Forrest: Good morning.
Forrest: Forrest Coleman, lead pastor here at Multiply.
Forrest: If you're new here today, welcome.
Forrest: Glad that you're here.
Forrest: As we jump into the next week of our series, Revival Come, and a sermon entitled One True God.
Forrest: You know, the last week we jumped in and we're talking about the history and the rich history of revival that's in this nation.
Forrest: Talked about the first Great Awakening and uh Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield and the colonies and a return to God.
Forrest: There was another move of God that happened out on the frontier, out in places like Kentucky.
Forrest: Called the Second Great Awakening.
Forrest: And this came about in 1800, 1801, 1802.
Forrest: And it happened just 50 miles from here in central Kentucky.
Forrest: Now, I'm not expecting that anybody coming into the room today necessarily knows any of this history.
Forrest: You'd have to be a church nerd or have gone through some Bible classes at some point to know about the history I'm going to tell you about today, but I'm telling it to you to be an encouragement and to show you what the Lord has done in this area.
Forrest: See, there was this place called Cane Ridge that's about 50 miles from here.
Forrest: And basically what happened in the turn of a just a two or three years was this moment that now is deemed as the second great awakening.
Forrest: What happened was back in that time, it's estimated that 23,000 people came through revival meetings there and around Cane Ridge.
Forrest: If you were to imagine that being today, that would be imagine every single resident of Lexington attending one single revival for percentage-wise.
Forrest: So what happened?
Forrest: What happened at this Great Awakening, the second Great Awakening, was people came into this area of Cane Ridge and they came to this camp meeting, they experienced the preaching of the word from Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians that were hungry for God, seeking after him.
Forrest: They even said that the crowds at one point were so large that there were no microphones, no amplification, that seven or eight pastors would be standing on tree stumps at one time preaching to the crowds.
Forrest: Also, at this point, it included black preachers.
Forrest: And it's one of the first recorded instances of black preachers teaching white people at the time.
Forrest: Was at this move, this moment.
Forrest: And this great awakening that happened of these people who came from Kentucky and from outside of Kentucky to experience God, to learn of Him, to worship Him, to experience the Holy Spirit.
Forrest: What was birthed and inspired out of this second Great Awakening was a host of abolitionists to see the end of slavery, to plant the seeds of what would come in the Civil War in 60 or 70 years.
Forrest: The American Bible Society came out of this time.
Forrest: Mission boards and foreign mission boards came out of this time.
Forrest: And what I'm trying to tell you is that Kentucky is a special place of revival.
Forrest: See, as we think about this region being somewhere where the seeds of revival have been planted and an outpouring of revival and worship.
Forrest: A few years ago, Emily and I actually got the chance to go over to Cane Ridge.
Forrest: You can visit the site of the meeting house there.
Forrest: And you can go inside and it's it's still there today, and you can visit it and you can take a look at different places, but it wasn't just in that building where this revival happened.
Forrest: It poured outside of this meeting house to thousands and thousands and thousands.
Forrest: This outpouring of revival, this outpouring of worship.
Forrest: Why is this important?
Forrest: It's important this outpouring of revival, this outpouring of worship to God, because the enemy, Satan, wants you to worship anything else than the Lord.
Forrest: See, you've come in here today, and you've come in today to a house of worship for us to give praise and glory and honor to the Lord.
Forrest: And you've stepped into a heritage that is even from the last couple hundred years in this state, in this region, just 50 miles from this place where God has moved powerfully and helped us shift our nation.
Forrest: And I wonder today, have you come into the room and the enemy has convinced you to worship something other than the one true God?
Forrest: See, the the the way that the Bible describes, the New Testament describes is that if there's anything in our life that, even something that's a good thing, that we make a God thing, a little g God thing, then it becomes a bad thing in our life, and that's called idolatry.
unknown: Well, yeah.
Forrest: Something that's become an idol.
Forrest: When we think about idols, we think about something that's, you know, something made out of wood or a statue or something that people long, long time ago would worship and bow down to.
Forrest: But can I tell you that just a few years ago, I visited in South Korea Buddhist temples where they are worshiping golden statues of Buddha.
Forrest: Right now across this earth.
Forrest: Idolatry, it's live and well, and not just in the worship of a statue, but worship of anything that the enemy would convince you to put before God.
Forrest: Wealth.
Forrest: That God is just something that has been over the millennia in a crutch of religion, that we're too sophisticated now, that we're too enlightened, that that we're beyond the need for God.
Forrest: But you know that's nothing new.
Forrest: Last week we jumped into the story of the prophet of Elijah.
Forrest: This man that called man called out by God in a time in Israel that they had experienced 19 consecutive evil kings.
Forrest: Nineteen.
Forrest: A long time of evil that ultimately led to the split of the southern and northern kingdoms of Judah and Israel.
Forrest: And God calls out Elijah to go and to confront and stand up to the evil king Ahab and his wife Jezebel.
Forrest: The Bible says the e the most evil of those nineteen.
Forrest: And Elijah in a stand before the Lord goes in front of him and as a proclamation says to him that there will be no rain for three and a half years, or no rain for years, unless they turn to God.
Forrest: This was catastrophic.
Forrest: This was a title, an entire shutdown of their economy.
Forrest: An agrarian economy focused in need of farming in an arid area of Israel.
Forrest: Rain was essential.
Forrest: And so we see that Elijah takes a stand and steps up to this evil king and Jezebel, who had brought in the worship of false Syrian gods into the land of Israel and to God's people.
Forrest: See these false gods of Baal or Baal and Asherah, these Syrian gods that people began to worship and to worship these statues and to begin to go to temples, even sacrificing their children to these false gods, engaging with temple prostitutes and all kinds of sin and evil was happening at the time.
Forrest: And Elijah stands up with the Lord as a prophet and stands up to this evil king and queen, and then immediately God takes him into this isolated place, the Karif ravine.
Forrest: This place called the cutting place, where God molds him and makes him into the person and the man that God wanted him to be and the power of God to work through him.
Forrest: And we see multiple miracles happen, and we spoke of this last Sunday.
Forrest: Culminating in the first time in the scripture that someone was raised from the dead as Elijah raised the son of a widow who had passed and raised him from the dead.
Forrest: An unbelievable show of God's power.
Forrest: But it was just the beginning.
Forrest: It was just the beginning of what God had planned to do through Elijah.
Forrest: Just the beginning of the revival that was to come through his work and through God's hand on him.
Forrest: See, we go to the next part of the story as Elijah has a full-on confrontation, showdown battle with the false prophets of these false gods of Asherah and Baal.
Forrest: Here's what happened.
Forrest: This is in 1 Kings chapter 18, starting in verse 19.
Forrest: Elijah says, Summon all of Israel to join me on Mount Carmel, along with 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah, who are supported by Jezebel.
Forrest: So Ahab summoned all the people of Israel and the prophets to Mount Carmel.
Forrest: Then Elijah stood in front of them and said, How much longer will you waver, hobbling between two opinions?
Forrest: If the Lord is God, follow him.
Forrest: But if Baal is God, then follow him.
Forrest: But the people were completely silent.
Forrest: Elijah speaks right to them and says, You need to follow the one true God.
Forrest: But if you want to follow these false gods, then follow them and see where that gets you.
Forrest: But stop wavering between two.
Forrest: You know, this happens in our life as well when we have Jesus plus something else.
Forrest: We want to worship God, but also worship wealth.
Forrest: We want to worship Jesus, but we also want to worship an addiction that we have.
Forrest: We want to worship Jesus plus something else in our life, and we can even take a good thing and put it in the place of God in our life, and it becomes a bad thing.
Forrest: That's what idolatry is.
Forrest: And so Elijah sets up a showdown.
Forrest: He says, Call these prophets to the top of Mount Carmel.
Forrest: And what we're going to do is we're going to put your false God to the test and mine.
Forrest: I want us to build an altar for a sacrifice and then call down fire from heaven for that sacrifice to be burned up.
Forrest: You'll get your chance, false prophets.
Forrest: I'll get my chance with the one true God.
Forrest: And so what happened was they set up the offering, the false prophets, they went first.
Forrest: They started to worship their false idols.
Forrest: They began dancing and worshiping and doing these worship dances and all these things that they were doing.
Forrest: And they did it on and on and on and on and on for hours.
Forrest: And Elijah just stood by, watching.
Forrest: For surely he's a God.
Forrest: Perhaps he's daydreaming or relieving himself.
Forrest: Going to the bathroom.
Forrest: Or maybe he's away on a trip or asleep or needs to be awakened.
Forrest: Isn't that hilarious?
Forrest: He says, Maybe your false God is going to the John right now.
Forrest: Maybe they're not listening.
Forrest: Maybe it's on a trip.
Forrest: Maybe he's on a trip.
Forrest: You know what they did?
Forrest: These false prophets, they began to worship harder.
Forrest: Dancing more.
Forrest: They even began to cut themselves and bleed as a sacrifice to this false God.
Forrest: But nothing happened.
Forrest: Then it was Elijah's turn.
Forrest: In verse 33, Elijah said, He piled wood on the altar, cut the bull into pieces, and laid the pieces on the wood.
Forrest: Then he said, Fill four jars with water, and pour the water over the offering and wood.
Forrest: And after they'd done this, he said, Do the same thing again.
Forrest: And when they were finished, he said, Now do it a third time.
Forrest: So they did as he said, and the water ran around the altar and even filled the trench.
Forrest: Elijah soaked the wood.
Forrest: Do you remember the fact that they're in the middle of a drought?
Forrest: Water at this point is like gold.
Forrest: He says, pour the jugs of water onto the wood, onto the sacrifice, now do it again.
Forrest: Now do it again.
Forrest: Could you imagine what people were thinking?
Forrest: Could you imagine as they saw them pouring the water on that altar?
Forrest: Basically light him, like him pouring gold over top.
Forrest: What they wanted.
Forrest: This wood was wet.
Forrest: You ever tried to light wet wood?
Forrest: One of our small groups this week had uh had a time where they were uh had some s'mores and had some fires going this last Tuesday, and I was talking to some of the guys, and some of the wood was wet, and they were trying to light the fire to get some s'mores to be cooked and everything.
Forrest: It took forever, and they weren't even able to light some of it because it was wet.
Forrest: You've ever been there before.
Forrest: I don't know if you've ever had life put a wet blanket over you where all of a sudden you feel soaked too.
Forrest: You ever felt like you're drowning?
Forrest: You ever gotten to that point where you feel like nothing's going right, you feel like you can't keep your head above water?
Forrest: The bills are piling up, the health thing is going on, the relationship with the boyfriend, girlfriend's not going right.
Forrest: You feel like life is just covering you over, dousing you.
Forrest: Maybe you're in the room today and you've walked in and you don't even feel worthy to be here right now because you feel like your life is saturated in sin.
Forrest: Can I tell you that God wants you to be here and he loves you?
Forrest: And even if you might be saturated in sin, God can refine you by fire.
Forrest: See, there's all this fire imagery in the Bible.
Forrest: There's all this fire imagery that it comes to the Lord.
Forrest: Hebrews chapter 12, verse 28 and 29.
Forrest: Therefore, since we received a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful.
Forrest: So worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.
Forrest: Malachi 3:2.
Forrest: But who is able to endure it when he comes?
Forrest: Who will be able to stand and face him when he appears?
Forrest: For he is like a blazing fire that refines metal, or like a strong soap that bleaches clothes.
Forrest: They looked at Elijah, they saw what he was doing as he was doused the wood with water, and they were thinking, what a waste.
Forrest: There was a lady in the scripture with Jesus in the New Testament in Bethany when Jesus was preparing to go and to be arrested and ultimately to die on the cross.
Forrest: And there was a woman there in Bethany who took an alabaster jar of oil, expensive, a year's wages.
Forrest: And she opened that jar and she poured it over Jesus' head and she anointed him with oil.
Forrest: And immediately people came to her and they said, That's a waste.
Forrest: You should have sold that and given it to the poor.
Forrest: And Jesus said, The poor you always have, you won't always have me.
Forrest: This woman's act will be remembered forever.
Forrest: And it's recorded in multiple of the gospels.
Forrest: See, what I'm telling you is that for you in the room today, don't see your worship as a waste.
Forrest: There are people in your life who are going to discourage you from even coming to being a part of a church.
Forrest: Why are you doing that?
Forrest: There's no point in that.
Forrest: You mean you go to a church in a movie theater?
Forrest: Why are y'all even doing all that?
Forrest: What you mean you started a church?
Forrest: Don't we have enough churches?
Forrest: Why do we why you why do we need another church?
Forrest: The world wants to convince you that your worship is wasteful.
Forrest: They looked on to Elijah as he poured the water and doused the wood with water, and they thought to themselves, in a drought?
Forrest: That water that we need.
Forrest: Look at what God did.
Forrest: In verse 36.
Forrest: At the usual time for offering the evening sacrifice, Elijah the prophet walked up to the altar and he prayed, O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, prove today that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant.
Forrest: Prove that I have done all this at your command.
Forrest: O Lord, answer me.
Forrest: Answer me so these people will know, O Lord, you are God, and that you have brought them back to yourself.
Forrest: Immediately, the fire of the Lord flashed down from heaven, burned up the bull, the wood, the stones, and the dust.
Forrest: It even licked up the water in the trench.
Forrest: The same God on Mount Carmel is the same God today.
Forrest: We need to seek that same God.
Forrest: I know it's the same God because a few years ago I had the honor of getting to go to Israel.
Forrest: And one of the stops in the trip that I took was on top of Mount Carmel.
Forrest: And at the top of Mount Carmel, even today, there is a statue of Elijah that commemorates this moment.
Forrest: It's still there right now.
Forrest: And all the unrest and everything that Israel as a nation is going through even right now, as we pray for them.
Forrest: Standing on the top of that mountain is a commemoration of what happened that day when God sent down his fire.
Forrest: Right now.
Forrest: And in two centuries past, the Lord brought a fire down into this area, into central Kentucky.
Forrest: And I believe that God wants to continue to bring his fire and his spirit here today among us.
Forrest: That the same God of yesterday is the same God today.
Forrest: See, there's a tradition across the globe in the Olympics.
Forrest: In the Olympics, in these games that happen every four years, the tradition that goes back a hundred years now is that of carrying a torch.
Forrest: A torch that they light with fire, and then this torch is passed along from different individuals who run and run and run and run.
Forrest: One year they ran it all the way from Athens, Greece, all the way to London.
Forrest: It's gone by sea, by air.
Forrest: Apparently, somebody even went underwater with it.
Forrest: Carrying the torch of the flame all the way to the beginning ceremony of the Olympics where they light the torch.
Forrest: People like Muhammad Ali, dignitaries, athletes have carried the torch, that fire.
Forrest: And I wonder today who's carrying the torch of God's fire into this next generation.
Forrest: What does it not bow down?
Forrest: False God.
Forrest: False idols.
Forrest: Worship with the wonderful God.
Forrest: Will you let God set a fire?
Forrest: Will you let him set a passion in a zeal for him?
Forrest: For his word.
Forrest: For the love of God.
Forrest: For his power.
Forrest: Pour out through your life.
Forrest: Through my life.
Forrest: What if the fire of God poured out through you?
Forrest: Overflowed.
Forrest: To your family, to your co-workers, to your friends, to strangers.
Forrest: Fire of revival that God brought down so many years ago.
Forrest: See, because when that fire came down and burned up the bull and the wood and the altar and the stones and the dust and every single thing, the people all there turned and worshipped the one true God.
Forrest: They had seen the fake that these false gods were that they were worshiping.
Forrest: And what was real.
Forrest: What if God was to set a flame through you?
Forrest: I know this.
Forrest: A fire starts with a little spark.
Forrest: One little spark that can set a whole people ablaze.
Forrest: What if we let God purify us through fire?
Forrest: See, I don't know what God wants us to do through our church, through you, that he does.
Forrest: And he's just waiting on us.
Forrest: He's just waiting on somebody who will dream big and pray bigger, that God will restore, redeem, bring his love into places where he is unknown, where people have forgotten, where they've turned away, where they've let the enemy steal and kill and destroy their life and their future.
Forrest: And we have to be the ones that carry the hope, that no hope can stand to.
Forrest: That Jesus Himself loved us so much, that he died on the cross for us, that we would be new and have new life and have a fire for him and a passion for him, that we wouldn't be satisfied with racial tensions, we wouldn't be satisfied with poverty, we wouldn't be satisfied with drug addiction in our land, but that we would turn ourselves, our families, our hearts towards him, that we would see families restored.
Forrest: And the chains of the enemy broken.
Forrest: What could he do through you?
Forrest: What fire could he bring through you?
Forrest: There are all different people in different stages in different platforms and different places, and God knows exactly where you are in life.
Forrest: He knows the people who you have influence over.
Forrest: He knows the people that are trying to discourage you.
Forrest: He knows the relationships that need to be mended.
Forrest: He knows all of that.
Forrest: He knows it.
Forrest: He knows it so intimately.
Forrest: God knows every hair on your head, is what the scripture teaches us.
Forrest: He knows.
Forrest: And he wants nothing more.
Forrest: And for us to receive that fire and live it out.
Forrest: You came in the room today, and now you're wondering, God, what if?
Forrest: What if, what if I was pouring out like that and standing for you in love and in care.
Forrest: What could you do?
Forrest: Would you let him speak to you?
Forrest: Would you let him show you?
Forrest: Would you let God inspire you?
Forrest: Maybe you came in today and your relationship with God is broken.
Forrest: You feel like a wet blanket is over your life right now.
Forrest: You feel like God's a million miles away from you.
Forrest: Can I tell you today that God is close to you and he's at your door and he's knocking, and it's on you to let him in.
Forrest: He stands at the door and knocks.
Forrest: So that he can come in and he can eat with you.
Forrest: That he can enter into your mind, heart, your soul to forgive you, to save you, to walk with you, to restore you.
Forrest: Today can be our day.
Forrest: Would you bow your heads with me?
Forrest: God, I pray all across this room.
Forrest: Father, for all the what-ifs going through minds and hearts right now.
Forrest: God, I pray, Lord, that you would show us that God, we could be a people who carry your love, carry your power, carry your fire to those that are around us.
Forrest: God, I pray today over every man, woman, and child in this place.
Forrest: God, that we would have hearts that are turned towards you, that are purified by you.
Forrest: That we walk closely with you, God, and in doing so, God, that there would be a redeeming and a restoration that comes.
Forrest: Father, I pray across this room today, anybody who's in this place who stepped in today and they feel like that you're distant or far away.
Forrest: That today, God, that they would know that you're near.
Forrest: And today, anybody who came into the room today and they've not received your forgiveness and asked for your salvation and asked for your forgiveness that you bought for them on the cross in their place, that today would be the day of their salvation.
Forrest: That today would be the day that they step across the line.
Forrest: And they ask you, God, to refine them and purify them and bring your spirit into them and forgive them of their sins.
Forrest: Father, thank you for doing that for me and many others in this room.
Forrest: Today, if that's you and you need to receive Christ as your Savior, need to ask for forgiveness and receive that today.
Forrest: I ask you to pray.
Forrest: Pray to Jesus in your mind, in your heart, and sincerity, Jesus, save me.
Forrest: I believe that you died, were buried, and resurrected.
Forrest: And that you are God.
Forrest: Forgive me, purify me, cleanse me, so that I'm be in heaven with you one day.
Forrest: Thank you for saving me.
Forrest: I give you my life as you gave yours for mine.
Forrest: No one looking around today, if you prayed that prayer today for you to receive Jesus' forgiveness.
Forrest: I want to pray for you, and I want to just be able to encourage you and want to lock eyes with you.
Forrest: And so today, if you prayed that prayer and you meant that and you prayed it for the first time, would you just quietly raise your hand up so I can see you?
Forrest: Lock eyes with me anywhere across the room.
Forrest: Father, I pray today that over this place, that anyone in this place, Father, that has not been restored to you, that today would be the day that they are.
Forrest: God, I pray, Lord, that you would use each of us powerfully.
Forrest: Father, none of us.
Forrest: Too far, none of us.
Forrest: We're not worthy of you to love us, hold us, carefulness, use us.
Forrest: Empower us.
Forrest: In Jesus' name.
unknown: Amen.
Forrest: We stand together as we close and worship.