Experiencing National Revival

The way that you know that God is real is somebody out there like Jonah testifying. Dr. Tony Evans reminds us one man caused a city to fall to its knees in prayer and says believers today can spark the same effect.

They testify that the grave is empty. They testify that Jesus is Lord. This is The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of The Urban Alternative. God has turned around entire nations before, and He can do it again.

Let's join Dr. Evans as he explains how that process can work here in our own country. Our theme has been a revival where God returns to His people because His people have returned to Him. When a revival occurs, you experience God's manifest presence. When we talk about God's manifest presence, we're talking about where God makes Himself real to you. You can know about God. You can reference God.

You can have information relative to God without ever experiencing Him. So when we talk about His manifest presence, we're talking about Him making Himself known to His people in a very real experiential way. So today I want to say a word about national revival, when God reaches down and makes Himself manifest to a nation. And there's no place better to do that with than Jonah chapter 3. There are lessons here for our personal lives, but this is the greatest revival recorded in the Bible of a nation, starting with its capital city, Nineveh. Now we all know the story of Jonah. Most of us know the story of Jonah related to a big fish. But the story of Jonah goes much deeper than a big fish. It goes to a citywide and then a national influence of revival where God returns to a Gentile group of people. God has told Jonah in Jonah chapter 1 to go to Nineveh, the great city, and proclaim against it.

And of course, you know the story. Jonah ran from going to Nineveh and got on a boat going to Tarshish. Where Jonah starts out is 550 miles from Nineveh.

He gets on a boat to take him 2,000 miles to Tarshish. So like a lot of us, he would rather go 2,000 miles out of God's will than 550 miles in it. He did not like what God was asking him to do. Now, there was reason why he didn't like it.

Two primary ones. Nineveh is an evil place. We don't have time to go there now, but all you got to do is read the book of Nahum. And Nahum is God's prophecy against Nineveh.

And you can, simply reading the book of Nahum, understand why Jonah wouldn't want to go there. This was a group of people who, like vampires, like to suck your blood. They were known for the shedding of blood. It was a violent society. And so Jonah's position is, who me there know?

You got to be kidding. Another reason he wouldn't want to go is that Nineveh was Israel's arch enemy, Assyria. Nineveh is the capital city of Assyria. They're going to invade Israel in a few years and wreak havoc and have wrought havoc with Israel. So they're their arch enemies.

So I don't want to go there for that. Jonah has to deliver this message. God has ticked off at you, Nineveh, to folk who like to kill folk. So Jonah decides, I'm not doing this.

I'm getting on a boat, and I'm going to Tarshish as far away as I can get from Nineveh and you too, God. God tracks down Jonah, as we know. While he's on the boat, he gets thrown off the boat. A big fish swallows him, and he's now facing a whale of a problem. He stays in the fish for three days and then is vomited up on shore.

He's vomited up on shore. That brings us to chapter 2 verse 10. Then the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up on dry land.

So we not only have a prophet, we've got a stinky prophet, because he's been vomited up on dry land. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and proclaim to it the proclamation which I am going to tell you. The big fish doesn't carry him to Nineveh because he's still got to go to Nineveh. So he gets vomited up on dry land, and the question is, well, what you going to do now?

Where you going to go? You looking for another boat, or you headed toward Nineveh? He says, you go to Nineveh and tell them the message I'm going to tell you. Point, God would not give him more information until he was obedient in the information he received. A lot of us want God to do more when we haven't done anything with what he's already said. A lot of us want God to do something new when we haven't addressed what he's given us in something old. The Bible says, he that hath more will be given. He that does not have that which he has shall be taken away. Translation, God won't give you more if you haven't done with what he's given you what you were supposed to do. So he tells him to go to Nineveh, the great city, and proclaim a proclamation. Another observation is that the word of the Lord came to him the second time. Point, Jonah had to adjust.

God wasn't about to. The adjustment had to be on Jonah's side first. Now, it is critical as we approach Nineveh, the great city, to understand that Nineveh had to preach to it because God's normal way of operating for the benefit of other people is through his people. Many of us are like Jonah. We don't mind being in Israel where it's safe. We don't mind being around other Christians where it's safe.

But out there where the crazy folk live, out there with the Ninevites, the Gentile unrighteous, we want to go down in the ship where the safe place is and don't want to associate with those who desperately need the message. You go to Nineveh and tell them the message. Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days walk. And Jonah began to go one day's walk and cried and said, verse 4, Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.

Remember, Nineveh would be the capital city of Assyria, the great nation. Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown. Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.

In Hebrew, this is five words. Five words make up the statement, yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown. The bad news is you getting ready to get wiped out. The bad news is judgment. The bad news is God getting ready to shut you down. The bad news is over.

But prophets didn't just deliver bad information. In forty days, Nineveh will be destroyed. In forty days, Nineveh will be overturned. In forty days, Nineveh will be shut down. That's good news there. What's the good news?

You got forty days. When your kids are misbehaving and you give them one line, keep on. You're only giving them one line. You're just saying keep on. Now, that's bad news. That bad news is if you keep on, you're going to get it. The good news is I'm not going to do it now.

Keep on means there's a little bit more time. So it's a bad news, but the bad news included a gracious provision. Why tell me in forty days you're going to destroy me? If you simply want to destroy me, you don't even have to send the prophet.

You can just wipe me off the map. It was in the midst of judgment that there was a grace offer. That there was an offer.

And that offer said you have a forty-day window to turn this around. When God takes the time to tell you about judgment, it's a painful word, but the fact He told you about it means there's still a window of grace. Forty days and Nineveh will be destroyed. Then the people of Nineveh believed in God, and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. And sackcloth was the garment of repentance. It was a visible demonstration of a heart change. I cannot see your heart, your heart.

You can't see my heart, but I want you to see this sack. I want God to change His mind about judging me and my situation. And so I am going to demonstrate visibly and publicly by the fasting, giving up of the food, by the sackcloth, my posture of repentance. So they not only believed, they took a posture of repentance. Now, remember, repentance means the restoration of harmony. Repentance means to restore fellowship with God, for me and God to be on the same page, to be on the same wavelength. Repentance means that me and God are cool again. Faith brings a legal declaration called justification, where God brings you into formal relationship with Himself. Repentance brings about harmonious relationship. You and God are now in the same room. Dr. Evans will talk about why repentance is necessary to bring us into a right relationship with God when he continues our message from his current series, Revive Us Again.

There's no question that our country needs revival. Why not let it start with you? To help you get started, we'd like to send you all 14 full-length messages in this two-volume series as our way of saying thanks for your donation to support Tony's ministry. And as a special bonus, we'll also send you a copy of his brand-new book, God Himself.

It takes a detailed look at the most important characteristics that define the Lord, and it'll draw you closer to Him as you realize more fully what it means to be made in His image. This special double offer will run out tomorrow, so call our Resource Center today at 1-800-800-3222 to get the details and make the arrangements. Or visit us online at tonyevans.org. I'll have our contact information for you again after part two of today's lesson and this. Now is the time to address this racial issue based on how God says we should address it. That's the motivation behind Tony Evans' bestseller, Oneness Embraced.

It gives a plan for how any community can see transformation take place. Oneness Embraced paves the way toward reconciliation with kingdom-centered solutions. God is literally waiting on His people to bring about the kind of change that we desperately need to see.

Oneness Embraced, available now at tonyevans.org. Our problem is either we do not believe in or we do not accept the reality of judgment. That's why, here's a principle you can always know when it's divine judgment, it always gets worse the next time.

Okay, it always gets worse the next time. He has made this a national issue. He's put it on the stage that the spiritual status of our nation is in trouble, our nation is in trouble, and that is because it is in trouble with God, so therefore we better get it right with God and I'm gonna make this a legal issue, a proclamation in other words. Both men and beasts must be covered with sackcloth, verse 8, and let men call on God earnestly that each may turn from his wicked way and from the violence which is in his hand. Remember, they are known for violence. They're crooks, they're thieves. He says, I want you now to turn from your wicked ways.

Why? Because we want God to change his mind, verse 9. Who knows? God may turn and relent and withdraw his burning anger so that we will not perish. The biblical principle here is a very important one and that is the principle of representation. Let me talk to you a moment about the theological principle of representation.

Here it is. The principle of representation simply says that the one who is legitimately above you also represents you. Therefore, their decisions affect you because the one above us represents us. This is true of a nation. When the kings made decisions, it affected the nations. It's true of a family. The decision of the father, the decisions of a husband affect the whole family. You can make God rethink his position.

You remember the series we did on spiritual authority? That our choices affect God's decisions. You can actually get God to reverse something. Now, that can be good and that can be bad because he can reverse it either way. He says, if you will get back in line with me, the bad that I had planned to do against you, I can reverse it and turn it to good. On the other hand, if you rebel against me, the good I had planned for your life and your world, I can reverse that and it can become bad and you will decide which reversal I do. So this king says, look, I want a reversal here because God, according to the prophet, is planning to do a number on us. And that's why as a nation of people, the prophetic word is needed in the White House to the outhouse to keep before the leadership and before the people, you don't want God against you. And of course, our leaders typically won't see the spiritual side of it unless there's a prophetic voice in front of it, unless there is a word from God being declared to it. And then you have the concluding verse, verse 10. When God saw their deeds, not heard their words. Not heard their words. The Bible, the New Testament calls it fruit of repentance.

In other words, it got to be something I can see. Here's what God is going to respond to. If you need God to flip a switch in your life, flip a switch in your situation, He must see your deed. He must see the action that you took, not the statements that you made. When He saw their deed, there is no such thing as invisible fruit.

When have you ever seen that? When He saw their deeds, they turned from their wicked way. Then God relented, changed His thinking on the matter, concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them, and He did not do it. You can change God's position in your situation. Now, this looks like the end of the story.

It's not. Turn to Matthew chapter 12 for our conclusion. Matthew chapter 12, verse 38.

Then some of the scribes and the Pharisees said to Him, to Jesus, Teacher, we want to see a sign from You. But He said to them, An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign, and yet no sign will be given to you but the sign of Jonah the prophet. Okay, so now Jonah is showing up again, but now it's in the New Testament by Jesus. For just as Jonah, verse 40, was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man, Jesus, be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh, okay, now we're back to Nineveh and Jonah, will stand up with this generation at the judgment and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. Oh, that's a sermon there. That's one of them Baptist passages there.

Jesus has been healing blind people, raising the sick from the dead, getting demons out of folk. They want a sign. You know, all this other stuff going on, and what they're saying, that's not enough. We've got to see the sun drop or something.

We've got to see more. A lot of us in here are asking God to do more, when if you really look back and see all the other stuff He's come through you on, you don't need no more signs. He's already made it absolutely clear He's God, but they said, We want a sign. Jesus says, There'll be no more signs.

Well, except one. He says, The one sign is, as Jonah was in the belly of the sea monster, three days, so the Son of Man is going to be in the earth three days. He says, There's going to be a vomiting, because after three days, the sea monster vomited up Jonah, and Jonah came back to earth, because he was in the water. He came back to earth.

He was thrown up on dry land. He says, Now the Son of Man is going to be swallowed up, too, for three days and three nights, and He's going to be swallowed up under the earth. But on the third day, early on Easter Sunday morning, that's a little while before day. He says, After the third day, the Son of Man is going to rise up, and that's going to be your sign.

Your sign is going to be an empty grave. But now there's another piece to this sign, that piece that you rarely ever hear talk about, that Jesus tags on to the sign. He says, The other piece to this sign is the men of Nineveh. He says, When Jonah came out of the belly of the whale, something happened in his city. Something happened in his nation. There was an upheaval spiritually.

A revival took place when Jonah rose from the belly of the sea monster. He says, The way you know that the Son of Man is alive, that the grave is empty, is not just because the Bible says so, but you're going to see a breakout in history. You're going to see men flocking to Jesus Christ. You're going to see His name on every billboard around the world. You're going to see people meeting to celebrate Him in buildings all over the world. They're going to sing songs about Him, none of which did He write.

They're going to write books about Him, none of which did He inscribe. They're going to be testifying about Him, closing prayers about Him, because they're going to be a generation of men and women who rise up and testify. The way you know that there's a sign is that there are folks willing to testify, because they've been like men of Nineveh. They've been born again, believed in God, repented, had harmony with God, and they testify.

The way that you know that God is real is somebody out there like Jonah testifying. They go to work and testify. They testify in their neighborhoods. They testify in their proclamations. They're not ashamed of the gospel.

They testify that the grave is empty. They testify that Jesus is Lord. They testify that Christ is coming back again. They testify that they're on their way to heaven.

They're not too cute to praise Him, too sophisticated to give Him glory. The sign of Jonah is that the men of Nineveh are going to testify that the grave is empty. Christ is alive. Somebody here ought to be willing to testify that Jesus Christ is Lord, that a revival might break out nationwide like it did in Jonah's day. Dr. Tony Evans, with some powerful encouragement and a timely call to action for believers today. And if you'd like to get the full-length copy of this message to review on your own or share with your small group or church, the title to ask for is Experiencing National Revival. Better yet, you can get it as a part of Tony's complete 14-lesson teaching series, Revive Us Again. This collection of messages will help you rekindle your relationship with the Lord and teach you how the same can happen for your church and community. And don't forget, through tomorrow only, we're bundling all these messages on both CD and digital download with Tony's brand-new book on the nature and characteristics of the Lord, called God Himself. And they're all yours as our thank-you gift when you make a donation to help us keep Tony's teaching on this station. Get your copy before this special offer runs out tomorrow. Visit tonyevans.org or call our 24-hour resource center at 1-800-800-3222.

That's 1-800-800-3222. Well, Dr. Evans has been talking recently about the things that lead to revival. Tomorrow, he'll turn his attention to the biggest thing standing in its way. I hope you'll join us. The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by The Urban Alternative and is made possible by the generous contributions of listeners like you.