Consider Revival I: Nineveh

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Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm John Snyder, and with me is a special guest, Steve Crampton.

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And Steve, you're going to be with us for a few weeks, and we're going to be looking at one theme, but we'll look at it from three different angles.

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And Steve has been a friend of ours for many years. Whenever you ask me how long you've been at the church,

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I'm always wrong. So how long have you been at Christ Church? It's 18 and a half years,

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I think. Yeah, and so the church has been around 21. Right. And if you ask me, I would have said, you're getting close to nine.

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So maybe that's a good thing. It's hard. Like, you know, your family's so pleasant that it doesn't seem you've been here forever.

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Yeah. It is remarkable how the time runs by. Yeah, and we haven't gotten any more gray hair since we first met.

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No, not at all. Okay. I want Steve to introduce himself, and then to introduce our topic.

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So tell us a little bit about yourself. I don't know quite where to start. I practice law for a living,

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I've been a believer for, I think, over 30 years now, and to some degree wandering in what

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I would call a bit of a spiritual wilderness, in the sense that churches that missed the focus of Christ for so many years and in so many different ways, and then to sort of come into an oasis where Christ is unveiled, and we can really feast on the things of God.

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So in many respects, you mentioned the nine years, it seems still like we're at the beginning of this journey in so many ways.

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So it's a wonderful walk. And Steve is also a member of Media Gratia's board, and very supportive and helpful anytime we need him.

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So Steve, I mean, because of your job throughout the years, we've watched you have to be kind of right, thrown right in the middle of some of the most disheartening cultural shifts.

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You know, in the last 20 years, certainly it's moved at a pace that's shocking, and it can produce, you know, a grim despair, it can produce a cynicism, and you know, we can become hardened, but you haven't.

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And I think, you know, it's been very encouraging to see you not do that, while not hoping merely in the legal system, but hoping in the

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Lord, and doing your work as unto the Lord. So, for a man constantly facing what could be very disheartening situations, what do you think is a key theme for us to focus on?

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Well John, the worst things become in the world. It seems, just as in Scripture we have so many examples, the only place we can turn is to the

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Lord for the words of life, and so for me, I have been experiencing,

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I'd say, a growing burden for a revival to come back upon our land.

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It's been many, many years, as you know better than most. And so what I'm hoping to do is maybe turn our focus a little bit to look at scriptural instances where, even in ancient times, we see the

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Lord move in a mighty way on a people. Even where we want to look here first is in the book of Jonah, and to move upon a people that wasn't really even seeking

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Him, it was a godless pagan nation like Nineveh, a city. Yeah, and we'll get to that in a minute, but what an encouraging picture.

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A reluctant, uncaring preacher, a pagan, ignorant people, and what an extraordinary turning that we see there.

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Yes. When we talk about revival, we want to make sure that we're all on the same page, so let's just kind of hit some things right up front.

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Revival is merely the extraordinary impacts of the extraordinary nearness of the

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Lord. So God among His people, but in an unusual way, producing extraordinary effects.

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So we think of, you know, the presence of the Lord in His essential deity.

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He is everywhere at once, and no matter where we go, He's there. But we know as believers that we long for something more than that.

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So then there is that what we might call a covenanted presence, that because of the finished work of our

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Mediator in Christ, we have a right to a daily, in a sense, face -to -face walk with our

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King. But even that, there is in the Scripture, and throughout

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Christian history, there is something more. There are times where God seems to give us that covenanted presence, but in such an extraordinary degree that we feel that a whole another category really would be appropriate.

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Yes. So we're talking about revival, or what has been called awakenings, or even one of my favorite phrases is a season of grace.

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And we generally see the impact beginning with God's people. So God's people are awakened out of that sluggish indifference, and suddenly the truths that we verbalize and that we accept intellectually, suddenly these become things that grip us.

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And then, working out from a revived people, then life comes through the

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Gospel and the changed lives of the messengers to the culture around us. So sometimes this happens on a big scale, like the

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Great Awakening, and sometimes it just happens in a church, you know. But the

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Lord is wonderfully gracious, and we see these throughout Christian history, and they're very encouraging to us in days like these.

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Hear, hear. So Jonah, I think, makes for a very interesting study in that the messenger himself is not what we would have looked for, humanly speaking.

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Instead, you have this prophet called by God who famously runs in the opposite direction of where the

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Lord wants to send him. So chapter 1, of course, deals with that whole running away, and I want to focus here more directly on chapter 2, where Jonah is rescued miraculously out of the great fish, and finally turns and basically submits to the

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Lord. And so you have this remarkable description in just a few verses in chapter 2, even of him describing his experience inside the great fish, and saying,

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I called out to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me. So there's that immediate turning from self, finally giving up, right, coming to the end of ourselves here, and turning to God, as he, of course, always wanted him to do.

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And I found particularly remarkable, too, in the midst of the description of all the waves surrounding and overwhelming him, this wrapping of the seaweed, and no question that he'd be losing his breath and so forth.

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And yet in in verse 4 of chapter 2, yet I shall again look upon your holy temple, as if somehow the

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Lord reminded him that he is the Lord's, and there is an end here to all of his distress.

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And in verse 6, yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my

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God. So that experience that I think all of us go through as believers, where in the book of Jonah, I think the imagery is he's going down, as he goes down into the ship, he goes down away from his called direction, and here now you finally turn, and he's looking up and turning to God again, that kind of poetic description here.

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And then in verse 9, but I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you.

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So we sort of come all the way out of the pit, so to speak. What I have vowed I will pay.

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Salvation belongs to the Lord. Just a wonderful, as I say, snapshot, very focused synopsis of,

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I think, the Lord now getting a hold of his prophet and preparing him for what's to come.

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So it has been said, John, that in most revivals there is this long period of preparation for the messengers and for how that revival is to come about.

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Is that your understanding and experience in your own studies of revivals?

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I think when we discuss, you know, we see it here, we see it throughout particularly 2

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Chronicles, it's full of seasons of extraordinary returning to the Lord. The New Testament, really, in one sense, from Pentecost forward, it only covers a short few decades, but that, we could say, is the great revival.

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The Reformation, Puritanism, the Great Awakening, you know, evangelical revival. So we have a lot of examples, and one of the things that Edwards, our chief theologian of revival, said was that with revivals there is a consistent appearance of suddenness in our perspective, and of variety.

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But if we understand from God's perspective, I think that there is a sense in which there's preparation.

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Here, with this very imperfect preacher and very imperfect motives, still there is preparation.

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There's a turning of a heart back to God. And when we look at, you know, whether it's the

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Puritans and, you know, being put into prison or laboring and not seeing that much fruit, but then in the next generation such an explosion of, you know, it sweeps through England, Scotland, Wales, you know,

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America, on the continent. So I think that probably our best understanding would be that God delights to use messengers that reflect

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Him, that would not call attention away from Him. Yes. So when we're praying for revival, when we're wanting to be used in some measure, whether it's the ordinary work of the

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Lord or the extraordinary, I think it's just a matter of integrity that we would labor to be the kind of people that God could use, so that our prayers and our lives aren't at odds.

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You know, we pray for revival but we continue self -absorbed. Right. So if you...let me just give a couple examples from history.

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Sometimes the suddenness shows up in the effectiveness, but not in the godliness. In other words, a person may have had a long witness of a very solid godly life, but their preaching or their efforts seem to be somewhat ineffective.

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And then when God draws near, that clean sword in the hand of the

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Lord suddenly is wielded with extraordinary impact. So in Wales, in the 1858 -1859 revival, there was a man named

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Edward Morgan, and he had heard about the revival in America, and it was occurring also in Ireland, and then, you know,

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Wales and England. But in Wales, there were a couple of leaders. Edward Morgan was the more theologically careful.

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Morgan was a very godly, very consistent pastor with not anything extraordinary to report.

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And it grieved him, and he cried out for revival for Wales for a long time. But he said that he woke up one morning, and it was like his preaching had been so changed.

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He said...he used this very vivid description. It was like, God came upon him like a tiger. You know, we think of the

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Old Testament, the Spirit of the Lord coming on the prophets, and that's how it felt to him. Suddenly, his preaching had extraordinary impact.

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Not just in his church, but the whole region. After about a year or so of that, it left him.

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And he really agonized for a while. Is this because of my sin?

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Was I not grateful? Was I careless? Was I proud? And he could never again find that level of impact.

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And he never really found a satisfactory answer, except that in the sovereign mercy of the

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Lord, God drew near to the land, accomplished His work, and then God withdrew that extraordinary work.

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But a godly man. Another example is in Scotland, a very godly man named Robe in Campbellsling, who preached, and he was called...we've

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mentioned this before, a long time back in one of our podcasts, he was called the ale minister, because the men in town preferred to skip church and go to the pub and get a pint of ale instead of listening to old boring

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Robe rattle on. And the women who were better behaved would show up at church, and the children who were forced.

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But there came a season in the early 1740s in Campbellsling, Scotland, and in Glasgow, that there was such an extraordinary nearness of the

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Lord, and it began with this man and another pastor, and his preaching suddenly transformed congregations, and it was the

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Lord. But one of my favorite pictures of God's preparing a person would be

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George Whitefield, converted while studying for the ministry in Oxford, very ill for months because of the conviction, it just trashed him, you know, his physical health was ruined for a while.

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So he goes and lives above a bookseller, who's a Christian, who lets

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Whitefield have Matthew Henry's commentaries, which Whitefield could never have afforded. The Greek New Testament, the

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Hebrew Old Testament, an English Bible, and Matthew Henry's commentary.

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And for months Whitefield said, I stayed on my knees with these books spread before me, getting to know

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God for the first time really as a Christian now, pouring over hours, six, eight hours a day.

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And we can see God using that, because never again did Whitefield have that kind of freedom to do that.

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And in one case, in particular, one of the New Years, he and Wesley and others got together, and they had a prayer meeting on New Year's Eve, and it lasted all night, and it was one of those extraordinary events where the

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Lord drew close, and they did not realize the passage of time, and next thing they know they'd been praying for, you know, five, six, seven, eight hours, and the day, you know, the light came up, the sun rose, and they were filled with such a fresh fervor, and it really was in some ways a milestone for the

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Great Awakening. So a lot of different ways that God has prepared people. And, you know, you talk about that purifying of the messenger, and I think there's a danger, at least in my own life, to think, well,

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I almost have to achieve the sinless perfection in order for anything to God to use me in a way like this.

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But I look at Jonah, and I say, well, God can use imperfect messengers, and does, right?

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You don't see, and of course it's a very short account, but you don't see that extraordinary preparation in Jonah, you just have that kind of a brief account.

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And then it seems to me, looking at the message itself is also just extraordinary here.

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I think about, I mean, Whitefield was known for his eloquence, among others, and you look at a

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Jonah message, "'Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.'" I mean, not exactly what you'd call a model for reaching a skeptical, hostile audience, right?

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And even his attitude, I mean, the Scripture records that he wasn't really wanting to see revival, unlike so many men who the

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Lord has used that are on their knees crying out for the people, seeing the ravages of sin.

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Jonah is, at best, indifferent to his audience, right? And yet the

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Lord used this message in such a marvelous way. When you see the response, first of the people of Nineveh, and then as it gets to the king himself, and the king goes out and throws off his robes, takes on the sackcloth, throws the ashes on, calls for the fast, not only for himself and his household, but for the entire kingdom, or the entire city, and all its animals, and livestock, even.

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And for many days they are out there, pagans, who had, as I recall in the history of Nineveh, it had like 15 different gates into this magnificent walled city, and I think every gate, certainly most of them, represented a different God, you know?

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They were so far into the pagan, lost worship of idols that, again, humanly speaking, you'd say, this is the last place you'd look for a revival.

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And yet the Lord, in his great mercy, visits upon this people such a move that they are turned, and I mean, there is a picture of wonderful repentance, and their own calling out by name to the

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God of Scripture, the Hebrew God. Just a marvelous picture. Yeah, what a contrast, you can imagine, with perhaps the

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Jews of the day. Jewish leaders, a Jewish king, a Jewish priest, you know, a

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Jewish prince, having grown accustomed to the mercy of the Lord, having kind of become hard, unresponsive.

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We certainly see an unresponsive Jew in our messenger here, Jonah, very hardened toward the souls of others because of his, you know, nationalism and his hatred of this cruel people.

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So what a contrast between the wholehearted turning of a city to God from top down, even though, and as you mentioned, making animals fast and making animals wear sackcloth.

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Well, God doesn't command that. And you know, and you can imagine the Jew looking and kind of chuckling, like, what's that?

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They have no idea. They don't know the God of the Bible. They don't have an Old Testament. They don't have chapter after chapter explaining the sacrificial system, and how

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God, through the death of a coming Lamb, would cover their sins. They have no reason to hope.

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In the message itself, there's no if. Right. So, with such little fuel, they wholeheartedly turn to the living

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God, and they turn their backs on their idols, and the Jews of the day, with such resources at their fingertips of truth, they're sluggish.

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And then I think of us, you know. Exactly where I was going to go. We have the New Covenant, which dwarfs the

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Old Covenant. It's the flower of the Old Covenant. The Old Covenant was the root system. We have the fruit. It's so far superior, the writer of Hebrews says, that the

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Old, which was glorious, has no glory when laid aside. The New, it just pales.

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And do I wake up and throw open a New American Standard Bible, and look at, like, you know, a commentary on...and

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is my heart shamed by the pace of the

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Ninevites? Yes. You know, a good place to stop at times and just ask ourselves, what about me?

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Yes. And I guess I would take with that, too, you mentioned the commentary, and we pull out our electronic devices, and you have at your fingertips such a wealth of information and input, some of it really, really great.

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And it's almost like, are we at a point where we have too much knowledge and not enough heart, sort of, given, laid open to the

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Lord? Where, like the Israelites in Jonah's day, we know it all.

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We already know this God, and we've been there and sort of done that, and now we're completely jaded to his marvelous moving upon us again today.

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Yeah, I think jaded is a great word for that, because it's really, it's unapplied truth. Unapplied truth, yes.

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You know, and so, and I don't know about you, but how I would describe it in my own life is when

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I learn new concepts, you know, and there's an intellectual appreciation, and oftentimes, because we're believers, there's a heart appreciation.

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You know, I'm moved emotionally by the new things I'm reading. Sure. But if it remains unapplied, it kind of becomes plastic, you know, like a mannequin.

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Beautiful to distance, no real use. Yes. Steve, we're not saying here that if we do

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A, B, and C, God has to do D. That if we do a formula, we can create revival.

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But certainly, there are lessons for us in preparing this soil of our own heart, our homes, our churches.

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So what are some of the, you know, the main points you would want to make to a person wanting to prepare themselves so that when they cry out to the

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God who brings these seasons of grace, there's an integrity there. Yeah. Yeah. I think we want to avoid the

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Jonah syndrome, where we have to be thrown into the mouth of the great fish before we get there.

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But I think that initial turning with a wholeheartedness to God, sincerely wishing to draw near to Him.

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Scripture says in Amos, you know, can two walk together unless they are agreed.

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We have this tendency, and I think, you know, there's an American sin, if we can call it that, too, where we sort of think we know better, and we can take a lot of scriptural truths, and they accord with our general idea of morality or something, but others don't, and we want to sort of set them aside or really bury them, put them behind us.

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And to really come in that humble way and turn to God and say, what is your standard of righteousness?

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Where is it that my own life has fallen so far short, right?

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And so to get right with God as a first blush response is absolutely critical, it seems to me.

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And then to also gather with other like -minded believers in crying out to the

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Lord. I believe, and you can correct me historically, but there is no revival without His people calling out on His name.

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Again, not that we can force God to act, but until our hearts are tender enough that we really turn to the one source of life and hope, there isn't going to be a movement of God.

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And the wonderful thing is, it seems to me historically, that God does kind of prepare the ground.

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He sends His Spirit into His people and draws them and kind of creates that hunger and thirst that we have to have before He'll act anyway.

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Yeah, and a couple of, I think, just helpful tools that the Lord has put in our hands.

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One is the great tool, the Scripture. 2 Chronicles is a book full of the cycles of maybe decline and then gracious restoration.

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So generally when we think of revival, I would think of Reformation, you know, so the repentance, returning to the

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God of the Bible as He really describes Himself. That begins to bleed over into every area of life.

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Reformation and extraordinary reviving, you know, extraordinary impact. We didn't mention this at the beginning, but one way to think of revival, when we think of the extraordinary fruit of God drawing near, it is the same fruit that we see always in the work of the

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New Covenant. So there's conviction, and there's life, and there's peace, and there's sanctification, and you know, and there's exposing of sin and healing of hearts, but it's on a level that's unheard of before, perhaps.

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So in my mind, an illustration that comes up easy for me is, when we lived in Wales, my wife and I, and two of our kids,

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I used to go for a walk on a little hill called the Wynolt. I'm not saying that right in the Welsh, but I'm supposed to speak a little.

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It doesn't sound understandable anyway. Yeah, right, so, and if I did, no Welshman would admit

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I said it right, you know? So this is a hill on the outside of the city of Cardiff, and so I would go, it's a protected area, you know, woods, and so I would go and walk through the forest, and just find a place to sit and pray.

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One morning I went out, I hadn't been out in a couple of weeks perhaps, and I went out, and the entire forest floor was covered in purple bluebells.

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I mean, everywhere, and it looked like 10 ,000 landscapers had invaded the forest and made the most beautiful purple carpet, you know?

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Overnight. Yeah, yeah. Now, compare that to landscaping. Landscaping is where we do the hard work, and we plant some flowers, and we're grateful for the growth.

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Sure. But what I saw that day was more like revival. It's like, God does in a moment, you know, what we feel like it would take a lifetime to do.

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The old authors used to say, a nation was born in a moment. So, normal work of the

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Christian, sanctification, evangelism, prayer, laboring, teaching, and we do see plants growing, and we're grateful, but then there are times where the need is so great, we cry out, and we say,

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God, the normal pace of your work just will not do. Right. We have gone so far away from you.

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Like now. Will you come, and in a moment, do what we could not do in a lifetime? So, wonderful picture there.

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We can find that when we go back to the Scriptures. Look at the passages where God describes who may draw near to Him, and take those seriously.

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I mean, we have many wonderful examples in places like the Chronicles, but if we want principles, and not just examples, we can look at those passages where God describes who may draw near to Him, like James chapter 4.

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Draw near to me, and I will draw near to you. And then there's a whole list of things that are expected.

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Another great tool, and this is not on the par with Scripture, this is just a tool, and that is actually

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Richard Owen Roberts, years ago, wrote a pamphlet called, Lord, I Agree, and this is based on the verse that you mentioned from Amos, where, how can two people walk together if they're disagreed?

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I mean, if you're heading south, and I'm heading north, we don't stay on the street very long, you know, we go different ways.

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So, agreeing with God is a significant step forward, and what

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Roberts did was he took twelve significant, what he felt were just key topics or themes for the

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Christian, so it's a 12 -week study in a pamphlet, and each week has five subtopics under a main topic.

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So if we're thinking of, you know, holiness, so week one, holiness, Lord, I agree with what you say about holiness, and then he gets five days with some specifics.

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And so each day of the week, you have a chance to ask yourself, do I really agree with what God says about holiness?

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And if not, will I repent? It's a great little pamphlet. It has gone out of print now, and we looked it up just a few minutes ago, and somebody's trying to sell editions of it for over $70.

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Don't do that, all right? We'll talk with Mr. Roberts, and we feel sure we'll be able to get you a digital copy of that, and so we'll have that in the show notes, and you can see where you can get that, if we can't get our hands on some of the physical copies.

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So, good tools. Who does God say can draw near to Him, and do I really agree with the

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Lord? One thing before we close, I'll give you another example.

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1904 Revival, where it was not a revival led by the clergy, or by the pastors, but by college young people, which oftentimes it was the 20 -year -olds, you know, the young people who led,

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God used to lead a revival. In 1904, the young people that got together and were converted, and then were used by God as they spread their testimony throughout

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Wales, and it was a genuine work of the Lord, with a lot of imperfections on the human side, but a genuine work.

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They had four guidelines that they held themselves to. Here they are. Number one, we must confess before God every sin in our past life that has not been confessed.

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Number two, we must remove anything that is doubtful.

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And we talked about that, you and I, before the podcast. That really is quite a penetrating word.

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Yes, it is. I remember, 20 years ago, reading this, and looking at a thing in my life that I said, is this right or wrong?

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And I thought, well, I'm having to ask. It's the doubtful category, you know? So would I be willing to set it aside for love of Christ?

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Number three, total surrender, that is, to say yes, or to agree with all God has said to us,

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His Spirit says to us through His Word. And fourth, to be willing to make a public confession of Christ, to speak of Christ.

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So four simple guidelines that they used. It's not a formula, but having been worked on by God, these young people felt that these were appropriate things.

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Well, as we bring the podcast to a close today, and it's just the first of our three looks at the theme of God, and revival, and the need that our nation has, and the churches of our nation have, for this season of grace, we want to kind of leave ourselves with the question, are we willing, for Nineveh, in its ignorance and pretty gloomy message, an ungodly preacher, are we willing for them to outpace us in the pursuit of our own

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God, when we have so much? So, not the kind of answer that you can really answer on paper.

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I mean, I wish it was. Right. Because I know the right answer. You can take that test. Yeah. You can't fill in with your pencil the right bubble.

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It has to be answered every day this week, you know, how I make my choices. Well, Steve, thank you so much for being with us, and for bringing this to our attention.

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Who will we be looking toward next week? John, next week, we'd like to look at Hezekiah, if you'll indulge us.