Hope Church LV Sermons
OPEN MY EYES :: A HEARTCRY FOR SPIRITUAL AWAKENING
How many of you believe that America needs revival? How many of you recognize that our nation needs a mighty move of God? How many of you agree that as a country we need a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God that changes us socially, morally, spiritually and culturally? You believe that? I don't want you to answer this next one out loud. Why is it not happening? I don't answer out loud. I'm not wanting to put anybody on the spot today. But you really expressed what I believe to be consensus in churches all across America. We look at our society, we look at our culture, we look at our political landscape, we look at our moral values and in the church, we wholeheartedly believe that what our country needs more than it needs anything else, as a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God. We don't need just a series of services and gatherings. We need a movement of God, a movement of God like we have read about at times and seasons in our history, a movement of God like we have read about in other places and locations around the world. And why is it not happening? Can I be real honest with you today? The answer to that question is sitting in this room. Are you okay? I didn't see anybody get up and leave so we were okay so far. One of the, I almost delivered this message today, sitting on a stool with a table. Let me tell you why, because when you're the preacher, you have to endure what I'm about to say for the next 30 or 40 or sometimes 50 minutes, right? Don't panic you all right. When you're the preacher, you have to live with it for a week and sometimes weeks as you prepare for standing here. We don't just get up on Sunday morning and say, "Lord, what you got today? Give it to me and then show up here." And every time when you're preaching, the real challenge is to make sure that you just don't have to say something but to make sure you have something to say. And if you're going to get there, you got to let the word have its way in your life. And as honest as I can be, this week was really uncomfortable for me. So I feel like I ought to be sitting down with you and not standing up because what I'm going to talk about today, it's been wearing me out. Let me show you in the Bible why I said what I said about the answer to that question. If you have your Bible, I want you to turn to 2 Chronicles 7. One of the verses I'm about to read for you, you've heard many times, it's quoted just about every national day of prayer that you've ever been to. But the surrounding context is the description of the verses where Solomon has completed the temple and the palace and Solomon has prayed this prayer of dedication over the house of God and God begins to speak to Solomon. Second Chronicles chapter 7, I hope you found it there in your Bible. If you're in 1st and 2nd Samuel or 1st and 2nd Kings, just keep moving to the right, you'll get there. The pages may be stuck together in this book, just pull them apart. That's not one we go to for our daily, pick me up on a regular occasion, right? I want to begin reading in verse 11, we're going to put it on the screen if you don't have a Bible with you this morning. Thus Solomon finished the house of the Lord and the king's palace and successfully completed all that he had planned on doing in the house of the Lord and in his palace then the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him, "I've heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice." And in verse 13, he begins to do something interesting. He begins to describe what it looks like in society when people begin to turn from God and what begins to happen is really what is the judgment of God on a society. He said, "If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locus to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people." Verse 14, and there's an IF that's implied there from verse 13, and IF my people, you need to underline that, he didn't say if those people. He didn't say if they, he said, if my people. And in case we did not understand exactly what he was implying, he says it with greater specificity, who are called by my name. If things in the land are not as they should be, Solomon, if my people. If the people that are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, wait a minute, my people, that there goes with my people. If my people who are called by my name, if they will humble themselves and they will pray, those people call by my name, if they will seek my face, if those people call by my name, if they will turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will for give their sin and will, say it out loud, heal their land. You see, we look at society and culture, and we immediately want to play the blame game. We look at the morals and the values in our culture, and we get together in our little holy huddles, and we look out there at them, and we say they need to dot dot dot. If they'll just dot dot dot, and all the while the book says, them's not the problem. It's not good English, but it's good theology. We want to blame our politicians. I watched it this week. My friend, Louis Giglio, you saw it in the news, Louis Giglio, personal friend, he spoke for us at our conference in Phoenix last year, I spoke with him again in October to conference where we spoke together, Louis had been invited by the President of the United States to pray at the inauguration this year because of his stance on ending sexual slavery in the world, he called the attention of the national media and was invited by the White House to pray at the inauguration, but then those that do what they do begin to dig deep into Louis Giglio's life, and it surfaced that a few years ago, 15 years ago, Louis had preached a message that took a strong stance on biblical sexuality and biblical marriage, and Louis was pressured to withdraw from praying at the inauguration. I watched as Christians on social media begin to point a finger at politicians and our president and politics and society, and the book says that's not the problem. You see, what we're seeing in our society today is a symptom of the problem. The real problem is sitting comfortably in churches all across the United States of America this morning, the real problem is a people of God, my people, he says, who have become grossly apathetic, not with what's going on in society, but have become grossly apathetic with what's going on in our own lives. And what we're seeing in our society is simply the bubbling up of what's happening inside of our own houses of worship. We want to blame the sports heroes and the celebrities. We want to blame the Hollywood crowd and movies and social media and music. We want to blame all the symptoms. What the book said, if my people, if my people, let me give you an example, all right, okay? Turn over to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. Say this phrase with me, the will of God, said out loud, the will of God. When you think about the will of God, we tend to think about the will of God as something mysterious, right? We think about the will of God as something hidden. What we think about the will of God is people say, oh, I'm trying to discover the will of God, I'm trying to find the will of God, I'm trying to discern the will of God. And listen, there are some aspects of the will of God that are more difficult to understand and discern than other aspects of the will of God. But 98% of it's in black and white in the book. We spend so much time worried about the 2% we're not sure about. We don't even pay attention to the 98% of it that's in black and white. And here's what the book says, if you'll pay attention to the 98% that's in black and white, the other 2% is just going to fall right into place. 1 Thessalonians 4 verse 3, "For this is the will of God," uh-oh, he's about to say something real plain here, read that first phrase with me. Here we go. "For this is the will of God." Not much ambiguity in that statement. What are the next two words? Your sanctification. The word sanctification is a word that could be translated holiness. Here's what he said, here's God's will for you, live holy. "It means to live my life consistent with the character and commandments of God." Not just on Sunday morning. He says, "You don't get real plain? Here's God's will for you, live holy." Ten days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, you just live holy. And then he says, let me give you an example in one area of what that looks like. For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that is that you abstain from sexual immorality. Now we've gotten real good in the church at hearing a word like sexual immorality and identifying one or two things that we consider to be deviant in our society. And we'll beat that to death while there's rampant sexual immorality all inside of the house of God. And we understand, and we have a hard time understanding why they don't get it. You see, oftentimes they see the book more clearly than we do. What they don't understand is why we can pick and choose a few things and make that the issue and other things just go unnoticed. The word sexual immorality here is the Greek word that's going to sound familiar, "pornea." Awesome people just got real nervous. Let me tell you what it means. It's the most basic word in the Bible for sexual sin. It means any sexual expression outside of God's divine design that is sex inside of marriage for pleasure, intimacy, and reproduction between a man and a woman, a husband and a wife. Anything that is sexual expression outside of that, the Bible says is unholy and therefore not the will of God for you or me. That's what he says, verse 4, "That each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God, and that no man transgress and defraud his brother in the matter because the Lord is the Avenger in all things. Just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you, "For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity but in sanctification." Listen to verse 8, "So he who rejects this, you're not rejecting man, but the God who gives his Holy Spirit to you." Now, this where it started messing me up this week, because I want you to think about the implications of what we just read, and we just read one paragraph. It's a big book. Here are the implications of that paragraph, what do you watch on TV? Now, when I see you, I'm talking about me too. I don't want you to look up here today and think, "Boy pastor, man, he's got this all figured out." No, I told you up front, all to be sitting right there. Just mess me up this week, movies. What are you dabbling in on the Internet? Students, you're living in the generation where you always got something in your ears. What are you listening to? You see, we've allowed what breaks the heart of God to become acceptable means of entertainment for us. Think about how much we watch and listen to, how much of it is dominated by sexual morality, how much of it celebrates sex outside of God's divine design, and yet, and I'm confessing the shows that we watch the movies that we go to that celebrate, and we laugh and we're entertained, and then we want to rise up and stand in judgment of the world and wonder why they don't get it? God says wholly what the world sees is hypocrisy. Listen to the way Andy Stanley wrote about it in his book Louder Than Words. This is so powerful. Listen, look at it on the screen. Every week through the media of movies, music, or movies, videos, and television, Christians entertain themselves with depictions of the very sins which Christ died for. Yet in most cases, these Christians are not the least bit grieved by this. For some reason, it doesn't strike us as sinful, especially if we are, quote of age. After all, the movie rating system says we're old enough to handle these things, so what's the problem? And consequently, scenes that would break the heart of God elicit laughter and cheers from his children. And worst of all, we rarely give it a second thought. Perhaps, you've never given much thought to how God feels about the things you call entertainment. After all, you were just unwinding, relaxing with some friends. But the reason it didn't bother you is because you aren't sensitive to it, and that's the nature of a hard heart. When what grieves God no longer grieves you, your heart is hard. And what bothers God doesn't bother you anymore, your heart is hard. I don't know where that hits you today. But God reached into my life this week, and I'm not where I need to be, but God shook me about some stuff. God said if my people, who are called by my name, it's a statement of ownership. When I was a boy, I was probably 10 or 11 years old. I had a friend who lived down the street from me, his name was Mark. Mark came over to my house, and Mark in the street gutter close to our home had found a lighter, cigarette lighter. And 10 or 11 year old boys, we were fascinated with this cigarette lighter. I lived, there was a field that was about probably 100 yards long and 60, 70 yards wide that was between my house and the next house down the street from me, on the street behind us. It's a big vacant lot. And most of the year that big vacant lot stood with grass, you know, up to about your knee, but in the summertime in the south with the humidity and the heat, that grass would just die. And it just looked like a big old dead field of hay. Well Mark and I thought it was really cool to light some of that grass on fire and throw it down and step on it and watch it go out real quick. So we're 10, 11 year old boys out there right in the middle of this 100 yard long 70, 80 yard wide, vacant lot full of dried out straw in all of our brilliance, lighting it, throwing it down and stomping on it real fast. Well, you don't take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened, right? We threw one down and before we knew it, there was a 100 yard burning field. Fire trucks came, police came, and we're running around with garbage can leads me and Mark trying to beat this thing out. And it's all said and done. My dad wanted to see me, but I told him, Mark found the lighter, Mark brought the lighter, and lit the lighter, Mark threw the grass, Mark, you know what was interesting? My dad was not looking for revival to take place in Mark's life. Your last name wasn't Pittman. Vance's last name was Pittman. You see, I was called by his name. If, my people, oh, it's the politicians, it's all this legislation, my people. It's the sports heroes and the Hollywood celebrities and the filth and the garbage and the music and the movies. God is not looking for repentance and revival in those people. God is looking for repentance and revival among his people. My people. Listen to what the Bible says about you and me. Just Peter chapter two verse nine, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him. You hear what he's saying, this is who you are, this is who I am, and God has brought us to himself that our lives may proclaim the excellencies of his name, whose name, the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous life. My people, listen to verse 14 again, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin and heal their land. I want to just give you quickly two conditions that he gives us. It sounds like four, but it's not four, it's two. In the Hebrew text, these are woven together in two phrases, two conditions. Now, don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying if we get these two right, there'll be a movement of God in our country. Here's what I am saying, we cannot create a movement of God. What we can create is an atmosphere that should God and his sovereign choose to move. We're ready. That's the first one, a desperation for God that produces prayer. And the key word here that I want you to really wrap your heart around is the word humility, a desperation for God that produces prayer. If my people will humble themselves and pray. The word humble here is a word that means lowly or meek and it's a word that implies dependence, describes a walking, a living in desperate dependence for God. Here's a defining statement, let me give it to you. Humility towards God is the awareness of our desperate need for him. Read that out loud with me. Humility towards God is the awareness of our desperate need for him. Listen to me, listen, listen, lean in close. We need God. Let me say this out over here. Listen. We need God. We need God more than we know we need God. You think you know you need God. No, no, no. I'm telling you, you need God. John 15-5, Jesus closed that verse on the vine in the branches and he said, "Apart from me you can do what?" Nothing. You know the problem. We think he said, "Apart from me you can't do big things." That's what we think he said. You know how I know that? Oh, let big things come up in our life and guess what, I need God. Get that word from the doctor or that call from your spouse or that police officer at your front door. Get that pink slip from the office and, "Oh, my, I need God, preacher." Call the small group. It's time to pray. He didn't say, "Apart from me you can't do big things." He said, "Apart from me you can do what?" Nothing. You can't even worship today without him. I couldn't wake up this morning with breath in my body without him. I cannot love my wife as Christ loved the church without him. I cannot lead my children to know the Lord and discipline them in the truth without him. I cannot be a friend to my friends without him. I can't be a pastor to one person, much less thousands of people without him. He gives us the evidence here when we're walking in desperation, whether it's humility. We pray. Really by saying prayer here, he's using the most generic word in the Bible for pray. But really he's just talking about being alone with God, crying out to God alone. When do you pray the most? When you're the most desperate, right? Let things just be cruising along and it's all good, but let that big thing pop up. Oh my goodness. We've become prayer warriors three quiet times a day, morning, noon and night, right? There are people all over this country today who are sitting in seats just like this with a judgmental attitude towards society and the way people are living in our culture who would say just like you did America needs to change and they won't give it another thought or pick up the word of God or pray until next Sunday morning when they're sitting back in those same seats. Some of you today, the last time you thought about God was last Sunday when you were here. God says, if you want to see an awakening, there needs to be a desperation that produces prayer. Listen to the way William McDonald described it. He said ordinarily we would rather do anything than pray, but it is only when we wait before God and desperate, believing, fervent, unhurried prayer that the reviving, energizing power of the Spirit of God is poured out. Here's the first question I want you to think about. Am I walking in humility? Does my prayer life, my time alone with God crying out to Him, does it demonstrate desperation for God? You know what's frustrating? Man, as Christians, we spend more time complaining about society than we do praying about it. Oh, we'll debate, we'll debate till we run out of breath. We'll point fingers, fingers will argue, will complain, will gripe, will blame, but it is not going to change until we get desperate for God and get on our face before Him understanding we as people of God, we need God. Here's the second one. A pursuit of God that leads to repentance. And the word I'm giving you here is the word holiness, humility, holiness. A pursuit of God that leads to repentance. If my people humble themselves and pray, here's the second phrase, seek my face and turn from their wicked ways. I love how He connected those two things together. You see, you cannot seek His face without turning from your wicked ways. The word seek here is a word that denotes seeking someone's presence, the word turn. The basic meaning is a movement back to the point of departure. You hear what He's saying? He's describing here that His people, their hearts, have wandered from His presence. And they fixed themselves again on the things of this world. And in order to seek His presence, we must turn away from the things that have once again captured our hearts. You see, the Bible calls us as followers of Jesus, a living sacrifice. You know that's an oxymoron, right? A sacrifice is usually something that's dead, a living sacrifice. You know the problem with a living sacrifice, it can crawl off the altar. That's what He's saying's happened. Yes, we repented, we turned from our sins, we trusted Christ in the gospel, we laid our lives on the altar and surrendered ourselves to the holiness of God. But over time our hearts have crept off the altar and we've once again begun to wrap our hearts around the things of this world and we've become so entangled with our culture. We don't know where it stops and starts. God looks at us and says, "If my people," you see repentance is not just a one-time experience resulting in salvation, repentance for the believer is a way of life. Clyde Cranford said it this way, "Real repentance bears fruit and one fruit it bears is a continual turning from sin to God." Silence that is not ongoing is not genuine repentance. You see, you cannot seek His presence and continue in your sin. Now, don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm not saying that this means as a Christian we don't struggle anymore. I'm not saying that as a Christian we don't battle temptation and in moments yield to temptation. That's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that if my way of life is rebellion against God and not repentance toward God there is a problem. If the pattern of life that I'm living, listen as Christians we're capable of any sin under heaven and we know that because a whole bunch of them have been committed this week. Amen? That's a good place for an amen, you all right? But as a Christian when we sin it grieves the heart of God and because God lives in me it grieves my heart and the spirit of God begins to work in my life, convicted me of sin and my lifestyle now is not one of choosing rebellion. My lifestyle is one where I recognize that is rebellion and God deals with me in my heart and my lifestyle is one of day in and day out moment by moment yielding back to God, falling back on the altar and walking in holiness before God. That is now the pattern of our lives. What he's pointing out here is that there are seasons when the people of God get so wrapped up in the things of the world that they begin to walk, not in repentance but in rebellion. Listen to what 1 John 1 and verse 6 says, this is again where it's pretty plain, listen to what it says, if we say that we have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness say the next two words, you said it not me, now here's what that says, if I say I'm walking with God, I love God, God loves me, me and God are good, and yet I continue to walk in darkness. The word walk here describes a way of life, a pattern of behavior, not a slipping, not a stepping into sin and sense and conviction, but my lifestyle is one where I've chosen rebellion against God, me and God are good, yet my lifestyle is in darkness. The word says, the book says, you're a liar, you can't seek his face and not turn from known sin, now that's an important word known sin, sin that God has made aware in your life because let's be honest, there's stuff in our lives right now we don't even know about yet, God hadn't shown us, if you've been walking with God for the length of time at all, you know that the closer you get to him the more you realize, hey this stuff, I didn't even know it was wrong five years ago and I know it's not pleasing to God, I can't deal with stuff I don't know about but what I know about I can deal with and God's shown it to me to turn it over to him and seek his face, here's the second question, am I walking and holding this, does my life demonstrate a pursuit of God that leads to ongoing repentance in my life, humility, holiness, humility, holiness, he didn't say if my people will just try to be good Christians compared to the rest of the world, he said humility and holiness and then listen to the promise, three words, hear, forgive, heal, God says when my people are walking in humility and holiness I will hear, here's what that means, when my people are walking in humility and holiness they've got my ear, I'll forgive, later in 1 John he said if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to cleanse us, to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from what, all and righteous, see what that means, if we confess our sins, the known sins, the sins that God's pointed out in my life, if I deal with those, this is what he said, he'll forgive me of those sins and he'll cleanse me from all the stuff I don't even know about yet, he'll forgive our sins that we've confessed and he'll cleanse continuously, all the stuff I don't even know about yet that he's going to deal with later on, he'll hear, he'll forgive, oh and then listen, he'll heal, oh it's a beautiful word, it means to make whole or to make fresh, wouldn't you love for God to make our nation whole, it's not going to start with them, it's going to start with us, what a great word for our sick, unhealthy, broken city, heal, Las Vegas needs to heal, where is it start, listen to me, not on Las Vegas Boulevard, it starts in this room, it starts in this room, my people who are called by my name.