A Heart Prepared For Revival

Introduction

Make sure Bob locks the front doors.

Turn to Joel 2:12-13.

Joel was one of the Old Testament Minor Prophets. He was an Old Testament preacher sent from God to deliver a message of revival to the spiritually dead people of Israel.

There’s not much background information on Joel. In fact, we know so little about him that there is lengthy debate about when he even lived and preached. More or less, all we know about Joel is found in the three chapters of this book.

As I said earlier, Joel was sent to preach a message of revival. Unlike other prophets, he doesn’t make clear what sins Israel was guilty of. Their sins aren’t identified, but it didn’t need to be. The call for repentance was the same.

Two themes stand out in the book of Joel.

Joel’s description of an apocalyptic locust swarm

Joel’s repeated reference to the day of the Lord

In chapter one, Joel describes the destruction that a plague of locust had brought upon Israel.

Read Joel 1:3-4, 10.

"Researchers who have experienced twentieth century locust plagues in the Near East confirm the accuracy of Joel's graphic depiction. The mature desert locust has a wingspan of about four inches, and a body length of about three inches. Locusts look like large grasshoppers. Technically, what distinguishes a true locust from a large grasshopper is behavior. When conditions are right, grasshoppers that normally act as solitary individuals begin to swarm. Great clouds of the insects will rise during daylight hours in search of moist green vegetation. The sky can be blackened to an altitude of five thousand feet over tens of square miles. A swarm can contain over a billion creatures that, all together, can weigh more than three million pounds. When a species of grasshoppers exhibits this type of behavior they are called locusts. Israel is the northernmost range of the migratory desert locusts. During a single day a locust swarm can travel sixty miles. During the course of a migration a swarm may move up to six hundred miles. In 1959 a locust plague in Ethiopia lasted six weeks. A conservative estimate is that these locusts consumed enough food to feed one million people for a year. (The Minor Prophets by James E. Smith, College Press, 1994, pp. 66-67.)

An event like this would be absolutely devastating to an ancient agrarian society like Israel’s, but that is what Joel describes in chapter one. That is what Israel had recently endured when Joel began to preach.

Joel used that event to prophesy that another great judgement day of the Lord was coming. He uses the vivid imagery of a locust swarm to describe an enemy that God would send upon Israel and bring sure destruction.

Read Joel 2:10-11.

In the middle of this message of impending doom, the Lord opens His hands and His heart towards His people and says these words:

Slowly read Joel 2:12-13.

Church family, tonight I’m not trying to scare you into revival. I don’t have an inside scoop on a coming locust swarm upon the farms of Pennsylvania. But what I do want more than anything is that this core group of our church, our Sunday night crowd, will have a heart prepared for revival.

Revival can be described in many good ways, but I like to keep it simple. A revived Christian is a Christian that’s serious about God. A revived Christian is a Christian that cares about their walk with God more than anything else. It’s a Christian who has turned to God with all of their heart, and that may be apparent by fasting, by weeping, and by mourning over sin. It’s a Christian who has a broken and humble heart.

Since we’ve been spending our Wednesday nights doing the Bible study on the Christian home, we’ve not spent much time together as a church praying for and preparing for our revival services. This evening, I want to do that. We’re going to spend our remaining time praying for ourselves and for each other.

Consider what I’m about to say: I don’t believe you need to pray for revival tonight. Rather, you will experience revival if you humble yourself, confess your sin, and turn to God with all of your heart. If you do that tonight during our prayer time, you will have A Heart Prepared For Revival.

Invite the men to go pray in the lobby.

Ladies to pray in the auditorium.