Revival

Andrew Murray

Malachi 3:10: Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

The sense of a need for revival is gaining ground in the church. Some are promising it most confidently. Others speak more carefully, and feel assured it will come if God’s people fulfil the conditions on which He has promised to bestow it.

As Mr. Moody said in a letter, published nor long before his death: “If our ears are open to God’s voice, and our hearts respond fully to his leading, I believe we are on the eve of unusual revivals of religion.” If it is true that God’s faithfulness in the fulfilment of His promise waits on our faithfulness in the fulfilment of His conditions, it becomes us to ask most earnestly whether the attitude of the church and the ministry is such as to give us confidence to expect the abundant blessing we long for and speak of.

It is indeed a heart-searching truth that the union between God and His people is so close, and that their partnership in the work of saving the world is so real that the performance of their part is just as indispensable as God’s. Everyone who prophesies revival would need to be someone who has stood in God’s counsel, has a divine right to speak in God’s name, and, in witnessing against sin and interceding in faith, is fulfilling God’s conditions. Just think of a man like Elijah. God had given him the promise, “I will send rain upon the earth.” But much had to happen before it came. He had to show himself to Ahab, rebuild God’s altar, reform the apostate people, bring down fire from heaven, and destroy the priests of Baal before he could tell Ahab, “Get thee up: there is sound of abundance of rain.” Even then his work was not done. He had to go up to the top of Carmel and bow himself down upon the earth, put his face between his knees, and pray. And in spite of the word of his servant “There is nothing!” Elijah had to wait for the same report seven times before even the cloud like a man’s hand could be seen.

To promise rain from heaven to a sinful people is a solemn thing. That action needs a man who stands before God and gets His knowledge of what is coming, who stands boldly before the people and pleads for a jealous God, and who then in persevering prayer brings down the blessing. Verily, it is not a light thing to prophesy revival, to give assurance that God is going to do something new and wonderful, to dare to say that He will in very deed open the windows of heaven, and pour out blessing that there shall not be room to receive it.”

This passage in Malachi sets before us in a striking way the conditions for revival and man’s part in securing it. The prophet tells the people that they have been withholding from God what He asks; therefore He withholds what they ask. God had His temple among them as the symbol of His presence and favor and as the place of His service and worship. He asked them to present their tithes there, both as an acknowledgment of their dependence on Him and of their gratitude. It was also to be used for the maintenance of His servants whom He had put in charge of His house. In that house God was to reveal and prove how He lived wholly to bless them. In that house His people were to show and prove how wholly they lived for Him. God left it to them to show how much they would have of Him. He would be to them what they were to Him; He would give them in blessing just as much as they proved He was worth to them. “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” “The Lord is with you, while [as far as] ye be with him.” And they had utterly failed. They had not brought their tithes or offerings as God had commanded.

To show Israel the heinousness of their sin, God charges them with having robbed him. “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. Ye are cursed with a curse, even this whole nation.” They had taken what belonged to God and kept it for themselves. They had withheld from His house what was His due; and God had withheld His blessing. “Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house.” The whole controversy with His people is about His house. If they will give Him the whole tithe, all that He claims, He will give them all they can desire: “He will open the windows of heaven, and pour out blessing, that there shall not be room to receive it.”
The jealousy of God for His house and service had been very strikingly enforced by Haggai a hundred years earlier. In the name of God he had reminded them of all God’s visitations. “Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough ye looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it.” Then God asks them in one single word to consider what all this meant. “Why? Saith the Lord of hosts. Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house. Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses, and this house lie waste?” And then when the people obeyed, the promise came at once: “I am with you, saith the Lord. From the day that the foundation of the Lord’s temple was laid, consider it from this day will I bless you.

God’s house on earth is the test of obedience of His people: their devotion to the house is the measure of their devotion to God; therefore, in that measure will they receive blessing from Him.

All of us who long for revival plead the promise in Malachi. We ask that God would open the windows of heaven and pour out His abundance of blessing. Are we careful to ask and then to say to God that we are ready to bring the whole tithe, all that He claims, into His house? Have we looked around to see if God’s people, who pray for revival, are doing it? Are we giving our testimony to God, and pleading with His people around us for His house that is lying waste, while we live in our panelled houses? Are we sure that God will not say, is not even now saying, in answer to our prayer: “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me even this whole people”?

“Consider.” In this dispensation in which we live, what is the house of God? Christ spoke of it in the words of the prophet: My father’s house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations. In the house to be built there must be room to fulfill the command: “Go and teach all nations.” In the parable of the kingdom of heaven the king made a great supper and Christ uses the words “Go out and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.” This is the house of that God says: “My house lieth waste: ye live in your ceiled houses.”

To the church of Christ has been given the unspeakable honor and privilege of building the house of God. Yes, believers themselves are that house, “an habitation of God through the Spirit” in which the nations can be gathered in to worship Him. The first work of Solomon’s reign of peace was to build the temple. The first work Israel was to do when brought out of exile to Jerusalem was to restore the house of God. The first object for which the church exists is to build the house of God throughout the world that “every creature”—these are Christ’s words—may know the good tidings that God loves him. God has asked His people to make sure there is meat in His house that His servants may be supported and free to go and call all nations into His house. God has asked every believer, without exception, with his whole heart and strength, out of love to God and his neighbor, to give himself to help in building God’s house.

And what do we find to be the case? After nearly nineteen centuries the larger part of the world has not even heard the tidings that there is a house of the Father open to them. After a century of missionary revival there are scarcely 10,000 white missionaries on the field—all that the church cares to give to meet the needs of a thousand million who don’t know Christ. Throughout the unreached world, notwithstanding the attempts of the few to overtake the work, God’s house lies waste, and all because Christians do not listen to Christ’s command. They are not prepared to bring the whole tithe for what the house needs, to give themselves wholly to the work God has laid upon them. Missionary organizations may plead for men, women and money; messages may come from national converts crying for more help; the Word of God may reiterate, command and promise—yet the great majority of Christians have not a thought of bringing the whole tithe into God’s storehouse.

Through vast regions His house lies waste, and where it is building there is no meat in His house sufficient for the open mouths willing to receive the bread. And God’s Word comes today to His people as solemnly and pointedly as to Israel of old: “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me, even the whole nation.” Oh, that Christians who pray for revival would consider the charge even if they themselves are not guilty! If they would see how impossible it is for the blessing to come until ‘the whole tithe,” all that is due to God, all that God claims, is brought into His house!

In Israel they had answered the prophet: “‘Wherein have we robbed thee?” They denied the truth of the charge; they were sure it was not true. The word wherein is repeated five times in the book. Wherein have we despised thy name? Wherein have we polluted thee? Wherein have we wearied Him? Wherein shall we return? Wherein have we robbed thee? The word reveals the utter absence of any sense of sin. They have no idea of God’s claim and how much He means it when He asks for the whole tithe. In self-complacent ignorance they boast of being God’s people.

Is it so very different in our day? Is it understood among Christians what the whole tithe means, and that God does in very deed ask it? Is it preached and believed that with the whole tithe God means and asks the love of the whole heart, the devotion of the whole strength to himself and His service? Is it recognized that the claim of God is absolute, and that in withholding the men, women and money needed for building His house of prayer for all nations, He counts His church guilty of robbing Him of that which He rightly claims—and greatly needs?

God has a controversy with His church—not so much with the lukewarm and self-contented who count it sufficient to be saved, and never think of the whole tithe, but with those who come as the representatives of His people and plead for revival. He asks them if they have brought the whole tithe and given themselves completely to His will and service. He asks those who by His grace have done so if they have lifted up their voices and testified against this sin, if they feel its weight and burden, if they are prepared, before the blessing is poured out, to have the evil removed. God withholds His blessing because we withhold His due. The very first thing needed before His hand can open the windows of heaven is that “the whole tithe,” all He claims, be given Him.

A great deal is often spoken about the lack of interest in missions, but it does not go to the root of the matter. Its terrible evil consists in that the heart is not devoted to God, that the spiritual life is diseased and feeble, and that religion is centered in self. Until the sin is known and mourned over, publicly confessed and condemned, and men are ready to be led by the Holy Spirit to a life entirely devoted to God and His service, prayer for revival will not avail.

What is needed is that those who see the evil should lift up their voice. Judging from what is spoken in many an assembly and meeting, council and congress, there is often a tone of mutual congratulation as to the state of the churches, which is so occupied with certain things that are good that it utterly fails to recognize the tremendous hindrance that keeps the windows of heaven closed. It is only when bold testimony, true confession, and deep humiliation prepare the way that the blessing can come down.

How easy it would be if God’s Spirit, as the Spirit of consecration, were poured out, and Christians were quickened to give gladly and liberally, for every missionary organization to double its income and its work and make the three million of last year into six. A true revival in God’s children would speedily work it. No one would feel the poorer for it; many all the richer. In seeking for revival, we need to be made ready for this consecration by confessing the terrible sins of the past and pledging ourselves and our brethren to a new obedience. The Spirit of God can and will work it. We need to pray for the Spirit, with the desire and surrender to give ourselves to be wholly possessed by Him and led to all that God would have of us.

The prayer for revival is a most heart-searching thing. With it comes a tremendous responsibility. It needs great divine grace. It asks if we are ready to turn our hearts and lives from other interests and to bear the weight and sorrow of those in the city of God who sigh and cry because of the abominations that are done in the midst thereof. It asks if we so believe in prayer—in our right and power with God to undertake this great request—that God shall entirely change the life of some, of many, of His people from one of selfishness to one of entire self-sacrifice. It asks whether we will be the first to give the answer, to offer ourselves for the Holy Spirit to do His full work of convincing of sin and consuming what is of self. It asks if we will accept and carry the answer to our brethren and prove what God can do. Oh, this prayer for revival may mean much to us in more ways than one, but let us not fear. Let us unhesitatingly bring the whole tithe into His house; let us unhesitatingly expect to see the windows of heaven opened and floods of blessing poured out.