Scripture: Acts 2:14; Acts 2:22-32; John 9:1-25 Series: 2023
Opening a Heart Full of Love series on Acts (themed ‘What do we do now?’ for Bee Creek UMC in Easter), this sermon on Peter’s Pentecost sermon (Acts 2:22-32) defines revival as God making the dead alive again. Its central claim is that revival requires continuity, not rupture: Peter links David to the risen Jesus, and historic revivals (Azusa Street, the Methodist movement) grew out of older traditions fulfilled rather than discarded. Through the stories of his wife Alina’s conversion chain, Wesley’s failed Georgia mission and Moravian encounter, and Peter the denier, the preacher argues revival comes through unlikely, flawed instruments and looks different in every age but needs the same conditions: people unashamed to share the fullness of Jesus. It closes by inviting the congregation into ‘Revive’ conversations and insisting revival starts personally with each hearer.
Illustrations: jesus-revolution-film, alina-family-conversion-chain, azusa-street-revival, wesley-georgia-mission, wesley-moravians-storm, when-harry-met-sally, jonathan-edwards-awakening, wesley-not-a-great-hang, peter-denier-at-pentecost, man-born-blind-john-9
April 23, 2023
Acts 2:14, 22-32
Revival
Peter stood with the other eleven apostles. He raised his voice and declared, “Judeans and everyone living in Jerusalem! Know this! Listen carefully to my words! “Therefore, let all Israel know beyond question that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ. Fellow Israelites, listen to these words! Jesus the Nazarene was a man whose credentials God proved to you through miracles, wonders, and signs, which God performed through him among you. You yourselves know this. In accordance with God’s established plan and foreknowledge, he was betrayed. You, with the help of wicked men, had Jesus killed by nailing him to a cross. God raised him up! God freed him from death’s dreadful grip, since it was impossible for death to hang on to him. David says about him, “I foresaw that the Lord was always with me;” “because he is at my right hand I won’t be shaken.” “Therefore, my heart was glad” “and my tongue rejoiced.” “Moreover, my body will live in hope,” “because you won’t abandon me to the grave,” “nor permit your holy one to experience decay.” “You have shown me the paths of life;” “your presence will fill me with happiness.” “Brothers and sisters, I can speak confidently about the patriarch David. He died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this very day. Because he was a prophet, he knew that God promised him with a solemn pledge to seat one of his descendants on his throne. Having seen this beforehand, David spoke about the resurrection of Christ, that “he wasn’t abandoned to the grave, nor did his body experience decay”. This Jesus God raised up. We are all witnesses to that fact.” Acts of the Apostles 2:22-32 CEB
The recently released movie, Jesus Revolution, tells the story of Chuck Smith, who was the pastor of Calvary Chapel in California, and the circumstances that led to a great revival of the church in Southern California. The emergence of the Calvary Chapel movement and the Jesus Freak movement. I have heard good things about the movie. I don’t agree with the theology of Chuck Smith, but I am grateful that this story has been told because the revival, begun in 1968, became personal for my family. In 1977, a young quaker pastor named John Wimber in Southern California left the Quakers and planted a Calvary Chapel Church in Yorba Linda. Five years later, they were disenchanted with Calvary Chapel and became the Anaheim Vineyard Christian Fellowship. The ministry there changed the life of a young aerospace engineer who worked in Southern California. His company had contracts with the Israeli Defense Force and he would travel to Israel. On one of those travels, this man named Bill Arder, who had had his life changed because of God through the vineyard movement, met a young engineer working for the Israeli Defense Force named Yoni Adonyi. Yoni was a very charismatic young man. He spoke English well and could talk intelligently about many topics. He was an interesting guy. And this young engineer from southern California took a liking to Yoni. He recommended that the young Israeli officer pursue his studies in America and move his family to America. His wife and he had a young daughter. And so eventually it worked out. This man from California, paid for the family’s immigration, got them over, got Yoni into an Ohio State PhD program in materials science. About six months after they moved, Yoni and his wife went to California to visit this man who had helped them so much and his family. They asked him, “why were you so nice to us? It doesn’t make sense.” And the man said, it’s because of Jesus. Jesus changed our life. We have love to share in this world. Yoni and his wife went to church with Bill and Monica and became Christians that day. They went home to Columbus, Ohio, and their daughter, my wife, Alina, became a Christian as well. Revival can change the world. Revival changes lives. Revival doesn’t always look like the movies. It doesn’t have to look like big tents. It doesn’t have to look like Pentecost. It is where God is making new life. And that is amazing. And that is beautiful
Series Intro
In the season of Easter, we’re going to take the time to look through the beginning of the Book of Acts where the disciples are left with the question:What do we do now? For Bee Creek United Methodist Church, that is the season that we are in: What do we do now? And as we worship together over the next few weeks, I want us to be praying and thinking through and responding actively to God’s movements as we not only ask this question, but answer this question, what do we do now?
The series is called a Heart full of love, that is not only a line from the musical, Les Miserables,
It is also the whole point of the Methodist movement and the point of the Christian life. We are saved by grace through faith for a sanctified life and heart full of love not just in the future, but starting now. Today we are looking at Revival.
Acts 2 is a long chapter. It covers a lot of different parts. Peter gives a long sermon a we have a portion of it today outlining the life of Jesus Christ. Not only outlining, but connecting the life of Jesus with the history of the the Old Testament including many quotations from the Old Testament.
Revival needs continuity. Revivius. To make alive again: Revival cannot happen with total discontinuity, though oftentimes it’s portrayed in that kind of way. The Azusa street revival where Pentecostalism began in 1906, came out of holiness traditions, which came out of Methodism.
In the reading from the Book of Acts, Peter is holding up these continuities between David and Jesus, between the words of David and Jesus. Revival is not sparked by saying the old is bad, but by saying the old has been fulfilled. God has been faithful and God is faithful today. Even those times when we thought God wasn’t faithful, God has been faithful. That is the powerful message of revival. Even in those times when we thought God had forsaken us, God was faithful. The new context in which we find ourselves has a response from God in Jesus Christ. This is the power of Pentecost. This is the power of the church. This is why we celebrate the birthday of the church at Pentecost. We don’t celebrate it in the upper room when they drew lots to make a bureaucratic decision. It’s the first thing they did, but it’s not the one we celebrate. We celebrate Pentecost when the church scales up. And part of it is this continuity that Peter is holding on to and offering to the people: they can be a part of what God is doing in a new and radical way. Because what is God is doing in a new and radical way is not different from what God did before. The God who resurrected the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt resurrected from slavery to sin and death and has saved us from sin and death so we can live as new people together.
While John Wesley was at Oxford in the early 1730s and while he was keeping his diary and, and helping to lead the Holy Club and the Oxford Methodist, a man named Thomas Oglethorpe, who was a member of parliament, started to organize a new colony in the United States between the Carolinas and the Spanish Florida territory. Now, the Carolinas were a colony started in the late 17th century by allies of Charles II that was focused on profiting from slavery and Indian wars. Thomas Oglethorpe was from a very different generation. He wanted to offer a place for moral uplift to those who could not find a spot in English society. He also wanted to help bring Jesus to the natives.
John Wesley got on board with this aim and he came to Savannah, Georgia, in the 1730s to preach the gospel to the Native Americans of Georgia. He came with high hopes. He failed. He did not start a revival in North America.
On his way Georgia, Wesley met some Moravians, who were a type of Lutherans focused on spirituality. There was a storm. John Wesley thought he was going to die. He was scared. The Moravians in the middle of the storm were not scared. They were smiling. They were singing hymns. Like in “When Harry met Sally, he wanted what they were having.
Wesley wanted that kind of faith. He started talking to them, learning about their faith practices. He thought that it was fascinating how so much of it was based around these small group gatherings and sharing the faith together. And he noticed ave a high similarity between what was going on at Oxford with the Holy Club, and what these Moravians did.
So when he came back to England, he became more involved in these different religious societies.
Another key factor at this time was that John Wesley received a book by an American preacher named Jonathan Edwards about a great awakening in New England. This account transformed Wesley. He didn’t agree with Jonathan Edwards’ theology, but the revival drew him in. If it could take place in New England, why not in England?
Wesley tried to preach a message of revival. He worked for Oxford so he didn’t have a church. He needed the permission of the priests officially to preach in their church. But he decided that God’s movement could not be confined to the walls of the church. So he started preaching outside.
John Wesley was not a super charismatic preacher. This is important. Nobody heard him preach and was like, “Wow, that is an impressive dude.”
And I think that’s one of the most powerful things of what happened and how the Methodist movement started. John Wesley was not a guy who you would want to have a beer with. He would probably judge you. He was not a great hang. He was not a very personable fellow who would tell lots of funny stories and keep you relaxed and easy He was probably pretty snooty and very morally upright, surely judgmental, no qualities that people are like super drawn to.
“You know, my friend John, he’s super judgmental. I just wanna spend time with him every day.”
Nobody says that. Nobody said that in 18th century. Nobody says that today.
Yet despite that, revival took place. Despite the character of John Wesley, revival took place in the same way despite the character of Peter, revival took place at Pentecost. Peter was a fisherman who had denied Jesus three times and yet at Pentecost, God spoke through him and transformed the world. John Wesley was a prudish English priest. And yet through him God changed the world. a revival today will look different than it did 300 years ago than it did a hundred years ago.
People have seen the big tents. A lot of people who are not in church today have already heard about Jesus and have chosen not to follow him. There are also people who grew up in the church and experienced trauma and don’t want a part of it anymore; church only brings up negative feelings. What it will take for revival here are the same conditions at Pentecost, the same conditions in England, the same conditions at Azusa Street. The same conditions anywhere that it has taken place. It may not have the same results, but it needs the same conditions. Those conditions are people who are unashamed of Christ’s good news. People who are willing to share the fullness of Jesus, not the presentation of Jesus, not the culture of Jesus, not the politics that have been presented widely of Jesus, but the fullness of Jesus And in that the possibility of transformation.
Revival is not just about a bunch of people becoming members of a church or converting to Christianity. It’s about people who are dead coming alive again; people dead in their soul coming alive again. And that is and always has been the future of the church. It’s not about bringing in people from other churches. It’s not about building new buildings. It’s the miracle of John 9. It’s the miracle of the man who was born blind. And when they come to him, ask him if this Jesus who healed him is a sinner. And he says, I do not know if he is a sinner or not. What I do know is I was blind, but now I see that’s it.
Conclusiony
My brothers and sisters, as we go forward, we need to be open to the fact that God may change us. God may change you. The direction of your life may change. That is revival. Whether it’s one person or a hundred people or a thousand or a million, that is revival, that is living again. It is a continuity with what God has been doing from the beginning.
Revive
I want to ask all of you here to be a part of Revive conversations. These aren’t revivals with big tents. These are chances to meet and talk about what has happened here and dream about what God can do. If you follow this QR code, it will take you to a Google form to sign up for one of the slots. Revival here will have continuity with the past, but it will also be a new thing. The greatest point of continuity is Jesus Christ. This is the season of resurrection, where Christian’s celebrate God coming back from the dad. If Jesus really came back from the dead, than anything is possible.
May God bless us with revival. May we have faith that God is doing a new thing. That is the old thing transformed. And may you remember that it starts with you. It’s not about other people, it’s about your life, your faith, your journey, your revival. May you be live again. May your spirit be aflamed. You are loved. You matter. Your mistakes can forgiven. You don’t have to walk the same path. You are free to have a heart full of love and to share that with others.
Let us pray, Heavenly Father, give us the faith of Peter to stand up for you even after we have denied you. Let us remember that revival does not look like movies. Living again starts with us. May we receive your spirit anew. May we receive Christ’s story anew, and may we share with our words and our deeds. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.