DAY 14 MORNING Read Acts 2:14-21
JOEL: JESUS CHRIST IS THE BAPTIZER IN THE HOLY SPIRIT
Jesus Christ is referred to by John the Baptist as the one who will come and baptize with the Holy Spirt and fire. In Acts 2:17 when Peter preaches at Pentecost, he declares that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on that day was a fulfilment of Joel 2:28 “And it will come to pass afterward that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters will prophesy and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants, in those days I will pour out my spirit.” Jesus Christ when he had ascended to heaven, poured out the Holy Spirit on his praying disciples in the Upper Room. The book of Joel is a timely reminder for any nation that has departed from its Christian foundations, of the urgency of seeking the Lord and is particularly relevant to the Western world today that has departed from its Christian heritage. It is time to blow the trumpet in Zion and to urge the church to be spiritually violent, to take up the weapons of prayer and fasting. Joel is traditionally thought to have been written to Judah, by the prophet Joel during the reign of King Joash (830-810BC) before the exile. The book of Joel begins with an intensely terrifying description of a locust plague. Locusts are one of the covenant curses of Deuteronomy 28: 38,42. Locusts were also sent in judgement on Egypt, in Exodus 10:3-20. Judah is challenged to return to God. Even God’s just judgement is avoidable if Judah repents. God in his mercy will hear Judah’s weeping and fasting. However Judah did go into exile when Jerusalem fell in 586BC and the temple was burned. As he prophesies, Joel collapses into one, two distinct prophecies of two distinct events separated by a significant period of time, that is the fall of Jerusalem and the Day of the Lord. Joel warns specifically of the coming future Day of the Lord, when repentance will be necessary. Joel highlights the restoration that would come to Judah. The valley of decision refers to the decision to turn from sin that all will need to do at the coming day of the Lord, which refers to the judgement day at the end times. The book of Joel concludes with a salvation oracle. There is a future day when there will need to be a radical change and the Lord will restore. His judgement is real and terrifying, but his covenantal love and faithfulness is enduring and He will roar from Zion on that day, and the mountains will drip with sweet wine.
An urgent call permeates Joel to seek the Lord in prayer. Jesus may years later poured out the Holy Spirit on Pentecost in answer to 10 days of intense prayer and Jesus the baptizer in the Holy Spirit answers our desperate contrite prayer today.
AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY 534- 604
Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory to bring the gospel to England, but at one point he “seemed to have lost heart at the thought of going so far and working among people .. and asked to be relieved of (the) task.”[1] Pope Gregory told him to continue. Originally Pope Gregory had told Augustine to destroy all the heathen temples, but in a second letter there was a change in the directive. Rather than destroy pagan temples, he was instructed to use them for Christian worship. Believing that instead of worshipping devils these buildings could be used to worship God, this strategy was aimed at being sensitive to the locals and appreciating the local culture. Most importantly the object and heart of worship had totally changed. After Augustine arrived in Kent, and King Ethelbert of Kent was converted, 10,000 Anglo-Saxons in England were baptized. Canterbury became the base for the Roman mission to evangelize England.
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PRAY for “the Jewish, French in France the twelfth largest unreached people group in Europe whose language is French and whose primary religion is the Jewish faith. There are 442,000, 0% Christian and 0% evangelical. ” [2]We pray for a waking up of the Jewish French in France. Lord, Blow a trumpet in Zion, and may there be a messianic movement of French jews coming to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord you are a God of enduring covenantal faithfulness. Reveal that love through the person of your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, we pray!
DAY 14 EVENING Read Psalm 66-70. Re-read Psalm 69
PSALM 69: JESUS CHRIST IS CONSUMED WITH PASSION FOR HIS FATHER’S HOUSE.
PSALM 69:9,13 “ For zeal for your house consumes me, and the insults of those who insult you fall on me…. But I pray to you, O Lord in the time of your favour; in your great love, O God, answer me with your salvation.” There is something simultaneously awesomely attractive and terrifyingly scary about an active volcano spilling out burning lava and violently ejecting dark plumes of smoke into the atmosphere. The love that Jesus has for his Father’s house is a jealous volcanic desire that will spurn everything that gets in its way. How do we make sense of this jealous love? The idea of God being jealous comes up in the Old Testament, but does Jesus Christ have a jealous love in the New Testament too? David Sliker says, [3] “There is an old heresy, the idea that the Old Testament is a God of wrath and the New Testament God is a God of mercy. In Exodus 34; 5, 6, [4] Moses says ‘Show me your glory’, and God declares ‘I am gracious and compassionate, I am slow to anger and I am faithful .. abounding in loyal faithfulness’. Somehow we have re-written ‘Slow to anger’.. to mean that he has ‘no anger’. ..but ‘No!’ …The blood of Jesus does not remove his anger. He is slow to anger but this does not mean there is no anger. In emphasizing the Father Heart of God, (in the contemporary charismatic Western church) we have ignored really important aspects of his character. His relationship to us and his passion and jealousy relate to our destiny and …how far He is willing to go to get us to our destiny. He won’t stop until all darkness is out of us .., that hidden sense that I know better than God that I am wiser than God that I have a better way.. is dealt with. He is love and included in that love is his anger and jealousy. When you yoke your life and when you fasten your life covenantly to a bridegroom God ..you get him….the whole of who he is, is fastened to you and you get all of him … the free gift of righteousness made a way for him to fasten himself to you. You get him .. the God of the OT and NT has fastened himself to you.”
We get a picture of that jealous volcanic love when Jesus drives out the money changers from the temple and Jesus quotes Psalm 69:9a. in Matthew 21:12-13. This is the first of multiple times that Jesus Christ is speaking in Psalm 69. The Message version of Matthew 21:12-13 says [5]“ Jesus travelled up to Jerusalem. He found the Temple teeming with people selling cattle and sheep and doves. The loan sharks were also there in full strength.Jesus put together a whip out of strips of leather and chased them out of the Temple, stampeding the sheep and cattle, upending the tables of the loan sharks, spilling coins left and right. He told the dove merchants, “Get your things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a shopping mall!” That’s when his disciples remembered the Scripture, “Zeal for your house consumes me.” Here in Psalm 69, we find David speaking this verse, 1000 years before Jesus was born. Secondly, Paul says in Romans 15:3 that Jesus Christ himself is speaking in the second part of 69:9. Paul says “For Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.” [6] Here in Psalm 69:9b Christ, the divine logos is speaking through the mouth of David, and Paul is recognizing this, and Matthew Bates calls it prosopological exegesis. Thirdly,Psalm 69:21 says “they put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst,” is also Christ speaking, according to Origen [7]. For Irenaeus the unity of the Old and New Testament, demands that we see the presence of Christ in the Old Testament. If we don’t have that approach, we are in danger of being gnostics. As we read this passage in Psalm 69, and meet the person of Jesus speaking through David 1000 years before Jesus was born, the unity of both Testaments Old and New makes sense. The risen and ascended Jesus Christ of Revelation chapter 1, with hair white as wool and eyes blazing with fire, is the same Jesus Christ of Matthew 21:12-13 and Psalm 69:9a.
PRAYER
Thank you Lord for the burning passionate love for your bride. Open my eyes to see you Lord Jesus and open my heart to burn with passionate love for you too.
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[1] Neill, S. The history of Christian missions, Penguin, 1964, 58
[2] Data provided by Joshua Project https://joshuaproject.net/people_groups/11764/FR
[3] Sliker, D. Psalm 2 The nations rage and the wrath of God. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB20S4rAYKQ
[4] Exodus 34:5,6.
[5] Matthew 21:12-13, The Message, NavPress 2016.
[6] Bates, M. The hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation, Baker Academic, 2017, 200.
[7] Comm Jo 10.222-23 in Bates, M. The hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation, 246.
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