Revive Us Again First Baptist Richmond, May 20, 2018 The Day of Pentecost Ezekiel 37:1-14

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1 Revive Us Again First Baptist Richmond, May 20, 2018 The Day of Pentecost Ezekiel 37:1-14 The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, Mortal, can these bones live? I answered, O Lord GOD, you know. People sometimes say that Pentecost is the birthday of the church, but if that s true then the church is getting old! If we assume that Jesus really was born in the year zero, as the calendar says; and if we assume he was about thirty years old when he began his public ministry, as Luke says; and if we assume that he ministered for approximately three years, as John implies; then it must have been around 33 A. D. that he was crucified, buried, and raised from the dead. Fifty days after that a group of believers heard a sound like the rush of a mighty wind, and something like flames began dancing over their heads, and they began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them the ability. Some people thought they were drunk, but Peter said, No, this is what the prophet Joel was talking about, that in the last days God would pour out his spirit on all flesh. And then Peter, intoxicated by that same spirit, preached a sermon so powerful it resulted in 3,000 baptisms. And that (some people say) is when the church was born: on the Day of Pentecost in the Spring of 33. But do the math: if that happened in 33 and it s now 2018, then the church of Jesus Christ is one thousand, nine hundred, and eighty-five years old. And you know how some people will say to you on your birthday, when you re getting older, You look good for your age!? What would they say to the church on her one thousand, nine 1

2 hundred, and eighty-fifth birthday? How s she looking these days? Five years ago Ed Stetzer wrote an article entitled, The State of the Church in America: Hint: It s Not Dying (which is something you might want someone to say to you on your birthday). i In that article he claimed that the church in America is not dying, but that it is going through a transition. Steve McSwain, another church expert, responded to Stetzer s article by saying, Really? What cartoons have you been watching? ii He said, Clearly, the Church is dying. And then he began to list the evidence: More than 40 percent of Americans say they go to church weekly, while in reality less than 20 percent of the population is in church on any given Sunday. Researchers estimate that between 4,000 and 7,000 churches close their doors every year. Some put that number even higher: between 8,000 and 10,000. In a recent two-year period ( ) more than half of all churches in America added not one new member. Each year, nearly 3 million more previous churchgoers enter the ranks of the religiously unaffiliated. iii And this was five years ago, when the church was only 1,980 years old! Churches aren t dying? McSwain asks, sarcastically, and then he answers his own question. No, of course not. Churches will always be here. But you can be sure, churches are going through more than a mere transition. And he should know what he s talking about. iv Steve McSwain has counseled church leaders within every denomination in America. He has crisscrossed the country for two decades, working with congregations as small as two hundred in attendance to churches averaging nearly 20,000. He has seen for himself that the church in America is going through something 2

3 far more serious than a mere transition. On his less hopeful days he might say that it is dying. But even then he would be no match for the Prophet Ezekiel. Ezekiel prophesied during that period of Israel s history known as the Exile, when the Babylonian army conquered the city of Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, burned its foundations, and carried the leading citizens off into captivity. By the rivers of Babylon, they said, there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors for mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. But how could we sing the Lord s song in a foreign land? (Ps. 137:1-4). For people whose church had been Solomon s beautiful temple, its songs and sacrifices and daily rituals of worship, things couldn t have been much worse. If Ed Stetzer had told them in those days that they were only going through a transition they would have laughed him out of the room. What they got instead was Ezekiel, a realist, who told them that as far as he could tell the church wasn t dying, it was dead. But in today s reading from chapter 37 Ezekiel writes, The hand of the LORD came upon me. You know, in those days when I thought the church was dead and gone, when I thought there was no hope for the future, the hand of the Lord came upon me. And he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. Not bodies, mind you: bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. Not only dry, I say: very dry. They had been there a long, long time. He said to me, Mortal, can these bones live? And of course they couldn t. Any fool could see that. But I m not any fool. I 3

4 know not to backtalk the Lord. I answered, O Lord GOD, you know. And you re the only one who knows. But not everybody sees it that way. Church consultants, for example, make it their business to inspect the bones, to evaluate their condition, and to determine whether or not there is any life left in them. In that article I referenced earlier Steve McSwain writes: As I see it, there are seven changing trends impacting church-going in America, and the trends he mentions are significant. 1) Demographics are changing: the population is getting older and it s getting browner. By 2050 one in three people you meet on the street will be of Hispanic origin. 2) Technology is changing everything we do, including how we do church (and if you don t believe it just ask the people who are watching this morning s service on our live webcast). 3) There s a crisis in leadership: McSwain says clergy abuse, the church s cover-up, and fundamentalist preachers are driving people away faster than everything else combined. 4) There s a lot of competition on Sunday morning. Everything used to shut down so people could go to church. Now everything is open, and brunch begins at 11:00 am. 5) Religious pluralism is impacting church attendance. People are discovering that immigrants of other faiths are often more Christ-like than many of the Christians they know. It makes them wonder if church is the only way. 6) McSwain believes the contemporary worship experience has contributed to the decline of the church. It may work in some spaces, he says, but bringing a praise band into a stained-glass sanctuary is a big mistake. 7) Finally, phony advertising is having a devastating impact on the church. McSwain says, If everybody and I mean everybody is not truly welcome in your church then quit saying they are. 4

5 Well, it s easy to criticize. But McSwain ends his critique by saying: In my next article I ll offer several best practices that, as I see it, might reverse the trends contributing to the decline. I was able to find that article online, and what he suggests are solid practices: 1) We should admit that things are changing and learn to embrace the change. Denial never helped anyone. 2) We should stop labeling those people who no longer come to church as unfaithful. They may have very good reasons for not being here. 3) We should appreciate the growing diversity within the church. The more diverse we are, the more we look like God s kingdom. 4) We should make friends instead of enemies with the people who disagree with us. They may be able to see things we can t. v As I said, those are all solid practices. I think we have already put most of them into effect here at First Baptist. But I cannot believe they will reverse the trends that are impacting church attendance. They remind me of those self-help books you see in the bookstores, the ones that say, You can be richer, smarter, thinner, younger, if you will only follow these simple instructions! But then you buy the book, and you follow the instructions, and more times than any of us cares to admit the results you get don t last. A few weeks later there you are again: the same old you: helpless, hopeless, and wondering why you even bothered. That s why I m glad Ezekiel doesn t say to his church, Friends, I think we can turn this thing around. We just need to embrace the change! No, he says, Friends, this thing is dead. It s a valley of dry bones. There is no hope for the future. And that s when he has a vision. 5

6 That s when the Lord shows him the state of the church and asks, Mortal, can these bones live? And Ezekiel says, Lord, you are the only one who knows. And Ezekiel is right about that. There s not a consultant in America who can tell you if the church is going to survive, much less thrive. They can prognosticate all they want but in the end only God knows. And this is what God says to Ezekiel. Prophesy to these bones, Mortal. Preach to them and say: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD. Notice that the Lord says, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord. Because there is no self-help book in the world that can bring life out of death. Only God can do that. So, Ezekiel preached to the bones, and as he watched they began to rattle and come together, bone to bone. And then the bones were covered with sinew, and sinew with muscle, and muscle with skin, until they were bones no longer, but bodies. Yet there was no breath in them. And the Lord said, Preach, Mortal! Preach to the breath and say, Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. Ezekiel preached as he had been commanded, and the breath came into the bodies, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude (Ezek. 37:7-10). As I studied that passage this time around I was struck by the fact that God asked Ezekiel to preach two times: once to the bones and once to the breath. And it occurred to me that there are many things we humans can do as individuals and as 6

7 churches to create conditions that are favorable for life, but there is at least one thing we can t do, and that is to give life itself. Self-help books can point us in the right direction, church consultants can help us re-assemble the bones, but at some point we ve got to preach to the breath, and the breath comes from God alone. In the early 18 th Century there were plenty of churches scattered across the 13 colonies, and yet church attendance was low. According to reliable sources, It was failing to keep up with population growth, and the influence of Enlightenment rationalism was leading many people to turn to atheism, Deism, Unitarianism, and Universalism. vi The churches in New England in particular had become cold and formal, places where worshipers rarely felt the warm breath of God. But what are you going to do? Embrace the change? No, instead the ministers in those churches realized that the problem was bigger than they were. They began to pray that God s Holy Spirit would fall upon the church as it had on the Day of Pentecost. They began to pray for revival. And then something happened. In his Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, Jonathan Edwards describes how the dry bones of his little New England town came back to life. vii It began with the young people. When one of their own died suddenly and unexpectedly they began to wonder what had become of him, and what would become of them. They began to seek the Lord with all their heart, and soon their parents and grandparents had joined them. The Spirit of God began extraordinarily to set in, Edwards writes. The work of conversion was carried on in a most astonishing manner and increased more and more; souls did as it were come by flocks to Jesus Christ. From day to day, for many months 7

8 together, might be seen evident instances of sinners brought out of darkness into the marvelous light. But it wasn t only that people were being converted. Edwards writes, This work of God, as it was carried on, soon made a glorious alteration in the town; so that in the spring and summer following the town seemed to be full of the presence of God: it never was so full of love nor joy. If it had happened here in Richmond we might say that the KOH had come to RVA; viii that our mission had finally been fulfilled; and we would have to acknowledge that it was not because we had embraced the change, but because God had worked a miracle. Some 50,000 members were added to the churches of New England in that period described by Jonathan Edwards, a phenomenal number for that time. Church historians have named it The First Great Awakening, because there was a second one during the early part of the Nineteenth Century, and a third one near the end of that century. Some have talked about the Welsh Revival of the early Twentieth Century, or the post-wwii churchgoing boom in this country, or the Jesus Movement of the 1970 s as other great awakenings. ix In every case there seemed to be a fresh outpouring of God s Holy Spirit, and churches that had been emptying out were filled up again with those who were earnestly seeking God. Suppose we are, at this very moment, on the brink of the next great awakening? And suppose our task is not only to embrace the change and tweak the technology; not only to re-assemble the bones as it were, and create the conditions conducive to revival; but also to preach to the breath as Ezekiel did, and like those believers in Jerusalem to pray for the power from on high God s power the only power that can turn death into life. Jim Somerville

9 i Ed Stetzer, The State of the American Church: Hint: It s Not Dying, Christianity Today, October 1, ii Steve McSwain, Why Nobody Wants to Go to Church Anymore, Huffington Post, October 14, iii Ibid. iv The information that follows was gleaned from McSwain s article. v Steve McSwain, Why Nobody Wants to Go to Church Anymore, Part Two Huffington Post, October 29, vi Wikipedia, The First Great Awakening. vii Bill J. Leonard, ed., Early American Christianity (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1983), pp viii Shorthand for The Kingdom of Heaven to Richmond, Virginia, the mission of First Baptist Church. ix Robert J. Morgan, The Sixth Great Awakening: America s Only Hope, Huffington Post, June 11,