Since we’ve moved to our new place in Onehunga, Mangere
bridge has become a feature in my life. Or I should say the Mangere bridges.
The new bridge adds a constant background motorway hum to the soundtrack of our
everyday. At night, out our window there is a line of red and white lights
arching over the dark stripe where the Manukau Harbour morphs into the Mangere
basin. On days off I’ve gone for a walk
across the old Mangere bridge, with its vistas down toward the Manukau heads. Puponga
point and the
Awhitu peninsula in the distance. The harbour changing with the
weather, from friendly sparkly blue, to moody forbidding grey. As the sun sets
there is an array of golds and reds. Even the old cement silo’s become a canvas
for the magical play of last light. Having grown up on this side of the Manukau,
up in the hills out west, the far side of the bridge has always seemed like a
distant shore, another place and it still seems like you are going somewhere
else when you walk over the bridge but now exploring both sides helps me
understand this city more.
Joel’s prophecy acts as a great bridge between the then and
there and the here and now. Then and there, because it stands at the end of the
Old Testament narrative, looking at God’s restoration of Judah and Jerusalem,
that started with the return of the exiles from Babylon and stares off at the
hope for a greater fulfillment in future times.
Here and Now because it is the passage that Peter uses to explain what
was happening to the one hundred and twenty followers of Jesus gathered in that
upper room in Jerusalem: that what was promised then was being fulfilled now,
God was pouring out his Spirit on all flesh. It stands at the birth of the
Church, the reality that we as God’s people live in today.
Today is Pentecost, and I want to go backwards and forwards
across that bridge between then and there and here and now so that we may know
the reality of that Spirit poured out. I want to focus on three things, the
context we find ourselves in, where we are at in God’s story. Secondly to
explore the idea of all flesh and to see ourselves in that, and finally to look
at what it means that we all prophecy, to be a prophetic people. Then we’ll
ties it all together.
Firstly context.
The book of Joel speaks of Judah facing judgment, locusts
and a drought, that judgment is accompanied by a call to repentance, then
assurance that after the judgment, God would restore the fortunes of his
people and would renew his relationship with them, they would be blessed and
the nations around them judged. Scholars are unable to tie Joel down to any
historical facts or time, but it was included into the Old Testament cannon
because people could see it as God speaking directly to Judah’s journey. Their
exile in Babylon and after that of the restoration of Jerusalem, that we see in
books like Ezra and Nehemiah, but also looked to greater and fuller restoration
and fulfillment to come. Joel Baker sums this journey up in the title of his
commentary of Joel “ from the depth of despair and sorrow to the promise of
presence”.
The ultimate way in which God has forgiven his people and
made a way for them to be reconciled with him is in the life death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ. We’ve just spent about a year and a half working
our way through Luke’s gospel and one of the ways Jesus talks of his death is
as a judgment on the spiritual blindness of the world. It is Jesus who takes on himself God’s
judgment, and enables the restoration of relationship with God through his
suffering and death. It is in his resurrection that that new life is made
possible. We experience that new life and restoration, the fulfillment of the
promise of God’s presence, with a greater fulfillment when Christ returns. Bakers title could as easily refer to the
Easter story ‘from the depth of despair and sorrow of the cross to the promise
of presence in the words of the risen Jesus ‘and I am with you till the end of
the age” made real at Pentecost.
You and I find ourselves in that story as well. It’s not
just history, it’s our story. Once we were far away from God as it says in 1
Peter 2;10 but now we have drawn near. Because of the death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ we can know God’s forgiveness for all we have done wrong and we
are bought back into a relationship with God, as his children and as his
people. In Christ we have been given new life, abundant life. At the centre of
that is that God restores his relationship with us by filling us with the Holy
Spirit. Our story is that we have come
out of the deep despair and sorrow of life without God to the promise of his
presence.
Secondly, “all flesh”
As we’ve seen in our survey of the Old Testament God has
worked and spoken through individuals who he has filled with his Holy Spirit. But
in this passage, it says he will pour out his Spirit on all flesh. Flesh is
used here to distinguish humans, beings of flesh and blood, from God, who is
Spirit. And ‘all flesh’ is reinforced in this passage by the language of
inclusion. In three statements sex age and socio-economic status are swept
aside. Your sons and daughters will prophecy. Old Men will dream, dreams and
young men will see visions. Dreams and visions are scriptural ways in which
God gives revelation to people. Age is not a barrier. Even on your servants,
both men and women. Slaves in Israel were also most probably foreigners, and
this is not only speaking about social status not being a barrier but also the
possibility of the gentiles being involved. I’m allowed one bad pun a sermon…
here it is… It is for all sorts, but seriously it is for everyone.
In Acts we see all flesh being reinforced by the apostles
speaking in all the languages of the people gathered from all the regions of
the then known world. Pilgrims who had come to Jerusalem for the festival of
Pentecost. It is a prophetic event, Jesus had come and given his life because
God so loved the world, he had commissioned his followers to go and make
disciples of all nations, they were to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea,
Samaria and to the ends of the earth. The Holy Spirit was enabling them
empowering them to do that. Symbolized by the speaking in all the different
languages of the known world. In Acts 10, when the Gentiles receive the Holy
Spirit this sign is repeated to show that ‘all flesh includes the gentile
nations as well.
Peter finishes his sermon at Pentecost, by saying this is for
you and your children and for those who are far off. Time and place are not a
barrier either, it isn’t just for one generation, one place and time, just to
get the church growing and off the ground, a bit of start-up capital thrown in
by an entrepreneurial God. Not just limited to that place. It is God’s promise to all of us, to you and
I. the language of inclusion is not just used here to fit into some politically
correct agenda, it’s the promise of a loving caring God, for all of us.
Lastly, what does it mean that all will prophecy? I mean
there are not enough street corners for all of us to stand there wild eyed
calling out ‘the end is near’ which maybe the image that comes to mind when you
think of that.
Joel chapter 2, does not exist in a vacuum, there is a whole
thread in Old Testament scriptures that we need to touch on to understand what
is meant. Moses in Number 11:29 says “I wish that all the LORD’s people were
prophets and he put his Spirit on them.” The hope that all God’s people would
know him as Moses did, and be able to declare his timeless word and purposes in
a timely manner. In Ezekiel and
Jeremiah, we see that just as they had been given a scroll of God’s word to
eat, there is the promise that God would put his word in people’s minds and
hearts, and change their hearts of stone to hearts of flesh. They would be a
people whose hearts were filed with God’s grace and love. A motif that runs
through the Old Testament is that Israel has a missional task in world history,
to live in such a way, caring for the poor and the marginalised, being a beacon
of justice and righteousness, that nations would come to see and know and
worship Israel’s God. They were to be a prophetic people. The Spirit was going
to e poured out on them to enable them to do that.
In Acts, we see this at work as well. All the disciples
gathered together are filled with the Holy Spirit and begin praising God. It’s
self a prophetic Act declaring the good things God has done. Peter stands and begins to prophecy, he takes
God’s timeless word, from Joel 2, and makes it timely, this is what is
happening now. In the New Testament, there are people given gifts and ministry
of prophecy, it is their task to speak forth God’s word, but all of us are
called to prophecy. Acts 2 finishes with a description of the church in
Jerusalem living in a way that declares and witnesses to Jesus Christ. There
life is built round, the teaching of the apostles, prayer and the breaking of
the bread: these are the means of grace by which we know Jesus more and more
and allow that relationship to shape and mould us. They form community and
share hospitality. There is a genuine concern for the poor, they sell what they
have and give the money to those in need. They care and pray for those who are
sick and see God’s healing. AS they do this people come to see Jesus Christ in
their midst.
It’s the same for us today. People often equate the whole
Holy Spirit thing with chandelier swingers and happy clappys, as pure
emotionalism, and can I say why shouldn’t you get excited about knowing God’s
very presence and power. But the result of the Holy Spirit’s activity and
genuine revivals has always been a hunger for God’s word, an increase in
prayer, a renewal of worship, a desire for Christian unity, hospitality, a
desire to see people come to know Jesus, genuine signs and wonders but also a
seeking of justice and righteousness a care and care for the poor. The Spirit
of God is what gives us the Spiritual vitality we need to face and work for
peace in the world. It gives us joy and hope in the face of evil and disaster.
This Pentecost as I’ve reread acts chapter two, the thing
that really stuck out to me was that the fire that symbolised the Holy Spirit,
came and appeared as a tongue of fire above each of the followers gathered
there. When we focus on ideas like context and all flesh and being a prophetic
people, its easy to get caught up in the big picture, get lost in the crowd.
It’s easy to think of the Holy Spirit being poured out on all flesh as kind of
like splashes on the masses, like those weather events we’ve had recently,
indiscriminate drenching. But the Spirit came upon each individual person, they
were not lost in the crowd, each unique person encountered a God who knows them,
who loves them, who sent his Son to live die and rise again for them. I just
want to say it’s for all of us corporately, which means its for you and I
individually. We started with the image
of a bridge that has come to mean something in my life, and we’ve been across
the bridge from then and there to here and now in a survey of the Old Testament,
but it is for you to be willing to cross that bridge from it being a then and
there thing to a here and now reality. To stop and to ask the father to fill us
afresh, to fill and keep filling us with his Spirit’s presence.
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