Let's actually begin with a word of prayer. Father, we are gathered from our schedules and our lives from our homes to come here to sit before you, to sit under the teaching of your word, to be formed by your word, to be changed by your word. And Lord, we want ultimately to have your word preached, and as your word is preached, that it would point us to the living word. To your Son Jesus. Ask now that you would do that, Father, that you would send your Spirit, be active in our midst, give us a sense of your holy word's power, give us an unwavering sense of the truthfulness of your word, of the usefulness of your word for us today. We pray that you would do all these things. In the name of Your Son Jesus, amen.
Well, I think if we're honest with ourselves, we can all recognize times in our past, no matter how long you've been a Christian, where there are moments in your spiritual life that can sometimes seem dry. Where if you're honest with yourself spiritually, it actually doesn't seem like you're doing well, or you really recognize, I want to be doing better. Maybe if you look at those periods, you're able to even recognize that there's just a downright coldness to God. There's a sense of His distance. You come to worship and there's this ongoing, long sense of just no passion when you sing. You come and you read God's Word, or you gather with God's people, or you go to small group, to care group, And there's just not a sense that God's near. I think we experience seasons like that. Other times, we don't feel like we're on spiritual life support. We feel like we're doing pretty well. We actually have a strong desire to come and worship. There's a desire to come and sing praises to God. There's an anticipation to come to the Lord's table with God's people, to gather during the week, to sit under the teaching of God's Word. And yet, even during those good times, there can still be a sense, a desire, something the Spirit is stirring up for more, for a deepening even of affections that seem to be stirred towards Christ. Sometimes spiritually the situation is we've become aware that we're trapped in sin. Sometimes as believers, you come to a point where you actually see with renewed clarity a particular sin that you've been struggling with. Sometimes It gets to a point where you're finally ready to fight. You've been aware of the sin, but you've just been sort of wallowing in it. And the Spirit brings renewed conviction. And you realize and you sense a desire, "I want to put this to death. And I want to put it to death because I want to draw near to God." You recognize through the Spirit's work that you've been drifting. And as you're aware of that drift, you realize By God's grace, you need to repent. And so you're ready to cry out to God. I think we can all identify moments and seasons like that in our lives as believers. Whatever the reason, whether it's spiritual dryness or it's repentance or it's just a growing desire, a growing sense that you want to understand more of the Gospel, You want to love God more deeply. We find ourselves at different points in our walk of faith searching and longing for God for all sorts of different reasons. And I assume there are all sorts of different reasons represented here this morning.
Well, what do you call that? What do you call that thing you're asking God to do? Is it renewal? Is that an apt description? Is it a hope that the Spirit would reignite dwindling passions? Is it reformation? Is that the idea you're trying to get to? Is that what you would call it? Maybe there's a sense of dryness that's related to bad theology or you've lost your grip on the importance of a certain doctrine. Maybe it is reformation that the Spirit's trying to stir up. I think as we look at those different things though, there's another word that we could use encapsulating both the ideas of spiritual renewal and spiritual reformation. And the word is revival. And I'm just going to be honest with you, it's actually not the word I wanted to use this morning. I was even making excuses with Dave during the week for why I wasn't going to use that word. I'm not going to talk about revival. I'm not going to preach on revival. The reason is because I'm aware, as a lot of you are probably aware, that revival is a loaded term. For evangelicals, revival comes with all sorts of baggage. And so I was worried that if I talked about revival, if I preached about praying for revival, that you guys would go all sorts of crazy places with it. And I didn't want you to go there. For some, the idea of revival isn't, isn't so much a biblical one or even one that's anchored in the historic real revivals that have happened to God's people. I'm aware that for some of us, revival is the experience of man-made attempts to manipulate God. That's what revival is. It's ways that we've experienced people trying to get God to do things through all sorts of different means and mechanisms. I know that for some of you, you've maybe experienced the huckster professional revivalist traveling from church to church, paid to spend a week in a different place with the promise that each place he comes for a week, revival is going to break out upon arrival. I know some of you have experienced that. I know that baggage is there. And after mentioning, because I know some of you are probably like me, you're suspicious of the big tent meeting style of revival. You've read and heard the intense critiques of revivalism that have been growing in the last 20, 25, 30 years within evangelical circles. I'm worried that by mentioning the word, you've already started white-knuckling it in your seats right now. You're already freaking out and looking to the exits thinking, If you're a guest, "I knew we shouldn't have come to this church today. They're going to talk about revival." The truth of the matter is, as bad as those Charles Finney-style revivals are, both theologically and practically, that are born out of the Second Great Awakening, if we're honest with ourselves, if we're honest with church history, we can't deny that there are real revivals. There are authentic revivals. The Puritans knew and experienced what revival was. You have a careful pastor, a very thoughtful pastor like Jonathan Edwards who was at the center of the First Great Awakening. He was at the heart of it in New England. If we're honest with ourselves, the Reformation is a revival. The Reformation that happens in 16th century Europe out of nowhere. Martin Luther and Zwingli and Calvin and Bucer and all these men. There's a revival going on, a recovery of the Gospel and this massive transformation and purification and renewal that happens in the church. That's a revival. Those are real outpourings of the Spirit on God's people. And so even though I realize that today you have some people who have wrong notions of revival, and today you have some people who are very skittish about the concept of revival, I think we need to recognize those extremes while still allowing a place for calling out to God to bring revival. To bring biblical revival, to bring authentic revival.
And so I want us to look this morning at just 2 verses from Psalm 85. We could look at the entire Psalm, but I want us to draw our attention to those 2 verses in particular, verses 6 and 7. And hear God's holy and authoritative word. Will you not Revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you. Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us salvation. The word of the Lord. May he write its truth upon our hearts.
Now I want to start on those two verses this morning, and I want to use Psalm 85:6-7 as a jumping off point. In no small part because it's a place that starts seeking for renewal. That's what the psalmist is doing, right? Revive us again. He's using the word that we get our word revival from. Revive us again. He's asking for renewal, but he's doing it in a very instructive way. What's the psalmist doing there? He's praying. He's praying that God would bring about revival. He's asking God, he's imploring the Lord, "Will you not revive us again? Won't you do that so that your people can enjoy you?" Now that's a really helpful image for us. I want us to recognize at the beginning a call here in Psalm 85 to set our hearts to praying. That's a helpful image we get in Psalm 85, and it really shows us two things. The first thing it does is it grounds all of our talk about revival, that loaded word, in a very particular place. It grounds any discussion of revival where it needs to be grounded, in prayer.
Now that seems obvious. Anybody who talks about revival is going to mention the fact you have to pray for revival, right? That prayer is an element of revival. If you want to pursue revival, spiritual renewal, you have to start praying. But it's more than that. We can imagine pursuing revival and starting with prayer, but then quickly moving on to other things, right? I don't think that's what the psalmist is doing here. We can start with prayer and then move on to other methods of revival, most of which I think are actually dangerous. They're bad ideas about how to bring about revival. It's the baggage I'm fearful of bringing into this whole idea. But Psalm 85 teaches us not simply to start with prayer, but to make prayer central to the whole endeavor. If you want to experience significant communal spiritual renewal. If you want to experience real, authentic biblical revival, you don't just begin with prayer, you make prayer central to and the heart of the task. Scripture teaches us to pray like this. There's all sorts of passages I could point you to. Isaiah 64:1, we hear an even more bold request, not just that God would revive us, But in Isaiah, we hear, "Oh, that you, God, would rend the heavens and come down." Well, that kind of shifts the picture of what revival looks like. But it's also instructive. You know how revival comes? It's not because you've hired a special preacher. It's not because you've scheduled a special week. Revival comes because God pours himself out, because God rends the heavens in an unusual way and moves in an unusual way in the midst of his people. There's one man who nailed it when he said revivals are always spurious. I love those old words. Revivals are always spurious when they are got up by man's device. And not brought down by the Spirit of God. Part of what that means is there's nothing more important that we can do if you desire significant spiritual renewal in this church, in the churches of this community, in the churches of this nation, than to pray.
6 · The pastor unpacks the goal of revival from Psalm 85:6-7—that God's people would rejoice in God
The second reason I think Psalm 85 is helpful is it lays out for us the goal of that prayer. It calls us to set our hearts to praying, but it also points us to why we're praying: that God's people, that the church, would rejoice in God. Authentic spiritual renewal always, always, every time, if it is real, it has an inherently and intentional and irreducible Godward direction. When real revival is happening, it's taking people's hearts and it's pointing them up, and it's taking their hearts and pointing them up, and that's filling them. It's giving them an enjoyment, a satisfaction in God, in Jesus, that they didn't have before. And one of the unique elements of revival is that it's a communal thing. It's something that happens in community. The reason why Psalm 85 is helpful is it lays out for us that goal, but it also points us to the fact the psalmist is praying this not just for himself, is he? Revive us. Revive the people of God. Bring new joy to the church. Now, there are massive individual impacts when revival comes. There are people whose, whose lives are changed, whose lives get back on track. People who were drifting and who were backsliding, who find renewed focus and renewed love for the Lord. There are people who don't know the Lord who get saved when revival happens. But all of those pieces are a part of something bigger that's happening in the community. The reason God pours out His Spirit in revival is so that His people would love Him and that we'd rejoice in Him.
7 · The pastor cites Ray Ortlund to define revival as the Holy Spirit making Jesus more real and more wonderful than anything the world offers, drawing others into worship—the church as living proof of Jesus
I'm going to read you a quote that I think is really helpful for just setting our expectations about what revival is. Ray Ortlund says this, one of my favorite pastors, "The church is to be the display of God in the world." The Bible says, "Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory. Why should the nations say, 'Where is their God?'" We are here, the church, God's people, to be living proof that Jesus is real and wonderful. That's why revival matters. Revival is the Holy Spirit making Jesus real and wonderful to our hearts. More real and more wonderful than all of this world, and drawing in many others to join us in that worship. That is Christianity, and it's beautiful, and God wants to pour it out on us.
8 · The pastor invites the congregation to pray for revival—reframed for the cautious as simply praying that Jesus would be more real and more wonderful—and asks for their agreement
Now, when you describe revival in that way, well, now I'm not fearful. Now I don't want to be cautious. I want that. I think Ortland captures perfectly what revival does to a community. It draws in others to join the body of Christ in worship, and the great goal is that the Holy Spirit wants to make Jesus more real and more wonderful in our hearts. So if you're freaked out by the notion of praying for revival. Let's just put it this way. You just set that word aside for a second and just say, I'm inviting you this morning to pray that Jesus would be more real and more wonderful. You okay with praying with that this morning? That's, that's what our goal is. That Jesus would, would be more precious to us.
9 · The pastor synthesizes the entire sermon series, showing that each previous message (praying for God's glory, mission, and communion with Christ) has been building toward praying for revival—Jesus made real and wonderful in hearts and proclaimed to the world
And in a real way, if we look at the entire series, this series, A Call to Pray, What have we prayed for? We've prayed for God's glory, to see God's glory, that prayer of Moses in Exodus, "Show me your glory." We've prayed for that. We've prayed for mission, that God would make our hearts more missional, that he would make us more aware of our neighbors and our coworkers and our family members, that he'd make us more aware of the nations who've never heard of Jesus before. And praying that God would bring in our neighbors and our coworkers and the nations, that he would save people. And we looked last week that God would bring us into sweeter and deeper communion with his son. The love of Christ would dwell, would take up residence in our hearts. In a real sense, this entire series has been moving us towards a call to pray for revival, a call to pray for Jesus to be real and wonderful, that we would see the glory of Jesus, that people who don't know Jesus would see and be saved by who Jesus is because those who love Jesus would tell them about Jesus, that those of us who love Jesus would know more completely and would be transformed by that knowledge of the nature of His love for us. That's what this series is about. That's why we want to set our hearts to prayer.
10 · Transition from the positive goal of revival (Jesus more real) to the negative aspect (idols displaced), using Ray Ortlund's phrasing as the pivot
We're also called, though, to notice something else that Ray Ortlund hits on. Another important element of that quote. It's not just that Jesus becomes more real. Ray says it's that he becomes more real and more wonderful to us than everything else in the world. Now, that's a helpful idea. That's a helpful concept.
11 · The pastor argues that revival reveals and roots out idols—both for unbelievers (conversion) and believers (sanctification)—and makes Jesus more satisfying than the idols were, not merely removing false pleasures but replacing them with superior joy
It's a call to set our hearts not just to pray, but to set our hearts against idolatry. That's one of the things that real, true, authentic revival does. Revival reveals idols. For unbelievers, people who have no idea who Jesus is, it does it in really big ways. That's really what conversion is. You realize you've been living for and worshiping these false gods. In ancient Israel, in the Old Testament, it's Baal, it's the Asherah poles. For your neighbors, It might be Buddha. Right? It might be Allah. It might be the gods of Western civilization. Money. Or leisure. Or sex. But revival shows those people Jesus and changes their allegiance. Changes what their hearts love. But revival does things for believers as well. It shows us where we're still flirting with those idols. It shows us how we're trying to bring things alongside of Jesus and find deep satisfaction in things that aren't Jesus in the way that only Jesus can do it. But it doesn't stop there. Revival reveals and roots out our idols in a way that makes Jesus more enjoyable than the idols previously were.
12 · The pastor uses Jonathan Edwards and the First Great Awakening to illustrate that revival reveals idols—dispelling the myth of stoic Puritan piety by showing that revival came to a generation where young people were carousing and parents were powerless, and revival made them realize their idolatry
Now historically, that's how revival happened. Now if I bring up Jonathan Edwards and you think of Puritan New England, right? And you think of that day and age, what are you imagining about the people? Very stoic, black and white, not much color, very prim, very proper, very stiff backs, very good posture, right? Kids have very strict curfews. Everyone is very polite, minding your P's and Q's. That's the image I have when I tend to think of New England in that time. But if you read Edwards' journals, if you read the journals of his grandfather, Jonathan Stoddard, you actually see something very different. Edwards actually laments the way the young people of his day go out at night and just go carousing around the town and causing trouble and staying out too late. He laments the fact that their parents are either totally apathetic to what's happening. He laments the fact that believing parents are okay with their kids being unbelievers. And he laments the fact that the parents who do care seem just to be powerless to make sure that the gospel does get transferred to the next generation. It's, it's a bleak situation. It's like things that have troubled parents in our generation. But when the Awakening began, one of the first things they saw was the way young people for the first time realized their sin and turned away from their sin. Put another way, when the awakening happens, people who've grown up in church all of a sudden realize there's all sorts of things they love more than Jesus, things they prioritize and love more than God. And biblically, that realization is the product of revival.
13 · The pastor narrates the historical context of Josiah's reign—a succession of evil kings, national apostasy, and political chaos—setting up Josiah as an unlikely candidate for revival but a demonstration of God's grace breaking the cycle
If you look at the Old Testament, one of the greatest periods of spiritual renewal that Israel ever experienced happens during the reign of King Josiah. King Josiah is a king. He's one of those guys that lives in that terrible period where you read Chronicles and Kings, right? And how does he describe them? He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He did what was right in the sight of the Lord. So it's going back and forth in these these kings. And as things get worse and worse and worse, there's more and more kings who keep saying, "And Manasseh did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, like his fathers before him." And there's a sense that things are getting really bad as the leadership of Judah gets really bad. Well, Josiah lives right in the middle of that. Judah going from bad king to bad king to worse king. His grandfather is actually Manasseh. He's an evil king. But he's a king who late in his life repents and he turns back. But part of the problem with his evil is that he raised his son in a way that was far from the Lord. And so his son Amon becomes king. And when his son Amon comes to rule, he immediately turns Judah back to all the bad ways. It gets so bad that Amon's servants, his household, his royal household in Jerusalem actually assassinates him. That's how bad things have gotten in Judah. They're assassinating kings, and not assassinating kings because they're evil. Evil people are assassinating evil kings because the whole country's evil. And so after the servants assassinate him, the country then executes the servants, and then they install Josiah as king. He's 8 years old, and the expectation at that point is Here's this 8-year-old living in this insane environment. The palace, right, and all the royal hanger-ons are obviously corrupt as all get out. It's just going to continue. It's going to be as bad as it ever was. Judah is literally a bloody mess. But Josiah comes to the throne, and even with that family history, God's grace enters in and breaks the trend.
14 · The pastor expounds 2 Chronicles 34 to show Josiah's radical dismantling of idols—not just removing them but pulverizing them, desecrating false priests' graves, and burning their bones—as an example of total war against idolatry
In 2 Chronicles 34, it says this: For in the 8th year of his reign, when he was yet a boy, he began to seek the God of David his father. And in the 12th year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherah and the carved metal images. And they chopped down the altars of Baal in his presence, and he cut down the incense altars that stood above them. And he broke in pieces the Asherah and the carved metal images, and he made dust of them. Not just I'm tearing them down. I've had predecessors who have teared them down, and then the next guy comes and sets them back up. We're going to tear them down. We're going to get the woodchopper out, and we're going to send the totem pole through the woodchopper, is essentially what's happening. Makes dust of them, and then he scatters it over the graves of those who sacrificed to them. We're going to make this wood chips. We're going to make this dust, and then we're going to take it. We're going to go over the graves of the false priests, and we're going to scatter over the top of them. This is going to be real. He then digs up the bones of those priests and of their altars, and he burns them. That's what I call setting your heart against idolatry. We're taking the gloves off. That's what Josiah does.
15 · The pastor applies Josiah's idol destruction to contemporary believers, showing that ancient Israel's idols (wealth, fear of man, syncretism) mirror our own, and that the church's worldliness described by Tozer in the mid-20th century has only intensified, making revival even more urgent
But he's not just tearing down idols. He's also restoring worship in the temple. Israel's been worshiping all these false gods. They've actually been worshiping some of these false gods in the temple. Things are that bad. But he decides to restore things. He does what revival does. He recognizes the sin of his fathers. He recognizes the sin of his people. He recognizes all these ways they've turned their hearts away from the Lord. He realizes all these things they're worshiping, all these empty, joyless, worldly pleasures. Now, I think what can be helpful, sometimes you think, well, man, yeah, They've got like these really explicit idols. It's just different for us today, it's so much more subtle. But think of why they're worshiping those gods the way that they are. It's for a lot of the similar reasons why we do. You want to know why they start praying to the Baals and building the Asherahs? Because they believe praying to Baal and praying to the Asherah poles is going to bring them better crops. It's going to secure their harvest. It's going to bring them money. They're intermarrying because they want to please their unbelieving spouses. They're now worshiping the gods of their spouses and they're being pulled away. They're living in cities mixed with these people. And there's some embarrassment for the Israelites that you only pray to one God. It's not that they've stopped praying to God altogether. They're mixing it. They're trying to love God and love the other gods as well because it makes them look better in the eyes of their neighbors. There's an idol of fear of man, caring more about what the world thinks about them than what God has called them to. Well, all of a sudden their idols start to look a little more familiar, don't they? Tozer is a well-known pastor. In the last century. He wrote this in the mid-20th century: Evangelical Christianity is now tragically below the New Testament standard. Worldliness is an accepted part of our way of life. Our religious mood is social instead of spiritual. We have lost the art of worship. We are not producing saints, holy people. Our models are successful businessmen. Celebrated athletes, and theatrical personalities. We carry on our religious activities after the methods of the modern advertiser. Our homes have been turned into theaters, our literature is shallow, and our hymnody borders on sacrilege, and scarcely anyone appears to care. And he's writing that about the 1930s and '40s and '50s. When you thought everything was Mayberry and everybody went to church on Sunday. You would think he's prophetically writing it for 2015, wouldn't you? Our homes have been turned into theaters. Our religious activities are framed after the methods of modern advertisers. There's so much stuff out there pressuring your pastors to market the church better. That's, that's why you'll grow, is you got to have the right advertising tools and campaign. Our models are successful businessmen, celebrated athletes, and theatrical personalities. He's describing our modern culture of celebrity. If that's why revival is such a necessary thing, in the '30s and the '40s and '50s. What's the verdict today?
16 · The pastor calls the congregation to join him in praying for revival—specifically for a desire to root out idols and replace worldliness with holiness that longs to see and resemble Jesus
Join with me in praying that that sense would come to us, that there would be a desire, a deep-seated desire to pray for revival, and that in that, in our prayerfulness, there would be a deepening desire to root out idols, to root out worldliness and to replace that worldliness with a holiness that longs to look upon Jesus and that longs to look like Jesus. That's what revival is meant to do in the church, in the midst of God's people.
17 · Transition back to the goal of Psalm 85, connecting rejoicing in God to seeing Jesus and recovering the gospel—the next major movement of the sermon
Going back to the goal of Psalm 85, remember what the goal was? He's calling to God, "Revive us," for what reason? For what purpose? So that your people would enjoy you, that your people would rejoice in God. Well, that idea is impossible without seeing Jesus, without looking upon Jesus and beginning to look like Jesus. And that's one of the indelible marks of true revival. Both biblically and historically. Real revival, authentic spiritual renewal, it's always tied to a recovery of the Gospel of grace.
18 · The pastor names the third call: to pray for revival that results in seeing the cross and the gospel, introducing the pattern that both Josiah and Hezekiah follow—revival grounded in gospel recovery
And so there's a call here not just to set our hearts to prayer, but to set our hearts to pray for revival, to set our hearts in praying for revival that idols would be revealed, and to set our hearts in praying for revival that we would see the cross, that we would see the Gospel, that we would see Jesus. Those two great reformations that happened in ancient Israel, Josiah and Hezekiah, those two kings, they both come about in this fashion.
19 · The pastor expounds 2 Chronicles 29 to show that Hezekiah's generation had stopped celebrating the Day of Atonement—the OT gospel—losing their sense of sin and forgiveness, demonstrating how revival begins with gospel recovery
In Hezekiah's day, so just a couple generations before Josiah, it's described to us in 2 Chronicles 29, things had gotten terrible. It's really bad. They're in a really bad place. There's a huge superpower that's coming to conquer them. Things are desperate. It was so bad though that God's people hadn't celebrated Yom Kippur, their holiest day of the whole year, in a long time. They had completely stopped celebrating it. Now to get you an idea of what that day was, that's essentially like saying Hezekiah's day, in that day the priests and the people had completely lost the gospel to the degree that had been revealed to them. Let me explain why. During the entire reign of Ahaz, Hezekiah's father, there hadn't been a single year where they had celebrated that most holy holiday. That holiday is what we call the Day of Atonement. The whole purpose of it was it's a single day where they would have one great sacrifice for the entire people of Israel to make atonement for their sins. One day where the people would come and they would offer sacrifices so that the people could be forgiven of their sins and that God could deal graciously and mercifully with them. And they haven't done it for years. So they have no sense of their sinfulness. And they have no sense of their need for forgiveness.
20 · The pastor describes Hezekiah's sevenfold celebration of the Day of Atonement as a dramatic demonstration of both the severity of their sin and the abundance of God's grace and forgiveness—teaching a generation that had forgotten the gospel
It's so bad they've actually stopped using the temple. And so Hezekiah decides he's going to reopen the temple and he's going to reconsecrate the temple. To do that, he starts with the Day of Atonement. For the first time in years, they're going to celebrate this great day of atoning for their sins, but he more than doubles down on it. He does a sevenfold celebration. For every sacrifice they normally do, he does 7 times the amount of sacrifices to show the people how far they drifted, to recognize the severity of their sin. But more important than that, to recognize God is gracious and God is forgiving. God's slow to anger. God's abounding in steadfast love. An entire generation has forgotten forgiveness. But if we come to God now, he'll still forgive us. And so the people finally remember to seek atonement. They finally remember that God offers forgiveness.
21 · The pastor describes the result of Hezekiah's gospel recovery—worship breaking out, Psalms being sung to re-teach the people their history and God's character, and the recapturing of the gospel of grace
And you know what happens? 2 Chronicles 29 describes worship breaking out, and Hezekiah stations musicians all over the temple, and he just instructs them Play David's Psalms. Sing David's Psalms so the people can be instructed. Re-teach the people their history and the character of their God through divinely inspired worship. They recapture a sense of the gospel of grace as much as it's been revealed to them at that time. That God through sacrifice will forgive them their sins.
22 · The pastor narrates the rediscovery of the lost Bible in Josiah's day—a generation so far gone they had literally lost Scripture—and Josiah's broken repentance when he hears God's Word read aloud
Now in Josiah's day, just a few generations later, similar events happen. Again, the temple's fallen into disuse. And so he's going to restore it. He's not just content to tear down their idols. He wants to replace the leaky pleasures with the true pleasure of worshiping God. And so he sets about having them clean out the temple, set the temple back in order. And so he has all these workers and these priests going to the temple to do it. And this priest named Hilkiah makes this discovery. It's one of the saddest discoveries in the history of God's people. They're going through the temple and Hilkiah finds the book of the law. In other words, things had gotten so bad that Judah had literally lost the Bible. He finds the Bible, and not because he gets sent to look for the Bible. It's like, well, let's go clean out the temple, and wow, what's this? Oh, I guess this is the way we're supposed to be living. This is God's word to us. So they bring the scriptures before Josiah and they read them to him. And 2 Chronicles 34:19 says, and when the king heard the words of the law, he tore his clothes. Josiah hears God's word and he realizes how far they've fallen, how completely out of step their lives are with what God's called them to, and he's just broken with repentance.
23 · The pastor expounds Josiah's response—gathering all the people, reading the entire book of the covenant aloud, and publicly renewing covenant with the Lord, modeling corporate repentance and recommitment to God's Word
What he does next is a powerful example for us. He hears all that, he hears the ways his fathers have failed to obey God's word, He doesn't despair. He repents. And then he gathers all the people to the temple. And 2 Chronicles 34 says, "And the king went up to the house of the Lord with all the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the Levites, all the people both great and small." He's bringing all the people together in case you didn't get that so far. "And he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord." And the king stood in his place and made a covenant before the Lord to walk after the Lord and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant that were written in this book. Josiah renews covenant with the Lord.
24 · The pastor describes the climax of Josiah's revival—celebrating Passover for the first time in a generation, paralleling Hezekiah's Day of Atonement recovery and reinforcing that revival always recovers the gospel
And then there's this awesome description. So they found God's Word and spiritual renewal and revival is now breaking out, right? They recommit themselves Old Testament style. They re-covenant with God. And then they celebrate Passover for the first time in a generation. Again, like Hezekiah, they've lost the Gospel.
25 · The pastor expounds the theology of Passover—God's deliverance through the blood of the lamb—and connects it to the Lord's Supper Jesus institutes at the Last Supper, showing the redemptive-historical continuity from Exodus to Christ
You remember what Passover is. We celebrated the Lord's Supper, right? We came to communion this morning. The bread and the wine. Well, that happens for the first time in the New Testament at the Last Supper. What Jesus is doing at the Last Supper is He's celebrating Passover with the disciples. And Passover is a reminder of the way God saved His people, the way God graciously delivered his people out of bondage in Egypt. Remember, there's all these plagues that have come. God is going to war with the gods of Pharaoh, and God is kicking tail. Plague after plague showing God's superiority to their false gods. And the final plague is God says he's going to strike down the firstborn of every household in Egypt, except for the households whose doorsteps whose doorways are covered with the blood of a pure Passover lamb. In those houses, the angel of the Lord is going to pass over. I love how Andrew Peterson puts it in one of his songs about the Passover. He talks about, "Lord, let your judgment pass over us." Let your love hover near. That's what's happening in the Passover. And they've forgotten it. They're sitting in the land and they've completely forgotten the way God has saved them and the way God has delivered them. But now they hear God's word. And so Josiah gathers the people in the hearing of God's word and they start worshiping and then they start practicing the visual reminder of the gospel of God's grace to them. The same Passover that Jesus celebrates at the Last Supper.
26 · The pastor highlights the magnitude of Josiah's Passover—unprecedented since Samuel—showing that the gospel recovery was so profound it produced worship greater than any generation had seen in centuries
And the author of 2 Chronicles tells us in 34:18, no Passover like it had been kept in Israel since the days of Samuel the prophet. None of the kings of Israel had kept such a Passover as was kept by Josiah. They've rediscovered the gospel to the extent it's been revealed to them.
27 · Transition to the sermon's conclusion, signaling two final applications drawn from the exposition
Now, there's two things I want us to recognize in conclusion.
28 · The pastor warns against revivalism's manipulation, correcting the expectation that sanctification happens through mountaintop experiences and teaching instead that it comes through God's ordinary means—parenting, catechism, relational discipleship, sermons, worship, and long-term church commitment
As we set our hearts to pray for revival, recognize and remember where we started, that you can't manipulate revival. Charles Finney in the Second Great Awakening tried to make revival a pseudoscience, convinced that you could make a revival happen at any time as long as you had the right techniques and as long as you manipulated the emotions of the crowd. But that's not true revival and it doesn't bear lasting fruit. More than that, it's mistaken. It has this idea that sanctification normally happens through huge events. Have you ever thought this way? Kind of viewing like growing in holiness as like jumping from one mountaintop experience to the next? And that's what holiness looks like? My problem right now is I need to have another big experience. Sanctification typically happens gradually because God has ordained it that way for our good. I love how Eugene Peterson describes discipleship. It's the title of one of his books. Discipleship, he says, is a long obedience in the same direction. That's a really helpful idea. Discipleship is a long obedience in the same direction, and it happens through parents raising up their children in the fear and knowledge of the Lord, through parents catechizing their kids, right? It happens through maturing believers intentionally walking in relationships with other maturing believers. Notice it's not mature believers with immature believers. That's a false notion. It's maturing believers walking through life in intentional relationships with other maturing believers. That's how sanctification happens. It doesn't happen usually, typically through one powerful sermon, one life-altering event. No, it happens through dozens and dozens and hundreds of sermons, long-term God-centered worship. Long-term membership and commitment and involvement in the body of Christ. That's how sanctification happens.
29 · The pastor applies the Josiah/Hezekiah pattern to contemporary church life, warning against technique-driven worship (pyrotechnics, subwoofers) and calling for a return to God's ordained means—Word-guided worship, preaching, sacraments, prayer, and community life
Josiah and Hezekiah didn't bring renewal by finding some newfangled worship technique. What happens? What do they do? They're not using like ancient Israelite pyrotechnics and that's why all of a sudden people start worshiping. There's not an extra subwoofer on stage and, "Wow, we added the extra sub and all of a sudden people started singing more loudly because if they're singing more loudly, it must mean they love Jesus more." It happens. National repentance, national spiritual renewal, a recommitting of God's people to God's ordained way of worship. Well, let's actually go back to the temple and start worshiping the way God instructed us. Let's actually clean out the temple and find God's Word and start reading it. And then start trying to live according to it. Novel things. The Word guiding our worship. The Word guiding our preaching. The Word guiding our praying. The Word guiding our sacraments. The Word guiding our pastoring and our community life. True revival isn't manipulated. It comes in God's timing through God's ordinary and God's ordained means of grace. That's how revival historically, the authentic kind, comes about.
30 · The pastor invokes Lloyd-Jones to reinforce that the only human action that brings revival is prayer, combined with faithfulness to God's ordinary means—Word, worship, sacraments, preaching, and community—and then God sovereignly rends the heavens
It's why Lloyd-Jones, a man who believed in revival, but was loath to manipulate it, to produce it in an inauthentic way, said the only thing you can do to bring about revival is to pray for it. To pray that God would bring it. Revival isn't manipulated. It happens by people praying for it and then God's people going about God's ordained means of grace. Reading God's Word, praying, gathering, worshipping, hearing preaching, coming to the Lord's table, gathering in community, praying for revival, and through those ordinary means of grace, God rending the heavens and coming down.
31 · The pastor concludes by emphasizing that the gospel is always at revival's center—Hezekiah's Day of Atonement, Josiah's Passover, Edwards's justification by faith—and defines praying for revival as praying for a longer, truer, more life-changing glimpse of Jesus Christ crucified, risen, and reigning
And finally, notice that the gospel is always at the center. Hezekiah celebrates the Day of Atonement for the first time in a generation. Josiah celebrates a Passover like none since the days of Samuel. You want to know how the Great Awakening happens in New England? Jonathan Edwards is preaching a sermon on justification by faith and revival starts. And so when I call us to pray for revival, I'm exhorting us to pray for longer, for a truer, for a more life-changing glimpse of Jesus Christ. That's what we're praying for when we pray for revival, that we would see, that we would know, that we would be changed by Jesus Christ crucified, risen, and reigning.
32 · The pastor concludes by returning to Ray Ortlund's definition of revival—the Holy Spirit making Jesus more real and more wonderful than all the world, drawing others into worship—and affirms that this is Christianity's beauty and God's desire for His church
Conclude again with that Ray Ortlund quote. We, the church, we, Providence, are here to be living proof that Jesus is real and wonderful. That's why revival matters. Revival is the Holy Spirit making Jesus real and wonderful to our hearts, more real and more wonderful than all this world and drawing in many others to join us in that worship. That is Christianity, and it's beautiful, and God wants to pour it out on us.
33 · Closing prayer asking God to revive the church, pour out the Spirit through the means of grace, sanctify His people, make Jesus more real and wonderful, and gather in the lost from surrounding communities—all to the glory of Jesus
Would you bow your heads? Lord, we ask that you would revive us again. As your people, we want to rejoice in your great love for us in your Son Jesus. Lord, we ask that in reviving us, you would pour out your Spirit as we sit under the preaching of your word, as we come to worship in community, as we come to take the sacraments together, as we gather throughout our weeks with fellow believers to pursue holiness and godliness and to walk out the one another's. Lord, as we walk out your ordained means of grace, we ask that you would do what you have promised to do, which is to sanctify your people. And we ask that you would also pour out your Spirit in special measure upon us. Father, revive us. Make Jesus more real and more wonderful to us. And Lord, gather in people from these surrounding communities and neighborhoods. Gather in unbelieving family members who we have shared the gospel with countless times. Gather them in to worship with us. Lord, we want to love you and we want to love your Son Jesus. Father, we ask these things in His name. We ask these things in His name so that He would be seen as the beautiful one that He is. We ask all of this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.