And we’re looking at the promise of deliverance and restoration. I’ll begin reading in Joel 2. We’ll read verses 18 through 27. Please turn in your Bibles and join me if you desire.
Then the Lord became jealous for his land and spared his people. The Lord answered his people, “Look, I am about to send you grain, new wine, and fresh oil. You will be satiated with them, and I will no longer make you a disgrace among the nations. I will drive the northerner far from you and banish him to a dry and desolate land, his front ranks into the Dead Sea and his rear guard into the Mediterranean Sea. His stench will rise. Yes, his rotten spirit will rise, for he has done astonishing things. Don’t be afraid, Land. Rejoice and be glad, for the Lord has done astonishing things. Don’t be afraid, wild animals, for the wilderness pastures have turned green. The trees bear their fruit, and the fig tree and grapevine yield their riches.
Children of Zion, rejoice and be glad in the Lord your God, because he gives you the autumn rain for your vindication. He sends showers for you, both autumn and spring rain as before. The threshing floors will be full of grain, and the vats will overflow with new wine and fresh oil. I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust ate, the young locust, the destroying locust, and the devouring locust, my great army that I sent against you. You will have plenty to eat and be satisfied. You will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. My people will never again be put to shame. And you will know that I am present in Israel and that I am the Lord your God, and there is no other. My people will never again be put to shame.
May we pray? Heavenly Father, we ask that you give us understanding of your word. Help us to have hope in it, that the new creation is coming. And just as your word has been fulfilled in the past, we can go into our day-to-day lives being certain that you will bring everything to completion as you have promised. In your Son’s name, we pray. Amen.
The day of the Lord. That’s the main theme of the Book of Joel. And it’s talking about, first, we had an invasion of locusts, and then we had an invading army. Last week, we talked about a call to repentance, and today we’re talking about how now God is going to restore and he is going to reward. He’s going to reverse the judgment and the discipline that had come upon Israel.
But briefly, let’s go back over the day of the Lord. What is it about? It’s whenever there’s a special intervention of God in human history. It’s about him having victory over his enemies. It’s about his sovereignty over the universe. It can happen in the past; it can happen in the future. Ultimately, it is not just to judge Israel, though; it’s to judge all of the nations. But it is also to discipline Israel to bring them back to him and ultimately to establish his rule in the Messianic kingdom when all things will be made new.
Last week, we talked about repentance in Joel chapter two, where the Lord declared, “Turn to me, return to the Lord your God.” And we talked about what repentance means. That repentance is a radical moral turn of the whole person from sin to God, inseparable from faith and demonstrated by actions and fruitful living. And we also talked about what true faith is. True faith is head knowledge that we hear the gospel, but then there has to be a time that we have conviction in our life.
Can we go to the next slide up there? I think I have it right. There we go. Conviction is, “Wow, that makes sense.” I’ve heard it, but this applies to me. I’m a sinner, and I need God’s saving grace in my life. But there has to be one more step in saving faith. And that’s when you say, “Now, God, I do trust you to do what you said. I trust you to save me from my sin.”
And what is this gospel that we have to know, that we have to be convicted about, and in which we have to trust? It’s first that Jesus is who he claimed to be—the Lord God—and that he died a substitutionary death to pay the penalty of our sin. Instead of us dying for our sin, he did it for us. And then he was buried, and he rose from the dead.
Let’s go back now to the text. We’re in verse 18 of chapter 2. It says that after this, then there’s this change in attitude. Instead of there being devastation, instead of there being destruction and discipline, now the Lord is giving a time of deliverance to his people. It says, “Then the Lord became jealous for his land, and he spared his people.”
And the Lord answered his people. Whenever there is true repentance, whenever there is turning to God initially or turning back to Him, God brings deliverance to anyone that’s involved there. Now, it’s interesting because we’ve talked about in prophecy, it can be about the past, it can be about the present, and it can be about the future. And in this particular verse here, scholars are not in complete agreement about whether this talks about something that did happen, is happening, or will happen.
And the reason for that disagreement is when the Jews originally wrote down the Scriptures, they didn’t write any vowels. They just wrote consonants. So can you imagine writing your name and just putting the consonants in there? Well, years later, the Masoretes came back in 600 A.D., and they said, “You know, somebody might forget where all these vowels are.” Imagine memorizing all the Bible, just the consonants, and knowing where all the vowels are. The Jews had done that for years, but the Masoretes came back, and they wrote in the vowels.
And when you think about the letters C, M, if we do it C, A, M, E, it says what? Something happened in the past. But if we put an O in there, then it says that something is going to happen in the future. And so with this particular text, they’re not sure about what God is saying. And it may be that he’s talking about the past and the future. That’s part of the confusing things in prophecy. We don’t know when it’s jumping forward and backward.
But as we’ll see in the text today, some of this stuff has never been fulfilled that God has promised. Some of it has just been partially fulfilled, the promise of deliverance. Why is it that God promises His people that he is going to deliver them? We have to go back to Exodus, chapter 34, verses 6 through 7. When God shared His character and the reputation that he wanted to have with the Israelites, he said, “The Lord, the Lord is a compassionate and gracious God. He is slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But he will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the consequences of the Father’s iniquity on the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation.”
Israel had gone astray from the Lord. They were worshiping idols. They had left following him completely. And according to God’s nature and character, he is a right judge. He is always going to punish evil. But it’s interesting when he shares about his character. He doesn’t put down first that he punishes the guilty. But the most important thing is that he wants us to know that he is compassionate, he’s gracious, and he’s willing to forgive no matter what our sin is.
And so it was he was promising to Israel, even though you have been devastated by the locust and you’ve been devastated by this army. If you will repent and truly turn back to me, I’m going to be compassionate, I’m going to be gracious, and I’m going to be forgiving. Jesus Christ was God in the flesh. And when we go to the New Testament, we see in the same way that God spoke about himself as being compassionate, Jesus demonstrated true compassion in the flesh.
In Mark, chapter one, verse 41, we read, “Jesus was moved with compassion, and he reached out his hand and he touched him.” Jesus isn’t reaching out to a baby here or a small child. He’s reaching out and touching a man that has leprosy. People with leprosy had to live outside of the camp. Their flesh was literally rotting and falling off, and they would have to wipe their sores as they rotted physically. And Jesus has such compassion that he reached out and touched this man. He had compassion for individuals, but he also had compassion for everybody.
We read in Matthew 9, when he saw the crowds, he felt compassion for them because they were distressed and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus, the word of God, became God in flesh. And he demonstrated the compassion of God. And anyone that turns to God, anyone that turned to Jesus in repentance and faith, he was there to have compassion upon them.
Let’s go back to the text. In verse 19, God said, “Look, I’m about to send you grain, new wine, and fresh oil. You will be satiated with them, and I will no longer make you a disgrace among the nations.” Here’s an opening statement about what’s going to be further developed in the text. He’s going to restore them, and there’s, along with this restoration, there’s going to be deliverance. And specifically he says they’re going to be delivered from disgrace. That means that the enemy is no longer going to taunt them. The enemy is no longer going to insult them. The enemy is no longer going to be able to scorn them.
This is true of the Jews in the past. It’s true of the Jews today. Those that are on Satan’s side continue to disapprove of them. They continue to blame them for things they haven’t done. They continue to insult them and scorn them. And in the same way that the Jews have had to suffer the disgrace of following the Lord, we as believers, in the same way, are going to be disgraced. But God’s promise to us is that one day that disgrace is going to be completely removed. He did it in the Old Testament. He’s going to do it in the future.
What does God specifically say in verse 20 that he’s going to do? He says, “I will drive the northerner far from you and banish him to a dry and desolate land.” Basically, if you were going to attack Israel, you had to come from either the north or you had to come from the south. Because if you came from the east, if I’m getting my directions right, you would have had to go across the desert. The nation to the south would have been Egypt if they had come. But all the others—the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Medes, the Persians—everyone in the past that ever attacked them would have come up the Fertile Crescent and come down from the north.
So God is referring to either specific enemies here or to the enemies in general that will always come against them. And we do find in other scriptures that there is a day coming that a great army will come from the north again, Gog and Magog, and we’ll be looking at that more in the weeks ahead. But God promised them that he would drive the northerner far away.
And it goes on to say that when he does that, his stench will rise. Yes, his rotten smell will rise, for he has done astonishing things. The astonishing things that this king has done is going to end up with the death of his soldiers, which is going to amount to the smell that would be from the death. We have an example of this in Second Kings, chapter 19. There was a battle in the past when King Sennacherib of Syria had surrounded Jerusalem.
And at that time, he was taunting the Israelites. A letter was sent to Hezekiah, and Hezekiah, the king, took that to the temple, and he turned to the Lord and he laid it out before the Lord and he prayed to the Lord. And God sent his prophet Isaiah with the answer to the king’s prayer. And that night, the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when the people got up the next morning, there were all the dead bodies. It must have taken them quite some time to bury 185,000 people.
And over the days that it took to do that, the stench of their bodies would have risen up in the land. We see God having his day in the past. But if we go to Ezekiel 39, then we read about a day in the future when again this is going to happen. Here we have a future battle coming when there will be as much destruction as we read about earlier for the Assyrian army. In this prophecy, God says, “You, all your troops and the people who are with you will fall on the mountains of Israel. I will give you as food to every kind of predatory bird and to the wild animals. You will fall on the open field, for I have spoken. This is the declaration of the Lord God.”
And the house of Israel will spend seven months burying them in order to cleanse the land. I think bodies start to smell shortly after there’s death. But imagine bodies that are still there after seven months because it’s taking them so long to be buried. A prophecy that hasn’t come about yet, but we saw it happen in the past. We can be certain that God is going to fulfill it also in the future.
There’s a promise of deliverance, but there’s also a promise of restoration. Let’s go to verse 21. “Don’t be afraid, land. Rejoice and be glad, for the Lord has done astonishing things. Don’t be afraid, wild animals, for the wilderness pastures have turned green. The trees bear their fruit, and the fig tree and the grapevine yield their riches.”
Children of Zion, rejoice and be glad in the Lord your God, because he gives you the autumn rain for your vindication. He sends showers for you, both autumn and spring rain as before, and the threshing floors will be full of grain, and the vats will overflow with new wine and fresh oil.
The first thing I want you to see here is that when God talks about restoration, he’s talking about rejuvenation. And what we see particularly here in the text is that it’s not just the people that are going to be rejuvenated, but it’s the land, it’s the wild animals, and it’s the people of Israel—rejuvenation of all creation. And the reason for that is all of creation, not just human beings, are suffering because of sin.
And this goes back to Genesis chapter three, where we read, “He said to the man, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, do not eat from it. The ground is cursed because of you.'” All of creation is looking forward to the great day of the Lord when he’s going to return and give us the new creation that we share about.
When we talk about the Gospel and we go over to Romans chapter 8, Paul picks up this theme and he describes it a little bit more fully. He says that “the creation eagerly waits with anticipation for God’s sons to be revealed.” Throughout all the years when people have not looked to the Lord, creation has been continually waiting, eagerly looking forward to everything being returned to its right order.
“For the creation was subjected to futility. It was subjected to sin. And it wasn’t because the creation decided to do this. It wasn’t willingly, but it was because of him—being Adam—who subjected it to the sin when he and Eve turned away from the Lord. Creation was subjected to futility. And it’s in hope that the creation itself also wants to be set free from the bondage to decay when the glorious freedom of God’s children comes about. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now.”
So when God talks about restoration, when he talks about rejuvenation, it’s not just for people, but the entire earth is looking forward to the new creation that God has promised to be about. There’s rejuvenation. But secondly, when we talk about restoration, God tells us that there’s going to be rejoicing. Let’s go back and read the underlined part here. He tells them to rejoice and be glad, for the Lord has done astonishing things. And then again, he says, “Rejoice and be glad in the Lord your God, because he gives.” He’s going to give rain for your vindication. He’s going to give showers. He’s going to give rain in the autumn and the spring as he did before.
Rejoice! But it’s not to rejoice just because things are going well, but he tells us to rejoice for the Lord. And he tells us to rejoice in the Lord your God. Our true rejoicing is going to be in what God does for us, not what we are able to accomplish for ourselves. We fall short in thinking that different parties, different governments, a new job, or a new friend can solve our problems. None of these things can help us. Only God alone can restore us and give us what we need when we turn to him in repentance.
What does the vindication look like? It’s a clearing of blame, and he says that this blame that is on us is just going to be washed away with rain and with showers—the same way we are cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ. And the world too is going to be cleansed one day by his death, burial, and resurrection. Going on now to verse 25, we talked about rejuvenation. We talked about there’s going to be rejoicing in the Lord. But he also tells us that there’s going to be a reward for those that serve the Lord, and that every difficulty that we go through, every discipline that we go through, is going to result in God rewarding us.
In verse 25, we read, “I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust ate, the young locust, the destroying locust, and the devouring locust, my great army that I sent against you. You will have plenty to eat and be satisfied. You will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you, and my people will never again be put to shame.”
God loved his people, but he still disciplined them. He still allowed judgment to come upon them. And so it is with us today, that God disciplines us when we turn out of the way of righteousness. I want to take us to Hebrews, chapter 12, verses 5 through 8, where it talks about God disciplines us because he loves us. And we read, “My son, do not take the Lord’s discipline lightly or lose your heart when you are reproved by Him. For the Lord disciplines the one that he loves, and he punishes every son that he receives. Therefore, endure suffering as discipline, because God is dealing with you as sons. For what son is there that a father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, which all receive, then you are illegitimate children and not the sons of God.”
If God doesn’t ever discipline you when there’s sin in your life, there is reason to question whether you truly are a son of God. Because God disciplines us because he has the desire that he wants to reward us and that he wants to restore us. In Isaiah 41:2, we read this promise: “Comfort, comfort, my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and announce to her that her time of hard service is over. Her iniquity has been pardoned, and she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”
The promise to Israel, the promise to the church, the promise to us is that eventually we will receive a reward for all the difficulties that we go through, whether it’s because of judgment or whether it’s because of discipline in our lives. God will repay for the years. We can look forward to the reward in restoration. There’s rejuvenation, there’s rejoicing in God, there’s a reward for serving him.
But fourthly, we see that there is the emphasis of relationship. “You will have plenty to eat and be satisfied, and because of this you will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you.” Part of relationship with anyone is getting to know them better and better. The more I learn about my children, the more I appreciate them. The more time I spend with my grandkids, the more I enjoy them, and I start to see their special gifts and what God has blessed them with. And as I’ve lived longer and longer with my wife, I appreciate her more and more.
And it’s the same way with God. When we return to him and we walk with him, we learn more about His Name. And that leads us to praise Him. Throughout Scripture, God does not have just one Name. There are a multiplicity of them because there is so much about his character and nature that God’s Word teaches us about him, that the better we understand him, the longer we walk with him, the more that we can praise Him. And this is part of the relationship that God promises us when we return to walk with Him.
But it’s not just about understanding His Name better and knowing his character better, but it’s also about a greater understanding of his presence. In verse 27, it says, “When there is true repentance, you will know that I am present in Israel and that I am the Lord your God, and there is no other.” When we walk away from the Lord, when we walk off the path of righteousness, we sometimes feel like, “Well, God has abandoned me. He’s far away.” God has never abandoned you. In that time you have walked away from Him. But when we’re in a true right relationship with him, we sense that he is right there in our midst.
It makes us understand how close he is to us as a father, how close he is to us as a friend. Thus, God’s ultimate goal for us, whenever there is discipline or whenever there is judgment, he does want to rejuvenate us. He does want us to rejoice. He does want to reward us. But what is most precious to him is that restored relationship that he has with us. Because he wants to be close to us. He wants us to be the first person that we come to when we have need. He wants us to walk hand in hand with Him.
So the goal of all of this is not just to make us feel better, but to help us to understand who God is, His Name, and His presence. The psalmist in Psalm 32, as we come to a close today, he talks about the forgiveness of God. And the applications that I want you to make today are one of three, or maybe all three of them.
The first thing is that you need to turn to the Lord in repentance. If you have not done that already, or if you’ve wandered away from the Lord and you’re a believer, you need to return to him to have this walk that he calls us to have. But not only should we turn to the Lord, but we need to always expect and know for certain that God will offer forgiveness. Sometimes we get to a point in our life, we just feel like we’re completely devastated.
“I’ve done the same sin over and over, and I can’t seem to overcome it. Can God forgive me one more time?” And the answer is yes. Or someone might say, “I’ve done this awful, terrible crime. I’ve done something so terrible, God could never forgive me.” The answer is, God can forgive you, and he does. We need to turn to the Lord. We need to always expect him to forgive.
And the third thing to think about today is that if God forgives us, if he’s forgiven everybody in this room, if he’s forgiven everybody that’s ever lived and will live for all their evil sin and their hatred towards him, if he can forgive all of those, we should be able to forgive the one person that has offended us.
Let’s read what the psalmist knew in Psalm 32: “How joyful is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, that God doesn’t look at it anymore. How joyful is a person whom the Lord does not charge with iniquity and in whose spirit is no deceit.”
The psalmist said, “When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long.” Instead of turning to the Lord, he just held in his guilt, and he continued in his sin, and it became a physical devastation to him. “For day and night your hand was heavy on me.” God was disciplining him out of love to bring him back. And he says, “My strength was drained as in the summer heat.” And the word Selah there, we think that it means you need to stop and think about this.
We have the psalmist here. He’s been in sin, and God is disciplining him, but he’s at this point refusing to return to the Lord. But the psalmist says, “Then finally, I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not conceal my iniquity. And I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and you forgave the guilt of my sin.”
So now the psalmist is saying what he said at the very beginning has happened to him, that now he is joyful because his transgressions are forgiven and his sins are covered. God forgives abundantly. So should we.
First John, chapter 1, verses 8-9, God reiterates the promise to us in the New Testament: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” God forgives abundantly. So should we. And not only are we supposed to know that, but it’s commanded to us. In Matthew chapter 6, verses 14-15, we read, “For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. But if you don’t forgive others, your Father will not forgive your offenses.”
And then in Ephesians 4:32, “And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.” If you’ve not turned to the Lord in repentance at some time in your life, we’ve got a prayer up there on the screen, and this is the type of thing that you would say to God and mean from your heart: “God, I’m a sinner in need of the forgiveness and salvation that only you can provide. Both my mind and heart are convinced that Jesus is your son, God in the flesh, that he died to pay the penalty for my sin, and that he rose from death, that I might also rise to new life and be a new creation. Today, I am radically turning my entire person from a life of sin to live for you.”
That’s what initial repentance looks like. That may be where you are today, that you need to turn to God initially. But maybe you’ve wandered off the path and you need to return to God like the Israelites did because you’ve been experiencing separation from God. You’ve been feeling his discipline. Know that God will forgive you if you come back to him.
But thirdly, you also need to be examining your heart. Is there anyone that God would lay upon your mind today? You know you’ve not forgiven that person. Maybe you haven’t forgiven them for years. Maybe it’s just been a matter of hours. God holds you accountable to give forgiveness to everyone because no one has offended you more than any of us have offended God by our sin.
May we pray? Heavenly Father, as we come to you today, we just ask that you would turn us to you. Father, if we are going astray, and if there is anyone that has never initially gone to you in repentance and faith, that they would express that to you today in their heart and become a true child of God. We also ask that you would lay upon our heart, Father, anyone that maybe we have forgotten that we haven’t forgiven them. Let us do that in our heart. And if they know that they’re not forgiven, Father, lay it upon us that we would have the strength by your Spirit to go to them immediately and say, “I forgive you.”
Father, I mean, I forgive you as the father has forgiven me. It’s in your son’s name that we give thanks and praise for the forgiveness that we have. And in his name, we end our prayer.