A revival is an extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit, resulting in holiness of believers, boldness in evangelism, and many conversions among outsiders.
These are only preliminary, unedited outlines and may differ from Andy’s final message.
On Christmas Day in 1904, Dr. G. Campbell Morgan, pastor of Westminster Chapel in London, stunned his congregation with a highly unusual sermon. His usual approach was expository preaching, moving through passages of scripture in a careful way. Instead, on that Christmas Day, he spoke of a powerful revival that was going on in those very days in Wales. Because he was a very careful man, he had not been willing to take the news of the revival from second-hand sources. So he traveled to Wales to see for himself. When he returned, he spoke of what he had experienced personally:
“I say to you today, beloved, without any hesitation, that this whole thing is of God, that it is a visitation in which He is making men conscious of Himself, without any human agency”
So… what was going on in Wales? Well, God had poured out the power of the Holy Spirit on his people in direct answer to prayer. Morgan said this:
“If you and I could stand above Wales, looking at it, you would see fire breaking out here, and there, and yonder, and somewhere else, without any collusion or prearrangement. It is a Divine visitation in which God – let me say this reverently – in which God is saying to us: See what I can do without the things you are depending on; see what I can do in answer to a praying people; see what I can do through the simplest, who are ready to fall in line, and depend wholly and absolutely upon Me”
The main human agent for the Welsh revival of 1904 was a coal-miner named Evan Roberts. He had been raised in a God-fearing home and had come to a deep faith in Christ as a young boy. At the age of twelve, he had entered the coal mines as did so many Welsh boys. But at his breaks in the coal mine and in the evenings he fervently studied his Bible. He began praying for revival to come to Wales… he prayed daily for this for 13 years… think about that! Thirteen years of daily prayer for revival before it came! And it wasn’t just Evan Roberts who was praying. God raised up some small groups of praying saints who prayed daily for revival for a year and a half before it came.
Effective fervent prayer was essential to the preparation for the Welsh revival. One person wrote this:
“If it be asked why the fire of God fell on Wales, the answer is simple: Fire falls where it is likely to catch and spread. As one has said, ‘Wales provided the necessary tinder.’ Here were thousands of believers unknown to each other, in small towns and villages and great cities, crying to God day after day for the fire of God to fall. This was not merely a ‘little talk with Jesus,’ but daily, agonizing intercession.”
The end result of that outpouring of the Spirit was the salvation of thousands of people. Approximately 70,000 people came to a saving faith in Jesus Christ in just the first two months of the revival, and over 100,000 over the two-years that the holy fires burned in Wales.
So… why am I beginning this sermon this way? Because I am deeply desirous to see something like that happen here in our region… Durham—Raleigh—Chapel Hill.
Today we are focusing on just one verse in Acts and using it as a gateway to discuss a phenomenon that has be a powerful theme in the history of the Christian church—revival.
Here is the one verse:
Acts 4:31 After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
This one moment speaks volumes, for it seems like a “mini-Pentecost”… a minor re-enactment of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the gathered church that happened that first day as recorded in Acts 2. With it happening again in Acts 4, it seems like a timeless lesson on the recurring of Pentecost from time to time, an empowering of the church by fresh effusions of the Spirit’s power.
When I was in seminary, I read a very significant book by the famed Welsh preacher, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, called Joy Unspeakable. In it he argued for this very thing… that the baptism of the Spirit is not a once-for-all occasion, but it is something that God has done again and again in the history of the church, resulting in deep holiness on the part of the church and great power in evangelism.
He argues, based on Acts 4:31:
“Every revival of religion, I say, is really a repetition of what happened on the day of Pentecost. It is really almost incredible that people should go on saying that what happened at Pentecost was once and for all…. [I emphasize this because] this, above everything else is what we need today…. Oh, is there any tragedy comparable to the failure of the church to realize that this is her need, and that this is her only hope?”
Lloyd-Jones was giving a series of messages on revival in 1959, on the hundredth anniversary of the great revival that swept Great Britain in 1859. His consistent point was that the church really doesn’t change, and neither does the world. The basic issues are always the same: man in his sin, the gospel as the power of God for salvation, the church in a weakened, almost helpless state, unable to meet the challenges of its day… knowing the truth, doing some good ministries, but unable to make any significant progress; suddenly the power of God is poured out from on high, the church is revived, it moves out in power and many in the world are saved and transformed genuinely. He would also say that revivals follow a course, at some point the power is dissipated, and the church returns to a weakened state needing the power of God to be poured out again from on high.
I. Defining Revival
A. Basic Definitions
My definition: A revival is an extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit through an encounter with God resulting in a deep work of holiness in the people of God, boldness in evangelistic proclamation, and significant numbers of conversions among outsiders.
“Revival is the work of the Holy Spirit in restoring the people of God to a more vital spiritual life, witness, and work by prayer and the Word after repentance in crisis for their spiritual decline.” Earle Cairns
“God’s quickening visitation of his people, touching their hearts and deepening his work of grace in their lives.” J. I. Packer
“the awakening or quickening of God’s people to their true nature and purpose.” Robert Coleman
B. Something God Does to Us
It is something God does to his people by the Holy Spirit.
It is often spoken of as being “poured out from above”
C. Not Man-Made
Charles Finney, the lawyer turned evangelist who led the Second Great Awakening in the 19th century:
“A revival is not a miracle, nor dependent on a miracle, in any sense. It is purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means–as much as any other effect produced by the application of means.”
I couldn’t disagree more.
Modern definition (especially in SBC churches): A revival is an event in the life of a church, scheduled but out of the ordinary pattern, consisting of evangelistic preaching and worship, the main focus of which is converting lost people or re-energizing the church life.
Again, a faulty definition, based on the revivalism that came after Charles Finney and others.
No, Mr. Finney… a revival IS a miracle from God. It is something God does.
But it has certain tendencies and patterns, and it seems to be directly the result of the church pleading with God to do it:
Luke 11:9-13 So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. 11 “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
II. Tracing Out the History of Revival
· Again and again in history, God has done this… pouring out his Spirit powerfully on people… drawing them into himself, convicting them of sin and causing them to cry out for holiness… empowering them to pour out into the streets with the gospel flaming on their tongues… resulting in many, many conversions.
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C. Everything Starts with Prayer
III. An Encounter with God
A. God Moves in a Powerful, Supernatural Way
Acts 4:31 After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken.
1. A supernatural display of the presence of God
2. Earlier, on the Day of Pentecost, it was this
Acts 2:2-3 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.
3. On Mt. Carmel, when Elijah was contesting against the prophets of Baal, it was this:
1 Kings 18:38 Then the fire of the LORD fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.
B. The Reaction of the People
1 Kings 18:39 When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, “The LORD– he is God! The LORD– he is God!”
An example from church history:
John Wesley: January 1, 1734 Journal entry: “Mr. Hall, Ingham, Whitefield, Hutching and my brother Charles were present at our Love Feast in Fetter Lane with about sixty of our brethren. About three in the morning as we were continuing instant in prayer the power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried out for exulting joy and many fell to the ground. As soon as we were recovered a little from the awe and amazement at the presence of His Majesty, we broke out with one voice, ‘We praise Thee, O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord.”
C. Pervading Sense of the Presence of God
Lloyd-Jones: An overpowering sense of awe and majesty in the presence of God, the consuming fire. The absolute purity and holiness of God comes upon the minds and hearts of the people with transfixing power.
Concerning the Welsh revival: “If one were asked to describe in a word the outstanding feature of those days, one would unhesitatingly reply that it was a universal, inescapable sense of the presence of God. The Lord had come down! A sense of the Lord’s presence was everywhere. It pervaded, nay, it created the spiritual atmosphere.”
Scotsman William Guthrie:
“It is a glorious manifestation of God into the soul, shedding abroad God’s love in the heart. It is a thing better felt that spoken of. It is no audible voice but it is a ray of glory filling the soul with God as he is life, light, love, and liberty, corresponding to that audible voice saying, ‘O man, greatly beloved,’ putting a man in a transport. … This is such a glance of glory that it may be called the firstfruits of our heavenly inheritance, for it is a present and … sensible discovery of the Holy God, almost conforming him unto his likeness, so swallowing him up that he forgets all things except the present manifestation. Oh, how glorious is this manifestation of the Spirit! Faith here rises to so full an assurance that it resolves completely into the sensible presence of God.” [Joy Unspeakable, 105]
Jonathan Edwards:
“As I rode out into the woods for my health, in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view that was for me extraordinary, or the glory of the Son of God, as Mediator between God and man, and His wonderful, great, full, pure and sweet grace and love, and meek and gentle condescension. This grace that appeared so calm and sweet, appeared also great above the heavens. The Person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thoughts and conceptions, which continued, as near as I can judge, about an hour; such as to keep me a greater part of the time in a flood of tears, and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be, what I know not otherwise how to express, emptied and annihilated; to lie in the dust, and to be full of Christ alone; to love Him with a holy and pure love; to trust in Him; to live upon Him; to serve Him and to be perfectly sanctified and made pure, with a heavenly purity.”
D.L. Moody: [He had been a Christian, a minister in charge of a mission; he was seeing people converted, but he wanted more] “I began to cry as never before, for a greater blessing from God. The hunger increased; I really felt that I did not want to live any longer. I kept on crying all the time that God would fill me with His Spirit. Well, one day in the city of New York—oh! What a day! I cannot describe it, I seldom refer to it. It is almost too sacred an experience to name. Paul had an experience of which he never spoke for fourteen years. I can only say, God revealed Himself to me, and I had such an experience of His love that I had to ask Him to stay His hand.”
SO… this is what revival is… an encounter with the living God, a direct experience of the Spirit of God unlike anything that these people had ever experienced before or would ever experience again.
Scripture:
Ephesians 3:17-19 And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge– that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Filled with all that God is… filled with a sense of the dimensions of his love for you in Christ… filled with the infinite majesty of the glory of God. That’s the encounter with God.
D. This Encounter with God Changes Everything
Great Awakening: “Eternal issues were discussed freely and unashamedly, and above all, a sense of the presence and holiness of God pervaded every area of human experience, at home, at work in shops and public houses. Eternity seemed inescapably near and real.”
IV. A Yearning for Holiness
A. Overwhelming Sense of Personal Sin
Job 42:5-6 My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. 6 Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.
Isaiah 6:5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”
Luke 5:8 When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”
Luke 18:13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
Lloyd-Jones: Men and women feel that they are vile and unclean and utterly unworthy. They also feel their utter helplessness to face such a God. They acutely realize they have never done anything good at all. They fall prostrate and cast themselves upon the love and mercy and compassion of God.
Iain Murray: “All awakenings begin with the return of a profound conviction of sin. From attitudes of indifference, or of cold religious formality, many are suddenly brought by the hearing of the truth to a concern and distress so strong that is may even be accompanied by temporary physical collapse. The phenomenon of hearers falling prostrate during a service or crying out in anguish is not uncommon at the outset of revivals.” [Revivals and Revivalism, p. 163]
B. Finding Relief only in Jesus Christ
Conviction of sin can last in some hearts for days, even weeks at a time during these revivals. Along with this, they have a clear sense of the love of God for sinners in the cross of Jesus Christ. At last they see it clearly. Perhaps they had believed it theoretically, but now they feel God’s love for them acutely in Christ. It suddenly becomes real to them and they feel acutely this truth:
Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
“He died for me… even for ME! MY sins are the ones that are forgiven!” Joy enters their hearts to a depth they had never known before. Praise to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.”
C. Overwhelming Desire to Share That Truth with Lost People
“And this now becomes for them the one thing that absorbs them. If they meet anyone they talk about it at once, everybody is talking about it. It is the main topic of conversation, the thing that absorbs all their interest.”
Their minds cast about to all the lost people around them… lost family members, neighbors, people in the community who are on their way to hell. They have lost any fear whatsoever of talking to them about Christ, so consumed are they with a sense of the power of the Holy Spirit and of the truth of the gospel.
V. Overwhelming Desire to Assemble for Worship
A. The People Couldn’t Get Enough of Being Together
Lloyd-Jones: “You will find that when God sends revival you do not have to exhort people to come together to worship, and to praise, and to consider the word, they insist on it! They come night after night, and they may stay for hours, even until the early hours of the morning. This will go on night after night for months exactly as happened here at the beginning. They met daily. They could not keep away from one another. Of course not! This marvelous thing had happened, this joy of the Lord, and they wanted to thank him together, and to pray together, to ask him to spread it and to extend it to others. If this happens to the Church, the world outside will be astonished as it has always been, in every period of revival and re-awakening. This is what is needed, not resorting to doubtful, worldly methods, to try and gather crowds and to bring people together. No, what we need is this inward urge, this constraint of the Spirit, this coming together of people who are sharing in the same glorious experience.” [Revival, 207]
Jonathan Edwards, the First Great Awakening:
“The work soon made a glorious alteration in the town. So that in the Spring and Summer following it seemed that the town (Northampton) seemed to be full of the presence of God. It never was so full of love nor so full of joy and yet so full of distress as it was then. There were remarkable tokens of God’s presence in almost every house. It was a time of joy in families on account of salvation being brought to them. Parents rejoicing over their children as newborn, husbands over their wives and wives over their husbands. The doings of God were then seen in his sanctuary. God’s day was a delight and his tabernacles were amiable. Our public assemblies were then beautiful. The congregation was alive in God’s service. Everyone earnestly intent on public worship. Every hearer eager to drink in the words of the minister as they came from his mouth. The assembly in general were from time to time in tears while the Word was preached. Some weeping with sorrow and distress, others with joy and love, others with pity and concern for the souls of their neighbors.”
VI. Powerful Preaching of the Gospel
We see it in our text:
Acts 4:31 After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
Acts 4:33 With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all.
Many examples from church history:
Obviously Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were known for their amazing power in preaching clear sermons on Christ during the First Great Awakening. But they were not alone.
Robert Murray McCheyne: He had simply to enter his pulpit and before he had opened his mouth people began to weep and were convicted of sin. He had not uttered a word. Why? This man had immersed himself in the presence of God before preaching and the Spirit was going ahead of him in power.
During an earlier revival in Wales in 1859, there was a man named David Morgan. He went to a revival meeting and was deeply moved by the Holt Spirit. He said this, “I went to bed that night as usual, David Morgan. But when I woke up the next morning, I realized I was a different man. I felt like a lion. I felt great power.” David Morgan began to preach the gospel with incredible power for over two years. Then one day, it was gone as quickly as it had come. He said to a friend, “One night I went to bed with this power that had accompanied me for two years. I woke up the next morning and found that I was David Morgan once again.” And he continued to be the original David Morgan until he died about fifteen years later. It was the power of the Holy Spirit, poured out on his preaching during that season of revival.
Evan Roberts was not a brilliant speaker or preacher, yet his audiences were captivated by his words. “What is the secret of the spell he wields over that audience? Is it learning or eloquence . . .? Nothing of the kind. The secret of his power is that he is ‘full of faith and love and zeal and the Holy Spirit’”
VII. A Vast Harvest of Souls
A. In a Revival, Non-Christians in Large Numbers Become Concerned for their Souls
Edwards, Great Awakening: “A great and earnest concern about the great things of religion and the eternal world became universal in all parts of the town, and among persons of all degrees and ages.” People would talk of almost nothing else
“All other talk except that of spiritual and eternal things was soon thrown by; all the conversation in all companies and upon all occasions, was upon these things only, unless so much as was necessary for people, carrying on their ordinary secular business. They seemed to follow their worldly business more as a part of their duty than from any disposition they had to it; the temptation now seemed to lie on that hand, to neglect worldly affairs too much and to spend too much time in the immediate exercise of religion.”
Welsh Revival:
“The scene was almost indescribable. Tier upon tier of men and women filled every inch of space. Those who could not gain admittance stood outside and listened at the doors. Others rushed to the windows, where almost every word was audible. When, at seven o’clock, the service began, quite 2,000 people must have been present. The enthusiasm was unbounded. Women sang and shouted till the perspiration ran down their faces, and men jumped up one after the other to testify.” [Sam Storms article]
G. Campbel Morgan about the Welsh revival:
“I can tell you no more, save that I personally stood for three solid hours wedged so that I could not lift my hands at all. . . If you could but once have seen the men, evidently [coal miners], with the blue seam that told of their work on their faces, clean and beautiful. Beautiful, did I say? Many of them lit with heaven’s own light, radiant with the light that never was on sea and land. . . Today it is awakened, and I look on many a face, and I knew that men did not see men, did not see Evan Roberts, but they saw the face of God and the eternities. I left that evening, after having been in the meeting three hours, at 10:30, and it swept on, packed as it was, until an early hour next morning, song and prayer and testimony and conversion and confession of sin by leading church members publicly, and the putting of it away, and all the while no human leader, no one indicating the next thing to do, no one checking the spontaneous movement”
B. Vast Harvest of Souls Comes into the Kingdom
Great Awakening: In New England, 50,000 new members were added to the congregational churches in five years. That’s when the population of New England was only 1.5 million.
In the revival of 1857-1859: Half a million souls joined churches in America… Lloyd-Jones says they were tested and had given clear evidence of their conversion and went through a process of joining established churches. Half a million in 1857-9!
100,000 just in Ulster in the UK during that same time.
We’ve already quoted the number from the Welsh revival: 100,000 in less than two years.
C. Society was Transformed as a Result
Welsh Revival: “It was plainly evident now to everybody that God had answered the agonizing prayers of His people and had sent a mighty spiritual upheaval. A sense of the Lord’s presence was everywhere. His presence was felt in the homes, on the streets, in the mines, factories and schools and even in the drinking saloons. So great was His Presence felt that even the places of amusement and carousal became places of holy awe. Many were the instances of men entering taverns, ordering drinks and then turning on their heels and leaving them untouched. Wales up to this time was in the grip of football fever when tens of thousands of working-class men thought and talked only of one thing. They gambled also on the result of the games. Now the famous football players themselves got converted and joined the open-air street meetings to testify what glorious things the Lord had done for them. Many of the teams were disbanded as the players got converted and the stadiums were empty.”
VIII. Applications
A. Come to Christ
B. Pray for Revival
