NOTE: This is an unedited transcript and, therefore, contains imperfections and is not for publication or quotation in whole or in part by anyone without the express written consent of Pastor Conley. The audio tape of this message delivered in the evening service on August 24, 1997, is available and may be purchased from the Church.

The Revival of True Religion

2 Chronicles 29

Dr. J. Drew Conley, Pastor

Tri-City Baptist Church, Columbia, South Carolina

When I was younger, we used to often joke about "turning to the Book of Hezekiah." We would use Hezekiah 5:9 or 2:4 to prove whatever heretical belief we were touting at the time. You could have a book of Hezekiah longer than many of those in the Bible, if you took all the chapters devoted to Hezekiah in Chronicles (there is more space devoted to him than to any other king, except David and Solomon) and if you added the material in 1 and 2 Kings and the three or four chapters in Isaiah.

Hezekiah was an unusual king. He was unusual in his dedication to God in that he is not compared or contrasted with his father, but is held up along side of David in a favorable way — the premiere example of a king "after God's own heart." There is only one other king in the whole history of Judah so favorably compared and that was his grandson, Josiah. Beginning with verse 1 of chapter 29 of 2 Chronicles, we read that "Hezekiah began to reign when he was five and twenty years old, and he reigned nine and twenty years in Jerusalem." Since 15 years were added to his life after a fatal illness that the Lord delivered him from, that means that most of his work done for the Lord which is recorded was done between age 25 and age 39. He did a great deal for the Lord while he was still a young man, and he was busy doing what the Lord wanted him to do. "And his mother's name was Abijah, the daughter of Zachariah. And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, according to all that David his father had done. He in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of the LORD, and repair them. And he brought in the priests and the Levites, and gathered them together into the east street, and said unto them, Hear me, ye Levites, sanctify now yourselves, and sanctify the LORD God of your fathers, and carry the filthiness out of the holy place."

Alexander Maclaren notes that "Hezekiah came to a tottering throne, and an all but beggared nation, ringed about by triumphant enemies." I had never really noticed just how desperate the straits were for the country of Judah when Hezekiah came to the throne, but after looking at the devastation that happened under his father, we see Judah had been taken captive by Israel, they had been ruined by Philistines and Edomites and the Assyrians and Syrians, the land was a shambles — economically, politically and militarily — and at the very core of it, spiritually.

Sometimes we think of the Assyrian nation in terms of Lord Byron's lines in the description of the destruction of Sennacherib: "The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold and his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold, and the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, when the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee." It is a colorful description and not exactly what the contemporaries of the Assyrians would have used to describe them. "They were a great deal more impressed," notes one commentator, "by the Assyrians' reputation as the most brutal, barbarous, ruthless war machine the world had ever known. Its atrocities were a byword, and its name was universally loathed and feared." It was the Assyrians that were at the brink of taking over Judah. It was the Assyrians that, during the reign of Hezekiah, would besiege Jerusalem and would threaten to destroy it altogether. We could say, as in the words of one man, that "The whole fabric of their society, human life as they knew it, and all that made it worth living, was threatened." They were indeed on the brink of destruction. Judah was no match for the kingdom of Assyria, but Hezekiah concerns himself first and foremost not with the kingdom of Assyria, not with trying to strengthen the land militarily, but with seeking first the Kingdom of God.

Tonight, I want to talk to you about "the Revival of True Religion." It starts with spiritual perception and priorities. We have read verses 1 through 5, let us continue with 6 through 10 as Hezekiah is explaining to the Levites why he is calling them to sanctify themselves: "For our fathers have trespassed, and done that which was evil in the eyes of the LORD our God, and have forsaken him, and have turned away their faces from the habitation of the LORD, and turned their backs. Also they have shut up the doors of the porch, (that is, the temple) and put out the lamps, and have not burned the incense nor offered burnt offerings in the holy place unto the God of Israel. Wherefore the wrath of the LORD was upon Judah and Jerusalem, and he hath delivered them to trouble, to astonishment, and to hissing, as ye see with your eyes. For, lo, our fathers have fallen by the sword, and our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity for this. Now it is in mine heart to make a covenant with the LORD God of Israel, that his fierce wrath may turn away from us."

With all the problems that man faces, his greatest problem is God. His greatest problem is failing to have his relationship to God made right. When a people start to perceive, when they start to understand, that having their relationship to God broken and being under the wrath of God becomes their prime concern — more important than any other kind of disaster or distress — then revival just may be beginning. We are struck, as we read this passage, with the swiftness with which Hezekiah takes action. In the first year of his reign, in the first month — we don't know if that refers to the first month of the civil year, or if refers to the first month of his first year — but one thing that is clear is, at the age of 25, upon coming to the throne, he already had in his mind what the real problem was. He had watched as a boy his father literally destroy the nation by turning away from God and turning to idols. These are clearly things that have been pressing on his mind for some time, because at the moment he has the power to do anything about them, he starts right away.

Revival and those used by God in it grows up characteristically in times of great extremity. There are those who say that times are too bad, that a nation has apostasized too far for revival to be possible, and yet when you look at history, it demonstrates that it is precisely when "times are too bad" and when apostasy has become too great that revival does take place. It seems that such circumstances are what it takes to wake God's people up and to set them praying and working for God's Kingdom. We find perhaps the greatest example of revival in what we would call "the modern era," in the Great Awakening in the 1700s. As we look back, we often think we are facing a time that is so much worse than what people have faced before. We evidence that by our own tunnel vision: our own failure to see and really understand the way things were in those days. In the late 1600s and early 1700s, there had been the Reformation and then there had been the Puritans. Things were so bad in England and so bad in Europe that the Pilgrims came here. William Bradford in his book, Of Plymouth Plantation, tells about the privations they endured simply to worship God in a Biblical way, and yet when he wrote that testimony as an older man, he laments that even in America, in his new-found colony there in Plymouth, Massachusetts, "that the old ways had been forsaken" and that the people that now were part of the American colonies no longer sought after God, and he bemoans it — page after page. There were pastors in England, such as Isaac Watts and others, who were praying in the early 1730s that God would do a work. The Enlightenment had deceived men into thinking that by this renaissance of reasoning and applying the scientific method to everything, they had begun to believe they did not need religion any more; they didn't need absolutes of God; they could find their own way. Marriage was something that was laughed at; gambling was rife; drunkenness rampant; it was a wicked society in the extreme. When you page back through history, you will discover over and over again great times of corruption, and often by God's grace in the very matrix of that corruption there rises up a purifying revival.

Perhaps the greatest revival since the Reformation, the Great Awakening that swept through Europe and through the American colonies and set our own country on its Biblical foundation, happened at a time of great, great extremity, when wickedness was terrible, when people seemingly had forgotten God, when the churches no longer were peopled, when Christianity was considered a thing of the past — obsolete, unable to deal with the needs of people in a modern era. You see, those ideas and those thoughts are not new. You often hear people talk about the 90s — you want to ask them what century of the 90s they are talking about, because the kinds of ideas they put forth have been regurgitated a hundred times. Thankfully, God often rescues people from times that are too bad.

What about Hezekiah's time? The Edomites (the descendants of Esau) were on the East, the Philistines were on the West and the South, and the Syrians were on the North — as one man described them, "they encompassed him like bees." Worldly prudence would have said, "Look after these enemies today and the temple tomorrow." But Hezekiah knew that the political and economic distress was but the rotten fruit of religious corruption, and that it is useless to try to mend a nation's fortunes unless you mend its morals and religion first.

People, individually and in groups, are often blind to the causal link between sin and sorrows. It is not that all sorrows are the direct result of sin, but that all sin does lead to sorrows. There are many sorrows you will never know so long as you walk with God. There are many sorrows into which a nation will never be plunged so long as it is seeking God. Look at our nation, many of our sorrows are due directly to our having forsaken God. The world expects us to meet every crisis in terms of the crisis; and, unfortunately, the church often buys into that way of thinking if it is sufficiently worldly. When there is a financial crisis, the first thing we think about is money. When there is a communications crisis (in other words, we are not reaching the "X generation," or whatever generation our prime concern is: the "boomers," the "busters," or whatever the fad name is for a group of people), our prime concern is to learn to talk the language of that particular group. When there is a church attendance crisis, we make it our chief aim to get the numbers up. If Hezekiah had responded to a military threat in a military way, the Syrians would have understood that. Notes one man, insightful in his comments, "Army would have been matched against army with dire consequences for Judah." But, instead, Hezekiah and his people first looked up to God. The result was, when the invaders did reach Jerusalem, the presence of God filled it, and it was impregnable.

I don't know what problems you face today, but I can tell you that you need to need to tend to your first and greatest problem and your first and greatest concern. We all go through difficulties. We have financial stress. We have family problems. We have problems with illness. We have job problems. We have things that are downright devastating. But the most important thing for you to tend to is having your soul happy in God — and making sure you are walking with God and you're glorifying God — because that will make you capable of meeting every crisis. You can try to solve your financial problems, and you may solve them. You may solve your family problems. You may solve your job problems, but if you haven't dealt with the core problem, you've really accomplished nothing but camouflage what God intended to use to get your life on tract. Hezekiah understood that. In the first month and in the first year, he got busy doing what needed to be done.

When God puts His finger on something that needs to be done, it's time to get up and do it and not be timid about it. What needed to be done could not be done timidly or halfway, or by degrees; what was needed was a total break with no delay and no holding back — total war, if you will. Sometimes God will convict you about a particular matter in your life — perhaps some pet sin — perhaps some omission in your walk with God: a failure to spend time with God in prayer, a failure to be filling your mind and your heart with His Word, a failure to set the kind of pattern in your life that will make it possible for your to grow in grace. When God brings a conviction about that, it is not time to sit back and think about it; it is not time to wonder just when you can finally get to working that out — it is time to do it. It is time to do whatever needs to be done when God is working on your heart. God is not obligated to work on your heart, and when God does it — when God moves upon you — it is a great gift, and it is one you need to take full advantage of. If there is a sin in your life that has been plaguing you, and finally after a long slavery to it (kind of passing over it, living with it, having set it to the side) and God finally breaks through and puts His finger on it, it is time to do total war against that sin. It's time to make it right; it's time to clean it out; it's time to set a new course and do it while the iron is hot. Do it while God is dealing with your soul. If you wait, if you leave the slightest root or vestige of that sin, it will spring up again, and you will find it sometimes grows up stronger than it ever was before. As one preacher put it, "Where conscience has no doubts (that is, when you are sure of what God wants you to do), we should not be dawdling. Central habits, bad paths: kill the beast swiftly, with one sure blow, lest by merely wounding him, he turn and rend you."

In verse 10, we see this is not merely some formality he is going through — this is not merely responding to pressure in some emotionally charged service — No, it is in his heart to do these things. It is a great blessing when God moves your heart. When you don't feel it is merely the influence of "everybody's doing good," or the pressure of a particular invitation or some other kind of manipulation, but rather God moving upon your heart and stirring your heart, then get up and do what needs to be done. Spiritual perception and spiritual priorities are the beginning of this revival.

Secondly, we find there is a thorough repentance and cleansing. We have already read verse 5: "Sanctify now yourselves (Levites), and sanctify the LORD God of your fathers, and carry the filthiness out of the holy place." In verse 11: "My sons, be not now negligent: for the LORD hath chosen you to stand before him, to serve him, and that ye should minister unto him, and burn incense." It talks about the Levites arising (its gives their names) and how they began to do what needed to be done. Verses 15 and 16: "And they gathered their brethren, and sanctified themselves (set themselves apart from sin and unto God — apart from what defiles and unto what makes holy), and came, according to the commandment of the king, by the words of the LORD, to cleanse the house of the LORD. And the priests went into the inner part of the house of the LORD, to cleanse it, and brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the temple of the LORD into the court of the house of the LORD. And the Levites took it, to carry it out abroad into the brook Kidron (the dumping ground where they burned the refuse of the city)." They took the idols out and put them where they belonged — in the garbage heap.

The repentance went beyond just personal guilt to include the past generation and the whole nation. Hezekiah understood that the problem wasn't merely with his own sin, it was with his whole generation; indeed. it was a problem with his father's generation. There were things that were so entrenched and so much a part of living that they had been long accepted and passed from generation to generation, though they were utterly wrong. Those are the things that are often overlooked. Often people talk of going back to the good old days. We don't need to go to the good old days, we need to go to the good God. We need to get things right — right down to the core — not merely things that have come up recently, but things that have been longstanding, that are contrary to the will of God.

True repentance must place the glory of God above national and family pride. So often when people repent, they repent part way. When they repent, they repent just in certain areas. You know revival is taking place when the repentance is thorough going — when the cleansing is absolute. You will know revival is occurring when instead of having to legislate keeping alcohol under control, the alcohol businesses go out of business because there are not enough people buying it. You will know there is revival when no longer do Christians have to call one another and say, "We need to protest about a strip joint coming into your area," but when no one will attend a strip joint. If they can't make money at it, they won't do it. We will know there is revival when you will go by Columbiana Mall on a Sunday afternoon, and you find the stores are no longer open, because people understand that it is the Lord's Day, and they are busy serving the Lord instead of serving mammon. You will know there is a revival when Christians are no longer wondering whether they should skip a service to go to a Little League game. You will know there is a revival when all these things that we are told we cannot legislate will not need to be legislated because there is a wholesale running back to God and getting things right before Him.

When people look back at the 20s and the Prohibition, they say "that proved it, you cannot legislate morality." It may have proved you can't legislate morality, but that's not why prohibition came about. Do you realize that during that era, preachers were preaching against alcohol. They recognized what damage it did to homes. Even in the brief time I have been a pastor, how often alcohol and drugs have caused a great deal of the problems with family distress — families that are church goers who have given in to the lie that they can do a little social drinking here and a little dabbling in this there (things that are really not honoring to the Lord), and they say "I have Christian liberty:" never mind if it destroys your family; never mind if it renders you incapable of really serving God; never mind if it ruins your testimony. These things are not really as important as being close to God. In the 20s, a lot of places serving alcohol just closed down. The alcohol was dumped in the streets, not because it was illegal, but because people were fed up with the slavery to alcohol, and there were enough people in support so the legislators could vote and the amendment passed. When there weren't enough people who considered drunkenness a sin, then no longer did the law stand. We are in a nation that is not run by decrees of the king; the politicians respond to the pressure they get from the public. When the public gets right in our country, I imagine the politicians will get right also. I would imagine you won't have the kind of people running for office who have won office in recent days when honesty matters, when fidelity matters, when God matters.

What does Hezekiah say to do: "Sanctify now (first of all) yourselves." Who is he talking to? He is talking to the clergy. He is talking to the priests. He is talking to the religious people. It is one thing to be a Levite and a priest; it is quite another to be fit to act as such. It is one thing to attend a church as a Christian; it is quite another thing to be a fit instrument in God's hands — one that shines forth the gospel. "Gifts," Alexander Maclaren notes, "are calls to service." And if we are lights of the world, our business is to shine. The main problem with our country today is that the Christians aren't shining — they are just as worldly and just as corrupt as the world they say they are trying to save with the gospel. Is it any wonder that so often the gospel that they pronounce is a gospel that condones sin and makes light of that which is an affront to God. It is not enough to be merely qualified or equipped, they had to be fit spiritually before God. Very often, we, as preachers and we, in certain groups, are very fond of trying to set other churches right. Let us begin with ourselves, lest, as one man put it, "like careless servants we leave dirty fingermarks where we have been cleaning." So often the beams in our own eyes are too great for us to see to clean up anything else. We will protest abortion; we will protest the strip joint — all while we are involved in other sins.

When repentance really strikes deep, if you can't control your television, it is worth it enough to walk with God to throw it out. If you can't control your time on the Internet, you break off your subscription. If you can't control what reading material you pick up in the bookstore, you stay out of the bookstore, because God starts to matter more than anything else. If you can't stay at your job without missing three Sundays out of four, you quit your job and find one that will let you serve God. So often we put so many things ahead, and our own lives are so dirty, if revival really came, it would scare us to death, because it would mean a radical change of the way we live.

Richard Owen Roberts has devoted a great portion of his life to studying revivals through history, and he draws several grand characteristics of what happens when revival comes in his book called Revival!. "When revival comes, an intense spirit of conviction will be felt immediately. Conduct that has always seemed acceptable will appear unbelievably wicked. When the revival comes, so powerful will be the conviction that persons who once thought themselves well worthy of heaven will stand in wonder and amazement that they are not already burning in the fires of hell. When revival comes, the agony over sin will be so great that the thought of prolonging life in the midst of such wickedness will be intolerable. Longstanding habits of self-indulgence, subordinate neither to reason nor to God, will be broken. Sins that have been covered for decades will be brought to light, and the fear of exposure and shame so long dreaded, will now be thought nothing in comparison with the prospect of cleansing and renewal."

"Sanctify yourselves," then he said "sanctify the house of the LORD"— essentially that meant getting out all the "filthiness" or abominations out of the place of worship: the idols and vessels used in idolatry that Ahaz had brought in. The more familiar we are with what is abominable, the less abominable it seems. The more we allow the world in the church, the less we have a problem with worldliness. We get used to a stained and corrupt church. We get used to allowing things that are really idolatrous and are an abomination to God because they distract our hearts from God, and they move our love from God to other things that are corrupted. We get used to allowing these things in our homes. Once you have sanctified yourself, remove the abominations. Get rid of the accessories to idol worship: the corrupt music, the contaminating reading materials, the posters. It grieves your heart to walk into a Christian teen's room and see his parents have let him post on the wall of his room the most corrupt individuals that are alive in our generation. They say, "You know we had Elvis when we were kids." Elvis did not do you any good.

These accessories, these things, that promote that which is contrary to God — all the links to the old ways, all that glorifies the old life style that you have now abandoned in your heart — get rid of those things that contaminate the place where you live and the place where you worship. Set new patterns — surround yourself with instruments which promote holiness. Do that which will help preserve what God is doing in your heart. Note the manner in which this work is to be done. In verse 11, the instruction is not to be "negligent: for the LORD hath chosen you to stand before him, to serve him, and that ye should minister unto him, and burn incense." Not everybody took it to heart. In verse 34, we read that "the priests were too few, so that they could not flay all the burnt offerings: wherefore their brethren the Levites did help them, till the work was ended, and until the other priests had sanctified themselves." There were some of the priests who said, "Well, we are not sure if this is just some kind of a fad. We are not really all that serious about it. We will just hang back and see what happens." They were not ready to be used by God when it came time for the sacrifice. The Levites were more upright in heart to sanctify themselves than the priests: the general group. Often it is the laity, if you will — the ministers who sit in the pews — who are more upright in heart than those who stand in the pulpits. It is not surprising in times of revival that some churches are passed by, and churches fold altogether, because they cannot stand the heat of revival. We must prepare; we must not be negligent that we might stand before the Lord to serve Him.

Finally, in revival you have the reintroduction of true worship — real worship of God as prescribed by God's Word. You notice Hezekiah instructs them with occasional references as to where he is getting his ideas. In verse 25: "And he set the Levites in the house of the LORD with cymbals, with psaltries, and with harps, according to the commandment of David, and of Gad the king's seer, and Nathan the prophet: for so was the commandment of the LORD by his prophets." We have movements today that are called "revivals" that could be just as well done without the Bible even have been printed. They give so little attention to it. They don't search for what the Bible says is revival. They don't search for what the Bible says brings revival. They don't search for what God wants, they just say: "There is loud music, people are dancing, this is revival." That is not revival. You can produce that at any pagan ceremony. Revival is that which is according to the Word of God. There never has been true revival in all the history of the church that relegated the Word of God to a secondary position. It is only when people start taking seriously the Word of God that there is actually real revival.

In verse 27, we read further, that "Hezekiah commanded to offer the burnt offering upon the altar. And when the burnt offering began, the song of the LORD began also with the trumpets, and with the instruments ordained by David king of Israel." We do well to look at past eras when God has clearly been at work. We do well to see in them the elements that are in line with Scripture, and in doing so, it helps us to understand that when real revival is happening, when true worship is occurring, and when it is clearly not.

In summary of what was involved in the true worship, we look at the various offerings that were given. We live in an era when Christ has fulfilled what the various offerings pointed toward. We no longer have a religion of offerings. Ever since Christ came and the veil of the temple was rent and, not long after, the temple was destroyed, even Judaism has no focus on sacrifice. That is one of the great questions to ask one who is a devoted Jew, "Where is the sacrifice? Where is the atoning? Where is the blood, without which there is no remission of sin? If you don't accept Christ, where is your altar?"

Notice these offerings all point to Christ — they all have parallels with what should go on among us. The first thing that was offered (verse 21) was a "sin offering:" "They brought seven bullocks, and seven rams, and seven lambs, and seven he goats, for a sin offering for the kingdom, and for the sanctuary, and for Judah. And he commanded the priests the sons of Aaron to offer them on the altar of the LORD. So they killed the bullocks, and the priests received the blood, and sprinkled it on the altar: likewise, when they had killed the rams, they sprinkled the blood upon the altar: they killed also the lambs, and they sprinkled the blood upon the altar." What is the sin offering about? The sin offering is about substitutionary atonement. It was about the fact that man cannot get back in fellowship (be reconciled to God) without somebody taking his place — an unblemished sacrifice. "Without the shedding of blood is no remission" (Hebrews 9:22b). A bloodless Christianity is a Christianity that cannot save.

We understand that our way back to God is not on our merit — it is not reform. Revival is not produced by merely our starting to do things right. Revival starts with casting ourselves on the mercy of God, and recognizing that apart from God's mercy (as evidenced by the sacrifice of Christ) we do not deserve to be spared. It is a despairing of self — a humbling of self; it is a casting yourself on the mercy of God where you are no longer making excuses, you are no longer rationalizing, and you are no longer trying to fix it up yourself. You throw yourself on God and say, "God, without You, I am in deep, deep trouble. Be merciful to me. Be merciful to me." The first step: The substitutionary atonement — the sin offerings. After they brought the sin offering, you will notice in verse 23 they talk of laying their hands on them. There is the bearing away — pointing to Christ, the only perfect offering who bears away our sins in our place. "They killed them and they made reconciliation (verse 24) with their blood on the altar, to make an atonement for all Israel."

The second offering mentioned in verse 24 is: "the burnt offering." There is a description of their giving the burnt offering. The burnt offering was unlike the other offerings. In other offerings part of the animal was sacrificed, and part of it you ate in a fellowship meal. The burnt offering, however, was totally consumed by the flame. It is a picture of the total consecration to God. First we have the atonement, the reconciling through the substitutionary sacrifice — the sin offering. Then we have a total, no-holds-barred (nothing held back) total consecration to God, as if you took everything of value to you and put it on the altar and said, "God, burn it up — it's yours." That is what the burnt offering was to symbolize. When revival takes place, there is a casting of ourselves on the mercy of God, and then there is a total consecration to God.

Third, we find reference to peace offerings towards the end of the chapter in verse 35: "And also the burnt offerings were in abundance, with the fat of the peace offerings, and the drink offerings for every burnt offering. So the service of the house of the LORD was set in order." Peace offerings indicate that things are now at peace with God. We might summarize this as joyful communion with God. There is substitutionary atonement. There is total consecration, and then there is joyful communion with God. You know you have been revived when the things of God begin to stir your heart, and you really honestly rejoice in them. It doesn't take someone pepping you up. It is actually rising from who you are, and you find yourself delighting in God's Word — you start to delight in time with Him; you start to delight in fixing your thoughts on Him and praising Him; and you start to really commune with God the way He created you to commune—like Adam and Eve in the Garden, enjoying the cool of the evening walking with God. So often we go through the motions of asking forgiveness, or we go through the motions of dedicating ourselves to God, yet inside there is no joy, there is no sense of peace and no sense of exulting ourselves in God; and, when we exult in Him, it becomes a show so people won't think we are other than spiritual. When revival comes, you start to exult in God for real. The peace offering — joyful communion.

Finally, there is reference to "thank offerings" in verse 31: "Hezekiah answered and said, Now ye have consecrated yourselves unto the LORD, come near and bring sacrifices and thank offerings into the house of the LORD. And the congregation brought in sacrifices and thank offerings: and as many as were of a free heart burnt offerings." Thank offerings are just as they sound: they are thankful praise. You hold nothing back as you are so astonished that God has granted you such joy. You are so astonished that He has been merciful to you. You are so filled with the joy of the LORD and that is your strength, and you rejoice in God your Saviour. You glorify Him because you are enjoying Him. You note verse 36 says, "And Hezekiah rejoiced, and all the people (Why?), that God had prepared the people: for the thing was done suddenly." How suddenly was it done? Look at verse 17: you will find it took them from the "first day of the first month" to the "sixteenth day" to do the sanctifying of themselves and the temple. It was after that when they began all of these offerings. In a time of less than three weeks, we have a people turned from abject idolatry and squalor and distress to being right with God and rejoicing with Him in thankful praise —that doesn't happen by the machination of men. You can't do it by getting churches together. You can't do it by planning it. You can't do it by just arranging things to have the music just right and the lighting just right, etc. God has to prepare the people. God has to do it. If there is a fundamental description of revivals, it is that God produces them.

When Richard Owen Roberts was a young man, and already fairly well known for his study of revivals (Mr. Roberts is an American and was in Europe and was introduced as an expert on revivals which was probably premature given his age at that time), a scholar in typical wry British style, said to him: "Knowing everything there is to know about revivals will not produce one." We know the definition of what revivals are, but let us understand that it is intervention of God. It is the extraordinary. It is not something we can work up, or work out. It is the work of God and that is why we rejoice in it. That is why we find that every true revival generally has a prelude to it — a prelude of prayer. What is prayer? Prayer is saying, "I can't do it; only You can."

Perhaps you find in your heart this evening a coldness — maybe even a deadness — a sense of boredom with the things of God — a sense of distraction — a difficulty in maintaining your focus on Him. I would counsel you to pray that God would revive you. It is not something you can work up. It is something God will do. When He begins to work, and you begin to do what He leads you to do, then like Dominoes — maybe more like a snowball going down a hill — things begin to happen, and it will be extraordinary. The waves will reach out from your home to your church, to your community, to your city, and from city to city to a nation, indeed will span the oceans to other nations as well — but it starts with God. Let us cast ourselves on His mercy this day. Let us bow to Him. Let us pray that He will intervene and be merciful to a people distressed because they have turned their backs on God. "The Revival of True Religion."

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