Calling an Audible - Is this Revival? | Live Service, February 19th, 2023

"Would you give me a drink?... Everyone who drinks this water will thirst again. But whoever drinks the water that I give him will never be thirsty again... The water I give will become in a person a spring of water, welling up to eternal life." (John 4, dramatized)

When the wells of this world run dry, only Christ—the Rock who follows us—gives living water that satisfies.

Calling an Audible

Good morning. How many of you know what an audible is in football? It's when the quarterback calls a different play at the line of scrimmage. On my way here this morning I decided to call an audible. I had a message prepared—it aired online this morning; we recorded it on Thursday—but I'm not going to give it, because something else has been on my heart.

I've shared this many times: I don't think there is any hope for our culture, for Western culture, North America, Western Europe, apart from a genuine move of the Spirit of God. A lot of churchgoers would agree, yet there's still a residual, almost subconscious thought in many of us that we have hope in politics, or in fill-in-the-blank. The reality is there is no hope apart from a genuine move of the Spirit of God.

Years ago I was with my friend David Guzik in Germany. He made the comment then that, with the rise of Islam in Europe over the last 25 years, there is no hope in Western Europe apart from a genuine move of the Spirit of God. I agree—and it's only spread, not because of Islam, but because of the move of the enemy and the brokenness in the world.

"Jesus Loved the People We Hate"

How many of you watched the Super Bowl last week? My wife and I watched it at the home of new friends—a doctor and his wife, a nurse practitioner she works with in the ICU. We were with five couples, none of them churchgoers. Near the end an advertisement came on, and to my surprise the whole room went quiet and started watching it.

It became the most controversial ad of the Super Bowl, criticized by people both inside and outside the church. Some asked why Christians would spend $10 million on an ad—which is exactly what Judas said about the costly perfume. If you're mimicking Judas, you're in the wrong boat. Others worried the group behind it wasn't theologically consistent. I don't care about any of that. My instant thought was Paul's: whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached, and I'll rejoice in that.

I was sitting in a room full of unbelievers, and about fifteen seconds in, a couple of the guys said, "Whoa, what is this?" And when the line came up—"Jesus loved the people we hate"—they said, "That was powerful." It was striking to watch nonbelievers take notice of that.

The Division That Broke My Heart

The last three years have been deeply discouraging for me, especially as a Christian leader, watching the division—not just in our nation, but in the church. I've watched friends who are pastors sow seeds of division, openly telling people to leave their churches if their pastor didn't do X. That is nowhere in the Bible. I've lost some friends over it, men I genuinely respected, and I don't know if those relationships will be restored.

We've watched people leave our own church because we weren't political enough, or didn't reopen at the right time, or didn't make a big deal about masks or vaccines. It didn't matter what you said—you'd anger half the people. As a leader it was the worst catch-22. And in all of it, I didn't see the heart of Jesus, and it broke my heart. I went through a long season of discouragement last year. My prayer was simply: God, you have to do a work, because we have no hope apart from you.

Laboring in Vain

Reading through Galatians last September, I came to Galatians 4, where Paul says, "I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts"—another translation, "I have labored in vain." What does that look like? We'd just had a heat wave that killed all the grapes in my parents' little vineyard. You plant, tend, and care for something, and an external force you can't control undoes everything. You feel like you labored in vain.

Fascinatingly, in Isaiah—around chapters 48 to 52—the Messiah, prophesied 700 years before Jesus, is pictured saying, "I have labored in vain," in the context of being rejected by His own people. And the Father answers the Son: I have something bigger than your bringing Israel back—you will go to all the Gentiles. There's an encouragement here. Sometimes in the moment it seems like labor in vain, but step back and realize God is doing something bigger. I believe that's the case over the last several years.

Why Moses Could Not Enter

My prepared message was from Numbers 20, answering the question: why was Moses not allowed into the Promised Land? Early in the wilderness, the people had no water and cried out. God told Moses to strike the rock, and water came forth (Exodus 17). There's a rock in the desert of Saudi Arabia, sixty to eighty feet tall, next to a mountain the locals call the Mountain of Moses—believed by some archaeologists to be the split Rock of Horeb. I have the privilege of going there next month with Pastor David Guzik and the board of Enduring Word, to the top of Mount Sinai.

Almost forty years later, the people again had no water. This time God said, "Speak to the rock," and water would come. But Moses, in the flesh, chastised the people—"you rebels"—and struck the rock twice. Water still came forth, but he didn't do what God commanded. God told him: you will not enter the Promised Land, because of unbelief and because you did not honor Me before the people. It may seem small to us, but it is a big deal to God when you misrepresent Him—because of what that rock represents.

God Moves When People Are Thirsty

Here's what was on my mind driving here. God shows up in powerful, miraculous ways only when people are thirsty to the point that they cry out to Him, because they can't find satisfaction anywhere else. In both wilderness accounts, God orchestrated everything—He led them into a place where they had a lack they couldn't fill on their own, where they had no hope but to cry out to Him.

I think God sometimes allows us to find ourselves in a wilderness where there's no other hope but Him. I believe that's what He has allowed for our Western culture, which has been wholesale departing from the truth of who God is for decades. Until we come to the point where we cry out because there is no hope in anything else, I'm not sure we'll see God move mightily. Even in the church there's still this hope: if we just get the right team in office, that'll fix it. It won't. If your hope is in the next political cycle, you'll be devastated the day after the election. There is no hope apart from a genuine move of the Spirit of God.

What Is Happening at Asbury?

Between services last week I saw a post on Twitter from my old friend Greg Gordon, who started sermonindex.net in the late '90s and has spent his life praying for revival. His post had a hashtag: #AsburyRevival. I clicked it and thought, what's going on here?

My friend David Guzik did a YouTube video about it Thursday; normally his videos get about a thousand views, and that one is near ten thousand. He did another yesterday between flights, and it has 8,900 views in 24 hours. Something is happening. After a normal chapel service on Wednesday the 8th, about twenty students stayed to worship and pray. It kept growing and has gone on nonstop, twenty-four hours a day, ever since—and now it seems to be happening at other campuses.

What is a revival? I appreciated J. Edwin Orr, who spent his life studying revivals: a revival is a remarkable sense of the presence of God, sensed by the converted and unconverted; an unusual interest in the things of God to the neglect of normal activities; an evident urgency of getting right with God—"sinners seeking the evangelist more than the evangelist seeking sinners"; a great work of conviction of sin and cleansing among God's people; and a high level of participation from lay people, not the leaders.

It seems to be a spontaneous move of the Spirit. Some call it emotionalism; some are upset it isn't enough gospel preaching; some are mad about various things being said. We just don't know yet. This age group—18 to 22 in college—is a desperately hopeless culture, convinced they have no future, being told all kinds of crazy things. They're thirsty, they've looked for water elsewhere and can't find it, and maybe something is happening. Is it genuine revival? I have no idea. My prayer is that it would be genuine and spread, because I don't think there's any hope for our culture apart from it.

My Heritage and My Longing

Some of you came to faith decades ago through the Jesus Movement. This Wednesday a movie called Jesus Revolution comes out—the story of early Calvary Chapel, Pastor Chuck Smith, Lonnie Frisbee, and Greg Laurie. That's our heritage here at Cross Connection Church. I grew up in this church; we started attending when I was eleven, and I thought this was the only Calvary Chapel—it was called Calvary Chapel of Escondido.

At youth camp in ninth grade, this somewhat overweight, bald man who looked ancient to us teenagers—Chuck Smith, probably in his sixties—got up and taught from Ephesians 1. Four hundred high schoolers sat completely quiet through two hour-long messages. I remember thinking, I want to follow the Lord, but I feared that if I did, God would make me do something weird. I wrestled with that for years, but ultimately I realized God was calling me to follow Him. I came into ministry as an intern here at nineteen.

For years I heard leaders speak nostalgically, with a smile, about what God did in the '60s and '70s. And I kept thinking and saying to people my age: we want to see God do something in our day, not just always hear what He did all those years ago. That's been my prayer for a long time.

That longing got me into trouble. In 2011 I had a website where I said publicly what many were saying quietly: Calvary Chapel had real problems—we were divided, defensive toward outsiders, convinced we were the only ones who had the whole Jesus thing because of the Jesus Movement. There's a USC sociologist who wrote The Reinventing of American Protestantism, showing that Calvary Chapel was a major movement that transformed American Protestantism in the 1990s—most Protestant churches adopted the Calvary Chapel model. But we became arrogant and insular about it.

I called it out, and I got fired from the Bible college by Pastor Chuck Smith. I ended up in his office apologizing. A year before he died, Chuck said, "If you feel this way, why don't you just leave the movement and call it something different?" I didn't tell him we'd already changed our name to Cross Connection Church. But I said, "Chuck, I don't want to leave Calvary Chapel. I love it. I want to see what happened in your day happen in my day." That situation kind of ruined my reputation in Calvary Chapel. I got blacklisted. And I'm okay with that, because I want to see God move.

The Rock That Is Christ

In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul says of that rock Moses struck, "that Rock was Christ"—not physically, but in type. It followed them in the wilderness and provided living water. There are beautiful scenes in John's Gospel that reveal this.

Most notably, the woman at the well in John 4. Several years ago Dallas Jenkins—son of the Left Behind author—put together a team to make a series on the Gospels called The Chosen. Honestly, when it was being crowdfunded, I thought, here we go, another crap Christian movie about Jesus that'll make people laugh at us. I have to apologize for even thinking that. About eight months ago a clip came up on YouTube, the scene of the woman at the well, and it's powerful.

"If you knew who I am, you'd be asking me for a drink... I would give you living water... Everyone who drinks this water will thirst again. But whoever drinks the water that I give him will never be thirsty again. The water I give will become in a person a spring of water, welling up to eternal life... I who speak to you am He." (John 4, dramatized)

There's a second water story in John 5, the pool surrounded by the sick and dying. There was a fable that an angel would stir the water and the first person in would be healed—the most pitiful scene imaginable, a mad dash every time the water moved. Jesus comes to a man who'd been lame for many years and asks, "Would you like to be made well?" The man says he has no one to take him to the water. Jesus says, "Rise, take up your bed and walk," and he's healed.

That story stands out to me, because for my whole time in Calvary Chapel I've seen a lot of older people—part of that wave of what God did decades ago—waiting and watching for the moving of the water, not realizing God is doing a work in other places.

The third water story is John 7. On the great day of the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus stands and cries, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me," and "out of his innermost being will flow rivers of living water." He is the ultimate source—the Rock that followed them. Until we're so dry and parched that we stop drawing from other wells and cry out to God to satisfy us, we won't receive it.

The Evidence of a Genuine Move

So is Asbury a revival? I don't know. I hope so. How will we know? The evidence is clear. Galatians 5 says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. That is the evidence that God is moving—not tongues, prophecy, healing, or words of knowledge. Those are gifts that accompany the gospel going out. But the evidence of God moving by His Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

A move of God's love. "Jesus loved the people you hate." Argue all you want about whether they should have spent $10 million, or whether the group is theologically pure and in your camp—that's a total distraction. And those who argue about it are distracting themselves from the point. You say, "I don't hate anybody." Yes, you do. They probably vote differently than you, watch a different news channel, and you'd be glad if they were gone; you might cross to the other side of the street to avoid them. Jesus loved the people you hate.

A New Work, in a New Way

Here's a point from my prepared message: God rarely works the same way twice. The first time He said, "Strike the rock." The second time, "Speak to the rock." Both times water came forth—even when Moses disobeyed—because God is good and works in spite of us.

Right now people argue that there are women preaching at Asbury, or sinners leading worship. Have you not noticed we are all sinners? It distracts from the point. May God do a new work, because there is no hope for the United States apart from it. I don't believe we can be one nation without being under God. Unless the Spirit moves, what you'll witness for the rest of your life is the continued fracturing of our culture. You can flee to a red state—it won't fix it. The brokenness will find you wherever you go. Only Christ Jesus can fix it, and He must move in us first, transforming our hearts. As Peter says, judgment begins at the house of the Lord.

Communion

We're going to partake of communion, which we'd planned for this Sunday. Some of you got white grape juice—don't be scared; the companies are having trouble supplying all the churches with elements, which is wonderful. Communion reminds us that our only hope is in the broken body of Jesus Christ and His resurrecting power.

Jesus, on the night He was betrayed, took bread, broke it, and gave it to His disciples, saying, "Take, eat. This is My body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of Me."

In the same way, after they had eaten, Jesus took the cup and said, "This is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me."

The book of Hebrews says that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin. Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin for us, that we might be made righteous. Our only hope is in You.

Wait for the Promise

Just before His ascension, in Acts 1, Jesus commanded the disciples not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father: "John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." He'd given them a commission, but said, before you go, you'll need the Spirit of God.

And what was their response? "Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" They were distracted by the end times. It's nothing new. I love Calvary Chapel, but we've been distracted by the end times for a long time. Some wonder why I don't do prophecy updates or talk about the rapture—because I think it's a total distraction. Do I believe in the second coming? Yes. But Jesus said, "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons... but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the end of the earth." Stop being distracted. You have a mission, and I'm giving you the empowering grace of the Spirit to do it.

Acts 2 is where God poured out His Spirit, and ever since, the church has gone out carrying the gospel. May God do it again. May He pour out again. People are coming to Asbury from all over the country, and that's good—may they take whatever they see back to their churches.

I don't know what God is doing, or whether it's genuine. I sure hope so. Look for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. That's what we'll see, and that's what our culture needs to see from the church. "They shall know that you are My followers by the love you have for one another." Jesus loved the people we hate. Ouch.

We'll be back tonight at six to worship and pray. You don't have to come; if you have something going on, don't. I'm not trying to manufacture anything. I just believe God wants us to respond to Him. We simply ask the Lord to move, because we need Him to move.

Closing Prayer

Father God, I pray that You would do a work in our day—a work we would not believe if it were only told to us, a work that cannot be said to be of us, but only of You. God, You know my heart, You know I've been discouraged, and I know that is something You experienced even as You wept over Jerusalem in the Garden. That fear of laboring in vain is something You apparently tasted as well. But You are the One who works in ways we can't imagine; You do the impossible.

So Lord, we pray for this church and for all the churches in our community. It would be my greatest joy to see every church here that preaches the truth filled beyond capacity. I'm not in this just to see this church grow—I want to see Emanuel Faith, Maranatha Chapel, North Coast Church grow. I know those pastors; they're good men who love You and want to see You move. They may do things differently, but Lord, move. We know our only hope is in You. We praise You, Jesus. Do work in our hearts, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.

May the Lord bless and keep you. May He make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May He lift up His countenance upon you and give you His peace. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.