Why Revival Really Won’t Come to Canada: II

Why Revival Really Won’t Come to Canada: II
2 Chronicles 30


John Macarthur tells of an ill-fated Spanish plane that crashed into a mountain in Spain in 1984. When they discovered the little black book, the last thing they heard before the plane crashed was the sound of the on-board computer saying in English “Pull up, Pull up, Pull up!” just before it was disabled by the captain. His last words, seconds before the plane crashed were, “Shut up Gringo.”

That is a disquieting example of what is going on inside our minds. Every day, our consciences are saying “Tell people about Jesus, share the gospel.” That’s the Holy Spirit. Has He said that to you this week?

Last week we saw that the reason revival won’t come to Canada is because for revival to happen it must first come to us as individuals and as a church and that won’t happen as long as we decline to reform our hearts.

This morning I want to continue in 2 Chronicles and see what else we can learn about revival from an actual revival that happened in the History of Israel. I also want to suggest that the second reason why revival won’t come to Canada is that Christians don’t share the good news because they are afraid (and justifiably so) that they will be laughed at and mocked.

Read 2 Chronicles 30:1-5.

I. Here is the invitation that they went out with- Read vv. 6-9

So, like in the parable of the marriage feast, the servants of the King went out as far south as Beersheba and all the way to the northern most tip of the northern Kingdom.

Their mission was to call the people to return to the God of their fathers because for over a century, the Jews in the northern Kingdom had turned away from God and were led astray to worship the fertility god Baal. And things weren’t much better in the Southern Kingdom either. These two nations quite remind me of Canada and the United States.

In the North, God had sent prophet after prophet to warn them, “Pull up, Pull up!” But all that Israel could say was, “Shut up Gringo.” They went from being a flourishing and powerful nation to being an enslaved and demoralized people within less than a 100 years. The Assyrians had overrun them so that they were dispersed abroad and mostly sent them into slavery.

Now Hezekiah is sending his messengers to them saying, “return to the God that your fathers forsook. Don’t be fools like them. Don’t give up your heritage. Why are you serving pigs for the heathen when you have a father is here waiting for you to return to him? Restore your allegiance to the living God. Why serve a god who is no god at all?”

Why should they return to Jehovah?

Because God is a gracious and merciful God. If you return to Him, He will not turn His face away from you.

How like those messengers we Christians are; but with a far superior consequence though. Because instead of just going to one people, the Great Commission commands that we go into the entire world, to every nation tribe and tongue and tell them the good news about Jesus.

Listen to how Paul describes his ministry:
1 Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we do not give up. 2 Instead, we have renounced shameful secret things, not walking in deceit or distorting God's message, but in God's sight we commend ourselves to every person's conscience by an open display of the truth. 3 But if, in fact, our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4 Regarding them: the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For we are not proclaiming ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves because of Jesus. 6 For God, who said, "Light shall shine out of darkness"--He has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ. 7 Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us. (2 Cor 4:1-7 HSV)
Hezekiah’s messengers went out with an offensive message. It wasn’t their message, it was the Kings. They didn’t try to tweek it and make it more upbeat because they feared the king.

Sure they would likely have had more success maybe if they went out and said “Come to Jerusalem, it’s gonna be a great party. You don’t have to change anything, just come out and have fun and it will also make you rich and healthy too.”

That sounds ridiculous, but that is exactly what a lot of preachers of the gospel are doing today even though the gospel is a greater message from a greater king.

But Paul says he did not deceive people or distort God’s message. He wasn’t preaching himself, or the pop-culture, or human philosophy, or mystery religion. He just preached Jesus Christ and him crucified, foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews. He did it because he knew that if people did not accept the message, it wasn’t because the problem was with it.

As Rico Tice said at the conference yesterday, “If the results of the message belong to me, I will cut the price so more will buy.” In other words, he won’t preach the hard things if the results depend on his ability to persuade people.

If people get angry at you, it’s because the real problem is that the god of this world has blinded their eyes and it is not within your power to open them. What is required to open the eyes of unbelievers is nothing less than very same miracle working power of God that caused the universe to leap into existence.

Think about it, the universe is vast beyond any human ability to measure. Billions of stars generating inconceivable amounts of power and all that was put into place by one word from God, “Let there be light.” And that is equal to the miraculous power that is required to cause an unbeliever to believe and its happening all the time. Our duty is simply to sow and to water, but God causes the increase.

All that we can do is to be faithful to the message. “God is gracious and merciful,” it says in 2 Chr 30:9, “He will not turn His face from you if you return to Him.”

II. There are two responses towards the messengers of the King and his message.

1. The first response is found in the second part of verse 10, “the inhabitants scorned and mocked them.” It happens with the gospel too. Think about the way that Jesus was treated, and yet, if you ask most people today what they think of him, they would almost unanimously concur that he was at least a good man and a good teacher.

So why did they crucify him? Why do they scorn and mock these messengers of Hezekiah? Why were more Christians killed in the 20th century than in the previous two thousand years combined? Why are they tortured and killed in places like Burma, North Korea, Iraq, the Philippines…? Why are they scorned and mocked in North America by the government, by the media, by your friends and your families?



Five reasons:
1. The gospel if a spiritual message and the minds of unspiritual people cannot discern the spiritual things of God.
2. The gospel is an offensive message. It requires that we affirm that we are sinners.
3. The God of this world has blinded their eyes
4. We are too scared of being teased.
5. We love ourselves more than we love the lost.

How will they hear if no one preaches? They won’t.

Here are some things that you need to do if you are serious about sharing the gospel:
1. Pray that God will open their eyes.
a. Ask God to bring you to people who are ready to hear the gospel.
b. Pray and Challenge yourself to share the gospel with one person this week.
c. Ask God to bring someone across your path.
2. Make changes in your schedule so that you can have time to go out and look for divine encounters.

Another response to the message from Hezekiah is in verse 11, “some of them humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem.” Why? Verse 12, “Because the hand of God was in Judah to give them one heart to carry out the command of the King.”

You know what? I think that the hand of God is with Gateway. I think that God has had his hand on this church for some time because He has a plan to bring revival here. That’s why he has laid us on the heart of Thomas over in Farmersville Texas, and he has laid it on the heart of the Band and on the representatives from the Southern Baptists of Texas to come up here to preach the gospel in a city that they’ve never heard of before. That’s no coincidence.

There’s energy in this church and energy in our worship and it’s almost like I can feel the hand of God as I work here all week and pray and meet with people. There’s a sense of expectancy. Many of our members have said so to me.

God wants to bring a revival to Gateway and it is already beginning. Let’s go out and invite people to come because the hand of God is with us to give us one heart. The grace of God compels us.

Conclusion

Finally, look at verse 21, as the revival that began in Jerusalem in Chapter 29 spreads to include the two nations of Israel and Judah, three things happen:
1. Dry religious activity is replaced with Joy (read v. 21a)
2. There was an outburst of spontaneous worship (read 21b)
3. The worship was extended (Read 23)

And the extent and effect was threefold, (Read v. 25); it affected:
1. The established organized church
2. The backslider, those who had fallen away
3. The Outsiders, people who had never heard of the Lord

They all came and rejoiced in the Lord with a rejoicing “that had never been heard in Jerusalem since the days of Solomon. And God heard their voice and their prayer came into His Holy dwelling in heaven.

Oh that our prayers for lost souls would rise that way to heaven. That our prayers for revival would rise before God as a pleasing incense and that He would hear our prayers and send revival.