Dr. Ron Sumners
Sept. 27, 1998
The Bible introduces us to Hezekiah when he was twenty-five years old around the year 716 BC We know nothing about his earlier years except that his father was Ahaz and his mother was Abijah, but we do know the life of his father Ahaz, because it is well recorded for us. He was a godless man and so was the age in which he lived.
Our scripture records the attitudes and actions of the people. "They would not listen, but persisted in their former practices. Even while they were worshipping the Lord, they were serving their idols. To this day, their children and grandchildren continue to do as the fathers did."
There had been a steady decline for many generations, and in the time of Hezekiah's father things seem to have hit bottom. Ahaz led the people to worship Baal. He built altars in the valley of Hinnom and sacrificed children, even his own sons, in the fires, to the god Moloch. That valley, in the time of Jesus, was the garbage dump of Jerusalem and Jesus likened Hell to the continual fires in the Hinnom valley.
It was a generation of godless rejection of the Word of God. That was the situation Hezekiah inherited. Religious life was at a low ebb, the Temple was closed and true worship was gone. The prophet Isaiah was on the stage of Judah at this time, and he had no doubts at all about the condition of the nation:
"Ah, sinful people, a people loaded with guilt, a brood of evil doers, children given to corruption! They have forsaken the Lord; they have spumed the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on Him. . . From the sole of your foot to the top of your head, there is no soundness, only wounds and bruises and open sores, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with oil. Your country is desolate. . ."(Isa. 1:4,6,7)
Isaiah has much to say to the nations around Judah, but much more to .say to Judah, herself. Judah represents the people belonging to God, the church. We have a strange inconsistency in the way we gladly take the promises if the prophets to Israel and Judah and apply them to the church, and the take the judgments of the prophets and apply them to the world! That is neither biblical nor honest.
There will be no hope for revival until the evangelical churches of our nation recognize and admit that Isaiah is preaching to us. Outwardly there may be many good things in the church today, but beneath it all there is the rottenness of worldliness, carelessness, a lack of deep commitment and a triviality about Holy things. Our churches are divided and quarrelsome; our leaders are proud of their reputations and working hard to build their own empires. Generally speaking, Christians think and behave like the world around them and are afraid to act differently . We are hardly making an impact upon our society, and our churches are not growing vigorously by regular, life changing conversions. Of course, some churches are growing and some sinners are being converted, but by and large we have become expert at simply swapping church members.
Many change churches because they move to different communities or they feel God leading them to a new fellowship, but much of what we call growth is dissatisfied or grumbling Christians moving from church to church. One church grows; another declines. Revival is not when churches exchange members, but when the Holy Spirit changes lives! Revival is needed, not because of the state of the world, but because of the state of the church!
Today we are good at condemning the sin of the world around us, like Israel did of Moab, Edom, Syria and others. But revival is meant for us . The world has effectively neutralized the light of the church because a majority of the church members live more in the world than they do in Christ!
Revival came to Scotland in 1742. Spiritual life was at a low ebb. Two faithful ministers were preaching, William McCulloch and James Robe, but for years they had seen little fruit for their hard work. Neither man was gifted as a speaker, and McCulloch was nicknamed an 'ale minister', because when it came time for the sermon many of the congregation would leave to quench.·their thirst at the ale-house next door! Robe described conditions in the church as, "a formal round of professional duties. . . and as to the multitude they were visibly profane".
Prior to the revival in Wales in 1859 the same problem existed . One revival historian writes, "The means of grace had become more or less a formality, made unattractive to the world by the coldness of its orthodoxy. Sinful practices were rampant and carried on openly without any sense of shame. The church was spiritually asleep, oblivious of its mission to the world, and satisfied with its lukewarm-ness". The prayer meetings were not burdened for the souls of the unconverted, and preaching was theoretical, oratorical and "popular" in the worst sense."
Sadly, this is descriptive of our day. For all our noise and claims, we can't recruit enough missionaries to meet the need and we can't adequately support the ones we have we have to beg and shame people to give financially to the work of the church we have qualified people who will not commit their talents to the work of the Lord we can't even get enough people to staff the nursery! Sermons are, in the. main, either dull or flippantly irrelevant. Did you hear about the milk cow that ·ate the preacher's sermon and wet dry! One modem writer dismisses preaching as "an ocean of verbiage". Few unbelievers are being converted and the Word of God does not seem to change the lives of God's people. My friends, if the living are not alive, what hope is there for the dead!?
The way many Christians behave and dress would have been unthinkable a generation ago. We have compromised our stand on the use of tobacco and alcohol under the pretense of 'personal spiritual freedom'. I would suppose some of you sitting in the pew today still hide the alcoholic beverages when your parents come to visit. Many are hooked on the mind-and-soul destroying drug of television . Americans watch an average of five hours a day. And when we do come to church we have a mind filled with impressions of the worst this world has to offer. We squabble and gossip and divide and are careless with the feelings of those who are sitting beside us who are in desperate need of friendship and help. We call ourselves "Christian Soldiers" and we go about our duties like an army on a forced march through a swamp.
There will be no revival if all we ever do is lament the sin in the world around us. After all, we should have learned in 2,000 years that sin what is to be expected of an unbelieving world. God comes to a people who admit their own sin and cry for forgiveness for their coldness and unholiness.
The problem with our nation is not the government, nor Bill Clinton, nor the educational system, nor the economic conditions, and it is not that dead and lifeless institutional religion that believes everything or nothing. The real problem lies with churches, like this one, who claim to have the truth and think they are rich in spiritual gifts and life, and yet are cold, apathetic and unattractive to the watching world. Covering our tracks with impressive, entertainment worship experiences will never convince a godless world of the reality of our God, though they may admire our showmanship. We can gather large numbers of Christians together for giant conferences, and monster banner-waving marches. These have their place and value. No one who was there can underestimate the value of the Promise Keepers Rally in Legion Field. No one can say that Billy Graham's massive crusades have not impacted the world. But there is the danger that those events may fool us into thinking that we are impacting the world a lot more than we are. The world will be won to Christ when individual Christians and local churches are revived and show and share Christ with the world!
During His ministry on earth, Christ spent much of his time turning the minds of His hearers to eternity. Many of His parables were about heaven and hell, like the vivid story of the rich man and Lazarus. Other parables spoke of the suddenness of death, like the rich fool and his barn. The parable of the tenant farmers taught about rewards and punishments, and the parable of the talents pointed to the day of judgment. And the list can go on. The terrifying thing about modem man is that he no longer feels afraid, or feels anything, about eternity. To describe hell as a Christ-less eternity is an irrelevancy to modem man. He lives all right without Christ now, so why not eternity? Eternity is not in their minds.
And when society no longer thinks about eternity, it almost goes without saying that it is because the church no longer thinks that way either. Our lives as Christians, and our worship when we are together, impress the world with our love for this life. There is little about us to convince the world that we are motivated for eternity. People do not touch eternity in our meetings, they rarely hear of it in our conversation and they certainly do not see it as the priority of our lives. Of course, appears in sermons occasionally, but we are not passionate about heaven and hell or the second coming of Christ, and we have lost a sense of accountability to God. One thing that revival does, and it always does it, is to reawaken, in both Christians and the community around, a sense of the reality of eternal issues. One observer described the eighteenth century as 'Stomach well alive, soul extinct'. How did that change? God sent a revival that swept across the nation until hundreds of thousands knew that God was real. When 40,000 people gathered in London in 1737, it was not to a sporting event. It was to hear George Whitefield preach the Gospel of eternal things. He was only twenty- two years old and was preaching to crowded churches in London and thousands were turned away because there was no room. He said, "They were all attention, and heard like people hearing for eternity''. When God comes in revival, whole communities are aware that there is a God and that eternal issues really matter. Not everyone will believe, but everyone will be made to think.
In 1859 when God swept Ulster, Northern Ireland with revival, the October meeting at the racecourse attracted less than 500 race-goers instead of the usual 10,000. The rest were at revival meetings . Clearly people were made to think about eternity.
In Wales in 1904, whole towns were stirred, and everybody was talking about Ged and eternity. National Soccer finals were canceled because people were attending revivals. Can you imagine Alabama or Auburn canceling a football game because everyone was at revival meetings?!
Duncan Campbell recalls the same thing happening on the Isle of Lewis in 1949: ''News of what was happening spread faster than the speed of gossip. . . within a matter of days the whole neighborhood was powerfully awakened to eternal realities. Work was largely set aside as people became concerned about their own salvation, or the salvation of friends and neighbors. In homes, barns and loom-sheds, by the roadside or the haystack, men could be found calling upon God. . ."
The population of New England in the eighteenth century was probably 340,000, and it is estimated that the revival there brought 50,000 to salvation. If 15% of the population is converted in a short time, everyone has to be thinking about eternity!
When Hezekiah came to the throne he did not begin by analyzing the disastrous effects of the rampaging Assyrian army; he called the Levites to "consecrate yourselves now and consecrate the Temple of the Lord" ·(2 Chronicles 29:5). He knew exactly where the problem of the nation really lay. lf we start where he started, we have hope for true revival. But we must start now!
Whole books can be written, and have been written about what is wrong with the church today.
We don't need any further analysis of the problems. We simply must admit that we have not been an eternity-minded people. We live like the world we are supposed to be saving. We live for the things of time rather than for the things of eternity. Our priorities are world-related rather than heaven-directed . Revival always begins by putting eternity back into the minds of the Christians, and only when the church takes eternity seriously can we expect the world to do so.
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