August 17, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“And afterward, [says the Lord God Almighty] ‘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.’” (Joel 2.28,29)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD TO US:

We love hearing good news. We long to hear that God will “pour out His Spirit.” The phrase itself indicates the anointing of blessing and favor. Be aware, mighty ones of God, that this word is spoken to “all” people but it is not all the people. God is speaking to those who survived the events prophesied by Joel up to this point. God is speaking to all who will have survived His holocaust. Yes, we love hearing good news. We love hearing how God is blessing us, anointing us with goodness and favoring us with the bounty of a new land, a new day and a new life. We love to quote the scripture for today. Some will connect it with that Day of Pentecost fifty days following the crucifixion, death, burial and subsequent resurrection of Jesus as the Christ when the promised Spirit of the Lord was poured out on “the survivors” who had huddled together in the Upper Room. We get excited to consider that particular day when, under the influence of the anointing of the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, Peter led the remaining disciples down the steps leading from the Upper Room and then up the steps to the Temple. It was a march of triumph speaking the truth in love to all who had gathered there. Yet those who gathered there did not consider themselves survivors. Representing the nations of the earth where the scattered people of God’s Abrahamic promise, those who gathered in the plaza did so to celebrate the “first fruits” of a new harvest. They came to have their own harvests blessed for the year to come. They came that the sacrifice which the High Priest would make at the altar of the Lord would cover them and theirs in prosperity and abundance.

Little did they know what was about to happen on that day of juxtapositions. As with a well-orchestrated liturgy presented antiphonally, Caiaphas and Peter spoke over the people. One, Caiaphas, spoke the words as they had been declared for centuries in a common practice of a religion of faith which had grown empty. The other, Peter, interpreted those same words which came as a new song declaring a faith which was being fulfilled. That faith would create a new religion, a new way of life in response to what God had done for the whole world. That new way of life was captured by the beloved disciple John whose words we love to hear as good news. They are spoken often still with a remembrance of familiarity, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that whosoever would believe in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world, through Him, might be saved.” (John 3.16-17) These are not the words of John but of Jesus Himself. He was speaking them to Nicodemus, a member of the Council and Elders of the Temple, who had come in the cover of darkness to inquire of Jesus with an unspoken question. He really never had the chance to ask the question though he ended up asking many. We may lose sight of the importance of this conversation by focusing to intently on it. In it Jesus speaks of the true knowledge which comes from God that is espoused by those who will be “born again.” Jesus was not speaking, as He said, of being born again from a mother’s womb. Instead, Jesus was speaking of those born anew in “spirit and in truth” by the on-dwelling and indwelling of the Holy Spirit. What was Nicodemus’s unspoken question? We hear it from John the Baptizer as recorded in Matthew’s account of his imprisonment leading to his death, “Are you the One or should we expect another?” John was seeking affirmation knowing his own end was quickly approaching. He himself would not be a survivor. He would literally lose his head for the sake of “speaking the truth” under the influence of the Holy Spirit of God in appointed prophecy. Yes, Nicodemus claimed “We know you are a rabbi from God who can do great miracles as only one under the influence of God could say and do such things.” He may have been speaking only for himself in a rhetorical “we,” or he may have been speaking for a group of associates who dared to believe that Jesus was a rabbi of great importance, a called out teacher appointed by God to bring a word to Israel. Yet, in his desire to approach Jesus to ask what was truly on his heart, he never asked the most important question of all, “Are you the One or shall we expect another?”

I bring these three scenarios to our attention because we love to focus on the “good news” as we prefer to hear it over bad news. Yet, in our focus on the “good news,” we dare not overlook the “hard news.” The hard news is the reality that must confessed and acknowledged in order for us to truly believe in the good news. We must make a distinction between “the good news” and the “desirable news.” We want to hear favor and blessing but settle more for favorable and acceptable. We are troubled but are we disturbed? For Joel, the declaration of the visions and new songs came with the truth of God’s display of justice and vengeance. For Nicodemus, the resulting profession of faith would come in seeing the “light shimmering in the darkness” as his colleagues set themselves against Jesus and His love for righteousness. For Jesus, the foreshadowing of His teaching that “God so loved the world” was fulfilled on Calvary where the Lamb of God was to be slain. Is He the One or shall we expect another? Are we willing to go through the valleys of the shadow of death to get to the House of the Lord forever? Or do we simply pray “Give me good news, joy without sorrow, peace without pain, plenty without hunger, fullness without thirst and life without sacrifice”? This is the intensity of Joel’s prophecy we dare not ignore. Let’s take some time to explore the word of the Lord which was given to Him and to us.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness but as righteous works of faith, hope and love in Jesus’ name. AMEN.