Revival Part 4 - The Great Commission

 

The Great Commission – Matthew 28:16-20

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

1) Introduction - How do we truly have revival? By living the Great Commission

This week wraps up our set of sermons on what revival truly is. I know that I have been highly challenged in my personal walk with the Lord to see what I have to do to get ready for what I feel is an upcoming revival not only in the life of our church and in our community, but what God has in store for us as a whole nation. Now, I know that some of you might be thinking, “well, Matt, that sounds all good, but how do we know it’s going to happen?” It reminds me of two stories: the first is from the comedian Jerry Clower. He spoke about how we have to remember to love our fellow man. When he called a friend of his to help a mutual friend out, the friend wanted to know what the mutual friend had done to get in trouble, and then he’d decide if he would help out or not. Jerry’s reply was “Well, let’s just go gather stones and put him to death first, why don’t we?!”
The second story was this: a traveling Christian accidentally left a copy of the Jesus film in his hotel room in Vietnam. A Dao woman found it, watched it, and came to Christ through that film. She then shared it with others, and they became Christians too. When the person came back to the area a few years later, over a thousand people had become Christians because of one film being left behind. Even though it was accidental, that person had done the work of the Great Commission, going to make disciples! 

Today I want us to take some time to look at this passage of scripture and also some others that help us understand how to take the Gospel to others. This is what true revival looks like, people! It’s knowing the Gospel so well, loving it so well, that we want to share it with others. And that does start with knowing the Gospel itself. 

2) Know the Gospel – 2 Timothy 2:15 

How do we know the Gospel? Well, look at 2 Timothy 2:15, which reads “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.” That is a strong passage that Paul writes to Timothy, but it is good advice to us even still today! But what he was saying to Timothy and to us is this: we must be a servant to those who we are trying to reach for the Gospel. The Gospel is the good news. And we must first be an approved servant.
What does that mean, an approved servant? It means that it is God, not other men, that the Christian must satisfy above all. It means also that we are tested by God and found approved by him through our life and through our ministry, like the gold that has come through the fire. 

Next, we must be an unashamed servant. Jesus showed us throughout his ministry here on earth that he was unashamed to be the servant to mankind. Remember that Jesus said himself in Mark 10:45 “even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” If we are to take his example fully, calling ourselves Christians, then we must also be an unashamed servant to those who we are trying to bring into the life of Christ. 

Finally, to know the Gospel is to be able to tell others about what the Gospel is. Remember, Gospel really means Good News! Paul tells Timothy to ‘correctly handle the truth’. Do you remember the game Telephone? You would whisper something into someone’s ear, and then in turn, they would whisper it into the next person’s ear and so forth and so on. When you got back to the original person, the message would usually be distorted and changed. Well, the same goes with the Truth of the Gospel. If we are not speaking it in the correct way, it will get distorted. This is how we end up with Prosperity Gospel, Mormonism, and other cults that SOUND like Christianity, but in truth are lies and ways to keep people from experiencing true revival. But there’s more to it than just knowing the Gospel, we have to live it out fully. 

3)Live the Gospel – Matthew 5:6 and Titus 2:7-8

When we say that we have to live the Gospel, it truly means that we are showing people the Good News in our lives. Look at Matthew 5:6, which says “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Hunger and thirst are an earthly need. They must be continually replenished. But remember what Jesus said about those who come to him: I am the water that will quench your thirst, and I am the bread that will always fulfill your hunger. How does this translate to the living of the Gospel? Simply this: we are to continually be relying upon the Lord to fulfill our needs, and in turn he will show us revival in our lives. When we have revival, we will truly be living out the Gospel! 

But there is a bit more that we can do, too. Titus 2:7-8 reads “In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching, show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.” Again, we see that we are to be an example through our speech, and through our teaching, but this takes it one step further: we are to set the Gospel example through our works. Now, we know that we are not saved through works. Can you imagine trying to do as much good as anyone else, and then being judged against that? We can’t, and that’s why God gave us the way of Grace through the death of his Son, Jesus Christ. But our works, especially those when we are reaching out to those who are seeking the kingdom, show the inner self and the Gospel that lives within us. When we do good and show integrity, seriousness, and soundness in our lives, then people have a hard time pointing out anything that is wrong in our lives. Are we going to fail sometimes? Yes, of course. That’s because we have sin in our lives. But if we are living out the Gospel this way, we will show the revival that is in our lives! 

 4)Love the Gospel – 1 John 4:16 

We have to love the Gospel, too. We have to be IN love with the Gospel. Does that make sense? Love is a word that is thrown about easily today. We can say I love you to our spouse, and in the next sentence say I love pizza. Does it mean that we love each one the same way? Of course not. But when we say that we love the Gospel, we have to truly mean it in a way that shows we are IN love with the Gospel. In love with it so much that we want to share it with others! Let me ask you this, when you’ve had a great thing happen to you, do you want to hide it away? Or do you want to tell others so they can celebrate it with you? 

God’s love is like that, too. We are given the example of God’s love on the cross for our sins. When John the Apostle wrote his first letter, he included this in 1 John 4:16. It says “and so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” God does not just let us do whatever we want to. He loves us so much that even though we deserve death for disobeying him, for constantly despising him, he sent his one and only son to die for us. 

Jesus reminds us that we are to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.” But he goes on to show what the second is, and it is the heart of loving the gospel: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus says that everything that has ever been or ever will be hung upon those two commandments. The kind of love that God has for us is the kind of love that we must show to others when we give them the Gospel. 

5)Give the Gospel – Psalms 107:1-2 and Romans 1:16

Finally, we come to the most important part of what Jesus was telling us during his final sayings of his earthly ministry. We are to go and make disciples. We are to give the Gospel away. But just as we have shown throughout this series, to give it away is to humble ourselves first. Psalm 107:1-2 says “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story - those he redeemed from the hand of the foe.” We start by humbling ourselves, giving thanks to the Lord for our redemption and our revival in our own lives. We thank him, and he loves us even more for it. But we have that task of making disciples after humbling ourselves. The task is repeated in verse two - let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story, those he redeemed from the hand of the foe. Who is the foe? Satan and sin! God has redeemed us from the hand of the foe through his son Jesus Christ!

I want us to look at one final verse that I hope will drive this home for you as we talk about giving the Gospel to others. Romans 1:16 says “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.” We are called to have a bold witness for the Gospel. When we have had true revival in our lives, this is actually relatively easy! We will want to be bold in our telling of God’s story in our lives. And because we are bold, we will have a powerful witness. How is it powerful? Because it is the power of God that is within the Gospel! I’ve said it before from this pulpit, you may not think that you have a strong testimony about your life in Christ, but the power of YOUR story is that you were dead and now you are alive and a completely new being in Christ! And when we do have that revival, we want to go and make new disciples, and we will never be ashamed of the Gospel when we have it fully and truthfully. 

6)Conclusion

As I was preparing this week, I came across an interesting article titled “What’s your excuse?” In that story,  Dawson Trotman, the founder of the Navigators Ministry, recalled the following story: "In 1948 in Europe I met for three days with a group of 25 German fellows. I talked to them every evening for three hours, laying before them the Great Commission and the idea that not only did Germany need to hear the gospel, but that Germans themselves needed to obey the Great Commission by sending out missionaries.

Every once in a while a hand would go up. One of them said, "But Mr. Trotman, you don't understand. Some of us right in this room don't even own an Old Testament. We only have a New Testament." But I pointed out, "When Jesus Christ gave these commands, they didn't have even a New Testament." Later another spoke up. "But Mr. Trotman, we have few good evangelical books in this country like you have in America." I asked, "How many books did the disciples have?" Scattered through our nine hours together were other protests: "In America you have money." "You have automobiles; we have bicycles." "In America you can hear the gospel any day." Every excuse was brought up. Each time I replied, "But the 12 apostles didn't have that either, and Jesus sent them out."

Finally, near the end, one fellow who was a little older than the rest, and who had a bitter expression on his face, rose and said, "Mr. Trotman, you in America have never had an occupation force in your land. You don't know what it is to have soldiers of another country roaming your streets. Our souls are not our own." I responded by reminding him of the Roman soldiers who occupied Palestine at the time Jesus Christ and his disciples lived. Then it dawned on me that when Christ sent out his men, they were in a situation so bad that there could never be a worse one: no printing presses, no automobiles, no radios or television, no telephones, no church buildings. He left them with nothing except a job to do. But with it he said, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore... " The Lord has given us every resource we need to do His will.

So, what is our excuse then? Are we prepared for revival? Have we done the work, because Jesus has given us a command to go and make disciples. When we rely on Him to do the work through us, we will be successful, and God’s amazing power will be shown. We will be revived! Let’s pray. 

Revival Part 3 - How does the church prepare?

 

Acts 1:14 (KJV)

These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.

How do we prepare for Revival? – Acts 1:14

I.                        Introduction

I read a story about a Japanese emperor that, many centuries ago, commissioned an artist to paint a bird. Many months passed, no painting. A year passed. No painting. Several years passed, still no painting! The Emperor had paid a great deal of money for this painting, and had been very patient in waiting for it. He became so angry that he did not have his painting that he called the artist to his court to demand an explanation. As the man came to the court, he brought with him a great canvas, many papers, and art supplies. To the Emperor’s surprise, over the next hour the artist painted a masterpiece of birds on the wing. When the Emperor asked the delay, since it had only taken one hour to complete this great work, the artist then pulled the papers out. He showed the Emperor sketches of wings, feathers, beaks, heads, and bodies. Then he explained that all of this research and study had been necessary before he could complete the painting. 

Now, that’s an entertaining story about something that may or may not have happened, but the moral of the story, which goes to the heart of our lesson today, is this: what are we doing as a church to prepare ourselves for the coming revival? Are we studying the small things so that we are prepared to make the great masterpiece? Let’s look at what the early church did to prepare themselves for the coming revival. 

  II.            Spiritual Preparation

So what was happening right after Jesus had ascended into Heaven? That’s what starts out the book of Acts, and the church was trying to figure out what to do. Now, this particular verse that we have just read is usually used in conjunction with how we choose people to work within the church, and how to prepare for that particularly. However, I want to draw our attention to the fact that this was not just a time for the disciples to be thinking about who to replace Judas, but also to prepare themselves for the promise of the Holy Spirit that was coming down to them. As one author stated, this is a passage where Luke gives a generalized review of what was happening within the church, and that “the primary characteristic that marked their lives together in this period was prayer, as they anticipated together the promised gift of the spirit. Prayer was the hallmark of the church in its early days. There was no effective witness without the Spirit, and the way to spiritual empowerment is to wait in prayer.”

 Something else we have to do before revival can happen as a church is that we must get right with God personally. This goes beyond the type of confession that we make to God in our personal lives. It acknowledges that we have made mistakes, that we are under the punishment of sin without Him and the saving grace of His son, and that we must confess those mistakes to the Lord. I am certain that there have been many churches in the past that have missed out on true revival because they were unable to confess their sins personally to the Lord Most High. Ecclesiastes 7:9 says “be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the bosom of fools.” When we are angry with one another, when we disagree, when we get to a point where we break fellowship, or we cannot tolerate someone else because of our own pride or because of our sinful nature, then we are missing out! And it takes confessing to the Lord those sins. 

III.            Prayer – Habakkuk 1:5

The next step we take is prayer. We talked a little about this last week in our personal preparations for revival. I won’t repreach all of that, but remember that revival starts with the prayer of one person! But how does that translate into the entirety of the church? Look at the book of Habakkuk. This is one of those books of the Bible that’s of the minor prophets, and sometimes is overlooked because it has a lot of history behind it, and it can be hard to fully understand sometimes. Mostly what happens within the book is that we see a prayer by Habakkuk praying to God for revival and God responding to him. Furthermore, these prayers are done privately and publicly. It is a joint effort to pray in private like we are instructed to do in so many places in the Bible, but also in a public way, in a way that beseeches God. It is never done in a way that is like in Matthew 6:5, where the hypocrites pray in public so that they can receive their reward right then.

As we pray as a church, especially for revival, God wants us to take certain steps to pray with one another. Look at James 5:16, which instructs us to “therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” When we confess our sins to one another, we are able to move into a place where we can ask as a group of believers for the will of God to happen. Look then to Acts 2:42, which reads “they devoted themselves to the apostles;’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” In other words, as a group of believers, the early church confessed their sins to one another, ensuring harmony within the church. They devoted themselves to the teaching of God’s word, ensuring that they knew what they would be talking about. They devoted themselves to the teaching of God’s word, ensuring that their knowledge would increase. They devoted themselves to fellowship with other believers, so that they would ensure that there were others that would stand with them as they faced the difficulties that Satan would throw against them. They devoted themselves to the breaking of bread together, which ensured that they were meeting the needs of those within the congregation. And finally, in the most important spot, they dedicated themselves to prayer, ensuring that they were listening to God’s will in their lives through the Holy Spirit. 

Before we move on from Habakkuk, I want us to look at the first response that God gives back to the prophet in chapter 1, verse 5. When we have done the things that we must devote ourselves to as a church, God makes a promise to us. In verse 5, God says “Look at the nations and watch - and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.” God will do things that will utterly amaze us as a church! But we must devote ourselves, especially to prayer. And one more time, how many people does it take to start a revival? Just one. But now that we know how to spiritually and prayerfully prepare ourselves, how do we make that jump as a church to the actual work? It’s simple: we make ourselves available to God. 

IV.            Make Yourself Available to God

The first way that we make ourselves available to God is to literally do JUST THAT. But it’s done by humbling ourselves. We mentioned this a couple of weeks ago when we approach the throne of God for personal revival. We cannot have revival in our lives personally, or as a church congregation together, without first humbling ourselves before the throne of God. 1 Peter 5:6-7 says “humble yourself, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” When we humble ourselves, we are allowing ourselves to be used in a way that will completely allow ourselves to bend to God’s will. 

But we are also to humble ourselves as a church. One of the things that I did when I was preparing for this sermon was to write the word “remember” on my notes. What I meant by this was to ask myself what was different before in my life when I was experiencing personal revival? What were the churches doing that I was at when we were having great revival happening within the church? Was it some program? Or was it that we had submitted ourselves completely and wholly to the will of God? And then I asked myself this: what changed? How did it change? Did I, like the church in Laodicea, become lukewarm? As I said last week, we must remember that God is the one who brought us through hard times, and built us up. But we cannot dwell nor can we live in that past. But we can remember that commitment that we made to God, not only as a personal believer, but as a church!

What other ways do we make ourselves available to God? We repent. Just as we saw in James 5:16, we repent. But this is done as a church as a whole. Have we been prideful? Have we looked down our noses at other churches rather than to try to lend a helping hand? Have we turned anyone away? I know of churches that have done this to their own detriment. One particular one, which was Lithia Heights Baptist in Lithia Springs, had been prideful and had been exclusive to the point that it shut down. Instead of welcoming all people into the church to worship, and to welcome especially those who had committed their lives to the Lord fully into membership fellowship, they decided to start a mission where ‘those people’ could go. Because of that pride and that exclusivity that they held, it would be less than 10 years after that mission was established that the mission would buy out the old church building after Lithia Heights had closed for good. 

When we don’t give ourselves fully to God, we cannot expect revival in our lives or in the church. If we haven’t given ourselves full to God, then we are holding ourselves back. We are literally preventing the revival that God promises us to keep from happening. 

   V.            Conclusion 

Now, I know that this has not been a sermon to this point that might feel very encouraging. Often the ones that seem that way are the ones that are promising that we have lots of work to do. But I can promise you this: God is working on our behalf always, and he wants to see revival happen in our church in a way that will not only surprise us, but also make us believe the unbelievable. One of the great quotes about a church is by William Temple, who at the end of his life was the Archbishop of Canterbury in England. He said that “the church is the only cooperative society in the world that exists for the benefit of its non-members.” We are a place where those that are seeking the way to the Cross will find it!

As I was reading this week, I came across a book titled “How to Have a Soul Winning Church” by Gene Edwards. Edwards is one of the theologians who coined the phrase ‘church building evangelism’. By this, he meant that most churches think that just because people drive by the building, they will come to church. Obviously, this is not a truism of any church, even the huge ones! If it were, those churches and any that are on a road would have to constantly be building new sanctuaries to accommodate the masses coming to church every Sunday! As Edwards asks in his book, “are we asking too much of lost people to come to church?” He then turns it around and asks us, the Christians reading the book and sharing it, “is it too much to ask Christians to go out to the lost man?” Edwards points out that churches that are committed to have true revival in their church have two things in common: they do a few things exceptionally well for programming, ensuring that they do not interfere with reaching people for Christ, and they also ensure that the entire church congregation is visiting and reaching out to those within the community for Christ. These soul-winning, revival happening churches do not depend on just one or two people to carry that full load, but they all participate in it! 

He tells this story to confirm what he meant by these two points. In 1900, a particular church was the largest in its city. But by 1959, it was deserted and boarded up. For two years, there had not been a service in it. For all intents and purposes, the church had died. This was a church that had averaged 800 people coming to worship. But as these things tend to happen, what had once been the premier area to live in began to degrade, becoming one of the poorest places to live in that city. Many Hispanics moved into the area. The denomination that this church belonged to was concerned that one of their most famous churches was falling to pieces, and programs and various schemes were used to try to bring it back to life. But nothing worked. But in 1959, a young pastor came to the city with a call from God placed on his life. He found that there were only seven members left in the church. He got those seven together, and told them “I want to be your pastor; vote me in!” And sure enough, they did! 

The young pastor went to the Hispanic orphanage that was located just down the street from the church and arranged for the children to come to the church there on Sundays. When the pastor counted, there were 40 Hispanic orphan children, seven members, and his family, making up 50 people. The church would asked for and received training to win souls and to have true revival in their church and in their community. It was a unique scene: a church built for over a thousand worshippers, but only 10 people on the front pew getting training on how to win souls, and praying with all their heart for God to bring revival to their community and to their church. 

Four Sundays later, that church had gone from being their usual 50 people to over 220. In a month! How did it happen? The houses were the same, the people who lived there for years were the same. Revival had struck that church in those four weeks, but there had been no evangelistic campaign. This congregation had committed themselves to prayer, to reaching out to the lost of their community, and to putting themselves right into the thick of the lives of those who were lost. They depended on God to provide the harvest, and believed that he would do it! Before the year was out, this church had won more Hispanics to Jesus Christ than the rest of the churches combined in their city.

Now, that church could have looked back to see the greatness of their past. But they had allowed pride, and they had allowed sinfulness towards their neighbors to cloud the way forward for them as a church. It had nearly killed them. But God had done something in their days that they would not have believed even if they had been told. They were completely and utterly amazed. 

I’ve got to tell you, today’s sermon I hope will be a reminder to you that we have a revival coming. I truly believe that! But we have to do the work as a group to do that. I hope that you will take time this week to pray for our church, pray for all the events that are upcoming, and that you will be praying that God will make us emulate His son. Let’s pray. 

Revival Part 2 - May 16, 2021

Psalms 85:6 

 

Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?

 

I.                  Introduction

 

Someone asked Billy Sunday one time “Why do you keep having revivals when it doesn’t last?” Billy Sunday replied “why do you keep taking baths?” One of the great theologians of the early 20th Century, G. Campbell Morgan said this: “Revival cannot be organized, but we can set our sails to catch the wind from heaven when God chooses to blow upon His people once again. What a strong statement about revival, is it not?

 

When we look at the Jews of the Old Testament, we see a pattern of how God would always try to reach out to his people to renew them. They would do so, but over time, they would turn away from God and, as we might say up here in the mountains, ‘backslide back into ruin.’ This psalm is a great example to us of what we are to do if we want to have true revival in our lives. We have to bathe ourselves in the glory of God, and must renew ourselves to emulate Jesus Christ on a daily basis. But let’s look at how the psalmist approaches the throne. 

 

  II.          Remembrance of Past Revival (vv. 1-3)

 

I find myself often looking to the past. Being that my first degree is in history, for a good long while, my job was to look into the past to glean information that might help me in the present and in the future! But, like Oswalt Chambers put it, “it is no use to pray for the old days; stand square where you are and make the present better than any past has been. Base all your relationship to God and go forward, and presently you will find that what is emerging is infinitely better than the past ever was.” It is good to study history, even your personal history, but we cannot get stuck there if we want true revival in our lives! 

 

It’s pretty easy to look back, isn’t it? I remember when I was in school, I had a professor who wanted us to read Jimmy Carter’s An Hour Before Daylight, which is Carter’s book about his childhood. When we finished reading it, the professor asked us, “How accurate do you think that Carter’s memories were of his childhood?” The meaning of this was to ask us, in a certain way, did Carter have on rose-tinted glasses while looking back at his childhood? We view things in a more positive light when we look back, don’t we? We tend to forget, especially when we are looking back on a hard time, what got us into that hard time in the first place! And we tend to forget the way that we were able to get back out of it, which was with a lot of hard work, a lot of sweat, blood, and tears, lots of prayer, and with lots of dependence on God. If we look back and don’t remember that God has pulled us through problems and difficulties, then we cannot have true revival in our lives. We can’t run around with our rose-colored glasses on.

 

God’s people were looking back in these first three verses. As one commentary put it, the lament begins with a reference to a previous time of similar difficulty when God forgave and restored his people. This is what God had done for his people in the past, and they now ask, in effect, that he do the same for them once more. He is praying that God will do what he had once done! 

 

As we do look back at what God has done for us, remember what the apostle John wrote in 1 John 3:1, which says “see what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” God always loves us and gives us the best for our lives. We’ve said this before: God never does anything for evil, and he will always remember us. And sometimes that even means punishing us for the deeds that we have done. But there is hope! 

 

III.          Request for Present Revival (vv. 4-7)

 

Have you ever gotten to a point in your life where you needed help RIGHT NOW? I mean, something is happening, and if you don’t get help right away, then things are going to go downhill VERY fast. I read a story a while back about a man who went up in a plane with his friend for a short joy ride. Halfway through the flight, the pilot passed out completely. The friend, who had never flown a plane before, quickly radioed for help from anyone who could! In a nearby plane, another pilot heard the pleas for help. He talked to the non-pilot man about what he needed to do, how to steer, and most importantly, how to land the plane. Before long, the plane was getting close to an airport, and after a somewhat rough landing, the non-pilot man walked away from the plane. This man had begged for help from someone who knew what they were doing, and who knew what to do.

 

The psalmist had made his case that God had helped in the past, and now he is asking for that to happen once again in verses 4 through 7. He has already shown that the only source of renewal for the lives of those is the one true God. Since God was merciful before, there needs to be a fresh demonstration of God’s mercy towards His people in their present need. He begs “restore us again, God our savior, and put away your displeasure towards us.” And almost like a child, he asks “will you be angry with us forever?” The psalmist knew that God was angry for the things done in the past. But he is asking, pleading, for God to revive the people once again. To have them turn back towards Him. To provide the way forward. The psalmist knows that it is only through the joy of the Lord that we can be revived! 

 

The psalmist ends this section with one last plea towards the past, but looking towards the future. In verse 7, he writes “show us your unfailing love, Lord, and grant us your salvation.” This is clearly showing that God’s love IS unfailing, and it is undeserved. We have a heavenly Father that wants to give us the strength to be renewed even though we don’t deserve it. We have turned away from him over and over, just like the Jews of old. We have proclaimed ourselves to be followers of Christ, but we don’t act like it. We don’t emulate Christ all the time. We try, certainly. We do our best mostly, but we fail. And that is the problem of our sin. But that is what revival is. It is the freedom of sin, it is the freedom from sin! It is the ability to take joy back in the Lord! And it is realizing that we have the ability to have revival in our own lives when we pray for it. 

 

 

 

IV.          Revelation of Future Revival (vv. 8-13)

 

Look at what the Lord says to us through the psalmist in verse 8 through 13. I want to read this whole passage because it should give you chillbumps.

 

I will listen to what God the Lord says; he promises peace to his people, his faithful servants— but let them not turn to folly. Surely his salvation is near those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land. Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven. The Lord will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest. Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his steps.

 

The prayer of the psalmist should give us great hope! He promises peace to his people. Love and faithfulness meet together, and amazingly enough in one of the most poetic verses of the entire Bible, righteousness and peace are so close that they kiss one another. Another translation says that goodness and peace will kiss. Basically, when we live in a fashion that is honoring God, we will see the blessings that He will give us! We will have that true revival that starts with us. It is only God’s presence that could guarantee such an idyllic state of affairs, and such certainty was the solution to the problems of these people originally. And it continues to be the solution to our problems even today! And it starts with the prayer of one person, and with the revival of one person to start. 

 

  V.          Conclusion

 

Never give up praying for spiritual awakening. In Luke 18:1, Jesus taught that we should always pray and not lose heart. In the spring of 1904 a young Welshman named Evan Roberts was repeatedly awakened to pray from 1:00 to 5:00 a.m. By November a powerful spiritual awakening was spreading through Wales.

God worked through the testimony of a young new believer named Florrie Evans. When Pastor Joseph Evans asked for testimonies Florrie arose and with a trembling voice said, "I love Jesus with all my heart." God used this to melt the hearts of many others.

 

The London Times reported remarkable changes that took place in the public spirit. For example, in Swansea people who had left their parents in the "workhouse" for the poor came to take them out. Entire congregations were on their knees in prayer and "for the first time there was not a single case of drunkenness at the Swansea County Petty Sessions." The Bible Society saw orders for Scriptures multiply to three times the level for the previous year. At Bangor University revival fires were spreading in January of 1905.  There were "only a third or a fourth of the students attending some of the classes...Beginning with a spontaneous outburst of praise and prayer among the men students, the movement spread . . at a united prayer meeting...some...broke down sobbing."

 

In 1904 the Atlanta newspapers reported an amazing revival of prayer sweeping the city. On November 2nd the Supreme Court of Georgia closed so people could attend prayer meetings. Stores, factories, offices and even saloons followed suit.

 

Revival came to north China in 1932 in answer to several years of prayer. At one point, Norwegian missionary Maria Monsen wondered what good her praying could do. She longed to see God's river of life flood spiritually dry China. Then she realized that the mighty Yangtze River began when the tiny drops of rain came together from the top of the mountains. Maria sought a prayer partner who would join her in claiming the promise "that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven" (Mt. 18:19). When she finally found someone she exclaimed, "The awakening has begun! Two of us have agreed!" The rain drops of revival prayer were coming together.

 

In November of 1930 Maria announced, "A great revival is coming soon and it will begin in the North China Mission." She was convinced that the missionaries had fulfilled the conditions for revival found in 2 Chron 7:14.  In 1932 about forty Christians were meeting in a town in North China for prayer four times a day beginning at 5:00 a.m. Believers were convicted of sin. Two men repented of hating each other. Love was strong and deep. Joy abounded. When revival came more people were born again than in any previous year in North China. One missionary estimated that 3,000 people came to Christ in his town. Pastors, missionaries, and Bible women experienced a deeper Christian life than they had ever known before.

 

In 1936 revival fires broke out on the campus of Wheaton College west of Chicago. A senior named Don Hillis arose in chapel to voice a plea for revival. Students responded with an all-day prayer meeting on Saturday. Both faculty and students confessed sin and made things right with one another.

 

The Wheaton campus was touched again in 1943 following a message on confession of sin during special services. The captain of the cross-country team arose to confess that he had violated college policy by leading his team in a Sunday race. Pride, criticism, and cheating were confessed by other students. Lunch and dinner slipped by unnoticed while the meeting continued into the evening service.

 

"Stop the bus!" a member of the Wheaton College Glee Club shouted. The Glee Club was touring in Florida in 1950. A revival that had broken out on the campus in Illinois had touched this student hundreds of miles away. He confessed he had broken the rules and other students began to turn to God. God's promise is still true. If we seek Him with all our heart, we shall surely find Him ready to pour the riches of His grace and love into the lives of His people (Jer 29:13). 

 

Let's follow the example of others who prayed until revival came, both in our nation, in our own region, in our county, in our community, but most importantly, starting in our own lives first. And we can do that through prayer. Let’s pray. 

Mother's Day 2021 - May 9, 2021

 Proverbs 31:28-29

Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.

1. Introduction

I want to take a moment to thank every woman in this church today for being an example of Christian living to those around you. I know from personal experience that this day is a hard day for some women. But today we honor all of the women in the church because even if you do not have a child of your own, you help to take care of those around you. You have been a mother to children around you, and you help to guide and show them the true meaning of Christian living. We honor you today for that! As a token of our appreciation, we want you to enjoy this. 

(have kids pass out flowers)

As I was getting ready for this week’s lesson, I came across a couple of real wisdom points about mothers. There is a diagram with all the questions that are asked a Mom, such as “When do we eat, and where’s my stuff, or can I go and do”. There is another diagram that has a question for Dad. It’s “Where’s Mom?” Right? I saw another one that said “A little boy who was told by his mother that it was God who makes people good, replied, “yes, I know it is God, but mothers help a lot!”

Mother’s Day is not just another day to celebrate your Mom. It’s a day to celebrate God and his wisdom to know that we all need mothers in our lives. Do you know, though that the Mother of Mother’s Day fought against the holiday in the later years of her life? Her name was Anna Jarvis. She began campaigning for an official day to honor mothers in 1905, the year her mother passed away. By 1908, she had the first major event honoring mothers in her hometown of Grafton, West Virginia. She kept pushing for the holiday to be recognized by the US government, placing it on the 2nd Sunday in May. In 1914, she would be successful in her attempts, and Woodrow Wilson would sign the 2nd Sunday in May as the official holiday. 

But shortly after the establishment of Mother’s Day, Jarvis realized that people were using the holiday to make a quick buck on the sentimentality of the day. She would say “a printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother - and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment.” She was disgusted with the way that the day had taken the meaning away from the holiness that she sought to show as a lay Methodist minister to mothers everywhere. As she put it, Mother’s Day, and I am quoting her again here, “is in honor of the best mother who ever lived - the mother of your heart.” 

As I have prepared for this week’s lesson, too, I found out that we are to honor mothers out of an abundance of Love in Christ rather than just our own love for the women that we call Mom. The woman are blessed, and we call them blessed through recognizing certain traits. Let’s look at a few of them. 

We call her blessed because:

2. Her Motherhood - gave them life

Why are we required as children to honor our mothers? It is because it is through our mothers that we are given life. Think about it, your mother carried you in her womb for months on end, enduring pain of childbirth. It is a biological thing for a woman to be called a mother. Did you know that ‘mother’ occurs for the first time in the Bible in Genesis 2:24? It’s a verse that we use often in marriage ceremonies. It reads “For a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife.” It is God’s plan for one man and one woman to forsake all others, including their parents, to be a God-designed team from which God can give them children to raise up in the fear of God. That means that the mother is a spiritually ordained position by God! 

In Exodus 20:12, one of the commandments that God gives to his people is “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord God is giving you”. We are to honor our mothers because this is one of the main ways that we please God. But more than this, it brings us rewards as well! Look at the end of that verse: if we honor our mothers and our fathers, we will be rewarded with long life. 

Husbands are to honor their wives as well. We know that one of the reasons that God ordained marriage was for them to have families. We see in Colossians 3:19, “Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.” This is a command for husbands to love their wives, not only as a wife, but in a way that honors them. There are many other verses that deals with how husbands deal with their wives. Every single one of them relates the thought that husbands are to love them like Christ loves the church, and to honor them in a way that is similar to the way that man honors the church. Ephesians 5:21-33 gives clear instruction on how a Christian household should work. I won’t go into it right now in the detail that it deserves, but rather I will say that in those verses that the husband is to love his wife like he loves himself. In verse 29, it says “after all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church”. When a husband respects, loves, and honors his wife and mother of their children (and even the children that make up his entire family!), he is honoring God in turn.  

3. Her Ministry - cares for them 

Next, children and husbands honor their wives through the ministry that she provides them. Look in this passage of scripture, Proverbs 31. All through verses 10-31, the woman being described here is described as selecting goods and working with others. She has good sense to represent her husband in the marketplace because it brings him honor. Her family wants for nothing. She even takes care of those outside of her own family, caring for the poor and the needy! If you’ll permit me, I want to brag on the mother of my children. When I read these verses, I am reminded of the kind of woman that Tasha is. And she has a ministry, not only to me, but also to our children. She has a ministry to the children that she works with at her school. She has a ministry to each one of you in this church as well, praying often for you and the trial that you are going through. When you have a wife who is the kind of mother that she is, she does bring a man like me prestige!

The ministry of mothers is also why we honor all the women in our congregation with the flowers today. You are the kind of people that have a ministry to others within the congregation. You are the ones that people can turn to and say “will you pray for me?” and you know that it will occur. I was reading this week about church mothers in the black churches in America. What the article I read said was that when a church mother says something, then it needs to be heeded. They also said that one of the worst things that a person could do is to do something in their behavior that would draw the attention of the church mothers! As one deacon of a church in Orlando put it, “when they turned around and gave you one of those looks, you knew what that meant!” We see these kind of women, and can remember these kind of women in the church. Their ministry is not to gain power, but to reprove in a manner that will keep people on the straight and narrow path, to love them in the same way that Christ loves them, and to minister to not only their physical, but also to their spiritual needs. The church needs mothers in it to help it to stay healthy, to keep it from harm, and to protect it like a mother would their own children. 

4. Her Methods - mature decisions for their proper growth

One last part for children to honor their mothers is to emulate her methods. As one author put it, it is honoring her mature decisions for the children’s proper growth. But what are these? First, they are diligent and have wisdom, exemplified through verses 13 through 19. Sometimes the wisdom that mothers have for their children is through education, but more often than not it is having the children emulate them by NOT doing what they did. Moms, ever have a time where you had one of your children (or a child that you had to reprimand that was in the church) do something that you did, and you said, “well, I told you not to because of what happened to me!” But how did you fix it? You helped them to overcome that same mistake. 

Mothers are also trustworthy and devoted. I was reading the story of St. Augustine of Hippo. His mother, Monica, prayed for years and years that her son would come to faith in Jesus. She suffered at the hands of her husband, being that he was an adulter. Her son would go and try to find truth in false religions, and would become wayward. After 17 years of resistance to the Gospel, Monica was able to convict Augustine of the truth, and he accepted Christ as his savior. Before his conversion, she wept for her son, convinced that he would die before she could reach him for the Gospel. But thank goodness she did! He became one of the great church leaders in the early church, and helped to shape what the church would be like. But without the devotion of his mother, there would not have been a St. Augustine of Hippo. 

Mothers are giving. See in verse 20, it reads She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy.” I was reminded of Mother Mary Bickerdyke, helping the needy soldiers in hospitals of the American Civil War. When a surgeon asked on what authority she had to take action in the hospital, she said to the man “On the authority of Lord God Almighty, have you anything that outranks that?!” She would, in total throughout the war, build more than 300 hospitals and aid the wounded on 19 battlefields. The soldiers that she cared for gave her the nickname ‘Mother’, and was so beloved by her soldiers that they would cheer her when she appeared. So loved by General Sherman, who once said after someone complained to him about her that “She outranks me”, Sherman had her at the head of the XV Corps in the Grand Review of the Armies in Washington D.C. After the war, she would work with the Home for the Friendless in Chicago, and would continue to help former soldiers as she could.

Bickerdyke’s example is one of greatness, but we also see the giving nature of mothers within our own community. How many times have mothers given food, shelter, clothing, and other items to help people within our community? I would say more than we will ever know. Giving is always a hallmark of the Christ-centered mother. 

Mothers are also dependable. To remind all of us, dependability is defined as the quality of being trustworthy and reliable. They are dependable for good advice, and they are dependable for loving even in the worst of situations. I am reminded of a story that President Dwight Eisenhower told of his mother. When he was growing up, his mother and brothers would play a card game called Flinch. One particular time when they were playing, Dwight was dealt a bad hand. He complained about it loudly. His mother made all the boys put down their cards and said to them, “You are in a game in your home with your mother and brothers who love you. But out in the world you will be dealt bad hands without love. Here is some advice for you boys: take those bad hands without complaining and play them out. Ask God to help you, and you will win the important game called life.” Having a mother that is trustworthy and reliable, one that you can truly depend on is worthy of praise and of honoring. 

When a mother loves the Lord, that is the ultimate reason for people to honor her. In verse 30, it reads “charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” The true worth of a woman is not found in her beauty, for we know that it will fade over time. It is not in her charm, because charm can be broken. The worth of a woman is in her devotion to God above all things. She is no slave of a master husband, but a person in her own right who takes a full and honored place in the life of the home and the community. As verse 28 says, “her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her”. 

5. Conclusion

We’ll finish with one more story of a mother’s love. I think that it sums up what we’ve been talking about today well. When Dr. D. M. Stearns, the great Bible teacher at the turn of the 20th Century, was asked this: “if you had prayed all your life for the salvation of a loved one, and then you got word that that person had died without giving any evidence of repentance after having lived a sinful life, what would you think, both of prayer itself and of the love of God and His promises to answer?”

This, of course, was a striking question, and it caused everyone to take a little more notice. Many wondered how Dr. Stearns would answer. He said, “Well, I should expect to meet that loved on in heaven, for I believe in a God who answers prayer, and if He put that exercise upon your heart to pray for that dear one, it was because He, doubtless, intended to answer it.” Then he told a story. 

Many years ago there was a dear old lady living in Philadelphia who had a very wayward son. This young man had been brought up in church and Sunday school, but he had drifted away from everything holy. He had gone to sea and had become a very rough, careless, godless sailor.

One night his mother was awakened with a very deep sense of need upon her heart. When fully awake, she thought of her son and she was impressed that he was in great danger; as a result, she got up, threw on a dressing gown, knelt by her bedside, and prayed earnestly that God would undertake for the boy, whatever his need was. She didn't understand it, but after praying for perhaps two or three hours there came to her a sense of rest and peace, and she felt sure in her heart that God had answered. She got back into bed and slept soundly until the morning. Day after day she kept wondering to herself why she was thus awakened and moved to prayer, but somehow or other she could not feel the need to pray for that boy any more; rather she praised God for something which she felt sure He had done for her son.

Several weeks passed. One day there was a knock at the door. When she went to the door—there stood her boy! As soon as he entered the room, he said, "Mother, I'm saved!" Then he told her a wonderful story.

He told how a few weeks earlier, his ship had been tossed in mid-Atlantic by a terrific storm; and it looked as though there were no hope of riding it through. One of the masts had snapped; the captain called the men to come and cut it away. They stepped out, he among them, cursing and reviling God because they had to be out in such an awful night. They were cutting away this mast when suddenly the ship gave a lurch, and a great wave caught this young man and carried him overboard.

As he struggled almost helplessly with the great waves of the sea, the awful thought came to him, "I'm lost forever!" Suddenly, he remembered a hymn that he had often heard sung in his boyhood days, "There is life in a look at the crucified One; There is life at this moment for thee; Then look, sinner, look unto Him and be saved; Unto Him who was nailed to the tree." He cried out in agony of heart, "Oh, God, I look, I look to Jesus." Then he was carried to the top of the waves and lost consciousness.

Hours afterwards when the storm had ceased and the men came out to clear the deck, they found him lying unconscious, crowded up against a bulwark. Evidently, while one wave had carried him off the deck, another had carried him back again. The sailors took him into the cabin and gave him restoratives. When he came to, the first words from his lips were, "Thank God, I'm saved!" From that time on he had an assurance of God's salvation that meant everything to him. Then his mother told him how she had prayed for him that night. They realized that it was just at the time when he was in such desperate circumstances, and God had heard and answered.

Now suppose that that young man's body had never been brought back to the ship. Suppose he had sunk down into the depths. People might have thought he was lost forever in his sin, but he would have been as truly saved as he actually was. God had permitted him to come back in testimony of His wonderful grace. 

A mother’s prayer, one of devotion to God, given in humbleness to the Lord most high, to save her child. Not just from the rough seas, but from the raucous living that he was living. And God hears those prayers. He hears those prayers, and to the humble that ask in His will, he grants. Thank you mothers, thank you women of the church, for being the people who love God and show it to your children and to the people of the church. Let’s pray.