Foundation for Pursuing National Revival - Pastor Greg Addison - June 21, 2026

Sermon from Pastor Greg Addison on Sunday morning, June 21, 2026.

Ministering to the heart of the Western Arkansas River Valley for over 165 years. Welcome to Chapter and First- the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith First Baptist Church, you'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg Addison, our ministry staff, and guest speakers. Thank you for listening!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years. Welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church. You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers. Thank you for listening.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

About the only word I can come up with is glorious. So it is incredible. Thank you all for that. Happy Father's Day, dads. Thank you. And those of us in the elite class of grandfathers, happy Father's Day to you guys as well. It is great to be a dad. I know y'all talked about dads in the book. That's a gift from the church. That's an exciting thing our association has done. We love being a part of Great Commission Baptist Association here in River Valley. So for a prayer time this morning, let's just pray for the dads here this morning. I know we've talked about camp and all that, but I want to pray for our dads and a blessing on our dads today. Lord, thank you for today. We thank you for this time of worship we just had and the incredible thing that reminds us just who you are in our lives as we worship you. Today we want to thank you for dads. We know that you, as a heavenly father, have set that model, and you are all that is perfect and wonderful and loving and giving and protecting and teaching as a father. And so I want to thank you for fathers here in our church. Help us to be like you and our families. Father, we want to be the kind of fathers that you are. And so I pray for our men and our church that you'll help them be that. And we know that grandfathers are discussed to some degree in Scripture, and we pray for grandfathers as well. I pray it'll be a wonderful day for our families. I pray, Father, that you'll bless these men. Thank you for how they love you, how they bring their families to church, how they're spiritual leaders in their homes, and we pray your blessings on them today. In Jesus' name and everybody set. Turn with me your Bibles to 2 Chronicles 7. And as you're turning, I want to give you another suggestion. Last week I suggested some reading materials. And today I want to suggest some movies for you as we head towards the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, remind you of our picnic on the 1st and a joint service together. Our folks from Chaffee are going to be coming over. We're having a one combined service here. In fact, uh they're excited about coming over and uh being a part of things. I told them I would give them a list of all of you who think you own your seat, and I'm gonna have them sit in yours. Is that good? And we'll just have some fun that morning, right? We're gonna have a great time working through that. But here's some movies kind of get you in the mood. Uh the John Adams movie is probably the most famous on this list, and it's a mini-series that was done based on the biography by David McCullough. It's really, really well done. Uh, and I would encourage you, especially watch the part that leads up to the Declaration of Independence and that sort of deal, because that's really what we're talking about. We're celebrating what we'll be looking at on the fifth, and so it's really excellent. It goes into debates and all that, it's really good. And while we're on that topic, the musical 1776. And I took a poll in the in the Chaffee campus. I want to take one here. How many of you have ever watched 1776? Yeah, okay. Thank you. I have a spiritual brother right here in the middle of the sanctuary. Y'all need to watch this. It's really an incredible thing. And I know that when I say Broadway, some people go, yeah, and some people go, ugh. You know, I promise you it's not some weird, foo-foo-y, hard-to-watch kind of thing. It's really, really well done. And uh, and really everybody should watch it. And it is literally the debates leading up to the Declaration of Independence, the assignment to the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence, Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson. And there's a really fun song in there about their debate and who's going to do it, and Jefferson doesn't want to do it. And Adams basically says, if I write it, everybody hates me because I'm obnoxious. And you need to write it because they'll listen to it. And it's really fun. Uh, how many of you in your family you've adopted certain fam movie quotes as a part of your family life, right? We have a few of them from this in our family. It's really fun. Uh I'll tell you how good it is. We were on vacation in DC with our kids and they were younger, and we'd walked and walked and walked, and we'd worn them out, and they were frustrated. We happened to walk upon Ford's Theater, which is where uh President Lincoln was assassinated, and they happened to be showing that. That was actually an the Broadway traveling tour was putting it on in Ford's Theater, and we thought, well, we got to do this. And our kids are frustrated, they wanted to go eat or go back to the hotel or whatever. So we go in and they're mad and we watch it, and by the time we got halfway through, they're all excited, they're thrilled, and by the time we got to the end of it, it is now a family moment in our family. That's how good it is. And so I would encourage you to watch that. And then here's a move, little known movie, you probably don't know of this movie. It is a Disney movie uh made in the 50s, and it is in color, those of you who recoil at black and white, right? Uh, and it's called Johnny Tremaine, and it's really a good family movie if you have kids or you want to watch with your grandkids. And what happens is Johnny Tremaine is a character, a teenage boy, who they plant in Boston at the time of the Boston Tea Party, heading into the battles of Lexington and Concord, which is we refer to that sometimes as the shot heard around the world. And uh the history is actually very good. Uh, being in a 50s Disney movie, it's very pleasant, it's a good family thing to watch, but it's got a lot of good history in it, and it really is a great conversation piece, I think, heading into uh that discussion of the culture of our nation. So I hope those are blessing to you. Just want to encourage those. So here we are in 2 Chronicles 7.14. We read this verse about a week ago. Uh we have gone through Solomon in our chronological reading. Solomon has built the temple and they've dedicated the temple, and now his uh time as uh tenure as king is continuing as we're reading. But I wanted to stop and read this right here because uh as we head into this 250th anniversary, you're probably gonna see this verse plastered all over. You're gonna hear people talk about it. I've grown up in church, I've heard this verse preached on I don't know how many times, and all kinds of different things. And so here's what happens: there is a lot of misconception to this verse, or there are people that preach it incorrectly, and there's a lot of people preach it correctly, I'm not trying to be critical, but they try to make this sound like a promise for America or something like that, and it's not that at all. Uh, there's a lot of uh pounding on this about repentance and screaming at the country to repent and all that. And so there's just there'll be times you'll see it as we head into this, and since we've just read it, I want to give us a biblical understanding of what this verse means. But I also want to point out that it has for us certain foundations that would help us understand how we can pursue national revival. So here's the verse. Everyone knows the verse. I mean, if you've been in church any amount of time, or you're at least familiar with it. And here's what it says if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray and seek my face, and turn from their evil ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land. Now that's the verse, and we just kind of grab it out of Scripture and we paste it out there. But it's important to understand what it is not, and it's important to understand instruction that it can provide. And so I want to give you the context or remind you the context of what's going on here. They've just finished building this incredibly gorgeous temple. Solomon is dedicating the temple, okay? So in chapter 6, just a couple of little things here so you get what's happening, he is dedicating the temple. And as a part of that dedication service, he is praying over that temple. So he says, Lord is your temple. Lord, we're coming here to worship. We ask that you inhabit the temple. And then he goes through a list of things that reiterate the promises to the nation of Israel as a people group. And as we've read up to this point chronologically, God has chosen and established the nation of Israel as a race and people group to be the funnel that he brings the Messiah into the world. And he rehearses some things in this prayer. So let me just give an example here in verse 36. Here's what he says as God's people, reminding them of the covenant, he says this. And you, God, are angry with them and hand them over to the enemy, and their captors deport them to a distant or nearby country. And so we know from reading, we've seen often how that happens. God's people sin, and it gets to be such a problem, and he has tried to convict them of that sin, and they continue in that sin, that God allows another nation to come in and either oppress them or conquer them as judgment of that sin, and then eventually they will return to him and repent of their sin. So he says, when that happens, verse 37, and they come to their senses in the land where they were deported and repent and petition you in their captors' land, saying, We have sinned and done wrong, we have been wicked. And when they return to you with all their mind and all their heart in the land of their captivity where they were taken captive, and when they pray in the direction of their land that you gave their ancestors, when they pray in the direction of the city you have chosen, Jerusalem, and when they pray toward the temple that I have built for your name, may you, God, hear their prayer and petitions in heaven, your dwelling place, and uphold their cause. May you forgive your people who sinned against you. Now, my God, please lay your ears, your eyes be open, and your ears attentive to the prayer of this place. And then he asked God to come and reside in the temple. And then the Bible tells us that that's what God did in verse 1 of chapter 7. When Solomon finished praying, fire descended from heaven and consumed the burnt offerings and sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. The priests were not able to enter the Lord's temple because the glory of the Lord filled the temple of the Lord. In other words, his glory was so powerful they couldn't even be in the building. All the Israelites were watching when the fire descended, and the glory of heaven came down on the temple. And they bowed down on the pavement with their faces on the ground, and they worshiped and praised the Lord, for he is good, his faithful love endures forever. Then the Bible tells us after all the festivities are over and all of that, that Solomon goes back to the palace, and it says in verse 12 The Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him, I have heard your prayer, and I have chosen this place for myself as a temple of sacrifice. If I shut the sky so there is no rain, or if I command the grasshopper to consume the land, or if I send pestilence on my people, and my people who bear my name, humble themselves, pray and seek my face, and turn from their evil ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land. My eyes will now be open and my ears attentive to prayer from this place. And then he challenges Solomon to walk with the Lord, and he reiterates his promise in verse 17 if you keep my statutes and ordinances, I will establish your royal throne. Verse 19. And now there is a Islamic mosque on what we refer to as the Temple Mount. And so that all happened. So that's the context of this verse. And so you have to understand the context of this verse. You can't just pull it out and slap it on a, you know, America Come to Jesus sermon. So here's what you get. That's the context of it. Now let's understand what this verse is doing. The first thing it says, it makes it clear in the context and in God's promises, and is both in the prayer that Solomon prayed and in the response that God answered Solomon's prayer with my people are the Jewish people. That's the Jewish people. This only applies to the Jewish people. Only they have these covenants with God and this relationship that he established in order to establish them to be the conduit through which he brought the Messiah into the world. So this does not apply to America. There's no promise in here for us. There's not any of that. This is not an American verse that doesn't apply to us. It's an Old Testament verse that applies to the Jewish people. And it is conditional on their faith. There was a condition on Solomon's behavior, and there was a condition on the people's behavior for whom he was responsible to lead. And so that is, if you walk with the Lord and you're obedient, then he will bless you. And if you turn away from the Lord, then there is an acknowledgement in Solomon's prayer before all the people, and there is an acknowledgement in God's response to him, if the children of Israel walk away, there is judgment for them. And they can be deported and conquered and all of that. In fact, those things historically happened because they walked away from the Lord. And so that's the context of this verse. And then you get three acts of faith obedience in the instance of Israel's sin that they must engage in in order for God to heal them. Number one, humble. That means to acknowledge Him as the only God, and it is to follow Him with yielded hearts. They are to be surrendered to Him, He is their God, and no one else, and they are completely obedient to Him. Then there is this prayer. If my people call by my name or bear my name will humble themselves, then He says, pray and seek my face. And that word pray is an English word that covers a number of different original language words. This word has this idea of a prayer of repentance. It is pleading before God for our sin. And in fact, Solomon references that kind of prayer in chapter 6, verse 37. It says, When they come to their senses in the land where they were deported and repent and petition you and their captors' land, saying, We have sinned and done wrong, and we have been wicked. And when they return to you with all their mind and all their heart, that is what this prayer envisions. And so it is a prayer of repentance. It is coming before the Lord, and we have sinned, and we have bespurched your name, and we've walked away from you, and we've not been holy as you've called, and we have violated your commands. Please forgive us. And this seek my face is in the context of that a prayer of dependence. We are depending on you. Again, Solomon's prayer that starts this is when they return to you with all their mind and all their heart in the land of their captivity where they were taking captivity. And so you get this sense of dependence on that. And then finally, the third thing is turn. And we talk about in the New Testament the word repentance often is illustrated with this idea of turning. I am walking away from the Lord. He's over there. I'm pursuing my own sinful desires, and repentance is turning from that and turning to Him and following Him. And so He says, look, here's the three acts of obedience that they must engage in. They must humble themselves before me and acknowledge me as God. They must pray in repentance and seek independence. And they turn from their wicked ways. That means change your behavior. We were doing this and we will not do this anymore. We will only do it God's way. We have to change in what we're doing. Those three acts of faith and obedience, they respond. God creates a threefold response. There's three ways that he responds. First of all, he responds that he will listen and hear. If my people call by my name will humble themselves, pray and seek my face, turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven. In fact, part of Solomon's prayer to the Lord is open your eyes and let your ears be attentive to the prayers of your people. And when God speaks to Solomon and answers his prayer in chapter 7, he says, I will open my eyes and I will be attentive with my ears to your prayer. It's important to understand that God hears prayer. And then he promises to forgive. Forgive their sin because they have repented of their sin. And then he promises to heal their land. Now, we don't know what all that means. It's not specific, but it is a sweeping, he will heal. There's a lot of ways he could do that, but he has promised to do that. And those are God's three actions that happen from the response of his people. Now, this verse may not apply to America as a promise, and don't let anybody make it sound like a promise to America. It is not a promise to us. We do not have a covenant relationship with the Lord the way Israel does. Sometimes in modern culture, some theologians try to argue that the church has now replaced Israel and all no, it doesn't apply to the church. This applies to Israel. Israel is still Israel and they're still the people of Israel. But it does become instructive to us because it models behaviors of how we are to interact with the Lord and respond to the Lord throughout the teachings of Scripture. Let me give you a verse from Proverbs. We spent the last two weeks talking about Proverbs. Here's what Proverbs says righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people. And that, as we know, is one of those collected, applied wisdom down through the generations. So when Solomon places this in his proverb under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, he has a history of the children of Israel walk with God and he blesses them. They walk away from God. Why did Solomon know he could pray all this about captors and all this other? Because he's seen it happen when they have sinned, and that sin has impacted their nation. And so he is giving us this applied wisdom of how we walk with God. The other thing in that is inherent. I believe God recognizes nations or nationalities. Okay? I believe he does. He says in Romans chapter 13, chapter 13, that governments are established by God for the purpose of creating safety and order. Right? Otherwise, we would live in the condition of loot, rape, and pillage. And whoever could do that the best would be in charge and the rest of us would be captive to them. And God says he's established governments so that they will maintain some control over society so people can function. And so I believe he acknowledges the existence of them and places his hands on them. When we look back at our history as a nation, we see that impacting in our country, a major part of the lead-up to that was the Great Awakening and the revival that swept the nation. Part of the people who came to America came with a heart of worship, and they were, they had been oppressed, and their forms of religion are persecuted, and they came here to worship freely, and there's a lot of people worshiping. Not all of our country was founded that way, but parts of it were founded that way. And because there was some freedom of religion and there was a DNA of following the Lord, then it was right for great awakening. And God raised up evangelists and men who preached and people were saved in the droves. Countless number of people were saved. And a part of that led to this understanding or this idea or thought that we should be free to worship and we should be free to make our choices in God. His structured life that way. It was a sense of dependence on the Lord. That's why the Declaration of Independence begins with we're endowed by a creator with certain inalienable rights. They were, they believed that. That God had a hand and established this. It's incredible how many prayers you read from founding fathers. George Washington constantly referred to the hand of divine providence, God placing his thumbprint on our nation. And because of that, look what happened. A nation was birthed, and this flourishing happened, and all of that. As the church grew, it was a part of that. Preachers and churches were preaching and evangelists and people were getting saved, and they were talking about freedom in Christ and all of that. They were pushing all of those things. It was powerful influence of that. But then when we came to the issue of slavery, the church wilted and failed. Christians failed to win the arguments of the day, and it was allowed to be maintained as the law of the land. And the Bible says a sin is a disgrace to any people. And because of that, we have a history of the fruit of that terrible sin that has disgraced and impacted us. One of the darkest times in the history of our nation is leading up to the Civil War, the Civil War, and following that. And again, the church could have been a part of that, but the church wilted and failed. And so you see, even in our history, times when we are righteous, more righteous as a nation, when we see that flourishing, and times when we have allowed sin to be a disgrace to us as a people and its devastating impact on us. And so Scripture teaches these principles. And so while I don't believe that this is a promise that applies to America, I do believe that it gives us foundational principles that we can look to for how we cry out to the Lord and plead for national revival. So here I want to give you just these three thoughts this morning. And I'm not going to try to resist the temptation to thunder on and all that kind of stuff because people have been doing that for generations. I've been hearing sermons like that my whole life about this, and we still don't have revival in America. In fact, America saw revivals beginning in the leading up to America, and in almost every generation, depending on how you define that, there has been a move of God that has been so broad and impacting that it would be referred to as a national revival that has happened all the way up until probably the 70s. And now we live in these generations where we have not had a full move of God that we refer to as a great awakening in the way that we have in previous generations in America. And why is that? It's because the church is failing, the collective church. And so here's three things I want you to see as foundations for revival. First of all, God demands that or teaches that his people who are called by his name will engage in humbling and prayer, repentance, and dependence and turning from their ways. In the same way, when the church has failed at times in our culture, the church has radically failed in protecting the unborn. Always have. Let me just give you an example. By any statistical measure that you read, there are at a minimum 14 million people who declare themselves as evangelical Christians and attend church at least once a month. So the first failure you know right there is if you attend church once a month, you're not an evangelical Christian. Because you don't understand what you signed up for when you said you got saved. And so we live in a culture where every single generation attending church, statisticians are telling us now all generations attend less than twice a month. Less than twice a month. Because of that, you take over 14 million people who claim to be Christians and attend church once a month. 14 million people who do not vote ever. Who do not vote ever. Not picking sides, just listen to me. Fourteen million people would sway every single election locally, statewide, and nationally that has occurred in our lifetime. Fourteen million people. Both of them have failed from a Christian perspective. Either one of them could be in the right spot if Christians stood up as salt and light and took a stand for Jesus. Million two to a million five abortions every year. The attack on the family that is rampant, that happens through laws and culture and all of that. Abortion is a part of that. Now people are getting married later than ever, less than ever. They're stating that they don't want children. What will be the result if we spend every year fighting over the right to murder a million and a half babies a year? Eventually, you're going to get generations that don't want to have them. And we are on the cusp of becoming a nation where more people die every year than are born. Sin is a disgrace to any people. People, when you get into this, here's what happens. We get like, there goes a preacher talking about politics again. What's the definition of politics? Like nobody knows. If you agree with me, you're all excited, I'm preaching the word, and if you disagree with me, then the preacher's meddling in politics. That's what happens. I have years of emails to prove that to you. And I'm not picking on that, I'm not taking sides, I'm not trying to get into that, but what I'm saying is if we were the church, if we were the church, collectively, we were the church and our nation, there would be a pursuit of righteousness and not the rampant growth of sin. When the church attends less than half of the time, less than 18% of the people tithe, we take the summer off, we do all those kinds of things. What do you expect? Revival is not, and 2 Chronicles 7.14, is not screaming at the lost people in America to change their ways. It is God's people who in the New Testament are the church. The church. Lost people do what lost people do. They can't help it, that's where they're going. That's why we use the term lost that comes out of Scripture when the idea of like sheep that have gone astray and all of that, and we are called to have the hope that they need and want. We should stop treating lost people as the enemy. They are actually the point of us being the church. Yeah, for my entire lifetime, George Barner and others who study these satats tell us that nine out of ten people who profess to be Christians will give their life to Christ, will be baptized, will occasionally read their Bible, will come to church once or twice a month, die and go to heaven, and never lead one person to Jesus Christ. Not one. Not one. There is no issue that would not be fixed in our country if every Christian led one person to Jesus a year. Right? And so the question is for us to understand that this call is to us as the church. We are called to be revived. That means that the church must be who Jesus died on the cross to make it. Now here's the question: who is the church? God doesn't call to the nation of Israel on this promise. He is trying to make a point with Solomon if my people, if Abraham and, you know, whoever out there will walk with me, will love me, will worship me, will encourage their friends to worship me, will teach their children to worship me. If they will do those things, if those individuals will do that, then collectively the nation of Israel is walking with them. And in the New Testament, there is the body of Christ, there is the church, but it is not an organization, it is not an entity to which you can scream and shout, you need to be revived.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

The church is you and you and you and me and you and you and you and me and you and you and you and me and you and me and you and me. It's individuals.

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And so revival never happens if the people who are supposed to be walking with Jesus are not walking with Jesus. If the people who are called to be salt and light are not living up to the standard for which Jesus saved them, there's no revival. There's no revival. And so we've got to understand this is an individual call. It is the committed pursuit of these three actions. What does it mean to be a person who is salt and light? Now remember, Jesus said this. He said he is the light of the world, but then he also said, You are the light of the world. As followers, we are light of the world. Why? Because if Jesus is in us, then Jesus lives through us, Galatians 2.20. And so Jesus' light is reflected through us. As he is the light of the world, and we're reflecting him, we become the light of the world. And he says, Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. And then he says, you don't take a life, a light, and put it under a bushel. He says, you are a city on a hill. He is trying to create this understanding that it's you and me individually and us collectively, and what are we supposed to be doing? Pursuing those three actions, humbling ourselves before the Lord. Think about how God looks at the way we just attend church. I can do whatever I want to do. I gotta skip church to do this because my kids won't get to play or they'll sit on the bench or some other kind of thing. When God has commanded us not to forsake the gathering of ourselves together. Pastors just get tired of talking about that because you feel like you're beating your head against the wall. Right? We are to be humble before God, which means what He wants matters, and He receives our first fruits, not what we have left over. Repent and dependence. Repent and dependence. We should be brokenhearted over the condition of our nation, not because it's so bad, but because the church has not been salt and light and impacted it. That's our repentance. I am sorry we are letting it fall apart, God. You placed your hand on our nation, you created a function where we could have the freedom to worship, and we we arrogantly take that for granted. We fight all these cultural influences and all that. Janet is is is fascinated with all the reacts of Europe reactions of Europeans who are over here for the World Cup. And they're realizing that Hollywood lied to them in every movie they ever saw. And they're like, man, these people are normal and they're super nice and this is wonderful. She told me this morning about some guy who decided he was going to walk across the country, and after two and a half months, he's only made it from Los Angeles to the edge of Colorado, and he's discovering, man, this is a big country. You know what they're fascinated by? They're fascinated by Buckeys. Is that awesome? People in Europe, man, they want to hang out at Buckeys. Isn't that awesome? You know what I'm reading from that? You know, we don't listen enough to understand. What they're finding out is that we have an affluence in our country that they cannot possibly fathom until they get here and participate in it. They're astounded by the size of our houses when they live in apartments everywhere in Europe. How many of you have been to IKEA? You don't know IKEA, right? It's a European thing, right? I just built an IKEA kitchen, it's a pain in the neck. But here's what happened. You put it all together and all that kind of thing. Here's what we learned. In Europe, they build their cabinets and stuff like that, where you put them together, take them apart, because when they leave one apartment and go to another, they have to take apart their cabinets and take it with them to the next one. They have no understanding that you go buy this house and three years later you sell it, make a lot of money and buy this house, and you got this big old yard and all this kind of. They have no, it's it's mind-blowing to them. We have so many options and so many things we participate in, and we are so wealthy. How in the world does the church have as little influence as we have in the most affluent nation in the history of the human race? Because we're spending all our time doing all this other stuff. We're distracted. I'm not trying to get you to tithe, I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about, listen, we got money so we can go do this and go do that, go do that, and go do that. We leave Jesus out of it. We're so distracted by all this opportunities that we have, and we have no internal character before God to set priorities in place. Turn from your wicked ways. Turn. That means do something different. How will revival happen in the church? Well, we all do something different. We also do something different. My dad used to tell me all the time, son, that's not working. Do something different. Change anything. You can't steer a ship until it's moving. Even if you do the wrong thing, God can steer you the right way. Do something different. And then faith and reliance on God's character to hear an answer. Again, I, you know, it's kind of frustrating. In some ways, I'm thinking, I'm preaching this sermon, and I heard this sermon my whole life, and you know, you just beat your head against the wall. At some point we got to believe that God meant what he said, that God answers prayer. At some point we we have to believe. Jesus commanded us in prayer. Keep asking, keep knocking, keep seeking. And this is the kind of prayer he's talking about. He's talking about praying for revival, praying for people to be saved, praying for your love list and not giving up. Do something different. Not inviting them and forgetting your list that you wrote your three names on is not working. Right? Do something different. And we do something different because we believe that God answers prayer. Well, God didn't answer prayer, and I'm just one and all that. Well, you got to do something different. And don't tell me that individuals can't make a difference. Because I read my Bible. Think about Nehemiah, one guy living in captivity, had never been to Jerusalem, didn't know anybody from Jerusalem, but he's living in captivity, and he had heard about and learned that he was Jewish. He was a part of the people of God. He had studied all that. A people, a few people visit from Jerusalem, and he is so intrigued, he wants to find out, and he asks what's happening, and they tell him that the walls are broken down and the people are in distress. There's a recession and there's poverty, and his heart breaks about a city that he's never been to. Because they're the people of God, and he's a people of God, and it's the same thing, and he starts to fast. And almost the entirety of Nehemiah chapter 1 is a Nehemiah, one guy, on his knees before God, and he is saying, God, I am sorry, me, my house, and our generation for our sin. Well, Nehemiah wasn't there when they sinned. Nehemiah wasn't even born yet when they were put in captivity. What's he doing applying for it? We say stuff like, Well, I'm not. That kind of person. I didn't do that. I wasn't there when they did that. I wasn't a part of that. You're part of the church. He's called to be sought and light and resolved that. And Nehemiah said, I have sinned, and he pled before God. And you know what part of his sin was? This promise we're looking at. Because they let dormant for generations a prayer promise that God had said, If my people will humble themselves, pray in repentance and seek my face, and turn from their evil ways, I will hear their voice, I will forgive their sin, and I will heal their land. Solomon even prayed as we read when they are deported to a captive land, read Nehemiah, and there they come to their senses and they pray for repentance. You will hear them there, and you will bring them back and heal their land. That's the extent of God's grace. One person did that, and it begins unfolding where he goes before the king, and a pagan, horrible king who was evil in every sense of the word, decides he's gonna let Nehemiah go, and he's gonna write the check for all the stuff to rebuild the walls around Jerusalem. It's not the size of who you are as an individual, it's the size of your faith and reliance on God's character to hear and answer. Daniel in the Lion's Den, please stop making that a children's story. Please. Man, I grew up in church my whole life, and I got these pictures, and it looks like zoo animals in this thing. And, you know, Daniel's sitting there all nice and he's pet and he's a lion. Listen, that is an adult, gruesome story. Understand what's happening. Daniel is a Jewish man, again, living in captivity, just as Solomon talked about, and he is walking with God against everyone else, and there is a terrible political plot by evil men to end him because they hate him because he's got more influence than they do. You think our politics are bad? Read the Bible. And they cook this plan where they know he goes and prays, just like Solomon said, if you will pray towards the direction of Jerusalem and the temple where God resides, he'll hear your prayers. And Daniel is praying there, and they know he will. And so they create this deal where they manipulate this evil, rotten king to pass a law that you have to worship him before anybody else, including any gods. And he goes, Yeah, I'm the king. Why not? I can do that because he's a rotten guy. And he passes this law, and they turn Daniel in, and he is given the death sentence and thrown into a pit where hungry, starved lions are chewing them to bits and tearing their bodies apart, and the city of that capital, they're sitting in a stadium around it, watching it as entertainment. That's the story of Daniel. And the king realizes in the midst of this, he is messed up, and those guys are evil. And Daniel was the one guy he could trust, and he frets all night long. And as soon as the sun comes up, he comes running back to the arena and he screams down, is Daniel alive? What's happened? As your God helped you, and Daniel hollers back, God has protected me. And you know what happens because of one man? Nobody reads the list of it. We want to get the picture of Daniel patting the lions when that's not the point of the story. The evil king then kills all the people who were in that plot, and he passes a law across the entire empire that the entire empire must first worship the God of Daniel. A pagan king passed a law that everybody's got to worship Jehovah God. The prayers of one man who was sent to his death for praying. And an entire nation was commanded to pray to God. That's the God we serve. That's the God we're praying to. He's not gotten weaker because he wore himself out answering Daniel's prayers.

SPEAKER_00 43:46

And the church.

SPEAKER_01 43:51

We.

SPEAKER_02 43:54

Us individuals. Why don't you bow your heads and we move into clothing? This was a message for the church today, and I pray that it speaks to all of us. But if you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, that humble prayer of repentance and turn is how you give your life to Jesus. It's how you get the privilege to pray to a God who answers prayers that way. He is the author of life. And he wants to bless and to forgive and to heal and make a place for you in heaven. And if you will humble yourself before God and realize that life is not supposed to be your way, that he is God and I am not. And then if you will repent and go, I know I've sinned, I know I've been doing what I want to do. And Lord, I'm sorry, and I repent for your sin. I ask for your forgiveness, and I trust Jesus to pay the price for my sin. And then you turn from what you were doing and living life your way, and then you turn to him and you say, Okay, Lord, I don't know what all this means, but I trust you because nobody ever loved me enough to die for me before. And Jesus died for me, so I want to give my life to him. This morning I want you to give your life to Christ. Listen, I've talked globally about the church and all of that, but I want you to know we're one of the ones that's working to be salt and light. Our people are growing and serving. Not that we're where we're ought to be, and we have a lot to grow, but listen, we're trying. And I want you to see the good examples of what God is doing in the lives of people here and know that He'll do that in your life. And if you want to know how you make a difference, man, you become a Christian, come be part of the church, and with us, come be the church and pursue revival. And let's watch God do what He's already done. If you want to be saved, a moment I'm gonna pray, we're gonna stand and sing, and our pastors are here at the head of the aisle. You just come. Come and talk to us about what it means to be saved. We'll share with you, we'll answer questions, we'll pray with you. Whatever it is, you come. If you want to be a part of a church family that wants to be the church, we're seeking revival together. Come join us. If you need to be baptized, if you've been holding back on baptism and you know you needed to, and it's become a thing in your life, listen, this is an opportunity to do something different. Start being the church. Take a stand, come be baptized. Show people that Jesus is the light of the world. If you'd like for us to pray with you, you come. Lord, we love you, and we we just ask that you take this and do something in us as your people. In Jesus' name we pray, and everybody said.

SPEAKER_00 46:47

We pray this message has been a blessing to you and helped to strengthen your walk with Jesus. Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you. Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can. Thank you for listening to chapter and first, the Bible teaching ministry of Fort Smith First Baptist Church.