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Restored fruitfulness 2 Chronicles 7: 7 – 16 Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 29 Jun, 2008 |
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NEVER TAKE any passage out of its context. That very familiar passage we read today has a broader context. It is about revival, and about why revival is necessary. I told you a couple of weeks ago about how getting relationships right in our Beach Mission team was the key to restored fruitfulness in mission. We were getting nowhere until we got somewhere together. Our church lacks fruitfulness. That is our basic problem: we can’t let it ride. We lose two, three, four people, and don’t gain replacements. It is well past time for us to change. This passage describes the symptoms of needing revival, it describes the steps to obtaining revival, and it describes the results of revival.
The symptoms God says to Solomon, 2CH 7:13 “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, 14 if my people, who are called by my name... and so on. The three basic symptoms are: drought, locusts and plague. Drought prevents crops from growing, locusts prevent fruit from forming, and plague prevents workers from harvesting. Three basic symptoms. We know about drought. We have had too many years of drought in Australia. It’s a land of drought and flooding rains. In drought, what can farmers do? They can’t plough: it scours the topsoil away. All they can do is stand and watch their livelihood shrivelling. They spend their savings on living, and there is nothing left for growth. A bit like our church? Many lock up and walk off the land because they can’t afford to keep going. It is dry people in a dry landscape. You understand the spiritual dimensions. The Exclusive Brethren used to preach in Fairfield. They were dry men in a dry landscape, out in their dark suits on hot, dry days. They mostly preached what the Bible says. Their errors were hidden in the detail. Their main problem was that they were dry men. They preached like dessicated corpses. They didn’t manifest life. They preached by law, not by grace, in a dry, unresponsive place. Why should a preacher tell people they must evangelise? If you act from a sense of duty, it will be nothing but law — dry and repellant. What you do out of a sense of calling, or out of delight in doing, or out of pleasure in seeing people’s lives changed, or even out of a combination of all of these and more, if you do it out of love for God and passion to make Jesus known, then it will be grace at work. People sense grace, and they respond to it. Dry people in a dry land achieve little. Then there are grasshoppers, locusts. They swarm over the countryside and consume the crops before they can be harvested. Sometimes a church loses its newcomers to cults. That is the most grasshopper–like thing. But what about losses where you can’t see what happened, or where people have gone? At the start, when there are only a few hoppers, you won't see exactly what is causing the losses. But later, when you open your mouth and a hopper flies in, you realise how great is the destruction you face. What about our losses? People come, they like us, and then they go again. Are locusts eating them up? They spring up, but don’t last. Little things have big effects. Why? What is happening? Sometimes you see the locusts, sometimes you don’t. But the damage they do is there. In the Song of Solomon, it says, SS 2:15 Catch for us the foxes, Whether it is locusts or foxes, farms need protection against the plagues of destroyers. Are we suffering the symptoms which show we need revival? Then there is plague. Plague means that you don’t have labourers to tend the fields or reap the harvest. Didn’t Jesus tell us, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field...”? Plague is dreadful. It kills off people. You don’t get them back when plague takes hold. During the Black Plague in Europe in the 14th Century, people developed symptoms in the morning and were dead in the afternoon. No one knew what caused plague. We know fleas carry it. Fleas from rats, rats from rubbish. If you have plague, you have rubbish. Sickness in churches, spiritual sickness among members, means rats in the basement. What is in our basement? Demonic infestations feed on the rubbish in our lives. The contamination leads to spiritual sickness, which keeps us from effectiveness in the Kingdom of God. I am not talking about horned men in red satin jump suits. I am talking about semi–personal spiritual entities. Have you ever said, “This thing I am struggling with seems to have a life of its own?” Maybe it has. We can discuss demons some other day. The real issue for us is the link between rubbish in our lives and spiritual sickness. The rubbish is bad relationships. The rubbish is unhealed wounds from abuse. The rubbish is all that stuff you and I know is there, and a lot of stuff we don’t even think about, don’t even acknowledge, stuff that lets nasty things grow and take over. God’s promises relate to any time, when this passage applies, any time when, 2CH 7:13 “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, ” — as God says. God doesn’t force fruitlessness upon us. God doesn’t want demons to infest our lives. It’s a basic principle: rebelliousness against God causes these things to happen, and God lets it happen so that we will learn and so that we will turn. He will not step in and rescue us!
The steps So God shows us the steps to revival. He does not delight in seeing us stuck where we should not be. He doesn’t want us to endure hardship a moment longer than we need to. We can get out of the mess. 4 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, It is conditional: if my people will do these things, then God will act. But it only refers to God’s people. There is no promise here if you have never known Christ. Just in case anyone is confused, God speaks to those he can call, “my people” and then adds “who are called by my name.” We Christians are called by the name of Christ.. We are among his people. God is speaking to you and me. He wants us to do four things:
Proverbs 3 tells us, PROV 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart Humbling ourselves starts out with not relying on ourselves any more. Paul tells us, PHILIPPIANS 2:5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: The best sermon I ever preached was as guest speaker at The Entrance. On the Sunday morning, I preached well, but not impressively. Sunday afternoon, something happened. It so distressed me that I felt like giving up on the spot. I was ready to tell the pastor that I couldn’t go on. I was ready to go home. I felt totally incapable of doing anything worthwhile. But I couldn’t let everyone down. I told God, “I am finished. I can’t do this. I need your help just to stand up tonight.” That was about it. I stood to preach, and the Spirit of God took over. It was a fairly ordinary sermon, but the Spirit was saying, “Wait here. Let them take it in. Now take this paragraph on the run! Make it wash over them!” And it was like that for half an hour. At the end, there was silence for a moment, and then all the people stood and applauded! — about 500 people in all! You know me well enough to know that that had to be the Holy Spirit and not me. I think I have even preached that same sermon here, and no one noticed anything special. More than ever, on that occasion I was broken down enough by my circumstances to rely to an uncommon degree on the Holy Spirit, and he came to the party. Break down self–reliance, and God can do it! That’s what humbling ourselves is about. Neil T. Anderson — I think — said that all revivals have a strong prayer element. He is right. When we really come together to pray, God will do a new work. I know we do pray. But what are our real expectations? You know what I mean. I will say, “Let’s concentrate on praying for a true spiritual change for our church,” and the first prayer off the rank is, “God bless so–and–so, who has to visit the dentist this week.” We all do it. Where is the, “Lord, send down the fire!“ prayer? Where is the “Lord, change me!” prayer? As soon as anyone drifts off into the “God bless mummy and daddy” prayers, we all drift that way, myself included. When Michelangelo carved his statue of David out of a single block of marble, he didn’t just direct his chisel randomly to the easiest areas to reach. Every blow had to count, to release that image from the stone. We are carving a district of God’s kingdom out of a single block, and random chipping will never do it. Then God says we must seek his face. This goes with praying, and with what I have just said. It is a special kind of praying. It is focused prayer, where we say, “Lord, I want to meet with you, and I want all barriers torn down!” When we pray with passion and determination, God will be found of those who seek him. That is his promise. In George Harrison’s song, My Sweet Lord. He sings, I really want to know you... That song is a Hindu prayer. He prays that maybe in another lifetime he will know his god. We know that all encounters with God have to start in this life, because after that is judgment. There is no ongoing stream of lifetimes. But do we pray as though we feel we have all eternity to sort out our relationship with God? You will seek me, and you will find me, says God. But it is only ...when you seek me with all your heart. I do believe that the quality of our praying will contribute greatly to the return of our church to life. It has to be prayer that truly seeks God’s face. But it must be accompanied by reformation of life. The final clause is, ...and turn from their wicked ways. Are there wickednesses that we have to turn from? Often Christians get tied in knots and turned upside down about things which are merely cultural, and totally miss the big things that are keeping them from God. When I was a boy, in some circles drinking alcohol was seen as a great sin, shopping on a Sunday was the end of civilisation as we know it; a woman in makeup was a painted hussy, and there were words you could read in the Bible, but you couldn’t say aloud. Yet we were tolerant of that deacon who beat his wife beater, or the member who stole things from work. In some places, even child sexual abuse was ignored. But what do we need to deal with in this generation? The mark of a hypocrite is not failure, but the attempt to cover it up, particularly by pointing out the sins of others. There is a way out: If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
The results God’s promise is very clear: if his people do these things, ... then will I hear from heaven and forgive their sins and heal their land. Here is where God makes it absolutely clear that he is talking about spiritual matters. He will hear, he will forgive, he will heal the land. Spiritual restoration leads to restored fruitfulness. The drought is ended, the locusts are driven off, the plague ends. Grain appears in the fields and fruit grows in the orchards again. Life becomes joyful once more.
Conclusion I think it is clear that our church needs revival — that we need it desperately. I sometimes feel myself a bit of a fraud, preaching revival when I know that I need it as badly as anyone else, perhaps more than the rest of you. I still preach it because I can see the need. I still preach it because I know something about revivals. I still preach it because, whilever we fail to grapple with our own need, whilever we are content to remain dry, to remain consumed by the enemy, to remain spiritually diseased, whilever we are content to live fruitless lives, someone has to say something. I see Jesus dying on the cross, and I see that our fruitlessness does little to honour him. We need revival so that we will live in the Spirit’s power, and we need revival so that Jesus our Lord, who died and rose again, Jesus, who is seated at the right hand of God the Father, will be glorified and praised together with the Father and the Holy Spirit forever. Let’s humbly seek God’s face even today. AMEN |
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© Peter R. Green 2007. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.) |
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