A sermon on Joel 2:28-32 by Dwight A. Moody, preached for Calvary Baptist Church, July 26, 2015
In those days, says the Lord, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams and your young men will see visions. I will pour out my spirit even on your servants, both male and female. And in that day, I will show signs in the heavens and wonders on the earth. The sun will become dark and the moon will turn to blood. And on that great and terrible day of the Lord, whoever shall call upon the Lord shall be saved. Joel 2:28-32
This text is a creative mash-up, mixing astronomical fantasies with earthly realities. This type of poetry is used when the earthly realities are so marvelous ordinary language does not suffice. When something so wonderful happens that ringing the church bells is too weak; that a mile long parade is too thin, that a sky full of fireworks is insufficient to celebrate what God is doing in the world. Sometimes we sing these words:” what a morning, when the stars begin to fall.” Sometimes we read these words: “In that day the sun will turn black and the moon will turn red, but whoever calls upon the Lord will be saved.”
The day of the Lord is the day of spectacular display in the skies and wonderful events on the earth. Signs in the heavens, Joel wrote, and wonders on the earth. It is these” wonders on the earth” that I wish to find and describe and present to you today.
Joel is very clear about one wonder: human speech. He says God is ready to pour out his spirit on all people so that all people may give testimony, may give a witness, may tell the story of Jesus.
It was then and is now the tendency of religious leaders to keep that juice of the spirit in a small cup. They didn’t need much, because they only poured it out on prophets, on priests, on kings. Just a few people. So they needed only a small jar of it. But God wants to take that jar and stretch it, deep and wide, deep enough to hold all the oceans, and wide enough to hide the heavens. And God wants to tip this cosmic jar of spirit, sacred spirit, and pour it over all of us. On you and me. On the men and the women. On the young and the old. Even on the servants, Joel says; the workers, that sweep the streets of Jakarta and service the cars of Santiago, that empty the trash in Tucson and drive the bus in Boston. God wants to give you the voice to speak a word of the gospel.
We do that at our festivals. In January 200 young preachers will come to preach. Orthodox, Pentecostal, Evangelical, Protestant, Roman Catholic. Male and Female. Black and white and every color in between. From age 13 to age 35. It is the most ecumenical event in American Christianity. It is Pentecost. It is the outpouring of the spirit of God. It is help for the church and hope for the whole human race. It is 200 young spirit filled people standing one by one and telling some part of the story of Jesus.
It is a reminder of the power of human speech. It is a great wonder on the earth. I experienced just that wonder of the world. My wife and I just took our first trip to Italy. We arrived on Friday. Saturday evening the four of went on a bike tour of Rome. Sunday came and we caught a taxi to Vatican square. A clear sky, a warm sun. a million people it seemed. At least 25,000 or 50,000. We waited for an hour, shoulder to shoulder, in the sun, with nowhere to sit or nothing to eat. Why. To hear a man speak in a language we could not understand from a small sixth floor balcony. Baptists used to call him the antichrist; but now in our language we would say he is pastor of the church in Rome. His name is Francis. And when he speaks, the world listens. I could not understand a single word. Again, like Pentecost. But I marveled at this wonder of the world, the power of the human voice, to inspire, to lift, to declare, to announce the good news of God.
But there is another wonder on the earth that demands our attention. What happened when Simon Peter stood up to preach? He took this very text to explain the commotion in Jerusalem. This enthusiasm, these testimonies, this pull in your own spirit that is not psychology, not drug induced hallucinations; not even political frenzy. It is the spirit of the living God.
Simon Peter told the gospel story. God sent Jesus. Jesus did mighty deeds among us. Evil men killed Jesus. God raised Jesus from the dead. There it is: 19 words. Here is another version: “In Jesus, God was reconciling the world to God.” 9 words. Here is another version,” While we were sinners, Christ died for us.” 8 words. Can I shrink it any smaller? Do you need it reduced further? Or is that sufficient? Is that enough to believe, to rejoice, to do the job?
The people asked, “what must we do?” And Simon Peter the lead speaker said: “Change your ways, trust in God, open to the spirit of God, be forgiven and filled and be facing a new way to life.” Three thousand of them were baptized that day. Walked right down to Gihon spring; to the pool of Bethesda; to the pool of Siloam; to any open stretch of that Herodian aqueduct that snakes its way to Jerusalem from south of Bethlehem, even down to the Wadi Kidron. They found water, enough to get wet in a great wondrous testimony of the converting, saving, redirecting, energizing, lifting, loving power of God.
Do you remember your baptism? Are you ready for baptism today? Three weeks ago I witnessed a baptism. I was with my family at Green Lake Conference Center. One of the teachers there is also a professor at Asbury Seminary and a Methodist pastor. His nine year old son came to him confessing faith in Jesus Christ and desiring to live for Christ. After dinner we gathered in the sand by the lank. We sang a song. Someone read from the Bible. Another person spoke about following Jesus. Then the father and his son waded out into the lake. There, the baptizer asked the young follower of Jesus: do you renounce evil ways? Do you pledge to live for Christ? Do you trust Jesus as your savior? Then he dipped that boy all the way under the waters of Green Lake. We all clapped, and when they waded ashore, we gathered round, laid hands on him, and gave thanks to God.
Here is the good news: any time the gospel is preached, somebody will believe it. Any time there is a witness to God in Jesus, somebody will stand up and say, I believe. Any time somebody stands and tells the story of Jesus, somebody is going to start singing some versions of America’s song: “Once I was lost but now I am found. I was blind but now I see.” That is why we preach, because of the truth of that old gospel song, but old enough for me. Verse three: “Down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter, feelings lie buried that grace can restore. Touched by a loving heart, wakened by kindness, cords that are broken will vibrate once more.” You know the chorus, “Rescue the perishing. Care for the dying. Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.”
This very week, this very day, thousands of people who know those two songs are gathered in South Africa for the Baptist World Alliance. They are believers from all over the world: red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in God’s sight. Some of them are there because 200 years ago this year, Adoniram Judson, recent graduate of Williams College, invested his life in the gospel story. In 1815 he boarded a ship and sailed for Burma; it is now called Myanmar. He was the first to go and declare the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ, to give his version of this great gospel story. God sent Jesus. Jesus did Mighty deeds among us. Evil men killed him. But God raised him from the dead.
While he was traveling to Burma, his friend and colleague Luther Rice, also a student at Williams, took his own journey, to what was then called the West. They meant over the mountains into Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Luther Rice came preaching, to Kentucky and to Lexington and to Georgetown. He was stirring up interest in the support of Adoniram Judson but he was also calling out others to preach the gospel and believe the gospel. And some Burmese people believed the story; he baptized them; taught them; and then the most amazing thing happened, the most wondrous of the wonders on the earth happened: they started to live like Jesus.
Yes, preaching Jesus is good, and I believe God is calling today some person to take up the work of preaching Jesus. Yes, believing the gospel is better, and I know that within the sound of my voice today, somebody is believing in Jesus as savior and lord for the first time. But the best of all, is living like Jesus. “Come follow me,” Jesus says to you today; and to me.
The book of Acts chapter two describes what happened to those first Christians. They performed signs and wonders. They were together in one accord and held all things in common. They sold property and helped the poor. They gathered in large spaces and in small spaces, to eat and pray and to learn the story of Jesus. The Bible says they did it with gladness, praising God and having favor with all the people. Joel squinted down the celestial spiral of time and caught a glimpse of the future God has promised. He saw the greatest wonder on the earth: a multitude of people sharing, praying, giving, forgiving, praising, and turning away from the way of the world to walk in the way of Jesus. They were living out the words of the prayer Jesus taught us to pray: surrender to God. Embrace the will of God. Trust God for food and needs. Confess to God. Forgive everyone. Resist temptation. Avoid evil.
You know where we saw this happen recently: down in Charleston SC. A surprising wonder on the earth was caught on camera among the same AME people. The AME: African Methodist Episcopal: the first church by blacks and for blacks in America. It was founded by Richard Allen, the same freed slave that first published that song sung by Blake, “My lord what a morning.”
My lord, what an evening! An evil man came into a Wednesday night church prayer meeting. I have been to a few of those, haven’t you? Simple, honest, genuine: people sitting around singing a gospel song, reading from the Bible, offering a word of praise or concern. Kneeling in prayer. You know what a Wednesday night prayer meeting is. They have fallen into disfavor among some these day. But not in Emanuel AME church in Charleston SC. For there, in the fury of racism and fire of rage, their life in Christ was tested. They had heard the story; they had believed the story; now they were called upon the live the story.
What did we see? Hospitality. Friendship. Prayer. Suffering. Death. Sounds like Jesus, doesn’t it? That young man Dylan had an evil intent. He wanted to spark a race riot. H wanted to launch a day of judgment against black folk in that famous AME church. He meant it for evil. But…..There is that word again. That word is the gospel fulcrum upon which turn the purposes of God in the world. He meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. You recognize those as the words Joseph said to his brothers long after they sold him into Egyptian slavery.
People mean things for evil; they will sell you property they know is bad; they will tempt you with pleasure they know is wrong; they will tell you a story they know is a lie. They mean it for evil, but God means it for good. In every bad or evil situation in your life, God wants to turn it into good. Isn’t this the story of Jesus? Evil men meant it for evil…..But God turns it into good. That is redemption. That is gospel. God is here today to turn any evil in your life into something good.
Down in Charleston, when the brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and mothers and fathers of those nine faithful souls took their place in a room with that killer, what did they say. I will tell you what they said. They remembered a story about Jesus they had learned at a Wednesday night prayer meeting. They recalled something said in a Sunday morning Bible study. Deep in their psyche was that narrative about Jesus, about his arrest, about his trial, about his crucifixion, about his last words. It was an unbelievable, impractical, unlivable story. But they learned it, and memorized it, and hid in their hearts the words of Jesus, hid them in their memory for a day they could not imagine, a day that finally dawned down in Charleston, South Carolina.
And then when the day came, the day of the Lord we might call it, when the spirit was poured out on all flesh and the sun turned to black and the moon turned to red and the stars began to fall, they repeated to a listening world the words of Jesus, “Forgive him, for he did not know what he was doing.” For the first time, perhaps, they prayed the prayer Jesus gave us to pray: “Forgive us our sins when we do wrong, just as we forgive those who do us wrong.”
Of all the wonders on the earth, it is not the telling of the gospel, or the believing of the gospel, but the living of the gospel that is the greatest wonder of all. Today, come follow Jesus. Practice hospitality. Give a testimony. Read your Bible. Sell something and give it to the poor. Forgive somebody who done you wrong. Sing a song, maybe this song, “My Lord, what a morning.” Or maybe this song,
God of grace and God of glory on your people pour your power.
Crown the ancient church’s story, bring her bud to glorious flower.
Lo the hosts of evil round us scorn our Christ, assail his ways.
Fears and doubts too long have bound us, free our hearts to work and praise.
Set our feet on lofty places. Gird our lives that we may be armored with all Christ-like graces in the struggle to be free.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the facing of this hour.
Do you feel like singing? Take a hymnal if you need it. Turn to hymn 395. What is God calling you to do today? What are you calling upon God to do today? Today is the day of salvation.
