Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on October 6, 2024. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Audio Transcript
I invite you to take your Bibles and turn to the book of Joel, chapter one. We’ll be reading verses 15 through 20 today. Joel, chapter one, verses 15 through 20, and it’ll be on the screen for your convenience.
“Woe because of that day, for the day of the Lord is near and will come as devastation from the Almighty. Hasn’t the food been cut off before our eyes? Joy and gladness from the house of our God. The seeds lie shriveled in their casings, the storehouses are in ruin, and the granaries are broken down because the grain has withered away. How 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 and 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.”
Heavenly Father, we ask that you give us understanding of your word today that only comes by your Spirit, how to know what it means, but also to apply it to our lives. We thank you for the promise that we have in the great day of the Lord that is coming, when all things will be restored and there will be a new creation. In Jesus’ name and for his sake in providing this for us, we pray. Amen.
The theme is the day of the Lord. In the book of Joel, the day of the Lord is when God intervenes in the world, especially Israel, to bring about his eternal plan. It’s about destruction, but it’s also about deliverance. It’s about invading armies, but the promise of restoration. And finally, we have in Joel the promise of things that are still to come: the promise of the Spirit, the promise of deliverance, and the promise of restoration.
So in this book of prophecy, we’re seeing all these things that God said were going to happen, and they did happen. And because of that, it is proof that what he promises to come in the future will happen in that time. Because the theme is the day of the Lord, we’re just going to be looking at that phrase today.
So we go back to verse 15. “Woe because of that day, for the day of the Lord is near and will come as devastation from the Almighty.” There’s this balance there. When we talk about God’s day, we’re talking about death, destruction, and punishment. But with that, there is going to be a new creation. We have great and varied promises from him, and we have certain salvation that is going to come.
Also, in your bulletin, you have a definition of the day of the Lord printed there by Paul Benwer, and I’d like to read over it. We’re going to just look at some parts of that today. The phrase “day of the Lord” is used in the Bible to emphasize special interventions of God. That’s the first main thing. When it comes to the day of the Lord, there are special interventions by God. It’s not like the hurricane that just came across our lands; it’s more evident that God is doing something.
The day of the Lord is used in the Bible to emphasize special interventions of God in human history. It’s also about his victory over his enemies. God is the righteous judge, the Lord of the heavenly armies, and he will completely destroy his enemies one day. We are certain of that. But it’s also about his sovereignty over the universe. So special interventions, victory over enemies, and God’s sovereignty are always evident when we talk about the day of the Lord.
The phrase is used in a non-eschatological sense when, in past times, the Lord’s authority over the world was demonstrated. So when we think about things that are eschatological, take off the “non,” and we’re looking at end events, the final days of this world, when we will come face to face with God, and he will restore things. So the opposite of non-eschatological is that God has had his day in the past. So there can be many days of the Lord in the past. They’ve been achieved, and they are still to come.
When, in the past, the Lord’s authority over the world was demonstrated by executing judgment on both Gentile nations. The day of the Lord also refers to Israel when God has intervened, when he has done things, when he has brought destruction and punishment upon them. But it’s always with the goal that they might be saved, that they might receive the prophecies. The phrase is also used in the future, as well, when the Lord will intervene in human history one day to judge all the nations and to discipline his people, Israel, and he will establish his rule in the messianic kingdom.
We’re going to be mainly looking at the past times when we see the day of the Lord today. You know, this phrase has other related phrases, like the day of the anger of Yahweh, or it might be referred to as “Yahweh has a day.” These direct expressions occur two dozen times in prophetic books and also in Lamentations. But there are similar terms where scripture just talks about “that day” or “the day of” and doesn’t say “of God” or “the day when these things are happening.” Those expressions appear nearly 200 times in prophets, Lamentations, and even in the book of Psalms.
The day of the Lord is a prominent theme throughout scripture that we need to understand. Let’s look at some examples of the day of the Lord that happened in past times. Let’s go back to Genesis, chapter 19, where we’re reading about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, because that was a day of the Lord where there was destruction, but there was also salvation.
It tells us in Genesis 19:23 that the sun had risen over the land when Lot reached Zoar. Then, out of the sky, the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah burning sulfur from the Lord. That was God’s special intervention. It was beyond a natural disaster; God was doing something that they knew was from the Lord. It tells us that he completely demolished these cities. He demolished the entire plain. All the inhabitants of the city were destroyed, and whatever was growing on the ground.
And early in the morning, Abraham went to the place where he had stood before the Lord the day before, where he had asked God, “Will you keep those that are righteous from being destroyed?” A special intervention of God. Destruction, but still the promise that there would be salvation. And that salvation was shown with Lot and his family.
We go on to read in verse 28, “He looked down from Sodom and Gomorrah and all the land of the plain, and he saw that smoke was going up from the land like the smoke of a furnace.” So it was when God destroyed the cities of the plain; he remembered Abraham, the promise he had made, and he brought Lot out. That’s his salvation. He brought Lot, his daughters, and his wife out of the middle of the upheaval when he demolished the cities where the Lord had lived in the past times when there was the day of the Lord.
We see this same thing: there’s destruction, there’s purpose, God is involved, but it always brings about some salvation or new creation, or it’s an answer to one of his promises. Let’s look at another example of the day of the Lord in past times. We go to Exodus, chapter 3, verses 7 through 8, and we’re looking at when Israel was delivered from slavery in Egypt.
The Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people in Egypt and have heard them crying out because of their oppressors. I know about their sufferings, and I have come down to rescue them.” This is the salvation part of it: to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them from that land to a good and spacious land, the new creation. In other words, a land flowing with milk and honey.
What was God’s special intervention at that time? Well, it wasn’t just normal things that were happening. There were frogs everywhere; water was turned into blood everywhere. There were gnats, an infestation of flies; livestock died; there were boils, hell, locusts, darkness, and finally, the firstborn were all struck dead. The Egyptians knew that God had intervened. It was not just some natural disaster. But then there was the salvation there because he parted the Red Sea so that the Israelites could go through and use that to further bring destruction upon the Egyptian army. Freedom of Israel, a restored nation, and a promised land. It was a day of the Lord in that time.
Going back to the definition now, some more words are underlined there. It talks about the judgment on Gentile nations, which is what we just saw: judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah, judgment on Egypt. But the day of the Lord also has to deal with judgment upon his people, Israel. The phrase is used in the future as well; the Lord will intervene in human history to judge the nations. But in the future, he’s also going to discipline his people, the children of Israel. Destruction, punishment, death, but that so that there will be a new creation, promise, and salvation. Because he one day will establish his rule in the messianic kingdom where he will rule from Jerusalem over all of the world.
What we want to keep in mind is that the day of the Lord always is centered around his people and his land, Israel, and his city, Jerusalem. I want us to go to Amos, chapter 4. Now, again, we’re looking at the day of the Lord. In past times, first we saw how he had the day of the Lord on those that were not his people. But now we’re going to look at the day of the Lord where there is judgment, destruction, punishment, and death upon his very people that he has chosen.
I read from Amos, chapter 4, verse 1. “Listen to this message, you cows of Bashan who are on the hill of Samaria.” He’s not talking to the cows; he’s talking to these women who oppress the poor and crush the needy, who say to their husbands, “Bring us something to drink.” The Lord God has sworn by his holiness. “Look, the days are coming when you will be taken away with hooks, every last one of you with fishhooks.”
Now we need to understand a little bit of history of what’s going on here. The first king of the nation of Israel was Saul, and he ruled over twelve tribes. Then King David came along, who wrote many of our psalms with a desire to worship the Lord in a special way, with music, and to build a temple for him. He ruled over twelve tribes. His son Solomon came along. Solomon didn’t follow the Lord very well; he had too many wives, and he was too interested in too much gold. He did things that he wasn’t supposed to. But the nation of Israel thrived under him, and he still ruled over twelve tribes.
But when his son Rehoboam came along, the people came and said, “Your dad has taxed us so heavily. Certainly, the king has enough. Now, will you please lower the tax rate so that we can live more abundantly?” And Rehoboam said, “I’m not going to tax you less. I’m not going to tax you as my dad did. I’m going to tax you even more.” And that led to a rebellion led by Jeroboam, and ten tribes on the northern part separated themselves from the two tribes in the south.
So we now have ten tribes of Israel, and we have two tribes of Judah. Now, here in Amos, Amos is speaking to the ten tribes that are in the north because he’s talking about these women that are on the hill of Samaria, which is the capital of the new nation of Israel. That nation, when they separated from Judah, set up a golden calf on the southern port and on the northern part of their land because they were creating a new and different way to worship. They were separating themselves from the Lord God Almighty.
And that separation from worshiping God as they were supposed to got so bad that it eventually led to the time that they were placing their live children in the fire and offering them up as burnt offerings to false gods. God had a day of the Lord with them. He’s talking to the women here, and the obvious thing is that women are usually the most caring; they’re usually the most concerned for others. But even in this nation that has fallen away from the Lord, it’s the women who are oppressing the poor, and it’s the women who are crushing the needy. Their only concern is having their husbands bring them something else to drink in spite of their sins.
And God says, “You will be taken away with hooks.” Here we have God warning his people. It’s always his desire that people repent and come back to him. He doesn’t just exact judgment on them arbitrarily or whimsically. He has patience, time after time after time, waiting for people to return. That’s what we want to continue to see here in this text. Before the day of the Lord came for these wicked Israelites, God gave them chance after chance to turn back to him.
In verse 6, we read, “First, I gave you absolutely nothing to eat in all your cities, a shortage of food in all your communities.” He gave them a warning by cutting back on the food they have. “But yet you did not return to me.” This is the Lord’s declaration. But God was still patient. Next, he said, “I also withheld the rain from you, yet you did not return to me.” This is the Lord’s declaration. And then he says, “I struck you with blight and mildew; the locust devoured your many gardens and vineyards, your fig trees and olive trees. Yet you did not return to me.” This is the Lord’s declaration.
God is forgiving them over and over and over. He’s patiently waiting for them; he’s giving them warning. And you would think that maybe at this point that he would have come in and brought judgment. But no, he goes on in verse 10. Again, he’s gracious: “I sent plagues like those of Egypt. I killed your young men with the sword along with captured horses. I caused the stench of your camp to fill your nostrils.” Gradually, the reminders and the punishments are getting heavier and heavier, hoping that they will turn back to him. Yet God said, “You did not return to me.” This is the Lord’s declaration.
And again, he’s patient. “I overthrew some of you as I overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. And you were like a burning stick snatched from a fire. Yet you did not return to me.” This is the Lord’s declaration. Therefore, in verse 12, God finally gets to the point. “I’ve given all these opportunities. You haven’t come back to me.” And he gives them this warning of what’s going to happen. “Therefore, Israel, that is what I will do to you. And since I will do that to you, Israel, prepare to meet your God.” He is here: the one who forms the mountains, creates the wind, and reveals his thoughts to man. The one who makes the dawn out of darkness and strides on the heights of the earth. The Lord, the God of armies, is his name.
He’s telling them death and destruction are coming now, but in the end, he wants to offer a new creation, and he wants to offer salvation. “Woe to you who long for the day of the Lord!” This is actually Amos 5. “What will the day of the Lord be for you?” He says, “When I do bring judgment, it will be darkness and not light. It will be like a man who first flees from a lion, thinking he gets away. But then he is confronted with a bear, and he finally gets past the bear. He makes it home just to rest his hand against the wall, only to have a snake bite him. Won’t the day of the Lord be darkness rather than light, even gloom without any brightness in it?”
The day of the Lord came for Israel as God had promised. But even in all this warning, it tells us in verse 26 of chapter 4 that still you’ve taken up Sakuth, your king, and Kaiwan, your star god images you have made for yourselves. So God said, “I will send you into exile beyond Damascus.” The Lord, the God of armies, is his name. He has spoken.
And after that, the northern kingdom of Israel was invaded by Assyria and they were taken into captivity. In turn, the southern kingdom of Judah will eventually follow in those same footsteps, and they’re going to be taken away by another nation into Babylon. The day of the Lord happened in the past to Gentiles; the day of the Lord happened in the past to God’s people, Israel. With certainty, we know that these promises of how it’s going to turn out in the end: God’s judgment will come on the world. But still, it’s all with this idea of a new creation promise and of salvation.
As we’re looking through prophecy, there are little indicators and things that you just kind of need to keep in mind as we’re looking at things. One of the things that you need to see today and remember is that throughout scripture, God’s grapevine and God’s personal fig tree is Israel. We find that mentioned here in Joel, chapter one, verse seven. It’s very particular; God says it referring to the invasion of the locust: “Has devastated not just a grapevine or not the grapevine, but my personal grapevine.”
And he said it splintered, “My personal fig tree. It has stripped off its bark and thrown it away. Its branches have turned white.” When the locusts came at that time, they destroyed not just a plant, but they were stripping the bark off of God’s very people. We know it’s a special mention because in that same chapter, in verse ten, God talks about the fields in general that were destroyed and the land in general that was destroyed. Nothing. His personal land and fields.
And then in verse twelve, he talks about the grapevine is dried up, the fig tree is withered, the pomegranate, the date, the apple, all the trees of the orchard have all withered. What I want you to see is in this prophetic nature, as it happened to Israel in that day, it’s going to happen to them again. Scripture continually talks about the fig tree and the grapevine as being Israel.
As an example of that, just to show you further, let’s turn to Isaiah, chapter five. There, we’re going to read verses one through seven, where God talks about not just a vineyard, but the personal vineyard that he’s taken the greatest interest in, and he’s referring to the nation of Israel.
Here, Isaiah 5:1-7: “I will sing about the one I love, a song about my loved one’s vineyard. The one I love, and God is talking about himself, had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He put it in the best place, and he broke up the soil carefully. He cleared it of all the stones; he made everything perfect. And then he planted it not with just any vines, but with the most expensive, the very best vines that he could plant. And then he built a tower in the middle of it so that he could watch his vineyard, so that he could enjoy it. And he dug out a wine press there. And after doing all of these special things to make it the best vineyard, the best garden in all the world, he expected it to yield good grapes. He had done everything that he possibly could.
And so it was for Israel. But when he came for the harvest, it yielded worthless grapes. So now, residents of Jerusalem and men of Judah, please judge between me and my vineyard. God was righteous; God was good. He did everything. But it was Judah now, like Israel, that had turned away from him, and they were not bearing the fruit that they should have in their life. Verse four says, “What more could I have done for my vineyard than I did? I spent everything I needed to; I did all the work. I did the best that I could. What more could I do?”
And the answer was, nothing. “Why, when I expected a yield of good grapes, did it yield worthless grapes?” God had every right to deserve the fruit of what he had done with Israel. But because they did not obey him and they turned from him, he says, “Now I will tell you what I am about to do to my vineyard.” The day of the Lord now is coming. “I will remove its hedge; it will be consumed. I will tear down its wall, and it will be trampled.”
God not only put a hedge around it to keep out the animals, but he had put a protective wall around it. And instead of, he says he’s going to tear down the wall. It’s going to be trampled upon; he’s going to make it a wasteland. “It will not be pruned or weeded. Thorns and briars will grow up. And I will also give orders to the clouds, that rain should not fall on it.”
“For the vineyard of the Lord of armies is the house of Israel and the men of Judah, the plant that he delighted in. He expected justice, but saw injustice. He expected righteousness, but instead heard cries of despair.” The day of the Lord came upon Judah just as it had come upon Israel when the Babylonians came in and took them away and left the land desolate and unguarded and unprotected.
We don’t only see the vineyard and the fig tree representing Israel in the Old Testament, but we also see it in the New Testament too. Let’s go to Matthew, chapter 21. I’ll be reading verses 33 through 41. And Jesus, in particular, here is talking to the chief priests, and he’s talking to the Pharisees, the religious leaders, and he’s telling them this parable, but they know that he is talking to them.
And as I read it, think about what we just read in Isaiah about what God did for his vineyard in the past because these religious leaders, they know their scriptures, and they’re going to hear Isaiah speaking to them through Jesus’ words.
“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner, just like there was in Isaiah, who planted a vineyard, just like Isaiah, who put a fence around it. He dug a winepress in it, and he built a watchtower.” It’s almost word for word, the very same things. Immediately they’re thinking, “He’s quoting from Isaiah. What is he telling us?” And then Jesus said, “When the time came to harvest fruit, he sent his servants to the farmers to collect his fruit.”
And because he had done everything that he could, he was expecting a good return. But instead, it tells us that the farmers took his servants; he beat one, he killed another, and he stoned a third. And again he sent other servants, more than the first group, and they did the same to them. The farmer here is God, and the servants are the prophets that he sent, one after another, to the Jewish nation, both Israel and Judah, to tell them, “Return to the Lord and repent.” But each time he sent another servant, they just beat them and they killed them.
Finally, in verse 37, the owner of the vineyard, who’s God, sent his son to them. Now Jesus is talking about himself, and the owner of the vineyard says, “Certainly they will respect my son.” The religious leaders should have known who Jesus was when he came. But when the tenant farmers saw the Son, they said to each other, “This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.” So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.
This is a parable about what the religious leaders did to the Son of God. “Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those farmers?” In other words, the day of the Lord is coming when God will vindicate his Son. “He will completely destroy those terrible men,” they told him, “and lease his vineyard to other farmers who will give him his fruit at the harvest.” The religious leaders understood the parable in an earthly sense, what was going to happen, but they didn’t seem to make the connection that Jesus was really talking about them and what they were going to do to him.
There’s some other text there in your notes today that you can read more about the vine, and you can read more about the fig tree, how they’re representative of scripture, I mean, of the Jewish nation. But right now, we’re going to go over to slide 28, and we’re going to finish up here, going back with our main verse today back at Joel 1:15, where we read, “Woe because of that day, for the day of the Lord is near and will come as devastation from the Almighty.”
There are three things about the day of the Lord that I want you to see. The first thing is that it is imminent. That means that it can happen at any time. There’s nothing that we have to be warned about it. There’s no indication that it’s going to happen in the next minute, but it certainly could. Or it could happen in an hour; it could happen in a year. You have to think back in the Old Testament, just like Sodom and Gomorrah, were unaware of the coming judgment, and only Lot’s family were saved. And had it not been for the angels pulling them out, even Lot and his family would have been destroyed. But it was imminent.
In that day, people were not expecting it, and suddenly it came. Egypt, though it had warning after warning that destruction was coming because God gave them ever-increasing plagues and problems upon them, still they didn’t know when it finally happened that last night when the firstborn were all killed, and all of a sudden it happened. We can’t believe it. The day of the Lord is always imminent. It comes at unexpected times, even when there is warning about it. The northern kingdom thought they were secure, and after many warnings, they were still destroyed by Assyria by surprise, and likewise the southern kingdom. Again, the day of the Lord was imminent; all of a sudden it was upon them, and it was too late to do anything more.
When we think about the war that’s going on in Israel right now, it should make us think that the imminent coming of Jesus Christ is even more apt to happen at some time. The day of the Lord is imminent; we need to be prepared for it.
And why is that? It’s the second thing here. Because the day of the Lord is devastating. “Woe because of that day, for the day of the Lord is near and will come as devastation from the Almighty.” God is merciful; God is loving; God is good. But he is also a righteous judge. And when he sees all the sin and the corruption upon this world, one day he will judge all of that, and those that are guilty are going to be cast into outer darkness. But those that love the Lord, that are prepared for his coming, won’t have to be thrown into outer darkness. Instead, they’ll have a relationship with the Lord.
Devastation, but yet there’s salvation for those who follow the Lord. He will conquer the wicked; he will destroy evil, but he will save all of those that belong to him. The day of the Lord is imminent; it could happen at any time. We should be prepared for it because it’s going to be devastating. It’s not going to be floods in North Carolina; it’s not going to be a hurricane. It’s going to be far worse than anything that we can imagine because it comes from God, not just from natural circumstances.
Imminent, devastating. The last thing is that it’s divine. When the day of the Lord is near, it will come as devastation, and we will know that it is from the Lord God Almighty, commander of all the armies of heaven. It won’t be anything like what man can do, even with their atomic bombs. It will be more devastating than that. It will be greater than the most powerful nation in the world, or even all the nations together. Whatever destruction they could do, when God comes, it will be a divine destruction. It will be beyond what our understanding of complete power is.
Therefore, we end the message today with this question: Are you prepared for the day of the Lord? That could happen before we leave church today; it could happen next week or next year. We just don’t know because the great and final day of the Lord is coming. But God made a way for us because there’s another spiritual day of the Lord. And that actually happened when Jesus came into the world, where God supernaturally intervened by sending his Son, Jesus Christ, born to a virgin. He came into a world to defeat and to judge the power of darkness, the power of sin, and the power of the grave—all of the spiritual benefits that are even more important to us than just our physical nature.
Therefore, his death on the cross fought the battle for us. His resurrection proved he is the triumphal king. And it’s by accepting his work on the cross that God gives us salvation, he gives us new life, and he gives us eternal hope. The only way to be truly prepared for the coming of the day of the Lord is to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. And that happens when you understand that you have a sin problem that you can’t do anything about. Jesus died on the cross to pay for that sin so that you could have forgiveness, so that you could have healing.
But it’s not enough just to know it in your head; you have to grab hold of it with your entire being and trust only in that. You have to put yourself in the arms of God and say, “I can’t do anything for myself. Please save me from my sins.” And as a result of that, you go forth and you tell people now, “Jesus is my Lord and Savior.” And when you do that, then you will be truly prepared for the day of the Lord.
That is one day imminent. Today it’s going to be devastating; it’s going to be divine. But it’s all going to lead to a new creation, to salvation for all of us. May we pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the prophecies in the Old Testament, that one after another, you have fulfilled them. And through time, we have more and more evidence that you do what you say. We have evidence that you are capable of doing everything that you say. Father, we look forward with excitement to the imminent return of Jesus Christ when he will make all things right. But we also, Father, look forward to that with concern for our loved ones and those among us that are not prepared. And we ask that your Spirit would speak to them, that they might come to you even today and say, “Lord, I have a sin problem. Please forgive me of my sin. I accept what Jesus did for me on the cross.”
“And from this day forward, I will let other people know that you are my Lord and Savior.” In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.