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Revival and the Gospel of Christ, Part 2 Psalm 85:1-7
We are continuing this morning where we left off last week with the subject of revival and the Gospel of Christ. They are two subjects that are distinct in many ways, but I also feel they are intimately related, especially given the climate in which we live. It is my conviction that we have not seen revival in at least 100 years in America, and we could probably extend that further back without overstating the case. What I mean by this is that we have not had a special season of mercy in our land in over 100 years. We have not seen people coming to Christ in large numbers and being regenerated and transformed by the Gospel all across the country in many, many years. Doubtless many people have been saved in the last 100 years, and many churches have grown to enormous size, but the impact of Christianity on society as a whole and even on churches has seemed to decline. When you read the accounts of revival from the 16th, 17th, and 18th century Puritans, you will quickly realize that we have never experienced anything like it in our age. For an illustration of this, let me read you a quote from Iain Murray’s book The Puritan Hope: Revival and the Interpretation of Prophecy. In December of 1791 in North Wales, Thomas Charles wrote:
General concern about eternal things swallowed up all other concerns. And a spirit of conviction spread so rapidly that there was hardly a young person in the neighbourhood but began to enquire, What will become of me? The work has continued to go on ever since with unabated power and glory, spreading from one town to another, all around this part of the country. A dispensation so glorious, I never beheld, nor indeed expected to see in my day…The coming of the Lord amongst us has been with such majesty, glory, and irresistible power, that even his avowed enemies would be glad to hide themselves somewhere, from the brightness of his coming…If the Lord God is graciously pleased to continue to the work, as it has prevailed for some months past, for some months yet to come, the Devil’s kingdom will be in ruins in our neighbourhood. Those who were foremost in wickedness and rebellion are now amongst the foremost in seeking for mercy and salvation in the blood of the Lamb. It is an easy and delightful work to preach the glorious Gospel here, in these days. Divine truths have their own infinite weight and importance in the minds of the people. Beams of divine light, together with irresistible energy, accompany every truth delivered…I bless God for these days, and would not have been without seeing what I now see in the land. – No; not for the world.
This type of revival is not the sort of thing that a man plans. I drove by a church with Randi not too long ago and saw on the outside a big banner that said, “Revival!” and then listed the dates of this supposed revival. That is the common perception of revival. It is a week of special services at the church, or it is a couple nights of a Billy Graham crusade, but the Bible never speaks of revival that way. As we read from Psalm 85, revival is something that God does in and through His sovereign mercy to bring about salvation in many hearts and lives. It is not something that humans can plan. No one can put a date on when revival will occur. God brings about revival in His own way in His own timing. It is, as Jonathan Edwards called it, a special season of mercy, and it comes from the sovereign mercy of God through His Holy Spirit. A question that burned in my mind as I thought about revival was, “Why haven’t we seen a true, biblical revival in so long?” Why has it been 100-plus years since we have had a real, biblical, culture-transforming revival? The answer to that question, I believe, is because we have misunderstood the Gospel and thus forfeited the power of God for salvation. As I said last week, that is a bold and indicting statement. To say that we have forfeited God’s power for salvation is a strange thing to say, but even more indicting is to say that we have gone wrong at the very heart of the Gospel message. So, I want to explain that. I started to explain it last week, but before I jump back into that, let me expand a little bit on why I think we have forfeited the power of God for salvation by misrepresenting the Gospel of Christ. In Romans 1:16 we read: For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Paul tells us that he is not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Why isn’t he ashamed? Because he knows that within the Gospel message is the power of God for salvation. It is the message of the Gospel that is the power of God for salvation, so if you go wrong at the Gospel, if you don’t teach the pure Gospel, what have you either diminished in your life or forfeited completely? The power of God for salvation. If you don’t preach the Gospel, you may be able to persuade men to become moral, but you will never see the power of God at work for salvation. So, my answer to the question, “Why hasn’t revival come in our era?” is this: Revival has not come because we have forfeited the power of God for salvation, which is the very message of the Gospel itself. We can build big churches, and we can have large crusades, and we can see great emotional responses to preaching, and we can rally people around a cause and call that cause “Christianity,” but we will never see the true power of God for salvation apart from a clear, biblical understanding of the Gospel. Where do we begin with the Gospel? Well, in Romans 1 Paul began with sin. If you want to understand the Gospel, you must begin with sin. What is sin? We defined sin using four verses from Romans last week: Romans 1:21, 23, 25; 3:23. From these four verses we saw that sin is not honoring God as God. To sin is not to honor God as God. We know this is a valid definition of sin because Paul tells us that he is going to discuss sin in Romans 1:18, where he says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Ungodliness and unrighteousness are terms used to define and describe sin. Furthermore, Paul went on to say in Romans 3:23, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. There he joins the two things: sin and the glory of God not being honored, prized, and treasured. So we know we’re on the right track with sin when we define it from Romans 1-3 as not honoring God as God. How does this look? How does a person look who fails to honor God as God? It is essential that we know this, because we could easily deceive ourselves into thinking we are honoring God when we are not honoring God. The person who fails to honor God does three things: 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. This means that the sinner sees the value of the glory of God and then he gives it up for some other item, whether it be a statue that he sets up to worship or whether it be television or sports or family or any other thing he values more than the glory of God. Sin is to exchange the glory of God for something that is not glory, and then sin is to serve and worship that thing. For most people in our society, the idol that is acquired in place of God is self. We want maximum comfort, maximum ease, maximum entertainment, maximum food, or whatever else it is that we desire. And, of course, no one wants to go to hell, so we want to have just enough of God to keep us out of hell but not so much that our desires for the things of this world are interrupted or altered. We want God to help us get free from hell, but we don’t want Him to mess with our lives here, unless of course it is in such a way as to increase our enjoyment of the idols that we serve. We all fall short of the glory of God. We all choose something other than God to satisfy us. That is what sin is. Anyone who chooses to be satisfied by anything other than God ultimately is a sinner, and that is the entire human race. No one loves God more than entertainment, no one loves God more than family, no one loves God more than their favorite hobby, no one loves God more than television, no one loves God more than the applause of men, no one loves God more than prestige, unless something happens that changes that person’s heart. We all are sinners. We all have many things that we naturally, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, prefer to God. In fact, anyone who is not a Christian prefers almost anything to God, because the unbeliever finds God boring, demanding, unfair, unloving, unkind, and perhaps tyrannical. The unbeliever does not want to submit himself to God. He has no desire to know God and to delight in God. The unbeliever only wants to use God as a means to an end, and when God doesn’t seem to serve him, the unbeliever blames God and reviles God. The natural man hates God. You have to understand this. Let me put it like this: when people demonstrate by their life that they enjoy anything more than they enjoy and value the presence of the glory of God, they show that they worship the creature rather than the Creator. Is there anything in your life that you value more than God? Is there anything that you enjoy more than God? Is there anything that gets more of your time, more of your energy, or more of your money than God? Now, let me clarify. I know that we all have to work. We all spend at least 40 hours each week working in an environment that would on the surface appear to have nothing whatsoever to do with God. This immediately limits the time we can spend in prayer, or in Bible reading, or in Christian fellowship, or in evangelism. But what I mean when I ask this question about your time, your energy, and your money is this: Do you do all that you do for the glory of God? Do you so value God’s honor, that when you get up in the morning and go to work, you do it so that Christ might be seen as excellent by everyone at your workplace? Do you go to your job to show how glorious Jesus Christ is? When you are at work, are you working for Him? When you pay your mortgage or your rent payment, which I know we all have to pay, do you pay it praying that God would use your home for His glory, and that the way you use your home would glorify God? Is your home an operation center for God to be glorified, or is it just a place for you to relax in and give no thought to God or His glory? Every dollar you spend, even if it is on a utility bill or rent payment, can be for the glory of God. The question is, what are you using your home for? What are you using your electricity for? Do you value the glory of God to such a degree that in whatever you do, you are doing it to magnify the glory of God? That is what I mean. The essence of sin is to ignore God and suppress the truth. It is to exchange His glory for something else rather than to live for His glory. When you put sin in that light, which is the light in which it belongs, it becomes very apparent how sinful everyone is. No one should ever be able to go hear Bible preaching their whole life and not feel like a vile, wretched sinner. Our sin is that we have committed treason against our Creator by ignoring Him so that we can have entertainment, amusement, comfort, ease, friends, family, and whatever else we find more fun than God. That is sin. Now, it is because we have sinned that we are under the wrath of God. God is not happy with sinners. That is why Paul says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. God is filled with rage and wrath at sinners who repeatedly trample over His glory for created things. He is not pleased and His wrath abides on them every day. That is what John the Baptist preached in John 3:36. He said, “He who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” To disobey Jesus is a serious offense. To sin is to bring upon yourself the wrath of God. When God sees men and women trampling His glory, trying to kick Him off the throne of the universe for sex and food and drink and sports and movies and friends and leisure, He gets angry. He does not take it lightly. God is filled with indignation when His glory is treated like it is worthless. Let me give you a few verses to show you this. Psalm 2:4. Here the nations have rebelled against God and are trying to remove Him from the universe. They are against God and against Christ, and they want to be rid of God and Christ. What is God’s response to such trampling of His glorious name? He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them. Then He will speak to them in His anger and terrify them in His fury. Anger! Fury! God is not sitting in heaven watching sin unmoved. He is filled with anger and fury at sinners who would demean His glory. He will someday terrify them in His fury. He laughs and mocks them, and it is this same God who has the power to cast them into hell in an instant! This God, who is enraged at sinners and scoffs at them, is the only Being in the universe keeping sinners out of hell for any length of time at all, and sinners go on mocking Him and sinning against Him. They enrage the only One who can save them. Psalm 7:11. The Psalmist writes, God is a righteous judge, and a God who has indignation every day. God is indignant every day! God is filled with wrath at sinners every day! It is because He is a righteous judge that He has such indignation! God cannot stand by and watch sin without being enraged at it. God cannot just sit and watch His glory be defamed and be unmoved. He has indignation every day. Every day you wake up God has indignation with sinners. All the people at your work place who are not saved, think about them, God has indignation with them every day you are at work. Every person in your family who does not have salvation through Jesus Christ, God has indignation with them every day. God is filled with wrath at sin. It gets stronger still. Look at Psalm 11:5. We read, The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence His soul hates. God’s soul hates the wicked. We cannot avoid these verses. We must realize what sin is at its core. Sin is so offensive and so wicked that it arouses divine wrath and indignation to the point that God hates the wicked. God hates those who would trample His glory and make it look like nothing. Now, there is a sense in which God loves His enemies. He sends rain on them. He gives them sunshine. He gives them many good things. That is a form of the love of God. But there is also a sense in which God hates sinners because, in spite of all that God does to show His goodness and love and glory to them, they continuously reject Him. Though God shows mercies every morning, and though God gives life and breath, and though God gives health and prosperity and sunlight and moonlight and food and water, sinners continue to reject Him for the creation. They prefer His gifts over Him. And this God hates. Because there is a sense in which God loves the sinner, He still gives good things, but it is the continual rejection of God by the sinner that causes God to hate the sinner even while He is loving that same sinner. We must not be confused. God hates sin, and God is angry with sinners who reject His glory. And we all from birth stand in this position as sinners. From the moment we are born we are filled with all kinds of sinfulness and we immediately begin to prefer the creature rather than the Creator. That is our hearts. We love sin, and we hate God. That puts us in a seriously dangerous position. That is the bad news. But, the Gospel is good news. The Gospel does not end with sin. There is a solution to this problem we have of being under the wrath of God for eternal treason. Repentance. There is a second word I used to summarize the Gospel, and that is repentance. Sin is rejecting the glory of God for a created thing, or a number of created things. Repentance, then, is changing our minds about this choice that we have been making all of our lives, and seeing the glory of God as more valuable than all else. I want to divide this up and put a sub-heading under it. That sub-heading is regeneration. Regeneration, which is a word to describe what Jesus called being born again. It is vital that you understand the connection between regeneration, repentance, and faith, and, of course, ultimately, joy. I want to just briefly explain regeneration, and I do it under repentance because it seems to me that the only reason anyone repents is because they have been born again. Let me try to explain that, because there are a lot of people who believe that you are born again after you believe and after you come to Christ. The Bible, however, teaches that the opposite is true. You do not receive Jesus Christ until after you are born of God. Let me give you three texts to show you this. Jeremiah 13:23. The prophet writes, Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good who are accustomed to doing evil. What is he saying? He’s saying that it is as easy for a sinner to do good and please God as it is for a leopard to change his spots or a person to change his skin color. In other words, evil is rooted in your nature. You are born a sinner, and your nature loves sin. You want to sin from birth. Of course, you don’t want to suffer the consequences from sin, but you do want to sin and do what God forbids. Since this is the case, you are unable to choose God. You cannot decide to love what you naturally hate. You cannot change your heart anymore than a leopard can change its spots. This means that, left to yourself, you will never repent. You will never see the glory of God as more valuable than all else if left to your own devices and your own natural will. Your will is captive to sin, and it is not free. Look at 2 Timothy 2:25-26. Paul says, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will. Who grants repentance? Who is it who enables a person to repent? God! God grants repentance. Why must this be so? It is because those who are unsaved are held captive by the devil to do his will. The natural man is the devil’s slave. The natural man is not free. He does not have free will. He is being held captive by the devil to do the devil’s will. The only way out of that prison of Satan is for God to grant repentance. This is exactly what God does for the believer. That is what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:6. There he writes, For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. This is a reference back to creation. The same God who created light out of darkness shines in our hearts, and when that happens, we see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ and suddenly, tears begin to fall. When God calls us and shines this light of truth in our hearts, that is regeneration, and suddenly we realize what we have rejected for so long. We see God and all that He is for us in Jesus Christ, and we look at the things of this world that we have cherished and treasured, and we let go of the idols, and we weep because we have forsaken the fountain of living waters for cisterns that can hold no water. We see the value of God and we cry because we have for so long despised God and trampled over His glory. Our hearts are broken when this light of regeneration shines in our hearts. And God is the One who must shine that light. We cannot find the light switch. It is not in our ability to create light in our own hearts. Only God can do it. So, when we hear the Gospel, when someone comes along and, with gentleness hopefully, corrects us in our opposition to the truth, God uses that word spoken to us and says to our hearts, “Light shall shine out of darkness.” And suddenly, there is light! Glorious, breathtaking light! And the Gospel message proves itself to be the power of God because it is that message that God uses to shine this light. That is why we are to gently correct those who are in opposition, so that God may grant them repentance. So that God may shine in their hearts the light of truth. And this regeneration always brings about repentance. Repentance is a change of mind. It means to change direction or to change your mind about something. And in this case it means to change direction, and instead of running away from God, you run to Him. And it means to change your mind, and instead of seeing God as demanding and boring and dull and tyrannical and unfair and unloving, you see God as gracious and exciting and beautiful and merciful and just and loving. I am afraid that because we have so mixed up the meaning of sin in our preaching of the Gospel in the modern era, that we have also gone wrong at repentance. People may think they repent because they now see God more favorably. That is not repentance. Repentance is not just seeing God as being part of your life. Repentance is realizing the value of the glory of God, and having your heart broken that you have forsaken the fountain of living waters. Repentance is not just something you do so that you can get out of hell to be with mom or with wife or with brother or sister or to be free from pain or sickness. That is not repentance. Repentance is not a human decision to stop drinking or smoking or sleeping around so that you don’t get hell. That is legalism and moralism. Repentance is having this light shine in your heart so brilliantly that you can’t see anything else anymore, and having your heart broken over your former blindness. Repentance is realizing that God is so glorious, that you smash the idols, you tear down the altars, and burn the remains because of your sorrow and your sudden realization from God that He is glorious and excellent and praiseworthy. Repentance is not deciding to live a good life and add Jesus to it so that you get out of hell. That is not repentance, and it does not require someone to be born again for that to happen. That is why I am against altar calls. If God shines the light of the Gospel in someone’s heart, repentance happens, and so does faith, and so does joy. You don’t need a time of walking the aisle. God isn’t waiting for you to walk the aisle to grant you repentance. God uses the Gospel message to save people, not altar calls. So this is repentance. It is to have the light of the Gospel of the glory of God shine in your heart and smash it because you realize how you have so sinned against Almighty God by preferring His creation to Himself, and to be utterly broken over your sin. Faith. Repentance, however, is not what saves you. Like regeneration, repentance is not the vehicle God uses ultimately to save you. It is part of the process, and it will always accompany true salvation in every case, but it is not what saves you. Faith is what saves you. When you hear the Gospel message, and you realize how heinously you have sinned against God, and your heart breaks for that sin, you still have a problem. The problem is that you do not have righteousness. You do not have forgiveness. And so, even though you may realize that God’s glory is beautiful and worthy and desirable, as long as you are unrighteous you can never have it. If God only regenerated us and granted us repentance, we would not have salvation. We would fall short of it. We need righteousness if we are going to be in the presence of Almighty God. Faith is the means by which God gives us righteousness. When we repent, we realize the infinite value of the glory of God and we are broken that we have rejected Him for so long, and then, by God’s amazing grace, we realize that we can have that glory in Christ. When we believe in Jesus Christ, it is that act of faith that God reckons to us as righteousness. Paul says in Romans 4:5, But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness. When we see the glory of God shining in our hearts in the face of Christ, we realize that it is by believing in Jesus Christ that we can have this righteousness that will enable us to enter into God’s presence. It is this faith in Jesus that gives us righteousness. It is not by works. There is nothing we can do to get righteousness. The only way we can have it is by faith in Jesus. We can look at salvation like this: I was a sinner, and I was opposed to God and I hated God. I didn’t want anything to do with God. All I wanted was for God to give me my way or get out of my life. God was not valuable to me. Because I was a God-hater and an enemy of God, wrath abided on me. The wrath of God was on me every day of my life that I was opposed to God. But then one day, I heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ being proclaimed, and upon hearing it God said, “Light shall shine out of darkness” in my heart. And I was born of God, I suddenly had spiritual life and I saw the glory of God as more wonderful and more glorious than anything I had ever known. My heart broke over my sin, over my rejection of God, my infinite treason, and I realized I needed righteousness and forgiveness if I was going to enjoy this glorious God because I am a sinner. And then I saw the cross, and I, by the grace of God, put my faith in the crucified, buried, and now risen Savior, and believed that all of His promises are true and certain. And by this act of faith I was made righteous before God and I had peace with God. His wrath was no longer on me. Nothing stood between Him and me. We were reconciled, and I was freed to enjoy His glory and His love and His mercy and His Triune perfections for all eternity. That is salvation. Salvation is nothing less than that. If your salvation is not so that you can be freed to enjoy God forever, then it is not biblical salvation. Whatever experience you had, if your salvation was not about you getting to have eternal, blissful, joyful fellowship with God forever, it wasn’t real salvation. It may have been fear of hell. It may have been an emotional excitement. It may have been to go to heaven to be with some loved one or to have eternal vacation. But whatever it was, it was not salvation as the Bible describes it. Salvation is seeing the glory of God in face of Christ, and loving it because God has declared that light shall shine in your heart that was formerly filled with darkness. Joy. I want to end with joy. I think that is the end of our salvation – joy in God. Not joy in friends, not joy in sports or joy in family or joy in life, even, but joy in God. This is the most wonderful of all joys because it never ends. If you have joy in your life only, your joy is finite because your life is going to end. If you have joy in your business, your joy is finite because your business is going to end someday, or you are going to die someday. Joy in friends, in family, or in anything else is all the same. All of those things change; all of them are finite and fleeting. The end of salvation is joy in God. Psalm 144:15 says, How blessed are the people whose God is the Lord! That word, blessed, in the Hebrew literally means “blissful” or “happy.” It is another word for joy. How filled with joy are the people whose God is the Lord! How blissful are those whose God is the Lord! Speaking to the disciples about their joy after His resurrection, Jesus said in John 16:22, Therefore you too have grief now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you. There is a joy that Jesus gives that no one can take away. And, in fact, His death and resurrection that allows us to abide in Him was done so that we might have joy. John 15:11. Jesus said, These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full. Jesus is saying, “The reason I am telling you about my love, and about keeping my commandments by abiding in Me, and about having fellowship with the Father through Me, is so that My joy might be in you, and so that your joy might be made full!” If you have the joy of Jesus in you, you have fullness of joy! Can there be any greater joy than the joy of the Son of God? Can there be more joy than infinite joy? If you are in Christ, your salvation is to bring you the joy of Christ. Jesus wants His joy to be in you, and He wants your joy to be made full! Christianity is not about a bunch of rules and regulations. No, to the contrary, Christianity is about freedom to enjoy God forever. Christianity is about freedom to rejoice in God and in His Son Jesus Christ for all eternity as we enjoy His presence. This is the Gospel. We are in sin, under the wrath of God, until one day we hear the preaching of the Gospel message, and God takes that message and says, “Light shall shine out of darkness!” in our hearts, and we see God’s glory as marvelous and wondrous and beautiful, and our hearts break over our sin and rejection of God, and we see Jesus Christ as the glory of God made available to us by His cross and His resurrection, and we embrace Him by faith. He is our salvation. He is our righteousness. We take hold of Him, so that we can know Him, and so that we can rejoice in Him forever. This is the Gospel the Puritans were known for preaching. This is the Gospel that, when preached in the power of the Holy Spirit, causes light to shine in people’s hearts by the power of God and brings them to tears and then to everlasting joy through faith in Jesus Christ. This is the Gospel we need to believe, and live, and proclaim if we want to be used by God in revival. The Gospel is the power of God for salvation. It is the message God uses to cause light to shine in people’s hearts. The reason that it is so rarely preached is because no one, on his own, will believe this Gospel, or even want to believe it. No one on his own would ever desire God more than this world of sin. It is an impossibility. It really boils down to a lack of faith in the power of God for salvation, and because of that lack of faith or fear of man or whatever, we lower the standard, and present a different gospel that is more suitable to worldly minds. But we must preach and live and share and spread this good news of salvation and joy forevermore in God if we want to proclaim the true Gospel message. Have you yet understood this good news? Is Jesus Christ your all this morning? Or are there things in your life that you love more than Jesus Christ? Have you received Jesus so that you can have something besides Jesus? If you have done that, then you have not received Jesus. If you could enjoy heaven without Jesus, then you’re probably not saved. Jesus is our heaven. Jesus is our joy. Jesus is our life! Oh, dear friends, let us proclaim the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and let us trust that God will use this message in a mighty way to draw many to Himself! And let us show the truth of this message by living in such a way that, whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, we do all to show that we love the glory of God more than all else. Let’s pray. [Home page] [ ]
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