Acts 3:1-10 "Vival and Revival"

0:55I showed this picture to Blake before the service and he said he looks like a rock. And actually, that's kind of close to true. This poor gentleman is frozen. He is a frog sickle. Now, there's a word you've never heard in church before. Now, he's not dead. He's not dead. He has these special chemicals in his cells that allow him to survive and protect his cells from damage during freezing. So he's not dead, but he is frozen and lifeless. And he's effectively kind of in suspended animation. He's kind of like a little froggy Captain America, you know, stuck in the ice, waiting to be thawed out. And he cannot do anything to help himself. All he can do is wait. Eventually, the Alaskan spring will come and he'll be thawed and he'll go back to being a frog. All right. Unfortunately, some of you may have just said in the last few minutes, like, it reminds me of some Christians I know. And then other of you are like, that's not funny at all. Why can't I move? And so, actually, I'm sure many of us in this room, I have a bunch of friends who are Presbyterians, and Presbyterians are great about making fun of themselves. They always call themselves the frozen chosen.

1:58Because we as Christians do have a reputation for sometimes being a little stuck, a little frozen, a little lifeless. But for some of us in the room, I think this idea of being frozen and lifeless is not really a joke, it's a reality. And this idea that we're spiritually stuck, we feel like we have no life, and we can't quite pull ourselves out of it, we can't quite thaw ourselves, is something that is very real. And there's no New Year's resolution that can kind of get you out of it. So the topic today is: when you're in that situation, what you're calling out for is revival. Revival. We're going to talk about revival today, that word revival, so again, bring life, new life, right? Yes. So revival, that's what we're going to be talking about today. I want to quickly overview where does this topic show up in the Bible? So the term revival, the concept of revival, is all over the Old Testament.

2:50I'll show you a couple of verses from the Psalms. In Psalm 85, 6, the psalmist says, Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? Psalm 80, 19, it says, Restore us, O Lord God of hosts. Let your face shine that we may be saved. Now, notice these words. It says, We and us. So this is not just someone personally saying, I feel spiritually lifeless and frozen. Please unfreeze me. This is saying, us, God's people, need to be unfrozen. In the Old Testament, God's people are constantly going through these cycles where they get in these spiritual lows and they have to call out, Dear Lord, unfreeze us, revive us again. And so these kinds of prayers are all across the Old Testament.

3:33Now, in the New Testament, you might think, well, we haven't really had time yet. You know, the church just started, so have we really had time to get down into this spiritually lifeless state just in the first century? And sadly, you do have a few church sickles even in the New Testament. In the book of Revelation, chapters 2 and 3, there are these series of letters to seven churches in the ancient world. And three of those seven, three of those seven churches, Ephesus, Sardis, and Laodicea, are described as forsaking their first love, spiritually dead, asleep, and lukewarm. So even within the first century, there are already churches that are in need of revival.

4:15So this term revival has been used throughout church history. I'm going to try to give you a quick definition. For those of you taking notes, bless you. This is a good sentence to write down. Revival is an extraordinary movement of God. Renewing his people who radiate his grace out to others. So, an extraordinary movement of God renewing his people, vertical, who then radiate his grace out to others, horizontal. So, this means that God's people are going from being in a state of spiritual lethargy and lifelessness and worldliness, and then they're feeling convicted of sin, they're repentant, they're brought into new affection for Christ that manifests itself in joy, in bold worship, in a new commitment to prayer, to missions, to going out and seeing conversions. That's what we mean by revival. And usually, this is indeed corporate. It's not individual. This is something that happens not just beyond just one individual person. It may be something that happens in a life group.

5:21It may happen in a neighborhood. It may happen in a middle school or a high school or a university campus or your city or your state. That's what we mean when we say revival: this is happening in our region. And it's something that we hope for, we pray for. We're listening for rumors that revival might be happening. And then, when revivals happen, they echo for years afterward. I'll give you an example. In 1857, there was a man who thought the noontime hour from noon to one, all the businesses are closed for lunch. So he said, I'm just going to host a prayer time in Manhattan. And he put out flyers. Wednesday. Noon, noon to one, prayer, come. And from 12 to 12:30, he was the only one. Then one other person showed up at 12:30. And by the end of the hour, they were up to six people.

6:10And the next week, there were 20. And the next week, there were 40. And then soon they started to run out of room. And then they had to get more rooms. And then they moved to daily. And by April 1858, there were 10,000 people praying over the lunch hour in New York. That's revival. That's what we're talking about. Lord, let that happen here. And I will tell you, I will encourage you, there are rumblings of revival in the United Kingdom right now. Amen.

6:34Let's see it happen. So now we need to ask the question: like, revival? Yes, that's what we want. So what do we do? All right, no takers. What did we say a moment ago? Revival is an extraordinary movement of God. It's God doing it. Then, like, what do we do? I don't know if we can make revival happen. I guess we just wait and do nothing. We can pray and kind of wait. So there are some people, when they think of revival, they think, I hope that happens. I pray that that happens, but I'm going to wait.

7:00Then there's another school of thought, and this is much more common here in Texas. The other school of thought says, we're going to make it happen. We can do it. And so I grew up here in Texas, and when I bring up the word revival, if you grew up here, you may have said, like, oh, right, that's that thing we schedule. It actually put it on a sign. Revival, Thursday, 7 p.m., be there. And these revivals, it's a revival service. You make it happen. And there is a script. You follow the script.

7:27You kind of create a certain atmosphere. You have a Smoke machine. We do not have a smoke machine here. You have cool worship leaders. We do have cool worship leaders here. And you kind of create a certain atmosphere and you bring in a charismatic speaker. And the idea is to create this kind of pressure and a tidal wave of contagious emotion that results in decisions. And then some of those conversions take it and some of them don't. This goes back many, many years. You could see a lot of this in the Second Great Awakening here in the United States. Charles Finney and all the people who came after him. So that's what we mean when we say revival in the United States. We usually mean this sort of concept. And Finney himself said, this is a technique. Follow the script. A, B, C, conversions. Boom, boom, boom, revival. So it is a technique, meaning you do this and it will work. It happens.

8:15Kind of bothers me. I don't love this idea. And I'll show you why. Let's see if we can see this picture. If you go this way, then you may end up with a really discouraging sign like this. I mean, you see a sign like this, you're like, Satan won today. This really is. So I don't like this. I don't like the idea that we scheduled revival and then we canceled it because the venue was overbooked or whatever. It doesn't really seem like that's what we mean when we talk about revival.

8:44By the way, don't get me wrong. I do not mean to imply that these kind of revivals are not used mightily of God. They actually are. These kind of revivals have been used to great effect in my own family. So I'm going to tell you a story. My grandfather. I call him granddad. My granddad, when he was in his 40s, he was a chemical engineer like me. He was very, very involved in his church, and he was involved in lots of different things in this committee and that committee. And one of the things he did is he was involved in planning a revival like this.

9:16We're going to reserve the football stadium Thursday, 7 p.m., and we're going to bring in the speaker and get all the logistics. So he's very involved in trying to make all this happen. What my granddad didn't know is that on that Thursday night, it turned out that the high school football coach forced his team to go to the revival. I know this is probably not legal. Welcome to West Texas. So, anyway, there was one young man who went to the revival service against his will. Don't want to go. Then, at the revival service, almost against his will, he found his heart changed and he became a Christian.

9:49And that young man was my dad. So, this is my grandfather's future son-in-law. This is a good reminder to all of us who serve in the church. When you serve in the church, sometimes it may not seem very glorious. I don't know if you all know this, but an hour before the service this morning, there were New Life members out with a leaf blower cleaning up outside. So, church service may not always seem very glorious, but it may leave a legacy you don't even realize for years to come. That was the case for my granddad. In fact, it may be the case that some of you in the room, you may have taught your future son-in-law or daughter-in-law in Tribe 5-6. You volunteered in the nursery, you may have changed their diaper.

10:31In fact, it occurs to me that as I preach right now, I should preach as if I have a future son-in-law in the room. Now, if that's the case, sir, wherever you are, Heather and I pray for you every day. Secondly, keep your hands to yourself. Whatever age you are, I was your age, and I do not trust you one tiny bit. All right. So I actually did ask my granddad at one point, I said, Do you think, calm down, do you think we can plan revival? Can't we do like A, B, C, smoke machine, music, revival? Does it work that way? And my granddad was like, no. What are we going to do? Can't do nothing. So let's see if we can find a third way. Some people do nothing, some people try to plan it. What does the Bible say? So if you want to understand revival, I think a good place to go is the book of Acts. Acts is not so much revival as it is revival. And so we're going to start. We're in Acts 3 today. Let me give you a little bit of context. We are in the book of Acts. That means we're out of the book of Judges, so the brutality level is going to decrease a lot. Yeah, no, it's disappointing, isn't it? Right. So let's give some context. Acts chapter 1 describes Jesus ascending to heaven. But before he ascends, he tells the people, he tells the disciples, wait, wait in Jerusalem.

12:00You'll receive power from the Holy Spirit. And in Acts chapter 2, that is exactly what happens. The disciples are together, they're praying, and the Holy Spirit descends, little tongues of fire. What do we call that special day in Acts chapter 2? Pentecost. Very good. And so, through the Holy Spirit, the disciples then go throughout the city, and they preach in many languages there, and it's a beautiful scene. And 3,000 people become followers of Jesus. Now, I want you to note what we said a moment ago: vertical and horizontal. We think of Pentecost as vertical, like the Holy Spirit descends. But most of what happened on Pentecost was horizontal. It is true that God could zap people into the kingdom, but that's not usually how he works. He uses people as means. In this case, he's using the apostles to go through the city, preaching in many different languages, and people hear the good news, and they become part of his kingdom. They become part of his community, our older brothers and sisters in Christ. So, that same idea of God vertically renews his people who radiate his grace out to others. We see that pattern even in Acts 2. Of course, not every day is Pentecost.

13:08Let's go a few days after Pentecost, Acts 3. So, please turn with me to Acts 3. We are going to be writing in your Bible. I know some of you may have been told by your grandma that it's wrong to write in your Bible. Sorry, she's wrong. It is good to write in your Bible. A Bible that has been read and pages slipped and written in so much that it falls apart. That's a good Bible. That's what we want. If you don't have a Bible of your own, please feel free to take one of these black Bibles in front of you. Writed it. Once you've written it, it's yours. So then you can take that home. Good. Acts chapter 3, verse 1. It says, Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer. Why are they going to the temple? Not for sacrifice, for prayer, the context of prayer. The ninth hour, and a man lame from birth, this person has never walked, never, never walked in his life. He was being carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple that is called the beautiful gate. We're not sure which gate this is, it's likely the eastern gate toward the Mount of Olives, to ask alms of those entering the temple. Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked to receive alms. And Peter directed his gaze at him, as did John, and said, Look at us. And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. Okay, your pen's ready. I want you to underline words that involve seeing or looking or attention.

14:21Verse 3, seeing Peter and John. Verse 4, Peter directed his gaze at him and said, Look at us. Verse 5, and he fixed his attention on them. That's a lot of verses about the way that we look at each other. I'm sure some of you have had this experience of there's a homeless person, there's a beggar, and you walk right by them. I think that was pretty commonplace for this particular lame man. What's remarkable about our culture in the United States is that we do this to almost everyone. I think if Peter and John came to the United States, they would say, like, wow, you rarely fix your attention. Attention on other people at all.

15:03They would notice how we intentionally isolate ourselves, often even in public. The United States in the 21st century has been described as one of the least social societies there's ever been. There was a book that came out 25 years ago, and it was called Bowling Alone. And the title kind of tells you what the book is about: the idea that bowling, which is a communal activity, we're doing those communal activities by ourselves. The idea that we intentionally isolate ourselves, even in public. Let's look at this picture. If you've ever, you know, walked, you're on a campus bus, you're walking down the street, you walk across campus, you walk through your neighborhood, or if you're in a big city and you get on the subway or you go to the airport, this is kind of how it feels, right? Here's you. You're the protagonist of reality. And all these other people are kind of grayed out and they kind of fade into the background a little bit. We don't really see them. So we're in public, but we're isolated still. And all these other people, in video game parlance, we would call them NPCs. NPC, what does NPC stand for? A non-playable character, right? In a video game, a non-playable character has no human behind them. They don't have thoughts and desires and hopes and wants and fears like you do. They're just there to be part of the background of the game and occasionally to advance the plot a little bit. We don't really care about them. We don't really feel for them because we don't really have any feelings. This is largely how we go through our lives, treating the bulk of the people we run into as NPCs. It's very easy to do. If you're driving, Protagonist of reality coming through. All you NPCs out of the way, please. Walking across campus, it's very easy to then isolate yourselves. And you can imagine that the era of technology that we're in, smartphones and things like that, makes this even worse. It makes it much, much easier to isolate yourself. Even if you're in public, you try to isolate yourself and say, How do I not think or deal with these people around me? What's sad is that's not just in public. You may even go back home to your neighborhood. You may go back home to your house and you don't engage with your neighbors. You may not even engage with your family members because there's just too many other things screaming for your attention. Like, there's this new TV show, and we're not going to watch it on TV. We're going to watch it on a streaming service. Turn the show on, and then I have to look at my phone at the same time. So, would you agree this idea that we go through life, we don't interact with anyone in a disembodied way, we ignore our neighbors, we ignore our family members, so we can watch two screens at once is kind of dystopian. It's kind of dystopian. And the reason we've gotten to this point, I know for some of you are like, I kind of feel like I was thrown into this situation. You're right. Some people have described this as an attention economy. An attention economy. Attention is valuable, and attention is scarce. That means attention is money. And so there are lots and lots of little things trying to get your attention. Remember, if you ever use an app that's free, the product, it's you. Your attention. And so, in that kind of economy, in that kind of circumstance, the idea that we're going to pay attention, pay our attention to other people, it does not come naturally at all. But Peter and John say, That's what we're going to do today. So, our first application today that we see from Peter and John is that the Holy Spirit empowers us to see people, to see people. And I don't just mean, yeah, we see people all the time. I mean, genuinely see them the way that God sees them, to pay attention to them, to feel compassion for them, and say, This is a person made in the image of God. God doesn't see anyone as an NPC, He sees every single person as made in His image and valuable. And that's how Peter and John are looking at this lame man. Let's continue through the passage. Verse 6: This is a famous phrase. Peter says, I have no silver and gold, but what I do have, I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. And he took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. Leaping up, this is a guy who's never walked before. Leaping up, he stood and began to walk, and entered the temple with him, walking and leaping and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God and recognized him as the one who sat at the beautiful gate of the temple asking for alms. And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. All right, now it's time for our typical frustration with the book of Acts. You say, awesome job, Peter and John. What am I supposed to do with that? I can't do that. Let's try to deal with. These objections that we're all feeling to the book of Acts. Objection number one, you may feel like, well, Peter and John healed this guy. Did they? Verse 12, when Peter saw it, he addressed the people, Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us as though by our own power or piety we've made him walk? Peter and John did not heal this guy. It was through the power of Jesus that this person was healed.

19:57But Peter and John are like super Christians. They're varsity. I'm junior varsity. So you may feel like, we can't emulate Peter and John because they're way up here. We're way down here. Again, I would say that objection is not true. Like, read through the Gospels. Like, Peter only has three modes. Seriously, read through it. Peter has three modes. Maniac, doofus, and coward. That's pretty much it. Sounds like me. And the point is, like, yes, Jesus doesn't choose the best of the best to go out there and be his apostles. He's choosing uneducated fishermen with impulse control, right? Those are the people that he's changing the world through. And so Peter and John are not super Christians. They're not varsity where we're junior varsity. Jesus chose people who are very much every day and have the same flaws that we do.

20:46Your last objection, maybe the most obvious of all, which is like, this is a passage about a miracle. Do we really expect miracles at new life? Maybe. But here's the thing. Is the most important thing I want to tell you about miracles? Whenever you see a miracle in the Bible, the miracle is not the point. In fact, the Bible uses two words commonly for miracles. One is wonder. That kind of makes sense. People in this passage are marveling and wondering at what's happened. The other word that the Bible uses for miracle is sign. So that should tell you something. You're driving down the street and you see a red octagon on a pole. You don't say, like, oh, a red octagon. You say, oh, stop. I know what this sign means. The sign points to some message beyond itself. That's what it means. And if you were here in the temple and you saw this miracle, you would not just say, like, how great for that guy that he can walk now? The miracle points beyond itself. The miracle is a sign that says, go.

21:46It says, the kingdom of heaven is here. It's here. And the miracle testifies that what Peter and John are going to preach to this crowd, that it's real. What Peter is out to do, as the passage continues, this miracle leads directly into a proclamation of the gospel right there in the middle of the temple. Peter, it's actually really amazing. Peter actually goes back to the Old Testament. He tells everyone, all those calls for revival from the Old Testament, they're pointing to now. They're pointing to now, where Jesus has come and something new has happened and the kingdom of God has broken in. All those calls for God's revival are ultimately fulfilled in Jesus. There may be people here today and you've never really understood. What we mean when we use this churchy word gospel? I want to say that the call you're going to hear from New Life Today is exactly the same call as in Jerusalem thousands of years ago. Peter says in Acts 3, this is verse 19, he says, Repent, therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing revival may come from the presence of the Lord. So, what you see in Acts 2, what you see in Acts 3 is this consistent call: Repent and believe. Jesus has come, He died that your sins may be blotted out, and He was raised again. That is the gospel. When we use that word, that's what we mean. We're trying to proclaim the same thing today that the original church did 2,000 years ago. So, what can we learn from Peter and John? I hope I've addressed your objections. I want you to write this in your Bible. If you want to see revival, what we do is we act with the expectation that God is at work. I want to distinguish this. I don't mean technique. Do steps A, B, C, and revival will happen. What Peter and John do is they go and they act. They take action, but they know that they don't have the power within themselves to create spiritual life at all. But they say, I'm going to act knowing that God is at work, with the expectation that God is at work. What's the name of this book of the Bible again? Acts. So, this is the Acts of the Apostles. The Apostles act, but they have no power in and of themselves. It is the power of the Holy Spirit that actually affects spiritual change. The apostles act, God is at work. God moves. That's the pattern you see. So I want to think about how to apply that to you. For each one of you, there may be an inward application. Here's the inward application to you and your own walk with God. I have heard people in this church say things like, I tried reading my Bible to feel closer to God, but it didn't work. I tried prayer, but it didn't work. The fact that we use language like it didn't work shows that we're kind of addicted to technique. This idea of like, there's a technique for that. Do ABC and it'll work. That's kind of the American self-help book culture that we live in. And so I want you to get out of the mindset of technique of we do ABC and it works. Instead, what I want you to do this next week is try the following. Let's read Psalm 85 once per day.

24:50And I'm not telling you to do that because it's going to work. I want you to read and say, I am going to spend time in God's Word. I'm going to act with the expectation that God is going to change my heart, that God is going to bring joy in my heart and make me more like Jesus. That's what I mean. Act with the expectation that God is at work. But more so today, I want to talk about outward applications. We've already talked about the fact that we want to prioritize humans over screens. We want to be able to look at our neighbor, our coworker, our family member, see them truly as made in God's image. And here's where the act comes in. I want to act. Toward that person. I want to ask them good questions. I want to listen well, genuinely care for them. I want to invite them to church to see what the gospel is all about. I want to invite them into my home. I want to share a meal. Those are all actions. We're acting in a way that invites and includes other people in the gospel. I've made the mistake throughout my life of thinking the gospel is mainly just about what intellectual beliefs you have in your head. But the reality is, a lot of people struggle to believe until they belong.

26:02So when we invite and include someone, say, come on, come to church with me, come to my home, and actually interact with them in an embodied way instead of just through screens, that sense of belonging makes the gospel far more plausible. I want to show you that this pattern of act with expectation is actually the norm in the New Testament. Look at this passage in 1 Corinthians 3. This is Paul describing basically how revival or revival first happened in Corinth. He said, What happened exactly? He said, I planted, and then Apollos, that's another Christian, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. Do you see the pattern? Apollos and I acted with the expectation that God is at work. Paul says, Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The hard part about evangelism is changing someone's heart heart, and that's not our job. We act, and the hard part of someone having their heart changed by the Lord, that happens through the Holy Spirit. Paul thinks in this same way. He says, I'm going to act with the expectation that God is at work. That's what we mean by planting and watering. I'll close with this. Some of you know I've been obsessed with a book that came out recently called The Great De-Churching. The Great De-Churching. So here's a number for you. In the last 25 years, 40 million American adults went from attending church regularly, at least once a month, to nothing. That's approximately one out of every six American adults. That's a sign that we're in need of revival. That's discouraging. Here's the unbelievable part. Sociologists have dug into the data. They try to figure out, like, how did this happen? Why did they leave? Let's try to figure out the number one reason that people de-church, that they walk away from church, the number one reason is it that there was a scandal in the church or they were hurt by the church or that they deconstructed or our old friend Richard Dawkins finally got to them is any of those things no the reason people de-church the number one reason is because they moved they moved and they got out of the habit they just never really reestablished the habit now think about covet in that context COVID kind of made everybody move effectively and got people out of the habit so the combination of just normal American like moving plus COVID people got out of the habit now they're not going anymore so the sociologists asked those same people what would it Take to get you back to church? And they were like, I don't know, someone invited me, I would go.

28:37You should be thinking right now, well, that's easy. Yes! Yes, it is easy. I don't think God wants us to be super clever or be really articulate and have all the right words. It is easy. All He wants us to do is to act, to see that person. I'm telling you, if you want, this next week, if you want a sign from the Holy Spirit of like, maybe I should say something, if you see a moving van, if you see someone moving, that is your sign. That's the Holy Spirit saying, this person's moving. They're at high risk of de-churching. Let's go talk to them and invite them. It is that easy. Some of you may be hesitant to act because you think, well, if I talk to someone about spiritual things, that kind of creates relational risk, like it might even end the relationship. That is not what the data says. The data says these folks are like, yeah, I'll go. And so there are stories, there's all these stories of people like they've moved to a new place, someone invited them, and the Holy Spirit did a work in their heart. That's what I want to see. And I have to tell you, part of the reason we're going through this passage, part of the reason we have this little mini-series on Acts, is because this has already started to happen. College students, a lot of y'all are back. I hope some of you college students probably remember what began to happen last April and May. Several of our college students here at New Life decided to do this. They said, classmate, I see you.

29:59Do you want to come to? BSM with me? Do you want to come to New Life with me? Let's talk. They asked good questions, and they listened, and they shared. And the end result of that was multiple 22-year-olds in that baptistry. This has already started to happen. We're not preaching about revival today because I think new life is a church sickle. I really don't think that. We're preaching about revival today because I think the signs are already there. It's already beginning to happen.

30:28So I want you to think now: who is that person that God keeps putting in front of you? Like, this person always seems to come into my view. Whoever that is, they're there for a reason. Invite them, include them, give them a sense of belonging, show that you care about them. It's not a relational risk, it's a relational invitation. That feeling you had a moment ago of like, oh, that's easy. That's simple. That is what we want. A simple act, a series of simple acts, can lead to revival because ultimately revival is an act of God. He wants us to act with the expectation that he is at work. We're starting a new academic year right now, and I want you to think ahead to May 2026. There is a, it could happen that we get to May 2026 and we say, business as usual, ho-hum.

31:21I don't want that. There is such a thing as holy discontent. Say, I'm not content with that. And that holy discontent is. Manifests itself by saying, Lord, revive us again. And that's what we want to pray right now. Please bow your heads and pray with me. Dear Heavenly Father, for every believer in the room, I pray that your Holy Spirit would prompt them, would give them opportunities, divine appointments with people around them, to show kindness, to genuinely see them.

31:58I pray that in this next week, with people moving in, that through your Holy Spirit, we would be empowered to see people and to act toward them, to invite them, include them, love them the way that you loved them, and that the end result would be revival. Lord, we cannot do this on our own. We have no technique, we have no ability to do this, but you do. Please create revival in our community. In your name, we pray.

32:34Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.