We're going to look at several passages of scripture this morning. You can turn to the Old Testament, the book of Ezra to begin with, and then we'll look in Nehemiah and Isaiah and maybe some more before the Lord. It's through with us. But it's going to be a minute or two before we get to the scriptural, portions that we're going to look at. Ninth chapter of Ezra, if you want to find it, just stick your finger in there and hold on to it. I want to speak to you for a moment or two about the greatest issue of the hour. It's not social, although many would have you think that it is. It's not political. It's not ethical. It's not the crises in the Middle East. It's not starving babies, whether it's Ethiopia or any other place. It's not the environment. It's not a nuclear holocaust. It's not drugs. It's not crime. Now, I don't want to minimize any of these things because certainly they are all significant. And there's no question of the fact that we all face these issues. But I want to talk about the greatest issue of the hour. You could correct everything that I've mentioned, and of course these are just a handful of many, many issues. You could do away with all of the social injustice and all the social inequality and you could eliminate homelessness. Of course, that could be eliminated easily if the ones that were involved wanted it to be. You could eliminate poverty. You could eliminate discrimination. You could clean up politics. That'd be a chore, wouldn't it? I mean, really. Put some honest men in Baton Rouge, in Austin, in Little Rock. That's all the capitals I can think of just offhand. Put some honest men there. Put some honest men in Moscow. And even put some good men in Washington, D.C. And that wouldn't solve the greatest issue of the day. You could insist on ethics. You could demand ethics on the part of everyone, from the highest office to the lowest office. Every one of them, be honest, men of integrity. And that would be a miracle, an honest lawyer. Wouldn't that be something? a doctor that would be satisfied with a dozen eggs if that's all the patient could afford to give him. You could do all of that. You could resolve the Mideast crisis. You could see on the front page of the newspaper someday Saddam Hussein with his arms around Mr. Shamir And at the same time, he's looking over and blowing kisses to George Bush. If that could happen, it still wouldn't resolve the greatest issue of the hour. Not at all. You could feed the hungry everywhere. You could do away with pollution. You could solve the energy crisis. You could melt all the weapons of war and turn them into plowshares. You could turn drug farmers into tofu farmers. You could turn drug dealers into used car salesmen. I don't know if that'd be helping them a whole lot. And every drug addict, whether he's hooked on cigarettes or alcohol or whatever, you could get him hooked on peppermint sticks and distilled water. You could turn every criminal into a daycare worker, and you still would not have met the greatest need of the hour. You could accomplish all of that and a whole lot more. but the greatest issue of all would remain unchanged. By the way, everything that I've mentioned thus far is on the agenda of every government in existence today. That's what they're really aiming for. That's what they want. And I want to remind you that they got their agenda from hell. Satan faxed it to them on his fax machine, and they're reading just exactly what he wants them to read. And that's their agenda. In fact, it is that agenda that has become the basis of society. I mean, these problems, if they can be solved, I mean, it's going to be that utopia, brother. That's what they're trying to do is create that utopia. here on earth, eliminate all human ills and make the world a better place. Isn't that what they want to do? Well, I want to tell you something. Even if they could make a place where Huey Long's dreams came true and there was a chicken in every pot, even if they could make a place where Franklin Roosevelt's dream became a reality and we really got a new deal. Even if they could make a place where Lyndon Johnson's dream of a new society was a reality. And even if they could make Jimmy Carter's dream of a can of peanuts in every parlor a reality. Or George Bush's dream of a new world order, a reality, the greatest issue faced by mankind would still be unresolved and would still be in the same mess that we're in right now. Pilate, you remember him, expressed the essence of what I'm talking about, the essence of this issue in one terse question that he asked the people, what do you want me to do with Jesus Christ? What do you want me to do with him? And if this humanistic utopia that I've described comes, it would ever come to reality. The answer to that question would still be the same. Crucify him. Crucify him. Crucify him. What is the issue that we're talking about then? It's the same that our ancestors faced. We face it. It's the same issue that our children will face. And it's simply this. God Almighty Sovereign, who most people think is a souvenir. Sovereign. Jesus Christ, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, the eternal potentate, the Holy Spirit, our comforter, our guide, known by many names, Elohim, the strong one, Elyon, the exalted one, El, the first one, Yahweh, the God of grace. This God who is omnipotent, this God who is invincible, this God who is omniscient, this God who rules and reigns, incomprehensible. I don't care how much you think you know about God, you haven't comprehended Him yet. And you won't ever comprehend Him. The Alpha, the Omega, The great I am, this God, has been offended. And the great issue of the hour is, what are we going to do to appease God? Now, I'm not going to run down to Baton Rouge and ask them how to resolve this issue. Because my friends, the problem that I'm talking about, it's not because of what's coming out of Baton Rouge. Washington, D.C. is not the one responsible for this mess that we're in today. The problem is in the church. That's where the problem is. And that's what I want to talk to you about today. What is the church doing about this issue? God has been offended. What are we doing about it? So look with me in Ezra, if you will, chapter nine. And I want to read verses eight and nine. And now, for a little space or for a moment, grace hath been showed from the Lord our God to leave us a remnant to escape and to give us a nail in his holy place, that is, to give us something constant, something sure, that our God may lighten our eyes and give us a little reviving in our bondage. I want you to notice the wording that the King James gives of that next statement. For we were bondmen, yet our God hath not forsaken us in our bondage, but hath extended mercy unto us in the sight of the kings of Persia to give us a reviving to set up the house of our God and to repair the desolation thereof and to give us a wall in Judah and in Jerusalem. My friends, I wanna say to you today that it grieves me to have to give you this report, but the greatest need of the hour for the church right now is revival. It grieves me to have to report that to you, that there's so much desolation in the church. And we have to come and say it needs reviving. Now I wanna speak to you about this reviving that Ezra spoke of here, and what all was involved in this reviving. And I want you to understand what I mean by revival when I say reviving. I don't mean what's commonly thought of as revival. Really, that's not what we see is not revivalism, it's evangelism. And although evangelism is necessary, true evangelism is not really going to come until the church is revived and truth is revived. And so when I talk to you about reviving, I'm talking to you about some specific thing. And I want you to jot them down because I believe that we need to be praying for these things as a group. Wherever we are, we ought to be praying for the same things. One, we ought to be praying for the restoration of the church to New Testament standards. And we ought not just pray about it on Saturday night for a few minutes before we go to sleep. These things are going to have to become something that's embedded in our lives to the degree that every time we're conscious of anything, we see the need for the New Testament standards to be restored in the church. We need to pray for it. We need to encourage our people to pray for it. We need to put up bulletins where they can see it. Pray that God's church will be restored to what it was, to what it's supposed to be. And involved in that, we will be praying for the recovery of the true testimony of Jesus Christ that men might know who he is. Not the popular Jesus of this hour. one Brother Murrow referred to this morning, or said that the Jesus freaks referred to him as the kid. He needs to be known as the eternal judge, the sovereign judge of the universe. We need to see a renewal of righteous living, Brother Conrad. And remember this, I am not talking about Righteous living on the part of those politicians. I'm talking about righteous living on the part of church members. Righteous living. Just doing what's right. Just doing what the Bible says. Living that way. From the youngest of us to the oldest of us. Recently, a man, said this of his own children, not recently, but I heard of it recently. When they were growing up in their teen years, he made this statement, supposedly a Christian man. He said, I believe that my own kids are gonna have to sow their wild oats. And that's a lie straight out of hell. Nobody has to sow wild oats. We need to teach our kids to do right. when everybody else is doing wrong. And if they come home from school bruised and scarred and battered because they've done what's right, love them and praise them for it and send them back to live right some more. We need to see that. We need to see the reappearance of virtue and integrity in the church. We don't need to see these guys standing up and lying. about Christianity and lying about the truth. We need to see integrity. Preachers ought to be honest. Sometimes I'm ashamed to say I am a pastor because so many times pastors have abused the exalted privilege that's theirs to be a shepherd over God's sheep. Over there where I am, preachers have a bad reputation. Most of them. You name a name, say, yeah, I remember him, he left town, he didn't pay all his bills when he left. We need some integrity in the pulpit and in the pew. And we need to be resurrected from dead religion to a vital spirituality. We ought to be praying for those things. Resurrected from the dead traditions of the hour. to a vital spirituality. Isn't that what he was talking about there in Esther? The bondage is there. And it's all around us. And we need a little reviving in our bondage. We sing, I long ago left Egypt. I love that song. I think that's a good, got a good message in it. We long ago left Egypt. But there was bondage in the wilderness, friends. They were out of Egypt, but they still had bondage to deal with. They still had a lot of things to deal with. And this is the task of the church. This is the task of preachers to see that there's a little reviving in the church. a little reviving of God's people. Sometimes we face unpleasant tasks. Sometimes we face difficult tasks. But I want you to know when it comes to this work that I'm talking about this morning of the church, we face an impossible task. To overcome something that is thoroughly drenched by the wickedness of the hour. Read your newspaper, what's going on in church synods and church councils and some of the things that they're considering. Pure, out and out wickedness is gonna be condoned by them. You say, well, I'm not a part of that. I'm not a part of all that. Well, let me tell you what you are a part of. You're part of a time and you're part of a system that Paul told young Timothy in his last letter where men would be lovers of their own selves, where they would be covetous, fond of money, fond of things, where they would be boastful and braggarts. You don't hear a lot of that coming from the pulpits today. Brother Cozart, one of your, well, it's not a close neighbor, but he's closer to you than the rest of us. I told you about that, Brother Merrill. My brother heard him a couple of weeks ago, and he made this statement. He said, the way things are going now, by the year 2000, I want you to hear this. One billion people, B, billion people will have been converted under his ministry. Boasters, proud, blasphemers, he fit into all of those as far as I'm concerned. Disobedient to parents. I know that young people would rather you leave that out. But that's listed there with all of these things that Paul was telling young Timothy about. He said they would be ungrateful people, unholy people, wicked people, without natural affections, truth breakers, false accusers, always slandering people, always talking about people, people without self-control, people who were fierce, people who were despisers of anything that was good or anybody that was good, hostile to virtue, hostile to truth, traitors, rash. All of these folks, high-binded, lovers of pleasure. lovers of the false. And that's a description of the church today. And I use church in the generic sense there. That's the obstacle we face. That's what we have to overcome. And I want you to understand that Satan, who is the enemy of righteousness, who is the opposer of all truth, has infiltrated the ranks of the church to the point that he has what I call pulled off the perfect con game. You know what pigeon dropping is? How many of you have never heard the term pigeon dropping? One honest man in the whole group. Two honest men. Okay, now we're all getting honest. When I was a student in college in Marshall, Texas, there was a rash of con artists came through Marshall, and some of them worked for the same company that I worked for. And some of them just hung out on the streets. I worked for the electric company, We had some guys working for us that would go around and, for instance, in several houses, they sold the people lightning proof for their houses. Your house would never be struck by lightning if you paid them $100, they'd take care of it. They stole the wire from the company. They'd go to one corner of the room and tack a nail in it, and another corner and tack a nail, and another corner and tack a nail, and another corner and tack a nail. Then they'd diagonally across the room from all the corners, they would run one aluminum wire from this corner to that corner, and from that corner to this corner. and that lightning proved the house. Pulled a fast one on those people. We found out about it when a lady came in one day and she was so appreciative, she had never slept as well, knowing that lightning would never hit her house. That's how the company found out about it. But a real pigeon drop works something like this. A man would come along, and especially if it was an older person, He would come along and he would show them a wad of money that big around. And on the outside of that wad of money would be a $100 bill. It looked like a bunch of money. And he would sidle up to the person involved and he'd say to that person, now look, I just invested $1,000 and look what I got in return. It's easy. Anybody can do it. And I have an inside track of this thing, and if you'll give me whatever money you can lay your hands on, I'll invest it in the same place, and it won't take five hours to where I can bring you back. Tenfold return on your money. Would you believe that there are some folks that fail for that? Now he'd say, now look, to show you that my intentions are good, let's go to the bank, let's get your money out of the bank, whatever you can invest, and I'll let you hold this water money till I get back with yours. That don't sound too bad, does it? And so they fell for it. They're not worried. They got some collateral. Go to the bank, pull out their savings, give it to them. I'll be back in three or four hours with your money. Three or four hours pass. Well, you must have had a little trouble. Five or six hours pass. You got a lot of trouble. Next day comes around, there's something wrong. And they'd take out of their pocket or wherever they had it, that water money, and they'd start unfolding it. And it was one $100 bill wrapped around newspaper that had been cut to the size of $100 bills. So for a $100 investment, that con artist sometimes walked away with $2,000 or $3,000. What does that have to do with what I'm talking about? Everything. The devil came along and he offered people the whole wad. And he gave it to them to hold. And some of them are still holding it. and don't know that on the inside of his $100 bill is absolutely nothing. That's where the church is today. It's been hoodwinked. It really thinks that what it's got is good. It really thinks that it's in an hour of revival. It really thinks that evangelism is doing a good job today. Man, it thinks he's going to win a billion people to Christ. Evangelism is not in bad shape at all. I have a real appreciation for honest evangelists, true evangelists, evangelists that have the call of God in their life. They don't need that kind of monkey business. But that's where folks are today. Evangelism usually originates with man and not with God. And I'm talking about revival. Turn with me, if you will, over to Nehemiah chapter one. Ezra and Nehemiah lived at the same time. I want to begin reading with verse 5. And I said, Nehemiah 1, 5, I beseech thee, O Lord God of heaven, the great and terrible God that keepeth covenant and mercy for them that love him and observe his commandments. Listen to his plea. Let thine ear now be attentive, and thine eyes open, that thou mayest hear the prayer of thy servant, which I pray before thee now, day and night, for the children of Israel, thy servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against thee, both I and my Father's house. have sinned, we have dealt very corruptly against thee, and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments, without command this by thy servant Moses. Now let me say this to you. It's already been pointed out. The greatest need of the hour is for revival in the church, and revival in the church is never gonna come. just by prayer or just by trying to find a secret formula. Revival is going to come when individuals within the church start dealing with their own personal sins. When they start dealing with their own filthy minds, their own corruption, when they start dealing with the problems, the sins that so easily beset them and they fall out of love with that which is wicked and fall in love with the one who is perfect and pure and holy and righteous. Revival is not going to come to church until we, just as God, loathe our wickedness. I understand that my sins are washed in the blood of the Lamb. I understand that they are forgiven in Jesus Christ, but I also understand that that does not give me license to do as I please. And revival will never come to the church until we as individuals get sick and tired of sin. Not the sin in my brother or my neighbor, but the sin in my own personal life. May I ask you a question? Are you this morning free? from sin? You have no problem with sin at all? Are you dealing with it? How can you expect God to revive the church where you are until you deal with your own personal sins? Say, I pray for revival. Are you repenting for revival? Listen to me, God, God can send revival anytime he wants to. He can, and you can't do anything to make him send it any sooner than he wants to. If he's sovereign in anything, he's sovereign in granting revivals. But I want you to believe this morning with all your heart that the darker the hour, the greater glory when God does send revival. And we live in a dark hour. Somehow I'm just expecting God to do that. I don't know what happened, Brother Murrell, but you've known me for a long, long time. And I've always been the eternal pessimist. But the more I read the scriptures and the more I read the Bible, I get the impression that there's a day coming when God's elect is going to be revived. Will you be in that? Will I be in that? Will any of us be in that when it comes? Revival comes to a people whose hearts are prepared for it, prepared by the Spirit of the living God. Isaiah, if you'll turn over there, chapter 57, probably quite familiar to all of you, but it wouldn't hurt to put it in your mind one more time, store it there one more time, Isaiah 57. Verse 15. For thus saith the high and lofty one. That's God. The one that inhabited eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in the high and holy place. And this is who I dwell with. With him also that is of a contrite. and humble spirit. The word contrite means crushed. Folks, I want to tell you today, if we're going to have revival, there's going to be some crushing that takes place first. But how do you get the essence of the rose petal? How does the sweet smelling flavor get up to heaven has to be crushed. In fact, the word is used in one place to mean powder. It has to be ground to find powder. Now, I don't know what it takes for God to crush you, but it takes something in your life entirely different from what it takes in my life. But I'm here to believe this morning that every Christian ought to desire reviving regardless of what it costs. And believe me, it will cost. He said, that's the ones that I will revive. That's the ones that's going to dwell with me. Those that have this contrite and humble spirit because he's going to revive them, he's going to repair them, he's going to restore the lowly, he's going to quicken the heart of the humble. In fact, the ones who will be in on this revival can be described thusly, bruised, broken, smitten. That'll describe us. The Spirit of God, the Spirit of God must do that. No self-flagellations. I cannot punish myself enough to please God. I cannot crush myself enough. but it's a work of the Spirit of God. And one of the things that I believe will come to those who want this desperately is a new spirit of prayer. You notice the verses that we read, it referred to prayer, prayer, prayer. The time will come when preachers don't have to beg people to pray. I'm not talking about praying out loud in service. We're all gonna do that You know, I mean, we don't wanna be embarrassed if we're called on. We're gonna pray out loud and we say something. I know a man that every prayer he's ever prayed at the meal time has been exactly word for word for no telling how many years. Word for word. Before you jump on him and scold him, why don't you try something? Why don't you, when you get ready to pray tonight, turn on the tape recorder and tape your prayer. And don't listen to the tape, just put it aside. Next week, when you pray, you know, your weekly prayer, turn on the tape recorder. Don't listen to it, just turn it on and put it aside. And if you get around to praying next month, do the same thing. And when you've collected four tapes, take them out and listen to them. And I think you'll come to the realization that after that, you could pray a whole lot more often because every night when you lay down in your bed, just turn a tape recorder on. And say, here it is, God. Here's my prayer. Here it is again. And instead of once a month or once a week, you can offer it up every night then because if you drift off to sleep, I mean, God can still hear the tape. And that's not the kind of prayer that I'm talking about. There's going to be a desperateness that enters into our prayer when we finally realize just how desperate the situation is. The psalmist said, will thou not revive us again? Will thou not make us alive again, once again, that we may rejoice in thee? That sounds like desperation to me. Make my prayers alive. But that desperation is also mixed with confidence. I mean by that, simply this. I believe God's gonna hear my prayer. And I believe God's gonna answer my prayer. And if I pray it with that kind of spirit and that kind of attitude, I may get revived in nobody else. But at least I will. But I have a sneaky suspicion that if any one of us ever got a real touch of Holy Ghost revival, the rest of us would get some of it too, even if it was just a smidgen. Because I believe it'll affect other people. This desperateness. The psalmist also said, though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me. Though I have adversity, Though I have affliction, though I suffer anguish, though I'm in distress, though I'm in tribulation, thou wilt revive me. I don't care how bad your situation is this morning. If you're a Christian, if you'll deal with that sin, God will revive you. God will restore you. And that's the need of the hour. And that's the issue that I think we need to address as Christians. What are we as Christians gonna do about the same problem in our own lives? That God might revive his work. Can it happen? Uncertainly. You gonna put God in a box and say, God, you know, so the situation's so bad, God can't do anything about it. Any worse than Sodom? Anything new going on now that wasn't going on then? Same sins. Same problems. I've always been impressed with the fact that those folks, if no one else, got a taste of hell before they actually went to hell. In my lifetime, I have seen perhaps hundreds of evangelistic campaigns. I've been involved in dozens of them. But I've never seen a real revival break out. Have any of you seen it? Oh, I've seen a touch. Once Brother Avery Rogers came to the church there in Baytown and preached on just what we're talking about this morning, sin and dealing with sin. And folks started confessing their sin, and there was just a touch of it. But within three weeks, they were settled back down into their sins. And the flame that could have spread, water was poured on it, and it went out. Wouldn't it be something to be a part of a church that the Holy Ghost set aflame? Wouldn't it be something? Wouldn't it be something to be a part of a church where folks dealt honestly with their sins. Wouldn't it be something to have our own individual hearts set aflame? Wouldn't it be something if God just suddenly gave us a gift of revival? It could happen. And it could begin with you. Or it could begin with me. Don't you think, as I mentioned earlier, that we should all unite our hearts? Brother, everywhere you go preach, what if you told people, what if the message got around, let's all pray for the same thing? Let's become unified in this. Let's all deal with our sins. What could happen? We begin to earnestly pray for revival for our churches. That should become a priority. Let me mention again the resurrection of the church, the restoration of the church to New Testament standards. Make my church what it's supposed to be. The recovery of the true testimony of Christ. The renewal of righteousness and the return of virtue. And the resurrection from forms. Dead religion. To vital living. Christianity. Now there's one last verse, and I want to close with this, from the second chapter of Haggai. Haggai. You may have some trouble finding it, but if you can find Habakkuk and Zephaniah, you're getting close. If you'll go over to the end of the Old Testament and start turning backwards, it won't take you as long to find it if you're not familiar with just exactly where it is. And I want to look at two verses. Verse 17. and verse 19. This is God speaking. And he could be speaking to you as an individual and he could be speaking to your church. I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail and all the labors of your hands. Yet you turn not to me, saith the Lord. Verse 19, is the seed yet in the barn? Yea, as yet the vine and the fig tree and the pomegranate and the olive tree hath not brought forth. Is that the condition right now? God says, even if that's the case from this day, I'll bless you. It can't get too bad for God to bless you. May God break our hearts and humble us. And here's my whole message in one short phrase. God, blast us or bless us, but don't let us go on like we are. That's the message. May we pray? Once again, Father, it's hard to come to this place in the message or fear that something wasn't said that should have been said or something was said that should have been left out. But, oh God, you're the God who controls our hearts and you're the God who controls our minds. And all I'm asking you today is that one little spark, one little glowing ember may have been placed in the heart of every person who's here. And that during the days ahead, every time their eyes close in prayer, every time they open the word of God, that you would fan that little ember. If it's sin in their lives and sin in my life, that you'd fan that ember until it sears me from that sin, until it's burned out of my life. I pray, dear Father, that we would not go off from this place thinking that just because we pray for the same things and just because we want the same kind of revival to happen, that it will. Let us never forget who you are, our sovereign. Let us never forget the power that you have. Let us never forget that in our strongest moment, we're still too weak to effect righteousness or revival or purity or holiness or anything else in our lives. We're overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed today. That the one who is clothed in light, robed in light, robed in perfect truth, gird about with justice, shod with divine judgment, that that woman would love me.