2 Chronicles 7 — Vance Havner

That the minute I announce it, some of the Saints will settle back rather comfortably into the pew as if to say, well, I've heard all that before. But I don't know of anything we need to do today so much as to familiarize ourselves with the familiar, yet better acquainted with what we think we already know.

The If Verses of 2 Chronicles 7

This is 2 Chronicles 7, and the verses are the familiar 13 and 14. I call them the if verses. God's if verse is the 13th, and our if comes in the 14th. If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people, here's where we come in.

If my people, which are called by my name, shall 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.

Now, have you noticed how that last verse just oscillates back and forth between God and his people? Just look at that for a moment. If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and forgive their sin and will heal their land.

It's back and forth all the way through, marvellous, marvellous. And this is just as timely as it ever was in the days of Solomon. Solomon was a strange character, supposed to be the wisest man, no man ever made a bigger fool out of himself than he did before it was all over.

And his career premiered in wisdom, peaked in wealth, and perished with women. That's the story of Solomon. In the very chapter that says he loved many strange women, I'm not surprised that it ends with an account of his funeral.

He just didn't make it through the chapter. So that's the way it went with Solomon. He still was the wisest man while he was wise, but he made a big fool and he turned into a fool on this matter. God was in the wisdom, and God gave him wealth, but he sure didn't give him all those women, I'm sure of that.

Personal Examination and Confession of Sin

But you notice here that this begins, God begins, he always does, with his people. And his people begin with themselves. This is a very personal old book. Search me and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts.

See if there'll be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way of everlasting life. As a matter of fact, that wasn't passed from the book, personally, all the way through. When David committed his terrible sin, he needed to do something besides grab a harp and start singing songs.

He needed to get right with God, against thee, thee only, if I sin. I used to wonder why he said that. I thought he'd sinned against Uriah, and Bathsheba, and everybody else. But he realized that the worst thing about sin is it's something between us and God.

Against thee, thee only. You don't hear many people today say, I've sinned against God. You hear them say, oh, I'm not as good as I ought to be, and I'm my worst enemy, and all those things. But it takes the Holy Spirit to bring a man to the place where he says, against thee, thee only, if I sin.

We sing it sometimes, Lord send a revival, let it begin in me. That's where it'll have to begin. Not the preacher, nor the deacon, but it's me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer. It doesn't take much religion to confess other people's sins.

I heard of a woman who went through a psychiatrist some time ago. She had a strip of bacon over each ear and a fried egg on top of her head. She said, I've come to see you about my brother. She needed a little help herself.

Do you ever hear somebody play Clare Allen World, visit all the mission fields, and you felt like saying, brother, if I were you, I believe I'd back up and start up over number one. You've never got around to him yet.

Start off with him. If my people are to call on my name, Israel then, today it's to us, and I wish we had started calling it Christians and Christmas, because we've always put the emphasis wrong in the pronunciation.

We are Christians, and the I-A-N stands for I am nothing. Christian, Romans 7, verse 4 says we're married to Christ. 2 Corinthians 11, verse 2 says we've been espoused to one husband. When a woman marries a man, she takes a new name.

She's the right kind of woman, she won't bring anything to cast reproach on that name. If you're a Christian, please remember when you say what that means. You've got a name, the only name of its kind in all the universe, and I hope you're not doing anything to bring reproach on that name.

Salvation Gives a New Name and New Identity

For two springtimes, I had meetings in the Ozarks. I can't think of any lovelier place to be in the springtime than the Ozarks. And the mountain missionary took me as far back in those mountains as you could go on a jeep, and he told me about old Leonard Lamb, who had been a sock and a drunk until he was 72, and then God saved him.

Really saved him, and it was the talk of the neighborhood. And he stayed saved, too. And one day he got to thinking, said, I need a little money, and folks know I'm a Christian now, maybe if I'd go over to the bank, maybe they'd help me out a little.

He went, the banker had heard about it. He said, tell me about what's happened to you. And he did. The banker said, well, sign your name there, that piece of paper, we'll let you have a little money. He came home and said, this is the first time my name's ever been worth anything.

Do you know why? He had a new name. That's what made the difference. It changed from non-entity to identity. That's what God does with people when they get saved. He gives them a new meaning. Wonderful.

And that's been the way with those poor characters that are saved, whether they're the uttermost or the outermost or the guttermost or whatever. They can come at one end of the social ladder and get saved, but I know a friend of mine that was in heaven with the Lord.

He was a Harvard man, head of the drama department at the University of North Carolina, just across the street from where I live. Oh, I'd like to hear him recite great literature, read the Bible as literature, but an infidel.

Never went to church. And his dear wife prayed for him for years that he'd be saved. One night he got saved in the middle of the night, all by himself, up in his room. God saved him. Marvelous. Got up the next morning, came down the stairs, said to his wife, go in church with me tonight.

Became a member of the First Baptist Church. Became a deacon in the church. He and I went out a lot and had lunch together. We liked to write, and I liked to hear him talk because he had an intellect that was marvelous.

And I said to him, did anybody in all these years of your infidelity ever say a word to you about Jesus? No. Nobody. No wonder the Lord visited him at midnight. Nobody else would to talk to anybody so.

Thank God the Holy Spirit wasn't afraid of him. But I think folks thought, well, he's so smart that I wouldn't know what to say. So they didn't save him. But thank God he got saved. Now, that's one end of the social ladder.

But either way, he was saved, if you trust him. Now, we have in this passage four things to do to have a revival. Four notes make a chord. And I don't believe we can claim just one part of it and not the rest.

We ought to use all four notes. God won't settle for a fourth of this text. You can't have a revival without prayer, but you can have a lot of prayer and never have a revival. And I don't minimize prayer.

Prayer as the First Requirement for Revival

It's the thermometer of a preacher or of a church. What a church is on prayer meeting night is what it is, not Sunday morning. You can't tell much about a church on Sunday morning. All the morning glories are that end, blooming.

But you can't tell much about its end. Wednesday night is pretty apt to tell it. That's the thermometer. And somebody has said what a preacher is in his prayer closet is what he is. Just that. That's a good thing.

And I know some prayer meetings in the Bible that were a waste of time. I've been in some others that were. Moses stood before the Red Sea and God said, Wherefore cryest thou unto me? Speak to the children of Israel.

Let them go forward. There's a time to pray and a time to proceed. When it's time to proceed, the thing to do is quit praying and start proceeding. Some folks never get around to proceeding. They just want to pray all the time.

I won't do it. And after the battle of Ai, Joshua lay on his face before God. That's a good posture. More people ought to be like that. God said, Get up. Wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face? Israel have sinned.

Not only one man had sinned. There was one man in the church not living right. What do you think that means? He's a dangerous influence. One bad apple can spoil a barrel of good apples. Give him enough time.

And so God said, We've got to deal with this man. And they did deal with him in the Valley of Achor. And Hosea tells us that the Valley of Achor shall be a door of hope. And I believe the Valley of Achor for the church today, a door of hope, is that Valley of Achor where we deal with sin individually and corporately in the church.

God won't set us anything less than that. Now it says here, My people shall humble themselves. That's the first requirement. I don't know of anywhere in the Bible where you're told to pray for humility.

You can take care of that. You do it. As a little child, Matthew 18, 4. Under the mighty hand of God, 1 Peter 5, 6. In the sight of the Lord, James 4, 10. You do it. Some people are sitting around waiting for a lovely feeling to come over them, have a certain kind of thrill before they think they're ready to go out and serve God.

No. You stir up the gift of God that's within you. You do it. You humble yourself in the sight of God. We like to brag about it a lot. Baptists are bad about bragging. I told them out at the convention last year, all that army of Baptist preachers, and I had said it to them 18 years before in Kansas City.

I said, We like to boast too much, and we're out here now where they got a lot of smoke. I think the way we like to blow, I believe we can blow it out in three days. That didn't help me to win friends and influence people.

So I had to say it. A lot of what I hear today sounds more like chest thumping than it does heart breaking before God. In the sight of the Lord, James 14. And if we'd learned humility, it would spare us humiliation.

God has to give us a spanking sometimes. He has to humiliate us. And you remember that man who, seeking to justify himself, said, and there's plenty of that going on, why I do this and why I don't do that.

Self-justification. God says, Judge yourself. If we'd quit justifying ourselves and start judging ourselves, something would begin to happen. Old Mel Trotter was having a prayer meeting one time and everybody had prayed with one man.

Mel said, Pray, brother. He said, I can't. Mel said, What's the matter with you? I just can't think of anything to pray about. He said, Confess your sins. He said, I can't think of any, Mr. Trotter. Mel said, Get on there and guess at it.

He got down on his knees and guessed it the very first time. If you could ever turn off TV long enough, if anybody ever does, to let God have a word, you'd guess it the very first time. It's not that hard to find, what the trouble is.

Seeking God's Face and Restoring Fellowship

If my people will seek my face. Now, what does that mean? You've heard it all your life. You've had to get up in the night and tell what it means to seek God's face. What does it mean? I will go and return to my place till they acknowledge their offense and seek my face.

When thou said, Seek ye my face, my heart said unto thee, thy face, Lord, will I seek. It means to seek God's favor and the smile of his approval, so that he makes his face to shine upon us and lifts up the light of his countenance on us and gives us peace.

Some things hide God's face, nothing between my soul and the Savior, so that his blessed face is not seen. That song was written by a great black preacher in Philadelphia. His son led singing for me years ago in three meetings in Grand Rapids and Toledo and Rockford, Illinois, I remember.

And I'd like to hear him sing his deadliest song, Take Your Burden to the Lord and Leave It There, for instance. But this one particularly. You know, the Japanese hated to surrender. They had never lost a war.

And the Oriental mind does not like losing faiths. When they had to march out on the deck of Missouri before Wainwright and MacArthur and the rest of them had signed the surrender, that was rough. I was hard on pride.

When you surrender to Jesus Christ you may lose faith. We could have a revival any time if we could save faith and do it. But you can't do it. You have to humble yourself and confess what's wrong. I heard a woman say she was teacher of a lady's Bible class for ten years before she ever got right with God.

She said, I finally went to an old Methodist altar and got on my knees and said, Lord, I'll go to India, I'll go to Africa, I'll go anywhere. The Lord answered my soul and said, I don't want you in Africa.

I want you to get right with Susie right here in the church. She said, I hadn't thought about that. But it started over. Lord, I'd go to Africa. She said, I'd rather go to Africa any time than get right with Susie.

The Lord said, get right with Susie right here in the church. She said, I did. And we had revival in our hearts. Well, some time ago a pastor said to me when I preached on this on Sunday night, Monday morning early one of the ladies of the church called me up and said I didn't sleep last night.

I said, my sister and I haven't spoken to each other in two years. I called her up early this morning and she's coming to see me. We're going to get right. Now that sounds just flat-footedly simple and plain and ordinary, but it's things like that that do it in the sight of God.

And we're going to get to where we don't think could be anything that unimportant. What do you mean unimportant? I remember a meeting where, when I made this prophecy, one of the leading men of the church marched down and faced the folks and said, I want to confess some of the ungodly things I've said about our pastor.

Now, that's not easy to do. You've got to humble yourself. And that did wonders. You can't get around things like that. Jesus said if you take your gift to the altar and remember that your brethren has odds against you, no matter whose story it was, he didn't say anything about who was wrong and right about it.

Hang on to your envelope till you get right with your brethren. That sure would ruin a lot of offerings on Sunday mornings over there. Hold on to it. You don't hear much of that going on today. I believe that some people are sick, even physically sick, because they have a grudge and unforgiveness in their heart and it has festered until it has poisoned them, not only spiritually, but sometimes affected them physically.

They run around to psychiatrists and hearing counselors. They get right with God and get right with somebody. That's what the cross is all about. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

When you get vertically right with God and horizontally right with everybody else, you've got it. That's the meaning of the cross. And Paul stood before the ruler and said, Oh, that wonderful little preacher.

The only stocks and bonds he ever had were stocks for his feet and bonds around his wrists. And he said, I exercise myself to have a conscience void of opinion toward God and toward me. That's the cross.

You don't have to carry a crucifix. I find myself sometimes in my walk saying, Lord, how am I doing? Have you tried that lately? Lord, how am I doing this way? Anything between us? Is there a point of rebellion anywhere in your life between you and God?

You'll do everything else in the world but that you won't do. You can't get this many people together without some folks that need to make a vertical right in your thing. And then, Lord, has somebody got something against me or there's something between us, no matter whose fault, I'm supposed to make the first move.

Now, you may not be able to get him right, but as much as lives with him, you live peaceably with all men. Have you done that? It's things like that we don't pay much attention to, but that's what the word of God means here.

And that's why some of our homes are not shining for Jesus. You haven't got a home, you just got a house. Have you got a house or a home? A home for by the Holy Spirit, people are living right this way and this way.

I heard of a certain family where they were having problems and they decided to put a vacant chair at the table and said, nobody's to sit in that chair, that's Jesus' chair. And you know it worked. Dad would come in all tuckered out from the day's work and he'd look at that chair and remember there's somebody here, we can't see him but he's here.

Mother would come in exhausted from the round of the day's activities. Then she'd look at that chair. There's one here who we don't see but we know and love. And the children might be a bit difficult that day.

There was a chair. And it worked. It'll work, I believe, any time, if from our heart we do that. What does it say? If my people which are called by my name shall turn from their wicked ways. Ah, that's the most subdued note in the whole business.

Turning from Wicked Ways and Forsaking Sin

And I have said already here, we cannot expect God to take away sin by forgiving it, if we're not willing to put it away by forsaking it. Some people have a comfortable feeling when they confess their sins.

Well, they're all thinking, wait a minute, did you put them away? It says it's got to be double barrel there. And then it must be sins. What kind of sins? Well, sins of omission. The good that would do not.

What is it that you know you ought to do, you won't do? Something God's been wanting you to do, maybe for a long time. You won't do it. How about that? People don't like to be told what they ought to do today, but the Bible doesn't hesitate to say we ought always to pray, we ought to obey God, we ought to forgive, we ought to love one another, we ought to support the weak.

And these are not polite suggestions. They're commandments. To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin. Now, if there's something in your life you know you ought to do, you won't do it, that's sin.

And the only way to deal with it is to tell God about it and confess it and have it done with, clear it up. And then turn it around, sins of omission, what is it that you do and you ought not to do? Same verse, Romans 7, 19, the evil that I would not, that I do.

The homiletics teachers, some of them, they used to call them homiletics, they said we ought to never do any negative preaching. Well, you'd have to throw away a lot of pages out of the Bible. The righteous man walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, standeth not in the way of sinners, sitteth not in the seat of the scornful.

Nehemiah said, so did not I, because of the fear of God, were to walk not as the Gentiles, be angry and sin not, steal no more, let no corrupt communication proceed out of our mouths, grieve not the Holy Spirit, no foolishness, foolish talking or jesting, no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, be not drunk with wine, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flake.

Maybe it's just one little thing. The shelf behind the door. The shelf behind the door. Carry it down and throw it out. Don't use it anymore. For Jesus wants his temple clean from ceiling to the floor.

He even wants that little shelf that's healed behind the door. Have you ever done anything about that little shelf? You think you're getting away with it not in the sight of God. I preached in Capitol Hill Baptist Church Oklahoma City years ago in a meeting and gave the invitation.

A young fellow came down there and put a pack of cigarettes in my pocket and said, I realize they don't belong in the life of a Christian. Now he was taking the matter into his own hands. I hadn't preached the sermon on tobacco.

Do you think I'd waste the whole sermon on tobacco? I tell them, if you've got yours along, kindly leave it on the steps, and I guarantee you no hog or dog will get it when you go out. I wouldn't want to preach a whole sermon on it.

But he was convicted. And he did the thing he ought to do. And that's the way God preached it. Very plainly. Disposition. How about that? Having therefore these promises dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit.

Perfecting holiness in the fear of God. The Bible names a lot of these sins of the spirit. Carnality. Ending. Strife. Divisions. Whispering. Swellings. Tumors. Sisms. Variance. Debates. Contentions. Oh, so many of them.

We have some people today who wrap themselves up in the rags of their pharisaic self-righteousness. Now they're the other way. They're the other extreme on this separation. I mean, they only get half of it.

I don't drink and I don't play cards and I don't smoke and so on. Of course they ought not. I'll agree with them. But you feel like saying, well, neither does a gate post. What are you doing? Let's get the other side of the koan.

Biblical Balance and Conformity to Christ

One of the great problems in our church today, we don't see both sides of the koan. Every koan in God's collection has two sides. You never saw one side of the quarter in your life. And whether it be the sovereignty of God and man's free will, or whether it be Calvary and the resurrection, or whether it be Jesus, son of God, Jesus, the son of man, faith and work, always.

Some folks get one side of the koan and they go through life lopsided. They don't get balanced. You need to see both. So the Pharisees were the most separated crowd you ever heard of. They wouldn't even eat an egg that had been laid on the Sabbath.

Now that's going after it with a vengeance if you ask me. But they didn't know the Lord. Why were you predestinated? Never mind about trying to figure it all out. You were predestinated to be conformed to the image of God's Son.

God saved you to make you like Jesus. Are you any more like Jesus now than you were ten years ago? Don't you think you ought to be? Does anybody notice any improvement? Does your wife, does your husband, do the children, do the parents?

Any improvement? We ought to go with grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Too many folks were covering their sins instead of confessing their sins. My dad used to take me to an old mill when I was a little boy, where they operated by water wheel.

Clearing the Channel for the Spirit's Work

And I loved to watch that big thing go around, stream would pour on the pockets of that wheel. Now suppose some morning the water was low and it wouldn't turn. How ridiculous it would be if that miller tried to turn the wheel himself, or call in all the neighbors and try to make it go around.

I'll tell you what he could do. He could go up the creek, dig out the channel, and the water would flow, and the wheel would turn. I go to all kinds of meetings of Baptists and others too, churches, deacons meetings, meetings of all kinds of groups, and I tell them they're sweating and foaming at the mouth, some of them trying to make the wheels go around.

And they're not going around. I say we need to go up the creek, get sin out of the way. Nobody wants to hear about that, it's not pleasant. What do you think God thinks of it? Whether it's personal sin, or sin in the church, allowed to go and grow unnoticed, unmentioned.

You need to go up the creek and clear the channel if you do. From within you shall flow rivers of living water. Because there be the inflow and the outflow of the Spirit of God. But it must be a clean channel.

That's what it says. And that's all I know to say. But if I could only get somebody to do it. I want to ask you one thing before we stop tonight. I've asked it all over this country. I'd like for the folks who at present are, have positions in this church.

You have some special responsibility in the church. Deacons, Sunday school teachers, choir singers, and all officers. Not because you're any better, but at present you represent the leadership of the church.

And I want to start with you. You look like honest people. And I thank you all. How many of you could say tonight, and I don't want to stage one of these bad desire parades that don't amount to anything.

We've just about rededicated ourselves to death, I think, sometimes. Everybody comes out and says it all over and does nothing. But what else are you going to do? Give them a chance and pray, dear Lord, make somebody mean business here tonight.

A Public Call to Humility and Repentance

How many of you for a change would be willing, not going to have any singing even, why do we have to sing them down now? If you mean it, how many of you could honestly, not make me feel good, but please don't think of that.

Would you be willing just to get up voluntarily, walk down here and stand in front of the pulpit for a word of prayer. You pray quietly and I'll pray out loud. But saying in your heart, I know there's a price for revival and it's not cheap.

God's not running a fire saver and a bargain counter. Costs. I am willing by the grace of God to humble myself and pray and seek God's face and turn from any wicked ways, start doing what I've not been doing and vice versa.

I'm willing to go up the creek and deal with whatever's wrong. If I'm at odds with somebody, I'll make them move. I'll call them up, I'll write to them, I'll go to see them. No matter whose phone it is.

There is no easy road to this thing. Now I know there'll be folks who'll come because, well, I know folks thinking what's the matter with him, he doesn't go down there. And so we let pride cause us to go where we don't need to.

Can I trust you tonight, you've listened so well. Nobody here but us and Jesus. I want you the three of you to gather in my name, my man. I wonder what he thinks of us tonight. It doesn't matter about me much.

How many of you would be willing? And please now, if we all get up just easily. Everybody just marches down. Well, you've done that many times before. But if in your heart it's going to be hard because that person you want to straighten things out with or that thing you want to start doing you don't want to do or quit what you are doing, it isn't easy.

Isn't that about a thing? Would you be willing to come? Just stand here and let me have a prayer from up here while you don't listen to me but tell God what you've come for and that you mean it and that you are putting it all into his keeping.

You're willing to humble yourself even to the point of embarrassment and pray as long as it takes. It won't take long if you mean business. See God's face. You young people, I'd rather have God's smile than the grin of this world.

Any price. Now that's a big order. And if you can't come, I'm not going to take advantage of my position in the pulpit and say anything to out-of-way preachers. God doesn't do that. I'm not your judge.

But you can't. But it don't mean you don't come. And don't add one more transgression to the ones you already have. But if you mean business. Everyone who has a position at present in the church that I've mentioned or if I haven't named one of them.

Would you be willing just quietly to come now and stand if you mean it. And let's not lose any time to be there. You can be the judge of whether you really mean this thing or not. And as you stand here dear friend, you say well God knows what he did, yes, but tell him that the best way you know how you mean business about this.

Maybe something that you've been hanging on to or something you ought to have been doing years ago and haven't. Maybe it's your disposition that doesn't please God. Makes it difficult sometimes for others.

Oh I don't know. I shouldn't name anything. You know what it is. God will show you. Father, we haven't come down for the walk Lord. I believe these people are sincere. Help us to mean it from our hearts and then we've taken the step.

Now help us to take the walk. It takes more than one step Lord. Help us just keep stepping. Walking in the life but begin with the first thing. Whether it's the vertical relationship to God or the horizontal relationship to somebody else.

Help us to face the cross and make it your ambition to have a conscience void of offense toward God and man. Now that's not sinless perfection but it is the goal of Paul in order to be the goal of every Christian.

Make that your goal. You cannot be faultless but you can be blameless. A little child writes a letter, the best way it can. It's not faultless but it's blameless. And we can we like to argue about it instead of going as far as we can go.

Lord I present to these dear people as they present themselves to thee and while our heads are bound are there other members of this church who do not hold maybe a position in it at present but you'd like to stand and say Preacher Abner I want to do that too.

From my heart now I'm not standing for the looks of it God knows he sees me and he knows if I'm just playing games here tonight but I mean it. I want to be one of them. Would you kindly stand if you remember this church and want to do that.

God bless you yes. If you're willing to do that. I like the way you're getting up deliberately thinking about it but I'm not trying to beg you to stand because if you're a Christian you ought to be up and just wait a moment.

Invitation to the Uncommitted and Uncertain

If you're a visitor here tonight I'm sure your church needs a revival I don't know one that doesn't. Would you like to say maybe I came over here for God to give me some kindling wood to start something over in my place.

I mean it tonight. Would you stand with us if you're a visitor from somewhere else. God bless you. Yes. My meetings so often we have a lot of visitors from other churches and other denominations. I like that.

We can start something somewhere else we didn't have any dream about if they got a touch of the message. Now what does the rest of this mean. Am I to understand that you don't think you need to stand.

I wish I could believe we're all in such good condition. Or else you won't stand. Search your heart. Are there others who would be honest enough to do this one thing more. Would you say in your heart preacher your sermon did not go in one ear and out the other.

I'm not it took me more than I look like right now but I believe you preach the Bible. Pray for me that I get to the place where I will do what I ought to do because I know I ought to do this. I acknowledge at least my need.

Pray for me because God spoke to me in the sermon and may I pray that I may get to where I will say one great big yes to Jesus. I thought anybody want to stand on that. Yes. Yes. It shows you've been listening.

God bless you. God spoke to you. Oh bless your heart. Anybody here the reason you couldn't stand is you're not a Christian or you're not sure you're a Christian. I've been talking to professing Christians tonight.

Would you by standing say, brother I'm not happy about the way I feel about being saved. Sometimes I don't know if I died now whether I go to heaven or not. And that's too important to play with. I need to know that I know that I know that I know that I'm a child of God.