Every Christian and every church will need revival. Most every single Christian I know has times in their lives when they need revival. Revival is part of the pattern the Holy Spirit uses to reconnect you to the gospel.1
Revival and spiritual awakening is when a group of people rediscover the power of the gospel. Nearly every single person can look at church and conclude the church was built for more impact than any church is seeing today. Even nonreligious people can look over a church and say, “I’m not that impressed. Your behavior doesn’t match your beliefs.” And they go on ignoring the church. So, every Christian and every church will need revival.
I want you to personally experience a spiritual awakening, and I want our church family to experience a spiritual awakening. Most importantly, God Himself wants you to experience Him in all His fulness.
A revival is a time when sleepy Christians wake up…2
… when nominal Christians convert to Christ…
… and when non-Christians come to faith in Christ.
This is accompanied by an increase in the conviction of sin, an increase in the consciousness of God’s mercy, and our unworthiness.
I invite you to find Ezra 9 with me.
A revival is when the Holy Spirit convicts of sin, brings assurance of salvation, and makes the sense of Jesus Christ intensely real. We want revival for so many reasons but one reason is this: revival always makes an impact on a society. There have always been social reforms in the wake of revivals — whether it is the repeal of child labor laws, the abolition of slavery, or even a decrease in crime — revival always leaves its mark on a people. No one can force a major revival to happen by pushing the right buttons. Yet, allow me to give you 3 marks that help distinguish a real awakening from the phony emotional stuff that passes for an awakening.
3 Marks of True Revival
Jonathan Edwards was the great pastor in Northampton, MS, and experienced several revivals in his time there. Many of you know him as the wig-wearing 18th-century pastor who preached that famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of Angry God.” He’s so much bigger than this one sermon. In fact, nearly 300 years ago, during the First Great Awakening, he penned a book where he outlines 3 true marks of a revival. They are helpful for us to quickly review.
1. A Deeper Awareness of God’s Presence
Usually, a time of renewal is preceded by a crisis, and during the crisis, God’s people really seek His presence.3 The people of God had a thirst for the living God.4 There’s a hunger for God’s presence. Revival or awakening never happens unless the Spirit of God shows Himself strong. When you study the awakenings in the past, I don’t know of one that wasn’t preceded by an extraordinary time of prayer. The Holy Spirit uses “extraordinary prayer” — united, persistent, and kingdom-centered prayer.
1. A Deeper Awareness of God’s Presence
2. An Increased Sensitivity to Sin
Whenever you see an awakening taking place, you see people crying out to God in confession of sin.5 Again, I want you to personally experience a revival. Sometimes this can be gradual, where God’s people really listen to the preaching of the Word. And at other times, there’s a sudden change as if an invisible thunderbolt from heaven comes down. Either way, you begin to notice a deepening burden on the minds of people whether they are old or young, rich or poor, man or woman. There’s a pervasive shame throughout as they search for inner peace. There’s a deep anguish of the heart and it may reveal itself as a silent, downcast appearance of the face but at other times, you witness people sobbing because of their increased sensitivity to sin.
A true revival will see someone’s conscience awakened. A true revival will see a lot of people in despair and sadness.
“Pastor, why would you want a revival, a time when people are in despair and sadness?” Because to reach the mountain top, you have to visit the valley. Because the surgeon cuts you in order to heal you.
1. A Deeper Awareness of God’s Presence
2. An Increased Sensitivity to Sin
3. A Renewed Discovery of God’s Grace
The strange thing about an awakened congregation is you’ll have a mixture of sadness and joy in the same room. There’s sadness because we realize the true weight of our sins, but there’s real gladness because we begin to appreciate the significance of the gospel. A lot of people right now are living life like this: “I live a good life; therefore Jesus accepts me.” But when revival comes, there’s a new embrace that Jesus saves sinners by grace. There’s a new grasp of the wonder of God’s grace.
So in place of, “I live a good life; therefore Jesus accepts me,” it’s now, “Jesus accepts me; now I’ll live a good life!”6 Sleepy Christians wake up to the power of grace and realize they cannot be accepted based on their religious performance. Over time, people and even the whole church will lose sight of the gospel. One of the main vehicles sparking the first awakening in Northampton, Massachusetts, was Edwards' two sermons on Romans 4:5, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in November 1734. For both John Wesley and George Whitefield, the main leaders of the British Great Awakening, it was an understanding of salvation by grace rather than moral effort that touched off personal renewal and made them agents of revival. The gospel will delight committed Christians, confront nominal Christians, and arouse sleepy Christians – all at the same time.7 There’s a rediscovery of the gospel by a generation or a church body. There’s more that goes on in a spiritual awakening, but there isn’t less than those 3 critical components.
1. A Deeper Awareness of God’s Presence
2. An Increased Sensitivity to Sin
3. A Renewed Discovery of God’s Grace
I hope you have found Ezra 9. A week ago, we looked at seeking a deeper awareness of God’s presence. Today, I want to explore an increased sensitivity to sin with you. And I am not so much aiming at your minds as I am aiming at your hearts through your minds.
Today’s Scripture
“After these things had been done, the officials approached me and said, “The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations, from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. For they have taken some of their daughters to be wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy race has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands. And in this faithlessness the hand of the officials and chief men has been foremost.” As soon as I heard this, I tore my garment and my cloak and pulled hair from my head and beard and sat appalled. Then all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the faithlessness of the returned exiles, gathered around me while I sat appalled until the evening sacrifice. And at the evening sacrifice I rose from my fasting, with my garment and my cloak torn, and fell upon my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God, saying:
“O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens. From the days of our fathers to this day we have been in great guilt. And for our iniquities we, our kings, and our priests have been given into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plundering, and to utter shame, as it is today. But now for a brief moment favor has been shown by the Lord our God, to leave us a remnant and to give us a secure hold within his holy place, that our God may brighten our eyes and grant us a little reviving in our slavery. For we are slaves. Yet our God has not forsaken us in our slavery, but has extended to us his steadfast love before the kings of Persia, to grant us some reviving to set up the house of our God, to repair its ruins, and to give us protection in Judea and Jerusalem.
“And now, O our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken your commandments, which you commanded by your servants the prophets, saying, ‘The land that you are entering, to take possession of it, is a land impure with the impurity of the peoples of the lands, with their abominations that have filled it from end to end with their uncleanness. Therefore do not give your daughters to their sons, neither take their daughters for your sons, and never seek their peace or prosperity, that you may be strong and eat the good of the land and leave it for an inheritance to your children forever.’ And after all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great guilt, seeing that you, our God, have punished us less than our iniquities deserved and have given us such a remnant as this, shall we break your commandments again and intermarry with the peoples who practice these abominations? Would you not be angry with us until you consumed us, so that there should be no remnant, nor any to escape? O Lord, the God of Israel, you are just, for we are left a remnant that has escaped, as it is today. Behold, we are before you in our guilt, for none can stand before you because of this” (Ezra 9:1-15).
Who is Ezra?
Ezra is the greatest Hebrew leader you have never heard of. Some have called him a “Second Moses.” Ezra was a scribe and a priest. Now as a scribe, Ezra would have memorized the Old Testament. Ezra’s job was to read the law of Moses and to interpret the law for the people of God. Here’s what to like about Ezra: he was a man who was uncompromised in his convictions, and he was oblivious to public opinion.8
Again, every Christian and every church will need revival. The believers in Ezra’s day were no diffenent. I want to show you how God used Ezra as an agent for revival. This part of your Bible is about 450 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. In the remaining minutes, I want to talk to you about a greater sensitivity to sin and highlight the need for confession for all of us.
1. Are You Torn Up?
“As soon as I heard this, I tore my garment and my cloak and pulled hair from my head and beard and sat appalled” (Ezra 9:3).
I doubt many of you have pulled your hair, tore your garment, and sat appalled. You may not have done it, but Ezra did. Ezra hears about people getting married, and instead of being happy, Ezra is dismayed.
1.1 To Sit Desolate
Another translation simply says Ezra sat desolate.9 Have you ever been torn up by something that you sat down on the floor? For many of you, you have been so torn up when your daughter’s volleyball team lost her last game in her senior year. You’re torn up by such a thing. You didn’t cry. You didn’t really move. What tears you up? What gets to your inner core like nothing else can?
1.2 Tearing of Garments
Ezra tore his garment, pulled out some of his hair, and collapsed on the ground in a public place so that the remnant could see his grief. In Bible times, when you tore your garment, you weren’t pitching a fit. Instead, you were showing deep remorse. Tearing your garments was a common mourning ritual. You might even put on sackcloth which was made of goat or camel hair. Neither of these was comfortable to wear, and that was the point. The piece of sackcloth clothing used in mourning usually took the form of a loincloth. The pulling out of one’s hair and sitting in stunned silence were other common mourning rituals. Here was the religious leader sitting down in the middle of everyone in stunned grief.
Ezra likely sat near the Temple until about 3 p.m. because verse 4 mentions “the evening sacrifice.” When Ezra sat in sackcloth, he was quickly joined by those who recognized the danger God’s people were in. Ezra was all torn up on the inside.
If you take time to contrast Ezra’s move with Nehemiah, Israel’s civil leader, you’ll see their reactions are a little different: “And I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair. And I made them take an oath in the name of God, saying, ‘You shall not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves’” (Nehemiah 13:25).
Ezra, the priest, pulls out his own hair while Nehemiah, the governor, pulls out the hair of the offenders. Would you rather be cursed out (not cussed out, and there’s a difference), or would you rather someone sit in stunned silence? Either way, you can see something’s wrong.
1.3 Collective Pronouns
This was a “You did what?” moment. Only Ezra continues to use the collective pronouns “we” and “our” when discussing what went wrong. So, this wasn’t just “What did you do?” but “What have we done?”
1.4 Holiness
So, what’s wrong here? The Bible says the people of God were not concerned about their personal holiness: “The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands…” (Ezra 9:2a).
God is holy and His people are to be holy as well. When you say, “I am God’s child,” you take on the traits of your Father. You want to please Him. If you don’t care about pleasing the Heavenly Father, then I doubt you are His child. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).
1.5 Intermarriage – Worship and Not Race
In verses 1 and 2, we see Ezra is upset because the Hebrew people married people of different races. God had commanded His people to marry only people of their faith. The issue here isn’t race; instead, it’s about worship.
“As soon as I heard this, I tore my garment and my cloak and pulled hair from my head and beard and sat appalled” (Ezra 9:3).
The reason God forbids His people against intermarriage had nothing to do with racism or the purity of the races, but simply because of their purity of worship. In fact, Psalm 106 describes the terrible impact on the collective faith of the Hebrew people:
“They did not destroy the peoples,
as the Lord commanded them,
but they mixed with the nations
and learned to do as they did.
They served their idols,
which became a snare to them.
They sacrificed their sons
and their daughters to the demons;
they poured out innocent blood,
the blood of their sons and daughters,
whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan,
and the land was polluted with blood.
Thus they became unclean by their acts,
and played the whore in their deeds” (Psalm 106:34-39).
Israel was surrounded by people who were so evil that they sacrificed their children and thought they were pleasing the gods. They were so evil that God gave this one-time command (not in effect today) that Israel was to battle them to destroy them. Think like ancient Nazi’s and you get a picture of this. Instead of obeying God, the people choose to intermarry with these “ancient Nazi’s.” God knew that if you married a woman whose mother worshipped pagan idols, her daughter was more likely to worship these same foreign idols. God knew that if you married a man whose father was an atheist, then his son was either likely to be an atheist or to concoct a syncretic blend of religion of some kind. Syncretism is where you blend opposing religious principles and practices in hopes of merging these. God would have none of this. God dictated who was to be worshipped and how He was to be worshipped.
1.4 For Our Good
And God did all this for our good. The Lord puts His commands in front of us. Each one of these commands is for our good. Ezra calls their actions “abominations” in verse 14.
For Ezra, the issue was who you married. For you, the issue may be honesty, laziness, jealousy, or sleeping with who you want. You may think marrying someone is your choice and God can mind His own business. “As long as I am not hurting anyone, I can do what I want.” But each one of God’s commands is an invitation for us to help ourselves to happiness. God gives us His laws for living, and God’s laws are not for our punishment but for our good. God gives us His laws for our welfare! He loves us, and every time God says, “Thou shalt,” He’s saying, “Help yourself to happiness.” And every time He says, “Thou shalt not,” He’s saying, “Don’t harm yourself.”
1.5 Application
What tears you up? What tears you up? I am ashamed to tell you that when my favorite teams have lost, I have been torn up. I had a high school buddy who punched his TV after a big loss. His dad made him buy the family a new TV. What tears you up? Have you ever heard about a good, solid marriage breaking up and said to someone nearby, “I guess everybody can do what they want?” I love that Ezra let this get to him on a deeper level. Ezra was torn up. Ezra mourned. He didn’t shrug his shoulders. He didn’t go about his business. Instead, he sat down appalled.
1. Are You Torn Up?
2. Are You Humbled?
“saying: ‘O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens’” (Ezra 9:6).
This is really a continuation of our theme. Have you been so ashamed of the moral mess you’ve made that you are ashamed?
2.1 Solidarity with Sinners
Ezra married someone who was a believer. He had obeyed God. Even though Ezra didn’t disobey God, Ezra was distraught because everyone else had disobeyed God. He uses language where he stands with everyone else: “our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens.” It’s interesting that Ezra doesn’t say, “Not my problem!” Instead, Ezra says, “Your problem is my problem.” Ezra says in effect, “Your disobedience is our disobedience. It’s My disobedience.” Notice the collective pronouns throughout Ezra 9.
2.2 Intentional Sin
This is an intentional, willful sin. In terms of the law, this isn’t manslaughter but this is murder one kind of sin. This is where God has marked a clear red line and you knowingly crossed over it. And look at the language Ezra uses here: “‘O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift my face to you, my God.” And, “for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens.”
2.3 Achan
All this reminds me of a fairly famous story in your Bibles where another man tore his robes, Joshua. The story goes like this, Joshua sends out men to spy on the enemy city of Ai. When all the Israelite soldiers were told by God through Joshua, “When you’re in battle and when we sack a city as we’re trying to conquer Canaan, you cannot take any of the booty or the plunder for your own personal gain.” Earlier in the Old Testament we see when the Israelites were going into Canaan trying to conquer the land under their captain Joshua, God told the Israelites, “Never in a battle take personal plunder. Don’t take things and use them for your own wealth.” But a man named Achan did that. He took personal plunder and buried it under his floor. Achan buried it underneath the ground, and Achan’s sin meant that God withdrew His presence from the people of Israel. They started losing all of their battles and they were getting slaughtered by the enemy. Joshua tore his clothes as a result. Unconfessed sin can prevent revival.
2.4 Jonah
Do you remember when Jonah was sinning and he was in the boat, and God’s wrath came, ready to sink the boat? One man’s sin can sink the whole boat. Again, this is about unconfessed sin preventing revival.
2.5 This Is a Big Deal
Back to Ezra, the first metaphor he uses expresses the idea that the people’s sin has reached a point that is “higher than our heads” (v. 6b). His second metaphor carries that idea even further by seeing the people’s guilt as a pile of shame that has by this time “mounted up to the heavens’” (v. 6c).
2.6 Convict
“And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment…” (John 16:8).
It says here, “… he will convict the world.” The word “convict” in John 16:8 is the Greek word elegcho is an extremely interesting word. It means to cross-examine someone to show them their error. It’s the work of a prosecutor. Jesus and the Spirit come to free you from the guilt and power of the evil of your life but to accomplish this, they must first convince you of the source of the guilt and power in your life is you.
2.6.1 Peter on His Knees
Remember when Peter pushed his boat out for Jesus to address the multitudes? Even though Peter had fished all night with no success, Jesus says in effect cast out your nets and try it again. When Peter obeys Jesus’ command, the nets tear because so many fish were caught. It’s right then the Bible says, “But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). This is a beautiful picture of what the Holy Spirit does. In a sense, that’s revival when we are collectively on our knees.
When you embrace Christianity, the Holy Spirit does this initial cleansing work in you. The Holy Spirit makes a decisive break in your life with the patterns of sin that were in your lives before knew Christ. Some of you feel or you sense Someone dealing with you. You don’t feel some THING but you feel some ONE. The Spirit goes after conviction of three things, and I tell you, these three things are very important:
There are three things: of sin, of righteousness, and judgment. Watch Peter on his knees in the boat before Jesus. There is so little of this happening in DFW right now. There are too few of us on our knees.
2.6.2 North Korean Revival
Would it surprise you to know that a revival broke out in North Korea in 1907? Yes, I said North Korea. Presbyterians encouraged people to devote their first two weeks of the year in Bible study, singing, and prayer around this time. Every year, God’s people were to drench themselves in prayer, Bible study, and singing. On the 12th night of doing this, the people sensed something really different, they sensed “God’s nearness” and the people then said it was impossible to describe. Then, after a short sermon, everyone began to pray. Witnesses said of this prayer that it was “not confusion, but a vast harmony of sound and spirit, a mingling together of souls moved by an irresistible impulse of prayer. The prayer sounded to me like the falling of many waters, an ocean of prayer beating against God’s throne. It was not many, but one, born of one Spirit, lifted to one Father above.”10
“He came to us in Pyongyang that night with the sound of weeping. As the prayer continued, a spirit of heaviness and sorrow for sin came down upon the audience. Over on one side, someone began to weep, and in a moment the whole audience was weeping.
“Man after man would rise, confess his sins, break down and weep, and then throw himself to the floor and beat the floor with his fists in perfect agony of conviction. My own cook tried to make a confession, broke down in the midst of it, and cried to me across the room: ‘Pastor, tell me, is there any hope for me? Can I be forgiven?’ and then threw himself to the floor and wept and wept, and almost screamed in agony. Sometimes, after a confession, the whole audience would break out in audible prayer, and the effect of that audience of hundreds of men praying together in audible prayer was something indescribable. Again, after another confession, they would break out in uncontrollable weeping, and we would all weep, we could not help it. And so the meeting went on until two o’clock a.m., with confession and weeping and praying.”
The next day, the men in attendance returned to their churches, where the revival spread throughout the entire Korean Peninsula. Similar incidences of confession of sin, weeping, and praying occurred spontaneously throughout the land. Even schools had to close down for days as children wept together over their sins.
2.6.3 The Need for Confession
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (1 John 1:9-10).
God invites you to confess your sin to Him. When your sin is hidden on earth, it’s exposed in Heaven. But when your sin is confessed here on earth, it’s hidden in Heaven.
EndNotes
1 Timothy Keller, “Foreword,” in Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal, Expanded Editio (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1979), 8.
2 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, New England Puritan pastor Cotton Mather first gave the term revival a technical religious definition. W. R. Ward, The Protestant Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 282– 83.
3 This was the first mark for Jonathan Edwards in his work, The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God. R. C Sproul and Archie Parrish, The Spirit of Revival (With the Complete, Modernized Text of The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God): Discovering the Wisdom of Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton, IL: Crossway), 89.
4 William Buell Sprague refers to this as, “The first step usually is an increase of zeal and devotedness on the part of God’s people.” William Buell Sprague, Lectures on Revivals of Religion (New York: D. Appleton & Cos Valuable Publications, 1832), Kindle Locations 373-374.
5 This was the first mark for Jonathan Edwards: “This work of the Spirit of God confirms and establishes people’s minds in the truth of what the Gospel declares to us about Jesus being the Son of God and the Savior of men.” Ibid., 87.
6 Timothy Keller, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel Centered Ministry in Your City (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 54.
7 Keller, Center Church, 65.
8 Malcom McDow and Alvin L. Reid, Firefall: How God Shaped History through Revivals (Nashville: B & H Publishing Group, 1997), 56.
9 Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, vol 3, a translation with Commentary (New York: W. W. Norton Company, 2019), 825.
10 William Blair and Bruce Hunt, The Korean Pentecost and the Sufferings Which Followed (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2015), 83.
