“O Lord, revive Your work” Habakkuk 3:2
Our hearts have, during the last few weeks, been full of joy and gratitude at the good news which has come across the sea from the land of the West. We hear that one of the most extraordinary religious awakenings has taken place in the United States. As many as fifty thousand persons are reported to have been added to the churches there in one month. There never has been known, since about a hundred years ago, in the days of Jonathan Edwards, such a thorough shaking throughout the length and breadth of the land, in religious matters. Now, what is there standing in the way of Great Britain, that we should not see the same? Why may not every Christian in England pray for the same? Why shouldn’t he work for the same, and why shouldn’t we have it at last?
There is one curse in America that we do not have, we call no men slaves; but, if even there, the great work of God’s Spirit has been carried on, we have at least one more probability why we should have the like. Only let us strive in prayer, let us labor diligently, and the day shall yet come when we shall see a great revival, when the name of our God shall be glorified, and His Churches shall be greatly increased.
It is on that subject I shall address you tonight, from the well known words in the prayer of Habakkuk, “O Lord, revive Thy work” (KJV).
It is very clear that there are three truths taught in our text:
1. Salvation is God’s work.
2. God’s work of grace sometimes need reviving.
3. No one can revive God’s work but God Himself.
I. The Great Salvation which God has sent into the world is entirely His own work.
Whether it be in the mass or in the individual, there is no true religion except it comes from above. A thousand mistakes have been made about this matter; and there is but one way of proving this truth, which is so explicit as to deny every error. Some say that religion is, in part at least, the work of ministers. Certain men, gifted with peculiar powers, conferred on them by ordination, are set apart to the office of the regular ministry; and when they read certain prayers, or when they preach, it is supposed that there is in them a special measure of power by which the Church and the world are blessed.
Yes, my brethren, God does make use of His ministers to establish His own work; but no so-called “minister” ever yet had power to intermingle with God’s work. We may be the instruments, just as Milton’s pen was the instrument for writing “Paradise Lost,” but the pen might as well claim the authorship of that wondrous poem as any of us claim the slightest iota of glory in the work of salvation. God, from first to last, must have, and shall have, all the glory–neither minister, nor evangelist shall share in it. There will be a curse and a blight on that man’s labor who does not always stand behind his Master, and declare that without Him he can do nothing.
There is another phase of error which also is opposed to this truth. I believe that many of my brethren, of whom I am now about to speak, do not see the tendency of certain doctrines they preach; but there are some preachers who teach doctrines, which, when refined, come to this, “That man is to help God in the work of salvation.” I do not care who the man is who says that, he is in error. Man, when he is moved by the Holy Spirit, and empowered by Him, may help as an instrument in his own salvation after he has been revived; but the first work of conversion is altogether irrespective of man, as to its channel. God the Holy Spirit stimulates the sinner who is “dead in transgressions and sins.” He asks of the sinner neither “will” nor “power,” but, finding him without anything, He gives him everything. “Salvation comes from the Lord” alone. Jonah learned that truth in the belly of the fish, and if some preachers I know were sent to a place like that, they might learn it too. A little more trouble with the soul, a little more deep experience, would make them come out with this grand old truth, that is sometimes called Calvinism, but which, after all, is only Christianity in its bold, naked form: “Salvation comes from the Lord.”
We call that man an agnostic who says that the world was not created by God; but he is worse than an agnostic who takes away the glory of salvation from God. If I wished to choose one out of two sins, the sin of denying God’s glory in creation, or in salvation, I would prefer to deny, against my senses, that God created the world, rather than deny that God saves souls. If I must commit a sin, let me commit the lesser one; for it surely is the greatest guilt to try to steal the brightest jewel in the crown of God, and that is the jewel of the glory of man’s salvation.
No, my hearers, you may criticize this doctrine if you will; but there it stands, and you must confess its truth, or else, denying it, you will be forced to find it true in this life, or in the next. Salvation is God’s work, from the very first holy desire that is breathed into the sinner, till the last dying wish with which he enters into Heaven. God shows the sinner his need; he neither could nor would know his need unless God showed it to him. It is the Holy Spirit who gives the sinner an insight into the all-sufficiency of Christ; he would never understand that unless he were taught of the Spirit. It is, then, the Spirit who touches the will, influences the conscience, guides the sinner out of himself to Christ Jesus, who saves him; and after that, it is still all of God. He who was the Alpha must be the Omega. He must work all our works in us, or we shall never see God’s face with acceptance. Of this I am persuaded, if I should even get my feet on the golden threshold of Paradise, and my finger on its pearly latch, unless I had all-sufficient grace to take the last step, I should die and perish on the, very doorway of Heaven. Every Christian should say,