Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on September 29, 2024. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Audio Transcript
I invite you to take your Bibles now and turn to Joel, chapter one. We are continuing in verses one through 20, and I’ll begin reading in verse one today.
Joel, chapter one. Reading beginning at the start, verses one through twelve: The word of the Lord that came to Joel, son of. 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, and 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 vine dressers, over the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field has perished. The grapevine is dried up, 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.
You have a diagram, and I put it in your bulletin today. When we’re going over a prophet like this, you have to kind of keep the whole thing in mind. It’s not like individual incidents; it’s meant to be one long letter or one narrative. Just kind of in review, Eric, can I have the back screen on so I can see what they’re seeing?
We got this balance talking about the day of the Lord. It’s mentioned five times throughout the book. In this balance, in the day of the Lord, it’s always about that there’s destruction coming because of evil in the world, but God still promises restoration and deliverance. The day of the Lord are prophecies that we can rely upon because so many of the prophecies have already come to pass.
And so it was in Joel’s day that the locust invaded, and then the army came, just as God said. Therefore, we can know that when we get to the middle part, where it says “after this,” and it’s talking about the future, that these promises of restoration will happen. Because what God has said has happened, and what he says is to come still will happen.
Once again, there’s a balance of destruction and deliverance or restoration. There’s the locust and there’s the restoration. There is the invading army, but there’s the promise of deliverance. The last three promises there we talked about last week are balanced, going all the way back to the book of Genesis. God created a good world.
But just as the locust invaded wave after wave after wave in Joel’s day, so it was when sin entered the world that it brought destruction, more destruction, more destruction, and more destruction. But God promises us the spirit; he promises us deliverance, and he promises us restoration that we’ll be looking at later in the book.
Just otherwise, for review, let’s go back to God’s supernatural interventions, which are meant to get our attention. We referred last week back to Deuteronomy when God said, “I’ve spoken to you; I’ve delivered you; I’ve done all these things.” And the reason was so that you would know that the Lord is God.
And secondly, not just to know that the Lord is God, but to keep him in mind, not to forget him, but to remember that he is God. And lastly, in doing this, we’re supposed to keep his statutes and commands. Know God, don’t forget him, obey him. Whenever natural disasters come about or when God does supernatural things, it’s to get our attention, to push us in this direction.
Joel’s message next is for all generations to come. That’s why he says in verse three, “Tell your children about it. Let your children tell their children and their children, the next generation.” And we’re not supposed to just stop there. The book of Joel is for us today. It is for all times, just as in Deuteronomy, when we read about the Shema.
Listen, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. We’re supposed to repeat that. They were to teach their children over and over to pass it on for the future. And why is this? Well, Joel’s message is for all generations to come, and the reason why God wants our attention, why he wants us to obey him.
Going back to Deuteronomy, chapter four, it’s underlined, there is so that you and your children after you may prosper. What we find in the book of Joel is that all joy is gone because they had not placed their joy in the Lord. But if we follow his commands and we follow his way, God promises us that we will prosper.
And then we stopped last week here, where we talked about Joel’s message as eschatological, which means that he had a message that was imminent. It was for the present. This thing with the locust is happening right now. He also had a subsequent message, or a future one, where he said there’s another army, but it’s going to be an army of people that come into the land, just like the locust.
But there’s a third message here that talks about the ultimate end of things, that again, this is going to happen in a similar way in the end days. Whenever we talk about something being eschatological, we mean that it’s relating to death, judgment, final things, and the future and final destiny of our souls and of mankind altogether.
Joel’s message was for then. It was for the near future at that time, and it’s still for our future to come. Going to verse five now, the next thing I want us to see is that Joel’s message is for the sleepers. He says, “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. All sin separates us from God. All sin is terrible. Some sins are greater with their evil consequences than others are. Our understanding of that would be like if you’re comparing stealing an apple to the sin of rape. One is definitely far more devastating.
So it’s interesting here that the only sin that Joel mentions here is that there was drunkenness, not drinking, but there was drunkenness among the Israelites of this time. Joel could have chosen a more heinous sin, but he chose drunkenness. I think the reason for that is because it’s metaphorical, and it is answered and shown to us in those first two words: the people are supposed to do something.
What are the two words up there? It says they’re supposed to wake up. So he’s wanting us to think about what it is like to be drunk, that people are asleep. The New American Commentary put it this way: Drunkards can be likened to physical, moral, and spiritual dullness. They needed to be awakened to be aware of their sin.
So Joel is saying, spiritually, it’s like, “Y’all are drunk; you’re asleep. You don’t even know what is going on,” to the point that the wine glasses are being taken away from them while they’re drinking, and they don’t even see the hand coming at it to take them away.
So Joel’s message is telling us that we need to wake up spiritually. We’re not supposed to be dull and asleep and not realize what is going on around us. It doesn’t fit that Joel was only speaking to the drunkards in his day, because he started out by asking all the elders and all the inhabitants to listen.
The people were asleep. They were unaware of what was going on. They were lethargic and slow to think like someone who is drunk. They are unaware that they are spiritually numb and that they’re just stumbling around.
I want us to go to the book of Isaiah, because Isaiah is a lot more specific with what it meant to be spiritually drunk in that day. Isaiah, chapter five. We read in verses eleven through twelve: Woe to those who rise early in the morning in pursuit of beer, who linger into the evening, inflamed by wine.
So their drunkenness was what hour of the day? It was just all day long. And again, this was a sin, but it was just indicative, more so of what was going on with them spiritually. I would say, just as it was in that day, there was this continual dependence on alcohol.
It’s the same way in our day-to-day. People are looking to alcohol; they’re looking to drugs; they’re looking to anything in their life that will bring fulfillment instead of paying attention to what God has to offer to them. Again, like we were saying, the prophecy is imminent. It had to do with Joel’s day. It was subsequent; it was what was going to happen after Joel’s time.
But ultimately, this is where the world is headed. So they’re drinking all the time. But also it says that they’re doing this at their feast, where they have lyre and harp, tambourines, flute, and wine. Another big part of their life is that they’re enjoying listening. To what? To music.
We see that as part of our day; there’s more music available than ever. When I was a kid, if you wanted to listen to a song, you had to pull out a what, 35, and maybe we had a few radio stations. But between all the electronic things, there’s music of every kind everywhere. Music is a wonderful thing.
But part of the problem with music is it can be like alcohol, in that people listen to that continually because they’re trying to escape the real spiritual situations that are going on in their life instead of turning to the Lord. And as a result, there was so much drinking and partying and listening to music all day long. It says that they do not perceive the Lord’s actions, and they do not see the work of his hands.
The Jews didn’t realize what was going on, and so much of our world today isn’t paying attention to God and what he is doing. He’s trying constantly to get our attention that we might turn to him.
Going on to verses 20 and 24, it tells us about the moral condition in Joel’s day, but also in our day. Today, we see it. He said, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”
In other words, all the morality in that day, as it is in this day, has been turned upside down. Scripture says that it’s wrong for people to live together. But today, in today’s world, it’s an okay thing. Scripture says that sex outside of marriage is sin, but today, it’s something that people are involved in. Promiscuity is seen as good. People destroy property just to say something or make a statement, and people say, “Oh, that’s a good thing that they destroyed that town.”
Morality has been turned on its head. Not only has morality been turned on its head, but we read in verse 21 that instead of looking to God, they’re looking to themselves. Woe to those who consider themselves wise and judge themselves clever, just like in the book of Judges. It tells us over and over that everyone did what was right in their own eyes.
Instead of having God’s standard of how we are to live and behave, each individual is deciding, “Well, I think this is right.” Someone else says, “I think this is right.” But once we all start living to what we think is right, it causes confusion and chaos in the world, doing what is right in their own eyes.
But also, instead of following God’s wisdom, it says that they judge themselves to be clever. They were saying, as people say today, “I know better than the Bible. I know better than Christianity. I can make my own decisions,” because humanity as a whole believes that it is God and wants to be its own God. Morality was turned upside down.
People were doing what they thought was wise instead of following what God was telling them. So Joel is actually talking to people that are anti-righteous. When we’re talking about righteous, we’re meaning walking on the path of life that God has laid out that he wants us to be in. These people weren’t even partially on the path; they were walking completely against it.
Verse 22 says, “Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, who are champions at pouring beer, who acquit the guilty for a bribe.” Even the judges were corrupt in that day, who deprived the innocent of justice. Here’s the main point: they’re doing all of this because they have rejected the instruction of the Lord of armies.
Not only have they rejected his instruction, but it says that they have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. It’s not even that they’re putting God’s word aside; they are anti-righteous. They are anti-God’s word. I want it completely put away.
The Jews rejected the instruction of God, and they despised his word. The outcome of their rejection and despising God is how all people are with the same attitude toward God and his word. When they follow that way, as it’s going to show us in the text, it leads to them not having joy anymore.
Therefore, how does God respond to people being against him? Well, Isaiah tells us that he raises a signal flag for the distant nations, and he whistles for them from the ends of the earth. Look how quickly and swiftly they come. So Isaiah was warning them that if you continue in this path of being anti-righteous, not listening to the Lord, God is going to signal for nations that are heathen to come in.
He’s going to whistle for them, and they’re going to come quickly. Judah doesn’t heed; Israel doesn’t heed what Isaiah and Joel tell them. They don’t learn the lesson. As promised, just as the locust came, God sends an army to invade them. But again, this is all to restore them.
God’s righteousness and his mercy go hand in hand. As we’ll see at the end of the book, the same thing is true for the end. When the world, when the Israelites, when people turn away from the Lord, he sends his judgment, but it’s always with the mind that he will restore them.
Deuteronomy 20:15, 38, and 42. You know, Joel doesn’t actually say that the locusts were a result of the sin of Judah, but God had warned them that if you don’t follow me, these natural consequences of sin in the world are going to fall upon you. If the Israelites had continued to obey the Lord, he would have protected them from these things, and he had warned them.
In Deuteronomy, he said, “If you do not obey the Lord your God by carefully following all his commands and statutes I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overtake you.” There is an exhaustive list of plagues and pestilence and problems that would come upon them if they didn’t follow the Lord.
Very specifically, in verse 38, he says that locusts will devour it, and in verse 42, that buzzing insects will take possession of all your trees and your land’s produce. Joel’s message is for a people that had chosen to disobey the Lord, and that’s why the evil of the world is coming upon them.
Next, I want you to see that Joel’s message is for everyone. In verse eight, we read, “Grieve like a young woman dressed in sackcloth, mourning for the husband of her youth.” Their pain is so extreme because of what the locusts have done to them.
The picture here is that a young bride has arrived at the place of her wedding. As she’s all dressed, her hair is ready, her makeup is ready, all of her friends are there, and everybody is sitting down. And guess who doesn’t show up? The groom. Well, he’s late a lot, she thinks at first, but as time goes on, he doesn’t show up. Maybe he’s been in a car wreck. Maybe his horse’s leg is broken. But ultimately, she finds out that he died on his way to the wedding.
Her pain is extreme, and Joel is saying that’s how everyone is feeling at this time. 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.
God’s spiritual leaders are suffering from it, but it’s not just the people that are suffering; all of the land is suffering too. Scripture tells us that our world, the physical part of it, is groaning for the Lord to return because all of it is affected by sin— all people, all things.
But it’s not just the priests. We go on; it says, “And the new wine is dried up, and the fresh oil fails. Be ashamed, you farmers. Wail, you vine dressers over the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field has perished.”
Joel’s message is not just for a particular group of people. In his day, it was for everyone, but it’s also for all of us today. That’s why he said, “You need to pass these things down to your children, to their children, and to their children after them.”
Next, I want you to see that Joel’s message is about joy, or actually, it’s about the lack of it. In his day, it tells us that the grapevine is dried up, the fig tree is withered, the pomegranate, the date palm, the apple— all the trees of the orchard have withered. Indeed, human joy has dried up.
The problem in Joel’s day is they were looking for joy in the wrong places. As long as they had enough grapes and figs and pomegranates and dates and apples, when they had plenty to eat, there was a lot of joy among them. But when all that was taken away, they didn’t have joy anymore because they weren’t looking to the Lord for their joy.
Imagine walking into Woodman’s and they don’t have apples today. Well, I’m really upset that they don’t have apples. Have you ever felt that way? But then if I find out they don’t have apples and bananas, now that’s really, really terrible. But if I walked into Woodman’s and every other grocery store and there was no fruit at all except for the things I don’t like to eat, then I would be very distressed.
But if I’m depending on those physical things—whether it’s what we eat or the things we do or our possessions—if they’re completely taken away from us, our joy is going to be dried up. Because instead of our joy being in things, our joy is supposed to be in the Lord God Almighty.
Joel’s message is about the result of being these drunken sleepers that are spiritually and morally dull. It is connected to the further explanation of the time that Isaiah gives us. We’re talking about all these things that were going on in his time, but actually, they were just being anti-righteous. They were not following the path that God had for them.
As is true with everyone, when we don’t follow God’s path, ultimately there is no joy. Any path that leads away from God’s path of righteousness, no matter how slight it is, will ultimately lead further and further from God.
Imagine if God’s path is to walk straight down this aisle here. I can reject it and I can walk the other way; I’m not going to be on that path. I can turn this way and walk, and I’m not going to be on the path. But it’s just as dangerous for someone just to veer off the path and start to climb over the pews just a little bit, because eventually, as they go further and further out, they’re going to be further away from the path of righteousness and true joy that God wants for all of us.
Joel’s message is about joy. Joel is talking about the lack of joy. What is it that he suggests that they do when they get to this situation? We have this call to prayer and fasting. In verses 13 through 14, Joel says, “Dress in sackcloth and lament.” Sackcloth would be the scratchiest clothing that you could possibly wear, and lament means to just wail and to cry.
He says, “Dress in sackcloth and lament, you priests. Wail, you ministers of the altar. Come and don’t just do this in the morning, but spend the night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God.” Joel first comes to the religious leaders. He says, “You need to pray. You need to pray seriously. You need to fast. You need to do whatever it takes to stand before God in this situation that we have.”
Part of it is you got to set the example for the people, and the ministers of God here, one of the reasons why they’re wailing is because they don’t even have a handful of grain or a cup of wine or any oil to make offerings to the Lord anymore. Everything is so far destroyed.
But not only does Joel address the spiritual leaders, but then he tells them, “Now that you are doing this, announce a sacred fast. Proclaim a solemn assembly for everyone to gather. Gather the elders, all the residents of the land, at the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord.”
When people have gotten to the point that they’ve lost their joy and they realize that they have not been turning to the Lord, the answer to that is to turn back to him in prayer and in fasting. Joel’s message is about what joy is supposed to be, but they’re lacking joy.
When we apply it to the New Testament, Joel’s message is really about true joy that comes only through Jesus Christ. Jesus is the gate; he’s the way to get on the path to God’s righteousness that eventually leads to abundant life and joy. But some people are going to just completely reject him and turn the other way immediately; they are headed for spiritual death.
But people also need to realize that there are some people that say that our righteousness alone or Jesus plus our righteousness is going to put us on the path. So there’s a little bit of Jesus in there. But when they add other things to it, they’re like the person that’s gradually veering off the path, and that too leads to spiritual death.
Jesus said, “I am the gate.” He doesn’t say, “I am a gate,” but he is the gate. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved. It’s a certainty; it’s a promise there. He will come in and go out and find pasture. On the other hand, a thief, speaking of Satan, he comes only to steal, kill, and destroy.
But Jesus said, “I have come so that they may have life and that they may have it in abundance.” Going through Jesus Christ on God’s path of righteousness is the only way that leads to true, abundant life and joy. Jesus emphasized this in John 14:6, where he said that, “I am not a way, but the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
There is no other religion; there is no other person; there is no other path to be on God’s righteousness. You either have to believe what Jesus says, or you have to say, “Jesus, you’re lying here. You’re not the only way; you’re not the only truth; and you’re not the only life.” You can’t not believe him and place your faith in him.
It has to all come together because he says, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” There is no other way. The message is that true joy doesn’t come through things; it doesn’t come through drugs; it doesn’t come through drinking; it doesn’t come through sex; it doesn’t come through any other people.
True joy comes through a relationship with God alone. How does Joel end this? He’s called them to prayer, and now he prays this prayer. For the first time, he mentions and draws their attention to the day of the Lord. In verse 15, we read the prayer: “Woe because of that day, for the day of the Lord is near and will come as devastation from the Almighty.”
So Joel, once again, he was telling them, “Look what the locusts did. If you don’t follow the Lord, there’s an army coming in, and it’s going to be as bad or worse than this locust.” But he’s also pointing to the future, that ultimately the great day of the Lord is going to come.
With that, there will be devastation, not just from locusts and not devastation from an army, but devastation from the Almighty. When God restores and makes things right, then he just repeats what’s been going on. He’s saying, “God, hasn’t the food been cut off before our eyes? Joy and gladness from the house of our God.” They don’t have that anymore.
The seeds lie shriveled in their casings. The storehouses are in ruin. The granaries are broken down because the grain has withered away. It’s not only the people, but the animals groan. The herds of cattle wander in confusion since they have no pasture, and even the flocks of sheep and goats suffer punishment.
“I call to you, Lord, for fire has consumed the pastures of the wilderness. Flames have devoured all the trees of the orchard. Even the wild animals cry out to you, for the riverbeds are dried up, and fire has consumed the pastures of the wilderness.”
We end in this dire situation. Everything is gone. There is no joy. But you gotta keep in mind there’s gonna be the promise of restoration that we see in chapter two, that God is using this to get their attention, not to leave them, but so that they will come back to him and experience joy. The day of the Lord in the end is gonna be even more so, and we need to be looking forward to that today.
So what are some things that I want you to get from the message today? The first is that the prophecies of the Old Testament are pertinent today. God wants us to read them. They weren’t just for Joel’s time; they’re for us because they’re about the day of the Lord coming back.
They’re also evidence of God’s omniscience that we can know for certain that our God knows everything. He is not surprised by anything. It’s evidence of God’s righteousness that just as he brought judgment and he got rid of the evil in that day, he still came along in his mercy because he wants to restore things to the original creation that he gave us.
The day of the Lord is coming. We should be prepared, and we should be making disciples of others so that they are ready for his return.
As Kelly Jo comes and leads us in our final song today, I invite you to stay seated. You’re welcome to sing along, but you need to ask yourselves these questions. Is this what you’re getting out of the message today? And more importantly, are you prepared for the Lord’s coming? Have you placed your faith in Jesus Christ alone and in nothing else, so that you know that you’re on the right path to a life of joy, not just in this life, but in eternity?
Ask God as we’re singing to show you what he wants you to learn today and how to respond. May we pray?
Heavenly Father, we thank you that your word is true. We thank you for the evidence that you’ve shown us over and over that when you say something is going to happen, it does. For that reason, we know that ultimately what you have told us about the future will come about.
The most glorious and joyful thing about that is that you will win, Father, and that you will make things right again. Those of us that know your Son personally will have a relationship throughout eternity, living in your glorious presence. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
There is healing in the power of the Lord most high? There is curse.