Road to Revival - Matt 16:18

Road to Revival
October 14, 2012
Matthew 16:18

Introduction

• The word revival means bringing back to life
• When I trained as a lifesaver in Australia, I leaned how to swim using sidestroke so I could bring a drowned person in to shore
• But once this person was on dry land, he had to be resuscitated, so he could once again breathe on his own power.
• A part of this was performing mouth to mouth resuscitation. This essentially consisted of blowing air into the person's lungs, so they would continue receiving oxygen into their body
• The important point here is that someone who was lifeless was unable to bring himself back to life, new life had to be breathed into them
• Down through the ages the church has gone through good times and bad times
• There were times when the church was growing, as in the early chapters of Acts
• But there were also times of persecution, for example during the 10-year reign of Diocletian, when the church became scattered and many lost their lives
• When necessary, God has stepped into the affairs of the church, supernaturally, and brought new life to something that was not doing too well
• Today we are going to look at some of the times this happened

Reading

• Matt 16:18

Pentecost

• Acts 2:1-4 - The disciples were gathered together, waiting for the promised Holy Spirit to come in power
• Suddenly the first church revival happens
• They had been praying for the Spirit to come, for 10 days.
• This is where the practice of "tarry meetings" started  
• The Holy Spirit comes when God says it is time, which may be different from our idea of when this should happen
• But God is true to his word
• The Spirit comes accompanied by supernatural activity
• There is the sound of a mighty wind, and what looks like individual flames that came to rest on each of them
• When the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit, they started speaking in other tongues
• There was nothing prophesied that would prepare them for these supernatural activities. Though miracles happened in the old testament, nothing was prophesied about exactly what would happen when the Holy Spirit came
• The Holy Spirit is as much an individual and personality, as Jesus and the Father
• He is able to express himself and do as he wills
• We cannot put the Holy Spirit in a box, and allow him to do only those things we approve of. He will do what He wants to do

First Great Awakening 1730 - 1750

• Revival history in the United States
• The First Great Awakening was a wave of religious enthusiasm among Protestants that swept the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s
• It left a permanent impact on American religion.
• It resulted from powerful preaching that deeply affected listeners (who were already church members) with a deep sense of personal guilt and salvation by Christ.
• Pulling away from ritual and ceremony, the Great Awakening made religion intensely personal to the average person by creating a deep sense of spiritual guilt and redemption.
• It caused a "great international Protestant upheaval" which also created Pietism in Germany, and the Evangelical Revival and Methodism in England.
• It brought Christianity to the slaves and it incited rancor and division between the old traditionalists who insisted on ritual and doctrine and the new revivalists.
• It had a major impact in reshaping the Congregational, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, and German Reformed denominations, and strengthened the small Baptist and Methodist denominations.
• Unlike the Second Great Awakening that began about 1800 and which reached out to the unchurched, the First Great Awakening focused on people who were already church members.
• It changed their rituals, their piety, and their self awareness.
• The new style of sermons and the way people practiced their faith breathed new life into religion in America.
• People became passionately and emotionally involved in their religion, rather than passively listening to intellectual discourse in a detached manner.
• Ministers who used this new style of preaching were generally called "new lights", while the preachers of old were called "old lights".
• People began to study the Bible at home, which effectively decentralized the means of informing the public on religious matters.
• The Holy Spirit taught people as they grew in grace and in knowledge
   

Second Great Awakening 1800-1830s

• The Second Great Awakening (1800–30s) was the second great religious revival in United States history
• It consisted of renewed personal salvation experienced in revival meetings.
• Major leaders included Asahel Nettleton, James Brainerd Taylor, Charles Grandison Finney, Lyman Beecher, Barton Stone, Alexander Campbell, Peter Cartwright and James B. Finley.
• Charles Finney (1792–1875) was a key leader of the evangelical revival movement in America.
•  From 1821 onwards he conducted revival meetings across many north-eastern states and won many converts.
• For him, a revival was not a miracle but a change of mindset that was ultimately a matter for the individual's free will.
• His revival meetings created anxiety in a penitent's mind that one could only save his or her soul by submission to the will of God
• Finney also conducted revival meetings in England, first in 1849 and later to England and Scotland in 1858–59.
• In New England, the renewed interest in religion inspired a wave of social activism, including abolitionism (abolishing slavery).
• In western New York, the spirit of revival encouraged the emergence of other Christian denominations and movements such as the Holiness Movement.
• At Cane Ridge, Kentucky and in Tennessee, the revival strengthened the Methodists and Baptists.
• It also introduced into America a new form of religious expression—the Scottish camp meeting.(Information from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revivalism#17th_century)

Conclusion

• In past weeks we have taken a look at personal revival
• We each need new life, the freshness of the Holy Spirit, inside of us, so that He can do his work through us, through our mouth, hands and feet
• The work he does in us as individuals, is reflected in the life of the church, which is the sum total of all the indiviual people which make it up
• The church is a living body, it is the body of Christ of which he is the head
• Next week we will take a closer look at this second awakening, and how it got started.
• As we go through this, we will ultimately be looking at our own pentecostal roots