In one of Max Lucado’s books he tells a story of going antique shopping with his wife. It sounds a little bit like me. He doesn’t like it but he loves his wife so he lets her go. He says, “I sat down in an overstuffed rocker with a magazine when I hear piano music. Beautiful music. The hills were alive with the sound of someone’s skill at the keyboard. A small group of listeners had gathered at the old upright. Between the furniture I could the back of the pianist. Why it’s only a child! With a few more steps I could see that it was my Andrea. Our seven-year-old was at the piano, her hands racing up and down the keyboard. I was stunned. What gift of heaven is this that she can play in such a way? But as I drew closer I saw the real reason. Andrea was playing a player piano; she wasn’t making the music; she was following it. Though it appeared she was playing the song, she was only trying to keep up with one already written. It’s no wonder she rejoiced in it. She had every reason to. And so do we.
Hasn’t God promised the same to us? Won’t His Spirit empower us to play what we could not? Won’t He use us in ways that astound us as beyond our ability? Of course He will, if we only let Him. And just like little Andrea, we won’t receive any of the credit for the amazing work. In our case God will.
Let me preface this message by saying that the blessings that are promised today do not apply if you are not willing to put into practice what you learned about repentance last week. As I said, “We must be willing to come to God His way, not our way.”
The work of the Spirit in the day of the Lord will be unprecedented. It will result in a remarkable change in the lives of individuals and society itself. Yet, as we will see, God tells us too that these great and precious promises are ours as well.
1. Its Future Occurrence
These verses tell us something about this Day of the LORD. It is a day that is coming in which God in all His power will fulfill finally and forever His prophetic utterances in the Scripture. When the Messiah came 2000 years ago much biblical prophecy was fulfilled or completed. The life of Jesus fulfilled over 50 major Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah. Yet there was more to be accomplished. God was not finished in earth history. It wasn’t because He couldn’t finish what He started. He simply was waiting for the perfect time to complete them. The time for their fulfillment could begin today or might wait another thousand years. In either case God is completely in control of what is going on.
There are three aspects to the Day of the LORD’S future occurrence in these verses in Joel.
A. God’s awesome work of His Spirit (vv. 28-29)
The first aspect to its future occurrence that we notice is God’s awesome work of His Spirit. This is discussed in verses 28 & 29. “It will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days.”
The first question that we have to ask ourselves about God’s awesome work of His Spirit is when is Joel saying that this will take place? He says, “After this.” But when is “after this?” The context to this passage is formed from the previous verses. These verses describe a time in which Israel is once again restored to her land and God has once again come to dwell in her midst. So it will come about after this when Jesus returns and begins to rule over the world from His capital in Jerusalem.
When Jesus returns to rule, the Scripture says that He will put out from His kingdom all that causes sin and those who do evil. Everyone who enters that earthly kingdom at the beginning will be a believer in the Messiah.
And so we get a glimpse of God’s awesome work of His Spirit in these verses. Everyone will receive God’s Spirit. There will be no distinction between rich or poor; young or old; male or female. The amazing thing about this is that at the time of Joel’s prophecy the Spirit of God did not dwell in every believer in the nation of Israel. God’s Spirit came upon people in the nation of Israel for special tasks such as governing the nation or delivering the nation from their enemies. God’s Spirit came upon prophets so that He could proclaim His Word to the people. God’s Spirit acted as a guide for leadership and the recording of prophecy. But the indwelling work of the Spirit was not a permanent work in the Old Testament period.
Perhaps you can picture Joel as he receives this information from God. He is flabbergasted at what God says He is going to do because He is going to work in a completely different way from which He had in the past. And the Spirit’s role wasn’t going to be expanded just a little bit but it was going to become universal. Think about what kind of society that would produce where everyone was empowered to obey God through His Spirit. What a transformation would take place. It would truly be a utopia that no revolution or social reform or education could accomplish. At that point the Scripture would be fulfilled that said, “They all would be taught by God.” And what would they be taught? Obviously they would be taught to live by the power of God’s Spirit. They would be taught to live out the fruit of the Spirit that is love, joy peace patience kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. And the Scripture says that against these there is no law. What law would you need when everyone loves God and their neighbor as they ought to be? What a blessing such a time will be.
God loves to pour down His blessings upon His people. He desires to bless us according to His sovereign grace. And one day He will do so in unprecedented measure as He democratizes the outpouring of His Spirit.
B. God’s amazing display of judgment (vv. 30-31)
The second aspect of its future occurrence that we notice is God’s amazing display of judgment. This is found in verses 30 & 31. Here the LORD says, “I will display wonders in the sky and on earth, blood, fire and columns of smoke. The sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes.” Here Joel says that God in these last days will show His tremendous might against the realm of darkness. What will be happening in this time in history is that God is beginning to unleash all His power against Satan’s kingdom. As at no other time in history Satan will be ruling the earth through his puppet, Antichrist. And God will come to do battle against Satan in a manner not unlike how He handled Pharaoh and Egypt when He released His people from slavery thousands of years ago.
When God came to deliver the Jews from slavery in Egypt He started out slowly. He performed a few opening tricks to warm everyone up to His power. But they were so small that Satan could duplicate them through the magicians of Egypt. Then God began to turn up the heat. It came about by the third plague that the magicians declared that what was taking place was not some half rate magic show. They announced to Pharaoh that this was the very finger of God. By the fifth plague the magicians could no longer stand before Moses because of the increasing power of God. And finally God completely broke the power of the Egyptians not just by killing their firstborn but by drowning their entire army in the midst of the Red Sea.
The same is going to take place in the day of the LORD. God will begin with smaller plagues. In Paul’s 2nd letter to the Thessalonians he writes that Satan will deceive people through the working of miracles (perhaps even mimicking some of the plagues that God sends). But as God turns up the heat (literally) the Antichrist cannot keep up. His whole kingdom ends us gnashing their teeth in pain and, like Pharaoh, he is drawn into a military confrontation with the nation of Israel at which time His army will be annihilated and his power will be stripped away.
God will do this to show to the world that no one is like the LORD. No one, even those who stand together in hardening their hearts against God, will be able to overthrow His plans. God’s amazing power will be evident for all to see. He will not be performing little parlor tricks like Antichrist. His display will be the real thing. It will be cosmic in scope because Joel says it affects not only the earth but also sky and space. Though Satan has some limited power it is nothing in comparison to Him who is able to shake the world by His words. The Scripture says that Jesus shall destroy Antichrist with the breath of His mouth. His words shall defeat Satan and His hosts. This is God’s amazing display of His judgment.
C. God’s extraordinary operation of rescue (v. 32)
The third aspect of its future occurrence that we notice is God’s extraordinary operation of rescue. We find this in verse 32. Joel says, “And it will come about that whoever calls on the name of the LORD will be delivered; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be those who escape, as the LORD has said, even among the survivors whom the LORD calls.”
In this great day of judgment the nation of Israel is being attacked by a massive assault from Antichrist’s forces that are made up from every nation on earth. As the army begins to ransack the city of Jerusalem the Israelite people call out to the Messiah to save them. And in an instant He comes and delivers the nation even in the midst of their defeat. This is an extraordinary rescue operation because against the odds of anyone helping them God Himself intervenes in the matter and all who call upon Him are delivered. Even Joel’s language here expresses the surprise of the deliverance. “And in Jerusalem,” he says, “there will be those who escape.” Even though Jerusalem is in the midst of being turned upside down Christ will swoop in and rescue those who call upon Him. And the rescue isn’t for just a few of the individuals there. Because the Scripture says everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be delivered. In the recognition of their need for deliverance they will call upon the only one who can save them and He does.
In the time of their need the Jews will understand they need the Messiah. An event in the Israeli Yom Kippur War in 73 showed this very effect. The Egyptians and Syrians had taken the Israelis completely by surprise. Some Israeli units were at their deployment areas for 24 hours without weapons. A few Arab soldiers could have wiped them out. Then when Israel’s enemies were almost ready to have complete victory they stopped dead in their tracks. Hour after hour they did not progress and to this day no one knows why. No orders were given to stop and they could have been having tea in Tiberias by early evening. Though in the 67 war the Jews were overconfident thinking that their ability to fight saved them now they recognized that only God had saved them. And in their humility they began to seek after the Lord. One Christian Jew who served in the Israeli Defense Force saw that over 40% of the soldiers began reading Bibles. He found men, who before the war were opposed to the Gospel, were now reading his Bible while he was on duty. A supply of Bibles from home that he distributed was quickly gone. He encouraged the men to leave their Bibles in their tents so that their fellow soldiers could read them. Though a few came to know Jesus as the Messiah the fervor soon faded. However, in the future, during the Day of the LORD, the Jews will truly recognize their need for the Messiah and call out to Him. And He will deliver them. This is what Joel is saying.
2. Its Present Implications (Acts 2)
These wondrous aspects of the Day of the LORD will be unparalleled in history. But the question that we must ask ourselves is do they have any significance for us. And so we come secondly to its present implications. To recognize that this Joel passage has present implications we need to go to Acts 2. In Acts 2, the Spirit of God has just fallen upon the 12 apostles. It is the beginning of the church as described in Scripture. The apostles were sitting in an upper room and a mighty rushing wind filled the room in which they were sitting. What looked like tongues of fire appeared on each of the apostles and they were filled with the Holy Spirit of God. This pneumatic outpouring ushered the apostles into the church age. Because of the associated noise of the event a great number of Jews, perhaps upwards of several thousand, came flocking to this place. The apostles came out of the room in which they were staying and begin to praise God for this outpouring of the Spirit. And all the people who were there heard the apostles speaking in their own native languages. And what appears to be happening here (because there are more languages listed in the passage than there are apostles) is that God is translating whatever the apostles are saying into everyone’s native tongue simultaneously as they speak.
It is so confusing, or perhaps convicting, to those listening that some begin to mock what is going on as attributable to drunkenness on the part of the apostles. Peter brushes these charges off as ludicrous saying, perhaps tongue in cheek, that they couldn’t possibly have gotten drunk because it was only 9 AM and the Jews didn’t normally begin their festivities that early. So as he moves on from addressing the false charge of drunkenness he now tells the crowd what is really happening. And in verse 16 he says, “This is what was spoken through the prophet Joel.” Notice now He changes the prophet’s words slightly so that they fit into the context of his sermon. “And it shall be in the last days that I will pour forth my Spirit on all mankind.” As Peter begins to relate this passage in Joel to the people there are three truths that become clear are directly applicable to us today.
A. The Spirit is available
The first truth that is clear is directly applicable to us today is that the Spirit is available. In essence, Peter is saying, “If God is going to pour out His Spirit upon us in the Day of the LORD is it so strange that He would do it for us now in preparation for that time?” The unmistakable relevance to our time is that there is transforming power through God’s Spirit. We can see this fact by noting that the apostles are changed people. First they go from being denying people to being declaring people. Peter, who was afraid of telling a young servant girl that he was a follower of Jesus during His crucifixion, is now boldly proclaiming Christ’s death and resurrection in front of several thousand people. He was even doing this in front of people, who fifty days before, were calling for Jesus to be crucified. You cannot say that the Holy Spirit of God didn’t transform these 12, who to a man had feared their arrest and punishment for being His followers. The Spirit of God turned Peter and the others into new people.
The same can be true for us. You see the Scripture says that God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind. These men had received power when the Holy Spirit came upon them. We too can have that same power. Do you doubt it? Do you doubt that you too can be as bold as Peter was on that day of Pentecost? Why do you doubt God’s Word when it has so many great and precious promises for us to live for Him? If you have a spirit of fear, or cowardice (this isn’t the word for having reverence or respect or avoiding that which we shouldn’t do – if you have a spirit of cowardice and phobia) it is not from God’s Spirit.
How come we are not advancing the kingdom of God like these early apostles did? It is because we are listening to the wisdom of the day instead of following the leading of God’s Holy Spirit. We are following the world’s advice that says you really need to win someone’s respect before you share the Gospel with them. We are following the world’s advice that says everyone has a right to their own opinion and we shouldn’t bother them with ours. Or when we do try to share the Gospel with someone we step all over our tongue because we are doing it in our own power instead of following the leading of the Spirit. The Scripture makes it clear that we should be praying for opportunities and boldness to share the Gospel with people.
God will transform us too if we merely seek to be led by Him each day instead of following our own direction and wisdom. It may sound strange but is it really? To start our day placing control of it into the hands of the One who wants to guide and direct us?
I can remember one day, while in a family dollar store, I had the distinct impression from the Lord to speak to the cashier about Him. I was about 20 feet from the cashier line and I remember standing there, arguing with the Lord about why I couldn’t do it. Well the Lord had the last word in it and I noticed that no one was waiting in line so as I checked out my items I asked the woman, “Do you know if you were to die today if you would go to heaven?” She looked at me and said, “No, but I’ve been thinking about it.” Then she told me how her niece had been speaking to her about the Lord. So I was able to tell her about Christ. Was that a coincidence? Or was it divinely ordained through God’s Holy Spirit? We need not have a spirit of cowardice but only to seek to be used by God’s Holy Spirit and He will direct us for His glory.
It has nothing to do with a program or technology. It has nothing to do with learning the latest witnessing technique. Though there is nothing wrong with programs or technology or techniques these are not what will transform our lives. We continue to look for the right program and the right seminar but if our faith is in them they will not help us. The apostles had no program, no seminar, no self-help books. They merely had the Spirit of God. And with the Spirit of God they were able to impact an entire world within 30 years.
God has given His church an outpouring of His Holy Spirit. Why are we not allowing Him to work in our midst? Will you let yourself be lulled into a spiritual stupor by not recognizing your desperate need for the Spirit to operate in every aspect of your life? God’s Spirit transformed the people in the early church and He wants to transform us if we will let Him.
B. God is able
The second truth that is clear from this passage that is directly applicable to our lives is that God is able. In other words, He is still the strongest. God continues to show His power day by day. Though it might not be in the same vein as what He describes in verses 30 & 31 where He displays His wonders in the sky and on the earth yet God’s power is still evident. In the battle against the kingdom of Satan God is still the victor. “Greater is He who is in you than He who is in the world,” says John in his first letter. God is able. We do not have to fear that we are on the wrong side. Read the end of the book and we can see are the victors!
What implications does this have for the way I live today? It means that no matter which way the tide of evil is going I do not need to be swept out with it. When I am asked to cheat at work to make everything look legal I don’t have to submit to that for God is able to overcome in the situation even if I am fired and made to look like the bad guy. It means that I don’t have to submit to the peer-pressure of my friends when they want me to do wrong. I don’t have to succumb to the sexual advances of my coworker because God is able to equip me to do right.
When I used to play a certain role-playing game as a young person I would always seek to befriend those who were most powerful and I would change alliances if I saw that one individual was becoming too strong for me. I did that because I saw no right or wrong, no higher standard nothing to guide what direction I took. I changed faces like clothing. But we don’t have to do that. For there is a Sovereign, all powerful, ever-present God who has determined right and wrong and though it might seem as dark as midnight around you, you can still stand firm in doing right because God is able to hold you up and make you stand. And He is the ultimate victor.
C. Salvation is accessible
Finally, the third truth that Peter expresses in quoting the Joel passage as being applicable to our lives today is that salvation is accessible. Joel 2:32 says, “And it will come about that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered (saved).” Salvation is accessible to every person. Now that Jesus Christ has died for our sins and risen again the Bible says that whoever will call out to Christ for salvation will be forgiven of their sin and receive eternal life.
Perhaps you may ask, “How can it be so easy? Why would God just wipe away my sin as a window washer wipes away a streak from a window?” The answer is if it weren’t so easy, it would be impossible. And in looking at what God did to allow this forgiveness to those who call on Him we wouldn’t say what God did was all that easy.
You see God’s standard for entrance into heaven is complete perfection. That is, 100%, no errors, completely good all the time, without a wrong thought or wrong word or wrong deed. Can any of us meet that? Of course not that is why if God didn’t forgive our sin apart from our effort it would be impossible. There is no way we could ever make up for our sin. God is not a God of community service. He doesn’t sentence us to do stuff to balance the scale against our sin. We can’t measure up to His standard.
This is why He came Himself to accomplish and fulfill His standard. This is why He died on the cross to pay for your sin and mine so that whoever will recognize that they fail to measure up to God’s standard and call upon Him will be saved. It is freely available to us because God did everything needed to bring us into a relationship with Him. Salvation is accessible to everyone who will call upon Him. If you have never called out to Jesus Christ to save you will you do that today? Will you do that right now? God wants to forgive your sin and make you completely righteous in His sight. Will you humble yourself and ask Him to deliver you from your sins and give you the righteousness of Jesus Christ. If you understand your need of a Savior will you call out today?
Jeremy Bentham, the champion of Utilitarianism, died in 1832. He willed his estate to the University College Hospital in London, on one bizarre condition. He required that his dead body be dissected and then his skeleton reassembled, preserved and clothed so that he could “attend” all subsequent board meetings of the hospital. To this day, dressed in his nineteenth-century attire, Jeremy Bentham is wheeled into the hospital’s board meetings and the chairman pronounces, “Jeremy Bentham, present but not voting.”
Too many of us as Christians have the experience of Jeremy Bentham far too often. We are present but not voting. The Spirit of God is not working in our lives either because we quench His presence by our refusal to listen to His direction for us or because we simply neglect to take advantage of the awesome life changing power of the Spirit of God. We go along in life present but not voting not making a great impact for Christ because we are so preoccupied about self instead of living in the power of the Spirit.
Joel has told us that an awesome work of the Spirit is going to take place in the future and Peter has assured us that He has already begun to work in the lives of those who will receive it. Even Jesus in Luke 11:13 spoke of the availability of the Spirit when He said, “If you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”
Don’t you believe for a moment that God’s gracious provision of His Holy Spirit is for only certain special people. It is for all His people. And God’s Spirit wants to work in you in amazing ways to show His greatness to others. Stop doubting and start believing and start asking for God to do great things through you for the advancement of His kingdom and for His glory. Why should you live in spiritual mediocrity any longer? Get ready to live the way that God intended.
Be warned that God is going to take you up on your offer. So be prepared to obey Him and submit to Him. And don’t tell Him that you want to give Him all of yourself if you are not willing to hand it over to Him. He won’t work in a half-surrendered body. So I leave the choice with you:
Present but not voting or Filled with His Spirit and really living!