Revival: a closer look
We saw last week that our experience of God – repentance, faith, baptism in water and the Spirit – is meant to lead to mission, whose Motivation is love, whose method is a mixture of Conversation and Demonstration, and whose outcome is Transformation not only in individuals but in communities – what we often call revival. Luke gives us a deeper insight into the nature of that "revival" transformation as he continues the story... And that "Revival" is somethign we need in Scotland today. In the five years from 2008-2013, the church in Scotland has declined by 17.3%.
It is structural.
Its scope is global. It is more than individuals burning £2m worth of occult literature. It is individuals changing how they spend their money, their time, what is important to them – and eventually it begins to affect the economy. Put simply, the silversmiths who have been used to making religious trinkets and souvenirs, mainly little silver niches containing a statue of the goddess, find that trade is slumping. Less people are buying silver idols – and Christian merchandise, silver crosses and doves and fishes and WWJD bracelets haven't been invented yet! Some of the guys look like they might go out of business. We know we have revival, not just when we're packing people in to the churches, but when we are having a positive impact on our community. When revival begins to bite in the economy, at the ballot box: in Barvas, Lewis, during the revival in 1947, pubs and dance halls closed: went out of business. In Manchester, Police chiefs reported a fall in crime corresponding to the work of the Message trust on some of the roughest estates: as individuals were transformed, the community itself began to feel the benefits. When British young people stop flying out to dance drunk and naked in Magaluf, when global corporations accept they have a responsibility to pay their workforce a fair wage and a safe place to work, we have signs of revival, when bankers and business leaders are prepared to limit their salaries and bonuses because of their Christian faith, we have signs of revival. When Russians and Eukraneans can't carry on a civil war because the young men love Jesus more than they love their racial identity, we have signs of revival.
It is supernatural.
Revival is God not man. "It's not Paul" It may harness and use the gifts of a man or woman yielded to God, but it is not dependent on any one human being. Revival is the outcome of the whole church living in the life. This story begins with Paul and his team deciding to move on. Two key team members have already gone. Paul himself takes almost no part in this story. The rest of the believers are restraining him for his own good. It’s not Paul’s doing. It has got bigger than Paul. Paul wasn't like the Baptist pastor in a small town church in the Midwest. It was very out of the way, and although it had a railway line it had no station, and one train passed though a few times each week. The pastor was very popular, but he had one eccentricity. Every time the train passed, the pastor was there at the level crossing, just standing there, watching. Eventually it became talked about round the town, so the Deacons had a word with him. His explanation was simple: “I love that train. It's the only thing that comes through this town that I don’t have to push!” Paul hasn’t pushing. The people had taken up the challenge and were running with it. Paul didn't have to push, because the revival had gotten a life of its own. In Barvas, Lewis, during the revival in the 1950's, Duncan Campbell said seventy five percent of those who turned to Christ, did so before they ever got to the Church. Over a hundred young people were in a dance hall and the holy Spirit just touched the place, and young men and women fled the place, running to the church, weeping in repentance. Later that night Campbell and one or two others found a young man, weeping and crying out to God by the roadside. Seven men who were being driven to the Barvas in a butcher’s van fell under Holy Spirit conviction and were saved before they got there.
It is supernatural. "It's not Politics" The transformation we want to see isn't rooted in any of the world's “isms”: environmentalism, feminism, pacifism, socialism, capitalism Yes, it's right that we look after the environment, seek peace and justice, oppose racism sexism and exploitation. But that is not because we buy into movements. These values flow from the Kingdom of God which, says Paul, is “Righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” The revival in Ephesus began with people trusting Jesus and filled with the Holy Spirit. It began with Paul proclaiming the Kingdom of God.
In fact, the New Testament Church never talked about revival – it hadn’t had the time to get dead. We we need revival. remember the statistic I quoted earlier. Do we, or do we not, need to be revived? I believe that the Biblical word for revival is simply the Kingdom of God. There is a “kingdom dynamic” to revival. It involves a visitation by the Holy Spirit of God, whose coming was “messianic”. It is the work of messiah to baptise in the Spirit. It involves action as believers engage in conversations and demonstration. It involves transformation in society. The Kingdom Spirit comes; Believers become disciples with Kingdom values, taking kingdom action; and the world feels a kingdom impact.
It involves Spiritual warfare.
And revival – the Kingdom impacting society – takes us into the realm of spiritual warfare. It is radical. It created a stir. The world wanted to fight back. Let's look at the strategies and qualities of the opposition.
1. Demetrius the silversmith had a complaint. “You know, my friends, that we receive a good income from this business.” There was a commercial aspect at the heart of this.
2. Demetrius appeals to national pride. “The temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited” When the City Clerk, the senior local official answerable to the Roman Governor, calmed the people down, he said, “doesn’t all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis?” Here is religion with a connection to the state, the city.
3. Artemis of the Ephesians was a fertility Goddess. Her “image which fell from the sky” it thought to have been a meteor which looked kind of like a woman with many breasts. Because she was all about fertility and reproduction, worshipping her was an excuse for a lot of sex and wild partying. There was a high level of self-indulgence in the Artemis cult.
4. The City Clerk refers to Artemis' image “which fell from the sky”. Here is belief that will not stand the test of thoughtful scrutiny. It's always been like this. It's traditional. Don't trouble us with the facts.
5. And this religion, lastly, will fight or coerce to protect its interests. It is marked by physical and verbal violence, intimidation, and the mob mentality
The Kingdom will always find itself at odds with the world's values and with worldly, pagan religion: with everything that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. Interestingly, the Kingdom will always find itself challenging religion. Sometimes that means direct, in your face paganism; sometime it's a subtle idolatry: if we worship our kids, our TV, our home or possessions, or our nation, if we allow them to take Gods' place, we have an idol. The kingdom challenges. When religion, even if it claims the name of Christian, becomes a commercial moneymaking concern, or enters an unholy partnership with the state, or a matter of self indulgence, or mindless traditionalism, or uses aggression and verbal or physical violence to protect or promote itself, the kingdom challenges.
Finally, it makes sense.
Did you ever stop to ask yourself why Luke alone of the four gospel-writers, wrote a part 2, the story of the early church? One of his reasons for writing was evangelistic. He hoped that some people who were not yet Christians would read his books. He hoped they would agree that Jesus was amazing; they would see that, in the life of the Christian Church, all this stuff about Jesus, worked out, and worked out well. He hoped that they would want their sins forgiven; the Holy Spirit and a taste of the Kingdom Jesus preached in their lives.
This City Clerk wasn't a believer: he was still a worshipper of Artemis. Yet what he says shows an important, educated man who doesn't need to accept the extreme things that people were saying about the Christians: “They are just trouble makers. They are all off their heads. Irrelevant, dangerous, foreign, subversive.” Luke is at pains to record those moments when sensible, respected people out-with the Church agreed that the Way “makes sense”. In the same vein, he name-drops, letting us know that Paul had made friends with the Asiarchs (locally elected rulers).
Today we might be dismissed as “Stupid, bigoted, narrow-minded, middle-class, self-interested, fantasists.” Revival isn't meant to make the rich richer, the state stronger, and the church more comfortable. It's meant to make the Good news make sense.
The Church in Revival, the Church experiencing the realities of the Kingdom, is supernatural; it may find itself in conflict with the world. It may on occasions be counter-cultural and counter-intuitive. But it isn't anti-intellectual, illogical, inconsistent or escapist. It makes sense.
© Gilmour Lilly August 2014
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