A spontaneous gift is sudden and unexpected to the recipient not to the giver. Revival is the sudden and unexpected outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It’s sudden and unexpected to the church and to the world, but not to God.
INTO THE TEMPLE
Jesus enters Jerusalem and proceeds to enter the temple (Matthew 21:12-16). The temple was the heart of the city, the center of its life. For Israel the temple was the meeting-point with God. It symbolized God’s presence, his dwelling with them. God never intended to come and go. From the beginning in the garden of Eden to the end in the new heaven and new earth, the picture and the truth is that God desires, intends, and plans to dwell with man completely and permanently. To be in unbroken relationship.
Yet, every relationship we are in inevitably suffers decay over time and must be restored.
When Jesus enters the temple he is by his actions declaring that the heart is sick, the center is twisted. It is because of this that he comes to heal, to purify, to restore. Revival is relational restoration to the church (relational reconciliation to the world). By its very name, Revival implies that something needs reviving; and reviving implies that something is dying. If the church of Jesus Christ is always consistently and fully devoted, obedient, and faithful in her relationship to Jesus Christ, there is no need ever of revival; but the Bible and history have shown that the church is not. God has repeatedly sent revival to his people.
OUT OF THE TEMPLE
By virtue of Jesus entering the temple, something must come out of the temple. He drives out “all who sold and bought”, perpetrator and victim alike. Jesus is going beyond corrupt practices. Where (the temple), not what (the trading), is at the root of what Jesus wants to get at. As Christians we often feel that our problem is our isolated acts of disobedience, but our problem is the deep aversion in our heart to God. We have an allergic reaction to God's sovereignty over our lives. It’s our attitude beneath our actions. We not only push against God, we push away from him.
A parent who lovingly disciplines their child quickly comes to learn that sometimes you discipline the act and sometimes you discipline the attitude. In fact, a parent will completely miss the heart of the discipline process if he thinks that it is only actions that need addressing.
In revival God intends to lovingly go after the attitudes beneath our actions; our moods and the way we are attuned to him and to the world, our way of being-in-Christ and being-in-the-world. Because before revival can come to the world, renewal must first come to the heart of the church. It is in this season that once again God restores to us a grand vision of himself, not of ourselves. We, the church, are obsessed with our own image. We’re not obsessed with the image of Jesus Christ, unless it reflects favorably upon us. God must come to demolish the idol of our image. It must become as dust before his glory.
A NEW TEMPLE
What Jesus has done in the temple, though, is not the extent or the fullness of what he wants to accomplish. What he is saying by what he is doing is that a new age is coming in him. Jesus hasn’t come to fix a system or to beautify a building. Jesus has come to replace the temple as the meeting-point with God: So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. (John 2:18-22)
Jesus has come to purify, to beautify, a people to meet and to dwell with God: What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” (2 Corinthians 6:16-18)
Revival comes to restore the splendor of God’s holiness in his people, to return us to an original or earlier condition. The holiness of Jesus doesn’t fade, but it does fade in us. So the Holy Spirit comes and “touches up” what needs to be.
Revival comes to radiate the light of God’s glory from us to the world, to go out in a direct line from a central point. We are not that central point. Our lamp is the Lamb. (Revelation 21:23)
A PURE AND SPOTLESS BRIDE
We can’t cause revival, but we can (re)turn to the God who does, and in so doing turn from the things that infect, decay, clog, or obstruct. Jesus’ great joy is not to present to himself a sleek, slender, brilliant, charismatic, and famous bride. His great joy is to present to himself a pure and spotless bride (Ephesians 5:27), and in so doing to present himself to the world.
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