Day
of Pentecost
June
4, 2017
Joel
2:28-29
Christians
Dream of Christ
In
the name of the Father and of the ☩
Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen!
I.
Daydreams
are a part of human life. Someone’s
talking to you and you start thinking about something else. Often
this dreaming is triggered by something the talking person has just
said, and off goes your mind (or maybe on goes your mind). You
enter a state of meditation and it comes
to an end when the preacher says, “Amen!” or your wife says,
“Dear?”
You
should listen carefully when others talk to you, but dreaming can be
good if you’re dreaming about
something good.
So,
do you dream about Jesus?
II.
Joel
was a prophet of God who lived and preached hundreds of years before
Jesus was born in Bethlehem. The Lord spoke through Joel’s
pen and the Lord said:
28After
this I will pour out my Spirit on all humanity; then your sons and
your daughters will prophesy, your old men will have dreams, and your
young men will see visions. 29I will even pour out my
Spirit on the male and female slaves in those days.
JOEL
2:28-29 CSB
We
need to explain a few words: prophesy and vision, dream, and pour
out.
We
usually think prophecies and visions
will tell us the future, but it’s
also about speaking to the present. Joel was a prophet—he spoke
about God’s
promises for the future, but he also spoke of the situation of his
own time. And usually there are strong connections between the
present and the future. For example, the Lord sent Joel to call the
people of Israel back to God, so they would be ready for the Day of
the Lord, when they would meet their Maker and Savior.
When
dreams paired up with prophecies and visions, we are right to
think about prophetic dreams of God’s
people (and
sometimes God’s
enemies). These dreams
were interpreted to reveal God’s promises. For example, God
showed Joseph in
Egypt that
Pharaoh’s dream about fat and skinny cows meant that there would be
seven years of good harvests and
then seven years of no food.
But
for us, dreams aren’t
so much about predicting the distant future, but instead are much
more a way to think about the
present and
the past. Night dreams draw on our past experiences, even
if it’s
just chewing on what happened that day. On the other hand, daydreams
chew over things that are on our mind for
the present and near future.
III.
So,
what’s
on your mind? What do you dream about? What keeps you up at night?
Missing
library books. Overdue bills. Angry children. New ideas. Tricky
surgery. Usually bad stuff, right?
So
put some good stuff on your mind. Put Jesus on your mind. Dream about
Him. And we will because of that last verb: pouring out the Spirit.
The
Lord God in our time pours out His Spirit on all His people, His
Church. The Christian Standard Bible’s
translation of “humanity” gives the impression that
the Holy Spirit is poured on unbelievers,
but the original Hebrew says that the Spirit will be poured out on
all flesh. Flesh means all living things. Since unbelievers are not
alive, the Spirit comes only to God’s
baptized and living people.
This
pouring and coming of the Holy
Spirit is the hearing of God’s
Word. At the original Pentecost
dramatic signs and wonders (wind and fire) accompanied the preaching
of Jesus Christ. And they preached:
22Men
of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by
God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you
through Him,
as you yourselves know. 23This
man was handed over to you by God’s
set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men,
put Him to
death by nailing Him
to the cross. 24But
God raised Him
from the dead, freeing Him
from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep
its hold on Him.
ACTS
2:22-24 NIV 1984
The
prophets on that day spoke of Jesus dying as our Savior; they
did not talk about themselves.
They did not call on their
listeners
to perform signs
and wonders; they simply showed them Jesus and called on them to
repent of their sin and trust Jesus.
IV.
This
pouring is happening right now. I’m
not speaking to you in some strange ecstatic speech; there
is no fire or wind. (Although think of how interesting it can be when
listening to a sermon through a thunderstorm!) I’m
just talking Jesus to you. The Spirit through the
Word pours out Jesus on you and all of God’s
people. When Joel mentions sons,
daughters, old men, young men, and slaves, he means that all of God’s
people will prophesy and all of us will dream. We
speak and dream of Jesus. In the past He was crucified for all our
sins, in the present His Holy Spirit speaks Jesus to us, and in the
future He will return to take us home.
So
dream, day and night, of Jesus, who has saved you!
For
even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to
give His life as a ransom for many, for you. Amen!
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