Revival in the rubble

We need both grace and discernment to recognise what God is doing, says James Glass, based on Ezra 3

In July 1773, 207 people boarded a ship named ‘The Hector’ off the North West Coast of Scotland. So began a journey to the New World and the promise of land and property that they could only have dreamed of in Scotland.

It was a tough voyage, lasting much longer than anticipated, and almost 20 people died on the way. Eventually, they reached their destination, their promised land.

Unfortunately, the promised land was not as it had been described. Instead of open, rolling countryside, the landscape was covered in trees for as far as the eye could see. You can only imagine how they felt.

And more than two thousand years earlier you can only imagine how the people of Judah felt when they re-entered Jerusalem after 70 years of exile. Going home had been the collective dream of the displaced people of God throughout their years of sojourn in Babylon.

And then in 538 BC at a politically – but not prophetically – unexpected moment, the Persian emperor, Cyrus, issues a decree that the people of Judah are to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. Exile was officially over. God’s people were going home. There must have been great excitement that God was fulfilling promise and prophecy. When they re-entered Jerusalem, however, it is hard to believe that the devastation they encountered did not dampen – at least temporarily – their enthusiasm. How much they knew about the state of Jerusalem before they returned, we don’t know.

In 2 Kings 25:8-12 we read that Nebuchadnezzar’s troops sacked the temple, set it on fire and then laid waste the city. The city of God had been reduced to a pile of rubble.

Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest, who had led the people back to their homeland, had to rebuild the temple and lead the people into a new era in an environment that looked more like a city ruined by heavy bombing than the Holy City.

Sometimes when God gives us the thing we have so desperately sought or brings us to the place we have dreamed of, we find that there is more rubble than revival.

The rubble of past failure. The rubble of years of neglect. The rubble of dreams exhausted by lack of resources and unremitting opposition. It all seems so incongruous with the promises and the prophecies. It just doesn’t seem to ‘fit’ with what we thought God had planned. That’s why we need revival. If there was no rubble, the need for revival would not be so pressing.

We don’t know how Zerubbabel and Joshua made the decision about where to start in their ‘revival’ project. We do know how they began to prepare the city for the spiritual awakening predicted by prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah.

But what did they do? And what can we learn from them?

1. The first major decision the leaders of Judah made was to rebuild the altar of God (Ezra 3:3).
Before anything else was rebuilt or put in place, even before the foundations were laid, the altar was rebuilt. A rebuilt altar was the top priority for the leaders of Judah. Why? Because of what it represented. It was the place of sacrifice. It was also the place of grace. It was the place of connection with God. One might be tempted to question why they built the altar before they laid the foundations. I would suggest that it is because in God’s economy consecration precedes construction.

In our quest for that move of God we label revival or awakening, the cross must be central. Not in some sort of one-dimensional presentation that happens to appeal to our own particular theological tastes. The cross of Christ is shorthand for what Christ accomplished for us in his death and resurrection and for the challenge to live a life devoted to him.

The cross says that our righteousness does not depend on us. It states that we have received the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). The cross shouts the victory over the enemy. Jesus’s death sealed Satan’s fate (Colossians 2:15). And the cross calls us to a life of consecration to Christ (Matthew 16:24; Galatians 6:14). Through the cross we are connected to God as Father through the Spirit. If we want to see revival in the rubble, we will make the centrality of the cross our priority.

2. The leaders of Judah re-established the rhythm of spiritual life in the city and nation (Ezra 3:4-6).
These verses can seem as though someone looked up Leviticus or Deuteronomy and went through a list of regulations and ticked them off! It would be a mistake to think that this was a case of trying to obey a set of religious rules. W hat these festivals and practices did was to recover the rhythm and shape of the spiritual life of the nation.

Pursuing a noble purpose demands engagement in regular life-giving practices. This is true in any area of life. Regular rhythms of prayer, reading and meditating on the Word, and fellowship are all key to bringing shape to the rubble.

It’s not without significance that the Methodist revival, the greatest revival in Britain in the last 300 years, had small groups and spiritual disciplines at its heart.

This is rooted firmly in the New Testament. After the outpouring on the day of Pentecost, Acts 2:42-47 describes a church that has spiritual disciplines and small groups at its core. That was how the early church made sure that the ‘revival’ that they had experienced shaped the life of the church.

3. They respected the past without allowing it to restrict their future (Ezra 3:10-13).
The day that the foundation of the temple was re-laid, there was great celebration. The people remembered God’s faithfulness. Everyone was joyful – well almost everyone. In the crowd that day were some who were around before the exile and remembered Solomon’s temple. For them, this new temple seemed a pale imitation of its glorious predecessor. As others celebrated, they wept. This new temple just did not measure up.

Jesus said something that succinctly describes this phenomenon. He said that anyone who tastes new wine who has also tasted old wine, will always say the old is better (Luke 5:33-39).

A glorious past can be as big a barrier to revival as an inglorious past. Sometimes the ‘new thing’ that people tell us God is doing seems a small thing in comparison to the glories of yesteryear. Sometimes our mind plays tricks on us. The further away the past becomes, the more glorious it can become!

Future revival or revivals might not look like what we have experienced or read about in the past. We must ask God for both the grace and discernment to recognise and embrace what God is doing today.

The people of Judah still had a few more trials before the temple was completed. Sixteen years elapsed before the building work was finished. They had, however, made a great start. The revival in the rubble had begun.

The rubble around us might not look very promising, but if the people of Judah’s experience is anything to go by, it might be just the place for revival to begin.

James is Elim’s Regional Leader for Scotland and Northwest of England. He is married to Beryl, and they have three grown-up children.

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.

Enjoy this article? Don't forget to share