’s Warning. Instead they drifted away from God . 1 Kings 11:4 says, "As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been." It got so bad that the Israelites were actually sacrificing their own children to Molech (the god of the Ammorites).
As a result of their disobedience and sin, God allowed a civil war to spilt the nation in two. Then in 722 BC He allowed the Assyrians to come in and completely destroy the Northern Kingdom of Israel. 155 years later, the nation still hadn’t repented of their sins so He allowed the Babylonians to conquer and completely destroy the city of Jerusalem burning everything including the beautiful Temple that Solomon had built.
In the fifth chapter of Isaiah we read about another time when God’s people had turned away from Him. God had promised to protect Israel from their enemies as long as they worshiped and served Him. But once again they had turned to other gods so in verse 5 he said, "Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard, I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there." Has God removed the hedge that has been protecting the United States of America?
II. NOT ONLY DO WE NEED TO RECOGNIZE THE NEED FOR REVIVAL, BUT WE ALSO NEED TO REALIZE THAT GOD IS THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN "HEAL OUR LAND".
-When it was introduced "Welfare" was seen as the answer to many of the problems in our nation and society. But now we know that even an elaborate welfare system does not work. In fact in some cases welfare complicated, or even added to the problems in America.
Others have preached that Education is the answer to all of our nation’s problems. But that doesn’t explain why Mohammed Atta, who was a college graduate, boarded a plane in Boston, hijacked it, and flew it into the World Trade Center killing himself and thousands more.
Our Military is one of the greatest militaries in the world, and it is right now waging war against the Taliban and Osoma Bin Laden. But as strong as our military is it cannot guarantee our safety.
Higher taxes, more government, and multiple social programs have not and will not resolve the difficulties we are facing. Health care reform will not ease the pain. Technology and science have not, nor can they provide the answers.
The only way our nation will be healed is if the Lord of the universe intercedes on our behalf. Our text sets forth a pattern and states the promise that Healing follows forgiveness. We notice this in the ministry of Jesus. He forgave their sins and healed their diseases. Forgiveness follows repentance. When people turn away from sin and selfishness, God hears and forgives.
Repentance can best be explained as turning from sin and going toward God. When I’m explaining this concept to someone who is lost I say, "Repentance is like a group of soldiers who are marching in one direction, but when their commanding officer yells "to the rear march," they all turn around and march in the opposite direction." When we repent, we turn away from our sin, and we turn to God. In other words we should "seek God’s face and turn from our wicked ways."
Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president once said, "I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go." Until we as a nation realize that there is no other place for us to go for Healing except to God we will continue to suffer the consequences of our sins.
Someone has said, "That our only hope for survival is Revival." I agree with that. I have said, and I will continue to say, that unless our nation experiences a Great Revival in the next 10-15 years, the "Church" as we know it today, will be a thing of the past. Many of our churches will be made into museums, or shelters for the homeless, or they will simply be boarded up, or destroyed.
Conclusion: Our Nation is in serious trouble, but there is Hope. Our hope is in Jesus Christ, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The only thing God is waiting for,....is for us to realize that we need ’healing’ and that He is the only one who can heal us.”
