Prayer That Brings Revival

Please stand as you are able as we read God’s word:

Joel 2:28–29 “Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.”

We’ve been looking at the topic of prayer the last few weeks - particularly looking at scriptures and stories about prayer that I hope are inspiring us to take this incredible opportunity we have to pray more seriously. This morning we’re talking about Prayer That Brings Revival.

We’ve been studying the Moravian community at Herrnhut. These were refugees fleeing persecution, and they found a sympathetic landlord by the name of Count Zinzendorf. Beginning in 1722, Moravian Protestants of various stripes began arriving on Zinzendorf’s land and building a community there. Five years would pass and the Moravian community would experience something that would forever put Herrnhut on the map, and that is still impacting us today.

But before this happens, they face a trial that was possibly greater than the persecution they had fled. I mentioned last week that, while all the refugees were loosely Protestant, they weren’t homogenous. While most were part of a group that called themselves the United Brethren, there were also those who ascribed to the teachings of Calvin or Arminius or Zwingli. Without getting into the weeds, they differed over who could be saved and over the meaning of the Lord’s Supper. All Protestant reformers, but all with some very sharp differences.

Zinzendorf’s vision for this community was one where doctrinal differences we not reasons for disunity. The phrase “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things love” was his guiding ambition. By 1726, Herrnhut had become a prosperous community.

However, into this mix of people came those that were less broad-minded. Some who come to the community held beliefs they were unwilling to budge on, and some of the groups delighted to stir up controversy. Slowly but surely, the sense of community and mutual support began to subside as people increasingly separated themselves over secondary issues.

By 1727, Herrnhut had become a mess of factions, intrigue, and in-fighting. People who had once been friends and neighbors refused to speak to each other. People became mean-spirited and unkind to others that weren’t part of their denominational clique. The town was on the verge of all out disintegration brought about by their division and animosity. It was a community in crisis.

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In the OT book of Joel we see a nation in crisis and under God’s judgment. While Joel never calls out any specific sins, the other prophets speaking during his time certainly do. Just skimming through the other prophetic books you see no shortage of accusations against the nation - idolatry, murder, injustice, exploitation of the weak, the oppression of foreigners, the neglect of widows and orphans. The people turned on God, and then they turned on one another.

Bc of these things, Joel said God’s judgment had already come in the form of a locust plague. And he was warning them that it would come again, this time in the form of a destroying army.

Joel 2:1–2 “Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near— a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come.”

We don’t like to hear about God’s judgment - unless it’s against those we think deserve it. We want him to be Santa in the sky. But God’s judgment is a form of loving discipline. And what is most unsettling is that his judgment always comes first to his people. We think it should be against those “out there”. But we’re the ones who are supposed to know better. We are the ones who are to be the light that draws others to the good and beautiful way of God.

This was Israel’s calling, and they were failing. In fact, in Hebrew the word translated into English as sin literally means “to fail”. Judgment was coming because of their failure to love God with their whole heart, failure to love their neighbor as them self, and failure to be the kind of people who accurately reflect God to the rest of the world.

This is the calling the church has inherited. We are to be God’s people who’s light - the way we love God and others - directs people to the Lord. Yet it seems like the church is a community in crisis.

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But while it seemed bleak for Israel, all was not lost.

Joel 2:12–15 “Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord, your God? Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly;”

Judgment wasn’t a certainty. They could repent, and God would relent. But it had to be genuine. No outward show devoid of honest intention - just tearing your clothes w/o making your heart tender. They had to acknowledge the ways they had failed at being the light for the rest of the world.

We’re reminded that even today, while God may bring loving discipline, he is also merciful. Like any good parent, he doesn’t delight in punishment. It’s only a last resort when we become so headstrong that we can’t listen to anything else. The writer of Hebrews reminds us God’s discipline is a sign that we are indeed his children. But we must respond to that discipline with repentance.

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And then comes the promise we read at the beginning. If they would repent, they would see an outpouring of God’s Spirit like never before seen. An outpouring that would make God’s presence accessible to everyone. Not just priests and prophets, but even ordinary household servants.

Joel 2:28–29 “Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.”

It they would only repent, all heaven would break loose. This outpouring of the Spirit would be the sign that God was once again with his people. Sadly, the people of Joel’s day didn’t listen.

But God would keep his promise: Acts 2:1–4 “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”

What Joel had prophesied had now come true. God came to be with his people in a way no one could anticipate - his very presence living inside them.

This is a pattern that we see repeated in scripture. That when God’s people repent, God shows up in power. As he says, in the book of Psalms, Psalm 51:17 “a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

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Zinzendorf had been away from Herrnhut for an extended time. When he returned he was shocked to find his beloved community is such division and animosity. He took immediate action. He began to meet with the different factions, praying for them and with them. He called together the community and chastised them for allowing things to reach this point and for the sin of division among fellow believers. By the end of the 3-hour come-to-Jesus meeting the settlers shook hands and committed to renewed unity. They genuinely repented.

The atmosphere changed almost overnight. It was as if the village was waking up from a bad dream, and all the better qualities of the various groups began to re-emerge. By mid-June of 1727, something remarkable was happening at Herrnhut. It became a model of harmony and order. People who had been estranged now met together for long evenings of prayer and praise.

In August, the pastor of the local church felt inspired to call the Herrnhut community together for a special celebration of Communion to recognize the love and goodwill that now existed. As the people walked down the hill toward the church, they urgently reassured one another of their forgiveness for past divisions and their renewed love. As the reached the church the sense of expectation was intense. It was said the hairs on the back of their necks stood up. No one knew what was going to happen, but the atmosphere was electric.

Just as the first followers of Jesus experienced the HS at Pentecost, as Zinzendorf began a prayer of confession over past divisions, the pregnant heavens over Herrnhut burst open. The power and glory of God descended on the people - eye witnesses had a hard time finding words to describe it. God’s Spirit came like a windstorm. The love and holiness of God swept through the church like a hurricane. Manifestations of the Spirit and power broke out.

August 13, 1727 would become known as the “Moravian Pentecost”. As the people walked back up the hill to Herrnhut, they knew that out of their breach now flowed the irresistible love of God, compelling them to renewed fellowship with Christ and each other. One settlers wrote in his diary:

“Those who previously could not tolerate one another now stood in the graveyard in front of the church and embraced, swearing promises of true friendship; and so the whole congregation came back to Herrnhut as newborn children.”

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Books like Joel - and stories like Herrnhut - call for us to examine ourselves. I don’t know about you, but I often wonder why we don’t see revival and an outpouring of the Spirit like there have been in other times and other places. Like in Herrnhut. Maybe it’s due to unbelief. Or to spiritual complacency. But maybe it’s because we have a sin of division that we’ve not repented of.

The word sin has a lot of baggage attached to it today. It’s been weaponized by the self-righteous against those who don’t live up to their standards. It carries the image of an angry preacher, holding up a Bible and pointing an accusing finger. But in the Bible, sin is less about the breaking of specific moral codes and more about the failure to be the kind of people God has called us to be. It is the failure to love God with our whole heart and to love our neighbor as our self. I’m afraid that we sometimes think that we can just show up and worship God and somehow enjoy a relationship with him yet remain at odds with others. While God desires our worship, he puts priority upon our relationship with one another.

Jesus said it this way. Matthew 5:23–24 “So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”

We simply cannot say that we are in good standing with God when we are in conflict, disharmony, or division with a brother or sister. Holding onto unforgiveness and grudges quenches God’s Spirit faster than anything.

I bring this up because several weeks ago God laid something on my heart for this message. I’m pretty sure it’s God, because this is something I definitely would never want to bring up. It has to do with the years 2020 and 2021, or what I call the perfect storm.

You may recall that we had a particularly contentious election that year. There was deep division in our country over who was best suited to lead it and the direction it should be led in. Unfortunately, that division filtered its way into the church. Pretty soon I started hearing people say things like, “You can’t be a Christian and vote for ________”. The funny thing was is that Christians on either side of the political aisle was saying it about others. And before my eyes, I started seeing people who had been at church together for decades dissolve their friendships and, in many cases, leave the church.

And then, if that wasn’t bad enough, we had this thing called Covid happen. Remember that? And the division that we had over the election spilled out into even more division surrounding Covid. We disagreed about social distancing. If the church followed the guidelines of the CDC to stop meeting, then you were seen as caving into government overreach. If you ignored the CDC guidelines and met anyway you were seen as being reckless and unloving to your neighbor. And then there was the wearing of masks. And we divided ourselves between mask wearing or not mask wearing. And then they came up with a vaccine and we further divided over being VAX or anti-VAX.

The bottom line is that in many cases people in church got angry with each other, got their feelings hurt, were unkind or unloving or judgmental… and then we just swept it all under the rug. Some would say that I am a fool for bringing all this up, I probably am. But I don’t believe that this is the kind of thing that you can just sweep under the rug and pretend it never happened. That’s what we’ve been doing in the church at large, but I have to wonder if that’s at least one reason why we are so weak and ineffective in our power and witness today.

Many saw this perfect storm as God‘s judgment against our nation. I’m not sure that is the case. I’m wondering if it wasn’t God shaking his own house. Revealing to us where we had lost the plot. Exposing us to where we were being more discipled by our preferred new source than by the sermon on the mount. That we were making something other than Jesus the test of our fellowship.

I don’t bring any of this up to call into question your beliefs or convictions about any of those things during that time. I’m willing to concede that whatever you thought, however you voted, you were probably right. The issue isn’t about whether or not we were right about our opinion. The issue is about how we treated one another as we held on to our opinions.

I know I’m guilty about how I expressed my opinions, and about how I viewed people…

Herrnhut experienced incredible and deep division. And yet they chose to bury the hatchet, not by sweeping it all under a rug, but by repenting. By going to brothers and sisters that they had wronged or had felt wrong by and seeking reconciliation, not by pretending that it never happened. And I wonder if this is what God is calling his church to in this season of prayer and repentance?

See the truth is that you can be right. But you can be dead right. You can win a battle, but lose a war. And when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ - and we ALL will - God is not going to commend us on whether or not we guessed right on taking a vaccine. He’s going ask us how we treated and loved our brothers and sisters who chose to do opposite of what we chose. Who aligned themselves to a different political party. Who didn’t see things the same way that we saw them. And so it seems to me that we can either face those questions then with Jesus or we can resolve them now.

And I’m using the election and Covid as a major source of disunity. But maybe for you, you don’t have any unforgiveness or hurt around those topics. Maybe for you, you’re holding onto unforgiveness because you felt slighted by someone in the church, or someone said something insensitive to you that was hurtful. Maybe the pastor ticked you off. But now maybe God is calling you to reconcile with whoever caused offense - so that God’s Spirit and refreshing can flow again.

I don’t know. All I can do is share what I think God is saying. I can make suggestions - you have to make decisions. What I do know is where we persist in unforgiveness, where we refuse to be reconciled with one another, we will not experience God‘s presence and power the way we desire to - the way we need to.

But when we pray like a Moravian, I believe the prayer of repentance will bring revival again.

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How do we respond to this message?

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Communion

The apostle Paul writes, 1 Corinthians 10:16–17 “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” This is why we call this meal Communion. This sharing of bread and wine symbolizes our sharing in union with Christ and with one another. To share in the meal while remaining divided with brothers and sisters goes against everything the meal stands for. And so it is important that we repent of the division we’ve held and commit to reconciliation with one another.

On the night that he was betrayed...

Come Holy Spirit and overshadow these elements. Let them be for us your body and blood so that we can participate in your redemptive work for us. May we find mercy, healing and salvation through the finished work of the cross. Amen.