“If…”

II Chronicles 7: 11-20
September 11, 2005
Rev. Curtis J. Young

II Chronicles 7: 11-20 - 11 When Solomon had finished the temple of the LORD and the royal palace, and had succeeded in carrying out all he had in mind to do in the temple of the LORD and in his own palace, 12 the LORD appeared to him at night and said:  "I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple for sacrifices. 
 13 "When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, 14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. 15 Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. 16 I have chosen and consecrated this temple so that my Name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there. 
 17 "As for you, if you walk before me as David your father did, and do all I command, and observe my decrees and laws, 18 I will establish your royal throne, as I covenanted with David your father when I said, 'You shall never fail to have a man to rule over Israel.' 
 19 "But if you turn away and forsake the decrees and commands I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them, 20 then I will uproot Israel from my land, which I have given them, and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my Name. I will make it a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples.”

This morning we begin the final four sermons on prayer. Their subject, I believe, is extraordinarily important: Praying for revival.

I realize the term “revival” has been trivialized to refer to evangelistic campaigns or special preaching programs in churches – to efforts engineered by people, albeit godly ones. Also, I am well aware the term is often associated with people doing strange things that if not linked to revival would be regarded as disturbed or hysterical.

If your idea of revival is shaped by these notions, I cannot blame you if you wonder why I would encourage you to pray for it. Why not simply plan a revival or avoid one!

True revival, revival as the Bible speaks of it, as God has promised it, as godly people have prayed for it, as it has built up the Church in faith, love and devotion, as it as expanded the church with new believers through spiritual birth, and as it has reshaped both public ethics and private morality – is the most wonderful thing that anyone could experience in this life.

Several Psalms clearly are prayers for revival. In Psalm 80:18 we read, “Revive us, and we will call on your name.” In Psalm 85, which we will study in three weeks, we are taught to plead with God, “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” (Ps. 85:6)

“Revive”, “restore”, “renew” – here are the three synonyms in Scripture when revival is the plea. Again and again, God’s people have cried, “Revive us!” or “Renew us!” From the time of the exile to Babylon, the prophets have also taught us to plead, “Restore us!”

Many of us may be accustomed to thinking of the Lord restoring us personally, or undergoing a personal renewal in our relationship with Him. Yet our Lord who commands us not simply to disciple individuals but nations, has repeatedly in the history of His Church – in the Old Testament, New Testament, and since – poured out His Spirit so as to affect entire churches, entire cities, entire regions, and even entire nations within a relatively short time.

To this point, I have spoken briefly about what a revival accomplishes, but let’s be clear as well on what a revival is.

It is most simply put, “a visitation from God”, “a period of unusual activity and blessing in the Christian Church”, “an outpouring of the Holy Spirit”. As a result, His presence, power and holiness are not just understood but felt in a way never known before. 

The phrases I just used were penned by Martyn Lloyd-Jones in his book entitled, Revival. He also characterized revival this way, that there is “not always the sound but the consciousness of the mighty wind of God”. 

In a revival, God’s truth becomes deeply personal. The holiness of God overwhelms. There is a terrible sense of one’s sin and such determination to be done with it and turn oneself in, so to speak, that hours of prayer seem like minutes as people seek God’s face. 

When the revival is over, and revivals do end, it leaves in its wake a wave of social reform that is long-lasting.

While this may sound extraordinary to us, revivals are part of the ordinary way God has worked in His Church throughout history. They are not limited to a given culture, or race or class of people, or to a particular historic period. 

What is striking about documented revivals in Europe and Africa, North America and South America, in Asia and Australia is the similarities. When God arises, His enemies are scattered. Nothing else matters but Him.

Many Christians have attempted to identify what they call “laws of revival”, certain steps that if taken lead to revival. Be skeptical. Revivals come entirely undeserved as divine gifts. There is nothing automatic about them, nothing that can be prepackaged, and no manual controls for how or when God visits His people.
And yet, when He does, He does not arrive uninvited. The Lord’s great visitations do not come apart from the effective, fervent prayers of righteous men and women.

This morning I read a passage which is familiar to many of you. The most striking thing is the first word in verse 14. It is, simply, “If”.

“…if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

“If” is placed for emphasis in our text. It hits the reader like a pail of cold water to sober us.

Our text began in verse 11, “When Solomon had finished the temple of the Lord and the royal palace, and had succeeded in carrying out all he had in mind to do in the temple of the Lord and in his own palace…”

Solomon had never felt so good about himself, so satisfied, so confident. He had just lead Israel to the pinnacle of its success. As fire came down from heaven and the glory of the Lord filled the Temple, imagine the triumph and joy of the people as they bowed to the ground and cried out, “He is good; His love endures forever.”

This was followed by the most extravagant offerings – 22,000 head of cattle and 120,000 sheep and goats. There was Solomon in the middle of the courtyard offering sacrifices, framed by the priests on one side with their trumpets, and by the Levites on the other with their instruments. After dedicating the altar with sacrifices lasting seven days, there followed seven days of feasting.

Verse 10 says that when Solomon sent the people to their homes, they were “joyful and glad in heart for the good things the Lord had done for David and Solomon and for His people Israel.”

From the greatest to the least, the very last thing on anyone’s mind was forsaking the Lord, spiritual treachery and betrayal, a love affair with idols and all the practices that go along with them. 

Yet within a few years, Solomon himself would fall headlong into debauchery as a sex addict and idolater honoring Ashtoreth, goddess of the Sidonians; Molech, god of the Ammonites; and Chemosh, god of the Moabites. In the process, he would oppress his own people for the increase of his own wealth. His son would follow in his example and as a result preside over a civil war and dissolution of the nation. Afterwards, only the family tribe of Judah would remain, and the corruptions Solomon introduced would ultimately lead to destruction, deportation and enslavement.

While God’s people took God’s favor for granted, the Good Shepherd drew attention to the corruption and judgments lying ahead. 

When it came to those things He did not say “if” but “when” in verse 13: “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people….”

Only when it came to restoration did the language shift to “if”, “if my people….” This was not to imply that the Lord was ignorant or powerless in the matter of their repentance, but to impress upon them their own sovereign responsibility to pray.

You could argue that the same point could be accomplished had He used the term “when,” “when my people who are called by my name humble themselves...” I agree. Clearly, the Lord was making another point -- Whether God’s people would seek revival at all.

We know though much of Israel’s history, little praying was done for revival even when conditions were terrible.

It is hard to admit that God has withdrawn his favor even when mighty flood waters arrive, when it is so much easier on everybody simply to blame the weather. 

The history of Israel attests, it is far easier to say, “Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” Avoid the wrath of men, persecution by the powerful, denunciation by the sophisticated. Just go along with the company line, things are not so bad. Be a good Enron executive or Worldcom accountant: “The books are in pretty good shape.” 

How easily we latch on to lesser things as proof of God’s favor and our own personal well being! Jesus wrote to the church of the Laodiceans, “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel from you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich…”

Let me say plainly, the church is not what it has been. It is not what it has been in terms of impact and influence, in terms of spiritual power. This to me explains the scramble for new methods and new schemes to attract people, to accommodate them. We convince ourselves that people are different now, that human frailties are new, that the problem is with our methods. Our methods must change. 

I am certainly not averse to testing new strategies, but what I am talking about is a misdiagnosis in which we focus on the superficial. People have not changed, not at their core. We need God to come down!

As part of the church of Jesus Christ in Silver Spring, in Maryland, in Washington, D.C., and in the United States, we must admit our spiritual territory is being overrun by the Philistines. We’re not contending with spiritual apathy but with atheism. We’re not faced with ignorance about Christ but hatred for Him. People aren’t bound up in immorality but moral anarchy. Talk about a demonized society! 

While it is common enough to find Christians throwing up their hands at the power of their adversary – in the press, media, schools, legislatures, courts, executive mansions – and plead helplessness, every time God’s people adopt this attitude in Scripture, God has rebuked it, from the complaining of the spies sent to spy on the Amorites in Canaan, to the complaining of the disciples as storm waters threatened to sink their boat while Jesus slept in the bow.

His rebuke is always the same: “I am with you.”
Now this is the whole issue: Is He with us? When God told Moses to lead His people into the Promised Land, how did Moses respond? Not unless I know you are with us. “If your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.”

This is the whole issue in praying for revival. We are praying for a visitation from the Lord. Why? Because we see our weakness. We see our enemies’ strength. We hear our Lord being slandered. We see the evidences of God’s displeasure. We see from the plumb line of His word that the world is becoming more out of kilter. We know we are powerless to change it. But we are not powerless to pray.

“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”