Cry Out and Be Delivered
Joel Chapter 2 ends with a beautiful promise of restoration for the people who suffered and then turned their hearts back to the Lord. Then, at the very end, Joel prophesies regarding a future and final Day of the Lord. Sometimes I think we take the indwelling of the Holy Spirit for granted. We live in the time Joel looked forward to. We are the flesh which God promised to pour out His Spirit upon. We have God with us and in us each and every moment because of the cross. Prior to Jesus’ sacrifice, the Holy Spirit rested upon people for a limited time and a specific purpose. This led King David to cry out, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Cast me not away from Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.” Psalm 51:10-11
Take to heart the beautiful promise of Joel. “All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be delivered.” That is the simple way to eternal life. There are rules. There are traditions, yet the bottom line only requires that we call upon His name. The thief on the cross had no time to get baptized. He never learned the sinner’s prayer or answered an altar call. He never followed the rules. There was not time. With one of his final breaths, he called upon the name of the Lord and was assured that heaven would have a place for him. Charles Spurgeon once preached, “You cannot perish praying; no one has ever done so. If you could perish praying, you would be a new wonder in the universe. A praying soul in hell is an utter impossibility. A man calling on God and rejected of God! — the supposition is not to be endured. ‘Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ God himself must lie, he must quit his nature, forfeit his claim to mercy, destroy his character of love, if he were to let a poor sinner call upon his name, and yet refuse to hear him.”
Rejoice oh lost sinner because all you have to do is call upon the name of the Lord and be saved! This is our message. Whether people come to Him because they have lost it all (as I did) or because He restored everything does not matter. Whether the soul cried out in the first few moments of realization or the last few seconds of life does not matter. All that matters is that our heart truly turned from the want of sin and fell at the feet of our Savior with the want of forgiveness. This is our message. This is our hope. This is the promise God gave to His people through Joel, and this is what we hold fast to.
(Written by Keegan Harkins.)
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