Thank you, Mark.
One of the words that is often overused in our day
is the word revival.
Sometimes I think that more than revival,
we need viable in this land.
We need life in the first place.
The one hears these days that there's a revival taking place.
Statistics are quoted to show that more people
are going to church than in many years.
Those who believe in God are in the majority by far,
and the percentage is increasing each year.
More Americans this year than last year
say that religion is a significant part of their lives.
On various religious programs, you
hear revival talked about, although we must remember
that revival is not talked up, it's prayed down.
But as I look in the Word of God and see what real revival is,
I wonder if we have genuine revival taking place in our land,
despite what some of these statistics tell us.
One of the great periods of revival in the Word of God
was a period of time after the captivity of Judah had ended.
I'm going to ask you to take your Bible and turn with me
to the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.
I have prayed, and I believe that many of you
have prayed as well, that we might see a great sweeping
of the Spirit of God across our nation in these days,
that we might see a revival, a genuine one.
How do we know a real revival?
Perhaps if we even have to ask the question,
is this real, it says something about the nature of it.
You'll recall a brief history of the nation of Israel in 586 BC.
The southern kingdom of Judah was carried away
into captivity by Babylon.
The city of Jerusalem and its glorious temple
was absolutely destroyed.
Jeremiah wept and preached, at least for a time,
to those people in captivity.
God raised up others of His prophets,
and it happened according to His Word that in 538,
Cyrus, who was the king of Persia,
granted the degree that the Jews could return to Jerusalem
and there begin to rebuild the city.
That is what the first part of the book of Ezra records.
It is the return to Jerusalem of about 50,000 Jews
under the law of Israel.
About 50,000 Jews under the leadership of their governor,
whose name was Erebabel.
Their concern was to build the temple of God again.
In chapter 3 and verse 8, it says,
now in the second year of their coming to the house of God
in Jerusalem in the second month,
the men listed here began the work.
In other words, a couple of years after they arrived
back in Jerusalem, they actually began the construction work
on the foundation of the temple.
This was in the year 535 BC.
It was this work which signaled the end of the 70 years
of predicted captivity of the people.
The 70 years had begun in 605 BC when Babylon made its first
incursion against Judah and took some of the people back
with them to Babylon, including Daniel.
70 years after that first incursion in 535,
the Jews are back in their land and they begin to build
the temple, but it does not go without opposition.
It is the work that God's work never does.
And for a time, the work remains dormant because of that
opposition.
But then, about 15 years later, the work begins again in
earnest and it took them four years to build the temple as it
was to be.
It was a temple that was greatly reduced in its glory.
And when the old men saw even the foundation of it,
the old men who had remembered the other temple,
they wept.
Many of the people, especially the younger people,
rejoiced at what was taking place in their midst.
But the older people wept as they remembered the glory that
had been the temples.
The work is completed on March the 12th, 515 BC.
And then a number of years passed, 58 years actually,
between chapters 6 and 7 of Ezra.
In chapter 7 we have Ezra's record of his own journey to
Jerusalem.
Before this he has written history,
but now he begins to write about his own experience.
In verse 10 we see a summary of the Spirit of God of this man
Ezra.
It is no wonder that what is about to occur did when you see
the character of this man who was their spiritual leader.
Verse 10, chapter 7, for Ezra had set his heart to study the
law of the Lord and to practice it and to teach his statutes
and ordinances in Israel.
When you find a man like that, something's going to happen.
That's the kind of a person you want to be,
isn't it?
It's the kind of person I want to be who soaks his heart in the
Word of God and then who practices it and then teaches
it, declares it to people.
Ezra records how the journey went and they finally arrived
safely in Jerusalem.
It took them about four months.
It was 900 miles as they would travel.
And the traveling was tough.
Not only was the terrain difficult,
but there were enemies along the way and bandits that
threatened them, but God preserved them.
And finally they arrived in Jerusalem.
After about four months being in the city,
a report came to Ezra regarding the spiritual situation of the
people.
We find this in Ezra chapter 9.
The report that came to Ezra was thus,
the people of Israel and the priests and the Levites.
Now those were the religious leaders who were responsible
for the service of the temple, right?
These people have not separated themselves from the people of
the lands according to the abominations and the elistos
people.
Verse 2, For they have taken some of their daughters as wives
for themselves and for their sons,
so that the holy race has intermingled with the peoples
of the lands.
Indeed, the hands of the princes and the rulers have been
foremost in this unfaithfulness.
The report was one of compromise.
Instead of the people of God remaining separate,
as God had called them, to holiness,
they compromised what God had told them and they began to
intermarry with the people of the land.
And whenever that took place, there was then the sharing of
standards and of gods and et cetera, et cetera.
So this was a very serious thing that had taken place.
It was an infraction of God's word.
Notice the response of this man of God in verse 3.
When I heard about this matter,
I tore my garment and my robe and pulled some of the hair from
my head and my beard and sat down appalled.
He was upset.
This is a typically oriental and Jewish way of expressing
astonishment and mourning and sorrow.
He pulled hair from his body, tore his clothing and sat
down.
Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel,
on account of the unfaithfulness of the exiles,
gathered to me and I set appalled until the evening
offering.
And when that time came, he fell on his knees and stretched
out his hands to the Lord, his God, and he began to pray.
I'm not going to take time to read this prayer.
May I encourage you to do that tonight before you go to bed.
Read the prayer of this man of God as he confesses his own
sins and the sins of his fathers and the sins of his
contemporaries.
He concludes by saying in verse 15,
Oh Lord God of Israel, Thou art righteous,
for we have been left an escaped remnant as it is this day.
Behold, we are before thee in our guilt,
for no one can stand before thee because of this.
It says that while he was praying and making confession,
weeping, and prostrating himself before the house of God,
a very large assembly, men, women, and children gathered to
him from Israel, for the people wept bitterly.
And the following verses then tell of the repentance in the
part of the people as the Spirit of God began to move upon
that land.
What do we see here?
In this revival, we do not see statistics being measured.
We do not see people talking about revival.
We see brokenness and tears.
We see people repenting of sin and turning from it.
And making restitution and correction in their lives.
My friend, that's revival.
The book of Ezra closes and we turn on to the book of Nehemiah.
Ezra made his journey about 557, excuse me, 457 to the land.
Some 13 years after the revival that we just read about,
Nehemiah is serving the king in the capital city.
The king is Artexerxes.
Nehemiah has an exalted position as a Jew.
He is the cupbearer of the king, which means that he was
daily in the presence of the king.
He was responsible for making sure that the wine of the king
was not poisoned.
And of course, the way that he did that,
he took a sip of it before the king would.
And if Nehemiah lived, the king would drink the wine.
The person who had that position was a very trusted man
to the king, obviously.
He was a bodyguard in a very literal sense.
Word came to Nehemiah that although the temple had been
rebuilt, yet the walls of the city of Jerusalem were in
disrepair and the gates of the city were still in their burned
condition.
Nehemiah wept as he heard this.
He was grieved that the city of his God should be in such a
state, so he began to pray.
God heard his prayer.
And some time later, while he was in the presence of the king,
the king noticed that his face was sad.
That was forbidden by law.
You did not go into the presence of the king with a sad
face.
It was punishable by death.
But the king trusted this man, Nehemiah, and said,
Nehemiah, what's the matter?
What's the problem with you?
And Nehemiah explained to him what his burden was.
And the king said, go back there and rebuild the wall and
fix those gates.
And so Nehemiah was commissioned to take another
group of exiles back for the purpose of the rebuilding of
the walls.
Now the early chapters of Nehemiah record that
construction and all the problems and all the ways that
Satan tried to hinder the rebuilding of the city.
It is a very, very interesting story.
If you have not read it lately, I encourage you to do that
this week.
But ultimately the work was accomplished and not only
accomplished but done in record time, 52 days.
52 days they rebuilt the walls around Jerusalem and
repaired the gates.
It was completed in September, this very month,
of 444 B.C.
In chapter 8 of Nehemiah we come again to this man Ezra.
He is in Jerusalem again.
Probably chapter 8 and these that follow are parenthetical,
not necessarily placed here in chronological order.
But we have here a record of a second great revival that came
to the people.
Now remember this is 13 years after the previous revival,
when they had made restitution for their sins.
In those 13 years they had slipped back into their old ways.
In chapter 8 and verse 1 of Nehemiah and all the people
gathered as one man at the square which is in the front of
the water gate.
It has a certain ring to it, doesn't it?
And they asked Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of
Moses which the Lord had given to Israel.
Then Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly of men,
women and all who could listen with understanding.
I guess they had a nursery on that occasion.
Not a bad idea.
On the first day of the seventh month this occurred,
that would have been September 27th, 444.
And Ezra read from it before the square which was in the
front of the water gate.
From early morning until midday in the presence of men and
women and those who could understand.
And all the people were attentive to the book of the law.
And Ezra the scribe stood at a wooden podium which they had
made for the purpose.
This is the first time that a pulpit or a podium is mentioned
in the Word of God.
And there were those who stood on his right and his left.
Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people for he
was standing above all the people.
And when he opened it all the people stood up.
Then Ezra blessed the Lord the great God.
And all the people answered, amen, amen,
while lifting up their hands.
Then they bowed low and worshiped the Lord with their
faces to the ground.
And then these men who were listed explained the law to the
people while the people remained in their place.
And they read from the book, from the law of God,
translating to give the sense so that they understood the
reading.
I like to think it was not only a translation of languages,
but it was also expository preaching of the Word of God.
So they understood not only what the words said,
but what they meant and how they applied to the lives of the
people.
And what was the response of the people?
They began to weep and to mourn.
The Word of God produced great conviction in their midst.
Interestingly, the leaders stopped it because this was the
occasion of the Feast of Tabernacles, or booze,
and they were not to be sad during that feast.
And so they said, stop crying, stop crying,
this is the wrong time.
What were they to do?
Well, he says, go in verse 10, eat of the fat,
drink of the sweets, send portions to him who is nothing
but the Lord, this day is holy to our God,
do not be grief for the joy of the Lord is your strength.
And so they obeyed and they observed that feast.
And then in chapter 9, a few days later,
toward the end of October, the sons of Israel assembled with
fasting in sackcloth and with dirt upon them.
This was not the normal way they would come together.
Sackcloth indicated they were coming for the purpose of
repentance.
The dirt on their heads, ashes, or dust,
meant the same.
And it says in verse 2, and the descendants of Israel
separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and
confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers.
While they stood in the place they read from the book of the
law of the Lord their God, for a fourth part of the day,
and for another fourth they confessed and worshiped the
Lord their God.
In other words, there was three hours of the reading of the
Word of God.
And that was followed by three hours of public confession and
the worship of the Lord.
And then the Levites stood up and they began to praise the
Lord and to cry out to Him and their prayer.
I think we can say legitimately their song, their hymn,
is recorded through the rest of this chapter.
Again, we don't have time to read it here.
I encourage you to read it.
I urge you, I beg you to read it.
And then beginning in chapter 10, we have the result of this
moving of the Spirit of God upon the people.
And they began to separate themselves.
Look at verse 28 of chapter 10.
It says, now the rest of the people, the priests,
the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers,
the temple servants, and all those who had separated
themselves from the peoples of the lands to the law of their
God, their wives, their sons, their daughters,
all who had knowledge and understanding,
are joining with their kinsmen, their nobles,
and are taking on themselves a curse and an oath to walk in
God's law.
What is taking place here?
Those people who had sensed the great moving of the Spirit of
God in their lives, and who as a result of that had
separated themselves from the peoples of the land instead of
conforming themselves to the practices of the heathen around
them, who had separated themselves from that unto the
Lord.
Separation is always that way, isn't it?
It is from something to something else.
They were bringing their lives into conformity to the Word of
God, and they were taking upon themselves an oath to obey the
law of God, and the rest of the book of Nehemiah deals with
what that involved, and how the nation was reformed,
and what steps they were taking to correct themselves.
What do we learn from this example of revival found in the
books of Ezra and Nehemiah?
I think we learn a couple of things at least.
What revival comes to your people in answer to prayer?
Ezra prayed, the people prayed, Nehemiah prayed,
and as a result of their pouring their hearts out to God,
the hand of God began to move.
And then the Word of God was declared.
It was expounded to the people.
It was explained to them so that they understood what God
expected of them.
And as the people saw what God said and saw where they were in
their lifestyles, the compromise, the lack of separation and
holiness, the lack of obedience, they repented,
and that's what revival is.
The repentance involved brokenness because of sin.
It involved weeping.
It involved acknowledgment of guilt.
It involved prayer of confession and praise.
It involved separation from sin unto obedience.
You can read in Nehemiah the last chapters there that it also
went into the families.
They began to teach the Word of God in their homes.
They began again to observe the Sabbath and to keep it holy.
They became obedient in supporting the work of God
financially and materially.
They began to attend faithfully the services of the
temple and to support the temple of God.
I believe that we need, like we have not in a long time,
a real revival in our land.
It is not enough for us to talk about it.
We must, each of us, get on our knees before God and ask God to
give us a brokenness of heart about our sins and a deeply
repentant spirit.
And then we must begin to correct our ways,
to make restitution where that is necessary,
to change our way of living.
We are so caught up in materialism.
We are so caught up in pleasing ourselves.
We are so caught up in the pleasures of our day.
Our hearts, our hearts are far from God.
And yet I sense that God is beginning to do something in
our midst, something that is more encouraging to me than has
happened since we began this ministry two and a half years
ago, because I sense in the hearts of at least a few that
God is beginning to create a hunger and a desire for a
deeper work of His Spirit.
And I believe that is the beginning of something.
I don't want to talk a great deal about it.
I'm not even sure how to characterize it.
I don't want to talk about it because I don't want to quench
or into any way stop what the Spirit of God is doing quietly.
But there are some of you sitting here tonight that know
exactly what I mean.
I'm talking about becoming burdened about our lifestyles.
I'm talking about sensing that our relationships with people
are abrupt and self-centered, self-serving.
I'm talking about the influence of the world upon our thinking.
I'm talking about the deadness that so much television and
theater attendance and that kind of thing has created in our
hearts.
I'm talking about pornography, which some of us have
imbibed in.
I'm talking about the kinds of things that take place on some
of the cable systems that some of God's people are watching.
God is doing a work in our midst.
And as he begins to peel back and to expose our hearts,
rather than making excuses, our response to your people must be
getting into the closet alone with God and there repenting
and there turning from our evil ways and returning in obedience
to the Lord our God.
I'd like for us to bow together in prayer.
About a year ago, I shared with you a prayer of confession one
evening in communion.
I'd like for us to consider these words again tonight.
Will you think with me, pray with me as we offer this prayer
to the Lord?
Merciful Lord, pardon all of my sins of this day, week,
and year, all the sins of my life, sins of early,
middle, and advanced years, sins of omission and commission,
of morose, peevish, and angry tempers, of life,
lip, and walk, sins of hard-heartedness,
unbelief, presumption, pride, of unfaithfulness to the souls of
men, of want of bold decision in the cause of Christ,
of deficiency in outspoken zeal for His glory,
of bringing dishonor upon Thy great name,
of deception, injustice, untruthfulness in dealing with others,
sins of impurity and thought, word and deed,
of covetousness which is idolatry,
of substance unduly hoarded,
improvidently squandered and not consecrated to the glory of
Thee, the great giver, sins in private and in the family,
in study and recreation, in the busy haunts of men,
in the study of Thy Word and in the neglect of it,
sins in prayer irreverently offered and coldly withheld,
in time misspent, in yielding to Satan's wiles,
in opening my heart to his temptations,
and being unwatchful when I know him nigh,
in quenching the Holy Spirit,
sins against light and knowledge,
sins against conscience and the restraints of Thy Spirit,
sins against the law of eternal love,
pardon all my sins, known and unknown,
felt and unfelt, confessed and not confessed,
remembered or forgotten, Lord hear and hearing forgive.
Would you take your hymnal and turn with me to the number that Mark
has been suggesting to us? Search me, O God.
The number is 300.
I'm not sure if Skip, do you have the number?