Mm-hmm. New believers are so excited they tell everyone about their relationship with Jesus. But over time, that excitement dies down. How can that be prevented? Today, on Turning Point, Dr.
David Jeremiah returns to the book of Jonah and shares his insights about keeping the spirit of revival going strong in our hearts. Listen now as David introduces the conclusion of his compelling message. When revival comes. And you know, revival ought to be happening all the time in our lives, not just in major events, but in daily occurrences. as we ask God to continue to renew us every day It doesn't Come and last forever.
You have to be on the regular routine of. Interacting with God about the nature of your soul and asking Him for the revival of your soul every day. We are going to finish up our discussion on when revival comes in just a moment. We'll get to it. But before we do, and this is a Friday edition of Turning Point, let me remind you that you need to get to church this weekend.
You know, for all these years, I've been telling everybody to go to church. And I sometimes wonder if people don't understand there's a church just about everywhere. And frankly, many of you may not know that Turning Point is a part of a church, the Shadow Mountain Church in Southern California, in El Cajon, California. If you live in this community, And you don't have a church that you attend, you should come and visit us. You will be welcome, you will be loved, you will find worship that honors and glorifies the Lord and the teaching of God's Word.
And we just encourage you to give it a shot, give it a try. We hope you will give us that opportunity. if you live in this area. And wherever you live, friends, church is a priority and you need to make it really your priority, especially during these days. Here is part two of When Revival Comes.
Um The Bible says The word of God is powerful. Here's the promise. Isaiah 55, 11, So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish what I please. It shall prosper in the thing for which I send it.
Listen to me, ladies and gentlemen. God's word never goes out without having an effect.
Sometimes we see the effect right away. And sometimes we do not. There are times after a sermon when no one responds, and someone says, Were you disappointed today? I am always encouraged when God's word bears fruit immediately, but I have learned that when the final amen is said and the service ends, God is not finished. You can hear a sermon, decide not to respond.
and then think about it all week until finally you do something about it. God's Word is powerful and it never returns empty. And that gives great confidence to anyone who teaches the Bible. Never be discouraged when you teach the Word of God, teach it with confidence. Teach it with authority.
And know this, if you teach the Word of God, God is going to do something with it. And you may not hear about it in this life. You may not hear about it today. It may be something that happens in the next generation. But God always uses His Word to effect change.
Hebrews 4.12 says, For the Word of God is living. And it's powerful. and it's sharper than any two-edged sword. Piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow, and it's a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And Paul wrote to Romans about the word of God and salvation.
He said, For I am not ashamed. of the gospel. for it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes.
Sometimes a preacher might feel tempted to move away from preaching the Word of God. As you have noticed and I have noticed, a lot of preachers seem to have done that. Maybe if I get a little more motivational in what I say. People will listen. Maybe if I don't ever mention sin, people will listen.
Maybe if I'm always positive to the most positive place. But the Bible says God blesses His Word, not all of our ideas. Preach the word of God. Do it simply and do it the best you can, and God will bless it. And you don't have to be cute.
Isn't that a good thing? You don't have to be clever. You just have to be faithful in preaching the Word of God. When we open this book, we step into the power of God.
So, why would anyone want to preach anything else? Preach the Word of God.
So there must be a hearing when revival happens. There must be a hearing of the word. And the Bible says God uses preaching to do that. He actually calls it in the Bible the foolishness of preaching. It is kind of foolish, really, that somebody would speak a word in a man's life and be changed, but that's what the Bible says.
Along with hearing, there needs to be believing. In order for revival to happen, the Bible says the people of Nineveh believed God. Notice it doesn't say they believe Jonah. They believed God, and Jonah was speaking the word of God so faithfully that when the people heard Jonah, they thought they were hearing God. Because they were.
It was as if God Himself was speaking to them and the text does not simply mean they believed about God. It means they believed in God. They believed in. him and in what he said. They believed it so strongly that instead of killing this prophet who came in to tell them they were going to die if they didn't repent, they didn't kill Jonah.
which should have been their normal response given their history. They listened and they changed their way of life. You say, well, Pastor Jeremiah, how does that happen? The truth is, I don't know that anyone can fully explain it. The preacher's responsibility is to proclaim the word.
The listener's responsibility is to hear it. God takes the preaching and the hearing, and in a miraculous way, he produces believing. They believed. There's a difference between believing about something and believing in something. They didn't believe about God.
You know, most everybody believes something about God. You know, there's a god somewhere, or they call him the man in the sky, or whoever they happen to address. But only Christians believe in God. You say, what is the difference between those two?
Well, let me tell you a story. The famous tightrope walker Charles Blondin. used to stretch a wire across Niagara Falls. And tightrope walk across the falls. It was quite a deal.
Crowds would gather to watch him perform. On one occasion, he actually pushed a wheelbarrow across the rope. And the people went crazy, applauding loudly. When he finished, he asked the crowd, do you believe I can do that again? And they cheered and shouted yes.
And then he said, Which one of you will volunteer to ride in the wheelbarrow? Hmm. Suddenly, the crowd was very quiet. Many people believed about him. But nobody believed in him.
The same thing is true with God. You see, many people believe about God. But believing about God. Isn't enough. You have to believe in him and put your trust in him.
Literally, you have to get in the wheelbarrow. and place your faith completely in his hands. That's what happened in Nineveh. The people believed God and everything began to change.
So there was a hearing and there was a believing. Third thing that happened is there was a repenting. The Bible says the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, put on sackcloth. from the greatest to the least. The response was so widespread that Jonah's message touched every level of life in the city.
The Bible says the people responded from the greatest To the least. Every single person, no matter if they were rich or poor. The Assyrians, you see, were among the proudest. of the people in the ancient world and their king would have been dressed in royal robes and surrounded by the pomp, circumstance, and dignity of his position. But the Bible says that when the message of the Lord reached the king of Nineveh, he took off his royal robe, put on sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
That was a way of showing mourning and repentance and sorrow for what one had done. And this is literally what happened. The king himself repented. Imagine how quickly that news spread across the city. People must have been saying, did you hear what the king did?
He heard Jonah preach and he put on sackcloth and ashes. The king has repented. Revival always produces repentance. Repentance means Agreeing with God about your sin, not trying to excuse it. You know what God says about sin.
To repent, you have to agree with him and you have to admit that God is right and you are wrong and turn from your sin. Interestingly, the king does not seem to have started the revival. The revival began with the people and it. Was grassroots first and then upward toward the king. That's the way it usually happens.
The text says the impact was so widespread, it affected the animals. I'd like to meditate on that for just a moment. Herds and flocks were included in the fast, covered with sackcloth. I can't imagine a cow in sackcloth. Can you?
The whole city was involved. At the beginning of the 20th century, Wales experienced one of these revivals, and it was so powerful that it changed everyday life across the country. 100,000 people got converted within just a couple of months. In the coal mines, the miners noticed something happened after that revival. The ponies that pulled the coal carts stopped working.
The reason was simple. Before the revival, the miners had driven the ponies with shouting, cursing, and harsh language. But after they came to Christ, their behavior changed, and they now treated the animals with kindness. And they had to retrain the whole system because the ponies didn't understand the new. thing that had happened in the miners.
The ponies had been trained to respond to shouting and swearing, and when that stopped, they didn't know how to respond. You know, the book of Proverbs says this: A righteous man regards the life of his animal. Have you ever read that verse? A righteous man Regards the life of his animal. Christians treat their pets better than non-Christians.
Christians care more.
Now, that doesn't mean they're going to heaven. We're not going to get into that whole deal. Don't worry about heaven. Just take care of them while they're on earth. and be kind to them.
When God changes a heart, It affects every relationship we have in life. It changes the way a husband treats his wife and the way a wife treats her husband. The way parents treat their children, the way children treat their parents, the way all people treat their animals. When God changes you, He changes you. And that is what happened in Nineveh.
from the king to the commonest of the people. They realize their sin and they turn from it. And the text also tells us that the proclamation did not come from the king alone. If you read it carefully, it came from the king and his nobles.
So the leaders of the nation joined together and said, we must change. It would be like the President of the United States and all of Congress. And Could it get a witness that we could use a little revival there in these days?
So they issued a proclamation across the city. And the people fasted, and they cried out to God, and the whole city turned in repentance.
So there must be hearing, there must be believing, there must be repenting, and there must be praying. Notice the book of Jonah got a lot to say about prayer. In the first chapter, The sailors prayed because they didn't know what was going on with that storm. And the Bible doesn't say they prayed to Jehovah's God, they prayed to their own gods, they just prayed. In chapter 2, there was a prayer meeting in the belly of a fish.
A very intense prayer meeting, I would imagine. Jonah crying out to the Lord. In chapter 3, an entire city is on its knees. The people of Nineveh are praying desperately to God. Notice that their prayers were not vague or general.
They were very specific. The king identified their sin clearly. He said they must turn from the violence that is in their own hands. Remember how brutal these Assyrians were? They were known throughout the ancient world for cruelty and violence.
They knew exactly what they were guilty of. And when they came before God, they didn't hide what they were doing. They confessed it plainly. They cried out to God. They ask him to forgive them for the violence of their hands.
So there was hearing, believing, repenting, praying, and finally there was hoping. The king's decree ended with this word of hope. Who can tell? If God will turn and relent and turn away from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. Behind the Ninevites' revival, was this great hope in God's mercy.
They believed that if they cried out to the Lord, he would turn away from his anger. and spare them. I'll tell you one of the most amazing things if you read the Bible carefully. is to discover how often the mercy of God shows up. even in the book of Revelation.
The book of Revelation from chapter 4 to the end of the book is about the tribulation. A terrible time of suffering and punishment. terror on this earth. But throughout those chapters, periodically, there's a parentheses of mercy. where God offers opportunity.
in the midst of the deepest, darkest days, of the future. Isaiah says it this way. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts.
Let him return to the Lord. and he will have mercy on him. and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. People sometimes ask whether something like what happened in Invere could happen again. I know that the Bible speaks of a great turning to the Lord after the rapture during the tribulation period when the two witnesses and the 144,000 Jewish evangelists are set loose on this earth.
The Bible says there's going to be a tremendous turning to God. But that's after we've gone to heaven. We're in heaven when that happens.
So Could it happen in our own time that we have a great revival? The Bible doesn't speak specifically to that in any place that I'm aware of. But I do know God's will is for his people to respond to him. And I can't imagine anything that would be more exciting than before we go to heaven for us to experience a great. Return to the Lord.
on this planet. when revival has come in other times and places. It is Always change the culture around it. Jonathan Edwards wrote about the revival that swept through New England during the Great Awakening. He described entire communities were transformed.
Places of open sin went out of business. People no longer supported them. Businesses that depended on drunkenness. couldn't survive because no one wanted liquor anymore.
Social life changed, the moral tone of entire towns was lifted. Listen to this, people would meet someone on the street they had wronged and immediately ask for forgiveness, though they had not seen them for weeks or months or maybe years.
Sometimes they would stop right in the street, weeping and embracing one another as they made things right. things that had been wrong for a long time. George Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards carried such a sense of God's presence that when people saw them in the streets, it reminded them of the message they had heard, and they would begin to weep. just because they saw the preacher. There was a deep awareness of the presence of God.
Lives were changed. Communities were different. And we can't Hardly imagine that. I've never seen anything like that in my lifetime. I lived after the Great Awakenings happened, seen a few things that looked like maybe it was going to start.
But I've never seen anything like what I've read about in the Great Awakenings. That doesn't mean it can't happen again. It doesn't mean we're not ready for one, because I can't imagine if revival comes in dark days. We are great candidates, men and women. We are great candidates.
We may not be able to orchestrate revival. But we can lay the groundwork. in two ways. I want this to be to kind of take away from what I've said today. First of all, we can pray for revival.
Let's rededicate ourselves to praying, Lord, revive us. And let me just ask us to change the pronoun there from us To me. Lord, revive me. Psalm 85, 6 says, Will you not revive us again that your people may rejoice in you? The Old Testament scribe Ezra wrote these words, and now for a little while grace has been shown from the Lord our God.
to leave us a remnant to escape. that our God may enlighten our eyes and give us a measure of revival. A measure of revival. How we need to pray that a measure of revival would begin and the Bible says we should pray for that Now I want you to pray for a revival in our country. In our city, in our church.
More important than that is to pray for revival in your own heart. You say, why would I do that? I don't know. Maybe you don't need revival, but you should ask yourself. Am I living for the Lord like I once did?
Is my heart warm toward God? Do I care about spiritual things? Like I did at one time. You know, there's a church in the book of Revelation that was indicted because they lost their first love. Have you lost your first love?
You know, one of the things I love about new Christians is they don't care what anybody thinks. They're so excited about Jesus, they just talk about him all the time. They don't worry about carrying their Bibles with them. Who cares what people think? I'm a Christian.
And then they get around other Christians who've been Christians for a long time. Um They can't understand normal. Christians aren't like that. And they cool off. The Bible doesn't want us to cool off.
The Bible wants us to be Hot for God. The book of Revelation also speaks of a church that became lukewarm. And it made God sick. The Bible said, because you are lukewarm, I will spew you out of my mouth. God doesn't want us to be lukewarm.
He wants us to be on fire for Him. And if we're not. We're candidates for revival. We need to rekindle the fire in our hearts. When we pray, we should ask God to do that.
Lord, I used to be on fire for you, but I'm not anymore. Please start the fire again. I want to be what I once was. I want to do what I once did.
So we can pray for revival and then we can practice it. We could rededicate ourselves to living a life of personal holiness. In fact That's what I believe. should be true of all of us. We should live lives that are described by a revived congregation.
There's a passage of scripture in the Old Testament. Psalm 119, whatever I think of that psalm. I'm always reminded that if I ever am going to be executed, I want them to read Psalm 119 before I die. Because it's the longest chapter in the Bible. In this chapter There's a bunch of things about revival.
Verse 25 says, Revive me according to your word. Verse 37 says, Revive me in your way. Verse 40 says, Revive me in your righteousness. Verse 88 says, Revive me according to your loving kindness. Verse 149 says, Revive me according to your justice.
Verse 156 says, Revive me according to your judgments. Psalm 119 is about revival. Revive me, and it's all built upon the Word of God. Ladies and gentlemen, if we're going to change the world, we have to let the Word of God, first of all, change us. And when we pass on to others the flame he ignited in our hearts, In the middle of this dark culture, we can confess and turn from sin.
And let revival fires burn. I wonder sometimes when we talk about stuff like this, if we don't just say, you know, Pastor, that must have been wonderful for those people. It's like a dream that happened or A famous point in history. That will never be repeated. But if you think that way, you're not thinking biblically.
Revival wasn't committed to a certain age or a certain population or a certain people. Revival is God's way. For us. And what God did for others, He can do for us. When I read about these revivals, My heart says, Lord, do it again.
Do again what you did then. Let us find The joy of revival. I know that this probably goes over the head of some of us. And we think, why doesn't the pastor talk about something I can use?
Well, you can use this if you will. What would happen if everybody Had a revival. In their heart, if we all became What God wanted us to be, lived our lives the way God wanted us to live. We would change the whole community. We have the power to do that.
The Holy Spirit can do that. God can do that. He can do that. God can do anything. Here's a question you need to ask.
Can God change His mind? We'll talk about that on Monday on Turning Point as we continue our discussion of Jonah, the Old Testament prophet. We've called this series Jonah the Runaway Prophet. And we're seeing the good part of what God has done in his life. But remember, God isn't finished with Jonah yet because Jonah is hard-hearted and he needs a little extra work.
I remember when I went through cancer some years ago, I prayed that God would help me to learn everything he wanted me to learn because I didn't want any refresher courses.
Well, Jonah is about to get a refresher course, and we'll see that as we move toward the end of this discussion. Don't forget to ask for your copy of the 27 calendar. It's this month's resource at Turning Point, and you can get your copy by simply sending a gift of any size to help us with the cost of airtime and production. And asking for the calendar. It'll be on its way to you.
You'll love it. It's beautifully designed just for your home and for you. Thank you so much for being with us. Have a great weekend. We'll see you on Monday.
Today's message came to you from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Dr. David Jeremiah, the senior pastor. Turning Point is also on radio and TV this weekend. To learn where you can find it, visit our website davidjeremiah.org slash radio. That's davidjeremiah.org slash radio or call 800-947-1993.
Ask for your copy of our 14-month 2027 calendar, The Light of the World. It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English standard New International and New King James Versions, available in several attractive and resilient cover options. It's such a blessing when we hear from you.
So please write us at Turning Point, PO Box 3838, San Diego, California, 92163. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us Monday as we continue the series, Jonah the Runaway Prophet, on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.
