“Joel: What’s Actually Wrong” // Joel 1–3 ther’s Day… Open your Bibles to the book of Joel. (It’s right a.) series on the Minor Prophets, a set of books most people ver in the Bible… at’s because first, they are called “minor,” and so we think, f they are called minor, how important could they be?” ey can be hard to understand. t week we saw that they are not called minor because they mportant, but because they are short. Which I like—they get in, state their case, wrap up. Some of you say, “Yeah, I wish your sermons were minor.” Fair point. gh these 12 books are short, they are really important ey describe how life in Israel went wrong, and what they bout that after it had. k is the second book of the Minor Prophets. ay not realize this, but Joel is actually one of the earliest ed prophets—most people miss that because his book so late in the Old Testament—but your Old Testament is anged chronologically. ed and prophesied early in Israel’s history—after David and on, but before the exile. He probably was a student of Elijah sha. ritten during a time when a lot of things had gone wrong in ritually, economically, politically. They were had endured a ad leaders and some significant financial setbacks. They ffered through a national plague (which I’ll tell you about in a minute). There was civil unrest. Their stock market was
foreign trade was low, national confidence was non-­‐existen
FBI director had just gotten fired, and almost everyone belie
country was headed in the wrong direction. Joel writes to diagnose the problem—and he tells them tha
problem is not the pain they are experiencing in these othe
the real problem is a dislocation in their relationship with G
● Joel’s book reminds me of the story I heard about the g
went to the doctor and complained that “everything on
hurt.” The doctor asked him what was wrong, and he po
his shoulder and says, “It hurts here.” Then he pointed t
head, “It hurts here.” Then he pointed to his foot and sa
hurts here.” The doctor said, “You idiot. You have a dislo
finger.” ● Many times, we feel like a host of things in our lives are wrong, when in actuality it is only one thing that is wron
This is going to have application for us in our personal lives for us as a church. (This book is short—only 3 chapters, we’re going through th
book.) (I. A Self-­‐Inflicted Plague (Joel 1:4–2:5)) Joel opens his book with a description of gigantic locust pla
“What the cutting locust has left, the swarming locust has e
what the swarming locust has left, the hopping locust has e
what the hopping locust has left, the destroying locust has e
(Joel 1:4) ● In America, thankfully we have never experienced the k
thing Joel is describing here. You may have seen a locus
look like 3-­‐inch long, heavily-­‐armed grasshoppers—but this kind of plague. ● The last recorded one that I could find happened in the
in 1915:1 Observers said that in March of that year swarms sts appeared in the sky. They flew down from the northeast ds so thick they obscured the sun. iately they began to dig holes in the soil about 4 inches nd a half-­‐inch wide, depositing more than 100 eggs in each The way they lay eggs is pretty creepy—they are neatly formed in cones about one inch long and as thick as a pencil, like something out of the Matrix. holes are literally everywhere. About 70,000 eggs would be trated in a single square yard of soil, and these patches d the ground for miles and miles. a few weeks, these young locusts hatched, resembling nts. They hadn’t formed wings yet, so they hop along the like fleas. They would cover 4-­‐ to 600 feet a day, ing any and all vegetation in their path. grew, they developed the ability to jump, at which point ould scour the trees and vines. A few weeks later they’d p wings, and they’d swarm over the areas they had already ed to destroy any plant with life left in it. und of their swarms, they said, was terrifying. ses say when they were done, there is literally nothing plant-­‐wise—left. They even eat the bark off the trees, behind a wasteland what looked like a nuclear holocaust. ddle school boys at a pizza party. get more desperate for food, they penetrated into houses food, clothes, fabric, and wood. Everything of value was his locust plague as both an illustration of their sin as well ng of God’s future judgment on their sin. n) ice, The Minor Prophets: Joel. Let me talk 1st about the Illustration aspect: Like the locust the devastating power of sin is progressive and total; it grad
destroys everything in its path. ● It destroys relationships and rots your character and wa
ability even to find happiness. ● The laws God gave us are life—we were created to love
others; for purity and honesty and generosity and worsh
when we do those things we experience life. ● We see this illustrated in the Creation account. When G
created the earth, it began as a dark, shapeless, chaotic Genesis 1:2 says that God’s word then spoke into that ch
brought life and beauty and order out of it. This shows w
word does when it enters our lives—it brings order and ● Sin, by contrast, unravels creation and plunges our live
into darkness, and God’s judgments in Scripture often il
that. o We saw that in the 10 Plagues… /not magic tricks/ r
Creation o We see that kind of judgment again in the locusts. o Wolf blade: sin numbs you until it destroys you. (th
pornography, flirtation, rebellion—it may feel good moment but rots your soul) So, the locust plague is an illustration. It is also a… Warning …of a coming judgment, one much worse than the locusts. would send the armies of Babylon who would destroy their take them into captivity for their sin. Listen how Joel proph
about the Babylonian invasion in terms of the locust plague
nation has come up against my land, powerful and beyond n
its teeth are like lions’ teeth. It has laid waste my vine and s
my fig tree; it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down
branches are made white. The fields are destroyed before t
ground mourns. The land is like the Garden of Eden before t
m a desperate wilderness, and nothing escapes them. As mbling of chariots, they leap on the tops of mountains, like ng of a flame devouring the stubble.” (1:5–7; 2:2–5) n destroyed their lives, and the locust plague destroyed the armies of Babylon will bring an even worse judgment if come to their senses. are seeing in that is an illustration of what theologians call e and active dimensions of the wrath of God, and how they her. wrath of God = God allowing us to suffer the natural uences of our sin. wrath of God = the lightning bolt of judgment from heaven. o Fire – the agony of God’s displeasure o Hell, is the full fruition of telling God to get out of yo
like C.S. Lewis said, In the end, we either say to God
be done” or he says to us, “Thy will be done.” o No one has helped me get my mind around the wra
as much as C. S. Lewis: SUMMARIZE: “The Bible asse
each person will go on forever… There would be a go
things that would not be worth bothering about if I w
to live only eighty years or so, but which I had better
about if I am to live forever. If my bad temper or jeal
gets worse for a span of 80 years, the increase will n
noticeable. But what does it look like for that temper
jealous to grow non-­‐stop for a million years? Hell is p
the technical term for what it would be.”3 o Sin is like cancer. It never stops growing. the thing: They work together. The active wrath of God—
ng bolt—is usually just an extension of, the passive. A few mples: s 3: Adam and Eve sin and God casts them out his ce; but Adam and Eve had already chosen to hide from presence, before God banished them from the Garden. tory of the Plagues, Scripture says that God’s judgment on h was to harden his heart so he would not believe, but only haraoh hardened his own heart several times.2 the way Jesus describes hell itself—which is the ultimate of the wrath of God, shows it to be an extension of his wrath. Sometimes we miss that because the Jewish hors Jesus use can be unfamiliar to us: “worm that does not die” – an image of a conscience tinuingly being eaten away by guilt and regret er darkness – the total absence of God and all his dness. ashing of teeth – Jewish image that meant self-­‐
demnation and self-­‐loathing When you understand that, you’ll see any earthly experien
God’s judgment—like this plague of locusts—as God’s merc
God is trying to wake you up. ● (Remember, the Minor Prophets started with one of the
mind-­‐bending illustrations of God’s love—Hosea’s faith
persistent love to a notoriously unfaithful wife. And you wonder sometimes how to reconcile these warnings of ju
with that beautiful picture of love. This is how.) ● Any experience of the painful consequences of our sin too late is God, in mercy, trying to wake you up. He’s no
to pay you back but bring you back. ● One of the most gripping illustrations of that I’ve heard Christian leader I knew of who got exposed in the Ashle
scandal a couple of years ago. Is something like this happening with you right now? ● Maybe you feel like “locusts” are eating away at every p
your life. 1: God’s wrath was to “give them over to their own lusts…” 3
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 74. are trying to save money, but God keeps letting stuff ak down. are trying to be better in your marriage, but new issues of flict keep cropping up. keep trying new strategies to get happy, but it always s like only a skin-­‐deep, pseudo-­‐happiness. (If you have to nd money every day to get happy, that means nothing is pening on the inside.) trying to wake you up. No new strategy is going to fix you. at’s because the source of the problem is not found in the ntal. It’s a vertical problem. od has more locusts than you have solutions. r God to bring you to your senses, he has to bring you to rself. me of you, he’s been calling out to some of you for years, u haven’t been ready to listen because you haven’t come end of yourself yet. r for God to make you new, he’s got to rip out the old. He tear you down. So, don’t be surprised if your world keeps ing. s blessed our church with a lot of growth over the years. a lot of people come here each weekend to re-­‐explore the God thing. And here’s what I’ve seen—a lot of people when me back to church don’t want real change, they just want fix what’s wrong; to slap a new moral coat of paint on their scrub away the rust. here’s the thing: God doesn’t just want to help you polish the old, he wants to make you a new person. Lewis in Mere Christianity: SUMMARIZE: Many people me to God because they realize their house has broken wn and they need God to fix it. And “at first you can erstand what he is doing. He is getting the drains right and pping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those s needed doing and so you are not surprised. But then, “he starts knocking the house about in a w
hurts abominably and does not seem to make any se
you.” And you wonder, “What on earth is he up to?”
“The explanation is that he is building quite a differe
from the one you thought of—erecting a new wing h
putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, m
courtyards. You thought you were being made into a
little cottage: but he is building a palace. He intends and live in it himself.” – C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
This is what God was doing in their age with the locusts, and
is doing in your life. He wants to reconcile with you. So again: What is this for you? Is there something in your li
you are asking God to take away, but God is trying to send y
warning through it? So, what does God say? (II. What God Wants (Joel 2:12–13)) 12 “Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with al
heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; 13 an
your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord you
he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in
love; and he relents over disaster. The thing to notice here is the kind of repentance he is call
the kind that grows out of love. Look at the words: “All your
fasting, weeping, mourning, rend your hearts, not your garm
● He’s describing repentance that comes from a broken h
just a bent will, but a changed heart. God wants a repen
that grows out of love and yearning for him. ● Because that’s the only kind of repentance that really w
Here’s what I’ve learned about me: When what bother
my sin is that it caused some painful circumstances, or it me feel guilty or ashamed, or I was afraid God was going to me, then my resolutions to change are short-­‐lived. Like balloon-­‐smacking. hose areas where my heart has been broken over how I od and drove his presence from my life, those are the areas ntance that have really changed me. You see, that’s the bad part of sin—it hurt God and drove his presence from s. me use an analogy: Say you have a married man who has roblem with pornography. Usually what changes him is not en he is beat up about why he is such a bad person. Real entance happens when he realizes what that is doing to his e. It’s love that drives out lust. say he overworks. Repentance is not when he says, “you w, to be a perfect dad, I need to be home more.” Real nge happens when he realizes how his overworking hurts kids, and out of love for them he changes his behavior. ason some of us can’t repent effectively is that we don’t ove God so much that our sin is not the violation of a nship we cherish. is why he brings up fasting in this context. me people treat fasting like it earns God’s favor. Almost like a way of inflicting a mild punishment on yourself. Muslims und the world are about to into Ramadan… that goes against everything else the gospel teaches. giveness is given as a gift. Fasting is an expression of our e for God. We don’t fast in order to gain favor with God—
Muslims do, but as a response of love to the favor God has en us in Jesus. ting occurs when you say, “God, I am heartbroken over r absence in my life and I need, I want your power back—
my life, and in my family and in our church. What I need is a new marriage strategy or a little more financial help or a w boss or for this person to leave me alone, what I need is r presence and power in the center of my life and I want that even more than food!” ● God is calling for repentance that grows out of love for
where you really want to be filled with a God whose pre
cherish. ● You say, how do I learn to have those feelings again? ● Start with Hosea. Start with his love for you. See what h
vs. 13? Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious a
merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love
relents over disaster. (2:13) ● Think about the love he demonstrated to you in the bo
Hosea. This is why Hosea comes 1st in the Bible. ● 1 John 4:19, “We love, because he first loved us.” The lo
for us produces love for God in us. ● We’ll learn to repent like this when we submerge oursel
truth of ● It’s why we say the gospel is not just the beginning of t
Christian life, the diving board off of which. ABC’s. In the
Chance the Rapper—this ain’t no intro, this is the entré
he was not talking about the gospel. But it fits. ● You’ll learn to really repent of your sin the more you im
yourself in the love of God. Watch now what God promises will happen when they do… things: (III. How God Responds (2:14–29)) [2:14] “Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and
blessing behind him,” ● (You may tend to read this as a question, like “Who kno
will do this? But, this is really more of a rhetorical quest
can see from vs. 12 that God was the speaker.) So, here’s what he promises: ● The first thing is mercy: “he will turn and relent.” Mercy
withholding from us wrath that we do deserve. cond thing is grace: “leave a blessing.” Grace is his pouring us goodness that we do not deserve. ou break into my house and steal my stuff and I catch you, I don’t call the cops, that is mercy. (I am withholding from the trouble that you deserve.) But if I go on from there to , “Well, obviously, you are in financial need” and I give you heck for $10,000 to help get you back on your feet,” that is ce. I am not only withholding from you what you do erve, I am giving to you goodness and privilege that you n’t deserve. n’t actually try this, btw, I’ll just call the cops). t only wants to shield his wrath from you, he wants to blessing and prosperity to your life. : 2:19, “The Lord answered and said to his people, ‘Behold, ng to you grain, wine and oil, and you will be satisfied.” eans new blessings. ally got serious with God the summer before my junior r of high school. Up until that time I had been pretty used on pleasing only myself and doing things my way, and most people who live that way I had been pretty unhappy. that summer I put God back into the center of my life and rtly thereafter my dad gave me what began to function like e-­‐verse, one that I have shared with you often—Matthew 3. Put him first in everything. ve seen that play out again and again. nds. Family. Financially. Church. He does that! s verse points to something else, too: “you will be d.” contentment. Which is a greater blessing? For God to tuff on your life, or to enable you to be happy with what en you? ntentment is one of the greatest heavenly gifts: “Godliness h contentment is great gain.” t this what we are always trying to teach our kids? You n’t need every new version of every new toy to be happy. ppiness with your stuff has more to do with your character than your possessions. Contentment is a character q
not a condition. o Sometimes God will bless you with more stuff, some
give you greater contentment in the stuff you alread
o Sometimes God will bless you by taking away the pa
sometimes he’ll give you joy and peace within the pa
He goes on, in another of my favorite verses in the OT: [2:2
restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten
hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which
among you. ● This is retroactive goodness, blessing, and grace. God w
and make up for in your life what sin destroyed. ● Has there ever been another expression of grace like th
how much God wants to love and bless us. He will repla
restore, and make up for what sin has destroyed in our l
relationally, financially, emotionally. ● Sometimes, you’ll experience that on earth; other aspec
won’t experience it until you get to eternity. o A good example of this is Job who lost everything—f
family, health (who wasn’t suffering for his sin, just s
But in the end, what he lost was restored 7 times… a
● What has sin destroyed in your life? Maybe you feel sca
divorce. Or regret for things you have done, and now yo
seeing that sin has inflicted some irreparable damage on
● Return to me, says the Lord, “and I will restore the yea
locusts have eaten.” o Your life is not over. All that pain you went through w
swallowed up in goodness. And it will never end! Wh
been there 10,000 years… o That will free you from the despair of regret You say, “What happened to all that wrath God had against
The hordes of locusts.” That’s a great question. Throughout
Joel keeps talking about the coming “day of the Lord” where
pour out his judgment on sin. On that day, Joel says, “the su
darkness and the moon to blood.” (2:31–32) And there the od will be poured out for our sin. Paul said this day Joel as fulfilled at the cross (Romans 10:13). When Jesus died, as darkened. The locusts of God’s wrath devoured the body nd he was sent into the exile of God’s wrath on our behalf. r sin in our place so that nothing but the power and resurrection would remain for us. He took the judgment of the Day of the Lord into himself, so that our “Day of the d only be about resurrection, reunion and power. Paul l in Romans 10 and says, ‘God has taken wrath, so that will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved!’ ther promises here: [2:28] “And it shall come to pass that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and hters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and g men shall see visions.” eatest gift God gives to us when we repent is a new ence of his presence. ites this verse in Acts 2 as being fulfilled by the coming of rit. rit’s presence would better to us than any other earthly g. He’s more life-­‐giving than money, more secure than ealth. More constant than great relationships. re a believer, you have the very Spirit of God in you. Look neighbor: If they are Christian, they have the actual Spirit in them. You say, “They don’t look like it!” Well, you don’t But the Creator of the galaxies loved that person enough himself into them permanently. ere is more. Now he has a job for you. See the next …your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.” this points to the empowerment of the Spirit in the church n. Jesus had said that when we got the Holy Spirit he would wer for mission: “You will receive power, after the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses…” ● That’s the way you know the Holy Spirit is in you: you a
talking about the love of God. ● When you’ve been restored and revived, you’re going t
something to say. o Isn’t that what happens when you fall in love. You ha
somebody. You can’t keep it to yourself. You’ve got everyone how wonderful your new man is. o When you are excited about your team winning the championship. Some of you have driven your Duke f
workers insane. But you have to talk about it! o Or how about this: Everybody I’ve ever known who h
remodeled their house has people over for dinner. Y
people to see. So people can see how awesome you
addition is. ● When God restores you, you are going to want to tell s
● God doesn’t just revive and restore you so that you fee
on the inside. He wants some witnesses. ● And the Holy Spirit comes on you to help you with that.T
of Joel opened with God telling Joel: “Tell your children
let your children tell their children, and their children to
generation.” (1:3) ● This is the point! Psalm 145:5, “One generation shall com
your works to another and shall declare your mighty act
● Is this happening? Is God’s Spirit on this church? Are yo
your friends—who is your one? Are we busy telling our God wants to bless our lives. He wants to bless our church.
to fill us with his power. The first gospel sermon preached a
resurrection, Joel was the text. And the message is, “Just as
you the power and presence you ask, just ask!” The absence of God’s presence and power and blessing fro
lives (or our church) has nothing to do with his unwillingnes
sin: Isa 59:1–2, [1] Behold, the LORD's hand is not shortened
cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; [2] but your
a separation between you and your God, and your sins n his face from you so that he does not hear. How badly do we want the presence of God? In our our nation? Answer: As seriously as we take sin and God’s presence. Shown by our heartbroken repentance … f fasting/repentance in revival gs are wrong in our lives—our church, our nation, but in one thing. We have fallen away from God, and no longer ursue him.