Time with the Children of God
Have you got something that is very special to you? Something that you wouldn’t want to get damaged or to lose? I guess you would want to keep that safe, wouldn’t you? In today’s reading from Acts we hear: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Salvation is a free gift from God, but it comes through faith. Let’s read the verse together: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
God sent Jesus to take away the sin of the world by his death on the Cross for all people, even those who hate him, and those who do wicked things. Their sin is forgiven—but that is not the same as being saved. Being saved means being saved from something and being saved for something. Some seashells I have remind me of this. Every year after Christmas our family goes on a beach holiday. One of my favourite things is to go for an early morning walk along the beach. It is so peaceful, listening to the water lapping against the sand, watching the seagulls cruise overhead, looking at the beautiful scenery. There must be millions of shells all over the beach. I like collecting some to take home as a special memory of each holiday.
Of all the shells on the beach I decided to choose these. I pick each one up and wash them in the water to remove all the dirt. I think they are beautiful. I put them in my pocket so that I won’t lose them or leave them behind, because I want them as my own and have them with me in our home.
This is like what God has done for us. God has saved you. That is why you are here. Like I picked up the shells off the beach, God reached out and gathered you to himself—before you knew him; before you had your sin washed away. He washed you and has kept you as his own, special, beautiful possession. Have you ever thought of yourself as beautiful, or special? Perhaps no one has ever told you about that before. But that’s what God says about you. After he created human beings in his own image, to be like him, he said his creation was very good—the word in Hebrew can also mean very beautiful.
God thinks all people are so beautiful, so special, so worth keeping, that he sent his own Son to save the world. He has chosen you as his very own, to belong to him. He has reached out and saved you to belong to him for his safe keeping from the troubles of this world, and the dangers of sin, death and hell, for life with him in his home in heaven forever. That is what being saved means, and God says that whoever calls on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved, kept safely in God’s hand forever.
Let’s pray:Growing in faith at home prayer
SERMON
“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” What sweet relief and comfort these words were to the people who first heard them, from the Prophet Joel. They were words of sweet relief and comfort because they had made a terrible mess of their relationship with God. Up until this point in Joel chapter 2, it hasn’t been such pleasant hearing for them. We might remember hearing from Joel 2 on Ash Wednesday; a text which begins with the cry to: “Blow the trumpet in Zion”—the national warning system is to be activated. Doom was fast approaching—a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! An invading swarm of locusts was on the way, personified as God’s army coming to bring judgment on his people. The swarm is so great that they will block out sunlight and cast a dark shadow over the land as they wipe out the vegetation in a flash.
Through the prophets God had pleaded with his people over and over again, longing for his people to return to him and walk by his ways. They had forgotten God, rejected his word, turned aside from him for a future of their own making. They were listening only to themselves (that’s the natural human way), robbing themselves of true life as they established a counterfeit life and a counterfeit religion, worshipping, praying to, and trusting in the gods of their neighbours. God had had enough. Destruction of the crops by the invading locusts not only meant the people would have no food, but they will have no grain for making grain offerings to God. It seems this will be an end to the sacrificial system by which he forgave his people and reconciled them to each other and himself.
The people’s only hope was not in anything they could do, or had done, or anything about themselves. There was no hope in human means, plans or even their prayers. God had brought everything that they had trusted in, to collapse, showing that their only hope was in God alone—in God’s mercy and forgiveness. So Joel called them to “Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.
God did relent from sending calamity. He promised to drive the locust armies away from them and drown them in the sea. He sent them an abundance—new grain, wine and oil to fully satisfy them. He tells them to not be afraid but rejoice. He healed their land, greening the pastures in the wilderness, bearing fruit on the trees and vines and sending abundant showers, promising that the threshing floors would be full of grain and vats would overflow with new wine and oil. He renews his promise of old to them: “I am the Lord your God”. Then he gives a new promise:
“And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days.
I will show wonders in the heavens,
and on the earth,
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 dreadful day of the Lord.
And everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord will be saved;
for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem
there will be deliverance,
as the Lord has said,
even among the survivors
whom the Lord calls.” (Joel 2:28-32).
Do you recognise those words? Those are the words of God’s promise of old through the Prophet Joel. Peter uses them in his sermon on this Pentecost day in Acts.
Pentecost was a festival God gave to his people to commemorate 50 days after they commemorated his rescue of them from Egypt through the Red Sea. The purpose of Pentecost, also called the ‘Festival of first fruits’ was to remind God’s people of his goodness to them in giving them their own land where he would dwell with them with all his divine favour and mercy. From all the abundance God had lavished upon them in this land, God’s people were to offer the first fruits of their harvest to him, and ask for his continued blessing on their agriculture.
It was on the day of Pentecost celebration that the apostles in Acts 2 were all together in one place. Jesus had told them to wait there in the city, ten days earlier before he had been taken up into heaven:
“Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.
…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:4-5, 8).
So the apostles returned to Jerusalem. Together with Matthias (the man necessary to be chosen as the apostle to replace Judas Iscariot) the women, Mary the mother of Jesus, and Jesus’ brothers, they were all in the upstairs room of the house at which they were staying, 120 in number. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them (Acts 1:12-15 and 2:1-4).
God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven who had gathered to celebrate Pentecost and give of their first fruits had heard this sound, and came together in bewilderment. Each one heard their own language being spoken. This wasn’t a new out-of-this-world spiritual language, but the gospel being spoken in the languages of all those present—they heard them declaring the wonders of God in their own tongues. Some tried to make sense of what was happening with human logic and supposed that the disciples were drunk. Peter, though, pointed back to the Old Testament to show that what God had promised from of old was coming true: “‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy.”
Centuries before, God relented on the disaster he proclaimed on his people of old. His promise through the Prophet Joel centuries before that “whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” excluded no one from wayward Israel. But it would also no longer be people from Israel alone who would be saved, but people from every nation under heaven. That also means that when God first made that promise, he also had you in mind—you here at Glenelg in 2024. That is why he sent Jesus, the new Passover Lamb to take away the sin of the world. That is why Jesus suffered and died. That is why he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, to pour out the Holy Spirit.
For people from every nation to be able to call on the name of the Lord for salvation, they first had to hear that message of salvation in their own languages. That is why, as we read in Acts, that through the ascended Christ, the Father poured out the Holy Spirit upon the people gathered in Jerusalem from beyond the geographical boundaries of Israel. Filled with the Spirit, they were speaking and hearing the wonders of God in their own languages, and whoever called on the name of the Lord would be saved. Those who had come from everywhere to celebrate the festival of first fruits were now the first fruits of God’s worldwide church; the holy communion of saints.
God’s promise that “whoever calls on the name of the Lord” is not limited to any nation or group of people. It is not limited to any social class, or dialect. It is not limited to people who perform well morally or spiritually. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Then he sent the Holy Spirit, to speak the gospel through his people in their own language, apart from whom no one can say “Jesus is Lord” (1 Corinthians 12:3).
Unlike human beings, God doesn’t promise something only to smash it to pieces in a rage of anger. Even when his own people turned to cheap, lifeless imitations centuries before, God still had in view his desire to save the whole world; people from every nation under heaven, not only Israel. So God called the Israelites back to him. Even when he warned them of squadrons of devastating locusts through his servant Joel, he relented, because he had the day of Pentecost in Acts 2 in mind. He had you in mind—all of you here. He wanted you to hear the wonders of God in your own language. And so as the ascended Christ continues to pray for his church: “May they be one” the Father answers Jesus’ prayer. He continues to send the Holy Spirit to bring people to faith and gather them into his church.
The unity of believers that Jesus prays for is not something that can be created by mere humans. Church unity is far more than physical togetherness. Unity in the church is through faith in the word; faith in the message—”whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved”—faith that can only be created by the Holy Spirit, not people. Jesus said: “When the Counsellor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me.
When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 15:26, 16:13).
Unity in God’s church can only come from him, as through the word the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, and enlightens people to look to Christ and call on him for salvation. He doesn’t want anyone to miss out—not any race, or social class or group of people. Just look at what God is doing in his church! If you haven’t been to a Community Meal Day here at St Paul’s before, please come, and see what the Holy Spirit is doing. Last week I met Cecilia, an Indigenous lady from Hermannsburg. She was so excited to be there. We have welcomed Benny and Fiona, people from China who are so keen to learn more about the Bible. There is Alla, a lady who has escaped the devastation of Ukraine, and with the help of Google translate, and her English classes, is able to say thank you and begin basic communication with us. And we have people who are homeless and people who have homes but no one to share them with. And in our congregation that serves them, we have people from the UK, Germany, the Barossa and Adelaide.
These seashells in the one dish illustrate that well—a picture of the children of God in his church. Like seashells gathered into a bowl for safekeeping, God has gathered all of these into his communion of saints. God has gathered you too, like someone walking along the beach and choosing a shell to be their own, keeping it safe with a place of honour in their home, not because the shell did anything to deserve it, or even lift itself out of the sludgy sand. It is in the hand and in the home of the one who saved it, simply because they took delight in it.
That is what God has done for you, showing his delight for you and his desire for you to be his own, ever since he poured out his Spirit upon you through water and the word. He washed you and kept you as his own, with all the other people he has saved from sin, death and hell, to be made holy and given the gift of eternal life. And he still sends his Spirit through the word, to walk beside you and comfort you, and lead you into all truth, so that when we hear the promise: “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” we know that that word ‘everyone’ includes each one of us, and in response to this wonderful news we are able to confidently say together: “Amen!”
