Route 66: Joel - The Day of the Lord: Beyond The Why

Isaiah, jeremiah.

Lamentations Ezekiel, daniel, hosea, joel, amos, obadiah, jonah, micah.

If you get any further, you've gone too far.

What's that?

Did I forget name?

I did dear me.

Get any further, you've gone too far.

What's that?

Nahum, did I forget Nahum?

I did.

Dear me.

Poor Nahum, he never gets any respect.

That's because you're speaking on Nahum, right?

Yeah, on the first day of november in 1755, a very powerful earthquake hit lisbon, portugal.

The earthquake came in the morning, 9, 40 in the morning, lasted for about six minutes.

12 000 buildings were destroyed in that six-minute earthquake and upwards of 60,000 people were killed, not only by the earthquake and the demolition of all those buildings, but also by a tidal wave that hit Lisbon.

There was also a fire that raged throughout the city for six days before it was able to be extinguished.

That's a horrific situation to be in.

People responded as people often do, by trying to find a reason for what happened.

And in England, protestant England, looked at the destruction of Lisbon and said well, it must have been because they were all Catholics.

Pretty tragic way to come to a conclusion, made just as bad by the fact that in Lisbon, the Roman Catholic clergy thought it was because there were some Protestants being harbored in some of the neighborhoods of Lisbon, and so they decided to hunt them down, and some of them were executed.

A tragedy that happened, a tragedy that people were demanding an answer to and coming up to their own conclusions based upon their own biases right, coming up to their own conclusions based upon their own biases, right?

How many times do we ask the question why, whenever life's troubles come?

I don't think I'd be too far from the answer if I just said always right.

Trying to find sense in the middle of life's difficulties and calamities is just something we feel driven toward, even Christ, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

A question that came even from the lips of our Savior.

Finding an answer is sometimes extremely difficult, if not impossible, no matter how hard we look for one, but in the book of Joel we find out that, though we may not get an answer to that why question, there's still things that we can learn, things that will be helpful for us not only to understand outside of ourselves, but also how to respond within ourselves, to go beyond just asking the why question.

And so let's go to Joel, chapter one, and just sort of enter in to this prophecy.

Joel speaks very briefly and very well sparse is a kind way to put it In verse one, the word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel.

That's all we know about Joel.

We don't know where he grew up, we don't know where he lived, we don't even know when he lived.

All we know is name and his dad's name.

That's it.

No other place in scripture talks about him.

And after this very brief and sparse introduction, he jumps right in and gives us a message that his message is meant to be an enduring message.

Hear this, you elders, listen all you inhabitants of the land.

Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your ancestors?

Tell your children about it, let your children tell their children and their children, the next generation.

So something's happened, and Joel is summoning all the older people and all people in that generation to listen to what he has to say and to make sure that they pass it on, that they take it to their children and their children's children and their children's children's children.

I think, if I got that right, and so we're already grasping something of what Joel wants to communicate to her here there's some extraordinary experience that's been brought into this generation, the significance of which is meant not only to be a lifetime lesson for them, but for generational lessons Well past their lifetime, to the benefit of those who have not yet been born, a lesson that will carry on beyond their grave.

And so the prophet is telling us that he's got not only a prophecy to give and remember.

When we talked about prophecy, even though it talks about the future, it's meant to be for the present generation's.

Amendment, right?

We said that that was one of the characteristics of prophecy.

This is more than that, right.

This is generational teaching, generational influence.

But when we read Joel, it seems like Joel's kind of holding back some information here.

He's kind of cagey about a lot of details.

There's a lot of specifics that other prophecies fill up with that Joel doesn't even have.

What was the first verse of Isaiah 1?

Do you remember the vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah, son of Amoz, saw during the reigns of King Uzziah, jotham Ahaz and Hezekiah of Judah?

Joel doesn't mention a single king.

When was he a prophet?

We do not know.

He doesn't talk about the major powers of Assyria or Babylon or Egypt at all.

The question about when Joel prophesied is about a 200 to 300 year range.

That's a lot of time, and the fact that Joel is so restrictive in giving this information might be an important characteristic about what we're meant to learn here, and we'll get to that.

Some people suggest and I think they're absolutely correct that Joel deliberately omits these specifics so that his message might be easily transferable from generation to generation, and we'll explore more about that in a minute.

But before we do, we need to address the elephant in the room, or should I say the locust on the lounge chair right.

Bob Wepler and I were talking earlier today and he said you're going to talk about the locust and I said well, yeah, well, for some people they're a plague and for others they're lunch, you know, and for others their lunch.

But Joel has a lot to say about locusts, doesn't he?

You can't read the book of Joel without thinking locusts, and Joel has kind of a threefold vision over the three chapters, and the first part of Joel's vision concerns a locust plague which has recently swept over the promised land.

Take a look at verses 4 to 13.

What the devouring locust has left, the swarming locust have eaten.

What the swarming locust has left, the young locust has eaten.

And what the young locust has left.

The destroying locust has eaten, okay, four types of locusts.

And then wake up, you drunkards and weep.

Wail, all you wine drinkers, because the sweet wine for which it has been for it has been taken from your mouth.

Why?

Because the locust ate all the crops.

That's why, for nation has invaded my land, powerful and without number.

Its teeth are the teeth of a lion and its fangs of a lioness.

It's devastated my grapevine and splintered my fig tree.

It has stripped off its bark and thrown it away.

Its branches have turned white.

Grieve you young women dressed in sackcloth mourning for the husband of her youth.

Grain and drink offering have been cut off from the house of the Lord.

The priests or ministers of the Lord mourn.

The fields are destroyed, the land grieves, the grain is destroyed, the new wine is dried up, the fresh oil fails.

Be ashamed, you farmers.

Wail, you vine dressers, over the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field has perished.

The grapevine is dried up and the fig tree is withered.

The pomegranate, the date palm, the apple, all the trees of the orchard have withered.

Indeed, human joy has dried up.

Indeed, human joy has dried up.

That's devastating.

When the pandemic hit, we all cringed over the idea that we might not have enough.

You know, toilet paper.

These people have nothing, and you can live without certain types of paper, but you can't live without food.

And so Joel prophesies about this plague and the desolation that's resulted because of it, and researchers talk about locusts.

I don't know a lot about locusts.

When I was a boy I used to catch grasshoppers and let them loose in my mom's house and she didn't like that much.

But I don't know a whole lot about locusts.

But they do say that locusts can act exactly like this.

One person said that the sky can be blackened to an altitude of 5,000 feet when the locusts swarm, darkening the sky, and that a swarm contained over a billion locusts and that combined weight can be 3 million pounds, that they can travel upwards of 60 miles a day, eating everything in their wake.

And in 1959, a locust plague hit Ethiopia that lasted for six weeks, and someone estimated that the locust consumed enough food to feed a million people for a year in six weeks' time people for a year in six weeks time.

So Joel brings this locust infestation and the desolation of it to bear and talks about it being something so horrific that the lesson of it needed to be remembered, and we'll get to that in a moment.

He skips ahead and we'll skip over part of chapter one into chapter two, and when he reintroduces the locust again, we find ourselves with some questions about what he's actually driving at.

Chapter two, in verse one, blow the ram's horn in Zion.

Sound the alarm on my holy mountain.

Let all the residents of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming.

In fact, it is near a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and total darkness, like the dawn spreading over the mountain.

A great and strong people appear such as never existed in ages past, will never again in all the generations to come.

A fire devours in front of them, and it goes on into this discussion, which leads people to wonder exactly what Joel is driving at.

Some people think that what we're reading here is another description of the locust infestation of chapter 1, or perhaps another round of locust infestation, and what they do is they deny the metaphorical characteristics of this chapter and say that this is locusts here.

Others see it as locusts as a metaphor for the enemies of the people of Israel, maybe one of the surrounding peoples, or maybe metaphorical for all of them combined together, as sort of the locust infestation, as a warning about a future invasion of another nation that's coming in.

But then there's the approach that most commentators rely upon, and that is to say that this is an extended metaphor, reaching from chapter one into chapter two, that uses locusts to talk about god's army coming to bring judgment, the impending day of the lord, the day of judgment, in which the lord himself will be the head of his own heavenly army in holy war against evil.

And if you take a look at chapter 2 and verse 11, you read the Lord makes his voice heard in the presence of his army.

His camp is very large.

Those who carry out his command are powerful.

Indeed, the day of the Lord is terrible and dreadful.

Who can endure it?

So it certainly has, I think, some biblical warrant there.

One commentator put it this way.

He said that the motif, as he put it, of the locust plague is taken up and it's transposed into a higher key and then it's given a more strident setting and a faster pace, because it's the image of the wrath of God coming.

What are we to learn from this?

As we step into the book of Joel, this, pay attention folks.

Learn a lesson here.

Learn it not only for yourselves but for generations after you, and make sure this lesson is so well learned and so well communicated that it can go beyond you and beyond your children, and beyond your children's children, even into generations further.

Yet One of the things that we can learn is that calamity comes from the Lord, calamity comes from the Lord.

Now, that doesn't seem very helpful at first, but it can be helpful if we walk through this first, but it can be helpful if we walk through this.

One of the things that Joel repeats five times in this short three-chapter book is the phrase the day of the Lord.

Right, the day of the Lord.

Chapter 1 and verse 15, woe because of that day, for the day of the Lord is near and it will come as devastation from the Almighty.

Chapter 2, verses 1 and 2, blow the ram's horn in Zion, sound the alarm on my holy mountain.

Let all the residents of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming.

Verse 2 describes it.

Of the Lord is coming.

Verse 2 describes it.

Chapter 2 and verse 10, the earth quakes before them, the sun shakes the sun and moon grow dark.

And then, in verse 11,.

He continues to speak and he says the day of the Lord is terrible and dreadful.

Chapter 2, verses 30 and 31.

I will display wonders in the heavens and on the earth blood, fire and columns of smoke.

The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.

Then, in chapter 3 and verses 15 and 16, sun and moon will go dark and 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 of the Israelites.

And then he goes on into verse 18 and says in that day, in that day.

So we see the Lord's day here mentioned over and over and over again.

It's an expression that's used 20 times in the whole Old Testament, five of those times here.

Now there are other phrases that day, those days, that time, the day which get used a lot more, but this phraseology, this clear phrase, only gets used a few times, and Joel uses it more than anybody.

What is it talking about?

What is this day of the Lord?

Not to be too specific, because I think it has application in different ways means that it is a day or an era or a season that is predominantly one characterized by God's activity.

It's his day.

It's God's day, in which he's acting in a very unusual and dramatically direct fashion.

Does that make sense?

It's his day, in which he is the one to be on in view when it happens.

It could be for judgment, or it could be for salvation, but it's his day, right, and we can say that to our kids, right, don't we?

Hey, it's your birthday, it's your day, right.

We'd say to our sons what do you want for?

Hey, it's your birthday, it's your day, right?

We'd say to our sons what do you want for dinner?

That was one of their birthday gifts.

They could choose the birthday dinner.

And no, it wasn't Ruth, chris, it was.

You know what am I going to cook for you, right?

So it's their day, though it's your birthday.

This is the Lord's day.

This is something he is making himself known in, and one of those things that we find in the book of Joel is that the day of calamity is the Lord's day.

This locust invasion the people moaned the tragedy of it, but they only moaned the tragedy of it from a horizontal point of view.

The crops have failed.

We've had bad seasons before.

The drunkards cried, but they didn't cry to heaven.

The farmers went to the banks and said I need an extension of my loan, metaphorically but they didn't cry to heaven.

People were seeing all of this the stripped grapevines, so little grain that it even disrupted their worship.

They couldn't even worship the way they were used to worshiping because all of that was gone.

They couldn't even make bread to eat, let alone to offer, and all this devastation was seen as simply a natural disaster, until Joel intervenes and says Wait a second.

Behind all of this, it's the Lord's day.

It's the day of the Lord acting here, reminding them that this invasion had come from God to them and he was wanting to get their attention, that he brought this upon them for a reason he alerts them to listen and he calls them to gather, and he wants them to learn that this is not just something to moan about your immediate and your personal loss, or even to think about it as perhaps a societal difficulty to try to collectively overcome, but rather there was something more that they needed to realize is that God was waking them up, and I say that when you think of the old covenant way of thinking about the land and the fruit of the land.

What did God say when he told the people in Egypt I'm taking you to a land full of milk and honey.

I'm taking you to a place of prosperity.

I'm taking you to a place you don't even have to.

It's all turnkey, the houses are turnkey, the fields are turnkey, the harvests are ready, everything's heavy with fruit.

You just come in and take it as I move you in there.

It's there for you to enjoy and realize.

When it's there, it comes because of God's bountiful blessing upon you and conversely, when it's gone, it's gone because God has taken the gifts away.

So this was more than just an agricultural problem.

This was not just a seasonal dry time.

This wasn't just a let's fix this together thing.

This was God saying I've withdrawn my hand of blessing from you.

And so they needed to think about that.

That looking at this disaster was to think Godward.

That doesn't mean he's the author of sin, but he uses evil things for his purposes.

But he uses evil things for his purposes and there's not a single Christian that can argue with that because evil hands took our Lord Jesus and crucified him, but it was by God's determination and purpose to use those evil deeds to save.

So we find this calamity given in this time so that people would recognize something about God.

And one of the questions that arises is will Judah repent?

Will they learn this lesson?

Will they do more than just moan over their losses?

Will they move toward repentance?

Will they listen?

And that leads us to the second lesson.

That calamity, first of all, shows us that God is involved in the hard times.

God is involved in the hard times, but also that the purposes are meant to be a responsiveness on our part, to learn, to listen, to remember, to repent and to return to God.

So let's take a look at verse 12 and 13 of chapter 1.

So let's take a look at verse 12 and 13 of chapter 1.

The grapevine's dried up, the fig tree is withered, the pomegranate, the day palm, the apple, all the trees of the orchard have withered.

Human joy is dried up Verse 13.

Dress in sackcloth and lament, you, priest, wail you ministers of the altar Verse 13.

Will they listen?

And that brings us back to the lack of detail in Joel.

Yes, this situation is detailed and yes, the call to repentance is detailed, but there's a lot of other stuff that's not mentioned in Joel.

That's mentioned in other places, like I said, and it's because Joel stands as a template, if you will, of how to respond to calamity as one of God's people.

More detail in it would make us sort of box it into categories too neatly and too tightly, but the fact that it's more general in its demonstrations and discussions means that we can carry it into more places and use it as a template of response.

So when natural disasters happened in the community of Israel, there were three things that typically happened.

First of all, the people were summoned together to a fast at the sanctuary.

Let me just read a couple passages.

First of all, 2 Chronicles 20, in verses 3 to 5.

Jehoshaphat was afraid and he resolved to seek the Lord.

Then he proclaimed a fast for all Judah who gathered to seek the Lord.

They even came from all the cities of Judah to seek him.

Then Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem in the Lord's temple before the new court.

They called an assembly, another one in Ezra 8, I proclaim to fast by the Ahava river so that we might humble ourselves before our God and ask him for a safe journey for us, our dependents and all our possessions.

When calamity hits, god's people need to rise up and gather together in this convocation of prayer.

And so what does Joel call for?

We read it together Verse 13 and 14.

Verse 14, particularly, announce a sacred fast, proclaim a solemn assembly, gather the elders, all the residents of the land at the house of the lord, your god, and cry out to the lord.

What do you do when you face calamity?

You humble your heart, you realize that it's bigger than you, you recognize that in some manner though you may not know all the details of it God is in this somehow, and that one of the responses if not the first response, is not to ask why, but to go to the Lord and call out to Him.

The second thing that happens when calamity strikes is that the people represent their complaint or their lament to the Lord in prayer, as they remind themselves not only of his judgments but also of his mercies.

Take a look at verse 12 to 17 again In chapter two.

I'm sorry, even now, this is the Lord's declaration Turn to me with all your heart, with fastings, weepings and mournings.

Tear your hearts, not just your clothes, and return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and he relents from sending disaster.

Who knows, he may turn and relent and leave a blessing behind him.

And you can offer a grain offering and a drink offering to the Lord, your God.

So here is not only gathering, but remembering who God is in the midst of this and bringing that before him.

Lord, be merciful to me in the midst of this.

And then to receive an answer, either of welcome or of woe.

And so the people would pray and they'd often would receive a response.

And in Joel we have that in chapter 2, in verse 18.

After calling together in verse 17, let them say have pity on your people, lord, do not make your inheritance a disgrace, an object of scorn among the nations.

Why should it be said among the peoples?

Where is their God?

Then the Lord became jealous for his land and spared his people.

And the Lord answered his people look, I'm about to send you grain, new wine, fresh oil.

You will be satiated with them.

I will no longer make you a disgrace to the nations.

So here is this template of what to do in calamity Gather before the Lord, cry out to God, remember his holiness, but remember his mercies and wait for an answer and wait for an answer, an answer that would come.

And so Joel here serves as a pattern that we're to follow when we face trouble, learning that calamity comes from God and our response is to go to God, not just demand a reply of an answer from him.

And so when we face troubles, it may not be a locust famine, may not be a plague, but it might be a calamity that totally wracks our hearts and minds with trouble and disrupts our life.

Remember the Lord is behind even that and remember Him with humble hearts.

Remember His mercies as well as His judgments.

Remember to seek an answer, to wait to see if God might turn even the trouble back into a flourishing of joy one day.

This is what we do with our failures, our distresses, our calamities.

A friend of mine was brought through a time like this, and this is what he said, and I'll quote to you what he said to me.

He said when I reached the darkest point I realized I had no place to go but back to God and I wouldn't want to go what I went through again.

But I wouldn't trade anything I learned, or I wouldn't trade anything that what I learned for anything else in the world.

He went back to God with that.

And this leads into another point that Joel is telling us that calamity is overshadowed by grace, despite the sin of the people and despite the calamity that came.

We read in here not just in chapter 2, but restoration and blessing, beyond the chastising discipline, that he's going to do that just as surely as he brought the locusts to bear upon the crops.

And that too would be his day.

His day would also include that Tear your hearts and not your clothes, and return to the Lord, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and he relents from sending disaster.

Joel, chapter 2 and verse 13.

Joel 2 · chapter mention

This is the positive motivation that God is a God of grace, compassion and patience.

Time and time and time again with the people of Israel, he speaks these words in the face of their abject denial of him.

But calamity is also something else.

It's a warning of a future day of judgment.

And that brings us to chapter three.

Instead of the people of Israel being, or Judah being, called into a conversation, now the nations are called to a place, and it's called the Valley of Jehoshaphat.

Jehoshaphat, without going into details, won a really big battle in a particular place where he was able to take victory over a number of nations that had gathered against God's people.

And so these nations are now gathered back to the same valley and they're sort of taunted.

Beat your plows into swords in verse 10.

Your pruning knives into spears Let every weakling say I am a warrior.

Come quickly.

All you surrounding nations Gather yourselves, bring your warriors here.

Come on, let's fight.

Are you ready to rumble?

Come to the valley of Jehoshaphat, for there I will sit down and judge all the surrounding nations.

And instead of the sound of battle, there's going to be the sound of harvest Verse 13.

Swing the sickle because the harvest is ripe.

Come and trample the grapes because the wine press is full.

The wine vats overflow because of the wickedness of the nation is extreme.

What you're going to hear in the valley of Jehoshaphat is not might against might, but God slicing down the nations like he's taking a harvest.

The swoosh of the sickle as it cuts all the stalks down and he gathers them all into his barn.

They're his Calamity in our day is meant to be a warning sign that you haven't seen anything yet In the coming day of judgment that no person can stand against.

And so the people of God were to learn their lessons, so they could all be messengers of a lesson from generation to generation to generation to generation that calamity came to God's people to remedy their hearts.

But calamity came so that they might remind the world that God is a God of justice and righteousness and that they can't just watch upon his people suffer.

They need to think about their own eternal state.

So the people of God here are seen to be received while the heavens and the earth shake and the moon turns dark and the harvest sickle flies through the air and cuts down the nations.

And so this is why, when we finished this morning, we read together and spoke together a benediction from Peter, in which Peter said this, talking about the calamity that befell the world in the flood, he said through these, the world of that time perished when it was flooded.

By the same word, the present heavens and earth are stored up for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

Dear friends, do not overlook this one fact With the Lord, one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like one day.

The Lord does not delay his promises.

Some understand delay, but he's patient with you, not anyone wanting anyone to perish, but all to come to repentance.

But the day of the Lord, huh, did you hear that the day of the Lord will come?

Like a thief?

On that day, the Lord's coming.

Still, it happened then.

The day of the Lord's happening in that day also.

But Joel also gives us something else to think about, and in chapter 2, he says this, and we'll finish with this After this, in verse 28, I will pour out my spirit on all humanity.

Then your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your old men will have dreams and your young men will see visions.

And I will even pour out my spirit on the male and female servants.

In those days I will display wonders in the heavens and on the earth blood, fire and columns of smoke.

The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.

Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, for there will be an escape for those of Mount Zion and Jerusalem, as the Lord promised.

Among the survivors the Lord calls.

The day of the Lord is also today, in a day of deliverance, of gospel proclamation before the coming day of the Lord of judgment, and the wondrous word is now is the accepted time.

Today is the day of salvation.

The day of the Lord is today too, in which he's on display in receiving the repentant, not just of Jerusalem and Judah, but of all people who find hope on that mountain where Christ himself was crucified.

That's a wonderful message of Joel, isn't it?

It's sobering, even shocking, but it is wonderfully full of salvation as much as it is of judgment.

So let's pray together.

Father, thank you for your word.

As we read these little books, we find them so full of truth about you and understanding, about life and Lord.

Though we may not have all of our answers the buzz of questions still running fervently through our head you give us enough to know what to do when trouble comes.

Lord, I pray that it might be helpful for us, in the midst of our difficulties and challenges, to know that we can look to you and that we know how to come before you with humility, with remembering, with repentance, with hope.

But we also realize that we are at the crossroads of an eternal day in which all people will be brought before a holy God and there's only one thing that will be in view.

Have they come to the Lord Jesus Christ, have they been received by grace, or will they face that day with the foreboding, terrifying words depart from me, you evildoers.

I never knew you, and so, lord, help us as your people.

I never knew you, and so, lord, help us as your people, not only to learn lessons for ourselves, but to speak a lesson to our generation, just like Joel told us to do, to remember these things and to bring them into generation after generation until you close the days by the day of the Lord.

And we pray this in Christ's name.

Amen, all right.