Revive Us Again Part 1
Notes
Transcript
Living and Active
Living and Active
We are not conservatives or liberals. We are Followers of the Christ. We are not Cultural Christians but Covenant Christians who adhere to the precepts and principles of the Laws of God. That means, our morality is not culturally subjective but absolute in God’s transcendent ethical standards of righteousness. We are to think with the mind of God not the crowd. The Truth we live by is not relative or subjective. If these views seem to lean to what we define culturally as conservative, so be it. And if you think any particular political party is the party of conservatism, you are deceived and blind. However, there is no cultural liberalism in the Law of God. Cultural liberalism is defined by the removal of all restraint and appetites of the flesh. It is founded on ideologies of humanism, post-modernism, and relativism. The further culture gets morally from the ways of God, the more radical the Christian is perceived. If not, something is tragically wrong with our Christianity. If adherence to the mind of God in ethical living is offensive to you, you need to experience conversion in Christ Jesus.
The living and actions of Followers of Christ should contrast distinctively from that of a professing Christian who has adopted a postmodern cultural ideology.
The vision and prophecies given to the priest ordained prophet Zechariah reveals God’s call to His people for purification.
Right here, we have a cultural battlefield within and without the Body of Christ.
Purification- tohar טֹהַר to cleanse and restore to it’s splendor. This culture does not see itself as needing cleansing. It finds pleasure in it’s filth and perversion in opposition to God. It calls dirty good and clean evil. I could say, it is like a child who refuses to take a bath. But it is far worse. It is more like a dog who has defiled himself and finds pleasure in it.
What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.”
Zechariah’s lamentation from the heart of God is for the people’s true spiritual transformation.
Again, another battlefield of ideological proportions within the church. God’s Word speaks of transformation verses deformation.
Transformation is defined as a marked change; to be changed; to transform the essential nature of something. In Scripture it is used in the context of the inner man or one’s soul.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
God desires to “transform” your inner being from the fallen nature to the nature of the Holy Spirit. Through the redemptive work of Christ your “nature” is transformed from it’s disfigured design back to the original design that can commune with the Creator.
Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
This is different than deformation which is the alteration of original form for the worse; to alter from proper or natural form; misshape; distort; to spoil the beauty or appearance of; to disfigure.
The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
This is what happened with man in the Garden of Eden as the result of sin. Today, we have people calling transformation what is really deformation to their minds and physical beings.
The visions God gives to Zechariah stresses their need for the presence of the Lord among them and the necessity for them to live as if the Lord were present. There is great warning for them not to follow in the fallen ways of fallen fathers whose disobedience brought God’s judgement. (1:16; 9:9–10; 14:4, 9) . (Apologetics Study Bible; THE MEANING OF ZECHARIAH’S MESSAGE; Cabal, T., Brand, C. O., Clendenen, E. R., Copan, P., Moreland, J. P., & Powell, D. (2007). The Apologetics Study Bible: Real Questions, Straight Answers, Stronger Faith (p. 1379). Holman Bible Publishers.)
Like the vision given to Zechariah, God is calling us to renewal and revival again. God is calling us back to His purpose for His people and His purpose for the nations. God desires to renew and restore His relationship with His people. This is the essence of true revival.
Throughout the Scriptures, and in the Word of the Lord given to Zechariah, there is a process for revival:
First, there has to be a return to priesthood or to live holy. Second, there has to be a cleansing of the temple or the dwelling place of the Lord. The Holy Spirit will not live where there is idolatrous love for the world or the things in it. These include, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes or the pride of life. Finally, there has to be the institution of sacrifice. Every iniquity, willful, sinful inclination has to be put to death.
This is more than just casting down thoughts or trying to control emotions, feelings or inhibitions and appetites. God desires a complete redirection of what you love and a complete surrender to the source of true love.
According to Voddi Baucham, “Love is not Love”. As Followers of the Christ, we are not to “love everything”. Who told you that Christians are supposed to love everything regardless?
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.
DO NOT LOVE THE WORLD.
DO NOT LOVE THE WORLD.
But what about John 3:16? Does it not say that God loved the world so much that He died for it?
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
In context, these verses do not speak of the same “world” nor the same “love”. God loves the people in the physical world. But we are not to love the humanistic systems and ideologies that exalt themselves against the knowledge and way of the Lord.
I am to love my wife. But only my wife. Love, as I am to have for my wife, directed to any other woman is called adulatory. I am to love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. But that same love directed towards anything other than God is called idolatry. The love for my wife is to come from God, not the lust of my fleshly nature or it is unsustainable and easily perverted. That same love directed to any other woman is not a love that comes from God but is a love that comes from a fallen fleshly nature, lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and pride of life.
Oh how confused the church has become at the seeming contradictions the world presents to the light of the truth. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil became a seemingly contradiction to the nature of God when a deceptive voice entered their ears.
In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
The revival we need is not a hoop and a holler. It is not floor flopping and tongue wagging hoe down. The revival we need is a renewed love for the Word of Truth. We need a revival to a restored passion to live holy and righteous before God. We need a revival of the preeminence of Jesus Christ as Lord of our living. We need a church that can see through the cultural fog of confusion and discern the deceiving presuppositions of a postmodern and anti-Christ church that has compromised the Gospel.
Look with me in Hebrews 4:12.
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
THE WORD OF GOD IS LIVING.
THE WORD OF GOD IS LIVING.
Living is a present tense verb. That means, it is not dead and remains applicable today. It means it has not passed away and become irrelevant. It means it has breathe and life in it. It means it is still active or doing what it was intended to do. It means it is still viable and as powerful today as when it came from the mouth of God.
I went to the dentist. I had a tooth that needs a crown. To see if I needed a root canal or not she did what she called a viability test. She touched something extremely cold to the nerve and waited for me to jump and holler in response. If I felt the pain, the tooth was still viable. In other words, the nerves were still alive.
If the Word of God does not challenge you when it hits a spiritual nerve, your soul might need a spiritual root canal.
The word “living” here is חַי chey or alive or life. It is the root of chaya חָיָה meaning to revive and sustain life. It is also the root of chava חָוָה meaning to have breath. This is not just a presupposition of something good. Throughout the Scripture, life is sacred and to be valued.
In Deuteronomy 30:15-20, God presents a choice to the people, life and death and admonishes them to choose life.
For it is no empty word for you, but your very life, and by this word you shall live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.”
Thus, the conclusion is that what sustains true life in any man or woman is living the life of the Word of God which is alive in the one who lives it. And it is by this that life is lived, not by the materials means of this world.
This world rejects the Word of God and it is evident in their choosing of death. Death to what is pure, death to what is good, death to what is holy, death to family, death to the sanctity of all things ordained of God, death to what is created in the image of God, death to anything and everything that was given to us by God or reflects His goodness.
And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
One way or another, mankind will hunger for the Truth of the Word of God. He will either reject it and refuse to partake leaving his soul in damnable starvation or he will desire it for the good and life that it truly is and eat it’s scroll.
“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord God, “when I will send a famine on the land— not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.
We are living in these days of great famine. People sit in churches starving for the true Word of the Lord but are fed loaves of sweet, pleasing motivation and gratification for their flesh. All the while the preachers feed on admiration and self-justification.
It is not about breaking it down in Hebrew or Greek or illuminating errors in understanding as much as it is about knowing what God said and then living it obediently. This is to choose life and choose it actively.
Will you choose to actively live the Word of God today? Will you ask the Holy Spirit to awaken within you an insatiable hunger for His Living Word? Ask God with me, “Lord Revive Us Again”!