Series: None
Message: Revive Us
Text: Psalm 85
Date: October 30, 2011
Pastor: David McBeath
PRAYER
INTRODUCTION
I have totally ditched the message I was planning for this Sunday. Let me tell you, it was hard to do, because I had already worked a good little bit on it. But God impressed on my heart that he wanted me to go in a different direction. I think God wants me to share what’s on my heart after the LEMA prayer retreat, the Kingdom Transformation Conference, what happened last Sunday, when I believe revival began to break out at our church. I am going to do this as we look at Psalm 85.
MY HEART—Last Sunday/About Him
Let me start with my heart. First, wasn’t worship this Sunday Great! And last Sunday it was awesome—wasn’t it! Our congregation was been whole-heartedly worshipping God! Our focus was been on Him!! It is like we’ve all forgotten everything and everyone around us and put our eyes on him! Man, it has been good!!!
Like we sang this morning: His Name is Great. His name is above all names! Because He is Holy! He is righteous or right and I am not, we are not—at least not on our own! But because of his Amazing Grace, because of the Lamb that was slain, sinners like you and me are made right. We get to stand on Holy Ground! We get to enter his presence! We get to experience him!
I’ve needed last couple of weeks! I needed new life breathed into me! I believe our church did too. I believe God is giving us a foretaste of the revival the renewal, the restoration he wants to bring to our lives and our church that may eventually spill over into our community! Wouldn’t that be great!! Wouldn’t it be great to see revival break out in Lockport!
MY HEART—Our Community
Revival has been my heartbeat. God has place revival on my heart since I was 11 or 12. I think I was in 5th or 6th grade. There was a speaker that came to my church and he talked about great moves of God (revivals) that had taken place. I remember God telling me that could happen again. I vividly remember that was the day God gave me a desire to get churches and denominations to work together for revival. After church, I went to the grocery store with my dad and told him I thought God was calling me to ministry.
The week before last—I had the desire God laid on my heart when I was 11 or 12 begin to become a reality. Seven pastors, from 7 churches got together for a prayer retreat to pray for a renewal in our lives, our churches, and the Lockport area. I am here to tell you, God has started to bring it. We saw it begin in our worship service last week!
MY HEART –Our Denom./Assoc.
I have also been praying that God would begin to bring revival to our denomination in our region and state. Last week, I saw God begin to make that happen. Several pastors from our association came to the Kingdom Transformation Seminar, where Larry Lane gave us a vision for how God could use us and our churches to bring true transformation or revival to our area. The Moderator and several other pastors came up to me and said this is what our association needs! They want to talk about how to maybe bring Larry Back to speak to our association of churches. If you know anything about NABA this is an amazing move of God because our NABA churches have tended to be cold, and lifeless! Revival fires are beginning to be stirred! Isn’t God Good!
REVIVAL BEGINS W/GOD
So how does revival happen? Well, we can’t put God in a Box. That would be like me caging my 55 pound boxer with tissue paper! …God brings revival! But that is kind of the point. Turn to Psalm 85 and let’s look at the beginning of verses 1, 2, and 3. How do they begin? They begin by saying You, Oh Lord do this! Revival, renewal, restoration, begins with God! It is GOD’s Work! I tell you what, that takes some pressure of me as your pastor. I am not going to bring revival to your life. I’m not going to bring revival to this church, or even Lockport—GOD WILL!! Revival begins with God!
REVIVAL TIED TO PRAISE
Moving to point 2, Revival is tied to praise. Notice the last half of verse 6: “Will you not revive us again that your people may rejoice in you?” Revival is tied to praise.
What does praise do? What should our worship songs help us do? They RETURN our attention to God by helping us praise him for who he is and what he’s done for us! Praise and Worship takes our attention off self. When we come to church on Sunday morning, we practice the discipline of corporate worship to help each other take our eyes of ourselves and put our eyes on God! That is what was so beautiful about last couple of weeks! Many of us have forgotten about ourselves and gotten lost in God. As a result we haven’t cared what people think of us if we raise our hand, or if we jump up and down for God, or if we started crying, because we knew we were in God’s presence. Our attention was RETURNED to God. It was off self. I was off others and only on God!
This is what our Sunday Gathering is about. We gather to help each other RETURN our attention to God, so we can leave and live the rest of the week with our attention on God. In a sense, each Sunday should be a mini-revival for us! We gather to celebrate or praise God for what he is doing and has done in our lives, in our marriages, in our relationships with our kids, in our relationships with our parents, in our jobs, and on…and on… God works in these areas of our life when our focus is on him during the week. Yet, many times we are bombarded with the ways of the world that often times gradually begin to take our focus off God. So we gather on Sunday morning to help each other RETURN our focus to God. Isn’t that beautiful? Revival is tied to praise!
GOD CREATES DESIRE FOR REVIVAL
1. Revival begins with God. 2. Revival is tied to praise or returning our focus to God. 3. We have to desire revival, but God creates that desire! Look at verse 4. The Psalmist prays: “Restore us again, O God our Savior.” Then verse 6 the Psalmist cries out to God, “Will you not revive us again that your people may rejoice in you?” The Psalmist desires revival. But where does he get this desire? He gets it from God!
You see when we praise God for who he is and when we RETURN our focus to Him, we see who he is and what he has done. Let’s look at verse 1-3 and see who God is and God has done for the Psalmist.
Verse 1 says: “You showed favor to your land, O Lord; you restored the fortunes of Jacob.” The Psalmist says that God showed favor to the land. He sees that God makes good things happen in the land. The Psalmist sees that God restores Jacob or Israel’s fortunes…I will come back to this. Verse 2, the poet sees that God forgives and covers sins. Verse 3, the poet sees God’s mercy. He sees that God isn’t angry and doesn’t give us what our sins deserve. Why? Look at verse 9. The Psalmist sees that God has shown Israel his unfailing love and granted them salvation. These are the things the Psalmist sees when he RETURNS his focus to God. He sees God’s goodness to him and his people in the past!! We will see the same thing if we RETURN our focus to God. God creates a desire for revival when we return our focus to him and remember what he has done for us!
That is what we were singing about this morning. Revelation Song: Worthy is the, …Lamb who was slain; …Holy, holy is He. Sing a new song, … to Him who sits on, …Heaven's mercy seat. The mercy seat is the place in the temple where the blood of a lamb was sprinkled in the holy of holies of the temple on Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur means the day of covering or the day of obliteration. The blood of the lamb covered or obliterated the sins of the Israelites, just as the blood of Christ our lamb covers or obliterates our sins as he sits on heaven’s mercy seat. He has turned his anger. He has set aside his wrath. He has forgiven our sins—and we don’t deserve it! But that is not all. God goes on to bless our lives and our relationships. Again we don’t deserve it. But that is How Great Our God Is! That is his Amazing Grace!! I don’t focus on him and his grace like I should. I need to my focus to be returned to him! How about you?
Speaking of the fact that my focus needs to be returned to him, God makes that happen. God causes us to return to him. He causes us to turn from our sin. The Psalmist recognizes this fact and this is his prayer in verse 4. He cries out restore us O God! The verb restore in Hebrew means to turn from one thing to another thing. It means to turn around or return. It means to repent. The Psalmist pray is for God our Savior to cause us to repent. He prays that God will return us to him. He prays that he will cause us to turn from our sin to him! He prays for God to restore us or return us to him!
REVIVAL STARTS W/ I
1. Revival begins with God. 2. Revival is tied to praise or returning our focus to God. 3. God creates our desire for revival. Next, revival starts with I. Let me explain.
Look at verse 8: “I will listen to what God the Lord will say;…” I will listen to what God the Lord will say. Revival happens when I listen to what God the Lord will say. Say it with me. Read the last bullet point. Revival happens when I listen to what God the Lord will say. Revival happens when I listen to God! This is truth!
This is truth. I experienced it, especially the past few weeks. Beginning with the pastor’s prayer retreat—I have experience renewal, restoration, revival in my soul. Why—I stopped to listen to God! I prayed that he would show up in my prayer time. I prayed for personal revival. I prayed that he would speak to me in his word.
Guess what, He did! Especially last Sunday! His spirit come on me in a special way! I wept in his presence, knowing who I was compared to him. But also knowing he didn’t see me the way I saw myself, because all he saw was Jesus! As I sat in his presence, I listened to him and he told me to pray. He told me to pray specifically for spirits that were in this gathering place, keeping this church from experiencing the fullness of his presence. He told me to cast out spirits!
Now for those of you who are getting a little freaked out, I was freaked out too! That was not like me. I am not charismatic and I am not Pentecostal, but I am not going to put God in a box! It may have freaked me out—but the way I experienced God presence last Sunday—I would not change for the world! I want it again!! It has made me want to seek him!
Do you see how good he is he makes us want to seek him!!! The verse in Matthew 6:3 where Jesus says: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.” has a whole new meaning for me now! The same with Matthew 7:7-8 when Jesus says:
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."
Oh man! We have to seek him! We have to seek him first, …above everything else. He is all that matters! I have RETURNED my focus to God! And I have returned to God as a result! Revival begins with “I”!
REVIVAL HEALS OUR LAND
Recapping, first revival begins with God. 2. Revival is tied to praise or returning our focus to God. 3. God creates our desire for revival. 4. Revival starts with “I”. Finally, Revival Heals our Land. Look at verse 9. Here is what it says: "Surely his salvation is near those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land." God wants to bring revival to our lives and our church so it overflows and heals our land. So it restores our city! He wants his glory to dwell in our land—in our city!
Let’s go back to verse 1. “You showed favor to your land, O Lord; you restored the fortunes of Jacob.” God made good things happen! If you look at verses 9 and 10, when God’s glory dwells in the land, look at verse 10, “Love and faithfulness meet together; Righteousness and peace kiss!” What a great image!! The Message paraphrase the verse this way: "Love and Truth meet in the street, Right Living and Whole Living embrace and kiss!”
Don’t you want a city where things are right? Where there is love and faithfulness. Don’t you want to live in a place where there is peace? Where people live God’s way? When I think of rightness and peace, I think of the promise of a heavenly kingdom in Revelation where there is no more crying and no more pain. It reminds me of Nickelback’s chorus that that looks forward
to a place where
everyone cared and nobody cried
everyone loved and nobody lied
everyone shared and swallowed their pride
Then we'd see the day when nobody died
But that kingdom, that place can begin to be a reality, at least partially, when our RETURN our focus to him on Sunday morning and keep our focus on him in all we do the rest of the week. God wants to show favor to our land! He wants to revive our land. He want’s revival to break out in Lockport, NY so as verse 9 says: “his glory may dwell in our land.” He did it for Israel. He can do it for us! And He wants to!!!
Look at the second half of verse 1. It says: “You restored the fortunes of Jacob.” The word restored is from the Hebrew root Shub (ùÑåÌá). It is the same verb the Psalmist uses when he prays for God Restore Us! It means to return or turn from something to something. Look at the New King James Version—It gives a more literal translation of this verse. It says: “You have brought back (returned) the captivity of Jacob.” Remember this is poetry. Jacob’s name was changed to Israel. His name is symbolic of the nation. So this verse says that God did good things in the land when he restored Israel, or when her returned or saved them from their captivity to Babylon. Remember from our study of Genesis that Babel and Babylon are deeply anti-God. They do not follow God’s ways! Their ways are typical of the ways of the world!
Why does God let Israel be taken captive by the Babylonians in the first place? Because of their sin! Because Israel’s hearts were not turned toward him! Israel’s true captivity is to sin. He says if you are going to act like the world—you might as well be part of the world. I will let you be taken captive by the world in hopes that you will realize how bad the world’s ways really are and have your heart turned toward me!
Israel’s heart needs to be returned to God. How does God return their hearts to him? He forgives their sin! Just consider verses 2-3: “You forgave the iniquity of your people and covered all their sins. You set aside all your wrath and turned from your fierce anger.” He doesn’t punish them anymore, her turns from his fierce anger. He restores the captives according to verse 1. He frees them from their true captivity to sin. The prisoners are set free—Just like he did for us with Jesus Christ! Look what Jesus says his ministry is all about in Luke 4:18-19:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Doesn’t this sound like what God did here in Psalm 85? Christ came to free us from the prison and oppression sin causes in our lives and our land!
Here is the point I want you to get! When God’s people are set free—he uses them to heal the land! When God’s people are set free he uses them to heal the land. How do they heal the land? Look at verse 9: It says: “Surely salvation is near those who fear him (GOD), that his glory may dwell in the land.” I believe this verse is saying that those who fear God (in other words those who have been restored, revived, returned to God) bring salvation to the land. God is near those whom he returns and revives. They become reflections of him and his way—thus his glory spills out on the land. His glory spills out to our city through us!!! How awesome is that! When we listen to What the God our Lord says, we become people who love God and are faithful and righteous—righteous just means we follow his right ways. We become people who love each other and others in the land. We become people that are characterized by love and peace in our relationships! God revives us, because he is God! And he uses us to heal our land because he is more than good to us! We can’t even begin to describe his goodness to us!!
1. Revival begins with God. 2. Revival is tied to praise or returning our focus to God. 3. God creates our desire for revival. 4. Revival starts with I, when I say I will listen to what God the Lord says. Finally, Revival Heals our Land.
We are going to close by singing Blessed Be Your Name. Let this song return your focus to God! Let it help you get your focus of self and others. This song praises God when he shows favor on the land and everything is god. This song helps us remember to praises God when we are in a land full of suffering, because this will remind us of our need for revival, our need to return ourselves and our land, our city to him!
