REVIVAL HINDRANCES

Luke 5

Our Lord had gone and perplexed the religious people again.  He starts by calling a man nobody cared for and that most people resented and hated; a tax collector (of all people!) to be one of His disciples.  Can you imagine!  Ugh!  A tax collector!  They knew this Jesus fellow was indeed a prophet, for no man could do the miracles He had done "except God be with him".  But why was He calling these sinners, tax collectors, and adulteresses?  Why wasn't He calling us?  After all, we are the godly ones; we are the only ones who carry out the religious duties required of God's law.  We are the holy ones; we are the praying ones, in fact, we are the only ones who fast and pray.  Indeed we are the only ones deserving of His call, so why oh why is He not calling us?

I confess there have been times in the past when I have had these thoughts when thinking about someone God is blessing: someone other than me.  Have you ever had these kinds of thoughts, about someone God is blessing in some very powerful way, in a way you have been asking to be blessed, but have not received?  Someone other than you or your congregation?  I have seen that these types of thoughts are always the thoughts of every religious man or woman in every generation who hears about God pouring down a great blessing, perhaps some great happening, perhaps a miracle, or perhaps even a revival, but some sort of blessing upon someone else or some other group they consider to be lesser than themselves.  Less deserving.  Less near to Him.  Less knowledgeable about the things of God.  Lesser.  Inferior.  Beneath.  These thoughts are an abomination to God.  They are like acrid smoke in His nostrils.  They are the smell of spiritual pride.  If sin could be rated, (it cannot, but if it could) I doubt there would be found a more intolerable sin than spiritual pride.

In my study of the various reformations and revivals that have swept over this planet, I have noticed that as the generation who experienced the revival grow old, and if the motion and presence of God is waning among them, when they hear about God breaking loose upon some other people who were not "of us", they often oppose the new work.  And they get even angrier if the new work displays a power equal to or surpassing that which they experienced.  "No man also having drank old [wine] immediately desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.”

Jesus repeats himself four times in parables to one group of religious people assembled about him.  If he saw fit to repeat himself that many times, then I ought to give the more earnest heed to what he had to say.  He uses here a simple analogy everyone could understand.  A wine skin is a container, a symbol of you and me as a people, as the temple of, or "container" for God's Spirit.  I believe we all know these things, and can see that the new wine represents the new work of the Holy Spirit that Jesus was doing among mankind.  But can you see that the "old wine" represents a work of God too?  The "old wine" being the work of God done in a former generation?

One brother told me that while studying Old Testament history, he had discovered that the Pharisee denomination were the descendants of the very people who had experienced a mighty move of God called the Maccabean Revolt.  The zeal for God's holy city and temple, the earnest desire for the things of God, the rising up of the faithful, the casting out of the idols; truly as mighty a movement as any we may read about in the Old Testament.  This was the heritage of the Pharisee denomination.  It is easy to envisage the stories passed on from father to son, mother to daughter about “the good old days" when Zion was filled with power from heaven.  No doubt, the stories of past glories, of past revival would stir the hearts of the young to pray earnestly for God to "build again Zion".  These were the passionate longings in the heart of every Pharisee.  They built upon those hopes an entire system of religion that waited for and kept prepared for the return of God's glory among them.  True, there were many hypocrites among them that abused their positions for self-gratification, but there were also many of the Pharisees who believed Jesus was the Christ when he came.  Even some in positions of authority, as well as a number of the Levite priests.

The vast number of the Pharisees, (and the Sadducees, and the lawyers and scribes) the very people who were the religious of that day, rejected Jesus.  Not because of what He did, but rather because of the way He did it.  He did not do the work He did in the manner that fit into the religious form of that day.  These religious people had been told all about the former works God had done in the past generations, the "old wine" of former revivals.  Those stories left an impression in the hearts of those people, and that impression was just like "old wine".  They expected God to come to them and do so according to their preconceived notions.  They prepared for God to come to them.  They attempted to prepare themselves to be in a condition outwardly religious enough so that God would return to them, to vindicate them, to justify all their merely outward religious rules and regulations that so many would not or could not bear; to prove to the world that “we are right" and all others wrong.  We are IT!  They added rule upon rule, precept upon precept and worked and struggled up their religious ladder until they were satisfied that they were holy enough to be THE people God would return to.  But the truth is, they were filled with the old wine.  And when God did come, He came in such a manner, conducted himself in such a way, and sought for such an unreligious people, that He infuriated the Pharisee denomination so much that they sought to kill Him.  They did not want this new thing.  They had spent too much energy and effort trying to be clones of the old.  To renounce their old religion as the empty thing that it was, to publicly cast it out, would have been too much humiliation for their religious pride to bear.

"And no man putteth new wine into old wine skins; else the new wine will burst the wine skins, and be spoiled, and the wine skins shall perish."  Jesus could not pour into them because their minds and their religion contained old, small, infected particles, like bacteria, that would infect and infest the blessings He might pour into them.  Yes, those blessings poured out in former generations were in fact blessings from God, but, old blessings, old movements, old revivals do not store well.  Even manna from the very hand of the Almighty is still only good for food for one day.  Try to use that manna tomorrow and it will be infested with worms and unfit for consumption.

Old wine, old milk, old manna, and old revivals all spoil over time.  They were wonderful in their day.  They are wonderful to read about.  They are inspiring to our faith, and so they ought to be.  But if we study in great detail everything about the people who received that outpouring, trying to fashion ourselves or pattern ourselves like them, rather than the One who did the pouring, we will in effect also adopt the very same bacteria that leads to the end of that revival.  We will hinder Jesus from filling us with "new wine", though earnestly and tearfully we pray for revival.  And worse, we will be in direct contradiction to the warning not to measure ourselves by ourselves or measure ourselves among ourselves.  Jesus wants us to keep our eyes on Him.  He is our pattern, not those fallible men and women of that former generation, though blessed they may have been.  They got what they got NOT by patterning themselves after other people of a former revival.  They received what they received by asking for, seeking for, knocking for, and finding a personal intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.  Their eyes were seeking heavenward.  Oh yes, they heard about former revivals, but their prayers were NOT asking for a “thing" called revival.  They did not pray for a blessing from God's hand, rather they prayed for GOD!  Neither were they asking to be made like “old brother so and so” from way back when.  No indeed, they had their sights set far higher than any mere fallible man or movement.  They knew that Jesus IS revival.  If we have Him, we have all we need.  To Him they prayed.  For Him to come down to them, they asked.  To know Him, to be like Him, to be IN Him they sought; and Him, the "new wine", they received.

The religious Pharisees of the past and present are not prepared for, and do not want any thing new.  They spend too much energy and effort trying to be clones of the old.  To renounce their old religion as the empty old wine skin that it is, to publicly cast it out, is too much humiliation for their religious pride to bear.  Never the less, God will not pour "new wine into old wine skins; else the new wine will burst the wine skins, and be spilled, and the wine skins shall perish”.  Do we have any "old wine" in us?  Are we an old wine skin?  Would it not be better to ask to be made into a new one?  A vessel prepared for the masters fresh wine from a new harvest?

"But new wine must be put into new skins; and both are preserved."

—Don MacIntyre (edited)