Signs Within (04/17/26-04/18/26)

Before I get started I need to acknowledge this weariness which has been upon me.  Perhaps it is no more than the accumulation of sleep loss.  Perhaps it’s the ongoing weight of various trials and pressures that do not seem to relent, though the specifics change day to day.  Perhaps it is something much more significant that needs addressing in prayer.  But I have found, particularly this morning, a certain detachment even as I pursue my usual course of spending time in God’s Word, spending time considering what today’s devotional has to say.  To be honest, I don’t know as I recognized what today's devotional was saying even as I read it.  It was just an exercise to get through.  And that is assuredly not as it should be.  Gathering things together for these comments just seemed to produce a jumble of details with no particular substance.  It’s lots of data points, but no meaning emerging.  No, it’s not quite that bad, but it feels as though it is.  All of this being the case, I think I shall delay pursuing these comments further until tomorrow.  Perhaps it shall be that God sees fit to reveal the medicine my spirits need at present, whether rest, greater reliance on Him, or simply spending more time on prayer rather than on activity.

Lord, You know my need as I really do not at present.  Yes, there has been a lot going on, and it’s been going on for what feels a long time.  But I know You have all these things well in hand, however chaotic it may seem to my perceptions.  If I have become too self-reliant and insufficiently attuned to You, help me to change what needs changing.  If there are big shifts coming, let me be found willing to what You are shifting.  If it’s all just testing my steadfastness of faith, then strengthen me to stand firm.  For, as Paul declares by Your Spirit, You are able to make me stand, and so, stand I will.  Keep me reliant on You and turned towards You.  You are my God, and I am Your servant.  Remind me of that when I need reminding.  Thank You.

Okay, so we left the crowds outside asking, “What is this trying to be?”  That is to say, “What does this mean?”  Here we find the Holy Spirit, through Peter, answering that very question, and the answer is that this is a sign.  Actually, as Peter lays it out, it is the beginning of a series of signs.  We shall get to what it signifies, but we begin with the statement that what these folks were witnessing was the unfolding of something prophesied long before.  This is what Joel was talking about when he prophesied.  And we are at the start of it, when God declares, “I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind.”  This is exactly what has happened, folks.  No.  It’s more than that.  This is exactly what is happening.  God is pouring out His Spirit on all mankind!

Now, that alone might give pause to these men of Judea.  Israel had long since concluded that all of these promises were for Israel, not for those dogs outside.  Yet, here it was, written in their own scriptures:  All mankind.  It’s interesting to see that the first sermon of this new era centers on the inclusiveness of the Gospel.  I don’t think even Peter really grasped that point yet.  But it’s immediately coming to the fore.  We might lay that to Luke’s interest in the narrative he is presenting.  But again, it’s pointing backward as much as it points forward.  Joel saw this coming, and here it is!  As we see from various other references, he was hardly the only one.  This was the mission from the start.  Go back to the initial covenant with Abraham.  “And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Ge 12:3).  We will come back to this matter of all and every later, Lord willing.  But for the moment, get the message.  There are no exclusions.  Nobody, no division of humanity is excluded from the possibility presented here.  No subdivision of humanity you may devise, whether your divisions be by race, by gender, by age, by economic standing, by profession, whatever your categories may be; none can be pointed to as being wholly devoid of any hope of salvation.

So, this which has been witnessed is a sign of that universality of the Gospel.  Having used such a term, I suppose I must emphasize that you can no more insist that each and every individual shall be saved than you could insist that some group cannot possibly be saved.  But the scope of the Gospel is limitless, and this is signified rather directly by the multiplicity of languages they had just heard coming from this group of men whom they would account the local equivalent of country bumpkins.  You saw the consternation.  Aren’t these guys from Galilee?  Where would they have learned to speak our language?  Greek, sure, but that’s not what we were hearing.

And so, Peter, by the Holy Spirit, directs their attention back to their Scriptures.  And his quote is pretty much unaltered from Joel’s writing.  For what it’s worth, he’s not stitching together quotes from various places, as may happen on other occasions.  This is one quote taken in full.  And it begins with what I am considering as more inward signs, which is to say things happening through the instruments of human involvement.  We have three variations offered, but they amount to one, I think.  You can sort of grasp that point by the fact that the list is bracketed by the repeated mention of the primary category of prophecy.  It begins with this:  Your children will prophesy.  It ends with:  My bondslaves will prophesy.  Now, I saw some debate as to whether this should read as “My bondslaves”, or “your bondslaves.”  Referring back to Joel 2:29, I see the translation is simply “the male and female servants.”  I fear my capacities with Hebrew grammar are insufficient to the task of sorting out the intention there.  I see a few translations following a similar pattern of injecting ‘My’ into that passage, but the majority seem to leave it ambiguous. 

What to make of that?  It’s a bit of a distraction, I suppose.  But it does occur to me that unless we take this as a general reference to the Jewish people as God’s servants, there’s no proper basis for speaking of female bondservants as His.  His servants in the temple were entirely drawn from the male populace.  So, it would seem to me more reasonable to take the reference as being to the servants in the households of His people, which is to say, ‘your male and female servants.’  And that understanding hews closer to the inclusiveness of the beginning:  All mankind, no distinctions.

Okay, so they shall prophesy.  What to make of that?  There is something in us that gets excited at the very prospect.  After all, we look back to those prophets of the Old Testament, and they were a pretty illustrious bunch, weren’t they?  I mean, wouldn’t you love to be able to perform the sorts of wonders that Elijah and Elisha did?  It’s exciting!  On the other hand, I doubt many of us would care to face the trials they faced.  Who wouldn’t like to have indications as to what was coming in the future, especially when the news is good?  But then, who would wish to face the frustration, the retaliation, the outcast experience that came with the job?  We tend to focus on the supernatural aspect, especially with someone like Ezekiel, with his rather physical form of prophesying.  And you know, if God wants to give us glimpses of heaven, we’re cool with that.  But to be Jeremiah, thrown into the well to die?  To be like Hosea, called to marry a harlot who will be unfaithful?  Honestly, none of these men had it easy by any stretch.  Their task was to speak God’s truth, and it was generally made necessary by the willful deafness of those to whom they were sent to speak.  They weren’t promised welcome.  They weren’t promised positive outcomes.  They were tasked with proclaiming the Truth, come what may.

In the New Testament, what we see of prophecy seems to primarily consist of foretelling events.  Yet, to visit fortune-tellers was always precluded for the servants of God.  If one wanted to know things, one seeks it from God, not through these practices of divination.  And if one wants to know things, and God chooses to retain His counsel to Himself, well!  Let not the seeker speak.  But far more of prophecy consists more simply in delivering God’s counsel, whether it directs attention to things ahead, or whether it reviews things as they stand.  Zhodiates, admittedly a man fiercely opposed to any thought that spiritual gifts of this nature still apply, yet comes to a pretty solid definition of what it means to prophesy, and one we do well to remain mindful of, whatever our opinions on spiritual gifts.  To prophesy is to speak the counsel of God in the power of God by the direction of God.

I want to emphasize the threefold aspect of that.  It is first and foremost to speak God’s thoughts after Him, if you will.  That is, in essence, how we ought to seek to address what we read in Scripture as well, for it is what the authors were doing.  Yes, they write in their own voice, and as their own thoughts direct them.  Yet, their thoughts are informed by the Spirit.  Their writing is commissioned by the Spirit.  Thus, that last part:  By the direction of God.  You know, there’s that parable Jesus spoke about casting pearls before swine (Mt 7:6).  “Don’t give what is holy to dogs.  Don’t throw pearls to the swine, lest they trample them down and tear you apart.”  Know when to speak, and when to refrain from speaking.  Oh!  Is there a lesson in that which we need to learn.  To be a truth-speaker, to be a prophet, does not consist in insistently rubbing the noses of one and all in the unvarnished truth.  There is discretion involved.  There is that tiny matter of speaking the truth in love.  Sometimes, love demands we hold our tongue.  How to know the difference?  Let your proclamation be at His direction, and if He does not direct it to be said, keep your own counsel.

If He wants His counsel declared, He will empower its declaration.  If we are speaking from ourselves, even though the words be true, His power is not in it.  We cannot account ourselves prophetic if we are not in fact speaking at His behest, but from our own passions.  We cannot expect to have anything come of our pronouncements except we speak as He empowers us to speak.  And we do no man any good if all we are speaking is our own opinions.  To be of value, our counsel must have all three involved:  God’s counsel, God’s power, and God’s direction to speak, or to write.  This, I would maintain, very much applies to the role of the pastor in the pulpit, or to the teaching elder; to the Sunday School teacher, to the mentor; to the one who would understand what the Scriptures say to us, and seek to share that understanding.

Okay, so perhaps we can touch on those other two forms of inward sign that Joel presents and Peter repeats.  Some will see visions, others dream dreams.  Now, why this should divide out to young men and old men as it does, I don’t know.  It seems to me, though, that the point remains that it is inclusive of all.  Sons and daughters, young and old, masters and slaves; there is no distinction.  But there may be variety.  Why not?  I don’t for a moment suppose, though, that visions are restricted to the young, or dreams to the old.  Neither to I give credence to the popular idea that every dream is significant on some deep spiritual level.  I know too many of my own dreams are little more than my body informing me that I’d best get up and attend to certain physical necessities.  That’s not the least bit spiritual in nature, but I thank God that He equips us to thus alert ourselves to our own need.

On the other hand, there are a few, a very few, dreams I can recall that had clearly significant content.  No, I did not feel the need to immediately arise and write down what I could recall, nor even to share the matter with anybody else.  Yet there was something there that was more than just the influence of a late supper or some such.  But dreams and visions:  The distinction, I suppose, lies in one’s physical state.  If you’re awake at the time, it would be a vision.  If you’re asleep, it would be a dream.  I don’t know as I’ve heard of anyone experiencing what I could construe as a legitimate vision.  Impressions, perhaps, or overactive imagination, but vision?  No.  When I think vision, I think Isaiah visiting the heavenly throne room, or those scenes Ezekiel saw by the riverbank.  These strike me as lasting experiences, matters of some duration, not fleeting momentary things gone from sight before they’ve even clearly registered.

So, what distinguishes vision from hallucination, or dreams of a spiritual nature from dreams of mere imagination or bodily influences?  Clearly, the fundamental driver is divine involvement.  A vision is something divinely granted.  A dream of the sort Joel has in view is likewise divinely granted.  Now, I would have to note that what is divinely granted cannot be demanded.  It can’t be worked up.  We cannot insist on receiving such a message from God.  And frankly, if we could, if it were so common an occurrence, it would no longer be a sign, would it?  It would be the stuff of ordinary, everyday experience.  As concerns ordinary, everyday experience, we do better to hold to pursuing a deeper understanding of that which is written, for there is more than enough there to keep us occupied to good purpose.

I’ll add a second distinguishing feature to these things, since, as I say, dreams and visions are variations on a theme of prophecy.  They signify something, which is to say they are signs; as I have been terming them, inward signs, or signs coming from within us.  If they are signs, they signify something.  They point to something beyond their occurrence.  The value of the prophecy is not in making a name for the prophet.  It may, in certain situations, come about as a means of validating the one who prophesies as in fact speaking God’s counsel by His power at His direction.  Thus, the visions of those Old Testament prophets.  Thus, the experiences of Paul and Peter.  But then you have one like Agabus, who comes up twice in the course of this book.  His words were true, and we may reasonably accept that they came rightly qualified as being God’s counsel given at His direction.  And the content was clearly a matter of things revealed by God’s knowledge and power.  Yet, he was not establishing himself as any sort of religious authority.  He made no claims based on being thus used.  He delivered what he was given to deliver, and left it to the man of God to determine what to do with the information.

Finally, I would add a warning as regards these inward signs, and those who claim to give expression to them.  Not every claimant to the prophetic label is in fact a prophet of God.  The mere pronunciation of claimed foreknowledge, however it may be delivered, does not in fact ensure that the pronouncement is true, nor that the one speaking is authorized by God.  It cannot even be taken as evidence that such a one is a child of God at all.  One need only look at the situation Jeremiah faced.  There were myriad claimants to the prophetic label, yet almost to the man, they spoke garbage.  Or, consider Balaam, who was constrained by God to proclaim truly, and yet had little regard for God, and a much greater focus on self-promotion and profit.  This is hardly unique to those two occasions.  Many a modern-day prophet has little in view besides his own name and perhaps a bit of easy profit at the expense of ill-shepherded sheep.

Understand that dreams and visions, prophecies and wonders are all well and good, but they are all of them subject to counterfeiting.  They may serve a purpose, but they cannot be taken as proof of the person.  Note that Paul, while he makes mention of the supernatural gifts he has exercised, points the believer to something far more robust, something far more impervious to counterfeiting:  the consistent lived example, or we might say, the example of a lifetime.  He spent time with those he taught, to the degree he was permitted to do so.  And he lived with those he taught.  He didn’t just pop up on a Sunday to speak for an hour, then withdraw out of sight.  He was there with them.  He was visiting them at home.  He was living life before them, open to their inspection, day in and day out.  He was facing trials with them, standing fast together with them, showing them by his consistent example that yes, the Holy Spirit of God was indeed indwelling and active in him, and by doing so, demonstrating that those he was teaching could in fact come to a like consistent life of faith, and by the same means of the Spirit indwelling.

Understand that dreams and visions, prophecies and wonders are all well and good, but they are all of them subject to counterfeiting.  They may serve a purpose, but they cannot be taken as proof of the person.  Note that Paul, while he makes mention of the supernatural gifts he has exercised, points the believer to something far more robust, something far more impervious to counterfeiting:  the consistent lived example, or we might say, the example of a lifetime.  He spent time with those he taught, to the degree he was permitted to do so.  And he lived with those he taught.  He didn’t just pop up on a Sunday to speak for an hour, then withdraw out of sight.  He was there with them.  He was visiting them at home.  He was living life before them, open to their inspection, day in and day out.  He was facing trials with them, standing fast together with them, showing them by his consistent example that yes, the Holy Spirit of God was indeed indwelling and active in him, and by doing so, demonstrating that those he was teaching could in fact come to a like consistent life of faith, and by the same means of the Spirit indwelling.

Lord, let it be so!  I see too much in myself of late that just doesn’t signify as it ought to do.  Burn away that dross, I pray, and let Your refining work proceed in me.  I am too much back in old patterns of speech, too much stressed and short-tempered, and these things will not serve the purpose.  Let me find once again my peace and my strength in You, that You may shine through me.  Let Your word not merely intrigue me in these first hours of the day, but guide me through every hour.

Signs Without (04/19/26)

Peter, again following Joel, proceeds from these inward evidences of God in action to outward signs.  It may be that man is still somehow involved in some or all of those occurrences to which our attention now turns, but I tend to think not.  I suspect that when the time comes for these things to unfold, they shall be such as are visible to all mankind, and such as leave none in any doubt but that something greater than mankind is causing them to occur, something greater than nature, or science, or whatever other explanation one might attempt.  Only one answer shall remain: That God, the True God, is moving.

So, then, we have four, perhaps five indicators brought to our attention.  Interestingly, they are once again sandwiched with the same, or a very similar sign at both ends of the list; that of blood.  The organization of Joel’s presentation makes it clear that the one mention concerns matters here on the earth, and the other concerns events in the universe around us.  The sum has got to leave us clearly aware of God being God of all Creation. Nothing is left out.  There is no place to hide from Him.  I think of the current interest in returning to the moon, or in the case of Musk, seeding a human colony on Mars.  The driving concern is to have a backup humanity, if you will, in case of earthly catastrophe.  But the message here puts paid to any such plan, if it is God who brings the catastrophe to pass:  There is no place in all of existence that is beyond His reach and control.  You cannot run from Him.

Now, that sounds rather dark and ominous, and frankly, it’s intended to be heard with trepidation.  These are Last Days events that are being set before us.  But then, the more exciting and receptive signs of hearing God’s word proclaimed in such surprising fashion, from such surprising sources, also concerned matters of the Last Days.  The message, then, is that this is upon you, and has been now for some two thousand years and more.  The situation only grows more urgent.  But let us attend to what is set before our mind’s eye here.

There will be blood on the earth, and as the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery observes, “The appearance of blood is never a good sign.”  Blood, of course, is the vehicle of life.  This is why blood plays such a large role not only in the Old Covenant practices of Judaism, but in most any religion one wishes to consider.  Sacrifice of life was required from the outset, to offset the penalty of sin.  Even for Adam and Eve, blood was shed.  And we find that the land stained by the blood of man, evidence of violence against man, was sufficient to curse the land thus stained.  Blood is life, or to put it more directly in biblical terms, life is in the blood.  It’s rather obvious, as statements go.  Drain the blood and life shall not remain.  For all that, cease to rejuvenate and restore the blood, and life will not long continue.  But even then, blood remains internal, and blood flowing internally is a very good sign, isn’t it?  Life continues.  And God is Life.

But when blood is made visible, when blood is found where it ought not to be, it is, at minimum, indication of ‘a rupture in the fabric of life.’  That phrase again comes courtesy of the DBI.  But it doesn’t stop with bloodshed among men, nor is it evident that this is what is being considered, though that would certainly fit with Jesus’ pronouncements about that day, that “there will be wars and rumors of wars (Mt 24:6).  No!  Things go cosmic.  The moon itself will be as blood.  Okay, so interesting observation that it is not only America that seeks a return to the moon.  Other nations are also looking to establish a presence there, and these other nations are not exactly friends.  So, could this point to conflict of a human sort spreading outward from the earth to other places?  I suppose so.  But I don’t know as that’s our intent here.  What would it signify, then, other than that man is evil; a thing we already know too well?  But if the moon is a sign pointing to God, then this appearing as blood is an indication.  I’ll turn to the DBI once more for words to describe it.  It is evidence of ‘a hemorrhaging universe.’ 

Now, that’s dire!  But no more dire than Peter’s later description of the Last Day.  Both heavens and earth, he writes, are being reserved for fiery judgment (and note that by his math, two thousand years has been but a couple of days to the Lord).  It will come to pass!  The heavens will be ripped away with the roar of rushing wind, the very elements will be burned up, destroyed utterly, in the intense heat of that fiery day (2Pe 3:7-10).  We could turn to John’s Revelation, which informs us that the sky shall split apart, rolled up like a scroll, and ‘every mountain and island [be] moved out of place’ (Rev 6:14).  This is cataclysm on the cosmic scale, and all of it related to that which Joel presents to us as, “the great and glorious Day of the Lord.”  I’ll come back to that.

To blood is added fire.  Fire, of course, has its role in the sacrificial system, just as blood does.  In its proper place, fire is and has seemingly always been a great boon to man.  By it he can cook his food, warm his home, power his vehicles, light his path.  But, like blood, when fire appears outside its containments, things get bad.  One need but think of the annual wildfires out west, and the overwhelming, sudden fierceness of such destruction.  All the arts of man can barely hope to contain its spread, except higher powers intervene to aid the process.  And fires are often seen as evidence of battle.  The conquering armies of old would oftentimes fire the city when they captured it.  The point was simply to ensure that the vanquished city did not become once more a stronghold to one’s rear.  It’s the basic principle of war that one protects supply lines; that one ensures a conquered foe remains conquered.

Here, however, we ought to look farther afield than the artifice of war.  Fire, in its role in the sacrificial rites, comes as evidence of God’s acceptance of the sacrifice.  But it is more than that.  After all, we have that familiar scene with Abihu and Nadab, consumed by that very same fire.  And that draws our attention to a greater significance.  Fire symbolizes God’s holiness, and where God’s holiness enters the scene, sin must be destroyed.  Thus, fire is a marker of purification.  It is evidence of God’s holy presence.  Holiness must, in the end, consume either the sacrifice offered in atonement, or the sinner for which atonement has not been made.  Holiness must eradicate sinfulness.  It cannot be otherwise.  As symbols go, this is particularly apt, for in fire we have also the symbolism of light.  Where, after all, does the light of the sun originate, but in its unimaginably intense fires?  So strong are those fires that all the intervening miles of space cannot prevent it piercing through, bringing daylight to the earth.  As symbols go, this is powerful in the extreme.  Light overwhelms darkness.  There does not exist a darkness that can overwhelm light.  Light wins.  Necessarily.  Just so, God, Who is Light, overwhelms, necessarily, the powers of darkness.  Holiness wins.  When He comes, there is no question as to the outcome.  It shall be as He desires.

Again, we have something like bookends here:  Fire on the earth, and an apparent quenching of fire in the heavens, as the sun goes dark.  Once more, the clear and evident point to which these signs seek to draw our attention is that God has control of all, determines all, and will bring His justice to all.  There is no hiding place.  There is no distance too great.  Now, I would have to admit that on such occasions as I contemplate these pronouncements of end times cataclysm, I tend to picture things in a most literal fulfillment, which may not be the best way to consider them.  When I read here that the sun will be darkened, I’m thinking something eclipse-like, only more so.  But if I take these two events, the darkened sun and the blood-red moon, in so literal, and physically explicable a fashion, something is still there to supply the moon with light to reflect.  The best I can devise is something causing, as it were, a double eclipse; sun and moon blocked from one another, and sun simultaneously blocked from earthly visibility.  And now, on such scale as the whole world will notice!  That’s going to take something huge, and it’s going to have to last at least a day, such that all portions of the earth have opportunity to observe the absence.  A darkened sun at night, after all, is hardly going to be noticed.

But what if we’re being too literal?  One could posit the recent insanity of outfits thinking to launch various compounds into the atmosphere in hopes of reducing the sun’s warming influence.  The shear hubris of such a proposal ought to be enough to drive the perpetrators from any employments and any access to the means to pursue their desired end.  But such is not the case, because it seems the world at large has generally lost its collective mind.  But it is not hard to imagine how horribly awry such a thing could go.  Consider other occasions when man has thought to intervene in God’s nature.  I remember life on Hawaii, where man in his brilliance had imported ferrets to address an issue with snakes.  But of course, man in his brilliance had not thought through the likely outcome of introducing an animal with no natural predators into such a protected environment, and soon enough there was a ferret problem to replace the snake problem.  And that problem came with rabies.  Such an improvement!  Or, look at the ravages caused by pigs where ships have landed and swine entered into the wild.  Or, lesser things.  Think about the man who brought gypsy moths to America in pursuit of establishing some sort of silk alternative.  And we still face the results more or less annually.  Man thinking to control or alter the natural order has never worked out particularly well.  Play with it on the cosmic level, and it would not be difficult to imagine a truly catastrophic outcome.  The sun became dark, the moon blood red.  Yeah.  You go tinkering with the atmosphere and even should the sun continue to produce its light, one might feel like it had gone dark.  One might even find oneself rather wishing it would.  Get it over with, already.

Then, in the middle position, we have smoke.  Well, of course, where there’s fire there will tend to be smoke, won’t there?  And we often find that where God is, in the brilliance of His holy fire, He surrounds Himself in obscuring smoke.  One might take that as a matter of Him protecting mankind from the purifying destruction of His direct presence.  And so, when His holy presence is in the temple, the temple is filled not with radiant light, but with the smoke of His presence.  When He accompanied Israel through the wilderness, He stood as a pillar of fire by night, supply warmth and visibility, and of smoke by day, providing shade to cover them against the heat of the desert sun.  But then, if we see smoke rising in the sky at some distance, what do we understand?  There’s fire there.  It might be a factory belching smoke, if we are in an industrial zone.  Or, it might be evidence of a forest fire.  Or, if we are in war-torn regions, it is evidence of enemy action.  We have rather a keen sense for smoke, because smoke is generally not a positive indicator.  It’s a warning.

What we are left with is an accumulated set of dire warnings.  All is pointing to destruction, to battle.  The Last Day is a day of battle, as the armies of God come to put an end to the rebellious reign of the devil.  The armies of mankind will gather together against the armies of God, a futile gesture, to be sure.  But the armies of mankind, for all their well-developed arts in producing death and destruction, will amount to nothing.  Even with the added component of demonic involvement, it will amount to nothing.  I am struck by the flow of events as they are unfolded in John’s Revelation.  The armies are gathered.  Everything looks ominous, dangerous.  But the Lord Jesus shows up, His armies at His back, and boom!  The battle’s over before it gets started.  “The channels of the sea appeared, and the foundations of the world were laid bare by the rebuke of the LORD, at the blast of the breath of His nostrils” (2Sa 22:16).  What is man or demon against so awesome a God?

So, what is Peter’s message here?  There is a day in God’s schedule, declared long ages ago, in which the total, cataclysmic weight of His vengeance shall come.  It is a day of judgment, but not so much judgments being determined, but rather, a day of sentencing, of penalties applied.  Observe:  “He who believes in Him is not judged.  He who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (Jn 3:18).  It’s a making manifest of what was truly the case.  Darkness will not, of its own accord, come to the light.  Evil will hide away from exposure.  But the one practicing truth gladly comes to that light, the light then making his acceptance evident, for it makes manifest that, “his deeds have been wrought in God” (Jn 3:19-21).

And all of this, Peter says, is beginning to unfold in this moment, has already begun to unfold.  What you see, men of Judea, is clear indication that these other things are coming as well.  The Last Days are here, and the Final Day necessarily approaches.  It’s a moment of crisis, a moment of decision.  And that shall occupy our considerations in the next portion of this study.

Two Roads Ahead (04/20/26-04/21/26)

Signs were set forth and signs have been given.  The events of this day were as signal flares going up.  Yet, those who witnessed them could not, by their powers of reason, reach understanding as to what it all meant.  This is not cause to shame them for their failure, but rather, cause to consider our own response to events of our day.  Short form:  We would have fared no better in their place.  We would have been just as perplexed, just as cynically ready to dismiss.  We are, if we are honest, inclined to that mindset against which Peter writes in his epistles.  It’s been two thousand years and nothing has changed, or if it has, it’s been for the worse, really.  But our fleshly conclusion is that things will continue on their course at least for our lifetimes, likely for those of generations to come.  We will acknowledge Scripture’s assurance that there comes a day beyond which there shall be no more, but it’s a gauzy sort of thing, a belief in the theory, but not necessarily in the event coming to pass in real, physical experience.  So, we might want to be a bit forgiving in our assessment of those listening to Peter.  After all, there was a need for him to address them, else God would not have moved him to speak.

Make no mistake.  There is something of a gentle rebuke in his words.  It’s left unspoken, but I think we must recognize it in the message of verse 16.  “This is what was spoken through the prophet Joel.”  You’ve had this in front of you for how long?  You’ve had how many prophets speak of it?  Remember, it wasn’t just Joel.  He’s just the one chosen for the moment, as regards the immediate events being explained.  There’s a quiet undercurrent to this.  You should have known what this is.  It ought to be clear to you, you who are men of Judea, citizens of Jerusalem in faithful attendance at temple.  One could perhaps hear it as a rebuke of the temple order, but that’s probably reading more into it than is proper.

So, Peter explains.  I am mindful that the Apostles had often enough had to await the patient explanation of Jesus in order to rightly perceive what it was they were part of.  We saw that in yesterday’s sermon on Mark 8:14-26.  They had just finished helping Jesus feed another four thousand men with their families, feeding them from nothing, and yet coming away with an abundance of leftovers; leftovers which had been left behind apparently.  Jesus makes a point about the leaven of the Pharisees, calling upon His companions to beware lest they develop the same habits.  But they’re too busy thinking about the bread they forgot to bring with them.  He rebukes their lack of understanding, their slowness of thought.  The scene switches rapidly to the healing of a blind man, whose sight is only gradually restored.  We tend to look upon it as Mark just slash-cutting from one event to the next, but that’s not the case.  It’s connected.  The healing of the blind man is a parable in flesh for the disciples.  At first that man’s condition is of seeing, but not clearly.  That is where the disciples are at currently.  But comes another stage of healing, and he can see clearly at last.  That time will come for the disciples in due course, has come in this moment when the Holy Spirit has arrived to take up residence in them and, as Jesus had promised, to recall to their minds what He had been teaching when He was with them.  In all of this, though, the freshly minted teachers do well to recall that scene in Mark, and the patience shown them when their own thinking fell so very far short.  We, in our turn, need to recall our own former days, that we may know mercy towards those still in them.

But let us come to the message.  We have looked at the signs that Peter lists, and noted that his quoting of Joel is in fact following a single passage, not stitching together disparate comments as those rightly dividing the word of God (2Ti 2:15).  This is a message in one division.  But it has the appearance of being bifurcated.  It’s like looking across time through bifocals.  In the reading portion of the lens are those events unfolding on that day:  God is pouring out His Spirit and His people are prophesying.  And it’s not some select few.  No!  He is doing this upon all manner of people.  It’s pretty clear that even those in the upper room that day didn’t fully grasp that point yet.  But they would in due course.  They would have no choice.  Still, the breadth of inclusiveness is already sufficient to send shockwaves through the believing Jews.  Men and women!  This was something that would need an adjusted mindset.  And bondservant alongside master!  Honestly, as we watch things unfold, it’s clear that it took years for this to properly register.  If we look across the Church more generally, we see that it has taken centuries.  The flesh does not die easily, nor the mind change readily.

But here is Peter, pointing to Joel, and saying, “Look!  What God told you through the prophet is now unfolding before your eyes!”  Now, had he stopped with the section that speaks of God pouring out His Spirit upon the people, no doubt this would stir up excitement in the listeners.  They would be rather like Simon the Magician, whom we meet later on, eagerly seeking that God might give them some of that good stuff.  And that sort of enticement is common to those proclaiming a false gospel.  This would be the stuff of the ‘best life now’ model of preaching, or the gold dust promises of the prosperity gospel.  Everything is health and wealth, nothing of the trials and tribulations.  Let’s keep clear of that call to holiness.  That’s works, and we’ll have none of it.  That’s a downer, because we know we’re so far from it.  So, we’ll stick to the good stuff.  We’ll talk at length of blessings and happiness and ponies and flowers.  We’ll keep the harsher aspects under wraps.  It won’t attract people.

Neither Peter nor Joel show any such propensity, however.  They don’t just say, “Look at all these nifty things we can do, now.”  They recognize that their deeds are but signs, and the signs are of little value if nobody understands where they’re pointing.  So, it is stated bluntly.  God moves right on from pouring out His Spirit to the bombshell news of the Last Day.  It’s not going to be fun and games.  It’s not a carnival come to town.  It’s destruction, and on a cosmic scale.  There’s going to be fire and smoke, bloodshed, a general overturning of the natural order.  This is not some recoverable annoyance.  This is a grand finale.  This is the message:  The wonders you are seeing today are evidence that the rest of the message is also coming to pass.  And for those wondering about the sequence of events, let’s be as clear as Joel was:  These events he describes transpire, “before the great and glorious Day of the LORD.”  All of this is but the lead up.  But all of this is enough to have a sensible person despairing of life and hope.  And that, quite honestly, is the intent.

Here is the message that’s being delivered, a message that Peter will proceed to elaborate upon so that those listening won’t miss it, cannot fail to understand it.  The Last Day is coming, the beginning of the Last Days is now.  We may not know the duration of this period, but we know it comes to an end, and with it, all that we have known of physical existence.  It is not going to be fun times.  It comes as a day of pure, unadulterated judgment.  And that judgment is entirely unavoidable.  There is no place that is beyond the reach of God’s Justice.  There is no life that passes without it facing God’s Justice.  Death will not hide you from it.  Space travel will not take you beyond its reach.  He who dies with the most toys does not in fact win, and you don’t only live once.  As the author of Hebrews makes plain, “It is appointed for me to die once and after this comes judgment” (Heb 9:27).  That judgment would be meaningless if life terminated at death, if the nihilists were right.  But they are not.  There remains the second death, the lake of fire which awaits those condemned in judgment (Rev 20:14), which is the true and eternal hell reserved for the devil and his companions, the which we remain if we are not such as call upon the Lord and submit to His governance.

Listen clearly!  This is the message being delivered in this first service of the Church.  The Last Day draws nigh, and terrible things lie ahead, and brother, you ain’t ready.  But again, had Peter stopped short, left off at the notice of that Day of the Lord arriving, his would be a message of hopelessness.  Yes, we have this moment of excitement, but the end is coming, and frankly, we’re all doomed.  In the nature of man, that would be a true enough message.  But the message is not about the nature of man.  It is about what God is doing to address the issue with the nature of man.  What lies ahead, should you continue on the course you have been pursuing, is indeed terrifying, and terrifyingly inevitable.  But you don’t have to remain on that course!  There is hope, and that hope, should you lay hold of it (or should it lay hold of you) is not some shaky reed, some crutch that might be kicked out from under you.  No!  It is rock-solid certainty:  Everyone who calls upon the name of the LORD shall be saved.  That’s more than what we hear referred to as a foxhole conversion.  That’s more than fear reaching out for any sliver of a chance, grasping the lifesaver as the waves close overhead, even knowing that it was thrown to you by some enemy vessel.  This is submission and acknowledgement.  This is appealing to the recognized authority, power, and goodness of Him Who sits on the throne.  It is an end to hostilities and rebellion.  It is the assured calling out of a child to his father, full of trust; full of love; certain of a loving, caring, powerful response.

Here’s the thing.  For too many there remains no sense of any need of being saved.  Saved from what?  For the atheist, there does not appear to be anything out there, nothing beyond the rather dissatisfactory present.  I mean, after all, if there is no lasting future, then what value can there be in making a name for oneself?  What point can there be to amassing a fortune?  What does it matter whether one hoards all for himself or seeks to benefit others?  For all that, why be bothered with health care?  The end result is much the same regardless.  And as for those seeking some false eternality of electronic dreams, why?  If there is no God, no purpose, no point, who wants to remain forever?  Even the best of vacations grows wearisome in due course.  Even the finest home environment eventually ceases to satisfy.

But let us suppose some perception of the need for God, yet one that fails to truly account for the significance of God.  We don’t need much imagination to suppose such a state.  Some of us were in it.  Many of us have children or family members who are in it.  They’re sure there is some deity out there, some supernatural something that’s watching over their lives.  And they’ve probably had proof enough of it, for all that.  Kudos to them for at least noticing the fact.  But when it comes to contemplating what it means for God to be God, Who He truly is, and what He has had to say about Himself, some switch turns off, and perception flees.  They want the gauzy fairytale, not the demanding reality.  But reality is demanding.  And God, as we read in James 4 this week for men’s group, is very much a jealous God.  He chooses the comparison of husband for good cause.  He expects a faithful wife, and all this casting about after gods more to our liking is akin to unfaithfulness.  He’s borne with it a long time, but He won’t do so forever.

Beyond that, there remains this most fundamental reality of His personal holiness.  He, unlike any we have ever known or heard of, is holy – perfectly holy.  There is not the least hint of sin in Him.  In this, He is most inhuman, as we have experienced humanity.  We have never known any individual of pure motive, least of all ourselves.  Is this not why we find it so challenging to accept praise?  We know how mixed our motives were, the degree to which self-interest played its part.  We know every mistake we made, that whatever we did, we should have done so much better.  We and we alone, know the inner turmoil of our thoughts.  At least this is the case for most of us.  But God knows.  Oh yes, He knows.  And yet He loves us.  Astounding!

Why does it matter so much, this holiness of God?  It comes back to those outward signs we considered.  All that destruction that comes into view is the necessary effect of true Holiness encountering sin.  Sin must be destroyed.  It is destroyed by His mere presence.  Somehow, we fail to grasp this point.  Forgive me an aside, but when we look at the events of the Revelation, and that culminating battle of Armageddon, no mention is made of an actual fight.  There is a gathering, the ominous appearance of the armies of the nations gathered against the saints.  But Jesus, the Victorious Warrior appears on the scene with the armies of heaven, and it’s over.  Holiness eradicates sin as light eradicates darkness.  It’s no contest, really.  It is to this point that saints of old, those like Isaiah and Peter, recognized their deadly peril when they found themselves in the presence of God.  “Woe is me, I am undone!” (Isa 6:5).  Why?  “Because I am a man of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the King.”  Sin has beheld holiness, and there can be but one result.  “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinner,” says Peter (Lk 5:8).  Why?  If You stay, it can only be my death, worse still, my perishing.  This is the response of one who properly understands the holiness of God, truly believes what He says of Himself.  And such a one, coming to the call of Christ, proclaimed through Peter:  “You are to be holy like the Holy One who called you – in all your behavior” (1Pe 1:15); who can comply with such a high calling?  It is impossible!  And yet, it is the barest necessity of sanctification.

Here is the place where we begin to appreciate this offer of salvation.  What is required of the man of God is not in fact the faintest possibility for the man of God.  And men of God have bristled at this reality, it seems, forever.  This is at the core of the endless debate over free will and predestination.  If I cannot be any other than what God has made me, on what basis am I held to account for being as I am?  If I can do nothing, why is everything required?  How is it fair for God to require of me that which I cannot do, and then, to condemn me for not having done it?  Ah, but that misses a rather critical ingredient in the equation, doesn’t it?  It leaves Christ out.  It leaves salvation out.  It leaves the reality of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit out, as well as the atonement by which our Savior has redeemed us and rendered us acceptable in the sight of our Father in heaven.

Yes, God is holy.  Perfectly so.  We can barely grasp this because we have such a limited perception of what true holiness is.  We can barely conceive of good rightly, let alone this perfection of sinless purity.  The nearest we come, I expect, is a newborn, or nearly newborn child.  I think of pastor’s granddaughter, whom I had the pleasure of seeing yesterday.  Oh, she’s so innocent, so full of joy at merely seeing your face, ready to laugh and love everything and anything.  How can there be anything sinful in such a one?  And yet, as a parent, you know it just ain’t so.  Sin is already there.  It needs but the first denial of some desire in the child to see it burst forth.

Until we have truly grasped this reality in God, we can convince ourselves that we’re good enough.  When once we do, though, we can hardly be convinced of ever being acceptable, of finding an encounter with Him survivable.  Never mind any idea of abiding in His immediate presence forever.  Me?  In this state?  I’d be burned to ash in a second.  And the sinner needs to understand this if ever the offer of salvation is to have meaning to him, let alone present as something to be desired.  Preachers of old understood this.  We tend to think of them as fire and brimstone preachers, thundering out a message of death and destruction until those who heard them were left quaking in their boots.  And to be sure, there was a certain class of preacher for whom this was the style.  I suppose there still is.  Evangelism is all about putting the fear of God in the unbeliever.  But then, as I have probably observed too often by now, one of the most effective messengers of the Gospel, known to many solely for one sermon, preserved to us in, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” was known not only for the skill of his writing and the depths of his theology and faith, but for the relatively deadpan delivery of his preaching style.  Just read the page, no need to play emotional games.  No need to bellow and wake people up.  The message is all.  Let it stand on its own.  But the message got across.  You are in dire peril with no way to rescue yourself.  There is but one possibility of escape from your predicament, and that is the slender cord of faith in Christ.  It is slender, but oh!  It is utterly unbreakable.  Stronger than spider’s silk, that cord, entirely reliable and held by One most faithful.  That anchor holds!

Now, this is a twofold realization that is necessary.  We must recognize what it means that God is Holy, and we must simultaneously come to knowledge of ourselves, that we are not in fact, good guys, not even close to good enough.  We must come to recognize that in this situation, there is no good enough.  There is only good – perfectly good.  And we’re far too late in the game to have any hope of such a record.  Blew that at six months of age, if not earlier, and we’ve no way to go back and rewrite the record, no opportunity for a rematch.  Until we have these two things in view, we will not be ready to change.  We will have no interest in change.  We may find habits here and there that we long to set aside, seeing their destructive impact.  But even then, we most often find ourselves powerless, don’t we?  Even with all the aid the state may offer, addictions refuse to relinquish their hold.  But comes the Christ, comes the Holy Spirit, and chains fall off, impossibilities are found to have been resolved and we barely even noticed the moment when it happened.  But until we see that universe-wide gulf between what we are and what God requires that we should be, until we come to the impossibility of personal holiness, and the implacable holiness of God, what reason have we got to cry out for help?  Why would we?  Who seeks to change when he’s happy as he is?

But hope calls.  The Holy Spirit is sent forth into the hearts of those whom God has called to Himself.  He redeems whom He chooses to redeem, and that, quite in spite of the one redeemed.  Oh, we are told, God never forces Himself on anyone.  Poppycock!  If He did not, there would not be a single human being to be found in heaven apart from Christ.  If He did not, not even Elijah or Enoch or Melchizedek would be found with Him.  And so, for those whom He has called, for those in whom the Gospel has taken root, hope blossoms with utmost joy.  And wonder, as well, for we have come to know ourselves, and having done so, cannot shake what we know.  Me?  You’re going to welcome me into Your heaven?  But, God!  Just look at me!  I’m a mess.  How is it even possible that You, in your perfection of holiness could ever tolerate the likes of me in Your house?  For all that, how is it possible that You, in the Person of the Holy Spirit, have taken up residence in this filthy hall?  Me?  You dwell in me?  How is it I stand?  How am I not destroyed, for I know too well that I remain a sinful man.  And yet, here is Peter, who knew that feeling as I may never feel it, proclaiming this stunning, unimaginable hope:  Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

With that Light of salvation before us, the terrors that accompany the Last Day are no longer threats.  They are assurance of purification.  The same fire that consumes the fuel and destroys the dross purifies the silver and the gold.  Indeed, apart from that refining fire, silver and gold have a dullness to them, prove to be rather unpleasant to look upon.  But let the refining fire do its work, and even so lowly a metal as solder or pewter becomes a bright-shining substance, reflecting the light in beautiful fashion.  Thus, we who believe can look upon the terrors of the Last Day without being terrified.  Why?  Because we have come to know our God and trust in Him.  That, after all, is a large part of calling on His name.  We know Him.  We know what He has said of Himself, what He has promised.  And so, even as we see fire, and smoke and blood in every direction, we have this assurance:  God is working even all this for good towards those who love Him, and have been called in His purpose (Ro 8:28).  This is not our destruction, but our preparation.  This is the final refining from which we shall emerge purified, stripped of every sin, and fully prepared for heaven.  Praise be to His name!  This is our homecoming, and the salvation offered in Christ is the ark which carries us over.

The Deciding Factor (04/22/26-04/23/26)

What has been set before us already in this sermon of Peter’s is a clear declaration:  What you are witnessing is evidence of God’s preparations for the day of the Lord.  And if He is beginning that work, in accordance with His word of old, rest assured that all of that which has been written shall come to pass.  What God has declared shall be shall in fact be.  We may not know the timetable.  We are not given to possess the schedule in detail.  But we are given assurance.  It has begun, and if it has begun, it will assuredly come to its completion.  For us, this is a certainty given to our hope.  It is not the stuff of fantasy, but the rational conclusion drawn from accumulating evidence.  For others, it is evidence of an equally certain doom.  The same evidence requires such a conclusion.  That day is coming.  The evidence of God’s continued activeness in the affairs of man can be denied, obviously, for many would deny there has been any such evidence.  But such denials are a rejection of the evidence, not a conclusion drawn from absence of any evidence.

Let me build on that just a little bit.  To truly come to saving knowledge of God’s sovereignty, God’s holiness, and God’s love absolutely requires the work of the Holy Spirit upon the heart.  And to come to such saving knowledge must inevitably, necessarily produce real faith and belief in that one to whom the Spirit has come.  But at the same time, proper application of what we term scientific theory, the application of rational, unbiased thought to the evidence all around us must surely bring us to conclude that there is a god.  And having concluded this much, we can also learn much about His nature, or His character from that which we discover in His handiwork.  As Paul writes, “Since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made” (Ro 1:20).  The issue is not lack of evidence.  The issue is suppression of evidence.  The unrighteous, he observes, “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Ro 1:18).  They knew God, but did not honor Him as God (Ro 1:21), refusing Him and thereby becoming futile in their thinking.  “Their foolish heart was darkened.”  What it comes down to is they made a choice, and it was the wrong one.

Okay, back on course here.  What I also discover in Peter’s opening statement is a clear depiction of the Trinity in united action.  The Trinity, I would note, is ever and always in united action, for our God, He is One.  And yet, here we see the Father pouring out the Spirit upon mankind, and to what end?  That all who call upon the name of Adonai will be saved.  Who is this Adonai?  He is that One who has been given the name above all names (Php 2:9), that One who is “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion” (Eph 1:21), the name of the LORD, Adonai, who alone is exalted above heaven and earth (Ps 148:13).  That is the message here.  This One, the Son, who through His perfect obedience to every command of the Father, an obedience even unto death, has been received on high, taken His seat upon His throne to rule and reign forevermore as Lord:  It is to Him, we must give our fullest allegiance.  For He alone is worthy.  And there is no other name under heaven by which by which we must be saved (Ac 4:12), no, nor could we be saved by any other.  This truly is the deciding factor.  The signs are there.  The question is what shall be the outcome for you or for me as individuals?  The answer lies in this formulation:  Do we call upon His name?

Here is bedrock truth.  Jesus Christ, the Lord Adonai, our Messiah, our Savior, has rightful ownership of mankind.  He created us.  If in fact we are redeemed, it is because He redeemed us.  Either way, He is rightful ruler of us.  What it comes down to is that those who refuse to receive Him as Savior deny Him as Lord.  Those who do receive Him as Savior, if indeed they have truly received Him, receive Him also as Lord.  But His Lordship over us does not depend upon our reception of that reality, any more than the sitting president depends upon our acknowledgement of his office to hold said office.  To deny reality does not alter reality.  It may very well impact what results from our encounter with reality.  You can insist the car barreling down the street towards you will stop rather than hit you as you are crossing, but your insistence will not make it so.  You may be right, you may be wrong.  The outcome for you, should you insist your interpretation is necessarily the way things shall be will lead to most unpleasant results should your interpretation prove invalid.

Jesus is Messiah. He is Lord. Your belief doesn’t enter into it. He does have, as Thayer puts it, ‘special ownership’ over mankind. He does exercise controlling authority over the affairs of man. You may or may not appreciate the course of His actions. You may or may not perceive the purpose in what He is doing. Look around! We cannot even fully perceive the purposes and decisions of our own governing authorities for all the coverage those decisions receive. We are constantly being surprised, for good or for ill, as we encounter the fruits of their decisions. One suspects that in many cases, they are just as surprised. But Jesus is not surprised, for His plans and purposes are formed upon perfect knowledge and perfect wisdom, backed by perfect power.

So, this one has ownership of us; the right to determine and direct.  It is His call whether He saves or whether He leaves us to our fruitless rebellion.  And He is every bit as righteous in one choice as in the other.  There is no fault to be found in Him.  He is Authority.  He is the very definition of right and good.  What we have, more often than not, are not definitions but opinions, and opinions are only as useful as they are correct.  Go back to that example of the car coming down the street.  You are entitled to your opinion as to what that driver will or will not do.  But your opinion will not prove an effective defense against those two tons of metal in motion.

Okay.  I think I have sufficiently established the significance of Lord.  We still need to move on to the matter of the name, and then, the matter of our calling on Him.  The name, as I have often reminded us, is more than just a word.  To say “Jesus,” does not in itself achieve a purpose or ensure an outcome.  To address Him as “Lord,” does not in itself indicate a true acknowledgement of His sovereignty, nor address the matter of obedience, let alone glad obedience to Him.  The name is itself a sign.  And as a sign, it points to that which it signifies, and serves to bring to mind all that adheres in the one named.  It indicates his character.  It puts us in mind of his authority, his association to us.  Perhaps you experience this on some small level when somebody mentions the name of your child who is now living far from home.  Perhaps you feel it at the mention of your mother or father, or some past friend from former days.  Certainly you get some sense of it when mention is made of our president, or a former president, whatever you may think of him.  We can debate the propriety of that office holding such great weight with us, but I’m quite sure that mention of any president who has held office during your lifetime brings back recollections of his deeds, his record in that office.

Now, then, to name the name of the Lord is, or should be, to acknowledge that Jesus is in fact Lord, with all that Lordship entails.  It should put is in mind of all His myriad excellences.  It is insufficient if our awareness of Him turns only to His rightful rule of us, though it is surely insufficient if our awareness of Him does not include this.  But to know Him as Lord and not as Savior would be as lacking as to know Him as Savior but refuse to acknowledge Him as Lord.  Either way, the picture is incomplete, the awareness of His True Self lacking significant considerations.  To know His wrath without His love, His goodness without His justice, His power without His mercy, or feel free to reverse any one of those pairs; however you arrange it, to lack the part is to miss the whole.  It indicates that you do not yet know Him.  Now, per Scripture’s own declaration, we are forced to admit that we do not as yet know Him as He truly is, for we have not as yet seen Him as He truly is, nor could we until that day when we are brought before His immediate presence having been perfected in flesh and spirit alike.  But we know Him.  This is His assurance.  And as those who know Him, we are assured that we shall not follow another.  We can recognize Him from among others who seek to lay claim to our allegiance and our love. 

Hear it.  Internalize it.  Know your Lord.  “I AM the good shepherd, who lays down His life for the sheep” (Jn 10:11).  “I know My own, and they know Me, just as the Father knows Me and I know Him” (Jn 10:14-15).  Consider the depth of that.  The Father and Son know one another perfectly, without limitation or exception, for they are One; each fully of the same essence as the other.  They know one another’s character and thought for they are of the same character and thought.  There is nothing hidden between them.  And here, He says that we are in like association with Him!  There is nothing hidden from Him, and nothing hidden in Him; not for those whom the Father has called.  Yes, God keeps His private counsel for the duration of this present age.  There are things we are not given to know, but these are not matters of His character or power.  They are details of His counsel and plan of action.  This in no way lessens the full depths of our relationship to Him.  We know Him fully, not just in certain aspects.  We do not confuse Him with any other so-called deity.  We don’t equate Him with the sort of tyrant gods so common to other religions, nor do we reduce Him to the weak sort of gods that populate other religions.  We know Him to be Who He Is, and we love and honor Him as such.

And that turns us to the issue of calling upon His name.  To be sure, this is something far more significant than merely saying, “Jesus Christ!” or every unbeliever ever to utter that phrase as a curse would be saved, which is rather clearly not the case.  I cannot go so far as to say that anybody who allows their mouth to speak in that fashion is clearly condemned, for I am quite sure that many a believer finds themselves falling into that same outburst on occasion.  But they, one expects, know regret for their sin, where the unbeliever feels no shame.  Neither is it sufficient for one to have declared the phrase, “Jesus is Lord.”  Anybody can stick those words together.  It might mean little more than that they are reading words off the page.  It might even be a deliberate attempt to masquerade as a believer.  Do you really suppose somebody under demonic influence, seeking to infiltrate the house of God and lead believers astray, is incapable of uttering that phrase?  This is not some magic formula God has set forth by which we identify one another any more than “in Jesus’ name,” is some incantation to render our prayers effective.  No, when John sets this as the test of spirits, it’s not just the bare words that are in view, but true and glad acknowledgement of what those words declare to be the case.  HE is my Lord, and glad I am of it!  He has the right to position me as He wills, to send me as He wills, to correct me as He deems necessary.  And I rest in that assurance, knowing that He is good, and His every action towards me or around me is for my eternal good, even when those providences seem, at times, so hard and even dark.

To confess the name is to embrace the one named.  Were He present in that moment, I dare say we should be rushing forward to hug Him in glad welcome and adoration.  It is a mental hug, if you will; a joyful calling to mind of all He is, all He means to us, all He means for us.  Here, we move beyond confession to calling upon Him.  This moves us to the place of appeal or claim.  To call upon the Lord is, first and foremost to acknowledge His Lordship.  But it is also to lay claim to His promises to those who are His own.  It may be an appeal to His authority and power, a calling to one’s aid.  But it is more than that.  It is a declaration of one’s desire and willingness to act on His behalf, to serve in His cause.  It is, then, the fullest embrace of Jesus Messiah, our Lord and Savior, in all His power, all His love, all His tender mercies, and all His Sovereign will.

A final point in regard to this message Peter is delivering.  There is a stunning degree of inclusiveness to his message, only more stunning, I would expect, to those standing outside listening.  The Jews were a rather exclusive club.  Even the Galileans were a tad suspect to those he addresses, “Men of Judea.”  These were the true Jews, if you will, the purebreds.  The Galileans had their Hellenistic tendencies, mixed a bit too freely with the Gentiles.  There’s a reason the nature of those speaking left folks a bit suspect of them.  These are those Hellenizing Galileans.  They’re probably drunk like their Greek buddies would be.  It’s a dismissive assessment.  And those living in Jerusalem?  Well!  Why were they here, after all?  They had chosen to live here rather than back home so as to be nearer the temple, nearer to God.  It’s a bit of a misunderstanding, to be sure.  It would be as if our houses proximity to the church was taken to indicate the degree of our holiness.  Hah!  You have to drive here?  I walk.  I’m here every day.  But that signifies nothing.  For the temple is with us wherever we are, given the Spirit has taken up residence in our very selves.

But to this select crowd, Peter presents the words of their own Scripture, the prophecy of Joel.  And what has it to say?  “I will pour forth on all mankind.”  Sons and daughters alike will prophesy.  And already, the theological traditions rise up and say, “No!”  This is men’s stuff.  Young and old shall hear the Lord.  But, but…  that’s reserved to the priests!  Ha!  Even you household slaves, people.  They, too, shall prophesy.  Oh!  It’s too much to bear.  How can they be saying such things?  But Peter’s not just speaking whatever pops into his head.  He is quoting Scripture, and doing so rather well.  This is no paraphrase with personal interpretation.  This is memorized verses brought forth with explanation.  And it lands on this:  Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.  Nobody is excluded from this possibility.

We must be careful, though.  We see the all and the everyone and many among us want to jump to such a degree of inclusion that nobody at all misses out on salvation.  There’s that old insistence that one has carefully studied the Greek and the Hebrew, checked all the lexicons, and discovered the meaning of all.  It means all.  Polite laughter all about.  But of course all very rarely means all without bounds.  It is universally the case that all means all within a set.  When God says all Israel will be saved, it clearly does not include every last Israelite ever to be born.  If it did, then He has much to answer for, as we see those like Abihu and Nabad, whom I have been mentioning so often of late, or those swallowed up for their rebellion against Moses.  What shall we say to that generation left dead in the wilderness because they failed to believe?

For all that, if we are to take Joel’s words as declaring a universal salvation, how shall we apologize to those Canaanites wiped out by God’s command?  What shall we do to make things right with the Baal worshipers, or those of Moloch?  Who will restore Pharaoh and his armies?  No, it should be patently obvious that all does not indicate each and every individual ever to exist.  It is all within a set, and that set is clearly designated with the final verse here.  It is everyone who calls on the name of the Lord, everyone who gladly acknowledges His lordship, and relies wholly and solely upon His strength, and His gift of salvation.  Nobody is excluded from consideration on the basis of race, gender, age, social standing, or any other category we might devise.  Nobody is excluded on the basis of past actions, else we would all most assuredly be excluded, and none left for Jesus to be Lord of.  No, but to those He calls, those to whom the Spirit has come, there is a welcome response; a loving, glad reception of our Lord and Savior, and an assured trust in Him and in Him alone.  To these, young and old, rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, man and woman, brilliant and simple, the promise comes:  You shall be saved.  You are saved.  For you, the day of the Lord is not a terror but a great and glorious day, the day of our revealing in full as we are fully and finally made like Him by the power of His regenerative work in us.  Praise be to His name.  Even so, Lord, come!