Calling on His Name

Joel 2: 23-32

 

 

I spent half of last week in a retreat about small churches and new pastors. The retreat was in the mountains. The weather was perfect, the food was great, and the company was challenging and dedicated. It was wonderful and uplifting. If you can't get into the life of Christ on a mountain in the company of other pastors and lay leaders, then you've really got some remediation to do with your faith. The problem is you can't stay on the mountain. Sooner or  later, you have to come back down into reality. Reality is loaded with all those things you didn't have to deal with on the mountain, from money and bills to groceries and traffic. So the last few days, I have been dealing with those realities and it has caused me to reflect on where I am and where I'm going.

As I began to read again from the prophet Joel, I tried to look at his words not only in his time, but in our time. I also found myself

musing on how the messages of the last few weeks fit together. I took a look back for a common thread.

Several weeks ago, we looked at a passage in 2 Timothy, where the apostle Paul encouraged his disciple Timothy to fan into flame the gift of God, the gift of the Holy Spirit who lives in you, to guard the good deposit of your faith by sharing it with others. Paul was talking to Timothy, but the message is for every believer.

The next week, we looked at Peter as he engaged with Jesus on the seashore at the end of John's gospel right before the ascension of  our Lord  into  heaven.  The question for  Peter  is the same  question for every believer. "Do you love me?" asks Jesus. "Feed my sheep."  We must realize that to love Jesus is to spend that love on someone  else. That is our commissioning for service in God's kingdom here on earth.

Last week, Luke's gospel reaffirmed that concept of · selflessness, when Jesus told Pharisees and disciples alike that "Whoever seeks to preserve  his life will lose it, but whoever loses his

life will keep it."  "For what does it profit a man if he gains the

whole world and loses or forfeits himself?" The real meaning of your life as a Christian involves giving yourself to others. This is how you will find the person that God created you to be.

Okay. I can see a common thread. Guard the good  deposit of  the Holy Spirit in me. Accept God's commissioning for service. Give your life away to others and you find the best of yourself. But why? Why do we do these things? Well, maybe the prophet Joel can shed some light on that for  us.

Joel is one of those Minor Prophets about whom we know nothing personal. Depending on which commentary you read, he was just before or after the exile of God's people to Babylon. Joel talks about enemy invasion of both Jerusalem and Judah. He paints  a pretty bleak picture. But then, Joel turns to hope, hope that promises deliverance from those enemies and hope that prophesies a special promise of the new age of the Spirit. In that last section, his words sound like a vision, a vision of the world to come, the age of the eschaton. The eschaton is the descriptive term for the end times,

the last days.

Joel starts the good news by saying to fear not, to be glad and rejoice (v.21). The good news is for not only the people, but also for the land, and for the animals that inhabit it. This is good news for the creation. God talks about Judah's shame here. He's not talking about locusts and grasshoppers, but rather defeat and exile at the hands of the enemies of God's people. And God promises that his people shall never again be put to shame. This is covenant language. God is making a promise.

Let's pause here to remind ourselves why God's people need deliverance, whether from drought or war or exile. The reason they need deliverance is because their condition results from disobedience. If they had been faithful, they would not be in this predicament and Joel would have nothing to write about. But just like me and you, they have not been obedient. Joel prophesies that two things are about to change. The first is that God will be in their midst. The second is that God announces again that he is the Lord their God and there is no one else. Again, this is basic covenant

language that God has said before. Here through Joel, he re-affirms

those covenants of old, but the implication is still there that God's people must obey the first commandment to have no other gods before him and to be truly obedient.

Why? Why should we do these things? Why would we want to guard the good deposit of the Holy Spirit in us? Why accept God's commissioning for service? Why give your life away to others?

Because when we do so, we will find God in our midst, and that's a game changer.

If you are reading along in the book of Joel, now you have come to the good stuff, the stuff that makes us imagine, that makes the hair on the back of our necks stand up. Listen to the words of the prophet:

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,

and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my  Spirit.

 

Now Joel has led us into the world of the eschaton, the end times.

 

And it shall come to pass afterward... When is afterward? It's the Day of

 

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the Lord. The second coming. Then, God will pour out his Spirit on all flesh. All flesh! Peter, infused with the power of the Holy Spirit as the presence of the Church begins to make itself known, quotes Joel in Acts 2:17 to the effect that God will save the Jews. Paul ta.kes it a step further in Galatians, where Paul says that if you are baptized, if you believe, in Christ, then there is no bar ... not Jew or Greek or slave or free or male or female. All who believe are one in Christ (3: 27, 28, 29).

Joel ends this section with even more good news. On the Day of the Lord, he says that God will show wonders in the heavens and on the  earth. There is one more promise, one more covenant, and it's a big one. Joel says that it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.

How are you saved? Joel tells us way back eight centuries before Jesus arrives on the scene. Call upon the name of the Lord. To call on God's name doesn't just mean to holler out for God. It doesn't just mean that you acknowledge his existence or his presence or even to pray to him. Calling upon the name of the Lord means to worship him, to, in the words of Proverbs 3, acknowledge him in all our ways and let him direct

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our paths. Those questions I was asking about where I am and where I'm going? These are the answers.

So God's story is written. It is there for us to read. It is there for us    to see. It is there in our hearts if we do not close those hearts to the Holy Spirit. What does God's story do to you? What is your story? You are writing it right now. Are you calling on the name of the Lord? If you are, then you are feeling the presence of the  Holy Spirit. If you are, then you  are living unselfishly. If you are, then you are finding God in your midst. And if you are, then you are saved.

They told me on that mountain to preach as if I'm a dying man. I think they were right. So now let me tell you, my dear friends in the faith, listen and apply these truths as if your life hangs in the balance. It does!