(Acts 3:19) “Repent, then and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.”
Today there is a forgotten word in most pulpits and it is the word repentance. We have an overabundance of sermons focusing on the goodness of God and the blessings and good things He does and wants to do for us but very little about the need for repentance of sin in the camp of God’s people. We see Christians seeking visions and dreams and chasing the abundance of things in this life. Prosperity and blessing is all the rage in many evangelical and Charismatic Churches today. We are not speaking about the liberal churches or the apostate Churches but evangelical and Charismatic Churches where you have New Covenant believers being fed all the time with a diet of the blessings and goodness of God but being fed very little if anything about the need for repentance.
Of course God wants to bless and heal His people spiritually and even physically but when there is unconfessed and un-renounced sin in the camp of God’s people His blessings are withheld no matter how loud and exuberant the worship may be. Many modern songs and choruses that are sung today focus on what we can get God can do for us, as if He is a blessing dispensing machine without any conditions for those blessings, rather than what He has done for us at the cross because of our sins and what we can do for Him to further His kingdom whether He chooses to bless us or not in temporary matters.
Many are told by their well-meaning pastors that God wants to bless their lives and strengthen them to keep serving Him, and this is right to do so, but what is often missing in their preaching is the Biblical mandate that seasons of spiritual renewal and refreshing are promised but that they only come from the Lord after there has been genuine Biblical repentance. When you read the sermons of John Wesley or George Whitfield or by William Booth and many others God has used, these preachers firstly gave men the law of God and what He required of them and that they should first repent and after that these preachers would give them the grace and mercy of God.
Sadly in many evangelical and Charismatic churches today they are offering people seasons of refreshing yet neglecting or even avoiding telling them that first they must repent and cast themselves upon the Lord for mercy and pardon and confessing openly and honestly their sins to Him and to their fellow believers without making any excuses and to pray for each other that they might be healed (James 5:16).
When you look at the preaching of the prophets, the apostles and the Lord Jesus the first thing that God commanded through their preaching was repentance first before anything else. When you look at the ministry of the Lord Jesus when He tabernacled among us, He healed many of sickness and disease and delivered many from demons but always focused His preaching first and foremost on the need for men to repent if they would receive God’s blessings and enter the Kingdom of God.
There is a balance to be maintained in preaching the Gospel of the kingdom and in all preaching, teaching and prophesying Biblically speaking. On one hand some pastors focus all of the time on hell and judgement and condemnation and impose guilt on their congregations which in the end only produces a form of works and striving to be right with God but always leaving in its wake a feeling and sense of condemnation and that no matter how hard one tries to serve the lord somehow they are riddled with guilt imposed on them by their well-meaning pastors.
On the other hand there are pastors always focusing on the blessings and good things that come from God but neglect and even avoid the weightier matters of the law such as the need for repentance, holy living and exposing hidden sin and the coming judgement, avoiding eschatology and in a very real sense comforting their congregations in their sins. These extremes in both cases are not Biblical.
In the Bible we are told “It is good that you grasp one thing and also not let go of the other; for the one who fears God comes forth with both of them” (Ecclesiastes 7:18). In fact we read in the Book of Proverbs that “A false balance is an abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is Hs delight” (Proverbs 11:1).
Preaching that brings about God’s blessing will have a balance between Judgement and mercy, not a compromise of either side, but both judgement and mercy held in tension with each other and in a very real sense kissing each other. As it is written in the Word of God; “Mercy and truth are met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Psalm 85:10). We see this revealed at the cross where God’s mercy and truth and God’s demand for righteousness were reconciled to each other by the atoning death and shed blood of the lord Jesus, being both a perfect sinless man who was fully human and fully God in the one body, signifying reconciliation being offered between sinful man with a righteous God. As it is written; “God was in the Anointed Messiah reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19).
The prophet Isaiah spoke about the kind of repentance that causes God to send spiritual refreshing from His presence to His people. Isaiah was not speaking to the unsaved in the world, although it also applies to the unsaved, but primarily he was preaching to God’s people who were in the regular habit of spiritually backsliding.
Isaiah writes; “Seek the Lord while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to the Lord, And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon” (Isaiah 55:8-9).
Firstly; if we are to experience times of spiritual refreshing from the Lord’s presence then we must seek Him with everything we have and call upon Him while He is near.
“Seek the Lord while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near.”
There are times when the Lord visits his people in a special way through the ministry of His Holy Spirit but His people need to be in a position spiritually to receive what He wants to give them. Hosea put it this way when he wrote; “Sow with a view to righteousness, Reap in accordance with kindness; Break up your unploughed ground, For it is time to seek the LORD Until He comes to rain righteousness on you” (Hosea 10:12). Many today within the wider Body of the Messiah hunger and thirst after miracles, signs, wonders and material prosperity but very few hunger and thirst after righteousness, yet those who do will be filled with the very life and power of the Living God Himself (Matthew 5:6).
No farmer sits on the porch without ploughing up the soil and sowing the seed into the soil expecting that somehow when it rains things will automatically grow. He knows there is ploughing and sowing required if he is to see a harvest. Likewise, to receive the rain of the Spirit we must be ploughing up the hard-packed soil of our heart and sewing into it the seed of God’s Word while waiting on the rain of the Spirit to germinate it and bring it to life in the soul. Neglect of feeding regularly on the seed of God’s Word will never see spiritual fruitfulness in one’s personal life or in the life of the local assembly corporately. There must be sowing and planting to see a crop. The other thing to keep in mind is that God is always willing to send seasons of spiritual refreshing but He is also sovereign in this matter (Amos 4:7).
Secondly; if we are to experience times of spiritual refreshing from the Lord’s presence then we must forsake wicked ways and thoughts.
“Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to the Lord,”
If our repentance is genuine we need to be willing to turn from what we know goes contrary to God’s Word in our daily lives. As the author of Hebrews writes; “Let us throw off every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race set out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1b-2). This takes time and effort on our part, but with that effort also relying totally upon the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit to enable us to crucify the flesh with its passions and desires that go contrary to the Word of God.
Our motive in being willing to turn away is that we might be a pleasing child to our heavenly Father and because of the sacrifice the Lord Jesus made on behalf of our sin and rebellion against God and his law. This kind of repentance requires a forsaking and turning away from what we know to be wrong and turning to God with a willingness to forsake it and to receive his mercy pardon and spiritual refreshing.
Thirdly; if we are to experience times of spiritual refreshing from the Lord’s presence then we must believe that God will have compassion on us and abundantly pardon us.
“And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.”
Consider the prodigal son, who launched out into a lifestyle of carnal living and debauchery of every kind who came to his senses after losing everything and recognizing that he had sinned against God first and foremost and was willing to return home and to do whatever his father asked of him without any excuses. He started on his long journey back to his father expecting some retribution. However, we are told that when his father saw him coming far away down that dusty road in all of his filth and squaller and smelling really bad, that his father ran to him and embraced him and re-instated him as his son who had been lost but was found.
We also read that his father saw him afar off and it shows that he had been watching the road every day hoping to see his wayward son returning home. The pardon and welcome that prodigal received must have blown his mind and added to this he was given this pardon freely and in abundance and all privileges of a son being fully restored to him. At that time the angels in heaven went wild with unbridled joy over one sinner who had thoroughly repented of his sin! Such is the unmerited favour of God towards all who truly return to Him without any excuses, with no expectations of Him other than to receive His mercy and that with a willingness to do whatever He tells them to do recognising that their sin was first and foremost against God Himself!
Only after there is a true and heartfelt repentance and a turning away from wicked actions and thoughts and a turning to God can there be seasons of spiritual refreshing from the presence of the Lord. Multitudes of churches today including their pastors are seeking spiritual refreshing from the Lord’s presence and having praise and worship services and motivational sermons laced with a few scriptures here and there and usually out of context and out of line with their co-texts, to make people feel good, while not dealing with unconfessed sin and the need of repentance. This is the major problem within many ‘mega-churches’ today with trendily dressed pastors offering their wiz bang music and star studded programmes and their worship services that look like rock concerts and with their personal prophecies and manifestations of one sort or another titillating the fleshly senses of naive saints.
Now God is always more than willing to send seasons of spiritual refreshing upon His people whom in love He has redeemed by the blood of the Messiah, but before this happens He requires repentance, that forgotten word in most congregations today within wider Christendom, especially in the western democracies that are historically associated with Biblical Judeo- Christianity. Spiritual refreshing always follows repentance, not the other way around! There may well be miracles, signs, wonders, manifestations, personal prophecies, dreams, visions and emotionally uplifting sermons but if there has been no repentance then one must question their authenticity Biblically speaking. Repentance must always come first before times of spiritual refreshing come from the presence of the Lord!
