Sermon

May 11, 2008
Pentecost
Joel 2:28-29
Pastor Joel Zank

God Pours Out His Spirit!

(Joel 2:28-29) Afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. {29} Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.

In Christ Jesus who keeps his promise and sends us his Spirit, dear fellow redeemed,

Just before he ascended into heaven, Jesus promised the church, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses...to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).  With this promise Jesus was announcing both the occasion of and the purpose for Pentecost, the high festival we celebrate today – an occasion that would be marked by the coming of God’s Spirit for the express purpose of making Christ’s disciples willing and able witnesses of all that he has done to save the whole world from sin.

Did you catch that? The coming of the Holy Spirit with power would make the disciples a band of witnesses rather than a bunch of reporters. What’s the difference? Everything! A reporter has no personal relationship to the facts with which he’s working. He couldn’t be objective if he did. A witness, on the other hand, must have personal experience with the truth. A witness can’t say, “Oh, I only heard about the accident from someone else; I’m not really sure what happened.” No, a witness has to have been there to see and experience the whole thing for him or herself.

I mention this because Jesus calls upon all of us to be his witnesses. So if we’re going to serve him in this way, it means we must all have personal experience with the truth to which he wants us to testify. But how will this happen? It will happen for us in the same way that it did for Peter, James and John. God poured out his Spirit on those first disciples and he didn’t stop with them. The words of the Prophet Joel assure us that the Pentecost miracle continues; to this day God Pours Out His Spirit 1) on all his people, 2) on behalf of all people.

To truly appreciate the astounding prophecy in our text, you need to remember how God chose to reveal himself and his Word to his Old Testament people. In the Scripture before us, God tells the people of Joel’s day that a time would be coming when God would give out his Holy Spirit in a measure and to a degree never before seen in the church. Now understand that God’s Spirit was no stranger to those Old Testament believers. Then as now it was the Spirit who created and kept faith alive in every believing heart. But in Old Testament times, it was only to a select few that Spirit of God chose to reveal his saving plans and purposes.

For example, when God wanted Israel to know that the Savior would be born of a virgin, he told only one man - Isaiah. Likewise, it was only to Micah that God revealed the news that Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Of course, it was God’s plan that these men should in turn tell his news to the nations, but God did not come to everyone in dreams and visions; no only to a chosen few. God’s people understood and even expected this. So much so that when God veered from the norm in the days of Moses, giving his Spirit to seventy of Israel’s elders all at once, the people didn’t know what to make of it. In fact, when two of those elders began to prophesy, the people begged for them to stop, insisting that only Moses should speak for God. But listen to what Moses told them: “Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets and the LORD would put his Spirit on them!” (Numbers 11:29).

Quite a wish! Guess what? Today the Prophet Joel announces that Moses’ wish would come true! When? You heard him - “Afterward.” Joel is looking forward to a day after the coming of the promised Savior, a day when God would pour out his Spirit on all his people: men and women, boys and girls, young and old, regardless of race or social standing. From that on, all of God’s people would enjoy a special measure of God’s Spirit and with it, the Spirit’s revelation of the Lord’s saving plan.

As we heard in our Scripture lesson from Acts 2, Moses’ wish and Joel’s prophecy both came true fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection from the dead on Pentecost Sunday;  and just as important, they’ve kept coming true ever since. How can I be sure? We are living proof of this! I look at us and am reminded of what our lives would be like without the Spirit of God.

Do you realize that if God were not pouring out his Spirit on us and our children right now, we would be without Christ? We would be lost souls – hell-bound sinners and there is not one thing we could do about it. Without the Spirit of God in us not a thing we’re hearing today would matter or make any sense to us at all. The life Jesus lived in our place, the death he died as our Substitute, his victorious resurrection, guaranteeing our place in heaven–these would all be like hidden treasure to us, treasure we could never hope to find, not even if we lived a thousand years on earth, not even if it were buried right beneath our feet. But as it is, this treasure is ours – not because we stumbled upon it and dug it up. That could not be! No, this treasure is our because our gracious God brought this treasure to our hearts in the person of his Spirit. The Spirit revealed this treasure to us, all of us. “But wait a minute,” you say. “I’ve had no dreams or visions as Joel prophesied.” I haven’t either, but then again we need to realize that Joel was speaking in Old Testament terms. Dreams and visions were the way God communicated directly to his prophets of old who in turn spoke to the people. All that Joel means to say is that in these last days, God is cutting out the middle man and speaking directly to you and me. Well, if he’s not speaking to us by way of dreams and visions, how does he speak to us? The writer to the Hebrew answers our question in the opening words of his epistle where he writes: “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, {2} but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1-2a).

You and I do not need dreams and visions from God. We do not need others telling us their dreams and visions. We have something better. God speaks to us through the words and promises of his very own Son and it is through these words and promises that he pours out his Spirit upon us. Don’t you like that word “pours”? God isn’t some miser, dispensing his Spirit with an eyedropper. No, God pours out his Spirit on us in the waterfalls of Holy Baptism - that blessed flood in which Jesus’ promises to wash away a lifetime of our sins. And that’s just the beginning! Every time we hear, read and study the Word of Jesus, the Bible, the Spirit of God comes gushing out upon us in a torrential downpour of blessings, blessings that the prophets of old could not even have begun to imagine. Think of the knowledge we have from God compared to men like Moses and Micah, Isaiah and Jeremiah. The youngest children among us know things about Jesus that were completely hidden from those prophets’ eyes.

Do you still want dreams and visions? Then close your eyes and picture the promises our Jesus makes to you. Picture the power of his Word going out from this place and making saints out of sinners the world over. I know you can see it, for this is the vision that moves you to give your hard earned dollars as offerings for the spread of the gospel. Why? Because you can picture something else, a day in the not so distant future, a day on which you and your children, together with millions upon millions of others have come to place of absolute rest, where temptation no longer plagues us and sins no longer depress us. You can see heaven, all its peace, all its joy, and it’s all yours because Jesus says it is, because he has earned it for you and gives it to you free of charge.

Friends you are all witnesses of this saving truth – witnesses, not reporters who have merely acquired and acquainted themselves with certain facts – you know these things as witnesses because by God’s grace you have experienced his saving love in your life. You have experienced the power of his forgiveness removing the guilt of your sins. You have experienced the power of his healing in times of injury and illness. He has answered your prayers, sustained you through heartache, cheered you in your sorrow and has granted you more blessings than we have the time and ability to count.

You are witnesses who can testify to the truth of these words.  And that’s what witnesses do – right? They testify – they share what they know. They can’t help it! It’s happens to you all the time. You see something - something scary, something courageous, something ridiculous, something thrilling, something sad, something funny and what do you do? You tell others - it’s all you can talk about; you tell everyone you see, friends and strangers alike. You can’t help it. God knows this. He’s counting on it. This is why he’s made you his witnesses, telling us through the prophet Joel: “Afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy...” (Joel 2:28a).

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of reminding you that you are all priests of God. Given the sheer number of people who signed our “Friendship Register” with the letters P.O.G. following their name, I know the message got through.  Now today it’s my pleasure to tell you that you are not only God’s priests, you are also his prophets. The work of a prophet is two-fold, first the prophet receives a message from God and second, he speaks that message to others.

God pours out his Spirit on all his people not just to bless them, not just to bless you, but to make you a blessing to everyone else. God pours out his Spirit on behalf of all people because he wants all people to be saved through the knowledge of the truth he’s given you. You are God’s prophet.

But I thought prophets foretell the future. They do – but not just the future. They tell people everything God’s wants them to know about the past, present and future. You can do that - by the power of God’s Spirit. Now that doesn’t mean we are all going to take our place in a pulpit and preach to a congregation. No, we are all God’s prophets serving in the place that he has put us. You parents, you are God’s prophets in your home, put there to tell the next generation the saving truths of God. On this Mothers Day, I can’t help thinking of my own mother and how she served as God’s prophet, teaching me the words of the Lord’s Prayer as she ironed our clothes. Parents, we can do that, we can speak for God teaching our children to pray to him and to sing “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.”

We are God’s prophets in our home and also at work. We can point lost coworkers in the direction of Christ. When they wonder out loud why life seems so frustrating, so meaningless, we can empathize with them, admitting that it is only the love of Jesus that keeps us going. When our friends feel helpless, we can remind them that Jesus is with them, that he will never forsake them, that he will make all things serve their good. When our loved one is dying, we can foretell the bright future that awaits him in heaven. We can comfort those who mourn the death of a Christian with the news of wonderful reunion at Christ’s right hand when he comes again.

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