Realities of Revival V: Seeking Revival

The Nature of Revival as Extraordinary Grace

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast, I'm Jon Snyder, and I want us to finish up our theme of revival, those seasons of extraordinary grace where God draws near to His people, and that extraordinary degree of His nearness, that relational nearness, where His activity seems to be obvious to the church.

We've seen this in Scripture, we see this throughout history, we haven't taken the time to point all of those out, we've recommended a few books that we feel are careful guides to that, one of them being Lectures on Revival by Ministers of Scotland, it was written in the 1840s, Banner of Truth published that, men that had labored alongside Robert Murray McShane for example, and who had seen a real revival begin in their churches, gathered together and put together a number of lectures, they're pretty full, densely packed, full of truth, really well worth your effort, where they cover the key themes, the centrality of Christ, the place of Scripture in revival, what about prayer, what about the testimony of the Christian's life, you know, dangers and benefits, and they just give so many helpful things for the Christian to understand when we're asking God for maybe a greater measure of His work among us, that we feel that we've come to a time where the ordinary things, the wonderful ordinary, according to Scripture, not necessarily ordinary according to what we've grown up with or where we're at, but the wonderful ordinary of the new covenant work of God we feel grateful for, but we believe that we need something more, and if God is going to be honored in our day, we're asking that He would draw near in an unusual way, and that He would raise that work to an unusual degree.

Remember that I think perhaps one of the most important things for us, if we haven't studied biblical revival and the history of the healthy revivals that we saw really prior to 1825 and Charles Finney's influence, I imagine Finney was a very earnest man, but many of the things that he implemented and his views that were beneath those new methods became very dangerous, and we still see the effects today.

But if you are interested in looking into that topic, it is just so fundamental that you understand that revival is not a distinctly different work of God. It doesn't require, therefore, distinctly different methods, and it isn't judged by a distinctly different set of standards.

A revival is when God does the work He has always been doing. When you think of the new covenant work, He is convicting, and He is saving, and He is sanctifying, and He is purifying, and, you know, all those wonderful things that we see in the Scripture, but He, in revival, it's as if that is raised to a whole nother level.

It's a difference of degree, not a different type of work. So we pray, and we preach, and we study, and we help hold each other accountable, and we stir each other up to good works, and we fast, you know, we do, we worship together.

We do all that we already are doing, but we use those means or those tools, perhaps in a way, in an extraordinary way. We give an extraordinary degree of effort in them as we seek the Lord. Today I want us to look at the impact of revival, and then we're going to close with the question, well, how do we seek the Lord, especially in light of the very many ways that people can do that in a way that it's not honoring to the Lord, and it may look very passionate, but it's not biblical.

Revival’s Impact in the Church

Well, what is the impact of revival? The men who put together that book in Scotland in the 1840s, they defined the impact of revival this way, life once possessed, but has now decayed, is quickened in a time of refreshing from God.

New power is felt in secret, in family, and in public prayer, along with enlarged views of divine truth and enlarged experience of its reality. Now, if we kind of take that general description of the impact of revival, we can pull that apart and see what they saw as legitimate evidences of the work of God.

Well, the first one is that life once possessed, but has decayed, is now quickened in a time of refreshing. Now, think about it. What they're talking about is not that lost people are saved. That does happen in times of genuine revival.

But revival or an awakening really has to do with reviving, so not vivification, not putting life into someone, but revivification, restoring life that is there and has decayed to the point that maybe you don't know if they're alive or not.

God coming to His church, which has drifted and decayed to the point that in the gracious discipline of God, even His people appear to be morbid, sluggish, cold, and unresponsive. But God, for His own glory's sake and His love for His church, draws near and deals with them in such a way that what has decayed is awakened or quickened, and there is a refreshing of what had become stale.

It reminds me of Psalm 119 in verse 25 through 32. There's just this string of verses where the psalmist cries out, my soul, God clings to the dust. And then you find following that a whole list of things that he says that he does in returning to the Lord and how God uses His word to restore that soul.

So when God does that, not in an ordinary way, but in an extraordinary way, when it's not just maybe an individual or two in a church, but it seems that all at once, everyone in the church is being dealt with, and God is granting broken hearts and repentance and renewed faith, and what was sluggish and cold and distant is now vital again.

That's revival. God beginning with His people. Now when we think of the decay that happens in a Christian's life when we're not careful, and that can happen to all of us and does happen at times to our great shame.

When we have this fountain of living waters instead of kind of, you know, the old cistern, the stale old trench that holds water and it gets stagnant. Why would we ever move from this fountain of living waters that Jeremiah talks about in chapter 2 into this old cistern, this ancient way of holding water when there wasn't any other water you could have?

But we do that, sadly, and God at times has to really break our hearts over that. Let me give you a picture of decay that the Scripture gives, and I think it's very helpful, and it gives us some real practical ways as we set our hearts to seek the Lord.

And really, this was called to my attention, not by my own personal Bible study, but probably 30 years ago by listening to Richard Owen Roberts when I thought he was very old back then. He's in his 90s now, and he is still preaching, and his heart is still hot for the Lord.

And I remember seeing Roberts back then with his white beard and hair, and I thought he must be 100 back then because I was, you know, 20. And Roberts asked this question, have you given sufficient time and consideration to what the Bible says as it uses agricultural metaphors?

And I thought, I have no idea what that man's talking about. And then I think, well, agricultural metaphors, okay, so you mean like the grape vines and you know it? Okay, well, yes, Christ is the vine, I'm the branch.

And so I thought of that, and he called attention to two that deal with the issue of returning to the Lord when the spiritual life has decayed. Let me give you one, Jeremiah chapter 4, and then I'll jump over to Hosea chapter 10.

But in Jeremiah chapter 4, God is telling the people to return. And in verse 1 he says this, if you will return, O Israel, says the Lord, return to me. That might sound a bit redundant, as if it's just, you know, poetic language, and it's not really saying anything, but it is saying something that's very significant.

It is easy for us to want to return to what we had before, I want to return to my more devout life, I want to return to a happier marriage, I want to return to a happier, you know, Christian walk, I want to return to church, I want to return to Bible study, but that is very different than saying, I am setting my face to return to God, and nothing else, though there are many good things, church, Bible, of course, but it is God that I'm coming to.

Well, down in verse 3 and 4, Jeremiah continues, and God gives directions for how to return to him. For thus says the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, break up your fallow ground and do not sow among thorns, circumcise yourselves to the Lord and take away the foreskins of your heart, you men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, lest my fury come forth like fire and burn so that no one can quench it because of the evil of your doings.

So God uses two big metaphors here, agricultural and then the right of circumcision. So speaking of the agriculture, if you're going to return to me, he says, just make sure that you notice there is fallow ground and you're going to have to break it up, and you would be foolish, it will be a complete waste of time in your attempt to return to me if you sow seed among thorns.

We'll come back to that. First, I want to read a parallel passage in another prophet, Hosea chapter 10 verse 12. God says to the drifting nation, sow with a view to righteousness, throw out the seed with a view to righteousness, reap in accordance with kindness, break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord until he comes to rain righteousness on you.

Now in Hosea's passage, breaking up the fallow ground comes after sowing and reaping, but is not sticking to the agricultural pattern. The prophet is not trying to do that there, he's just making certain statements from the Lord and he's not saying this is the exact order.

Back in Jeremiah, the order is appropriate, it's the order of agriculture. First you break up the fallow ground, then you sow seed, then you reap. So if we go back to Jeremiah, what is it to break up fallow ground?

Well, what is fallow ground? Fallow ground is hard ground that you want to be productive. So think of a farmer, he has these acres, but a portion of his hundreds of acres, a portion of that has been allowed to lie fallow.

That is, he hasn't done anything to it for a year. And so the hard, the earth has become hard, which once was tilled and soft and able to receive seed, and the old weeds have kind of grown back over it.

So fallow ground is this, it's ground that once was productive in the farm, once was plowed and planted and tended, but has been neglected. And when we do that, we often, in farming, you may let ground lie dormant for a period because it's good for the soil.

The Jews were commanded to do that every seven years, so they understood what it was. But spiritually, it's an area of the life that once was plowed and planted with the gospel, the word of God, and God supplied that rain, and it produced spiritual fruit, a spiritual harvest.

There were good Christ-like things growing in that part of your life, but through neglect, it has become hard, and other things, weeds, have covered it. It reminds us again of the parable of the sower.

There's a patch of ground that the seed falls into, and immediately it sprouts up, but because it's covered in weeds, the weeds choke it out. Or other seed falls over here, not in the tilled earth, but on the hard path just beside the tilled ground, and that hard path, the seed can't get into the dirt.

And so it just lays on the surface until the birds come and peck it and take it away. So what God is saying through Jeremiah, and again through Hosea, is not, you are lost people who have never seen me work in you.

He is saying, you are my people, and I have worked in you. We know that not every Jew is a believer. But as a nation, speaking generally, and with that old covenant, you are a people that once were like a productive field.

I plowed and planted and tilled and guarded and watered, and so much wonderful response, so much that was good grew out of that. But now you have neglected me and your relationship with your God, and now your heart and life has become hard, and it's covered with other things like weeds, and you would be a fool to throw new seed on that ground.

If I wanted to plant a garden, I'm not a very good gardener, if I wanted to plant a garden and I got seed for whatever I really wanted, whether it's tomatoes or Swiss chard or broccoli or carrots, and I went out and I said, okay, I'm going to do a garden, and I went into my backyard and I just threw all the seed all over my backyard.

But my backyard is hard, and it's full of grass. How much of a garden would I expect? I would probably be surprised if I got more than a couple of stray plants that somehow the seed did get under the surface enough and germinated and set its roots down, and as the spring rains came, it did grow a little.

And though it wasn't very productive because the grass was choking it out, maybe I could see a few plants. Have you ever asked yourself, why is it that we have so many good books, so many Bible study aids through the internet, so many good sermons?

You can go to sermonaudio .com. You can hear the most helpful of preachers today. You can read great commentaries. You can read what John Owen wrote. You can read what John Bunyan wrote from prison. You know, you can dive into the sermons of George Whitefield.

Have you ever wondered why it is that so much seed is falling on your heart, your life, your soul, and so little concrete changes are occurring? Preachers wonder as they preach. Parents wonder as they talk to their children.

Church members probably wonder. We've gone through these series of sermons, you know, here's the attributes of God. Here's the work of Christ. Here's the life of holiness. Here's Romans 6, you know, and then you look at yourself in the mirror and you think, I don't see many changes from that.

It could be that you're not a very good measurer of the changes that are occurring in you, and other people do see changes, and I hope that's the case. But it also could be that you are throwing a lot of great seed on fallow ground, that large portions of your life have become indifferent and calloused, like hard ground, and covered with weeds, other interests.

So when you come to church, when you read your Bible, when you pick up a Puritan book, when you go to a podcast or sermonaudio .com and you listen to the best preachers of the day, it may stir you on the surface, but the Word never gets down, and the changes never occur.

When you think of the parable of the sower, a seed producing 30, 60, hundredfold, would you say, if you were to honestly examine your life, for every sermon I am hearing, or every passage I am studying on a certain topic, I think I see 100 real responses, if we could just kind of think of it in a very concrete way.

Sermon on holiness, and over the next couple of weeks, anybody that knows you well could say, I think I've seen 100 different ways you've applied that. Well, I think we would be embarrassed to make that claim.

What about 60? What about 30? Would you even be willing to say, for every sermon I've heard in the last months of 2023, I can show you one concrete, enduring change in my thinking or desiring or talking or choosing?

I can show you a concrete change, one-to-one, the seed fell, one seed, one plant grew. Would you even be able to say that? Is it because we have skipped the work of plowing up the fallow ground? We have not done the hard work of repentance and bringing the soul before the Lord and letting the Bible be like a plow that, you know, the descriptions of God, the commands of God, the holiness of God, have you used that to plow up the heart, to get deep beneath the surface so that your life is ready for what God says next, and it's not just falling on hard, weedy, choked-out soul?

Enlarged Prayer and Enlarged Views of Divine Truth

Well, that's a picture of decay and one way that we respond to it, but there were other things that they said occurred when God came in revival. It wasn't just that this decayed life is now vibrant again, but in particular, in prayer and in your understanding of biblical truth, there would be a greatly enlarged appreciation and effectiveness in these areas, enlarged prayer life, effective.

I wonder if, when I look at my life, if I were to describe it, would I describe it as greatly enlarged? Would I describe it as clearly effective? And I don't mean a name-it-claim-it kind of effectiveness, but that you know that God is hearing you and God is working through those prayers, maybe not in our time, but He works, and our prayers are not, you know, in vain.

And we have a greater appreciation for that open chain, line of communion, and we are frequently at the throne of grace because of our sense of need, but also because of our confidence. Those go together, and our love of the King, we desire to live before His face at the foot of the mercy seat all through the day, cultivating that awareness of God.

Is that you? In revival, that is restored. What about biblical truths? We have these enlarged views, so words that were just words at one time now become enormous, and you know, words that once, you know, that we believed but have been packed away in the back of our mind and haven't impacted us practically, maybe in decades, suddenly it's like they come out and we dust them off and we see how beautiful they are.

You know, the omnipresence of God, the omniscience of God, the patience of God, the faithfulness of God, the zeal of God, the jealousy of God, and suddenly each of these aspects of God or of the work of Christ, what is adoption?

What is justification and regeneration? What is that wonderful calling to Him? You know, what is sanctification and glorification and the perseverance of the believer? We think of the duties of the Christian life.

What is it to live with Him, by Him, for Him, and to Him? And when all those things, which we already are aware of because we're acquainted with our Bibles, when God draws near, it's as if the blinders are pulled away, and how big, how infinitely weighty and significant these things are is felt, and how beautiful, and the imagination and the affections, the thoughts, the choices are captivated and fashioned by what God says on these pages.

When was the last time that the Word of God in your life, in your church, in your home, was what God says it was? Was like a hammer breaking hard stone, like a fire burning across a land, purifying it.

Revival’s Wider Effects Beyond the Church

There are other evidences and impacts of revival, not just in the church being awakened in this way, but also there is the impact that comes when the believers are affected in this manner than unbelievers are affected, and that's generally what we think of, but that's the byproduct, and it's a wonderful byproduct.

And the Scottish ministers gave three categories. They said, the cold and careless Christians around you in church will be affected. So as God works, the believers in the church, many of them are affected, but not necessarily all of them.

There are always people who are missing Sunday because they're busy this and traveling here, or they're there and they're just not really plugged in, and for some reason, God is working in very many people, many people sitting around them, but they themselves go home and say, I don't get it.

I don't feel like it was a particularly helpful service, or I don't feel the way that so-and-so is feeling, but as they see the changed lives of their brothers and sisters, true Christians who have become cold or careless are impacted.

Maybe Christians in other churches down the street in another city that hear what God is doing in you and see the genuine and enduring evidence. Another way that it impacts others, the Scottish ministers pointed out, was that the lost who are members of a church, who attend the church, but who are not really born again, and they have, of course, been indifferent.

You know, they're okay with church, and they like perhaps the music, they like the fellowship, the community, maybe they like the ethics or the encouraging sermons about God-loving and being there to support you in your difficult times, but if you were to really press them, they are strangers to the God of the Bible.

They do not know Him. They have never embraced Christ on His terms, and they only have the trappings of religion, but when God comes and the true believers are now wonderfully, vibrantly restored and changed, those who thought they were believers, who deceived themselves perhaps, now realize the gap between what they are and what a true Christian is, which perhaps they didn't see before, and now they're bothered, and many of them are brought into the kingdom as they feel the emptiness of their religion next to the true religion of the Christian made vibrant again.

And then they give another category, this is outside the church, the dark world, those who aren't even concerned enough to wear a mask, to show up at church, and to go through the motions occasionally.

Even those who don't love God are oftentimes affected when a region is impacted by the nearness of God. Now, I'll just give you one amazing illustration, and it's from Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Connecticut.

Edwards said that when God began to work in the Christians in that extraordinary way, which later we look back and call the Great Awakening, Edwards said as it continued to go and to spread, and other people were being converted in the church, and then some of the people outside the church were being converted by seeing them, they were being drawn to church.

What is all of this? What's going on? Why are my friends so different? Why is my wife or husband? Why are my children or why are my parents different? And so they give attention to religion, and they're saved.

But Edwards said the impact went further than just salvation. There were many who were not saved, and yet they were impacted. And his illustration shocks me to this day. He said there were men in the town known for drunkenness.

That was pretty much what they preferred to do when they weren't at work. So if they weren't working, if they had free time, they were getting drunk. And he said the men, when God drew near to that church, to that region, they were ashamed of their sin.

No longer did they feel they could openly sin in this way without feeling a great sense of shame. Before, they felt fine. Now they're ashamed. The changes in the people around them, the awareness, this, in a sense, you know, really a supernatural sense that, you know, what God thinks about things becomes much more manifest and I can't just parade it like I used to.

So they quit being drunks. He said many of them, instead of going to the pub, to the bar of their day, they started prayer meetings in their houses, in their homes. It's amazing. And yet, he said, some were converted, but others were not.

And after that period of great work of the Lord, that extraordinary level of work passed, then he said they slowly went back to their drunkenness. They never claimed to have been converted. My pastor in Wales, a man named Vernon Hyam, grew up in a town which had experienced, the 1904, 05, 06 period, we call that sometimes the 04, 06 revival, and that revival did have a number of things doctrinally that were wrong, but there was also a great deal of the work that was more careful and lasting.

And Mr. Hyam, as a young pastor, had people in his church who lived through that. They were old now, and he talked to them, and he talked to the people in the town. He would witness from house to house, door to door, going evangelizing, and he would meet people that said, no, I'm not a Christian.

Do you want to be a Christian? Don't you care about your soul? No, I don't want to be a Christian. I was around in the 04 revival, and they would say, no, something really happened. It was quite shocking.

The whole town changed, but I never followed Christ. It's quite an amazing thing. When God draws near to His people, and they are changed, then those that are near them that are not Christians are changed, and then those that are outside, even further, they begin to be impacted.

Judging Claims of Revival

They're not all saved, of course, but they are impacted by an awareness that what God thinks about what they're doing matters. Now, let's talk about judging the claims of revival, just quickly. Like all works that God does, which include His people, evangelism, discipleship, there will be imperfections.

There are imperfections in true churches. There are imperfections in true Christians. There are imperfections in valid confessions of faith or professions of faith and conversions. So, sometimes we are a bit, I think, oftentimes we are unwilling to biblically judge claims of revival.

We say, well, I don't want to be the person that says, let's wait and see what the fruit is. But sometimes I think maybe we're too quick to give a negative assessment. So someone says, there's a great work of God occurring in our church, and you think, well, it's not in my church, or it's not in my denomination, or they believe differently than us, and so we feel they're wrong, therefore God couldn't be working like that down there.

It must be a counterfeit, and that is not necessarily the truth. We should wait and be gracious and hold our tongues, especially in the day of the internet where everybody can give their opinion on everything, and we are instant experts after watching a 30-second video of something and then reading everybody's opinion that agrees with us.

Hold our tongues. Keep your fingers away from the keyboard. Give it time for the real fruit to show. The existence of imperfection is not an evidence that it is not the work of God. Think of the New Testament church.

We have in the book of Acts such a wonderful work. I mean, it really is the revival of revivals. God's taking a group of Jews who are believers, and they've embraced the Messiah, and how vibrant their life is and how that spreads, but immediately in the book of Acts you find fakes in the church, people who want to appear to be much more godly than they are, Ananias and Sapphira, and God strikes them dead.

Now if you are an opponent of Christianity and of that movement at that time, you could certainly point that out and say, well, if it is a real work of God, what about all these liars? I mean, we don't do that.

Why would we call that a work of God? If it was a work of God, there wouldn't be liars in the church. There wouldn't be complaining widows in the church when they felt that they were being overlooked because they were Greek and not kind of the blue-blood Jews.

You know, any church that has a bunch of complainers can't be a real church, and so we want to be careful. When God works among us, in us, God's work is perfect, but where we are involved there will always be imperfection, and we want to be gracious and wait to see what fruit sticks, what remains.

And if the normal fruit of God working in the life, godliness, Christlikeness, compassion, the fruit of the Spirit, if that is not what endures, then I think we have a right to say that does not appear to have been a work of the Lord.

But if it does, and we have noticed some people maybe, you know, being a bit ridiculous, we can say, well, of course, it wasn't a perfect work. There were imperfections because people were involved, but there was some real work done.

Seeking God for Revival

Well, a final question for us to really conclude this small series, and that is, how do we seek God if we feel that we are a people who need His work in a greater measure? Well, just let me say that when people talk about seeking God for revival, oftentimes those who are maybe more biblically careful with doctrine, it's not always the case, but oftentimes they are afraid of that kind of language, and they think if you seek Him with all this passion, you know, older people looking at younger people, then you're going to get off into this kind of crazy stuff, and it's going to end up not having anything to do with the Bible, and that has happened so often.

It's a valid fear. So what's the cure to that? The cure is not the question of how much passion, how much heart, how much zeal and earnestness is in your seeking. The safe road is not to tamp down and to kind of put a wet blanket over passionate hearts so they don't get out of bounds.

Let your heart be as zealous and passionate and intensely earnest for God and revival as possible. You are not in danger of going on a wrong track if you can keep some basic rules in mind. Maybe we could think of these as kind of fences along the path or riverbanks, and the river is this river of desire for God, and it doesn't matter how much it rages and how fast it flows, if it'll stay between the banks, it's safe.

Well, one thing I think we can say is make sure you are yearning and seeking a person and not an event, not a power, an effectiveness, a tool to make you, your family, your church, your nation better.

While we do ask God to come and deal in such a way that good will result, it is God Himself that is the treasure of the church and not a revival event, not power to be more effective when I talk to my children.

So is it a person you're seeking? If so, then certain things immediately are going to be in place. The character of that person, what they like or don't like, that becomes the guide for how you seek. If you are wanting a person to come spend time with you at your house, you know, you have waited and you've longed for them, and, you know, maybe it's a mother waiting for a son who's returning from...he's been stationed in the army, you know, in foreign battles, and now he's going to come home, and she can't wait for him to come home.

She waits for news that he's actually left, you know, she waits to be told, and every day she looks out the window and wonders, and while she longs for his return, she goes and she looks at the house and she thinks, what does he like?

She goes to his bedroom, she gets it perfect. She looks at the pantry and the refrigerator and the freezer and she thinks, what will he want to eat? He likes his mom's cooking, well, what's his favorite meal?

And she stocks up on everything she knows he likes, and she plans days when he's home, these people will be able to see him and these people, and she tries to keep any unpleasant event from that schedule and to pack it full of things he would enjoy.

If you seek the nearness of God that, as a believer, already dwells within you, but if you seek for that greater work of the Lord, that restored intimacy that perhaps has faded with carelessness, then you will want to look through every room of the life, weekends, free time, money, entertainment, iPad, internet, talk, marriage, kids, work, how I act in the car, how I behave behind closed doors, secret thoughts, longings, plans, all of it is like a room and you open the door and you allow the Scripture by the Spirit to be applied to every one of those areas.

God, show me what's real. Teach me what pleases or displeases you, and by your help, I will deal with this. And you labor to make the life something God would delight to draw near to. If you want to know what that looks like, there are so many passages.

If you start at Genesis and finish in Revelation, you will find you can make a list of so many passages where God describes the kind of person he delights to draw near to, or the kind of people he will allow to find him.

Make a list of those, go back and study them one at a time, and begin to record what you're learning, all the while asking God, please God, you teach me, how am I to seek you? Draw near to God and he will draw near to you, James says, to a group of Christians.

It's not static, it's not constant. That relational aspect, that fellowship between your soul and God is not always, God is not always at the same distance from the soul in that way, in that experiential way, otherwise James could not say to Christians, draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

He would have to say, you're God's and so he's already as near as he can be and he will never fluctuate. While the relationship is on the bedrock of the finished work of Christ, the enjoyment of that relationship, the awareness of God's work in us, that does fluctuate as we follow Christ or drift from Christ.

So, be careful, seek the Lord, but remember it's a person and what kind of person he is will determine how you seek him. Well, I hope that's been a help to you as we've considered, just in a quick way, a few sessions together, what is it when God draws near in revival?

What is a season of extraordinary grace? How do you judge that? What would it look like? How would it impact you? How can you seek the Lord if you feel that you desperately need that yourself?