Sermon Tone Analysis

Something remarkable is happening in a little town called Wilmore, Ky., right now.

For the past 11 days, a revival has been taking place on and around the campus of Asbury University.

Now, understand that the school itself is not calling this a revival.

School officials are calling it an “outpouring,” as in an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

And I think they’re wise in being careful about using the term “revival,” and I’ll tell you why in a bit.

Nonetheless, what is happening there is being called a revival by the media, by church pastors from a wide array of denominations, by many of those who have attended the event, by bloggers and TikTokkers and by many others.

It all started with a solid, if otherwise unremarkable chapel message by one of the Asbury professors during the mandatory campus chapel service the Wednesday before last.

He preached about loving one another with the love of Jesus — a love that’s unselfish and even sacrificial.

When he was finished and the small worship team had finished the last refrain of their closing song, some students hung back and joined one another in prayer.

The professor invited them to remain in the chapel as long as they wanted.

Soon, they had been joined by scores, and then hundreds of other students.

The worship team came back, along with prayer teams and counselors.

And the worship continued throughout the night.

And then throughout the next day and night.

Asbury University has been the site of several other marathon revival services, including one in February of 1970 that continued for 144 hours without stopping.

After the 1970 outpouring, some 2,000 witness teams were sent out from Asbury to churches and to more than 130 college campuses throughout the nation.

That particular revival is credited with stoking the fires of the so-called Jesus Movement that pushed back against the hedonism of the late ‘60s and launched some of the West-coast churches that helped give birth to the praise music genre of contemporary Christian music.

I was watching videos posted by folks who have been at Asbury during the past week, and what I saw was beautiful.

The 1,500-seat chapel has been full, with students and others coming and going throughout the days and into the nights.

Music has been led by a piano and guitar — or even sung a capella — with musicians and singers spelling one another to give each other rest.

In one row of seats, hands are lifted in praise, while in another row, heads are bowed in prayer.

Folks kneel or lie prostrate at the steps of the platform, turning it into an altar of prayer, while others kneel around them and lay hands on them in love and support.

There have been periods of confession and testimony interspersed among the times of prayer and worship, along with brief Gospel messages.

Perhaps even more amazing than what’s going on inside the chapel is what’s been happening outside.

Four overflow locations have been set up for worship.

Yesterday, someone who had just arrived on the campus described a line of people more than a mile long waiting for a seat to open up in the Asbury chapel.

Their video showed thousands of others on the school’s lawns singing “How Great Is Our God” as they watched a video stream from inside the chapel.

And what is happening at Asbury University seems to have spawned similar outpourings at other colleges and universities around the nation.

At least 15 other institutions across the nation have reported similar events.

Is this a revival?

Well, hearts are being changed.

People are coming to Jesus in faith.

Confession and repentance are taking place.

People are reporting the palpable presence of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the assembly at Asbury University.

All of these things would be expected from a Holy Spirit -inspired and -directed revival.

And all of these are things for which we should be praying, both for Asbury and for ourselves.

But there’s something we will have to wait to see before we can label this “outpouring” a true revival.

Before we can truly label it a revival, we’re going to have to see where it leads, what new thing comes from it.

Back in 1970, that university followed the 144 days of continuous worship with two weeks of nightly services.

And then, it sent 2,000 teams of people who had been part of those services out into the world to spread the Good News of a Savior who loves us.

As I mentioned earlier, a whole new genre of praise music was one of the results.

One of the West Coast churches that was formed in the wake of that revival began raising people up to plant other churches; to date, they have planted more than 1,400 other churches.

In other words, the Holy Spirit didn’t just show up at Asbury University in 1970 to make a bunch of people feel good about their relationship with God for a few weeks.

Instead, He was poured out upon those folks so that they would go and make disciples.

So they’d go and tell.

That’s what we see in the first New Testament revival, the one on the Day of Pentecost that resulted in the formation of the Acts 2 church.

Remember that the crucified Jesus had ascended back into heaven 40 days after His resurrection.

Nine days later, 120 of His followers were gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks, and Luke writes that they were all gathered together “with one mind, continually devoting themselves to prayer.”

And it was in that place that the Spirit of Promise came to them.

Look what Luke says in chapter 2.

He came with a noise like a rushing wind,

Much as with what’s been taking place at Asbury University, this gathering had been filled with worship and with prayer and with fellowship and love.

And though I haven’t seen anybody record such a physical manifestation of the Spirit’s presence at Asbury, it seems clear that He is surely present in what they’re experiencing there.

But what takes place next in the Book of Acts is the key to why I say that we’ll have to wait and see what happens before labeling this outpouring as a revival.

Look at verse 14.

And then, Peter the fisherman launches into a wondrous, Holy Spirit-inspired sermon about how Jesus, who had been crucified in Jerusalem less than two months earlier, was the promised Messiah, Israel’s Lord and Savior, whom they had put to death on a cross.

And it wasn’t just Peter who was talking.

What we’re meant to understand from verse 4 is that the 120 people who had been gathered in prayer and received the Holy Spirit in that upper room in Jerusalem were given the ability to speak languages they had not previously known, the languages of all the people who had come to Jerusalem for this great Jewish feast day.

They were Peter’s interpreters to those around them.

The people who heard this sermon were pierced to the heart, Luke writes, and many repented of their sins and turned to Jesus in faith that only HIs sacrificial death and supernatural resurrection could provide a way for them to be reconciled to God.

“And that day, there were added about three thousand souls” to the new church.

The followers of Jesus had a nine-day prayer meeting, where they worshiped and sang and prayed for the coming of the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus had promised to send in His place.

And when the Spirit came, they certainly would have experienced great joy.

They certainly would have experienced a closeness to God that they never before had imagined.

They certainly would have experienced the wonder and excitement that we are hearing from those who have been at Asbury University during the past 11 days.

But I’m afraid we have used the term “revival” a bit too loosely here in America in recent years.

In my own Baptist tradition, we scheduled revivals twice a year.

Great speakers would come and talk about Jesus.

Choirs from around the city would gather to lift their voices in praise.

Prayer teams would gather before, during, and after the weeklong events.

And a few people would make professions of faith.

And they’d be baptized.

And then, everything would go back to normal.

There was no great outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

We didn’t see people of God on their faces in confession and repentance.

There was no renewed cry for justice and peace.

We heard the speakers and the choirs.

Maybe we came home with a bounce in our step that was missing earlier that day.

But everything just sort of fizzled from there.

This isn’t how the church responded to revival in Acts, chapter 2. How did THEY respond?

Look at verse 42.

They were DEVOTING themselves to the apostles’ teaching.

They were DEVOTING themselves to fellowship, to community, and to prayer.

They KEPT FEELING a sense of AWE.

They were experiencing UNITY and were sincerely glad to be spending time together.

They were praising God in PUBLIC, and the lost community around this church took notice of what was going on.

There was something altogether new happening in Jerusalem, and the world could not help but notice it.

Now, we’ve been talking the past few weeks about the new things we are promised as those who follow Jesus in faith.

And this week, we were scheduled to talk about the new song that is on our lips as believers.

We see King David talk about this new song in the 40th Psalm.

And, as it turns out, this psalm is about revival, even if the Hebrew word for revival isn’t used there.

I want to spend the remainder of our time this morning looking at a portion of this psalm and discovering what it tells us about revival.

I’ll warn you that we’re going to jump around a bit.

Let’s start by taking a look at the first two verses.

We don’t know what the situation was that had David so despondent as to describe himself in a “pit of destruction” and stuck in “the miry clay,” but whatever it was, he clearly had been helpless.

And every one of us, whether we are followers of Christ or not, has probably been in some similar situation.

Perhaps you’re caught in the pit of sin, as David had been when he sinned with Bathsheba.

He compounded that sin of adultery by instructing his soldiers to allow her husband to be killed in battle.

As with David, our sins hardly ever manifest themselves as individual acts of disobedience.

Instead, we get into the slimy pit with them and start digging, and pretty soon, we’re up to our hips in mud, unable to free ourselves.