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Revival and the Gospel of Christ Psalm 85:1-7
Last weekend Randi and I were in Minnesota attending a conference. The conference was entitled, “A God-Entranced Vision of All Things,” and the conference was held in honor of Puritan Jonathan Edwards’ 300th birthday. Jonathan Edwards lived in the colonies that later became the United States from 1703 – 1757. An appropriate question to ask is, “What is so special and so significant about Jonathan Edwards that you would attend a weekend conference 650 miles away to hear?” This morning’s message is one answer to that question. Jonathan Edwards lived in a different time than we live in today, and I don’t think it has as much to do with technology, fast food, computers, cars, and a global economy as much as it has to do with how he saw God, and how that vision of God affected how he saw the world around him. Jonathan Edwards lived to make God the center of his life in every way, and he lived realizing that God is the center of this universe. God is the one from whom all things come. He is the one through whom all things come, whether it be life, death, riches, poverty, health, illness, or anything else. And God is the one for whom all things come. In other words, this world exists for God, and it exists to glorify Him. God is the Creator, He is the Sustainer, and He is the goal of all things. The world was made by God, through God, and for God. Jonathan Edwards lived with this view of God (which is found explicitly in Romans 11:36), and, I believe, it was his view of God, shaped by the Bible, that was instrumental in God bringing two revivals to New England in the 1730s and 40s. When you hear the word revival, I don’t know what comes to your mind. Perhaps you think of a big tent, or a Billy Graham Crusade, or a week of services at a local church. If you have that view and that understanding of revival, it may shock you to find out that there were only two revivals between 1730 and 1750 in New England. Someone might even say, “Just two? Why, we have revivals twice a year where I’m from!” The reason it may sound shocking to some people that there were only two revivals in a 20 year span is because they do not understand revival as the Bible describes it, which is how Puritans like Jonathan Edwards understood it. Let me start this morning by explaining what revival is not. Revival is not something organized, arranged, and planned by any human being. A human being does not and cannot plan revival. A human being can and many people often do plan meetings called “revivals,” but they cannot bring about revival in the biblical sense of the word. Revival cannot be brought about by human plans anymore than weather conditions. A person could just as easily cause rain to fall from the sky as he could cause a true, biblical revival. I want you to see this in Psalm 85:1-3. Notice what the Psalmist writes. O Lord, You showed favor…You restored…You forgave…You covered…You withdrew…You turned away from Your burning anger. Every one of these actions is an act of God. The forgiveness, restoration, and salvation that Israel experienced in the days described in this Psalm can be attributed to nothing but the work of God Himself. The Psalmist shows his understanding of that further in verses 4-7. He pleads with God, Restore us, O God…and cause Your indignation toward us to cease. He asks, Will You be angry with us forever? Will You prolong Your anger to all generations? It is God that the Psalmist speaks of as being the source of salvation, and the means of restoration to that salvation from which Israel had fallen away. He goes on in verse 6: Will You not Yourself revive us again? The Psalmist realizes that he has no power to bring restoration and revival to Israel. He goes to God and he pleads with God to revive Israel. He prays that God Himself would revive Israel. They could have meetings and services as long as they wanted, but unless God Himself would work to revive His people, His people would not be revived. Show us Your lovingkindness, O Lord, and grant us Your salvation. From these verses it is evident that revival is not something that a human being contrives. It is not something that can be brought about by human strength or intelligence or planning or ingenuity. It is solely a work of God Himself. If you have in your mind a picture of a Billy Graham crusade or a tent meeting or a week of services when you hear the word revival, can you just delete that image? That is not revival. A revival may, and I underscore may, come from one of these things, but these things are not revival nor are they the cause of it. What, then, is revival? I want to read you a few quotes to give you a picture of what revival is. These are all Puritans, and I say that with joy and without apology. The Puritans have been castigated in our day and most people have tried to put them somewhere on the shelf of historical religious relics of a bygone age, but the Puritans saw more of true revival than perhaps any other group of Christians besides the Apostles themselves. So, if you hear the word “Puritans” and get a bad taste in your mouth or have some other negative connotation with that word, I ask you to reconsider, and listen to the following descriptions that will hopefully help you picture revival as it should be pictured. Let me start with a definition, and then go on to illustrations of it. Jonathan Edwards wrote the following concerning revival and God’s work of redemption:
“It may here be observed, that from the fall of man to our day, the work of redemption in its effect has mainly been carried on by remarkable communications of the Spirit of God. Though there be a more constant influence of God’s Spirit always in some degree attending his ordinances, yet the way in which the greatest things have been done towards carrying on this work, always have been by remarkable effusions, at special seasons of mercy.”
That last phrase, “special seasons of mercy,” is, I believe, a biblical understanding of revival, from Psalm 85 and other places. A revival is a special season of mercy, in which the Spirit of God is pleased to communicate Himself to men in a remarkable way. True revival is when the Holy Spirit causes men to be concerned about eternal things in much larger ways than normal. It is when men are interested, in a large degree, in biblical truth and matters of the soul. It is a special season of mercy. How can we recognize such a special season of mercy? What does it look like? It seems to me that these special seasons of mercy are always marked by a desire for the Word of God by people in general in such a degree that it cannot be satisfied. During such a special season of mercy, the Word of God has its own appeal. No church programs are necessary. No church growth seminars are relevant. No skits, no drama, and no entertainment would be acceptable because people would cry out to have the Word of God, and the Word of God only. Let me give you a few illustrations of this truth. A Puritan preacher named Laurence Chaderton experienced a time of God’s mercy being poured out in a special way, and it was inevitably marked by a strong desire in people for biblical preaching. Here’s the quote: “On one occasion when Chaderton had preached for two hours and promised to stop, he was interrupted by a cry from the congregation, ‘For God’s sake, Sir, Go on, go on!’” Two hours of preaching, and the people had not yet had enough of God’s Word! They appetites for the Word of God could not be satisfied, and even though the preacher was ready to be finished, the people were not! What a difference than in our day, where the situation usually seems to be that the preacher is ready to go on, and the people are ready for him to stop! One mark of revival is a great desire to hear and read and learn the Word of God. In the year 1626 another special season of mercy was experienced by the Puritans. Again, the Spirit of God worked in such a mighty way, that one person described this time period like this: “The Lord was pleased to bless His Word, the people had a vehement appetite for it that could not be satisfied; they hung upon the ministers, still desirous to have more; no day was long enough, no room large enough.” Any time real revival happens by the power of the Spirit of God this is the result – people have a great desire and appetite for the Word of God. They cannot get enough of it. No message has more wonder to them than the message of Christ crucified. Nothing can substitute for this truth, and no amount of worldly amusement and entertainment can draw off souls who are so moved by the Spirit of God. This type of change in society that is the general result of revivals threatened worldly industries in these days. Families are often taken with praying together as families and having private worship together in their homes. Families have often been found singing together during such special seasons of mercy. Rather than gathering around the latest trend, families gather round the Word of God and they seek Him in prayer and praise. This can have a devastating impact on the world and the things of the world. James Kirkton writes of Scotland just prior to 1660, following a great time of revival:
“You could not for a great part of the country have lodged in a family where the Lord was not worshipped by reading, singing, and publick prayer. No body complained more of our church government than our taverners, whose ordinary lamentation was, their trade was broke, people were become so sober.”
To put that in modern terms, it would be similar to the NFL having to change game day to Saturday because the stadiums were empty on Sundays for people attending the public worship of Christ. When the Spirit of God moves on people in this type of merciful way, it radically alters society, including the family structures and activities within society. Normal activities can sometimes be suspended because of the Spirit’s sovereign work. This is seen in a somewhat humorous, yet heart-stirring account, of Puritan John Rogers’ ministry. John Rogers was performing a wedding ceremony, and the story goes like this:
“At another time when Rogers was taking a wedding service he preached on the necessity of the wedding garment: ‘God made the word so effectual that the marriage solemnity was turned into bitter mourning, so that the ministers who were at the marriage were employed in comforting or advising those whose consciences had been awakened by that sermon.’”
Can you imagine this scene? Two people getting married, and during the sermon at the wedding, people begin weeping and mourning over their sin against God to such a degree that the ceremony has to be stopped to advise and counsel them? Yet this is what happens when the Spirit of God sovereignly works during a special season of mercy. It is my conviction that we have not yet seen a period of such revival in the modern era. Indeed we have seen many churches grow to enormous size. We have seen evangelistic crusades draw tens of thousands of people. We have seen men’s stadium events draw a hundred thousand people for a weekend. Yet what have we to show for it? What has the impact been on the family? What has the impact been in the entertainment industry? What has the impact been in the world of sports? What has the impact been in marketing, in materialism, in evangelism? Granted there have been people saved, many people saved, during the modern era, but have we witnessed such a time of awakening as these Puritans were privileged to see? J.I. Packer, who is nearing 80 years old, was a speaker at the Edwards conference. He said that he has not seen in a revival of the biblical sort in his entire lifetime, which takes us back to the 1920s. True revival has not occurred in at least 80 years, probably more. The one question that burned in my mind as I thought about Packer’s statement and as I read parts of The Puritan Hope: Revival and the Interpretation of Prophecy by Iain Murray (from which all of the above quotations come), was, “Why?” Why hasn’t revival come? Why do we have so much “Christianity” and so little revival? Why is it that with the 700+ churches in Wichita that it cannot be said that you can hardly find a family to stay with who does not regularly attend to family reading, singing, and prayer? Why do so many people claim Christ, or claim to believe in God, and yet we see so little of what the Puritans saw? I know many common answers given. We live in the 21st century; they lived in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries (note that, the Puritan age was around 300 years long – that is what revival does). Obviously it will not be like that today with the cultural differences. Do you know what my problem with that objection is? It’s two-fold: 1) It’s shallow, and seems more like an excuse not to serve God rather than a well-thought out reason, and 2) The Puritan culture was radically different from the early church culture of the 1st and 2nd century, yet the zeal for Christ, the devotion to worship and prayer, and the desire for preaching and hearing the Word was the nearly the same. The early churches had a culture nothing like the culture of Scotland, England, the colonies, or early America, yet the Spirit’s work transcended cultural barriers. Culture is irrelevant when the Holy Spirit works. The results are the same in every culture. That is not to say that the way those results play out is the same, but the desires, the appetites, the repentance, the faith, and the love for God are the same. When the Spirit works, people hunger for God and His Word regardless of culture. So let’s not excuse ourselves for our spiritual apathy with the excuse of a different culture or time period. It is not a valid reason, and it won’t stand when you stand before Christ on judgment day. You will not get out of your duty to love God because of your cultural background. Another answer may just avoid the question altogether, and say, “Well, the Puritans had their shortcomings.” That’s true. Just like every other period in church history, there are weaknesses in the Puritans. The best of men are men at best. But that doesn’t give us a reason not to imitate their faith when it proved to be something that greatly glorified God. Let’s not excuse ourselves from the incredibly high standard of devotion we see in the Puritans; rather, let us endeavor to reach it and, if God is especially merciful to us, exceed it so that Christ’s kingdom may extend further into the dark places of the world. Here’s what I think is the answer to this question, “Why hasn’t revival come in our society?” The reason we haven’t seen revival in our time is because we don’t truly proclaim the Gospel of Christ. We very often preach another Gospel. Now that is a very indicting statement, so I need to explain it, and that is what I want to do. I am saying that I believe the reason we have not seen a revival like the Puritans saw several times, and like Jonathan Edwards saw twice in a span of only 20 years, is because we preach and believe and live a different Gospel than the Puritans preached and believed and lived. Ours is a diluted Gospel. It is watered down. It has been made to fit the desires of the world, and the world has embraced it, much to the detriment of true revival. The pure Gospel is essential to revival. Let me take a few minutes this morning to explain the Gospel as the Puritans believed it and, as far as I can tell, it is in the Bible. I want to use four words to explain it this morning: sin, repentance, faith, and joy. Sin. Let’s start with sin, because that is what we need to start with if we are going to understand the Gospel. If there had not been sin, the Gospel would not have been needed. So we must start here, and I believe the apostles started here as well, especially as you read the book of Romans or Peter’s sermons in Acts. The Puritans were noted for preaching heavily on sin. They were convinced no true salvation could occur if a person was not convicted of his or her sin. That is why Jonathan Edwards preached a sermon entitled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” He understood that the thing that must be understood by sinners is that they are sinners. My fear is that we have gone wrong at this very starting point with the Gospel. From my own experience, what I’ve read, heard, and discussed with people, I see a fundamental error at this basic point of the Gospel. In fact, in my own Christian life I have had to learn what sin is over time because I had never really had it explained to me for what it really is. Our tendency with sin seems to be one of two paths. Either we avoid talking about it because talking about sin makes people uncomfortable, or we change the meaning of sin. Sometimes we just avoid it altogether. If people hear that they are sinners, that isn’t a very seeker-friendly message. Sinners don’t want to stop sinning. You have to understand that. Sinners do not seek to escape sin; they seek to escape the consequences of it. Sinners want a Gospel that tells them they can have forgiveness and righteousness and then go out and live however they want and return to their worldly lifestyles. So when you mention sin, it often makes people very uncomfortable. We only want our consciences cleared, we don’t want to hear about the very thing that is pricking them! So one tactic is to avoid the topic of sin altogether. Another tactic, and this is probably more common, is to change the meaning of sin. What is sin? Adultery? Fornication? Murder? Stealing? Lying? Certainly these are all sin, but there is a problem with the focus we have had on these things. Sin is usually equated with immorality, and godliness is equated with morality. Therefore, people who are deeply entrenched with the sin of coveting, or of not loving God, or of having idols, never feel their sin. They never experience conviction of sin. A person who has never stolen, never murdered, is honest, and content with their lifestyle could perhaps go to church all their lives and never realize how utterly wicked and sinful he or she is! The greatest tendency we have in our modern evangelical time is to alter the meaning of sin. We use the word, but we misuse the word. What is sin? I want to read four verses from Romans to help you understand the sinfulness of sin.
The first verse defines sin in its essence, and the other three show how that sin plays out. Let me put it before you in two propositions. The first one is found in 1:21, in that phrase, they did not honor Him as God. The essence of sin is not honoring God as God. Sin is to treat God like He is less than God. That is why, I believe, the ten commandments start with, You shall have no other gods before Me. That means that you shall not honor anyone or anything more than you honor God. Nothing shall have the priority in your life that God has, and even that says less than should be said. God is not a priority; He is the priority. He is to be in everything you do, ruling as God in every situation you are in, always receiving the honor as God. If you do not honor God as God you sin. The second thing, then, is how this looks. Oh how easily we could be deceived into thinking that God is being honored in our lives when He is being defiled and blasphemed. So we have to know what it means to honor God. We will see what it means through the negative, and then try to put it in the positive. In 1:23, 1:25, and 3:23, we see what it means not to honor God. A person who does not honor God is described in three ways: 1) he exchanges the glory of the incorruptible God for an image, 2) he worships and serves the creature rather than the Creator, and 3) he falls short of the glory of God. That third one is a summary of the first two. Let’s look at each of them. When we think about sin as it relates to the Gospel message, we have to understand it in these terms. Revival will always be accompanied by this understanding of sin, so let’s look at this first one. Sin is to exchange the glory of the incorruptible God for an image. That is to say, sin is idolatry. Sin is to have someone or something be god to you other than the one true, living God. This is a very powerful picture of sin. If we exchange something, that implies that we trade it in for something else. If I exchange a book for another book or for a CD or a shirt or whatever, that means that I give up the book, I let it go, and I acquire something else, another book, perhaps. There is one common element involved in all exchanges: People exchange something they either don’t want for something they do want, or they perhaps exchange something they want for something they want more. In other words, a true exchange always involves getting rid of something that, in your mind, has lesser value for something that has more value to you. So when Paul says that the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men (1:18) is exchanging the glory of the incorruptible God for an image, what is he saying? He is saying that sin is to see the glory of God next to another object, whether it be a wooden idol or a car or a child or a spouse or any other person or thing, and to choose the other thing over the glory of God. That is sin. Sin is to see the glory of God, in other words, the beauty, majesty, and wonder of all that God is in all of His infinite perfections, and to choose something else. The person who does no honor to God is the person who values something else more than God in practice. That is what it means to exchange the glory of the incorruptible God for an image. The second picture of not honoring God is seen in worshipping the creature rather than the Creator. This simply means to ascribe more worth to something God has made than to God Himself, which is of course utter folly and wicked sin. Now, how do you ascribe worth to someone or something? It is not by saying with your lips only that you value that person or thing. You do not ascribe worth to an object or a person just be saying, “That person is valuable.” If I say that my wife is valuable to me, and I ascribe worth to her, but I don’t want to spend time with her or enjoy her company, I betray that I don’t really value her. If I valued her, if I really thought she was worthy, I would want to spend time with her and enjoy her company. I would show by my life what my verbal claim says. You do not worship the creature by going to a pagan temple filled with idols and statues and bowing down to them only. Yes, that is one way a person might worship the creature rather than the Creator. The more common way to worship the creature rather than the Creator is to live a life that shows that created things are more valuable to you than God. To not honor God a person chooses something other than the glory of God to be the most valuable thing in his or her life, and then worships it and serves it. Paul summed it up in 3:23 by calling this falling short of the glory of God. He writes, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. This means that everyone in the world has exchanged the glory of God for an image and by doing so ascribed more value to an image, something created, than to the Creator, and this is sin. One of the most powerful moments of the conference last weekend was when John Piper was preaching on Friday night, and he said something like this: There is one word that describes exchanging the glory of God for something of lesser value – treason! To fail to honor God as God is treason! It is not some trivial thing. It is to deny your Creator as you behold His glory and His invisible attributes and His mighty power, and His holy majesty and you sniff at it, and then choose television, or sports, or wife, or children, or land, or mother, or father. This is treason! Sin does not have to do with morality. Sin does not even primarily have to do with other people. Sin has to do with God. The reason sin is so utterly sinful is because it rejects the infinite value of the glory of God for something that is of infinitely lesser value. It rejects the most valuable thing in the world for something that is in and of itself worthless. And this is the universal indictment on mankind. We all have done this. We all have valued something more than the glory of God. We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is no one exempt. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8). Let me put it to you positively, and I’m just going to do that briefly, and next week I’m going to unfold this for the entire time, but I want to put it to you positively right now and not leave it at the negative end. If sin is to value anything created more than you value the Creator, then righteousness is to value the Creator more than anything else. God’s demand is that you value what is most valuable, namely Himself. That is what it means to be righteous. If you could perfectly value God’s glory, you would be a perfect person. Sin is to commit treason by trampling over the glory of God like it is worthless in order to get to some created thing. Righteousness is to love and value and treasure and seek the glory of God above everything else. As we close I want to give you a couple points of application. First, I want to remind you that the Gospel is good news. This morning we have talked a lot about sin. That’s the reality of life in this fallen world. There is good news, and that is why we have to mention sin. Before the good news can be embraced we have to understand where we’ve gone wrong and what sin is. Sin is not the end of the story, and the reason we bring up sin and the reason the Bible talks about sin is not to condemn us. We are already condemned as sinners, so the Bible doesn’t need to condemn us. The reason the Bible tells us that we are condemned as sinners is so that we will be able to embrace the good news of salvation and have fullness of joy forever in the presence of Jesus Christ. That is the reason we talk about sin, and if we don’t talk about sin then we show that we really don’t care about people, because we don’t show them what it means to be unrighteous before a holy God and their great need of a Savior who can give them a new heart and a new spirit that will embrace God’s glory rather than reject it. So, don’t think of preaching and discussing sin as a negative. It is the only way to show people their true need for Jesus Christ. With that being said, here’s one application – pray for revival. One of my heart’s greatest desires is to see a great, special season of mercy in my lifetime for the glory of Christ. My heart yearns and aches to see people coming to the cross with tears flowing from their eyes because of their sin and because they have rejected the glory of God for an image and then believing upon Jesus unto salvation. I long to see people coming not just one at a time, but hundreds at a time before God repenting of loving television and sports and sex and drinking and leisure and friends and family more than Christ, and then by faith embracing the glory of God in the face of Christ. I hope and pray that is your desire as well. What could be more incredible than seeing such an amazing display of God’s mercy during such a special season? No game, no movie, no television show, no vacation, nothing this world has to offer could compete with seeing Christ so glorified through the salvation of many, many sinners. So, will you join with me in praying for real, true revival? Will you join with me in praying for a special season of mercy that would begin here in Wichita, and then extend from the Pacific to the Atlantic and then cross the oceans to countries where Christ is not known? Secondly, I want to encourage you this morning to seek and destroy sin in your own life. I’m not just talking about the outward manifestations of sin. I’m talking about sin in its essence. Is there anything you value more than you value God? Before you answer, just think about it for a few minutes, maybe pray about it, and ask God to show you if there is something that has a place only He should have. If you only destroy the outward manifestations of sin, you haven’t really done anything helpful at all. Jesus talked about this kind of removal of sin like this in Matthew 15:8-9: This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me. But in vain do they worship Me. That was to the Pharisees who had impeccable outward righteousness. They had destroyed every form of outward sin, but inside they were filled with hate, murder, adultery, pride, and lust. So I encourage you this morning to seek and destroy the real sin in your life. Ask God to show you, and He will, and then prayerfully, by means of the Word of God and faith, destroy the idols. Let’s pray. [Home page] [ ]
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