Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / May 10th, 2015 | Route 66 - 2 Chronicles

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May 10th, 2015 | Route 66 - 2 Chronicles · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Did I hear a faint hand clap during that?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I go away, I let Tim Collins preach for one Sunday, and you get out of the habit, you know, of this.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, I hear Tim did a great job.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so happy he did a super job last week.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I love our baby dedications, especially when the whole church stands up and is related, you know, to them.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's fantastic.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And happy Mother's Day.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I have a spot, a little spot on Country Legends 106.9, and in today's spot, four times it'll run.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: I said, you know you're a mom if you count all the spreckles that you put on your children's cupcakes just to make sure that they all have the exact same number.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: I said, uh, you know you're a mom when you want to kill the kid who broke your child's toy and made her cry.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know you're a mom when your child throws up and you catch it.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know you're a mom when you actually buy cereal with hard little marshmallows in it.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know you're a mom when you know that Mother's Day is actually 6 a.m.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: till midnight.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um child came home from Sunday school, Mother's Day.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Parents said, What did you learn today in Sunday school?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: We learned about Adam and Eve, he said, and uh teacher told us that God made the first man.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: First man got really lonely, so God rocked him to sleep, and then he took out the man's brains and made a woman out of them.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you love your mom for her brains or for her heart or spirit, this is the day, of course, to tell her so.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's big, it's my first uh, it has special meaning for me.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's the first Mother's Day of my life that my mother has not been on earth but is in heaven for me to celebrate.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: She's a great woman.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that's Mother's Day.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you're visiting today, we're on a road trip through the Bible.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is, I think, 2 Chronicles is uh I think the 14th book of the Old Testament.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: I should have counted more carefully, but uh we're going through the Bible, the 66 books of the Bible, taking a road trip and stopping at each book for just one message, one message that tries to capture the single meaning of the book, handing out a study sheet uh that you should have in front of you that you can take with you, take home, and after you've read this, you know everything about this book and you could teach it in seminary.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it's inspired stuff.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you notice this key verse here, 714, is the most famous verse in the book.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: You probably heard this verse quoted on Thursday on the National Day of Prayer.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's often quoted.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: This past Thursday was the National Day of Prayer.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: If my people, you can say it with me, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Very famous verse, most famous verse on revival in the Bible.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now we hear a lot about revival, but I think there's some confusion about it.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we all like the idea, but what is it?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up a little, uh, for a few years I was Baptist growing up, and so revival back then was sort of a week-long church meeting, you know, that got advertised as the week of revival.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes there was a tent, and sometimes there was a traveling evangelist.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: But once you read the Bible, you realize revival has nothing to do with tents or evangelists or crusades.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Revival is a work of God in the human heart in which he brings back to life something that is alive but is near death, okay?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so it just really gets back to the word revival, is connected with the word revive, okay?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like if somebody pulls someone out of a swimming pool, and uh, I remember my first day here at this church back in the 70s, somebody came in running and screaming that swimming pool down here.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: There was someone lying at the bottom of the swimming pool, and by the time I ran down there, uh uh that the person finally the fire people came.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't even see the person, and and that person was not able to be revived, but you're so excited when you when you do CPR and you're able to revive someone who's alive but close to death.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So revival is uh is the giving life, giving back life to something that is perhaps about to lose it.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's important you realize that revive is a word, revival is a word for Christians, not for non-Christians.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not a Christian, great to have you here.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like Tim Collins said last week, you're you're very welcome.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: But this message won't be primarily for you because revival, that's what this message is about, is for Christians.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: What you need, if you're not a Christian, is you need Bible.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: You need life in the first place, because the Bible says that if you haven't trusted Christ as your Savior yet, God wants to impart new life into you.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: He wants to regenerate you.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're Christian, you need revival.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Charles Spurgeon, the great pastor, preacher in England in the 19th century, put it this way: it's clear he said that the term revival can only be applied to a living soul.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Many blessings may come to the unconverted in consequence of a revival among Christians, but the revival itself has to do only with those who already possess spiritual life.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: There must be vitality in some degree before there can be a quickening of vitality, or in other words, a revival.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, uh, but why is it then that we would have a whole book, 2 Chronicles on revival?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I am I gonna waste your time?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh the next 30 minutes on talking about revival.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer is that every Christian uh during their life needs several revivals.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you're like me, maybe dozens, you know, of revival.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not, it's not because you uh it's because we sort of drift away from God.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not as though we suddenly, it's not like a tire suddenly going flat.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a slow leak, not a blowout in your Christian life.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like you've suddenly gotten lost from God.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: It just generally happens gradually.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: When I was growing up, I grew up on a small farm, three acres, in northeast Portland.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: We had, you know, in a little pasture land, we had three cows, we had a bunch of chickens, we had rabbits, and so forth.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and one afternoon, when Steve and I uh were in uh, I think junior high, we could phone, mom got a phone call.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was in the afternoon, and it was a neighbor.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: All the neighbors had about three acres, too.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So one on one side had corn, one on the other side had prized chickens, and so forth.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we're the only ones with cows, and so the neighbors knew if they saw a cow in their backyard, it was ours.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: So she gets a call from a neighbor saying, I think that's your cow in my backyard.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: So she turned to Steve and me and said, Would you please go get hope and bring her back home?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we did.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: We brought the cow back home and we looked all around the fencing.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: We couldn't find any hole in the fence.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we went in and told mom, well, we think that the gate was left open or something.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: But then the next day, next afternoon, she got a phone call from another neighbor saying, Your cow's in my corn.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we went and got the cow, brought it back, couldn't find a hole in the fence again.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so mom said the next day, she said, I want you and Steve to go out and sit there in the pasture and watch those cows until you figure out where they're going.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we did whatever.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: We grabbed a bunch of apples from our apple tree, and we grabbed the game of life and the game sorry, and we traipsed out to the pasture, sat under the tree to watch the cows.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't pay rapt attention.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: But after a while, we saw that uh the Holstein, one of the Holsteins, was sort of going over toward the fence.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was getting tired of the sprigs of grass, and there was a little clover over the fence.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so this cow stuck his head over the fence, kind of pushing it down.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: We saw the fence sort of giving way, the barbed wire and so forth, and ate some clover from the other side.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we look at each other, it's crazy.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was another little sprig of clover farther on, and the cow took another step, and the fence just sort of started giving way.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: We couldn't believe it.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the cow ate that clover.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was another sprig, and so the cow just kept going, kind of pushed the fence down, stepped through it.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: We looked at each other before long, that cow was 10 feet, then 20 feet.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: It had sort of nibbled its way off the plantation.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's, I think, what happens to good Christians.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: What happened?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's not as though you suddenly got lost.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's not as though you suddenly, you know, stop reading the Bible, praying, going to church or anything.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: It just sort of happens gradually.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: You nibble your way away from God, away from the spiritual life.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: In the book of Hebrews, there's this parallel that the writer of Hebrews makes to a ship.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's sort of that's gotten unhooked from the dock.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: The rope is, and it says, why is it you are drifting away?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: In the book of Revelation, we read, you've lost your first love.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: In Jeremiah, he says, you know, when we were young and first married, God says to his people, you were so devoted to me.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, in a marriage, you sort of don't feel the way about me you once did, right?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that happens in marriage and it happens in the Christian life.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it's sort of, we need revival because we sort of drift away from God.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't matter how old you are.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, some of you I can see you've got some white hair.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Remember 30, 40 years ago, back when you were, you know, wild.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Remember those great days of being a wild, you know, and now you know you eat your wild oats with uh all bran and prunes.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, the fact of the matter is, is that you never grow too old or too spiritually mature to grow out of the need for revival.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you heard that.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And and what's more, and this is a word from the great evangelist of the Western Plains in the 1800s, Charles Fetty, Christians are more to blame for not being revived than sinners are for not being converted.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that makes sense, doesn't it?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because, dear friend, if you're a believer, then you know the joy of walking with God.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Never have somebody come to me and say, Wow, I sure wish I could have had fun the last 10 years, but I was just being too related, you know, I was following Jesus.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: No, because following Jesus is really fun.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it really is.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of people come and say, you know, I sure wish I hadn't wasted the last 10 years or the first 20 years of my life.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: But now that you're a Christian and you know how good it is, you have much less reason for not being revived than sinners for not being converted.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so you like I should call out revive us, oh Lord.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the signs, by the way, let's just be honest about the signs that that that that a person needs revival.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it sort of starts with prayer.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: I never had much trouble.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: I love to read and I love to study, so Bible study, but but but you see it in a lack of a desire for prayer.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know how you used to meet regularly with God?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't happen anymore.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's why last year, you know, I was a prayer revival in my life and preached a series on prayer.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it gets down to am I having that regular time of prayer?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Or do I care so little about something God cares so much about that I'm not doing that?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: For you, it may be a lack of hunger, for the word, you've stopped studying, you feel like you know enough that Sunday's all you need.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or it may be that you stop singing on Sunday morning, a little embarrassing to open up and sing with everybody else, and so you don't do worship singing much, or maybe you're embarrassed when the subject of Jesus Christ comes up at work or in public, you know, serious subject, and so you back off of that.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you just don't think about Christ anymore, you don't pray for someone that you know well who isn't a Christian.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Those are signs that you sort of sort of drifting away and you need revival.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And when you come to this book, open your Bible to 2 Chronicles, when you come to the book of 2 Chronicles, you find it's all about revival.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: On the bottom of the first page, on the outline, on the front side, if you have that with you, you'll see that 20 of the chapters in here basically are about each of the kings of Israel of Judah, the southern two tribes, 20 kings of the southern tribes, Judah and Benjamin, and this book analyzes whether they were good kings, evil kings, or revival kings, by using this famous verse, 2 Chronicles 7.14, to let you know whether they prayed, whether they were humble, whether they sought God's face, and whether they turned.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, so uh that's the story.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's what this book is about.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's written to the returning exiles in about 500 BC.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't care a bit about the northern ten tribes.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: They're gone, they're off in captivity, we'll never see those ten tribes again.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's about all of those kings that ruled in Judea, down in the south, here in Jerusalem.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: What were they like?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: How many of them really cared about God enough to bring revival?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: So let's look at this book, and I want to share with you that the heart of this book is Solomon dedicating the temple.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the great events in ancient history.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: The temple's one of the seven wonders of the world.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: It took a billion dollars in modern terminology to build this thing in about a thousand BC.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's beautiful.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon dedicated it.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: We spoke about this in 1 Kings 8, four weeks ago, in 2 Chronicles.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: It spins three chapters on the dedication of the temple.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: The glory of God falls, 100,000 people there.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's just astounding.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the climax are these verses.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon finished this temple, and the Lord appeared to Solomon at night.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: 2 Chronicles chapter 7, verse 11.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord said to him, I've heard your prayer.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 6 is one long prayer by Solomon.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I've chosen this place, what place?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon's temple, the first temple, for myself as a temple of sacrifice.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: If I close the skies so there is no rain, or if I command the grasshopper to consume the land, or if I send pestilence onto my people, why would God do something so mean as these three things?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if he promised that if his people turn away from him and abandon him, he would do this to jerk them awake and bring them back to himself.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: And God now says to Solomon at night, and if I do this, then if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin and heal their land.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, most people just take this verse alone, completely out of context.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: But you need to see this verse in context, for God is simply replying to Solomon's prayer.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you look back at chapter 6, you'll see that these are the very words Solomon kept using to the Lord.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Take chapter 6, for example, verse 26.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, chapter 7, verse 26.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: I need to hear pages turning out there, it'll make me feel real happy.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: 2 Chronicles 7, 26.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Notice, or 626, notice Solomon's prayer the previous day.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, when the heavens are shut up and there's no rain, because your people, us, Israel, have sinned against you.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: And when they pray towards this place, and when they confess your name and turn from their sin because you've afflicted them, then please hear from heaven and forgive the sin of your servants, your people Israel.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Teach them in the right way to live and send rain on the land you gave your people for an inheritance.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: So so Solomon's praise this in about ten ways, all the way through chapter six.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Notice he says in verse 36 and 38.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: When they sin against you, verse 36, for there is no one who does not sin, can you say amen?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you become angry with them and give them over to the enemy, verse 37.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: If they have a change of heart and repent and plead with you and say we've sinned, verse 38.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if they turn back to you with all their heart and soul in the land of their captivity where they were taken, and pray toward the land you gave their powers, toward the city, toward the temple, then from heaven, your dwelling place, hear their prayer, uphold their cause, forgive your people.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: And now we come.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: The next day, God says, you know what?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: If this happens, if I close the sky, grasshopper pestilence, and if they do, you know what?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is yes.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness! All I have to do is pray and be humble and so forth, and even if I'm really blown it, Lord, you will restore me, you'll, you'll, you'll hear from heaven, you'll forgive my sin, you'll heal our land.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Wow! Now stop for just a second.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Let me offend some of you, real quickly.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: I agree with this recent book that just came out entitled The Most Misused Verses in the Bible, on the 17 Most Misused Verses in the Bible, surprising subtitles, surprising ways, God's Word is Misunderstood, 2012 book.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I agree with chapter 6 in this book that says 2 Chronicles 7, 14 is one of the most misused verses in the Bible.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason it says that is that this verse is always used in national days of prayer to say that if just enough Christians would pray and seek God's face and so forth, then God would not only, you know, forgive their sin, but he would heal the land of America.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: He would bring prosperity to Kansas, he would bring or to China or to India, wherever people are praying.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you read this verse in context.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this verse is about Israel, the land of Israel.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And America's not biblical.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Israel, it's not the covenant nation, it's not a theocracy.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: God ruled.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're not living in the land of promise.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: I agree.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: It is the best country in the entire world, but it's not the holy land.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Please go over to the holy land with me someday.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: But and then so the physical promises, I'll heal your land, are for them alone.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Spiritual promises, though, I would argue, are for all of those who are God's children.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: God will hear from heaven if you do these things.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: He will forgive our sins, and he will heal the parched land, we might say, in your spirit.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: So this is an amazing, incredible promise that God will bring revival and new life and vitality and refreshing from heaven if his people, who are called by his name, are you called by his name?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: You trusted his son as you say.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Are you a Christian called by his name?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Same way you call your children, you know, you give them your last name, or if you're George Foreman the boxer, you call all of your children George Foreman.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: They use both names so they don't get lost, he said.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, but um, if you call God calls us by his name, and if we'll humble ourselves, pray, seek his faith.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, notice these four conditions.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: If my people who are called by my name will, what's number one?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, pray.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, seek my faith.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, turn from their wicked ways.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: And what are the three promises God gives?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Then I will hear from heaven.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, forgive their sins.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, heal.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want to go through these four.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I want to get really practical, talk to you about your life and my life and these four things, and how this is how God moves in your heart to bring you back to Himself.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, humble yourself.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: The argument of this book is you take this verse, and the writer, the chronicler, says, I want to show you how to humble yourself, how to pray, how to seek his face, how to turn.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: From illustrations from the kings.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the very first king after Solomon is named Rehboam.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: A bad boy.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: And yet the argument in this book is humble yourself like Rehoboam.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: When Rehboam had established his sovereignty and royal power, we're in 2 Chronicles chapter 12, verse 1, he abandoned the law of the Lord.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: He had all Israel with him.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: They were unfaithful to the Lord, and so God brought up the king of Egypt with all kinds of chariots and thousands, 60,000 men on horseback and countless people, and they started wiping out Judea.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: They came up to Jerusalem, and a prophet walked into King Rehoboam and said, This is what the Lord says, you abandoned me, therefore I have abandoned you in the end of High Shishak.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Get this.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: So the leaders of Israel and the king, what did they do?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's our first word.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: They humbled themselves, saw the Lord is righteous.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: When the Lord saw they had humbled themselves, the Lord's message came to Shemiah.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: They have humbled themselves.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how much clearer could it be when Rehoboam humbled himself?
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is the epitaph, the Lord's anger turned away from him.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: This guy was a jerk, Lord.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: This guy opposed you.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: All he has to do is humble himself?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, this book says.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: This should be so comforting to us.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you humble yourself, God will turn.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, why is humility so important to God?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: What's the opposite of humility?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Pride.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: What is the worst sin of all?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Adultery?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Homosexuality?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Not even close.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's pride.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible says very clearly that pride is the anti God's Chuck Olson's right.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: He said, My main lifestyle problem is smoking, but my real sin is pride.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Every single day I have to die daily to my pride.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because pride is the greatest sin.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: God's not out to wound your pride, dear friend.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: He is out to kill your pride.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: He hates pride.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Pride is that thing that makes us so sensitive, that makes us so defensive, that makes us so, you know, irritable, that causes us to put ourselves on a pedestal, look down on other people, to criticize other people.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's that thing that drives us away from God, causes us to think of ourselves all the time, to be self-centered and not think of other people.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: Pride is that hateful thing that we have inherited from Satan himself.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so God will do whatever he can to break your pride.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now he'll do that in small ways and in big ways.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Lately, he's been doing that in my life through a little grandson of mine named Asher.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Asher's four years old.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Asher speaks his mind.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: This last week I was uh I was tired, it was about six o'clock at night, and I flop back in the easy chair, had my head back, my belly up, my feet out, and so forth, and all of a sudden little Asher comes in the door, he sees me, he yells, Papa! And he runs and he flings himself spread eagled across me.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just great hug.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Love him.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: For a little while.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: He sits up, funny look in his face, he looks at me, he takes his forefinger and he pushes it into my belly.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Papa, are you gonna have a baby?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: I slugged him right in the face.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know that I went to the gym and worked out right after that was over.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens is what happens spiritually, God will bring someone in your life.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're a little touchy, you're defensive, and so forth.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: You drifted away from the Lord, you're starting to think of yourself, He'll bring someone in your life.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: It sort of punches you right in the belly and causes you to fly off the handle in order to bring you down, because God wants you to be broken, because as David said, Lord, I've realized you're not looking for more sacrifices or more worship.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: What you're really looking for, a broken and a contrite heart, Lord, thou wilt not despise.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: God wants us to be broken.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: God loves broken things.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: He breaks up the soil so that we have crops, he breaks up the crowds, clouds so we might have rain.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: We break the alabaster vial so the perfume can come out, and he is looking for your pride to be broken.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: Back in 1995, the fifth revival that's happened in Wheaton College history spread around the country to Baylor University, Asbury, and so forth.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: When it was at Asbury College, a student leader named Brian, and the stories carried, was carried in a national magazine.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: He said, you know, Asbury College, we were, we were, the revival had swept our campus.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, students were waiting in line to go up and share.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: There were tears, there was, there, everything is happening.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I stood in line for three hours to get up there with a friend, and he says, the whole time I'm looking at myself from outside, amazed, that I am going to go up to the microphone as a student leader at Asbury College and Seminary, and I am about to confess a sexual sin.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: But he said, I was broken.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: My pride was broken, I had nothing to protect anymore.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what God wants to do in your life and in my life.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because he loves humility, he hates pride, he's out to kill it, and before a revival can happen in your life, God must break your pride and you must humble yourself.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that's number one, you humble yourself.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, he says, requirement is that you pray, that you pray.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: This thing that we don't think much of, but that God thinks everything about.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's what's fascinating.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: In this book, the king used to illustrate the importance of prayer in revival is the single worst king of all 20 kings.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: His name?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Manasseh.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 1, chapter 33.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king, and he reigned 55 years in Jerusalem.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: Did what was evil in the Lord's sight, imitating the detestable practices of the Canaanite.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, think of the worst president you can ever think of, and imagine that if he was in office for 55 years, imagine Hitler being in office for 55.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Here's Manasseh.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: He practices personally witchcraft, divination, and sorcery, personally consulting mediums and spiritists.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Personally, I've left off several verses.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: In order to get you, in order to get the people of his kingdom committing infanticide, that is, giving up their one and two-year-old little babies to be killed by the idols, says he gave up his own little children, putting them in the arms of the red-hot god Molech when a fire was built, so that they would die.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: He put his own children in the fire.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: He did a great deal of evil in the Lord's sight, we read.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: He set up a carved image of the idol he had made in God's temple.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's no king as bad as him in the south.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so the Lord warned him, but they didn't listen.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: So God brought against them the military commanders of the king of Assyria, and they captured Manasseh with hooks.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Ouch! You know, grappling hook, right in the back.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: And when he was in distress, oh no, no, Manasseh, it's way too late for this.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: When he was in distress, Manasseh sought the favor of Yahweh his God and earnestly humbled himself before the God of his ancestors.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: He prayed to him.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: No, Lord, don't tell me.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: So God heard his petition and granted his request and brought him back to Jerusalem to his kingdom.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: So Manasseh came to know that Yahweh is God, and the epitaph for this awful, terrible, no good king is the rest of the events of his reign, along with his prayer to his God, are written in the records of Israel's kings.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: His prayer and how God granted his requests and all these other things are written down.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Are you kidding me?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: You can be so bad, you cause other people to sin, you can commit this kind of murder and this kind of evil, and yet if you humble yourself and pray, I mean, is this comforting or what?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: What God can do and is willing to do in the life of someone who simply humbles themselves and prays.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Friends, there have been five revivals, six revivals actually, in the history of America.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: My favorite.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's called the Layman's Prayer Revival.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Took place in 1857 through 1859, just before the Civil War.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: And you want to you want to talk about political divides today between Republicans, Democrats, Progressives, and Conservatives.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Political divides back then, remember, I wasn't there, you weren't either, but Kansas versus Missouri, the North versus the South before the Civil War.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: There was such animosity, and then comes the crash of 1857, banks closed down, tens of thousands of people out of work, 30,000 men sitting on the streets of New York City having lost their jobs.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: So much pain, so much poverty, so much hunger and everything else.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody thinking of the Lord.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're in spiritual distress.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's 1857, and one guy named Jeremiah, a businessman, Jerry, we'll call him a businessman in New York City, decided he would go around and invite people to a one-hour lunchtime prayer meeting.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: So he did, September 23, 1857.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Would you join me in a lunchtime prayer meeting in the back of this little church from 12 to 1?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: He passed around a lot of little flyers and so forth, and he was there at noon and nobody came in at 12.15 and nobody came in at 12.30.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: One person came up the stairs, and by one o'clock there were six of them.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: On September the 23rd, 1857, a few clerks, a couple merchants, a couple businessmen, and they just prayed.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: He did the same thing the next Wednesday, and to his surprise, 20 showed up.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: On the third week, 40 showed up.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Within six months in New York City, there were 5,000 prayer groups at lunchtime.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: Pastors were coming.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: Franklin, President Franklin Pierce started, they started doing it every day, and President Franklin Pierce started walking in every day, joining it.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: Within one year, 15,000 cities across America, Boston, Detroit, wherever you want to go, had layman's prayer meetings from 12 to 1 every day.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the result was with all these Christians getting revived, it started spilling over.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: And when the Civil War began, they say over 100,000 Confederate troops were Christians as a result of the layman's prayer revival.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: Layman's prayer revival.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: God brings incredible revival simply because people humble themselves and pray.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: Third, God says, seek my face.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I've studied this a lot, and I find that in the Hebrew, seek my face means, seek my face.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, all it means is, you know, if you're looking for something, you really want something, well, you have stories.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Both Asa sought God's face, Jehoshaphat sought God's face.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: Asa told the people of Judah to seek the Lord God.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: The land is ours, said Asa, because we sought the Lord our God.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in 2 Chronicles 14, 4 and 7.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: And in chapter 15, 1 through 4, King Asa said, People, if you seek him, he'll be found by you.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: But if you abandon him, he will abandon you.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so they sought him.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Same was true.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Seek my face like Jehoshaphat, he says in 2 Chronicles.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord's with Jehoshaphat.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we have these other verses about seeking his face.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: David says the same thing.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: When you said, Seek my face, my heart said to you, Your face, O Lord, I will seek.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to seek his face?
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: It means with urgency.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: You don't like having wandered off the plantation.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: You want to get back to God again.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you have this yearning in you.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: The same kind of yearning I had this last week when I lost my cell phone.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: I confess that my cell phone has the sum total of my brains in it.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that I know, everything that I want to know, all the people.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: If I lose my cell phone, anybody else like that?
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: I go crazy panic.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: And here day after day, it's not there.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm hunting, I'm carrying my, you know, the phone from home outside, you know, and around, you know, and looking for it and going on the app, find your iPhone and so forth.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: So when I find it yesterday, this thing I've been seeking, you know, he loves you so much.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you know what it's like when you seek something you desperately want.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it seems to me that's the urgency that God wants.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: He's not, he's not happy with Christians.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: You just casually seek him.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: He's looking for people who seek him with urgency, and then as a result, they turn.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: Humble yourself, pray, seek my face.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: Turn.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Story goes with little George Washington with his axe in his hand, his father comes to him.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: George Washington says, I can't tell a lie.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: I chop down your cherry tree.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: And in the cartoon that I'm referring to, his father says, Admitting it is one thing.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Would you stop admitting it and just stop doing it?
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because after a while, when you keep chopping down cherry trees, your daddy gets mad.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: And God would really like for us to stop continually coddling our sins and to turn from them.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: In the story.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: In this book, it's Hezekiah, who uses the word turn in nearly every sentence and says we need to turn back to God.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: And he illustrates it by going to the temple, unlocking the doors that his father Ahaz had locked, finding all kinds of garbage in the temple of God, and cleaning it all out and dumping it in the ravine.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what turning means.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: It means cleaning out the temple.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you, dear Christian, are a temple of the Lord, and God wants to clean you out.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he's not content with you simply coddling those sins, those habits that you've had for all these years.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: He's looking for you to humble yourself, to pray, to seek his face, and then turn from those wicked ways to him.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let me wrap this up.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite books on the spiritual life is by J.I.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: Packer called Keep in Step with the Spirit, a wonderful book about revival and the spiritual life and the charismatic movement.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, close to the end of that book, I have reviewed all the revivals in 2 Chronicles and in America and in other places in the world.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it seems to me these four things happen with every revival.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, God comes down.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, God's word comes home.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, God's purity comes through.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, God's people come alive.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I want to have happen in my life and in your life.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: Will you not revive us again, David cries, that your people may rejoice in you?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: This place, your heart, will be filled with joy.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: I promise, if you have a time of refreshing that comes from the Lord, and this isn't just academic for me.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is far more than just sermon stuff, because this happened to me.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: It happened to me back in February of 1970.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was in college and I was ambushed by revival.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was not ready for it.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't welcome it.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want it.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: The fact is, I thought things were pretty much going well for me.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was associated with a basketball team.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was a junior.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing decently in my major, which was mathematics.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: I had friends.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: I had a successful summer job.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: I went to church on Sunday.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: I helped in pioneer clubs on Wednesday night.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: I had grown up like, you know, I'd grown up as a pastor's kid.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: What else?
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I didn't need anything else, and this is Wheaton College.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's a Christian school.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't need revival.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: The pastor from California came that February.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: Had to go in the mornings.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was chapel.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: But he spoke in the evenings, and obviously I didn't go.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: I never went to things like that.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: But on Wednesday, a girl, girls always ruin your life, but a girl talked me into giving up basketball and going with her to an evening meeting.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I sat there with her and I listened to this pastor, you know, talk about sin.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: And there was something happening in me, and I just it felt really weird.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: Felt really queasy.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he talked about the fact that no matter how far along we are in the Christian life, we need revival.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: I came back alone the next night on Thursday night, sat halfway up on the right side, and pastor got up and he said, before I'm going to speak tonight, one of the student leaders, student body uh vice president, wants to say something.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: And this fellow came up to the stage, and to my utter astonishment, this guy that I knew quite well confessed a sexual sin.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: My mouth hung open, and before he was done, and he wept, two other guys were standing there.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: And before they'd finished sharing, there was a line.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that pastor never got up that night.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven o'clock, twelve, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: The president of the school said, guys need to go to breakfast.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: We're calling off classes for today.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't speak the next night either.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was the fourth of the five revivals in Wheaton's history, the revival of 1970.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd stayed up all night many times.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: I confess, I hate for my grandchildren to hear this, but I'd stayed up all night playing cards many times or watching television or playing ping pong or playing chess or whatever.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: I had never, ever stayed up all night before to be broken, to pray, to humble myself, and to seek God's face.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: That night, we all have important nights in our lives or days that was one of the most important nights in my life.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: That plus some, I suppose, many revivals, smaller revivals that have happened to me since then.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I stand here today rather than being a mathematics teacher or something like that.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: I find myself wishing for that kind of joy to happen to each of you.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: I find myself praying, revive us again, fill each heart with thy love.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: May each soul be rekindled with fire from above.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I know that revival doesn't come because we seek revival.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: Revival comes when we seek God.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: I just want this for you.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: I want it for me.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to ask for hands to be raised or for you to come forward, but I would ask that if there's something inside you that says, yeah, I would like something like that to happen in my life.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've drifted away.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not where I once was.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: Then in the moment that's right ahead of us, the moment of prayer.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: You may want to take your paper and look at those four on the back side and pray something like this.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh God, I'm praying to you right now.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm seeking your face.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm humbling myself.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm asking you to help me turn to you.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: And see what the Lord does in your life.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: Bow your head with me and pray, will you please?
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: Our Heavenly Father.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: I pray for myself and I pray for these dear friends.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: I pray a revival, a renewal, a refreshment of spiritual life.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: Would you move inside us, Heavenly Father?
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: Revive us again.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: Fill each heart with thy love.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: May each soul here be rekindled with fire.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: Move in our humble.