Revival is Marked by Justice

The gospel doesn't start with your fallenness, it starts with God's goodness. If the gospel starts with your brokenness, that's not good news, that's bad news. The good news is that God created and it was good. The bad news is that we broke that goodness with sin. The good news is that God came as a real human being named Jesus of Nazareth and he overcame that sin. He restores humanity and he gives right relationship to all people with God. [00:28:21] (29 seconds)  #GospelFirst

If we say we love Jesus and we received his righteousness, it is revealed through our lives of generosity to those who are in need. Tim Keller said it this way, it is the generosity of God, the freeness of his salvation that lays the foundation for the society of justice for all. There is an inequitable distribution of both goods and opportunities in the world. Therefore, if you've been assigned the goods of this world by God and you don't share them with others, it isn't just stinginess, it is injustice. [00:47:41] (29 seconds)  #GenerosityIsJustice

In other words, in a moment when most of the world would tell David, go on and kill Saul, David looked at the situation through God's eyes. There wasn't a moment of saying, yeah, go get your vengeance, go get your bloodshed. It was a moment that said, go get your justice and righteousness with Saul again. This wasn't an opportunity to seek revenge, this was an opportunity to seek repair and reconciliation. This wasn't an opportunity to say, go on and kill him, go on and do that. It was saying, can you look at this circumstance through my eyes so that you would understand how I love him and how I've called him and what I have for him and how we can move forward into this place of living in what justice actually looks like. [00:38:12] (43 seconds)  #SeekRepairNotRevenge

But can I just say revival isn't limited to a personal experience of righteousness and justice, it's actually most revealed through a person's life that is seeking justice for those around them? Revival and righteousness does not lead us to become entitled, it leads us to become engaged. It doesn't lead us to become entitled saying, I've got my ticket to heaven, we're blessed here in the four walls of the church. It says, I wanna be engaged in God's outworking of justice and righteousness in society. I want to see social justice, not as the hot topic word that it has become, but as the scriptures reveal God's working of righteousness in our world. [00:44:27] (41 seconds)  #RevivalSeeksJustice

Therefore, I wanna say this, justice or righteousness is our starting point for pursuing revival in our midst. In fact, many revivals are marked by multitudes and multitudes and multitudes and multitudes of people coming unto salvation in Christ. They experience justification. They begin their sanctification journey with the Lord. But, can I tell you that true revivals are not marked by how many people came to an altar call? True revivals are marked by the fruit of people continuing to walk long after their altar call. And [00:24:53] (35 seconds)  #RevivalShowsFruit

And every day, even though we have done awful, wicked, heinous, injust things in our lives, when we proclaim the gospel to ourself, we recognize the justice and mercy of God met on the cross of Christ and he pays us life, not death. We get what we do not deserve, friends. And what we do deserve, Christ receive on our behalf. This should lead us to gratitude and a proper perspective of who we are and who God is and how we can see things in our world and that's why this all matters because injust things happen all around us all the time. [00:26:27] (37 seconds)  #MercyMeetsJustice

Beloved, revival is marked by justice. From the scriptures throughout all of church history and revival history, we can see how when God pours out his spirit upon his people, it leads us to righteousness, a personal holiness, a justification with God, and then it flows into how we see others and how we seek justice and righteousness on their behalf. And, our invitation today is to stand right with God, see rightly as he sees things and to seek justice, to get generous with justice and I believe that it's not just an invitation but it is a mandate for the people of God. [00:50:36] (38 seconds)  #RevivalMandatesJustice

Friends, the world is gonna tell us justice needs to look like vengeance or labels or division or death or one group of people being higher than another, but when we ask God how he sees it, we will receive a vision that is greater than any human creativity or imagination. And when we look through that lens, it reminds us of the the future that we have to come and we pray that future now as it is then. Amen? [00:38:55] (23 seconds)  #GodsVisionFirst

And every day, even though we have done awful, wicked, heinous, injust things in our lives, when we proclaim the gospel to ourself, we recognize the justice and mercy of God met on the cross of Christ and he pays us life, not death. We get what we do not deserve, friends. And what we do deserve, Christ received on our behalf. This should lead us to gratitude and a proper perspective of who we are and who God is and how we can see things in our world [00:26:27] (31 seconds)