Well, good morning, church. Turn with me, if you have a Bible, to the book of Joel, chapter 2.
If you're in the sanctuary, the text will also be on the screens.
As Pastor Matt mentioned, Pastor Nick wasn't able to be here this morning,
but he wrote a great sermon, and so I'm going to preach it. Now, you might never have seen
this happen before. I happened to be at a church this summer where they were meeting in several
different locations, and the pastor would rotate around, and in the other locations, they were all
meeting in backyards, somebody else would read the pastor's sermon, and it was very edifying.
Or you can imagine yourself in the early church, and the Apostle Paul, who perhaps planted your church,
is under house arrest, and he can't come in person, but he writes a letter,
and someone stands up in the church and reads Paul's sermon to you, right? So this has happened
before in the history of the church. We're just going with it today. So, Joel 2, 28 to 32,
is our sermon text this morning. We've been going through the book of Joel, and we come here to a
great promise that Joel gave his people. Joel 2, beginning at verse 28.
And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your
daughters shall prophesy. Your old men shall dream dreams. Your young men shall see visions,
even on the male and female servants in those days. I will pour out my spirit, and I will show wonders
in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to
darkness and the moon to blood before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And it shall come
to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in
Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those
whom the Lord calls. Let's pray. God, we have heard your word. Now we humbly ask that by your spirit,
you would help us to understand it, and not just understand it, but to take it in and to live it out.
We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. One of the great longings of the human heart is for intimacy.
What is intimacy? Well, we might say it's knowing and being known. But it's not just being known,
it's also being welcomed, received, loved. That's intimacy. Knowing and being known, loving and being
loved. And it's one of the great desires or longings of our hearts. Now it's easy to see that on the
horizontal level in our human relationships. We long for friendship, or perhaps for marriage,
or perhaps for a deeper connection with our children, or with our parents. We long for intimacy,
but we also know this longing on the vertical plane toward God. The human heart was made for eternity,
for transcendence, for intimacy with God. Now how do we know that? Well, just think,
why is true satisfaction so hard to find? Even, and maybe especially when we're in the best of times,
surrounded by friends and success, why doesn't that satisfaction seem to last?
And why, despite many people's predictions that religion in the modern world would gradually fade,
and eventually become obsolete, why are religions and spiritualities flourishing and multiplying today,
like never before all across the globe? The human heart longs for intimacy with God.
Nothing else will satisfy, nothing else will do.
C.S. Lewis wrote a long time ago,
If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy,
the most probable explanation is that we were made for something more.
In fact, long before C.S. Lewis, Augustine wrote,
God, you have made us for yourself,
and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you.
But here's the heart of the matter.
Is intimacy with God possible?
Is it possible for my finite heart to touch eternity,
for my created being to have real intimacy with the creator of the universe?
Is that really possible?
Well, that's a question that Joel's audience might have been asking.
Remember, the message of Joel came to a people who had lost everything in a locust plague.
And after the call in the beginning of the book to lament and repent,
Joel begins in the middle of chapter 2 to bring a message of hope.
The message of hope began, as we saw last week,
with the promise of physical restoration.
Some of my favorite verses in the whole book are verses 24 and 25 of chapter 2.
The threshing floor shall be full of grain.
The vat shall overflow with wine and oil.
I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten.
I will restore to you the years that the locusts have devoured.
What a rich promise!
It's a promise that stretches through the entire Bible.
That God will undo the effects of sin on his creation
and make all things new, a new creation where death, dying, and decay are no more.
But Jesus once asked this question.
He said,
What does it profit to gain the whole world if you lose your soul?
What if you could have threshing floors full of grain
and vats overflowing with wine and oil, all the joys of this world?
What if you could have the new creation at your fingertips and not have God?
What good would that do?
What if we had all the gifts that this world can give but not the giver?
You know, any of us who have lost a parent or a spouse
or someone very close to us
would trade in a heartbeat every gift that person had ever given us
for one more day in their presence with them?
The giver is more important than all the gifts.
And how much more is that true of God?
So is it possible to have intimacy with God?
And if so, how do we get it?
That's the question Joel's audience may have been asking
and it's the question that we may be asking too.
And at the end of this chapter 2 of Joel, we see the answer.
Joel shows us first how intimacy with God is possible
and second how we can get it.
So first we'll look at how intimacy with God is possible.
Look at verses 28 and 29.
These verses tell us that intimacy with God is possible
because God has promised to pour out his spirit.
It shall come to pass afterward, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.
Even on the male and female servants in those days,
I will pour out my spirit.
Now the spirit of God in the Old Testament
is God's personal powerful presence.
And in the New Testament, we know that the Holy Spirit
is none other than the third person of the Trinity.
God himself.
Now these verses highlight three things about this gift of God's spirit.
It's lavish, it's universal, and it's fruitful.
Consider how lavish it is.
God says, I will pour out my spirit.
He says it at the beginning of verse 28 and at the end of verse 29.
It's not a trickle, it's not a drop,
it's a lavish pouring out of the spirit.
A few years ago, I was at a water park with my family,
and at one spot near the splash pad,
they had this giant bucket suspended in the air.
And water would slowly pour into the bucket
until it got so full that it would suddenly tip over
and deluge all the kids standing underneath.
And it would happen again and again and again.
That's the image here.
God's spirit poured out, nothing held in reserve.
Not just once, but on an ongoing, overflowing basis.
You know, in the Old Testament,
the spirit of God would come and go on certain people.
But Joel looks forward to a day
when the spirit would be a lavish, permanent presence.
Nothing held back.
But it won't just be lavish, it will be universal.
That is for all kinds of people.
I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.
On young and old, Joel says.
On male and female.
On the upper class,
all the way down to the male and female servants.
The spirit will come and make intimacy with God possible.
For everyone.
For all kinds of people without exception.
Age won't be a barrier.
Gender won't be a barrier.
Social status won't be a barrier.
Now back in chapter 1,
when Joel was talking about the locust plague,
everyone was affected by the devastation.
Young and old.
Male and female.
Priests and farmers.
But now we see that intimacy with God will come.
For all of those groups of people.
As the great Christmas hymn puts it,
he has come to make his blessings known
as far as the curse is found.
But it's not just lavish and universal, it's fruitful.
Verse 28 says,
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.
Your old men shall dream dreams.
Your young men shall see visions.
When the spirit is poured out,
it's going to make a difference.
And Joel talks about the effect of the spirit's fullness
in terms of prophecy.
Now on the one hand,
we know from the New Testament
that the indwelling spirit of God
is given,
gives a variety of gifts
to believers to build up the church.
To help and serve and love one another.
And these gifts are given freely,
without distinction,
so we can build one another up in love.
You can read more about that in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14.
But to Joel's audience,
they would have heard something even more than that
in this promise.
You see, in the Old Testament,
to prophesy or to be a prophet
was to be someone who had received the word of God
in a special and powerful way,
to have the knowledge of God wash over you
so powerfully and so specifically
that you had to share it with others.
You couldn't hold it to yourself.
In the Old Testament,
God would sometimes communicate to prophets
through dreams or visions,
as verse 28 mentions,
or sometimes just by speaking to them.
But the point is that to prophesy
was to know God and God's word intimately
and to be an instrument of sharing that word with others.
So when Joel says,
the spirit will be poured out
and everyone will prophesy,
yes, he means we'll have gifts to serve one another,
but deeper down,
he means that intimacy with God,
knowing and being known,
loving and being loved
by the creator of the universe himself,
will not be the privileged possession
of a select few,
but intimacy with God and his word
will flow like a river
over all the people of God,
young and old,
rich and poor,
male and female.
What Joel sees here
is the fulfillment of Moses' longing
in Exodus or Numbers 11.
Moses said,
I wish that all the Lord's people
were prophets,
that the Lord would put his spirit on them.
Jeremiah spoke of a similar thing
in Jeremiah 31
when God said,
I'm going to make a new covenant
with my people.
He says,
I'll put my law within them
and I'll write it on their hearts
and I will be their God
and they shall be my people.
And no longer shall each one
teach his neighbor
and each his brother saying,
know the Lord,
for they shall all know me.
From the least of them
to the greatest,
declares the Lord.
Intimacy with God is possible
according to Joel
because God has promised
to pour out his spirit.
And you know,
that's one of the things
that makes Christianity
or biblical spirituality
different from other religions.
You know,
most other spiritual approaches
will give you a program to follow
in order to break through
to intimacy with God.
But the Bible turns all of that
on its head.
According to the Bible,
God breaks through to us.
He forges the intimacy.
He pours out his spirit.
And doesn't that make sense
when you think about it?
You know,
intimacy is not something
that can be forced.
If I'm trying to get to know
another person,
they have to open up
for a real friendship
to develop.
They have to pour out
their spirit as it were.
And if that's true
with one another,
how much more is that true
when we approach
an infinite,
holy,
and perfect God?
We can't create,
we can't break through
to intimacy with this God.
God must break through
to intimacy with us.
There's no other way.
Maybe one of the reasons
if you found intimacy with God
to be fleeting
or hard to come by,
perhaps you've been looking
in the wrong place.
Perhaps you've been
peeking through the back window
trying to get a glimpse
when God has flung open
the front door
and said,
come inside.
But here's the good news.
What in Joel's day
was a future promise,
Joel said afterwards,
Joel was looking forward
to a point in the future
when this would happen.
For us,
it's a present reality.
And we heard earlier
from the reading
from Acts chapter 2
about the day of Pentecost.
One of the most significant
moments
in all of redemptive history,
in all of the biblical story.
You see,
on the day of Pentecost,
this was after Jesus
had died
and resurrected
from the grave
and ascended into heaven.
His followers
were gathered
in the upper room
and on that day,
God poured out
his spirit
on all flesh
just like
he had promised.
And on that day,
the new covenant age
of the risen Lord
and his spirit began
without reserve,
without distinction,
and fruitful
beyond imagination.
God has poured
out his spirit.
But that leads us
to our second point.
We've seen how intimacy
with God is possible
because God has poured
out his spirit,
but now we need to see
how do we get it?
Let me read again
the second half
of our text,
starting in verse 30.
God says,
And I will show wonders
in the heavens
and on the earth,
blood and fire
and columns of smoke.
The sun shall be turned
to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the great
and awesome day
of the Lord comes.
And it shall come to pass
that everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord
shall be saved.
For in Mount Zion
and in Jerusalem,
there shall be those
who escape,
as the Lord has said.
And among the survivors
shall be those
whom the Lord calls.
So how do we,
here,
right here and now,
how do we get
this intimacy with God
through his spirit?
Joel says,
Everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord
will be saved.
Now,
verses 30 and 31
use the figurative language
of a battle.
Blood,
fire,
smoke.
And the smoke
is rising so high
that in daytime
it blocks the sun
and at night
it makes the moon
look blood red.
This is battle language.
Language of turmoil
and conflict.
And what Joel is saying here
is that between
the outpouring of the spirit
on the one hand
and the great
and awesome day
of the Lord's return
on the other,
the in-between time
will be a time
of great upheaval.
And the in-between time
it's the time
we're living in now.
And if you look over
the last 2,000 years
of human history
since the day of Pentecost,
you have to agree.
There have been moments
of grandeur
and grace
and peace.
But human history
has also been full
of upheaval,
conflict,
turmoil.
And all this distress
reminds us
that our world
is still broken.
things aren't
how they're supposed
to be.
We're not
how we're supposed
to be.
And if God
were to return
in his holiness,
if he were to
simply show up,
the sinful world
would collapse
under the weight
of his glory.
But in the midst
of this upheaval
and distress,
something else
is happening.
Amidst the sounds
of battle,
another sound
is going forth.
another voice
is ringing out
through the tumult
of human history
and it's the voice
of the Lord
calling.
That's how verse 32
ends,
with the reality
of the Lord's call.
And that sovereign
call of God
is drawing forth
a response
in human hearts.
The Lord's call
goes out
and the human
response calls
back.
And in that
call and response,
this promise
unfurls.
Like a banner
of hope
over the chaos,
everyone
who calls
on the name
of the Lord
will be saved.
Now you might ask,
well,
saved from what?
It's a good question.
We're not saved
from the tumult
and upheaval
and conflict
of human history.
What we are
saved from
is permanent
alienation
from God.
You see,
that's the very
opposite of intimacy
with God,
is alienation
permanently
from God.
In Matthew 25,
Jesus says
that to be
permanently
alienated
from God
is like
being forever
excluded
from the feast.
Like being
lost
in perpetual
darkness.
Even like
disintegrating
in a fire.
And if you've
ever been
alienated
from a loved
one,
you know
a little
of what
that
disintegrating
fire
feels like.
what if
the trajectory
of your
life
apart
from God
continues
for
eternity?
What if
when the
curtain
of your
life
drops
and the
play
is over
and the
drama
ends,
what if
you find
yourself
in darkness
outside
the feast,
not in
intimacy
with God
but alienated
from
God?
Is there
any way
to be
saved
from that?
Is there
any way
to get
the intimacy
that God's
spirit
makes
possible?
Well the
good news
according to
Joel is
yes,
everyone
who calls
on the
name of
the Lord
will be
saved.
Now you
might also
ask,
what does
it mean
to call
on the
name of
the Lord?
And that's
a good
question too.
In the
Old Testament
to call
on the
name of
the Lord
is an
expression
that basically
means to
worship the
Lord
exclusively.
To shift
the allegiance
of your
life from
any other
God to
the Lord
and to
the Lord
alone.
In the
New Testament
this is
called
faith.
Trusting
or resting
the weight
of your
life
no longer
on yourself
but on
the Lord.
And that
raises another
question.
Why is
calling on
the name
of the
Lord the
way to
get intimacy
with God?
Why isn't
it those
who are
smart enough
can find
intimacy with
God or
those who
are good
enough or
enlightened
enough or
kind enough
can find
this intimacy
with God?
Well the
reality is
you can
never be
enough.
the chasm
of sin
between us
and God
is too
great for
us to
bridge.
That's an
unpopular
thing to
say.
But maybe
the reason
that we
try to
keep telling
ourselves
over and
over
I'm enough
is that
deep down
we know
that we're
really not
enough.
But here's
the good
news.
There's
one who
is enough
and he
loves you.
When sin
separated us
from God
Jesus took
our sin
and he
bore that
separation
on the
cross in
your place
in my
place
and he
rose again
so we
could call
on his
name
and be
saved.
You see
we get
intimacy
with God
not through
what we've
accomplished
but through
what Christ
has accomplished.
It's
grace.
Something
has been
done for
you.
The Lord
Jesus has
come and
lived and
died and
rose again
for you
so you can
call on his
name and
rest your
life in him
and be
saved now
and for
all eternity.
And if
you get
that,
if you get
that it's
all of
grace and
we can't
accomplish
it in
our own
name but
we can
receive it
in his
name,
then the
intimacy with
God will
come.
Because the
spirit who
is poured
out at
Pentecost will
begin to
wash over
you too.
And God
will include
us in
his people,
this new
Jerusalem,
this new
Zion,
those as
Joel says,
those whom
the Lord
calls.
I wonder
do you sense
that even
now or have
you sensed
that?
The Lord's
call?
In Acts,
when Peter
preached this
very text,
he read these
very words on
the day of
Pentecost,
it says the
people were
cut to the
heart.
Have you
felt a tug
on your
heart?
On the one
hand,
it's a voice
that may seem
strange and
other because
it's not your
own voice.
And at the
same time,
it's familiar
and true.
And it's
saying,
come.
And do you
sense your
own heart
responding with
a yes to
the voice
of God?
If you've
experienced that,
if you're
experiencing that
now, you're
experiencing the
power of the
Holy Spirit and
the effective
call of God,
liberating you
to call on
Jesus and
be saved.
So do just
that.
Call on the
name of Jesus,
take him as
your Lord,
the only
Lord.
And then go
public, talk
to a friend or
talk to one of
the pastors about
making your
faith public by
getting baptized.
And if this is
true of you
already, if
you've already
heard and
responded to
that call of
God, if you've
called on the
name of the
Lord, continue
to make your
profession known.
Continue to
enjoy the
intimacy that
you have in
the Spirit of
God, through
prayer, through
fellowship with
other believers,
through serving
with the Spirit's
gifts, through
loving your
neighbor, through
sharing this
good news of
Jesus with
others, all of
those are ways
that the
indwelling Spirit
of God works
in us and
through us.
And as we
keep in step
with the Spirit
who's been
poured out, this
intimacy will
continue through
joys and sorrows
until one day we
will see him
face to face, the
Lord, on whose
name we have
called.
And when the
great and awesome
day of the Lord
comes, our faith
will become sight
and our intimacy
with God will
have no end.
Let's pray.
Father, thank you
for this promise
that you gave to
your people long
ago through the
prophet Joel.
Thank you for
fulfilling that
promise by sending
your Spirit on
the day of
Pentecost to
seal the work
that Jesus has
done to our
hearts, to
fill us with
that fountain
of living water,
of overflowing
life.
We pray that we
would be
refreshed by
the power of
your Holy Spirit
this morning.
We pray that we
would live in the
power of your
Spirit day by day.
We pray that we
would call on you
and know your
promise that those
who call upon your
name will be
saved, that you
have rescued us
and you will
continue to abide
with us.
Pray all these
things in Jesus'
name.
Amen.