The Next Awakening
The Next Awakening • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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I recently came across a writing from Jonathan Edwards from 1741 where he outlined how to determine when God was at work. This writing and explanation was needed because all over New England, people were gathering with many claiming to be a work of the Lord. For the most part, the Spirit of God was moving and we now refer to this time as the First Great Awakening, but there were some who pointed at the church’s enthusiasm and somewhat emotion response as signs that it was not a move of God. Edwards defended these by outline 5 ways to see whether the move of God was real or not:
When esteem for the true Jesus is raised
When Satan’s kingdom is attacked (sin and worldly lusts)
When people come to love Scripture more
When men are led away from falsehood to truth (sound doctrine)
When there is an increase of love to God and man
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always wondered what it would take for another great awakening. What would a regional revival in the churches look like? What would it take. When I came across this list, it’s not a list of steps, it is signs of a move of God. The last I checked, it’s going to take a move of God for the next great awakening and revival to break out in the big ‘C’ church.
Over the next month or two, we are going to work our way through the book of 1 John. The Apostle John sums up the purpose of this letter in 1 John 5:13:
13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
By knowing we have eternal life and the implications of eternal life, as believers, we ought to moving toward the five things that Edwards listed as a move of God:
When esteem for the true Jesus is raised
When Satan’s kingdom is attacked (sin and worldly lusts)
When people come to love Scripture more
When men are led away from falsehood to truth (sound doctrine)
When there is an increase of love to God and man
Here’s what I mean by this. The confidence in our salvation should:
lead us to love and follow Jesus more
Change our desires and holiness is something we strive for
give us a hunger for God’s Word to nourish our soul
pull us from the lies of the enemy to the truth of who God is
manifest itself in love for God first and then others
When John is writing this letter to the church, he is writing these instructions knowing that none of it is possible without the Holy Spirit leading, guiding and equipping God’s people.
I know many of you have prayed that God would move and open the eyes of those around us. We want to see our culture and our country changed, not for the sake of change, but a change to follow Jesus.
This changes starts with God’s people first. We have to esteem Jesus more, we have attack sin and worldly lusts, we have to love Scripture more, we have to establish a firm foundation of God’s truth through the teaching of doctrine and most importantly, we have to love God and each other more and more.
It’s not until we as the church, not just Crossroads, but the big C church, get these priorities straight that we’ll then get to see a change in our culture…an awakening to the Gospel.
I believe the book of 1 John will help us get a foundation for this to happen. Let’s read starting in chapter 1, verse 1:
1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.
2 The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.
3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
4 We write this to make our joy complete.
This is our introduction to the letter. John gives a brief overview of who this letter is about and who it is to. The letter is about Jesus, the Work of Life who the apostles were able to see with their own eyes and touch with their own hands.
The proclamation here is to the church, to believers. John is not trying to convince anyone to believe, he is writing to encourage those who already believe. That they would not be led astray, that their fellowship with the apostles would continue and in turn their fellowship with the Father and Jesus would continue.
It is in this fellowship that both the apostles and the believer’s joy is made complete.
He continues...
5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
6 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
Here we have the first of two warnings John gives us. This first warning is about walking in the light that is God. In John 3, it says this about walking in the light...
19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.
21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
Sin is a sneaky thing. People like to hide their sins and when someone is in a pattern of sinful behavior, they try to avoid God and in doing so “walk in the darkness”
The idea here is that it doesn’t matter how hard we try to cover something up, we cannot hide anything from God. He sees it all. First and foremost, our responsibility to confess is to God, but there is another piece and that is confessing to one another. There is something that happens when believers confide in one another and hold each other accountable.
The verse says that we should come into the light so that it may be plainly seen what we do. Not just by God, but by our brothers and sisters in the Lord.
Let’s go back to 1 John...
6 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
First, John calls us a liar if we claim to be a believer and walk in darkness…then he says that when we walk in the light in fellowship with one another and with Jesus, our sins will be purified.
We cannot fully escape sin. We can escape the power of sin over our life and bondage we have to it, but at some point sin will rear its ugly head in our life. We are not to hide it or ignore it. We are to expose it, confess it and then it is forgiven. We are purified from it.
We have a well in our home and the primary way the water is purified from harmful contaminants is via light. Coincidence that God designed light to be able to work that way…I think not.
Let’s finish up chapter 1 of 1 John:
8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
John now goes a little direct at sin. First, we must recognize that sin is going to be there. It doesn’t mean we accept the sin and say it’s ok, because it’s not. We also don’t deceive ourselves and say not me...
The proper place after exposing the sin to light is to confess. Jesus has paid the price for that sin and we have the promise to be forgiven and purified from it.
This is the beauty of the Gospel. Not that we are perfect, but that we are perfectly forgiven. One of the biggest complaints about church people is that we can be hypocrites. A hypocrite is someone who says one thing, but does another. A hypocrite doesn’t ask forgiveness, doesn’t admit or confess wrongdoing. A hypocrite tries to hide sin in the shadows, but there is always somebody watching and noticing.
John ends with strong words that if we claim to not have sinned, we may Jesus out to be a liar...
What happens when we get our convictions wrapped around these ideas that John lays out here...
When esteem for the true Jesus is raised
When Satan’s kingdom is attacked (sin and worldly lusts)
When people come to love Scripture more
When men are led away from falsehood to truth (sound doctrine)
When there is an increase of love to God and man
We esteem Jesus more. We worship Him more, we love Him more. We make a big deal about Him. We recognize what He’s done for us and what He can do for others.
We put a dagger into the plans of the enemy when we confess our sin and stop hiding it. Satan would love nothing more that to have a church full of sin loving, seat warmers.
We give an example to the world and each other about the truth of God’s grace. We can be so hard on each as believers. We knock each other down, stab each other in the back, kick and pile on to someone who is struggling…Jesus dealt with this when a crowd wanted to stone an adulterous woman. They tried to trap Jesus into allowing this woman to be punished and he told them:
John 8:7 (NIV)
7 “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
Every single one of the men walked away and Jesus told the woman after they walked away:
John 8:11 (NIV)
11 “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
Her sin was exposed, Jesus forgave and told her to stop.