Sermon Tone Analysis

Series: True RevivalText: 1 Samuel 7:3–15

By: Shaun Marksbury Date: February 19, 2023

Venue: Living Water Baptist ChurchOccasion: AM Service

Introduction

Many people are wondering about what is happening right now in the chapel of Asbury University, a school within the Wesleyan/Methodist tradition.

The Wednesday before last, the chapel message included teaching that prompted many students to remain in prayer.

That was now eleven days ago, and students have been cycling in and out of the chapel, along with people from all over the country.

Speakers have come forward with generally evangelical messages and musicians have led in song while many in the country watch what they consider to be a revival breaking out in Kentucky.

I’m not going to be evaluating the question of whether we should consider this to be a true revival today.

I’m pleased with some elements and praying for it, and I’m troubled by other elements, such as the content of the messages, some of the people up front, and the school itself.

Truth be told, though, it takes years to evaluate the fruits which may come from a revival, and we can be too quick sometimes to embrace or condemn it.

Let’s first back up and consider a more basic question: “What is revival?”

There are a lot of definitions today which may not be the first ones you think when you consider true revival.

For instance, I heard one Christian teacher say that revival is “when God steps down from heaven.”

Others look for special manifestations.

Yet, the term has a specific connotation.

The word “revive” comes from the Latin revivere which means “to live again,” and the English term primarily means “to restore to consciousness or life.”

That makes sense; if we find someone has fainted, we would ask how to best revive the person.

In Scripture, when Elijah prayed that the Lord would return life to the dead boy, we read that life returned and “he revived” (1 Kings 17:22).

When we think of revival, then, we should think of a return of or the creation of new life and awareness.

With that in mind, the primary marker of true revival is always the spiritually dead coming to new life in Christ.

The secondary marker is related to that — the Christian coming to a new or a renewed sense of awareness to the truth and ways of God.

This is all the work of the Holy Spirit, and this work may extend beyond the individual to include a church, a region, or even an entire country (all of which we find examples of in history).

This means that Scripture and the gospel should be at the forefront of any revival.

As one theological dictionary explains,

True revival always brings a fresh and vivid scriptural emphasis on the holiness and justice of God, on His judgment on sin, and on true repentance and the reception of Christ by faith.

The presence of God in awful and overwhelming power is the hallmark of revival, as He moves in glorious gospel triumph, bringing new life to His church and salvation to many souls.

Such a revival leaves a lasting mark.

Thus, we would expect the preaching of God’s Word and a clear gospel presentation to be the hallmarks of revival.

When we look at revivals in history, they begin within areas of spiritual dryness where God’s Word sparks a fire that quickly spreads, burning across many hearts.

Such revivals lead to a greater sense of God’s holiness and a desire to obey His commandments.

That’s what we see in just one example of revival, and it’s in First Samuel 7. This comes after the time of the judges, when, sadly, overall spiritual decline marked the children of Israel.

As we get to 1 Samuel, we see that even the high priest and his sons are not worshipping as they should.

The Israelites even lose the ark of the covenant to their enemies, the Philistines!

Of course, the Lord can defend Himself, and through an almost amusing series of events, He leads the Philistines to simply return the ark of the covenant to Israel.

However, the ark sits for some time — nothing is necessarily changed in Israel.

So, we begin first Samuel 7, we note that the ark sits out of place for 20 years, a time in which the people need revival.

When revival finally comes, we see that it begins with worshipping the Lord alone, it includes confession and the gospel, and it comes through the work of God.

Let’s consider the first of these.

Revival begins with worshipping the Lord alone (vv.

3–4)

Then Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel, saying, “If you return to the Lord with all your heart, remove the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your hearts to the Lord and serve Him alone; and He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines.”

So the sons of Israel removed the Baals and the Ashtaroth and served the Lord alone.

In a sense, these were the people of God.

However, they were not living righteously before the Lord, having hearts divided.

We see Samuel identify this and call them to repentance.

The real problem wasn’t the Philistines, which God could easy remove from them; the issue was the idolatry of the people.

What kind of idolatry was occurring?

We read here that there were Baals (plural) and Asharoth (plural for Ashtart or Astarte).

The first of these is a more familiar name; Baal was the Canaanite storm god, bringer of rain.

As to the latter, the Bible Knowledge Commentary notes,

Ashtoreth (or Astarte) was goddess of both love and war, as were her Babylonian and Greek counterparts Ishtar and Aphrodite respectively.

She apparently functioned with Baal as a fertility deity and by their sexual union in some magical way the earth and all its life supposedly experienced annual rejuvenation and fruitfulness.

Rain is essential to an agrarian society, especially one prone to drought, and some of the Jews were apparently hedging their bets by worshipping both Yahweh and these Canaanite deities.

So, the children of Israel needed to learn to trust in the Lord completely and not feel the need to have such idols.

Samuel promised them that “He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines.”

Since the time of the conquest of Canaan, though, they had long since lost that confidence.

To be clear, idolatry is always our problem.

When we pursue something more than God — such as money, entertainment, power — we’re placing that above God and worshipping it.

When we pursue our lusts rather than obey the Lord, we are actually worshipping ourselves.

When we seek ungodly means of knowing, such as horoscopes, talking to the dead, or getting good luck charms, we’re engaging in idolatry.

When we adopt the thinking of the world, trying to mix it with God’s ways, we idolize.

We must put all these things aside in recognition that we’re not putting God first.

They also needed to repent, to turn from their sin and back to the Lord.

Note that the call isn’t to just remove the idols but to “direct your hearts to the Lord and serve Him alone.”

They were to replace idol worship and synchronistic worship with wholehearted devotion to Yahweh.

That is exactly what they did.

We read, “So the sons of Israel removed the Baals and the Ashtaroth and served the Lord alone.”

Repentance, then, is the start of revival.

Really, we could take one step back before that and say revival begins with the call of God’s Word.

Samuel was a prophet, and he bore the mantle of the Holy Spirit as he spoke; people were obligated to keep the prophetic word.

Moreover, this call against idols is a command to keep the Law of Moses and notably, the Ten Commandments.

After that, Joshua had told them to “be very careful to observe the commandment and the law which Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, to love the Lord your God and walk in all His ways and keep His commandments and hold fast to Him and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul” (Jos.

22:5).

It’s always amazing when Christians say that thinking biblically is putting God in a box, when the Holy Spirit has inspired this box of Scripture for us!

So, we might say that true revival here began not with the shaking of tambourines or spiritual ecstasies but with Scripture.

When we are not committed to the Lord and His ways, we’re placing someone or something idolatrously above Him.

We are not following His Word.

True revival will cause us to recognize this, and something else:

Revival includes confession and the gospel (vv.

5–9)

Then Samuel said, “Gather all Israel to Mizpah and I will pray to the Lord for you.”

They gathered to Mizpah, and drew water and poured it out before the Lord, and fasted on that day and said there, “We have sinned against the Lord.”

And Samuel judged the sons of Israel at Mizpah.

Now when the Philistines heard that the sons of Israel had gathered to Mizpah, the lords of the Philistines went up against Israel.

And when the sons of Israel heard it, they were afraid of the Philistines.

Then the sons of Israel said to Samuel, “Do not cease to cry to the Lord our God for us, that He may save us from the hand of the Philistines.”

Samuel took a suckling lamb and offered it for a whole burnt offering to the Lord; and Samuel cried to the Lord for Israel and the Lord answered him.

In this section, we see the gathering at Mizpah.

This was a place about seven miles north of Jerusalem.

There needed to be an area large enough to accommodate them, and this was a common spot for gatherings in those days.

In Judges, for instance, they gathered there to decide what should be done with the Tribe of Benjamin (Jud.

19:1–20:1, 3; 21:1, 5, 8).

We see later in, 1 Samuel 10:17–24, the people regather there and the Lord publicly selects Saul as king.

We might see parallels between this and the church gathering.

The people of God must regularly come together, which we see in the Old Testament in the temple and much later in synagogues.

God prescribed that worship in a certain way, and that is no less true in the New Testament era.

In addition to the reading and preaching of Scripture, we are to pray for one another, as we see here, and we’re to have confession and assurance, as we’ll note in a few minutes.

Let’s back up and consider what happens here.

First, we see Samuel beginning here with the call to gather, and he promises to pray for them.

Prayer is essential because God is ultimately in control, as we will see, and He wants us to pray concerning our troubles.

Without God’s grace, the people will not have true conversion or change.

We see that they also engage in spiritual activity in v. 6.

They draw water, which they may have needed after their respective journeys, but poured it out before God (as MacArthur notes, this “was a sign of repentance”).