Sermon Tone Analysis

I Am Proud of My Humility

2 Chronicles 7:14

 

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 will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

Joseph Parker, pastor of London’s City Temple in a previous century, once stated: *The man whose little message is ‘Repent!’ had best pledge his head toward heaven*.

Repentance cost John the Baptist his ministry, his reputation, and his head.

The message of repentance insured that Jesus would be received with studied coolness by the religious authorities of His day.

The message to repent was not one which religious leaders warmly embraced when Peter and the other Apostles preached it in Jerusalem.

Arguably, the greatest preacher to minister among Christian and Missionary Alliance churches was A. W. Tozer.

His message was *Repent*.

By the end of his life, he was banned from virtually every major conference in North America because the message was odious to religious leaders.

Repentance is perhaps the hardest message to deliver in this day—and it is perhaps the most needed message of this day.

On one occasion, I preached in a chapel service at the First Baptist Church of Oak Cliff in Dallas, Texas, a large church of several thousand members.

At the conclusion of the service I was confronted by a friend who ministered in that church.

“Mike,” he solemnly intoned, “it was a great sermon, and we need to hear the message; but we don’t want that message.

You’ll never be invited back to speak in this church.”

The message which invited such stern rebuke was the message that the lack of vigorous advance bears testimony to the fact that as a people of God we are in need of repentance.

What was true for that Dallas church and for the churches of the Southern United States holds equally true for the churches of Canada and more specifically for our church.

Though concerned for the spiritual health of evangelical churches in our nation, in our province and in this region, I am particularly concerned for the spiritual health of this congregation.

So long as God gives me opportunity to address this community of faith I am obligated to call for repentance and to seek the spiritual welfare of this church.

I am not greatly exercised over the lack of perspicuity or the absence of spiritual sensitivity among the liberal churches—they departed the Faith long ago and have scant prospects for revival.

Let the United Church follow its sordid path.

We welcome those few vibrant fellow believers who yet provide a dim light within those darkened environs.

Let the Anglican Church continued its downward plunge toward the divine judgement.

We yet rejoice with those few fellow saints who courageously maintain a witness even within the stench arising from the garbage heap of darkened liberal theology which today defines that religious society.

However, I am greatly concerned that the evangelical churches, and especially those churches which claim to hold Baptist convictions, continue to honour God through seeking out the place where He works and endeavouring to there work together with Him.

I am greatly concerned that the churches with a reputation of being alive should reveal that life which is found in Christ alone.

In that vein I propose, by the grace of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ, to invest time during the coming several weeks laying a foundation for revival in our day.

Though I dare not perhaps expect to be the means by which revival comes to the whole of the Christian community of our city, I pray that we, through understanding the will of God and through uniting to insure that that will is carried out, will become a catalyst for revival.

Though others may elect to continue for a time in sullen refusal to seek revival, may God give you and me grace to experience a fresh filling of His Spirit.

The Premise from Which God Speaks — I am well aware of the context in which this best known of all biblical promises is given.

There are those scholars which say, with some justification, that this promise does not apply to us in this age of grace.

The promise was given to Solomon in response to His prayer at the dedication of the Temple he had built.

It is predicated upon a relationship which is utterly foreign to us in this day.

No nation in the whole of history, save ancient Israel, can claim that *every* victory was the result of obedience to God and that *every* defeat was the result of disobedience to God.

There is a sense in which this promise specifically has no application to us or to our day.

There is yet another, more general sense, in which the promise ever applies to any and to all who are called by the Name of the Living God.

Whenever a people turn from God, they may anticipate that they surrender any claim to intimacy with Him through their rebellion.

We anticipate blessing in proportion to the degree of righteousness.

Should we not likewise anticipate the forfeiture of blessing in proportion to spiritual frowardness?

I have no difficulty in appropriating this promise to the churches of our Lord, though I am cautious in daring to think that it has application in a national sense.

Solomon had prayed for God to fulfil the promise made to Israel through Moses.

In his closing words to the people he had shepherded for forty years, Moses again informed Israel of God’s promises.

In *Deuteronomy 28:1-14* the blessings which applied under the Old Covenant are spelled out in detail: exaltation above other nations; deliverance from enemies; agricultural bounty; children; freedom from national debt and want.

However, should the nation prove disobedient, God would curse them severely [*Deuteronomy 28:15-68*].

It was these horrendous curses which prompted Solomon to pray, imploring God to remember His promise to bless should the people, having been judged, repent and turn again to obedience to God and His covenant.

Solomon’s prayer, and more particularly his specific requests of God, is recorded in *2 Chronicles 6:14-42*.

I want you to take special note of an important factor frequently overlooked in reading this portion of the Word—God answered *thirteen years after Solomon prayed*.

While I agree that it is important to bear in mind that God *did* answer His prayer, there is encouragement in the knowledge that God need not immediately answer my prayer nor give me assurance that He shall answer to make His grace certain and to assure an answer.

It was when Solomon had finished the temple of the LORD and the royal palace, and had succeeded in carrying out all he had in mind to do in the temple of the LORD and in his own palace that the LORD appeared to him at night [*2 Chronicles 7:11*].

Though not immediately germane to the message this day, this is more important than any of us dare imagine.

When you pray and do not receive an answer immediately, do not despair, God hears and He will answer according to His will and in His time.

Persist in prayer, saints of God.

However, this particular prayer anticipates repentance, anticipates a time when God has delivered His people over to the consequences of their own folly, and they, humbled and in straitened circumstances resulting from their foolish choices, again turn to Him for mercy.

Chastened, they are brought to the point of deepest humility as they are forced to confess their lack of strength and inability to accomplish any great deed outside the power of God.

In order to see this clearly, consider the promise in its context.

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, 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 will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land [*2 Chronicles 7:13, 14*].

God speaks of the heavens being shut up so that no rain falls; He speaks of locusts devouring the land and of a plague among the people.

All these events are by His design.

Our concept of God’s intervention in the world frequently betrays a sort of spiritual schizophrenia.

On the one hand, we harbour the hope that God will only do good.

The further we stray from God the more we seem to consider Him incapable of judging at all.

You may recall the divine confrontation of such errant thinking in *Zephaniah 1:12*:

 

At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps

and punish those who are complacent,

who are like wine left on its dregs,

who think, The LORD will do nothing,

either good or bad.

Having strayed from God, we, too, shut knowledge of Him from our minds, perhaps because the thought of divine confrontation is too painful for us and because we stubbornly refuse to release our clinging grasp of that which is evil.

However, even as we witness the tendency to reduce God to an absent landlord at best and a nonentity at worst, we speak of *acts of God* every time we see the power of nature unleashed.

Earthquakes, cyclones, droughts, floods—all alike are classed as *acts of God*.

I believe we can safely conclude that God is not only capable of judging the world but that He does intervene to call mankind to account from time-to-time, even calling nations to account—nations which overwhelmingly reject knowledge of His mercy.

However, today I am less concerned with nations than with congregations, and in particular I am concerned with this congregation.

I fear that God does judge His people and that even in this day and even in our midst, we may yet see the judgement of God.

In the verse immediately preceding the text before us, God speaks of shutting off the rain, of sending locusts to devour the land and of plague.

I look about us at the broader community of faith and I am certain that I can see withdrawal of blessing and delivery of peoples over to judgement.

I look more particularly at us as a congregation and I wonder whether I see the judgement of God.

It is only the dullness of our hearts which keeps us from recognition of the withdrawal of His blessing.

It is only because we are consumed with promoting our own individual interests that we only dully sense the loss of rich blessing.

It is only because we are out of touch with Heaven that we have no sense of spiritual loss.

Has our life as a church—has our life as individuals—grown dry and dusty with no blessing of God poured out on us?

Where God blesses, the people are as a well watered plain.

How precious is the promise of God through Isaiah:

 

This is what the LORD says—

he who made you, who formed you in the womb,

and who will help you:

Do not be afraid, O Jacob, my servant,

Jeshurun, whom I have chosen.

For I will pour water on the thirsty land,

and streams on the dry ground;

I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring,

and my blessing on your descendants.

They will spring up like grass in a meadow,

like poplar trees by flowing streams.

[*Isaiah 44:2-4*]

 

Do you not long for fullness of life only to witness locusts devour your blessings?

I speak of the locusts which steal joy and rob us of peace.

I speak of those locusts which are so abundantly prevalent in this vapour we call life.

Our joy which should arise from knowing the Creator is eaten by the locust of *scientific thought* until we dare not speak of the Name of the Most High God.

We are silent, fearing that some may ridicule our faith.

We are devoured by the locust of *tolerance* so that we dare not speak aloud in condemnation of sin.