I Will Pour Out My Spirit

Rain on a dry field. It doesn't fall on just one corner, or on the best plants only. It pours down on every inch of ground, every stalk, every seed. Now imagine God pouring out not rain, but himself, like that.

The prophet Joel has lived through a terrible locust plague in the land of Judah. He has called the people to turn back to God with all their hearts, and God has answered with a promise of rain and harvest: I will restore the years the locusts have eaten. But God is not finished. He goes on to promise something far bigger than full barns. To understand how amazing it is, remember how the Spirit of God usually worked in Israel's story. The Spirit came on special people for special jobs: on Moses and the elders, on judges like Gideon, on kings like David, on prophets. Most ordinary people never expected to experience the Spirit for themselves.

“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh.” All flesh. Not just priests. Not just kings or prophets. Then God spells out who he means, as if to make sure nobody is left out. “Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.” Girls as well as boys. “Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.” Grandparents and teenagers alike. And then, the most surprising of all: “And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit.” Even the servants, the people at the very bottom of society, who owned nothing. God's Spirit would be given to them as freely as to anyone else.

Then Joel's vision grows dramatic. God says he will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth: blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. These are pictures of the whole world being shaken, the way the earth shook when God came down on Mount Sinai. It is serious. The day of the Lord is the day when God puts everything right, and no one can stand on their own strength before it.

But in the middle of that shaking, there is an open door. “And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered.” Whoever. Anyone at all who turns to God and calls on his name will be rescued. On Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be people who escape, Joel says, just as the Lord has promised, among the survivors whom the Lord calls. So the promise has two sides that fit together. God's Spirit poured out on all kinds of people, and God's rescue open to all who call on him. Long ago, Moses had said, I wish all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them. Through Joel, God says: one day, I will.

Hundreds of years later, Jews from many nations crowded into Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks, a harvest festival held fifty days after Passover. Its Greek name was Pentecost, meaning fiftieth. The book of Acts says that on that day Jesus' followers were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke in many languages. Peter stood up and explained it by quoting this very passage from Joel.

You'll find this promise in Joel chapter two, verses twenty-eight to thirty-two. God's Spirit for sons and daughters, old and young, servants too, and rescue for whoever calls on his name. So here is a question to carry with you. If God's Spirit is for young people too, how might God want to use you?