At the church where I serve we are in the middle of
a sermon series entitled "When God speaks". During this series we are
looking at these letters that we
often have a tendency to skip over, which are referred to as the prophets. We
are going to discover who these letters that we have a
tendency to skip over were written to. We are going to discover what these
letters that we have a tendency to skip over reveal about who we are. We are
going to discover what these letters that we have a tendency to skip over
reveal about the nature of God and God’s activity in history. And as we go
through this series, our hope and prayer is that God would move by the power of
the Holy Spirit in our heads, hearts and hands so that we understand and
embrace the timeless and timely truths that these letters that we often skip
over have for our lives.
This week, I would like for us to look
at a letter that is recorded for us in the Old Testament of the Bible called
the book of Joel, which is the next letter that was written by prophet
chronologically, which is not necessarily the order that they are found in the
Bible, where they are organized by size. So let’s look at the man and the
message of the Book of Joel, beginning in Joel 1:1:
The
word of the LORD that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel:
Here we are introduced to the
prophet Joel, who lived during the reign of King Uzziah, who was the king of
the Southern Kingdom of Judea from 790-753 B.C. This letter was written during
the times described in a section of another letter in the Old Testament of the
Bible, called the book of 2 Chronicles, in 2 Chronicles 26. Joel was a
contemporary of both Jonah, Amos, and Hosea.
During this time in history, the southern
kingdom of Judea experienced a severe crisis. And it was into this state of
crisis that the Lord called Joel to be a messenger to proclaim His message to
the Jewish people of the Southern Kingdom. We are introduced to this crisis in
Joel 1:2-12:
2 Hear this, O elders, And listen,
all inhabitants of the land. Has anything
like this happened in your days Or in your fathers' days? 3
Tell your sons about it, And let your
sons tell their sons, And their
sons the next generation. 4 What the gnawing locust has left, the
swarming locust has eaten; And what the swarming locust has left, the creeping
locust has eaten; And what the creeping locust has left, the stripping locust
has eaten. 5 Awake, drunkards, and weep; And wail, all you wine
drinkers, On account of the sweet wine That is cut off from your mouth. 6
For a nation has invaded my land, Mighty and without number; Its teeth are the
teeth of a lion, And it has the fangs of a lioness. 7 It has made my
vine a waste And my fig tree splinters. It has stripped them bare and cast them away; Their branches have become
white. 8 Wail like a virgin girded with sackcloth For the bridegroom
of her youth. 9 The grain offering and the drink offering are cut
off From the house of the LORD. The priests mourn, The ministers of the LORD. 10
The field is ruined, The land mourns; For the grain is ruined, The new wine
dries up, Fresh oil fails. 11 Be ashamed, O farmers, Wail, O
vinedressers, For the wheat and the barley; Because the harvest of the field is
destroyed. 12 The vine dries up And the fig tree fails; The
pomegranate, the palm also, and the apple tree, All the trees of the field dry
up. Indeed, rejoicing dries up From the sons of men.
Here we see Joel call the Jewish people to a time of
mourning as a result of experiencing a locust plague. However, to fully
understand the power of a locust plague, we first need to understand some facts
about a locust plague. An average swarm of locusts will cover an area of 4
square miles and weigh 800,000 lbs. Often several swarms would move together,
covering as much as 400 square miles and would darken the sky. Locusts can fly
as high as 5,000 feet and when they settle down in an area they may lie in
blankets up to two inches deep. Locusts devour as much as 400 tons of
vegetation per acre. As a matter of fact, in 125 B.C. a locust plague swept
through North Africa, causing the death of 800,000 people.
And in these verses, we see Joel use poetic language
and metaphor to describe the swarm of locust and the damage that these locusts
brought upon the Jewish people. Joel called those who so loved wine that they
would have been considered alcoholics to weep and mourn, because the grape
plants had been destroyed. Joel painted a powerful word picture of a lion
tearing through its prey, to leave only its bones, to describe the destructive
power of the swarm of locusts.
Joel called the Jewish people to mourn like a woman
who was engaged would mourn the sudden loss of her future husband just before
their wedding day. Joel revealed the reality that the devastation from the
locusts was so complete that there was no grain and wine for worship. The
devastation affected every sector of agriculture, nothing was spared, no
citizen escaped the plague.
Now a natural question that often arises in the wake
of such a disaster is “Why? Why did this happen?” And in most instances
throughout history, we never fully receive an answer to that question. However,
in this case, the Lord, through the prophet Joel, provides the answer to this
question in what he says next. So let’s look at what is said next, in Joel
1:13-20:
13 Gird yourselves with sackcloth And lament, O priests;
Wail, O ministers of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth O ministers
of my God, For the grain offering and the drink offering Are withheld from the
house of your God. 14 Consecrate a fast, Proclaim a solemn assembly;
Gather the elders And all the
inhabitants of the land To the house of the LORD your God, And cry out to the
LORD. 15 Alas for the day! For the day of the LORD is near, And it
will come as destruction from the Almighty. 16 Has not food been cut
off before our eyes, Gladness and joy from the house of our God? 17
The seeds shrivel under their clods; The storehouses are desolate, The barns
are torn down, For the grain is dried up. 18 How the beasts groan!
The herds of cattle wander aimlessly Because there is no pasture for them; Even
the flocks of sheep suffer. 19 To You, O LORD, I cry; For fire has
devoured the pastures of the wilderness And the flame has burned up all the
trees of the field. 20 Even the beasts of the field pant for You;
For the water brooks are dried up And fire has devoured the pastures of the
wilderness.
Now to fully understand what Joel is communicating
here, we first need to understand what Joel means when he uses the phrase “The
Day of the Lord”. In the letters that make up the Bible, the “Day of the Lord”
is used in two different ways. In most places in the letters that make up the
Bible, this phrase refers to the time at the end of God’s story here on earth, Jesus will return to earth to
defeat selfishness, sin, and death, and to exercise God’s right and just
response to the wrongdoing and injustice of humanity against God and others
that flowed from their selfishness and rebellion against God and others. In addition, the “Day of the Lord” is also the
doorway through which those who are in right relationship with God as a result
of responding to all that God has done to rescue them from their selfishness
and rebellion through Jesus life, death, and resurrection, by believing,
trusting, and following Jesus as Lord and Leader will enter into the Kingdom of
Heaven.
However, in a few places in the letters that make up
the Bible, the “Day of the Lord” refers to a localized judgment of God against
selfishness and rebellion at that time in history. This is how Joel uses this
phrase in these verses. Joel is
revealing the reality that this swarm of locusts was an instrument of God’s
judgment on the Jewish people as a result of their selfishness and rebellion
against Him.
Joel then begins to describe the depths of God’s
right and just response to the selfishness and rebellion of the Jewish people
through the plague of locusts, beginning in the second chapter of the book of Joel.
We will look at those verses tomorrow...
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