Analysis Before Revival

But what a great man of faith. Verse number eight, or verse number seven rather, Moreover Solomon hallowed the middle of the court that was before the house of the Lord, for there he offered burnt offerings and the fat of the peace offerings which, because the brazen altar which Solomon had made was not able to receive the burnt offerings and the meat offerings and the fat. Also the same time Solomon kept the feast seven days, and all Israel with him, a very great congregation from the entering in of Hamath unto the River Of Egypt.

And in the eighth day, they made a solemn assembly for they kept the dedication of the altar seven days, and the feast, seven days. And on the three and twentieth day of the seventh month, he sent the people away into their tents, glad and merry in heart for the goodness that the Lord had shown had had showed unto David and to Solomon and to Israel his people.

Thus, Solomon finished the house of the Lord and the king’s house, and all that came into Solomon’s heart to make in the house of the Lord and in his own house, he prosperously effected. And the Lord appeared to Solomon by night and said unto him, I have heard thy prayer and have chosen this place to myself for an house of sacrifice. If I shut up heaven and that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people, if my people, which are called by my name, shall 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.

Now mine eyes shall be open and mine ears a tent unto the prayer that is made in this place. Would you pray with me tonight? Our fathers, we come to your word now. We, thank you for it and we pray that you’d help us, Lord, to, to have a heart, Lord, a heart of humility that is willing, Lord, to examine ourselves and and make an analysis of where we are with you, Lord, especially as we consider the days ahead and and the things on the horizon here in our church. So Lord, guide us in our study of your word, we pray, speak to our hearts. We ask in Jesus name, amen.

Now you’ll notice in verse number verse number 12, the Lord appears to Solomon, so this is a dream, and the Lord answers Solomon, if it wasn’t already obvious that the Lord answers Solomon that he is going to indeed dwell in this house that Solomon has built. He has dedicated it to the Lord and the Lord has accepted that. In verse 13, in this dream, the Lord says to Solomon, if I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people. Now you all are very familiar with verse number 14, right? That’s one of the most quoted verses probably in the Bible, especially in churches.

But verse number 14 has a background, and the background you see in verse number 13. And the background is that the Lord tells it gives a condition. He says, if this circumstance comes to pass, heaven is shut up, there is no rain, and locusts are devouring the land or pestilence is among, among God’s people. Now, that’s that’s important for to understand verse number 14. Heaven is shut up, the land is devoured, pestilence rages because, and we know because of verse 14 that these things are happening to Israel because of the sin of God’s people. Notice at the end of verse number 13, it says, or I send pestilence among my people. So, these are the the unfortunate events of verse number 13 are happening because of of the sin of God’s people.

And we we know that’s true, and it makes sense to us if we’re familiar with our Old Testament because we know that many of the promises that God made to Israel, if God promised them that if they were faithful to him, that if they obeyed his word, if they hearken to his voice, that God would put his blessing upon the people of Israel. And the blessing that God specifically promised to them were blessings related to their land, blessings related to their cattle, to their offspring, that is their children. The Lord Lord even said, if if you obey me, you your not only will your cattle not cast their young, but your ladies will not essentially have miscarriages.

And so, all of these blessings, but there were also blessings God promised concerning the fields, and how abundant their fields would bring forth fruit. And so many of the blessings of of God to Israel in the Old Testament were blessings related to the things we read in verse number 13. Related to their land, related to rain, related to pestilence, disease among the people.

Now, what but what we see in verse number, what we see in verse number 13 is actually the reverse of that. They are not experiencing the blessings of God in this way. In fact, they’re experiencing the reverse. Instead of rain, the heaven is shut up, and instead of, fruitful fields and trees, the locusts are eating all the fruit. And instead of, wellness in body, there is pestilence among the people. And all of these things are indicators of the spiritual condition of God’s people.

So when we get to verse number 14, we have to understand that the background of verse 14 is that Israel is in spiritual decline. This is the warning, now of course this isn’t happening at this moment, but God is saying, if this be the condition, this is what you need to do. And so the condition here is the spiritual decline of Israel. The Lord is diminishing them because of their waywardness.

Now, here’s what you have to remember. The New Testament believer has no promises regarding fruitful fields or lands that enjoy rain. The New Testament believer is not promised that we’ll have many children and we’ll never have miscarriages or suffering in that way. The New Testament believer is not promised the physical blessings that God promised Israel. That’s one of the clear distinctions, and often, just as a side note, a lot of times many Bible interpreters, what they do at that point is they say actually we do and then they just spiritualize them.

But these are physical promises that God made to Israel that not only were they physical promises, but they’re actual actually fulfilled physically as well, which tells us that’s exactly what God intended for their obedience. And the reverse, as I said, the reverse is true. But the but to the New Testament, but to the New Testament believer, like we see in verse 13, these signs, the rainless heaven, the locusts devouring the land, the pestilence, these signs indicate a spiritual decline of Israel.

Now, in the New Testament, we often recognize, or we should recognize, when we are in a spiritual decline. Now, is it not true that both corporately as a people and individually that there are times in our lives when we are in spiritual decline? Have you ever, you don’t have of course have to answer raise your hand or anything, but have you ever been at a point where you can look back and say, no, I was I was in a bad way, that I was in spiritual decline, or the church was in spiritual decline. And the reason I’m bringing this up is because It’s not because I think our church is in spiritual decline, but I’m bringing it up because these things are directly related to our the special meeting that we’re having on starting September 13, the soul refresh.

Because the purpose of that meeting is to turn our attention on ourselves And to seek the Lord afresh and anew, and to ask the Lord to refreshen us, to ask the Lord to wake us up, and to point out any spiritual decline in us. That’s what we desire, we should desire for the Lord to do, but a lot of times what we need to do before we do that is we need to take an evaluation of ourselves.

And so the Lord says Israel’s in spiritual decline. The New Testament believer can also be in a spiritual decline. Whenever we cease to exhibit the fruits of the spirit, whenever we no longer long for and love the things of God, whenever we become uninterested in serving the Lord Jesus, mark it down. We are in a spiritual decline. If those things are true, and you could add other conditions to that, just like they could look at their land, and their productivity, and their fruitfulness, and all of these things that God promised. And whenever that was not the case, you could say, they’re in decline. Well, so the New Testament believer can look at, we could look at ourselves and we could say, where am I?

Am I in spiritual decline? Do I exhibit the fruit of the spirit? Am I excited? Am I longing for the things of God? Am I interested in serving Jesus or not? You see, what existed what existed in their land in verse 13, sometimes exists in our souls. Barrenness in the land, unfruitfulness in the land exists to us in our souls. And you all, no doubt if you’ve been saved for any length of time, you know what it’s like when your soul is barren, when you’re fruitless, when you have no excitement, you’re full of apathy and indifference toward the things of God.

You see, we can in our own way have these same spiritual conditions and it is often in times like this that just like we read here, the house of God which in Israel was the temple, the house of God sometimes becomes neglected. I was I read through part of the section in second Chronicles or second Kings rather about the the revival of Josiah. And one of the aspects of the revival of Josiah was that the house of God in the decline, the house of God had been had been neglected.

And then whenever there was a revival, remember they found Josiah came up and after he had been king eighteen years, he sent them in to the temple to repair the breaches and to fix everything up, and they started fixing the temple, and that’s when they found the book of the law. Remember, they read it to Josiah, there was a great revival, and as a result of that, the house of God was repaired, attention was brought back to it. Now, the house of God is not this building, that’s not the correct comparison. Scripturally, the house of God is the church of the living God. And one of the marks of decline in us personally is a decline in our attention to and a decline in or or rather a a neglect in the house to the house of God, which is the church of the living God.

It’s just another way we can look and say, where am I at spiritually? What is my temperature? These are If if we could say it like this, these are these are spiritual thermometers that that are in the bible that we can we can stick under our tongue and find out where am I at with God? Where am I with God? Let me remind you of something. Our church as a whole can only ever be as healthy and alive and revived and energized and on fire for God, if you wanna use that term. It can only ever be that to the degree that we as individuals are that.

Is it not so easy to look at a situation and say, well I wish our church were x y and z. I listen, I of all people say say that, I promise you, I say that way more than you probably think it, I promise you that in my prayer life. Just just seeing what I would like, know, I’ve I’ve told And I’ve voiced some of these things to you over the over over the months and over the years where I want I wanna send missionaries out of our church. I I have I want God to give us a country in this world, and I want Choice Hills Baptist Church, little old Choice Hills Baptist Church have an outsized impact on some country in the world. I mentioned this in the past. I want to send missionaries, not one, not two, I wanna send missionaries, I wanna have a mission agency that is aiding missionaries to go to the foreign field and I mean, I want the Lord to do some things.

You know, you you no doubt have things like that, but here here’s the thing, whatever we whatever desire we have for our church, whatever we want to see our church do or be, it can only do or be that to the degree that we as individuals are that because what is the house of God? What is the church? It is made up of individuals. The church can’t be A if the individuals in it aren’t A. Does that make sense?

So actually, the Lord is challenging us for self examination. Each one of us to look at ourselves and say, am I this? I want our church to be on fire for God, am I? I want our church to have a strong evangelistic fervor and zeal, am I? I want our church to be a church that prays, am I? I want our church to be a church that serves one another, and that’s actually the theme of the soul refresh.

The same care one for another. I wanna care for and serve and help one another in the body of Christ. Am I doing that? Right? That’s what we have to look at and not expect other people to do it, but say, Lord, am I doing that? I want our church to be that, I have to do that. You know, sometimes that’s hard to do, is it not?

Because sometimes we wanna wait on another to do it so that we can kind of come along and help them and that’s fine, that’s fine, I like that too, you know.

But if we wait on everybody else to do the thing that we want, it might be that we need to be the one who does it. We need to be the one who leads the way. Now notice verse number 14. Now it’s important that we understand verse number 14 aright. In verse 14, it mentions my people. You know where that word comes from? It comes from the end of verse 13, where God refers to Israel as his people. In verse 13, he says, pestilence, send pestilence among my people. And so in verse 14, he says this, if my people which are called by my name.

This verse that you’re so familiar with is not addressed to the nations of the world or to the world at large. This verse is specifically pointed at the believer. It’s not pointed at America, it’s not pointed it’s not pointed at, you know, Christianity, it’s pointed at the believer. And he says, if my people which are called by my name. Now stop there a second and think about it.

The Lord is addressing his people, not the world. We know the world is away from God, but the Lord is addressing his people. And God’s people are here in this verse, they’re they have been they have been awakened and find themselves in a degraded spiritual condition. By the time you get to verse 14, it’s not going well. Right? Verse 13 tells us that. When you get to verse 14, this people of God are not in a good condition.

And this tells us that sometimes the people of God do indeed slip into this condition. Is it not true you guys have been saved quite a while? Just looking through, almost all of you have been saved you know quite some time. What have you noticed? You’ve noticed that it does like this, does it not? Churches and individuals. This is one reason why we have revival meetings. It’s because over time we begin to slip.

Right? Over time our our love, our zeal starts to wane. Over time our spirituality starts to wane. And we need to be revived, we need something additional, and that’s why we have this meeting every year. Because we do, just as human beings, we’re just, we’re sinful, we’re frail, and we do tend to slip, do we not? I know I do. And we need to be awakened, we need to be shaken up, we need to be reminded from time to time.

Because we can slip into spiritual degradation. Now verse number 13, verse number 13 is definitely not a pleasant verse. But verse number 13 does reveal a silver lining in our Lord’s relationship to us. It is in verse number 14, if my people which are called by my name. Notice, even though they’re in spiritual decline, God is still owning them. They are still his people. He has not abandoned them, he is still with them.

And because they are God’s people, it is because they are God’s people that all of the bad things and unpleasant things in verse number 13 are happening. Let me repeat that. Because they are God’s people, all of those things in verse number 13 are happening. The Lord is not simply standing by while they while while his his people sin against them, sinned against him rather. God is actively chastening them and God is actively turning them from their sin. That’s why all these terrible things are happening in verse 13.

He is not standing by and allowing them to continue. He’s intervening with those things. Right? You think of Romans chapter one. Romans chapter one has the famous decline. Right? God turned them over. God turned them over. God turned them over three times. We’ve been studying that in our Romans class in school of scripture. The worst thing that God can do is stop intervening. That’s the worst thing God can do. He just lets us go.

But God will not do that. He might do that with this world who rejects him and indeed indeed he does by degrees. But he will never do that with his people. He will net God will never ever stop intervening when we start slipping. He will always come to waken us back up. Proverbs three verse eleven and twelve, the bible says, my son, despise not the despise not the chastening of the Lord, neither be weary of his correction. Listen, for whom the Lord loveth, he correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.

In Job five, Eliphaz says to Job, he says, behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth. Therefore, despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty. So even the chastening we read in verse number 13 is actually the silver lining of God’s care.

The very pain and suffering they’re experiencing is a mark of God’s care for them and a mark of His relationship to them. And that’s the way it is. Listen, when we start to decline, God comes along and he says, wake up. The seven letters to the churches in Revelation are all about that. Wake up, remember, repent, turn.

And so that’s why there’s a silver lining here because God shows that we are still His people. Then you see the spiritual condition, look at verse 14. If my people which are called by my name, there’s four things shall humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways. Four things.

But I wanna look at those things not as they’re stated, we’ll get to that in a minute, but I wanna look at those things in the reverse. The Lord is telling them to humble themselves and to pray and to seek His face and to turn from their wicked ways. But why is He telling them to do that? He’s telling them to do that because in those areas, they have slipped.

Notice the first one it says, if my people which are called by my name shall humble themselves. Humility is needed because these because God’s people are filled with pride. They’re filled with pride. It’s interesting that pride is the first one that is meant, the first the first point that is mentioned. Because what happens is pride dams up all of the other points that are mentioned in verse 14.

It stops it all. It it breaks the circuit. A person who is proud is not going to have any of the other virtues that the Lord commands us to have here. If is so arrogant and proud that he refuses to examine himself. If one is so proud he stubbornly persists in his aloofness and distance from God. If someone hardens his heart when God calls upon him to alter his ways, if someone remains, listen now, if someone remains content with a sickly and lethargic spiritual condition.

It all all of these things point to pride. The person that says, listen, we’re having soul refresh. A little over a week from now, right? If we say, now we’d never say it, but if we have the attitude, I’m not going to seek the Lord extra. I’m I’m not going to examine myself. I’m not going to evaluate where I am with the Lord. I’m just not. You know what that is?

It’s pride. The Lord says, if my people will humble themselves. When a person hardens his heart or the one thing came to my mind is, know, something that’s probably more common than anything in our day is this sinful contentment with sickly Christianity.

Just lethargic, apathetic, indifferent indifference. And you know when we get to the point when we get to the point where we’re like, it’s fine. And the Lord is screaming at us that it’s not fine. Right? He is screaming at us. And we’re like, it’s fine.

That’s pride. The first thing is we have to Sometimes sometimes when we’re in need of revival, we don’t feel anything. Our feelers are all dead end, right? And that’s where we got to hear God’s command And he says, humble yourself. And sometimes even without the feels, we have to come to God and say, God, I have no feels.

But I know that I’m apathetic. I know that I’m indifferent. I know that I’m not where I need to be. That’s the first step of humility, right? And then he goes on to say, and pray. So I thought about the the what what plagued Israel, what plagues God’s people is prayerlessness. Little by little, as the as our as our spiritual life declines, prayer becomes less of a priority as other things begin to crowd it out. We already saw pride, but pride convinces us that we’re self sufficient.

Right? And that is evidence. How is self sufficient, how do we see self sufficiency in our life? Sinful self sufficiency. You know how it comes out? Prayerlessness. Because we don’t feel like we need help. We don’t feel the urge and something pressing that, Lord, I really can’t do anything. So we don’t pray.

Apathy, like I mentioned before, shows itself in that we don’t even bother to pray. For what should be a serious concern either in ourself or maybe in others or in our family, We know it’s a serious concern. We know there’s sin there. We know it’s the people are going away from God. We know all of these things are happening and yet we somehow we just don’t care a lot.

And you know what happens when we don’t care a lot? What happens? We don’t pray. No concern, no prayer. You see a cooled off desire toward our Lord reveals itself in prayerlessness. Just like a marriage. You know your marriage is in a bad shape when you’re not talking to your spouse. You don’t need anything else. If you’re there, you know your relationship is not where it needs to be. Right?

It’s that simple. Now think about how terrible the situation it would be if there was no communication between husband and wife and neither cared. But that’s the way sometimes we get, which leads to prayerlessness. Which is why the Lord says, if my people will humble themselves and pray. You know sometimes the Lord wants us to pray even when we don’t feel like praying.

Right? Should you pray if you don’t feel like praying? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Notice this, he says, pray and seek my face. The Lord tells them to seek God’s face because they are aloof from God, they’re distant.

Aloofness from the Lord shows itself in distance from everything that is associated with the Lord. Distance from his word, distance from prayer as we mentioned, distance from his people, distance from his service. In other words, kind of like Adam and Eve, you remember in the garden when they sinned against God, they didn’t go to God, they ran away from God. They created distance between themselves and God. They were not seeking the Lord, they were hiding from Him. And the Lord says here, and seek my face, come close to me.

Come, draw nigh. That’s what the Lord wants us to do, to seek his face because we are aloof. We’re aloof. And then the last one is this, and turn from their wicked ways. When we are in a spiritual decline as a believer, one of the marks of a spiritual decline will be a rise in sinful activity, sinful behavior.

You know, it’s no wonder that in the midst of pride as we’ve seen, in the midst of prayerlessness, and in the midst of aloofness from God, it’s no wonder that wickedness is on the rise in our daily lives, right?

We become more comfortable with that which God detests. In other words, we hate it less than we used to. And so, iniquity and sin in our lives increases, and that’s, the Lord directly addresses that, and turn from their wicked ways. And so this leads us all to a principle that we should apply to ourselves. Let me challenge you to do this, as we think about the soul refresh, this is all about a self evaluation.

Listen, I wanna ask you a question and I just want you to answer it in your own mind and heart. When we have this meeting a week and a half from now and it starts, do you actually want the Lord to work in your heart and to change you from where you are right now? Now, first thing, if the answer to that is nah.

Then I wanna encourage you to go back to verse 14 and start at the top. Because that is sinful apathy. That’s what that is. But if on the other hand, the answer to that question is yes. Yes, I want the Lord to work in my heart. I want to draw closer to him. I want to follow him better. If the answer to that is yes, then we have to understand what is required. Here’s what is required.

The Lord calls us in verse thirteen and fourteen to self analysis, self examination. To look at ourselves and say, where am I? And to do it seriously. So let me encourage you to do this. Over the next week and a half.

I encourage you to think about your spiritual life and to plot it. Plot, p l o t, plot your spiritual life. Like on a graph, you you start over here and you plot the line.

And as you plot your spiritual life over time, right? You guys know about graphs, right? Do you like graphs? As you plot your spiritual life, do you see a downgrade over time? Now I’m not talking about over two weeks, I’m talking about over a year or two years or five years or ten years even. As you And this is all about self examination. Put the data of your life into a graph and plot it over time.

Do we observe a downgrade in our spiritual lives over time? Over time, is there a decrease in our devotion to God? Over time, is there a growing distance between us and our Lord? Over time, do we observe less prayer?

Over time, is there a growth of sin? Right, if you’re looking at a financial chart, you know, you want to, you don’t wanna see your income go down and your debt go up. That’s not, so sometimes a rise is a bad thing. And in this case, sin is is a bad thing. And so I just challenge you and I wanna do it myself, look at our spiritual life. What what does the graph show?

What does that analysis show? Are we on the decline as a believer? You see if the answer is yes, I’m on the decline, then we need to very carefully apply and obey if you will, to obey two Chronicles seven fourteen. We need to listen to what our Lord says in this verse. Humble ourselves, pray, seek God’s face, turn from our wicked ways and this leads to the last thing, very brief.

He says, then will I hear from heaven, number one, will forgive their sin, number two, and will heal their land. You see the Lord, this is this is a reference to revival. The word revival is not used, but what is happening? There, God hears them, God forgives their sin, their relationship is now being restored with God, and God heals their land. I know everybody takes this and they say, oh America will be great again in the world, you know, it’s not what he’s talking about. Remember the land in verse 13 was a reference to the What was the symbols of degradation in the spiritual life, right? The fact that the spiritual life was falling apart, that was demonstrated in Israel by the removal of all those blessings.

What happens when we get revived and renewed? You know what happens? Is all of those spiritual blessings that we enjoy as a believer, the fruit of the spirit, the longing for and love for the things of God, the desire to walk with God and serve God come back to us. They come back. God heals us.

And we go on our merry way serving him. But the Lord places the onus, the responsibility on us. He says, humble yourself, pray, seek my face, turn from your wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven. He responds to us.

It’s not on God to fix us. He fixes us, but it is upon us to turn to the Lord and to become alarmed at our slide, at our downgrade. But if we do not heed his call for self examination, what will happen is our spiritually degraded condition that we currently have will persist and it’ll worsen.

So I just wanna ask you, I wanna request of you as we move toward the soul refresh, please, and I know we only have really a small subset of our church here tonight for a lot of traveling, people are sick, surgeries and all that stuff.

But our church can’t go into a soul refresh, into this meeting where it’s designed to awaken us, it’s designed to splash water on our face. We can’t go into the meeting unprepared. We need to go into the meeting with a self analysis having been done.

Where we’ve examined ourselves before God, say Lord, what has happened with my spiritual life? Where am I? What do I need to do? And where we see gaps, we need to take that obey the Lord in verse 14 and take that to him and lay that out and try to prepare our heart for the meeting because that is the prerequisite to the healing that we desire to see which is what we call revival.

And so let me encourage you to take some time, maybe even during our prayer time tonight with the star and come Sunday, I’ll go ahead and tell you, Sunday, I’m planning on challenging us even more in this way to prepare our heart for this meeting. We can’t go into the meeting just like any other church service or any other period. We need to take some special steps to prepare our heart for the Lord.

And the Lord will respond. The Bible says draw nigh to God, what? And he will draw nigh to you. You see, he expects you to do it first, he expects me to do it first, does he not? He does. And then he responds to it. And so that’s what I’m challenging us to do as we prepare for this meeting. Let’s pray together.