What Does 40 Mean in the Bible? A Church Anniversary Sermon on Acts 1 and the Pattern of New Beginnings

Forty years is a long time for anything to survive. A church not just surviving but growing with the same message it started with deserves a closer look. On the weekend City of Life Church marked its 40th anniversary, guest speaker Dr. Joel Tudman posed a question: what does 40 mean in the Bible, and what does it tell us about what comes next?

He opened Acts 1, anchored the church's story inside the story of Scripture, and made the case that what has kept this place alive for four decades is the same force that has always been unstoppable: the message of Jesus Christ.

What Does Zao Mean? The Greek Word for Life That Changes Everything

Dr. Tudman opened in Acts 1:1–5, a passage many churchgoers know well, but he slowed down at a single word in verse three. Luke writes that Jesus "presented Himself alive" after the resurrection, and it was the word alive where Dr. Tudman planted his flag.

The English definition is straightforward enough. Living. Not dead. But Luke wasn't writing in English, and the Greek word translated as "alive" is zao.  Zao means something far deeper than the absence of death. It means to be possessed of vitality, to exercise the full function of life. It describes life that is active, life that produces, life that moves and speaks. Zao is the opposite of merely existing. It is life that cannot be contained and does not know how to be still.

That distinction matters enormously for understanding the resurrection, and for understanding what it means to follow a risen Savior. City of Life has not survived for 40 years because it managed to keep breathing. It has survived because something inside it has been zao: fully functioning, fully active across every season.

What Does 40 Mean in the Bible? Every Instance Points to a New Beginning

Before moving to his main points, Dr. Tudman paused on the number at the center of the celebration. In Scripture, he observed, 40 is never random. Every time it appears, one of three things is happening: something is being tested, something is being prepared, or something is about to transition.

The evidence is consistent across both Testaments. In Genesis 7, 40 days and nights of rain preceded the resetting of the earth. In Numbers 14, a generation spent 40 years in the wilderness before entering the Promised Land. In 1 Kings 19, Elijah traveled 40 days and was repositioned by God. In Matthew 4, Jesus fasted 40 days before His public ministry began. In Jonah 3, Nineveh was given 40 days to turn back to God. Without exception, the number 40 ends with a new beginning on the other side.

Then Dr. Tudman turned it directly toward the church. Not 40 days. Not 40 months. Forty years. And if that pattern holds, the testing season has already happened. The preparation is already underway. What comes next is transition. "God is about to transition this place to be an answer for the city," he said. "And if I were you, I would stay still, because I believe God's about to do something."

The Risen Christ Is Still Speaking: What Acts 1 Says to the Church Today

With the scriptural foundation in place, Dr. Tudman built the rest of his message around three observations about the risen Christ, each one aimed directly at a church 40 years in.

The first: He is still speaking.

Acts 1 records that Jesus presented Himself alive after suffering and then continued speaking for 40 days about the kingdom of God. Death did not stop the message. The crucifixion did not end the conversation. Even on the cross, Jesus kept speaking, and Dr. Tudman noted the sequence of His final words: forgiveness, surrender, completion. He argued that Jesus was so saturated with the Word that He had to consciously stop speaking in order for death to do its work. "His words are life," Dr. Tudman said. "He's so loaded that death can't even change his words."

For a church, that means the message has never stopped. City of Life has stood for 40 years not because of programs, buildings, or favorable circumstances, but because the message of Jesus Christ kept coming from the stage through every difficult season, every internal struggle, every year that felt impossible. "It didn't change when the faces changed. It didn't weaken when the world around it changed." The constancy of the Word is the proof.

He's Still Moving: The Post-Resurrection Appearances and What They Mean Now

The second observation follows from the first. He is still moving.

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul recounts the post-resurrection appearances of Christ: to Peter, to the twelve, to more than 500 at one time, to James, and finally to Paul himself. That last entry is where Dr. Tudman lingered. Paul calls himself "one born out of due time, “ a man who never walked with Jesus during His earthly ministry, who actively hunted Christians before his encounter on the road to Damascus. And yet the risen Christ appeared to him, too.

The message was never reserved for the well-behaved, the lifelong believers, or the people with clean records. It was moving toward the ones everyone had counted out. "I want to know who those are that everybody counted out," Dr. Tudman said. "All of a sudden, you met Jesus. All of a sudden, he transformed you." That movement has not stopped. It moved through Jerusalem and Galilee after the resurrection. It moved through Paul's story. It moved through 40 years of City of Life. And it is still moving through whoever walks through the doors, carrying the weight of their history.

He pressed that further, challenging the church on the gap between being good at church and actually being alive out in the world. Light is not needed inside the building where everyone already believes. It is needed in dark places: in the workplace, in hard relationships, in the neighborhoods where no one expects a Christian to show up. "You've got to learn how to be alive in the places where you are afraid," Dr. Tudman said. The same life that raised Jesus from the dead is in every believer, and it was designed to be visible.

The Holy Spirit Is Still Filling: From Acts 1 to Acts 2 and What Comes Next

The third observation moved from the resurrection to Pentecost, from Acts 1 to Acts 2. The 40 days of Jesus walking among the disciples led directly to 10 days of waiting, which led to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Dr. Tudman pointed out that the arithmetic is intentional: you cannot have 50 without 40. Pentecost, a word rooted in the concept of harvest, was the direct fruit of everything that happened in those 40 days of Christ's presentation of Himself alive.

He also addressed a concept that often goes unexamined in Western church culture: unity. Most churches work hard to achieve unity, treating it as a goal to reach through effort and careful management. But Dr. Tudman argued that unity was never meant to be earned. Unity is the DNA of the Holy Spirit. When the disciples gathered with one accord in Acts 2, they were not practicing a technique. They were yielding to something already in them. And when the Spirit came, the evidence was supernatural.  People from every background understood one another, the walls of human division dissolved under the weight of God's presence.

For any church 40 years in, the implication is clear: the filling is still available. It does not require that everything be perfect first. It requires releasing the need to manage what God freely gives, and letting His presence lead rather than asking God to follow the plans already made.

What 40 Years of a Church Proves About the Message of Jesus Christ

Dr. Joel Tudman did not come to City of Life's 40th anniversary to celebrate the institution. He came to point the church toward what the institution is made of: forty years of the same message, forty years of a Word that would not quit even when the people carrying it wanted to, forty years of the Spirit moving in ways that could not be manufactured.

The message he left behind was not complicated. The same Christ who presented Himself alive after suffering is still speaking, still moving, still filling. The number 40 in Scripture always points toward something on the other side. And if that pattern holds, City of Life is not looking back at a milestone. It is standing on the edge of a new beginning.

He is still alive. The message is still moving. And the church's greatest years are still ahead.