Well, I appreciate very much that welcome and
introduction.
It establishes a basis of fellowship between you
and me right from the start.
I was wondering how I should set about
establishing that basis of fellowship for myself.
I thought that perhaps the best way of
doing it was to make reference to the
great George Whitefield, who went to my old
grade school.
No, that isn't the way to say it.
Whose grade school I was privileged to attend
some 200 years after.
Let's say it that way round.
This was in Gloucester, England.
George Whitefield, as you know, was the focal
point of the awakening on both sides of
the Atlantic in the 18th century.
And he had a way of dealing with
this problem of fellowship with all sorts and
conditions of denominations.
There was a bit that used to recur
from time to time in some of his
sermons.
He would look up to heaven, look up
to the sky, and call out to Father
Abram, whom he used to envisage as occupying
the position of Saint Peter in Roman Catholic
mythology.
And this is the dialogue that he would
go through.
Father Abram, what have you got up there
in heaven?
Any Baptists?
No.
Any Presbyterians?
No.
Any Episcopalians?
No.
We don't know any of those names up
here.
We are just Christians up here.
I am with you, brothers and sisters, as
a fellow believer, a Christian.
I am with you as a Reformed Christian.
In the 18th century, a Dutchman, I think
it was, wrote a textbook of Reformed Christianity
under the title, Synopsis of the Purer Theology.
I am a Reformed Christian because I believe
the Reformed faith needs to be the purer
theology.
And, as has already been said this morning
by Sonny, I recognise that the purer theology
needs to vindicate itself by bringing forth the
purer life in its adherence.
I was struck some years ago, five years
ago I suppose, when somebody said to me
about the books I have written, they are
all spirituality really, aren't they?
It had never occurred to me that they
were.
I thought that I was asserting key doctrines
which have to be asserted for the glory
of God.
But when I thought about it, I realised,
yes, of course they are.
Because just like the Puritans, who have meant
so much to me, I don't find myself
able to let any matter of doctrine rest
until I have tried my best to bring
it down to earth and show what difference
it ought to make in people's lives.
And please God, I shall go on writing
that way and I shall go on lecturing
and preaching that way.
That, I believe, is how it ought to
be.
That most certainly is how it is in
the Scriptures.
And from that standpoint also, I find myself
very much in the right place in this
conference.
It's already become abundantly plain that your concern
is not just with purer doctrine up in
the clouds.
You want to see the Church renewed and
transformed by the purer doctrine that God has
given us to see and share.
So do I.
So are we in fellowship?
I believe we are.
And I proceed on that basis.
You've given me a great subject to explore
with you.
I say, you.
It was actually Uncle Ernie Riesinger.
Every Calvinist uncle.
Wonderful man.
It was Uncle Ernie Riesinger who gave me
the subject.
I was happy enough to accept it.
He asked me if I would talk about
revival.
I said, yes, by the grace of God,
I would.
And now I set myself to do just
that.
Let's start with a word.
Where does that term revival come from?
It's an 18th century word.
It originally was part of a three-word
phrase.
Both sides of the Atlantic in the 18th
century, they were talking about the revival of
religion.
You can, of course, have a revival or
a quickening and renewal of interest in all
sorts of things.
Quite specifically, revival of religion was the 18th
century interest.
And, of course, when we talk about revivals,
we are focusing on revivals of religion as
our interest.
The phrase was used in a book title
by the great Jonathan Edwards in 1742.
Edwards lived before the days of publisher blurbs
on dust jackets.
And, therefore, like most 18th century and 17th
century men, he went in for long titles
rather than short ones.
He wanted book titles that would explain to
everybody what would be in the book if
they bought it and read it.
And the work I'm thinking of is the
work titled Reflections on the Revival of Religion
in New England in 1740.
A classic statement, incidentally, of the theology of
revival, which I embrace and I suspect you
do also.
In 1835, nearly a century afterwards, another impressive
man used the same phrase for book title.
It was less than 12 months after my
own conversion at Oxford at the age of
18 that I had a copy of this
work pressed into my hands.
It's Charles Finney's Revivals of Religion, a book
which, theologically, I don't altogether go along with,
but a book whose business-like passion for
the winning of foes made an impression on
me then, which remains with me and I
trust will never leave me.
Revivals of religion.
That's the phrase.
That's what we're concerned about here.
The general thought, as has already been said
in this conference, is of divine visitation.
God visiting his people, that's the phrase that
recurs in Scripture over and over to express
the spiritual reality of revival from the divine
point of view.
God pays a visit and everything is made
different as a result.
But when I read Finney and Edwards alongside
each other, I realised that there was a
difference between the two conceptions of what was
involved in God's visitation.
Edwards, the pioneer, and in my book, the
greatest theologian of revival that the world has
yet seen, pictured God's visitation as like a
wave breaking on the seashore.
A wave coming in, powerfully as the big
waves do, and flooding the world.
And in expanding this vision, he laid great
stress on the sovereignty of God in revival,
and he stressed that it was through the
successive waves of spiritual blessing that broke on
the world that the kingdom of God, the
kingdom of Christ, was advanced and built up.
You know I expect that he was a
post-millennialist and his vision was of the
kingdom of God advancing until the whole world
was brought under the dominion of Christ before
the judgment day.
And his doctrine of revival in its broadest
statement was just this, that it was by
the successive breaking of waves of revival upon
the world that the kingdom of Christ had
been extended and would be extended until the
earth was filled with the knowledge of the
Lord as the waters cover the sea.
Finney's conception was a little different.
He didn't use Edwards' picture of the breaking
waves.
He used rather the image of the harvest
that the farmer reaps following his wise sowing
and tending of the seed.
And his thought focused around the means that
must be used to bring about revival in
the church.
In analyzing the notion of revival, he focused
on evangelism.
That is, the converting of those who came
to the church services but had never yet
come to know the Lord.
And in talking about the means of revival,
he stressed preaching, the preaching of the gospel,
and prayer, passionate, honest, hearty, serious prayer from
God's people.
And these, he maintained, were the means that
God had guaranteed to bless.
So that he would say, you may have
revival in your church if you want it.
Well now, I'm glad that you're not saying
amen to all of that.
Because this is really very one-sided.
For Finney to say that there's no warrant
for expecting a visitation of God until one
begins to pray and preach the word is
entirely justified.
But for Finney to say, as it were,
that we've got God in our pocket so
that we can have revival any time we
like it, provided we are prepared to work
for it, is overstatement of a kind which
eventually boomerangs, you know, in Finney's own ministry.
He wrote his revivals of religion at the
end of ten years which was a very
fruitful, genuine revival ministry.
God had used him as an instrument of
revival.
It was revival time, and churches had been
quickened, in many cases, in a quite momentous
way.
But then after he'd written his revivals, and
his book on revivals, and published it, the
era of revival ebbed away, and he preached,
and prayed, and taught others to preach and
pray as he'd done before, and revival didn't
come.
He never was able to cope with that
in his own theology.
He never understood why it was.
And at various times in the next 40
years of his life until his ministry ended,
he was casting around and offering views to
the world as to why it was that
revival was not coming in the way it
had come in those first ten years.
And he made guesses like it's because we
don't teach the second blessing, Christian perfection, it's
because we don't campaign violently enough against the
institution of slavery, it's because we don't practice
vegetarianism.
He even got to that.
The truth was that he was flummoxed.
He committed himself to this theology that if
we seek it with all our heart, we
may have it.
And, as I said, in the latter years
of his life it didn't come in the
way that it came in those first ten
years.
And I think that just as one has
to say that it's only because Calvinism is
true that there are any Arminians in the
world, I mean, there wouldn't be any Christians
at all to go wrong in their doctrine
of grace if Calvinism wasn't true.
So, with Finney, if Edward's theology of revival
hadn't been true, there never would have been
those ten years of blessing out of which
Finney generalized in a slightly off-key way.
Can you see that?
But, nonetheless, Finney's business-like passion for the
winning of souls and the renewing of the
Church is something that I think ought to
be admired, whatever corrections we find it necessary
to make in his theology.
Well, there were two concepts, two different ways
of spelling out the notion of a revival
of religion.
In this twentieth century there's been a third.
You'll find it, for instance, in the book
by Richard Loveless titled Dynamics of Spiritual Life.
It's a twentieth century development.
It has resulted from study of the story
of what happened in Jerusalem in the early
days, Acts 2 through 11.
This is the notion of, and I borrow
Loveless' phrase, continuous as distinct from cyclic revival.
That is to say, the notion of revival
as a continued state, a state of health
in the Church, is contrasted with the older
notion of revival as a visitation from God.
I suspect that both notions can be linked
together without loss to either.
I think there's truth in the continuous revival
notion.
I think that one can express it by
saying that notion is pointing to the hope
of revivedness.
The constant quality of Church life, just as
I think, I do think, with Edwards and
with Spinney both, that the basic notion of
revival from which you must start is the
notion of divine visitation at a time of
spiritual deadness and apathy.
If you look at the so-called renewal
movement in the Christian churches, the charismatic renewals
and the various offshoots of that movement which
we've seen in recent years, I think that
at heart, however well or however clumsily they
express themselves, what they're really after is the
ideal of a Church that is continuously healthy
because it's open to God and thoroughly committed
to the path of Christian obedience.
And I don't want to lose that thought
from my theology of revival, and I trust
that you don't either.
So what is one to say?
Well, I've talked about how the word is
used.
Let me now try to tell you how
I understand the reality to which the word
is referring.
Let me offer you my understanding of what
revival is based on my suspicion that there's
some truth in each of these three notions.
Some.
More perhaps in one than in the other
two.
But I'll leave you to work out which
I have in mind when I say that.
But let me say it from Scripture.
Let me put it to you from Psalm
85 and verse 6, that famous prayer which
I'm sure you could repeat to me.
Will thou not revive us again that your
people may rejoice in you?
Thou turns into you in my new international
version which I've got here, and that's the
form of words which I follow now.
Without going into the theology of revival, which
is there in Psalm 85 in a very
wonderful way, let me simply say that from
that prayer I get the following points.
First, the idea of revival.
It is God quickening, restoring life in a
situation where life has not been observable in
any great measure up to this point.
Second, the subject of revival.
God revives His church, His own people.
Will thou not revive us again that your
people may rejoice in you?
Revival is a work, whatever else it has
in it, that begins with God's people.
Revival, therefore, is not something that man can
work up.
It's something that God must send down.
That isn't a way of saying that we
should sit back passively and wait for it,
but it is a way of saying that
we are dependent on God first.
That's the third point, the agent of revival.
Will thou not, will you not, revive and
quicken us again?
That's the point which constantly, I'm afraid, most
notably, I have to say, among some indebted,
get missed today.
You know, a revival is an evangelistic campaign.
Man organizes it.
Man prays for it.
Man sets it up.
Man prays for it.
Man says, God, you bless this thing that
we've laid on for your glory.
Man's in church the whole time.
And God, in effect, becomes our servant in
what we call the revival.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't have evangelistic
campaigns.
That's the question which one must discuss on
its own basis and in its own terms.
I'm not speaking to that.
I am only saying that whatever else an
evangelistic campaign humanly organized is, in and of
itself, it's not revival.
Revival is God's work.
Revival is God sending down from heaven a
blessing beyond anything that man can work up
and certainly, as I said when we first
started looking at this verse, beyond anything that
will have been seen in the church in
the immediately preceding past.
You can see then how encouraged I was
when 25 years ago, I think it was,
I saw an advert in a Christian journal
I have it clipped here before me.
In large letters, it says, Don't plan a
revival.
I saw those words and I said in
my heart, Aha, they're giving the message of
love.
Then I looked at the small print and
my heart sank again.
Don't plan a revival, big letters, until you
have these three samples of colour advertising planned
especially for the church which wants something different
but must operate on a restricted budget.
Write for them today.
No, it wasn't quite the change of heart
that I supposed.
The agent of revival is God, not we.
And we cannot command God in this matter.
Fourth aspect of the situation, the circumstances of
revival, as I hinted before, God quickens at
a time when the church is moribund, half
dead.
And under God's anger, we're going to hear
more of God's anger this morning, let me
just say it now in a single sentence
that's there as a matter of fact in
the previous verse of Psalm 85, Will you
be angry with us, Lord, forever?
asks the psalmist.
He recognises that God is angry with his
people at present.
So he says, Will you be angry with
us forever?
Will you prolong your anger through all generations?
Will you not revive us again?
The reviving work of God is the averting
of the anger of God.
More of that in a moment, just note
it now.
At this point, the consequences of revival, that
your people may rejoice in you, says the
psalmist.
Quicken us, and that will be the immediate
fruit of your quickening.
Joy among God's people, such as has not
been there for a long, long time.
That isn't actually all that can be said.
For in Psalm 67 verses 1 and 2,
you've got a further bit of the pattern,
which again we're going to meet again before
we're through today.
Look at the opening verses of Psalm 67.
I read them as they stand in the
King James and in my NIV, though not
actually in all modern translations.
The psalmist prays, May God be gracious to
us and bless us and make his face
shine upon us.
Us is his own people.
Us is believers.
Us is the church.
That, verse 2, your ways may be known
on earth.
You're saving your salvation among all nations.
A bit of the picture that you've got
there is of the evangelistic overflow of God's
visitation of his own people.
When God revives his church, there always is
an evangelistic overflow.
You've got the same picture in many places
actually in scripture, but just take one in
Isaiah chapter 60, opening verses.
I hope you have spotted that Isaiah chapters
40 through 66 are one extended theology of
spiritual revival.
If you haven't spotted it before, make a
note of it now and study the chapters
from that standpoint.
That's what they're really about.
Here we are at the beginning of chapter
60 and the oracle says, Arise, shine, for
your light has come and the glory of
the Lord rises upon you.
Who is you?
God's own people.
Zion.
Yes, but we are reading this from a
New Testament standpoint so we may properly say
spiritual Zion.
God's people.
See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness
is over the people, but the Lord rises
upon you and his glory appears over you.
Verse 2.
Now look at verse 3.
Nations will come to your light and kings
to the brightness of your door.
You see the thought?
God visits his people.
There's light there.
There's life there.
The world is impressed.
There's power here.
There's a quality of living here that we
cannot but envy.
We need it.
So the nations come to the light of
Zion.
Kings come even to the brightness of the
rising of God upon his own church.
That's how it is in times of spiritual
revival.
You can see, can't you?
Revival is a corporate work.
You can, of course, have such a reality
as personal revival.
Scripture has a good deal to say about
it.
But why you can't have revival as a
corporate work without personal revival, you can have
personal revival, this individual and that individual and
that individual, finding a new, what shall I
call it, a new height and depth and
length and breadth of life and the love
of God without anyone around sharing that blessing.
And where you've got persons revived in isolation,
you don't have the visitation of God in
revival of religion of which Edwards, Finney, Lovelace
and all the rest have been speaking.
There's a characteristic work of God renewing his
church, reviving his church, of which Psalm 85
is speaking and which acts 2 through 11
instances There's a great deal about it in
Scripture but essentially it's a corporate thing.
And it's the impact of that work of
God on a community, transforming that community into
a company of people renewed by divine light
and power.
That this text, Psalm 85, 6 and the
Isaiah text and the Psalm 67 text and
many other texts in Scripture are speaking.
So I give you this notion which we'll
work with in all our study of revival.
Revival is God extending his kingdom through the
restoring of his church.
There you've got, I think, the whole essence
of the work of God brought together in
a single notion.
God extends his kingdom that's the evangelistic overflow
through the restoring of his church.
That's the quickening of life among the moribund,
apathetic, enfeebled people of God.
What happens then in revival?
In subsequent talks I shall talk I shall
be referring to this in detail but let
me just give you a checklist of the
main points now.
Again, have them in mind as we work
with all of this.
In time of spiritual revival and I'm spelling
it out now in New Testament terms eight
things happen thus.
God comes close.
That's how it all starts.
The sense of the presence of God in
holiness and in mercy is restored to his
people as everybody has to face him in
Isaiah 61.
64 verse 1 I should say.
It's pictured of God coming down.
Coming down among his people.
God comes close.
And so second thing that happens sin is
seen when the holy God has come close.
You can't escape the knowledge of your sin.
It's like the light being turned on in
an attic which nobody has been in for
years.
All the dirt is shown up straight away.
Sin is seen.
And so the third thing that happens is
this.
The gospel is loved.
They ask are there special revival doctrines and
the answer to their question is yes most
certainly.
The doctrines of Christ's substitutionary atonement for our
sins and of God's free justification through grace
for sinners who believe on Christ.
Those are the doctrines which are always at
the heart of revival preaching and revival blessing.
Check it out historically and you'll find it
so.
For the gospel is never so loved as
when God has come close.
And sin is seen.
Sin is seen not only by those who
are not yet Christ but sin recognised in
the lives of those who are but who
because God hasn't come close in the past
as now he has and therefore who hadn't
lived their lives in the light of God
as now they're forced to do they just
hadn't seen the sin that was there.
The gospel is loved and among God's people
the fourth thing that happens is that repentance
goes deep very deep.
I served my first piece of ministerial beauty
as an assistant to a man who'd been
converted in revival in Ulster in the 1920s.
I lived with him and worked with him
he was a funny fellow but I learned
from watching him that one thing that marks
all revival converts is that repentance goes deep.
They have a sensitivity to sin which others
don't have.
They have a depth of exercise about their
own personal sin which others don't have.
I said the gospel is loved I meant
it's loved because people see their need of
it as they've never seen their need of
it before.
I now say that repentance goes deep as
part of my explanation of what happens when
the gospel comes to be loved as never
before.
Evangelical repentance springs from the knowledge of God's
grace.
That grace is appreciated at a deeper level
than ever.
Repentance goes deeper than ever before.
Fifth thing that happens at time of revival
God works fast.
Paul at Thessalonica ran a mission which lasted
three Sabbaths then they ran him out of
the city you'll remember.
But those were revival times.
Paul ministered in the power of the Spirit.
He left behind him a church, a lively
church a church that moved into maturity it
seems very fast you would suppose that from
the positive things that Paul can say about
them particularly in 1 Thessalonians.
And in 2 Thessalonians you may recall in
chapter 3 and verse 2 he asks them
to pray in very striking terms he says
pray that the word of God may run.
That's rendered in all sorts of ways in
our English translations speed on is what you
have in the RSV have free course is
the rather less adequate translation that you have
elsewhere but the Greek says that the word
of God may run it's the most vivid
thing as it did among you says Paul
Paul himself had been thrilled by the speed
with which God had worked to bring forth
and mature that Thessalonian church it's like the
Old Testament phrase expresses a nation it seems
is born in a day God works fast
at times of revival it's always so and
there's much scripture pointing to the suddenness with
which God's blessing comes on people in a
very deep and wholehearted way come alive to
God and there's an overnight maturity of love
and service I'll tell you in a minute
what are some of the key passages of
scripture about this I haven't time to go
through it all now we'll come back to
some of it later but just let me
say it in formula terms now God works
fast at revival times and after what sometimes
seems like years in which nothing has happened
in a matter of days a tremendous amount
happens through a blessing of God's Spirit on
the feet of the Word that's been sown
and sixth thing that happens the church becomes
itself what I mean by that is that
the deepest Bible idea about the nature of
the church here on earth as also in
heaven is that the church is the people
who know their Lord present in their midst
they gather and He's there and they know
He's there and the enjoyment of His presence
in worship, in fellowship in receiving His ministry
as they give, we in the church shall
I say, give Him our praise that's the
essence of church life Christ in the midst
it's pictured in the first chapter of Revelation
seven golden lampstands representing seven churches and in
the midst one like the Son of God
it was promised by the Saviour in words
which were not just a pious formula but
they were words which were intended to matter
the reality of future church experience when two
or three meet together in my name there
am I in the midst do it and
seek me there and you'll find me there
it's a promise and it was a matter
of experience in fact in those days of
revival quality ministry in the apostolic age when
the church was founded you have that for
instance in what Paul says astoundingly to my
mind in 1 Corinthians 14 where right at
the center of that long disquisition explaining why
there were other things so much more worth
doing than speaking in tongues Paul says this
just imagine he says that the whole church
meets together and you all speak in tongues
and there comes in someone ignorant or unlearned
won't they say that you're mad but of
course they will says Paul what good will
that do them but he says if when
you come together you all prophesy and you
can see from the way the verse goes
on that when he says that what he
has in mind is something very like what
we would call preaching the gospel prophesying there
is testifying to one testifying to the congregation
by one another one and another about the
wonders of God's saving grace to sinners if
you all prophesy says Paul and there comes
in someone ignorant and unlearned well what happens
then I'll tell you says Paul he is
convinced by all he is judged by all
the secrets of his heart are made manifest
and falling down on his face he'll worship
God and acknowledge that God is among you
in truth God is here among these people
and in comes the guy who spiritually was
nowhere and straight away he feels it how
could Paul say that he could say it
brothers and sisters this is I think as
certain as anything can be because it had
actually happened that Corinth in the past he
could appeal to their memory of it happening
he could simply say that and know that
this would count with the Corinthians as an
argument yes of course it has happened and
it will happen we can expect it to
happen again but you couldn't get away with
a statement like that in a church where
it had never happened even once now could
you how many churches can you think of
yours or any others where that sort of
thing has been happening in our day well
I'm simply saying that I mustn't take it
any further that in times of revival the
church becomes itself as the people of the
present and this is a matter of real
experience which those who wander in even become
aware of let alone those who are Christ
and who look forward to getting together in
church because it means getting together with the
Lord well that's the sixth thing that happens
seventh thing that happens the world feels the
impact that the evangelistic overflow we're going to
be looking at Zechariah shortly let me just
tell you how Zechariah in his theology of
spiritual revival expresses the thought it's actually in
Zechariah chapter 8 he envisages revival blessing in
Old Testament terms as blessing to Israel and
this is the way that he spells out
the pattern in Zechariah chapter 8 verses 20
to the end of the chapter this is
what the Lord Almighty says when renewing and
reviving blessing has come to you many peoples
and the inhabitants of many cities will yet
come and the inhabitants of one city will
go to another and say let's go at
once to entreat the Lord and seek the
Lord Almighty I'm going, you coming with me?
and many peoples of powerful nations will come
to Jerusalem to seek the Lord Almighty and
to entreat Him this is what the Lord
Almighty says in those days ten men from
all languages and nations will take firm hold
of one Jew by the hem of his
robe and say let's go with you because
we've heard that God is with you now
I don't intend to discuss the dispensational significance
of that passage which as you know divided
a lot of Christian expositors I intend only
to make from it this one point when
God blesses His own people there's the evangelistic
overflow the world feels the impact and nations
come to the light which God has given
to His people to share the life that
God has given to His people and the
church becomes a power in the land and
a power in the world the world feels
the impact of revival blessing in the church
and eighth thing that happens this of course
is the let down but it's the condition
of things in this world and we are
fools if we suppose that anything changes when
revival comes Satan keeps pace Satan can't create
but Satan can destroy and Satan tries to
destroy the whole rationale of his life the
whole motivation of Satan is to destroy what
God has done to spoil it, to mess
it up to befoul it, to discredit it
he's trying to do it in the personal
life of each single one of us and
when God pours out His blessing and revival
Satan is there keeping pace seeking and regularly
succeeding at point after point in discrediting the
works by fanaticism and folly and error and
stupidity and all kinds of things that really
are scandalous this was why Edwards you know
had to write his reflections on the revival
of religion in New England in 1740 there
had been so much fanaticism and scandal connected
with the work that there were many critics
saying there's nothing here except human folly nothing
of God at all Edwards had his answer
to that Edwards spells out his answer actually
in another work it's a little treatise but
it's golden you should read it it's titled
The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the
Spirit of God where Edwards argues on the
basis of 1 John 4 verses 1 through
6 that any state of affairs that results
in Christ being honoured scripture being heeded the
gospel being taken seriously and love springing forth
among professed Christians is most certainly a work
of God at its heart even if the
fire has been accompanied by some very acrid
and unpleasant smoke because Satan who is responsible
for the smoke has no interest in producing
any of these altered states which have just
been lifted Satan isn't interested in exalting Christ
and getting the Bible taken seriously and making
people take the gospel seriously and love each
other as a matter of conscience in a
way that they never did before no, said
Edwards, that's God and it was by calling
attention to that fact and by dealing very
soberly and justly with the follies that Satan
induced detecting them for what they were that
Edwards vindicated the 1740 Great Awakening Satan keeps
pace and so you mustn't be romantic, friends
in your thinking about revival when God blesses
what happens is that you exchange the problems
of deadness for the problems of liveliness I
know which set of problems I would rather
be dealing with myself I have no interest,
and I speak as a pastor in spending
my life tending a graveyard neither have you,
I think who are in ministry you too
feel the burden and the distress of that
my graveyards can be very tidy places and
liveliness can be a very disorderly thing but
oh God, grant us the problems of liveliness
in our day rather than bogging us down
amid the problems of deadness as so many
churches are bogged down at this present time
well, these are the things that happen that
was what I wanted to say to you
I want you to have this notion or
this general notion of what the work of
revival involves before we begin our Bible study
oh you say, are we going to do
some Bible study?
indeed we are what we are going to
do, brothers and sisters is to explore a
little and we can only do this in
a superficial way but we are going to
explore a little some of the precious things
that are there in the prophet Zechariah chapters
1 through 8 where you have a pretty
full scale theology of revival spelled out in
what we may call pattern or paradigm form
it's all spelled out in terms of the
Old Testament dispensation it's all spelled out in
terms of the specific state of affairs into
which Zechariah spoke we make allowance for that
but the principles that Zechariah sets before us
in his prophecy are principles which apply to
all God's work of spiritual revival anywhere at
any time as you will see to be
sure, this isn't the only place in scripture
where you have a full scale theology of
revival, theology I mean of the spiritual restoration
of God's people you have that also, as
I've already said in Isaiah, chapters 40 through
66 you have it also, in briefer compass
in the first ten verses of Isaiah 35
you have it also in Ezekiel many chapters,
notably 36 and 37 you have it reflected
in some of the great prayers of scripture
Isaiah 62 through 64 were started there and
also Psalm 85 for which I quoted earlier
Psalm 80, of which we were looking last
night Psalm 79 also Habakkuk chapter 3 and
you have narratives of God's work reviving his
people in many places in scripture most notably
three times in 2 Chronicles revival under
Hezekiah and revival under Josiah and what are
the chapters 15 and 16 I think it
is that is Isaiah 31 is Hezekiah 35
and 36 I think is Josiah and then
that leads on to the books of Nehemiah
and Ezra Ezra and Nehemiah, proper order and
in both of those books there's a record,
among other things of God pouring out revival
blessing on his people through the actions of
the actions of Ezra and Nehemiah the spiritual
leaders of God's people in those days and
then you get to Acts 2-11 and
though of course there's a unique element there
it's the beginning of the Christian dispensation God
is pouring out his spirit upon the apostles
in a way that has some unique things
about it God is establishing the church but
the pattern of the blessing is as before
and before we are through we shall see
what the elements in that pattern are now
there's a great deal in Scripture about revival
I haven't given you all the passages anything
like it but I hope I've given you
enough to be going on with in your
own studies that was all I wanted to
do this moment well, what we're going to
do is to look at some of the
highlights of the first eight chapters of Zechariah
we're going to do so in answer to
the question that is there in all our
hearts what hope have we of revival in
our time how are we to seek it
how may we prepare the way for it
if indeed there's anything at all that we
can do about it Zechariah is answering those
questions as a matter of fact by his
God-given theology of revival I'm going to
ask you to read with me in a
moment the first six verses of the first
chapter of Zechariah and there we shall see
Zechariah setting before us what is really central
the key thought in his theology of revival
right the way through and that is what
I call the doctrine of the two-fold
return just look at verse three and you
see it there this is what the Lord
Almighty says return to me declares the Lord
Almighty and I will return to you says
the Lord Almighty the theology of the two
-fold return the heart of Zechariah's teaching about
spiritual revival before we move into that for
our last few minutes let me just say
after the opening oracle of the book chapter
one verses one through six you then have
a section from chapter one verse seven to
the end of chapter eight in which you
have a series of promises of restoration after
the summons to God's people to return to
him then comes God's promise God's spelling out
of what's involved in his promise that he
will return to them and the passage consists
first of eight visions of restoration chapter one
verse seven through chapter six verse fifteen and
then two chapters of exposition of what restoration
means chapters which pick up and amplify the
summons of God to his people to return
to him chapter one verse three and the
promise of God that he will return to
them also chapter one verse three chapter one
verse three in other words is the text
of which the rest of Zechariah one through
eight is the exposition we shall see that
as we go along now let's read the
first six verses of Zechariah chapter one and
I make on it my comments they'll have
to be made very briefly because the clock
has beaten us but we shall be returning
to some of this tomorrow in the eighth
month of the second year of Darius the
word of the Lord came to the prophet
Zechariah son of Berechiah son of Iddo and
this is what God said just pause there
a moment and let me fill in the
situation for you the date is given precisely
it's November 520 B.C. and the situation
into which Zechariah is sent to speak this
oracle is as follows the captivity the burning
of God's temple took place so they now
calculated in 586 B.C. in 536 B
.C. 16 years before Zechariah Cyrus king of
Persia who has just conquered Babylon sent Joshua
and Zerubbabel and the exiles back from captivity
to Israel to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple
we know from secular sources that encouraging the
parts of the empire to practice their own
religion was the principle of policy which Cyrus
followed but of course under the providence of
God it comes to the Jewish exiles as
a marvelous vindication of the truth of God's
word exiles followed by return had been promised
exile had taken place as God's act of
disciplinary judgment now comes return in the providence
of God which they couldn't have accomplished nor
could they have expected but Cyrus sends them
home to rebuild the temple and they are
thrilled and they are awestruck and they go
back to Jerusalem in a spirit of worship
and great joy and as Ezra chapter 3
tells how as soon as they got there
they set up the altar they laid the
foundation for the temple they got going with
the work but then came opposition it's all
described in Ezra and so the work was
stopped and then they found that economically living
in Jerusalem as the ruined city as indeed
it was was no joke at all it
was very hard making a living there and
so morale began to drop so it continued
for 15 years until on September the 1st
520 BC three months before Zechariah two months,
sorry, before Zechariah came the word of the
Lord to Haggai who came to the people
with a message we find it in his
own prophecy which we have the message, consider
your ways, think God's first word to drifting
human beings is regularly think to his own
people, bumping along the bottom as we might
say he says think justice to the ungodly
world, he says come let's reason together, think
think about what?
well think about your priorities says Haggai you're
experiencing drought you're experiencing poverty you're short of
everything and the temple isn't up yet, you've
abandoned the work of rebuilding it and remember
the temple was the place where God centuries
ago promised his presence and his blessing can
you wonder that you're suffering drought and poverty
and lack of everything when you're neglecting the
building of the temple and spending all your
time thinking about how you can put your
own homes together some folk were trying to
build rather grand homes, it was their way
of defying the poverty and misery of Jerusalem,
well should you be doing that says Haggai
when the house of God hasn't yet been
built consider your ways, get your priorities straight,
first things first that's the message of Haggai
and you can see the Christian correspondences of
all that without my selling the mouse well
following Haggai came Zechariah and as David Baron
comments while Haggai's task was chiefly to rouse
the people to the outward task of building
the temple Zechariah coming after him, thought to
lead the people to a complete spiritual change
something much bigger, something much deeper than Haggai
had spoken of, a complete spiritual change, one
of the fruits of which would necessarily be
increased zeal in the building of God's house,
that I think says it very well Zechariah
in the word of the Lord, at the
prompting of the Spirit of God, calls the
people to complete spiritual change to seek it
with a promise that if they seek it,
they will find it.
This was God's word to them.
He's speaking two months after the work started
and I mean the work of renewing the
rebuilding of the temple people, I expect are
already beginning to feel this is a tremendous
job for us, it's more than we can
manage and at this moment God in his
wisdom sends his word through Zechariah to lead
people to seek that complete spiritual change which
will keep them at it until the temple
is built and keep them at it thereafter
so that they really do become God's holy
people in the world bringing glory to his
name.
That's the situation and the word of the
Lord comes to the prophet Zechariah and this
is how it goes.
The Lord was very angry with your forefathers.
Would you have expected God's word of encouragement
to those who actually turned their hand, put
their hand again to the task of rebuilding
the temple?
Would you have expected his first word to
them to be one of rebuke rather than
a word of encouragement?
It was a rebuke.
It was a very stern word indeed but
there was a reason for that.
There's a difference between working for God and
turning to God.
Haggai's word had led them to start working
for God, rebuilding the temple and they'd been
hard at it for two months but they
hadn't yet turned to God in their hearts.
Brothers and sisters, you know this perfectly well
for it happens in your own church.
There are folk who are prepared to do
this and that and thus work for God
but they don't turn to God.
I'm not saying that they're not believers in
any sense at all but I am saying
that they do their duty as church members
working for God without any indication of the
kind of thing that Zechariah wanted to see
and they're still found indulging their little moral
napses and they're still found living lives of
spiritual formalism.
Is their heart in the worship of God?
Do they love the Lord?
Well, not really but they do things for
the church but they haven't yet returned to
the Lord.
That was the condition of the Israelites to
whom God sent Zechariah as his second messenger
to speak this rather stern word which is
beginning to unfold in verse 2.
The Lord was very angry with your forefathers.
Therefore, tell the people this is what the
Lord Almighty says.
You return to me says the Lord Almighty.
If you don't I shall be angry with
you too but you return to me declares
the Lord Almighty and I will return to
you.
Not by any not as a result of
any kind of magic not as an automatic
thing.
God's blessing is never automatic.
He's sovereign and His good gifts, His visitations
His blessings only come at His discretion but
what God is saying to them here is
that they have no reason to expect that
He will revive them renew His work among
them if they are not laboring to renew
their own godliness whereas conversely if they do
labor to renew their godliness and in that
sense to return to Him in a radical
way, more about this in future studies then
they have reason to expect and hope and
anticipate that He will return to them with
blessings such as they've never known.
This is what the Lord Almighty says.
Return to me and I will return to
you says the Lord Almighty.
Don't be like your forefathers.
To whom the earlier prophets proclaimed, this is
what the Lord Almighty says, turn from your
evil ways and your evil practices return to
me.
That is what God said to them but
they would not listen or pay attention to
me declares the Lord they heard my word
and they didn't hear it they stopped their
ears to it they didn't take me seriously.
Verse 5 Where are your forefathers now?
Oh, they're dead and gone.
And the prophets who delivered these messages do
they live forever?
No, they're dead and gone as well.
What remains?
What remains is the ineffaceable memory of what
happened.
History plain public history for everyone to observe
and take note of.
This is what remains.
The history referred to in verse 6 Didn't
my words and my decrees which I commanded
my servants the prophets overtake your forefathers?
Didn't it happen?
And before they died didn't they acknowledge that
it had happened?
Didn't they repent?
End of verse 6.
And didn't they say the Lord Almighty has
done to us what our ways and practices
deserve just as He determined to do.
The word of the Lord stood.
The word of the Lord was fulfilled.
Brothers and sisters if we are going to
be realists in this whole matter of seeking
revival we've got to learn to reckon with
the anger of God over those who don't
take Him seriously don't seek His face although
they profess to be His don't practice righteousness
don't abandon evil ways that sort of thing
brings down God's curse.
Revival follows the anger of God.
The anger of God is expressed so the
Old Testament tells us over and over again
in impoverishment in impotence impotence against
hostile spiritual forces in imperviousness to the word
of God people hear it and they don't
hear it.
God says return to Me and they don't
do it.
Aren't we seeing the fruits of God's anger
against us?
Yes even here in supposedly Christian North America
in these days.
We are seeing spiritual impoverishment it was Charles
Colson who has a right I think to
speak the amount of traveling that he's done
in North America who said and indeed says
often in public that what his travels to
and fro over North America for prison fellowship
have taught him is that in North America
Christianity is 3,000 miles wide and half
an inch deep.
We are a shallow formal lot.
Even those of us who call ourselves evangelicals,
alas that's how it is.
And spiritually we're impoverished and impotent.
Do I need to stress that we're not
impacting this country for Christ?
I don't think I need to.
I think you know it all too well.
And imperviousness to the word of God as
it searches heart and conscience.
Many of you are pastors and you can
testify to that.
You know that this is our condition.
We are under the anger of God corporately
in our quest for revival.
We'd better recognize if we're realists that that's
where we start.
Reckon then with the anger of God.
Reckon with the appeal of God.
Return to me and I'll return to you.
And reckon with the agenda of God who
promised, who said through Zechariah return to me
and I will return to you.
Because God is sovereign you can never program
revival or predict revival at such and such
a date.
But because God is sovereign you can never
preclude revival.
He loves his people.
We shall see more of that before we're
through.
He loves to bless his people.
Return to me he says and I will
return to you.
There's hope there.
Reckon with these things brothers and sisters.
I must stop now.
But we go on from there digging into
Zechariah's theology of revival in our next two
studies.
May we pray for a moment together before
we close and move into lunch.
Gracious sovereign faithful heavenly Father in
Jesus name we draw near and say to
you Lord we are among those who have
called forth your anger and we are humbled
and ashamed.
Father we are among those to whom you
have spoken this morning saying return to me
and as those who have heard that word
we ask you that it may sink down
into heart and conscience and that we may
turn to you in these days of cause.
More honestly at a profounder level in our
personal lives than ever before.
And Father we are those who have heard
you saying to Israel through Zechariah I will
return to you and hearing those words our
hearts have leapt.
We are longing gracious Father that you should
in power and glory return to us.
As we return to you so Lord draw
near to us that we may know something
of your quickening blessing in our own lives
before this conference is through and that we
may take that beg to our own church.
Oh grant it gracious Father for Jesus sake
and for his praise.
Amen.
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, Armenians, 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 man 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, what Christians
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.
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 are 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.