A Night in the ER
“Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands; and purify your hearts,
ye double minded. Be afflicted, and
mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to
heaviness. Humble yourselves in the
sight of the Lord, and he will lift you up.”
(James 4:8-10)
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| Dr. Rick Flanders |
“Revive” is a term used in the
Old Testament to describe the work of God by which He brings His people back to
the place spiritually where He can bless them.
The prayer, “Wilt thou not revive us again, that thy people may rejoice
in thee?” (Psalm 85:6—note also Habakkuk 3:2), assumes that the people of God
have gone away from Him through disobedience and that they must be brought
back. Now the word “revive” is translated
here and in thirteen other places in the Old Testament from the root word for
“life,” and it means to bring back to life, or health. The word “quicken” used eleven times in Psalm
119 is translated from the same Hebrew word and has the same meaning as “revive.”
The word “revive” is often used
in the emergency room at the hospital.
This fact is instructive because a revival among God’s people (believers
in Jesus Christ now in the New Testament age, as the nation of Israel was in
Old Testament times) is very much like the reviving of a patient in the “e. r.” Somebody is brought in who needs help. He can’t help himself. He is not breathing right or at all, his
color is bad, he is unable to walk and get around, he may be experiencing pain,
and he is obviously not well. So the
attendants must revive him. He must be brought back to normal health and
vitality. And there are two important
factors in the revival process.
VITAL SIGNS
First, the medical technicians
must check his “vital signs.” These are
measurements of bodily functions which can be compared with accepted standards
of health. They check heart rate, blood
pressure, oxygen levels, and blood readings.
When these numbers are determined, the cause of the difficulties may be
more evident as they are compared with numbers that science has determined
represent the normal rate or level in a healthy body. Before you can revive somebody, you must know
what “health” looks like. And health or
illness is described in terms of the numbers generated by monitoring
devices. If the patient’s heart-rate is
too high, work must be done to bring it down.
If his blood-pressure is too low, the nurses and technicians will try to
raise it. At least some treatment would
be administered to the patient so that improvement would be brought about in
the vital signs. The first step in
reviving a person is finding out how to determine when he is well. Vital signs set the norm that is to be
achieved.
Spiritual revival also gravitates
to norms. What was to be normal and
healthy spiritually for the Israelite nation under the “old covenant” is summed
up in the book of Deuteronomy. Chapters 27
and 28 indicate that when the people are obedient to the Law of Moses and
faithful to Jehovah as the only true God, certain physical and material
blessings will come their way. But when
they become disobedient or unfaithful to the Lord, their blessings would be
turned into curses. If and when they
turn back to God with all their heart, he will forgive them and turn the curses
back to blessings (chapters 29-30).
These were the Old Testament standards of spiritual health, and the vital
signs of revival.
Believers since the coming of
Christ have been living under the “new covenant.” This arrangement was predicted in Jeremiah 31
and Ezekiel 36, and is expounded as the “new covenant” in Hebrews 8 through 10. But the blessings and conditions of “new
covenant” living are explained by the Lord Jesus Himself in the Upper Room
Discourse, recorded in John 13 through 17.
Here we find the vital signs of New Testament Christianity. Look for them as you study this long section
of the book of John, which is the record of a talk Jesus gave to His disciples
the night before He died. He let them
know that He was going away, but that His departure would inaugurate the New
Testament Age, which would be very good for His people (John 14:1-27; John 16:5-15). This era (the one in which we now live) would
be characterized by His absence (at the right hand of the Father, interceding
for us), His presence (in the Person of the Holy Spirit living within us as our
Comforter), and by His imminent return for us.
There would be many phenomenal blessings for committed followers of His
under these arrangements. And we will
experience them all when we “abide” in Him (John 15:1-16). When we fail to abide in Christ, we wither;
when we abide in Him, we prosper. In
this important passage of scripture, we can see the blessings Jesus taught us
to expect under the new covenant:
1. Amazing
and direct answers to prayer (John 14:12-14; 15:16; and 16:23-24).
2. Divine
help in keeping the Lord’s commandments (John 14:15-17).
3. Manifestations
of the divine presence (John 14:18-23).
4. Illumination
of truth (John 14:24-26; and 16:12-14).
5. Supernatural
peace (John 14:27; 15:11; and 16:33).
6. Spiritual
success and reproduction (John 15:1-16).
7. His
love and His joy (John 15:9-11; and 16:20-22).
We also find several more
characteristics of the healthy Christian life:
1. Love
and ministry to one another.
2. Cleansing
from our sins by the Lord.
3. Purpose
for our trials.
4. Persecution.
And we can see all of these in
the book of Acts, which records what actually happened with the Christians when
Jesus went back to heaven. They were
healthy, as the vital signs indicated.
When our Christian lives reflect these blessings, we are healthy. When they lack these things, something is
wrong. We are ill spiritually and in
need of revival.
It is apparent from the books of
John and Acts that most believers in our day need reviving, as do the great
majority of churches. The issue now is
how we can be brought out of our sad condition.
And the Bible tells us exactly and plainly how this is done.
RESUSCITATION
James 4:1-10 is one of the
clearest revival passages in the New Testament, and it reflects the principles
of every Old Testament revival passage directed to the nation of Israel. Revivals in all ages are based upon the same
principles; only the results differ, based on what covenant is in force. The principles of James 4 give Christians the
promise that when we follow them, God “shall lift you up” (see verse 10). We are guaranteed spiritual resuscitation if
we will do certain things.
Remember that revival in the New
Testament is about restoring the abundant life described in John 13 through
17. It is only indirectly about closing
saloons, changing society, reducing crime, and seeing vast numbers of
conversions. We make a mistake if we try
to define revival from history. By one
historical definition of the term, a revival is the advancement of religion at
a certain period in a certain place.
This is the result of a widespread revival, in the Biblical sense. When Christians live the abundant life, they
see prayers answered, live lives worthy of their Lord, and win many to
Jesus. But the revival (Biblically
speaking) happens in their own hearts before anything happens in the world
around them. Remember what Jesus said in
John 7:37-39 about the effect of believers being filled with the Holy Spirit! The Spirit gushes out from their innermost
selves and touches the multitude around them.
We know that the revived believers of the first century were accused of
turning “the world upside down” (Acts 17:1-7).
Revival is the spiritual resuscitation of Christians.
In James 4, the great disease
among the churches was worldliness, with strife and prayerlessness and
unanswered prayers as symptoms (verses 1 through 4). This “friendship of the world” makes the
Spirit within them jealous (verse 5).
They were supposed to love Him rather than the world (see First John
2:15-17, and compare it to this passage), but now they love the world in an
adulterous affair by adopting the wicked philosophy of life that defines “the
world” as evil. The only cure for
worldliness is the grace of God, accessed by humility (verse 6). The scriptural principle upon which we can
base our confidence that humbling ourselves before Him will bring grace from
the Lord is “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.” This is a principle taught and illustrated
throughout the Bible, and notably over and over again in the Second Book of
Chronicles, in which we find another revival promise that is based on humility
(7:14). Human pride is the great
obstacle to divine favor. He is always
offended by it. But it is also true that
God always gives grace when a man humbles himself (see startling illustrations
of this in First Kings 21:25-29 and Second Chronicles 33). Therefore the first step in getting revived
by God is to humble ourselves before Him.
This humbling takes the form of
submitting to God, according to verse 7.
Submitting to God is letting Him have His way about the issues that have
come between oneself and Him. Notice the
change in resistance from verse 6 to verse 7.
“God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
A man moves from being proud and
having God resisting him to being humble, getting grace, and finding himself
successfully resisting the devil. And it
happens when he lets the Lord have His way (“Submit yourselves”).
This new humility leads to a
deliberate effort to seek God. It is as
if the backslider (carnal Christian) lost God somewhere and is setting out to
find him. So often God has said, “Ye
shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart”
(Jeremiah 29:13—see also passages such as Deuteronomy 4:29 and Second
Chronicles 15:2, where the same promise is made). This is a revival promise, and is the same
promise that the Lord made through the Apostle James.
“Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify
your hearts, ye double minded. Be
afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and
your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves
in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.”
(Verses 8 through 10)
God is the Great Reviver of His
people and He always brings them back to life and health when they humble
themselves and seek His face. When we
truly seek to find the God of the Bible, Who is holy, we will always turn from
our sins, ask for cleansing, and purify our divided hearts. When God’s people do this, they will be
revived. Of course this is the promise
God made to Solomon for Israel that we find in Second Chronicles 7:14.
“If my people, which are called by my name, shall 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 will heal their land.”
Now I must testify that I have
seen this happen many times. Revival involves
two participants: God and man. God has
already made clear His intentions and desires.
When His wayward people finally admit their error and humbly seek His
face, He always comes and revives them.
The two unite in heart and mind, and the believer goes on to live in
unity with the will of the Ruler of the universe. In John 15, Jesus calls this revived way of
living abiding in Him. Read His
description and explanation of it in verses 5 through 11 of the chapter. Whenever the people to whom I have brought
the revival message have been willing to humble themselves and seek God’s face
for the revival they need, it has come.
As in James 4, the reviving often or usually has come with weeping and
mourning, but the humbling brings God’s very presence into the room. I have seen a week of meetings change
markedly, and a church changed in a lasting way as a result of a prayer meeting
after a revival service when the divine conditions were met. I have seen it again and again. It is not revival preaching alone that brings
a true revival, but a response in the people of genuine humility that gets them
on their knees to seek the Lord. This
does bring revival.
The world is in need of seeing
again the followers of Jesus Christ living the life of victory and joy and
peace and power that He died and rose again to give us. Christians in this sense are the hope of the
world and certainly the light of the world.
But we are not there yet. We need
to spend a night in the e.r. If our
churches each had a revival night, there could me many remarkable changes
achieved. Let the truth about New
Testament Christianity be preached, and let the people be urged to seek the
Lord for that level of living in a prayer meeting that involves honest humility
and earnest supplication. And may our
God revive us so that He can impact the world through His people again.
Dr. Rick Flanders
Previous Articles by Dr. Flanders include:
Books and articles have been written on the subject, and some of them leave people confused and unsettled. The debate in some arenas has done more harm than it has done good. Certainly we will be helped if we can discern clear facts about repentance from the Bible. And there are several which are both clear and even undeniable. Consider these:Understanding Carl McIntire: Important Insights Into Our Present World
Both liberal and conservative churchmen found McIntire’s message and methods disturbing. The “new evangelical” element rising in the conservative churches joined the liberal leaders of the mainline churches in denouncing, castigating, and even ridiculing him. But now, with the passage of time, we can get a better perspective on the man and on what he was telling us, and he doesn’t look as crazy as he did to some back in his heyday.
When a pastor changes the church music to the popular “contemporary” style he should consider the seriousness of the decision he is making and ponder in the light of scriptural principle if he is making a mistake. The error in such a change may be found in at least four missteps he is taking.
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