Joel 1
RileyJoel 1:1-20
JOEL—OR A PROPHET’S CALL TO Joe 1:1 to Joe 3:21IN taking up the study of the Book of Joel, we want to express the hope that many of you will read and reread this volume. Its brevity makes its reading the task of only a single sitting, and its clear forceful style is sufficiently attractive to invite a second perusal; while a third and fourth review would aid materially in making evident the plan of the Book, and the purposes of the Prophet.In discussing Hosea, we called attention to the fact that the order of these volumes, as they appear in our Bible, was not necessarily the order of their origin. The date of the Book of Joel is difficult to determine. Hosea told us the king under whom he prophesied, made mention also of the four kings of Judah who reigned in his time; and so definitely fixed for us the period of his prophecy. But the Book of Joel provides no such guide-posts. We know nothing of his personal history, and although the name of his father is given, that name appears nowhere else in sacred story.
So we are left without information regarding his family. The result is that students of the Word have parted company when they came to discuss Joel’s place in history, the majority putting him back as far as 810 to 758 B.C. while others, with some array of arguments, bring him down as late as 500 B.
C. We need not stop to enter into this discussion, since what Joel has to say is of equal weight and authority whether uttered at the one time or the other. He was Judah’s Prophet, just as Hosea and Amos were Prophets of Israel.His purpose in writing this prophecy seems to have been twofold, to reveal God’s judgment against sin, and the Day of the Lord, when men should turn from their iniquity to “worship * * in spirit and in truth”, and the golden Age would be on. In the Hebrew text this Book is divided into four chapters; in your English version, into three chapters; in fact, into no chapters at all. Its form is more like that of a sermon than a book. And while certain parts of it are given to the discussion of certain phases of his subject, the prophecy is worthy to stand as a single discourse, only passing from one subject to another as the preacher makes progress from point to point.We have elected, therefore, to discuss this volume under terms that will cover the entire Book, following, largely, its own arrangement of thought. AND It is not difficult to see that the first chapter opens with a description of a dire affliction which has fallen on the land: an affliction such as had not been in the days of the oldest inhabitants, nor even in the days of their fathers; an affliction which made such an impression upon the generation of Joel that he expected them to tell their children, and their children to repeat it to their grandchildren, and the grandchildren to give it to the generations to come.The unfaithfulness of Judah was assumed, not described. The Prophet’s appeal to the people to “turn unto the Lord” is proof positive that they had turned from the Lord. But he says nothing as to the nature of that turning, and nothing as to the extent of it. It would seem altogether probable that the arrangement of Joel in the Scripture Canon is due to this fact. Hosea had so vividly portrayed the apostasy of Israel and Judah that those who gathered these prophecies into one Book might say “Joel fits after Hosea”. Hosea tells the condition of the people, and Joel describes the judgments that had come in consequence.
If there is any one thought abundantly illustrated in the Old Testament, and often emphasized by the Great Teacher Himself, it is the dire fate of those who are unfaithful to the Lord God. It is found in the writings of practically every Prophet of the Old Testament, and it burns with new meaning when God’s Beloved Son speaks to that subject.
In Matthew 24:48, we have Jesus’ description of the faithless servant, and also His severe judgment against him. Joel is not out of date, therefore; he has a message for this generation. It is the message which the Apostle Paul repeated when he said, “He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption”.The affliction, here, is expressed by the processes of natural law. The scourge which Judah saw is brought about by the locust, or grasshopper. George Adam Smith calls our attention to the fact that though the palmerworm, the locust, the cankerworm and the caterpillar are all mentioned here, they are simply four separate terms for the same devouring insect—the locust, and might be translated properly in these words, “That which the shearer left the swarmer hath eaten; that which the swarmer hath left the lapper hath eaten; and that which the lapper hath left the devourer hath eaten.”No man, who has ever looked upon Kansas or Nebraska, in locust years, would charge the Prophet Joel with extravagance in the language which he here employs; and possibly Palestine and vicinity have seen more dreadful scourges. Dr.
Doughty, in his volume entitled “Arabia Deserta” speaks of having seen in this very country “clouds of locusts which devoured everything before them:” While a traveler to South Africa tells of the space of ‘ten miles on each side of the Sea-cow river, and eighty or ninety miles in length, the whole surface of which was literally covered with these pests; Another was reported, from Syria, concerning a season when the whole face of the mountain was black with them: when the effort to stop their onward march by trenches and fires proved utterly useless; when it required days for their armies to pass a single point, and when the noise of them, as they marched and foraged, was like that of a heavy shower falling on a distant forest.’ Driver declares that when in an erect position the appearance of these insects, at a little distance, is like that of well-armed horsemen. Ail these testimonies, and more, that might be easily given, corroborate the realism of Joel’s words in picturing what had occurred to Judah’s possessions.We call your attention to the fact that these insects, which may hatch at any season, in innumerable companies, and march forth to consume the very land itself, were regarded by the Prophet as judgments against Judah’s sin.
It is so that a great many of those wide-spread calamities that visit neighborhoods, and touch even nations, whether inaugurated of God or no, are yet taken possession of by Him, and employed to teach the afflicted the effects of unfaithfulness. To illustrate—the ground often cleaves asunder and earthquakes have shattered its parts, but when one opened at the very feet of Korah and followers and swallowed them up and all that appertained to them, Moses felt it was a Divine judgment against their conspiracy. For a long time people have read Bulwer Lytton’s volume “The Last Days of Pompeii” to see the evident connection between the awful sins of that people, which, like those of Sodom, called to Heaven for judgment, and that fateful hour when the silent mountain, whose solitary flickering light had already sent a word of warning, poured forth a torrent of death, and smote men and women, by the hundreds and thousands, leaving them in the very acts of their iniquity so that when the day of exhuming should come, the Judge would be justified or having overthrown the city.It is only a short time since, that Martinique, with twenty-five thousand inhabitants, had poured upon it a flood of lava which left but one living man in all its limits. He was preserved not because he was righteous, but because he was so vile that they buried him in the lowest cell of one of their prison houses, and even then his flesh was roasted until he has walked the earth bearing the marks of a judgment like the mark of Cain. Let no man misunderstand me! Jesus Himself once distinctly taught that God was not sending these calamities upon certain individuals because they were sinners beyond the rest.“There were present at that season some that told Him, of the Galilean whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. “And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things? “I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. “Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? “I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:1-5). If Joel saw in this devastation of the land by the locusts an occasion of repentance, it was not for the farmers or gardeners whose fruits and vegetables were most utterly destroyed, but for the whole people to learn the lesson, search themselves and see if there were any wicked way in them! And today Jesus seems to be saying to us what God said to this ancient people, and what His Son said to those who reported the Galilsean blood shed by Pilate, “Repent”!God, therefore, is confessedly over all. We doubt if Joel meant to suggest that God had, by any miracle, made ready this myriad of locusts, but he did mean to say that ‘all power in Heaven and in earth’ is with Him, and whatever comes to pass must be by His permission. Even the offensive things—His hand is upon them. Few subjects enjoy a greater agreement on the part of the Old Testament Prophets than this touching the Divine presence. Joel’s name is significant.
The very word means “The Lord is God.” And who can sound the depths of that word, or explore the heights of that thought? Joseph Parker has justly said, “The ease or difficulty with which a man can surrender God depends, if I may say, upon the use to which he has become accustomed to put the mysterious term.
If God has been but a nebulous and speechless dream—a veneration without a corresponding morality—the act of surrender will be as indefinite as itself. But in our case, as Christian believers and Christian teachers, God is in every part of our life; He has manifested Himself to us; He has taken up His abode with us; the Spirit of His Son is in our hearts, crying, Abba-Father! He searches us and tries us; He acts directly and judicially upon every motive; He guides us with His eye; He besets us behind and before, and lays His hand upon us; to Him our hearts aspire in instinctive as well as in reasoned prayer; the spontaneous outstretching of our hands is towards His holy Temple, if haply we may touch His strength, and feel secure because He is almighty. When we do wrong, our eyes are darkened as with a cloud, and when we do well our hearts feel upon them the light of a smile. That is our case now; in such circumstances surrender would be destruction. We have, if I may so put it, gone too far in our use of God to turn away from Him and yet retain our identity intact.” “We live and move and have our being in God.” We have passed the merely argumentative stage. “God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us”. “Our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ”. This was the old Jewish conception; this is also the Christian conception; and this is the true conception. “God * * over all, God blessed for ever“Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the House of the Lord your God, and cry unto the Lord. “Alas for the day! for the day of the Lord is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come?” (Joe 1:14-15). This Prophet saw God in the storm just as surely as in the sunshine that was to follow. God was present there in the time of their sorrow and witnessed their suffering just as surely as He would be present when the sorrow had passed, and all sighing had fled. With the great Apostle of the New Testament he believed that “in Him we live, and move, and have our being”. AND At the end of the eleventh verse of the second chapter he has finished his word-picture of devastation, and has reminded his auditors that the Infinite Father, the Lord of Heaven and earth, is in command of this terrible army, and hence his appeal,“Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: “And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil. “Who knoweth if He will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind Him; even a meat-offering and a drink-offering unto the Lord your God”? (Joe 2:12-14). In their affliction He would have His people hear the Father’s voice. It is a blessed suggestion. Our hours of suffering, our seasons of sorrow can be converted into Divine speech, if our hearts turn to Him. As you know by repeated assertions, we do not belong to the company who lay every calamity to the charge of God. Our afflictions we do not count a certain evidence of the Divine disfavor. We have an adversary who is pleased to lay his oppressive hands upon us, but we know that “all things work together for good to them that love God”, and like Job of old, Satan’s attack may, under God, become our season of blessing. Or, like the Son of Man, his temptations and trials may afford a positive triumph through the Divine grace.“I asked of my spirit within me A question that troubled me quite— A querulous question of nature, Because I was short in my right: I asked it to search out the reason Why trouble should light upon earth, And tears should be mingled with blessing, And moans with the ringing of mirth.
“But a voice, like the voice of an angel, Said, ‘Turn thee, and question again; God never afflicts for His pleasure, Nor troubles the children of men. His hand is the hand of a Father, His chastening is good in disguise, Though the clouds which are resting upon you May darken this truth from your eyes.
“ ‘And then,’ said the voice growing softer, ‘Some things which you counted God’s wrath, Are only His wonderful blessing, Revealing themselves in your path; And that which you counted evil, Was happily an angel of light, God’s beautiful angel of sorrow, Who winged his way through the night.’ ” Repentance was the Prophet Joel’s appeal. He was like Jonah in his opinion of the character of God when he repeated the words of the Lord,“Turn ye even to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: “And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil” (Joe 2:12-13). He knew, with the Psalmist, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise” (Psalms 51:17). You remember Jonah’s words when he complained that God had saved Nineveh, “I knew that Thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest Thee of the evil”. And Joel entertains the same opinion of Him. It is a strange thing that any man knowing his own past, studying the Divine treatment accorded his fellows, or looking into the Scripture to hear what God would say, can reach another conclusion.Joel believes that this repentance should begin with the leaders of religious opinion,“Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare Thy people, O Lord, and give not Thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God”? (Joe 2:17). Hosea has already said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge”—a charge against the priests, and reminds them “Like people, like priest?” Pentecosts will never come to the Church until God’s Prophets, the men who stand in the pulpit, and through whom the congregations voice their prayers, have made themselves right before the Lord. Long since I have ceased to complain of the pew. I confess to you that I believe profoundly that the pew is what the pulpit makes it. The opinions prevailing among the people are the direct product of the speech of the sacred desk.When John Wycliff was attempting to recover true religion he declared that it was the business of the preacher to “preach the Word” and argued that out of false preaching comes the spiritual deadness of the people; that the friars of his time had affected the depravity of the Church, and he announced, then, a truth which ought now to be sung in the ears of every seminary professor, and become the conviction of every theological graduate, namely, “It is God’s Word that should be preached. God’s Word is the bread of the soul—the indispensable, wholesome bread. Therefore, to feed the flock in the spiritual sense without Bible truth, is the same thing as if one were to prepare for another a bodily meal without bread.
God’s Word is a live seed which begets regeneracy and a spiritual life. Now the chief business of the preacher is to beget and to nourish up members of the church.
Therefore it is God’s Word he must preach. Then only will he succeed.” I confess I cannot help asking myself sometimes whether I am a worthy successor of my fathers in the Protestant faith.It has been claimed that every new era has been created by a preacher. Guizot is the authority for the opinion that Paul did more for liberty and free institutions than any other man of two millenniums, Froude only voices what is universally accepted when he affirms that Luther created the Reformation. It was certainly Savonarola who redeemed Florence more effectively than any grand jury of modern times has been able to cleanse Augean stables of municipal life. Dwight Hillis thinks that Caedmon, Bede, Bunyan and the translators of the King James version of the Bible opened up for us the springs of English literature. Cromwell wrote that “the Puritan preacher destroyed the Divine right of kings.” If the religious leaders are all right, God’s people may behave foolishly, as they did under Moses, but, after all, their leadership will insure their progress through the Wilderness, and their eventual possession of the Promised Land.But this call to repentance was associated with the promise of restoration.
The Prophet Joel knew this to be within the Father’s will and power. He said, “God * * is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil. “Who knoweth if He will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind Him; even a meat-offering and a drink-offering unto the Lord your God”? (Joe 2:13-14). No man will either doubt that willingness or question that power when once, like the Prophet, he has seen God. Oh, to know the heart of God.Love so deep, so high, so broad,Help me, Lord, to fully prove,All it means that God is Love!This Book also gives us THE IN OUTLINE Joel, the Prophet, had a vision of the end of the age centuries before John, the Apostle, put foot on Patmos. He saw the Pentecost to come. “It shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: “And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out My Spirit” (Joe 2:28-29). On the day of Pentecost Peter interpreted and applied these words. When the mockers said, “These men are full of new wine * * “Peter, standing up with the Eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them * *” (Acts 2:13-14). “This is that which was spoken by the Prophet Joel; “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: “And on My servants and on My handmaidens I will pour out in those days of My Spirit; and they shall prophesy” (Acts 2:16-18). There are those who profess to have no interest in prophetic studies, who speak of it with scorn as if such studies were mere speculations; but the truth is, until a man works himself into the meaning of prophecy there is for him no plan for the ages, and a great majority of God’s promises are without practical application. To get into the spirit of prophecy is to discover the key of Scripture study. Many of you remember Dr. John Robertson, of Glasgow, Scotland, who, a few years ago in this pulpit, broke unto us the Bread of Life. One day in my study I asked him the question how he came to be a pre-millennialist? He answered, “The World’s Fair compelled me to assume that position in Scriptural study.
At the request of Mr. Moody, I came over from Scotland to join with the famous evangelists from the ends of the earth, in a Chicago campaign in the Name of Christ.
Day after day I was face to face with defeat. I saw quickly that for every convert to the Gospel that we were making, the Adversary, and his emissaries, were winning a score to such conduct as meant their destruction, and I became despondent over the situation. All the while such men as Moody, Torrey, Chapman, Dixon, Wharton, Pierson, and Gordon not only kept their courage, but seemed positively confident of eventual victory. I was unable to understand their spirit, and when I asked them why they were not discouraged, they answered by pointing to the promises of the prophecies. Though prejudiced against the pre-millennial theory, I made up my mind to see what the Scripture had to say upon the subject, and lo, to my amazement, when once I began to work upon the subject in honest spirit, the meaning of prophecy was made clear, and the Coming of my Master burst forth from the Sacred page, and became to me also the “Blessed Hope”.Ah, beloved, if Abraham, living when he did, was privileged of God a look down the ages that revealed to him the day of the Son of Man, and thereby gladdened his heart, who will say that God does not intend us to do what Joel did—foresee the conquests to come?He also saw the special privilege of the Age of the Spirit. He knew that in that day it should “come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the Name of the Lord shall he delivered” (Joe 2:32).Evangelism was in his perspective.
He saw the Jew and the Gentile alike, brought under the Divine benediction. Even Peter did not fully understand the sweep of His promise.“I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh” Jew and Gentile alike.
Nor the depths of it— “Your sons and your daughters * * and your young men, * * and your old men * * and on My servants and on My handmaidens”.That this was to be the portion of men irrespective of station or nationality, Joel made perfectly evident.“Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: “Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears; let the weak say, I am strong. “Assemble yourselves * * together round about: thither cause Thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. “Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about” (Joe 3:9-12). Then he proceeds to show that all this opposition will be in vain. “Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great” (Joe 3:13).Such has been the history of many of His movements in this age of the Spirit. No human opposition or hellish device has been able to retard the progress of our God who is marching on.Dr. A. B. Simpson tells us that there is an old frontispiece in Wyclif’s first Bible representing the cause of truth and the Holy Scriptures by a bright flame, while all around it are the enemies of the truth, with the devil at their head trying to blow it out. The bishops, the priests, the cardinals, and the Pope, with the devil himself leading them, blowing and blowing until it seems as if they would burst.
But instead of blowing it out, they only blow it in, and it blazes and blazes until they are scattered before its consuming breath. This is ever true of the cause of Christ.
Opposition, persecution, and misrepresentation only strengthen it, as we have all had such good reason often to prove. Nobody can hurt us but ourselves and “when the enemy shall come in like a flood” let us quietly ask the Spirit of the Lord to “lift up a standard against him”, and we shall hear a voice proclaiming, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts”.Finally, this apocalyptic vision represents alike, millennial glory and terrible judgment. Judgment is repeatedly expressed in this volume. It will be attended by the darkening of the sun and the moon, and the cessation of the shining stars; by the shaking of heaven and earth; by the revelation of the power of God, and His righteous wrath against sin. I shall not attempt to depict the scenes of that judgment, beyond what the Prophet has said. I agree with Henry Van Dyke that there is much concerning this judgment which we ought not to try to peer into, and explain with our little limits of reason.
It is not ours to pronounce judgment upon our fellow creatures; the one thing of which we are certain is that God will never do injustice to a single soul; but in every nation, “whosoever shall call on the Name of the Lord shall be delivered”. The rest we may leave in silence with God, and fear when He speaks against sin.Of that millennial glory we are enamoured.“It shall come to pass in that day * * the hills shall flow with milk, and all the rivers of Judah shall flow with waters, and a fountain shall come forth of the House of the Lord, and shall water the valley of Shittim * * “But Judah shall dwell for ever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation. “For I will cleanse their blood that I have not cleansed: for the Lord dwelleth in Zion” (Joe 3:18; Joe 3:20-21). It is in harmony, beloved, with the twentieth and twenty-first chapters of the Book of Revelation. It is the picture of the consummation of the Ages when the Adversary shall go down into the eternal depths; after which“The Tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. “And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And He said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful” (Revelation 21:3-3).