Called onto the Carpet

Awesome, good morning, how are we doing today? Man, it’s great to see everybody, great to see all the new faces. And you know what Carter said, we really mean, if you’d be interested in learning a little bit more about our church or grabbing fajitas sometime, I’d love to take you up on that.

And man, a lot of really exciting things going on in the life of our church. Yeah, like the video that we played at the very top of the service for the Janie Chapman State Missions Offering, I just kinda wanna recap what that is and why we give in the first place. But Janie Chapman, she was a church lady that lived up in the upstate of South Carolina. And probably the greatest impact that she had was in encouraging state missions amongst South Carolina churches. And that was decades ago.

So what we do as Southern Baptists is throughout the year, we have special giving drives where we wanna raise money for particular causes. And right now, this month is the Janie Chapman State Missions Offering. So the extra funds that you give in the specially noted giving envelopes that are on the back tables, all that specifically goes to helping plant new churches and win more souls to Jesus in our state of South Carolina.

I just wanna give a minute to the idea of giving anyways. I know for me, I had to undergo a bit of a renaissance when it came to how I viewed my financial gifts that I gave back to the Lord. I had to come to a point where I saw everything in my life, from the kids that we didn’t have yet, to the cash that we didn’t have yet as newlyweds, to the things we didn’t have yet. Everything God ever gave me is a gift, including the very greatest gift in the world, salvation through Jesus Christ. So how can I not respond to God’s lavish generosity with just an attempt at generosity back to Him?

So that’s what I wanna invite you to do. It’s, you know, we give not just to keep the lights on or to keep the AC going. We give most importantly to fund what God is doing in our state and in our world through helping people meet Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. So that’s what I wanna invite you into.

But right now, specifically, we’re gonna pray for what that video was talking about, the work amongst Japanese background people happening right here in our state. Who would have thought there are enough Japanese people in South Carolina for us to be praying specifically for various pastors that do that? I know this was a few minutes ago. Are we able to put up the prayer request slide from that video? They might get it up here in a second, but if not, that’s okay.

What I want you to do is just turn to one of your neighbors and just pray for Japanese Christians and non-Christians in the state of South Carolina, asking that God would save the non-Christians and empower and fuel the Christians, all right? So just take a moment.

These are, yeah, some of the prayer requests. They might be able to cycle them on the screen, all right? Thank you guys. Y’all take it away and I’ll put a bow on it here in a second. Thank you guys.

Father, I wanna thank you so much for Pastor Aki that we saw in the video. God, from what little I know of Japanese culture and religion, Lord, it was a big deal that he would be saved. God, I’ve heard it said that Japan is one of the least reached mission fields in the world, not necessarily because of the persecution that we might associate with China or Afghanistan, but just because of all the traditions of Shinto religion in Japan and ancestor worship. God, thank you for saving him.

Father, I pray that you would bless his ministry in the upstate. Father, that he would just be a fountainhead of more men and more women and more children that are gonna come into your kingdom and introduce others to Jesus Christ that will bring others into the kingdom as well. Lord, I pray that our giving this month, it would help fuel the ministry of folks like him.

Lord, I pray for all the international people in South Carolina. God, I pray for folks that are here on student visas at one of our universities. God, I pray for, Lord, the folks that are trying to immigrate here. God, just trying to have a better life for them and their families. God, I pray for the international businesses that are sending their employees Here. God, I pray for all these folks asking, Lord, that You would do something in their lives that is new and beautiful, that You would save them from their sin and You would bring them into a purpose-filled life of helping introduce others to You as well. Lord, for us here at Sauldam Baptist Church, I pray that You would help us to view our money and our energy, even our facility. God, it’s just tools in Your hands, Lord, to spread Your kingdom. God, would You please use us? God, would You use me this morning as I’m gonna open Your Word and just say what it says for a few minutes? God, would You please empower me to speak Your truth and all of it and nothing but it? God, would You please help me as I’m going to just talk more about that incredible grace that we’ve already sang about? Lord, for anybody here that doesn’t know You yet, would You open their eyes so that they would see You and Your beauty? God, would You save them this morning? Would the people of Sauldam Baptist Church hear a better sermon than what I’m about to preach, please? God, it’s in Your great name that I pray, amen.

Amen. Well, if you do have your Bibles, you can open them up to Nehemiah chapter five. Nehemiah chapter five, we’re gonna continue our series that we’ve been going through called Revival and Restoration. This morning, we’re gonna see some folks get called onto the carpet, all right? We’re gonna see some people get called out for what’s going on. That’s a phrase, you probably use that at some point in your life in some sort of conversations. It means when you confront and assess. Originally, I did a little research. It actually did involve a carpet. The original way this was used is it goes back, you can get some kind of convoluted sources, but it was started in military situations where a senior officer would bring a junior officer into his room and there’d be a special carpet and he would put that carpet out and the junior officer would stand on the carpet and he’d be berated for something. Maybe his uniform wasn’t straight, maybe his battalion or his company, Al, I’m just making up words. I don’t really know what they really mean at this point. Maybe something in their unit wasn’t quite correct. Maybe they did something that wasn’t according to standard. I don’t know. But officers would call onto the carpet somebody else.

Now this happens in a variety of settings. If you’re like me, academically, you had to work at some things and you got called onto the carpet a time or two where a teacher who was well-meaning was just trying to help you do a little bit better. And they say, Jeremy, I believe in you. I think you could do better work than this. Or Jeremy, did you cheat on that test? And I let you fill in the rest. Maybe it happens in athletics. Also, if you’re like me, you weren’t a stellar athlete growing up and your coach a time or two would call you onto the carpet, say, Jeremy, I need a little more effort from you. Or Jeremy, man, I think your playing time’s done, buddy. You know, we may have seen that. If you’re a Clemson fan, week one of the college football season to week two, certain Cade Klubnik, I think he got called onto the carpet. All right. But this even happens in some spiritual terms. Spiritually, we get called onto the carpet. And that’s what’s going to happen in Nehemiah in this story, in Nehemiah chapter five.

If there’s one main thing I want you to take away from today’s message, it’s this. And I’m going to define some of these terms. It’s that revival requires repentance. Revival requires repentance. We get called onto the carpet all the time. The question is, how do we respond? We’ll see that happen in the life of Nehemiah. But before we really get to that, I just want to define some terms. Repentance. We, if you’re like me, you grew up in the church, you heard this word all the time, but what does repentance mean? Repentance is a change of attitude and action from sin toward obedience to God. Literally, I’m going to turn from this that’s bad for me and for God and for others, turn toward the good thing. All right. Repentance is not saying, oh, I’m sorry and doing the same thing over again. Repentance is owning it and saying, I, by God’s grace, will not do this again. It’s the difference between me getting upset with my kids And I said, “Hey, okay, I’m sorry, sorry guys that I yelled at you.” Versus me getting on their level and saying, “Hey, Daddy messed up and he lost his temper and he’s going to try not to do this again by God’s grace. Do you forgive me?” Those two different things. That’s repentance.

Revival then is an act of God in rekindling His people’s love and devotion for Him. Revival is when God revives our love and our devotion. Revival is not the same as an awakening, all right? Throughout our history as a country, we’ve seen various great awakenings that might start in the Northeast or over in California. An awakening is when God just starts saving large masses of people suddenly. You can’t really control it. You just kind of ride the wave of what God is doing. An awakening is God saving the lost. Revival is God bringing new life to the saved.

Revival though requires repentance. Repentance is critical for our life as a Christian. Martin Luther, who is one of the fathers of the Reformation back in the 1500s, one of the reasons that we can be here as a Southern Baptist church in 2024. Martin Luther put it this way: “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said to do penance, willed that the whole life of believers would be repentance.” Martin Luther’s whole approach on the Christian life is not perfection or performance. It’s repentance. Your vitality as a Christian will be measured by your readiness to turn away from and turn to, all right?

So that’s what we’re talking about this morning. Today’s passage connects the need for God’s people to repent in order for them to be revived. Now know this: No one will ever have a legitimate, healthy, powerful, or authentic relationship with God while harboring something they know they need to repent of. We cannot be vitally connected to our Father while trying to hide something we know is wrong. We have to be ready to repent of things that stand between us and God. We can’t just look at our 90% fidelity and faithfulness to God and say, “God, I’m 90% with you,” knowing that we’ve got 10% back here. What God wants for you and what He wants from us is our faithfulness back to Him.

And I personally believe, and everything I’ve read about impact in a community from a church, everything I’ve read about church revitalization, is that the size of our impact will be the measure of our purity before the Lord. We will impact the Lowcountry as deeply as we are pure before Christ. And God is reviving our church. Let us not then quench His work, but join Him in it, in our repentance.

So this is all true in Nehemiah’s day. Let’s start it off. Our passage in Nehemiah chapter 5, I hope you’re there. It’s going to begin with sin that needs to be repented of. It’ll be on the screens, but it’s so much better in your hands. Read it with me. Nehemiah 5.

“There was a widespread outcry from the people and their wives against the Jewish countrymen. Some were saying, ‘We, our sons and our daughters, they’re numerous. Let us get grain so that we can eat and live.’ Others were saying, ‘We are mortgaging our fields and vineyards and homes to get grain during the famine.’ Still others were saying, ‘We have borrowed money to pay the king’s tax on our fields and our vineyards. We and our children are just like our countrymen and their children. Yet we are subjecting our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters are already enslaved, but we are powerless because of our fields and vineyards. They belong to others.’”

Nehemiah in verse six, “I became extremely angry when I heard their outcry and these complaints. After seriously considering the matter, I accused the nobles and the officials, saying to them, ‘Each of you is charging his countrymen interest.’ So I called a large assembly against them and said, ‘We have done our best to buy back our Jewish countrymen who were sold to foreigners, but now you sell your own countrymen, and we have to buy them back?’” They remained silent and could not say a word.

Then I said, “What you are doing isn’t right. Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God and not invite the reproach of our foreign enemies? Even I, as well as my brothers and my servants, we’ve been lending them money and grain. Please, guys, let’s stop charging them interest.”

Verse 11, “Return their fields, vineyards, olive groves and houses to them immediately, along with the percentage of the money, grain, new wine and fresh oil.”

that you’ve been assessing them.” They responded, “We will return these things and require nothing more from them. We will do as you say.” So I summoned the priests and made everyone take an oath to do this. I also shook the folds of my robe and said, “May God likewise shake from His house and property everyone who does not keep this promise. May He be shaken out and have nothing.” The whole assembly said, “Amen.” And they praised the Lord. Then the people did as they promised.

Man, this is a wild passage that begins in verse one through verse five with some sin that needs to be repented of. This passage reminds me of where our entire story began back in chapter one. In chapter one, the people there were desperate and they were despairing. There was an outcry that came to Nehemiah. That was because the people of Jerusalem were being punished and they were being enslaved by others. But here in our passage, it was the people of Jerusalem doing it to themselves.

So what’s going on? Verse two, it says, “There are lots of mouths to feed. We, our sons, our daughters, we are numerous.” Man, children are a blessing from the Lord and lots of children means lots of blessings and lots of mouths to feed. So there’s this situation where the people need to eat. This requires some consideration. It requires some work. It requires some food, but there’s something going on where they don’t have enough grain. It’s not just that they’re numerous. There’s lots of mouths to feed. It’s that they’ve even started mortgaging off their assets.

Verse three, “Just to make ends meet.” Some families are mortgaging their property just to make some short-term profits to buy some bread for their kids. They’re saying, “Hey, we know we’ve had this property for a long time, but we might even need to consider taking the new mortgage out or God forbid, we might have to sell our ancestral land just to buy some bread for our kids.”

So verse four, it gets even worse. Some are borrowing money just to pay the king’s tax so that they can keep those fields in those vineyards, so that they can keep making their own bread and their own wine. They’re going into debt over this.

It gets worse again. Verse five, “They even start suffering under slavery.” We and our kids were just like the nobles, were just like the rich people, yet our kids are going into slavery. Imagine some families saw the only solution to this problem was to start selecting which child they’re gonna sell into slavery. Times are so bad that the only way out, as some saw it, was to decide which mouth to stop feeding and to sell off instead. Obviously that would have lessened their load, but man, that would have broken hearts.

Now we need to know this form of slavery they were selling their children into is not the same as the chattel slavery that began with the spice trade that made much of America prosperous unto the Civil War, but this is still living under the status of being owned by somebody else for their benefit. That’s what’s going on. Times are so bad, they’re selecting which child to give away.

It gets worse again. It’s that some of the rich Jews in Jerusalem are the ones channeling this. They’re the ones buying those kids on the cheap and then selling them for a profit to the foreigners. They’re the ones that are buying up all that land so that these families who are mortgaging off and selling their property, they’re the ones that are capitalizing on the issue. It’s not just that mothers and fathers saw time as so bad and hard, the only solution was to sell their children, but it’s even that some of the own Jews were buying these kids and then selling them again to foreigners.

If you sold your child to another Jew in Jerusalem, there’s a chance you could still have a relationship and a life with them. They may not be in your home anymore, but you might start buying your food from them in the market as they represent another family or you might still be able to maintain some sort of relationship. But if you sell your child who then gets sold outside of the city or the country, your relationship’s done. And that’s what some of the Jews were doing inside of the city walls. That’s what they were doing to themselves.

Put yourself in Nehemiah’s sandals. How would you feel if you saw this happening? Imagine all the progress you’ve made. You have heard that the city of Jerusalem has been destroyed and it’s never been rebuilt for 150 years. You’ve heard that what was once the hotbed of spirituality and religion for your people has now become not just cold embers, it’s just become cold. As people no longer worship the Lord, you have come back to Jerusalem, a city you’ve never even actually lived in because you’ve lived in exile your entire life, and you have rallied the people, you are rebuilding the walls, you’re seeing the temple be rebuilt, you’re seeing a vitality come back to the people, and then you hear, “Hey, in the midst of all this progress, we’ve got some of our own sinning against our own by selling off our kids and making life hard for everybody else.” How would you feel? You’d be hot. You’d be mad, right? You’d be pretty upset. It’s not surprising that Nehemiah gets upset. What’s surprising is what we see in verse six. Sorry, verse seven. I’ll read six and seven. “I became extremely angry when I heard their outcry and these complaints.” After seriously considering the matter, though, that’s when he acted. Man, if verses one through five is sin to be repented of, then verses six through 11, that’d be that call to repentance. Nehemiah displays patience in the midst of his anger, and that is a great aside for us. If I zoom out from the story for a second and just think about something, I’ve heard this called the 24-hour rule. I’m not great at this. You hear something that gets you a little upset, give it 24 hours, and maybe it won’t bother you so much tomorrow over coffee. Nehemiah seemed to have given himself the 24-hour rule. He said, “I know this is not right. I know it needs to be addressed, but I’m not exactly sure what to do, and I’m probably a little too angry to do it well right now. Let’s give myself a little bit of time. Let’s wait.” So Nehemiah waits. He considers seriously. We assume, based off of what he’s already done, that he’s probably praying through this. He’s talking with some other wise counselors before he goes through with his plan. But after waiting, verse seven tells us that Nehemiah fostered repentance, which, as we have already established, has made the way open for revival. Nehemiah starts fostering repentance by calling onto the carpet those wealthy nobles. Verse seven, seven and seven through nine again. I’m going to read this for us. “After seriously considering the matter, I accused the nobles and the officials, saying to them, ‘Each of you is charging his countrymen interest.’ So I called a large assembly against them, and I said, ‘We have done our best to buy back those Jewish countrymen who were sold to foreigners, but now you sell your own countrymen, and we have to buy them back too.’ They remained silent. They cannot say a word. Then I said, ‘What you are doing isn’t right. Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God and not invite the approach of our foreign enemies?’” And then he starts making some calls to action. This call to repentance begins with a specific confrontation. He said, “Hey, you guys are exploiting your own countrymen, and you are enslaving them as well.” He is very specific with what he’s calling them to. He said, “Hey, I’m not going to be vague about it. I’m not going to speak with ambiguities or some language that can be misinterpreted. I’m going to say, you’re selling our people into slavery. You are exploiting and abusing the poor.” He makes this specific confrontation, but he also gives a specific cause for change. Verse nine: “Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God?” Man, fear of God—that is, we’ll have it on the screen for you. The fear of God is reverence. It’s obedience. It’s a lifestyle that comes from treating God as holy and in charge. The fear of God is the only true thing that can create change in our lives. The fear of God is the fuel that takes you from merely saying, “I’m sorry,” to actually owning what you’ve done and saying, “I am sorry.” Nehemiah knew he had to appeal to the deepest part of these people. He had to appeal to their relationship with God. He said, “Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of God? Shouldn’t you treat God as holy? Shouldn’t He be in charge of your life? Shouldn’t your lifestyle match what you say? Shouldn’t your walk match your talk?” Then he gives them a specific example to follow. He says in verse 10, “Look at me. Hey, at least I’ve been trying to give them money. I’m trying to give them some grain. I’m trying to help this situation. You’re exploiting them. And the people, or in verse 11, he gives them a specific sign of repentance. He’s saying, if you’re truly sorry about this, if you really care, if you’re going to walk like God wants you to, if you’re going to treat God as holy, if you’re going to treat your own people as worthwhile, here’s what you’re going to do. Verse 11, you’re going to return their fields, their vineyards, their olive groves, and their houses immediately. If God really is in charge of your life, you’re going to give them even a percentage of the profits you’ve made, a percentage of the grain, the new wine, and the fresh oil that you’ve been assessing them. If you really care, this is what you’re going to do.

Man, does anybody else think about the story of Zacchaeus from the New Testament? As I was preparing for the sermon, I couldn’t help getting that image out of my mind. Zacchaeus, if you’re not familiar, he was a Jew. And like these nobles, these guys, he was also exploiting his own Jewish countrymen. He was an employee of the Roman empire. Same story, different occupier. He was an employer of the Roman empire. He would collect taxes from the Jews. It was very well known at that time that the Jewish tax collectors would not just collect the $50 or whatever it is from the Jewish families, but they would also say, hey, your tax, your bill is actually $75. They would collect that 25 on top and they’d be paid some by the empire. The Jewish tax collectors then were known to be exploiters. They were known to not really care for their own people.

Now, Zacchaeus, he’s one of these guys and all of his neighbors, all of his community members, probably his family, everybody hates him like crazy. But he hears about this guy, Jesus, who some are claiming is the rabbi that we’ve been waiting for. Some are just claiming he’s an interesting teacher. Some are even saying, I would kill for him. Zacchaeus is curious. He’s like, okay, I’ve just got to hear what he has to say.

Now, if you grew up in church, you know the songs. Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man. And was he apparently not a very big deal, even though he treated himself like a big deal. So he has to climb up into a tree just to see Jesus as Jesus is walking through town. Jesus is walking along the road that Zacchaeus has climbed into the tree to look down at him from, and he stops under the tree. And Jesus addresses Zacchaeus, the tax collector that everybody hates, that everybody had given up on, the guy that had, it seemed like, given up on his faith. And what does Jesus say? If you know it, what does Jesus say? “Come down, why? I’m coming to your house today, and what am I doing?” “Man, we’re gonna have a meal, we’re just gonna talk.”

Zacchaeus that day, he meets Jesus, not just face to face, but he meets the grace of God, impersoned in Jesus. And Zacchaeus, he doesn’t just say, “Aw, shucks, I’m sorry for what I’ve done.” No, the fear of God grips this guy. He says, “I am sorry. I’m gonna give back everything. I’m even gonna give back four times as much as what I’ve exploited from them.” It’s this incredible moment of where Zacchaeus, having met the grace and the forgiveness of God, can’t help but just pour everything back out to the people that he had hurt and abused. That is repentance. Nehemiah is saying thousands of years before that moment happened between the tax collector and our savior, Nehemiah is saying, “If you’re truly sorry, that’s the type of response you’re gonna have to this.”

Man, what, what stands out to me next is the fact that it works. I’ll be honest, look at verses 12 and 13 with me. They respond, “We will return these things and require nothing more from them. We will do as you say. So I summoned the priests and I made everyone take an oath to do this. I also shook the folds of my robe as a sign and said, “May God likewise shake from His house and property everyone who doesn’t care, keep this promise. May he be shaken out and have nothing. The whole assembly said, amen. And what they do next? They praised the Lord. And then they did as they promised.

Man, this passage starts with sin that’s got to be repented of. Then it flows to this call for repentance. And then finally It ends with repentance and revived worship. Nehemiah hears the outcry. He hears about the desperation. He addresses it and he calls them to change. And by God’s grace, they respond to it. They respond.

Man, owning your own fault is key in repentance. If you want your next apology to actually land with someone you’ve hurt, don’t say, “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.” You would say, “I’m sorry that I lost my temper on you and I hurt you.” You don’t just say, “I’m sorry if this made you feel some way.” You say, “Hey, I am sorry that I did something against you.” That will change your relationships. That will revive that relationship.

I believe that courageous moments of confronting others for the sake of change, though, does not always go as well as we’d hope. I’ve been there where I had a friend. He had not been faithful to his wife. Some time had passed and I got one-on-one with him. And we’re just talking. I said, “Hey man, did you do it? Did you actually have that relationship outside your marriage?” He just looked away. He didn’t own it. He didn’t confess. He didn’t repent. Not to me. And my relationship with him has never been the same. Sometimes it goes that way.

Sometimes when we work up the courage to confront others and humbly call people onto the carpet, it does not go like this. As Nehemiah confronts these nobles, these Jewish people that were exploiting and abusing their own, thankfully it did work. They did display fruit of repentance.

Makes me wonder how would I respond to this type of public confrontation or private. Makes me wonder where moments happen in my life where somebody has tried to help me love Jesus a little bit more by confronting me and my sin. How have you responded? How have you responded the last time somebody called you on the carpet, not for a difference of opinion or for a preference, but for some legitimate sin that you need to repent of?

Makes me wonder too, am I so engaged in the lives of others that I’d be able to even see that type of thing or where they would know that I love them enough to do that for them? Are you, are you so engaged in the lives of others that you’d be open to somebody confronting you?

This is a bit of an ironic invitation, but there’s this proverb that says iron sharpens iron. And so one man sharpens another. I don’t think that this is a church of folks that want to be dull irons. I think we want to be sharp irons that are like instruments in our Father’s hands that are useful for a cause bigger than ourselves. Amen.

That sharpening only happens as the irons rub, which means we’ve got to be in community. We’ve got to actually know each other. We’ve got to actually be able to see each other in the bad times for us to actually rub against each other, for us to sharpen each other so that God can use us to do something outside of us.

Here’s my invitation from the kids in the room to the students, to the adults. Wednesday night, I want to see you here. That’s where iron sharpens iron. This right now is me trying to encourage a room of people that are all looking at me. Wednesday night is when we get to look at each other and we get to have a meal together and we get to say, “How’s your week going? Really? How are you actually doing? How did that conversation go?” And that’s where we get to sharpen each other, where God uses that to make us a people that looks a little bit more like Him day by day. It’s my invitation to you.

So we return to this moment at hand. Nehemiah stamps this moment with an oath. He says, “Okay, they’re going to say that they’re going to do this. They’re going to return everything. They’re not going to require any more.” But Nehemiah knows public ceremonies always make things last a little bit longer. So he stamps it with an oath. He calls in the priest. He says, “Let’s do something public.” This would help memorialize this moment of repentance for everybody that they would be more likely to keep their word.

Reminds me of baptism and Lord’s Supper, a public oath, a moment where we get to together say publicly, like Oliver and Jackson, like Kassara and Jacob a month and a half ago, to get in the baptistry and say, “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. And I commit to follow Him with all of My life and do anything He tells me to do. And I’m going to make this public, not just for my sake, but for our church’s sakes, that we can all be a body together. Or like in two weeks when we celebrate Lord’s Supper, where we get to together take the bread and the juice. And we say, Jesus is my Lord. He has given His body to be broken. He is my Savior, who has given His blood to be poured. And I commit to follow Him in purity.

These public oaths help us keep our word. And in this oath, Nehemiah says, God judge anyone who doesn’t keep their word. If these folks went back on their word, Nehemiah was saying that like shaking dust from a robe, wiping the feet off or wiping the dirt off your feet when you get in bed later, so God would shake His robe and wipe off. That folks who just paid lip service would not have the fruit of their sin.

The final product, I’m amazed. The whole assembly praised the Lord. You see, it was through confrontation and repentance that this happened. It was through confrontation that God helped these people repent of their sin and revived their worship and purified their hearts while also protecting the vulnerable from future abuse.

So here’s my promise to you. You can take this to the bank. Your repentance will always be good for people around you. I’ll say it again. Your repentance, when you turn away from the bad and turn toward God, will always be good for those around you.

Which begs a question, is there something that you need to repent of? Is there a 10% back here you’re harboring and protecting? Or maybe you’ve never actually entered that relationship with Jesus. One of surrender and submission to Him that God keeps calling you to, that He is wooing you to, or else why would you be here today? Have you in truth given your life to Jesus and embrace the forgiveness and the grace that God has for you? Have you done that? If you haven’t, or if there’s a 10% back here that you need to get out of the closet before Jesus, I encourage you and I invite you and I beg with you, please take a moment to do that. You’ll never regret that and it’ll be good for you.

I want to close with the story of a guy named John. He lived a couple hundred years ago. His dad was a sailor and his mom was a Christian. When he was, dad was away at sea, mom would read scripture to him and teach him truths of Christianity and things seemed well, but mom died at 11 years old. Mom died when he was 11 years old. So from 11 years old on, John lived with dad on the sea. Went to go live with his dad amongst all the other sailors where probably all of the stereotypes of what a sailor would be like back in the 1700s were true. Their un-Christian lifestyles and their sin would robe off on this guy named John and he would embrace the sins of his dad and he just dove headfirst into a lifestyle of running away from God.

He was forced into the British Navy whenever he came of age, but he got into so much trouble that he was found himself shackled in chains amongst the prisoners on this Navy boat. His dad pulls some strings, gets him transferred to a ship on its way back to Britain. On that return voyage to Britain, this man’s ship is caught in a storm so ferocious, even though he had spent at that point eight years on the sea, that he resolved, he said, “I’m going to give my life to Jesus if I ever get back to dry lands.” He lands in Ireland and upon arrival, he goes to the first church he sees and he dedicates himself to God.

Shortly afterwards, he’s assigned to a slave ship, headed with African slaves actually here to Charleston. But in his newly reborn Christian state, he’s struggling with this, a process that he calls atrocious and despicable. You might know the story, this man’s name is John Newton. Eventually in 1772, after he got out of the Navy, he’d become a pastor, he had been serving for a couple of decades. He would write a hymn that initially had no title that debuted in 1773, something that we now call Amazing Grace. Amazing Grace.

In a moment, Donnie’s gonna come forward and we’re gonna sing that song. If revival happens through repentance, repentance happens by seeing God’s grace as amazing. If you’ve tasted that grace, I wanna invite you, sing “Amazing Grace” like you mean it. Like God’s grace and His forgiveness and His acceptance of you through Jesus really is amazing. How sweet the sound that could be. And if you don’t know God’s grace as amazing, I pray as we around you sing, would you listen to us, declare the greatness of God in saving us through Jesus Christ? And would you give your life to Him please?

Pray with me now. Lord, I hope I’ve done Your Word justice. I hope that I have made it so clear. What You desire for us is our whole hearts. What You desire for us is repentance because through repentance we can be revived. And when we are revived, that’s when we can make an impact on people around us. God, being revived and loving You and knowing that we’re loved by You, that’s what drives us to go to Target and to go to a farmer’s market to share with complete strangers about Jesus Christ. That’s what drives us to have courageous conversations, helping others repent of their sin.

Lord, I pray for the person in the room that’s just wondering if Your grace really is amazing, that’s wondering if they really need to make a step that is even considering right now. God, I beg that You would save them, that You would open their heart, that they would see You in Your beauty and in truth. Lord, would You please use us for Your purposes? Thank You, God.