The DNA of Spiritual Life III, the Revival Gene

What about that little gospel choir, aren't they great? They are just really good. Fred, thank you. You'll be hearing more from them as the weeks go ahead, and if you'd like to join them, I think it's probably an open group. I've noticed Fred's even been able to impart some rhythm into them, which is fairly miraculous in and of itself. Okay, we're in Luke chapter 5. If you have your Bible, Luke 5. If not, it'll be on the overhead. We're going to read together the final message in this brief series on the DNA of spiritual life. What has God put in us that changes our internal code of how we operate? And next week, I start a new series, an 11-week series called Gravity and Grace, where I'm going to talk about how God's grace changes everything about us. Our relationships, our stress, our guilt, the obstacles that we face, the failures that we face, all starts next week. I know that that's going to be a great series, a wonderful time to invite people to find the power of the gospel of Christ. Luke 5.33. Let me set the context for you, because it's a little longer than I wanted to read, but it's important. Jesus, in Luke chapter 5, has called the disciples. He's formed that team of men that was going to surround Him. He went on in verses 12 and following to heal a man with leprosy, which in that day was the most feared of diseases. And then that story where the paralytic is laid down in front of Him through the roof, and He does that. At the end of that story, it says, everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, we have seen remarkable—remember that word—remarkable things today. Then He calls Matthew, the tax collector, to be a disciple. And then verse 33, let's read together, shall we? And out loud, if you want to read it from the overhead here. They said to Him, John's disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking. Jesus answered, Can you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them. In those days they will fast. He told them this parable. No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. For if he does, the new wine will burst the skins. The wine will run out, and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. Now in verse 26 that I read a little bit earlier, we discover something about Jesus that bothered the intelligent people of His day, just like it bothers intelligent people of today. And that is the fact that most things about Jesus are remarkable. The Greek word for remarkable, that's the New Testament language, is the word paradoxa. What's it sound like? Paradox. It's a paradox. Most things about the kingdom of God are paradox. A paradox, by the way, for those of you who need to just be refreshed in the basics of English grammar are, it means this. Contrary to acceptable opinion, something which though true appears to be self-contradictory, something that's beyond expectations, or as the word is defined there in Luke 5 26, remarkable. It's remarkable. What Jesus did is remarkable. And I've discovered as I go on in the Christian life, more and more things are remarkable. I mean we have remarkable things in these days. Mark McGuire's a paradox, isn't he? I mean he's a bit remarkable. Here he is about to make sports history and pass Roger Marris and all that, but it was interesting at one of the more recent interviews I saw, Mark McGuire had all these cameras and all these microphones in his face and saying, well how does it feel this? And he said, he turned to the said, this is just the game. What's really important is my family. Now that was a paradoxical statement. And I've discovered that most things about the Christian life are really paradoxes. I've determined that, well, the Lord works in our lives very often paradoxically. This summer I spent a lot of time reading about renewals and revivals in America. Many of you helped me by just, you know, thinking, well he's up there, maybe God will finally get through to him, and he'd send me all this stuff. And I read it, I just want you to know that. I read all these reports about other churches and other ministries, and it's great stuff. But I also discovered as I read this that most of what was going on in these other renewals and revivals contradicted the normative patterns, traditions, the normal channels of things. And they were, by and large, beyond expectation. They were, by and large, paradoxical. Many times things just happened, people didn't even know why. Now, we established over the last two weeks that the DNA of our spiritual life includes, number one, the Father's genes. And I said in that first week I was back, I said, the Heavenly Father has put in you the genes of God. You're a new creature in Christ. And I said, His inclination is to shepherd you into those paths of righteousness, and to take care of you, to fall back into His arms of grace. And I said last week that the genes of the local church are the genes that enable you to care for others, and to have a mission, and a purpose, and a gift to serve God. But in order to sustain that relationship with the Father and in the local church, friends, we need a vital, vital flow of energy, of life from God. John 737 calls it a river of living water. And Jesus used the metaphor of new wine. He said new wine needs to be received into new wineskins. Now, if you're taking notes, that should be in your outline. New wine into new wineskins. I think that's right, isn't it? Well, let's all look around and find our outlines here. Let's see. Outline, outline, outline. I have one. You have one. Sue has one. Let's find our outlines. Is that the first blank in there? It's not on there, huh? All right. Well, it'll come. It's actually B. Jesus speaks for the need, right, for new wineskins. Let me talk about those three things. I already said belonging to what? Yeah, the first thing is that we belong to a loving Father. The second is that we belong to a loving church, and we have a mission in life. Now, let me talk about the church for just a moment as a wineskin. Because you see, if you don't get this, you could go on a search that will lead you into frustration. Got the blanks all figured out, folks? All the accountants, everyone happy with that? Chemical engineers, you got that? We don't have any blanks missing. All right. All right. The church as wineskins. Seventeen and a half years ago, nine men met in Jay Dawson's basement. Jay, I think, yeah, you're sitting here. And we got this book. It was called The Problem of Wineskins. And what we did, we, this book was one, it was really kind of leading edge back then, 1981. And it was about the fact that God wanted to do a renewing thing in the church, but he had to find some structures that could contain the move of the Spirit. That was when the, quote, charismatic movement was at full strength, and the church didn't seem to be able to respond to it. And Howard Snyder made the point that the church, the wineskin, needed to be able to flex to receive the new wine. The church had to change. And we studied in those evenings, those long evenings, Jay, remember? We studied things like how the, what was really important wasn't the building, it was the people. How God didn't make a big distinction between clergy and laity, but God gave the pastors to empower the people and equip them for the work of the ministry. And we talked about worship, not as liturgy, but in spirit and in truth, like we're worshiping here today. And we talked about those many, many things that make for vital life. And, you know, interestingly, over the years, we've changed some emphases here and there. We've at times raised the emphasis on small groups, and sometimes on spiritual gifts, and sometimes on mission, and sometimes outreach. But always at the core, we remain true to our vision. And that was to make disciples of Jesus Christ, who are loved, nurtured, and equipped to minister to God and one another in the loss, the war, and the power of the Holy Spirit. And we've all for those years remained true to that vision, and we've kept the central emphasis of this church, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I want you to know the most important thing that you'll ever hear me say up here is that Jesus is the Lord of the church. Keep your eyes on Him, not on these emphases. They're going to come and go. There's always going to be another move here and another move there, but never miss Jesus, because He's what it's all about. If you miss Jesus, you've missed the most important message. But there are churches these days that are experiencing a renewal, an awakening in the things of God, where a hunger for God just seems to be bubbling up in the people, where care for one another is sort of automatic and not organized in any special way, where the lost are included and brought in, where passion for the presence of God compels people to get there early and stay late, where holiness and purity are part of the overflow of the message and the Word of God. Those churches are experiencing what I call—you might want to write this down, I don't think this is on the outline—revival grace. It's a grace revival. God's doing it. And it's happening in Oregon, it's happening in New Jersey, it's happening in Florida, it's happening in Canada, it's happening all around North America. There is revival grace taking place. And friends, it's a paradox. There's no formula for it. You can't make it happen. Interestingly, some people will go visit these places, and they'll take their revival bucket—now this is something you can get at any Christian bookstore, it's called a revival bucket. You take it to a place where revival is breaking out, and then you go to the place where the revival is, and you say, put some of your revival in my revival bucket, and I want to bring it back and pour it in my church. But in fact, you can't do that. And many, many people have gone someplace looking for revival to bring it back to their church. Many pastors and many leaders, and they get back to their church, and they pour the revival bucket out, and they try really hard, and they have long meetings, and they bring in guest speakers, and they get a lot of things going, but there's no revival. And there's few things to me that are more pathetic than a church that's trying to have a revival. Anytime you ever go by, if you ever drive by a church that has on the marquee, revival, generally it's not happening. It's what they want to have happen. I mean, when you're trying, when you start replacing the authentic presence of the Lord with a little bit of hype and a little bit of sensationalism and zeal and so on, friends, it's like a lousy meal. Heating it in the microwave doesn't make it any better. It's still a lousy meal. And that's the way it is. If you're trying to make revival happen, it doesn't happen. Charles Finney, 200 years ago, gave us five marks of a true revival. Here you go. Write these down. Five marks. Very quickly. Number one, he said, there's always going to be conviction of sin. Now, most people don't flock to a place where there's conviction of sin because they don't want to hear it. Maybe, let's go up the street. They don't talk about sin up there. I'd rather go where I can just sort of have happy messages. But in a true revival, God doesn't let you off the hook. He points the light of His truth into your heart. And then, number two, there's personal repentance. God says, now that you know, do something about it. The word repent means to turn around, to change your mind and turn around. Number three, there's renewed faith. You begin to believe God that something's going to happen because He's present. And may I just pause right there as we leave that one up on the overhead? Renewed faith. Friends, if you just came to this meeting with faith, I'm here to tell you God would do things like we've never imagined before. The problem is, and I'll explain this in a moment, we come with faith that's kind of prescribed and boxed and limited. That's partly the fault of our humanness. It's partly the fault of our culture. We'll get to that in just a second. Number four, if there's true revival, it breaks the power of sin and flesh. How many of you know that there are things that you can't just get rid of? You wish you could. You have a habit. You've got a problem. You've got a fixation, an addiction, a stumbling block, and you can't get rid of it. In true revival, God breaks that power. Charles Finney also said that true revival attracts the unsaved. Even though all those things seem to be very difficult, he said people out there really are looking for it because they want the authentic move of God. In true revival, things begin to break loose that change the whole culture. And friends, I have to tell you, from my own estimate, we haven't experienced revival yet in America. Because as Michael Brown says, and he's by the way on the staff of the folks at Pensacola, he says this, what is revival? It's God stepping down from heaven and bearing his holy arm. He comes and acts and speaks. God is in the midst of his people. The Lord is shaking the world. That's revival. It's a time of visitation. If it's confined to one church, listen, it's not revival. Let me hear that. If it's confined to one church, it's not revival. When revival comes, it'll be all around. You'll go to a lot of different places. If it's confined to the meetings themselves, it's not revival. You don't go to the meetings. I mean, when God's visiting you, it's everywhere. If it can be traced to the efforts of man, it's not revival. And if it does not ultimately affect the society, it's not revival. God bring us revival. There's not many places where those things are happening these days, but I believe that they will. Now, there are plenty of places that are experiencing a fresh sort of awakening, and I'm blessed by that, and I'm excited for those places, and I believe God wants to do that right here. But we don't want to call it revival. In fact, it's interesting. What's happening is God is just bringing a lot of churches up to normal Christian life. As Watchman Nee once said, he's a great Chinese believer from earlier in this century. He said this, by the time the average Christian gets his temperature up to normal, everybody around him thinks he's got a fever. A fanatic is once defined as someone who loves Jesus more than you do. See, the early church started to turn the world upside down. At least that's what they were accused of, but in fact, what they were doing was showing the world the way it should be, right side up. Now, on the other side of your outline, I said some things about false revivals. I'm not even going to talk about that today. I think I've given you enough to just mull on there for a moment. In the end, you see, Jesus is the Lord of the church, and the only way for the church to experience that renewing, reviving power, and this is the paradox, isn't by going to places where it is, but by the people of the church looking at their own hearts and saying, where am I, God? Where am I in my walk with you? Where is the revival grace in my life? And that's what I want to spend the balance of the message on. I want to talk about the wineskin of the human heart. Can we do that together? I brought a wineskin up here. Where did I leave? All right. Here it is. This is a real thing. You can go to a wine shop and buy these. Of course, in the Middle East, this is what they always used. It was made originally of sheepskin. This one's got some other kind of liner and so on, but the real thing was just sheepskin. And what they would do is they'd pour the unfermented wine into the skin, and then they'd just let it sit. And then all that chemistry happened. All those reactions took place, and the things would bubble and all, and it would expand, and there would be all kinds of formations going on here until the wine was fermented. Now, it's a very interesting thing when Jesus uses this picture. He's talking about our hearts. Now, I know this looks like a liver, really, doesn't it? A heart, but he's talking about our heart. And when he says new wine, the word for new, and this is something you wouldn't get if you just read the English, new wine, the word for new there, in front of wine, is the word neos, N-E-A-O-S, like we get the neo something art or whatever. That word for Greek means new as in a new kind of, or a new earlier, or a new, actually, more recent variety of wine. But the word for wineskin is not the same word. The new wineskin is the word kinos, which is a different, it talks about being renewed or improved substance, not a different one. So what he's saying is new wine, a fresh filling, a different work has to go into a renewed wineskin. Because what happened if that, if you took the one that had already been filled with wine and tried to pour out the wine and fill it with new wine, it was already formed, and it would be brittle, and it would explode. And the scripture that we read said what would happen? The wine would fall all over the place, and you'd lose the wine and the wineskin. So what they had to do was to take these wineskins, and here's what they did to make them new, to kinos them, they put them in water and soaked them for three days. And then they took them out of the water and they rubbed them with oil, very, very thoroughly. Do you know the symbolism of that? What is water the symbol of in scripture? The Word of God, that's right, two people knew that, the Word of God. And what is the oil the symbol of? Most of us know that, the Holy Spirit, that's right. And God is simply saying this, in order to receive the renewing work of His life, you need to soak your heart in the Word and soften that skin, and then just say, Holy Spirit, just rub me with your oil, just anoint me afresh and soften my heart, so God can do a work. He can pour new wine into your life, something fresh, something alive, not something that's been there, done that, not something that you've already experienced before. You know, as I look over this congregation today, I've got, I mean, I love this congregation, but I'm concerned for some of us. There are scores and scores of us in this meeting right here, this service, who are new to the things of the Lord. You're like, maybe like Daryl and Stephanie, I mean, you've been a Christian a while, but now it's starting to make sense, and you're really excited. But there are a lot of you sitting here looking at me right now with your arms kind of folded in a sort of, I know all this, Pastor J's kind of, and you see, I'm concerned about that, because I believe that there's a real danger of losing the blessing of God. I hate to lose things, don't you? How many of you lost your television remote? Isn't that irritating? You know, you want to see, you want to get the news, the football game, and you can't find that remote, and it's just stuck down between the pillow. Or how about your keys? Anyone lost their keys? I mean, is there anything more frustrating? I lost my keys. Well, I won't even tell you about the whole story, but I mean, and then how many of you blame everybody else, and it was always you, and that kind of thing? But there's nothing I hate losing more than this sense that I'm walking in the presence of the Lord, and we can't lose that. We can't lose that. We miss the favor, and the grace, and the blessing, and the anointing of God. Here's three reasons why we lose it. This isn't on your outline. Three reasons why we lose it. Number one, and I've talked about this already since I've been back from my break, it's just busyness. We lose God's blessing because we're too busy to get it, too busy to wait for Him. The cares of this world, Mark chapter 4 say, crowds out the seed of the Word of God in our lives. Friends, I just, I pray that you're taking me seriously on that. You're not just going to walk out of here and go back. How many of you have a whole day off tomorrow? Let me see your hand. Would you consider giving God the first fruits of that day? Most people, hey, I've got my day off. I'm going to sleep till 11, and then I've got a picnic, and then maybe God should have a little bit of that day off. But the second reason why many of us lose it is because we get so familiar. We think we've already been there. I did a little graphic. Let's drop the lights down a little bit, guys, and show them the graphic. Here's what concerns me. You see, part of us on the left-hand side, we've been there and done that. We've been to all the meetings. We kind of know the things of God. We have an encyclopedic kind of knowledge of how God operates, and so we're not all that impressed. And when somebody gets something happening, we say, well, you know, it's not as good as when I was at so-and-so place. On the other side, and you know what's interesting about those people used to be the people on the right-hand side. The people that every time something happens, they're running off to it. There's people that come to this church once a month, call themselves members, but the other three weeks they're at other churches because they think something hotter is going on there, at least for that week. Or there's some speaker showing up, or there's some conference to go to. Friends, I've got to tell you, every hot new thing isn't going to help you to grow in Christ. In fact, when Jesus wants to really cause you to grow, you know what he usually does? He usually tucks you away in some place of service and makes you just feel like nobody's even noticing you. It's then that he's doing something unbelievable in your spirit that soon is going to blossom forth. And I just want to make, I just want to make an appeal. Don't let those three things happen to you. Don't be so busy. Don't be so prideful that you've been there, done that. And don't be so quick to run off to every new thing that you miss, that anointing, that grace that God just wants to work in your life. Thank you, guys. You can put the lights back on. Let me just close by just mentioning these four specific ways that you can walk in the flow of personal renewal. I'll just touch them real quickly. Number one, understand that renewal of the wine skin of the human heart, number one, is a process. This passage makes it clear. These people were indignant. I love the fact that the disciples were eating and drinking. How many of you know they'd sit right in the doorway? I mean, if there's food and stuff to drink, they were there, okay? And they were criticized by the Pharisees for that. What Jesus is saying is, hey, there's a time for personal devotion, a time to fast, a time to pray, and a time for solitude, and time for silence. But there's also times of celebrating and rejoicing, times of of sowing together, working together. We're coming into a time, listen, this fall is a time of great harvesting, when many people are going to be responding to the seeds that we're going to be planting through the fall ministries. Spiritual renewal comes into our lives when we embrace it as a process. It is not born overnight. It is birthed over a season of life. It happens over time. Last week, following the first service, a couple came forward, and the young woman that came forward to respond to the invitation to receive Christ, she had tears in her eyes, and she was very, very genuinely touched. And she said to me, she said, Pastor Jay, the Lord has been nudging me for the last weeks that I needed to do something in my life, and now I'm finally doing it. And I remember thinking to her, and saying to her, thinking and saying to her, you know, praise God that you recognize this season of your life. Just a little aside here, if you're here today, and God's been nudging you, but you haven't been responding, friend, don't presume that that's going to keep happening. I'm here to tell you, there are seasons when God nudges, and there are seasons when there's just nothing's there. And if you're being nudged, by all means, get out of your chair today and respond to God. A lot of people think when they're ready, they'll come to God. And I want you to know that moment may never come. It's a process that you need to respond to. Renewal comes. It comes, we wish it would come overnight. How many of you wish it was just microwave Christianity? You know, stick yourselves in there, pop that thing, and you got a super saint. It doesn't work that way. I have people that come up to me now and then here, they'll show up in the platform afterwards, and say, hey, I'm ready to come up and share a message. I said, great, is that right? How long have you been a Christian? I've been a Christian five months, you know, I've been all over. And they've got the right lingo, the right zeal, but they have no, they haven't had any time to be refined, no real growth in character. Moses wandered in the desert for 40 years while God fashioned his character. Paul, 17 years before he started teaching and preaching. Go to work in the children's ministry for a while, then come up and talk about sharing from the platform. You say, did you do that? And the answer is yes. Yes, we all just kind of learn the things of God. And renewal, you see, starts with a, it starts with that revelation I talked about last week, that apocalypsos is the word, that unveiling of our minds when we begin to see things. Remember, I talked about your heart is like a negative and God opens it up and shines the light of his understanding on there. And then he moves you forward into repentance. So it's revelation, I need to change, repentance, I begin to change. Repentance from what? Well, for some of us, repentance from being prideful and complacent over here, I've been there, done that. For others, repenting about the fact that I'm just running off everywhere. And for some of us, it's just the repentance about judging everyone else for being wrong, because I'm right. All these things, you see, all these things, friends, they block the flow of life. They stop the river of God. And if you want to know, I think the reason why so many churches are so silent in these days, why so many of them are dying, is because they've blocked the flow of life. March 29th, 1948, Niagara Falls stopped flowing. The people who live within that area were awakened by the overwhelming silence. Happened in the middle of the night. They believed it was an apocalyptic sign that the world was coming to an end. Imagine that. It was 30 hours before the rush of the water resumed. What had happened? Well, heavy winds had set the ice fields of Lake Erie in motion and tons of ice jammed the Niagara River entrance near Buffalo and stopped the flow of the river until the ice shifted again. And that became a picture to me. Why are so many churches so silent about important things? It's because the river has stopped flowing. Why are so many Christians silent about important things? Because there's no river of life. It's got to come from us. It has to come up from our spirit. And I'm here to say to you that that is the thing that God wants to release. And understand that in the end, this process begins and ends at the cross. The reason why the cross was in the point of it all. There is no other place for renewal but at the cross of Christ. People say, well, Jesus died there for my sins. And may I just say this and listen very carefully, if you miss the rest of it, hear this. It is near heresy simply to say Jesus went to the cross, so I wouldn't have to. Have you ever heard that said? Jesus died in the cross, so I wouldn't have to. And that sounds so righteous, but that's not only, that's just a part of the truth. He died in the cross for your sins, that's true. But then he says to you, now you pick up your cross daily. We have that scripture, Sue? Pick up the cross daily. If anyone would come after me, he must, not while he ought to or he should be going, he must. If you want to follow Christ, you must deny yourself and take up your cross every Sunday morning and follow me. No, every day. Renewal comes when we come to the cross on a daily basis and say, Lord Jesus, make me like you. Because, you see, it's a paradox. Look at the rest of the verse. Slide it down for me, Sue. The rest of the verse says this, for whoever wants to save his life, what a paradox, will lose it. But whoever wants, whoever loses his life from me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world? How many people are trying to just kind of gain, I mean, is your boss trying to gain the whole world? At your expense sometimes, does it feel like that? And yet, they'll lose or forfeit life itself. It's the paradox of the Christian life. Revelation, repentance, renewal. That's the sequence. Revelation, repentance, renewal. Number two, how does God work? Well, he works by pruning some things out of our lives. How many know pruning is a wonderful experience? We ought to all just, Lord, just start to prune me now. Let's all pray that together. You see, personal renewal requires some cleaning up of who we are. A little over a year ago, just before my daughter, actually about a year and a half ago, when we were getting ready for Amy and JD's wedding, we wanted the house to look as good as we can because all the neighbors and actually family members come in from out of town and neighbors over and so on. And so one of the folks that's in the church who's in the landscaping business stopped by and these bushes. And I said, well, let's just cut them back a little bit. I went like this. He said, so we can do that. He said, but that's not, he said, you got to cut them way back. And he went in there and literally, I mean, I mean, he cut off like a foot and a half and it was this scrawny, ugly looking bush. But by the time the wedding came, by the time summer came along, it had opened up and filled in and blossomed and it was beautiful. And that's what happens in our life. Sometimes God gets in there and cuts some things out and it hurts. And we think we look ugly or we lost something that was pretty. And we have in our way of thinking, but God is preparing us for something far more beautiful and full and fruitful. Notice what it says on your outline. While every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it'll be even more fruitful. Here's my big question for you. Who's the he? Your husband? Your wife? Your cell group leader? Who's the he? It's the father, your heavenly father. God is the only one. If someone else in this church comes up to you with their pruning shears and says, I got to clean up your life, just tell them to snip their own life a little bit, okay? No one else is to prune your life. God does the pruning. He's the one that convicts you of what needs to change. And let me just help you understand that there's some very practical things here. This isn't like some weird spiritual thing. God wants to do some pruning on some of our lives of our schedules. I've been hammering this because I'm so aware that unless we give God some room, friends, He's not going to move. Some of us, we just need to hear God say, drop this out of your life. Stop doing this. Make some room for me. For some of you, He wants to prune your spending patterns. You're taking everything you're making and you're spending on yourself. And one of the most important things you could do would be to prune back your spending and give as God has committed. Give your tithe, your 10%, and your offering to the Lord as well. Some of you need to prune the way you spend your leisure. You spend hours in front of a computer screen or hours in front of a novel or the television set, up till midnight watching the news and all the comedians, but you just can't get up in the morning to be with the Lord. It's just kind of tired. Some of us need to just prune our relationships. The Lord spoke to me, there were just some relationships I needed to say to these people, I've got to tell you, I'm not going to be able to spend time. I have just too many relationships. We'll touch base now and then, but I just can't do this weekly thing I've been doing with you. Why? Because God wants us to be fruitful and He needs to cut out some of those things in our lives. It's never pleasant, but it bears fruit, Hebrews 12, 11 sa