Pentecost
“After this, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. . . everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved.” Joel 2:28,32 (EHV)
Joel did not mince words. Judgment was coming. Unless there was repentance, locust swarms would arrive with a scorched-earth agenda. What the large locust did not consume, the small locust would. Judgment would be universal, unstoppable, well-deserved.
Peter minced no words either. In the very city where it happened, he condemned his countrymen for rejecting and murdering God’s Son. With laser-like precision the Law hit home. “They were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37)
The message of Pentecost is still a call to repentance. It’s so easy to look at the immorality of our culture or the apostasy in today’s churches and see why others need to repent. Shouldn’t we rather condemn the selfishness, arrogance, lust, and discontentment that we find in our own lives? God hates those sins, doesn’t He? God hates all sin; great or small; secret or well-known; lust, jealousy, laziness, greed. No one needs to tell us that if God hates them, His punishment must follow. That knowledge is etched into our hearts.
What is not etched in, is the news that God’s punishment has already fallen. It fell with all of its devastating power on the “scorched-earth” of Calvary’s cross. God judged the sins of this entire world in the One Who became the Substitute for all people. What Jesus leaves behind is not destruction, but a crucial verdict that was declared on Easter morning: “Your sins are gone. You are no longer guilty before God in heaven!” Hard to believe? It is impossible to believe until the Spirit is poured out and produces faith in our hearts.
Come, Holy Spirit, come!
Let Thy bright beams arise;
Dispel the sorrow from our minds,
The darkness from our eyes.
Convince us of our sin,
Then lead to Jesus’ blood,
And to our wond’ring view reveal
The mercies of our God.
The Lutheran Hymnal 225:1, 3