WHY REVIVAL REALLY WON’T COME TO CANADA: I

WHY REVIVAL REALLY WON’T COME TO CANADA: I
2 CHRONICLES 29


Today is mother’s day. Did you know that in Canada, a little over 2000 children die every year before they reach the age of one? What is striking is that, in the same period, over 105 000 children die as a result of abortion? What does that mean? For one thing, it means that the mother’s womb is the most dangerous place in Canada! You know, for the most part these children are being sacrificed to the god of convenience and selfishness.

To God, we moderns are no better than the unsophisticated ancient pagans who visited temple prostitutes and sacrificed their children to fertility gods. We celebrate perversity and we legislate decadence all the while righteousness and holiness are mocked and scorned and in some cases outlawed altogether.

Christians like to say that our nation needs a revival- we hear it a lot right? But revival, the kind of revival that it’s going to take to save unborn babies and turn this nation toward God cannot happen out there until it happens in here, in this church and in each individual sitting here today. Because, how bad it is out there is directly related to how bad it is in here… and it’s pretty bad in here.

Do you really want God to heal our land? Are you willing to let Him adjust your heart for a revival? Let the people of Israel in the day of Hezekiah be an example to us of how that can happen.

Read 2 Chronicles 29:1-10

I really struggled with the idea of calling something a revival before it happens- it seems to imply that it is in the power of man to bring a move of God that really only God can do.

But there is a role that we can play in bringing about a revival and we see it modeled by Hezekiah and the priests. The role that we play in bringing revival is called reformation. It means consecration- conforming our affections, our beliefs and our actions to the Holy requirements of God found in scripture.

In the history of God, wherever you see a reformation of men, revival always follows. So I want to spend the next couple of weeks looking at the revival that occurred during the reign of Hezekiah because I believe that God wants to bring a revival to Gateway.

I. First, reformation begins with a conviction of sin.

Hezekiah was a Godly king and that made him very uncommon in the history of the kings of Israel. Over and over and over again we read that David’s successors did evil in the sight of God and they led Israel to follow strange God’s into captivity to sin, rather than follow the God of heaven who by His grace led them out of captivity.

In their inclination towards apostasy, at least, Israel has much in common with believers today.

Jonathon Edwards described the awareness of sin that surfaced just prior to the Great Awakening in America. He wrote this, “Some few instances there have been persons who have had such a sense of God’s wrath for sin, that they have been over borne; and made to cry out under an astonishing sense of their guilt wondering that God suffers such guilty wretches to live upon the earth, and that He does not immediately send them to hell.” (Edwards on Revival p. 26).

The Puritans had a catchphrase: “Semper Reformanda”; it means always reforming.

I was on the phone with my friend Pastor Larry Arbo the other day. He said that he has learned that a pastor must relentlessly resist the pressure to dilute their doctrine and wink at sin. He’s been doing it for 25 years! I think that’s true of all Christians though, don’t you? We are all under from sin, Satan and the world to make friends with darkness.

Do you realize that for every hour that you spend here in the church you have 167 hours in the world? (That’s what I am up against as a preacher you know.) On average, Canadians spend 25 hours a week watching television. But, my guess, that outside of church most Christians spend less than an hour in the Word and in prayer- if at all!

“Every empty prayer meeting condemns us; every Bible daily unopened condemns us… every wasted minute of our life condemns us; every unclaimed opportunity for God condemns us.” (L. Ravenhill).

Are you walking in power and Christian victory? Or, are you walking in defeat beaten down by sin and destructive patterns of living? Is your Christian life always reforming or is it deforming? What is God presently saying to you about your relationship with Him?

Gerda and I have friends that never answer their phone. When we call them we always get their answering machine. But, after constantly getting the answering machine, we’ve finally just stopped calling them altogether. Does God get the answering machine when He calls you? Or has He just stopped calling you altogether?

Do you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? For years the kings and priests were using the temple as a garbage heap- the house of God became foul than the sewers of Jerusalem until they finally had to close the doors to keep the filth from spilling out.

You are the temple of God. There was a price to be paid to make you His dwelling place. Jesus suffered indescribable violence and spiritual brutality so that he could redeem you; so that you could become his dwelling place, his ambassador; you are the very presence of the Kingdom of God here on earth. Time to throw open the doors to the temple let the light of God reveal the secret sins of your heart so that you can deal with them and rid yourself of them.

Let it be upon you heart, like it was on the heart of Hezekiah in verse 10 to make a covenant with the Lord to turn his wrath away from us before it’s too late.

II. The second thing that we can learn from Hezekiah about what is required for a reformation that leads to revival is that we need to get rid of the things that are causing us to stumble in our walk with the Lord.

Read v. 11-18

The priests had become negligent. In verse 11 Hezekiah reminds them that the Lord had chosen them to stand before Him… and to serve Him… and to minister to Him.

“For you are a holy people unto the LORD your God: the LORD your God has chosen you to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth” (DT 7:6).

Jesus said, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit” (Jn 15:16) and Paul wrote “God has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love (Eph 1:4).

Chosen to be a special people, to bear fruit, to be holy, to serve God… But are we doing it?

There are severe spiritual implications for the idleness these Priests. As Matthew Henry writes, “Those that by their negligence in the service of the Lord think to mock Him, only deceive themselves. God expected work from them. They were not chosen to be idle, to enjoy the dignity and leave the duty to be done by others, but to serve him and to minister to him.” How much more the church?

Jonathon Edwards recalled that during the revival, after the awakening to sin, people were “struck with the glory and the wonderfulness of the dying Christ… (struck) with the sufficiency and preciousness of his blood… (struck with) the value and the glory of his obedience and righteousness.” (Edwards 34). Are you struck by Jesus?

When you consider the horror caused by sin and that Christ suffered the way that he did to rescue us from the dominion of sin, how is it possible for us to continue to cherish in our hearts the very thing that caused him to suffer the way that he did?

III. Finally the third thing that we can learn from Hezekiah about what is required for a reformation that leads to revival is that purification requires a sacrifice. Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.

Read vv. 20-24

Look at how many animals they had to sacrifice- so many that there were not enough priests to handle them all. But the Mosaic Law that required those sacrifices in the Old Testament was just a shadow, a provision that was made for people as it looked forward to Christ. If those sacrifices made them perfect, then just one would have been enough, but it is not possible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin”

"Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, As in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams. (1 Sam 15:22). “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and a contrite heart-- These, O God, You will not despise.” (psalm 51:17).

Those animal sacrifices were provisional in the Old Testament; they were meant to point to Christ, the Passover lamb. His sacrifice was sufficient- His blood washes us and makes us white as snow.

If your heart has been moved this morning with a sense of the repugnance of sin and the beauty and the majesty and the glory of Christ, I want you know that God is calling you. Choose this day whom you will serve.

Jesus is saying, “Follow me.” Being right with God is not about how many religious things you do, or say that you do. Being right with God is all about trusting Him to make atonement for your sin and then living like you believe that he died for you.

The sacrifice has been made, all that we need to do is repent- “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)

Conclusion:

Look what happens when reformation comes; when we are awakened to sin and throw open the doors to our hearts and let the Holy Spirit remove the things that separate us from God: rejoicing, spontaneous worship; thanksgiving, people began to give to the work of the Lord out their overflowing joy and

Read vv. 28-36

That is why revival won’t come to Canada. Revival won’t come because God’s people refuse to reform themselves. But we can do it. If we set our hearts to it, God will prepare His people for a sudden, spontaneous out flowing of His divine presence that will set this church and this community on fire for Him.

Do we really want that to happen?