Let's open our Bibles now to the book of the prophet Jonah. Jonah chapter three. I'm going to read the whole chapter. You'll find this on page 936 of the Pew Bible. Continuing our series of studies in this well-known story. Jonah chapter three, beginning at the first verse. Let's give attention again to the word of God. Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you. So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city. Three days journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city going a day's journey. And he called out, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them. The word reached the king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles. Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them. and he did not do it. Amen. This is the Word of God. Well, a few weeks ago we began our two-part study of this great Ninevite revival under the preaching of the prophet Jonah. And you remember how we considered a revival to be a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit, where God uses the ordinary means of grace in an extraordinary way, as has been experienced in Scripture and throughout church history. And we're studying the subject under three headings. We thought about the source of revival in verses 1 and 2. We're in the middle of the characteristics of revival in verses 3 to 9. And we're going to also look this evening at the results of revival in verse 10. So to review where we have been, last time we saw the source of revival is God. God is the one who takes the initiative, not us. We saw here that in Jonah chapter 3 we have an Old Testament picture of the outpourings of the Holy Spirit on the Gentiles in the age of the Gospel, the age in which we live. The New Testament prefigurement of Christ's burial and resurrection doesn't stop at the end of chapter 2 with Jonah out of the fish and back on dry land. It continues. into chapter 3, with a prefigurement of the preaching of Christ to the Gentiles at Pentecost and after. We might say that what we have in Jonah 3 is an Old Testament picture of New Testament revival. In Old Testament shadows, it teaches us New Testament lessons on revival. And then we began to consider some of these characteristics of revival. Martin Lloyd-Jones, who has written much on this subject, says that the two main characteristics of revival are first, an extraordinary enlivening of the members of the church, And second, the conversion of masses of people who hitherto had been outside in indifference and sin. And that is precisely what we see in our text. Revival affects both believers and non-believers, but it does so in very different ways. Believers are revived. and unbelievers are awakened. And in our last study, we looked at the first three characteristics of revival, the ones that affect the church. Now let's just go over them again briefly. The first characteristic of revival in the church is a renewed awareness of God. Let's note again, the order that Jonah is revived before Nineveh is awakened. Revival usually begins with the people of God. The church must be roused from her slumber before she will ever urgently sound the gospel trumpet to a perishing nation. And Jonah here had received a renewed sense of the holiness and the power of God. He had experienced a new depth of repentance before God and a renewed focus upon God's sovereignty in his grace. And so must we. But then the second characteristic of revival in the church is a renewed burden for the lost. So like Jonah going to the exceedingly great city of Nineveh in verse 3, we need to be willing to go to the lost and to boldly face the greatness of the task. And then the third characteristic of revival in the church is a renewed confidence in the ordinary means of grace. God says to us, as He did to Jonah, Arise, go to New Denabi, go to Whitehead, go to Ballyclaire, wherever it is He's placed you, that great city or town or village perhaps, and preach to it the message that I tell you. You see, what makes revival extraordinary is not the means that are used, but rather the quantity of the fruit that God is pleased to issue from them. We don't need, my friends, we don't need a new message. We don't need a new method. What we need is a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit to breathe life into these things. Is that something that you pray for? Is it something that you long to see? So, with that brief review then, this week, we want to look at the final three characteristics of revival, which show us how revival affects the world. So we begin this evening then with the fourth characteristic of revival, which is found in the world. And it is this. A great turning to God in saving faith. A great turning to God in saving faith. Look at verses 4 and 5 again. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey, and he called out, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And the people of Nineveh believed God. So Jonah here preaches his one-sentence sermon. A one-sentence sermon of judgment on this wicked city. And what is the result of this one-sentence sermon? And the people of Nineveh believed God. Their ears heard Jonah's voice. But in their hearts, they recognized God's voice. God was speaking to them. It doesn't say the people of Nineveh believed Jonah. They believed God. The voice of their Creator, and Lawgiver, and Judge. These Ninevites had the same experience the Thessalonians had. Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 2.13, When you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth the word of God, which effectively works in you who believe. That's what's happening here. in the book of Jonah. Now this is characteristic of true preaching by the Spirit. Jonah had been commanded, go to Nineveh and preach to it the message that I tell you. Yes, it's delivered by a human preacher. But the message is God's message. It's not the preacher's message. He's just the message boy. Never mind him. What's God saying to you? That's what we need to ask when we hear the Word of God preached. It is every preacher's fear that there may be too much of him in the sermons he preaches. Too much attention drawn to him, not enough attention to Christ. Jonah preached the sermon, but the Ninevites heard God speaking. When God sends revival, when His Holy Spirit accompanies this very ordinary means of grace, you'll leave church and you'll have barely noticed the person that was standing up here, because you'll be thinking about what God has said to you. His message will follow you and consume you, and it will not let you go. That's the way it was at Nineveh. Even in Reformed circles, we need to beware of creating celebrity preachers. Now, there's a lot of good that has come from the new interest in Reformed theology in the church in the last 10, 20 years and more. But let's be careful that we don't fall into the Corinthian trap. I am of Piper, I am of Keller, I am of de Young. They are all faithful Jonas and the Spirit of God is upon them and we should thank God for raising such up. But let's thank God even more for the message that they bring from the Word. Is that what consumes us? Do we listen to podcasts and sermons and do we go to conferences to hear God speak? Or because there's a superstar preacher who's in town, and we want to go and hear him. It's a challenge. We read, the people of Nineveh believed God. And if we could put the emphasis elsewhere, we read the people of Nineveh believed God. This Hebrew word believe, aman, has the same root as a word we use a lot, amen, okay? And it means truly or verily or so may it be. In other words, the Ninevites hear and are fully persuaded that truly Jonah's message of judgment will be. It will be. And more importantly, they not only believe God's judgment, they believe in the God of judgment. In other words, they don't merely believe information. The word means to rely upon, to put your confidence in, or put your trust in. Their faith is in a personal God, not just the warring that He has communicated to them. And it is by such faith, says the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 2.8, that you are saved. Saving faith, brothers and sisters, isn't just the intellectual acceptance of gospel data, which is of course essential, but it is also the embracing of the God who is at the center of that gospel. And without it, you may carry around a wealth of biblical knowledge in your heads, but you can carry that wealth of biblical knowledge with you to hell. We were reminded of that from this very pulpit this morning. Those who hear the words of Christ, they go to church, they've memorized the catechism, they know the Bible, but they're not building on the rock. We need to be careful. Before Jonah came to them, the Ninevites would have perished in their sinful ignorance of salvation. Remember that Jonah left behind him in Israel a generation that would soon perish in their sinful knowledge of salvation. That, my friends, is a far, far greater calamity and a far greater judgment. Perhaps someone this evening is thinking, well, hang on a minute. Maybe this story is a bit of a stretch to you. After all, how could such a brief message of judgment bear such extraordinary fruit, such a great turning to God and saving faith? Well, I think the text shows us that the Ninevites discerned enough hope in the message that the king himself could say in verse 9, who knows, God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. And I think we see from that statement by the king of Nineveh that the Ninevites discerned the gospel of salvation from Jonah's ministry. How did they do that from a one-sentence sermon? Well, to answer that we need to see that Jonah's ministry had two elements to it. Two elements. First, it was a powerful message. A powerful message. What was the message? Nineveh shall be overthrown. That's it. Nineveh shall be overthrown. Few words, but many implications. These words said to them, there is a God who is holy and who must punish sin. These words said, you as sinners are responsible to this God, and your threatened overthrow indicates that your sins have been committed against this God who makes the threat. These words said, this God has, in the midst of threatened judgment, shown you grace. He's given you a period of grace. Yet, 40 days, said Jonah. Forty days to do something. Forty days to do something about your desperate condition. And not only has He given you a period of grace, He's given you a prophet to warn you, and who can acquaint you with God's will. It's a powerful message. This sermonette, if you want to call it that, in verse 4 is probably a summary statement. It's most likely that Jonah preached more than the few Hebrew, or four Hebrew words, actually. It's a very short sermon. Probably this is a summary statement. It's unlikely that's all he said. Tell me more. 40 days, it'll be over. That's all I'm allowed to say. Probably there was more to it than that. But having said this, Isn't it awesome how the Holy Spirit can do so much with so very little? That's a comfort to those of us who are preachers here this evening. The Holy Spirit can do so much with so little. How many people have been converted by the remembrance of a single scripture verse? Or reading a single gospel tract? You think of Augustine, awakened at the sound of a child chanting, tolle lege, tolle lege, pick up and read, pick up and read, pick up and read. Just a few words spoken at the right moment. Even if they don't contain the entire gospel, they can be used by God to point an unbeliever to where they will encounter the entire gospel. And this is not an encouragement to us in our evangelism. God can take your words, just a few stumbling words that afterwards you just... Why didn't I think of this verse or that verse? And you walk away, oh, what a terrible evangelist I was. You don't know what God's doing with those four English words, perhaps, that you spoke that might have stabbed someone in their soul and driven them back to find a Bible, to find another Christian, God can do a lot with a little. It's a powerful message. Jonah could say with Paul in 1 Corinthians 2.4, My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. A powerful message. But there's something else here. There is also here a powerful sign. A powerful sign. All through this series, I've been at pains to point us to the gospel where Jesus talks about the sign of Jonah and how he shows that Jonah's message in life is fulfilled by Christ. And in Luke chapter 11, verse 30, Jesus, as he gives his own infallible commentary on the Ninevite revival, says something that I think is absolutely fascinating. He says, Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites. Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites. And in the context there, what Jesus is saying is that Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites in exactly the same way that the Son of Man is a sign to His generation. There's a one-to-one parallel. And Jesus there is telling us something important that's not immediately obvious from the Old Testament text of Jonah. You see, just as Jesus' powerful gospel preaching to Israel was validated by His undeniable miracles, which culminated in His being raised from the dead the third day, Even so, Jonah's powerful gospel preaching to Nineveh was validated by his being raised from the dead, as it were, following three days in the belly of the fish. Now, how the Assyrians knew about Jonah's death and resurrection experience in the great fish, we're not told. But Jesus tells us he was assigned to them. Jesus himself tells us this. Maybe there was an eyewitness. We don't know. I mean, it would be quite something to see a giant fish beach itself and throw this prophet onto the beach. Perhaps there were witnesses to this. We don't know. We're not told. But whatever the source, the Ninevites were deeply convinced of the truth of His message, and in part, Jesus tells us, it was because Jonah himself was a sign to them. So Jonah, the messenger of God to these unbelievers, was himself a living picture of what God could do for them also. If God had spared Jonah, The rebellious prophet, might he not also spare them? A nation of rebels against their creator. I think there's a point of application there for us this evening. Because in a certain sense, you too are a sign. You're a sign to the unbelievers all around you in the world. Not because you performed miracles, but because a miracle has been performed upon you. You too have undergone a death and a resurrection, your new birth, your having been raised spiritually from the dead. You are a living, walking example of what God can do for your unbelieving neighbors and family and friends. And the question you need to ask yourself is this, is my whole life a message of grace that backs up my verbal witness to the world? Do you have a lively Christian testimony of having been brought from spiritual death to spiritual life by the power of God? Because if you don't have that, it's just words. You need to be a Christian. And your friends say, well, I know the way you live. I don't want anything to do with that. Are you a sign to the world? So this is the fourth characteristic of revival in the world. There's a great turning to God in saving faith. There's a fifth characteristic of revival here in the world, and it is a great turning to God in repentance. A great turning to God in repentance. Repentance may be defined in its most basic sense in the words of verse 10. They turned from their evil way. They turned from their evil way. That's what repentance is. Repentance is basically a U-turn. Mark Dever writes, it is turning from the sins you love to the holy God you are called to love. So when God sends revival, unbelievers turn to God in faith, but they also turn from sin in repentance, and they do it in droves. The Ninevite repentance is demonstrated by three elements. For one thing, there is a true grasp of the gospel. You see that in verse 5. and the people of Nineveh believed God, they called for a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them." They have a true grasp of the gospel. Many evangelists in the world today preach a gospel that is altogether devoid of a call to repent for sin. Take, for example, America's pastor, they call him, Joel Osteen. I don't know if he's popular here or not, but he's huge on the other side of the pond. And he wrote a book called Becoming a Better You. And in this book, he redefines sin as, and I quote, falling short of your own potential. That's the definition of sin, rather than falling short of the glory of God and standing guilty before his awesome majesty. Faith and repentance are inseparable. They are two sides of the same coin. Indeed, saving faith shows itself by repentance. If there's no repentance, there is no gospel. It was Jesus who said, unless you repent, you too will likewise perish. We confess with our Catechism 87, what is repentance unto life? Answer, repentance unto life is a saving grace whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, that is to say, a true grasp of the gospel, doth with grief and hatred of his sin turn from it unto God with full purpose of and endeavor after new obedience. So don't mistake What they did in verse 10 is somehow meriting their reprieve. God saw what they did, and He turned from His wrath. This is the fruit of the Spirit working faith in the heart and hatred of sin. Repentance unto life is a saving grace, and we need to pray for God. to grant this repentance unto life to our unbelieving loved ones, and we must exercise it ourselves day by day in the Christian life. Nor is this putting on sackcloth merely an external changing of wardrobes, because there is secondly under this heading not only a true grasp of the gospel, but a true sorrow for sin. A true sorrow for sin. These Ninevites are gripped by an awareness that they are sinners in the hands of an angry God. Verse 6, the word reached the king of Nineveh and he got up from his throne and he took off his robe and he covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he issues a proclamation and published through Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles, let neither man nor beast herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God." Friends, truly repentant souls grieve, not just for sin's bitter consequences, but for the fact that their sins are an offense against a holy God. Repentance can be easily faked. God describes this danger in the book of Joel, chapter 2 and verse 12. Return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning. Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful. He is slow to anger. He is of great kindness, and He relents from doing harm. Who knows if he will turn and relent and leave a blessing behind him? Isn't it interesting? It's the same words that the king of Nineveh said. Who knows? Who knows if he will turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger that we may not perish. In times of revival in the history of the church, This sorrow for sin has often been accompanied by a great visible outpouring of grief for sin. Here in this passage, we have fasting for man and beast alike, removing all worldly pleasures and taking on the trappings of sorrow and even bereavement. J. I. Packer notes that, quote, in revival, the gospel of redeeming love and free forgiveness through the cross is valued as the best news ever. And the exercise and gestures of repentance, whereby believers distance themselves from their sins, become vigorous and violent. That's a good description of what we see happening here in the book of Jonah in Nineveh. Take another example. In 1736, Jonathan Edwards published his observations of the Northampton Revival under the title, A Narrative of Surprising Conversions. And he describes a very similar experience. Let me just read a few lines. Edwards writes, Some are brought to conviction by a great sense of their sinfulness, in general that they are such vile, wicked creatures in heart and life. Others have the sins of their lives in an extraordinary manner set before them. Persons are sometimes brought to the borders of despair and have had such a sense of God's wrath for sin that they have been overborn and made to cry out under an astonishing sense of their guilt, wondering that God suffers such guilty wretches to live upon earth and that He does not immediately send them to hell. All that may seem very foreign to us, very foreign to our experience personally and to our experiences as a church and as a denomination. And no doubt revivals have seen great excesses of emotions that have brought disrepute to the gospel. But let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater here. When a thrice holy God draws near to an unholy people, a people of unclean lips, such as Assyria or Northern Ireland. We shouldn't wonder that they cry out like Isaiah, Woe is me, I am undone. So we have here a true grasp of the gospel, we have true sorrow for sin, and we have thirdly a true crying out to God for mercy. A true crying out to God for mercy. Verse 8, the first part. Let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. And verse 9, who knows God may turn and relent from His fierce anger so that we may not perish. Call out mightily to God. It's an urgent expression of repentance. An urgent expression of faith. This isn't fanaticism. This isn't mass religious hysteria. This is a corporate expression of 1 John 1.9. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. In revival, such crying out to God usually affects all strata of society. You know, all the pundits out there can say, well, what would you expect? All those downtrodden working-class people, the Methodists, are, of course, they're finding a ready audience among them. You'd expect that. But then you get these noblemen come along and they're being converted. It affects everybody. Nineveh was a great city, a proud city. Nineveh was a world capital, but we see it here reduced to its knees in humiliation before God. An entire society from the slums to the royal palace. This is national repentance. In verses 6 and 7, the Ninevite king and his nobles take the lead. They set the example in repentance. This isn't the same thing that maybe you've heard of America's annual presidential prayer breakfast. I don't know if that's something you've heard of before. Happens once a year in Washington, D.C. And it attracts speakers like the Dalai Lama and Bono. King Abdullah of Jordan was on there. And it's a big, great ecumenical time to, you know, share, I guess, common spirituality or something like that. Can you imagine our prime minister and members of Parliament kneeling down in dust and ashes and confessing personal sin and national sin, crying mightily to God to turn from His wrath and urging this nation to attend to the preaching of the gospel. You say, that's fantasy. That's what happened in Nineveh. It's happened in the history of the church in this gospel age. And while this is a characteristic of revival as it comes to the world, surely we as the church need to lead the way. We saw this in our last study. The church needs to be revived before the nation is awakened. When's the last time you proverbially sat in sackcloth and ashes? Have you ever cried out mightily to God for your own sin? Your family's sins? This nation's sins? Have you ever shed tears for this nation? Have you ever wept for our province? How often our cries are mere whimpers. Maybe just a formal, forgive us our trespasses as part of our daily prayer routine. A low view of sin will bring with it a low view of repentance. So to summarize, these are the three elements of repentance shown by Nineveh. They had a true grasp of the gospel, a true grasp of sorrow for sin, and a true crying out to God for mercy. there's another element to repentance, and really it's our final characteristic of revival as it affects the world. We've seen here in this passage a great turning to God in faith, Great turning to God in repentance. And the sixth characteristic of revival in the world is a great turning to God in transformed lives. Transformed lives. And we see that, I think, in the second half of verse 8 and also verse 10. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. And then look at the start of verse 10. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way. They did what they said they would do. They actually turned from their evil ways. Here are people whose lives have been transformed by the preaching of God's Word. True faith and true repentance are evidenced by changed lives. The last Old Testament prophet was John the Baptist. And you remember what he counseled his hearers in Luke 3 verse 8. Therefore, he said, bear fruits worthy of repentance. And again, repentance is something that can be easily faked. When the conscience is pricked, there may well be a great outpouring of emotion, especially in a widespread movement like a revival. But where are the lasting fruits of repentance? Once again, Shorter Catechism 87, where there is true repentance, a sinner doth with grief and hatred of his sin turn from it unto God with full purpose of an endeavor after new obedience. And friends, this endeavoring after new obedience is exactly what the Ninevites demonstrated. They turned from their evil way. Now this statement shouldn't be quickly rushed past. This is incredible. This is incredible. As far as the ancient Near Eastern civilizations were concerned, the Assyrians were the most ruthless of them all. They were a byword among the nations. They were known as the inventors of some of the most horrific tortures and executions. They invented crucifixion, for example. It's the earliest examples of crucifixion in the historical record. And they terrorized their neighbors for three centuries. And yet, by the mighty work of their Creator, they set aside their violence and their evil, and they turned instead, excuse me, to seek the face of Jehovah. It's remarkable. But this is the sort of thing we can expect when God sends revival. Only 160 years ago, in Ulster, there was a revival. 1859 revival. And there was such a dramatic improvement in public morality. Public drunkenness was greatly reduced. Many bars were put out of business. The law courts in the main towns of Belfast, Balomina, and Coleraine had to be closed because there were no cases to hear. This is all a matter of historic record. This happened here in Northern Ireland. Here's the proof that turning to God in faith and repentance is real. A transformed life. Sometimes it may last for a long time, sometimes for a season. We don't know how long this Ninevite revival and its effects were felt in this place. But it's true, whether it be the conversion of an individual or a nation, that faith without works is dead. So let's pray for our nation. And that we, like Jonah, would see a true turning to God in faith and repentance, and a turning away from the evil as lives are transformed by the Spirit of God. Well, as we draw near the end of this chapter, we've considered the source of revival, and we've considered six characteristics of revival. And briefly in conclusion, I want us to just say a few things about the results of revival in the last verse. Let's look at verse 10 again. When God saw what they did, How they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. What are the results of revival? Well, they are that multitudes of undeserving sinners are saved from the wrath of God. But there are a lot of people, most recently a group of theologians known as the Open Theists, that have looked at this verse 10, and they've tried to use it to undermine the unchangeableness of God. They say, well, here's God changing His mind in response to the free will actions of man. Well, that's just nonsense. God tells us himself in his word, Numbers 23, 19, God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man that he should change his mind. The previous warning of verse 4, expressing God's revealed will that Nineveh would be destroyed in its wickedness, is not contradictory to His secret will that a repentant Nineveh would in fact be spared. Hugh Martin puts it very well. He says, it was wicked, violent, unrighteous, atheistic, proud, and luxurious Nineveh, which God had threatened to destroy. But a city sitting in sackcloth and ashes, humbled in the depth of self-abasement, and appealing as lowly suppliants to his commiseration, a Nineveh like that, that Nineveh, God had never threatened. That Nineveh he visited not with ruin. He had never said that he would. Friends, we serve a very, very gracious God. A God who shows mercy to his enemies. God says in Ezekiel 18.23, Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? Says the Lord God. and not that he should turn from his ways and live. God can extend such mercy. And extend it to entire communities, and provinces, and nations. Because His Son died as a ransom for all the world's Ninevites who will turn to God in faith, and turn to God in repentance, and turn to God in transformed lives. Nineveh was spared because Jesus wasn't. He died for His people. who will turn from their sins and repent and believe the gospel. Maybe you're not a Christian here this evening. Maybe you think that the God of the Bible, and particularly the God of the Old Testament, seems an angry sort of God. He's always sending prophets out there, ringing bells and calling for repentance and saying, repent or be damned. That's your vision of God. Dear friend, in His judgment, He shows mercy. He shows mercy. There's a Savior here for you too. Has God not spared you till this evening? You who, like Nineveh perhaps, have sinned against Him greatly and earned His wrath. Suppose, like Nineveh, God gave you A 40-day warning before you were summoned to stand before Him to give an answer. I wonder how you'd spend those 40 days. I hope you'd be doing something similar to the Ninevites in this passage. Perhaps you should be doing that this evening. God doesn't usually give 40-day warnings. He doesn't usually give 40-second warnings. Friends, shall we not pray for revival? Shall we not pray for the lost among us? The lost in our neighborhoods, our cities. All the six characteristics of revival that we've discussed here. An awareness of God, a burden for the lost, confidence in the means of grace in the church. and then turning to God in faith and repentance and transformed lives in the world. All these six things are tangible things that we do experience, in fact, to a greater or lesser degree in the present life of the church. All of them actually are, in a sense, ordinary. They're not just confined to the history books, to those almost unreal seasons that you read about, where God pours His Spirit out in extraordinary measure. So friends, since we, the church, have the Holy Spirit, and we have His ordinances, His ordinary means of grace, we actually already have all the necessary ingredients of revival. Our quantity. of feeding often corresponds with our degree of hunger. Do we hunger for the Word? Do we hunger for God to work among us? Let us hunger. Let us pray. Let's expect more from our sovereign source of revival, that God would again revive us, revive His church, and awaken our nation. Isaiah writes in Isaiah 62.6, you who make mention of the Lord, do not keep silent and give him no rest until he establishes and makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth. Amen. As we remain seated, let's call upon God in prayer. Let's pray. O living God, We acknowledge that you are our judge. And we acknowledge that you know our hearts this evening. You know all the recesses which hide wicked things. You know the sins of our youth. You know the sins of our old age. You know all about us. And Lord, if there be anyone here this evening who needs to cry out mightily to God, we ask, O Lord, that you would so move them by your Spirit, that they would cry out and find that you are willing to receive them. And Lord, those of us who have cried out mightily to you, we do confess, O Lord, our faith is so small, our repentance is so insincere, Our lives do not show forth Your power as they ought. We confess that we have not been assigned to our Ninevites as Jonah was. And so, Lord, there is much this evening for which we must repent. But we thank You, O Lord God, that You are not simply the judge. You are the Savior. You are the one who is in the business of giving life. And we ask this evening that You would give new life to us all. Revive us, we pray. Restore to us the joy of salvation. Restore to us a keen awareness of the depths from which we have been brought. And grant, Lord, that we this week would go forward with a renewed burden to pray for our nation. We confess our own contributions to the sins of this land. We ask, O God, that you would be pleased to move by your Spirit. We pray, O Lord, that you would raise up a generation of those who will go forward to preach your word with power. But help each one of us, we pray. to speak a word in season about the Savior and revive us, O Lord God, so that our nation will be awakened. We ask all of these things in the powerful name of Jesus Christ, who is the Lord. Amen.