Revive Us Psalm 85 (July 3 2016)

All right, well, good morning, Harvest.

It's uh great to see you all here this morning.

I'm excited to uh get into God's word with you.

If you would uh turn in your Bibles to Psalm 85.

Psalm 85 over is gonna be, we're gonna be continuing in our series uh through the Psalms, and uh so you can get uh turned over there.

And I got a question uh for you as we get going here.

Um have you ever, this is gonna sound a little weird, but have you ever been, have you ever like passed out before or ever been like knocked out, or you ever maybe seen that happen to somebody?

Um it's actually happened uh to me once or twice.

I remember as uh as a junior high kid or something, I was at home and I get lightheaded when I get up uh fast.

Um and so what happened was I got up and I had something exciting I wanted to go show my mom, and so I ran to the other side of the house.

I grabbed that thing, I ran back, and then just went down in like mid-sprint uh in my hallway and like crashed into the washing machine and like it was a huge loud noise.

Um my mom's first reaction was uh anger hearing the sound because she didn't see any of that.

Um but I don't know if you've ever seen this happen to somebody before.

I was I remember uh talking with somebody and eyes rolled into the back of their head and down they went, and convulsions, and it's just like it's freaky, right?

It's a scary, scary kind of a moment.

You're not sure what do I do, and all of your training, if you've had any kind of kicks in, you're desperately trying to reach for uh what do I do and calling the ambulance and uh and all of that.

Now, again, you might be thinking, interesting start to a sermon.

This is kind of weird.

Um, but I mention all of it because um if you were to survey the uh evangelical scene these days, if you were to look out on the worldwide church and uh all of that kind of thing, um, it's probably pretty obvious uh to you um that the church in general um needs to revive.

Right?

We need to we need to wake up.

And uh now I want to be really careful before we go too much further here, um, because um I, you know, I could stand up here, I could rattle off depressing stat after depressing stat about all the challenges the church is facing and how many churches are closing their doors, and that's in record number, and you know, biblical marriage being threatened, and you know, on and on and on uh it goes.

Um but um I want to be careful here because uh when I'm tempted to think that way, um I like to remind myself of what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 16.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

He said, I will build my church.

Right?

I will build my church.

And he says, and the gates of hell will not, right?

They will not prevail against it.

That's Matthew 16, verse 18.

Matthew 16:18

Okay, so let's be really clear about this.

Okay, the church is not dead.

Okay, the church is not dead, it is not headed towards uh extinction.

God in his sovereignty, he's got a plan.

He's got a plan for his church, for his bride.

He's in control, he's on the throne.

Now, all of that uh is true.

And so let's not let the pendulum swing a little bit too far here with all kinds of panic and and hand-wringing and oh no, what's happening here and the church is is dead meat, okay, because at the end of the day that's not happening.

Okay, but all of that being said, does the church need a wake-up call from time to time?

Absolutely.

Right, absolutely we do.

Um, do we fall into sin?

Do we reduce our effectiveness uh in the world?

Uh do we affect our our um our our walk with Christ because of the sin in our life?

If absolutely, and uh now maybe more than ever, we as the church need the Lord uh to revive us again.

Okay, to wake us from our slumber, uh, to lead us to repentance, to do these things, to transform our hearts, to breathe life into our dry and weary uh bones.

Okay, and that's what we're gonna be talking about uh here this morning as we go through Psalm 85.

So hopefully you're there.

And uh, if you would stand with me, we're gonna read this now.

There's 13 verses, uh, so follow along, starting in verse 1.

This is what it says, Lord, you were favorable uh to your land.

You restored the fortunes of Jacob, you forgave the iniquity of your people, you covered all their sin.

You withdrew all your wrath, you turned from your hot anger.

Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your your indignation towards us.

Will you be angry with us forever?

Will you prolong your anger to all generations?

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

Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.

Let me hear what the what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints.

But let them not turn back to folly.

Surely his salvation is near those who fear him, that glory may dwell in our land.

Steadfast love and faithfulness meet.

Righteousness and peace kiss each other, faithfulness springs up from the ground, and righteousness looks down from the sky.

Yes, the Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase.

Righteousness will go before him and make his footsteps away.

Let's pray.

God, we come before you, Lord, as your bride, as your church, as those who you have called out of sin, out of darkness, and into your glorious light, Lord.

And I pray that as this text says, Lord, would you revive us again that your people may rejoice in you, Lord?

Lord, we need that as a church across the globe for sure, Lord.

We need that as our church here.

We need that as individuals.

Lord, would you do the work necessary?

Lord, any hard hearts here this morning, Lord, any hearts that lack courage, any hearts that that lack faith or or whatever it might be, God, would you break through in the way that you can?

Lord, we are at your mercy to do this, Lord.

Revive us so that we can live for Jesus Christ, that we can shine a light, Lord, that people would see us and want what we have.

Lord, that you might get the glory.

Lord, we um say all of these things in the powerful name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

You can take your seat.

Thanks so much.

All right, so here's what I want you to be thinking about here as we work through uh these verses.

Okay, first question for you.

Um, how does the Lord want to revive us?

Okay, us here as Harvest New Market.

How does the Lord wanna kind of want to stir, what does he want to stir up in us kind of on a corporate level as a group?

Um and then um how does he want to revive kind of me and you as individuals?

Um how does uh as husbands and fathers and and as leaders in the home, as as a wife and and as a mom or as a single person, as a as a man or a woman or as a student, junior high, senior high, um, college, university, that kind of thing.

Um, what does the Lord um want to do uh in you?

Okay, that's kind of the first question.

Second question, really important, do I even want this?

Do I even want this?

Do I even want to be revived?

That is a fundamental and key question that we need to ask ourselves.

Because you'll never get the revival that you're looking for.

You'll never pray for it if you don't desire it.

Right?

We we will pray for uh what we desire.

So think about that uh today, because maybe you're just you're you're you're stuck in neutral or or you're in a rut or whatever it may be, and the desire for the Lord, the desire to follow Him and to have His power and presence in your life uh in an amazing way, that's just kind of that's like air leaking out of a tire, and uh your desire is gone.

Okay, some key some key things uh to think about and uh wrestle through here this morning.

Well, here's our first thing if you're following along in your notes at all.

Um it's this the Lord will revive his church when we reflect on his favor to us in the past.

When we reflect on his favor to us in the past.

Now, you need to understand this about this uh this Psalm, Psalm 85.

It's uh it's a lament.

Okay, it was written as a lament, which was a song that was gonna be that would be sung by Israel.

They would have sung this as a congregation, as as God's people.

They would have sung it to uh to the Lord, and it was during a time where they were experiencing uh God's um displeasure with them because of their sin.

That's what they were experiencing.

And so this is them uh grieving.

This is them mourning and weeping over their rebellion uh against the Lord and crying out for him to forgive.

Lord, would you forgive us?

Would you restore us?

Um, and they're asking for new life uh to be breathed into them as a nation.

And so this is how they begin that whole process.

This whole thing is really repentance.

Okay, so take a look at this, verse one.

They say, uh, Lord, uh, you were favorable to your land, you restored the fortunes of Jacob, you forgave the iniquity of your people, you covered all their sin, you withdrew all your wrath, you turned back, or you turned from your hot anger.

Okay, notice the past tense verbiage here as he goes through this and how they begin this process of repentance by by looking back into the past on everything that the Lord had done for them as his people.

And they were they were reflecting on that, they were reminding themselves of all the good uh that he had done, his favor, his goodness towards them as his people.

And I think one of the verses that really, or one of the sections that really comes to mind here is is uh Exodus uh 34.

And uh I'm gonna read this section here, a couple of verses from that.

But this really comes after the whole golden calf incident.

You remember that?

And God's people had, you know, come out of uh Egypt and they were trying to follow the Lord, and Moses was their leader, and he goes up on the mountain, and after a while of all of that, they're like, well, you know, we don't we don't see the answers of the Lord that we're calling for, and we need a God, and so they like made up this false God and made this calf, and and it was a disaster for them, uh for sure.

And uh, this is what the Lord says to Moses, kind of after all of that happens.

And this is so cool.

He says, The Lord, the Lord, speaking of Himself, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation.

So Moses responds, he says, and Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped.

And he said, If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for this is a for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon the iniquity of our of our sin, and take us for your inheritance.

Awesome, right?

Awesome is the Lord's favor and his kindness uh to his people, whether it is towards Israel, all those years ago, thousands of years ago, or to it's uh to us, his church uh here today.

Uh he's a merciful and patient God.

Right?

We are quick to mess up.

We are quick to be faithless, we are quick to rebel, but God is slow to anger, it says.

He still gets angry, but he is slow to anger.

He pours out far more goodness, far more blessing that we have, um, that we have any, that we don't deserve, right?

We we don't even come close to deserving it.

Listen, when when the church finally gets to the point where you know we've had enough of the lukewarm, the passionless, the powerless, the joyless existence that our walks with him have become because we haven't taken our sins seriously.

When we get sick of all of that and we're now ready to deal with our sin through repentance, there's no other way.

There's no other way to get the Lord's favor on you than through repentance.

Okay, what it helps us is when we think back on the Lord's favor uh towards us in the past.

And of course, it becomes, or it starts with becoming intimately familiar with how the Lord works with his people uh from the beginning.

Right?

And you can read passages like I just read from Exodus, and you look through uh his nation, Israel, and how they kept messing up, and he kept bringing them in.

He kept he kept uh pulling them into a relationship with him.

And you see that through the New Testament as well.

God establishes the church and he draws people in, and in Acts, thousands of people being added to their number as God uh draws them in.

Okay, so we can become familiar with that, but we can also think about uh his working in our own lives.

Right?

And you think through the last couple years in your life, especially if you've been walking with the Lord for a while, you know, man, what has the Lord done?

You start to think about that again.

It starts to flood your soul with joy and with hope and with a sense of, oh yeah, the Lord is good, and the Lord can do this, uh, and he will do it.

Looking back is and reflecting is so, so helpful.

And so what I did this week is I actually thought through what are some of the things that we can celebrate as a church, as a campus, of some of the some of the mighty acts of God and some of the things that He has done for us, and just kind of the short time that we've existed as a campus.

And so I jotted a couple of these down, and you guys uh might have more that you would add to it.

Some stories maybe that I've never even heard before.

Um, but here are a couple of things that we can reflect on.

And the fact that that really what we've got here right now today started with a couple of people just praying.

Right?

About 10 years ago now.

Uh people just gathering, um, just a small handful, four or five people gathering saying, Lord, would you start a church?

Would you do a work?

Would you do something here, Lord?

We we we desperately want to see a movement of you in Newmarket.

Amazing.

Ten years ago.

And then that group uh kind of came together and they ended up kind of linking into uh Harvest York region and Markham and becoming a small group there and just kind of developing and growing in all of that, uh, which is so cool.

Um another thing that happened, this might sound a little bit self-serving, but uh pastor was hired, right?

Worship leader was hired.

No, sounds self-serving, but honestly, I'm so thankful that the Lord would call me to this work and bring Greg into uh to all of that.

Uh lots to be thankful for there for sure.

Uh back in 2014, uh in the fall, we gathered together as about 20 people uh doing core group training.

And really what that was was was learning what it means to be the church and what does it mean to be a harvest Bible chapel, and what are the what are the things that we're gonna be fired up about?

What is our focus gonna be?

And what are we gonna be going for here?

And so we met for about five months, um, just training and and teaching people uh from the ground up what it meant to be the church.

And we, of course, had our official launch in March of 2015, praise God.

We started off with uh three small groups of people meeting in homes and and that became four, and then recently became five, and we have uh kind of plans to start a sixth uh very soon, praise the Lord for that.

Uh you can look back and see that we've had uh four people uh baptized so far in the first year and and next month looking at potentially doubling that uh total number, which is so great.

Uh we had uh youth groups start up for the first time a couple of months back, and and the Lord brought us uh Drew and Maddie, and they're just doing this as a volunteer thing, and they moved up here to do this, and we're not even paying them.

It's like it's crazy.

The Lord, the Lord is doing it.

We had a a women's study startup, and how many times did I hear that the Lord used that in a powerful way, fired them up to study God's word?

So amazing, right?

Uh tons of people uh serving uh in ministry.

It's the long weekend this week, which is which is classic for people going on vacation and stuff, which is fine and good.

Um but we still have people we have people serving.

People are still here.

The Lord's drawing people uh to this work.

Uh way more people serving uh than is average across uh nor uh other churches, which we can praise the Lord for.

All right, we've got a game plan for uh going autonomous uh in place, and our elders are prayerfully considering all of that, uh, which is amazing.

We've got leaders rising up, we've got God transforming lives, we've got, you know, about a weekly average attendance, about 125 or so, and uh growing.

Okay, so much to be thankful for, so much to reflect on and thank the Lord uh for what he is doing here, so much of his favor being poured out on us uh in such a relative short amount of time.

So, hey, you want God's church to revive?

You want your own lives to revive?

Well, it starts by remembering what he's done for you uh and to us in the past, remembering his goodness.

Uh the verses there talk about our salvation, remembering the gospel and what he has done to save you from sin, the withdrawal of his wrath, as the verse says.

Amazing.

You know, that had been stored up for us.

That was that was pointed at us.

God has forgiven us of all of it through Jesus Christ.

Right?

We don't deserve any of the good that has been poured out.

And sometimes we just need uh to remind ourselves of that and have our perspectives uh change a little bit.

Okay, reflect on these things.

Think about these things in your own life for sure.

Don't forget the past.

Never do that.

Thank God for what he's done and cry out for more, right?

I'm not done crying out for more.

I want more to happen.

Right?

I want much more to happen, and that really leads us to the second thing here.

The Lord will revive his church when we appeal to his desire for restoration.

We've got to appeal to his desire to restore.

Okay, I think sometimes when uh we allow ourselves to examine and think about some of the alarming stats about the church.

I referred to a few of them uh earlier.

One another example might be like high divorce rates in the church, right?

Something like that.

Um, when we think about those things, we can get pretty down about it, can't we?

Maybe we can get jaded, um, maybe we can get upset about it and discouraged.

Now, some of that is an appropriate response, isn't it?

It's good to grieve that.

Okay, but sometimes, and this is what I want us to be careful of, sometimes it's to the point where all we see is the brokenness.

That's all we see.

You know, we've completely lost sight of the fact that God's desire is to restore.

His desire is to fix us, his desire is to change us, and we can we can focus on the negative only.

But take a look at verse 4 here.

I love this.

He says, Restore us again, O God, our salvation.

And put away your indignation towards us.

Will you be angry with us forever?

Will you prolong your anger to all generations?

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

Show your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.

Awesome.

Awesome.

I I think something though that kind of plagues the church a little bit too much, and I know that I've been guilty of it, and and and maybe you have too, is that is is this crying out to the Lord uh for help when when we've sinned, which is a good thing to do, right?

We need to cry out to him uh for help.

But too many times I think the uh the uh that appeal for for God to help us becomes detached in some ways from the belief that God actually wants to help.

Does that make sense?

We're crying out, but somewhere in the back of our minds, somewhere in our hearts, we don't really believe that He wants to do it.

Right?

I'm God, I'm gonna pray these words because I know it's the right thing to do as a Christian, but I kind of have a lot of doubt right now.

I kind of doubt that you're gonna that you're gonna do it.

You know, I wonder how many times we cry out to the Lord for restoration and forgiveness.

But we don't really believe that he wants to.

Maybe we haven't seen restoration uh in our lives for a while now.

And so we've kind of lost that, lost sight of that, lost that hope.

You know, and our our pleas are hampered and hindered by a certain level of hopelessness.

Now I love I love Jewel 2.25.

This is such a great verse.

It says God, he says, I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten.

What a hope-filled verse.

I will restore to you the years that the swarming locusts have eaten.

The desire of God's heart towards his church is that he actually wants to and loves to resuscitate us when we're in need of revival.

In fact, he he promises that he will do it when we repent.

Right?

That is the key on our part.

We need to repent.

Joel says there, I will restore you, right?

That's a that's a promise.

And it's a promise that we as the church first need to realize, we need to recognize that it's a promise, and then believe in uh by faith.

We need to take him at his word that God will do.

It, if he says uh he's gonna restore us, then our job is by faith to believe, to trust that he'll actually uh do it.

Now I think one of the biggest challenges uh for us, though, that blocks us from believing it is that we've all been let down uh at some point in our lives by somebody, haven't we?

Uh we've been let down by people.

Uh we've we've all had someone promise us something only to be lied to.

We've been rejected, we've been uh forgotten about.

Well, we have to understand and realize that God is different.

God is not man.

God does not go back on his promises, he does not fail in one of his promises ever.

It's it's it's it's he's incapable of doing it.

It goes against his character.

He never fails us, ever.

His heart is to restore us.

And of course, the the ultimate expression of all of that is through the gospel, through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now, ever since Adam and Eve first disobeyed God in the garden, mankind, that's all of us, every person, has been in desperate need of revival, desperate need of being restored.

And God said, you know what?

These people are wicked and they are sinning against me, and I am their creator, but they somehow think that they get to decide what's up, and they get to decide what is right and what is wrong.

But it's but it's me that does it, and and they deserve to be wiped out, and they deserve an eternity in hell.

Those are all the things that we deserve.

And because God is a righteous judge, he's like, I will deal with this one way or another.

What we, of course, deserved is uh forever separated from God.

And and the Bible describes that as a place called hell for eternity when we die.

But here's the thing, we need to remember that God is a restorative God.

That is his heart, that is his desire, and he's like, I will punish sin.

I have to do it because I am good.

I can't pretend it didn't happen.

But here's what I'm gonna do: I'm gonna punish my perfect, sinless son Jesus on the cross instead of them.

You might be like, well, that's not fair.

Exactly.

It's not at all fair.

It wasn't fair to Jesus, but that just shows us his love for us and his, again, his restorative heart.

And you need to know that that if you don't know Jesus Christ as Savior, if you are still living in your sins and those have not been forgiven, you need to know that Jesus went to the cross for you.

He went to the cross for you as an individual, as a person, and that you can know him.

You can have your sins cleared out, you can have them wiped away, the slate is now clean, no more guilt, no more shame about any of that.

If you would trust that Jesus went to the cross for you, that he paid the price in your place.

If you would just admit your sin to the Lord, you can do that right now.

You just pray, Lord, I sinned against you.

Would you be my savior?

You're now a Christ follower.

It's it's not that complicated, but it involves a working of the Lord in your heart to do that.

Listen, if you have questions about this, this is why we exist as the church.

It's to help you understand that.

Please come talk to me.

Come talk to someone after the service.

We would love to walk you through that.

Understand the Lord wants to revive us.

Appeal to that desire.

You've been living for the Lord for a while now, but it's like lukewarm city.

That's what's happening to you.

It's like appeal to him, appeal to his desire to change you, to get you out of that rut, out of that place.

Remind yourself that he wants to do it.

Remind him.

Right?

We see through the through the scriptures, God's people, the prophets, we see the writers of scripture appeal to the Lord.

Lord, you have this desire.

Lord, you've promised that you will do this if we come back to you, if we turn, if we if we bend our knee and and bow before you, Lord, you will do it.

Would you please?

Right?

Appeal to Him.

He has the desire to restore and to revive us again.

Here's the third thing.

The Lord will revive His church when I do what's right while I wait on Him to act.

When I do what's right.

Okay, so so far the approach and the perspective of this Psalm has been from the corporate angle, right?

And so they've been saying a lot of words like we and us and talking about the nation, and we've been talking kind of as us as a church, the whole congregation repenting and pleading with the Lord to revive.

And now we start to see a transition here in the language as it changes to kind of an individual approach.

Instead of we and us, there's more I and me.

Take a look at verse 8, you'll see it.

It says, Let me, right?

Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints.

And I love the sense that you get here in this verse of God's people now individually desiring a fresh word from the Lord.

They're now everyone on their own, leaning into the Lord, pressing into him, wanting, craving his voice in a way that's personal, in a way that meets them in their own individual and specific uh circumstances and needs.

They've wasted enough time living for themselves and the fruitlessness of all of that.

Now they just want God.

They want what he has to offer.

I love it.

Their hearts are starting to come alive again.

You can sense the passion and the fire in them as they're as they're crying out for all of this.

He's beginning to revive them even as we see them singing this song.

As they cry out to him and as they're waiting for him, right?

They're like, Lord, we're like they're on the edge of their seat, Lord, I need a word from you.

But then notice this next part, I think this is so key.

He says, but but let them not turn back to their folly.

Let them not turn back to their folly.

Surely his salvation is near to those who fear him, that glory may dwell in our land.

Now that that word folly there, I don't know if you want to write this note in the margin, but it uh it literally means moral stupidity.

Moral stupidity.

I I love how careful uh God's people are here because they don't want to return to the folly, the stupidity of their past sinful ways.

They're like, we're waiting on the Lord, we're waiting for a voice from him, and we want to be patient about that, and let's let's be careful to not go back to our vomit, as the scriptures say elsewhere, and go back to the thing that brought us uh to this negative spot as his people.

Okay, they now desire, there's a craving there for righteousness and and holiness that that wasn't there before.

You know, they're they're waiting patiently for the Lord to revive, and they want to do the right thing.

Listen, if if you want the Lord to revive you, okay, to uh to to bring you out of whatever your folly, your moral stupidity uh might be, you need to understand that there also needs to be a commitment on your part to actually do the right thing.

To actually do the right thing.

Sometimes uh my concern is that our desire and our approach is to just pray to the Lord, which is a good thing, but but pray that the Lord would just miraculously remove all of the negative out of my life.

Lord, take away the sin completely and just download goodness into my life and make it this clean, neat, and easy process with next to no effort on our parts.

Right?

Sometimes we want that.

Let me give you an example here.

I'll throw myself under the bus.

Okay?

Sometimes when my attitude is just a gas can, okay, it is it is not good.

It's been known to happen.

Um sometimes what I do is uh I pray just that.

I pray that the Lord would just like magically take it away.

God, my my my my mood today, my my attitude is terrible.

I admit that, you know that, I know that, my family knows that.

Anyone within 10 miles knows that.

Uh my attitude's not good.

Lord, would you just replace it with a good attitude and magically take it all away instantly?

God, do it.

Now, on one hand you might be thinking, well, that's what's like what's wrong with that?

Right?

Pray that thing.

At least you're praying.

Well, yeah, I guess that's good.

But what I'm trying to get at here is that I can be really lazy about it.

I can be really lazy.

Uh God, God, you do all the work.

You take away the problem.

And until you do that, I'm just gonna stay the course of being an idiot.

Right?

That's me.

That's me.

I'm just gonna sit here and receive.

Now, here's what I've what I've kind of noticed.

Um, and I wish that I did it all the time, but I found that if I would just put forth some effort sometimes, um I can usually just decide to have a better attitude.

You ever you ever think you ever realize that?

If I just like stop and think, like, snap out of it, man, like stop being a tool, right?

You can you can you can get out of that place.

You you you really can.

Now, is it by God's grace?

Is his spirit working?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

But sometimes we can decide to do the right thing.

Okay, what I'm trying to say here is that yes, God does the work, he's the one who changes our hearts, absolutely, but we have a part to play, don't we?

We have a part to play in all of this, and that's what a relationship is.

We have a relationship with God.

The Lord does a mighty work, but we have a part to play.

Okay, so whatever your vices are, okay, enough about me, let's talk about you.

Whatever your vices are that you need to repent of, are you are you seeking to repent there and just thinking that the Lord's gonna do it all, or are you um putting forth some legitimate effort to do the right thing in the middle of that?

So a couple of examples.

Let's say uh your struggle uh is pornography.

Okay, if your struggle is pornography, tell somebody about it.

Tell somebody, uh newsflash, it's never getting better if you don't tell somebody.

Never gonna happen.

You gotta tell somebody about it.

And then and then put some guardrails in your life to protect yourself from temptation and to protect yourself from going off a cliff.

Right?

Those are some ways that you can do what's right.

Do what's right.

Okay, if your issue is, let's say, uh spending beyond your means, okay, and you're always out there spending money and buying new things and and all of that, tell somebody about it.

Get some accountability in your life.

Let them know what's going on, that they can that they can pray for you and and hold you accountable.

Uh you can do other right things like cutting up your credit cards or stop going to the mall.

Right?

Like sometimes we pray like, Lord, I don't want to spend stuff, and then we put ourselves in the worst position ever.

We go to the mall.

And it's like where the temptation is, or we we surf the web.

We're on Amazon, which is even easier to spend money on.

Right?

I'm not saying that that dealing with our issues, dealing with the heart things uh is always easy, but sometimes it's easier than we think.

Sometimes it's easier than we think.

We need to do the right thing as we wait for the Lord uh to act.

Okay, last thing here.

The Lord will revive his church when I confidently expect that he will come through.

I will expect it.

I'll expect it.

Take a look at the expectation here as Israel cries out to the Lord uh to revive them.

I love this.

There's no doubt, there's no waffling at all.

Verse 10, take a look.

They're like steadfast love and faithfulness meet.

Righteousness and peace kiss each other.

Faithfulness springs up from the ground, and righteousness looks down from the sky.

Look at the hope in though in those verse, that verse right there.

This is what's gonna happen.

Keep going.

He says, Yes, the Lord will give what's good.

He will give, and our land will yield an increase.

Righteousness will go before him and make his footsteps away.

The Lord's gonna iron itself for you, the Lord's gonna do it.

I gotta love the confidence in those verses there.

Right?

There's hope, there's there's expectation.

Now, we've already talked about how God desires to help us, but this is more about how God actually will help us.

Okay, it's not like he just wants to, but he's not actually gonna do it.

No, he actually will.

These verses say that uh that God's steadfast love, his faithfulness, his righteousness and peace, they're they're guarantees.

They're coming for you.

Heads up.

He says that he will give us what is good and make a way.

We as the church, we're we're we're supposed to share in this confident expectation that the Lord will hear our cries and spring into action.

He's gonna come through in a big way.

He's gonna do it on his timing.

It may not happen immediately the second that you ask for it.

Understand how the Lord works, and that takes time, and he's got work to do in our hearts.

We're not always gonna understand what he's doing behind the scenes, but he's doing stuff.

I guarantee that because the Bible guarantees it.

Okay, we can expect, be confident about it.

Allow these verses really to be medicine for your doubting heart.

Medicine for you as you know, uh up against your faithlessness, up against your hopelessness, up against your lack of courage to believe, your lack of understanding.

Confess all of these things to the Lord.

Admit them.

He can handle it, he's big.

Confess these things to him and press into the Lord this morning.

Do it.

Believe that God will do these things in your life, in the life of your family, in the life of our church.

He will do a work.

Now, these verses are applicable for sure to everybody here in the room.

Right?

They're applicable to God's church, but can I speak here to the men for just a second?

Um, and maybe throw down the gauntlet a little bit?

Okay, women, listen in.

But this is to the men.

Men, are you are you taking this stuff seriously?

Are you thinking about revival?

Do you cry out to the Lord for this, not just in the church, in your own life?

Are you asking the Lord to do this?

Are you know it's time for a wake-up call for some of us here, I believe?

Or are you stepping up to be the godly man that God has called you to be?

Are you doing it?

Are you on your face begging the Lord for forgiveness?

Begging your family for forgiveness when you mess up?

Or is there pride there?

Is pride getting the upper hand and you're like, I don't, I don't wanna I don't wanna do that.

Excuse me.

I don't want to bow my knee.

I don't I don't want a soft heart.

Are you praying deep prayers for yourself and for your wife and and for your children?

Prayers of uh of faith.

Are you leading by example in your home and in your church with humility and integrity and courage with a with a heart to disciple, because that's God's heart.

And you just want what he wants.

Now I understand, it's not just about the men.

I get it.

But when God revives men's hearts and they snap out of their slumber, and we wake up here and we refuse to be boys anymore, the Lord is gonna do a powerful work here in this church.

Do you believe that?

We're gonna have to be putting out extra chairs on a long weekend.

We're gonna be adding second and third services.

I really believe this begins with men.

We see it all through scripture as well.

Men stepping up and leading as the Lord works, as the Lord revives them out of the death nap that they're in.

Will you let him do this in your life?

Will you let him use you to transform your family?

Enough of your women, uh your wives always always leading the charge.

No, come on, we need to go to church.

Come on, we need to go to the prayer night.

Enough of that, you guys lead.

Bring your kids, bring your wives.

Lord, do it.

That's my prayer.

I hope that that's your prayer too.

Listen, we're gonna be moving into a time of communion uh right now.

And uh communion is uh a key time uh for us to uh spend some time in repentance, spend some time crying out for uh revival, crying out for the Lord to do this work in our hearts.

Lord, would you give me courage to face the areas that I've that I've tried to hide for far too long?

When we take communion together, what we're doing is we're remembering Christ's death until he comes, as 1 Corinthians 11 says.

And so what we're gonna do in a second is you're gonna find uh there's there are cups uh up here.

In a moment, you're gonna come up when I give you the word and you're gonna grab uh a cup.

There's actually two of them stacked together.

You can bring that back to your seat uh on your own time, and you can take that when you've spent some time confessing sin and getting right with the Lord and making another recommitment to him.

I'm gonna lead well, Lord.

I want you to revive me.

You're gonna take that uh on your own time.

We're gonna remember the gospel.

We're gonna remember what Jesus Christ has done to forgive.

We're gonna remember his heart to revive, we're gonna remember his heart uh to restore.

All right, so I'm gonna pray here in just a second, and once I'm done with that, you can make your way forward.

Joel and the worship team are gonna be up here.

They're gonna lead us through a couple of more songs, but you're gonna come up and you can take it back and uh and take it on your own time.

And hey, here, this is this is for the church.

This is for the church, this is for people who know Jesus Christ as Savior.

And if you have any question marks about that in your mind, or you would know that, you know, I don't know Jesus, we would just say, remain seated.

Hey, remain seated, because we don't want you to think that coming up here and drinking some juice and eating a cracker is gonna get you right with the Lord.

That's not what does it.

It's repentance, it's an act of the will and the heart to confess sin.

So think about that.

Okay, so I'm gonna pray right now as the team comes.

Join me as we pray.

Oh God, have mercy on us as the church, Lord, have mercy on our families represented here, on young and old, as single and married, Lord.

Would you do a work?

Would you do it?

God, we want to thank you for the gospel, which is at its core, uh a message of hope that Lord, you want to revive your creation.

Lord, I pray that you would start with us here in this church, God.

Lord, I pray that you would lead us to repentance, Lord, heartfelt repentance.

I pray, Lord, that that you would give us strength, Lord, that you would give us forgiveness, Lord, and you would give us new joy in you.

Lord, I pray that as we take communion here, Lord, that we would rejoice in the gospel.

I pray that we would reflect on what you have done, Lord, and consider what you uh will continue to do, Lord, what you promised to do in us.

So, Lord, again, we we plead for mercy.

Lord, do it all.

We pray in Jesus' name.