How should revival affect society?
Easton Christian Family Centre, 10th October, 1998. Isaiah 58
At Alpha last week someone
came in who had been attracted by one of the posters, the one which read “Job, car,
girlfriend, flat...Still not satisfied?” I don’t have any of those anyway! He
said. But he listened to the video and
heard about Jesus dying for our sins so that our guilt can be taken away, and
so that we can come into a personal relationship with God. But none of it seemed to click with him, and
the main reason he said was because he couldn’t see what it had to do with his
day to day struggles with poverty and hardship. We didn’t really know how to answer him.
John the Baptist sent his
disciples to ask Jesus if he was really the one sent by God. Do you remember what his reply was? “Go and tell John what you have seen and
heard: the temple is full, everyone is singing new songs, we have loads of
Alpha courses, everyone is giving prophecies..” It wasn’t that at all!
The signs of God’s presence were these: “the blind receive their sight,
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the
poor have good news brought to them.”
Jesus didn’t see a split between what went on in the temple and what God
wanted for the rest of the world. There
was no question for him that where God was working, his followers would see
things being healed around them that affected every square inch of creation.
The Jews Isaiah was speaking
to 2500 years ago in this passage had forgotten this. They sought after God, day after day, but they thought revival
was all to do with their temple.
They were so engrossed in their rituals that they had forgotten about
the broken land, the injustice around them, and that God cared about it. They had forgotten that God had promised
Solomon that he would heal the land if the people prayed and
repented. Not heal the temple or
church, but heal the land. Do we
believe that revival is to do with the healing of the land? As one writer has
put it, “To the extent that the spirit of revival prevails, mercy, justice
and righteousness sweep over the land.”
What I believe God is saying to us through Isaiah, is that if you want
to see real revival, look at my world. (OHP)
In fact one thing that God
wanted to say to the Jews was that they were in some ways using their devotion
to God as a way of excusing themselves from their responsibility. Isaiah told them, “You serve your own
interests on your fast day, and oppress all your workers.” In 1960s America, when Martin Luther King
and others were fighting for civil justice in America, the white Southern
Baptists were caught up in revival.
Were they so caught up in false, self-interested religion, that they
failed to see true religion, in which God says, “Men and women are more
important to me than all the worship rites you can muster”? If we take what Isaiah is saying seriously,
did they miss the point somewhat? Could
this passage be saying to us that if we only think of God’s activity in his
world in terms of church revivals we are missing the point?
There are further
similarities between ourselves and those Isaiah was addressing. They were a people in a broken land, with
the walls of their institutions crumbling around them. (OHP) If we look at these statistics,
can we not feel that we as a church are in a land in which the ways of God are
similarly crumbling? If that is the
case:
Is revival just about us
knowing the love of God for ourselves, or is it about working for a society
where schoolchildren are protected?
Is it about the church
fasting, or is it about abortion becoming a thing of the past?
Is revival about our personal
relationship with Jesus being good or is it about countering the culture of sex
and violence we live in and so on, and so on.
And if Jesus were here in the flesh, and were asked if he were
the one, wouldn’t he say, “ What do you see?
Children are restored to their families, people are released from
addictions, robbers steal no more, people do not hurt each other.”? “To the extent that the spirit of revival
prevails, mercy, justice and righteousness sweep over the land.” God says, “If you want to know what revival
means, look at my world.”
I’d like to talk a bit more
personally now about some of the issues this passage throws up for me, because
God has been challenging me about my desire for revival in my own life, and my
response to the world around me. I’ll
illustrate it with two examples from our recent church life. A member of this congregation managed to
pluck up the courage to ask a workmate if he would like to come to Alpha. “No, not really,” he said, “Why should
I?” Our brother was stumped. He didn’t know what to say. And if I’m honest, I don’t know what I would
have said either. Apart from going to
church, agreeing with a few doctrines and praying, I can’t claim that my
day-to-day experience of life is all that different from a lot of my
non-Christian friends. It’s not that I don’t believe that God’s abundant life
is there for the taking, it’s just that I haven’t given up my life in such a
way that I risk experiencing it. The
other story - last Sunday evening Alan Hawker spoke of the Christian life of
consisting of so much blessing that we couldn’t stand it. “Stop, Lord, it’s too much!” he said. For me, what he was describing was what
revival would feel like - being absolutely overwhelmed by God. But I can’t claim to have really known what
that means on a day-to-day basis in my life.
Yes, in a service from time to
time I’ve known his presence. But in
the day-to-day fabric of my life, or in my involvement with the Christian
community there seems to be a big gap between what I say about God, and what I
experience, so that when I am asked by someone why they should come to Alpha, I
can’t immediately talk about my faith as a living reality. Do you feel like this, too, if you’re
honest? Have you ever wondered what to
say when someone asks you why they should become a Christian?
Why can’t I really be awake
to the God who says in Isaiah “I will guide you continually...I will satisfy
your needs in parched places...you shall be like a watered garden, like a
spring of water whose waters never fail”?
Could it be that like the Jews 2500 years ago I need waking up? Maybe it wasn’t just that they couldn’t be bothered
about the injustice and crumbling society around them, but that they had become
so used to the way things were that they didn’t even notice that things were
wrong. God said to Isaiah, “Shout
out, do not hold back! Announce to my
people their rebellion! They don’t
even notice what’s wrong. They
think they are doing allright. They say
to me “Why do we fast, but they do not see?
Why do we humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” They have become so used to making their
home in a world that doesn’t acknowledge me, that they have completely
forgotten that they need to make their home in me! Wake them up!”
Is this what God is saying to
me now? Is he saying it to us? To our church? We do good works. We have
a family centre here. We are nice. But have we got so used to living with the way things are in society that we fail
to see the need to make a difference?
Are we in fact pretty similar to most other people? Are we like the Israelites - living so much
in exile that we think of ourselves as
needing to be different from our neighbours only in the outward ways in which
we practise our religion? Or are we
like thermostats, which try and change the temperature of our society, or are
we like thermometers, which basically just mirror what the temperature of
society actually is? Do we really view
what is going on in the world in much the same way as those around us? While society has been changing in so many
ways, have we fallen asleep to God’s world because we have been too busy
concentrating on how our churches are doing?
Or whether we are really feeling that God loves us?
I feel maybe God is beginning
to say to me things like this, trying to get me to wake up to why my experience
of him seems so shallow, why I often seem to have little that is genuinely
different about my life to share: He
says,
How will you see a real move
of my presence when you live as if Western riches coupled with two thirds world
poverty is normal?
How will you know what
justice feels like when you live as if 800million people living in poverty and
debt is normal?
How will you know quality of
life when you live as if loads of cheap and useless consumer goods is normal?
How will you really serve my
purposes in creation when you live as if environmental collapse is normal and
that depleting resources to serve today’s needs is normal?
How will you be able to be
committed to me when you live as if dedicating your life to economic well-being
and security is normal?
How will you know the things that
last if you live like a throwaway society is normal?
How will you have time for me
when you live as if living for the weekend and holidays, or working all the
hours of the week is normal?
And how are you ever going to
know the meaning of true Christian love when you live as if you don’t ever need
anyone else, and that that is normal?
How will I awaken your
community if you all spend your time organising your lives and making
yourselves comfortable enough so that you have no real need to be open and vulnerable
to each other?
I feel God is asking me to
repent of all the things that make me feel independent of the Christian
community. He is asking me to consider
in a real way what stops me from being available to bring about his purposes in
his world. Where can we start with
this? As a start I think he is calling
me to be honest with others about my use of time and money, so that they can
help me to see where my priorities lie.
And he is telling me to see which of the lies about the way the world is
I have swallowed as being normal. He is
saying, "As you can really begin to see my world and society for what it
is, and see all the injustice and pain in it, I will be able to use you, and
you will know what real revival in my world means."
As we come to communion this
morning maybe God is asking us through Isaiah to see in the body and blood of
Jesus his care for every square inch of the creation he brought into
being. Maybe he is asking us through
his death what we are willing to sacrifice, in what ways we are going to fast,
to deny ourselves comforts, so that others can live. Perhaps he is saying, “If you can open your eyes and your hearts
to my world and renounce your captivity to false ways, then you will know
revival. Then you shall call, and I shall answer, you shall
cry for help, and I will say, “Here I am.”
Use communion to reflect on
this, come to the meeting tomorrow night to reflect and share on the ways we
can all change. God might be calling us
to give up a lot of the things we have lived with so long, so that we can love
his world, and can see his love in action.
But the most common command in the Bible is one that occurs 366 times -
“Do not be afraid.” If we and the world
are to journey into revival, he will be with us every step of the way.