Expecting Revival

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Good morning. I'm Maddie Duhan and I'm part of the Women Reading Women group.

Today's scripture readings are from the book of Joshua, chapter 4, verses 20 to 24, and the book of Judges, chapter 2, verses 8 to 10, as printed in the liturgy.

Joshua 4:20–24 Judges 2:8–10

A reading from the book of Joshua.

And those twelve stones which they took out of the Jordan, Joshua set up at Gilgal.

And he said to the people of Israel,

When your children ask their fathers in times to come, what do these stones mean?

Then you shall let your children know, Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.

For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over,

as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over,

so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty,

that you may fear the Lord your God forever.

A reading from the book of Judges.

And Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years.

And they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance,

Abtinath-Hirehs, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain Gaash.

And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers.

And there arose another generation after them,

who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.

The grass withers and the flowers fall.

If you are just tuning in, today's your first Sunday at Christ Church, we welcome you.

And just as context, I've returned from a four-month sabbatical that was given to me by the church just recently.

And during that time, God gave me this one word, revival.

And the simple prayer, revive us.

And I want to go back today to the definitions that I gave you my first Sunday back at the beginning of this month.

This is from a pastor in London who died about 40 years ago.

His name was Martin Lloyd-Jones.

And he said that revival is a visitation from on high, a great religious awakening,

the unusual outpouring and manifestation of the Spirit of God.

A church historian named Edwin Orr gives this definition.

He says, revival is a movement of the Holy Spirit bringing about a revival of New Testament Christianity in the church of Christ and its related community.

And the result of this outpouring of the Holy Spirit,

the result of this awakening to New Testament Christianity in the church,

is that people find themselves saturated with God.

Over and over, people describe themselves as saturated with God.

Now, if you're here today and you say, I think I have enough of the Holy Spirit.

I think I've got this New Testament Christianity thing down.

And I am more than saturated with God.

This sermon series is probably not for you.

But for the rest of us.

We're talking today about expecting revival.

And I'd like to try to raise our expectations for revival.

God commanded the children of Israel to take 12 stones out of the middle of the Jordan River

and set them up at Gilgal so that they would never forget.

And they would always remember this mighty act of salvation that happened there in that place.

That they would always remember God's wonderful works.

And in the same way, we need help to learn about revivals.

We need help to not forget and to remember these great times that God has brought to his people,

both in Scripture and in church history, where God has come down in a powerful way.

We don't want to forget these things lest we end up like this generation described in Judges chapter 2 that we just read.

Judges 2 · chapter mention

There arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.

What a tragic crisis among the people of God.

And is that not a description of the cultural moment we're in?

There's so much we don't know about the Lord.

There's so much we don't know about what he's done for his people.

And so I want to point our attention to these events recounted in Joshua chapter 4

Joshua 4 · chapter mention

that speak directly to this theme of revival.

And what I want to say today is that we need reminding that the Lord's hand is mighty for those who cry out to him.

And first of all, we need reminding.

God did something exceptional.

God did something unusual, something striking and sudden and extraordinary.

First of all, just by delivering the children of Israel from her enemies, the Egyptians,

who had enslaved them and forced them into harsh labor for 400 years.

And God, boom, he delivered them.

And then after that, the Lord divided the Red Sea and they went through on dry land.

Of all the mighty acts of salvation in the Old Testament, this is the foremost event.

And here they are now after the wilderness for 40 years.

They're looking on the other side of the Jordan River.

They can see the land that God promised to Abraham, this land that they've been longing for,

this land flowing with milk and honey.

And the problem is, how are they going to get to the other side?

How are they going to cross through this river, especially when it's at flood stage?

And you can go home and look up YouTube, Jordan River flood stage.

And you'll see, and you can just imagine, this ancient river was much wider, much deeper,

much stronger flowing whitewater rapids.

This is an impossible situation.

This river cannot be crossed.

But God.

But God came and he divided the waters.

And they went through, not on wet ground, but on dry ground, just like they did at the Red Sea.

And God commanded them after that.

But he said, take 12 stones from the spot where those priests stood in the middle of the river

with the ark of the Lord's covenant, the symbol of God's presence.

And I want you to take those 12 stones and set them up on the other side at Gilgal.

Why does God command them to do this?

Verse 21, it says that your children are going to ask their fathers in times to come,

what do these stones mean?

And I think we're in a similar position today as we consider the wonderful works of God in revival

and the ways that God has shown his mighty hand, the ways that he's come down and he's acted in power

to awaken and enliven and quicken his church.

And what I'm wanting to do through these sermons is cause us to ask the question,

what do these stones mean?

What is it all about?

What in the world are you and Andrew talking about?

What are these events that have happened in the past?

Why do they matter to us?

What in the world is this revival in the 16th century you call the Reformation?

What is this revival that happened in the 18th century called the Great Awakening?

What exactly happened in 1857 on Wall Street in New York that changed the face of the church in the United States?

What happened in 1904 to 1907 in Wales and all the way to India and China and Korea that changed the 20th century church?

We don't even know about these things.

And the stones that we're trying to set up.

They're meant for the children of Israel to ask the question, what does it all mean?

What do these stones mean?

We don't know what happened.

And these sermons on revival are meant to be like stones that cause us to ask, what is this?

And why is it relevant to us today?

Now, you would think with an event like this in your history, there'd be no need to remind people.

It's extraordinary that we even need these stones of remembrance and memory.

And you would think that, you know, here's these two impossible events that God made possible.

The dividing and the crossing of the Red Sea and the dividing and the crossing of the Jordan River.

There's no way people are going to need to be reminded in some sort of visible, external, objective way that this happened among their people.

But God knows us better than we know ourselves.

Right?

He knows that we're made of the dust.

He knows that we're common human clay.

He knows that our human nature is corrupted by sin.

And therefore, we so easily forget the truth.

That even an unforgettable event can be forgotten.

That even this thing that happened could come to somehow not be imprinted on the minds and impressed upon the consciences of the next generation.

And so God says, put up some stones and get the attention of the people and provoke them to ask the question, what does all this mean for us?

You guys tracking?

So the Bible is like a set of stones for us.

The Bible is meant for us to come along and to open it and to read it and there to encounter the power of the living God.

This God who's revealing himself.

This God who's doing mighty acts.

This God who's saving people and showing that his hand is mighty.

And yet so many people in the church today are just walking by those stones.

They don't know what they mean.

And they're not even asking the questions.

And if we would just allow these stones of scripture to stop us in our tracks.

If we would take the time to say, what does it all mean?

We too could experience the power of the living God who reveals himself through those stones.

Our communion table is like a set of stones.

The Lord knew that in our sin we might forget even the death of the Son of God for us.

His agony and his shame and all that he endured on the cross as our substitute to atone for our sins and bear the judgment of God in our place.

How could we forget this?

How could we forget this mighty act of God that demonstrated his eternal love for us?

But Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves.

And so he commands us, break bread.

Drink wine.

Do this in remembrance of me.

He's setting up a visible, external, objective memorial, a tangible reminder lest we forget.

What does this Bible mean?

What does this table mean?

What do these stones mean?

And I want us to set up some stones of revival in this season at Christ Church.

Stones that could be signposts for us to the history of God's mighty hand coming down to awaken his church.

And I pray that as we do that subsequent generations, our children and their children and their children's children would be going along casually one day.

And they would suddenly come across all these stones.

And they would have awakened within them a new interest, a new curiosity to say, Mom, Dad, what is the meaning of all this for us?

And that we might have the great privilege of telling them these stones serve as a testimony that the presence of the living God came down among us and performed a great miracle for us.

We get to remind them of the facts, of the central event that once happened, that Christ was crucified to save sinners like us.

That's what the stones mean.

That's what the Bible means.

That's what this table means.

That's what every revival in the history of the church means.

And we need reminding.

We need reminding.

And we need reminding that the Lord's hand is mighty.

We need reminding that the Lord's hand is mighty.

Look at verse 21.

It says,

When your children ask their fathers in times to come, what do these stones mean?

Then you shall let your children know that Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.

For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over.

As the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over.

So that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty.

That you may fear the Lord your God forever.

You know, we too want to remember these times and these events where something amazing happened.

Something wonderful happened to revive God's people.

And it's not just something that happens, you know, only once in an utterly unique event.

And you'll notice a series in our own text here that what God did at the Red Sea, he did again at the Jordan River.

That God moved at the Jordan River exactly as he did before at the Red Sea.

And the same thing happens in revival.

It's not just something that happens once.

It's something that happens serially and repeatedly down the centuries of the church.

In the same way, with the same patterns, and the same characteristics, God does here what he did over there.

And just as God worked in the same way at the sea as he did at the river,

so the Holy Spirit has come down at different times in the life of the church.

And he's shown his mighty hand here and here and here in the exact same ways that we too might know that the hand of the Lord is mighty.

I want us to think for a moment about the past just 300 years of the church.

And I want us to think about these revivals that have happened over the past few centuries

that have caused us to see that the hand of the Lord is mighty.

Think about the great awakening that happened in the 1730s and 40s.

We know that before that time, the state of society was deplorable.

And we also know that the state of the church was dead.

And God decided to send the Holy Spirit down.

And when the Holy Spirit came down, he converted and created some of the greatest preachers since the time of the apostles.

And it was through the preaching, the renewed preaching of the gospel,

that whole churches, whole cities, whole nations came alive to God in that time in a mighty way,

in a way that showed that the Lord's hand is mighty.

Historians tell us that, you know, this awakening had a huge part to play in the United Kingdom and her colonies,

not descending into the kind of revolution that swept through France in 1789,

that we were spared of that kind of violence and that kind of social chaos.

And that rather what sprang up from that awakening was the trade unions movement.

Right?

That people, as the Holy Spirit came down,

and people were given a new identity, a new nature, a new sort of dignity in Jesus Christ,

they began to demand better education and better working conditions.

And we know that also out of this revival, the abolition of slavery movement rose up.

William Wilberforce and his whole cohort of abolitionists are a result of this revival.

It would have never happened.

This wide-scale liberation from bondage, liberation from oppression would have never happened

had the Holy Spirit not come down in power at this time.

What do these stones mean?

They mean that the hand of the Lord is mighty, to do mighty things.

If you fast forward to the revival in 1857 to 59 in the United States,

the United Kingdom that spread throughout the world,

that revival began in a lunch hour prayer meeting among business people on Wall Street, of all places.

And that lunch hour prayer, it began with one person.

One person who went and started to pray by themselves.

And then eventually that one person became six people.

And then eventually that six people became 10,000 people praying every day at lunch in the heart of Wall Street.

And what happened was that revival started to move from city to city,

from college campus to college campus.

It came all the way here to the College of California that in just a few years' time

would become named the University of California at Berkeley.

And people, when they described that revival, they called it a year of the right hand of the Most High.

Where God showed that His hand was mighty.

And then if you fast forward to 1904 to 1907,

the revival in Wales that swept to India and China and Korea,

that revival began by people saying,

Lord, bend us.

Lord, bend us.

Lord, send your Holy Spirit now for Jesus Christ's sake.

And they prayed and prayed and prayed until the Holy Spirit came down.

And it changed whole peoples and whole nations.

You can ask Miriam Kim about her grandfather who suffered greatly for the gospel in Korea.

And I believe it's coming straight out of her family having roots in this revival that changed that nation.

Now, what I'm trying to say to you

is that the hand of the Lord has been shown to be mighty

at the Jordan River

exactly as He showed it to be mighty at the Red Sea.

And what I want us to see is that

the Lord works in the same ways,

in the same patterns,

and with the same characteristics

through all of these times of revival

when He shows that His hand is mighty.

And just to list a few of these characteristics

that we see in each of these revivals,

number one,

every single one of them is a repetition of the day of Pentecost.

That the Holy Spirit comes down

on a whole number of people together

and they become aware

of a presence and a power

that's above them and beyond them.

They become aware of the majesty

and the might of God.

And they begin to sense that no human being

is presiding over this meeting.

That in fact,

it's the Holy Spirit who's presiding,

who's leading,

who's directing,

who's guiding.

And because of that,

people begin to become awake

to spiritual things.

Things that maybe they've heard

a thousand times before,

but were never really real to them.

They begin to feel their power.

And the second thing that happens,

the second characteristic,

when the Lord shows that His hand is mighty in revival,

is not only does the Spirit come down,

but people become awake to the glory

and the holiness of God.

And when they realize the holiness

and the glory of God in their midst,

people are filled with a sense of awe

and reverence,

a sense of holy fear before God.

And the third characteristic of these times

where God shows that His hand is mighty,

is that people experience the utter purity of God.

And that leads them inevitably

to a deeper sense of their own sin.

To see the ways in their life

that they're actually fighting against God.

And they begin to say with the prophet Isaiah,

as they realize that,

they say,

woe is me,

for I'm ruined,

and I'm lost,

and I'm unclean.

People begin to cry out from their heart

and say,

my heart is vile,

and I'm utterly unworthy.

In fact,

I don't believe I've ever done any good at all.

We say with the Apostle Paul,

any goodness I bring to God

is nothing to me.

It's just,

it's trash,

it's garbage,

it's dung,

it's filthy rags.

One of the great hymns

that came out of the Great Awakening

was this great prayer that said,

nothing in my hand I bring,

simply to Thy cross I cling.

Naked,

come to Thee for dress.

Helpless,

look to Thee for grace.

Foul,

I,

to the fountain fly,

wash me,

Savior,

or I die.

This great revival

that broke out

at the Bible conference meeting

in Pyongyang

in January 1907.

One of the observers wrote this.

He said,

God came to us in Pyongyang

that night

with the sound of weeping.

And as the prayer continued,

a spirit of heaviness

and sorrow for sin

came down upon the audience.

And over on one side,

someone began to weep,

and in a moment,

the whole audience was weeping.

And man after man would rise,

confess his sins,

break down and weep

and throw himself to the floor

and beat the floor

with his fists

in perfect agony of conviction.

And it says that the Christians

returned to their homes,

taking the Pentecostal fire with them,

and it spread to practically

every church.

Schools

canceled classes for days

while students

wept out their wrongdoings together.

We had our hearts torn

again and again

by the return of little articles

and money

that had been taken from us

over the years.

All through the city,

people were going

from house to house,

confessing wrongs,

returning stolen property,

not only to Christians,

but to non-believers.

A Chinese merchant

was astounded

to have a Christian walk in

and pay him

a large sum of money

he had obtained unjustly

years before.

The whole city

was stirred.

The cry went out

over the city.

You see,

this is what happens

over and over

and over again

when the Lord's mighty hand

comes down

in revival.

We sense the Holy Spirit

come among us.

And we sense the holiness

and utter glory

and purity of God.

And we sense

within ourselves

something deeply wrong.

And we begin

with a new honesty

and a fresh expression

to get that wrong

out before God.

And then what begins

to happen

as a result of that,

another characteristic

is that we get

a clearer view

of the mercy of God.

We come to a clearer view

of Christ crucified.

Something that perhaps

all of our lives

we've known

in a theoretical way,

but we never really

experienced his power.

And all of a sudden,

because of God's

mighty hand upon us,

we're melted by it.

And we're broken

by it.

And we weep

not only with a sense

of sorrow,

but with a sense

of joy.

And we say to ourselves,

for God so loved

the world

that he gave

his one and only son

that whoever believes

in him

should not perish,

but should have

everlasting life.

And that becomes

suddenly real

to people.

It becomes applied

to their lives

and they begin

to sing

like Charles Wesley,

another great

revival hymn.

He said,

and can it be

that I should gain

an interest

in the Savior's blood?

Died he for me

who caused his pain,

for me

who him to death

pursued?

Amazing love.

How can it be

that thou,

my God,

should die

for me?

People become

lost in praise

to the Father,

Son,

and Holy Spirit

when the mighty hand

of the Lord

comes down.

And I would say

a last characteristic

of these

great times

of revival

is that one thing

begins to absorb

the church.

And the church

desires to

be together

more and more

around that one thing.

If you could believe it,

people begin

to want more

church meetings.

They want to get

together so they can

praise God more

for these things

and they can talk

more with each other

about these things

and they can pray

more for God

to do more

of these things.

And the church's

whole experience

of time

completely transforms.

Whereas before,

people had no time

to give.

Now time

is forgotten.

Time gets absorbed

into eternity.

prosperity.

And people

want to meet

like the New Testament

church met

daily

in the temple

courts.

They met until

midnight.

Sometimes they met

until daybreak

because they couldn't

get enough

of God.

The Holy Spirit

reorganizes

our sense of time

and causes us

in these seasons

of revival

to experience

days of heaven

upon the earth

and we don't

want to leave.

life.

So what do

these stones

mean?

They mean that

God did again

at the Jordan

River exactly

what he did

at the Red Sea

and why did he

do that?

To show us

that the hand

of the Lord

is mighty

and that the

living God

can come down

in power

among his people.

And what do

these stones

of revival

mean?

They mean that

God has continued

to awaken his church

again and again

and again

in the exact

same way

according to

the same

characteristics

and the same

patterns.

Why did he do

that?

So that you

might know

that the hand

of the Lord

is mighty

and that the

living God

has come down

among us

before and he

can do it

again.

And so that

is our simple

prayer.

Do it

again.

Lord,

do it again

here

and now.

Do it again

among us

and in our

time.

Lord,

show us

and show

the East Bay

that your

hand is indeed

mighty.

Don't you

want this?

If this

happened,

would it not

address almost

all of our

spiritual and

moral issues?

Would it not

address pretty

much all of our

cultural and

social problems?

realms?

If the mighty

hand of the

Lord was

coming down

from on high

and the Holy

Spirit was

filling up and

presiding over

his church and

life abundant

was being given

to God's people

without measure

and we were

living out of a

new sense of

power and a

new sense of

awe and a new

sense of humility

and unity and

desire to go and

serve people and

even suffer for the

sake of other

people, don't you

want this?

It's what God

wants and we

need reminding

that he wants

it.

We need reminding

that the hand of

the Lord is

mighty and we

need reminding

that the hand of

the Lord is

mighty when we

cry out to

him.

I want to close

just with a

thought about

this that says

in verse 24,

so all the

peoples of the

earth may know

that the hand

of the Lord is

mighty and that

you might fear

the Lord your

God forever.

The Lord comes

down and he

shows his hand

to be mighty

for two reasons.

Number one,

that God's people

would fear him

all their days,

that we would

recognize him

in his glory

and his majesty

and we would

give to him the

worship that he

alone deserves.

But the second

reason he shows

that his hand is

mighty is that

all peoples of

the earth would

know his power

and his greatness.

The Lord wants

every person in

your life to

know him.

Every person

that you live

among, every

person that you

work with, every

person that you

play with, he

wants every person

connected with this

church to know

him.

He wants every

person here in the

Bay Area to know

him.

And we might say,

you know, how can

God possibly do

that?

How could he

possibly bring

revival to

Berkeley and to

Oakland and to

the Bay Area?

How could God

make the

impossible possible?

And what I'm

trying to do is

show you that

he's done it

before.

He's done it in

other places and

other times that

maybe even were

much more difficult

than now.

And I want you to

notice two final

details about this

text in terms of

his timing.

When does the

Lord show that

his hand is

mighty?

Well, he shows

that his hand is

mighty after periods

of great trial and

discouragement.

That in the same

way, he's always

brought mighty

revivals to the

church after seasons

of great decline

and decay.

And think about it.

God's people had

been in Egypt for

400 years in

bondage, in

captivity, under

cruelty and task

masters and whips

and bricks without

straw.

And then the mighty

hand of the Lord

came down and parted

the waters of the

Red Sea.

After Egypt, God

does the impossible.

And he does it

after the wilderness.

God's people had

been in this

howling, barren,

lifeless wasteland.

They'd been

experiencing hunger

and thirst, been

experiencing trials

and temptations.

They'd just

experienced the

death of Moses,

their great leader.

They're grieving.

They're discouraged.

And then the mighty

hand of the Lord

comes down and he

parts the waters of

the Jordan River.

after the wilderness.

He does the

impossible.

And similarly, after

the church has been

in Egypt and been

in the wilderness,

after the church has

gone through these

hard periods, these

barren periods in the

history of the church

where even the people

of God have lost

their faith in the

living God, that is

when God sends his

revivals.

That is when his

mighty hand comes

down to awaken and

quicken and enliven

his church, to build

it up and to

transform society.

He always does this

after periods of

great trial and

discouragement.

Anybody had any

reason to feel

discouraged over the

past few years?

That's when he likes

to do this stuff.

And notice that the

Lord typically waits

until the moment of

crisis.

When our back is up

against the Red Sea.

When we come to the

borderland of the

Jordan River and we

have nowhere else to

go.

When the people of God

feel hopeless and

helpless, then the

mighty hand of the

Lord comes down.

At the Red Sea, we

had the mountain on

one side.

Right?

We had a mountain on

the other side.

We had Pharaoh and

his chariots and the

army of Egypt coming

from behind us and we

had an uncrossable body

of water in front of

us.

We were defenseless and

doomed.

The people of God were

desperate and despairing.

A mountain here, a

mountain there, an

enemy behind us, an

impossible barrier before

us, utterly helpless and

hopeless.

Shut in, shut down.

The people of God crying

out to him for salvation.

And it's always in that

moment that God acts.

The mighty hand of the

Lord comes down and all

of a sudden the presence

and power of the living

God is in the midst of his

people.

And he's manifesting the

glory and the goodness of

God to all the nations.

And Christ Church, I want to

invite us to raise our

expectations of God.

I want to invite us to get

down on our knees before

God and to cry out to him

to send revival, to do it

again so that all the

peoples of the earth may

know that the hand of the

Lord is mighty and that we

might fear the Lord our God

forever.

forever.

In the name of the Father,

Son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen.