Joel, chapter three. Turn your Bibles to Joel, chapter three. We’ll be reading verses one through sixteen. I thank Matt that he was willing to fill in for me last Sunday as Mary and I were gone. I’m very appreciative that we have men at our church who are able to do that in my absence. Joel, chapter three.
Yes. In those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all the nations and take them to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. I will enter into judgment with them there because of my people, my inheritance, Israel. The nations have scattered the Israelites in foreign countries and divided up my land. They cast lots for my people. They bartered a boy for a prostitute and sold a girl for wine to drink.
And also Tyre, Sidon, and all the territories of Philistia. What are you to me? Are you paying me back or trying to get even with me? I will quickly bring retribution on your heads. For you took my silver and gold and carried my finest treasures to your temples. You sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks to remove them far from their own territory.
Look, I’m about to rouse them up from the place where you sold them. I will bring retribution on your heads. I will sell your sons and daughters to the people of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabians, to a distant nation. For the Lord has spoken. Proclaim this among the nations. Prepare for holy war. Rouse the warriors. Let all the men of war advance and attack. Beat your plows into swords and your pruning knives into spears. Let even the weakling say, “I am a warrior.”
Come quickly, all you surrounding nations, gather yourselves. Bring down your warriors there, Lord, and let the nations be roused and come to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. For there, I will sit down to judge all the surrounding nations. Swing the sickle because the harvest is ripe. Come and trample the grapes because the winepress is full; the wine vats overflow because the wickedness of the nations is extreme.
Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of Decision. For the day of the Lord is near. In the valley of Decision, the sun and moon will grow dark; the stars will cease their shining. The Lord will roar from Zion and make his voice heard from Jerusalem; heaven and earth will shake. But the Lord will be a refuge for his people, a stronghold for the Israelites.
May we pray? Heavenly Father, as we look at your word today, we ask once again that you will give us understanding. And we expect that from you, because you’ve given it to us for a reason—that it would be for those in the past, those in the present, and those in the future—that we might understand your overarching purpose and plan for our world. Father, give us understanding and also how to apply it to our lives today that we might be more obedient to you. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Coming back to the book of Joel today, the theme of the book is the day of the Lord. And we’re over here near the end at the promise of deliverance. And then next week, Tom Mittoon will finish us out with the promise of restoration. In Joel, there is this constant balance between destruction and deliverance or restoration. We have the locust and then the restoration from them. We have the invading army and then deliverance from them.
The first half of Joel has come to pass; historically, it’s been fulfilled. And because of that, we can know that what is still predicted for the future will come about because God’s word always comes true. When we talk about the day of the Lord, there are some specific characteristics that we’ve just kind of mentioned to keep these in mind. It’s about the special interventions of God in human history, when God steps down and does something in the world that we have to attribute only to him and to nothing else.
A grand example of that would be when the Israelites were released from Egypt, the ten plagues that God sent upon the Egyptians. It’s about victory over his enemies. It’s about his sovereignty, not just over this world but over all of the universe. The day of the Lord has happened in past times, and it will happen in the future again. It’s about judging the nations. It’s about disciplining the people of Israel. And in the end, the final day of the Lord will establish his rule in the Messianic kingdom, when all things are made new and we experience the new creation.
Let’s go back to verse one in the text. It says, “Yes, in those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem.” The prophecy here is about a regathering of the Israelites to their homeland. And when we think about prophecy, I want us to keep three things in mind. Though we don’t completely understand prophecies until they are fulfilled, it’s when we look back and we say, “Oh yes, we can see how God worked that all out.”
So some people might say, “Well, then why should we study them if we can’t fully understand?” Well, 1 Peter, chapter one, gives us a reason for this, where it talks about the prophets, the people of God in the Old Testament. They were continually trying to understand these prophecies. And in the same way, God wants us to try to understand them today.
I read from 1 Peter 1:10-12 concerning this salvation. The prophets who prophesied about the grace that would come to you, as they searched and carefully investigated, inquired into what time or what circumstances the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating when he testified in advance. And then Peter goes on to say that even the angels long to catch a glimpse of these things that are going to happen because they’re waiting to see how God will accomplish his purposes.
The second thing to keep in mind is that prophecies can have multiple fulfillments. We can see them fulfilled at one time in the Old Testament and then again in the future or even in the present. The third thing to keep in mind is that prophecies have fulfillment that can either be incremental, where we see a little bit of the fulfillment, or we can see it gradually over time that God is accomplishing his will.
So the best we can do before it is clear that a prophecy is fulfilled is to continually believe that God will do what he says and observe when a prophecy may be coming about. We can look at the times and understand them. That is God starting to bring this about. And so it is with this regathering of Israel. God talks about a certain day is coming, a certain time when he’s going to restore the fortunes of Judah and regather them into the Holy Land. And we see that happening today.
I first want us to go back to the book of Deuteronomy and say that this wasn’t something new that came up to Joel. Even Moses had prophesied that the Jews would be brought back into the land. And as we’re reading through the context of this, we need to understand he’s talking to them before they’ve even gone into the land. They’ve just come out of Egypt, and he’s warning them that if you turn from the Lord, someday you’re going to be dispersed from the land. But there’s that promise that they will come back.
In Deuteronomy, chapter 29, we read: “They began to serve other gods, bowing in worship to gods they had not known, gods that the Lord had not permitted them to worship. Therefore, the Lord’s anger burned against this land, and he brought every curse written in this book on it. The Lord uprooted them from their land in his anger, rage, and intense wrath, and he threw them into another land where they are today.”
Moses is talking as if these things have happened in the past, even though they haven’t happened yet because they’re not even in the land. But because of the language here, we understand how God is looking at the situation. God sees the past; God sees the present; he sees the future all at once. So in God’s mind, what Moses was saying, God saw that it had already happened because of the certainty that it will happen in the future.
He goes on in verse 22 to talk about that future generations of your children were going to follow foreigners and other gods. There are going to be consequences of the sin of the Israelites, that they’re going to be expelled from the land. But we go on to read in verses 1 through 5 of Deuteronomy 30: “When all these things happen to you, the blessings and the curses I have set before you, and you come to your senses while you are in all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, and you and your children will return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your hearts and all your soul by doing everything I am commanding you today.
Then he will restore your fortunes, have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. Even if your exiles are at the farthest horizon, he will gather you and bring you back from there. The Lord your God will bring you into the land your ancestors possessed, and you will take possession of it. He will cause you to prosper and multiply you more than he did your ancestors.”
So whereas God shared through Moses that there would be consequences of Israel’s sin, that they would be expelled from the land, at the same time, Moses is saying, “But there’s this promise that someday you’re going to return to him.” And at that time, God’s promise is that he’s going to restore you to the land. But it wasn’t only Moses that predicted this.
We can go to Ezekiel, and now we’re listening to a prophet that has seen the Israelites taken out of the land by the Assyrians and the Babylonians. And we read in Ezekiel chapter 39:23, “The nations will know that the house of Israel went into exile on account of their iniquity because they dealt unfaithfully with me. Therefore, I hid my face from them and handed them over to their enemies, so that they all fell by the sword. And I dealt with them according to their uncleanness and transgressions, and I hid my face from them.”
Ezekiel said the consequences of Israel’s sin would be that they would be taken from the land. But then we go on to read about the promise of their regathering. Ezekiel said, “So this is what the Lord God: I will restore the fortunes of Jacob and have compassion on the whole house of Israel. I will be jealous for my holy name. They will feel remorse for their disgrace and all the unfaithfulness they committed against me when they live securely in their land with no one to frighten them.
And when I bring them back from the peoples and gather them from the countries of their enemies, I will demonstrate my holiness through them in the sight of many nations. They will know that I am the Lord their God when I regather them to their own land, and after having exiled them among the nations, I will leave none of them behind.”
God said that their sin would cause them to be expelled from the land, but one day they would return to him. And we see that in the news today. More and more Jews are returning to Israel. We’ll look at some numbers in just a minute. We don’t see their whole hearts being turned back to him, but here, the prophecy—we’re seeing parts of it fulfilled and we’re looking forward to the complete fulfillment of it.
Moses talked about it; Ezekiel talked about it. Jeremiah has the same type of words. Here we read in 32:37, “I will certainly gather them from all the lands where I have banished them in my anger, fury, and intense wrath. And I will return them to this place and make them live in safety.” And then in verse 40, “I will make a permanent covenant with them. I will never turn away from doing good to them, and I will put the fear of me in their hearts so that they will never turn away from me.
I will take delight in them to do what is good for them, and with all my heart and mind, I will faithfully plant them in this land.” God promises that the Jews will be regathered to the land of Israel. But he also promised two other things we find in Jeremiah. He promised that there would be a reigning king from the line of David and there would be a serving priesthood.
We read in Jeremiah 33:17, “For this is what the Lord says: David will never fail to have a man sitting on the throne of the house of Israel, and the Levitical priests will never fail to have a man always before me to offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings, and to make sacrifices.” Of course, we know that this one that is coming to reign is Jesus Christ.
And again, it’s just an example of partial or incremental fulfillments of prophecy. When Jesus first came, the Jews were looking for a king that would re-establish himself and drive out Rome. But Jesus came and dealt with our main problem first. He died on the cross for our sins. He was a suffering servant so that we might have eternal salvation. And at some time in the future, when he’s going to return, it will fulfill this prophecy completely that he will be sitting on the throne over the house of Israel in Jerusalem.
God promised a return. God promised a reigning king. God promises that once again there will be serving priests in Jerusalem. How certain is this that it’s going to happen? Let’s go back to our text here. In Jeremiah, it says, “The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah. This is what the Lord says: If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night cease to come to me at their regular time, then also my covenant with my servant David may be broken.”
He’s kind of going in a roundabout way of saying, “I’m going to keep my word.” And he says, “It’s as certain as we see daylight and we see nighttime.” That day after day for thousands of years this continues on—the regularity of that. The certainty of that is proof that he is going to make his promises come fulfilled about Jerusalem and about Israel.
Verse 21 says, “Then also my covenant with my servant David may be broken.” If that could happen, if day and night could end, then he would not have a son reigning on his throne, and the Levitical priests would not be my ministers. And even as the stars of heaven cannot be counted and the sand of the sea cannot be measured, so too I will make innumerable the descendants of my servant David and the Israelites who minister to me.
God has made his promises, and God’s promises are certain. Going back now to the book of Joel, we read about the gathering of Israel, but there’s also going to be a gathering of the nations. In verse two, we read, “I will gather all the nations and take them to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. I will enter into judgment with them there because of my people, my inheritance, Israel.”
God is referring to a time here when he’s going to gather together there in Israel nations that are against Israel, that are coming to Israel to attack it. But God says that he’s going to bring them there so that they might be judged. We don’t know of a specific place that’s identified by this name, the Valley of Jehoshaphat. But we do know that the name means that the Lord will judge.
Joel gives a prophecy about Israel, but he also gives a prophecy about other nations that are against Israel. These rulers and nations may think that they are in control and their plan is to come in and overtake Israel. But the truth is that God says he is in control of this. It is his ultimate purpose that they will be coming into the land so that he can bring about judgment upon them.
The Gathering of the Nations Micah, chapter four, another prophet, talks about a similar thing. Many nations have now assembled against you—that would be Jerusalem. And they say, “Let her be defiled, and let us feast our eyes on Zion.” They see things there; they see resources that they want to take for their own. They see ports; they see lands. But verse 12 says they do not know the Lord’s intentions. They don’t understand that God has a plan in this, that they haven’t just come of their own accord, but God has gathered them like sheaves to the threshing floor.
These nations are going to join together because they covet what Jerusalem has. They’re going to come expecting to get what they want, and they come thinking that this attack is just all their own plan and doing. But God says, “This is all of me. I am in control. I am leading them here.”
Why is it that God is going to judge these nations? What is it that they are guilty of? Joel says that the nations have scattered the Israelites in foreign countries and divided up my land. We see this throughout history. The Jews have been dispersed throughout the world; their land has been divided up multiple times and given to many different kingdoms. And then it talks about how people view the Jews as if they have just not much value or worth.
Joel says that they cast lots for my people as if they’re just throwing dice and they’re gambling with their lives like you would the pieces of a game board. That there’s no real concern that these people have any value. They say that their concern for the value of a boy would be that they would be willing to barter a boy for one night with a prostitute, or they would be willing to sell one girl just so that they can get a drink of wine.
It shows how much the world—and those that are against God’s people—devalue the lives of the Israelites. Their lives are going to be altered like pieces in a game just with dice. Again here, we have the boy’s life isn’t worth more than one night with a prostitute, and a girl’s life is worth less. The life of a child is not worth more than one drink of wine. And for this, the nations are going to be guilty and face the judgment of God.
When God talks about doing this to nations, he gets really personal about it. Because God doesn’t just see it as being something against the Israelites, but he says, “All these things are personally against me.” And that’s what we read in verses four through six.
And also Tyre, Sidon, and all the territories of Philistia. What are you to me? Not what are you to the Israelites? But God saying, “What are you to me personally?” And he asks them the question, “Are you paying me back, or are you trying to get even with me?” God takes attacks on his people as being personal affronts to him. He says, “I will quickly bring retribution on your heads, for you took my silver and gold, and you carried my finest treasures to your temples. You sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks to remove them far from their own territory.”
All the evil that has been perpetrated against God’s people, God takes that personally. When someone strikes the Israelites or steals from them, God describes this as an offense against him because it’s as if people are striking God himself or stealing from him.
Verse 7. Again, we come back; there’s going to be this regathering of Israel. God says, “Look, I’m about to rouse them up from the place where you have sold them.” Now, typically throughout history, when nations have been conquered, they’ll take the people out and they’ll disperse them to other lands so their numbers are not so large. And their hope has been that they would assimilate into those new lands and not be a threat anymore.
Usually, other people groups assimilate into the new cultures within a few generations after they’re taken. It’s rare that they would keep their original nationalities and then return there in mass at a later time. But that’s what has happened with the Jews. They were dispersed, but they haven’t been assimilated. They’ve remained Jewish. They’ve remained faithful to their nationalities.
If we think about immigrants coming to America from Scandinavia, the British Isles, or Europe, are any of you here for that reason? Did your ancestors come because they came to a better place to live? And you may still be interested in your ancestry and go to ancestry.com and you may want to look up, “Oh, you know, where did my grandfather and my great-great-grandfather come from?” And you may even be interested in going to visit those places for a vacation. But how many of you today would want to move back to where your great-great-great-great-grandparents lived?
Okay, we got one. That’s great. But generally, we don’t see that happening. But that is what is happening with the Jews. It’s unprecedented that the Jews would return en masse to their homeland. It’s unprecedented that they even still exist after all the attempts to annihilate them and to absorb them into other cultures.
And yes, some of them have been absorbed, but the multitudes have not, and they are returning to God’s land. Just have a chart here that comes from a Google synopsis and a website called All Israel News. It shows how the Jews are returning to the land. In 1800, there were 7,000 Jews in Israel. In 1880, there were 24,000. In 1900, there were 50,000. But we jump up to 1947, the year before they became a nation; there were 630,000. And within two years, there were over 1 million Jews living there.
And today, there are almost 8 million Jews that have returned to the land of Israel. The Jewish population of Israel has grown dramatically since 1948 when Israel became a state. And today, Israel is home to 50% of the world’s Jewish population, making it the largest Jewish population center in the world. The Jews are returning to their land. We’re seeing possibly the prophecies that God shared with his prophets about what is happening, and it’s just increasing more and more.
Since October of last year, when the war again started, there’s been a 300% increase in people applying to leave France and go back to Israel. There’s been a 150% jump in people from Canada wanting to go back to Israel. Even in the United States, there’s been a 100% rise of the Jews that are wanting to go back to their homeland—the regathering of Israel.
Then we go back to the judgment of the nations. What is this going to look like? It’s going to be not the Israelites bringing judgment, but God himself is going to judge those that are against his people. “I will bring retribution on your heads. I will sell your sons and daughters to the people of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabians, to a distant nation. For the Lord has spoken. Proclaim this among the nations. Prepare for a holy war.”
Because this is a war where the nations are against God, not just against his people. “Rouse the warriors. Let all the men of war advance and attack. Beat your plows into swords and your pruning knives into spears. Let even the weakling say, ‘I am a warrior.'” And then the call is come quickly. “All you surrounding nations, gather together.”
There’s the call to the nations, but then there’s a call to the Lord. “Bring your warriors there, Lord. Let the nations be roused and come to the Valley of Jehoshaphat.” Once again, it’s going to be a holy war because God is involved. The warriors that will be coming to fight will be his angelic host that appear for the judgment of the nations. God has prophesied that this will come about.
We’re going to continue to read then, “For there I will sit down to judge all the surrounding nations. Swing the sickle because the harvest is ripe. Come and trample the grapes because the winepress is full; the wine vats overflow because the wickedness of the nations is extreme. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision. For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.”
In verse 15, we hear how it’s going to be a supernatural event. It won’t be any surprise who is involved here; it goes beyond just human warfare because it tells us in verse 15 that the sun and the moon will grow dark, the stars will cease their shining, and the Lord will roar from Zion and make his voice heard from Jerusalem; heaven and earth will shake.
But the Lord will be a refuge for his people, a stronghold for the Israelites. It’s going to be very evident that God is standing up for his people, that he is the one that is fighting for them because the battle will be accompanied by supernatural events. And as in the plagues of Egypt, the Israelites were protected from them. God says that all of this going on, still my people are going to be protected in the midst of these supernatural events.
Now, these prophecies may not all come to pass in one battle. We may see them incrementally fulfilled. Because in regard to prophecy, we go back to the three things at the beginning. We can’t completely understand them until they’re fulfilled, but we still are supposed to look at them and study them and see them possibly coming about.
And we have to remember that they can have multiple fulfillments and can be fulfilled incrementally or gradually over time. But what we’re trying to point out today is to show you that God’s people are returning to the land, and it appears that things are coming to a head in this world, that God is about to intervene and restore the new creation.
The best that we can do before it’s clear is believe that God is going to do what he says and to continue to observe the prophecies and what may be coming about. So how are we supposed to apply this to our life today? I’ve got four applications up there.
First one is we know that God will accomplish his purposes. The second is we know that God will destroy the wicked and deliver the righteous. And we know that God’s discipline is purposeful. And last, we know that God’s plan for Israel will be fulfilled. Just reiterating, we know that God will accomplish his purposes. What does that mean to us? It means it’s all about him. It’s all about his purposes. It’s all about what he’s planning to do. It’s not about us.
We become so self-centered in our life that we look at how everything affects us. We should have an eternal perspective and say, “How is this working out God’s plan, and what is he doing?” We know that God will destroy the wicked and deliver the righteous. That should give us hope. Good will win in the end, and we don’t need to worry or be fearful about the outcome because God will restore all things.
We know that God’s discipline is purposeful. We see it in the Israelites that he sent them out of the land, but his desire is that they will return to him and come back. It’s the same way in our life that sometimes we have difficulties, problems, illnesses. We can have many things that God allows in our life because he’s trying to bring us back to him.
Either he just wants us to bring a closer relationship with him, or maybe there’s some sin in our life that’s driven us away. God has purpose in discipline, but it’s not to hurt us. The ultimate purpose is to bring us back into a closer fellowship with him. Lastly, we know that God’s plan for Israel will be fulfilled. And for me, that means that I want to be on God’s side in this and support his people because that is the nation that he is going to support.
The end. Kelly Jo is going to be coming up now to lead us in a song with the worship team, and I’m just going to ask that we all stand as we sing, and you can remain standing for our benediction today. But what is God saying to you? Is there something in your life that’s a difficulty right now, and you’re just thinking about it in your own life? Wow, this is hard for me.
Maybe you need to stop and say, “God, what are you trying to do in my life? Are you trying to draw me back to you through this difficult circumstance?” Or maybe you’re worried about the situation in the world. There’s hope in God. There’s certainty that he will make all things right.
May we have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, as we close in song today, we come to you acknowledging that you are in control of all things. Help us to be more concerned about your purposes than our own. Help us to be hopeful that in the midst of all the things going on, the increased evil in the world, that you are still in control and working all these things according to your plan.
Let us draw closer to you, Father. Let us see our difficulties as opportunities to trust you more. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.