LET IT POUR:
WHY YOU NEED THE
SPIRIT
If Hoshea was a romance, and if Zechariah was a
court-room drama, the prophecy of Joel could be called an ecological horror
story.
Imagine
a bright sunny day, blue skies and warm weather. Suddenly it turns dark as if a
great cloud had banished the sun. You look up expecting to see rain clouds, but
instead your eyes grow wide at the sight of millions of locusts. They descend
on the land and begin obliterating everything green. In their voracious hunger
the locusts even chew the bark off of trees, the wool off of sheep, maybe even
human flesh.
This is
not the imagination of Alfred Hitchcock; this has happened many times in the
history of the world. In 1915, Palestine endured a locust plague that caused
great devastation and hunger. The female locusts were about 2 ½ to 3 inches
long and laid hundreds of eggs while feeding on the land. It was estimated that
as many as 65,000 to 75,000 locust eggs were concentrated in a square meter of
soil.[i]
We don’t
know exactly where Joel fits into the history of Israel; he doesn’t give a lot
of clues. What we do know is that he speaks hope to Israel after a severe swarm
of locusts ravages the land. After the locusts leave and the people return to
God, the rains return, the land becomes green again, and the people are able to
grow food and eat.
When we
read the Prophets we find that the stories are mostly about coming back to God
and God delivering the people from invaders, exile, or locusts. If that were
the whole story, if that is how we perceive God, then we would be like baby
birds in a perpetual state of infancy. We get into trouble – God delivers us –
what miserable beings we are that we never learn and never progress past our
imbecility.
That’s
not what the Prophets wanted their hearers to believe. Joel does remind Israel
that the LORD provides food for his people, but when the people’s stomachs are
filled he tells them there’s more to life than bread. Joel promised them that
one day God would pour out his Spirit on them. If they have the LORD as God why
do they need his Spirit? Why do you need the Spirit?
1. I will pour out my Spirit
God wants to give his people more than food, more than
land, more than a panic button to call on him in times of trouble. The LORD is
a relational being; he wants more from his relationship with humanity than
humble servitude. But how does an infinite God relate to a finite being? How
does a human begin to understand God?
Joel
foretells of a solution to this chasm between God and humankind, “And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on
all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream
dreams, and your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and
women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days” (28-29).
a) When will this
promise be fulfilled? Joel writes “afterward” implying that the blessing of
God’s Spirit comes after the judgment on unbelievers in Judah. But the precise
fulfillment of this promise does not happen immediately. There is a future tone
to the promise that links it to the Day of the LORD, commonly thought of as the
“end of time.”
b) What does the
promise give the Jews? In the OT era we read of heroes like David suddenly
being filled with the Spirit, or Samson having the Spirit “rush upon” him. The
Spirit was certainly active in the kings and prophets, but not in a permanent
way. At various times the word of the LORD was rare and visions were uncommon.[ii] We
might compare the presence of the Spirit to drops of rain in the lives of the
saints.
According
to Joel, the LORD will one day pour out his Spirit. These are no longer
droplets of water but a waterfall of the Spirit. Joel implies with this
“outpouring” that the presence of the Spirit will be permanent as opposed to
temporary.
c) Who will
receive the promise? This is where Joel gets radical. In the OT era, male
leaders were typically the recipients of the gifts of the Spirit, be it
Samson’s strength or David’s prophecy. The LORD says “I will pour out my Spirit
on all people.” Joel and every Jewish reader would understand the Spirit to be
poured on believing Israelites. But even here those who receive this outpouring
are not only the elite or the leaders or the very smartest. God will not
discriminate in pouring his Spirit out – not on the basis of sex, since both sons
and daughters will prophesy – not on the basis of age (old men dream; young men
have visions) – and not on the basis of class (servants/slaves, men and women).
Everyone in the kingdom of Israel will receive the Spirit.
This
fulfilled a desire Moses once expressed. Having called the elders together for
a meeting, the seventy elders experienced the Spirit resting on them and they
prophesied. Two elders who did not make it to the meeting, Eldad and Medad,
were in the midst of the camp and prophesied there. A young fellow ran and told
Moses (as if to tattle on their truancy) but Moses replied, “…I wish that all
the LORD’s people were prophets…” (Num. 11:24-30).
d) How will this
promise be expressed? Through prophesying, dreams and visions. Prophecy is
often thought of as foretelling (future stuff) but the prophets themselves saw
it as “forth-telling.” They saw themselves as witnesses to God’s truth, telling
people about the character of God and his truth. Together, these three
expressions are about revelation. People will not simply have cool
hallucinogenic visions as if on drugs; they will have revelations about God,
who he is, what he does, and will discern his work in their world.
Do you
see how God works? Do you see what God wants? Joel reminds me of when Jesus fed
the 5000 (John 6). A great crowd was following Jesus because he had healed the
sick and cast out demons. Jesus looked up and saw the crowd and he wanted to
feed them. They were a long way from any village and were physically hungry. So
Jesus performs a miracle to feed all these people. They keep following him
because of this miracle, because their stomachs were filled. But Jesus wanted
to give them something more – the bread of life, himself, the presence of God.
Human
nature is like that. We are so quickly fascinated by the temporal things that
we miss the eternal.
2. I will show wonders
Without the Spirit we will fail to see the deeper things
of God. Without the Spirit we cannot begin to understand the difference between
judgment and salvation.
Joel
speaks of wonders in the heavens and on the earth in 30-31. Blood, fire, and
smoke are symbols of judgment. They send shivers of fear up and down the spine
of the bravest people. Fear makes us do dumb things.
Last
week we endured quite a storm; rain, wind, lightning. Our neighbor’s kitten
climbed an oak tree and refused to come down for two days, until Sharon rescued
the kitten. Even then the kitten wanted to go up the tree or cling to the bark.
In the
face of judgment men and women will not run to God but away from God. Consider
how people reacted to Jesus when he healed the man born blind (John 9). Rather
than praising God for the miracle and desiring to know more about the Christ,
the authorities wanted to prosecute the formerly blind man and hunt down Jesus
for healing without their say-so. And because of this unbelieving response men
and women bring judgment on themselves. This is humanity without the Spirit of
God to enlighten them.
On the day
of Pentecost, Peter and the 120 followers of Jesus began to speak in tongues,
languages that all the visiting pilgrims spoke. They thought these people must
be drunk. Peter’s response was a direct quote from Joel. Peter said to them
“this is it – this is the fulfillment of the promise.” Consider the parallels
with Joel’s prophecy:
When – the
last days (Peter begins Joel’s quote with “In the last days…”
What – Only
three months before, Peter and the apostles were so afraid they cowered behind
closed doors. Now they presented a powerful testimony of the risen Christ.
Who – The 120
were uneducated fishermen, tax collectors, former terrorists and women (Mary, Mary
Magdalene, etc).
How – They
spoke in tongues previously unknown to them to people from all over the world.
Peter spoke boldly about the crucified Christ and how God raised him up.
How did
the crowds respond? They were cut to the heart (Acts 2:37). They felt the
judgment of these words. What were they going to do with this experience? That
response would make all the difference in their lives.
3. Everyone who calls will be saved
What does it mean to be saved? Salvation is what we have
termed a “Christianese” word, a word that means something only to the initiated
(those who go to church). If salvation means what it did to Joel’s people, it
means God will save us from locusts and other disasters in our present context.
There is no greater disaster to the human condition than sin; unrepented sin
keeps us from approaching God. If we can’t approach God we cannot be saved.
Salvation.
But
isn’t salvation more than being saved from the fire of hell? Considering what
Joel was trying to tell his people, deliverance from calamity was just the
start of something huge. “And everyone
who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in
Jerusalem there will be deliverance…” (32).
God can
save us or deliver us from trouble without pouring out his Spirit. He’s done it
before. Why give people his Spirit?
The
answer begins in Peter’s Pentecost message. He presents Jesus Christ as the
fulfillment of prophecy, the miracles he performed, the cross on which he bled,
all pointing to God’s breaking into our world to show us himself. And when the
people realized what God had done in Christ, they were cut to the heart and
said “Brothers, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37).
Peter
responds, “Repent and be baptized, every
one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven. And
you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (2:38). God saves men and
women from their sins through Christ so that they may begin to know God. We are
saved to know God. And the Holy Spirit is instrumental in showing us more of
God.
Tim
Keller said this, “When I go to the Truth of God, and the Spirit is giving me
access, do you see what happens? You can read about the power of God. If you
just read about the power of God, without the influence of Spirit, you say,
‘Oh, God is powerful.’ Without the influence of the Spirit, all that can do is
make a superficial impression on the top of you, but when the Spirit of God is
there, you read about the power, and there’s access. The truth begins to shine.
It begins to change you, and what happens is your heart develops courage.
When you read about his goodness, it develops peace in
you. When you read about his forgiveness, it develops relief in you. You shake
off your guilty fears. When you read about his forgiveness, it develops
generosity and mercy in you. When you read about his holiness, it develops
conviction of sin and humility in you. Don’t you see? Only when the Spirit of
God is doing that do you see real access happening. Only then.” The prize is Jesus. Being saved and
filled with the Holy Spirit, we begin to know God better. And with our eyes on
the prize – Jesus – we unwittingly become better people.
When I first thought of how this message would go, I
imagined a great response. Preachers have this temptation to see themselves as
the catalyst for revival or some such thing. So what I pictured was a crowd of
you coming down the aisle to receive whatever the Holy Spirit wanted to show
you. I was hoping for an experience that would shake us to our boots.
I
realized suddenly that this was selfish on my part. Not that I would refuse
God’s gifts if he decided to do something amazing among us. But to want it in
that way was rooted in a selfish desire. I wanted to experience something out
of the ordinary, something supernatural.
In
contrast, the LORD led me to think of Ezekiel 36:26-27, which reads, “I will give you a new heart and a put a new
spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart
of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and
be careful to keep my laws.”
Do you
see what I see? God wants to put his Spirit in you so that you can see better
what his heart and person are like. He wants us to choose obedience to be like
him, to follow in his ways. The flashy stuff is cool – speaking in tongues or
having an ecstatic experience – but it is only for a moment. God wants a long
obedience in the same direction.
One
fellow put it this way. It’s awesome to pour gasoline over a pile of wood and
watch it go whoosh. But put gasoline in a fuel-efficient car and it will travel
for near 800 km.
Why do
you need the Holy Spirit? He is the person of God given to you so that you can
recognize God in the every day. He reveals the hand of Jesus in your life so
that you might know him better.
Has the
Spirit been poured out on you?
AMEN
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