Acts 2:17-21I WILL POUR OUT MY SPIRIT

17" 'In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. 18Even on my ser-vants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. 19I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. 20The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. 21And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.'"

You and I live in very special days! Things that are now part of our everyday experience, were once be-yond the imagination of our parents. Technology has changed our world to the point where it would be almost unrecognizable to people living even 20 years ago. As someone who lived through many of these advances, I’m sure I will sound positively ancient to the younger people here this morning!

But once, we waited until later in the evening to make a long-distance phone call more cheaply. Now, we call anywhere at any time and think nothing of it. Once, a weak heart was a virtual death sentence, a time bomb that could go off at any moment – and there was nothing we could do about it. Now, implanting a pace-maker in someone’s chest is out-patient surgery and barely worthy of note!

Once, we had 3, maybe 4, television stations to choose from – but only during certain hours of the day. Now our cable access menu seems endless, offering programming 24 hours a day! I’ve barely scratched the surface of the changes that have taken place in our world in recent years. And yet, we clearly see how far we’ve come in a fairly short time.

We are truly living in very special days. But that doesn’t come as a surprise to any of us here today. Both Peter and Joel have already told us that. The special days they describe are not an age of technology, but the age of the Holy Spirit. That’s what they’re talking about by divine inspiration in Joel 2 and Acts 2.

In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. We live in the age in which the Lord bestows his Holy Spirit in abundant measure upon his people. It is a grand and glorious time, an era unknown and unimaginable to people who lived before it. It is an age that began in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost so many years ago. It is the festival which we celebrate this morning!

During this time, the prophet and the apostle both tell us that Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. In this new age, every one of God’s people will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit to a degree unknown by earlier people of God.

Now, people of all ages, men and women, girls and boys, persons of any social position in life, have a di-rect revelation from the Lord, himself, and have the ability to share that precious message with one and all. That is, of course, quite a change from the way things were before! What we have now, and take for granted, was unknown to previous generations.

In those days, God came to his people one by one in dreams and visions. This was how he revealed him-self and his will to mankind. You remember that when the Lord wanted Jacob and his family to know that he would rescue them from famine and extinction, he sent dreams to his son, Joseph, to announce it. It took years and a lot of complications, but the deliverance took place as the Lord had decreed.You remember that when the Lord wanted his exiled people to know that a change was about to take

place in the government controlling their fate, he sent a vision of a hand writing on the wall. And overnight the nation that carried Israel into captivity was replaced by another. Through the centuries, however, only a handful of people in special circumstances were given these dreams and visions.

Now, in the age of the Holy Spirit, that changes. God’s Word and his will are clearly spelled out in the pages of holy Scripture – available to all. Now the love of the Father and his provision for man’s eternity are easily seen in the person of his Son. What was once hidden and obscure was now plain as plain can be. Everyone can see and know it.

In the Gospels we hear precisely how our salvation has been won for us by the sinless life and innocent death of God’s one and only Son. In the Epistles, every necessary detail of our faith is explained. In the book of Revelation, our final victory is declared and our eternal bliss is described in detail. And in light of the New Testament, the beauty of the Old is seen.

We know, or can know, everything God wants to tell us about himself, us, and our new relationship with him. All this is the working of the Holy Spirit. First, he moves the Bible writers to record the Lord’s ex-act thoughts and words. Then he attaches himself to those words and every time they are used, he comes with a power that can bring unbelievers to saving faith, as well as strengthen and confirm the faith of God’s people. That happens every time the Word is used!

In the age of the Holy Spirit, God’s people live in peace and joy, contentment and certainty of the life to come through faith in Christ Jesus! But we notice that the age of the Holy Spirit is also referred to as the last days. We are literally living in the final age of the world! There is nothing to come after these days. When this time is over, everything is over. There will be no more universe or time or history.

Everything God has planned for mankind will be accomplished. Every promise he ever made, every prophecy he ever uttered, will have been fulfilled – except for the signs that come immediately before the very end. When those last signs are seen, then judgment will be at hand. The end does and it doesn’t sneak up on us. In Matthew 24, Jesus gives a number of signs to look for as the world comes to an end.

And we see those signs fulfilled all around us. The love of many has grown cold. Many false prophets have come, claiming to speak for Christ. Wars and rumors of war constantly swirl around us. The com-ing of the end is not exactly hidden from our view! But the exact day and hour of its coming are! Not even Jesus knows when the end will come.

But as Joel and Peter tell us, the end itself will be unmistakable. God says: I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. The end, when it comes, will be dramatic, awesome in every way!

This is the age in which we live – an age of the Holy Spirit’s special presence and an age that could come to a crashing finale at any moment. Realization of this fact can move us in different ways. We could be terrified. I’m not ashamed to admit that I will be awe-struck at that time. But I don’t fear it, nor do I never want it to come. And when it comes I won’t be afraid for long, for this is what I know and believe:

Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Through faith in Jesus, my eternal future is not in doubt. When I stand there before the Lord to be judged, I know what he will say to me: Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the cre-ation of the world.

Thus, the realization that the end could come at any moment also fills me joyful anticipation and eager-ness for its coming! I’ve never experienced it, but my Brother Jesus promises that our life with him then will eclipse even the best this life has to offer. Thus, I can’t wait for the end so I can begin the longest and best part of my life!

But one more emotion grips me, as it should grip us all. This emotion, a feeling of urgency, comes when you lay 2 undeniable truths side by side. In the last days … and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. The days we live in will not go on forever. They will come to an end, and when they do, all human beings will face judgment.

And the judgment will be made solely on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ – and nothing else! Think of what that means. People who do not know and believe that God shows his love for them in his only-be-gotten Son are not saved. There is no heaven for them. They will go to hell – hell, a place where abso-lutely no love of God will ever penetrate. People there live in an agonizing misery that never ends.

Understand that, if you understand nothing else about the age in which you live. People without faith at the end … will go to hell! That’s not just nameless faces in faraway places. That’s the guy you work with, the neighbor you have coffee with, the relative you’re so fond of. If they don’t know and believe in Jesus Christ, they are lost.

Thanks be to God that we live in the age of the Holy Spirit! For in this age we all have the ability, the right, the privilege, the calling to prophesy, that is, proclaim the saving Gospel to any one and every one. We have the difference between eternal life and death, the difference between heaven and hell … but we have to use it for it to do any good! And we have to be urgent in our use of the Gospel. Time is not on our side.

We are in the last days, we don’t know when they will end. Judgment is on the horizon. Eternal souls hang in the balance. God has poured out his Holy Spirit on you and me. It brings knowledge and power to create saving faith! What will you do with your opportunities to witness, personally? What will you do with your chance to witness through missionaries your offerings send out? How will you live in the last days, as someone who has the Holy Spirit? Amen.