St. Luke’s Evangelical Lutheran Church -- Watertown, WI
Pastor Mark Gartner
Sermon for Pentecost -- May 12^th and 15^th, 2005

Dear children of God,

Pastor Schultz announced a couple of weeks ago that the final episode of the Star Wars movies would be coming out on May 19. Its amazing to think of the popularity and money that these movies have generated. I remember when the first of these movies came out when I was a kid, and they are more popular now than ever. One of the ideas and phrases that most of us who has ever watched a Star Wars movies can identify with is the phrase, "May the force be with you." The idea of an invisible force that guides and directs your very moves is what separated the ordinary warrior from the true Jedi warriors. The Jedi who could harness and use the force the best was most often one of the strongest.

As we gather here in God’s house we are not going to talk about the force, but I want to use this concept to have a little multiple choice quiz about the Holy Spirit. A) The Holy Spirit is an invisible force that gives us strength. B) The Holy Spirit is not real. C) The Holy Spirit is real and is the 3^rd person of the Trinity. The answer is "C", but sadly many people think that the correct answer is "A". They truly think that the Holy Sprit is just a force that you need to tap into when needed. That is why on this Pentecost Sunday we are going to talk about the very real and true 3^rd person of the Trinity that we call the Holy Spirit. As Christians whose hearts has been changed by the power of the Holy Spirit we soon begin to realize that the Holy Spirit is very important in our lives. For this reason our theme will reflect our appreciation for the work of the Holy Spirit.

Today is the day of the Christian Church year that we call Pentecost. It is on this day that fell 50 days after Jesus’ resurrection and 10 short days of Jesus’ ascension that God the Holy Spirit appeared to the disciples in the city of Jerusalem. As we heard in our reading for today, the Holy Spirit came on the disciples and they were filled with the strength and courage to proclaim God’s Word. This morning we are going to look at the Old Testament prophecy from the book of Joel. In this account which was written many years before the first Pentecost, we see Joel prophesying that this invite would happen and that the Holy Spirit would fill his children.

"And 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. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days." Through Joel the Lord says, "I will pour out my Spirit." Old Testament believers were familiar with the Spirit of God and his life-giving work. Already in the first chapter of the Bible, Moses taught that the Spirit of God, who "was hovering over the waters" (Genesis 1:2) was active in the creation of the world. King David, a thousand years before Christ, prayed, "Do not . . . take your Holy Spirit from me" (Psalm 51:11). The fact that the Holy Spirit was already known and active in the Old Testament immediately raises this question: If Old Testament believers had already received the Holy Spirit, why does Joel need to foretell the outpouring of ! the Holy Spirit?

The answer to that question is found in two Hebrew words in this text. The first is the word used for "pour out," which refers to an abundant outpouring rather than a scant sprinkling of the Holy Spirit. This fact alone makes Joel’s promise remarkable, since even a few brief, scattered drops of the life-giving Spirit would be a rich and unmerited blessing of God, but Joel promises that when God pours out his Spirit, it will be in a downpour that will extend to all flesh.

The second word is "people." Although Joel is clearly talking about people, it was surely not without reason that he used the Hebrew word that tells us something about the people on whom the Holy Spirit will be poured out. The word really means "flesh," and is often used to describe the sinful condition in which all people are born since Adam fell into sin. In the days of Noah, for example, God’s verdict on the human race was that it is "flesh," which is explained to mean that human wickedness had become great in God’s sight and that every inclination of the human heart was only evil all the time. When we understand our natural condition, that we are flesh and that all flesh is spiritually lifeless, helpless, and worthless, we begin to realize what a glorious gift God promises through his prophet to pour out on all people. For although the flesh counts for nothing in spiritual things, "the Spirit gives life" as a gracious, fr! ee gift to undeserving sinners.

Joel’s prophecy of the outpouring of God’s Spirit on all people was startling news for Jews, but his next words are just as startling. As his vision of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit continues, he says, "Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions." This is a picture an Old Testament Jew could hardly imagine — everyone a prophet, everyone being granted visions and dreams like prophets! The Holy Spirit did not reveal special messages to all Israelites, which they were, in turn, to proclaim to others. Instead, God specially called a few prophets to whom he revealed his message and through whom he made that message known to his people. Note that the work of a prophet consisted of those two aspects: (1) receiving a message from God and (2) relaying that message to others. God makes this clear when he describes the great Prophet he will send, saying: "I will raise up for them a prophet... I ! will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him" (Deuteronomy 18:18). The Israelites understood that they were not all prophets and considered it strange. It was this very fact — that not every Israelite was a prophet — that moved Moses to pray, "I wish that all the LORD’S people were prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit on them" (Numbers 11:29). The very thing Moses prayed for, the prophet Joel foretells.

God will make all his people prophets — Joel sees the young and old, men and women, slave and free — receiving revelations from God through dreams and visions, which were two ways in which God revealed himself and his will to his prophets. Think of men like Joseph and Daniel. Think of men like Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah. Through these dreams and visions, God gave his prophets insights into his plan of salvation that the ordinary believer in Israel did not have. Through dreams and visions, God gave his prophets a fuller revelation of himself and his will than he granted others.

Joel foresees a time when that fuller and richer revelation of God and his will extends to all believers. Does Joel, however, actually mean to say that in the last days, God will give his people the message they are to proclaim through dreams and visions, as he did with his Old Testament prophets? Remember that God used dreams, visions, and the gift of his Spirit in Old Testament times to reveal his will and plans to people. As an Old Testament prophet, Joel speaks in Old Testament terms. But his words no more mean that God’s people as prophets should expect God to communicate with them through dreams and visions than Isaiah’s prophecy that all God’s people will be priests means that they will all actually bring burnt offerings and sacrifices to the altar at the temple in Jerusalem. Joel uses Old Testament language to say that God will grant all his people the complete revelation of his ways, which in times past was reserved for a few specially chosen prophets.

The work of a prophet was not complete when he received a message from God. God sent Jeremiah to serve as his prophet, saying, "You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you". So when Joel foresaw the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all flesh, he not only saw all God’s people receiving messages from God, but he also saw them relaying that message from God to others.

Peter on the Day of Pentecost stresses this when he adds to Joel’s words and repeats "and they will prophesy" at the end of the quotation. We tend to think of prophesying as telling the future, but the fact is that while God’s prophets did sometimes predict the future, more often they proclaimed what God revealed to them about their own time. Thus when Joel says God’s people will prophesy, he simply means they will tell and teach and preach and proclaim God’s Words for God to others. Joel sees God’s people serving as proclaimers of the truth. We see the beginning of the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy on the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit filled the believers and enabled them to speak in languages they had never learned so that the visitors to Jerusalem said, "We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!" (Ac 2:11). Think of what the Holy Spirit did that day! He not only gave Peter the words he was to speak, but h! e empowered Peter so that he boldly stood up and spoke as a powerful prophet of God’s truth. That’s how the Holy Spirit produces prophets. He gives them the wisdom to know God’s Word and the strength to speak it. Jesus spoke of both aspects of the Holy Spirit’s work:

The verb form Joel used indicates that this pouring out will continue into the future — throughout all the last days until the glorious return of Christ. So it continues. The Spirit still works through Word and sacrament to open the eyes of believers to see what Old Testament prophets and kings longed to see but never saw and to hear what they waited to hear but never heard. Then that same Spirit opens the mouths of God’s people to speak like prophets of God and witness, and he does that without respect to race, gender, age, social or economic status. God’s prophets include men and women, young and old, slave and free. Children joyfully proclaim the birth of the Savior in familiar words that not even Isaiah knew in the Old Testament. Women teach truths about Jesus to young people in Lutheran elementary schools and Sunday school classrooms that not even Solomon could have known. Men, who are born spiritually dead and blind, see the glory of God in Christ by the enlightenin! g work of the Holy Spirit and speak what they have seen and heard. Rich and poor, employer and employee, stand side by side on Sunday morning and prophesy with praises and prayers the wonderful works of God. Joel said they will prophesy, and as the Holy Spirit works wisdom and courage in them, God’s people do.

Let each person prophesy from the "pulpit" God has assigned. When Joel sees the Holy Spirit being poured out on men and women, young and old, slaves and free, he is looking ahead to the time Paul describes: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:28). Both prophet and apostle are reminding us that believers in Christ are equally privileged members of God’s family and share equally the gift of forgiveness, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the inheritance of eternal life. Yet it is necessary to distinguish between the possession of a gift and the God-pleasing use of it.

As we gather today in God’s house to celebrate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, may our hearts be filled to overflowing as we realize what the Holy Spirit has done to our hearts. He has changed them from sinful hearts to hearts that trust in Jesus as your Savior. He has taken us from certain death to life eternal. He has also filled us with the power and strength to share the truth of Jesus with all people, just like the disciples did on that first Pentecost. Amen