Nature of Revival - Part 1 — Richard Owen Roberts

Brother Rubin has used the term repentance, and of course it is a term of great consequence, much neglected. I was in some meetings in the Omaha area some time ago when at the end of the meetings three of the men were driving me to the airport and they said to me, do you realize that you have contradicted much of what we believe?

Well, I said that certainly doesn't concern me. But what in particular are you agitated about? Well, they said what you said about repentance. You don't seem to understand that repentance is a work, and we're not saved by works, but by faith.

Why, we just completed a training course in evangelism, and in the training manual it said don't ever mention the word repentance when you're witnessing to people, because it will only confuse them, lead them to think there's something they must do, when in truth we are saved solely by faith in what Christ has done.

Repentance and Faith in Salvation

Now, if there were just one or two people in the world that believed such wickedness as that, it would be a relief, we could shrug our shoulders and pass it off and think nothing more of it. But the sad truth is that a very substantial percentage of the Church in America do not believe that repentance has anything to do with salvation.

They say that has to do with the Christian life, that it's an optional matter, that if one wants to become really serious and go deep into the things of God, then they have to consider repentance. But to be saved, no mention of repentance is appropriate.

Do you think I made that up? I wished I did. It is so perfectly absurd that I would like to think that someone who was just fooling, just kidding around, came up with a ridiculous viewpoint like that.

But you see, part of the problem is that there are many who don't understand that there is an unbreakable link between repentance and faith. It is impossible to believe without repentance, and it is absurd to repent and not believe.

For repentance is turning from, and faith is turning toward, and the two must be kept together. And no one can embrace Jesus Christ in faith and do so without having repented, because we are all going the wrong direction.

And in repentance we turn from the wrong direction and in faith to the right. Well, that's elementary to some of you, but that is primary doctrine in much of the Church where such confusion reigns. But let me begin this morning first by a word of instruction, and then picking up on what I just said.

The word of instruction is simple. We come from very different backgrounds. I doubt that any of you have had a pilgrimage like my own. And some of you are in denominational settings or in areas of theology, theological thought, that are very contradictory to my own.

And I am bound to say something that will be offensive to you or troubling to you. I understand that. No, I'm not going to shy away from it. If I'm right and you're wrong, I better tell you something.

But I say that with good humor. What I really want to say is, please do not hesitate to interrupt. Be polite about it. Give me opportunity to finish a paragraph, but if you have something you want to say by way of an objection, or if you feel it would be helpful to have some clarification or further explanation, do feel the liberty to call for that.

Now, I am getting old, I admit that, but by the grace of God, not so old that I have started to wander and lose my way. And if you interrupt kindly with a raised hand and give me opportunity, as I said, to finish the thought that I'm on, I think by the grace of God I'll be able to return to where I was when you interrupted, and if it will help.

Now, don't interrupt because you have a mean spirit. If you do have a mean spirit, you obviously need revival, and that would be a good time to keep silent. But I'm quite sincere, if you have something that you feel you need further information on, or something you want to insert, feel that liberty.

Repentance from Sin and Dead Works

But now let me come back to what I was saying about repentance and its mandatory nature. We are in danger, those of us who believe in the mandatory nature of repentance, are in danger of confining our thoughts concerning repentance to sin.

Now, did you hear what I said? We are in danger of confining our thoughts to sin. Now, we surely must repent of sin, but to repent of sin is not adequate. We are also to repent of dead works. Let me draw your attention straightway this morning to the book of Hebrews, chapter 6.

Admittedly a most difficult passage for many, but look, if you will please, at this passage, and let me draw something very specific pertaining to repentance to your attention. While you are turning to Hebrews 6, may I take a moment to lay out an explanation of the book of Hebrews that some of you may have missed.

The book of Hebrews is constructed in a very unique and special way. It is like no other book in the Bible. You've learned that, no doubt, in just reading it. But it is immensely helpful, I believe, to understand the structure of the book of Hebrews.

Christ's Supremacy in Hebrews

For the book of Hebrews, in a most magnificent fashion, exalts the Lord Jesus Christ, and does so through a series of contrasts. Christ is contrasted with the law given by angels, with Moses and the whole Mosaic covenant, with Abraham, with the priesthood, with the sacrificial system, even with angels.

I have not given those several words in proper sequence in Hebrews, just suggesting that in every case Christ is contrasted with those matters, and always shown to be infinitely above everything he is contrasted with.

Now that constitutes the central theological theme of Hebrews, this repeated contrasting of Christ with something out of the old covenant, and demonstrating the superiority of Christ over everything that preceded him.

But at the same time that this series of contrast is being presented, there is something else occurring. I feel as if what I'm about to do is almost juvenile, and yet it may help some of you to catch exactly the spirit of Hebrews.

Did you ever send a child to summer camp? I remember the first time we sent our boy to summer camp, and I remember how it was when he returned home. And he was telling us all about his experience at summer camp.

Whoa, dad, I tell you, the fishing was, oh my, what wonderful fishing, and swimming, and the counselors, and he just was all over everywhere prancing about, dancing, as he was telling us about this wonderful summer camp experience.

He would start on a line of thought and interrupt himself, he was so excited about the whole matter. Now there's a sense in which the book of Hebrews is like that. Here is this glorious presentation of doctrine, but the author of Hebrews, we don't know his name.

Some are opinionated on the matter, but nobody really knows who wrote Hebrews. But he is under an immense burden for the people to whom he writes. So while he is lifting up and exalting Christ and elevating him above all else, he is constantly, it seems, interrupting himself.

And the interruptions all take the form of warning. Let me call your attention with a bit of care here to this process that I have just described. Notice in chapter 1 of Hebrews how Christ is contrasted with angels.

But when you come to chapter 2, before he has completed this contrast with angels, we read in verse 1, for this reason, we must pay closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it, for if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?

After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed by those who heard God also bearing witness with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to his own will.

Hebrews' Warnings and the Necessity of Perseverance

A very severe warning in the opening part of the book. Indeed, dear friends, those of you who preach, you ought by all means to preach through Hebrews, because we are living at a time when the doctrinal portion and the warning portions of Hebrews are urgently needed.

You see, among most of us there is the absurd notion that it's how you start that counts, that a good beginning in the Christian life is everything. But that is a falsehood straight from hell. It doesn't much matter how you start.

It's how you finish that really counts. And we have literally millions who appear to have made a good beginning, who do not make a good ending. But, you see, they have been led to think that having started well, all is well.

Now the point is quite clear. Hebrews is written to a body of Jewish believers who have made a wonderful beginning. But some of you who have been students of Hebrews are aware of the fact that they came under tremendous persecution.

We know many things that literally were happening at the time. We know that while these professed believers were attending the Christian meetings, their homes were being ransacked systematically by the opponents of Christ.

We know that Nero would take these Christians in groups and he staged these huge and lavish garden parties. And we know that he would mount them on crosses and then cover them with inflammable materia and set them on fire.

And these Christians served as lanterns at his garden party. We know that many of these Jewish believers came from families that were not believers. And the families were saying to them, you have done a stupid thing.

It was absurd for you to abandon the old covenant, the covenant as they would have regarded it, and to have followed this Jesus of Nazareth who is a proven heretic. Now use your brain and come back to the truth before it's too late.

Come back, come back, come back. All kinds of things were happening that were beckoning them back. And had they gone back, what would they have gone back to? Hebrews makes it plain that the old covenant was a shadow or a type of that which was to come.

Had they gone back, they would have gone back to nothing. But because when Christ came, he was all, he was everything. He was the fulfillment of all that the shadow or the type of the old law suggested.

So to leave everything and to go back to nothing would have been indeed a tragedy of vast proportion. And yet they were being beckoned back. And the indications are some were feeling the drawing power of that beckoning and were being attracted backward instead of forward.

So the warnings, as I suggested, appearing over and over and over in Hebrews warning them, don't go back. Now that's desperately needed in our day. And that basic understanding that I've suggested that it doesn't matter how you start, but how you finish the Christian life.

But I give you that as background to what we're going to read now in the third warning. Now just for the sake of those who have never marked these things out, the first warning, as I pointed out a moment ago, is found in chapters 2, 1 to 4.

The second warning begins at verse 7 of chapter 3. It is an extended warning, and it runs on through verse 13 of chapter 4. I will linger a moment over this second warning simply to point out these words to you.

In verse 6 of chapter 3, but Christ was faithful as a son over his house. Whose house we are. Now get this. Whose house we are if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end.

Did you get those words? We are of Christ's household if, and let's be sure we understand what follows the word if, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end. And in that word confidence, hold fast our confidence, refers to the bold, open, ongoing proclamation, Jesus Christ is Lord.

Now you see there are many who have been taught that if we believe in our hearts that Jesus Christ is Lord and confess with our mouths we are saved. And what they are led to believe is an error in connection with that biblical statement.

They are led to believe that if once they believe in their heart, and once they confess with their mouth, they are saved. But that's not true. The faith that saves is not faith that once gripped us, but faith that grips us throughout the remainder of our lives.

The confession of the mouth is not a one-time, this is the baptismal pool over here sir, it's not a one-time dip in the pool and an open confession by a one-time dip. The confession has to begin somewhere, but it can't end in the waters of baptism, or it can't end with the first testimony.

There has to be the ongoing, open, bold proclamation throughout life, Jesus Christ is Lord. Faith, in other words, doesn't happen in a point of time any more than repentance happens in a point of time.

Repentance and faith are ongoing, and once they start they must continue through life. So we are of Christ's household if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end. Now I don't want to get bogged down theologically and upset some of you by being too particular, but we misuse the word saved.

If we were to speak correctly, those of us who truly are in a state of repentance and faith, we would say we are being saved. But you see there are many who are referring to some experience in the past, where their present life has nothing to do with that past experience, and they say, well I was saved.

And they name some time when they had this open confession and this moment of faith. But my point is that the book of Hebrews is a book that is making it crystal clear it doesn't matter how you start it, it's how you finish that counts.

Now in the second warning, I've read verse 6, which is preliminary to the warning, but if you will glance down at verse 14. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end.

So the great focus of the second warning is the mandatory nature of pressing on, pressing on, pressing on unceasingly in the pursuit of Christ. I shall speak more of that, Lord willing, later in the day.

Repentance from Dead Works in Hebrews 6

But I began these brief words about Hebrews by telling you I wanted to read something pertaining to repentance from chapter 6, and so now if you will turn back to 6 and notice these words. Therefore, leaving the elementary teaching about Christ.

Now I should tell you that the third warning begins in chapter 5 at verse 11, and continues through verse 12 of chapter 6. So in short, I'm plunging now into the middle of the third warning when I read to you again from verse 1.

Therefore, leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity. Not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God. But of instruction and washing, and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.

He singles out six foundational doctrines. But we concern ourselves now with only one. Repentance from dead works. How many of you men who preach have preached upon repentance from dead works? Well, one.

Another. Thank God, several. That's encouraging. I've been in places where it appears that nobody ever even heard of the matter, let alone preached upon it. Now what would be an illustration of a dead work to be repented of?

Yes, absolutely, sister. Something done in the energy of the flesh. For instance, a man could lead in a public prayer meeting, and he could be praying in the energy of the flesh. And he would need to repent of that dead work.

It's rather shocking, but important to realize that even praying publicly can be nothing but a dead work. Others, if they were to repent of dead works, would need to repent of their having accepted Christ.

Now listen carefully, lest you go away saying, that poor Mr. Roberts is to be pitied as a heretic. For many, when they say they have accepted Christ, all they've done is to acknowledge historic facts concerning Christ to be true.

Now Christ does not require my acceptance of him. My great burden ought to be his acceptance of me. It's vastly more important that he accept me than that I give mental assent to him and accept the facts about him.

There are some who deliberately have accepted Christ, as they say, as their Savior, and yet they have willfully rejected him as their Lord. They say in their hearts, I will not have this man rule over me.

And yet they think they can be saved from hell by accepting him, even though they reject his authority in their life. They need to repent of that dead work. But it's not my purpose this morning to explore all of the realms in which dead works affect the Church.

But even worship can be a dead work. The whole crowd can fill the sanctuary and have a wonderful time, just go away glowing with joy and excitement. Oh, we worship the Lord, and yet the whole crowd could have missed completely the Lord, and never even came near him.

There is that possibility, isn't there? Have you not yourself sometimes participated in the singing of these great praise choruses, and yet your own mind was somewhere vastly removed, not even thinking for a moment about the Lord whose praises you were offering with your voice?

Repentance from dead works. So there has been in our day terrible neglect of preaching on repentance from sin, and even more terrible neglect of preaching on repentance from dead works. But then I would add, dear friends, that a grievous error, or a grievous area, I meant to say, where repentance is needed, is repentance from false viewpoints, from erroneous doctrines.

Repentance from False Doctrine and Revival

Much of what is being taught and proclaimed in our day as the truth of the Bible is a lie. Last evening, some of you were here, I indicated that back in the 1800s a viewpoint began to develop that said, Revival is nothing other than the right use of the right means.

And the author of that grievously wrong viewpoint said that revival is something like agriculture. A farmer plows the field, and then he plants the seed, and he cultivates, and then at the appropriate time he reaps the harvest.

And what he said was that's the nature of revival. Do we need a revival? Then we ought to go about it like farmers. We ought to plow up the field, and we ought to plant the seed, and we ought to eliminate the weeds, and if there's a shortage of moisture, we ought to add some moisture, and in time we'll have the great harvest of revival.

That's a lie. As I pointed out last night, revival comes from the sovereign hand of God. There is nothing any of us can do to force the hand of God. There are things for us to do. We can repent, we can pray, we can pour out our hearts longing to the Lord.

But if revival comes, it will come because he determines to send it, not because we determine to have it. Now this may not seem consequential to you, but let me take a moment to lay out a little history.

The Solemn Assembly in Early American Christianity

You know it has been said of our day, of our generation, that we have lost our way because we do not know history. Let's go back to the earliest days in which our forefathers were populating this continent.

I don't want to take advantage of you by exalting my own position, but I happen to be, and you may want to forgive me for this, I happen to be a Congregationalist. Now that may not mean a thing to some of you, but to others of you, you know that the people who settled in New England, the Pilgrims, were Congregationalists.

They fled the old country because of the terrible persecution of Christians, and because they were not allowed to worship God according to the dictates of their own hearts and conscience. And so they landed on the shores of Massachusetts, and they planted the Plymouth Bay colony.

And in their hearts they fought. They were establishing a nation in covenant relationship with God. That was in their hearts. You read the early documents from the 1600s, it's crystal clear. They didn't consider themselves the equal of old Israel, but they felt themselves called of God to establish a new Israel, a nation under God.

They sought the face of God. They practiced fasting and prayer. Every time there was some registration of God's anger against them, a fire, a flood, a great storm, the death of some young prominent leader, whatever the incident, every time they thought that God was registering his anger against them, they called a solemn assembly, and they gathered together to seek the face of God and to inquire what it was that had offended God, and how they could put that sin away and enter again into a harmonious relationship with the Lord.

That began, as I implied, in the 1600s, before the nation was actually formulated. I know that this won't interest most of you, but it may interest a few. If you were to study the books and the pamphlets published from the earliest days of the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, you would see that an amazing percentage of those books and pamphlets were devoted to the theme of the solemn assembly.

I don't know how many of you understand the biblical concept of the solemn assembly, so I'm going to take a moment to fill in just in case there are some who don't understand this matter. I've spoken to you about repentance, and I've specified three areas where repentance must occur in connection with sin, in connection with dead works, and in connection with false teaching.

But I need now to add this important matter. We must learn to see the difference between personal repentance of personal sin and corporate repentance of corporate sin. I know some of you have been exposed to this matter.

A few of you, at least, have seen some of our publications that deal with this subject. A little pamphlet that first appeared entitled The Solemn Assembly spells this out hurriedly, but I think with accuracy.

We later published an entire book called Sanctify the Congregation, which showed how to deal with corporate sin. But now I'm asking each of you to quickly catch up in your thinking on this matter. Dear friends, very basic to the understanding of revival is the realization that in the Old Testament revival is not ordinarily directed toward individuals.

It is a corporate matter. Now take the most familiar, or what I think is the most familiar passage on the subject of revival in all the Old Testament, 2 Chronicles 7 .14. Is that personal? Well, no one could read that with any care and say, well, that's personal, that affects me.

No, no. If my people, plural, who are called by my name shall humble themselves, plural. You go all the way through that passage and you'll see that it is clearly a passage dealing with the nation. Now that is not to say that there is no personal aspect to revival.

It is only to say to focus on the personal and to miss the corporate is grievous indeed. Now, dear friends, in our approaching the subject of revival today, and we're going to give the day to, I hope, the most serious consideration of it we can possibly give, I must say to you that it is urgent that we all understand that first and foremost what we're speaking of is corporate turning from sin to God.

The corporate blessing of God coming down upon his people. But you see, many, many churches have never faced the problem of their corporate sins. They have never practiced corporate repentance. Now, I don't speak belittlingly or critically, but in many of our churches the way a service is ended is by people coming to the altar and dealing with personal sins.

Well, there's certainly a time and a place for that. But if that's as far as it ever goes, we have missed something of tremendous consequence. If you study the judgments of God as they are revealed in the scriptures, it is more than clear that the judgments of God against the corporate body are vastly more numerous than the judgments of God against individuals.

Revival as Corporate Repentance and Renewal

So as we're approaching this theme of revival, we've got to have it clear in our minds that we need revival not merely as individuals, though I would expect every honest individual hired here would gladly acknowledge their need of revival.

But what we need is corporate revival. I don't think I'll offend the pastor by saying, this church needs revival, my church needs revival, your church needs revival, this state needs revival, this nation needs revival, this world needs revival.

These matters we surely must understand and woe to us if we do not understand these things. So I've suggested to you this necessity of repentance that involves sin, that involves dead works, that involves erroneous doctrine, and then I've broadened it to say that it must be not merely personal, but it must be corporate.

And if it is not corporate, then it will be vastly less consequential than what is so desperately needed. The sense that I have is that the understanding of revival that exists among us here, and certainly that exists in the Church across the land, is much too low.

We've taken a position that is inconsequential in comparison with the immensity of the need. And so for a few moments what I'd like to do, I've brought along some notes to help me to do this in a systematic way, but for a few moments I want to dwell on the subject of revival, and just very plainly, my hope, my purpose, my yearning, my desire, my prayer, is that your sense of the consequence of revival will grow immensely.

I don't think you would be here if you didn't have some sense of the need of revival. But I do think it's possible to be here and to have less than an adequate sense of the need. Now the degree to which we feel the need is definitely going to affect our conduct, our prayer, and our promotion of this thing.

The Language of Salvation and Revival

So what I've done, as I implied a moment ago, is to put in front of me a list of terms that have been used in the Church on this wonderful theme of revival. Now I don't need to tell those of you who love the Lord how precious such words as grace, forgiveness, justification, redemption, propitiation, blood atonement, mercy seat, throne of grace, and many others like them are.

Don't you find those wonderful terms? Doesn't it delight your soul to just feast upon the language of Scripture? We have a book that Reuben has been offering for sale in this area entitled, Salvation in Full Color.

And what it is, is a group of twenty sermons that I selected, not my sermons, but sermons that I selected from the period that we call the Great Awakening period in America, from the 1740 period, essentially.

And they're sermons having to do with the great words of salvation. Now some of you wouldn't consider it a great word, but shame on you. Election. Some of you are troubled by that word. You just struggle with it.

But that's to your shame. It's a biblical word. No man made it up. Atonement. Regeneration. Repentance, which I've stressed. Faith. Adoption. Oh, what a lovely time we could have just thinking together about the biblical theme of adoption.

How those of us who were aliens from God, strangers and outcasts, have been adopted into the family of God and made joint heirs with Jesus Christ. Well, that book, as I said, takes twenty of these great terms, and there's a marvelous sermon on each of the terms by one of the great giants of the faith.

Well, readily we delight in such terms, those of us who love the Lord. But now what we're going to do is to think of the language of revival. And I repeat what I said already. I'd just like to hope that your heart will swell with anticipation and joy and enthusiasm as you consider the language that has been used pertaining to this wonderful subject.

Revival.