Flood on Dry Ground: Pentecost

Minister:
Date: PM
Text: Isaiah 44:3-5
Psalters: 173, 79, 163, 287
  1. The rich figure.
    1. The figure is of plentiful rain making dry ground yield rich vegetation (pasturage) and creating rivers with willows alongside.
      1. The Israelites knew that dry ground grew nothing – it was baked earth, parched and dry, producing no fruit.
      2. By nature we are spiritually like the dry ground.
    2. God comes with promises of life-giving power to the captives, who see themselves as barren.
    3. As lush vegetation results from a saturating rain, so spiritual fruits result from the Spirit’s work.
  2. The rich fruit of the rain-giving Spirit (Pentecost), after Jesus completed His work of earning all of salvation.
    1. For the eternal God the reality of salvation always is; it never became.
    2. But in time there was time before and time after Jesus did His work on earth.
    3. The signs at Pentecost indicate the fullness of the blessings in Christ.
    4. Now there is a greater richness of the Spirit-given relationship.
      1. The greatest evidence of God’s love for us can be pointed to as an accomplished fact (Rom. 5:8).
      2. Now we know God as Father (rarely used for God in the O.T.).
  3. The experience of this blessed reality is most wonderful.
    1. As willows flourish by a river, so the Spirit makes believers flourish in faith, repentance, and love, though still in a dry world.
    2. When we do not flourish it is because we grieve the Spirit (Eph. 4:30) or tried to quench Him (I Thess. 5:19).
    3. We flourish when we know, appreciate, and walk in the knowledge of our true identity in the Spirit of Christ: “I am Jehovah’s.”
    4. We even “subscribe his hand unto Jehovah,” i.e., tattoo the name of our master on our hand.