Focusing on the Heart of the Gospel

Dear Church,

Here in the month of May we’re doing four sermons that focus on the heart of the gospel, and I wanted to give you just a little more background on why. The reason for this series comes from our desire and continued prayer for revival. 

And “revival” is a word that I love. It’s an important word that should be part of the way that we talk as long as we’re clear on what we mean by it.

And we should mean by it what the late J. I. Packer meant by it when he defined revival as “a work of God by his Spirit through his word to bring the spiritually dead to living faith in Christ and to renew the inner life of Christians who have grown slack and sleepy.” 

Revival is the work of God to bring awakening and renewal — that’s what we want, and because that’s something we ourselves can’t do, we pray for it. We want it, and we ask for it. 

And right away, I want you to know that even just this act of wanting and asking defies human pride in two directions — one direction of human pride that says revival is unnecessary, the other direction says revival is impossible.

There are some who think they don’t need revival. They don’t admit that they’ve grown “slack and sleepy” because they’ve reconfigured what to expect of the Christian life. They’ve settled for basically a nominal Christian existence. They’re just fine being American and going to church. And so to these folks, revival is unnecessary.

But then there are others who think revival is impossible — and this is really just the pride of cynicism. It’s the rejection of the possibility that anything special can happen. It’s the scrooge-mentality that is more comfortable with criticizing the way things are than with hoping for something new. And to these folks, revival is impossible.

And so by wanting revival, and by praying for it, we are defying both kinds of pride. We believe that something we desperately need is also something God is willing and able to provide: and that is, a fresh work of the Holy Spirit through God’s word to make the dead alive in Christ and to rewaken the rest of us.

God has done this at several moments throughout church history, and when we look back and study those moments, one thing that characterizes them all is a focus on the atonement of Jesus. Back in the 1950s, the London pastor Martyn Lloyd-Jones gave some lectures on the topic of revival, and one thing he observed that was true of all past revivals was that there was a tremendous emphasis on the person and work of Christ. He says that, “in periods of revival, the church glories in the cross; she makes her boast in the blood of Jesus.”

And so as we’re wanting and praying, we’ve studied Galatians together, and now we’re in a series on the heart of the gospel, because we’re just aiming to do what Lloyd-Jones talks about. We want a renewed, clear focus on Jesus and what he has done.

And for this upcoming Sunday, that means we’ll be in Romans 5:1–11. Pray for us.

With hope,

Pastor Jonathan