We hope that you enjoy this teaching from Christ Church.
This material is copyrighted and no unauthorized duplication, redistribution, or any other use of any part is permitted without prior consent from Christ Church.
Please consider donating to this work in the San Francisco Bay Area online at ChristChurchEastBay.org.
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.
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.
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
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, 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.
In the name of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.