Tears Between the Altar

The great British evangelist George Whitefield used to tell his congregations that I got this sermon while many of you were still in bed. Well, I'm no George Whitefield, but I got the following message between the hours of three and four this morning. We will be in the book of Joel.

You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends. Joel is prophesying against the southern kingdom of Judah. We find in Joel a people who have forgotten God.

They have forgotten what God has done for them in former times, and they have forgotten that all their blessings and prosperity have come from his hand. The Jews in Judah in the days of Joel are self-reliant people, hell-bent on self-indulgence and self-rule. God has been pushed into the background to where only religious formalism exists without any reality of him in the daily life.

And God has a bone of contention with the backslidden Jews, and he sends his prophet Joel to deliver a stinging series of messages to them, and he sends a locust invasion to destroy their crops to get their attention. We saw recently the locust plague on East Africa just this last year, where the desert locusts multiplied 20-fold in a period of three months to reach densities of 80 million per square kilometer, where they ravaged entire communities in Kenya and Ethiopia, consuming a food equivalent that is mind-boggling. They consumed a food equivalent to that eaten by 35,000 people a day.

This kind of devastating locust swarm is what occurred to the Jews in the days of Joel. Crops were ruined, families were bankrupted in a financial collapse, and this is the scene where we pick up our story as we look at the passage in Joel in chapter 2, beginning in verse 12, where the prophet calls the nation to a time of repentance and to a return unto the Lord God. 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 meal offering, and a drink offering, unto the Lord your God. I will pause here, friends, to say that this call to repentance falls squarely upon the shoulders of the religious leaders of Judah.

They are the ones who have been derelict in their duty of calling awayward people back to God. So God sends a plague and a prophet to them in the hopes of national repentance and a return to God. It's a desperate situation, where the crops have been wiped out by these desert locusts, and all have felt the pain of this financial collapse.

And here, Joel instructs the religious leaders to call a solemn assembly, to call the people back to God. We pick it up in verse 15. Look at this striking imagery as we see this national call for alarm.

Blow the trumpet in Zion. Sanctify fast. Call a solemn assembly.

Gather the people. Sanctify the congregation. Assemble the elders.

Gather the children and those that suck the breast. Let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet. 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, O where is their God? Then will the Lord be jealous for his land, and pity his people. I will stop there. In this striking passage of scripture, we see a repentant people and a merciful God.

When God sees the repentance is genuine, then he's moved to action in two dramatic ways. He's jealous for his land, and he will heal it, and he will pity his people and restore fellowship with them. We live in a day of remedial judgment from God on the nation and the withdrawn presence of God in the church.

We too, like the people of Judah, are in desperate times. The national tragedy that occurred in our nation's capital and the devastation of the pandemic should be wake-up calls to our religious leaders, to call solemn assemblies, to seek the face of Almighty God, and to lead a nation in repentance back to the living God of the Bible. But sadly, since the church lies in the very grip of apostasy, I don't see any hope from our religious leaders who are too asleep and too afraid of men to take any firm stand for God.

It's up to the average Jane and Joe in the pew to fall on their faces and cry out to God over the sins of the land. It's up to them to let their tears fall between the altar and the sanctuary, and wet the carpet of the sanctuary with their broken-hearted cries and desperate petitions to Almighty God. God will hear the desperate cry of His remnant and turn and be jealous for His land once again.

The land belongs to Him after all. England belongs to Him. America belongs to Him.

Everything may look desolate, but He owns it. He is ownership over His land and over His people. But if the people of God turn back to God in sincerity of heart, He will hear their cry.

He will come and heal the land.