WE NEED RAIN
DEUTERONOMY 28:1-15, 23-24
Introduction: A few years ago much of the United States went through a severe dry spell. It was so dry that it had become an Internet joke. During that drought someone published this request online: “Please pray for rain: "It’s so dry in Tennessee that the Baptists are starting to baptize by sprinkling; the Methodists are using wet-wipes; the Presbyterians are giving out rain-checks; and the Catholics are praying for the wine to turn back into water.” In the 1930’s severe drought brought what was known as the Dust Bowl, or the Dirty Thirties, called the worst natural disaster in recorded history. It lasted a tortuous decade, from 1930 to 1939 and destroyed farms and lives throughout Canada, the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, and parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas. Some of the severest dust storms reached the eastern coast and blanketed eastern cities such as Chicago and New York in “black snow”. The drought began in 1930 and progressed throughout the decade. During 1932 there were an estimated 14 severe dust storms. A year later there were 38 major storms and 100 million acres had been lost. As millions of acres of farmland became useless, hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes. It was truly one of our nation’s greatest tragedies. The Bible speaks of spiritual drought that can cause far greater devastation than “Black Sunday”; a drought of the outpouring of God’s power and blessing. Just as many of the people today in the Middle East and Central Asia, currently in the grip of one of the worst droughts in recent history, are desperate for rain, so the church needs to see its desperate need for a fresh rainfall from God.
I. The Need for a Fresh Downpour of Rain from God.
A. Haggai 1:6, 9-11 “"You have sown much, and bring in little; You eat, but do not have enough; You drink, but you are not filled with drink; You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; And he who earns wages, Earns wages to put into a bag with holes... You looked for much, but indeed it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why?" says the Lord of hosts. "Because of My house that is in ruins, while every one of you runs to his own house. Therefore the heavens above you withhold the dew, and the earth withholds its fruit. For I called for a drought on the land and the mountains, on the grain and the new wine and the oil, on whatever the ground brings forth, on men and livestock, and on all the labor of your hands."
B. Often the condition of our hearts is such that we are not aware of our need at the very time it is the greatest! For to have a fresh outpouring of God’s power and blessing we must see and admit that we have a need.
C. We need rain when we have become spiritual deserts, when worship becomes form without substance, when our secular lives have precedence over our spiritual lives, when we find ourselves losing battles against temptations, we doubt that we will see the outpouring of His Spirit again, and when we have lost the joy we once had in our Christian lives.
D. Psalm 85:6 “Will You not revive us again, that Your people may rejoice in You?
E. Hosea 6:3 "Let us acknowledge the LORD; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth."
II. The Downpour of Rain from God We Need.
A. What we need is a downpour of revival. Revival is that supreme and gracious work of God in which He visits His own people, restoring them and outpouring the fresh rain of the fulness of His blessing.
B. No one present could tell exactly what happened to the Moravians on Wednesday morning, the 13th of August, 1727 at the specially called Communion service. The glory of the Lord came upon them so powerfully that they hardly knew if they had been on earth or in heaven. Count Nicholas Zinzendorf, the young leader of that community, gave this account many years later: ’We needed to come to the Communion with a sense of the loving nearness of the Saviour. This was the great comfort which has made this day a generation ago to be a festival, because on this day twenty¬-seven years ago the Congregation of Herrnhut, assembled for communion (at the Berthelsdorf church) were all dissatisfied with themselves. They had quit judging each other because they had become convinced, each one, of his lack of worth in the sight of God and each felt himself at this Communion to be in view of the noble countenance of the Saviour. ...’This firm confidence changed them in a single moment into a happy people which they are to this day, and into their happiness they have since led many thousands of others through the memory and help which the heavenly grace once given to themselves, so many thousand times confirmed to them since then’ (Greenfield 1927:15).- Geoff Waugh, Fire Fell: Revival Visitations. Brisbane: Renewal.
C. A second example comes from Jonathan Edwards, the preacher and scholar who later became a President of Princeton University. Edwards commented on the results of a powerful move of God’s Spirit bringing revival to the church in Northampton. He wrote, “A great and earnest concern about the great things of religion and the eternal world, became universal in all parts of the town, and among persons of all degrees and all ages; the noise among the dry bones waxed louder and louder; all other talk but about spiritual and eternal things, was soon thrown by. The minds of people were wonderfully taken off from the world; it was treated among us as a thing of very little consequence. They seemed to follow their worldly business more as a part of their duty, than from any disposition they had to it. Our public assemblies were then beautiful; the congregation was alive in God’s service, every one earnestly intent on the public worship, every hearer eager to drink in the words of the minister as they came from his mouth. The assembly in general was, from time to time, in tears while the word was preached; some weeping with sorrow and distress, others with joy and love, others with pity and concern for the souls of their neighbors. - Geoff Waugh, Fire Fell: Revival Visitations. Brisbane: Renewal.
D. Revival is always marked by an overwhelming sense of Christ’s presence in the church.
E. Isaiah 6:1-5 “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!" And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. So I said: "Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, The Lord of hosts."
F. “...if Jesus were to physically make His presence known, Sunday after Sunday there would be:
• Increased and renewed participation in Worship.
• An outpouring of Love among God’s people.
• A heightened awareness of Holiness with confession, repentance, and restitution.
• An eagerness for Christian Service.
• Anointed preaching of and individual interest in the Holy Word of God.
• A growing boldness in Prayer.
• A remarkable ease in witnessing to and Evangelism of the non-churched community.
• All-out involvement in Spiritual Warfare.
• An unusual Sense of Well Being or wholeness. - Mainstay Church Resources, Wheaton, IL, November 19, 1997
G. Acts 2:28 “You have made known to me the ways of life; You will make me full of joy in Your presence.”
III. Hindrances to a fresh outpouring
A. Desires
1. Psalm 81:12-13 “So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own plans. If only My people would listen to Me and Israel would follow My ways”
2. C.S. Lewis gave us the following insight: Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. - Michael Horton, Editor, The Agony of Deceit, 1990, Moody Press,
3. Desires that aren’t subject to true desire for Him and His will are empty and hold back the rain from God.
4. When we put God’s will ahead of our own desires He sees to it that our desires become His desires and we gain much more than we could ever have thought possible in following Him.
B. Deeds
1. 2 Chronicles 6:26 “When the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against You, when they pray toward this place and confess Your name, and turn from their sin because You afflict them”
2. When you stand on the rim of the Grand Canyon you can hardly believe the view in front of you: a vast chasm one mile down, from four to eighteen miles across, and more than 200 miles long! Sin produces a chasm between God and man that is deeper and winder than the Grand Canyon – a chasm so great that no mere man can possibly bridge it to re-establish contact with God.
3. Jeremiah 5:25 “Your iniquities have turned these things away, and your sins have withheld good from you.”
4. We shut off God’s blessings by refusing to obey His commands.
C. Doggedness
1. Daniel 5:20 “But when his (Nebuchadnezzar’s) heart was lifted up, and his spirit was hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him.”
2. When we are filled with pride we do not want to admit that we are in a spiritual desert and that we have become dry as dust. We see ourselves as OK.
D. Doubts
1. Matthew 13:58 “Now He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief.”
2. If we have it set in our head that God won’t do something then we don’t open our spiritual eyes to allow God to do that particular thing. We don’t pray or if we do we don’t pray believing that the rain is going to fall.
3. Doubt stands as a barrier to effective faith. Doubt hinders our prayers. Doubt hinders our enjoyment of God’s fellowship.
4. James 1:6b-8 “...he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”
E. Duplicity
1. Ezekiel 33: 30-33 "As for you, son of man, the children of your people are talking about you beside the walls and in the doors of the houses; and they speak to one another, everyone saying to his brother, ’Please come and hear what the word is that comes from the Lord.’ So they come to you as people do, they sit before you as My people, and they hear your words, but they do not do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their hearts pursue their own gain. Indeed you are to them as a very lovely song of one who has a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument; for they hear your words, but they do not do them. And when this comes to pass--surely it will come--then they will know that a prophet has been among them."
2. Lip service - Many want to give God lip service - make a show of their Christianity before all for whatever reasons - yet their hearts are removed far from Him.
3. Isaiah 29:13 “...these people draw near with their mouths And honor Me with their lips, But have removed their hearts far from Me...”
IV. The Steps that Enable God to send the Needed Rain
A. Hosea 6:1-3 “Come, and let us return to the Lord; For He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His sight. Let us know, Let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord. His going forth is established as the morning; He will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rain to the earth.
B. 2 Chronicles 7:13-15 “When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to prayer made in this place.”
C. If all the sleeping folk will wake up,
If all the lukewarm folk will fire up,
If all the dishonest folk will confess up,
If all the disgruntled folk will cheer up,
If all the depressed folk will cheer up,
If all the estranged folk will make up,
If all the gossipers will shut up,
If all true soldiers will stand up,
If all the dry bones will shake up,
If all the church members will pray up...
Then we can have a revival! - R.G. Lee
