IF MY PEOPLE WILL HUMBLE THEMSELVES
II Chronicles 7:14
INTRODUCTION: This fall we will be studying about revival. Eventually we will study some of the great revivals that took place in the Bible, but we are taking a few weeks to learn more about what revival is and how it comes. That’s why in a moment we will be looking at II Chronicles 7:14. But first I want to begin by reminding you what is meant when we talk about revival. As we said last week, Revival does not come by design. God can not be manipulated to send revival. It is cannot be orchestrated or produced by the flesh. Revival is not the church deciding to do something. It is God deciding to do something to his church. Revival comes at the sovereign, gracious decision of God to send a fresh movement of His Spirit among his people. Revival is God moving and that is hard to explain. In 1803 a strange event took place in the hills of Kentucky. 25,000 people went out to hear preaching at a place called Cane Ridge where preachers stood on stumps and proclaim the righteousness of God. People became so overwhelmed with their conviction of sin that they fell to the ground and thousands were brought to the Lord. The reason I bring this up is because Cain Ridge was led by Barton W. Stone, who is considered to be one of the founders of the Churches of Christ in America. And maybe you didn’t know it, but the churches of Christ grew out of revival, out of the second great awaking in America. We were birthed in the mist of a revival and you cannot explain the revival that started the Churches of Christ. I wonder if Cain Ridge happened today, how many of us would even go. Revival is a gracious move of the spirit that brings renewal to the church. That is why I say revival can’t be bought. You can’t package it, you can’t come up with a formula, you can’t buy it in a kit or the church would have already have it. Revival can’t be bought, instead must be sought. Also from last week, revival will not come unless it is desired. It is an invasion from heaven at the request of the saints on earth. Now, I say again you can’t obligate God. You cannot make God do anything. But Church we must be remember that God wants to revive his people more than they want revival. God longs to send revival to his church. He is waiting for his church to seek it and He tells us how in II Chronicles 7:14. READ TEXT This verse is so critical that it will take 3 sermons to understand what God is looking for before he grants revival. God says, "If…then." If you will humble yourself, seek my face, turn from your wicked ways, I will hear, I will forgive, I will heal. So the very first thing that God says He is looking for, the first thing He must see before He sends revival is Humility. There are several things I have learned about Humility.
{The first thing is that…}
I. HUMILITY IS AN INTENTIONAL UNDERTAKING
A. God chooses to fill empty vessels. What we are going to see over and over again this Fall is that God will not send revival until his people humble themselves. God can not fill people with the Spirit if they are already full of themselves, and there is a real danger in the church of having a sufficient spirit. That is why we don’t see many revivals; a sufficient, satisfied spirit.
B. One of the great personal revivals in the Old Testament was with a King named Manasseh. There were few Kings more evil than Manasseh and God brought judgement upon him just as He promised. The Babylonians came and literally put a hook in his nose and drug him to Babylon. But look what happened to this man in II Chronicles 33.
1. "In his distress he sought the favor of the LORD his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. And when he prayed to him, the LORD was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea; so he brought him back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD is God." You will find this over and over again in the Old Testament.
2. When we humble ourselves God promises to hear and respond, and he never breaks that promise. You will never find a time in the Bible when men humbled themselves before God that he did not hear and respond. And we need to realize that God puts the responsibility to humble ourselves on us. The command is not to feel humble, not to praise humility, not to act humbly, but to intentionally humble ourselves.
3. Look at Zephaniah 2:3…Do you want to miss the judgement of the Lord? Do you want revival to come? God says, "Seek humility." But what does it mean to seek humility? It’s more than what I do. Now if someone comes up to me and gives me a complement, I will try to act humble, but that isn’t what he is talking about. It is one thing to act humble, but do we SEEK humility? Do we intentionally seek ways to humble ourselves? Yet that is what God is looking for.
C. Seeking humility means that we confess our burden for the way things are. Every Revival in the Bible is proceeded by the people having a great burden that things have become so bad and people are living so far from God. I want to tell you something, America needs revival to restrain the righteous anger of God.
1. Often times we fail to realize that our God is the same God of the O.T. and He will treat this nation like he treated the nations long ago if injustice, oppression and unrighteous continue to thrive. He will deal with America just like he did Sodom bringing destruction and desolation. But Sodom is not God’s only option. There is another option that he prefers.
2. God prefers to withhold judgement upon a nation if there is a godly minority in that nation that will plead for it. Many times God will save a nation only because there are a few people who are burden and they pour their hearts out to Him. The question is, do we have that burden?
3. In Isaiah 59, when Israel was so far from God and Babylon was right around the corner, the prophet wrote, "The Lord looked and was displeased that there was no justice. He saw that there was no-one, he was appalled that there was no-one to intervene." Another translation puts it; "He wondered why there was no intercessor." the Lord was displeased there was no one to stand in the gap. Who was praying, pleading and feeling a burden for the way things are? No one.
D. I am reminded of a story told about William Booth, the man who founded the Red Cross. He sent a couple of young men to another city, and when nothing seemed to be working the men sent a telegraph to him expressing their frustration. Booth replied back with just two words, "Try tears!" Church our tears must not only be shed for America but for our own sins.
1. You see, the problem with America is not with the darkness, but with the Light. God meant for his church to be the godly minority that saves nations by their righteous. The church is to be the salt of the earth. That means we ought to have a preserving influence in our community literally staying the wrath of the living God. And while the people criticize up, mock us and scorn us, they don’t understand that we are the ones keeping judgement from falling on their heads.
2. We need to feel a burden for our own lack of righteousness. It is time for us to stop blaming Washington and blaming Hollywood, and start weeping for our own sins. Why do we get upset when sinners sin? What do we expect them to do? They don’t have the truth of God, the cover of the blood of Christ or the Holy Spirit to guide them.
3. The problem is not that sinners sin. The problem is the church can’t wait to spend seven dollars on Saturday night to go watch them do it. God says in Joel 2, "Even now return to me with fasting and weeping and mourning. Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God for He is gracious and compassionate, abounding in love and He relents from sending calamity." That’s what it means to humble ourselves, to feel that burden. But I wonder if we have become too proud to rend our hearts and weep and mourn?
{The second thing I have learn about humility is that…}
II. HUMILITY IS THE WILLINGNESS TO STRESS THE DISCIPLINES OF
PRAYER AND FASTING
A. Even in desperate times we have one great source of hope, we can move God’s heart by our pleas, and revival is always preceded by a passionate calling on God’s name by his people. Folks God is not moved by a man’s standing, but by a man kneeling. That’s why in our next sermon we must talk about what it means to pray and seek His face. But if you are going to do some serious soul searching, God tells us over and over again that if we are serious about humbling ourselves then we must pray and fast.
1. By the way, Jesus in His teaching did not say "If you fast." He said, "When you fast." Why? Because fasting is one of God’s ordained ways of humbling ourselves. Psalms 35:13, "I put on sackcloth and humbled myself with fasting." In Ezra 8:21, the prophet Ezra proclaimed a fast so that he and his companions might humble themselves before their God.
2. Why is fasting a sign of humility to the Lord God? Because it is our attempt to subject our desires so we can focus on God’s desires. It also fasting communicates a yieldedness and an availability to God for whatever He wants instead of what we want. Most of all, fasting enables us to give our full attention to God’s leading and not to our own agenda.
3. For example in Acts 13 it says the church was praying and fasting and there was a movement of God and then they set aside Paul and Barnabas to do mission work. That is how mission work was launched. In Acts 14 when the apostles went to ordain elders in churches they would only ordain elders after they had prayed and fasted. Why? Because they wanted to be led by the spirit.
4. Fasting means you are willing to give up something your body demands in order to fervently seek something you spirit needs. The Word of God is so clear "You want revival? Pray and fast." So why don’t we? Two reasons. First, we are afraid to do it because some denominations do it. This is going to be our downfall. Far too many Godly, spiritual things are shunned and abandoned because someone else is doing it and therefore it must be wrong.
5. The second is pride. It is humbling to fast. If you decide to pray and mourn and fast you will be ridiculed by some people because you are doing something radical and not going along with crowd. Psalm 69:10-13
B. Folks’ revival doesn’t come because we see the importance of humility and declare its virtues. Revival comes because we intentionally seek it. And God clearly says this is what you do if you want to humble yourselves before me. The question is, are we too proud to do it? Humility means we have a burden for how things are and then we pray and fast and then start addressing our desperate need for Holiness.
1. We are going to see this over and over this fall. Revival always makes us address our need for holiness. I have wondered why revival comes so slowly and so infrequently, when every church would say they are for revival. What church is going to say that they don’t want revival to come? So why do we rarely see it?
2. I think part of it is the sovereignty of God and that I cannot explain. But I also think part of it must be the sins of the people who ask. How can we expect God to send revival, when we cherish sin in our hearts? The Psalmist says in Psalm 66:18, "If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened." God promises that he will hear when we humble ourselves and part of humbling yourself is when you get serious about addressing our need for holiness.
3. I didn’t know this until recently but bathtubs are a fairly recent invention. They didn’t come to America until the 1840’s and were immediately categorized as a luxury and a vanity. In fact towns like Philadelphia and Boston made it against the law to take a bath unless you had a doctor’s prescription. Now here’s a marvelous way to be cleansed but the people are against it.
4. You know what I think, I think many Christians would rather put up the stench of their unconfessed sins than come clean before God. Listen church, a lot of people are asking for revival because they think it would be fun. They have never been in a revival. Long term it is glorious, short term it is painful. Because if there was a move of the Spirit in this church there would be a conviction of sin like we have never seen before. And Are we sure we want that?
C. Do you want it folks? Do you really want every time you start to pick up that magazine, or that video for the Spirit to make you nauseous? Do you want every time you start to gossip or slander or say something harsh, to have the Holy Spirit so crush against your chest you think it is going to collapse?
1. Every time you start to tell a dirty joke, or keep your money from God, do a dishonest deal, to skip church over some silly, selfish reason, do you really want the spirit to crush you so that you have to fall to your knees and ask for forgiveness? Is that what you want. Well, that is what you are asking for if you are asking for a revival.
2. Humbling ourselves means asking God to be painfully thorough in revealing anything that is not pleasing to him. So the Bible says in Psalm 34, "The Lord is close to those whose heart is breaking. He rescues those who are humbly, sorry for their sins." Isaiah 57:15
D. God’s doesn’t send revival until we humble ourselves. Revival can only come when we intentionally seek humility with prayer and fasting.
III. THE SAME GOD THAT REVIVES THE HUMBLE IN SPIRIT IS THE
SAME GOD THAT REMOVES THE PROUD IN HEART.
A. Peter says in the fifth chapter of his first letter…That we need to clothe ourselves with humility because God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Therefore we need to humble ourselves under God’s mighty hand.
1. That word, oppose, that Peter uses is the same word for a general lining up his soldiers, getting them ready to go into battle. In other words, if you are going to proud before God, rebellious before God, you know what He wants but in your stiff-necked rebellion you will not do it, God says I will line up my army against you, and God doesn’t lose battles. God will enact severe judgement on those who are filled with selfish pride.
2. We make a mistake in the church today. Every time something bad happens we are too quick to say, "That must be Spiritual warfare." Listen, many times it is God’s discipline. It is God keeping his promise to humble the haughty in spirit.
B. Do you remember king Nebuchadeezer? How proud and arrogant he was before God even though he had been warned in a dream to humble himself, but of course he didn’t. So God sent him out into the wilderness for 7 years to live like an animal. Daniel 4:37 he says, "I learned a great lesson. I learned that all those who walk in pride He is able to humble."
CONCLUSION: The Bible says that one day every knee will bow. That is not
the issue. The only issue is WHEN. That’s all we’re talking about today. We are not talking about whether or not you will be humble before God. We’re just talking about WHEN you will humble yourselves and how. In fact the Bible says that in the end God will humble all that do not humble themselves. I’ll put it to you this way, if you will not fall flat on you face before God he will put you flat on your back, but one way or the other you’re going down. Today revival is waiting for you now, waiting for you to humble yourselves. If you want purity and rightness in your life and in this church YOU have got to humble yourself and ask God for revival.
