When Revival is Necessary - Part 2 — Richard Owen Roberts

Moses and Christ: Faithfulness in the Household of God

Move to the second of these warning passages, as I indicated to you, chapter three, starting at verse five, a much longer passage, and in truth, a much more complicated passage, but let me read it to you.

Chapter three, verse five. Now Moses was faithful in all his house, as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later. But Christ was faithful as a son over his house, whose house we are.

If we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm unto the end. Now let's not glaze over that. Faith without faithfulness is zero. Moses believed God and held fast. So, yes, the mercy of God is wonderfully demonstrated in the life of Moses, when at the very end, at the age of 120, he lost his temper, took the rod, whacked the rock that God had commanded him to speak to.

But God didn't strike him dead, and he didn't send him to hell. But in order to maintain his own holiness, his glory, God told Moses, go up on the mountain, look across to the land, and lie down and die.

So God was faithful. He never allows sin to pass unnoticed. There's always a just recompense of reward, as we saw in the first one. But it was a just recompense of mercy. Moses, you can't finish your life work, but I'm not removing you from my kingdom and my power.

So Moses was faithful despite his sin, and Christ was faithful without any exception. But the statement we must not fail to realize is, whose house you are if, if you hold fast the confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end.

We have pretended that if a person makes a one-time declaration with their mouth, they're in the kingdom. But God says, you must go on with this outspoken affirmation, Jesus Christ is Lord throughout life.

Holding Fast to Confidence Until the End

I repeat again, it isn't how you start, it's how you finish. But then look at verse seven. Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, where your fathers tried me by testing me and saw my works for 40 years.

Therefore, I was angry with this generation. And said, they do always go astray in their hearts. And they did not know my ways. And I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Take care, brethren.

Blessed there be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart in falling away from the living God. We've got all kinds of people in ministry who are living in the depths of moral wickedness. And they're absolutely safe and secure by their own understanding of things.

I've had men speak right into my face and say, I have been an adulterer my entire adult life. But I know I'm a Christian. And we have countless numbers of churches that know their pastor is an adulterer who do not think for a single moment of removing him from ministry.

And of course, that's to say nothing of the rest of us to whom much is given, much is required. God was intolerant of sin in the Old Testament. He declares his intolerance of sin in the New Testament.

But we pretend that God is so overwhelmed with love and grace that he overlooks our small failure. And we all know that the first time God speaks to you and says, don't do that, we know that if you defy him, it'll harden your heart.

And all across the land and all around the world are multitudes who honestly think they're Christians they don't even know that their hearts are hard. If you approach them about some obvious sin in their life, they look at you as if somehow you've come from some outer planet.

Don't you know God loves me? It's very easy to convince yourself that you are a special favorite of God. That he is truly a God of all grace and all mercy and does not hold anybody responsible for their sin.

But that's the God of the imagination, not the God of the Bible. That's not an unchanging God, but a changing God. So the question that has to be asked, have I in any way hardened my heart? When folk read about Pharaoh and they read this large number of occasions when it says God hardened his heart and other occasions when it says Pharaoh hardened his own heart.

The Danger of Hardening the Heart

And they wonder what all is going on there in Exodus? Let me ask a simple question. What does God have to do to harden your heart? Nothing, nothing. He just has to cease softening it. Within moments a heart can be hardened and one can go throughout the major portion of their life with their heart hardened and never even be aware of it.

So the question, is there any area in your life where you have hardened your heart? Any area of stubbornness, rebellion where God has spoken to you and you have failed to answer yes and the consequence is that your heart is hardened.

Verse 12, take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart in falling away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day as long as it is still called today lest any of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin for we have become partakers of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end.

While it is said today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart as when they provoked me for who provoked him when they had heard indeed did not all of those who came out of Egypt led by Moses and with whom was he angry for 40 years?

Was it not with those who sinned whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they should not enter his rest? But to those who were disobedient. So we see that they did not enter because of unbelief.

Some of us have failed to connect disobedience and unbelief. To say that you believe and yet to disobey is obscene. What kind of a God is so dumb that he doesn't see through that kind of idle foolishness?

Faith is not passive assent or acquiescence. Faith is active obedience. You've only to look in Hebrews 11 to see that every person described there as having faith was given something to do and they did it.

There are multitudes of Old Testament characters who do not make their way into Hebrews 11. Is there any disobedience in your life? In any realm, if there is, the hardening of the heart is a grievous danger.

May have already happened. To talk about revival without focusing upon the absolute necessity of true and total repentance is indeed obviously a very foolish matter. Well, the warning continues into the next chapter.

Entering God's Rest Through Faith and Obedience

Therefore, let us fear. Lest while a promise remains of entering his rest, any of you should seem to have come short of it. For we have had good news preached to us just as they also. But the word they heard did not profit them because it was not united by faith in those who heard.

And we've already observed what it means to have heard the word and unite that word with faith. As I just stated, it means then to act upon that word, to do whatever it is the Lord says to do. Any failure to act upon what God says is unbelief.

For we who have believed enter that rest. Just as he said, as I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he has thus said somewhere concerning the seventh day.

And God rested the seventh day from all his works. And again in this passage, they shall not enter my rest. Since therefore, it remains for some to enter it. And those who formerly had good news preached to them failed to enter because of disobedience.

He again fixes a day saying, today, after so long a time, just as it has been said before, today, if you shall hear his voice, do not harden your heart. Well, time forbids that I go further with that second warning.

But again, I would urge you to ask, have I acted in disobedience in any realm? And thus hardened my heart. And then when you know that by God's grace, your heart is truly soft toward the Lord, and you are walking in obedience, then concern yourself with those with whom you maintain Christian fellowship and beseech them to examine this passage of the incredible danger of hardening the heart.

When we're talking about revival, we're talking about being in such a relationship with God that there are no barriers that keep him from moving profoundly and beautifully upon us. Let's look briefly at the third of these warning passages.

Dullness of Hearing and Stunted Spiritual Growth

Starting, as I suggested earlier, in chapter five, at verse 11, this being the portion that deals with dullness of hearing, of stunted growth, of sluggishness. Verse 11, concerning him, we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God. And you've come to need milk, not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.

But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. I'm gonna speak in a very blunt fashion. Almost every church where I'm invited to preach, the attendance Sunday morning is vastly larger than the attendance Sunday night.

And the attendance at the prayer meeting, if they still trouble themselves to have one, is much smaller than the attendance Sunday night. And if you talk to those people who never come back for anything other than Sunday morning, it doesn't take very long to observe that for the most part, they are stunted in their growth.

They have no thirst for God. They have no appetite for the word of God. Dullness of hearing and stunted growth go together. The American church is characterized by, now sometimes it can be blamed on dull preaching.

And there is plenty of that, shamefully so. And by the grace of God, that could be changed. It amazes me that a man of 30 years of age with a microphone in front of him can't be heard by the elderly people on the front row.

Not even the choir could hear him if there wasn't a microphone. Now that's understandable, if the gospel is a lot of shabby nonsense. But when you consider who our savior is and his plan for all of his creation, it seems to me we ought to get aroused ourselves and begin to preach in such a way that nobody would dare to fall asleep.

Instead, it's almost as if we urge them to fall asleep. Once in our lives, Maggie and I had an incredible experience. We had a Sunday off. We were in Southern California. We asked a friend if he had a Sunday off where he would go to church.

Well, he said if it were me, I would visit the Crystal Cathedral. That was when that grievously foolish fellow by the name of Schuller was pastor. He said I'd go to, it wasn't then the Crystal Cathedral.

At that time, it was just the drive-in church. But it was on its way to becoming the Crystal Cathedral. In the evening, he said go to Costa Mesa, listen to Chuck Smith at Calvary Chapel. We followed his advice for the first time in our entire lives.

Maggie and I each fell asleep during the sermon. Now, you know how it usually is. One of you falls asleep and the other one gives the elbow. But when we left, we said the whole service was planned for that very purpose.

The platform was way high. You had to be tilted way back just to see up there. The organ played everything in such soothing, oh, my, my, my, even if you weren't tired, you would've gone to sleep in the midst of that atmosphere.

But some of us who never intended to put anybody to sleep do so. There's no burning fire, no genuine passion. Nothing matters enough to even exert yourself. The problem of dullness is a curse upon the American church.

Repentance from Dead Works and Pressing Toward Maturity

But not only does he speak in this passage of dullness, and he does speak indeed critically about it, but then in the next portion of this third warning, it gets complicated and a lot of confusion and disputes have arisen out of the words of chapter six.

Therefore, leaving the elementary teaching about Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works. Did you get that? Not repentance from sin, but repentance from dead works.

Dead works are the curse of the American church. Works that cannot be made alive by the spirit of God and all the millions of people who are relying upon a decision they made for eternal salvation, nothing but a dead work.

The first principle of the gospel, repentance from dead works. Long past time, we got serious about the word of God. We began to give credit to the Holy Spirit. We began to face the fact he's a whole lot wiser than we are, and when he speaks, we better listen.

So, I'm not gonna repeat, says the author, these fundamental doctrines, these elementary matters, repentance from dead works, faith toward God, instruction about washings, laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, eternal judgment, and this we shall do if God permits.

For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance since they again crucify to themselves the son of God and put him to an open shame.

For ground that drinks the rain which often falls upon it and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled receive a blessing from God, but if it yields thorns and thistles and is worthless and close to being cursed and it ends up being burned, but beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you and things that accompany salvation.

Though we are speaking in this way, for God is not so unjust as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward his name in having ministered and still ministering to the saints and we desire that each of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promise of sluggishness.

Faith That Perseveres and Inherits the Promise

Well, I'm in the kingdom now. I'm just going to enjoy life knowing that heaven is assured. Heaven is assured for all those who have faith, but there is no faith if the Lord says repent and you don't repent.

If the Lord says press on and you don't press on. There is no faith if you are sluggish. If you've got faith, you know how vital the kingdom of God is, how urgent that you pour everything you've got into its advancement.

There really is no confusion in the sixth chapter if you'll remember this simple fact. Hebrews has two parts. You can mark out the warning passages and read them in one single sitting and when you put all the warning passages together, there is one beautiful straight arrow.

Doesn't matter how you start. It's how you finish that counts. So all that it says in chapter six, if you seem to have had a good start, but you've become dull and sluggish, you've misinformed yourself, you've deceived yourself.

The believer is one who, according to Hebrews 11 .1, faith gives substance to things that are hoped for. It provides the evidence of things not seen. The believer is the person who is much more affected by the unseen and the hoped for than he is by the world of taste and touch.

Examining Ourselves in Light of the Three Warnings

So let us ask with honesty, where do I stand in terms of these three warnings? Have I somehow slipped into that tragic position that is described in verse one of chapter two where I am simply drifting?

Have I sinned and refused to repent and thus hardened my heart? Have I simply become dull and sluggish? And the eternal matters that so profoundly impact all of life are less consequential to me than the things that I can taste and touch.

Seriousness about revival demands that we pay close attention to these warnings. For to whom much is given, much is required. You have a whole lot more than Abraham had, vastly more than Moses had. Even King David didn't have a fraction of what you've got.

Now the time has come when we must, like men of God, arise and abide by the word of God and call every other believer we know to task and insist that they pay close attention to these warnings. And those of us who are in a position to publicly teach and preach, we need to make certain that everybody understands that to whom much is given, much is required.