From a Cesspool to a Throneroom — E.A. Johnston

The Need for Personal, Church, and National Revival

I want to bring a message before you today, friends, on revival, because we need revival today. We need revival in our homes, on a personal level. We need revival in our churches, on a corporate level.

And we desperately need revival in our country, on a national level. I was once young, and now I am old. And I've never seen a time in my entire life where one national tragedy falls on the heels of another.

Whether it's people being gunned down in churches, or at concerts, or at schools. Or whether it's national calamities like floods and fires. I believe God is speaking today through these remedial judgments upon us.

Hosea's Prophetic Picture of a Nation's Decline

There is a passage found in my Bible, which I feel best represents us today as a nation. And I believe this message can not only apply to the people of America, but to other nations as well. Turn in your Bibles, friends, to the book of Hosea.

We will be in three verses of chapter 5, verses 12 through 15. The title of my message today, friends, is, From a Cesspool to a Throne Room. Because that is what will take place in the heart of a nation that turns itself back to God.

The moral decay in society, combined with the spiritual declension in the church, is a muddy mire of sin and decay, like a stagnant cesspool. A violated God sits on his throne in heaven as he sends remedial judgments to the land.

He does so with the divine purpose to turn the hearts of the people back to him through repentance and prayer as they earnestly seek him on his throne. We need a national revival today, friends, that would turn the attention and the hearts of this country from a cesspool to a throne room.

I want us to look at how God dealt with his wayward people in the days of Hosea, as found in Hosea chapter 5 and verses 12 through 15. And it is here we find the story of the people of God in the days of Hosea the prophet.

The backdrop is one of bleakness and gloom, for the people of God have turned their affections away from God and have replaced God with other things, things that consume them. The prophet Hosea comes to speak God's word to them, as the nation is given over to harlotry and idolatry.

Jehovah God is no longer on the forefront of their daily living, and so he sends three remedial judgments to them, one more progressive than the preceding one, to get their attention and to get them to repent and return to him.

There are three figures of speech which God uses to speak of the judgments he has sent among them. The three judgments are found in verses 12 through 15, which is our passage today, friends. And let me read them to us at this time.

Here now is the word of God, and may the Spirit of the Lord attend the reading of his holy word and pierce the conscience with conviction. Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a moth and to the house of Judah as rottenness.

The Moth: Gradual Spiritual Decay

Let me pause here, friends. The first figure of speech is the moth. Notice that this first remedial judgment does not turn the wayward Jews back to God, but they seek help from man instead. Look at what happens in the next verse.

When Ephraim saw his sickness and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to the Assyrian and sent to King Jerob. Yet could he not heal you nor cure you of your wound? Now, friends, look at verse 14, for it is here we find the second figure of speech which describes judgment upon the backslidden people of God.

The Lion: Calamity as Progressive Judgment

For I will be unto Ephraim as a lion and as a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear and go away. I will take away, and none shall rescue him. Let me pause here again, friends. This judgment from God is more progressive in nature.

The first judgment of the moth is indicative of eating away at a thing without being observed. How the people of God had gradually turned in their affections to other things other than Jehovah. Jehovah was once enough for their affections, and they had rested securely under the wings of the Almighty's protection and sufficiency.

But gradually their hearts turned away from God, and it was unnoticed by them, like a moth would steal into a closet and hide there, and it eats away at valuable clothing, leaving holes where there once were none.

This happened to the Jews in the time of Hosea. They had gradually turned away from God and their affections, and their walk with God had holes in it. The next figure of speech, which describes a progressive judgment upon them, is in the figure of a lion.

A lion is ferocious. It is violent. It attacks and leaves carcasses in its wake. These speak of the national calamities which befell Israel at this time of their national decadence. Because they refused to return to God, he sent terrible calamity to them one after another.

America's Spiritual Heritage and Moral Drift

Look at America, friends, and how this once great land that once was so favored of God in powerful spiritual awakenings and missionary enterprise, which took the gospel to the South Seas and across the globe as forest sailing ships could carry, how there once was a fear of God in the land, and the average home had a family altar which instructed the upcoming young generation to love God with all their heart and soul and mind.

Our universities were birthed to train up ministers of the gospel. Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Hartford, Princeton were missionary birthing grounds and preaching training grounds that carried its young graduates to plant themselves on foreign soil for the souls of men and the sake of the gospel.

And many a young missionary lies in martyr's graves on foreign soil. America was blessed by Almighty God with prosperity and influence around the globe. Then this nation became very similar in their behavior as the Jews in the days of Hosea.

First the moth, because of prosperity, the affections of the people slowly drifted away from God and attached themselves to idols of man's making. Then as the people shifted away from God in this country, then came the lion.

I wonder, friends, if I could ask you to take out a piece of paper and for the next hour, which we don't have time for, but if you could, that I would ask you to do it and have you list all the national tragedies that have befallen America since the terrorist attacks of 9 -11.

Why just look at the last 12 months of floods and fires and senseless killings in our land? We're bloods in the streets of every corner of our country. God is trying to get our attention, but we are too consumed by our idols.

Ephraim is tied to his idols. Let him alone. Well, let's look at the third progressive judgment that came upon the people of God as seen in Hosea 5 -15. And I believe, friends, this is the most severe of the three.

The Withdrawn Presence of God

I will go and return to my place till they acknowledge their offense and seek my face. In their affliction, they will seek me earnestly. This speaks of the withdrawn presence of God. Once translation of this verse reads, then I will return to my lair until they have borne their guilt and seek my face.

In their misery, they will earnestly seek me. How much more will the people of America bear in remedial judgments upon them by a violated God who's been mocked and legislated out of this country from the schoolhouse to the courthouse?

Spiritual Decline Within the Church

But the most grievous judgment, I believe, is the one that has fallen in the churches of this land. The church paid no attention to the moth as she built larger campuses for bragging rights within her denominations.

The church replaced the old gospel that had power, power to save, with a less offensive one. The church, in her effort to reach the world, let the world into the church and has not even noticed the absence of the Almighty as he has withdrawn himself and gone back to his lair.

I took a chapel service at a Christian school a few years ago, and the pastor of that church, which was over that school, asked me to bring a message to those high school students. As I stood before them and poured my heart out to them and broke open God's word with them, they were as disinterested as a child would be to a lecture on rocket science.

A couple of teenage girls on the front row mocked me and giggled to one another while I preached. Some teenage boys never looked up from their cell phones. Others gave me blank stares and, when I was done, they politely applauded because they felt they had to.

The broken-hearted pastor, who was almost 70 years old, approached me when they were dismissed, and he looked me in the eye and said, I feel sorry for these young kids today in church, for I remember a time when I was a youth in church and God was still moving in the land in the early 1970s, and what breaks my heart, brother preacher, is that most of these church kids have never experienced the power of God in a meeting.

And that, my friends, is the full description of our text today in Hosea 515, I will go and return to my place. That's what had happened to the American church in the last 50 or 60 years. We are under remedial judgment of the withdrawn presence of God, but nobody seems to notice and very few care.

Affliction, Repentance, and the Return of God's Presence

What national calamity will have to take place to get this country's attention? Will it be a computer hacking of our NORAD defense system as nuclear missiles are launched at us from North Korea and a third of this country's population is instantly fried by fire?

I don't know, and it's too terrible to even wonder about. But God is speaking to this nation and to her churches that He will stay in His place, in His lair, until they acknowledge their offense of a violated God and seek His face, seek it earnestly.

And because of His great love for us, God will turn up the heat and let loose the lion so that in their affliction they will seek me earnestly. Long, for when the seats in our sanctuaries are empty and the aisles are full of the prostrated people of God, as they weep in humility and brokenness over the sins of the church and the sins of the land, and in their desperation they cry out in holy boldness unto God and seek Him earnestly with prayers and repentance that gain His ear and grip His attention and make Him move out of His lair and come amongst us again in an outpouring of His grace in a national spiritual awakening that will shake this land from coast to coast.

The Rochester Revival and Public Repentance

The evangelist, Rolf Barnard, used to love to tell a story about the time when he was a young preacher boy and an older pastor took him around the city of Rochester, New York. And this older pastor, who was in his 80s, told Rolf Barnard of the memories he had as a boy when Charles Finney was preaching in a local factory and revival broke out and spilled across the streets and hamlets of the entire area of Rochester where it was said over 100 ,000 people came to Christ there during the second great awakening.

And this old pastor walked slowly and took Rolf Barnard by the hand and he took him to a particular street corner and he said, right here was the hotbed of the business district during the great revival.

And as a boy I stood right here and saw grown men come out of their places of business and kneel on the sidewalk in broad daylight with their suits on and their hats removed. And I heard them as they weeped over their sins and as they cried out to God to have mercy and save them.

A Call to National Prayer and Spiritual Awakening

Oh, friends, wouldn't it be wonderful to behold such scenes as that in our desperate days where we stand on the very brink of annihilation as a nation and God in His mercy would be in our midst with His manifest presence to such a degree of His outpoured plentiful effusions of grace that little children would stand and stare in wonder at grown men kneeling on a public street corner as they weeped over their wretched sins and begged God for mercy and saving them.

If that doesn't send you to your knees, I don't know what will. And what will it take to turn this nation back to God and go from a cesspool to a throne room? Let's begin with prayer. Let us pray.