Sermon Tone Analysis

A Call to Biblical Repentance

Introduction

We are at a crossroads in our nation.

On one hand, we are so thankful to God for the blessings He has bestowed upon this nation, the freedom to walk through the doors and come together as a body of believers and to worship God.

On the other hand, we are on a downward spiral, that if not reversed and reversed soon, our nation will suffer the wrath of an angry, Almighty God.

A Wichita minister said it best in his prayer before the Kansas state legislature in 1996:

Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask Your forgiveness and to seek Your direction and guidance.

We know Your Word says, “Woe to those who call evil good,” but that is exactly what we have done.

We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and inverted our values.

We confess that we have ridiculed the absolute truth of Your Word in the name of moral pluralism.

We have worshipped other gods and called it “multi-culturalism”.

We have endorsed perversion and called it an “alternative lifestyle”.

(Read Leviticus 20:13 to the congregation.

Mention Romans 1. Mention that it’s not an “alternative lifestyle but an “abominable lifestyle”.

Mention how anti-Christian forces are trying to silence the pulpit from the speaking out against sin and how “you God cannot be put on trial and expect to win”.)

We have exploited the poor and called it “a lottery”.

We have neglected the needy and called it “self-preservation”.

We have rewarded laziness and called it “welfare”.

In the name of “choice”, we have killed our unborn.

(Read 1 Corinthians 6:19-20.

Mention the baby’s body and the mother’s body belong to God, not the mother.)

In the name of “right to life”, we have killed abortionists…

Search us, O God, and know our hearts today.

Try us, and show us if there be any wicked way in us.

Cleanse us from every sin, and set us free.

Pat Robertson put it this way on page 37 of his book, Six Steps to Spiritual Revival:

“God Bless America.

But which America are we asking God to bless?

The America of our founding fathers, or the America we have become in the twenty-first century?

Do we suppose He will bless us just as we are-with our same-sex marriages, high abortion rate, blatant immortality in the media, abandonment of the traditional family, and mindless pursuit of riches and pleasures?”

Before we can state in this country “God Bless America”, we first need to rise up and say, “America, Bless God!”

Let us compare the top seven major issues that took place in the Public School system about forty years ago and today in our present age:

40 Years Ago:

1. Talking in class

2. Chewing gum

3. Making noise

4. Running in the halls

5. Getting out of line

6.

Improper clothing

7. Missing the wastebasket

Now:

1. Drug abuse

2. Suicide

3. Alcohol Abuse

4. Pregnancy

5. Rape

6. Murder

7. Assault

As we see what has happened in just the Public School system, much less our nation as a whole, something screams “Something went wrong!”.

We reap what we sow, more than we sow, later than we sow.

And by the looks of what we’ve been sowing in our nation, if we don’t turn the tide and turn it fast, we will reap the wrath of the judgment hand of God.

Let the storms and devastation and destruction that is sweeping our nation be a wake up call in order for us to turn back to God, become once again One Nation Under God, and return to our firm foundation on the Holy, inspired, eternal Word of God.

(Mention we need to get back to the three R’s: 1. Repentance in our hearts, 2. Revival in our churches, 3. Restoration in our nation.)

(This morning we’ll focus on just one of those.

Mention Sermon Title: A Call to Biblical Repentance)

(Invite Congregation to turn to 2 Chronicles 7:14)

The people of Israel were gathered around the newly built Temple from Solomon, the most glorious building ever built in the history of the world (it would cost around four to five billion dollars to reconstruct such a temple today).

During this worship service, fire came down from Heaven and filled the Temple.

It was the Shekinah Glory that filled with such brilliance that the people fell on their faces in awe before God.

The word “Shekinah” in Hebrew means “dwelling”.

God literally dwelt with His people.

That evening after this filling took place in the Temple, the Lord Himself spoke the words to Solomon we see in this verse so that the people of Israel would repent and turn to God.

(Have congregation stand and read the passage of Scripture together)

2 Chronicles 7:14

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

If the Israelites, the chosen people of God, the ones of whom God placed His hand upon and said “I will bless them that bless thee and curse them that curse thee” (Genesis 12:3), need to repent before God, how much more, we, in America, blessed beyond measure, need to repent as well.

The verse begins by stating, “If my people”.

God didn’t just say “If our president, or politicians, or congress, or the Supreme Court, or Washington (Lord knows if Washington was our hope for this nation we would be hopeless!)”,

but He says in His Word “If my people”.

True repentance begins with people!

We’re not going to see restoration at the national level until we see true genuine repentance at the heart and personal level.

The reason we see wickedness in Washington is because wicked hearts vote in wicked people.

(Mention the Great Awakening, Revolutionary War) Pat Robertson said it best in his book, Six Steps to Spiritual Revival, “Start revival in my nation, O Lord, by first starting it in me.”

Once we get our hearts right with God and repent of our sins, and once we bring revival to our churches and get our churches back on track doing the true mission work of God, then and only then will we begin to see true restoration in our nation, so that we can once again be “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Psalm 33:12).

1. Requirements for Repentance

A. Repentance requires humility “If my people which are called by my name, shall humble themselves”

The problem in this nation?

We’re not humble!

We strut around boasting about what I’ve done, what I’ve accomplished, how good I am, and…we think we’re so good we don’t need God!

We get such wrapped up in our three favorite people, Me, Myself, and I, that we forget about and forsake God.

(Mention the Pharisee and Publican (Lk 18:9-17), how we in this nation have become puffed up as the Pharisee, bragging about how good we are (how we brag about how we took care of Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden, etc.) instead of falling upon our face in repentance of God and thanking God for sparing our nation from further terrorism.)

President Abraham Lincoln warned about the sin of Pride when he stated:

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven.

We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity.

We have grown in numbers and power as no other nation has ever grown, but we have forgotten God.

We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.

Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

The Scriptures have much to say about the sin of Pride:

Proverbs 16:18- Pride goeth before destruction,

And an haughty spirit before a fall.

Proverbs 6:16-17- These six things doth the Lord hate:

Yea, seven are an abomination unto him:

17  A proud look, a lying tongue,

And hands that shed innocent blood,

Isaiah 14:13-14(5 “I Wills” of Satan)- For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven,

I will exalt my throne above the stars of God:

I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

Genesis 3:4-5(Deception of Eve)- And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.