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 Mt. Saint Helens

Prior to the 1980 eruption, Mount St. Helens was the fifth-highest peak in Washington

• Its eruption was the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in the history of the United States.
• Fifty-seven people were killed
• Destroyed:
  • 250 homes
  • 47 bridges
  • 15 miles of railways
  • 185 miles of highway were.
• The eruption caused a massive debris avalanche, reducing the elevation of the mountain's summit from 9,677 feet to 8,365 feet and replacing it with a mile-wide horseshoe-shaped crater.
• The debris avalanche was up to 0.7 cubic miles in volume.

 There is something about an explosion that gets our attention and imagination.

• That's why we watch fireworks
• That's why you all got excited when I promised to blow some stuff up in our service today.

 And I think that's why we all crave revival.

 Today I want to preach about the spiritual explosion that we are praying for ... and call us to both pray and work towards it.

1.  What is Revival?

Revival is a spiritual explosion.  It's a coming together of God's presence with certain other preconditions, and His Spirit exploding into our lives, our community and world.

• Prayer
• Outreach/Mission
• Community
• Living and Thinking Rightly

 I'm learning that these things aren't the cause of the explosion...they are the result.

2.  Haggai's Prophecy of Revival

A.  Setting

Haggai preached during the days of Ezra & Nehemiah

 Fifteen years before, the people had returned to Jerusalem from Babylon and had laid the foundation of the temple that had been destroyed by the earlier Babylonian invasion.

 Mixed joy & frustration because the temple did not measure up to the old glory.

 Along with this latent disappointment, the people were discouraged.

 In Haggai's day the people had been working for approximately three and a half weeks, from the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month (Hag. 1:15) to the twenty-first day of the seventh month (Hag. 2:1), and already discouragement had set in. (Boice)

B.  The Prophecy

v.4 - Be Strong...for I am with you.

 v.5 - this is how it felt to be in the Exodus and the promises I made then still hold.  "My spirit remains among you. Do not fear."

 v.6-7 SHAKE THE NATIONS

 C.     Short Term Fulfillment

Moreover, the nations were shaken. The Ionian Greeks, who had expanded eastward to the western shore of Asia Minor, had been subjected to the rule of Persia by Cyrus the Great about 540 b.c. But in 501 b.c., about twenty years after the date of Haggai's prophecy, they rebelled against Persia, bringing on a Persian invasion of Greece about a decade later. Darius was king at this time. He led a great army, but he was defeated at Marathon in 490 b.c. in a victory the Greeks still remember with pride. Shortly thereafter, Darius's successor Xerxes marshaled an even larger army and a powerful navy. The army contained 1.8 million men. The navy was the largest ever seen. But in 480 b.c. the Greek boats scattered the Persian navy, and the Greek army defeated the Persian army at both Thermopylae and Plataea. A year later the reassembled Persian navy was again defeated. Thus Persian hopes of conquering the Greek mainland were forever crushed.

As the Persian Empire began a gradual collapse, Alexander the Great came to power and led the Greek armies over the Bosporus against Persia. He defeated the Persian armies at Granicus in 334 b.c., Issus in 332 b.c., and Arabela in 331 b.c. At his death the Greek empire broke up and was eventually replaced by Roman rule of the Mediterranean countries. (Boice)

D.  Ultimate Fulfillment

v.7 - the desired of the nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory.

v. 9 -The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house.

v.9b - ...in this place I will grant peace (shalom)

JESUS

PENTECOST

2.  Revival Today?  (The Chemistry of The Spiritual Explosion)

Mission / Prayer / Community / Right Living & Thinking are results not causes.

A.  Power Source = GOD

Holy

Isaiah 6

• God's Holiness
• My Sinfulness

Proverbs 9:10 - "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

B.  Reactant = The Work of Jesus Applied to Our Hearts

Colossians 2:6-15 - So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Justification (You Are Accepted)

Colossians 2:13-14 - When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.

Sanctification (You Are Free From the Bondage To Sin)

Colossians 2:11-13 - In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins,

The Holy Spirit Within (You Are Not Alone)

Authority In Spiritual Conflict (You Are In Command)

"...you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. ... And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross."

Repentance (metanoia) literally means "A change of mind" -toward God, toward oneself and toward others."

MENTOS EXPERIMENT

C.  Explosion = The Work of Jesus Done Through Our Lives

Mission  - Following Jesus into the World

• Evangelism
• Social Good

After Jesus rose, the apostles wanted to know the time and manner of the Kingdom's completion.

Acts 1:6 - So when they met together, they asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"

"...they are unconsciously trying to evade the long period of spiritual warfare needed to spread the kingdom, to gather the elect from all ages of world history, and to allow the followers of Jesus to become like Him through sharing the way of the cross." (Lovelace p.163)

Acts 1:7-8 - He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

"The apostles are revealing the natural gravitation of their hearts away from outward mission and toward self-centered enjoyment of kingdom blessings.  Jesus responds by telling them that the greatest blessing they can know within ordinary history-the full empowering of the Holy Spirit-will only come to them in the context of outward movement in mission." (Lovelace p.163)

"The apostles do not harangue believers to witness as do some modern pastors intent on church growth.  They assume that in a church filled with the Spirit, God himself will be engineering the occasions for witness and that these will unfold with the naturalness of the dialog in a good play.  Moreover, they assume that all Christians will "be wise in the way you act towards outsiders" and "make the most of every opportunity" (Colossians 4:5). This means that every Christian must consciously be in a witnessing stance toward all person who are not already members of the Messianic Kingdom." 

Prayer - Depending on the power of the risen Christ

Community - Uniting with the Body of Christ

Right Thinking & Living  - Having the Mind of Christ

Conclusion

What Is the Most Crying Need of the Church in America Today?

John Piper's Answer:

One could answer at different levels of ultimacy. I choose to assume the urgency of the two ultimate levels (heart-felt passion for Christ, and radical obedience to Christ), and move one level down: To the end of pure and passionate lives of Christ-exalting mercy and world evangelization, the greatest need of the church is to know and understand the full biblical witness of God's love (including the grace that raises the spiritually dead, Ephesians 2:4-5; and justifies the ungodly by faith alone, Romans 4:4-5; 5:8-9), the full biblical witness of God's wisdom (including the knowledge of all future events, Isaiah 41:23, 26; 42:8-9; 44:7-8, 26-28; 45:21; 46:10; 48:3), the full biblical witness of God's power (including his rule over every bird that dies, Matthew 10:29, and every role of the dice, Proverb s 16:33, and every act of man, Jeremiah 10:23), and the full biblical witness of God's justice (including his everlasting wrath upon the impenitent, 2 Thessalonians 1:9). "My people go into exile for lack of knowledge" (Isaiah 5:13); "Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD" (Hosea 6:3).

The assumption here is that American Christianity is plagued by truncated views of all God's attributes. And a truncated view of God will give raise to truncated Christian living and truncated awakenings. Therefore the awakening and revival that I pray for will be not just for the fullness of the Spirit's power, but for the fullness of the Spirit's illumination of God in the word.

Ron Sider's recent article in Books and Culture, "The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience," contains the too familiar stats on how evangelicals and born-againers live lives a millimeter above the pagans in America, or sometimes below, in the Bible belt. Nine percent of born again people have biblical world view. However, this group of people stand out with significantly different behavior from the worldly "born-againers" and "evangelicals." Here is Sider's comment:

"Barna's findings on the different behavior of Christians with a biblical worldview underline the importance of theology. Biblical orthodoxy does matter. One important way to end the scandal of contemporary Christian behavior is to work and pray fervently for the growth of orthodox theological belief in our churches" (Jan/Feb, p. 42).

Indeed, orthodoxy was the only factor the article pointed out correlated with a significant difference in Christian behavior.

Truncated theology > truncated lives.