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The sermon attributes genuine revival exclusively to the Holy Spirit while emphasizing bold preaching of truth and earnest prayer as His instruments. Revival is described as producing conversion, renewed ministers and congregations, family devotion, holiness, worship, and beneficial social change. Spurgeon warns that emotional or bodily phenomena should not be confused with the Spirit’s work, which transforms the mind and life. The appropriate response is joyful gratitude, repentance from inconsistency and spiritual coldness, prayer for a greater blessing, and compassionate labor for those without Christ.
Theological center: True revival is sovereignly caused by the Holy Spirit, working through the faithful proclamation of biblical truth and the prayers of God’s people.
Applications: Seek greater revival · Pursue holiness · Pray for perishing people · Preach biblical truth boldly
Primary texts: Isaiah 52:10 · Philippians 1:18
“The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.” Isaiah 52:10 WHEN the heroes of old prepared for the fight, they put on their armor. But when God prepares for battle, He makes bare His arm. Man has to look two ways—to his own defense, as well as to the offense of his enemy. God has but one direction in which to cast His eye—the overthrow of His foeman—and He disregards all measures of defense and scorns all armor. He makes bare His arm in the sight of all the people. When men would do their work in earnest, too, they sometimes strip themselves, like that warrior of old who, when he went to battle with the Turks, would never fight them except with the bare arm. “Such things as they,” said he, “I need not fear. They have more reason to fear my bare arm than I their scimitar.” Men feel that they are prepared for a work when they have cast away their cumbrous garments. And so the prophet represents the Lord as laying aside for awhile the garments of His dignity and making bare His arm, that He may do His work in earnest and accomplish His purpose for the establishment of His church. Now, leaving the figure, which is a very great one, I would remind you that its meaning is fully carried out whenever God is pleased to send a great revival of religion. My heart is glad within me this day, for I am the bearer of good tidings. My soul has been made exceedingly full of happiness by the tidings of a great revival of religion throughout the United States. Some hundred years, or more, ago, it pleased the Lord to send one of the most marvellous religious awakenings that was ever known. The whole of the United States seemed shaken from end to end with enthusiasm for hearing the Word of God. And now, after the lapse of a century, the like has occurred again. The monetary pressure has at length departed, but it has left behind it the wreck of many mighty fortunes. Many men who were once princes, have now become beggars, and in America, more than in England, men have learned the instability of all human things. The minds of men, thus weaned from the earth by terrible and unexpected panic, seem prepared to receive tidings from a better land and to turn their exertions in a heavenly direction. You will be told by anyone who is conversant with the present state of America that wherever you go there are the most remarkable signs that religion is progressing with majestic strides. The Great Revival, as it is now called, has become the common market talk of merchants. It is the theme of ev…