A passage from John chapter 6, part of
which we sing every Sunday between the second
and third lesson.
And that thing that we sing is really
appropriate.
It comes down to what I'd really like
to talk about today.
From John chapter 6, starting at verse 63.
It is the spirit, Jesus is speaking, it
is the spirit that gives life.
The flesh is of no avail.
The words that I have spoken to you
are spirit and life.
But there are some of you that do
not believe.
For Jesus knew from the first who those
were that did not believe.
And who it was that should betray him.
And he said, this is why I told
you that no one can come to me
unless it is granted him by the Father.
After this, many of his disciples drew back
and no longer went with him.
Jesus said to the twelve, will you also
go away?
Simon Peter answered him, Lord to whom shall
we go?
You have the words of eternal life.
And we have believed and have come to
know that you are the Holy One of
God.
At one time or another, almost everyone here,
no doubt, has either seen or been part
of a revival.
I mean a real revival.
I'm not talking about getting a series of
meetings together and getting in an outside speaker
and arranging special music and programming the thing
to come up to a climax where everybody
is supposed to recommit themselves again, which may
have its value.
But I'm talking about something which takes place
at God's initiative, takes place beginning from God's
side, God's speech, his spirit moves.
And under the power of a living word
from God, people begin to repent and change
their lives.
Always with this comes a burst of enthusiasm
and praise and generosity and joy.
Other things are forgotten.
Other commitments and engagements are dropped so that
we can all come together and drink from
this new spring which God has opened up
in our midst.
Of course, every aspect of our lives comes
under the influence of this.
Relationships are healed.
Sins are put away.
Habits are changed.
And for a while, the revival seems to
roll on by its own momentum.
And nobody even stops to think about how
can we keep this thing going, but with
the passing of time.
It seems that the fires of this thing
begin to cool down.
And some of the people who were drawn
in start to drift away.
And the enthusiasm that was so spontaneous in
the beginning now starts to get forced.
It's like we're sitting around trying to keep
our spirits up and we still say, Praise
the Lord, but it's like, you know, you're
trying to get me going and I'm trying
to get you going.
When it comes to that point, the revival
has arrived at a critical phase where it
could go off in any one of three
directions.
One of the directions, you could say, would
be right on.
The first is that it might move off
into the way of a cult.
Now instead of a fresh living word from
God, it substituted the personality of the leader
or some religious ideology formulated by the ruling
group within this movement.
Not all cults are built around personalities.
They're often built around an ideology.
The Bible is still used.
The same songs are sung.
The worship remains quite the same as what
it was.
And yet there is a shift.
The source of its life is no longer
a living word from God, but now it's
a human personality.
Or the revival might take the way of
the religious club where everybody still kind of
stays together.
But the thing that holds them together now
is no longer a burning word from God.
The word has been hardened down now into
a legalism to which everybody in the group
pays lip service while their thoughts go after
other things.
And now the joy and the enthusiasm and
the generosity and the thoughtfulness of other people
and the mercy and the forgiveness and all
those things which are so much a part
of the revival disappear.
And in their place is this hard legalism
and all the hypocrisy that goes with it.
Or the revival might continue to grow and
increase even though it goes through changes under
the power of a living word that never
stops coming.
There may be inner changes and outer changes
and pressures of all kinds that tend to
change the form of this thing.
But it continues to go on and the
revival will never stop as long as there
are people who are hearing and responding to
a living word from God.
One Sunday in March, ten years ago, some
of you here will remember that a revival
broke out among us here.
And very quickly all kinds of changes began
to take place in our lives.
The worship remained pretty much the same.
But underneath what appeared to be relative order
was an influx of obvious life that drew
people together and then sent them out with
a witness that bore fruit.
Families were healed.
Lives were healed.
And this thing had continued down through these
ten years to today.
But again, today, and this has probably happened
a number of times in the past ten
years, there are signs that would indicate that
once again the revival has arrived at a
kind of a critical phase where it could
go any one of these three ways.
What's taking place among us, and it's important
for us to see this, could very easily
go the way of the cult.
And people might say, well, that's hardly likely
here.
But don't kid yourself.
What could happen, at least, is that we
could take the insights which God has given
us here and formulate them into an ideology
that becomes very rigid and then begin to
make everybody conform to it in subtle ways
and start eliminating the people who don't conform.
It's a shortcut to power, but it's the
end of the presence of God.
Or it could go the way of the
religious club.
Instead of continuously hungering and thirsting for a
living word from God, that word that kept
us alive and drew us together and kept
us alive some more and sent us forth
now is hardened down and it becomes a
legalism.
And this legalism becomes the means by which
we can continue to go through our old
routine.
But while we're going through our old routine,
our hearts are chasing after the cares and
the riches and the pleasures of this life,
and the outsiders might not even notice a
change for quite a while.
But if we're at all honest, we will
see that the heart of the revival is
now beginning to turn to stone.
The joy, the liberty, the forgiveness, the compassion
toward other people, the mercy, the desire, the
childlike love for Jesus and the desire to
do his will now are replaced by a
legalism, and with that legalism always comes a
good dose of hypocrisy.
Or the revival could continue and grow and
develop under the power of a word which
continues to move.
And the best example of that would of
course be what we see in what took
place on the day of Pentecost and what
followed.
What took place on Pentecost was obviously a
revival in the right sense of the word.
God brought something to life, and the source
and center of that revival was the living
word from God.
The Spirit moved upon the believers, and their
tongues were loose, and their mouths were open,
and they spoke as the Spirit gave them
utterance, and what they spoke was God's word,
a word from God.
Peter stood up and began to speak, and
undoubtedly was himself astonished at what started coming
out of his mouth.
And the multitude that came together recognized, at
least many of them recognized, that this was
a word right from God.
And they submitted to that word.
They put themselves under its authority, and their
lives were changed.
Peter's sermon ends like this.
Let all the house of Israel, therefore, know
assuredly that God has made him, both Lord
and Christ, this Jesus, whom you crucified.
Now when they heard this, they were cut
to the heart, and said to Peter and
the rest of the apostles, Brethren, what shall
we do?
Peter said to them, Repent, and be baptized,
every one of you, in the name of
Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins,
and you shall receive the gifts of the
Holy Spirit, for the promise is to you
and to your children, and to all that
are afar off, to everyone whom the Lord
our God calls to him.
And he testified with many other words, and
exhorted them, saying, Save yourselves from this crooked
generation.
So those who received his word were baptized,
and there were added that day 3,000
souls.
And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching,
and fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and
the prayers.
Very soon, this revival began to experience outward
threats.
Peter and John are put in prison, they're
arrested and put in prison for preaching the
word.
They're released the next day with a command
not to preach anymore.
They go back to the brothers and sisters,
and everybody prays, and listens to their prayer.
And now, Lord, look upon their threats, and
grant to thy servants to speak thy word
with all boldness, while thou stretchest out thy
hand to heal, and signs and wonders are
performed in the name of thy holy servant
Jesus.
And when they had prayed, the place in
which they were gathered together was shaken, and
they were all filled with the Holy Spirit,
and spoke the word of God with boldness.
The word was still the center of their
life.
Then came internal difficulties, very quickly, and that
will always happen.
There came tension between the Hebrews and the
Greeks, because the Greek widows weren't getting a
fair share in the daily distribution of food.
And they complained, and the apostles conceived that
this unfair thing, this tension, is threatening the
power of the word in their midst.
If this isn't straightened out and made right,
the word is under threat.
And the twelve summoned the body of the
disciples and said, It is not right that
we should give up preaching the word of
God to serve tables.
Therefore, brethren, pick out from among you seven
men of good repute, full of the Holy
Spirit, and of wisdom, whom we may appoint
to this duty.
But we will devote ourselves to prayer and
to the ministry of the word.
Again, the word is still central.
One of these seven, who is supposed to
be serving tables, you know, preaches the word,
as they all do.
Everybody does.
And he gives himself stone to death.
And from the stoning of Stephen erupts a
severe and violent persecution.
The church still hangs together under the power
of the word.
And as they were stoning Stephen, he prayed,
Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.
And he knelt down and cried with a
loud voice, Lord, do not hold this sin
against them.
And when he had said this, he fell
asleep.
And Saul was consenting to his death.
And on that day, a great persecution arose
against the church in Jerusalem.
And they were all scattered throughout the region
of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.
Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation
over him.
But Saul laid waste the church, and entering
house after house, he dragged off men and
women and committed them to prison.
Now those who were scattered went about preaching
the word.
The word continued to remain central.
The revival went on.
It went from strength to strength.
Because they responded to the word that was
in their midst.
They conformed their lives to it.
They went out and both lived it and
proclaimed it.
Jesus says, Lo, I am with you always.
Wherever two or three are gathered in my
name, there am I in their midst.
How is he in our midst?
He is in our midst as the word
of God.
He is the living word.
He.
He's the one who speaks.
He's the shepherd who makes his voice known
to his sheep.
The words that I speak to you, they
are spirit and they are life.
We never have to worry for a half
a second about whether or not Jesus will
speak to us.
He will speak.
He speaks today.
He'll speak tomorrow.
He goes with us through the very fires
of that world, instructing us and teaching us
in the way that we should go, guiding
us with his very eye.
The issue is not, will he speak to
us?
The issue is, will we, in fact, put
our lives under the authority of the word
that he does speak?
And that word is not just the dead
letter of scripture, which the Pharisees dragged around
with them, killing people's faith, intimidating them with
their rules and regulations, and distorting the God
of Israel.
But the word we're talking about is the
spirit of God coming up through scripture, taking
the veil off our minds, setting us free,
conforming us to the image of Christ, loosing
our tongues so that we can speak.
Jesus is the word among us.
The words that I speak to you, they
are spirit and they are life, he says.
He who abides in me, if you abide
in me and my words abide in you,
ask whatever you will and it will be
done for you.
He or she who has my commandments, my
words, and keeps them, he it is who
loves me.
He who hears my word and believes on
him who sent me has eternal life and
will not come into condemnation, but is passed
from death to life.
The revival, which is all something which God
initiates and preserves, will go on and it
will go from strength to strength if we
are willing to be a people under the
word.
Which means just a few simple things.
To be a people under the word means
that we open our lives to that word.
Man does not live by bread alone, but
by every word that proceeds out of the
mouth of God.
The words that I speak to you are
spirit and they are life, but they don't
do us any good if we don't open
our hearts to them.
There has to be a holding still, a
receiving, a listening, an opening of the heart.
We have to come to the place where
we realize that we can't even, we can't
get through a single day without hearing something
from our shepherd.
Even if it means taking a snatch from
a song, or a little piece of the
sermon in the mouth, or something from Isaiah,
meditating on that and carrying it with us
in our hearts and minds.
And along with that often comes the just
holding still in utter silence before God.
We talk too much.
We need to say praise the Lord, but
we also need to shut up and listen.
To become silent before God until the Spirit
can speak to us as He spoke to
Elijah on Horeb in the voice of Isaiah.
And having heard a word from God, the
next thing we always have to do is
take that word, grab hold of it, and
incorporate it in our living.
What is faith but to make the word
of God actual in our lives?
Not just hearing it, it's doing it.
Not everybody who says, Lord, Lord, is going
to enter the kingdom of God.
Not everyone who can quote the Bible from
cover to cover.
It's a matter of taking the word and
making it actual in our lives.
For instance, Jesus declares us forgiven by His
blood.
Then how come we walk around with all
this guilt?
If there's something we need to repent from,
and whoever does it, then let's repent.
If you probably leave this place today, let's
repent.
Kneel, fall on your face, do whatever you
like, but repent.
And then God help us to live as
men and women who've been forgiven.
Jesus also commands us to forgive as we've
been forgiven.
Then how come we're walking around with all
these grudges?
Faith is to do the word.
Lord, I got this grudge, I can't get
it out of my head.
At least do that.
Help me to get rid of it.
Do something about it.
And we could go on and on.
We know the things that God is telling
us in our hearts to act on.
Incorporate it.
Make it real.
Turn it into flesh and blood.
And finally, to be a people under the
word is to confess the word.
Now Lord, behold their threat.
And grant thy people to speak thy word
with all boldness.
Which is more than beating people over the
head with Bible verses.
It's taking the word which God has spoken
to us and dealt with us on.
The things that God has shown us.
The things we have seen and heard and
bearing witness to them.
In whatever language, whatever way we have to
say it.
To speak from our hearts the truth that
we have found in the person of Jesus
Christ.
God help us to get rid of our
fear, our self-consciousness, and our self-righteousness,
and our self-importance.
The word that we have heard from God.
Whenever Jesus raised the dead, he did it
by means of a spoken word.
Young man, I say to you, arise.
Little girl, get up.
Lazarus, come forth.
He brought us to life by means of
a word.
He keeps keeping us alive by means of
a spoken word to us.
The revival will go on and it will
never stop.
If we are willing to listen to that
word and stay under it.
Let's pray.
Pray Heavenly Father that you deal with us,
each of us, individually and all of us
corporately.
That today the spirit in his power and
his light and his wisdom would point out
to us those things that we have allowed
ourselves to get tangled up with, that have
been substitutes for your pure word.
Those places where we have been trying to
suck life and have been really taking death
into our very spirits.