God's Gift for the Family

Introduction

What does a teenager and an elderly person have in common? Well Neil Langer named these few things:

They like to hang out at malls — have developed their own “walk” — often wear clothing that doesnt fit well — are randomly accused of having questionable driving habits — tend to have trouble parking — are often frank and blunt. While this is funny, there is another question we could ask. What does a 10 year old and an 80 year old have in common? They need one another for their well-being. Josmitha Maria Dsouza, Anirban Chakraborty, and Neetha Kamath wrote an article last year about an experiment studying the effects of interaction with children on well-being among the elderly. They allowed children ages 7-14 to interaction with elderly people in a senior living facility ages 65 and over for 45-60 minutes weekly for 12 weeks. Results showed that these interactions increased self-esteem, self- reported health, decreased depression, and increased self worth in the elderly. In another instance like the Intergenerational School in Cleveland OH, children also learn from the experiences of the elderly and develop empathy and patience in classrooms rid of age segregation.

This concept of spending quality time and energy together is not a concept designed by Drs. Peter and Catherine Whitehouse at the Intergenerational School, nor was it developed by the Indian scholars in the experiment we discussed. I’d argue friends that all the way in Exodus 23, we see the Festival of Harvest or the Feast of Weeks. One of the components of this festival according to Deuteronomy 16:10 is that all able bodied Israelites were to take the trip to the temple in Jerusalem to hand deliver their offerings. There is a unified effort to bring gifts to where God is and celebrate the harvest God has brought to their lives. While in the OT and in Jewish tradition, these festivals celebrated God’s ability to move in the land and produce a harvest for them, here in our text we see the celebration of God’s ability to move in the people and produce a harvest in them. Its a family affair!

The gift of God’s presence moves from a mountain (Mt. Sinai), to the building (temple/tabernacle), from the temple into the family (each of us).

Focus: God’s salvific hope for creation is manifested in the gifts the Spirit places in each of us.

Function: We should acknowledge God’s work in the lives of those around us as we join together in anticipation for The Lord’s glorious return.

Big Idea: As part of God’s family, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, and become the gift through the Holy Sprit.

God’s gift for the family shows up in all people (v.17-18)

This text is calling for unity in the Spirit. The question is, “Why does the gift of the Holy Spirit choose all people?”

Answer: Because salvation is not by race or law (OT), but by faith (NT), the Spirit needs a larger vessel to be poured through. Ephesians 2:8 “For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—”

In other words, when more people are invited to the family reunion, you need more food and more cooks.

- Angie Williams and John Nussabum in their research for the book Intergenerational Communication Across the Life-Span present 5 basic tenants for their Life-span perspective

1. The potential for development extends throughout the life-span. We never stop developing

2. Development is multidirectional: from young to old and old to young

3. Growth and decline are joint occurrences

4. There is much intra- as well as interindividual diversity as we develop across the life span. Not one size fits all.

5. the person and environment are engaged in a transactional relationship, influencing and being influenced by each other

If such is the case, in God’s omniscience, God desires the full range our our lives and relationships to work in the plan of redemption and hope for the world. God pours through our whole lives because God fills throughout our whole lives.

To Pour Down - verb. to flow from a much higher location to a lower one in spurts

The process of pouring involves two forces: filling and pulling. Filling determines the content of the pour, the pulling determines the direction of the pour

example of rain (evaporation lightens the water from the earth and stores it in the clouds, condensation forms in the clouds to the point where that water becomes heavy and gravity pulls it back to the earth as precipitation)

It is suggested that the pouring of the Spirit in the NT contrasts the droplets of the Spirit in the OT. In the OT there were manifestations of the Spirit present in the lives of specific people for a specific purpose. For exmaple, the Spirit came upon certain judges, warriors, and prophets in a way that gave them extraordinary power: for example, Joshua (Numbers 27:18), Othniel (Judges 3:10), Gideon (Judges 6:34), Samson (Judges 13:25; 14:6), and Saul (1 Samuel 10:9, 10). However, the Spirit later departed from Saul because of his disobedience (1 Samuel 16:14). (Thomas Nelson Bibles)

Emphasis: That’s why we need a faith family (Church). No, we don’t come to church to get another “filling” of the Holy Spirit. We were already filled with the Spirit when we believed. We come to church to be encouraged to live out the fruit of the Spirit. As we are filled with the inspiration to live out the fruit of the Spirit, we are sent out to display the fruit of the Spirit because somebody out there needs to taste it!

Matthew 7:16 “You’ll recognize them by their fruit...” Trees have fruit, but families do too. Maybe that’s why we call them family trees. What’s on your tree?

Bananas - potassium, apples - fiber, oranges, lemons grapefruit - acidity, berries - antioxidants, and there are fruits in each and everyone of use that contributes to the fruit bowl that the world needs to live! So I ask again, “what’s on your tree?”

In the book “They Found the Secret” by V. Raymond Edman, he chronicles the life of a Frances R. Havergal (Fannie). She was raised in a godly home but knew her Christian heritage was not to take the place of a personal relationship with Christ. There was a partnership in her conversion to Christianity at the age of 13 by the impact of a classmate who was converted and a teacher who was intentional about her rearing in the faith. As her story goes on about her searching for the abundant life in Christ full of surrender, it was on Advent Sunday, December 2, 1873 that she had this encounter. She states:

First, I was shown that the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin, and then it was made plain to me that He who had thus cleansed me had power to keep me clean; so I just utterly yielded myself to Him, and utterly trusted Him to keep me.”…Edman then states, “And what was the outflow of that appropriation of the life of the Lord Jesus made by her complete surrender to Him? There was a constant experiencing of the fruit of the Spirit.

There is an intensified verocity to the dispensation of the Spirit in the NT in a way that requires a larger vessel to hold the essence and desire of the Spirit. Here in our NT text, the droplets increase to an outpour extended over people and not a person for the purpose of the salvation of humanity. There is a filling and a pulling.

Sons and daughters prophesy (to reveal a future event by divine inspiration).

- Key: One can become prophetic by growing in knowledge of the word of God.

Young men see visions (awake) - Old men dream dreams (asleep): we could get caught up in the semantics and make distinctions between dreams and visions, but I love what Sarah Horton from Ouachita Baptist University says on this matter in her thesis,

“God used both dreams and visions to speak to many of his people, as well as many foreigners--even pagan worshipers, such as Abimelech (Gen 20) and Nebuchadnezzar (Dan 2, 4). In fact, when it can1e to "outsiders, uninitiated, or those who had no access to prophets," dreams were often a first choice for divine communication. 14 In God's first communication with Abraham (then Abram), he appeared in a vision to establish the Abrahamic covenant (Gen 15); later, he reaffirmed it through a dream to Jacob (Gen 28). Among the prophets, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Obadiah, Micah, Nahum, and Zechariah all received their prophetic messages through visions…In the NT, the book of Matthew records how God sent dreams to Joseph, the Magi, and Pilate's wife. The book of Acts recounts stories in which Paul and Peter both receive visions, as well as Ananias and the Gentile Cornelius. The last mention of a vision in the Bible occurs in Revelation 9, where John implies that he received the whole revelation through a 14 John Walton and Andrew Hill, The Old Testament Today (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004). 7 vision. So we see that again God sends dreams and visions both to his people the Jews/Christians, as well as to people outside the faith.”

Through their poetic wordsmithing, the prophets are actually referring that all people, regardless of their gender and age and regardless of whether they are asleep or awake, are able to receive messages of God as a result of the Holy Spirit who dwells in them.

This is evident when you continue to read Acts. In Acts 21:8-9, the four daughters of Philip the evangelist are prophets.

Paul receives a vision of a man inviting him to Macedonia in (Acts 16:9) where he and Silas consequently bring their jailor to Christ after God broke their chains in prison.

In Acts 11:28, Agabus prophesies the spread of a terrible famine throughout the Roman Empire, as well as Paul’s arrest in Acts 21:10-11.

Peter is summoned by an unsaved Gentile named Cornelius, who sees an angel in a vision in Acts 10:3-7. As a result, he and his family are baptized in the Holy Spirit.

Emphasis: We should be ever grateful that we serve an audible and visual God, who desires and determines not only to speak to us, but show us.

*Mention Russell from GlobalGates. This man from Bangladesh (majority Muslim) has a goal of increasing the Christian population in this ethnicity from 1% to 10% by 2045. With a population around 175M, that means he wants the Christian population to grow from around 1.7M to around 17M in around 20 years. Thats a God-sized goal. One of the strategies he uses is to use social media to show cartoons and images familar to his people and he asks the question in presenting an image of Jesus “Have you seen this image in your dreams?” See he knows that his people are familar with Jesus. They just have Jesus wrong, and its not too far fetched to imagine they have thought about Jesus, even while asleep. God speaks to us in various ways.

How does God speak to you? How may God be speaking to someone in your family? Do you pay attention?

God’s gift for the family shows up in difficult times (v.19-20)

This prophesy is also found in the book of Revelation. The stars will fall to the earth, the sky will roll away like a scroll, and the islands will move (Revelation 6:13–14). Later, hail and fire will fall from the sky, and a third of the earth will burn (Revelation 8:7). A third of the sun, moon, and stars will be darkened (Revelation 8:12). Later still, a third of mankind will die in fire and smoke (Revelation 9:18). Beyond these specific fulfillments, "wonders in the heavens" and "signs on the earth" can be taken to mean God will do mighty things all over creation.These wonders and signs point to the future judgement of the world consummated in the return of Christ.

Blood, Fire, Cloud of smoke - can all be viewed in the context of war in which a victorious nation would burn down the conquered city after its demise, leaving behind bloodshed, fire, and clouds of smoke.

Families warn against divine judgement, societal evils, and personal missteps. The prophetic nature of the preceding verses is not a celebration of the ability to only recognize great times. Its also an understanding of God’s standard in the world.

The world looks dark. It seems hard to breathe sometimes, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. Divisions and greed plaguing the minds of our loves ones and even ourselves because of the vices we are surrounded by create avenues of anxiety and the family sometimes turns against one another because they see each other as the enemy and not the problem.

This is some bad news…depending on where you are in the fight. If we celebrate a conquering King we have to recognize that the King has enemies that need to be conquered. As Christ has already overcome the world, that means the fight is fixed. Family knows what it is to be a part of a fixed fight. (Big brother wants to play little brother in that game that big brother always wins)

How does your family handle the difficult times?

God’s gift for the family shows up to save the world (v.21)

Sermons from John Piper (1990–1999) (I Will Pour out My Spirit)

If war broke out tomorrow in the Middle East with terrible bloodshed and earthshaking ferocity, and began to draw the whole world into conflict, would that be a sign that God’s purpose for our day is not a great spiritual awakening but only a bleak downward spiral of calamity and moral collapse till the end?…No. On the contrary, there is a promise that in the last days the Spirit will be poured out on all flesh—all the nations will be reached. The true church of Christ will be awakened and revived and sent with extraordinary passion and zeal and prophetic power, and—right in the midst of terrorism and war and persecution and natural disasters—the flaming end-time church of Christ will finish the Great Commission, and welcome the King…O, my dear Bethlehem friends, I want us to be a part of that bright, bold, prophetic, Christ-exalting, risk-taking, end-time band of disciples—taking the clear and glorious message of verse 21 everywhere, no matter what: “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

The Holy Spirit isn’t impressed with your degree, your zip code, your whip, your boo, your membership in the organization, your blue check on instagram, your clear status at the TSA, or your points at Chick-Fil-A. The Holy Spirit helps you to recognize the name.

So what does a 10 year old and an 80 year old have in common? It is not simply the ability to matriculate through educational benchmarks and acquire the status and standards of success as measure by a flawed and fallen culture. It is that they can be almost in two different worlds, but they’re family. Rather, what they have in common is that at the point of faith and belief in Jesus Christ, they can be filled with the Spirit and made partners in the kingdom work. What they have in common is they can live under the freedom that while God is no respecter of persons, He is a keeper of promises. What they have in common is that the power of the name that saved them can be used through them to save someone else.

Does your family know who to call on?

There are so many names in our families, Abuela, big momma, pops, Unc, cuz, bro, sis, heartbeat, love of my life, matriarch and patriarch, rock, hope for the future, and so much more. But do you know the only name that really matters when you surround the family reunion table?…

Acts 2:21 “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

The name of the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous run in and are safe

At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow and every tongue confess

There is a name I love to hear...

When I get to my family reunion, ill be excited to see and do…but when we all get to our famiy reunion in Heaven, itll be even more glorious.

“When we all get to Heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be. When we all see Jesus, we will sing and shout the victory!”

When the family gets together the children play, the parents vent, the elders give wisdom, and the Spirit can be present in all of that!

When the family of God gets together, Paul tells the Corinthians we fellowship, we break bread, we pray, and we read scripture to learn how to call on the name of Jesus.

In that name is joy, peace, victory, love, hope. Those gifts are found in the family of Jesus. Jesus is Lord and when Jesus is Lord the family is safe!