God, Do It Again | Revive Me, Revive Us, Revive This City

This whole we had a series planned uh that that we had started, Ancient Wisdom for Modern Problems.

Uh today I'm kind of taking a break from that series, and perhaps we'll come back to the regularly programmed uh scheduled programming next week.

Um, and the reason I'm taking a break from that is because last Sunday, if you were here, something happened in this room.

Um, for those of you who were here, you you were in the room, you saw it.

Uh a lot of you uh at the end of the sermon, at the end of the service, you came down to this altar.

Uh some of you were were crying.

Uh I was crying.

Uh, some of you hadn't cried in years.

Uh, some of you didn't come down, and that's okay, but but you felt it anyway.

You you felt that pull, that weight, that sense that God was close.

And I didn't know it at the time.

I actually looked at the recording after the fact and noticed that there were people from one end of the altar all the way to the other end of the altar publicly repenting to God, publicly praying to God, crying their eyes out.

And I want to acknowledge that.

I want to acknowledge that it was a real moment, a moment where God showed up.

But then maybe for some of you, Monday came.

The alarm went off as it always does.

You get up, you get ready, you go to work, you come home, back to the same house, back to the same apartment, the same bills on the same counter, the same quiet.

And maybe for some of you, somewhere in that week, maybe it was Tuesday, maybe it was Wednesday, maybe Thursday, that feeling you experienced on Sunday got thin.

It faded a little bit.

And if you're anything like me, maybe there was a question that started to work on your mind.

Was what happened on Sunday, was that real?

And if it was, gosh, how do I get it back?

Right?

That's a hard place to be.

Because you've tasted something.

And now you want more of it.

And you don't know how to get it back.

You don't know how to get back to it.

So this morning, I'm not gonna stand up here and hand you some program on a how-to.

Uh, I want to actually talk about what happened last Sunday.

And more importantly, I want to talk about the God who did it.

You see, well, you know what?

Let's just dive in.

We're gonna go to 2 Chronicles chapter 7.

2 Chronicles 7 · chapter mention

If you have your Bibles, you can follow along, you can open up there with me.

2 Chronicles chapter 7.

2 Chronicles 7 · chapter mention

Verse 1.

When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.

The priests could not enter the temple of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled it.

I'm gonna keep going actually.

When all the Israelites saw the fire coming down and the glory of the Lord above the temple, what did they do?

They knelt on the pavement with their faces to the ground, and they worshiped, and they gave thanks to the Lord, saying, He is good, his love endures forever.

This is Old Testament.

There's a story of God's people a long time ago.

King Solomon had just finished building the temple.

The temple was the one place on earth where God's presence lived with his people.

And this is what we hear happened.

The glory of the Lord filled the temple.

Now, that word glory, we've talked about it months before, but that word glory means the weight of God.

It is the realness of God, it is God's own presence so thick you could feel it in the room.

It filled the temple so completely that the priests, the men whose job was to work inside that room, couldn't even walk in.

The presence pushed them back out the door.

And I want you to understand something.

That wasn't some some feeling that they just worked up in themselves.

God did it.

God did it.

God turned toward his people, and his presence came down.

Now, I bring this up because last Sunday, much smaller room, no fire, no cloud.

We got a small glimpse of something like that.

Now understand, not because we pulled it off, but because God chose to turn his face toward us.

And let me tell you, all those people across the altar, you know what thing stood out to me?

And again, this isn't, let me let me clarify and qualify, this isn't a sexist comment that I'm about to make.

But I saw a lot of men at the front of that altar.

That's important.

Because men, I know we have a lot of pride and ego inside of us.

So for us to come out of our seats, out of our pews, walk up to the altar with tears in our eyes, repenting before God, praying out to God, that's not something we easily do.

Can't manufacture that.

God did something.

God empowered even the men in this room to come to tears in repentance.

I'm gonna keep reading.

Because God says something to those people that He's saying, that I think He's saying to us this morning.

It comes from verse 14.

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

Now he's talking to the people of Israel back then.

But he's talking to us too, right here, right now.

My people who are called by my name, that's the church, that's us, that is the people God has put his name on.

People like us.

He is talking to a room like this one, and right in the middle of this, he tells them what to do.

Three words.

He says, Seek my face.

Seek my face.

Not seek my hand, not seek the things I can give you, seek my face.

In the Bible, a person's face means the person, it means their presence, it means their self.

So God is not saying, come and come to me to get the things from me.

No, he's saying, come and get me.

There's a difference.

There's a difference between wanting what God can do for you and wanting God.

And this morning, we're gonna live in that one difference.

Because again, what what what happened last Sunday was not a mood, it was not it wasn't the music, it wasn't the the emotions of a of a full room.

I mean, those things, yeah, they may have been part of it, but that's not what did it.

It was God turning his face toward you.

And that ought to change what you do with your weeks.

And understand this it's not about chasing a feeling, it's about seeking his face.

But now, if you're gonna seek his face, whose face are you seeking?

I want to make sure we're all on the same page with this.

Who is this God?

What is he like?

Because last Sunday we didn't just feel something, we got a glimpse of a somebody, and I want us to be clear on who he is.

I want us to see him.

So I'm gonna take you back in scripture to a day where a man saw God, like really saw him.

It's in the book of Isaiah.

Isaiah was a preacher, he was a good man, a religious man, he was a prophet, and it was a hard year.

The king had just died, the whole country felt shaky, uncertain, afraid of what was coming.

There was a lot of uncertainty.

Some of you in the room right now know that exact feeling.

The ground moves moves under you, and you don't know what's gonna come next.

In that year, Isaiah walks into the temple, probably to pray, probably like he had done a hundred times before, but this time God let him see.

He sees the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and Isaiah can't take in all of God, so he notices the edges, just the bottom of God's robe, just the hem, and it and the hem, it fills the entire temple.

The hem alone fills the room.

And around the throne, there are angels, powerful ones.

Each one has six wings, two wings to fly, and four wings to cover themselves.

Because even sinless angels cannot look straight at God.

And then they start calling out to each other.

Not holy, not even holy, holy.

They cry out and they say three times, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.

And the room shakes, the door frames tremble, smoke fills the temple.

A pastor, an old pastor theologian who had passed away, R.

C.

Sprohl, he pointed something out about this.

In the Bible, when something is really true, they say it twice.

Like in the Gospels, we see Jesus saying truly, truly quite a few times.

See, they double it to press in, you know, double down on the importance of what the statement is that they're talking about.

But there's only one thing God is ever called three times over.

Nobody in Scripture is called love, love, love.

Nobody is called mercy, mercy, mercy.

It's only this holy, holy, holy, all the way to the third degree.

Why?

Because God's holiness is not just one part of him, it is the brightness of everything he is.

It is the it is the weightiness, it is the radiance, it is the glory of who our God is.

And Isaiah, this good man, this preacher, this prophet, well, he falls apart when he comes into the presence of God.

He cries out, woe is me! Woe is me.

I am ruined.

I am a man with dirty lips, and I have just seen the king.

See, in that moment, Isaiah didn't just decide to feel small.

He just saw God.

He just saw the holiness and the glory of God.

He began to acknowledge how small he was and how great and incredible and amazing and awesome God is.

So his smallness, the truth of that, just started bubbling out.

That word holy, it means God is above us.

He is set apart, he is clean in a way we've never been, he is pure in a way we cannot manufacture.

He is so far above us that again, even sinless angels have to hide their eyes.

That is the God who gave us a glimpse, who turned toward us this past Sunday.

That's who we're talking about.

Now, here's what most people get wrong about God.

You hear that word holy, holy, holy, holy, and you picture God a certain way.

Maybe arms crossed, maybe he's distant, maybe he's impossible to please.

A God, maybe you think he's a God who needs you to clean yourself up first before even thinking about entering his presence.

And if that's the God you're picturing, then a full altar last Sunday, well, that's not good news for you.

That's scary.

Because if God is that holy, then people like us have no business being anywhere near him.

And in one sense, that's true.

But watch what this same holy God is actually like.

See, Jesus told a story about two men who went up to the temple to pray.

Same temple, same holiness.

One was a religious man.

He stood up front and prayed a list of his own goodness.

And he said, God, thank you that I'm not like the other people.

Especially not like that guy over there.

I'm not pointing to anyone in specific.

And that guy over there in the back was a tax collector.

Now, a tax collector back then, well, was viewed as a sellout, right?

He worked for people in power.

He robbed from his own neighbors and got rich off their backs.

Everybody in the society would have hated him.

And he earned it, and he knew it.

And he's standing in the back, and he won't even lift his eyes up off the floor.

And he beats his chest like the guilt is physically sitting on him, and he prays seven words.

God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

And Jesus, he says that the man in the back went home made right with God.

Not the religious one with his list, but the broken one with his seven words.

That's the goodness inside his holiness.

The holy God, the one angels can't even look at.

He bends all the way down toward the man everybody had written off.

The moment that man stops pretending and starts acknowledging his sinfulness, acknowledging God's holiness, and acknowledging his need for a savior.

See, God does not turn away from the sinner, he receives the one who stops pretending and cries out for mercy.

That is our God.

He is holy, he is good, that is who he is.

That is who turned his face towards us last Sunday.

Now, when you see a God like that, I would imagine everything in you would want more of him.

And that's a good thing.

But it can send you looking for the wrong thing.

Now I know this personally.

For those of you who don't know, part of how I came to faith in Jesus was through a series of visions.

God actually showed me things.

It was real, it was wonderful.

And then I just I just loved experiencing it.

And then one day, the visions, well, they stopped.

And I was young in my faith.

I figured I must have done something wrong.

So I decided I've got to do something to get them back.

I gotta get the visions back.

So you know what I did?

I would go into my room, shut the door, eyes shut really tight, start start praying my little heart out.

Nothing.

So I thought, okay, well, maybe I need to set the mood.

So I dimmed the lights.

I even lit some candles, and I put on worship music, not just any worship music, the really anointed worship music.

You know, where they repeat the same phrase about 50,000 times.

And I sat there with my eyes squeezed shut, waiting for God to show me a vision.

Nothing.

So I prayed harder, lit another candle.

Still nothing.

Turns out, big surprise, it's gonna be a shock for everyone.

Turns out, you can't make God show up by lighting candles.

Who knew?

Little me and my candles.

And I know it can sound a little funny, but what was underneath actually wasn't funny at all.

See, here's the thing I got wrong back then.

I thought the goal was the feeling.

I thought the goal was the feeling, get the feeling back, manufacture the goosebumps, and I know I'm okay.

But what I was actually missing was him, his presence.

And look, don't get me wrong, God is omnipresent, he is everywhere all the time, he is never not with his people.

But sometimes, sometimes, God makes his presence known.

There are moments when he pulls back the curtain and lets you feel that he is right there with you in the room.

And I think that's what happened last Sunday.

The God who is always here, letting us know he was here.

And maybe this week, when when the feeling started to fade, when you wanted to get the feeling back, or maybe you got a little scared.

Not that the feeling left, but maybe that that he left.

I want to tell you something that I wish someone had told me in a room full of candles, he didn't leave.

He didn't leave you.

But at the same time, you can't manufacture him doing the same thing.

Can't manufacture that.

But I will say this when God's people get hungry, like really hungry, not for a feeling, but for him.

Let me share a few stories.

Whales, not the animal, the country.

1904, little country of coal, coal miners, and farmers.

In this small little country, the churches had grown cold.

A lot of the people there were just going through the motions, which we see true of many places here today as well.

But God did something, He pulled back the current over an entire nation.

And it didn't start with a famous preacher, it spread from ordinary people who got desperate for God.

And within about a year, a hundred thousand people came to Christ in a country smaller than a lot of our states here in America.

But the number isn't what gets me.

It's what happened on the ground.

The bars started closing.

Not because Anybody passed a law, but because the men who used to drink up their entire paycheck every Friday night just stopped wanting to.

The taverns lost their customers and shut the doors.

Men started showing up at the doors of people they had wronged years back to pay off old debts and to say to them genuinely, I'm sorry.

The courts.

No joke, the courts started running out of cases.

It got so quiet in some of the towns that a judge would show up, they would he would show up to court and they would hand him a white glove.

Now the white glove was symbolic.

It was a symbolic ceremony letting them know that there are no cases to try today.

There were no crimes today.

And here's the one I can't even get over.

Down in those coal mines, the miners would use ponies, right?

Little horses, ponies to haul the coal carts.

Those ponies had been trained through cursing.

The people would swear and curse, and that's how they were trained.

It was part of their language.

That's what drove them.

So when the miners got saved and the cursing stopped, the ponies didn't know what to do.

They didn't recognize clean words.

The work in the mines actually started to slow down because grown men had stopped swearing.

Nobody organized that.

Nobody ran a workshop or a program that that caused that, that caused the bars to become empty, to clear out the courts from crime, to confuse the mining ponies.

A whole nation, a whole nation got a look at how holy and how good our God is, and it changed everything, all the way down to the animals in the dark underground.

Look at what God did.

Let me give you another one.

This one also started very small.

The years 1855, London.

The churches were dead and in serious, serious trouble.

There was a big Baptist chapel that could seat about 1,500 people.

But on a good day, there were barely 150 people sitting in the in the room.

Barely 150 people.

This kid who never finished high school.

His name may be recognizable to some of you, was Charles Spurgeon.

Spurgeon got his people in the church to start praying.

He led them to pray for a mighty visitation of God.

In fact, he had people always praying for him while he preached.

That church had 150 people or less when he got there.

One year later, 3,000 people were coming.

300 people were baptized.

It gets crazier.

They actually had to knock that building down and build a new one.

And while that was happening, they started meeting in a hall that seated 10,000 people.

And whenever Spurgeon showed up, 10,000 people were there.

At one point, they went to a place that seated 70,000 people, sorry, 27,000 people.

And every time he showed up, sure enough, 27,000 people showed up.

And it wasn't just him.

In 1858, three years after that, a little group of six businessmen started meeting at a place called Fulton Street.

Six guys just praying at noon every single day, praying for a visitation of God.

Just six people.

A year later, that number had grown to 10,000 businessmen praying for God to move.

And in 1859, revival broke out across the world.

There's some names that you might know that came out of that movement, out of that wave.

Guy named Hudson Taylor, who took the gospel to China.

Dwight Moody, a preacher who also founded colleges.

The people who would lead the church for the next 40 years, most of them came to Christ in that one move of God.

And it started with a room full of nobodies who got hungry for God.

So here's what's sitting on my chest this morning.

If God did it in Wales, and he did it in London, then the question isn't whether he can do it, the question is whether he'll do it here for you, for our church, for this city.

Will he do it?

You see, every one of those stories, Wales, London, the six men at Fulton Street, they all have one thing in common.

And it isn't a method, it's not a program, it wasn't the right music or the right candles.

It's a face.

In every real move of God, he turned his face toward his people.

Will he turn his face toward us?

Now that question actually got answered a long time ago.

On a hill outside a city.

Seek my face, come find me, come get me.

Not just my stuff, get me.

Now some of you in the room might be thinking, well, what happens if I seek his face and I'm not clean enough?

I'm not clean enough to see it.

Isaiah saw God's face and he fell apart.

And he was a prophet of God.

The angels couldn't even look.

So how do people like us, people with dirty lips and dirty hands, ever get to see the face of a holy God and still live?

And look, before I give you the answer, again, remember last Sunday.

We're all in the same room.

But we didn't all handle it the same way.

Some of you wept.

Some of you wanted to come down to the altar, but but your feet wouldn't move.

Maybe because you're not a public crier.

Some of you stood there thinking, I don't know what's happening.

But something is happening.

And I would say at least one of you was quietly checking your mascara to make sure you're gonna survive through the morning.

Look, there was different people in the room that day.

Same God, same room.

But how do sinful people get to see a holy God?

Remember the priests back in Solomon's temple?

The glory of God came down so heavy that the priests couldn't walk into the room.

The presence pushed them out the door, they couldn't stand in it.

But that is no longer true for us.

And here's why.

Hundreds of years later, there was another priest, the true one, the ultimate priest, Jesus.

And he walked straight into the presence of a holy God.

That no one else could ever do.

We could never do what Jesus did.

He was the one man with clean hands and a clean heart, the only one who deserved to stand in the presence of God and never get pushed out.

And on that hill, that priest was driven out.

Not because his hands were dirty, but because ours were.

And for the first time in all of eternity, God the Father turns his face away.

The priest got pushed out of the room because God was too holy.

Jesus got pushed down because we were too dirty.

He was driven out into the dark, away from the face of God, so that you and I could be driven in, to be made right with God, to have a relationship with God.

And then Sunday morning came.

The face that turned away from Jesus on Friday turned back toward him on Sunday.

And because it turned back toward him, it will never turn away from us.

So now, when God says, Seek my face, here's where you find it.

You want to see the face of God?

You look at Jesus.

That's the face.

All that holiness that made Isaiah fall apart, all that glory that filled the temple and pushed the priest out the door, it has a face now, and his name is Jesus.

And that face is not a cold face.

That face is not a far distant face.

That is a face that's got scars in it, scars that were put there for you.

And it gets even better than that because the glory that used to live in a building, it doesn't live in a building anymore.

When Jesus rose and went back to heaven to sit with the Father, he sent his Spirit.

And the Spirit doesn't fill a temple made of stone, it fills his people.

The Spirit of God, he now resides in you.

You the one who maybe never belonged anywhere.

The sellout in the back who can't lift his head.

The one who who lit candles trying to feel something.

The tired one.

The one who feels like they blew their life all away.

That spirit sits inside you.

The glory that fills Solomon's temple lives in you.

You are the temple.

God didn't just visit you last Sunday and leave.

If you belong to Jesus, He has moved in.

And maybe some of you are sitting here thinking, I wasn't, I wasn't part of last Sunday.

And maybe this is your first time here.

Maybe you've been coming here for years, but maybe you've never actually met Jesus.

So I want you to know if you want to have a relationship with this God, if you want to have a relationship with Jesus, it's not about cleaning yourself up first.

That's not what it's all about.

The tax collector didn't have to clean up himself.

He just told the truth about himself.

And he asked for mercy.

I mean, that's really it.

Turn from going your own way.

Stop trusting yourself and trust Jesus Christ, who is crucified and risen for sinners.

That's the beginning.

And church, I gotta tell you what this does for me.

For longer than I should have, I lit candles trying to get God to turn toward me.

And the whole time on a hill that I didn't build, the face I was begging for had already turned.

So I want you to hear this, church.

The face that you may be begging for, he's already turned toward you.

He's already turned and looking at you.

So don't chase a feeling.

Just seek his face.

And because God has already turned toward towards us in Christ, He's taken residence in us by his spirit, we can ask boldly to bring revival in our area.

And I would charge us and challenge us to pray this in three circles.

Revive me, revive us, and revive this city.

Revive me.

You gotta start there.

It starts with you.

A growing awareness of our sinfulness, a growing awareness of God's holiness, and praying with expectancy, Lord, turn your face toward me, revive me, and then revive us.

Revive this church.

Revive this room.

Lord, do again what you did last Sunday and do more of it.

Revive us.

And then revive our city.

Revive West Palm Beach.

Lord, turn your face toward our city.

Bless our city.

Bring the people to you.

I mean, imagine it.

Imagine what God did in Wales and in London.

And imagine it here.

On Belvedere Road, in the apartments of Military Trail, in the downtown offices.

The household where nobody has spoken about Jesus in years, suddenly praying together out loud.

The teenager who has been glued to a screen for as long as we can remember, suddenly awakened with something real for the first time.

The father who is who's been gone, even if he's been at home, suddenly asking his wife and kids for forgiveness.

The addict who has tried everything, but is now finally free.

Look, it doesn't stop at these doors.

Imagine sleepy Christians all over our city waking up.

Imagine this room full.

Imagine all of our classrooms full of people.

Imagine all the churches all over the city finally coming alive in ways that we have not seen.

Imagine people walking out of here on fire, carrying the name of Jesus onto job sites, into schools, down every street in West Palm Beach with boldness and confidence, not scared to preach and proclaim the name of Jesus, but with boldness saying Jesus is our King.

That is what revival is.

It's not merely a crowd that gathers on Sunday.

It is a people that catch the fire of God and scatter out there every single day of the week.

It's not a program we can run, it's not something we can manufacture.

Yes, sir, we can build an altar, we can lay the wood down, we can seek his face, we can get our knees and pray our little hearts out and pray that he would do it again.

But it is him who brings the fire down.

But we gotta start by praying.

God, revive me, revive us, revive this city.

God, turn your face toward West Palm Beach and let us see thousands upon thousands lit up to live for your glory.

Amen.

Father, I just want to thank you, God, for what you did last Sunday and thank you for what you're doing in each of our hearts, even today.

Lord, we don't want to seek mere feelings, we don't want to seek the goosebumps on our arms.

We want to seek your face.

We want to seek you, Lord Jesus.

You rescued us, you brought us in.

You made us whole and you're making us whole.

Would you revive our hearts?

Renew them so that all we want to do is to live for you, for your glory, Lord.

Would you revive our church?

You've put such deep roots in this church for 65 years.

Lord, help us to see the great fruit that is to come with this church.

Revive this church.

And God, would you revive our city?

We see too many people living out the Christian life just by name only, but not really living for you.

God, would you change that?

Would you wake up the sleepy Christians?

Wake them up to who you are and light a fire in them to proclaim the truth of the glory of the gospel.

We love you, Jesus, and it's in your name we pray always.