“But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons,” 1 Timothy 4:1
Introduction
Let us go to the Lord in prayer.
Father, I come before You in the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ. Lord, You know all things. They are all before You like an open book. Who can hide their heart from Your presence and Your eye? The deeds of the most clever men are exposed before You. Your omniscience knows no bounds and if it were not for grace I would be of all men most terrified, but there is grace, abounding and glorious, poured out upon the weakest of men and abounding to Your glory. Father, I praise You and I worship You and I thank You for all that You are and all that You have done. And there is no one like You in the heavens or the earth or under the earth. You are king and there is no other. You are Savior and You share that glory with no one.
Father, this night You know me and my great need of grace. Why am I here except that You called the weakest among men, the most ignoble among brothers and that by Your grace, often times, the lesser teaches the greater? That is always my case and I praise You. I worship You.
Father, help us tonight. To the wind with eloquence, to hell with the brilliant intellect, Father. Let the truth go forward. Let me be changed that the state of Your Church be more glorious. I pray for grace upon grace and mercy upon mercy for myself and for the hearers who are present here. Help us, oh God, and we will be helped and we will boast in that help in Jesus’ name. Amen.
It is a great privilege for me to be here today, an astounding privilege to stand here before you and to speak about things such as revival, reformation, the working of God among his people and among men. But today I am going to share with you an indictment – yet it is an indictment of hope.
As I was praying through what I should say to you, I came to a great conclusion, a great burden that was laid upon my heart: We need revival. We need an awakening, but we cannot simply expect the Holy Spirit to come down and clean up all the mess we have made. We have clear direction from the Word of God with regard to what He has done through Christ, how He expects us to live, how He expects us to order his Church. And it does little good for men to cry out for extra-biblical manifestations when biblical principle is violated all around us.
I want you to know this: There is little need for the devil and evil men to oppose a man praying for revival unless he is also laboring for reformation. We have been given truth, and we cannot simply do what is right in our own eyes and then expect the Holy Spirit to come down and bless our labors.
As we look into the Old Testament, we see that Moses is given very, very detailed explanation how to build the Tabernacle. Now, was that given for Moses’ sake or for the Church’s sake? I think that what is being explained there is that God is specific in His will, and that we are not to presume that we can take the smallest detail and ignore it.
Now I know that I am frail man, buffeted by many weaknesses, but I have an indictment. I can’t call it my indictment, because who am I to indict anyone? And I dare not call it God’s indictment, for how can I presume upon His name. But I will say this: As I look around at the Church and compare her to Scripture, I see that there are certain things that must change.
I am not Martin Luther. This is not 95 declarations nailed to Wittenburg’s door, but this is a burden on my heart and I must share it. I must share it! What I am going to say will anger some of you, but let me warn you. It may be true that you will be able to accuse me of arrogance. It may be true that you do not like my delivery. I have many times been arrogant and I have many times delivered truth in a wrong way; but don’t allow that to be an excuse for you. The question is this: Is what I am saying true, whether it is delivered through a faulty messenger or no?
Others of you will rejoice in what you hear and you will want to say, “Amen,” and maybe pump your arms. But don’t do that, because all of us bear a measure of guilt. And if you have attained to some spiritual state, then I would say what my brother has said. “What do you have that you have not received and if you have received it, why do you boast?” Would it not be better to worship God in humility?
If you are a younger minister, I do not want you to get caught up in these truths and take them back and storm your church without love. I would make one suggestion. See to it that your knees are bleeding before you begin any sort of reformation. And if you are an older minister serving the Lord for many, many years I beg you not to be arrogant. An old foolish king can learn from the weakest of his servants.
I also beg you this: Have the courage to change everything, even if it is the last day of your life. At least you can go into glory knowing that you attempted a reformation that was biblical.
And I will say this as a warning to the older men. Please, listen to me carefully. I know the admonition in 1 Timothy chapter five of the way I am to address you, and so I do address you in that way. But, there is a great awakening going on in this country! And not only in this country, but also in Europe, South America, and many other places. I see young men going back to the rock from which we were cut. They are reading Spurgeon and Whitefield; they are still listening to Ravenhill, Martin Lloyd-Jones, Tozer, and Wesley – and it is a great, incredible movement. Just because popular media and Christianity Today hasn’t discovered what is going on, I want you to know that I would have never dreamed 15 years ago that I would see the awakening we are seeing, not through my ministry, but through what God is doing without any of our ministries.
Whether it is Holland, with a thousand young men declaring, “Things have to change,” crying out all night in prayer for the power of God and the truth of Scripture; or in South America, recognizing that they have been so influenced by psychology and all sorts of superficial techniques coming from America with regard to evangelism – and now, weeping and broken, they are going back and evangelizing their churches. Or the inner city of the United States, where I have sat up at times until two and three in the morning discussing theology with young African Americans, whom God is going to raise up to do more preaching than anyone will ever be able to imagine. There is an awakening.
Now I am going to say this with tenderness: Most people over forty don’t even have a clue about this awakening. Many young men are turning back to the great teachers from the prior centuries, and to the old ways, and to truths that have brought awakening time and time again in this world. Most of these young men are quite young; and they will go to their leaders and say, “Look at what we have discovered! Look what happened in Wales. Look what happened in Africa. Look at this! And look at that! And look at this teaching! It is absolutely amazing!” And most of the older men today will either turn away or say, “It is nothing any different than what I have been preaching for 25 years.” But in fact, it is completely different than what they have been preaching the last 25 years. And so we need to be very, very careful to understand that God is doing a great work. And “he who began a good work in you will finish it”!
Many people have the idea that they are going to pray-in a revival. And other people say, “Revival will come whether you pray or not.” I am not in either one of those camps. Because I know this: When I see men, women, and young people all over the world praying for an awakening, to me that is the first fruits of revival! And I can count on the fact that He who gives these first fruits will bring in the full harvest.
Now I want to look at ten indictments – things that I believe that we must change in the modern church.