Real Revival Series

He mentioned to them that even Solomon couldn’t resist worshipping these people’s idols. Most of them then changed. But then he found out that one of the high priest’s grandson’s was married to a Horonite, and it says I (Nehemiah) chased him from me.

Then look how Nehemiah closes. Thus I cleansed them from everything foreign (by the way this is something many of the good kings of Judah like Josiah had to do time after time). And he says remember me, o my God, for good.

So did a revival happen in the book of Ezra? Not really. Many of the components were there. There was confession, there was even agreement that the sin had to stop, but it was all words. Revival is not everybody weeping and confessing all their sin and having an emotional experience, that’s a good start, but true spiritual revival, which means bringing back to life, causes repentance in the real sense of the word, and that repentance creates mass change in a person, community, or culture.

I wonder what was happening during those 14 or so years before Nehemiah showed up and chased off all the foreigners. Obviously Ezra couldn’t police a whole country, just like a pastor can’t know everything that goes on in people’s private lives outside of church. I bet the people worshipped at the temple, heard the word of God preached, burnt their sacrifices. All the while continuing in their sin and disobedience. Maybe they just got better at hiding it. Do any of us need to do some repenting?

It’s also true that not all revivals are instant, sometimes they begin and percolate for a long time before the actual revival comes. But it has to start as it did here in Ezra only to come to fruition over 14 years later.

But you say that’s all Old Testament, things are different today, once you’re saved by Jesus blood, you don’t have to worry anymore. By the way, these people were very precious to God as well and they had about another 500 years to get it right with attack after attack coming against them to wake them up, until finally they were totally obliterated by the Romans in AD 70 only to return this time about 1900 years later. God never gives up trying to save the people he loves, even after he has already saved them. And yes sometimes he does it through judgment that leads to repentance even after we become His children.

Listen to what John says to believing Christians in his first letter probably to the churches around Ephesus. “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are children of God and who are children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness (not breaking God’s laws) is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother”.

And of course there’s Paul’s famous words to the Roman church in Romans 5, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?”