An Old Testament Revival - Part 1 — David Ravenhill

An Old Testament Revival: The Need for National Revival

I know many of you have driven many miles to be here and I appreciate it, but I know one thing, God will not fail us. If you have the Bible tonight, turn with me to the Old Testament, to the Book of Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Chapter 29.

I want us to explore this chapter together. I know it is one of the great revivals of the Old Testament. How many of you know we need a revival? Unless we have a revival in this nation, we won't have a nation.

My father said way back in the 80's, that if America doesn't concentrate in prayer, they will pray in concentration camps. I used to laugh, not outwardly, because I respected my father, but inwardly I thought, Dad, this is America.

The land of the free, the home of the brave, we have a constitution, we have a bill of rights, and so on and so forth, but I've learned that those things are fastly disappearing. The church is being turned against, and we are the ones now that are the problem, if you like.

We are the ones that speak out against homosexuality and all the other things that we know are wrong morally, and yet we are the ones that are mocked and laughed and so on, and will be, I believe, within a number of years, driven underground.

It wouldn't surprise me that in my lifetime, we'll have an underground church in America because of the persecution. And the only answer is revival. The Spirit of God coming and sweeping through this land.

Hezekiah’s Godly Leadership Despite a Wicked Father

We're going to look at a young man that almost single-handedly brought about one of the great revivals of the Old Testament. We're introduced to him there in chapter 1, oh sorry, verse 1 of chapter 29.

His name is Hezekiah. Hezekiah grew up in a home with a father who was the king, Ahaz. Ahaz was one of the most wicked kings in all of Israel. He did more evil than all the previous kings combined. He erected high places to various gods.

He tore down the, well, closed up the house of God, basically turned the entire nation of Israel away from God into idolatry and apostasy and so on. You can read, in fact, if you get time, chapter 28 will give you a good background.

One of those lesser subtractions, he dies, and his son becomes king. And you would think that because of his father that here you would have another generation of evil, a man that would practice evil because he saw his father doing it.

Yet you have the very opposite. So let's pick it up there in verse 1. Hezekiah became king when he was 25 years of age. Just a young man. Verse 2, he did what was right in the sight of the Lord. Revival begins when we do that which is right in the sight of the Lord.

Not in the sight of your leadership. They may be good or bad. In the sight of your denomination. Not in the sight of your parents. But in the sight of the Lord. In other words, you become God conscious.

And Hezekiah was God conscious. He was aware that God was no doubt looking at his life somewhat like Joseph in the Old Testament when eventually his brother sold him and he was sold into slavery. And there he is, of course, in the house of Potiphar.

And Potiphar's wife takes a lichen to him and wants him to sleep with her. And the Bible says he fled. And he said, how can I do this sin? Or how can I sin against God and do this sin? In other words, he was God conscious even though he was away from home.

Away from his elders. Away from his friends, relatives, and so on. There was still a God consciousness about the way in which he conducted his life. And Hezekiah is that sort of an individual. He did that which was right in the sight of the Lord according to all that his father David had done.

It seems to me that because he couldn't look to his natural father, he chose a spiritual example. In this case, he looked back to the life of David and said, listen, I want to be like David. I would suggest to you if you don't have an earthly father that is a man of God or a mother that is a woman of God, find somebody.

Somebody that can mentor you. Somebody you can look to, read the books that they've written, and so on. And say, listen, I want to be like that individual. And so here is a young man that said, I want to be like David.

Something about David's life. He was a man of God, a man of passion for God. And Hezekiah, again, develops that same love for God. Verse 3. In the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord and he repaired them.

Restoring the House of God and Making Spiritual Priorities

Let me take you back to the previous chapter. Verse 24. Moreover, when Hezekiah gathered together the utensils of the house of God, he cut the utensils of the house of God in pieces, and he closed the doors of the house of the Lord.

In other words, the house of God was off limits. The house of God was all boarded up. The doors were closed. And the very first thing that this young man does, the very first year of his reign, in the first month of his reign, he opens the doors of the house of the Lord and he repaired them.

Let me take you now to verse 17. Because I want to combine these two verses. Now they began the consecration on the first day of the first month. They began the consecration on the first day of the first month.

If you combine that with verse 3, it would read this way. In the first year of his reign, in the first month of his reign, on the first day of his reign, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord and he repaired them.

That's what I call priority. In other words, he doesn't sort of settle into office. He doesn't pass a bunch of legislature. The very first thing he does is a spiritual act. He goes to the house of God.

He recognizes the house of God is not in the condition that God intended the house of God to be in. And he sets in motion a series of things to restore the house of God back to its rightful place in the lives of God's people.

And so the very first day, the very first month, the very first year of his reign, he opens the doors of the house of the Lord and he repaired them. Now, the Bible speaks a lot about doors. And the doors were not only opened, but the doors were repaired.

Doors serve a two-fold function. They permit access and they prevent access. No doubt if you have left your home or your condo or whatever you live in, you close the doors when you left. Possibly lock the doors.

Why? Because you don't want some intruder getting in. When you go home, you will unlock the door to permit access. And so a door permits access, but it also prevents access. And he is not only opening the doors, but he is repairing the doors.

In other words, the doors are going to open and they are going to close. Now as we look at this particular chapter, obviously we don't want to get too fixated on the fact that this is an Old Testament setting because the Bible says all these things were written aforetime, were written for our instruction.

And when we go to the New Testament, of course, the Bible tells us, God no longer dwells in temples made with hands. This is not technically the house of God. I always get a little perturbed when the psalm leader stands up and says, Isn't it good to be in the house of the Lord this morning?

And I feel like screaming out, No, it's even better to be the house of the Lord this morning. So if you are the house of God, this is just the garage in which you will be. Isn't that right? Biblically.

And so when we look, though, at this setting in the Old Testament, we need to look at the counterpart, if you like, in the New Testament. That counterpart is your life and my life. The Bible says whose house we are.

We are the house of God. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit. And just as a natural temple has got doors, we have doors. The eye is a door. David said, I will set no worthless thing before my eyes. In other words, I will not allow certain things to get into my mind through the eye gate.

We have ears that allow things in or we can close our ears. We can have a deaf ear, if you like, to certain things. And so the doors have to be opened. The doors have to be closed. And the Bible, again, speaks a lot about doors.

Revelation says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man open the door, we can close the door or we can open the door. And so we need to be responsive, again, to open the doors at certain times and close the doors at certain times.

Repentance, Transparency, and Cleansing the Inner Life

But the reason the doors have to be opened initially is because the house of God was full of uncleanness. Notice it says there, he brought in the priest and the Levites in verse 4. In verse 5, he said to them, Listen to me, O Levites, consecrate yourselves now.

Consecrate the house of the Lord, the God of your fathers, and carry the uncleanness out from the holy place. In other words, the house of God that was designed by God and built for God, if you like, was polluted.

Instead of God reigning supreme, sin reigned, if you like. It was full of uncleanness. I think many people again today will go to what we call the house of God and yet internally there's all sorts of uncleanness in the house of God.

And if revival is going to take place, that uncleanness has to be dealt with. And the only way we can deal with it is to open the doors. And one of the things that the enemy hates are people that will open the door.

In other words, we live, many of us, behind closed doors. We don't want people to really know what is going on, what we're struggling with, the battles that we're facing and so on and so forth. And so we fool people.

We have all the religious jargon, if you like, and we know how to greet one another, sing the songs and even raise our hands and so on and so forth. But internally, the house of God is not in the condition that God wants it to be in.

And it's only when we become transparent and honest and we open the door that the uncleanness can come out. When we talk about opening the door in the New Testament, we would refer to that as repentance.

That I am prepared to open the door. And yet the one thing that the enemy loves to do, he loves to keep us locked up, if you like, within ourselves. Isn't that right? And men, I think, are worse than women at that, that we don't like to be too transparent.

We close down, we don't tell people, we don't share our feelings and what is going on inside us and so on. But when it comes to God, He knows already what's going on. And He's looking for that honesty, He's looking for that transparency.

In the parable of the sword, the seed that brought forth thirty, sixty and a hundredfold fell into, the Bible says, not a pure heart. Nothing wrong with that. Not a righteous heart. Nothing wrong with that either.

But it fell into another side. It's when we become honest that the Word of God then can take root and change us and transform us. But the enemy hates, again, that sort of honesty. He wants to keep us in bondage.

He wants to keep us in a place where, again, we are fooling everybody else, but we're not fooling God. I think of a gentleman that was in my church, the last church I passed, it was up in Washington State.

And this family would come on a regular basis. In fact, they were at every single meeting we had. They would be there at the midweek meeting, they'd be there at the prayer meeting. The gentleman sometimes would come up and help counsel at the front and so on and so forth.

And two or three years went by as I was pastoring there. One day I got a call from this gentleman wanting to come and see me. And he sat down in my office and all of a sudden he opened the doors. And I could not believe what was going on behind closed doors.

That man had me fooled, he had his wife fooled, as far as I know. He certainly had the church fooled. But he was involved in an incestuous relationship with his daughter. It's been going on for years and years and years.

And yet here he was counseling other people, testifying, and so on. That's what I mean by closed doors. Things can be going on internally that we don't share with anybody else. We may be addicted to pornography.

We may be battling with anger or lust or some other thing. And we like to live behind those closed doors. And those doors have to be opened in order for what is inside to be brought out. Again, what we call, as I said a moment ago, repentance.

Unfaithfulness and the Downward Spiral into Bondage

And so here is a young man. The first thing he does then is consecrate the priesthood. And he sends it into the house of God to carry the uncleanness out from the holy place. Verse 6 he says, For our fathers have been unfaithful.

They've done evil in the sight of the Lord our God. They forsaken Him, turned their faces away from the dwelling place of the Lord, and they turned their backs. They've also shut the doors of the porch.

They've put out the lamps. They've not burned the incense or offered burnt offering in the holy place to the God of Israel. Let me break that down for you a little bit. Because here we have, if you like, this downward spiral of how it began.

How does this nation end in apostasy? How does this nation end with such unbelievable things that are going on? Let me just read you a little bit of the background here. It says, They sacrificed the gods of Damascus, which had defeated them.

It goes on to say about his father, the Lord humbled Judah before Ahaz, king of Israel, for he brought about a lack of restraint in Judah and was unfaithful to the Lord. Prior to that, it says he caused his sons to pass through the fire and so on.

I mean, it's hard to believe that these were the people of God, and yet they have abandoned God, abandoned the house of God. They're involved in all sorts of idolatry. He's making his sons pass through the fire.

He brought about a lack of restraint. In other words, every man is doing that which is right in his own eyes. But now we have, how did that take place? What led to that downward, what brought about that downward spiral?

And we find here in verse 6, the first thing, our fathers have been unfaithful. Our fathers have been unfaithful. As you know, throughout the Old Testament as well as the New Testament, our relationship with God is likened to that of a marriage.

After all, one day, and I know it's hard for us guys to get our heads around it, but one day we're going to be the bride of Christ. Isn't that right? It's going to be the great marriage supper of the land.

And I don't have all the, you know, the revelation on that, other than I know that this is what the Word of God declares. But even in the Old Testament, God married Israel. That was in the, you know, I made a covenant with her.

And yet, it says here, our fathers have been unfaithful. There is nothing more devastating to a marriage, a relationship, than unfaithfulness. My wife and I happen to be part of the revival down there in Pensacola.

Lived there for 18 months, and I did a little bit of teaching in the school there. And we became friends, or my wife became friends with a lady. And one day I got a call from her husband, and he said, listen, my wife is getting to know your wife, and seems to be hanging out and establishing a friendship.

He said, would you be open to having a cup of coffee sometime, and so on. Cut a long story short, we met, and one of the first things out of his mouth, he said, has your wife told you anything about my wife and I's relationship?

And I said, well, not very much. And he began to open up, and he said, several years ago, he said, my wife got involved sexually with another man. They were actually in the ministry, and so on and so forth.

I won't go into all the details, but even as he told me, and this was years after he was down at the Bible school, training again for the ministry, but even as he told me about that unfaithfulness, the tears were just ringing in his eyes.

You know, the pain, the hurt of that situation. And God says that in the book of Ezekiel, he says, I've been hurt by your adulterous ways. We don't realize that God can be hurt. He can be wounded. Just the same way we get hurt, we get wounded.

On a different level, obviously, but here it says, it all began with unfaithfulness. What is unfaithfulness? Unfaithfulness is when you have a lover on the side, if you like, that gives you more pleasure and more delight than your spouse.

James says, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world, if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. In other words, our love for the world. We may not be involved in, you know, some, what we would consider some gross sin, but we can have a great love affair with the world, with the NFL.

No, be careful. That was too predictive. Sorry. But we can have a love affair with other things and spend hours with that mistress, that mistress, if you like, and yet when it comes to church, it's like, man, how long is he going to keep going?

Isn't that right? In other words, there is an unfaithfulness. We derive greater pleasure from the things of the world, and yet the Bible says we're in the world. We're not supposed to be out in the world.

Come out from among them and be separate, and yet somehow there's an attraction that satisfies and gratifies us more than the things of God. And we will spend hours, if you like, with that mistress, and yet when it comes to reading the Word of God or prayer or relating to God himself, we have very little interest.

That's where it eventually leads to. That was the first thing that Hezekiah mentions. You've been unfaithful to the Lord. And then it says that you've forsaken him. So, again, that relationship of unfaithfulness led to a departure from that relationship altogether.

And obviously the inference is there that there was a divorce, if you like, a spiritual divorce that took place in their relationship. It says not only that, but it says they turned their faces away from the dwelling place of the Lord.

You know, when you no longer have an interest in something, you no longer visit that place. Let's say that you're a fanatic about bowling, and I've never been a bowler, but let's say you're a fanatic about bowling, you're going to be constantly at the bowling alley.

Isn't that right? That's your love affair. But when you lose interest in bowling and take up some other sport or some other interest, then you no longer visit the bowling alley. And so it says here that, first of all, there was an unfaithfulness to God, and then, second, they turned their faces away from His dwelling place.

In other words, they were no longer in the house of God. Why? Because they were no longer interested in the God of the house. And you can tell a person's spiritual interest level, if you like, spiritually by, you know, whether you see them on Sunday morning only or whether you see them Wednesday night at the prayer meeting and so on.

And so they turned their faces away from the dwelling place. Not only that, it says they shut the doors of the porch and they put out the lamps. In other words, there was no longer the burning of the lampstand.

The lampstand, if you studied the lampstand in the Old Testament, you recall that the lampstand was placed strategically where it would give light to what was directly in front of it. And the Bible says that the thing that was directly in front of the lampstand was the table of showbread.

And so it was the illumination, if you like, of the Spirit of God upon the Word of God that brought it to life. But when the lamp goes out in our own life, there's no longer any sort of revelation, any interest in the Word of God.

In other words, this just becomes a dry old musty book about a bunch of Jews wandering around in the wilderness type of thing. And we think, you know, how does that relate to me? Why? Because it's not revelation.

The light has gone out. The revelation is no longer there. The interest is no longer there. And we need to get back to allowing the Spirit of God to bring the Word of God to life. You know, the letter kills.

That's what the Bible says about itself. The letter kills. The Spirit gives life. And when the lamp goes out, again, you just end up with the letter of the law. And so we need, again, to turn on the light, if you like, allow the Spirit of God to work in us and through us.

And so it's not only that they allowed the lamps to go out, they've not burned incense. Incense, of course, was the place of prayer and worship. Many times we talk about it more as worship. Technically, it was more prayer.

The Bible says in the New Testament it was the hour of incense burning, which was the hour of prayer. Now, again, when you lose interest in somebody, you no longer communicate with them. Isn't that right?

You know, let's suppose, for instance, that there's a young man and a young woman. They're in high school, and they fall in love with each other. And he's the track star or something, and she's the cheerleader.

And, you know, after every track meet, Tom's around at Mary's house. And Mary's parents get used to the fact that Tom's around. They know why Tom's around, because he's in love with their daughter, Mary.

And, you know, it just becomes a routine thing. And then one day, Tom doesn't show up. And they think, well, you know, he's been here just about every night this week, given a break, and he's got other things to do.

And two nights go by, and Tom doesn't show up. And finally, Mary's dad says to Mary, hey, I haven't seen Tom for a couple of nights. What's going on? And she sort of drops her head a little bit. She's embarrassed and said, oh, we broke up.

The reason that Tom isn't at Mary's house is he no longer loves Mary. And when we no longer love the Lord Jesus Christ, we're no longer in the house of God. Isn't that right? No longer have an interest in the things of God.

Again, the light has gone out. And then it says they're not burning incense. In other words, there's no longer any communication. Prior to that, they were texting each other or tweeting each other or whatever it is these days.

It's way beyond me. But anyway, I'm still in the e-mail stage. But anyway, you know, Mary and Tom are constantly in a communication, even though they may not be able to visibly see each other. They're always communicating.

But now there's no longer the communication. And spiritually, the same thing was taking place. They were no longer burning incense. They no longer had an interest in God. They were no longer praying to God, no longer dependent upon God.

And then the last thing it says, nor have they offered the burnt offering in the holy place. The burnt offering was a freewill offering. It's the offering that most people say Paul was referring to in Romans 12.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, you present your body a living sacrifice, a burnt offering. It was wholly consumed. But you'll notice that no longer are they offering the burnt offering.

The Bible says that in the day of thy power, thy people will volunteer freely. In other words, when God is moving, people will volunteer freely. They want to get on board. They want to get with the action, so to speak.

But the fact that they are not volunteering, not offering the burnt offering means, again, they have no desire to be involved in the things of God. And I've passed it long enough to know that when you need a replacement for the Sunday school, you know, the five-year-old boys or something, you know, say, listen, you know, Matilda, who's been doing this since she was 12 and she's now 99, has decided to take a break.

And we need somebody else to look after the five-year-olds. And all of a sudden, everybody starts praying, you know. Because they know if they make contact with the pastor, it's a sign of, I'm volunteering.

You know, so all of a sudden we, you know, bow in prayer, so to speak. But you know, when God is moving, people want to get on board. Isn't that right? When there's a revival atmosphere, listen, I'll go on that mission trip.

I'll go out on the streets. I'll pass out tracks. I'll do whatever it takes. You know, I want to be involved. And so here is a little bit of a background as to how the nation ended up being in the condition it was.

God’s Wrath, Judgment, and Freedom from Bondage

It began with a love relationship being broken, another love relationship taking it, no longer an interest in the house of God, again, and all the other things that we just talked about. Verse 8, therefore, that's the result of that.

Therefore the wrath of the Lord was against Judah. We don't hear too much about the wrath of God anymore. We've repackaged God in recent years. And we've made him just a, you know, big sort of Valentine's teddy bear type individual that has a constant smile of approval on his face no matter what we do.

But my Bible tells me differently than that. And I have to stick to what I read in the Word of God. You know, if you love something, then you have to hate the opposite. Isn't that right? If you love health, you hate sickness.

If you love justice, you hate injustice. And there's always a counterpart. And God is both just and a justifier. And there's certain things that God hates. Because you've hated lawlessness and love righteousness.

The Bible says, therefore, I will put mine anointing upon you. You've got to love one thing and hate the other. I think it was A .W. Tolzer that said that the Christian life can be reduced down to one simple little formula.

Learn to love what God loves and hate what God hates. You can't put it any simpler than that. And as believers, we have to love what God loves. But we've also got to hate what God hates. And you can't love something without hating the opposite.

And God here is, if you like angry, the wrath of God was against Judah. Why? Because to whom much is given, much is required. I believe that we are heading into a time of judgment in America. And our judgment will be far greater than just about any other nation.

Because we've had far more life than any other nation. There's a church on every single corner. There's TV stations and radio stations that you can tune into and so on and so forth. I mean, we are being saturated with life, so to speak.

And yet we've rejected it. And therefore, the penalty is going to be greater than those who have ever heard it. So God is angry with His people. And it says, He made them an object of terror, of horror, and of hissing, as you see with your own eyes.

For behold, our fathers have fallen by the sword. Our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity for this. In other words, the end result of this downward spiral was that God's people were in bondage.

Many of them had died by the sword. In other words, God said to them, listen, if you walk in obedience, I'll defend you. If you walk in disobedience, basically you're on your own. And so here we have a nation that has turned their back on God.

And as a result, they fall by the sword. Not only did they fall by the sword, but their sons and their daughters and wives are in captivity. Bondage has come in. And that's the end result in our own life.

When we choose to walk in disobedience to the Word of God, we end up in bondage. We end up in captivity. Thank God that one of the things Jesus came to do was set captives free. You know, not just prisoners in the sense of being literally in prison, but those that are prisoners to whatever sin, or lust, or pride, or anger it may be, that Jesus Christ can set you free.

But here, this is the end result, again, of this downward spiral. Rather sad situation. Verse 10. Now, it's in my heart. This is the king speaking Hezekiah again to this young man, 25 years of age. It's in my heart to make a covenant with the Lord, the God of Israel, that His burning anger may turn away from us.

You can see the sincerity and the determination of this young man. Again, he makes a covenant. That's pretty strong language. We don't use that language very much these days. But a contract, if you like.

And he makes a contract with God, a covenant with God, to turn away his burning anger. We need to do the same thing. In other words, he's serious. He's not just sort of nonchalant and said, boy, you know, it would be nice to have the old days back again, and so on and so forth.

No. This man is determined. So determined, again, that he no doubt gets on his face before God, and he makes this agreement with God. Verse 11, My sons, do not be negligent now. In other words, don't be apathetic, lethargic, indifferent.

For the Lord has chosen you to stand before Him, to minister to Him, and to be His ministers in the burning sense. Now, he's gathered together the priesthood. They had gone through a time of consecration.

Obviously, prior to this, they were doing what everybody else was doing. They'd forsaken their posts. They were involved in all sorts of carnality and sin and so on. But now he presents them what they themselves have fallen from.

This is the ideal that God has for you. And the first thing he says, the Lord has chosen you to stand before Him. And keep in mind, when we come to the New Testament, we are all priests. Isn't that right?

We are a royal priesthood. And you and I have the privilege, and it is a privilege, it is an honor, of standing before Him. There's no greater privilege than that. And yet, how often do we avail ourselves of that privilege?

Of coming into the presence of the one who is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. If you had a personal letter from the White House saying that you are invited, just a small company of people, five or six chosen from around the nation, to spend the day at the White House to meet the President and so on, you know, you would be thrilled.

The fact that, listen, I'm going to Washington, D .C., I'm going to be in the White House, I'm actually going to meet the President and so on. Here I've got this little invitation. There's only five people in the entire United States that are going to be there.

This is not some big conference where we have to look through binoculars to see the President. Listen, I'll actually be able to talk to him. In fact, I think, it may not be a great thrill these days, but, you know, I'm going to be careful.

But you know what I'm saying. But here we have the privilege of coming in to the one that rules the universe. The one that is the creator of the heavens and the earth. The one that never slumbers or sleeps.

The one that created the stars, calls them all by name. I mean, what an incredible privilege you and I have to be able to stand before him. That's what we have as a priesthood. Not only that, he says, but we can stand before him and minister to him.

Minister to him. Now that sounds a little strange, I'm sure. How do we minister to a God that is absolutely, totally complete within himself? He doesn't have to have any addition. He doesn't need anybody supporting him.

The closest I can come, of course, to that is those of you who are parents and you know what it's like when your little two or three or four year old son or daughter or granddaughter or grandson jumps up on your lap spontaneously and wraps their arms around you and gives you a peck on the cheek and says, Papa, I love you or whatever.

I mean, that is the privilege you and I have of coming in to the father of the universe. God himself and saying, Papa, I love you. I love you because you first loved me. You lifted me out of that horrible pit and out of the miry clay, set my feet on a solid rock, and I'm here to say thank you.

Thank you, Lord, for saving my soul. Thank you, Lord, for making me whole. And we can minister to him. And then, he says, not only that, we can be his ministers. We can be his ministers. And that is, of course, what we are called to do.

We are ambassadors of Christ above us. If you look up the word ambassador in the dictionary, it is the highest ranking office that you can have outside of a kingdom. In other words, if you are the ambassador of the United States to Japan or to Germany or Italy or wherever it is, you have the full force of the United States government behind you, supporting you.

You represent that government in a foreign land. And we are ambassadors of the kingdom of God. Here we are in this world where we have the authority and the power of God behind us. That is the place that God wants to bring us to.

And we need somehow to get a revelation of this because the world, again, has such a magnetism many times and draws us and we get sidetracked and we get off on this thing and that thing and so on and we forget our true calling.