Minor No.2 Joel

And although there's three chapters, two of which, or the second one, is quite a long one, nonetheless, we'll be working our way through the gist of the book. I think we'll just wait a moment as our gentleman is, as I was saying, I'd be glad if you'd have your Bible open at the prophecy of Joel, and though there are three chapters, the second of which is quite long, we'll be looking at the outline of the teaching of this rather interesting prophecy. And I have put on the board, or on my overhead projector, an outline which more or less follows the notes that you have already received.

You'll discover as a piece of additional information that Joel means Yahweh is God, Jehovah is God, and the prophecy itself splits into two specific sections, the first addressing the present – I've entitled it – and the second, from the 28th verse of the second chapter, predicting the future. I've also outlined some key verses, though you've no need to pay too great attention to those, as I'll be making some reference later on in our study. One of the things that you will have noticed when the church minibuses have been driving around Worthing is that, if you please, almost the slogan of the tabernacle is, Jesus is Lord.

It's a good creedal confession, it's a confession of faith. Nothing is more wonderful today than to recognize the Lordship of Jesus Christ, particularly when we have in front of us what is, by the admission of all politicians of any particular party, a most frightening prospect in terms of what could happen in our world. It's good to be able to say that, though the future is somewhat bleak, Jehovah is Yahweh, Jesus Christ is Lord.

And as I say, this was really the theme that Joel had, signified by his own name, as he went around southern Palestine proclaiming the news that God had brought to his establishment attention, he was able to say, Yahweh is God. One of the things that maybe frightens us today in terms of the future is the possibility of a nuclear war. Indeed, Time magazine, not so long ago, had a whole issue dedicated to that awful prospect entitled, Thinking the Unthinkable.

And as I say, as a Christian person, it's good to be able to read a magazine like that and to recognize that Jesus is Lord. Now when Joel was engaged in prophesying in what I suggest was probably the 9th century BC, 9th century before Christ, he too was confronted with some very, very traumatic events. It looked as though the whole land of Israel, both Judah and also the northern kingdom of Israel itself, you remember they split into two, might be overrun.

And as you'll see on the map I put on the overhead projector, one of the great problems confronting the land of promise, Palestine, both north and south, was posed by Assyria. That was becoming an increasing world power. And it seemed as though ultimately Palestine would have to relent to the political pressures of Assyria.

And when Joel recognized this and thought that they might be the instrument or Assyria might be the instrument through which God would judge his nation, well he might well have been afraid. He might well have been very, very fearful. But Joel was a man who was able to see God in everything.

And I reckon that's a good principle to start with for us to latch on to this evening. Whatever is in store for us in the 20th century, the Lord our God is sovereign. Yahweh is God.

Jesus is Lord. And as I say, this is what kept Joel going in the 9th century. He probably prophesied at Jerusalem.

If you read the chapters that follow you'll discover that Joel has a good knowledge of agriculture, probably something of a farmer in his background. And maybe from time to time he'd go to Jerusalem and by the temple he would start to preach. And the gist of his preaching, the precis of what he has to say is discovered in these first three, or rather in these three chapters of this particular prophecy.

There's not too much known about Joel apart from the fact that he had a great love for his people and a great love for God. And he wasn't in any way fearful of telling the people that unless they repented, unless they took stock of what they were doing and what was likely to happen, then God would move in judgment and he would pour out his wrath upon them. Well that will do as an introduction to our prophecy.

Let's go back to the outline and have a look at these two sections that really constitute the whole of what Joel had to say. In the first I argue he's addressing the present and in the second he is predicting the future. Addressing the present.

One of the great problems that immediately confronts Joel, and you discover it as you read rapidly through the first chapter, is an impending plague of the locusts. I wonder if you think that I'm stretching things too far to suggest that in the ninth century B.C. a plague of locusts was as terrifying to the people in those agricultural days for virtually every person lived off the land as the threat of nuclear war today. I think that you could make that comparison and as a result get a good deal of profit from what Joel has to say.

He's speaking about this plague, the like of which there has never been another, not by comparison, since time began, since records were kept amongst the Israelites. So he says in the second verse, hear this you elders, listen all who live in the land, has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your forefathers? He sees such utter devastation resulting from this attack of the locusts that those who are able to survive when poverty in terms of famine follows the plague will talk to their children in bated breath of the disaster of the year in which the locusts plagued Judah, southern Palestine. In the fourth verse reference is made to four different type of locusts.

When one swarm has finished another will come and when you're breathing a sigh of release because the great locusts have gone then the young locusts will come and when the young locusts have eaten all that they require other locusts will come. In the Hebrew language I'm told that four different words are used for locusts there and it indicates something of the savagery of the attack upon the land. A locust can eat its own weight in food every every day.

Listen to this, a report in the National Geographic magazine describing a plague of locusts in Palestine in 1915. On the first day of March at noon attention was drawn to the locusts by the sudden darkening of bright sunshine and then by veritable showers of excretions which fell thick and fast. At times their elevation was in the hundreds of feet, at other times they came down quite low, detached members alighting.

The clouds of them would be so dense as to appear quite black and we're told that one swarm of locusts weighing 20,000 tonnes could consume 40 million pounds of green vegetables in one day. Would you like to turn over to the second chapter? For there in the third verse is a picture of the Garden of Eden typically portrayed before a swarm of locusts come. Before them verse 3, before them fire devours, behind them a flame blazes, before them the land is like the Garden of Eden, behind them a desert waste, nothing escapes them.

This is the devastation that Joel anticipates as a result of this great and dreadful year in which the locusts he predicts are to fall upon Israel and Judah in the ninth century. Now as a result of this dreadful calamity he decides that he must warn three different types of people in Judah. In the fifth verse, perhaps appropriately to the disturbance we had a moment or so ago, he warns the drunkards, this is chapter 1, wake up you drunkards and weep.

Wail all ye drinkers of wine. Why? Well there'll be no grapes, there will be no possibility of making liquor at all. The cup has so to speak been snatched from your lips and there is no drink for you to imbibe.

And then later on he warns the priests. In the ninth verse he tells them that no longer will they be able to minister at Jerusalem bringing grain and drink offerings before the Lord because there's no drain and there's no drink as the drunkards have discovered. And therefore the priests might well be in mourning because they're not able to furnish the temple with the sacrifices that they have been accustomed to.

But the people who bear the brunt of the savagery of a plague of locusts are of course the farmers. So drop your eye down to the eleventh verse and we read despair you farmers, wail you growers. Or as the literal Hebrew puts it in the eleventh verse I believe, turn pale you farmers, wail you vine growers.

Why? Well because there is no harvest whatsoever. Neither the vine will produce fruit nor will the wheat and the barley be able to be harvested. And this year because of the terrible plight from the locusts.

So then in addressing the present situation Joel first of all has to speak about the terrible effect of the locusts upon the land. And he says also as a result of God's judgment there will be a drought. Look at the seventeenth verse, still with the first chapter, and by implication the drought is mentioned.

The seeds are shriveled beneath the clods. And then in the nineteenth verse reference is made to a terrible fire. One can imagine with the ransacking of the land by the locusts and just stubble left with the heat that there is naturally in Palestine a fire could be a devastating thing.

So to cap it all, to crown all of the calamities is the third, that of fire. Now when Joel thinks about the present calamities that are about to befall the nation he does so from the point of view of a spiritual man and he makes his own evaluation. Bishop Ryle, I think I made reference, Bishop of Liverpool in the last century, went on record and was unpopular for such by saying that a plague of foot and mouth disease in England was God's judgment upon the people in that century.

Joel is prepared to suggest that God's judgment is imminent upon the land of Judah because of the way that they have transgressed and the judgment will take on this triplet of plagues. And so what do you do when the land is threatened by the plague of locusts? What do you do when the land is not only threatened by a plague of locusts but an even perhaps more serious plague in terms of the Assyrian army? Well if you've got any sense you get on your knees and you start to pray. And that's what Joel said from his pulpit, his makeshift pulpit outside the temple at Jerusalem.

Verse 13, chapter 1, put on sackcloth oh priests and mourn. Wail you who minister before the altar, come spend the night in sackcloth you who minister before my God. And the 14th verse, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly.

And later on he's going to say exactly the same thing when he pleads that the people will turn to the Lord, will call on Him and ensure that there is a day of prayer. And so that's the lesson of the locusts. And the way to avert the locusts is to pray to the Lord.

The way to avert His judgment is by casting yourself upon His mercy. That's what Joel discovers in the 8th or 9th century BC. And that's a gospel principle that applies today.

To be in difficulty should compel you to cast yourself upon the Lord. And you will discover that God is gracious. That's what Joel has to say in the 2nd chapter and the 13th verse.

Return to the Lord your God for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. But it's not just the locusts that Joel is afraid of. When you move into the 2nd chapter, he uses the locusts as a very vivid metaphor of something even more disastrous to which I alluded a moment or so ago.

The possibility of the ransacking of southern Palestine by the armies of Assyria. Look at the 2nd verse. He's still got the imagery of the locust in mind and yet he blurs it or he allows it to refocus into the imagery of an army.

A day of darkness and gloom. A day of clouds and blackness like dawn spreading across the mountains. A large and mighty army comes such as never was of old nor ever will be in ages to come.

And in the 4th verse, he speaks of the cavalry within this army. They have the appearance of horses. They gallop along like cavalry with a noise like that of chariots.

You know, one of the interesting things about the locusts I'm told is this, that if you put it under a microscope, you would discover that its features, its face or its faces are very much like that of a horse. Listen to one commentator. Many have observed that the head of the locust is shaped like that of a horse.

This is a metaphor which is still familiar to the Arabs. The Arabs say that in the locust, small as it is, there is the nature of 10 of the larger animals. For the locust has the face of a horse, the eyes of an elephant, it has the neck of a bull, the horns of a deer, the chest of a lion, the belly of a scorpion, the wings of an eagle, the thighs of a camel, the feet of an ostrich and the tail of a serpent.

But Joel is no longer thinking just in terms of locusts. He's thinking rather of an army which masters with unrelentless force down towards Jerusalem. Verse 7, they charge like warriors.

They scale walls like soldiers. They all march in line, not swerving from their course. They do not jostle each other.

Each marches straight ahead. They plunge through defences without breaking ranks. They rush upon the city.

They run along the wall. They climb into the houses like thieves. They enter through the windows and so forth.

Listen to this and you'll see again how true the imagery is of a great army with that of the plague of locusts. Here's a man writing from Palestine in 1845. For several days previous to the 1st of June, we had heard that millions of young locusts were on their march up the valley toward our village.

And at length I was told that they had reached the lower part of it. Summoning all the people I could collect, we went to meet and attack them, hoping to stop their progress altogether or at least to turn aside the line of their march. Never shall I lose the impression produced by the first few of them.

I had often passed through clouds of flying locusts and they always struck my imagination with a sort of vague terror. But these we now confronted were without wings and about the size of full-grown grasshoppers, which they closely resembled in appearance and behavior. But their number was astounding.

The whole face of the mountain was black with them. On they came like a living deluge. We dug trenches and kindled fires and beat and burned to death, heaps upon heaps.

But the effort was utterly useless. Wave after wave rolled up the mountainside and poured over rocks, walls, ditches, and hedges. Those behind covering up and bridging over the masses already killed.

After a long and fatiguing contest, I descended the mountain to examine the depth of the column, but I could not see the end of it. Wearied with my hard walk over the living deluge, I returned and gave over the vain effort to stop its progress. Well, I've said enough to make the point clear that Joel is terrified not only at the thought of the locusts, but also of the possibility of the attack, the invasion of the Assyrian forces into the territory of Judah.

And so what does he do? Well, we've indicated he prays, or rather he tells the people to pray. And he does so with the notion that what might be just round the corner is what he calls the day of the Lord. The day of the Lord.

Look at the 15th verse of the 1st chapter. What a dreadful day, for the day of the Lord is near. It will come like destruction from the Almighty.

Look at the 1st verse of the 2nd chapter. He tells the bugler, blow the trumpet in Zion, sound the alarm on my holy hill. Why? Because the day of the Lord is coming.

He's fearful that the Assyrian threat might represent the last moment of time when God will not only pour out judgment upon the enemies of the Jews as they had considered would be the point of the day of the Lord, but he would pour out judgment upon them. And so Amos, concluding this section, tells the people in the 13th verse of the 2nd chapter. Did I say Amos? I mean, of course, Joel.

Tells the people at the end, in the 13th verse of the 2nd chapter, rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God for He's gracious and compassionate. And from the 18th verse right down to the end of the 2nd chapter, or rather to the 27th verse of the 2nd chapter, Joel offers this tremendous promise that when people repent, then the curse of the locusts can be stopped by Almighty God, be they literal locusts or the armies of the Assyrians.

Then God can restore the day of lost opportunity. I will repay, verse 25, I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten. Well, that in summary fashion was Joel addressing the present situation and I took longer in that section deliberately because I think it is the springboard from which we can perhaps get some glimpse into the future and to appreciate more particularly what Joel is having to say from the 28th verse of the 2nd chapter through to the final verses of the 3rd chapter.

Prophecy is sometimes telescopic. That means to say the prophet sometimes deals with the immediate situation and then by the grace of God the distant is brought into the present and he passes comment on the distant as though it is the present. How then do we know that Joel is now going to speak about future events which might also have wedded into what he has to say some meaning for the folk who listen to his predictions in the day of his own literal ministry? Well, we know that Joel is talking about the future from the 28th verse of the 2nd chapter because you will recall that Peter on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2 refers back to Joel.

Joel is talking about the coming day of the Lord and that day is not to be seen just in terms of a 24 hour period. It is to be seen as the day of the Messiah when he institutes by his gospel the gracious provisions that God has made for men and women to avert the scourge of judgment as a result of their sin. And God will inaugurate the day of the Lord by the pouring out of His Spirit on all people.

In Old Testament times the Spirit of God only fell on specific individuals, but in New Testament times the Spirit of God is generally applied. You cannot be a Christian without having received the Holy Spirit. You might know Him in differing degrees.

Some might testify to an overwhelming of the Spirit, what some might refer to as a baptism of the Spirit. I won't scrap terminology this evening, I won't argue with you, but one thing I will say is this, that when you become a Christian God pours His Spirit out in degree upon you. And in the day of the Lord at its very beginning, Joel says, speaking for God, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.

Your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. What is he in mind? Well he's got a concept of spiritual fruitfulness. You remember he's had in mind the plague, the terror of the locusts, the ravaging of the Assyrian army, but then he has in mind the fact that God has averted the plague and that He's restored the years that the locusts have eaten.

Prior to verse 28 there is a picture of physical fruitfulness. Now he transfers that picture through into New Testament idiom and talks about the pouring out of God's Spirit on all people. And if you belong to God, then you're helping to fulfil the prophecy of Joel, because the Spirit of God has made you fruitful in the eyes of the Lord.

So there is this prediction, and the future blessings of God upon the earth. Joel even has an insight into the way that men and women will be saved. Look at the 32nd verse, still with the second chapter, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

You remember that's quoted by Paul in Romans 10. He applies it specifically to Jewish people, but you and I know that that is a Gospel verse that is applicable to Jew and Gentile alike. It's on the basis of that that we know salvation.

It's on the basis of confessing the Lord Jesus and their need of salvation that Jewish people also shall be saved. There is no automatic salvation for the ethnic Jew. He will come to God on the same terms as Christian people, or he will never come to God at all.

Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, for on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the Lord has said among the survivors whom the Lord calls. So here is the beginning of the day of the Lord predicted, the outpouring of the Spirit of God, the period inaugurated at Pentecost and lasting now for two thousand years. And yet the day of the Lord, as every literal day has its conclusion, will come to its full stop.

Joel has had in the first part of his prophecy the present situation in mind and the fact that God might well judge the southern Jew by pouring His wrath out through the instrumentality of the Assyrians. Now Joel develops and broadens this theme. It's not just the southern Jew and the northern Jew, but it's all the nations of the world that Joel has in mind who will at the last point of the day of the Lord be brought before him and have to answer for a way that national and international affairs have been conducted.

Chapter 3, verse 1. In those days and at that time when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. Then I will enter into judgment against them concerning my inheritance, my people Israel. The concept is of God meeting out judgment on specific towns as well as specific countries.

References made to Tyre and Sidon who already have known the wrath of God outpoured upon them in Old Testament days. That's in verse 4. But references also made to all the nations of the world, verse 11, who will assemble before the Lord and down will come the warriors of God, the latter part of verse 11, to execute judgment. The thought is sustained and developed in the twelfth verse.

Let the nations be roused. Let them advance into the valley of Jehoshaphat for there I will sit to judge all the nations on every side. And the fourteenth verse, multitudes in the valley of decision for the day of the Lord is near.

So you see what has happened. From the local situation, Joel has gone forward centuries to the general situation at the end of time. Every nation is ultimately responsible to God.

And every disaster, be it the natural disaster, quotation marks, or plagues, or the dreadful power unleashed of the Assyrian army, or the obscenity of a nuclear war, the combined might of the Soviet Union and China or the western nations, all this is not outside the sovereignty of God and He ultimately has everything in His utter and complete control. History and its development is not capricious. It does not stagger forward from one foot to another foot like a drunken man, as though God has taken leave of responsibility for events in our world.

In the seeming chaos of it all, God works out His purposes. And to every man or woman born of Adam, be they Jew or Gentile, there is a possibility of being prepared for the day of the Lord. As repentance stayed the plague and the unrush of the Assyrian armies into southern Palestine, though it didn't stay the unrush of the armies into northern Palestine.

So prayer today is vital for men who would know a right relationship with God. And in the day when God brings about His purposes, for Jew and for Gentile, and the nations are all brought before Him, whether literally in the valley of Jehoshaphat, I doubt, though some might believe that that is the case. But the geographical location is not worth arguing over.

When the nations appear before God, there will be only one safe spot in the whole of the cosmos, and that will be in the presence of the Lord, overshadowed by His arms, overshadowed by His arms. For we are told that in that day, verse 16, when the Lord roars from Zion and thunders from Jerusalem, when there are apocalyptic signs, the sun turning into blood and the moon being darkened, then the Lord will be a refuge for His people, and a stronghold for the Israel of God. And ultimately, after that day, God will bring about His purpose and He will bring in His final purposes for the redeemed of mankind, both Jew and Gentile.

And He will demonstrate, as the final part of the last verse indicates, that the Lord dwells in Zion. That then, in relatively summary fashion, is the story of the redemption of Ephrasi of the ministry of Joel. It's all drawn together in the very name that he bears.

Yahweh is God. And on the basis of that, He's able to address the present situation. And with the prospect of Yahweh still being God in mind, He's able to predict the future and offer a message of hope to Jew and Gentile who live as late as the twentieth century and in the threat of nuclear warfare.

Amen.