Rev. David Holwick
First Baptist Church
West Lafayette, Ohio
September 22, 1985
Revival in the Church
Ezekiel 37:1-14
"Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones."
Bones have a gruesome fascination about them. There is a monastery in Italy which has been in existence for hundreds of years. When a monk dies he is buried down in the basement. Over the years a lot of monks have passed on but their basement is only so big. Their solution is ingenious - after you've been buried a few years they dig you up. Your skull is put in one room and your bones are neatly piled in another. Then someone else replaces you in the basement. It's a weird feeling to walk in and see skulls piled up like cans in a supermarket. One monk was so important they gave him special honors: his skeleton was re-assembled and a priestly robe was put on him.
Bones are a striking image of death, especially spiritual death. When Ezekiel looks at the valley of dry bones, he is really looking at the nation of Israel. Spiritually, they were just about finished. The temple was destroyed and most of the Jews had been deported to other lands. Many of them had given up their faith in God because of the terrible things that had happened to them. Like those bones, the religion of the Jews was dry, it had no flesh, no spirit, and whatever faith was left, was scattered all about.
The same thing can happen in a church. It may be packed with people and overflowing with money but still be spiritually dead. At one time we've probably all visited a church like this. You walked in and nobody acknowledged your presence. After opening prayer, people start looking at their watches. The singing is flat and the sermon is dry as dust. Maybe the message used religious-sounding phrases but it has no fire or conviction. This kind of church can grow because children are born in the families. But if new families aren't attracted, it will inevitably decline.
Nothing is more depressing than a dead church. What dries up a church? Liberalism has been a big culprit. Go into any large city in Ohio and you'll find churches that were once thriving but now are on their last legs. They usually blame it on the fact that people are moving away to the suburbs but other churches in the area haven't been affected by that. The real reason these churches decline is that they have lost the heart of the gospel.
The essence of liberalism is that Christianity is reduced to what we are comfortable with. If you have a problem with miracles, a liberal will tell you to put them aside. All the negative elements in the gospel are toned down or eliminated.
A funny thing happens when Christianity is rewritten on our terms. It becomes powerless and boring. I once experienced a liberal altar call. Printed in the bulletin was a responsive reading at the end of the service. It was a pretty large gathering and at the conclusion the worship leader had us all stand up. We read out loud from the bulletin. We read that we would rededicate ourselves to love one another, be more faithful to God and that all this was coming from our hearts. I have to give them credit for one thing - the response to that altar call was 100%. They didn't give you any choice about it.
True revival requires a decision from the heart that no one else can make for you. We agree to meet God on his terms, not our own.
Another way to dry up a church is through formalism. Formalism is not quite the same thing as liberalism, even though they often go together. Formalism is when you go through all the right motions but there is no feeling behind it. We often associate it with the high-class churches, like Lutherans, Presbyterians and Episcopalians. These groups like to have worship tightly structured. When the minister prays, he is usually reading it. The rest of the service may follow a little book and there is a heavy emphasis on rituals like Communion.
One thing I should stress is that a formal church is not automatically dead. Many of these churches proclaim the gospel and worship God enthusiastically. This is great -but I feel there is a strong tendency for formal worship to become formalism. People become preoccupied with the rituals and forget the God behind them.
The opposite of a formal church is what is called low-church. We are very low-church. We may not put as much emphasis on rituals but we can still die from formalism. Our type of church focuses on the Bible and the doctrines it contains. Our ultimate goal is not be wishy-washy in what we believe but sound. I've known churches that were so biblical and so sound they were sound asleep.
There are plenty of fundamentalist churches that are not growing because they have forgotten what their purpose is. It has to be more than pumping people full of Bible facts. The Bible has to be presented in a way that relates to people's lives and challenges them to follow God's teaching. It should affect how you do your income taxes, treat your family and plan your future.
All of us slip into formalism at times. How often have you sat through a service but your mind was really on golf, or supper or puttering around the house? Genuine worship goes beyond the routines and rituals.
A third way to become spiritually dead is because of sin. When a person becomes a Christian, all of their sins, past and future, are forgiven by Jesus. At conversion, you don't just start with a clean slate. Your life stays clean, at least in God's eyes, because all he sees is the blood of Jesus. This forgiveness is concerned with your eternal salvation and sin cannot affect it.
However, sin has a great effect on our daily relationship with God. The more we disobey him, the more distant and silent he will seem. Our sin drags us down, and can also drag the whole church down. The Bible has many examples of how the sin of one person kept God from blessing everyone else.
If we really want revival, we must recognize the awfulness of sin and ask God to cleanse us from it everyday. This is an obligation for every believer. The great evangelist Charles Finney once said:
"Christians are more to blame for not being revived than sinners are for not being converted."
When an invitation is being given in this church, what is on your mind? Are you thinking, "I sure hope Bob wises up and gets saved?" "And Sally better repent before the whole church is dragged down."
The best way is to take a pencil and draw a line on the pew on one side of you, then the other. Then pray for God to start a revival between those pencil marks. You should be concerned that other people are right with God but begin with yourself.
A final way to kill a church is to lose your love. The book of Revelation contains seven letters to seven churches. To Ephesus, the very first church, Jesus says this:
"Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love."( Revelation 2:4)
The church at Ephesus wasn't completely cold - they just were not where they had started. First love can mean love for others or love for God. I think both are in view here. Their relationships weren't as close and their spiritual fervor had cooled down. This doesn't sound like much but Jesus says it threatens the existence of their church.
Too many Christians have lost the closeness they once had with God and are doing nothing to gain it back. If even a small number in a church take that step, great things can happen. John Wesley said;
"Give me one hundred people who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God and I will shake the world."
A revival can begin with a few people but it is not genuine unless it spills over to everyone else. When a congregation experiences it, people should be more concerned about other people's relationship with God as well as their own.
For Ezekiel, the revival of Israel had two stages. Verse 4 has the first stage. Ezekiel is ordered to preach to them:
"Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD!"
That's when the bones started to shake together and get some meat on them. But there was still a problem - verse 8 says they had no breath or life in them. Sermons and messages and devotions can prepare us for revival but they can't produce it. One ingredient is left.
In verse 9 Ezekiel is told to pray to the wind. There's a play on words here because the same word for breath also means wind, and it also means Spirit. No revival is complete until God pours out his Spirit. It is something that can't be scheduled or planned for. We can only pray for it. What could that Spirit do in our church?
________
Typed on April 13, 2005, by Sharon Lesko of Ledgewood Baptist Church, New Jersey
Copyright © 2024 by Rev. David Holwick
Created with the Freeware Edition of HelpNDoc: Easily create Help documents