95-73 – Wisdom Breakers – The Leaven of the Sadducees

This sermon is Part 7 of the series "Wisdom Breakers" by Dr. Chuck Betters.

Wisdom Breakers is a study of the book of James. James tells us that as long as our faith is weak and if our faith is wavering, then we can never possess wisdom. When God calls us to fulfill his purpose, HE does not rescind that calling. Often times we can distracted or sidetracked with living out our mission. My identity in Christ is directly related to whether I understand what it means to be a bond servant of Jesus Christ. This is how James identifies himself in the opening of this book. Dr. Betters is about to explain that if we understand that our identity in Christ is that of bond servants to him, that is when we become a threat to the powers of Satan. Because then our identity is clear and we can serve the Lord to our fullest.

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Welcome to In His Grip with Dr. Chuck F. Betters, produced by Mark Inc. Ministries. Each In His Grip message is designed to help turn your hearts toward Jesus and equip you to walk by faith. Let's join Dr. Betters as he preaches today's message.

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I want you to take your Bibles, please, and turn to an Old Testament book. You're going to find it almost to the very back of the Old Testament. Habakkuk chapter 3. And then I'm going to want you to put another finger over in Matthew chapter 16. Habakkuk chapter 3. Matthew chapter 16. Let's go ahead and begin with the passage in Matthew. We have been studying over the past several weeks the whole issue of wisdom. How do we understand the movement of God in our lives? And then how do we regulate our response to the interruptions or the invasions of God in our lives? How do we learn how to see what we are experiencing through God's perspective? The whole issue of wisdom involves change. God does not want us to remain the same people that we were when we were first converted. The whole doctrine of sanctification demands that there be fruit that proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that we are the children of God. No, it is not a sanctification that gives birth to justification, but it is a justification that is, we are converted, we are regenerated, we are given the gift of faith, we are adopted into the family of God as an act of God's grace and God's mercy. But the proof of that, or the evidence of that, is that my life is changed, that I do not remain the same person that I was when I first became a Christian. And so all of us need to take temperatures spiritually of where we are compared to where we were. I ought to be a different man today than I was last year at this time, or that I was five years ago, or even that I was yesterday. And yes, tomorrow, if I am truly evidencing faith in Christ, I will be a different man tomorrow than I am today. There will be change in my life. And what is that change? That change is to continue to see the evidences of Christian grace, spiritual grace evident in my life, the fruit of the Spirit evident in my life, the power and the dynamic of the Spirit evident in my life, confession of sin, repentance, so that each day I am putting off the old man, putting on the new man, and I am being renewed after the image of him who created me in Christ Jesus. We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, unto good works. That is, we are to become instruments through which the mirror image of Jesus Christ is seen in the world around us. So my justification leads to an evidence of sanctification. That is, I am progressively becoming more and more like Christ every day of my life. Now, one of the things that has troubled many Christians, or let me back up, one of the things that has troubled many people, whether they be Christians or non-Christians, is this. How can I know that I am truly a converted man? How can I know for sure that I am truly in Jesus Christ? Many people struggle with their assurance of their salvation. Many people struggle with the whole issue of what it means to be a child of God and to be in Christ. Some people actually get to the point of spiritual exhaustion as they struggle over the issue of am I really a child of God? Normally, what they want the pastor or some spiritual leader to tell them is, Yes, you are a Christian. If you have done this, this, this, and this, then you are a Christian. If you have prayed the prayer, if you have spoken the words, if you have joined the church, if you have done this or if you have done that, then truly we must be saved. And they want somebody to stand up and say, Yes, that's true. They want some pastor to tell them, yes, that's true. You are a Christian. Now I am not trying to create unnecessary doubt. But there are some of you who need to doubt. And you need to take real serious spiritual inventory and ask yourself whether or not the evidence of God's Spirit is present in your life and has been present in your life, progressively making you more and more like Christ every day of your life. If you are not understanding life from the perspective of God, if you are not beginning to see that you are an ambassador, an alien, you are passing through, that your citizenship is in another world, that you are a part of the kingdom of God, and if you are not beginning to see life from that perspective, and if there is no change in your spirit, no change in your walk, no change in your marriage, no change in your family relationships, no change in your commitment, if you have become deaf to the voice of God, if there is no intimacy and communion with Him and no desire for such, if there is unconfessed sin that remains in your life, whether it be known or unknown, if there is no burden and urgency for advancing the kingdom of God, if there is not a heartfelt desire in your spirit to become tomorrow a different man or a different woman than you were today, then I would seriously question whether or not you are a Christian. And you say, Well, that scares me. Well, that's good. It ought to scare you. And I would not be a faithful minister or steward of the Word of God if I were to sugarcoat the fact that you are no different today than you were when you, quote, were converted, unquote. If that happens, then you have to really sit back and challenge whether or not you truly understand the gospel of God's grace. Matthew 16, verse 5. When they went across the lake, the disciples forgot to take bread. Now we've read this passage to you. Be careful, Jesus said. Be on guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Now they began to question whether or not Jesus was speaking of material bread, and of course he wasn't. Verse 12 tells us then they understood that he was not telling them to guard against the yeast used in bread, but against the teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. 13 principles that I told you then, and I'll tell you again, you need to write down, you need to study, because if these principles become evident in your life, then you stand the very real risk of being blocked from seeing things from God's perspective. One of those that we talked about last week was the leaven of the Pharisees, the teaching of the Pharisees. And remember what we did? We took the little acronym status, because that's what the Pharisees were driven by. Status. And each of those letters stood for some aspect of Pharisaical teaching. Pharisees continue in every church. Good Christian people, people who truly love God, can become indeed Pharisaical in their approach to the gospel. Church leaders can become Pharisaical. Church pastors can become Pharisaical. And when we find ourselves slipping into that doctrine of Pharisaism, even a little bit, even remotely, we stand the risk of seeing it implode and maybe even explode out of us. And we can become terribly boxed in spiritually and maybe even to the point of questioning our own salvation. Now, again, let me remind you: I am not trying to create doubt where there should be no doubt. Nor am I trying to create certainty where there should be doubt. You have to go before God and examine your heart. The challenge of this message this morning is that there will be no revival. Whether in this church or any church, whether in our denomination or across denominations, there will be no revival until God's people begin to study and examine their hearts before God on the issue of what it means to be converted. We must learn what it means to be truly converted. Then and only then can there be revival. The Pharisees thought they were converted. The Sadducees thought they were converted. They believed that they were God's people. They believed that they were rightfully going to inherit all that God had promised them. Now, their view of inheritance was material blessing here on earth. Now, having said that, let's go back to this passage in Habakkuk. Habakkuk chapter 3. And then I want to explore another wisdom breaker, wisdom breaker number 12, which is a divided loyalty due to the presence of the leaven of the Sadducees. Now we talked last time about a divided loyalty due to the presence of the leaven of the Pharisees. Today I want to look at the leaven of the Sadducees. Habakkuk chapter 3. I wish I had the time to explore this context, but I don't. Suffice it to say that the prophet was in a position where he was questioning God's wisdom, where he was wondering why God was going to use the horrible, horrible pagan countries and pagan empires to bring a judgment on his own people. He couldn't understand why God was going to judge his own people as the result of their sin, but using an instrument of unrighteousness, an instrument of a pagan nation to bring that judgment. So God explains it to him, and he still doesn't understand it. But now you see in chapter 3, some understanding begins to emerge. He's beginning to see the root problem. And this is the root problem of Sadduceeism, and I might add, it is the root reason why there is no revival in the church today. The doctrine of the Sadducees continues in the church today. Many Christians are Sadducees. Many Christians hold to the teachings of the Sadducees without even knowing it. And you see a prayer here in chapter 3, verse 1. A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet. Lord, I have heard of your fame. I remember hearing something about the power of God unleashed in the church and through the church years ago. I read the stories of your intervention in the lives of those of Israel in the Old Testament, and I see the outpouring of your spirit and the miracles that you worked. I read about them, I hear about them, but I don't see them today. And it grieves him, and so he says in verse 2 renew them in our day. Renew them in our day, in our time, make them known. You know, it's interesting to me when he prayed this prayer, the church as they knew it then was probably in one of the lowest points of Old Testament history. For all intents and purposes, they couldn't even remember the way things used to be. The church had so slipped into Sadducean doctrine, so slipped into apostasy, so slipped into a rationalism, so slipped away from the great unleashing of God's power that it became a mere remote memory. There were no prophets, there were no evangelists, there was no evangelism. The nation had become so corrupt and so depraved and so morally bankrupt that God said, I have no other choice but to judge you. And I'm going to use a pagan instrument to do it. Habakkuk protests and says, God, not a pagan instrument. God explains to him why this must happen. Yes, I will renew. And in the midst of all of that, in the midst of that kind of despair, where the picture of the church was anything but rosy, where the state of affairs was anything but glorious, the prophet cries out to God, Lord, I've heard of what you've done in the past. Do it again and do it in my day. Then he makes this remarkable statement in verse 2 in wrath. In wrath, remember mercy. In wrath, remember mercy. I want to talk to you today about what I believe is the number one roadblock to true and lasting revival in the church, and that's the leaven of the Sadducees. The Sadducees were the chief priests. Whenever you read in the scriptures, the chief priest did this and the chief priest did that. For the most part, the Sadducees were the chief priests. They were the power brokers of the Sanhedrin. If the Sanhedrin was to turn right, the Sadducees would be the ones who turned them there. The Sadducees were the power brokers in the church. They controlled the direction that the church went. They were the guardians of Israel's relationship with the Romans. They had a foot over here in their religious world and a foot over here in the Gentile Roman world, and they were the aristocrats. They were wealthy aristocrats. Their faith was almost non-existent. They virtually believed nothing. Their interest was not in the things of God, their interest was in bringing a dynamic between Israel and Rome. They were the power brokers who saw themselves as the instruments that built relationships with the Roman Empire. And because of their wealth, they could do it. Because of their power, they could do it. They were power brokers, and their whole interest was power. Now, if the interest of the Pharisees was image or status, the interest of the Sadducees was power. And once again, you can take that little lacrostic, and we'll see what we can do in developing the principle of Sadduceeism. The P stands for political posturing. The Sadducees placed more trust in man and more trust in the institutions of man than in God. They saw the social problems and the economic problems and the moral questions of their day as being resolved within the context of an alliance between them and Rome. Their whole image was to control socially, economically, and morally the flow of life. They were ones who believed that they could develop a world-life view that was rooted in their own teaching and their own doctrine. They were political posturers. Their worldview was tainted by a disbelief in the world of the spiritual. In fact, they didn't believe there was a spiritual world. They did not believe in a resurrection. They did not believe in an eternal hell. They did not believe in the spiritual world made up of angels and demons. They did not believe in the inerrancy of the Old Testament scriptures. The whole of Sadduceean thought was pure rationalism. Man has the answers, society has the answers, the institutions have the answers. If we have moral problems, we'll just find out what the solutions are by delving inside of ourselves and rationalizing it through. And so they postured themselves into positions where they were intellectually and financially able to become power brokers that sought to change the whole contour of Jewish life within a Roman culture. The O in the plan stands for ordered lives that refused to allow divine interruptions. The Sadducees did not believe that God had any right to invade. That is what Jesus was to them. Jesus to the Sadducees was an interruption. He was an interruption of the status quo. When he came onto the scene, he interrupted the direction they were going, and he said, No, my kingdom is not of this world. And he spoke of another kingdom. And he interrupted the flow of their lives. You see, they were the power brokers, but now many of the quote peons were following Jesus. And he interrupted them. And he became their avowed enemy as the result of that. You see, for a Sadducee, there is no fluidity of spiritual life. They do not believe that God hits moving targets. They believe that man is to create his own solutions to the problems and the ills of society. That God is a detached God. That God doesn't really care about what is going on in the affairs of this life if God exists at all. So there is no fluidity. They do not see that God hits moving targets. By the way, parenthetically, I think it's important for you to understand that you will never have a higher sense of calling in your life. You will never have a higher sense of purpose in your life. You will never see yourself from God's perspective if you become a status quo person. God hits moving targets. Now he opens doors, he closes doors, and as we are tuned into the Spirit of God, he will show us which open doors to walk through and which closed doors to walk away from. But I tire of hearing Christians speak of waiting upon God, as though waiting upon God means sitting out in a box somewhere and waiting for some sort of bolt of lightning to come. Waiting upon God means active service, it means aggressive effort, it means standing forth in faith and believing that God's going to open and close doors as he sees fit. God hits moving targets. The Sadducees were more focused on the questions of why than they were on the questions of what now. They were the rationalists who wanted explanations and proofs that God was who he says he was or is. But they were not at all concerned about what he wanted them to do now, how he wanted them to respond now. So they sat back in their status quo because they could not believe in a God who was concerned with the affairs of men. These were power people, control people. To submit to a sovereign God was to relinquish control, and they refused to submit to that God. May I suggest to you that Sadducean rationalism and power and control is alive and well in the church today? We continue to demand of God that our lives must be ordered in a certain way without or devoid of any interruptions from Him. Unless those interruptions are positively influencing us, unless those interruptions are pleasurable to us. W stands for Watered Down View of Scripture. They had a selective acceptance of Scripture based upon what most adequately served their rationalism and their quest for power and control. They were very adept at pulling out scriptures to proof text their position. If it was politically advantageous to them, then they would accept it and say, does not the word teach? If it was not politically acceptable to them, or if it injured their cause in any way, they rip that page right out of the Bible. Are we not Sadduceans today? Do we not rationalize certain truths right out of the Word of God and say they don't apply to me? Do we not walk in our marriages that way? Do we not live our lives morally in the context of I am in control, not God? Don't we take certain portions of the Bible and just rip them out and throw them away? And say, since it doesn't serve my quest for pleasure and power, it has no binding influence on my life. E stands for experiential atheism, devoid of any belief in the supernatural. You see, that's what the Sadducees were. They said they believed in God, but in practice they were atheists. The way they lived their lives was atheistic. Their whole view, their whole world view was man-centered, anthropocentric, not theocentric, man-centered, not God-centered. The whole of life revolved around what is good for man, what is pleasurable for man. They would have resisted with every ounce of energy in them the number one question in the catechism. That my chief end in life is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Their chief aim was to glorify self and to enjoy power forever and control forever and to submit to a sovereign God who made any claims on my life was something they resisted. Ours stands for rationalism that demanded of God signs and wonders to prove to them who he said he was. That's nothing new. Satan's been doing that since the beginning of time. Satan always looks for a sign, always looks for a wonder, always looks for God to prove himself. He didn't change his methodology at all. When he tempted Jesus, what did he say? If you be the Son of God, work a sign, work a miracle, cast yourself down. Pulled in a little scripture here, a little scripture there, mixed it all up, tried to confuse Christ. And what was Jesus' response to him? Bow before a sovereign God. That's the essence of the temptation story. I am the Lord your God. There are no other gods but me. The Sadducees resisted that. The Sadducees attacked that. There was a rationalism. There was an atheism. There was a sense of man-centeredness. There was a selective breeding of scripture, so to speak, a watered-down view of the scriptures and a political posturing and a power-based movement to control people's lives. You know, I've been a Christian for 28 years or so. I've been in the ministry for 27 of those years. And I've got to tell you, the Sadducees are alive and well. They're in every church, they're in every denomination, they're in every movement. But what I believe we need is the prayer of Abacuc. I believe we need revival. And the only way we're going to have revival is when we uproot the Sadducees. The Sadducee doctrine that's in my heart. You see, that pride inside of me says, No, Lord, I will not submit. I am in control of my destiny. I am in control of my pleasure. And the whole of my life revolves around me gaining more power, more pleasure, more control. And the whole doctrine of New Ageism has so filtered into the church, it's just disguised Sadduceeism, that's all it is. That's all it is. It's the old form, just dressed up in new language. The whole idea of man's great human potential. The rationalism of the Sadducees is, I believe, the number one roadblock to true revival. And I don't believe we'll ever see revival in our day until God begins that work of uprooting who's in control of my life. The question for you this morning is who's in control of your life? Are you a power broker? Are you a control person? Have you really learned to submit to the sovereignty of God? Does God hold the right in your heart to invade your life? And interrupt you and move you in a completely different direction, not with protest, but with submission? There is a divided loyalty, a man-centeredness that may be the very issue that has deadened the work of Christ in the 20th century. Several things have emerged in our churches today. And certain doctrines are being taught that I believe if you listen closely, you'll hear the faint voice of the chief priests. You'll hear the echoes of the demons of Sadduceism. One of those doctrines is that we have a death in our churches today of preaching on the total depravity of man and the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation. We still contend today that there is something we can do to save ourselves. That there is something inherent in me that is not as bad as the next guy. A New Ageism, a rationalism, a Sadduceeism that denies the absolute total depravity of the human being. And in so doing rejects the absolute sovereignty of God. You see, if man is not totally depraved, if he has this spark of deity, if he has this, quote, free will, if he has this divine enablement or this divine spark within him, then God is not absolutely sovereign in salvation because there's something we can do to become Christians. Even the faith to believe, friends, comes from God. Even the faith to believe is a gift of God. The Bible speaks of faith to believe is a gift. Repentance is a gift. You say, Well, I can repent. No, you can't. And no, you won't. Not unless God gives you the fruit or the gift of repentance, rooted in the gift of faith. Dead people are dead. They can't respond. The absolute total depravity of man, the absolute sovereignty of God. There's a dearth of preaching on that. We don't like to talk about that in our churches. You won't find too many churches where they speak of the absolute, unconditional, 100% total depravity of the human heart. And the absolute 100% total sovereignty of a holy God in the act of salvation. Too many of our churches birthed in this free willism, birth in this Arminianism, birth in this heretical teaching that dares to defy a sovereign God who is Lord over salvation. Too many of our churches have convinced their people that there is something they can do to be saved, something they can do to inherit eternal life, something they can do to justify themselves before a holy God. There is absolutely nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing you can do to earn place and privilege before a holy God. That's Sadduceism. Today in the church, there is a methodological pragmatism. You know what the church is concerned about today? Numbers. And what can I do to get the numbers? What can I do to bring more people into my church if I have to water down the message like a Robert Schuler does? If I can water down the message and teach people that there's a positive God inside of them and preach to them a so-called Christianized New Ageism, if I can water it down and build a wonderful facility that will attract the masses and water down the gospel and never talk to them about sin and never talk to them about hell and never talk to them about judgment to come, then that'll appeal to people. And they'll come flocking into my church. You say, why are you after Schuler? Because he has trained hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pastors to go back to their communities and do the same thing. And the church growth movement has piggybacked on that. And men are more concerned now about methodological pragmatism. That is what works rather than what the gospel is. You know what happens? We then have a diminished or restricted view of worship. Church services are no longer designed to worship God, they're designed to appeal to Joe Schmoe out there, who's never darkened the doors of a church. Make it attractive. Make it appealing. You say, is there anything wrong with making it attractive and appealing and relevant? No, we believe in relevant worship. We believe in practical worship. But never, never, never at the expense of preaching and teaching the whole council of God. And if that means half of you leave, then leave. Find a place where your Sadducean roots can be watered. And there will be no revival. There is a displacement today of man's need to be regenerated. And that has led to a social gospel. You see, what we have been taught in our churches today is that the purpose of the church in the world is to make a difference in the world, thus to change society, to change the infrastructures of society. Now we say that the liberals do that. Is that what they do? Well, we know the liberals do that. But you know what saddens me more is that evangelical Christianity has slipped into the same sort of mindset. There's a whole new doctrinal system being taught in our seminaries and from our pulpits that teaches that the purpose of the church is to change the infrastructures of society. To somehow establish the kingdom of God here on earth and thus to bring in the kingdom. I get anonymous mail all the time. And I don't know who's sending it to me, but they're trying to convince me of a post-millennial view. They're trying to convince me that the purpose of the church is to change the infrastructures of society and thus bring in the kingdom of God. Friends, the kingdom of God came when Jesus went to the cross. The kingdom of God is here, the kingdom of God is in heaven, it is a visible kingdom here, it is an invisible kingdom there, and growing in that invisible kingdom there are the saints of God who have gone on from Old and New Testament alike. And growing in that visible kingdom here are both those who are regenerated and those who are unconverted. And in the end, God will separate the sheep and the goats and the wheat and the tare. But the kingdom of God is present. We are in union with the kingdom of God, invisible in heaven, and visible on earth. He's already ushered in the kingdom. But see, evangelicals now are beginning to flow out into this mindset, this teaching that says our goal, our ambition, our desire is to change the infrastructures of society. I'm going to tell you, we have failed miserably at doing that and will continue to fail until there's a revival of the doctrine of regeneration. There's a denial of inerrancy. We virtually have recast moral law. What we said 10 years ago was wrong, we now say is right. It's interesting, I mean, even in my own home, to listen to my children who are now grown talk about when they were children what we would allow them to watch on TV and what we wouldn't allow them to watch on TV. It's really convicting. What we said 15 years ago was immoral and wrong then, we now sit and laugh at today. And more. Because society says it's acceptable to watch it, we recast the moral law. We say, God, your moral law is no longer binding because too many people over here agree that it's right. And so we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna watch it. And what we allow to be filtered into our homes and into our heads, and what we read and what we watch and what we laugh at and what we think is funny is sad. And there's a great imbalance in our churches between doctrine and experience. We have extremism on both sides. We have this group over here. The most important thing is doctrine. Let's think these things through. And they are the legalists who stand on the edge of their seats waiting for the slightest slip of the tongue about what is doctrinally correct. You've got those extremists over there. And then you've got the emotionalist over here. The only thing they're concerned about is do I feel good? When I leave the church, do I feel good? Did I really worship God today? Did I feel good? So you've got extremists over here, cold in their orthodoxy, and you've got extremists over here who are hot in their experience, doctrine and experience as though the two don't go together. I think it's sad. Because I think the more we understand doctrine, the greater our experience will be. The more we understand the truths of God's word, the more we understand the meaning of grace, the more we will be in touch with who we are in Jesus Christ and discover our intimacy in Him and our union in Him, and the greater will be our worship experience. The two are not to be taken separately. There's a reliance in the Spirit on both. We need revival. I've been doing some studying recently on the Great Awakening. In fact, uh a periodical that I subscribe to has a whole issue now on revival. Specifically on the Great Awakening that happened in the mid-1700s. You know, I'm like Habakkuk. I'm saying, Lord, I've heard of these things, but I've never seen them. I've never seen them. I'm saying, Lord, I want to see it. I want to see it again. And you know what's interesting is I studied some of these things. One man, Gerald McDermott, who wrote extensively on revival, he said this. Listen to this quote. He says, American evangelicals, that's us, are frustrated because their attempts to transform American culture seem to have failed. After electing three presidents and sending hundreds of legislators to Washington, and despite influencing public policy with tons of mail and armies of lobbyists, evangelicals cannot point to a transformed America, can they? In fact, it's probably worse. A history lesson might provide some perspective. Evangelicals in America and England felt a similar frustration in the 1730s. They too had failed to reform their societies after decades of political and social effort. Preaching endlessly for moral reformation elicited boredom and contempt. Reducing the standards for church people brought in more people but few conversions. See, pragmatism's not new. Political leaders paid lip service to evangelical religion while furthering the secularization of society. I'm personally opposed to such and such, but then when they get into office, they don't follow the moral conscience of the scriptures. Yet within a decade, within a decade, the greatest evangelical awakening since the Reformation broke out across America, England, and the continent. By the time it subsided, the political and social cultures of the Anglo-American world had been forever changed. But you know where it began? With revival in the church. McDermott speaks of ten common characteristics of revival. Now, when you study the history of revival, these are the things you're going to find present for revivals to occur. Number one, revivals were always preceded, always preceded by corporate prayer. God's people got on their faces and began to pray. Number two, revivals always had strong leaders, strong voices. Number three, revivals were sparked and sustained by the preaching of Reformation doctrines. Reformation doctrines are rooted in the total depravity of man and the absolute sovereignty of God and salvation. Unapologetically, that's what the revivalists preach. Number four, revivals included the preaching of the Reformation message in new and more powerful forms. You know what that tells me? The preachers didn't stand still and say, well, it worked for me 20 years ago, it's going to work for me today. The message didn't change, but the methodology changed. I think that's critical. Number five, revival leaders preached at non-traditional times and in non-traditional places. You know what that says to me? They weren't afraid to do something that wasn't scripted in the bulletin. They went beyond the 11 o'clock hour. When you read the life and times of a George Whitfield, when you read of what perhaps was the greatest preacher that existed in that time frame, when you read of how he preached and where he preached, here was a man who could stand in an outdoor area without microphones, without his voice being projected in any way except naturally and preached to 30,000 people and be heard by all of them. A big, deep, booming voice. And on the other end of the spectrum, you had a Jonathan Edwards who was a monotone. And yet the Spirit of God was upon both men, and these men preached in the context of what was not written in the bulletin. Number six, you'll find this interesting. Every revival had its own music, and music was relevant. Music is the window to the heart. You see, these revivalists were not afraid of expression. But every one of them had their own music, and their music was relevant to the needs of their people. They weren't afraid to cut new turf. They weren't afraid to go through new territory. And that's why we come to number seven. Fierce opposition met these. Revivals and these leaders. There can never be a work of God without a work of Satan. There will be opposition. We begin talking about revival. There will be opposition. Number nine, the presence of the Holy Spirit was cultivated and believed to be manifestly felt and known when He came upon His people. You knew when the Holy Spirit was in this place. You knew it. I've been preaching here now for ten years. For ten years in this church. There have been many times where I have sensed the presence of the Holy Spirit in this place and knew he was here. But none. More that I can remember than this one. The Sunday after our son was killed. We had a worship service here. And my wife and I sat over there. And I believed at that moment this whole congregation was focused. You came prepared. You were mourning with us, hurting with us, struggling with us, grieving with us, and for that reason, you wanted to hear just as much as we wanted to hear the voice of God. I will never, ever, ever forget that worship service because out of all the sermons and messages that I've preached in this church, that is the one time I feel that the Holy Spirit was so close we could cut him with a knife. You know what that says to me? If all of us were to consume ourselves with the issue of preparing to worship God and come through those doors ready to meet the living God and have his spirit land on this place, I guarantee you he would land. You know what our problem is? We come in with all of our baggage, with all of our control, all of our power grabbing, all of the junk, all of the trivia, and we bring it in here. And our hearts have never been prepared. And that's why we can't sense the Holy Spirit. Number nine, the accounts of revival help to spread the revival. You know, it's interesting to me. We hear about revivals, but they're always in the same denominational-oriented churches. We have the vineyard movement now, we have the Toronto Blessing, but they're all within the same denomination, all within the same structure. And I have to stand back and I have to say, wait a minute, when the Spirit of God lands historically in revival, he crosses denominational lines, he crosses cultural lines, he goes into the liberal churches, he goes into the conservative churches, he goes into the charismatic churches, he hits the Baptists, the Presbyterians and the Methodists, the Lutherans and the Episcopalians, he hits them all. But it always starts somewhere. And number 10, concern for the poor and the unfortunate sprang out of the movement, not the other way around. You see, when God gets a hold of my heart and does a work in me, my desire, my desire to change the structures of society is going to be a natural outcry. I'm going to see I have a responsibility to the poor, to the needy, to the brokenhearted. McDermott concludes this section. He says, a renewal cannot be engineered by a committee. We're going to have a week of revival services. You know, when you study the history of revivals, a revival cannot be engineered by a committee or even a team of preachers. If the 18th century evangelicals were right, revival comes only by the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. We can do nothing to ensure such a work, but we can and should join with others to pray for the outpouring of the Spirit of God. Are you praying for it? Are you praying for it? You know, the backdrop of the first great awakening. The mid-1700s, the church was in the midst of apostasy. There was a great demise in the church because their view of holiness was so diminished. They had long ago abandoned the Puritan dream of a Christian nation. Later settlers who came to America did not come to establish a Christian commonwealth, but they came out of Sadducee and ambition and a desire for money. And in time, they and their children became preoccupied with drunkenness and immorality and a quest for political power. The clergy was marred by scandal and immorality. The church was virtually apostate. They even established what were called halfway covenants so that anybody who wanted to could come to the Lord's table. Membership requirements were dropped. Churches were filled with pagans who believed that baptism saved them. There were no membership standards. Deism was in vogue, a God who was detached from us but not transcendent and personal. The church was controlled by the rich intellectuals in the academia of their time. Even the French Revolution was birthed in a period of the so-called enlightenment where the authority of the church and especially the authority of God was brought into question. I thought I was reading USA Today. Listen to this, and I'm almost finished. It is confessed by all who know anything of the matter that there is a general and horrible decay of Christianity among those who profess it. The modern Christianity is too generally but a very spectre, a scarce shadow of what it used to be. Ah, sinful nations, ah, sinful children that are corrupters, what have you done? What have you done? So notorious is this decay of Christianity that whole books are even now being written to inquire into its causes. That wasn't written by Billy Graham or Chuck Swindall or anybody at the Promise Keepers. That was written by Cotton Mather in 1704, just prior to the outbreaking of revival. The churches seemed to be filled mostly with nominal Christians. They gave no evidence of being converted. Part of the reason was because they compromised the biblical standards for participating in the church. It wasn't necessary to be born again. It wasn't necessary to evidence the fruit of the Spirit. But then the Spirit of God landed. Graciously landed. And in the context of that revival, Princeton was started, Dartmouth was started, Brown University was started, the University of Pennsylvania was started, Rutgers was started, most of the Ivy League colleges have their roots in that revival. I believe we are primed for revival. But a couple of things have to happen. One, we need to pray for it. We need to pray for a time where the Spirit of God, like Jonathan Edwards says, begins to extraordinarily set in and wonderfully work among us. Where we can sense the presence of God's Spirit, like Habakkuk, renew your work again, Lord. Let me see what I've heard about. We need to pray for it. But as a church, we need to repent of our corporate sin. You know what our corporate sin is? First of all, I believe our corporate sin in this church is that we take the gospel of Jesus Christ for granted. And thus, in my opinion, we abuse the grace of God. You say, well, how do you know that? If we really, truly, honestly understood the grace of God, would we ever give God anything but our very best? You who work in ministries, do you give God your best? When you come to worship, do you give God your best? When you sing, do you give God your best? When you watch others sing, are you giving God your best? When you listen to preaching, are you listening by giving God your best? When you give offerings, are you giving God your best? When you order your priorities in life so as to advance the kingdom of God, are your priorities reflecting that you're giving God the best? I don't think so corporately. And as your pastor, I believe it is incumbent on me to warn you that I think you take the grace of God for granted. I don't think you give him your best. I think at times I don't give him my best. And I think we are to repent of that. Are you giving due consideration to what's going on behind closed doors in your family? How dare we appear before a holy God and beg for revival when there's so much sin in my own home? In my own marriage, in my own thought life. When was the last time you sat down with a good, solid hour of meditation in God's word? But you'll set your VCRs if Friends is on. Something's wrong. The one group of people that ought to know better than anybody else are those who are in the church that the days are evil and that the time is short. There needs to be a corporate confession of the leaders of every ministry and every aspect of church life. All of us, from me to every single one of you who are involved in leadership, we need to repent. We need to get on our faces before God and we need to say, we have not given you our best. We have not given you what you rightfully deserve. Then and only then is God going to begin a work of revival when we root out this Sadducee and heresy. Do we love our covenant children? Can't even work in the nursery. But we love our covenant children. The ones that the Bible calls the heritage of the Lord. Given to you, given to us. But Lord, don't ask me to do anything. Don't ask me to get involved. You see, if I'm content, if my life is not interrupted, then I can sit on my little Sadducean assurance. And I don't have to worry. Nobody's spoken to me. Nobody's reached out to me. Well, what have you done? What have you done? How can we ever ask God to become so real that the Spirit of God begins to work an extraordinary and wonderful work among us when there's so much sin blocking us? So much corporate sin. Are you loyal to the Church of Jesus Christ? You know what Satan loves? He loves gossip. He loves destructive criticism. Let me tell you something. If you don't have anything good to say about your church, then guard your tongue. Guard it carefully because Satan sits there and he waits for you to become destructive in your criticism. I didn't like this. I didn't like that. And you get two or three other people around you to say the same thing. And maybe they agree with you. The next thing you know, you have a click. You have a little power base of people that feel the same way you do. Satan stands there and he pours water and fertilizer and says, Keep going, buddy, you're doing fine. Keep going, keep going. You say, Does that mean I can never criticize? No. I said destructive criticism. Now, constructive criticism means you go to the sources and you deal with it within the structure that God has ordained. The problem is we go to lunch after church and we say, Boy, I hated what happened there this morning. I hated this, I hated that, I didn't like this, I didn't like that. It was to this, to that, to this, to that. The problem is, people are sitting right next to you listening to this, listening to this, listening to this. And you know who has the biggest ears? Your children. And then you want to know one day why they walk away from the church when for 15, 16, 17 years all they ever heard was your criticism.

SPEAKER_02 58:08

Where's the loyalty? Where's the loyalty?

SPEAKER_03 58:15

I think it's important that we repent of our corporate sins. Would you stand? Would you join hands with those around you? Would you bow your heads, please? As we get ready to close in prayer. I want to read you something. The very appearance of the town took place and changed. Jonathan Edwards writes, it was a time of joy in families on account of salvation being brought to them. Parents rejoicing over their children as newborn, and husbands over their wives, and wives over their husbands. The goings of God were then seen in his sanctuary. God's day was a delight, and his tabernacles were amiable. Our public assemblies were then beautiful. The congregation was alive in God's service, every hearer eager to drink in the words of the minister. The assembly in general were from time to time in tears while the word was preached, some weeping with sorrow and distress, others weeping with joy and love, others with pity and concern for the souls of their neighbors. And like hot fire, this revival spread. Father, I am so tired of reading about these stories. I crave the day when you land in revival in your church that way again. And Lord, I don't know where it's going to begin. But I can't think of a better place for it to begin than right here. With your heads bowed and your eyes closed as we get ready to sing our final hymn, I want to invite you to draw a nice big circle around yourself and say, Lord, would you begin a revival in me? I want you to come confessing all known sin. I'm going to make this very difficult because I want it to be very genuine. I want to give you time at the close of the service, even as we sing the final hymn, to step out of that pew, to walk down here and to kneel, and by doing so, admit to unconfessed sin in your life. You don't confess it to me, and you're not going to confess it to anybody else. You're going to lay it before God. I want to invite you to do that. I want to invite you to come in humility and say, Lord, whatever it takes, whatever it takes. Now be careful. Be careful when you pray this. Break me, mold me, shape me, use me. And Father, as you begin to speak, I pray that each person would be touched, each one would be renewed.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:10

Now may the grace of God, the love of our Lord and our Savior, Jesus the Christ, the very presence, person, and power of his Holy Spirit abide with each of you now until Christ comes again and forevermore.