Joel – The Wandering Shepherd

Before It Happens: “Judgments of the ‘Day of the Lord’” – Joel 2

On September 25, 2015, the Business Insider web report offered a fascinating article called “Predictive Policing.” In the article, the author referred to a Tom Cruise movie from 2002 called “Minority Report.” The article described the movie as an action mystery-thriller directed by Steven Spielberg, and noted the story was set in the Washington, D.C. area in the year 2054. At that time the so-called “Pre-Crime” police unit was tasked with apprehending criminals before they committed the crime, based on foreknowledge provided by three psychics called “pre-cogs.” It sounded like a powerful thriller for those who like the science fiction genre. My chief interest, though, was in the information found in the article that described how police are, in fact, using stores of computer collected and analyzed data to suggest where police resources should be directed, (i.e. areas where crimes will likely occur) – as a computer “predicts” when and such help should be concentrated. I was fascinated with the notion that such “predictions” could actually one day be found a reliable aid in crime deterrence.

The fact is, though, that predicting coming trouble isn’t a new thing. God mercifully sent prophets centuries ago who did just that. In our last lesson, we began recalling some of the words of an ancient prophet in The Book of Joel.

As we look into Joel 2 in this lesson, it may be helpful if we recall that in our last lesson we made the point that it wasn’t a desire to punish that drove God to send prophets – it was a function of His grace to warn us. We made clear that these passages are sometimes cryptic, and often uncomfortable to wade through, but God was anxious that His people know what was to come. The passage begins:

Joel 2:1 Blow a trumpet in Zion, And sound an alarm on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, For the day of the Lord is coming…

Does it sound like God desired to hide what was happening? Not at all! The truth is that however hard, however uncomfortable, we need the message of a coming reckoning of our lives. We need to know that God is not aloof, and our sin is not private and easily forgotten. Israel needed that message too!

Go back to the Book of Joel and you will recall that God used a graphic symbol to get the people’s attention. They saw a massive locust invasion described in vivid terms in Joel 1. The warning of God was made plain: this was to be an illustration of something larger that would devastate the children of Israel in the days ahead. The prophecy was horrid, messy and terrible… but that wasn’t the end of the story. Prophecy wasn’t designed to leave people in the “soup” of judgment. Let me explain…

Do you recall that Jesus used the scene of a woman in childbirth as His “go to” illustration concerning the prophecy of the end times of the human program? In Matthew 24, tucked into His warnings of “wars and rumors of wars” He offered these words: (Matthew 24:8 But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs.). He said that when the time of judgment drew near, the birth pangs would begin, but that pain was just the beginning of the end. It is particularly helpful, I think, at that moment of pain to recall that the end is not in pain – but in a new life. The pain will pass.

In the same way, some prophecies are revealed in very messy terms. Some of them are not linear prophecies – neatly unfolded in chronological order like the organized closing argument of a lawyer. Rather, as God unwinds the cosmos around us and replaces it with a new Heaven and earth, there is a painful and nasty process – but it is designed to bring forth something wonderful and exciting. This isn’t the only example of such pain-ridden processes in life.

• Think about the first morning the athlete begins training for a spot on the Olympic team. It is still dark out, and they get up and head out the door in their sweat pants and t-shirt – a body is about to begin to be altered. There will be much pain ahead, but the end may find them standing on a platform with the whole world watching them receive a medal.
• Think of the confused and distressed drug addict that checks into the clinic and begins the process of stripping from within the body the harmful and powerful drugs. The process will be disgusting, but it will restore the life that was ebbing away. If they follow the given instructions, they will likely exit new and different people.
• Closer to more of us, consider the person beginning the terrible process of losing many, many pounds on a necessary but agonizing diet. The end will be greater health, but the path to get there may not be very pretty.

All of these examples are arduous and painful processes that are designed to end well. So it is with God’s eventual and dramatic end to the history of human rebellion. Time will surrender to eternity, and mutiny will be replaced by worship!

Joel’s opening vision was stark, powerful and heartbreaking – but the locust devastation provided a picture to refocus Israel on coming judgment – and encourage them with the message that it would end well.

This prophecy is more than it appears on the surface. It is a story of the world God made, and what He is going to do with it. It is the story of what God did for His people, Israel – and what He will do to bring them to full surrender to Him. Like the intricate settings and battles of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, there is detail and drama. We must not become quickly impatient for the revealed ending and miss the weight of the struggle – because the prophets aren’t in a hurry to skip over the painful details.

Here is why. God’s faithful character is uniquely revealed in the depths of a painful struggle. His glory is best discovered in a commanding triumph over the rebels, and His vast wisdom most clear in the rich texture of the prophetic struggle.
In detail, chapter two is probably the weightier part of the message of this prophet’s record. The chapter turns on the words: “The Day of the Lord.” This phrase was used five times in Joel beginning with Joel 1:15 (see also: 2: 1, 11, 31; 3: 14). You cannot begin reading the second chapter for but a few words and the phrase appears yet again.

Because the prophet did not begin with a definition, we will need to discern the meaning of the phrase FROM the text. As we seek to do so, we will see this truth emerge…

Key Principle: The “Day of the Lord is an extended period of time in which God deals with Israel’s constant rejection of Him.

It begins with their veiling from the former profound relationship with Him, and end with their restoration beyond any further judgment at Messiah’s return and judgment of His people. We will be able to discern this by looking at the best passage in the Bible on the subject – Joel 2.
When the prophets use the term “day” they don’t always seem to mean a chronological 24-hour period.

Think with me about what we see in the prophetic literature. The term “day” always appears to refer to time, but some references appear to be more than a single calendar day:

1. There is the term “Day of man’s judgment” in 1 Corinthians 4:3 referencing the current economy, when men have control over human jurisprudence- i.e. where men “run the courts.”
2. The “Day of Christ” is mentioned six times in Scripture (1 Cor. 1: 8; 5: 5; 2 Cor. 1: 14; Phil. 1: 6, 10; 2: 16) and appears to refer to a time period when Christ will come to snatch away the church (as described in 1 Thessalonians 4: 13– 18) from the earth, bringing up the Christians of the church age to be with Him forever (Jn. 14: 1– 3).
3. Another term is the “Day of God” (cp. 2 Peter 3:12) seems to refer to the final disposition of Heaven and Earth (when they ‘pass away’) as God remakes things using devastation and fire.
4. With these, there is also the “Day or the Lord” which seems to include several profound kinds of judgment of God on His people Israel, and on the nations before, during and after the Tribulation.

Based on these uses of the term “day” in the context of judgment, the word doesn’t appear to be only used of 24-hour periods, but sometimes may be reckoned a protracted period of time.

What did the prophets mean by the “Day of the Lord” as best we can tell?

The specific phrase occurs nineteen times by name throughout the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures, including once by the prophet Obadiah (1:15), five times in Joel (1:15; 2: 1, 11, 31; 3: 14), three times by Amos (Amos 5:18 twice and 5:20), three times by Isaiah (2:12; 13:6, 9), twice by Ezekiel (13:5; 30:3), three times by Zephaniah (1:7 and 1:14 twice), once by Zechariah (14:1), and once by Malachi (4:5). Add to that other occurrences of “that day” or “that great day” and you will pile on another seventy-five places where it was mentioned in at least a cursory way.

Rather than define the terms outright, I would like you to build with me a construct for the meaning of the “Day of the Lord” as we follow the record of Joel 2.

Our text offers descriptions of the “Day of the Lord” beginning with the call to assemble because of its impending arrival.

After Joel called the people in 2:1 to: Blow a trumpet in Zion, And sound an alarm on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, For the day of the Lord is coming, He went on to describe the event…

First, the “Day of the Lord” was swiftly approaching.

Joel 2:1b …Surely it is near.

From God’s perspective, Israel was running out of time before an event, that was part of divine judgment, would come upon them. The importance of that phrase is simple: People always think they have more time in life to straighten out their walk with God. Part of the blessing of warning is it reminds us to pull against our natural inclination to believe we have more time.

If you are honest with yourself, can you admit that you often think you can accomplish more in the day ahead than you actually can? Are you a victim of your own unrealistic expectations? If you are, you need to listen carefully when the Lord calls you to repentance and renewal – because you will tend to think you have more time.

Don’t forget, when you read “near” in the Bible, that when we talk in terms of time with God, we have to be careful, since He dwells outside of the dimension of time.

There is a Scripture connecting events of the “Day of the Lord” mentioned some time later in the words of Peter in Acts 2:16.

…but this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel. 17 ‘And it shall be in the last days,’ God says, ‘That I will pour forth of My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; 18 even on My bond slaves, both men and women, I will in those days pour forth of My Spirit and they shall prophecy 19 and I will grant wonders in the sky above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke. 20 The sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the great and glorious day of the Lord shall come. 21 And it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’”

That quote from Joel was made as Peter defended the men who were speaking in tongues in Acts 2. In my view, Peter carefully noted that with the coming of the Spirit to begin indwelling the believers, the “Day of the Lord” judgments were commencing. Something at Pentecost appeared to be acting as the beginning point of the “Day of the Lord.” If my analysis of his reference is true, the “Day of the Lord” is a period of judgment beginning with the celebration of Pentecost in Acts 2, when the Spirit of God fell upon the church. The effect that event had on Israel will become clear as we study.

In any case, don’t miss the point: People overestimate the amount of time they have to get their life straightened out – so we all need reminders that life is short and judgment is certain.

Second, the “Day of the Lord” would bring a darkening veil over the discerning eyes of God’s people.

Critical to the understanding of the nature of the “Day of the Lord” is the sentence that included the nature of the judgment – it was a “darkening” or “veiling.” The writer continued:

Joel 2:2 A day of darkness and gloom, A day of clouds and thick darkness. As the dawn is spread over the mountains, So there is a great and mighty people…

The words evoke the image of the blanket of locusts that blocked out the sky. In the same way, the people of God would experience a darkening and a gloom. It may be the reference was to natural disturbances – and clearly that was part of the issue. At the same time, it appears that a veil descending over their hearts would also arrive, and it would make a clear walk with God a distant, vague, and darkened pursuit. Paul appears to have spoken of this “veiling” as a “hardening” in Romans 11:25:

For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; 26 and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion; He will remove ungodliness from Jacob.” 27 This is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins.

If the “Day of the Lord” includes a judgment that placed a curtain of darkness between the Jewish people and God for a time, one form of divine judgment seems to be God placing a distance from Himself in the heart of someone that expresses (in word or deed) their desire for Him to “leave them alone.”

Don’t miss that: God may politely withdraw from you when your life message to Him is that you don’t want Him bugging you.

It is ONLY His grace that keeps needling you with embarrassing guilt. Your feeling of guilt isn’t your problem; your stubborn and rebellious spirit is! Part of God’s mercy can be seen in His uninvited conviction.

In the case of Israel, the veiling or hardening was neither total nor final, but it was part of the whole judgment.

Third, the “Day of the Lord” (though offering some resemblance of other judgments) was unique in the prophetic scheme.

This was both am exceptional and distinctive time…

Joel 2:2b …There has never been anything like it, nor will there be again after it to the years of many generations.

In the Bible, the “time of Jacob’s Trouble” (called by Jesus the “Great Tribulation”) was described in Daniel 12:1 and Matthew 24:21 exactly that way – as a time unlike any other. The description in those places are clearly of judgment so heavy on the Earth that the world would have been decimated were it not for God putting a stop to those days.

Unique judgment requires special attention. The fact that God clearly marked out a coming time that was unlike any other was an “historical highlighter” marking something very important. To God, the time of purifying His people wasn’t a WASTE of resources. The destruction of the landscape was “entirely worthwhile” as God drew people back.

It is worth remembering that even the hard times that call us and draw us back to God are precious times in His sight. In some cases, those severe moments of discipline are the moments He marks as the most important in our lives. So it was with Israel in the “Day of the Lord.”

Fourth, the “Day of the Lord” includes severe destruction of the landscape through divine judgment as a main feature.

Obviously, if you are a Bible student, the description here fits well with the later description of the Great Tribulation…

Joel 2:3 A fire consumes before them and behind them a flame burns. The land is like the garden of Eden before them but a desolate wilderness behind them, and nothing at all escapes them.

Parts of the Great Tribulation are described in those exact terms, as in Revelation 8:6

And the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound them. 7 The first sounded, and there came hail and fire, mixed with blood, and they were thrown to the earth; and a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up. 8 The second angel sounded, and something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood, 9 and a third of the creatures which were in the sea and had life, died; and a third of the ships were destroyed.

It appears the “Day of the Lord” includes the Tribulation Period revealed most completely in Revelation 6-19, with the seven seal judgments (Rev.6), the seven trumpet judgments (Rev. 8) and the seven bowl or vial judgments (Rev. 16).

Are you really any different? Most of us can readily admit that we aren’t good at repentance, and we aren’t quick at picking up on the signs of judgment.

It will take a near decimation of the world to bring Israel to her knees. She won’t realize she needs God until there is literally no stone left unturned in her attempt to find her way without Him.

Fifth, the “Day of the Lord” includes the appearance of a massive army, just as the locusts graphically pictured.

The story of “The Great Tribulation” in Revelation 16 and 19 ends with a massive military buildup on the Earth that prepares to destroy Israel – but meets doom in the coming of Messiah and His forces from Heaven.

Note how the “Day of the Lord” in Joel 2 appears to include this time…

• It includes the movement of a swift army: Joel 2:4 Their appearance is like the appearance of horses; And like war horses, so they run.
• That massive army moved with great noise: Joel 2:5 With a noise as of chariots They leap on the tops of the mountains, like the crackling of a flame of fire consuming the stubble, like a mighty people arranged for battle.
• The army that struck terror into hearts as it advanced: Joel 2:6 Before them the people are in anguish; all faces turn pale.
• It appeared as a well-trained, overwhelming force on the earth: Joel 2:7 They run like mighty men, They climb the wall like soldiers; And they each march in line, Nor do they deviate from their paths. 8 They do not crowd each other, They march everyone in his path; When they burst through the defenses, They do not break ranks. 9 They rush on the city, They run on the wall; They climb into the houses, They enter through the windows like a thief.
• The militia seemed unstoppable, and blocked out even the stars (dust cloud or aircraft?) above in their overwhelming power and might: Joel 2:10: Before them the earth quakes, the heavens tremble, The sun and the moon grow dark And the stars lose their brightness.
• The gathering of an army that would surely destroy them without God’s intervention was foretold in detail in Zechariah 12:12-14:5: The burden of the word of the Lord concerning Israel. … 2 “Behold, I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that causes reeling to all the peoples around; and when the siege is against Jerusalem, it will also be against Judah… 7 The Lord also will save the tents of Judah first, so that the glory of the house of David… 10 “I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn. 11 In that day there will be great mourning in Jerusalem, like the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the plain of Megiddo. 12 The land will mourn, every family by itself…14: 2 For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city will be captured, the houses plundered, the women ravished and half of the city exiled, but the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city. 3 Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations, as when He fights on a day of battle. 4 In that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east… 5 You will flee by the valley of My mountains … Then the Lord, my God, will come, and all the holy ones with Him!

In the end, Israel won’t save herself. They will finally see God’s Son, their Messiah, and He will bring them rescue – just as He did for many of us.

Salvation isn’t about our ability to find God – it is about our response to Him when He stands right in front of our messed up lives and calls us to take His hand and follow Him. God isn’t interested in people “getting their lives together” so they can meet Him. We can’t do it. He is interested in us recognizing we have no one who loves us like He does.

Israel will see their long lost Son. They will recognize Him for His past sacrifice for them. They will weep – but they will reach out for His hand. That is the only thing for which God waits.

Sixth, God’s rescuing army also arrives.

Mid-way through the description of the advance of the army, the prophet appears to have changed his description from the opponents of God, to the army God sent in response:

Joel 2:11 The Lord utters His voice before His army; Surely His camp is very great, For strong is he who carries out His word. The day of the Lord is indeed great and very awesome, And who can endure it?

Isn’t this just like the description of the assembly called from Heaven for the defeat of the armies defiant against God found in Revelation 19: 17?

“…Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried out with a loud voice, saying to all the birds which fly in mid heaven, “Come, assemble for the great supper of God, 18 so that you may eat the flesh of kings and the flesh of commanders and the flesh of mighty men and the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them and the flesh of all men, both free men and slaves, and small and great.” 19And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies assembled to make war against Him who sat on the horse and against His army.

The “Day of the Lord” doesn’t only include the Tribulation Period, but also the end of that time with the coming of the Lord. The gathering of the nations was organized to attempt to destroy Israel and remove any memory of the God of the Bible – but then God showed up.

Never count God out in the fight… Never! When the darkness descends and you look in every direction but find no alternatives – look UP! God isn’t aloof. He knows where you are, who you are, what you’ve been doing, and where you are headed.

Many in Israel may have rejected the Messiah today, but He hasn’t rejected them. When the time is right, He will show Himself. At the same time, He is removing any doubt that there is another way for them to be reconciled to God and find peace on this planet. It isn’t until God removes the other options that we see the truth – He is all we have – but He is all we need.

Seventh, when God’s army appears, His people will again be called to repent.

A message was passed to the Jewish people to get serious with God yet again, as their time had run out. Even though God called for generations, yet He called again. Long after they had forgotten His love… His patience called them back to Him.

The message of repentance will be offered to His people.

Joel 2:12 Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “Return to Me with all your heart, And with fasting, weeping and mourning; 13 And rend your heart and not your garments.

The opening to return to God’s arms will be offered to His people.

Joel 2:13b…Now return to the Lord your God…

Is that true of YOU today? Have you been on the run trying to make it without God, but you sense Him calling you today?

Don’t ignore Him. In fact, listen to the way the prophet, the SAME GUY who described the decimation of things all over the world, described the character of God…

Joel 2:13b …For He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness and relenting of evil. 14 Who knows whether He will not turn and relent and leave a blessing behind Him, even a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God?

Just as Zechariah 12:10 reminded us of the coming response of the people of Israel, so Joel cites the turning of the hearts of the people to the Lord in the face of the battle between God and the nations. The appearance of the army of God will be a new opportunity to bow before the Lord. The people will recognize the day and nothing will be more important!

In Joel 2:15 they are called to “Blow a trumpet”… to “Consecrate a fast” … 16 Gather the people… Assemble the elders…

Even the long resistant spiritual leaders of Israel will call the people to repentance and recognize their own sins.

Joel 2:17 Let the priests, the Lord’s ministers, Weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, “Spare Your people, O Lord, and do not make Your inheritance a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they among the peoples say, ‘Where is their God?’”

Clearly this will be a day when Israel will understand the choice they have to finally see the Lord clearly once again.

Here is the simple truth: God rescues when He is invited to do so. He saves when we recognize we need saving. As long as we think we can run our lives without Him, He lets us try.

Here is what Scripture makes plain: It won’t work for Israel, and it won’t work for you.

The “Day of the Lord” includes God’s heavy hand of judgment to get His people to stop running.

In our next lesson, we will finish the chapter with God’s wonderful rescue – but don’t leave the conviction of this moment…

The penalty for constant neglect of God and their invitation of evil while distancing themselves from God was this:

• God withdrew.
• Intimate knowledge of God became veiled.
• For dark generations the Jewish people suffered.
• Many invented marvelous things, and some achieved notoriety and wealth.

Yet, through it all they were living in turmoil under the “fog” of a spiritual life largely darkened.

The prophet explained it.

When we push away from God, He politely lets us walk in the peril of our own arrogance.

God’s judgment in His withdrawal is always palpable. They KNEW something shattered their identity. Even after the State of Israel has attempted to offer stability and identity to world Jewry, still they know the world waits for their destruction and they don’t know why. It hurts. It is lonely. It feels wrong and isn’t clear why these things are happening.

Yet, God’s promise didn’t stop at pain and rejection. There is coming an END to the pain. Significant to the narrative was this record of its end:

Joel 2:25 Then I will make up to you for the years That the swarming locust has eaten… 26 … Then My people will never be put to shame. 27 Thus you will know that I am in the midst of Israel, And that I am the Lord your God, And there is no other; And My people will never be put to shame.

Look at that.

Grab the import of a nation redeemed, lives restored.

Think about many people who have lived apart from God for much of their lives, only to find peace in the Savior late in life.

In a mobile home backed up to the church property lived a man who came to Grace Church years ago, walking in the back door and looking at the ceiling as though it might fall upon his entrance. I noticed him immediately because his skin was a pale yellow. He was apparently a sickly man with an advanced and serious illness. He decided to walk across his back yard one morning and walk into the church. At the invitation, he came forward, and we talked for a time after the service. He told me that he came to Jesus in his youth, many years before. He recounted God’s call to send him into a mission field, and how he told God “No!” in a church service, because he had things he wanted to accomplish in his life. He didn’t think God understood how hard the mission field would be for him. No one knew how much he was wrestling with God, but in a matter of weeks, he left the church, never to return until he walked in our door. Then he made the remark that I will never forget. He said, “I am old and I am very sick. My time here is short. I know what the Lord wanted for me, and what a WASTE I made of my life!” We prayed together, and he sobbed as he asked Jesus to take him back after years of wandering. I opened to Joel 2 and asked God to follow His own nature and “give back” for the years eaten away by the locusts of self-centered thinking. In the next months, I had the chance to visit the man a number of times, and each one surprised me, more and more. I would walk in, and he would be smiling, excited about his study of the Word. “I missed God through my life. I knew He was watching, but He knew I wasn’t listening! How glad I am that He restored me!” He didn’t live long, but he died happy.

You have the opportunity to ask for God’s rescue TODAY. That is God’s mercy to YOU. Won’t you respond before the locusts eat your life?

God waits to be asked.

Randy Alcorn reminds us that when we listen to the vocabulary of the Bible, it reveals something powerful with its language of God’s heart for struggling and wayward people. He noted, God often uses words like reconcile, redeem, restore, recover, return, renew, regenerate, and resurrect. God wants to put back the relationship that rebellion and mutiny is trying to keep at arm’s length. (My paraphrase from a note he made in Fifty Days in Heaven).

Before It Happens: “Preparing for Coming Days of Judgment” – Joel 1

What does your Bible look like inside? On careful inspection, if we checked the Bibles of many people who are active in the local church in America (I am speaking of those who study of God’s Word at least in their church services), we may observe a pattern others have noted before us. The text of many Jesus followers is well worn. Some parts are underlined and have scribbles in the margins. Some are filled with colored markings and symbols in an unintentional “code’ that no one but the owner and the Spirit of God may fully perceive. Yet, even in these cases, often there is a pristine portion of their Bible – a section somewhere between the books of Song of Solomon and the opening of Matthew – that appears cleaner. This section is often in near mint condition, with gilded edges still gleaming, despite the condition of the rest of the Bible in which they are found. Perhaps it is because there is so little preaching, as many pastors have openly admitted they struggle with how to bring the Hebrew prophets into the modern pulpit.

Part of the reason may be that we don’t understand the true function of the prophets and their writings. We may read their words and they strike us as vengeful or angry (with all that “God will bring fire and judgment” talk) – and that doesn’t match our understanding of God’s loving character and His general way of doing things. Some believers have made up their mind that the God of Israel was somehow transformed to a warmer and nicer version of Himself when Jesus came (as recorded in the record of the Gospels). Frankly, that is nonsense. God doesn’t change and doesn’t need to change. Perhaps the real issue is, that we haven’t taken enough time to carefully consider Who our God is, and make a true attempt to understand the truth of what the prophets provide as spokesmen of His grace. They weren’t angry – they were giving sharp warnings because people were haplessly but swiftly approaching a perilous cliff in their nation. The fact is that when you are trying to stop a tragedy, your words may often sound shrill and impatient. As we open to the beginning of the recorded words of the Prophet Joel for this lesson, I trust the Spirit of God will make clear this truth…

Key Principle: God’s prophetic warnings are a function of His grace. Those who snub warning eventually suffer judgment by their own choice.

If you are patient, that truth will show itself from our text. Before we begin to investigate the text, I want to remind you of how we got where we are in our churches regarding prophecy and its part of our Scripture diet. Honestly, there are several problems that naturally arise in the modern church when trying to preach or teach the prophets. In fact, I asked some friends who serve in pastoral roles why we don’t do more with the prophets from the pulpit, and they offered some helpful observations.

Honestly, it is hard to make the message of God’s eventual judgment all that helpful and practical to the struggling Christian. Today’s church is bent on practical life preaching and God-help strategies. I am not commenting on that truth here – just observing it. One pastor explained why he has largely skipped speaking on and teaching from the prophets. He noted (my paraphrase):
Sometimes I preach from a specific prophecy (say, concerning the coming of Messiah) and trace the promise to the eventual fulfillment in God’s story. To bring home some sort of personal application, I try to remind the congregation that prophecy shows the veracity of God’s Word and the faithfulness of God’s character.

My point is: You can trust God. He speaks; then He does exactly what He said He would do. Occasionally it is good, but it isn’t a very deep observation of the text.

He said, “I read over my notes, and if the text of my message seems dry in the study, I am sometimes honestly tempted to “spice up the story” and make it appear more relevant by offering some of my own thoughts on possible connections and even, on occasion (I admit) speculative end-times scenarios to help hearers see relevance for their lives today – because being relevant has become very prized in pulpit communication. This is a constant danger, because I want people to stay with me in the presentation and not sleep off the sermon! Because of these dangers, I spend less time preaching the prophets. When I DO, I tend to tell a story about the writer’s life and make parallels between a follower of God long ago and the hearers today. That helped me feel like I wasn’t skipping the prophets, but I mostly AM skipping them. I am not really explaining the message of the books themselves, and the congregation doesn’t appreciably grow in their knowledge of those books of the Bible.”

I suspect that anyone who teaches the Bible has at least a little sympathy for what that pastor authentically shared of his own experience.

I mention the lack of time spent in these sections, and the three different natural bends of teachers of the Word to encourage you as we move forward. This study will require something of you in patience. That isn’t a veiled warning of a “boredom zone” ahead, it is rather a recognition that we are on unfamiliar ground in many circles today. You may be a student of prophecy, but most people aren’t today. We need to deliberately stretch ourselves. We need to speak the whole counsel of God’s Word. Some of the parts of Scripture have easy individual application and offer deep encouragement. Prophetic portions offer something very different. Without the words of the prophets, some of the lofty view of the Awesome Majesty of the Heavens would be barely touched, and a powerful and resounding call for us to tremble at His voice would barely be heard.

Prophets help us do more than satisfy ourselves that God knows where everything is going. They challenge us to bow before the One True Judge.

They call us to examine whether our outer practices are incongruent with our inner beliefs. They bring back a sense of the power and splendor of the God we serve.

There are examples of all the styles of preaching in the Word, if you look for them. When Paul stood on Mars Hill before philosophers, he carefully reasoned for the faith. When Jesus spoke of the Galilee hillsides, He pulled the minds of the people into the simplest imagery of daily life. When the Apostle Peter rose to defend God’s work in the men on the Day of Pentecost he launched into a full-throated support of the prophetic power of God before the crowd – and three thousand responded.
What the prophets of old offer is something more than mere learning about God. Think of the long, thin finger of Nathan the prophet stuck into the face of David as he uttered the words, “You are the man.” The value of the prophetic word is that it can be like an arrow to the heart in a way that few other portions can.

I am deliberately beginning slowly to introduce the prophets, because our next studies will have some unusual qualities as we work the text from a book of the Minor Prophets. Take a few moments with me to open our Bibles to the book of the Prophet Joel. The book is after Psalms in the middle of the Bible, and is the twenty-ninth book of thirty-nine in the common collection of the Hebrew Scriptures. As we turn for this prophet’s record, think with me about the painful process observed by a prophet of God, as they tell of the end times.

We must recognize that God made us emotional beings, and we gravitate toward positive emotion – but that isn’t the only kind we need to be able to reckon with.

We need to look at the painful parts of judgment to understand the glory of grace and rescue of redemption. As we open our reading, stand in front of a field that was stripped by the voracious appetite of locusts.

Joel offered his opening words in three parts:

• He called people to see what was happening as unique.
• He called specific kinds of people to respond to the scene.
• He called people to recognize the urgency of their time.

As you read his words, some will notice (because of their edition of the Bible) the way they are placed indented in paragraphs. The translator wanted you to know the words are lyrics. They were poetry. They were the record of a sad song written by a broken-hearted man who could barely believe what his eyes were seeing.

Look at the beginning of the three parts of his message from the first chapter…

First, he called the people to attention by telling them they have never seen anything like what was happening in front of them.

Joel 1:1 The word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel: 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.

If there was a word for what he was trying to say concerning the scene he was about to explain, it was: “Unbelievable!” He told the people and the elders who led them to stop moving and look at the picture God showed him. He went on to describe the scene.

Joel 1:4 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.

What is clear and certain is this: The man was overwhelmed by the scene of massive devastation – and he wanted them to see how obvious the marks of it were.

Some of us know exactly what he felt. We cannot believe that in a mere five years, our country has deliberately overhauled the most basic unit of mankind – the family. We have made perilous moves swiftly, based on the flimsiest testing of where that will lead our society. We are no longer drifting, we are swiftly moving with a furious current toward a rejection of one thing after another connected to Judeo-Christian practice. Left-over images of biblical texts on court rooms across the country are stark reminders of the violent lurching to the left.

In the Book of Joel, most scholars note that an invasion was approaching that would eventually devastate Judah – and this was a call to prepare and repent in hopes that God may withhold or reduce the judgment. Perhaps the locust invasion was a dramatic way for God to warn them of another kind of invasion just over their horizon view. Like the prophecy – the locusts were a symbolic warning given in GRACE.

Joel’s essential question was, “Have you ever known any invasion this severe?” (1:2)

That should have given them pause, instead of letting their eyes adjust to the dark setting. In fact, one of the common commands of the Law was for Israel to constantly rehearse her history before her children (cp. Dt. 4 and 6) in order to help them avoid the hand of God’s judgment.

The second part of the opening prophecy was separated into calls of specific kinds of people to face what was coming in God’s judgment.

• God’s first call was for those who were dull-minded as one would be with wine overindulgence to awaken (1:5).

Joel 1:5 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.

The call came for Israel’s dullard drunkards to awake from their lulled, compromised and sinful state. They were to open their eyes to see that judgment was at hand.

One of the ways people deal with staying in a wrong state and not facing God is DIVERSION – they simply focus on something else.

There is a natural tendency in some of us when we are facing hard times to attempt to ignore the coming results or divert our attention to something that will help us cope with the pain of what we see. In fact, we have noted before the term for “turning off the mind” is called ‘AMUSEMENT’ and it has become for many a consuming passion.

This is a danger of a Christian population that focused more on how the church can meet their needs than how it can honor God’s call. We can end up with sermons that make us feel good about things when the actual call of God is to see how perilous they are becoming. ALL our teaching isn’t warning – but let’s admit that in some places the idea of warning NEVER rises to the pulpit.

• His second call was to those who were planning in ignorance of the impending doom.

Joel 1:8 Wail like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth.

Israel was to drape herself in the clothing of sadness and brokenness. The point was that while some could divert, amuse, or dull their minds, others made plans for celebrations and paid no attention to the impending troubles because they were unaware of them. They were the CLUELESS. When peril came, the power of judgment crushed them like the waves of mourning as their dreams were dashed against the rocks of reality.

Government isn’t bad – it’s necessary. The problem is it neither CAN nor SHOULD be called on to feed, clothe and care for us in every situation. When we reward people for lack of preparation for difficulty, we discourage the next group from even trying to sacrifice and prepare.

Joel’s imagery of the bride, dressed and waiting for a groom that will not come because he has died – reminds us there is a process of mourning a severe loss that we are impatient in our culture to understand – but it has a purpose in the fallen world. We weren’t designed to face death, but God added “waves of grief” as a means of regaining equilibrium.

His point was this: Loss is most powerful in people who never truly considered it could happen to them.

The issue with the people was one of thorough forgetfulness that led them to clueless insensitivity. At one time, they knew evil, in principle, would be judged. By then, they knew their nation had plunged into evil. Yet they didn’t connect the problem with the result. They simply made plans for the next celebration and hoped for more years of good harvest – hoping against hope that things would go well.

The people hardest hit in the downturn of a market are those who have forgotten to consider the possibility.

The deepest despair comes from those who have honestly forgotten the risks of living in a broken world. In short, Israel was about to be walloped and some had never considered the possibility that God was actually going to judge as He repeatedly warned.

This is the danger of a church who has taught a generation of Christians that God’s chief interest is in their health, wealth, and happiness. They never considered the possibility the things that have happened to Iraqi or Syrian Christians could happen to them as well. Troubles, brutal martyrdom, and a tested faith are things they believe belong to another time and place.

• God’s third call was to priests and ministers (1:9) to lament the cutting off of the provisions for the spiritual life of the nation.

Joel 1:9 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.

While some were DULL and others were CLUELESS, those who oversaw the spiritual life of the nation should have been able to see without blur that things were heading in a bad direction. Joel beckoned SPIRITUAL LEADERS (those with an “elder” view” of the community) to step up and recognize the signs. A community elder is one who acts as a father or patriarch over more than his own biological family – but becomes a protector and provider for that greater community.

Let’s say it this way: When you serve God by serving His people, you think differently about the effects of sin on the society.

Those who sit in the counseling room, work at equipping of Jesus followers, and craft instruction for God’s people from His Word, are often “early adopters” of the message of the effects of bad decisions. There are some in our society who STILL don’t connect the dots between our decisions and their outcome as a people.

When we opened “no fault divorce,” we removed both legal roadblocks and public stigma to the decoupling of a marriage. Today, people are even insulted if you use terms like a “failed marriage” because they feel that is judgmental toward their situation – as if one of the natural options of people coming to the altar and declaring their commitment was an escape hatch.

Here is what I know. In the history of marriage, there have always been troubled people and difficult pairings. The profound difference in our time is that it is easy to get out of the problem without working it out – and the world around you will help you deflect any sense of responsibility for that event. Out of compassion for people in difficult marriages, we legislated our way into the mess of meaninglessness at the altar. The children torn up by these broken homes now fill our schools as a broken and bitter reminder that we made it easy on one person often by devastating another. They live together, because they don’t see the point of the commitment we call marriage, and we shouldn’t wonder why.

When our courts decided the people needed protection from the state invading their privacy so much that a woman had the unrestrained right to end the life in her womb, many didn’t connect that decision to the brutishness that has now become part of the modern American voice.

• They didn’t recognize with equal fervor the child within her to be also that of her partner – his rights were effectively muzzled in that termination of life.
• They didn’t calculate the loss of 57 million Americans in a single generation to the economy.
• They didn’t think through how human life itself, no longer sacrosanct, would diminish clarity of honored values of our society.

In a new way, motherhood was separated from fatherhood, and unborn children became throwaway dolls, removed in bags and treated like refuse. We no longer argue about if it is human life, but argue today whether we have a right to have tax dollars rid me of an inconvenient child in the womb. Politicians call for this without pausing to observe how far we have fallen from the image of tenderness that was once associated with the womb.

Some claim our pulpits shouldn’t address things like divorce, so called “same sex marriage” or abortion. They look at those social issues as merely political and judicial. They don’t get it – because they don’t understand the elder view. Those of us who know God’s Word and teach it, carry a special wound in the society for the self-mutilation that comes from our collective mutiny against God. We deal with the broken-hearted children, and we try to train those whose thinking has been so skewed that “right” and “wrong” are no longer clear.

The Bible is unequivocal and clear – morality is not a social construct.

Man didn’t crawl out of primordial ooze, invent a God, and then promptly NOT follow Him so they could invent guilt. That doesn’t make sense because it didn’t happen. Men didn’t invent God. He created us. Exacting design doesn’t flow haplessly from random happenings. You know it, and so does every observant person who isn’t bent on doing life according to their own rules.

Closer to home, we need to remember our own history in days like these as well. Our country simply wasn’t founded without a profound connection between a specific faith view of the world and human responsibility. It isn’t by happenstance that our Congress had a chaplain and our buildings were built across the land with Bible verses etched into them. The Bible men and women were sworn into office with wasn’t just a décor statement. We come from a long and detailed history of men who knew that our rights and responsibilities were based on the fact that all of us have the same Creator. They wrote carefully that none of us is more important than the other because they reckoned that we all will eventually kneel to the same God. That story may be ignored in our halls of learning, but our history is literary and stubbornly stained on parchments with ink. The only hope of those who desire to mute the voices of our fathers is to fill the heads of the young with nonsense and hope they don’t grow up and get wise by doing things like reading the documents for themselves.

• A fourth call was for farmers to recognize the shame of losing everything in an act of God’s disfavor (1:11).

Joel 1:11 Be ashamed, O farmers…

The FARMERS were presented as those who knew deep disappointment. Perhaps no one truly understands the sense of hopefulness for the crops like the farmer; conversely, no one feels the depth of the disappointment in the stripping of the land. People attached to the land become more sensitive to their impact on it. They who worked the land and saw it destroyed weren’t to be MAD, as though God has abandoned them – but ASHAMED as if THEY had abandoned God.

When we see judgment clearly, it will not be a mark against God, but a mark against us. Our modern jails aren’t a statement about our contemporary judges as much as they are statement about our growing contention to live inside the boundaries of the law.

• A fifth call was for the vinedressers to wail (1:11) for the loss of the vines, fig trees and other fruit trees. They were to see their joy withered as the trees melted away (1:12).

Joel 1:11b “…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.

VINE DRESSERS were a subset of farmers who acted more as attendants. They didn’t plant the vines as much as tend them. They were to grapes what daycare workers are to children. People who tend and care for the fruit cultivation have a very specific “parenting” view of the vines and trees they attend.

The third (last) part of Joel’s opening urgently called people to stop acting like the time was far off and get serious with God right away.

The call starts with the clergy and warns on them to get serious before they expect the nation to get on board.

Joel 1:13 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.

God’s worship leaders were told to change what they are wearing, and put on the symbols of mourning so all could see them. They were told to pay attention to the provisions of God being diverted from the temple. They were called to publicly call the people to fasting, public repentance, and mourning. The warning of judgment connected to public acceptance of egregious errors started with God’s leaders. Also note that God didn’t just tell them to “get sad” and look somber before the masses. He gave them their message: God will not let what we are doing go on forever – His day is coming. He isn’t playing around, and He is right on schedule to do what He promised.

Judgment cannot be avoided by ignoring it.

Joel 1:15 Alas for the day! For the day of the Lord is near, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty.

God intended the people to notice the time of judgment was getting close:

• First, they were to see their prosperity evaporating.

Joel 1:16 Has not food been cut off before our eyes…

• Second, they were to notice the sobriety of those who studied God’s Word and taught them from it.

Joel 1:16b “…Gladness and joy from the house of our God…

They were to reckon the natural disruptions in the earth as part of the tremors of coming judgment.

Joel 1:17 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.

They weren’t supposed to call for a new legislature so much as drop to their knees. They weren’t supposed to look for help from the king as much as from the King of all Kings!

Joel 1:19 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.

It wasn’t enough for the temple to keep the schedule as usual. The people were to be awakened to the voice of the Lord concerning the days ahead. They should be clear, pronounced and deliberate. God said:

Joel 2:1 Blow a trumpet in Zion …

Why? Were they to be depressed while the world was rejoicing? The point was they were to show the warning before the world around them connected the dots between their sinful violations and God’s coming of judgment.

God’s leaders were, and are, to make clear the hour is late and the warning is becoming more and more obvious.

God’s prophetic warnings aren’t as much a function of His judgment as they are of His grace.

He didn’t tell us what was coming because He savors judgment, but in order that we might step out individually and stand with Him against the normative trend of our day. When God called believers to be HOLY as He is HOLY – the call was to be distinct as He is not like any other.

If you blend well in the company of lost men and women – something is wrong with your distinctiveness.

If people note the difference in you and it makes them uncomfortable, you may be the warning sign they most need to turn before they plunge into the broken road ahead. Don’t forget…

Those who close their ears to the pronouncement will eventually suffer God’s judgment by their own choice.

If you took the time to read the last three chapters of the Bible, in the Book of Revelation, you would surely note four powerful truths that emerge from looking closely at the final judgment scene called the “Great White Throne” Judgment. You would note:

• THE IDENTITY OF THE JUDGE: the offended Son of God
• THE ABSENCE OF AN ADVOCATE: sinners stand fearfully alone
• THE FINALITY OF THE VERDICT: no appeal is possible
• THE SEVERITY OF THE SENTENCE: Eternal separation from God into torment becomes real for countless people

Looking over the edge into that prophecy of the future, we have a responsibility to articulate the warning to those who do not know Christ as their Savior – and will only know Him as their judge. It need not happen. The peril is both clear and obvious.

The warning is a function of God’s GRACE.

• When you work hard for a day’s pay- we call that a wage.
• When you compete well for a trophy – we call that a prize.
• When you achieve recognition for a high level of service – we call that an award.

When you didn’t work for it, didn’t compete for it, didn’t accomplish it and never could even if you tried – we call that a gift of grace. Come to Him today, receive His forgiveness, and avert standing in judgment for your sin.

A story is told about Fiorello LaGuardia, who, when he was mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression and all of WWII, was called by adoring New Yorkers ‘the Little Flower’ because he was only five foot four and always wore a carnation in his lapel. He was a colorful character who used to ride the New York City fire trucks, raid speakeasies with the police department, take entire orphanages to baseball games, and whenever the New York newspapers were on strike, he would go on the radio and read the Sunday funnies to the kids. One bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter’s husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges. “It’s a real bad neighborhood, your Honor,” the man told the mayor. “She’s got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson.” LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said, “I’ve got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions—ten dollars or ten days in jail.” But even as he pronounced sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill and tossed it into his famous sombrero saying, “Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Bailiff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant.” The following day the New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren. Fifty cents of that amount was contributed by the red-faced grocery store owner, while some seventy petty criminals, people with traffic violations, and New York City policemen, each of whom had just paid fifty cents for the privilege of doing so, gave the mayor a standing ovation. (Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel, Multnomah, 1990, pp. 91-2)

Before It Happens: “Forced to Give Account” – Joel 3

I don’t think I am exposing a secret when I say that it seems an election season brings out the worst in media personalities. Am I wrong? I mean, in all the years I have been watching elections, I have never seen so many so-called “news” outlets parsing stories to get an angle for or against a candidate as we are seeing in this one. Some of the media outlets should be on the payrolls of the candidates! Many reporters don’t simply have a “point of view” but they even seem to possess their own “facts on the ground.” How often you hear some inflammatory statement of one of the candidates repeated, and then you look up the whole speech in context and conclude the reporter wasn’t really listening to what the candidate said at all. It is happening on both sides, and it is making the process of examining either candidate effectively impossible.

The American people are not being served well by leaders who will easily dismiss the truth to win votes, nor by reporters who already know who we should vote for if we were as enlightened as they are. Honestly, neither side appears deeply concerned with the truth as much as they are about the next good sound bite. Yet, here is what I know… what we say and do cannot simply be swept away by misinformation. Each of us must remember there will come a day when we will be forced to give an account of our lives to our Creator. Jesus said it this way:

Matthew 12:36 “But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment.”

Have you thought much about that? Have you stopped to carefully consider that even when you have long forgotten, the record of your words and actions has already been recorded by the One Who misses neither detail nor true intent? For most of us, that is a sobering thought.

I mention accountability because we have been studying prophecy narratives about the “Day of the Lord” and made note along the way that a variety of judgments are a part of that record in the Book of Joel. This lesson is about the last chapter of that short prophecy. Perhaps a fair warning is in order: based on extensive study of the narrative of the Word, I have concluded this: the hour seems late in the human program. There is a timeline for the terminal generation in Heaven and the hints to the appearance of the end of our age seem very much like what I am reading in the daily news. I cannot be sure the day is soon, but I can say with certainty this…

Key Principle: God hasn’t left us unaware of what to look for, nor has He left us without something to do about the terminal generation. A time of giving a full account of our life is coming.

We must live as though God is watching, and our choices will be judged. I am well aware such talk is not popular in today’s western view. We want to hear about grace, about personal exceptions to every rule that allow for my personality, and about how my choices are truly my own while God’s job is to bless me no matter what I say or do.

That isn’t the mature believer – but that does represent many believers. In truth, I can fill rooms with believers who come from broken backgrounds and found love, security and joy in Jesus – and that is as it should be. Yet, I have never met a truly mature and surrendered follower of Jesus who was honestly unaware that our personal relationship with Jesus compels us to grow and change into His likeness and character by the power of God’s Holy Spirit. They know that Jesus calls us to change. He calls us to become distinct from the world around us. He calls us to reckon ourselves as servants of the Almighty. The one enduring mark of a profitable servant must be faithfulness.

In the last chapter of Joel, the prophet spoke of a time of judgment on both His long estranged wife, Israel, and the nations of the world. He presented an orderly look at a severe and precise conclusion to the days of Israel’s great tribulation. The problem is, it may not be obvious what the prophet is telling us…we may need some help. Joel was an early prophet, and his imagery may be a bit cryptic. Maybe looking at some words of the Savior that are less enigmatic will help us drop into Joel 3 with more understanding. Let me propose this…

To understand the timeline of Joel 3, let’s look at the same imagery as told by Jesus in places like Luke 21 and the cross references in Matthew 23-25.

Turn for a moment to the Gospel of Luke in chapter 21, where the good doctor opened the account reminding us of a time Jesus was watching people in the Women’s Court as they placed their offerings in the containers prepared for that purpose. The rich came (likely with great fanfare and gave (Lk. 21:1) and that contrasted with a very poor widow, who put in (in comparison) a tiny token. Jesus noted the woman gave the greater gift, because she gave sacrificially from her only coins that met her most basic needs, while the rich gave from the mere extras of their wealth (Lk 21:2-4).

In the context of expressions of worship and giving, surrounded by the grand Temple and Plaza with its impressive size and intricate design, Jesus prophesied a coming destruction before His closest followers – and that got their full attention! The Master warned them of the coming day when all the physical beauty of the building would be stripped away, and the Temple would come down (Luke 21:6).

For a Jew of His time, raised with this Temple at the center of their life, a natural negative reaction could be expected. One question, if you followed Jesus and trusted His prophetic sense in the scene would rise within a follower as to the timing of such destruction. Another serious challenge would rise as the purpose of such an event – what would God be doing allowing the religious center of His people to come apart. It would be, in modern Christian terms, to prophesying that God abandoned the church, and the world swarmed it, picking over the rubble. How could that be? The whole crowd probably wanted to know what to expect in regards to the collective Jewish national future in light of the words of the Savior regarding the Temple’s coming destruction. Jesus answered them about the days ahead:

In simple terms, the timeline of Jesus included five major items from the time of Gentile domination to the reemergence of Israel:

• There would be deliberate attempts to deceive Jews with false Messiahs (Lk. 21:8).

• Skip down to verse 12 (we will look at the intervening verses in a moment). There would be persecution because of the name of Jesus against the Jewish people (Lk. 21:12-18).

• Now look at the verses we passed by. There would be a stark rise in news of wars and natural convulsions (21:9-11).

• There would be an obsession in the nations with Jerusalem that culminated in military blockade (Lk. 21:20-24).

• Messiah will come and the people will be rescued and the land restored. Predicting an eventual military blockade against Jerusalem that will be devastating, Jesus made clear the troubles would only be ended when the Messiah returns. To make that clear, He said:

Luke 21:27 Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. 28 But when these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

The Prophecies of Events beyond the Return of Messiah

In addition to the prophecies concerning His return to rescue the people, Jesus spoke about His judgment of the nations in direct terms as well. Those can be found in much more complete terms in Matthew 24 and 25. To be sure, the setting for Matthew 25 must be considered after the return of Messiah, because of what Jesus said in places like Matthew 24:29ff (just before Matthew 25):

Matthew 24:29 “But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. 31 And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.

The time will be following the Great Tribulation with its powerful signs. Messiah will come to earth visibly and be seen by the nations. His return will terrify and trouble them, because it will be in overwhelming force. Whatever deception they previously believed, whatever taunting and mocking of His Word they have done – it will become instantly clear they were found on the wrong side of truth. Some people will MOVE TOWARD Him, because they have believed. Others will gather only to fight Him. In any case, the coming of the Son of Man will be neither silent, not unnoticed.

When He comes, the nations and their people will need to be dealt with. National leaders will suffer as a result of the armed offensive against Israel, and the destruction of their forces made clear in Revelation 16:16 and Revelation 19. Yet, many in those nations may have believed, and didn’t agree with the governmental response. Matthew 25 revealed the scene:

Matthew 25:31 “But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. 32 All the nations (ethnos) will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; 33 and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left.

The text notes the coming, the enthroning, and the judgment. If you continue reading, Jesus noted the rewards and penalties coming out of that judgment.

• First, He spoke of those who would receive blessing in Matthew 24:34

“Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

• A few verses later, He spoke of those who would be judged negatively in Matthew 24:41:

“Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels;

The text also made clear the STANDARD by which the Son of Man judged the people of the earth on His return. Each was judged, positively or negatively, based on their response to the needs of His people during the hour of their greatest trouble. In 24:35-40, some treated Jesus well by treating His people well. In 24:42-46, others were harshly judged because they were cruel and hateful toward His people. To them, the text records Jesus’ voice:

Matthew 24:45 Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ 46 These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

David Levy wisely noted: “What is meant by judgment of the nations? The word nation (Greek, ethnos) refers [here] to the judgment of individuals within the country, not to the judgment of whole nations. The following reasons bear this out. First, the message of salvation presented in the Tribulation calls for an individual acceptance, not a national one. Second, there is no record in Scripture that whole Gentile nations will accept the preaching of the 144,000 Jewish witnesses. Third, in all the judgments presented in Scripture, it is the individual, not the nation, who is judged…[In addition] the term nation is used in other portions of the New Testament with reference to individuals (Mt. 6: 31– 32; 12: 21; 20: 19; 28: 19; Acts 11: 18; 15: 3; 26: 20).” – Levy, David. Joel: The Day of the Lord (Kindle Locations 909-915). The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

With those scenarios in mind, take a moment and look with me at what the Prophet Joel recorded about the judgment of the nations in Joel 3, and see if you can observe that five-part story (or at least the greatest part of it) emerging from the narrative.

The Timing of the Judgment of the Nations (3:1-2a)

The prophet began by explaining the timing relative to the work God was doing with the Jewish people. Israel is an effective CLOCK one can watch in order to follow the end times happenings. He prophesied:

Joel 3:1 “For behold, in those days and at that time, When I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, 2 I will gather all the nations And bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat.

The passage begins with an assumption, that we recall “where we left off in the story” at the end of Joel 2. God’s promise to His people didn’t stop at pain and rejection. The narrative at the end of Joel 2 promised an END to the pain of their darkness and shame before the nations. Note again the end:

Joel 2:25 “Then I will make up to you for the years That the swarming locust has eaten, … 26 … Then My people will never be put to shame. 27 “Thus you will know that I am in the midst of Israel, And that I am the Lord your God, And there is no other; And My people will never be put to shame.

That record, then, reminds us we are at the point of the story when the Great Tribulation has given way to the Millennial Kingdom – with the arrival of the King – as recorded in Revelation 19 and 20. Note two other things about the verses.

First, there is a “gathering of the nations” referred to in Joel 3. At the end of the Great Tribulation, the remaining Jewish people found salvation in their Messiah, Who came rescuing them from impending doom brought on by the armies of the nations. The huge army that gathered against Israel, the Gospel and Israel’s God was summarily smashed by the Word of the Savior Who came in the clouds. That military obliteration dealt with the combined armies of the confederate nation states, but not with the judgment of the nations they represented, per se. (A reference of that can be found in the fifth of seven judgments we will study below). The last book of the Bible unfolds this story well:

Revelation 19:11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. 12 His eyes are a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems; and He has a name written on Him which no one knows except Himself. 13 He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. 14 And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses…19 And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies assembled to make war against Him who sat on the horse and against His army. 20 And the beast was seized, and with him the false prophet … 21 And the rest were killed with the sword which came from the mouth of Him who sat on the horse, and all the birds were filled with their flesh.

A second note should be made of Joel 3:2’s mentioning of a place in the “Valley of Jehoshaphat” – the place which was given in terms of its purpose “our Lord will Judge” (the meaning of Jehosophat). Since Zechariah 14:4 mentions a new valley created at the division of the Mount of Olives, this is a likely place where the Messiah holds court. Specific designation of its location isn’t given because it was not formed at the time of Joel.

The Terms of the Judgment of the Nations (Joel 3:2b-3)

Return with me to Joel 3, now that our timing is understood. The prophet continued with the specifics, or the TERMS of the judgment.

Joel 3:2b “…Then I will enter into judgment with them there On behalf of My people and My inheritance, Israel, Whom they have scattered among the nations; And they have divided up My land. 3 “They have also cast lots for My people, Traded a boy for a harlot And sold a girl for wine that they may drink.

The graphic version of the “terms of judgment” seems to regard the treatment of Israel from the Tribulation as Jesus explained further in Matthew 25. Note in Joel 3:2b the terms of God:

• I will enter into judgment: God will be the judge. At the valley of “our Lord will judge” the ethnos gathered are brought to stand before the Holy One.

• On behalf of my people: there is no doubt this referred to both the saved Jews entering the Millennium, and in particular the witnesses from among their number. Consider the cruelty of martyrdom of many of those witnesses. A question posed in practical terms, “Did you show support for such atrocities? Did you harbor them at the risk of YOUR life? Did you have a heart faith that was shown by your moral response and your acceptance of risk on their behalf? This is surely part of the “least of these” from Matthew 25 who, when cared for, become a testimony of our heart faith in Messiah.

• And My inheritance, Israel: Another demonstration of belief in the Person and program of the Messiah is the aiding of the children of Israel during a time of international abhorrence, scattering from their land, and shattering over the security of their land and people. Just as Abraham was promised that God would “bless those who bless him and curse those who curse him” the terms appear to include the treatment of his children.

• Cast lots for my people: Some Jews of the Tribulation Period appear to be a commodity, traded as slaves or chattel. Note the bartering that appears during this time as well as the things purchased – a prostitute and more drink. The fruits of the people in that business show them to be of the basest kind of people.

The judgment is one of works, the terms of which are the treatment of the holders of the Gospel (the Jewish witnesses of the Tribulation) and the Jewish people in their plight of dispersion, while hiding among the hostile and largely unprotected actions of the nations. The judgment of these sinful works show they reflected heart attitudes toward the revealed Word of God, and the Savior that Word teaches. Look at it this way:

People who care about the Bible and take it literally will be those most sensitive to the treatment of the Jewish people in that hour. The same appears true today.

The Targets of the Judgment (Joel 3:4-8)

Look closely at the verses that follow the terms of the judgment and you will see WHO will face sentencing for their misdeeds. It is likely this is not an exhaustive list, but rather a typical one – a sample of the people and deeds that are judged most harshly by God. That will become clearer as we look closely at the verses.

Joel 3:4 Moreover, what are you to Me, O Tyre, Sidon and all the regions of Philistia? Are you rendering Me a recompense? But if you do recompense Me, swiftly and speedily I will return your recompense on your head. 5 Since you have taken My silver and My gold, brought My precious treasures to your temples, 6 and sold the sons of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks in order to remove them far from their territory, 7 behold, I am going to arouse them from the place where you have sold them, and return your recompense on your head. 8 Also I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the sons of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans, to a distant nation,” for the Lord has spoken.

• What are you to Me: What have we in common? What is your tie to me?

• O Tyre, Sidon and all the regions of Philistia? These named regions are those of the Philistine coast and the Phoenician coast in antiquity, and include Lebanon and the Gaza strip today. They appear in the prophecy to relate to the actions of those nations of long ago – that is, the peoples who willingly dispossessed the children of Israel of land in their desired territories given them by God (Joshua 13:1-7). Unable to supplant them (Judges 1:21-36), they became a constant “thorn” to Israel (Judges 2:1-6) trying to destroy them. These groups were a terrible affliction to Israel from the time of the Judges through the Divided Kingdom period (the time of Joel). The last recorded plunder by them was that of the invasion under the fifth of the kings of Judah in the Divided Kingdom, that of King Jehoram of Judah (who reigned about 8 years from about 848-841 BCE, as referenced in 2 Kings 8:16-9:37. He was the son of King Jehoshaphat, and a child of intermarriage with the household of Ahab in the north – a king of Judah who walked like a king of Israel because of family connections).

• Are you rendering Me a recompense? Can you make up for your rebellion and your terrible harm committed against my people? After all, these were the “apple of God’s eye” (Zechariah 2:8) which simply means: “God is as sensitive about Israel as people are sensitive to their pupils!” If you smack someone in the pupil, they will react. There is little that can be done for the damage the nations caused against God’s people.

• Swiftly and speedily I will return your recompense on your head. Don’t relax. This is coming down hard and fast upon you.

You worked to scatter My people, you stole the silver and gold that was given in worship to Me, said the Lord. You labored to break up My land and give it away to others. You sold My beloved children into slavery. What can you do now that I have caught you?

The Trick of the Judgment (3:9-11a)

The prophet showed that God was going to draw the armies of the Gentile nations into conflict through a stirring from Heaven. God uses the egos of men and the stupor of their deceived state to draw them into a direct confrontation with Him and His people. The scene was proclaimed in Joel 3:9ff:

Joel 3:9 Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare a war; rouse the mighty men! Let all the soldiers draw near, let them come up! 10 Beat our plowshares into swords And your pruning hooks into spears; Let the weak say, “I am a mighty man.” 11 Hasten and come, all you surrounding nations, And gather yourselves there.

Mid way into the eleventh verse, it appears that either the perspective of the narration changed, or the nations cry out to taunt God. The prophets said:

Joel 3:11b “…Bring down, O Lord, Your mighty ones.

In any case, it is clear the deceived nations will be drawn to the conflict, and will be destroyed. After that, the people of the defeated nations will be drawn to stand before the Judge at the Valley of Judgment in Jerusalem.

Joel 3:12 Let the nations be aroused And come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat, For there I will sit to judge All the surrounding nations. 13 Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, tread, for the wine press is full; The vats overflow, for their wickedness is great. 14 Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. 15 The sun and moon grow dark And the stars lose their brightness.

The Termination of the Judgment (Joel 3:16-21)

The Judgment of Israel by God will end, once and for all, when her King returns. The conditions of both the Jewish people and the nations will be altered by His arrival.

Jerusalem will be purified in the coming of Her King:

Joel 3:16 The Lord roars from Zion And utters His voice from Jerusalem, And the heavens and the earth tremble. But the Lord is a refuge for His people And a stronghold to the sons of Israel. 17 Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, Dwelling in Zion, My holy mountain. So Jerusalem will be holy, And strangers will pass through it no more.

The Apostle Paul knew his people were going to be renewed to a walk with God. Yet, he knew that early believers who only looked at the attempts of Jewish leadership to discourage and dissect the early church would not see the bigger program of God. He saw it, because his view wasn’t based on the news – but on the Word of God.

Romans 11:25 For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery– so that you will not be wise in your own estimation– that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; 26 and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, “THE DELIVERER WILL COME FROM ZION, HE WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB.” 27 “THIS IS MY COVENANT WITH THEM, WHEN I TAKE AWAY THEIR SINS.” 28 From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of [God’s] choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers; 29 for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

A Biblical world view allowed Paul to see what others could not see – that God was working an intricate plan, and believers who took their cue from the news would not see what God was doing. That is STILL a major problem with the church of Jesus Christ.

Many in the church see Israel as replaced – but Romans eleven verses twenty-five to twenty-seven make no literal sense in that scenario. Others focus on current Jewish opposition to the Gospel and conclude that because they are hard to reach in the time of their veiling, the efforts would be better spent elsewhere – but that doesn’t take into account Paul’s answer in verses twenty-eight and twenty-nine. Here is the simple truth: God doesn’t give up on His plan…He keeps steadily working it out. He works it out when even the believers don’t believe. He plods ahead, unaffected by our doubt and complaint – because He knows what He is doing. He knows where it all ends… in His glory.

Joel ended with a grand promise. The Land of God’s people will yield abundantly at the Coming of Her King:

Joel 3:18 And in that day The mountains will drip with sweet wine, And the hills will flow with milk, And all the brooks of Judah will flow with water; And a spring will go out from the house of the Lord To water the valley of Shittim.

That won’t happen everywhere on earth…

Joel 3:19 Egypt will become a waste, And Edom will become a desolate wilderness, Because of the violence done to the sons of Judah, In whose land they have shed innocent blood.

The land threats against the Jewish people, so familiar to our news today, will be gone!

Joel 3:20 But Judah will be inhabited forever And Jerusalem for all generations.

At long last, the Holy One will bring to an end the suffering, and right the transgressions against His once wayward, self-willed people. They may have spurned Him, but those who dealt harsh blows against them faced judgment in the end.

Joel 3:21 And I will avenge their blood which I have not avenged, For the Lord dwells in Zion.

As we close this lesson, let me be honest with you.

If there are any THREE questions I would like to pose to those of us who busily study prophecy, the first is this:

“What exactly do we need to see in our world to know that we are nearing the END of the human story?”

In more direct terms: ”If you aren’t busy sharing your faith and preparing your life – what are you waiting for to get busy for God?” I want to know what people across our land in the church, many who possess solid knowledgeable of God’s Word, are waiting for to acknowledge that we are quickly approaching the “terminal generation” of human society. What will it take for you to surrender to Jesus Christ in light of what the Bible has predicted and what you see coming to pass?

2 Peter 3 warned that people would mock the very message that Jesus would return. Do you think that is where we are as we face campuses across our nation that have squandered the money and facilities of generations of believers to preach the Bible is a false Bronze Age mythology offering no more truth than a story about unicorns and fairies? Our colleges and universities in the country were largely begun to train men and women to follow God. We now sponsor public mocking.

1 Thessalonians 5 predicted that people would proclaim “peace and safety” when the end came suddenly. We have watched in my lifetime the dissolution of the Soviet Union in a period of weeks and even days. Do we not know that we live in a world where markets can tumble in hours. Do we not understand that a few airplanes crashing can change the world as we know it?

We don’t mention these things because we want to scare people, but rather our heart’s desire is to let the Word of God sound a trumpet blast to awaken the slumbering from sleep.

If Daniel 12:4 marked the end as a time of massive amounts of information becoming accessible and people traveling about in a constant whirl, shouldn’t the international airlines, the compact computer we all carry in the phone in our pockets, the internet and Uber’s driverless car cause you to pause and think about how late in the world’s story we may be? Since man walked out of the Garden of Eden until the dawn of the twentieth century, men traveled on foot or tamed animals to ride. There was little difference in transportation between Abraham when he left Ur of the Chaldees and President Lincoln when he pulled up in front of Ford’s Theatre. In the last few generations, we have traveled to the moon, sent satellites into the heavens, driven at break-neck speeds on our highways and flown around the world in a day. Shouldn’t that make us think about the hour growing late?

Revelation 11 predicted the death of two witnesses in Jerusalem being simulcast to the whole of the world in international and instant video communication. Did you stop and think about that? Before television, before international satellites, before cell phones with video capability, before the world wide web – the Apostle John mentioned the whole world watching at one time. That was not possible in 1900! It wasn’t even possible in 2000 – but it IS possible now. Very few places are isolated from the reach of modernity.

This is looking more and more like the terminal generation.

The second question I have for those of us who study prophecy is this:

“Why does the study of the end make us sad and often more stern than other believers? Prophecy addicts are not known for being the most compassionate followers of Jesus. Isn’t something WRONG with that?

We must seek answers, but we must love people enough to do something about what we find in those answers.

My final question is this: Are you ready to give an account of your life choices to the God Who loves you – but truly KNOWS you?

God hasn’t left us unaware of what to look for, nor has He left us without something to do about the terminal generation. In the end, everyone will be forced to give an account of their life. There is no escape from that truth. Don’t be scared. You can know the Creator well by that day if you begin to walk closely with Him now!

Before It Happens: “Judgments of the ‘Day of the Lord’” – Joel 2

On September 25, 2015 the Business Insider web report offered a fascinating article called “Predictive Policing.” In the article, the author referred to a Tom Cruise movie from 2002 called “Minority Report”. The article described the movie as an action mystery-thriller directed by Steven Spielberg, and noted the story was set in the Washington, D.C. area in the year 2054. At that time the so-called “PreCrime” police unit was tasked with apprehending criminals before they committed the crime, based on foreknowledge provided by three psychics called “precogs”. It sounded like a powerful thriller for those who like the science fiction genre. My chief interest, though, was in the information found in the article that described how police are, in fact, using stores of computer collected and analyzed data to suggest where police resources should be directed, (i.e. areas where crimes will likely occur) – as a computer “predicts” when and such help should be concentrated. I was fascinated with the notion that such “predictions” could actually one day be found a reliable aid in crime deterrence.

The fact is, though, that predicting coming trouble isn’t a new thing. God mercifully sent prophets centuries ago who did just that. In our last lesson, we began recalling some of the words of an ancient prophet in “The Book of Joel.”

2:1 “Blow a trumpet in Zion, And sound an alarm on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, For the day of the Lord is coming…”

Does it sound like God desired to hide what was happening? Not at all! The truth is, that however hard, however uncomfortable, we need the message of a coming reckoning of our lives. We need to know that God is not aloof, and our sin is not private and easily forgotten. Israel needed that message too!

Go back the Book of Joel and you will recall that God used a graphic symbol to get the people’s attention. They saw a massive locust invasion described in vivid terms in Joel 1. The warning of God was made plain: this was to be an illustration of something larger that would devastate the children of Israel in the days ahead. The prophecy was horrid, messy and terrible… but that wasn’t the end of the story. Prophecy wasn’t designed to leave people in the “soup” of judgment. Let me explain…

Do you recall that Jesus used the scene of a woman in childbirth as His “go to” illustration concerning the prophecy of the end times of the human program? In Matthew 24, tucked into His warnings of “wars and rumors of wars” He offered these words: (Matthew 24:8 “But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs.”). He said that when the time of judgment drew near, the birth pangs would begin, but that pain was just the beginning of the end. It is particularly helpful, I think, at that moment of pain to recall that the end is not in pain – but in a new life. The pain will pass.

• Think of the confused and distressed drug addict that checks into the clinic and begins the process of stripping from within the body the harmful and powerful drugs. The process will be disgusting, but it will restore the life that was ebbing away. If they follow the given instructions, they will likely exit new and different people.

• Closer to more of us, consider the person beginning the terrible process of losing many, many pounds on a necessary but agonizing diet. The end will be greater health, but the path to get there may not be very pretty.

Joel’s opening vision was stark, powerful and heartbreaking – but the locust devastation provided a picture to refocus Israel on coming judgment – and encourage them with the message that it would end well.

This prophecy is more than it appears on the surface. It is a story of the world God made, and what He is going to do with it. It is the story of what God did for His people, Israel – and what He will do to bring them to full surrender to Him. Like the intricate settings and battles of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, there is detail and drama. We must not become quickly impatient for the revealed ending and miss the weight of the struggle – because the prophets aren’t in a hurry to over skip the painful details.

In detail, chapter two is probably the weightier part of the message of this prophet’s record. The chapter turns on the words: “The Day of the Lord.” This phrase was used five times in Joel beginning with Joel 1:15 (see also: 2: 1, 11, 31; 3: 14). You cannot begin reading the second chapter for but a few words and the phrase appears yet again.

Because the prophet did not begin with a definition, we will need to discern the meaning of the phrase FROM the text. As we seek to do so, we will see this truth emerge…

Key Principle: The “Day of the Lord is an extended period of time in which God deals with Israel’s constant rejection of Him.

When the prophets use the term “day” they don’t always seem to mean a chronological 24-hour period.

Think with me about what we see in the prophetic literature. The term “day” always appears to refer to time, but some references appear to be more than a single calendar day:

1. There is the term “Day of man’s judgment” in 1 Corinthians 4:3 referencing the current economy, when men have control over human jurisprudence- i.e. where men “run the courts.”

2. The “Day of Christ” is mentioned six times in Scripture (1 Cor. 1: 8; 5: 5; 2 Cor. 1: 14; Phil. 1: 6, 10; 2: 16) and appears to refer to a time period when Christ will come to snatch away the church (as described in 1 Thessalonians 4: 13– 18) from the earth, bringing up the Christians of the church age to be with Him forever (Jn. 14: 1– 3).

3. Another term is the “Day of God” (cp. 2 Peter 3:12) seems to refer to the final disposition of heaven and earth (when they ‘pass away’) as God remakes things using devastation and fire.

4. With these, there is also the “Day or the Lord” which seems to include several profound kinds of judgment of God on His people Israel, and on the nations before, during and after the Tribulation.

Based on these uses of the term “day” in the context of judgment, the word doesn’t appear to be only used of 24-hour periods, but sometimes may be reckoned a protracted period of time.

What did the prophets mean by the “Day of the Lord” as best we can tell?

The specific phrase occurs nineteen times by name throughout the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures, including once by the prophet Obadiah (1:15), five times in Joel (1:15; 2: 1, 11, 31; 3: 14), three times by Amos (Amos 5:18 twice and 5:20), three times by Isaiah (2:12; 13:6, 9), twice by Ezekiel (13:5; 30:3), three times by Zephaniah (1:7 and 1:14 twice), once by Zechariah (14:1) and once by Malachi (4:5). Add to that other occurrences of “that day” or “that great day” and you will pile on another seventy-five places where it was mentioned in at least a cursory way.

Rather than define the terms outright, I would like you to build with me a construct for the meaning of the “Day of the Lord” as we follow the record of Joel 2.

Our text offers descriptions of the “Day of the Lord”: beginning with the call to assemble because of its impending arrival.

After Joel called the people in 2:1 to: “Blow a trumpet in Zion, And sound an alarm on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, For the day of the Lord is coming.” He went on to describe the event…

First, the “Day of the Lord” was swiftly approaching.

Joel 2:1b “…Surely it is near.”

From God’s perspective, Israel was running out of time before an event that was part of Divine judgment would come upon them. The importance of that phrase is simple: People always think they have more time in life to straighten out their walk with God. Part of the blessing of warning is it reminds us to pull against our natural inclination to believe we have more time.

Don’t forget, when you read “near” in the Bible, that when we talk in terms of time with God, we have to be careful, since He dwells outside of the dimension of time. There is a Scripture connecting events of the “Day of the Lord”, mentioned some time later in the words of Peter in Acts 2:16

“…but this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel: 17 ‘And it shall be in the last days,’ God says, ‘That I will pour forth of My Spirit on all mankind; And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, And your young men shall see visions, And your old men shall dream dreams; 18 Even on My bond slaves, both men and women, I will in those days pour forth of My Spirit And they shall prophesy. 19 ‘And I will grant wonders in the sky above And signs on the earth below, Blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke. 20 ‘The sun will be turned into darkness And the moon into blood, Before the great and glorious day of the Lord shall come. 21 ‘And it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’”

In any case, don’t miss the point: People overestimate the amount of time they have to get their life straightened out – so we all need reminders that life is short and judgment is certain.

Second, the “Day of the Lord” would bring a darkening veil over the discerning eyes of God’s people.

Critical to the understanding of the nature of the “Day of the Lord” is the sentence that included the nature of the judgment – it was a “darkening” or “veiling.” The writer continued:

Joel 2:2 A day of darkness and gloom, A day of clouds and thick darkness. As the dawn is spread over the mountains, So there is a great and mighty people;

“For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; 26 and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob.” 27 “This is My covenant with them, When I take away their sins.”

If the “Day of the Lord” includes a judgment that placed a curtain of darkness between the Jewish people and God for a time, one form of Divine judgment seems to be God placing a distance from Himself in the heart of someone that expresses (in word or deed) their desire for Him to “leave them alone.” Don’t miss that: God may politely withdraw from you when your life message to Him is that you don’t want Him bugging you. It is ONLY His grace that keeps needling you with embarrassing guilt. Your feeling of guilt isn’t your problem; your stubborn and rebellious spirit is! Part of God’s mercy can be seen in His uninvited conviction.

In the case of Israel, the veiling or hardening was neither total nor final, but it was part of the whole judgment.

Third, the “Day of the Lord” (though offering some resemblance of other judgments) was unique in the prophetic scheme.

This was both am exceptional and distinctive time…

Joel 2:2b “…There has never been anything like it, Nor will there be again after it To the years of many generations.

In the Bible, the “time of Jacob’s Trouble” (called by Jesus the “Great Tribulation”) was described in Daniel 12:1 and Matthew 24:21 exactly that way – as a time unlike any other. The description in those places are clearly of judgment so heavy on the earth that the world would have been decimated were it not for God putting a stop to those days.

It is worth remembering that even the hard times that calls us and draw us back to God are precious times in His sight. In some cases, those severe moments of discipline are the moments He marks as the most important in our lives. So it was with Israel in the “Day of the Lord.”

Fourth, the “Day of the Lord” includes severe destruction of the landscape through Divine judgment as a main feature.

Obviously, if you are a Bible student, the description here fits well with the later description of the Great Tribulation…

Joel 2:3 A fire consumes before them And behind them a flame burns. The land is like the garden of Eden before them But a desolate wilderness behind them, And nothing at all escapes them.

Parts of the Great Tribulation are described in those exact terms, as in Revelation 8:6

“And the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound them. 7 The first sounded, and there came hail and fire, mixed with blood, and they were thrown to the earth; and a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up. 8 The second angel sounded, and something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood, 9 and a third of the creatures which were in the sea and had life, died; and a third of the ships were destroyed.”

Here is the truth: when we are rebellious, it is nearly impossible to get our attention until we face catastrophic failure. Anything short of destruction of our dreams will easily be explained away and ignored. In the case of Israel, the whole earth will appear to turn against them because they won’t run to God until there isn’t anywhere else to run! Are you really any different? Most of us can readily admit that we aren’t good at repentance, and we aren’t quick at picking up on the signs of judgment.

It will take a near decimation of the world to bring Israel to her knees. She won’t realize she needs God until there is literally no stone left unturned in her attempt to find her way without Him.

Fifth, the “Day of the Lord” includes the appearance of a massive army, just as the locusts graphically pictured.

The story of “The Great Tribulation” in Revelation 16 and 19 ends with a massive military buildup on the earth that prepares to destroy Israel – but meets doom in the coming of Messiah and His forces from Heaven. Note how the “Day of the Lord” in Joel 2 appears to include this time…

It includes the movement of a swift army: Joel 2:4 Their appearance is like the appearance of horses; And like war horses, so they run.

That massive army moved with great noise: Joel 2:5 With a noise as of chariots They leap on the tops of the mountains, Like the crackling of a flame of fire consuming the stubble, Like a mighty people arranged for battle.

The army that struck terror into hearts as it advanced: Joel 2:6 Before them the people are in anguish; All faces turn pale.

It appeared as a well-trained, overwhelming force on the earth: Joel 2:7 They run like mighty men, They climb the wall like soldiers; And they each march in line, Nor do they deviate from their paths. 8 They do not crowd each other, They march everyone in his path; When they burst through the defenses, They do not break ranks. 9 They rush on the city, They run on the wall; They climb into the houses, They enter through the windows like a thief.

The militia seemed unstoppable, and blocked out even the stars (dust cloud or aircraft?) above in their overwhelming power and might: Joel 2:10: Before them the earth quakes, The heavens tremble, The sun and the moon grow dark And the stars lose their brightness.

The gathering of an army that would surely destroy them without God’s intervention was foretold in detail in Zechariah 12:12-14:5:

The burden of the word of the Lord concerning Israel. … 2 “Behold, I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that causes reeling to all the peoples around; and when the siege is against Jerusalem, it will also be against Judah… 7 The Lord also will save the tents of Judah first, so that the glory of the house of David… 10 “I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn. 11 In that day there will be great mourning in Jerusalem, like the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the plain of Megiddo. 12 The land will mourn, every family by itself…14: 2 For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city will be captured, the houses plundered, the women ravished and half of the city exiled, but the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city. 3 Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations, as when He fights on a day of battle. 4 In that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east… 5 You will flee by the valley of My mountains … Then the Lord, my God, will come, and all the holy ones with Him!

In the end, Israel won’t save herself. They will finally see God’s Son, their Messiah, and He will bring them rescue – just as He did for many of us.

Israel will see their long lost Son. They will recognize Him for His past sacrifice for them. They will weep – but they will reach out for His hand. That is the only thing for which God waits.

Sixth, God’s rescuing army also arrives.

Mid-way through the description of the advance of the army, the prophet appears to have changed his description from the opponents of God, to the army God sent in response:

Isn’t this just like the description of the assembly called from Heaven for the defeat of the armies defiant against God found in Revelation 19: 17?

“…Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried out with a loud voice, saying to all the birds which fly in mid heaven, “Come, assemble for the great supper of God, 18 so that you may eat the flesh of kings and the flesh of commanders and the flesh of mighty men and the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them and the flesh of all men, both free men and slaves, and small and great.” 19 And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies assembled to make war against Him who sat on the horse and against His army.

Never count God out in the fight… Never! When the darkness descends and you look in every direction but find no alternatives – look UP! God isn’t aloof. He knows where you are, who you are, what you’ve been doing, and where you are headed.

Seventh, when God’s army appears, His people will again be called to repent.

The message of repentance will be offered to His people: Joel 2:12 “Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “Return to Me with all your heart, And with fasting, weeping and mourning; 13 And rend your heart and not your garments.”

The opening to return to God’s arms will be offered to His people: Joel 2:13b “…Now return to the Lord your God,

Is that true of YOU today? Have you been on the run trying to make it without God, but you sense Him calling you today? Don’t ignore Him. In fact, listen to the way the prophet, the SAME GUY who described the decimation of things all over the world, described the character of God…

Joel 2:13 b “…For He is gracious and compassionate, Slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness And relenting of evil. 14 Who knows whether He will not turn and relent And leave a blessing behind Him, Even a grain offering and a drink offering For the Lord your God?

In Joel 2:15 they are called to “Blow a trumpet”… to “Consecrate a fast” … 16 Gather the people… Assemble the elders…

Even the long resistant spiritual leaders of Israel will call the people to repentance and recognize their own sins:

Joel 2:17 Let the priests, the Lord’s ministers, Weep between the porch and the altar, And let them say, “Spare Your people, O Lord, And do not make Your inheritance a reproach, A byword among the nations. Why should they among the peoples say, ‘Where is their God?’”

Clearly this will be a day when Israel will understand the choice they have to finally see the Lord clearly once again.

Here is the simple truth: God rescues when He is invited to do so. He saves when we recognize we need saving. As long as we think we can run our lives without Him, He lets us try. Here is what Scripture makes plain: It won’t work for Israel, and it won’t work for you.

The “Day of the Lord” includes God’s heavy hand of judgment to get His people to stop running.

In our next lesson, we will finish the chapter with God’s wonderful rescue – but don’t leave the conviction of this moment…

The penalty for constant neglect of God and their invitation of evil while distancing themselves from God was this: God withdrew. Intimate knowledge of God became veiled. For dark generations the Jewish people suffered. Many invented marvelous things, and some achieved notoriety and wealth. Yet, through it all they were living in turmoil under the “fog” of a spiritual life largely darkened. The prophet explained it.

When we push away from God, He politely lets us walk in the peril of our own arrogance.

God’s judgment in His withdrawal is always palpable. They KNEW something shattered their identity. Even after the State of Israel has attempted to offer stability and identity to world Jewry, still they know the world waits for their destruction and they don’t know why. It hurts. It is lonely. It feels wrong and isn’t clear why these things are happening.

Yet, God’s promise didn’t stop at pain and rejection. There is coming an END to the pain. Significant to the narrative was this record of its end:

Look at that. Grab the import of a nation redeemed, lives restored. Think about many people who have lived apart from God for much of their lives, only to find peace in the Savior late in life.

In a mobile home backed up to the church property lived a man who came to Grace Church years ago, walking in the back door and looking at the ceiling as though it might fall upon his entrance. I noticed him immediately because His skin was a pale yellow. He was apparently a sickly man with an advanced and serious illness. He decided to walk across his back yard one morning and walk into the church. At the invitation, he came forward, and we talked for a time after the service. He told me that he came to Jesus in his youth, many years before. He recounted God’s call to send him into a mission field, and how he told God “No!” in a church service, because he had things he wanted to accomplish in his life. He didn’t think God understood how hard the mission field would be for him. No one knew how much he was wrestling with God, but in a matter of weeks he left the church, never to return until he walked in our door. Then he made the remark that I will never forget. He said: “I am old and I am very sick. My time here is short. I know what the Lord wanted for me, and what a WASTE I made of my life!” We prayed together, and he sobbed as he asked Jesus to take him back after years of wandering. I opened to Joel 2 and asked God to follow His own nature and “give back” for the years eaten away by the locusts of self-centered thinking. In the next months, I had the chance to visit the man a number of times, and each one surprised me, more and more. I would walk in, and he would be smiling, excited about his study of the Word. “I missed God through my life. I knew He was watching, but He knew I wasn’t listening! How glad I am that He restored me!” He didn’t live long, but he died happy.

You have the opportunity to ask for God’s rescue TODAY. That is God’s mercy to YOU. Won’t you respond before the locusts eat your life?

God waits to be asked.

Randy Alcorn reminds us that when we listen to the vocabulary of the Bible, it reveals something powerful with its language of God’s heart for struggling and wayward people. He noted: God often uses words like reconcile, redeem, restore, recover, return, renew, regenerate, and resurrect. God wants to put back the relationship that rebellion and mutiny is trying to keep at arm’s length. (My paraphrase from a note he made in Fifty Days in Heaven).

Before It Happens: “Preparing for Coming Days of Judgment” – Joel 1

What does your Bible look like inside? On careful inspection, if we checked the Bibles of many people who are active in the local church in America (I am speaking of those who study of God’s Word at least in their church services), we may observe a pattern others have noted before us. The text of many Jesus followers is well-worn. Some parts are underlined and have scribbles in the margins. Some are filled with colored markings and symbols in an unintentional “code’ that no one but the owner and the Spirit of God may fully perceive. Yet, even in these cases, often there is a pristine portion of their Bible – a section somewhere between the books of Song of Solomon and the opening of Matthew that appears cleaner. This section is often in near mint condition, with gilded edges still gleaming, despite the condition of the rest of the Bible in which they are found. Perhaps it is because there is so little preaching, as many Pastors have openly admitted they struggle with how to bring the Hebrew prophets into the modern pulpit.

Key Principle: God’s prophetic warnings are a function of His grace. Those who snub warning eventually suffer judgment by their own choice.

If you are patient, that truth will show itself from our text. Before we begin to investigate the text, I want to remind you of how we got where we are in our churches regarding prophecy and its part of our Scripture diet. Honestly, there are several problems that naturally arise in the modern church when trying to preach of teach the prophets. In fact, I asked some friends who serve in Pastoral roles why we don’t do more with the prophets from the pulpit, and they offered some helpful observations.

Honestly, it is hard to make the message of God’s eventual judgment all that helpful and practical to the struggling Christian. Today’s church is bent on practical life preaching and God-help strategies. I am not commenting on that truth here – just observing it. One Pastor explained why he has largely skipped speaking on and teaching from the prophets. He noted (my paraphrase):

Sometimes I preach from a specific prophecy (say, concerning the coming of Messiah) and trace the promise to the eventual fulfillment in God’s story. To bring home some sort of personal application, I try to remind the congregation that prophecy shows the veracity of God’s Word and the faithfulness of God’s character. My point is: You can trust God. He speaks; then He does exactly what He said He would do. Occasionally it is good, but it isn’t a very deep observation of the text.

He said: “I read over my notes, and if the text of my message seems dry in the study, I am sometimes honestly tempted to “spice up the story” and make it appear more relevant by offering some of my own thoughts on possible connections and even, on occasion (I admit) speculative end-times scenarios to help hearers see relevance for their lives today – because being relevant has become very prized in pulpit communication. This is a constant danger, because I want people to stay with me in the presentation and not sleep off the sermon! Because of these dangers, I spend less time preaching the prophets. When I DO, I tend to tell a story about the writer’s life and make parallels between a follower of God long ago and the hearers today. That helped me feel like I wasn’t skipping the prophets, but I mostly AM skipping them. I am not really explaining the message of the books themselves, and the congregation doesn’t appreciably grow in their knowledge of those books of the Bible.”

I suspect that anyone who teaches the Bible has at least a little sympathy for what that Pastor authentically shared of his own experience.

I mention the lack of time spent in these sections, and the three different natural bends of teachers of the Word to encourage you as we move forward. This study will require something of you in patience. That isn’t a veiled warning of a “boredom zone” ahead, it is rather a recognition that we are on unfamiliar ground in many circles today. You may be a student of prophecy, but most people aren’t today. We need to deliberately stretch ourselves. We need to speak the whole counsel of God’s Word. Some of the parts of Scripture have easy individual application and offer deep encouragement. Prophetic portions offer something very different. Without the words of the prophets, some of the lofty view of the Awesome Majesty of the Heavens would be barely touched, and a powerful and resounding call for us to tremble at His voice would barely be heard.

Prophets help us do more than satisfy ourselves that God knows where everything is going. They challenge us to bow before the One True Judge.

They call us to examine whether our outer practices are incongruent with our inner beliefs. They bring back a sense of the power and splendor of the God we serve.

There are examples of all the styles of preaching in the Word, if you look for them. When Paul stood on Mars Hill before philosophers, he carefully reasoned for the faith. When Jesus spoke of the Galilee hillsides, He pulled the minds of the people into the simplest imagery of daily life. When the Apostle Peter rose to defend God’s work in the men on the Day of Pentecost he launched into a full-throated support of the prophetic power of God before the crowd – and three thousand responded. What the prophets of old offer is something more than mere learning about God. Think of the long, thin finger of Nathan the prophet stuck into the face of David as he uttered the words: “You are the man.” The value of the prophetic word is that it can be like an arrow to the heart in a way that few other portions can.

I am deliberately beginning slowly to introduce the prophets, because our next studies will have some unusual qualities as we work the text from a book of the Minor Prophets. Take a few moments with me to open our Bibles to the Book of the Prophet Joel. The book is after Psalms in the middle of the Bible, and is the twenty-ninth book of thirty-nine in the common collection of the Hebrew Scriptures. As we turn for this prophet’s record, think with me about the painful process observed by a prophet of God, as they tell of the end times.

We must recognize that God made us emotional beings, and we gravitate toward positive emotion – but that isn’t the only kind we need to be able to reckon with.

Joel offered his opening words in three parts:

• He called people to see what was happening as unique.
• He called specific kinds of people to respond to the scene.
• He called people to recognize the urgency of their time.

First, he called the people to attention by telling them they have never seen anything like what was happening in front of them:

Joel 1:4 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.

Whether this was a vision in the realm of the spirit or an actual event on the landscape is not known. Whether the locusts were insects of a field or the imagery of an invading human army is not known. Whether this already happened or was about to take place is not known. What is clear and certain is this: The man was overwhelmed by the scene of massive devastation – and he wanted them to see how obvious the marks of it were.

Some of us know exactly what he felt. We cannot believe that in a mere five years, our country has deliberately overhauled the most basic unit of mankind – the family. We have made perilous moves swiftly, based on the flimsiest testing of where that will lead our society. We are no longer drifting, we are swiftly moving with a furious current toward a rejection of one thing after another connected to Judeo-Christian practice. Left over images of Biblical texts on court rooms across the country are stark reminders of the violent lurching to the left.

Joel’s essential question was: “Have you ever known any invasion this severe?” (1:2) That should have given them pause, instead of letting their eyes adjust to the dark setting. In fact, one of the common commands of the Law was for Israel to constantly rehearse her history before her children (cp. Dt. 4 and 6) in order to help them avoid the hand of God’s judgment.

The second part of the opening prophecy was separated into calls of specific kinds of people to face what was coming in God’s judgment.

• God’s first call was for those who were dull-minded as one would be with wine overindulgence to awaken (1:5).

Joel 1:5 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.

The call came for Israel’s dullard drunkards to awake from their lulled, compromised and sinful state. They were to open their eyes to see that judgment was at hand.

One of the ways people deal with staying in a wrong state and not facing God is DIVERSION – they simply focus on something else.

There is a natural tendency in some of us when we are facing hard times to attempt to ignore the coming results or divert our attention to something that will help us cope with the pain of what we see. In fact, we have noted before the term for “turning off the mind” is called ‘AMUSEMENT’ and it has become for many a consuming passion.

• His second call was to those who were planning in ignorance of the impending doom.

Joel 1:8 Wail like a virgin girded with sackcloth For the bridegroom of her youth.

Israel was to drape herself in the clothing of sadness and brokenness. The point was that while some could divert, amuse or dull their minds, while others made plans for celebrations and paid no attention to the impending troubles because they were unaware of them. They were the CLUELESS. When peril came, the power of judgment crushed them like the waves of mourning as their dreams were dashed against the rocks of reality.

We live in a time when people call, year after year, for every problem to be solved by their government – even when the truth is their government is up to its neck in debt. Freedoms are casually surrendered as we ask one new administrator after another to step in a help us solve some difficulty or injustice. It isn’t bad to have someone test the food in the packages we will consume or make sure the tires on the airplanes in which we travel have been made to certain specifications. Government isn’t bad – it’s necessary. The problem is, it neither CAN nor SHOULD be called on to feed, clothe and care for us in every situation. When we reward people for lack of preparation for difficulty, we discourage the next group from even trying to sacrifice and prepare.

The issue with the people was one of thorough forgetfulness that led them to clueless insensitivity. At one time they knew evil, in principle, would be judged. By then, they knew their nation had plunged into evil. Yet they didn’t connect the problem with the result. They simply made plans for the next celebration and hoped for more years of good harvest – hoping against hope that things would go well.

The people hardest hit in the downturn of a market are those who have forgotten to consider the possibility.

This is the danger of a church who has taught a generation of Christians that God’s chief interest is in their health, wealth and happiness. They never considered the possibility that was has happened to Iraqi or Syrian Christians could happen to them. Troubles, brutal martyrdom and a tested faith are things they believe belong to another time and place.

• God’s third call was to priests and ministers (1:9) to lament the cutting off of the provisions for the spiritual life of the nation.

Joel 1:9 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.

While some were DULL and others were CLUELESS, those who oversaw the spiritual life of the nation should have been able to see without blur that things were heading in a bad direction. Joel beckoned SPIRITUAL LEADERS (those with an “elder” view” of the community) to step up and recognize the signs. A community elder is one who acts as a father or patriarch over more than his own biological family – but becomes a protector and provider for that greater community. Let’s say it this way: When you serve God by serving His people, you think differently about the effects of sin on the society.

Those who sit in the counseling room, work at equipping of Jesus followers, and craft instruction for God’s people from His Word are often “early adopters” of the message of the effects of bad decisions. There are some in our society who STILL don’t connect the dots between our decisions and their outcome as a people.

When we opened “no fault divorce” we removed both legal roadblocks and public stigma to the decoupling of a marriage. Today, people are even insulted if you use terms like a “failed marriage” because they feel that is judgmental toward their situation – as if one of the natural options of people coming to the altar and declaring their commitment was an escape hatch. Here is what I know. In the history of marriage, there have always been troubled people and difficult pairings. The profound difference in our time is that it is easy to get out of the problem without working it out – and the world around you will help you deflect any sense of responsibility for that event. Out of compassion for people in difficult marriages, we legislated our way into the mess of meaninglessness at the altar. The children torn up by these broken homes now fill our schools as a broken and bitter reminder that we made it easy on one person often by devastating another. They live together, because they don’t see the point of the commitment we call marriage, and we shouldn’t wonder why.

When our courts decided the people needed protection from the state invading their privacy so much that a woman had the unrestrained right to end the life in her womb, many didn’t connect that decision to the brutishness that has now become part of the modern American voice. They didn’t recognize with equal fervor the child within her to be also that of her partner – his rights were effectively muzzled in that termination of life. They didn’t calculate the loss of 57 million Americans in a single generation to the economy. They didn’t think through how human life itself, no longer sacrosanct, would diminish clarity of honored values of our society. In a new way, motherhood was separated from fatherhood, and unborn children became throw away dolls, removed in bags and treated like refuse. We no longer argue about if it is human life, but argue today whether we have a right to have tax dollars rid me of an inconvenient child in the womb. Politicians call for this without pausing to observe how far we have fallen from the image of tenderness that was once associated with the womb.

Some claim our pulpits shouldn’t address things like divorce, so called “same sex marriage” or abortion. They look at those social issues as merely political and judicial. They don’t get it – because they don’t understand the elder view. Those of us who know God’s Word and teach it carry a special wound in the society for the self-mutilation that comes from our collective mutiny against God. We deal with the broken-hearted children, and we try to train those whose thinking has been so skewed that “right” and “wrong” are no longer clear.

The Bible is unequivocal and clear – morality is not a social construct. Man didn’t crawl out of primordial ooze and invent a God and then promptly NOT follow Him so they could invent guilt. That doesn’t make sense because it didn’t happen. Men didn’t invent God. He created us. Exacting design doesn’t flow haplessly from random happenings. You know it, and so does every observant person who isn’t bent on doing life according to their own rules.

• A fourth call was for farmers to recognize the shame of losing everything in an act of God’s disfavor (1:11).

Joel 1:11 Be ashamed, O farmers…”

The FARMERS were presented as those who knew deep disappointment. Perhaps no one truly understands the sense of hopefulness for the crops like the farmer; conversely no one feels the depth of the disappointment in the stripping of the land. People attached to the land become more sensitive to their impact on it. They who worked the land and saw it destroyed weren’t to be MAD, as though God has abandoned them – but ASHAMED as if THEY had abandoned God.

• A fifth call was for the vinedressers to wail (1:11) for the loss of the vines, fig trees and other fruit trees. They were to see their joy withered as the trees melted away (1:12).

Joel 1:11b “…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.

VINE DRESSERS were a subset of farmers who acted more as attendants . They didn’t plant the vines as much as tend them. They were to grapes what daycare workers are to children. People who tend and care for the fruit cultivation have a very specific “parenting” view of the vines and trees they attend.

The third (last) part of Joel’s opening urgently called people to stop acting like the time was far off and get serious with God right away.

The call starts with the clergy and warns on them to get serious before they expect the nation to get on board.

Joel 1:13 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.

Also note that God didn’t just tell them to “get sad” and look somber before the masses. He gave them their message: God will not let what we are doing go on forever – His day is coming. He isn’t playing around, and He is right on schedule to do what He promised.

Judgment cannot be avoided by ignoring it.

Joel 1:15 Alas for the day! For the day of the Lord is near, And it will come as destruction from the Almighty.

God intended the people to notice the time of judgment was getting close:

First, they were to see their prosperity evaporating.

Joel 1:16 Has not food been cut off before our eyes,

Second, they were to notice the sobriety of those who studied God’s Word and taught them from it.

Joel 1:16b “…Gladness and joy from the house of our God?

They were to reckon the natural disruptions in the earth as part of the tremors of coming judgment.

Joel 1:17 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.

They weren’t supposed to call for a new legislature so much as drop to their knees. They weren’t supposed to look for help from the king as much as from the King of all Kings!

Joel 1:19 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.

It wasn’t enough for the Temple to keep the schedule as usual. The people were to be awakened to the voice of the Lord concerning the days ahead. They should be clear, pronounced and deliberate. God said:

Joel 2:1 “Blow a trumpet in Zion …”

Why? Were they to be despressing while the world was rejoicing? The point was they were to show the warning before the world around them connected the dots between their sinful violations and God’s coming of judgment.

God’s leaders were, and are, to make clear the hour is late and the warning is becoming more and more obvious.

God’s prophetic warnings aren’t as much a function of His judgment as they are of His grace.

If you blend well in the company of lost men and women – something is wrong with your distinctiveness.

If people note the difference in you and it makes them uncomfortable, you may be the warning sign they most need to turn before they plunge into the broken road ahead. Don’t forget…

Those who close their ears to the pronouncement will eventually suffer God’s judgment by their own choice.

If you took the time to read the last three chapters of the Bible, in the Book of Revelation. You would surely note four powerful truths that emerge from looking closely at the final judgment scene called the “Great White Throne” Judgment. You would note:

• THE IDENTITY OF THE JUDGE: the offended Son of God.
• THE ABSENCE OF AN ADVOCATE: sinners stand fearfully alone.
• THE FINALITY OF THE VERDICT: no appeal is possible.
• THE SEVERITY OF THE SENTENCE: Eternal separation from God into torment becomes real for countless people.

The warning is GRACE.

When you work hard for a day’s pay- we call that a wage.
When you compete well for a trophy – we call that a prize.
When you achieve recognition for a high level of service – we call that an award.

A story is told about Fiorello LaGuardia, who, when he was mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression and all of WWII, was called by adoring New Yorkers ‘the Little Flower’ because he was only five foot four and always wore a carnation in his lapel. He was a colorful character who used to ride the New York City fire trucks, raid speakeasies with the police department, take entire orphanages to baseball games, and whenever the New York newspapers were on strike, he would go on the radio and read the Sunday funnies to the kids. One bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter’s husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges. “It’s a real bad neighborhood, your Honor.” the man told the mayor. “She’s got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson.” LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said “I’ve got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions—ten dollars or ten days in jail.” But even as he pronounced sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill and tossed it into his famous sombrero saying: “Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Baliff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant.” So the following day the New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren, fifty cents of that amount being contributed by the red-faced grocery store owner, while some seventy petty criminals, people with traffic violations, and New York City policemen, each of whom had just paid fifty cents for the privilege of doing so, gave the mayor a standing ovation. From Brennan Manning, The Ragmuffin Gospel, Multnomah, 1990, pp. 91-2.

The fact is, though, that predicting coming trouble isn’t a new thing. God mercifully sent prophets centuries ago who did just that. In our last lesson, we began recalling some of the words of an ancient prophet in The Book of Joel.

Joel’s opening vision was stark, powerful and heartbreaking – but the locust devastation provided a picture to refocus Israel on coming judgment – and encourage them with the message that it would end well.

Key Principle: The “Day of the Lord is an extended period of time in which God deals with Israel’s constant rejection of Him.

What did the prophets mean by the “Day of the Lord” as best we can tell?

Rather than define the terms outright, I would like you to build with me a construct for the meaning of the “Day of the Lord” as we follow the record of Joel 2.

First, the “Day of the Lord” was swiftly approaching.

Second, the “Day of the Lord” would bring a darkening veil over the discerning eyes of God’s people.

Don’t miss that: God may politely withdraw from you when your life message to Him is that you don’t want Him bugging you.

Third, the “Day of the Lord” (though offering some resemblance of other judgments) was unique in the prophetic scheme.

Fourth, the “Day of the Lord” includes severe destruction of the landscape through divine judgment as a main feature.

Fifth, the “Day of the Lord” includes the appearance of a massive army, just as the locusts graphically pictured.

In the end, Israel won’t save herself. They will finally see God’s Son, their Messiah, and He will bring them rescue – just as He did for many of us.

Sixth, God’s rescuing army also arrives.

Seventh, when God’s army appears, His people will again be called to repent.

Here is the simple truth: God rescues when He is invited to do so. He saves when we recognize we need saving. As long as we think we can run our lives without Him, He lets us try.

Grab the import of a nation redeemed, lives restored.

Key Principle: God’s prophetic warnings are a function of His grace. Those who snub warning eventually suffer judgment by their own choice.

My point is: You can trust God. He speaks; then He does exactly what He said He would do. Occasionally it is good, but it isn’t a very deep observation of the text.

Prophets help us do more than satisfy ourselves that God knows where everything is going. They challenge us to bow before the One True Judge.

We must recognize that God made us emotional beings, and we gravitate toward positive emotion – but that isn’t the only kind we need to be able to reckon with.

First, he called the people to attention by telling them they have never seen anything like what was happening in front of them.

Joel’s essential question was, “Have you ever known any invasion this severe?” (1:2)

The second part of the opening prophecy was separated into calls of specific kinds of people to face what was coming in God’s judgment.

One of the ways people deal with staying in a wrong state and not facing God is DIVERSION – they simply focus on something else.

His point was this: Loss is most powerful in people who never truly considered it could happen to them.

When our courts decided the people needed protection from the state invading their privacy so much that a woman had the unrestrained right to end the life in her womb, many didn’t connect that decision to the brutishness that has now become part of the modern American voice.

The Bible is unequivocal and clear – morality is not a social construct.

The third (last) part of Joel’s opening urgently called people to stop acting like the time was far off and get serious with God right away.

Judgment cannot be avoided by ignoring it.

God’s leaders were, and are, to make clear the hour is late and the warning is becoming more and more obvious.

If you blend well in the company of lost men and women – something is wrong with your distinctiveness.

The warning is a function of God’s GRACE.

Have you thought much about that? Have you stopped to carefully consider that even when you have long forgotten, the record of your words and actions has already been recorded by the One Who misses neither detail nor true intent? For most of us, that is a sobering thought.

Key Principle: God hasn’t left us unaware of what to look for, nor has He left us without something to do about the terminal generation. A time of giving a full account of our life is coming.

To understand the timeline of Joel 3, let’s look at the same imagery as told by Jesus in places like Luke 21 and the cross references in Matthew 23-25.

The Prophecies of Events beyond the Return of Messiah

The Timing of the Judgment of the Nations (3:1-2a)

The Terms of the Judgment of the Nations (Joel 3:2b-3)

The Targets of the Judgment (Joel 3:4-8)

The Trick of the Judgment (3:9-11a)

The Termination of the Judgment (Joel 3:16-21)

“What exactly do we need to see in our world to know that we are nearing the END of the human story?”

“Why does the study of the end make us sad and often more stern than other believers? Prophecy addicts are not known for being the most compassionate followers of Jesus. Isn’t something WRONG with that?

My final question is this: Are you ready to give an account of your life choices to the God Who loves you – but truly KNOWS you?

Joel’s opening vision was stark, powerful and heartbreaking – but the locust devastation provided a picture to refocus Israel on coming judgment – and encourage them with the message that it would end well.

Key Principle: The “Day of the Lord is an extended period of time in which God deals with Israel’s constant rejection of Him.

What did the prophets mean by the “Day of the Lord” as best we can tell?

Our text offers descriptions of the “Day of the Lord”: beginning with the call to assemble because of its impending arrival.

First, the “Day of the Lord” was swiftly approaching.

Second, the “Day of the Lord” would bring a darkening veil over the discerning eyes of God’s people.

Third, the “Day of the Lord” (though offering some resemblance of other judgments) was unique in the prophetic scheme.

Fourth, the “Day of the Lord” includes severe destruction of the landscape through Divine judgment as a main feature.

Fifth, the “Day of the Lord” includes the appearance of a massive army, just as the locusts graphically pictured.

In the end, Israel won’t save herself. They will finally see God’s Son, their Messiah, and He will bring them rescue – just as He did for many of us.

Sixth, God’s rescuing army also arrives.

Seventh, when God’s army appears, His people will again be called to repent.

The “Day of the Lord” includes God’s heavy hand of judgment to get His people to stop running.

God waits to be asked.

Key Principle: God’s prophetic warnings are a function of His grace. Those who snub warning eventually suffer judgment by their own choice.

Prophets help us do more than satisfy ourselves that God knows where everything is going. They challenge us to bow before the One True Judge.

Joel offered his opening words in three parts:

• He called people to see what was happening as unique. • He called specific kinds of people to respond to the scene. • He called people to recognize the urgency of their time.

First, he called the people to attention by telling them they have never seen anything like what was happening in front of them:

The second part of the opening prophecy was separated into calls of specific kinds of people to face what was coming in God’s judgment.

The people hardest hit in the downturn of a market are those who have forgotten to consider the possibility.

The third (last) part of Joel’s opening urgently called people to stop acting like the time was far off and get serious with God right away.

Judgment cannot be avoided by ignoring it.

If you blend well in the company of lost men and women – something is wrong with your distinctiveness.

Those who close their ears to the pronouncement will eventually suffer God’s judgment by their own choice.

• He called people to see what was happening as unique.
• He called specific kinds of people to respond to the scene.
• He called people to recognize the urgency of their time.