“Grace led my roving feet
To tread the Heavenly road;
And new supplies each hour I meet
While pressing on to God.”“Grace taught my soul to pray,
And made my eyes overflow;
Twas grace that kept me to this day,
And will not let me go.”
But without grace from God, there is no salvation; for “Salvation comes from the Lord” alone. This doctrine, I hope, we are all ready to receive.
II. The Work of Salvation Often Needs Reviving.
If you know anything of the work of God’s grace in your own heart, you will frequently have to pray, “O Lord, revive Your work.” Today you are full of faith, tomorrow you may be full of doubts. One day you can sing like an angel, the next day your throat is dry, and not a note rises from your soul. One day you stand on a mountain’s summit, and another day the dens of the leopards are your dreary habitation. You are at times full of zeal, and then nothing is too hard for you; you feel that you could give your body to be burned, if it were necessary, to magnify His name. But, finally, perhaps there comes a long season of backsliding, and your soul grows cold and dead; joy flies away, lukewarmness comes and cools your love, all your happiness departs, and your fervor becomes quenched in a frost of cold insensibility.
You often need to be revived; no, more than that, you know that the text may be read, as it is in the Hebrew, “O Lord, preserve Your work,” for there are times when, not only does the work want reviving, but it seems as if it were almost gone out, and it must be rekindled and preserved. Blessed be God, if any of you need reviving, you have the promise that you shall have it, if you seek it with diligence. “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.” He carefully takes the wick, and blows it with His own sweet breath; and when one spark appears, He gently blows it until there is another, and at last the flame becomes bright, and strong, and mighty. So may it be with each of us in our own hearts, in the hidden man of the soul!
I am sure that it is so, too, with the Church at large. We need to pray earnestly, “0 Lord, revive Your work.” There comes, every now and then, a mighty stir in our churches. God sends a George Whitefield, or a John Wesley, and a great wave seems to arise upon the surface of the Church, and it rolls over the sands of man’s indifference. Gradually it falls back, and perhaps there follow fifty more years of sloth, and dull routine. Again God appears in a marvelous manner, and once more He shows His power and might; but then once again the revival dies out, and the light of Israel seems once more to be quenched, and the glory to have departed. It strikes me that, at this period, we are somewhere between the two great waves. I pray the Lord God that we may very soon, by His infinite mercy, see another great wave of blessing arise mightier than any that have ever gone before.
Look at our churches; you will see almost everywhere–I would not speak too harshly–you will see nearly everywhere a coldness which cannot be too much lamented. There is a little awakening just now; some of our ministers are finding out that they have tongues, and they are beginning to speak to “the common people,” speaking, too, in good old-fashioned language. They have begun to find out, also, that if they would be the instrument of the salvation of souls, they must preach as if they meant it; they must not leave their hearts in their studies, bringing their old dry manuscripts with them, and stand droning in the pulpit for an hour. There is a little awakening, but there is still a need of far more of the arousing spirit than they have yet received. I am sure, if you look around you, if any thoughtful man considers the signs of the times, he will admit that the doctrine of the text is a doctrine of fact, and that the Church often needs reviving, and that she always needs preserving.
III. No One Can Revive God’s Work but God Himself.
I shall presently come to an earnest exhortation; but just a word first on this doctrine that is included in my text: “O Lord, revive Your work.” I have not the slightest atom of faith in any professional revivalism; I have never seen any real good come of it. This I have seen, while the revivalist has been holding special services, the people have been stirred and warmed, and many have professed to be converted; but, then in far too many cases, a blow and a blight have been left on those churches for years afterwards, and an injury has been done them from which they seemed never to recover. A man-originated revival is a sort of spiritual intoxication, producing a kind of arousing of men and women, yet really leaving them flatter and duller than they were before.
