If You Want Revival

Text: Isaiah 58:9-14

Focus: renewal

Function: to help people see justice as a path to revival

⁹Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
    you shall cry for help, and he will say, “Here I am.”

If you remove the yoke from among you,
    the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

¹⁰if you offer your food to the hungry
    and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
    and your gloom be like the noonday.
¹¹The Lord will guide you continually
    and satisfy your needs in parched places
    and make your bones strong,
and you shall be like a watered garden,
    like a spring of water
    whose waters never fail.
¹²Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
    you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
    the restorer of streets to live in.

¹³If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath,
    from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
if you call the Sabbath a delight
    and the holy day of the Lord honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
    serving your own interests or pursuing your own affairs; ¹⁴then you shall take delight in the Lord,
    and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob,
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

When I grew up, we lived our lives around the Church. There was Sunday School and then an hour and half worship service that consisted of singing and listening to a rather lengthy hell fire and brimstone sermon. It seemed to me that every single week, there was something that I needed to go forward for and confess.

I eventually gave up trying to please God with my own holiness and stopped listening to preachers of shame.

After Church, we spent the afternoon honoring the Sabbath, which meant that we weren’t allowed to play outside. Then we went to evening church where we had less singing and an even longer sermon.

Wednesday night came around, and we were back having a prayer meeting.

I love the zeal and dedication of that church, but we spent a lot of time there.

And that wasn’t all, it was a Missionary Church. That meant that twice a year, we held a one week meeting where a missionary, or several missionaries came in and told us of their work and asked us for money.

But the real time of dedication came at our yearly revival meeting. Those lasted for a week, unless the Spirit really got moving, and then we went on for another week or so. Those meetings happened every single night of the week, so we got home, quickly ate supper and dashed out every night for our revival meeting.

A couple of those revival meeting had a very strong influence on my life. I can say that I genuinely experienced the moving of the Holy Spirit as I felt touched and called by God to do even greater things than I do myself.

Of course, most of the time, it was a prayer for the power to live a holy life free from sin. The revivals were inspiring, but at times, they focused a little bit too much on avoiding sin instead of preaching the love of God.

But one revival really stood out in my mind. It happened when I was about 14 years old. It was called the revival of love.

It started when two pastors in a certain denomination were feuding and finally one of them decided to lay down his pride, forgive the other and he said a great out pouring of love flowed through him into his church and the other pastor’s church.

And, the scripture says that the moving of the Holy Spirit is like yeast in a loaf of bread. We can’t see it happening on a micro-biological level, but we can certainly see the affect as the bread dough rises and that sweet smell fills the air.

I remember studying the revival later, when I was in bible college, and I don’t remember what the feud was, that was not important. What was important to the one pastor was standing right with God in forgiveness toward his fellow pastor.

And God blessed the congregations with a move of the Spirit that caused people who heard about the story, as evangelists from the congregations spread out and shared the testimony, more and more people were overcome by the power of love and forgiveness and a genuine revival broke out.

I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to cause a person to give up their pride, and then love and forgive and be generous with grace to people that might even be their enemy.

And this passage is about what brings about revival.

I call it a revival of justice.

Every time I have experienced the moving of God’s Holy Spirit in my life it has been either in worship, or in my own sacrifice of giving up my pride and loving someone who is not easily lovable.

The prophet was singing these words under the power of the Holy Spirit. I was taught that he was not necessarily in control, the Spirit was moving through Him anointing him with the words to say. I was supernatural and it moves beyond human wisdom into the realm of the wisdom of God.

And the wisdom of God, if we want revival, is for us to do justice toward the poor.

The chapter starts out with the people asking God why they fast and pray and no revival comes.

And God answers them with the fact that their religious practices make them feel like they are speaking to God, but if they want to speak to God, they need to take care of the poor in their midst. God told them that fasting is meaningless if they exploit the poor.

He gives them several “If’s” as condition for revival.

If you remove the pointing of the finger.

This is huge for me. It means DON”T JUDGE THE POOR. We can easily justify a lack of concern for the poor if we blame them for their circumstances.

We can say they are lazy, they are stupid, they are ignorant or blame them for making poor choices, like not finishing high school and expecting others to bail them out.

We can say all that and feel better about disobeying the command to care for the poor. But this verse is one that I live my life by when I deal with the poor who are looking for help.

God commands me not to judge them for their reasons. I believe it is a test from God to see if we will obey and love them without condition.

God tells us not to question their circumstances, but to care for their needs. Now that does not mean that I let people take advantage of me. There are people who need to take some responsibility and helping them does make their situation worse. But it isn’t for me to judge. So I pray about it and trust the Holy Spirit to lead me in how I give. And at that point, I trust my gut as if God was leading my conscience.

Now I hope I didn’t just contradict myself and give an excuse to judge them. I don’t. It is just that some people learn of my generosity and then take advantage of it and I don’t let that happen.

So the next IF is if we offer food to the hungry. It is self explanatory. But it is also a standard by which we can judge ourselves as to whether or not we are walking with Christ.

Not that this justifies me, but I look for the beggars on the street corners so that I get the blessing of giving back to Jesus Himself.

Then the subject changes from justice to worship. He goes on to an IF about the Sabbath. He tells them to practice the Sabbath. The Sabbath is a day of rest. It is a day of faith.

God created for 6 days and then rested on the 7^th. And by faith, God tells us to trust in God by resting as well.

It was a respite for both the rich and the poor alike. The poor are desperate, and losing a day to get enough to survive on might seem like a lot to ask. But they did it in faith, trusting that God would provide.

And the OT law about the Sabbath made it clear that even the slaves were to be given a day of rest.

It took a lot of faith for a poor person to spend a day not working to get themselves out of poverty. But following the Sabbath was and is a symbol that we trust God.

Now, I talk about the Sabbath as a day of worship. That is why we spent so much time in Church I was young. We were trying to obey that command. But how is resting considered to be worship?

It comes down to living by faith.

And that brings us full circle to the relieving of the suffering of the poor. Both, trusting God by not working the Sabbath and giving generously come by faith.