I appreciate Fred Malone's kind introduction, and it's
good to know, as it's always good to
know, that something you did long ago, and
it's nearly 30 years since I wrote Evangelism
and the Sovereignty of God, has done good
to someone whom one didn't know about at
the time of writing.
It's moving, it's humbling, but it's joyous to
know that this material is used in the
way that God does in fact use it.
I would like to say, before I begin
any exposition, that being at this conference has
been a great joy and a great lift
to my spirit.
I shall remember the fellowship and I shall
most certainly remember the singing.
It's a long time since I was in
a singing situation that made me think so
much of the singing that there will be
round the throne on that glorious day.
Only one thing I have to say, Fred,
it is not that I am going back
to the colonies, or back from the colonies,
I should say, that's the way you said
it.
I live in Vancouver, Canada now, and I
am returning from the rebels to the colonies.
As I said,
I shall carry with me the happiest memories
of what the rebels get up to, now
that they have the country to themselves.
Well now, I'd like to begin by reading
the fourth chapter of Zechariah.
Please turn it up and have it open
before you as I speak.
It's the fifth in Zechariah's series of visions,
the one that we didn't say anything about
at all yesterday.
Zechariah, chapter 4 and verse 1.
Then the angel who talked with me returned
and wakened me as a man is wakened
from his sleep.
He asked me, what do you see?
I answered, I see a solid gold lampstand
with a bowl at the top and seven
lights on it, with seven channels to the
lights.
Also there were two olive trees by it,
one on the right of the bowl and
the other on its left.
I asked the angel who talked with me,
what are these my lord?
He answered, you not know what these are?
No my lord, I replied.
So he said to me, this is the
word of the lord to the rebel, not
by might nor by power, but by my
spirit, says the lord almighty.
What are you almighty mountain?
Before Zerubbabel you will become level ground.
Then he will bring out the capstone to
shouts of God bless it, God bless it.
Then the word of the lord came to
me, the hands of Zerubbabel have laid the
foundation of this temple.
His hands will also complete it.
Then you will know that the lord almighty
has sent me to you.
Who despises the day of small things?
Men will rejoice when they see the plumb
line in the hand of Zerubbabel.
These seven are the eyes of the lord
which range throughout the earth.
Then I asked the angel, what are these
two olive trees on the right and the
left of the lampstand?
Again I asked him, what are these two
olive branches beside the two gold pipes that
pour out golden oil?
He replied, you not know what these are?
No my lord, I said.
So he said, these are the two who
are anointed to serve the lord of all
the earth.
May God bless his word to our hearts
and to him be the praise.
Amen.
In this third talk I seek to bring
you and myself with you right down to
earth to the place where the rubber meets
the road and where practical action has to
be taken.
Let's turn our backs on any romantic dreaming
about revival that we may have done these
last couple of days.
Let's give ourselves to realistic thinking about revival
as it relates to our lives, our churches,
your church, my church, and our time.
What we've seen so far is that revival
is the work of God revitalizing moribund christians
and churches by awakening those moribund believers, by
visiting the moribund communities, by bringing deep knowledge
of himself where before knowledge was only shallow,
by evoking vital and wholehearted and vigorous and
lively response to himself where previously response was
apathetic.
In revival God purges and brings holiness.
In revival God searches and arouses deep faith
and deep repentance of a kind that were
not there before.
Out of revival flows worship.
Out of revival flows witness.
There's an evangelistic overflow.
Communities are shaped and in general terms you
knew this before ever you came to this
conference.
It is part of our protestant heritage to
know about revival in broad and general terms
and we knew enough about it to desire
it and to be attracted by the subject.
I believe it was the subject that brought
you here rather than the speaker and I
believe that I speak to you as folk
who are still even more perhaps than before
concerned about revival in your own situation.
You long to see it in your situation
as I long to see it in mine.
Let's be clear about the elements in revival.
I've given you my checklist.
I stand by that checklist.
God comes and the gospel is prized because
sin is seen.
Repentance goes deep.
The church becomes itself and Satan keeps pace
to mess it up.
These are the criteria of revival.
There's much talk these days which would lead
you to think that certain types of manifestations
are the sign and guarantee of revival.
Different people vary as to which manifestations they
pitch on as indicators of revival.
Some think that you have revival wherever you
have tongues.
Some think that you have revival wherever you
have supernatural healing.
Other suggestions are made.
I put it to you that the criteria
of revival are as stated and if people
suppose that wherever you get manifestations you have
revival there's going to be an awful lot
of chasing of will-o'-the-wisp in
our days.
So what has all this got to say
to us?
I've just reminded you of the position that
we've reached so far, the understanding of revival
to which we've come through studying Zechariah and
reflecting on the thing in itself.
Where does all this touch up in our
own lives?
Let me straight away set before you four
propositions which I think indicate the answer to
that question.
First has to do with the need of
revival.
The proposition is this.
Spiritual stagnation.
Falls under divine judgment.
That is true in churches just as it
is true of us as individuals.
God may take up human sin into his
plan.
He has done so in the past and
will do so again.
But he never condones it.
He never justifies it.
Always it evokes his anger.
Always it brings signs of his displeasure.
He forbids it and he forbids it because
it's not in his nature to approve it.
So where there's sin in any form we
may expect to know the displeasure of God
in experience and spiritual stagnation is a form
of sin.
Spiritual stagnation is what you get when for
whatever reason you decline to be wholehearted for
the Lord.
Maybe you never have been wholehearted for the
Lord or maybe you were once but you've
decided not to be so anymore.
And there may be active disobedience involved.
There may be simply passive apathy involved.
But either way to refuse to meet God's
redeeming and saving love with wholehearted love and
loyalty in response.
That is sin.
That is stagnation.
That is something spiritually fixed.
That is something spiritually ruinous.
And it brings down as I said signs
and tokens of God's displeasure.
That's all that you can expect while that
is the condition of the individual or the
church.
You've got it all through scripture.
In Psalm 81 for instance where the psalmist
is acting prophet and the Lord is speaking
his word through the psalmist's mouth.
And if you look at verses 11 and
following you see God saying this.
After verse 10 I am the Lord your
God who brought you up out of Egypt.
Open your mouth wide and I will fill
it.
Comes this in verse 11.
But my people would not listen to me.
Israel would not submit to me.
So I gave them over to their stubborn
hearts to follow their own devices.
If my people would but listen to me.
If Israel would follow my ways how quickly
would I subdue their enemies and so on.
But Israel has turned her back on her
God and so that's not the way it
is nor the way that it's going to
be.
Their enemies are not subdued.
Impotence, poverty, misery continues.
You just look over now to Psalm 85
at which we looked the first time I
spoke to you.
You have the psalmist in verses 4 and
5 prior to that key verse, verse 6.
You have him saying restore us again O
God our Savior.
Again because verses 1 through 3 have looked
back to revivals of past days when God
did show favor to his land and bless
his people in a wonderful way.
Forgiving their iniquity, setting aside their wrath, showing
them that he was their God and that
he loved them.
But now things have slipped, things have matched
again.
So the prayer has to be, verse 4,
restore us again O God our Savior and
put away your displeasure toward us.
Will you be angry with us forever?
Will you prolong your anger through all generations?
The signs of God's anger are there.
The impotence, the barrenness, the poverty.
Will you not revive us again he prays
that your people may rejoice in you once
more.
When the Lord Jesus from his throne speaks
to the seven churches in the book of
Revelation chapters 2 and 3 there's very much
of the same kind of talk.
They too, five of them at any rate,
very clearly are in a state of spiritual
stagnation.
And Ephesus, I said yesterday of the Sardis,
of course I was wrong.
Ephesus is China's rebuke for having left its
first moth and called to repent and do
the first works.
And the church at Sardis in the opening
verses of chapter 3 is told that though
it has a name that it lives it's
dead and must wake up and strengthen what
remains or else its candlestick will be pulled
up and thrown away.
And the church at Laodicea, self-satisfied and
self-deceived in its self-satisfaction, is diagnosed
as being tepid, repulsive, to be tepid, lukewarm
before the Lord when he gave his son
to save us.
It is just more than the son himself
in his glory can abide.
Because you're just lukewarm, he says, I'll spew
you out of my mouth.
Vulgar talk for a very unpleasant prospect.
Behold I stand at the door and knock,
he says.
If you hear my voice and open the
door I'll come into you and stop with
you and fellowship will be restored.
But only so.
You must change.
You must repent.
Be zealous and repent.
Need I quote any more scriptures to make
my point that spiritual stagnation falls under divine
judgment?
There's under his anger and experiencing one way
or another the tokens of his displeasure.
The alternatives are always revival or judgment.
And that is as true for us in
North America today as ever it was in
Bible time.
There's a lot in Charles Finney that I
can't go along with but I'm not at
all sure that he was wrong when he
wrote this.
Christians are more to blame for not being
revived than sinners are for not being converted.
Well you could argue against that but you
can see what he's saying.
He's saying that it's a great and grievous
thing when those who claim to know the
grace of God are apathetic and half-hearted
and formal and superficial and just spiritless and
backbone-less and energy-less in their response
to it.
God give us a caution about spiritual stagnation.
Second proposition.
This has to do with a source of
revival.
It follows directly from all that we've said.
It is God alone who quickens.
That's true of the church.
That's true of the individual.
Organizing is no answer.
We've been reminded of that already.
There are many many scriptures that say that.
Let me turn you to just one which
we haven't referred to yet but which makes
the matter as plain as can be.
It's Isaiah chapter 22 where Isaiah is bringing
the people the word of the Lord with
regard to their response to the threat of
a Syrian invasion and in the middle of
verse 8 we pick up with a reading.
This is what we find.
In that day says the prophet in the
word of the Lord you look to the
weapons in the palace of the forest.
You check the armory.
You saw that the city of David had
many breaches in its defenses.
So you did something about that.
You stored up water in the lower pool
preparing for a siege.
You counted the buildings in Jerusalem and tore
down houses to strengthen the walls.
You built a reservoir between the two walls
for the water of the old pool.
You did all those things but you did
not look to the one who made it
or have regard for the one who planned
it long ago.
You didn't return to the Lord.
You trusted in your own resources and your
own skill in organization.
The Lord, the Lord Almighty, verse 12, called
you on that day to weep and to
wail, to tear out your hair and put
on sackcloth.
But it didn't happen that way.
Verse 13, see there's joy and revelry, slaughtering
of cattle and killing of sheep, eating of
meat and drinking of wine.
Let's have a party while we can before
the siege starts.
Let's eat and drink, you say, for tomorrow
we die.
It's God alone who quickens and it's to
God that his people should return when they
become aware that the fires of life have
burned low and indeed are threatening to go
out.
Because God is sovereign in revival, as I've
said before, you cannot predict it but also
you cannot preclude it.
There's no situation so great and so grievous
that God cannot move in it and restore
it.
So it's with hope that we should brood
on the thought that it's God alone who
quickens more abound Christians and more abound churches.
That leads on to proposition number three, which
has to do directly with the quest for
revival.
Follows from what I've just said.
Spiritual revival is something to be sought.
To be sought for one's own soul, to
be sought for one's own church, to be
sought for one's own community.
It's not for us to say, well all
we can do is wait and twiddle our
thumbs until God is pleased to act.
As Jonathan Edwards explains in one of his
writings on revival, God means his great blessings
to be sought before they're bestowed.
Because they'll be valued more when one has
laboured to seek them, knowing that God is
the only one from whom they can be
received.
And he expounds, I remember, Ezekiel 37 verse
37 to that end, I will yet be
inquired of by the house of Israel to
do this for them, namely to increase them
with men like a flock.
And one can apply that directly to all
our concerns to see the church grow, not
just statistically, but grow with folk really brought
into newness of life in Christ.
I will yet be inquired of by the
house of Israel to do it for them.
We are to seek spiritual renewal, spiritual revival,
and we are to seek it first by
petition.
Oh Lord, I have heard of your doings
and I tremble.
Revive your work in the midst of the
years.
In wrath remember mercy.
One prays for spiritual quickening.
And with that, one opens one's own life
to God, as the psalmist does at the
end of Psalm 139 verses 23 and 24.
Search me O God, I have quoted these
words already I think, search me O God,
try the ground of my heart, see if
there be any wicked way in me.
The implication is, if you find any wicked
way, tell me so that I may put
it away, and lead me in the way
everlasting.
One seeks God for spiritual revival by petition
linked with self-examination, openness to God's own
searching work.
And with that link consecration, I'm thinking here
of Malachi chapter 3 verse 10, bring all
the tithes into the storehouse and prove me
now, says the Lord, whether once you've done
that, once you've got your priorities right and
put me first and begun to worship and
serve me as you should, in terms of
all the light and power that you've been
given so far, prove me and see whether
I don't open the windows of heaven and
you find that you're experiencing a blessing beyond
anything you've known.
By petition, by examination, by consecration, seek God
for revival, seek revival from God.
This is the biblical way, I said before,
I say again, there are great prayers for
revival scattered through the Bible that will help
us here.
Psalms, like Psalm 44, 79, 80, 85, Habakkuk
chapter 3, Isaiah chapter 62 through 64, go
on from there.
Spiritual revival is something to be sought, and
this is how one and fourth proposition, spiritual
revival is something to be looked for and
hoped for.
God does not play cat and mouse with
us.
When folks seek him with all their hearts,
they find him.
Maybe for salvation, maybe for blessing on the
church, but the promise is that you find
him and I find him when we seek
him with all our hearts.
And you remember the message on our first
evening from 2nd Chronicles 7 verses 14 through
16, if my people, then revival is something
to be hoped for.
Pessimism about the possibility of revival is a
form of unbelief of the Bible.
Let me beg you never to lapse into
that pessimism, even if for years you've sought
revival and not seen it yet.
And that brings us to Zechariah chapter 4,
and the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel,
which is what I want to talk about
for the rest of my time this morning.
This is the word of the Lord to
Zerubbabel, verse 6.
Not by might, nor by power, but by
my spirit, says the Lord of hosts, the
Lord Almighty.
And who was Zerubbabel?
He was the prince, the political leader of
the people, whose responsibility it was, according to
the summons delivered by Haggai and reinforced by
Zechariah, to get the temple built.
And it was an awesome job, and people
had been on it for a few weeks,
and they were already losing heart, and Zerubbabel
undoubtedly was tempted to despair of ever getting
the building finished.
And who are we?
We are Christians in the year of grace,
1988, desiring revival in our churches and communities,
and quickening in our own hearts and lives.
I'm going to put it to you that
this word of the Lord to Zerubbabel is
a word to every pastor, every lay leader,
every alert Christian in this conference.
It's a word to us all.
Not by might, nor by power, but by
my spirit, says the Lord Almighty.
We read these words as Christians do.
I know it's Old Testament prophecy, but it's
our privilege as Christians to learn from the
Old Testament, from the vantage point of New
Testament revelation, which amplifies and deepens and enriches
so much that the Old Testament shows us
in outline and in formula.
When in the Old Testament you read about
the Spirit of God, bring all that you
know about the Spirit from the New Testament
revelation to amplify what's being said.
For the Spirit of God was, in Old
Testament times, the same person that he is
today in this New Testament era.
It's simply that in Old Testament times not
so much was revealed and known about him,
but the reality of the triune God was
what it is, and has been from all
eternity.
Nothing changes there.
So what do I want you to bring
to thinking about the Spirit of God as
we open up Zechariah 4, verse 6?
I want you to remember this, that that
word Spirit, ruach in the Hebrew and pneuma
in the Greek when you get to the
New Testament, signifies power in action, the power
of air moving forcefully, breath breathed from the
lungs, as when you breathe out to blow
out the candles on your birthday cake, or
wind blowing tornado style across the country.
Air moving forcefully to produce effect.
That's the picture which the word Spirit conveys.
And in the Old Testament we hear about
the Spirit of the Lord, meaning the active
power of the Lord, the awesomely, the awesome
power of the Lord as it often is.
And you know that down here, wind and
tornadoes is awesome.
The Spirit of the Lord was often awesome
in the power displayed.
We hear of the Spirit of the Lord
in the Old Testament in creation, Genesis 1,
verse 2, the Spirit of God brooded on
the face of the waters, putting creation into
shape.
We hear of Him in connection with revelation.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon the
prophets, giving them the word of the Lord,
which they're to deliver.
We hear of the Spirit of the Lord
enabling them for leadership and for superhuman service,
like for instance the service rendered by Samson.
Samson, that mixed up kid, he's not a
role model for us in every respect and
don't you think it.
But when the Spirit of the Lord came
on Samson, the strength that he had was
superhuman and his achievements in freeing the people
of God from Philistine tyranny were magnificent.
And it isn't only Samson, there's many others
too.
We hear of the Spirit of the Lord
enabling folk for service and we hear of
the Spirit of the Lord active in the
renewing and regenerating of hard hearts.
Thus it's already taught in the Old Testament
that it's through the Spirit of God that
all the godliness that the world ever sees
becomes reality.
Without the Spirit of the Lord there wouldn't
be any godliness anywhere.
You say what passages show that?
Well there's one, just one, I haven't time
to stop on it, but it's one which
will stand for all because it's so clear
and so strong.
It's Ezekiel again, Ezekiel 36 verses 25 through
27.
God is speaking of what he'll do for
the people when he restores them to their
own land.
He says, I'll regenerate you.
I will sprinkle, verse 25, I will sprinkle
clean water on you and you'll be clean.
I'll cleanse you from all your impurities and
all your idols.
I will give you a new heart, verse
25.
I'll put a new spirit in you.
I'll remove from you your heart of stone
and give you a heart of flesh.
How will I do that?
Well in this way, verse 27, I will
put my spirit in you and move you
to follow my decrees and be careful to
keep my laws.
See what's being said there?
The prophet is talking about two sides of
a single renewing work of God.
Our theological term for it is regeneration.
On the one hand it's cleansing, on the
other hand it's evoking responsiveness.
It's done by God putting his spirit in
folks, thus taking from them the heart of
stone, giving them a heart of flesh and
making them henceforth responsive to his word and
to his will.
Let me try a new review which was
held by Kelvin and which I believe to
have much more to that you can say
in its favour than any other, though it's
not always the view that that's told I
know.
I believe that when Jesus spoke to Nicodemus
about being born again of water and the
spirit, he was using a two-word parable,
born again.
And the reference to water and the spirit
is to the two aspects of the work
of regeneration that are described here in these
verses.
Water, sprinkle clean water on you and you'll
be clean.
Spirit, I will put my spirit in you
and move you to follow my decrees and
be careful to keep my laws because now
you'll have a heart of flesh.
Later in the conversation he slapped Nicodemus' wrist,
you remember.
Are you the teacher of Israel and you
don't understand these things?
The only natural way of explaining that comment
is that Nicodemus, as the teacher of Israel,
ought to have known what being born again
of water and the spirit was because it
was all written for him in the Old
Testament.
So I'm very much drawn to this way
of understanding new birth of water and the
spirit and the meaning of Jesus as he
spoke to Nicodemus about it.
Other views, of being born of water and
the spirit are tried by different people, but
I'd like you to try mine on, well
Calvin's, on for size.
And I speak as to wise men and
women, you judge what I say.
But this is all Old Testament.
Spirit, the active power of a gracious sovereign
God, goes forth in creation, revelation, enabling and
regenerating and all of that continues through the
New Testament.
But then in the New Testament you have
the additional revelation of the spirit personhood, which
appears from the verbs that express his ministry.
He shows things, he says things, he teaches,
he intercedes, he can be lied to, he
can be grieved.
With verbs like that, it's plain that it's
a person who's being spoken of.
Jesus calls them the second paraklete.
And to be a paraklete, Greek parakletos, meaning
counselor, advocate, comforter, supporter, ally, helper, all those
things and more, to be a paraklete, a
second paraklete, carrying on the ministry of Jesus,
the first paraklete, requires that you be a
personal agent.
Yet there can't be any doubt about the
personhood of the Holy Spirit in the New
Testament, nor can there be any doubt that
the Spirit is the agent of the Father
and the Son throughout the New Testament, the
agent of the Father and the Son, applying
redemption to men.
The Spirit comes not to call attention to
himself, but to witness to Christ.
And it is witness to Christ, I picture
it in terms of the three modern notions.
The Spirit is the floodlight, throwing the light
on Christ, opening our eyes and enabling us
to see him.
The Spirit is the matchmaker, the one who
draws us to Christ, urges us to Christ,
unites us to Christ, and keeps us in
that holy fellowship.
The Spirit is the intercom through whom he
communes with us, by letter, through the Scriptures,
and we commune with him by phone, through
our prayer.
So the Spirit brings us into communion with
the Son and with the Father through the
Son, and keeps us in fellowship with the
Father and the Son.
So regeneration in New Testament terms means union
with Christ, and sanctification in New Testament terms
means conformity to Christ.
He makes us more and more like the
one at whom we are looking.
And spiritual gifts, not everybody seems to appreciate
this, but it seems to me clear from
Paul, spiritual gifts are in themselves expression of
Christ for the edifying of others.
Well we can't stop on that, I just
want to remind you of those things so
that you'll bring them with you in your
thinking as we explore our text.
Now look at what it was.
It was declared to be the word of
the Lord to the rebels.
Zechariah has seen a vision, and it's described
in verses two and three, a solid gold
lampstand with a great bowl at the top.
In the bowl are seven lamps, with wicks
I suppose running down from the base of
the lamp into the oil that's there in
the bowl in which they float.
And each of these seven lamps has seven
channels for the lights.
That's how it's put in my NIV.
It seems to mean seven places where the
edge of the lamp is pinched so that
there's a wick resting on that pinched bit
of the edge, and thus around the edge
of each of the seven lamps you've got
seven distinct lights burning, 49 in all.
And in verse three there are two olive
trees by the lampstand, one on the right
of the bowl and the other on the
left.
That's what Zechariah saw.
And he asks the angel what this is,
verse four.
And the angel says to him, verse six,
this, meaning all that is pictured by what
you see is the word of the Lord
to the rubbable.
I suggested yesterday that the word of the
Lord to the rubbable, as pictured in this
vision, should be verbalized like this.
It's a vision of God sustaining his own
people by his own energy.
Pictured by the oil, of which we shall
hear more in a moment, the oil that
constantly feeds the great bowl on the top
of the lampstand and which keeps the 49
lights burning.
The church is called to be the light
of the world.
The lampstand is a picture of the people
of God fulfilling their ministry.
It's by divine energy, the divine supply that
it happens, not by human resources.
And I suggested that in the theology of
revival that we were building yesterday, the truth
we should draw from Zechariah chapter four is
this, that it is from God's spirit that
life and energy and power for service flow
in revival times.
Revival, in other words, means that God by
his spirit supplies new energy and life for
ministry and service.
This is the word of the Lord to
the rubbable.
This is the general message.
The picture of the lampstand is something that
we could dwell on for rather longer than
we're able to this morning.
It's a picture which in itself suggests three
precious thoughts.
God's presence with his people.
Ceremonial lampstands of this kind were found in
the temple, the place of God's presence.
This one isn't an exact replica of any
of the lampstands in the temple, but there
was no place in Israel where ceremonial lampstands
of this grandeur would be found apart from
the temple.
So the thought of the temple comes in
here and the temple is the place of
the presence of God.
And the vision is meant to suggest God's
presence with his people, that promised blessing of
which we were thinking in our theology of
revival yesterday and the day before.
The church becomes itself, you'll remember, when God's
presence as a matter of experience is restored
once again to his people when they need
to get it.
And then the lampstand suggests the further thought,
the thought of God's purpose for his people,
I said it a moment ago in just
one phrase, we're to be the light of
the world.
Jesus said so, Sermon on the Mount.
You are the light of the world.
The world is in darkness, the world is
lost.
Which means people don't know how to live,
they don't know which way to travel on
the journey of life.
They are wandering around aimlessly and cluelessly in
the dark.
You are the light of the world, says
Jesus.
Shine as lights of the world.
But it's only by God's power that God's
people will ever do this.
We need the grace to be different and
to be so that we shall be seen
as different.
How rarely do our churches get themselves the
reputation of being a different sort of people
from the rest of the folk around.
But I mustn't develop that.
Third thought is the thought that we are
going to look at more fully, the thought
of God's power in his people.
If you look on to the last verses,
verses 11 through 14, you'll see Zechariah asking
what the two olive trees on the right
and left of the lamp stand with, look
at verse 12, two gold pipes running from
them to pour out golden oil, apparently into
the bowl, the big bowl of the lamp
stand.
He asks the question and he gets his
answer.
Verse 14, these are the two which are
anointed to serve the Lord of all the
earth.
It's a reference to Joshua the high priest
and Zechariah Zerubbabel, I should say, the prince.
And as we said yesterday, they were the
two mediators of God's grace to God's people.
The office of priesthood, high priesthood and kingship
had not yet been united in a single
person.
That was only to come when the branch,
the branch of David, the Messiah, appeared later
in history.
This is a pointer to the ministry of
the Messiah, as is so much else in
Zechariah.
But again, that's more than we can dwell
on in any detail now.
Suffice it to say that through the mediation,
mediatorial ministry of Joshua the high priest doing
his thing, offering sacrifice for the people, and
the mediatorial ministry of Zerubbabel doing his thing,
leading the people in the Lord's name, blessing
was to come to the people.
These were the two anointed to serve the
Lord of all the earth.
And through their ministry comes the supply of
the divine grace of help, which enables the
people of God to be the light that
they're called to be.
These are the general truths, then, which the
vision is setting before us, and was setting
before Zechariah, and Zerubbabel too.
But the angel then became specific.
This, this vision, is the word of the
Lord to Zerubbabel.
This is what it means.
This is the vision explained in a single
phrase.
This is what you should say to Zerubbabel
to explain what you've seen.
Not by might, nor by power, but by
my spirit, says the Lord Almighty.
Here is Zerubbabel.
Daunted by the size of the task.
Think now, brothers and sisters, of the next
bit of demanding service, demanding ministry, which you
know awaits you as servants of Christ.
What is it that you're going back to
your churches to take in hand next for
the Master?
What is it that you're going back to
your families to take in hand next for
the Master?
Just have before your minds the next thing
that when you are quiet before the Lord,
you know that you ought to be tackling,
and which by God's grace you'll go back
from this conference to tackle.
Think of that, and thus you'll put yourself
in Zerubbabel's shoes.
He knew what his job was, and he
very much doubted whether he could ever achieve
what he'd been called to attempt.
I shall fail.
This was the thought that was floating around
in Zerubbabel's mind.
It might be the thought that is floating
around in your mind as you think of
that next bit of difficult and demanding service.
As long as you think you're likely to
fail, you're going to be weak, your hands
will be weak, your movements will be sluggish.
If you thought you were going to succeed,
it would be different.
This is the word of the Lord to
Zerubbabel, says the angel, not by might nor
by power, but by my spirit.
That which has to be done will be
done.
It's a word of encouragement, and I want
us to hear it as a word of
encouragement today in our own quest for, well,
what?
Revival in our churches?
Sure.
Revival in our own ministries?
Sure.
Spiritual quickening in our own homes, perhaps?
Yes.
Spiritual fruit in the lives of particular folk,
friends of ours, to whom we've been witnessing
and for whom we've been caring and praying,
and who, it seems, are quite impervious to
the word.
Starting something, maybe, in the church.
Starting something, maybe, in the home.
Starting some new pattern of responsibility in your
own life.
Starting a course of study, maybe.
You're frightened.
I know I ought to try, but I
don't think I can do it.
Not by might nor by power, but by
my spirit, says the Lord.
What's the message?
One can spell it out in these three
ways.
It's a word of encouragement.
Tellings are rubbable and oughts.
First, this.
Keep yourself from misplaced trust.
One of the reasons why we so easily
get discouraged in the things that we undertake
for God is that we undertake those things
in so self-reliant a way.
And that boomerangs us.
Don't trust to the arm of flesh, says
the Scripture, but we do.
And we rely on human resources, and we
very soon find that we are making little
or no progress.
Keep yourself from that misplaced trust, says the
Lord, through his servants, to the rubbable, and
to you, and to me.
That word might, not by might, it's a
word which in the Hebrew regularly refers to
organized forces.
Was this the rubbable thinking of calling in,
maybe, the Persian army, or something like that,
to get the temple erected?
I don't know, but organized forces, anyway.
That word power signifies the strength and the
skill of the human individual.
Think of that word, that word of rebuke
in Isaiah chapter 31 and verse 1, and
you'll see what it is that we're being,
that's being censured here.
Woe to those who go down to Egypt
for help, who rely on horses, who trust
in the multitude of their chariots and the
great strength of their horsemen, the skill of
those horsemen, but who don't look to the
Holy One of Israel or seek help from
the Lord.
That word, Isaiah 31 verse 1, is pinpointing
the message here, keep yourself from that misplaced
trust in human resources, in organized forces, because
they're great, in human power, because of the
human power and skill, because of the wonderful
things that human skill can do in human
affairs.
God's way, God's way of getting anything of
spiritual significance done, is the way that you
see modeled in the defeat of the Midianites
under Gideon, back in the story told in
Judges chapter 7, do you remember?
Gideon had an army of 32,000 men.
God said, there are too many men here,
and he reduced the army, first of all,
to 10,000, and then to 300, by
applying criteria which seem to me to have
been applied simply in order to reduce the
number and make it smaller, and that's the
only account really you can give of why
when God had sent the fearful home, because
you remember, that was what he did for
the first 20,000, what God did for
the first 20,000, they were fearful, and
as I said a moment ago, those who
were afraid of failing, will never do well
in the enterprise itself.
One of the great things which the doctrine
of sovereign grace gives us, is a confidence
that under God, one doesn't finally fail, because
one with God is a majority, as William
Carey said, and he was a sovereign grace
man too.
Yes, well, having got rid of those who
weren't confident of victory, remember God then sent,
told Gideon to send them down to the
stream to drink, and he selected the 300
who drank one way, and sent home the
9,700 who drank another way, and I've
heard all sorts of attempts to explain just
what's the difference between picking up the water
in the palm of your hand and raising
it to your mouth, and putting your mouth
down to the water and taking it directly
from the stream.
I can't see that there's any significance in
that, save that God meant to reduce the
number of Gideon's forces, and he knew what
he was doing, so that when the victory
was won, there would be no question that
it hadn't come by might, and it hadn't
come by power, it had come by the
Lord's own spirit.
Well, it isn't, you see, that small is
beautiful, but it is that sometimes small is
God-honouring, and the small forces, beginning as
they do on the day of small things,
are used by God over and over to
do great things, and then there's no question
that the glory must be his, mustn't go
to man.
He has done it.
This is marvellous, and he's to be praised.
But of course, for this, one must learn
to rely on the Lord and refuse to
be daunted by the depressing calculations of men.
If you were trusting in human resources, well,
as I said, that trust will boomerang, you
will rely on, sorry, you will calculate in
human terms what you can hope to do,
and you will be discouraged by realising that
the resources at your command just don't seem
adequate to do the job.
The sense of human impotence in spiritual work
is a healthy thing, brothers and sisters, to
feel, I want to see renewal of spiritual
life, and I can't bring that about by
any resources that I have, any skill that
I can command, that's healthy.
It sends you back to the Lord with
the urgency that grows out of conscious impotence.
That's healthy, that's good, that's right.
And that was the first bit of the
word of the Lord to Zerubbabel.
Not by might, nor by power, but by
my Spirit.
I do it, says the Lord.
So keep yourself from misplaced trust on human
resources.
Second bit of the message, second thing that
this word from the Lord is saying to
Zerubbabel and to us, is keep yourself from
misguided despair.
Keep yourself from actually yielding to that feeling
that it's all hopeless, nothing can ever be
done.
Listen to the Lord's challenge.
Verse seven, what are you, O mighty mountain?
That's the mountain of difficulty which Zerubbabel sees
before him.
Before Zerubbabel, you'll become level ground.
Not by might, nor by power, but through
the work of my Spirit.
And Zerubbabel will bring out the capstone, that's
the last stone that completes the temple, to
shouts of God bless it, that's the NIV,
or isn't it lovely, which is the older
translation and just as good a rendering of
the Hebrew for the record.
But he'll bring it out and it'll be
put in place and the work will be
finished.
You'll see that, says God, by my Spirit.
Second challenge, verse 10, who despises now the
day of small things?
The oracle was given at a time when
the work had made so little progress that
Zerubbabel despaired of finishing it.
It was a day of small things, but
days of great things grow out of days
of small things and it's good American wisdom,
is it not, to say, what, don't start
small, don't start at all.
Don't despise the day of small things, don't
despair because as yet it's only a day
of small things.
Moses was awed and indeed scared to the
pit of his stomach when God said, you
go down into Egypt and bring out my
people.
He thought it was impossible, far too great
a job for him to do.
But surely I will be with you, said
the Lord to him.
Now let that be enough of your complaints
and your wriggling to try and get out
of it.
You go, I'll be with you and by
my Spirit, by my power, by my strength,
you'll do it.
If one with God is a maturity, keep
yourselves then, brothers and sisters, from misguided despair.
Here's a conference, we talk to each other
about revival, our hearts are thrilled, we go
home and the danger is of a great
big letdown, the post-conference blues.
That's the spiritual thing, that's Satan trying to
get you into, to lapse into misguided despair.
Brothers and sisters, forewarned is for arms, don't
do it.
Keep yourself from misguided despair and as you
say in your hearts, by my own resources,
by our resources, the resources of my little
group, I can't do it and I have
to admit that we can't do it.
Say also in the next breath, with the
help of the Lord, we can do it.
Not by might nor by power, certainly, but
by my Spirit, it'll be done.
So, third bit of the message, the word
of the Lord to the rubber bull that's
contained in this oracle, keep yourself from misplaced
trust, keep yourself from misguided despair, keep yourself
from demoralized sloth.
Sloth, laziness, apathy, doing nothing, opposite of zeal,
one of the seven deadly sins of medieval
law.
Keep yourself from demoralized sloth.
Putting it positively, work.
Go home from this conference, brothers and sisters,
to work.
Go home from this conference to find the
place where the next bit of spiritual work
has to be done in your situation and
put your hand to it.
Do it in dependence on the Lord.
Do it because it's the next thing that
He's called you to do.
Do it in hope that as He's called
you to it, by His Spirit, it'll be
done, even though humanly it just seems too
much too hopeful.
Can there be success here?
Yes, with the Lord there can be success
if you and I work.
Revival comes out of the blessing of God
poured out from heaven.
Revival also comes out of the diligent spreading
of the Word, the earnest praying, the resolute
standing for righteousness in a community, in the
church, the purging of the church sometimes.
These things have to happen.
They are part of God's initial moves in
bringing His blessing about.
Maybe we go back, you and I, into
situations where those are some of the immediate
things that have to happen, or maybe you
have to start even further back.
Maybe you'll go into a situation where folk
in the church have never yet appreciated that
there's revealed truth to be learned, and before
you can preach to them and teach them
and instruct them and lend them good books
as Calvinists do, you have to get into
their minds the thought that there's something here
that needs to be learned.
Because the great legacy of liberalism, you know,
Gresham Machen said this 70 years ago, the
great legacy of liberalism is anti-intellectualism, the
idea that religion is a kind of top
dressing of pious behavior, which you put on
ordinary life.
It's a matter of doing certain things, go
to church on Sunday, etc., etc., but it
isn't truth to be learned and never was.
That's one of the devil's lies that still
holds many in its grip.
You may go back to churches where people
haven't yet woken up to the fact that
there's revealed truth to be learned, and you
have to try and instill that thought into
them.
Start where you are.
There's no other place to start.
Start with the next task that has to
be tackled in order to lead people on
to the place of spiritual richness and joy.
Work, and work in the confidence that the
Spirit of the Lord is with you.
Just as the rubble was told to work
in hope, so the scripture tells us to
work in hope.
How do you suppose the disciples felt when
Jesus, risen from the dead, said, well, I'm
leaving you, but I'm giving you a job
to do.
You're to convert the world.
That's what he said.
Go and make disciples of all the nations.
Go and convert the world.
But by the grace of God, they kept
themselves from demoralized sloth.
They worked.
They worked marvelously, and the world, in a
real sense, was one.
One can do it with the help of
God in the power of the Spirit.
We must labor to do it with the
help of God in the power of the
Spirit.
I believe, brothers and sisters, this is the
bottom line.
The Word of God sends us all home
to pray and to work, to work and
to pray, and to keep working, and to
keep praying until the day of small things
becomes the day of great things.
There is hope.
It's as bright as the promises of God.
Keep hoping.
Keep praying.
Keep working.
God, and God, revive His work in our
midst, and God bless us all.
Amen.
We're glad that you have heard this tape
from the Southern Baptist Conference on the faith
of the Founders.
I'd like to say some things about what
this conference is, what it intends to do,
and upon what principles it operates.
First of all, all who hear these tapes
need to realize that this conference is not
a political movement.
It has no designs on seeking to run
any candidate for any office within any denomination.
It is strictly a conference for personal edification
of pastors, elders, deacons, and members of Baptist
churches.
It is not a political movement of any
kind.
Neither do we consider it a place for
airing negative and critical vendettas against other groups.
We're quite aware that there's much that could
be said about pagans, Turks, Jews, atheists, Pelagians,
semi-Pelagians, Catholics, Arminians, Moderates, Hyper-Calvinists, and
people of other theological persuasions, including ourselves, that
would not be favorable.
But this conference is designed for a positive
presentation.
Positive edification is our goal.
To embrace the truth with such vigor that
error must of necessity fall.
What are we?
We are Southern Baptists.
We welcome people from other denominations, from other
traditions, we cherish the fellowship that we have
with them, and we feel that the doctrines
around which this conference centers are so broadly
evangelical that many people can enjoy them.
But our stated purpose is to provide edification
for people within Southern Baptist life.
We affirm our Southern Baptist heritage and desire
to recapture it.
We affirm the fellowship that is available in
the network of all Southern Baptist life and
associations and state conventions and desire to sanctify
it.
And we affirm the conscientious involvement in a
multiplicity of benevolences that is characteristic of Southern
Baptist life.
We desire to reform it.
We affirm the task of the Foreign Mission
Board, the Home Mission Board, the Brotherhood Commission,
the Sunday School Board, the Christian Life Commission.
All of these have good and proper goals
and assignments.
We desire to see men within these who
believe the gospel and we desire these men
to come there, not through political manipulation, but
through the individual training of minds so that
God and his providence may place people who
are prepared in those positions.
Also, what we are, we are Calvinistic.
We do not apologize for that.
We believe that Calvinism is the gospel in
its purest expression.
We could rightly call it Paulinism, but what
Christian would not call their doctrine Pauline.
We could rightly call it Augustinianism, but Augustine
developed his understanding of the doctrines of grace
in a context that was not so aware
of the necessity of the doctrine of justification
by faith.
And so we call it Calvinism because not
only does it have the great Pauline and
Augustinian doctrines of justification by faith, but it
also sets these within the context of imputed
righteousness as our only standing before God as
set forth in the Reformation doctrine of justification
by faith.
And a third thing we are, in addition
to being Southern Baptist and Calvinistic, we are
experiential.
We do not have the attitude of those
guys out there don't know this, but our
attitude hopefully and prayerfully is this question, has
my mind and my heart absorbed and is
it being molded by the reality of these
doctrines?
And it is in this context that we
seek to apply all the doctrines of grace.
We're happy that you have listened to this
tape and pray that God may benefit you
in it, and perhaps in its providence may
lead you to attend one of these conferences.
God bless you.