I Will Pour Out My Spirit: A Meditation on Acts 2 for the Sunday of Pentecost

And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God,

I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh:

and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

and your young men shall see visions,

and your old men shall dream dreams:

And on my servants and on my handmaidens

I will pour out in those days of my Spirit;

And they shall prophesy:

And I will shew wonders in heaven above,

and signs in the earth beneath;

blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke:

The sun shall be turned into darkness,

and the moon into blood,

before that great and notable day of the Lord come:

And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call

 on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Signs and wonders are peculiar things.  As modern people, many of us passed through an education system that taught us to look for natural explanations for everything around us.  The philosophers and political thinkers of the Enlightenment bequeathed to modernity an inheritance of naturalism where only matter and energy had any relevance.  God, if He existed, was not significant to such thinkers, because the world as we experienced it through our senses and our reason was all that we could count on.  This era of Post-modernity in which we now find ourselves has taken this experiential naturalism into new frontiers, making the existential angst of the individual’s encounter with matter and energy supreme.  We abide now in a philosophical world propped up by the proclamations of Freud, Nietzsche, and Darwin:  that we are individuals who are animals without meaning, in a world which is accidental and uncaring, set within a universe which is mindlessly pressing toward its own distant extinction.  Having taken their scalpel of atheistic naturalism to man, creation, and God, they have taught us to ignore or defame anything which might show itself as super-natural or transcendent, discard any meaning in life, and cut away the very foundations of truth, beauty, and love.

Humanity is a strange creature, though.  Made in the image of God, he resists the spiritual and mental lobotomy of atheistic naturalism or secular humanism, because something deep inside him needs to acknowledge truth, beauty, and love.  He rebels against the notion that he is a meaningless animal driven only to satiate his passing lusts.  He yearns for beauty in the face of all that is twisted and perverse.  He steps out into the world hoping for the consistency of truth as he pursues his life, rather than the soulless fortunes of blind chaotic chance.  The witness of truth, beauty, and love deep within him allow him to keep drawing breath, keep rising out of bed, keep standing and walking and working in the world he now finds so dark and frightening.  If ever he loses that internal witness, there is nothing to keep his pessimistic depression from sliding into suicidal or homicidal despair.  The suffocating fumes of atheism, naturalism, and humanism work like an unholy trinity to press the hope and life out of every human breast, like a vast carcinogenic cloud oppressing our whole human race.  It blinds our eyes, deafens our ears, dulls our hearts, and left untreated will rot away our lives, our dignity, our families, and our societies.  While there are so many dangerous thoughts and ideas in the world, there is nothing quite so sinister and unlivable as this dark monstrosity wafting through our times.

To persevere, many people just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and try to ignore the consequences of the philosophy they have embraced.  One more week at work, one more vacation, one more decade, one more retirement, one more hospital trip… one more frivolity or tragedy or vanity after the other, until they can finally die to escape the hopelessness of their worthless lives and devolved societies.  This is not the fullness of life, but a fleeting shadow—a curse rather than a blessing.  Life becomes a problem to be solved or endured, and death a solution to our problems to release us from our endurance.  This blinded, deafened, dulled existence enslaved to caustic atheism, naturalism, and humanism is a calamity before heaven and all creation.  This is not why man was created, and not what His Creator intended for him.  Ours is not the first age to be suffocating under the morbid lies of such evil, but our age is certainly the most recent of examples where the purveyors of death rise up in great vehemence to crush out the light of life.

So, from time to time, the Author of Life breaks into our gloomy prison to dispel the darkness of our deadly enslavement.  Such a day was Pentecost, over 1900 years ago.  As people of every tribe and race had pressed into Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover, so they were also gathered in the darkness and despair of their times.  They lived under pagan oppressors and political tyrants; corrupt religious leaders and false prophets; social philosophers who promoted hedonistic satisfaction as the only balm for their meaningless lives of toil and pain.  Into that darkness the Lord of Glory broke through with His signs and wonders, disturbing the rhythm of matter and energy and passion and pain, and shone forth the liberating Truth once again.  Great rushing winds, tongues of flame, and gifts of diverse languages—signs in heaven above and on the earth beneath—were used to shake the enslaved masses out of their stupor.  Healings of body and mind, the casting out of devils, and even raising the dead were soon to follow in the Apostolic train, all empowered by the Holy Spirit given to them on this great day of Pentecost.  God saw the plight of His creation under the sway of the evil one, and came to pierce their darkness and break their chains.

The signs, however, were not what saved the people.  No matter how great the miracle or wonder, such things only serve to awaken or jostle people to attention.  The Holy Spirit who descended upon the Apostles came to bear witness to what actually would save the people:  Jesus Christ.  The signs and wonders of the Holy Spirit were never to bring honor or attention to Himself, nor to the person through whom He worked.  Rather, the Holy Spirit came to bear witness to Christ Jesus, His saving blood spilled for all mankind upon His Cross, His resurrection from the dead, His promised gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation.  The Holy Spirit worked miracles and wonders so that the people might be freed from their demonic enslavement to deadly lies, and live instead by grace through faith in Christ alone.  The Apostles knew this directly, stepping out in humility and faith as the Holy Spirit worked in them to make them powerful witnesses of the saving life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

It is certainly true that our days are dark, and the mortal slavery of the devil hangs heavy on the shoulders of our people, clouding their minds and weakening their spirits as he leads them in chains toward the fires of hell.  But our God is a Saving God, a Redeeming God—the only One and True God.  He is the Lord of Hosts, the Light of Life, the Alpha and the Omega, the great and holy King of the Universe.  Our God does not leave His people enslaved without a witness to His saving Word, to His Only Begotten Son, who has given His life to ransom the whole world.  Our God is not silent, nor does He sleep in ignorance of the plight of His creation, nor of the workings of the evil one.  Our God reigns forever over His whole Kingdom, and presses His Kingdom into our time and place by His Spirit working through His Word to draw all men to saving faith in Jesus Christ.  His Gospel proceeds forth from His witnesses, and by His Holy Spirit works wonders to shake dead sinners into life-giving faith and repentance.  Our God lives, and His Word abides forever—even as His Spirit abides in and with us to both bind us to Christ, and to bear witness to Him everywhere we go.

Hear the Word of Christ calling to you.  Let His Word and Spirit give new sight to your darkened eyes, fresh hearing to your deafened ears, and new hope with tenderness to your despairing heart.  Hear His eternal Truth which dispels the lying darkness all around you.  See His unfathomable Beauty of everlasting life and forgiveness.  Feel His sacrificial Love pour over and through you, that you might be a giver of His love to all people.  Now awakened, risen, forgiven, and loved unto all eternity, never doubt His wonder working power to save any and all by His Eternal Word and Holy Spirit.  Stand straight with eyes fixed upon your Savior, that through Him you may see your neighbor in suffering, enslavement, and need—then speak boldly to the darkness in the power of His Word and Spirit, that the evil one might flee in terror before His omnipotence shown forth in you, and your neighbor may be made free from his demonic shackles.  Pentecost has come, and we are sent in the power of Christ by His Word and Spirit to be His witnesses to the ends of the earth.  Let the darkness hear and tremble—and let the people hear, and live.  Amen.