Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on September 22, 2024.
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Audio Transcript
And turn to Joel, chapter one. It will be on the screen for you as a matter of convenience, but it’s always good to be turning in God’s word and reading along with us. We’re taking just a brief hiatus from going through the book of Luke, and we will come back to the book of Luke. I wanted to do some prophecy for us. In the scripture, it talks about that the wise steward brings out of the storehouse those things that are necessary for the household. And we believe that refers to teachers of God’s word and pastors to decide. You know, we kind of need a balance of God’s word. Sometimes we need vegetables, sometimes we need meat, and sometimes we get to have dessert. So we’ve been going through Luke for some time, but we’re going to take some time to spend back in the prophets looking at Joel, especially because Joel is about the day of the Lord.
As once again, we see things happening in Israel and in Jerusalem, it just stirs our mind to consider: are we finally in the last days? What is God doing? And prophecy talks about that. We’re not going to be applying it to Israel today, but for what will eventually take place. The Book of Joel is thinking about the day of the Lord, and today we’re going to be talking about the invading locusts.
I begin reading in verse one: the word of the Lord that came to Joel, son of Pethuel. Hear this, you elders! Listen, all you inhabitants of the land! Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your ancestors? Tell your children about it, and let your children tell their children and their children, the next generation. What the devouring locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten. And what the swarming locust has left, the young locust has eaten. And what the young locust has left, the destroying locust has eaten.
Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you wine drinkers, because of the sweet wine, for it has been taken from your mouth. For a nation has invaded my land, powerful and without number. Its teeth are the teeth of a lion, and it has the fangs of a lioness. It has devastated my grapevine and splintered my fig tree. It has stripped off its bark and thrown it away. Its branches have turned white. Grieve like a young woman dressed in sackcloth, mourning for the husband of her youth.
Grain and drink offerings have been cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests who are ministers of the Lord mourn. The fields are destroyed. The land grieves. Indeed, the grain is destroyed. The new wine is dried up, and the fresh oil fails. Be ashamed, you farmers! Wail, you vinedressers, over the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field has perished. The grapevine is dried up, and the fig tree is withered. The pomegranate, the date palm, and the apple, all the trees of the orchard have withered. Indeed, human joy has dried up.
Dress in sackcloth and lament, you priests! Wail, you ministers of the altar. Come and spend the night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God, because grain and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God.
May we pray: Heavenly Father, as we begin to look at the book of Joel today, help us to know how to apply this prophecy to our lives—something that was written so long ago, but yet it is pertinent to us today—that we might know you better, that we might respect you more, that we might be desirous to obey your commands and build our relationship with you, and therefore to be able to reflect Jesus Christ in this world in a more substantial way so that others would be drawn to Him. It’s in His name that we give thanks. Amen.
We’re going to start today in the Book of Joel, and it’s a prophecy. It’s kind of hard to divide it up in how we’re doing with the life of Jesus, where we’re looking at individual incidents, because the whole book ties together. So today we’re going to be going over some introductory things about prophecy and about the book and kind of the Jewish mind, how they would have heard this.
The book is mainly a long poem. There are only two paragraphs that are written as prose, but the rest is poetry. If you are like me in school, poetry is sometimes hard to understand because there’s a lot of allusion to other things. So we have to look at some scriptures today to see what thoughts, what pictures would have come up in the minds of the Jews as they heard this prophecy through Joel from the Lord.
The theme throughout the day is the day of the Lord, and you’ll see on the screen that it’s mentioned five times throughout the book. Joel introduces us to the day of the Lord. He has more mention of it than any other book in the Bible. When we talk about the day of the Lord, we’re talking about a day or a time when God especially intervenes in the world, and He especially intervenes in His people, the Jews, and the land of Israel. His purpose is to bring about His eternal plan.
Throughout the book of Joel, and as it is with the day of the Lord, there’s this balance of destruction and deliverance. Because God is a just God, He will bring destruction to the world. He does punish the evil. But along with that, there’s always the balance that He’s the deliverer because He is a God of mercy and of grace—a balance between destruction and deliverance or restoration.
You’ll see two black boxes. We’ve got the invading locusts and an invading army, two things that are bad and evil. But then to balance that in the green boxes, in answer to the invading locusts, there’s the promise of restoration. And in answer to the invading army, there’s this balance of the promise of deliverance. After each of these, God calls His people to do something. First, He calls them to prayer and fasting. Next, He calls them to repentance.
In chapter two, verse 28, it says, “Then after this,” and at that point, now we have three promises that we’re going to be looking at: the promise of the Spirit, the promise of deliverance, and the promise of restoration. To see the balance of God working good there, we have to go even further back in the Old Testament to the book of Genesis because the balance of this promise of the Spirit and the promise of deliverance and the promise of restoration goes back to the Garden of Eden.
We have to remember that God created the world for mankind. Everything that He made was good because He is a good God. But Adam and Eve made a choice that brought destruction to the good creation. Satan tempted them and therefore became the ruler of this world. In essence, he was the invader, just like the locusts are invading here in Joel. He is like the invading army that Joel says is coming. Sin wreaked havoc upon everything that God had made. The worst of it was that man was separated from God spiritually, and Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden.
Along with sin immediately came fear, strife, selfish ambition, shame, blame, jealousy, accusations against creation, the serpent that God had made, accusations about the woman that she had led Adam to sin, and accusations against God Himself—that the reason why the woman is here is because God gave her to Adam. All these things entered the world. Not only were relationships destroyed, but the order of creation was disrupted. The land would no longer produce readily. There would be weeds and thorns. The animals that once had been familiar walking with Adam and Eve in the garden would now become wild and dangerous.
In balance to this invasion of sin into the world, Joel tells us that in the end days, God is going to restore through His Spirit. He’s going to deliver the world, and He’s going to give us restoration. The first half of Joel has come to pass everything on this side of the purple, and that just proves to us that what God promises on this side will also come to pass.
I want us to look at some prophecy principles first, though, because when we read prophecy, when we think about it, there are some basic things that help us in understanding it.
The first thing I want you to see is that prophecy is often partially understood, or more than likely, it’s just not understood at all until after it is fulfilled. I want to give you an example of this: Peter is preaching in Acts chapter two after Pentecost, and he quotes from the Old Testament. He quotes from David, who wrote this: “I saw the Lord ever before me because He is at my right hand. I will not be shaken. Therefore, my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. Moreover, my flesh will rest in hope because you will not abandon me in Hades or allow your Holy One to see decay. You have revealed the paths of life to me. You will fill me with gladness in your presence.”
The Jews had been reading this for thousands of years. They had been singing this song in their worship. It was a prophecy, but they didn’t understand it. Here, after the resurrection, Peter is able to confidently say, “I am confidently speaking to you about the patriarch David. He is dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.” In other words, David wasn’t saying that his body wouldn’t decay. Who was he talking about? Since he was a prophet, he knew that God had sworn an oath to him to seat one of his descendants on his throne. Seeing what was to come, he spoke concerning—here’s the key—the resurrection of the Messiah. Nobody saw it coming, but God had prophesied it. Jesus was not abandoned to Hades, and His flesh did not experience decay. It was not true of anyone else that had died and been buried.
So it is with prophecy. A lot of times, we just don’t understand it until after it has been fulfilled. When we look at it today and we read about the future, God gives us a glimpse of things. But the glorious thing will be one day when we say, “Yes, this is how God fulfilled it. He has been faithful to His word.”
The next principle is that prophecy is sometimes fulfilled incrementally. Sometimes you see a whole prophecy, but just a little part of it is fulfilled. All of a sudden, the rest of it is saved for another time, even if it’s in the middle of one sentence.
I want to give you an example of that. The text that you see on the screen is Isaiah 61:1-3. I want you to read along there as I read about the incident in the New Testament when Jesus is quoting from this passage. In Luke four, we read that Jesus came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up, and as usual, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to Him, and unrolling the scroll, He found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Period.
Jesus then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on Him, and He began saying to them, “Today, as you listen, this scripture has been fulfilled.” Did you notice the difference in what Jesus quoted? He stopped mid-sentence in that prophecy because the day of God’s vengeance had not come. Just part of the prophecy, even though it seems to be altogether taking place that day in their midst. So when we look at prophecy, it can be fulfilled incrementally. It’s not always happening as we might think that it is.
Therefore, prophecy is sometimes fulfilled at multiple levels, meaning it can be imminent—it’s now, it’s about to happen soon, it’s going to happen tomorrow. Or prophecy can be fulfilled also at another level, that it’s subsequent—meaning it’s coming next, you’re going to be around for it, but it may be a while before it comes about. Prophecy can also have a fulfillment that is ultimate—it’s in the future, at the end of all things. It’s like the finale or the grand conclusion.
You can kind of picture this. You go to watch a movie, and it seems like the movie has come to an end, and everything’s over. The next thing you know, there’s a twist, and there’s something new that happens next. Or it’s a novel that you’ve just finished reading, and when you get to the last page, it says, “To be continued,” and then you have to wait for the next novel to come out. Prophecy is like that. It can be happening right now, but it can also, that same prophecy refer to something that’s about to happen. It can also look forward to a future time when that prophecy is fulfilled again.
An example of this is in Isaiah, chapter seven. Isaiah had asked Ahaz to declare or ask for a sign from God so that God could prove Himself. Ahaz replied, “I will not ask. I will not test the Lord,” even though God had asked him to do that. So Isaiah said, “Listen, house of David, is it not enough for you to try the patience of men? Will you also try the patience of God?”
Isaiah said this, as we read in verse 14: “Therefore, the Lord Himself will give you a sign. See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Emmanuel. By the time he learns to reject what is bad and choose what is good, he will be eating curds and honey. For before the boy knows to reject what is bad and choose what is good, the land of the two kings you dread will be abandoned. The Lord will bring on you, your people, and your father’s house such a time as has never been since Ephraim separated from Judah. He will bring the king of Assyria.”
This prophecy was fulfilled at multiple levels. We recognize it now: Jesus was born of a virgin. So it was fulfilled at a much later day than when Isaiah was writing. But that word “virgin” can also mean just a young woman. There was this fulfillment in Ahaz’s day that this young woman had a baby and named him Emmanuel. We know that it happened in that day because this boy grows up before this king of Assyria comes into the land. So that child was born.
That was a prophecy that was fulfilled, and it was to picture something that was about to happen. But there’s also this fulfillment that we understand in the New Testament that the Savior, the Messiah, Emmanuel, God with us, would be born of a virgin.
Another principle is—and you’re going to be really shocked at this one—prophecy is not focused on what? It’s always focused on Israel. We’re a proud nation, sometimes to the point of being arrogant. We think that we are the center of the world. For a long time, maps were made that America was put in the center and everything was spread this way. But you can also do the map where Israel is the center and America is off to the side. As far as I can see, there’s no direct mention of the United States in scripture. Some people do find our nation in the Bible, but I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere. Have any of y’all seen USA written in the Bible? Please correct me if I’m wrong.
We are not the focus of scripture. Prophecy is always centered around and in the context of God’s people and the land of Israel, particularly the city of Jerusalem. It’s like this: when the Bible speaks about the countries to the north and south, He’s not referring to Canada and Mexico, okay? He’s referring to places in the Middle East. Directions are always in relation to Israel. Prophecies are always in relation to Israel.
There are other countries mentioned in scripture, at least their locations. It talks about Syria and Babylon, which is Iraq, Iran, which was Persia, Greece, Turkey, and most likely Russia. But America just doesn’t seem to be there. I can just conjecture what that might mean. Maybe America doesn’t exist in the end times. Maybe America is just considered part of the whole world, and maybe it’s just so insignificant by the time the end comes that it didn’t need to be in Bible prophecy. But Bible prophecy, again, it’s always focused on Israel.
Let’s go now to Joel, chapter one. After all of that introduction, first service didn’t listen very fast. Okay. I didn’t get finished. If you listen faster, I’ll try to get through this today.
Verse one says that the word of the Lord that came to Joel, son of Pethuel. Here we have the author, Joel. His name means “Jehovah is God.” There’s no information other than that given about him, other than the fact that he has a father. That’s a really big deal—he had a father. Would you agree with me? We know that his name was Pethuel.
Then who is it that he is speaking to? Who is his audience? He’s talking to the elders, and we’re not talking about the leaders here. We’re talking about the old-timers, the people that have been around for a while. We’re going to see that Joel is asking these people that have been around, “Do you remember anything like this?” So he’s not just talking about leaders; he’s talking to the older generation, but he’s also talking to all you inhabitants of the land.
In any poetic form, he uses this “hear,” and he uses this “listen,” because he’s wanting them to do two things. They sound similar. The word “listen” there just means to give your ear—hear what I have to say. But when he tells these elders to “hear,” he’s telling them to listen for meaning here. Listen in order that you can obey. Really think about what I’m saying, and then go and tell other people about it. Sound the alarm. Don’t just listen; do something about it.
Now, the whole book is basically a long poem except for two paragraphs. So we need to understand how the Jews would have seen the poetry here and what allusions, what things would have come to their mind as they’re hearing what God is speaking to them.
We’re going to be looking at some other passages about how the Jews, who were very familiar with the books of Moses, would have recognized similar language in this prophecy to what they already know to be true, and how God speaks to them and has spoken to them in the past.
Let’s go to Deuteronomy, chapter 4, verses 32-40, and you’ll see the similarities here. Indeed, ask about the earlier days that preceded you. There’s this look back. Has this happened before? “From the day God created mankind on the earth and from one end of the heavens to the other?”
Here’s where Joel sounds very similar: “Has anything like this great event ever happened, or has anything like it been heard of?” I want to point out that when God supernaturally intervenes, His supernatural interventions are always meant to get people’s attention. When God wants to get people’s attention, He is more than capable of doing that.
We’re reminded here, how did He get the attention of the Jewish nation? In verse 33, God said, “Has a people heard God’s voice speaking from fire as you have and lived?” God doesn’t appear as a fire and a cloud out here on any of these hills and speak verbally to us, but He did that for the Jews because He was intervening so that He would get their attention.
“Or has a God attempted to go and take a nation, meaning Israel, as His own out of another nation?” He’s talking about Egypt, and not just to arrange bus rides to take them across. But He did it by trials, signs, wonders, war, a strong hand, an outstretched arm, and great terrors, as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes. He performed ten mighty plagues that got everybody’s attention because God wanted people to know that He is God.
God’s work with Israel was very evident then. When we come to the book of Joel, Joel is saying the same thing. God is still the same God that showed us great things in the past. Why was it that God showed these things to them? Well, we go on reading in verse 35: “You were shown these things so that you would know that the Lord is God; there is no other beside Him.”
God’s supernatural interventions are always meant to point us to knowing that the Lord is God. Verse 36: “He let you hear His voice from heaven to instruct you. He showed His great fire on earth, the pillar of fire. The cloud followed them day and night. You actually heard His words from the fire.”
He did this because He loved your ancestors. He chose their descendants after them, and He brought you out of Egypt by His presence and by His great power. Therefore, what is the response? Verse 39 says, “Today, recognize Him and keep in mind that the Lord is God in heaven above and on earth below; there is no other.”
That’s what Joel is saying. He’s saying, “Remember God; think about God; keep God in mind.” These prophecies that I’m giving you today are to cause you to honor Him the way that you’re supposed to. We do this according to verse 40 by keeping His statutes and His commands. In other words, Joel is saying, just as Moses was saying, “Pay attention! Know that the Lord is God. Do not forget that the Lord is God and be obedient to His word.”
In both Joel and Deuteronomy, we learn that God is doing something supernatural outside of the realm of what is natural or normal. In both, His purpose is to get the attention of God’s people so that they will respond to Him appropriately and not forget the message or the warning of the prophecy.
Also, it is for present generations and the generations to come. All that He does wants us to pay attention to Him, to know that He is the Lord God, not to forget Him, and to desire to obey Him.
The next main point I want you to see is that Joel’s message is for all generations to come. The incident here is meant to be remembered for all future generations because the message for the present hearers is also for the hearers of the future. Joel says, “Tell your children about it, and let your children tell their children about it, and then their children, the next generation.”
We go back to Deuteronomy, chapter six, with similar language. “Listen, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. These words I am giving you today, they’re to be in your heart, and you are also to repeat them to your children.”
God’s word is to be passed on from generation to generation. Verse four: Joel’s message is eschatological. I think I got it right that time! My wife is good with English, so I don’t have to ask Dave like I did in the first service.
Okay. Joel’s message is eschatological. That means it’s about end times. It’s about things relating to death and judgment. It’s about things that are relating to the final destiny of the soul of humans and all of mankind.
We’re going to see that there’s this message that’s going on right then. It’s pointing to an invading army, but it’s also looking to those three promises. In the end, it says that there were devouring locusts, there were swarming locusts, then there were the young locusts, and then there were the destroying locusts.
Locust invasions are fairly common in Palestine and in Israel, and generally they do not drive people to the brink of starvation. I was historically looking up, and in 1915, there was a severe infestation of locusts, and it was so bad that the price of wine was doubled. Really sad, really terrible day. It was inconvenient, but it was hardly devastating.
I’m going to refer here in a little bit to an invasion of locusts that’s probably more like what was going on in the passage. We’re talking about the great day of the Lord here. There are ten different words for locust in the Old Testament. It doesn’t really say why God allowed Joel to choose just these four out of ten. It could be that it’s just different types of locusts or different stages in the life of locusts.
I think the best explanation here is that it fits with the fact that if you think things can’t get worse, they probably will. Have you ever been there in your life? Your dishwasher breaks down, your refrigerator quits working, the brakes go out in the car, kids need braces, and they just come boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
After we’ve been married about seven years, all those wedding gifts just started breaking one after another: the blender, the mixer. We had a whole list. We started to laugh about it. What’s going to break next? Whatever was given to us at our wedding. If you think things can’t get any worse, you’re wrong.
I think that’s what Joel is saying here. If you think that the devouring locusts are bad, then the swarming locust came, and it got worse. And it got worse. Keeping in mind that the day of the Lord is about judgment and salvation, we’re going to see how bad it probably was during this time. Amos gives us an idea that also kind of goes along with what I’m saying.
If you think things are bad, they could get worse. Amos writes in chapter five, “Woe to you who long for the day of the Lord! What will the day of the Lord be for you? What is it going to be like in the end times?” First, he says, “It will be darkness and not light.” That’s bad enough for there to be no light. But then he says, “Then it will be like a man who flees from a lion, and as you’re running away, you’re confronted in front of you by a bear. Somehow you manage to escape the darkness and the lion and the bear, and you get home after running, you’re tired. You rest your hand against the wall, only to have in your very own home a snake bite you.”
I think Joel is saying that the day of the Lord is going to be bad, but it’s going to be worse, and it’s going to be worse than that, and it’s going to be worse than that again. Historically, I was thinking, how bad was this locust invasion? Well, it’s not been that long ago.
In 1874, in July, there was an invasion of grasshoppers, or locusts, in the USA. How many of y’all remember that event? Oh, that was first service. An invasion of grasshoppers began in July 1874 when millions of insects, more accurately called Rocky Mountain locusts, descended on the prairies from North Dakota to Texas. Without warning, they arrived in swarms so large they blocked out the sun and sounded like a rainstorm.
According to a New York Times correspondent, they beat against the house, swarmed in at the windows, covered the passing trains, and worked as if sent to destroy. Let me read how this was described in the papers.
In that day in late July, without warning, millions of Rocky Mountain locusts from the mountains of Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana descended upon the prairies, arriving in swarms so large they blocked out the sun. They spread across the Great Plains, from Canada in the north to Mexico in the south. In a span of a few hours, they ate crops down to the ground. One farmer reported that the locusts seemed like a great white cloud, like a snowstorm. We understand snowstorms, whiteouts.
Here, they were blocking out the sun like a vapor, and confronted with the sudden invasion, farmers rushed to cover their wells. They scrambled to save what crops they could by covering their gardens with blankets and textiles. But the insects’ numbers were too great, and they chewed through the fabric that they put over their gardens. After eating the crops, they moved on to eat the wool from live sheep and clothing off people’s backs. Paper, tree bark, sawdust, leather, and even wooden tool handles were completely devoured.
If that sounds outrageous in the south, if you’ve ever had termites, they can eat through anything. Freshly planted young crops were especially vulnerable to the locusts. The newly arrived immigrants in western Kansas were hit the hardest, and in many cases, the insects were said to have covered the ground several inches deep. The locomotives—that’s a train—could not get traction because the insects made the rails too slippery.
These ravenous insects also knew no bounds, infiltrating every nook, requiring residents to pat down their bedding before retiring. Unfortunately, not everyone survived. The St. Louis Republicans said that we’ve seen in the past week families that had not a meal of victuals in their homes—families that had nothing to eat save what their neighbors gave them and what game could be caught. Even they mentioned there was a family of six that died within six days. They didn’t have enough to eat.
It was so bad in 1874 that on July 25, Governor Thomas A. Osborne had a special session to discuss this. Actually, that was September 15. In conclusion, they said between 1873 and 1877, the locusts caused $200 million in crop damage. In one year, 12 trillion locusts devastated the Great Plains, and their weight was more than 27 million tons.
I don’t know if they had fake news back then, but it’s chronicled in a lot of places. I think this is the type of devastation that Joel is telling us happened in his day. The purpose was to get people’s attention so that they would turn back to the Lord, that they would remember who the Lord is, and that they would be desirous to serve Him and obey His commands.
We’re going to pick up next week at this point and move on, but take some time to read the book of Joel this week. It’s only a few chapters long. It won’t take you much time. We’ll continue to look at this locust invasion, this invasion of locusts that was so utterly terrible in his day that they needed to recognize God was speaking to them.
Will you stand with me in prayer?
Heavenly Father, we come before you today knowing that you are the awesome and almighty God. The things that we’re reading about here are true, Father—they happened in the past. Whether you caused this devastation to come or whether you just used one that came about, Father, it was meant to get the attention of your people.
As we go through Joel, Father, let us get our attention to you. Let us remember you, not forget you. Let us come to you in confession and repentance to make our lives in line with your path of righteousness. For us, Father, let us see the importance of passing it on to our children and our grandchildren and the next generation. There might be many more in our families to serve and honor you.
In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.