Wind

With the sound of a rushing mighty wind from heaven, they were all filled with the Holy Ghost (Acts 2:2-3). Fitting that on Pentecost the ascended Jesus poured out His personal Spirit into the hearts of His people as a powerful wind. Wind is an agent God uses to accomplish His good pleasure. No human being can direct from where it comes or to where it goes—it blows where it listeth (John 3:8). But God creates the wind (Amos 4:13) and brings it forth from His treasuries (Ps. 135:7). He gathers the wind in His fists (Prov. 30:4). The stormy wind fulfills His word (Ps. 148:8). At His command, it raises waves upon the sea (Ps. 107:25), and in the spring, wind causes frozen waters to flow (Ps. 147:18). Therefore to the question asked of Jesus, What manner of man is this that even the wind obeys him?, we respond, "He is truly God!" (Mark 4:41). 

Wind is a powerful agent of God that always accomplishes His will. Mighty angels must hold the four winds of the earth. With those four winds, God brings to the earth heat (Luke 12:55), drives away rain (Prov. 25:23), brings relief (Exodus 10:19), and storms (Ezek. 27:26). With a strong east wind, He brought seven years famine and locusts upon the Egyptians, and divided the Red Sea so Israel escaped on dry ground (Gen. 41:27; Exodus 10:13, 14:21). With another wind, he swept the locusts away and brought those watery walls thundering down on Pharaoh's host (Exodus 15:10). With an east wind He showed He could provide enough flesh to feed Israel, but preferred to give them manna (Ps. 78:26). And by a west wind He once brought an end to three long years of famine in Israel (I Kings 18:45). 

Wind is symbolic of God's certain judgment upon the wicked. The ungodly are like chaff driven before the wind (Ps. 1:4). He that troubles his house inherits the wind (Prov. 11:29). They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind (Hosea 8:7), and the whirlwind shall scatter them (Is. 41:16). The hearts of the wicked are like trees blown in the wind (Is. 7:2). He whose faith wavers is like a wave of the sea driven by the wind (James 1:6), often tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine (Eph. 4:14). And Jesus, the great stone made without hands, not only smashes to pieces the ungodly kingdom of man, but sweeps it away with His wind (Dan. 2:35; Rev. 6:13). 

Wind is a personal agent of God. This explains why Scripture virtually identifies wind with angels. When the four winds of earth are unleashed at Christ's command, the angels themselves are said to go forth slaying men and hurting earth and sea (Rev. 7:1-3; Rev. 9:13-15). When our Lord flies upon the wings of the wind, He rides upon an angel, His ministers of flaming fire (II Sam. 22:11; Ps. 104:3-4). Thus, when the wicked are driven as chaff before the wind, Jesus, the Angel of the Lord Himself, pursues them (Ps. 35:5). Wind is also a life-giving agent of God. Scripture even uses the same word for wind, and a person's breath or spirit. Wind is the blast of God's nostrils (Exod. 15:8). Thus, He made all things by the breath of His mouth (Ps. 33:6); He sends forth His Spirit and they are created (Ps. 104:30). And in the hand of God is the breath of mankind (Job 12:10), into whose nostrils He breathed life (Gen. 2:7). 

Certainly fitting, then, that the ascended Lord returns to His church as a powerful wind—the personal Spirit of God given unto Him as the Angel of God. With that wind He must breathe His own new life into a people spiritually dead—so that when we receive that Spirit we receive Jesus personally. Although we pass as the flower before the wind (Ps. 103:16) and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away (Is. 64:6), nevertheless, He says, "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live" (Ezek. 37:9). No human can direct or control that wind either, but He blows where God sends Him. And assuredly by Him all the elect are gathered from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other (Matt. 24:31). Like the wind, He cannot be seen—but the effect is surely known in everyone born of that Spirit (John 3:8). Let us by that wind in our lungs, that life in our soul, that breath in our words, give thanks to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ with praise and obedience, who came to us with the sound as of a mighty rushing wind.