Bible Lesson 54
Practical Christian Living Part VI
PSALMS 85:4-7
The past few lessons have shown that the visible church of our times has many problems that have impacted the work of God, here on the earth. We have discussed the problems, and compared the obedience of the visible Church to the Bible and found it wanting. There is a solution to the problem and that’s what we want to discuss in this lesson. Our scripture verse for this lesson is Psalms 85:6, which says simply, “Restore us, O God of our salvation, and cause Your anger toward us to cease. Will You be angry with us forever” Will you prolong Your anger to all generations? Will You do not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in You? These were the chosen people of God, the Nation of Israel; and they had felt the sting of God’s anger and they could no longer rejoice in Him because they had lost His favor.
I believe that’s where many, so-called Christians, who are only church-members, find themselves today. We have purposefully departed from God’s Will and God’s Word and we are now, in many cases, social clubs and places where we come to feel good about our sin.
We have the same need these people in Psalms 85 did, we need a fresh visit from God; and the only way that we will ever know revival is to comply with God’s commandment in 2nd Chronicles 7:14. In that scripture, God says to, disobedient and wayward creatures, “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land”.
Thirty-eight little words that God gave so that man could reconnect with Him; and the problem is that over decades men have cried for revival and preached for revival and sung about revival, but the revival has eluded us for the simple reason that we want to have it our way. First of all, we want to move God aside and have Him allow us to plan a revival, or hold a revival; you won’t find that in those thirty-eight words of Second Chronicles 7:14. The first thing that God tells us in that scripture is that we must “humble” ourselves.
Humble means to bring ourselves low, in effect to see ourselves as we are. Humble means also an absolute absence of pride, unpretentious, base, without arrogance. That is a difficult position to achieve for the modern man; because it goes against the grain of what we have been taught at home, at school, and church. We are people that know nothing at all about being humble before man or God.
Notice also, that the first thing God gives us to do in seeking reconciliation with Him involves judging ourselves. God does not say, humble your wife or children or spouse; or humble your neighbor and it does not say that you as a teacher or preacher should call for your congregation to be humble.
It says to humble ourselves. Revival always begins when we take a piece of chalk or something and stoop down low and draw a ring around our own feet and begin the revival within that circle. God says, “If My people who are called by My name, will humble themselves”; do you know many humble church members? That could be the reason that we have not experienced revival!
If we desire a fresh anointing of God, we must first humble ourselves; because nothing will happen unless we do that first. Then God continues there in 2nd Chronicles 7:14; and says once you have humbled yourselves, Pray and seek the face of God. Just as lost sinners pray and seek the face of God to be saved, those who have turned their backs on God must Pray and seek His face for revival. How many of us think that we know how to pray?
I am sure that I have much to learn about true prayer and if it were not for the Holy Spirit in me because of God’s grace, I would have trouble getting a hearing from God. I have not and will never give up on learning about how to please God in my prayers, and unless and until we all are willing to confess our shortcomings in prayer and ask God to make the connection we will not see revival.
Most of the true revivals that I have ever read about came only in God’s time and as one or two people prayed without ceasing for revival. We can look back to when the nation of Israel was in bondage in Egypt, and they were very badly treated and God had already planned to bring them out with a high hand; but before God began his work of bringing them out, God made them begin to cry for His intervention. In this, the 21st Century, we are in the same trouble that the Hebrew nation was when they were in bondage in Egypt.
We are in bondage to sin and worldliness and affluence. The only way we will ever get revival is to begin to cry out for it with an earnest heart and from our humble position as we seek the face of God in prayer.
Revival does not speak of reviving what we see in the numerous denominations that exist in the world today, although all of them profess Christ to some degree. Revival goes past that, back to the original Christianity, back there in Acts. Revival deals more with the power of God and the presence of God than it does with denominational trivia. In Acts 1:8 we find that God promised his disciples and us today, that when we are truly saved and indwelled by the Holy Spirit, that we will have the power to go and be His witnesses.
Be honest with yourself, how many church-members do you know who go out to teach people to obey all that Christ has commanded us to do? It takes the power of the Spirit, and we don’t even like to talk much about the Spirit that indwells every true Christian that lives today. We have confused God’s plan for the church to the point that in many places today we don’t think we need God to save anybody. We think that we can do that by making church-members, and church-members have nothing to do with being saved. Now, all true Christians are church-members (members of the body of Christ), and all Christians interact with other Christians.
The first thing that we have to get straight in our heads is, Who God is, about the Word of God and its absolute truths, and about who it is that God loves and extends His grace and mercy to. Now, God can do anything that He wishes to do, wherever He wishes to do it, at whatever time He desires to do it; but He does not contradict His own Word the Bible. (See Psalms 119:89). All too often, the visible church has begun to replace the foundations of the true church, Jesus Christ, with wood, hay, and stubble; these will not stand the fires of judgment (See 1st Corinthians 3:11-15).
If you think that no one should ever challenge the status quo of our visible churches, perhaps you need to review your church history. Remember a man named Martin Luther, who posted his 95 theses on the door of the church at Wittenburg, Germany? He wasn?t popular with the church leaders of his day, but his actions prompted the Protestant Reformation. What would happen if revival came to the visible church of our day? First of all, revival is for those who are the people of God, those who are called by His name!
That’s what 2nd Chronicles 7:14 says, remember?.”If My People, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek My face”. that means that revival is for those who once had “revival” those who were once saved and on fire for the Lord. Certainly, there will be lost souls saved, whenever the Spirit of God begins to move in a church, a community or a nation; but what revival is really about is bringing those who once had life, at least Christ-life in them, back to a proper relationship with God. Revival, as a word is never used in the Bible; however it is certainly a precept of God because as we saw in our Scripture for this lesson, back there in Psalms 85:4-7 we know that revival is what is being spoken of in those verses. In those verses whoever is writing this Psalm is praying for a revival; and this is not the first time revival was needed, because he said revive us again (verse 6).
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every pastor, teacher, or whoever ministers the Word of God, was such a man, on fire for the Lord, that every Sunday there would be a revival in our churches? Surely, we that claim the blood of Jesus Christ could keep our focus on Christ for another week, and the next Sunday we would be ignited with that “fire from heaven” again. The problem is “us”. We are so mesmerized by the toys and devices of Satan that we will not keep the main thing, the main thing. The main thing is Jesus Christ, not what job we will get or what car we will drive or when we will retire or anything else that keeps our minds off of the Savior, Jesus Christ.
I believe that many of the people who have “professed Christ”, and joined the churches of our day, were under conviction, but were short-stopped by well-meaning pastors, or church schedules or the multitude of programs that exist in every church that I know about. A person who seeks the face of our Almighty God is not playing games, they are in the very presence of the one who created all that we know exists, and that should cause us to fall on our faces like dead men. Think about the Apostle Paul who was on the road to Damascus and he rounded a corner and came face to face with the Lord Jesus Christ.
He did not dismount and attempt to shake hands with Christ?.instead he fell to the ground, as Jesus asked him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me.” You should know the story, but in case you don?t, Saul was instructed by God to go into Damascus and wait until He would tell him what He wanted him to do. Incidentally, he had to be led into the city because the light of the glory of Christ had seared the sight from his eyes. Saul sat in darkness without eating for three days until God sent for Him, and put him to work for the kingdom.
Have you seen anything like that lately?
It’s not likely that you have because the disease of apathy and ignorance of the Word of God has almost taken the visible church down. I don’t say that with any joy or even with any good feelings because I believe in the visible church. I believe it was begun with the distinct purpose of taking the Word and the Will of God to its community and thereby infusing that community with a moral tenor. However I think that the church got too interested in the ways and the things in and of the world and that has caused the visible church to lose its authority in its community, and now it has become part of the world.
That is very bad because the Bible tells us clearly, that if we become friends with the world we become the enemies of God (James 4:4). How did we forget that? God’s Kingdom work must be done by God’s people in God’s way, and that cuts across every way that the world does business.
We can look back to Second Chronicles chapter 7 and verse 14, and we find the account of King Solomon as he has finished building the Temple, and Solomon has prayed and dedicated it to God. God then tells Solomon in chapter 7, that he has heard Solomon’s prayer and that God has chosen this temple for Himself as a house of sacrifice. God then tells Solomon, “When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land or send pestilence among My people” then God gives Solomon the revival theme that we have used in this lesson. God said. “If My people who are called by My name, will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” God knew that these people, who were just like we are today with the exception that they did not have the Holy Spirit indwelling them, God knew that they would turn aside from the old paths and follow silliness and sin and that he would punish those sins with drought, locust and pestilence; but he gave them the solution to that problem when He said if they would humble themselves and pray and seek His face, and turn from their wicked ways that He would hear their prayers in heaven and would forgive their sin and heal their land.
There are times when people today who are supposed to be Christians, fault the Jews for all of their trifling ways and their sin and adulterous worship of other gods; but we are in much better circumstances than they were. They had to follow God in the flesh, by Faith; but we who have faith under Grace, have the empowerment of God, His Holy Spirit, to enable us to follow in His footsteps (Ephesians 1:13). We today, like the Jews of old have taken the absolutes of God’s Word, His commandments, and have made them options for those who join our congregations.
God has said, this you will do, but we have changed that to this you may do if you choose to. God has told us that when we find ourselves under His judgment, that we should humble ourselves and pray and seek His face, and turn from our wicked way, then He would hear our prayer and forgive our sin and heal our land. We have taken those clear commands and we now forget what God has said and we think that we can generate revival and God’s forgiveness, as we produce holy hootenannies, that we call revival; but which produce no heavenly fire that falls upon repentant sinners. We have forgotten that only God can send revivals and that He only sends them in answer to our obedience to His commands to humble ourselves and pray and seek His face and turn from our wicked ways.
It has been so long since the institutional church has experienced a real revival that we have forgotten what revival is. Think about when you were saved?..that is, if you have experienced that new birth (John 3:3,5-6). I want to remind you that millions have been short-stopped before they were truly saved. They were stillborn, new creatures. The institutional church does not have time in its preplanned schedule to allow anyone who comes under Holy Ghost conviction to reach God and be saved. Think about how we have a church in this day and age. We are met at the church door as a rule by some church leader and given a “Church bulletin” which list minute by minute, everything that will happen in the service.
First, we will have a prayer by brother so and so, then another brother will read a verse of scripture, then the choir will sing and then the preacher will have about 20 minutes to preach and then the altar call and then the benediction at a specific time. Sounds nice doesn’t it; but have you ever read any bulletin that had a time set aside for the Holy Spirit to work? Have you ever found any time that could be used while the Holy Spirit works? Doesn’t the Holy Spirit have to work in every man’s salvation?
Jesus Christ the only way to God for man told His disciples in Acts chapter one and verse 4, that they were to stay in Jerusalem and wait on the promise of the Father: then in verse 5 Jesus told them what they were to wait on?..the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Jesus did not give them a bulletin that said that the Spirit would be given at some hour on that very day. No indeed, they were to wait (for 10 days), until the Holy Spirit came. That should tell us that we do not schedule God. God controls the schedule and nothing happens except on God’s terms and in God’s time.
We have become so presumptuous that we think that God has to work when we set a time to let him work. I have seen this happen in churches of our day when a called preacher actually preaches the truth of the Word of God and some person is convicted of sin in his or her life and they go forward to deal with God, some well-meaning preacher or teacher will attempt to convince them that they don’t need that, that they are alright. Who in this world is qualified to make that decision? I certainly know better than to get between God and someone that He is working with!
What America needs is a refreshing and reviving of that old-time religion; because that is the only kind of religion that saves. Many of you have heard that old spiritual that goes Tis the old-time religion, And it’s good enough for me.? That old-time religion that took weak and unlearned men and set them on fire from heaven and sent them out to turn the world upside down. This is the kind of religion that knocked the firebrand Saul out of his saddle on the Damascus road and turned him from an enemy and destroyer of the young church of Acts and made him the greatest preacher this side of Jesus Christ. The old-time religion that activated men like Billy Sunday, and Charles Finney and the Wesley brothers.
The old-time religion took a worthless sinner like me and put his old man to death and raised a new creature that seeks to please God. That song goes on, ?it was good for our mothers; and it’s good enough for me?. That old-time religion was good for mothers who knew how to serve God with a humble spirit and raise children and instill in them the morals of the Holy Bible. Yes, it’s the old-time religion, that doesn’t make church members but creates new creatures by the Grace of God and it goes on to say ” It makes me love everybody, and it’s good enough for me”.
That old-time religion causes us to know that we are all destined to live together and that we should show love to all people. Then it goes on to say, it has saved our fathers, and it’s good enough for me. The Old-time religion saved our fathers and fathers who had that old-time religion became moral, hard-working, and loving fathers. That’s good enough for me. The last refrain of that song says, “It will take us to heaven and it’s good enough for me.” This is a song for people who have realized that this earth is not their home, that they are strangers who are looking for a city, not made with hands, we are only pilgrims as we live here on the earth, who are being fitted to occupy heaven and all of its glory as we serve our Lord for eternity.
To understand that old-time religion, people had to know that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, for by faith the elders obtained a good report” (Hebrews 11:1-2).
We seem to have completely lost the idea of living by faith, and we have even improvised what we want to live by as we have become just like the world. The good news is that God has not changed and He has said when we meet His conditions as laid out in 2nd Chronicles 7:14 that He will act in our favor.
God restates that promise throughout the Bible, and in Isaiah chapter 57 and verses 15-18 God says to us, “For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones”. We need to come to the same realization that the Prophet Habakkuk came to when he prayed to God there in Habakkuk 3:2 and said, ?O Lord, I have heard Thy speech, and was afraid: revive Thy work during the years, make known; in wrath remember mercy. That should be the prayer of the visible church of our day. Lord, amid Your wrath, remember mercy. Don’t give us what we deserve.
Lord, wilt Thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in Thee? True Christianity always results in joy and rejoicing; but do we see much of that in our congregations that seem have been starched and ironed before they were washed?
Are we even willing to be revived? Do you think that most of the comfortable congregations that have been assured that because they come to church, they are assured of a place in heaven, would ever want the fire of the Holy Spirit to fall on them? Well, what about you as you read this lesson, would you be willing to walk the way God wants you to walk to do the things that Christ has commanded? If you are that strong in the Lord, then dare to be different. Dare to live like a child of God. Ask God to revive you so that you can once again rejoice in His Salvation.
Until next time,
may God bless and keep you
This is Bro. Bob