Editor’s note: This sermon was preached at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists headquarters, Silver Spring, Maryland, October 2011.
I’m going to speak to you as the Spirit empowers me on the reviving power of God’s Word. And my thematic focus is simply this: harness the reviving power of God’s Word. When we think of revival, we often think about some type of worship service, some type of outreach for the church. But revival comes in nuanced ways. When someone put a handbill in my mother’s mailbox, in the inner city of Baltimore, that anonymous Seventh-day Adventist did not realize that he or she was about to trigger a revival in my family. My mother already had three children, and “one in the oven.” (She was pregnant with me.) The handbill stated that the meeting’s opening message was “The Day Money Will Be Thrown in the Streets of Baltimore, Maryland, and No One Will Stop to Pick It Up.”
My mother was on welfare, and there was no paternal presence in the home. And Mama picked up that handbill and said, “I am going to that meeting. I’m not going to stay for the entire sermon. I simply want to know the answer to two questions: When and where? When will the money be thrown? Where will it be thrown? Because I know one somebody who will stop to pick it up.” She went to the meetings; and for 12 weeks, my mother heard the Adventist message. Our blessed Lord said, “ ‘My sheep hear My voice’ ” (John 10:27).* And through the power of the Word of God—a family that had never had a male graduate from college, a family that had relatives steeped in alcoholism and other addictions—that family joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church and experienced a literal overhaul because of the power of the Word of God.
Power in the Word
We do not so much search the Word of God as the Word of God searches us. There is reviving power in the Word that we, as a church, need to harness. There is a biblical illiteracy, even among people of faith. When you, as ministers, use illustrations, sometimes you see puzzled looks on the faces of those who are listening because many of our young people don’t even know the Bible stories anymore. Billy Graham has stated that Christians are one generation away from agnosticism. If we don’t tell the story, if we don’t harness the power, the reviving power, of God’s Word, we are going to create a generation that does not know the power of God and His mighty deeds. Acts 13:36, speaking of David, says, “ ‘For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep, and was laid among his fathers.’ ” I believe that that is the mission statement for every person of faith—to fulfill the purpose of God for your life, in your generation. One of the best ways of doing that is to learn from the generation that has gone before you, to take the baton from that generation, and then serve faithfully in every season of life. The springtime of a Christian should be prepossessing and exemplary. But so should the summer and the autumn and the winter. The end of our lives should be like a golden sunset, with its beautiful hues, serving the purposes of God, in your generation. And a part of the service should involve passing the reviving power of the Word to the generation that is coming behind you.
I love the Bible. This Book saved my life. When I was 13 years of age, in the toxic pathology of the inner city, prostitutes and drug pushers on the corner, two of my friends came and said, “Barry, we would like you to help us get back at someone.” That morning—and this is something I have done for more than 50 years—I read the chapter of Proverbs that corresponded with that date of the month (31 chapters for 31 days). It was the first of the month, and that day I read chapter 1, dwelling on verse 10: “My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not” (KJV). On the strength of the reviving power of the Word of God, I did not go along with my two friends. My friends did not just “get back at someone,” they killed someone.
Night after night on the evening news, their sad story was played out. One of the young men said, “I didn’t do it; he did it.” In the end, the judicial consequence was the same: life in prison. Had I been with them, even if I had stood and quoted Scripture, I would have received the same penalty. My life was literally saved by the reviving power of the Word of God.
The benefit of revelation
We need to harness that power and continue to harness it. One of the most beautiful chapters in the Bible is Psalm 119. It tells us about the benefits of the Word. The first benefit is the benefit of revelation. Verse 18 says, “Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law” (NKJV).
In the United States Senate, I teach a senators’ Bible study once a week. One of the senators, after listening to a briefing about how terrorists want to eviscerate major population centers, came up to me with a furrowed brow, and said, “Chaplain, do you believe God would permit humanity to destroy the planet?”
I said, “Senator, are you familiar with the prophecy of Daniel 2?”
He said, “No, I’m not.”
I said, “Well, we will have that for the Bible study next week.”
With standing room only at the Bible study, I unpacked Daniel 2 that involved revelatory knowledge. Nebuchadnezzar discovered that his wise men had been playing games with him. As long as he could remember the dream, they could come up with an explanation. And that is so typical of so many experts today. But revelatory knowledge is needed. Because even the experts say, “We don’t know what to do.”
Nebuchadnezzar said, “I can’t remember the dream. And if you can’t tell me the dream, I’m going to have you and your families slaughtered.”
And Daniel said, “Don’t let the king be hasty. I believe we’ve a connection; we’ve got a message for him.”
And as I started unpacking Daniel 2, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, and the feet of iron mixed with clay, I said, “Senators, before God will permit humankind to destroy the planet, He will put up the sign ‘Closing Time.’ ” The reviving, revelatory power of the Word of God. That’s a marvelous benefit. “Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law.”
The benefit of revival
Then there is the benefit of revival. We see that in verse 25: “My soul clings to the dust; revive me according to Your word” (NKJV).
Ezekiel was a preacher given the challenge by God of preaching a devotional message to a congregation of dry bones. Sometimes that’s the way I feel when I’m preaching a devotional message. Ezekiel 37 begins, “The hand of the LORD was upon me, and He brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones. . . . There were very many on the surface of the valley; and lo, they were very dry. He said to me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ And I answered, ‘O Lord GOD, You know.’ ”
The benefit of strength
Verse 4: “He said unto me, ‘Prophesy over these bones and say to them, “O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.” ’ ” There is reviving power in the Word of the Lord. And if you want to shape the church with a revival, if you want to get dry bones in the church to come together, let’s stop just preaching the newspaper; let’s stop preaching theological “niceties.” There’s power in the Word of God to revive dry bones. And you’ll have the dry bones in your life come together and be vivified by the power of the Spirit.
There’s a third benefit mentioned in Psalm 119:28—“My soul melts from heaviness; strengthen me according to Your word” (NKJV) the benefit of strength from the Word. Steve Farrar has a wonderful book called Finishing Strong. In that book, he talks about how only one in ten who begin their ministry, end up at the end of their ministry finishing strong. And I thought to myself, What an amazing statistic! Could that possibly be? I started thinking about the people in my seminary class at Andrews University more than 40 years ago. Farrar says there are two basic landmines: sexual indiscretion and money. I started seeing how my class had been decimated and even more. Farrar says there’s one primary reason. As they did the study, and questioned those who had had moral lapses, the primary reason for moral lapses emerged as the neglect of one’s devotional life. I just didn’t have time to get into the Word and receive the strength that I could from the Word. There’s nothing like a word from the Lord to strengthen you.
In 1 Kings, chapter 19, Elijah was suicidal. Remember? He fled, and Jezebel said, “He’s a dead man.” Elijah, who had done mighty things on Mount Carmel, was exhausted, worn out, burned out, and he needed strength. And it’s beautiful how God handled that situation. He fed him and let him sleep. That’s what some of you need. Then God woke him up, the angel fed him again, and God let him sleep some more before He tried to correct his cognitive distortion. Elijah needed more than just rest and food. He needed a word from the Lord. And that still, small Voice penetrated the fog.
This man had burned himself out so much that he had become a legend in his own mind. “I, even I only, am left” (1 Kings 19:10, KJV). How do you miss 7,000 saints? How do you become so wrapped up that you miss 7,000 saints? You need the strength of the Word of the Lord. And God gave him a renewed vision and a renewed mission. And then God said, “I know you asked Me to take your life, but I’ve got news for you. Although you asked Me to take your life, My plan for you is that you never die. You’re going to be one of the few people on the planet who appear in the Old and New Testament, you see, because My Son is going to be on the mountain one day. As He sets His face like a flint toward Jerusalem, He’s going to need somebody who knows what it is to tread the winepress all by Himself. My Son is going to be there, and He’s going to need some encouragement. I want you—and I’ve got another tag team partner for you, Moses—to come down there and say, ‘Hang in there, Jesus. You can do this, Jesus.’ I want you to strengthen Him with your testimony.” Just like Elijah, you know burnout and emotional distress, but let His small voice penetrate through your fog. There’s strength and power in the Word of God.
The benefit of wisdom
Finally, harness the reviving power of the Word of God by receiving the benefit of wisdom. I love how David puts it. He says, in verse 99 of Psalm 119, “I have more insight [wisdom] than all my teachers, for Your testimonies are my meditation.”
I was pastoring in Chesapeake, Virginia, and had a home in Virginia Beach that I needed to sell. It had been on the market for nine months and my real estate agent was an absentee. So here I was, driving back from Chesapeake and listening to a news program, when the journalist said, “This is the worst time, probably in history, to be trying to sell a house.” Now that was all the man of God needed to hear at that time. Worst time in history! A vagrant thought entered my mind. You are never going to sell that house.
Now I knew that thought was demonic and I decided to take it captive, to cast down imaginations. Right there in that car, I said, “That’s a lie, devil. Philippians 4:19 says, ‘My God will supply all [my] needs,’ ” and I said it out loud, “and I need to sell that house.”
The next day, I got a call. I said, “Who is this?” He said, “This is Ron Gregory, your real estate agent.”
“Ron, I didn’t even recognize your voice, it’s been that long.” He said, “We’ve got an offer on your house!”
I said, “Really?” He told me the price. I said—and this is how much confidence the Word gave me— “Well, let me make a counteroffer. I want exactly what I asked for, and I’ll pay the closing costs.”
The next day, the realtor said, “I don’t know how you did it, but it is sold.” Praise God! The Word gives you the wisdom to not let the devil intimidate you, the wisdom to know that there’s power in praying the promises of God.
When your child comes to you and says, “But Dad, you promised,” you’ve got to do what that kid says. I had that happen to me. I’d made the mistake of saying, “Son, any college you want to go to, that you pray about, I am committed, I promise, that I will support you in your effort.” So he comes in to me, full scholarships to three or four different schools, and says, “Dad, the Holy Spirit has impressed me to go to Yale.”
My first response was, “The devil is a liar.” Fifty-thousand dollars a year. “Do they give scholarships?” “No, they don’t. They only give needs-based scholarships and you make too much money. . . .
“But Dad, you promised!” And on the strength of my simple promise, that boy went to Yale and, praise God, graduated with a degree in molecular biophysics. Then graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School, attending there with a full scholarship!
Conclusion
When I harness the reviving power of Scripture, I say, “But God, You promised.”
Come to Him with His promises. Tell Him, “You promised in Philippians 4:6, 7 that if I had no anxiety about anything, but pray about everything, your peace that passes all understanding will guard my heart and mind in Christ Jesus; You promised in Isaiah 54:17 that ‘ “no weapon that is formed against [me] will prosper.” ’ You promised in Romans 8:28 that in everything You are working for the good of those who love You and are called according to Your purposes; You promised in Psalm 34:10 that ‘the young lions do lack and suffer hunger; but they who seek the LORD shall not be in want of any good thing.’ And moreover, You promised that I can find Jesus in this Book, and to know Him is to have life eternal.”
Get in the Word!
* Unless otherwise noted, all Bible quotations are from the New American Standard Version.
