Revival Conference 2007 - Gareth Evans - Part 3

The last five weeks I've spent one day a week in fasting. My prayers are cried out to God for his word. I'm interested only given what I believe God has laid upon my heart for you. And I have said on a daily basis, God, I do not want to go to Canton unless you come with me. Anoint my preparation, Lord, and please anoint my presentation. That has been a year in the cry of my heart. I can give you a lot of talk. I'm a good talker. I'm a Welshman. I'm a school teacher. And you can leave here with lovely thoughts in your head, but unless the spirit of God takes the words and plants them deep in your heart, then my standing up here is totally vain, brothers and sisters. I know that, and you know that. Moses cries unto God, God, unless you go with me, I am not going. We come into chapter 33. It promises me in verse 2, I will send an angel before you, and to a land filled with milk and honey. But I will not go up in the midst of thee, for you are with a stiff-necked people. Are we a stiff-necked people? I find it quite amazing sometimes when I hear us sing some choruses, and I understand the sentiment behind them, lift Jesus higher. I understand that. But brothers and sisters, we can lift him no higher than his Father has already lifted him. He is seated at the right hand and high. He is my King of kings, my Lord of lords. What is required is not that I lift him higher, because I cannot lift him higher than the Father has, but what is required is that I bend me lower. Evan Roberts is crying all the time for God. He says, God, bend me, bend me, bend me, bend me. We are a stiff-necked people. We are not willing for God to bend us, to break us, in order that Jesus Christ might receive the glory that is his. They are stiff-necked people. Verse 4, But when the people heard these things, they mourned, and no man put on his ornaments. For the Lord had said to Moses, saying to the people of Israel, You are a stiff-necked people. I will come unto thee in the midst of a moment, and I will consume thee. Therefore now put off thy ornaments from thee, that I might know what to do with thee. And the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, but on Mount Horeb there was a measure of repentance there. We've heard preaching here this week on repentance. We hear that Jesus came preaching repentance. We really do not understand much about repentance, do we? We take it as meaning, well, turn from your ways. I was in Haiti about three years ago. I had the privilege of speaking at the International Church, and on my journey back to my lodgings, we stopped off at a little village on a Sunday afternoon. In this village there were some missionaries that were won together every Sunday afternoon just to fellowship together. There were six or eight missionaries. One of these missionaries worked by himself. His ministry was that every week he would bring three doctors in from the United States. Then he would take them up into the village where they would minister in one village to the people of that village. Then he would bring them back and drive them into Port-au-Prince, the capital city, send them on the plane, and then pick up three more doctors for the next week. That's what he did all the time. At the end of each week on the Friday, they would gather together in a house. As he's telling the story, this happened the Friday before the Sunday I was there. This is just brand new news. He said, we're in this house on the Friday. We had our generator providing the electricity. The men, these three doctors, were typing into their computers a report of the patients they'd worked with. The missionary doctor then would receive these reports, file them away so that 13 weeks later, when another team came through to take them to the same village, he would have this record for them. They did a circuit every quarter of the year. He said, as we were in this house in the night typing out the reports by the light of the generated lamps, they noticed a fire out of the window. They all went to the door and they looked up the hill. There on top of the hill was the fire where the village stood. I tell you, brothers and sisters, if you ever go to Haiti and you're driving through the country, it's quite a very, very poor country, that the hills are where you'll find prominent houses. The houses of the witch doctors, the voodoo doctors, are always the most prominent house. It's the one set apart from the other. He is the mayor of the town. He is the lawyer. He's the guy. He's everything. He's the priest. He's the voodoo priest. He's everything else in that village. He's the authority, the chief. His house stands out. The voodoo doctor's house will have banners and buntings and flags outside and sometimes skulls on poles and dead animals outside. You can recognize them everywhere you go. And as they come out and look up, they realize, they get in their four-wheel vehicle, drive back up, and they realize it's the voodoo doctor's house that's on fire. And they come alongside the doctor. He's standing by the ruins of his house as it's burning down. And they begin to commiserate with him. And he looks at them in amazement. He said, no, no. He said, I gave my life to Jesus today. I came home and I gathered all these things and I put them in the house and I burned the house down. That's repentance. That's repentance. Have you gathered all those things and put them into the house or have you put them into storage for gathering them back later? He wasn't interested in coming back later. He burned his whole house down upon the lot. That's repentance. And these people made a show of repentance. And then in verse 12, Moses begins his petition. O Lord, you said to me, bring up these people. You have not let me know who you will send me, but you've said to me, O Lord, I know thee by name and you have found grace in my sight. And therefore, Lord, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way that I may know thee. I've met you at the burning bush, God. I've heard you speak. I've been in awe at your holiness. I've been into Pharaoh's palace. I've seen the plagues. I've seen the opening of the Red Sea. I meet you at the mountaintop face to face. You speak to me as a friend. You say you know my name. Oh God, I long to know you. How many of us would have been satisfied with any one of those revelations of God? Moses comes to a place where he has tasted God so that he is so hungry for more that all his cries is, O God, I want to know you. That's the cry of the man or the woman who is serious about revival. I want to know you. And God says a very interesting thing back to Moses. He said these words. Well, let me come back a moment. God says, my presence will go with you. All right, Moses, I will not send an angel. I will come myself. My presence will go with you and I will bring you into my rest. There is a rest for the people of God. That is what Canaan represents. I want to bring you into my rest. But like the Hebrews later said, there remains a rest for the people of God because Joshua was not able to bring them in. Well, he brought them into Canaan, the natural, earthly rest, but he had not brought them into the rest that remains for the people of God. Let us be careful, therefore, that we fail to enter in because of unbelief. Do you want to come into the rest of God? I'm very saddened by the hymns that look at Jordan as being the crossing of death into the presence of God. I tell you right now, brothers and sisters, Canaan was a place of giants. Canaan was a place of victories. Canaan was a place of defeat. It was where the enemy was in the land. That is the rest into which God wants to bring his people and he demonstrated his rest when the walls of Jericho fell down. They demonstrated their ignorance and foolishness when the AI people came and flew them because they came in their own strength. But when we come in the strength of God, that's the rest of God, when we rest from our own labors and allow God the Spirit to move in the church. We're very good at our own labors and organizing things and doing things so much so that God doesn't need to come and we need to get out of the way so that God can do his things in our church and bring us into rest, into rest. As in Brazil, I met a very delightful young brother who was pastor of a small church at which I was speaking. As he picked me up and journeyed to the church, this time I was in Brazil. I've been there four times. I preached in one church Sunday night, Monday morning, Tuesday, Wednesday, then I went.