Joel: Learning to Hate Sin and Love God | Pastor PJ Berner

Hey, we are continuing our series in the minor profits, and as we turn

to the book of Joel this week, there are some ad campaigns that need to be

updated, uh, like this one for Marlboro.

I believe it.

No camels.

Sorry.

Uh, camel cigarettes back in the 1950s, more doctors smoke

camels than any other cigarette.

Well, Lucky's was gonna take issue with that because they responded and said,

well, 20,679, it's important to, to not round up or down on that one 20,679.

Physicians say, Lucky's are less irritating.

It's toasted.

I don't even know what that means.

I don't, I don't even know what that means.

Um, needless to say, you're not gonna find today, uh, these same advertisements.

In fact, today, if you pick up a, a package of cigarettes, what you're gonna

find on the back is a warning from the surgeon general, uh, the, the top doc

in the entire nation that says, uh, we don't recommend that you use these things.

Uh, this is not good.

You're not gonna find 20,000 physicians saying that you need to smoke Lucky's,

uh, because they're less irritating and toasted, whatever that means.

There's some messaging that needs to be updated.

There's other messaging that never needs to be updated, and when it

comes to the Bible, we find at its core that the primary message

that never needs to be updated.

It's a message that courses through the book.

It's a message that we need to have an answer to because

it's a message that says this.

It says this, God is holy, and you're not.

I'm not.

We're not.

God's holiness his perfection, his sinlessness, his being the standard

and the epitome of what is, uh, the, the unblemished level of perfect

perfection and, and beauty in everything.

He is the definition of what it is to be holy.

And the Bible says that we fall short as Paul says, in Romans of that standard.

And so we have to ask ourselves the question, what do we do with that reality?

That, that God is holy and I am not, because His holiness

requires that sin be dealt with.

And if I am not holy because I am a sinner, that means that my sin

has to be dealt with in Joel's day.

That meant that Israel's sin had to be dealt with.

In future generations, that's that's gonna mean that their sin

is gonna need to be dealt with.

And we have to ask the question and answer the question, what do we do with sin?

Well, if you're here this morning and you're a Christian, then you've

found that answer that sin is dealt with at the cross, that that sin was

dealt with when Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sin and in exchange

gave you his perfect righteousness.

Such that now in the eyes of God, he does not just declare you not

guilty, but he declares you innocent with the righteousness of Jesus,

so that when the standard remains, you shall be holy for I am holy.

And you say, well, I can't be holy when it comes to your standing before God,

Christ was holy on your behalf, and you possess now his perfect holiness

to have a relationship with God.

But if all of us in this room, myself included, are honest with ourselves,

none of us still are sinless.

In fact, the, the Christian life is not about being sinless on this side of

eternity because that's not possible.

If you spend your life as a Christian chasing a standard of sinlessness, you

will be exhausted, you'll be tired, you'll be shamed, you'll be condemned,

and you will feel like you will never measure up and you'll never have any

confidence in security in Christ.

But what do we do with our sin?

'cause as Christians, we don't wanna be complacent, we don't wanna be comfortable,

we don't wanna grow familiar with it.

We don't wanna.

Think to ourselves, well, I mean Jesus died for sin, so what does it matter?

Let's go ahead and sin Paul dealt with that too.

Instead, what I'd like to suggest to us this morning, and it's a message

that I think we find in the book of Joel, is this, as Christians, we need

to hate sin, love God, and live ready.

We need to hate sin, love God, and live ready.

The the book of Joel, the, the key word in the book of Joel is

gonna be the word repentance.

And each of those three ideas of hating sin, loving God, and, and living

ready is going to have something to do with our repentance as believers.

But the book of Joel, just to, to set the, the stage, uh, this outline has,

has changed on the back of your, your notes there from what it was last week,

because originally I had Joel in the seven hundreds, but after studying it

this week, I moved him post exilic.

I think he's after the exile on the return and after the building

of the second temple here.

Um, and there's reasons that I just don't have time to get into

on that because of communion.

But if you've got an itch on that, come talk to me afterwards and I'll

gladly info dump you on all of that.

Uh, the reality is nobody is fully certain on when Joel wrote.

Uh, he is one of the most difficult of all the prophets to pin down because we don't

have Joel prophesied during the reigns of such and such and such and such and such

and such, which is speaking in tongues.

There's, that's the only time I'll ever speak in, speak

in tongues, what I just did.

Um, we don't have that.

Right.

And, and so, and, and even the events recorded in the book, there's nothing

historically that we can point to and, and get a, a firm date based

on what he references in the book.

So it's, it's a lot of assumptions and it's a lot of looking at internal

evidence to draw conclusions.

Uh, I, I believe he's, he's around five 15.

It's okay if he's not, if he wrote in the seven hundreds, if he wrote in the

five hundreds, his message is still apropos, no matter when he wrote in

the History of the Nation of Israel.

Joel's target audience was the Southern Kingdom was Judah.

And so, uh, author Joel Date, five 15 audience, uh, Judah, he,

he wrote to this southern tribe.

Uh, one of the reasons why I put it post exilic is he doesn't reference the

northern kingdom or any of those events at all in the book, entire book of job.

Uh, he refers to Judah the Southern Kingdom as Israel, which

would again be indicative of the fact that he's writing later on.

I told you I wasn't gonna info dump you, so I'm gonna stop.

But his audience he's writing to is the Southern Kingdom there, Judah.

And, and the theme of the book, like I said earlier, is this theme, this idea

of repentance, that we need to repent by hating sin, loving God, and living ready.

But let's look at the Book of Job to draw that out for us.

Look at chapter one, only three chapters this week instead of 14, like last week.

But still pray for my time management here because we've got communion after

service too, or after the, the message.

Joel chapter one verses two through four.

Uh, Joel chapter one is this.

It says, hear this, you elders give your all inhabitants of the land.

Has such a thing happened in your days or in the days of your fathers?

Tell your children of it.

Let your children tell their children and their children to another generation.

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

What the swarming locust left.

The hopping locust has eaten.

What the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.

As we go through the book, we're gonna see the book break down this way.

Chapter one, as I just read, is about the locust.

We're gonna dive into that in just a second.

Chapter two is gonna be about repentance, the call to repentance, and then

chapter three is gonna be about the impending judgment, the day of the Lord.

Uh, so chapter one, locust chapter two, repentance chapter three, judgment.

But let's talk locus for a second.

We're, we're not super familiar with them, but we know these guys don't.

We, you walk through a field during the summertime in, in, in Texas, and

they will attack you and their stealth.

They come outta nowhere and you look very foolish to everybody else driving by.

When you're swatting at something they can't see because the.

The grasshoppers are attacking you.

The locusts are very similar to the grasshoppers.

In fact, when they congregate together the swarms, these, these grasshopper like

insects become the, the locust plagues.

And you, you're like, plague.

That sounds like an ancient word.

Uh, the most recent locust plague that that made headlines

at least was back in 2020.

'cause why not?

Everything else happened in 2020.

Um, it just didn't get the same credit 'cause it wasn't, you know, COVID and

there wasn't a shot for it either.

I shouldn't have said that.

I should not have said that.

When we have two services, this is why first service I'll say things I

shouldn't, and second service I'll say, I'll clean it all up anyways.

Uh, back in Africa there was a, a massive swarm of locusts and, and, and

these locusts, when they reached swarm stage 80 million plus per square mile.

No, thanks.

I'm out.

No, I I don't want that.

Um, 80 million plus per square mile, and they each eat about

two grams of vegetation a day.

That means that when there's a swarm state like this, that they're consuming the

food of about 35,000 people every day.

Y'all.

This is why locusts are so devastating to an agrarian culture like Ancient Israel.

To farmers, to people that needed their land, the people that

needed to rely on their land.

This is not the first time we hear about locust.

Back in Exodus chapter 10, the locusts were one of the 10 plagues that that

Exodus 10 · chapter mention

God sent against Pharaoh in Egypt.

In Deuteronomy chapter 28, God promised to send locusts in

Deuteronomy 28 · chapter mention

judgment for the sin of the people.

That's what we're reading about here in the book of Jewel.

In Judges chapter six, they are used metaphorically to describe the armies

of the mediaite in the Amalekites.

And in Revelation chapter nine, verses three through 10, again, they're

used there to describe the demons that are gonna be released from the

bottomless pit by the angel with the key at the fifth trumpet blast.

So aside from the occasional use of there being food like John the

Baptist who ate the locust in the wilderness, uh, locust in the Bible

never meant good things happening here.

And so as we come here, we can assume that when Joel, Joel is talking about

Locust as the book opens up, that it's not a good situation and it wasn't.

In fact, the locusts in verses five through seven of chapter

one had demolished the vines and destroyed the produce of the vine.

Eschatological speaking wine is associated with gladness and celebration

and joy, and so here there's an an indication that that had been taken

away even from the people of Israel.

The produce of the vine, the wine had been dried up by the attack of

the locust verses eight through 10.

It had interrupted the sacrificial offerings.

They couldn't bring grain offerings because they didn't have grain to offer.

They couldn't bring the first fruits because they didn't

have the fruit to begin with.

And so even their ability to worship the Lord was hindered by this locust plague.

And then third, it had ruin just the harvest.

And so their food was in danger.

Uh, in verses 11 through 12 there.

This was what was happening in job's or job.

Joel, why I'm gonna do that more than just this time?

If I say job, just go, Joel, in your mind, just auto replace Joel.

This was what happening in Joel's day.

And, and, and so as they're looking at this, though, they're anticipating that

something worse is coming back In Exodus chapter 10, what followed the plague

Exodus 10 · chapter mention

of locust was the plague of darkness and then the death of the firstborn.

In Deuteronomy 28, after God said, Hey, I'm gonna send locust against you in

judgment for breaking the mosaic covenant.

Then after that came the, the exile and more death and destruction.

And so now that they're looking at the locust here in Joel, chapter one, Joel

and the rest of the people are concluding that something else bad is coming.

And that's where we go in verse 15.

Look at the text there.

It says, alas, for the day of the Lord is near the day of the Lord is a

day of destruction from the Almighty.

It comes.

He says is not food cut off from before our eyes and joy and gladness

from before the house of God, the seed shrivels under the clouds.

The storehouses are desolate.

The granaries are torn down, the grain has dried up.

The beasts groan.

The herds of cattle are perplexed because there's no pasture for them.

Even the flocks of sheep suffer, so even the animals

are suffering under this going.

This plague of locusts has been horrible.

And Joel says to you, oh Lord, I call for fire, has devoured

the pastures of the wilderness.

Flame has burned all the trees of the field, even the beast of

the field pant for you because the water brooks are dried up.

Fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.

So Joel is looking at a landscape of complete and obliterate destruction in

front of him, and he's saying, Lord, we fear that not only is this what we're

facing, but we fear that the day of the Lord is upon us the day of the Lord.

That's gonna be a key theme in the book of Joel.

The day of the Lord is often associated in the Old Testament with that fear of

eschatological judgment of God, where God was gonna put an end to everything

once and for all, where God's wrath was gonna be poured out on his enemies.

It's referenced also in Zephaniah.

Zephaniah one 14 through 15 says this, the great day of the Lord

is near, near and hastening fast.

The sound of the day of the Lord is bitter.

The mighty man cries aloud there a day of wrath.

Is that day, a day of distress and anguish, A day of ruin and

devastation of darkness and gloom, A day of clouds and of darkness.

We talk about a day, the day of the Lord, but the day of the Lord

is not really just a day at all.

On the back of your page, if you can't see this, you're gonna see this same chart.

The the day of the Lord is actually gonna be a period of time during

which the wrath of God is gonna be poured out upon his enemies.

And we believe that the day of the Lord is going to be begin with and be

inaugurated by the rapture of the church.

That when Christ comes back for his bride and takes believers to go and

be with him, that kicks off what's known as the tribulation period.

This is the seven year period sometimes called the time of Jacob's

trouble, like Isaiah chapter 30.

Isaiah 30 · chapter mention

And during the seven year period, this is when, if you ever read

the Left Behind series with Kirk Cameron in, in all that stuff, this

is where all that is gonna go down.

You're gonna have the rise of the antichrist, you're gonna have the

rise of the false prophet, you're gonna have the treaty with Israel.

You're gonna have then the, the breaking of the treaty,

the abomination of desolation.

You're gonna have a time of great turmoil and stress, all that.

At the same time, God is pouring out the judgments that we read about in the

early stages of Revelation on the earth.

During that time.

The tribulation, a time period of God's great wrath being poured out on the earth.

That's gonna last for seven years.

At the end of seven years, God is gonna come.

The second coming of Christ.

At the second coming of Christ, the antichrist is gonna be dispatched.

The false prophet is gonna be dispatched.

Satan is gonna be bound for a thousand years.

That's known as the millennial kingdom, and that's what

you see next on your chart.

During the millennial kingdom, Christ will reign on earth.

Satan will be prohibited.

He will be limited.

He will be bound.

During this time, there's still gonna be sin in the effects of sin.

People are still gonna die during the millennial kingdom.

And so this is why this is still part of the day of the Lord, although it's

the, the, the intensity is gonna be abated for a, a, a period of time.

At the end of the thousand years though, we come to the great white throne.

The great white throne is the culmination of the day of the Lord.

The great white throne is the moment where all of the unbelievers are brought before

the judgment seat to have the books opened in front of them and, and they will be

judged based on what they have done, and then cast into the lake of fire, which

will be their place of eternal torment.

This is what's referred to as the Day of the Lord.

Do you see why Joel was, was frightened by the day of the Lord?

He didn't have as much of a detailed concept because he

didn't have the New Testament.

He didn't have the development of the understanding of the rapture and things

like this and the millennial kingdom.

But still, Joel knew enough that the day of the Lord was going to be the

fullness of God's wrath being poured out upon his enemies, and Joel was terrified

that Israel was going to be part of the enemies of God given their current states.

The day of the Lord would include the invasion of another army.

And that's chapter two.

The first 11 verses here, the day of the Lord was going to bring another invasion.

And we read about that in verse one.

Blow a trumpet in Zion and sound an alarm on my holy mountain.

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

It's near a day of darkness in gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness.

And then he goes on and he says, like blackness, they're spread upon the

mountains of great and powerful people.

Their life has never been seen before, nor will ever be again after them

throughout the all the years of the generations fire devours before them.

And behind them, a flame burns.

The land is like the Garden of Eden before them, but behind them,

after they come through a desolate wilderness and nothing escapes them.

Their appearance is like the appearance of horses and like war horses,

they run, and with the rumbling of chairs, they leap on the tops of the

mountains and like crackling a flame, a fire devouring the stubble, like

a powerful army drawn up for battle.

Jump down to verse 11.

The Lord utters his voice before.

Notice these next two words, his army.

This second invasion that we read about here, the first invasion being the locust

in chapter one, the second invasion being this eschatological force in chapter two.

Uh, this, I believe, is the eschatological army of God coming in judgment

against those that are opposed to him.

And so as you read through the book of Revelation, and I think

that's why in Revelation chapter nine, verses three through 10, uh,

the part of the, the destructive forces that God unleashes during the

tribulation are compared to locusts.

I.

It's a callback to the book of Joel that, that that illusion saying, this is the day

of the Lord that Joel is talking about.

And now Joel at this time thought it might be coming upon his generation.

And so he's frightened.

So he's calling for fasting, he's calling for repentance.

He's calling for the people to turn from their sin and, and,

and see that's our theme for this book is the theme of repentance.

And that's not only the theme of the book, but in so many ways should be much

of the theme of our lives as believers.

Uh, the moment that we are saved is a moment of repentance whereby we turn

from our sin and turn towards Jesus and positionally we are re repenting.

And that's a, a once in time moment.

That's a once in time repentance.

But then as the, the, the, the reformer said, the, the whole life of the

Christian is about repenting daily.

Why?

Because like I said earlier, we all still sin.

And so there's a need for us to, to look at our sin and, and to turn

from our sin, to repent from our sin.

Why?

Because what I want us to see in this first chapter and a half of job is this.

Sin brings God's wrath.

It brings God's wrath.

It brings God's judgment.

And as as Christians, I know we sit here this morning when we say Yes, but

that was poured out on Jesus for me.

And I would say yes in amen.

But all the more reason for you to repent from your sin on a daily basis.

Because it's my sin and your sin that put Christ on the cross just

because that happened 2000 years ago, doesn't lessen the impact of

the, of the fact that the sin that we commit is the sin that put him there.

And that should not only cause us to want to turn from our sin, but it

should cause us to want to turn from our sin as our first point this morning

is gonna say, because we hate it.

Turn from your sin by cultivating a hatred for it.

Turn from your, from your sin by cultivating a hatred for it.

Uh, my guess is when Joel and his contemporaries experienced the plague of

the locust and realized this was God's judgment against them, that all of a

sudden the Baals and the Asra and the false Gods Molech and all these other

false gods that they once went after and, and looked at, at, they became

distasteful and hideous in their eyes because they experienced the result

they experienced what the worship of these false gods brought, which

was the judgment of God and our sin.

Church should cause us to have the same.

The same response.

We should hate our sin.

But what's so hard is that we, we love so much about our sin when we're

really honest with ourselves, right?

It's like me and Tillamook chocolate peanut butter ice cream.

There's no better chocolate peanut butter ice cream out there.

I will fight you.

I won't.

'cause I'm not supposed to be istic.

That's a qualification for an elder.

So I won't really fight you.

Maybe I'll have somebody else fight you over that.

It's better.

It's better.

I don't care because, and don't come at me with like, but have you

tried the ones with the peanut?

Don't put things in my ice cream.

I don't, I don't need to crunch my ice cream.

I, I It's meant to be creamy.

Right?

And the peanut butter swirl through the chocolate peanut

butter ice cream is amazing.

I love that.

Ice cream.

I don't love what it does to me now that my metabolism hits at 40.

Right?

And, and so I'm, my affections for that ice cream are waning.

Because I, I, I don't want the results of what it does when I sit

down with the, the spoon in the tub on the couch, and it's just mine.

I don't like it.

Or maybe you've had a, a TV show.

You've had a, some, something that you've watched for years, but

recently you've realized that man, that TV show has, has taken a turn.

That is beginning to, to celebrate things that you know, are not honoring to Christ.

And, and they've introduced themes, and they've introduced concepts and

even some of the language of the, the show has changed, and now all of a

sudden you realize that that show is negatively impacting your thought life

and it's negatively impacting the words that are coming out of your mouth.

And, and you're looking out at your sin and tracing it back to that, and

you're going, okay, even though I really enjoy this, man, I, I hate sinning.

See church, one way we can grow in our hatred for sin is by pulling the

curtain back on temptation and sin.

By, by, by pulling the curtain back to see what it really

is in its destructive nature.

Have y'all ever been, been hiking and you've gone up to the mountains and,

and you've been there and you're like, okay, we're gonna go on this trail.

And you come up to the trail and maybe the trail is, is there and the outside

of the trail, it's nice and wide and it's flat, and maybe there's flowers and,

and, and by the trail there's a sign.

But imagine if that that sign is, is broken and it's on the ground.

And, and you don't really look at the sign too closely as you set

out on that trail, but what that sign says is, Hey, be careful.

This is one of the hardest hikes that's here in the park.

And, and if you read it and knew that ahead of time, you would never walk

on that flat trail to begin with.

But when you come to that flat trail, it just looks so good and inviting.

And there's the flowers there, and you're like, I can get some good

pictures to put up on Instagram later, and this is gonna be awesome.

And, and it's gonna be such a, a nice hike.

And then you start on the hike and then you realize, man, this

is not what I, I signed up for.

Because that trail leads you to a precipitous climb and, and,

and drop and then climb again.

And, and it's just difficult.

And you're fearing for your life all of a sudden when you started

out in a field of flowers.

That's sin and temptation.

When temptation first confronts us.

It's the path with the flowers, with the broken down sign.

And unless we do the work church to, to stop and read the sign and remember the

dangers that are at the end of the path, then we're gonna find ourselves regretting

that we ever went down that path.

One way for you to cultivate a hatred for sin is by pulling

the curtain back on temptation.

Remember where the path leads.

When you are tempted by the outset of the path, remember that that path takes you

somewhere that you never wanted to go.

And that will help you fight against the initial temptation.

This is what Solomon told his son, didn't he?

Hey son.

The, the lips of the forbidden women woman, they drip honey, but

they conceal poison her house.

Man, the, the doorway looks inviting, but it goes down to the grave.

And so one way for us to cultivate a hatred for sin is

thinking about where sin leads.

A second way we can cultivate a hatred for sin is gonna involve

anticipation and reflection.

Anticipation and reflection.

Let's start with reflection.

One way for you to cultivate a hatred for sin is at the end of every day to

reflect on your day and to have a clean slate with God before you go to bed.

Say, Lord, I, I, I wanna lay out for you.

I wanna, I, I wanna bear my soul.

I wanna confess every sin that I'm aware of, that I committed today, and

ask for your forgiveness for that sin.

The, the beauty of being.

Free in Christ and having Christ as our great high priest who intercedes for us.

You don't have to go to a priest to do that.

In fact, you shouldn't.

'cause you have a great high priest.

You can go before the father at any point in your day, at any time during your day.

You don't have to wait till the end of the day.

I'm just saying at the end of the day, it's a good time for

you to stop down and, and grow.

A little bit introspective and say, God, I, I want to confess, I

want to bear my soul before you.

If we're gonna do that, we have to pray with David.

Lord, search me.

Try me know me, see if there's any grievous way in me.

'cause I wanna get rid of it is a way to keep short accounts with God, in

other words, and you're gonna hate your sin 'cause you're not gonna want

long accounts at the end of the day.

And so bear your soul with the Lord at the end of each day.

This is how the Apostle Paul, by the way, could say that he is

blameless in accordance with the law.

Have you ever wondered about that?

Paul wasn't saying that he was blameless in the sense that he never sinned.

But he was blameless in the sense that he kept short accounts.

Anytime that he sinned, he made sure that he dealt with it before the Lord.

This is the qualification of, of an elder, which if you're in our, our men's

Bible study, which I would encourage you to do, is a qualification for

any Godly man, and that is that we would be men who are above reproach.

This is being above reproach.

It's not that you're sinless, but you're keeping short accounts with God.

It's one way we can work on hating sin more.

A second way to develop a greater hatred for sin though is

through this, this anticipation.

And so if, if reflecting is the lag measure, you guys know

lag measures and lead measures.

If your goal is, I wanna sin less, I wanna be more godly.

Reflecting at the end of the day, that's a lag measure.

You, you've already lived the day.

So the lead measure is anticipating planning at the beginning of your

day saying, man, how can I avoid the sin that I normally fall into today?

Maybe it's your commute, right?

May, maybe you drive home and, and, and you're just tempted

to get angry on the road.

Or maybe it's your free time and what you do with your free time.

Listen, if, if you made it a goal to say, I'm going to lose 20 pounds, then

you're not just going to go to bed that night and wake up in the morning and grab

the tub of Tillamook chocolate peanut butter ice cream and sit down on the

couch and expect the pounds to melt off.

Are you?

No, that doesn't work.

Believe me, I, I can attest to you this morning.

It doesn't work.

You're gonna do what you're gonna plan.

You're gonna say, okay, I gotta change things, I gotta change my diet.

I, I gotta get in the gym.

I gotta exercise to see that goal accomplished.

Or maybe you're gonna even think, you know, we're catering a lunch at work and,

and in preparation for that, I know it's gonna be high carb, how high cow food.

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna pack a lunch with me for work so that I don't put

myself in the way of, of sin or put myself in the way of, of bad food.

Y y'all, if, let's go back to your commute.

If your commute causes you to stumble on the way home, maybe what

that means is you need to turn off.

Your form of packing your lunch, so to speak, is, is to turn off

the political talk show host that's just angry at everybody.

Or to turn off the sports talk guy who's angry at everybody or

to turn off the crime podcast.

That's just making you depressed about how dark humanity is, and to turn

on some praise music to turn on, an audio Bible, to turn on some preaching

in the car on your commute, or maybe your pitfall is your free time.

Maybe your packing your lunch is taking Dave Ramsey's $0 budget approach.

Do that with your time.

Make every minute accountable, figure out something to do with every

single minute of your day so that you're not left to your devices.

That's a, a lead measure anticipating.

Another lead measure though, as I talked about at the beginning of

this point, is to consider the cross every single morning to remember what

our sin cost every single morning that it put Jesus on the cross that.

More than anything should stir our hatred for sin, which is part

of our process of repentance.

Well, the fact was for Joel's o Audience, audience, that's

the word for Joel's audience.

Uh, the day the Lord had not yet come.

And so there was still time to repent.

That's where we go in the rest of chapter two.

Look at verse 12, yet even now, declares the Lord.

Return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping in mourning and

render your hearts and not your garments.

Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful and

slow to anger, abounding steadfast love and he relents over disaster.

Note the speaker in Joel two 12, yet even now, declares the Lord is Yahweh.

He's the one that wants the repentance, but notice what kind

of repentance that he wants here.

Return to me with all your heart, declares the Lord.

Render your heart, not your garments.

Time and time again in the Old Testament, God looked at Israel and said, will you

stop just going through the motions?

So many times God would even say, you know, I hate your feasts.

I hate your sacrifices.

Or in the New Testament, this people honors me with their lips,

but their heart is far from me.

See, when God wants repentance from us, just like he wanted with

Israel, God wants a repentance that's born not out of religiosity.

He doesn't want you to just clean up and look good and show up and and, and

go through the motions once a week.

He wants your heart.

He wants a relationship with you.

That's why Jesus died on the cross for you.

He doesn't want you to appease him with lip service.

He wants you devoted to him from your heart.

And so that's what he's calling for from Israel and and Job, or Joel

says the same things he says, render your heart's, not your garments.

God relents over disaster.

In other words, there's time for us still.

He goes on and he's gonna call in chapter two for this national repentance,

and he's calling for everybody.

He says, even let the nursing infants be brought, the newlyweds.

Get the groom, get the bride.

Bring them out here.

Get them out of their honeymoon.

We're all gonna repent before the Lord.

It is a call on everybody.

It's still a call on everybody, and the Lord's response is one

that is favorable to his people.

It says in verse 18, then the Lord became jealous for his

land and had pity on his people.

The Lord answered and said to his people, behold, I'm sending you grain

and wine and oil and you will be satisfied, and I will no more make

you a reproach among the nations.

I will remove the northern northerner far from you and drive him into

parched and desolate land and his vanguard into the eastern sea and

his rear garden into the western sea.

The stench and foul and smell of him will rise for.

He has done great things.

Uh, Joel here is, is transitioning.

God is.

Into a, a mashup of what was gonna happen in the short term for Joel

and his contemporaries and the, the future deliverance that God was

gonna work for his people, Israel.

And so in the short term, he's talking about, I'm gonna get

the, the, the locust outta here.

Earlier in the book, he had talked about the lo locust coming from the north.

And so that's why he says, I'm gonna drive the northerner far from you.

So he's telling Joel your repentance.

I've heard it, I've seen it.

It's genuine.

You've repented from your heart.

I'll take him away, but then he's gonna say, there's also gonna be

a, a future repentance for Israel.

That's going to result in me showing favor and kindness to them as well.

In fact, look at verses 28 through 32.

These might sound familiar to us.

It says, after it shall come to pass, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.

Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy and your old

men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions.

Even on the male and female servants.

In those days, I will pour out my spirit.

I will show wonders in the heavens and on earth, blood

and fire and columns of smoke.

The sun shall be turned to darkness, the moon to blood before the great

and awesome day of the Lord comes.

And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be

saved for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem.

There shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said.

And among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls.

This may sound familiar to you because you're thinking about

Peter in Acts chapter two.

Peter quotes this and applies it to the day of Pentecost when the

spirit was poured out upon the, the apostles there in the upper room.

Now, I think that Peter believed that this was going to be the full fulfillment

of Joel two, and in Acts chapter one, verse six, you remember the disciples

came to Jesus and said, all right, Jesus, it's time to set up the kingdom right.

And Jesus said, no, not yet.

It's not for you to know the day or the hour, but you'll receive power when

the Spirit has come upon you and you're gonna be my witnesses and Jerusalem

and Judea and to the ends of the earth.

And so they went and did that for a few days, but Peter's still Peter,

so I think Peter's like, great, we've been doing this for a few

days now it's time for the kingdom.

And so he's watching the Holy Spirit being poured out like this.

He's like, man, this reminds me of, of, of, of Joel two.

So in his sermon, he quotes Joel two and says, it's, it's

what's happening right now.

And Peter wasn't entirely wrong, he just wasn't entirely right in saying that

it was fully completed at that point.

This is what we know is already not yet.

And so the, the day of Pentecost, this was, uh, a, a foretaste of

what God was ultimately gonna do.

In the end.

You say, well, how do we know that?

Because the rest of these signs.

Here in Acts or in Joel chapter two didn't happen in concurrence

with the day of Pentecost the moon, turning the blood and the clouds

and the darkness and the judgment.

That didn't happen at Pentecost.

And so Peter's right to look back and say, this is a partial fulfillment

of Joel two, but there's also another future fulfillment that is, is

in view here in Joel chapter two.

That is going to happen still for the people of God and the people of Israel.

Listen, y'all.

God wanted his people to repent in Joel's day.

He's gonna want them to repent in the future and some will.

Those that call upon the name of the Lord, those are the ones in the future

after we are taken to be with the Lord.

Those are the ones that the Lord is gonna seal.

Those are the ones that, that the Lord is, is going to, to, to pardon and forgive.

Those are the ones that Zechariah is gonna talk about.

They're gonna look on him whom they pierce, and they're gonna mourn for him

that future day of repentance for Israel.

That's yet future.

Here's the thing, y'all, God still wants us to repent today too.

Same way, not through religiosity, but from the heart.

Point number two this morning is this, turn from your sin

by cultivating a love for God.

Turn from your sin by cultivating a love for God, not just a hatred

for sin, but a love for God.

And I would even go so far as to say this.

If all you have is a hatred for sin, then you will just find another

sin that you love a little bit.

More, you'll find another sin that you hate a little bit less, that will

become your pet sin, and it'll be okay because it's not as bad as this sin is.

And you'll think, yeah, I hate my sin.

I hate this horrible sin over here.

I hate adultery, but I, I'm okay with this over here.

And so we have to not just hate our sin, but we've gotta love God more.

We've gotta repent with all of our heart.

We've gotta render our hearts and not just our garments.

One of the consequences of our sin that should bother us the most y'all,

is the interruption that it creates in our relationship with Jesus.

Not a severing, an interruption.

You're safe in Christ.

You're secure in Christ.

You're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, but your

relationship, your intimacy can be interrupted through your sin.

Here's what this might look like for you.

Sin can cool your passions for Jesus and the Lord.

You've got unconfessed unrepentant sin in your heart, man, you, you're less

prone to want to be around God's people.

You're less prone to wanna show up at church.

You're less prone to wanna pray.

You're less prone to wanna open your Bible because you've got this weight,

this baggage that's a burden to you.

Sin can also discourage your pursuit of Jesus and I, I, I don't, I

don't really want to grow because I don't feel like I'm worthy of it.

Sin tempers your boldness.

Convictions that you have about the Bible, maybe you're less vocal about them because

you know the hypocrisy in your life.

You've got this pocket of unconfessed unrepentant sin in your life over here,

and so you're less bold about speaking out for Jesus and in defense of Jesus because

you know that there's this hypocrisy and you just don't wanna step into that.

Sin also hinders your prayers.

Peter speaks to husbands and says, husbands live with your

wives in an understanding manner.

He says, if you don't, your prayers are gonna be hindered.

If you've got unconfessed unrepentant sin in your life, it's going to hamper

the effectiveness of your prayers.

Sin unconfessed unrepentant also promotes self-loathing in condemnation.

You are gonna struggle and battle with that and and you are gonna

disbelieve Romans eight, one, which says there's no condemnation

anymore for those in Christ Jesus.

When you've got unconfessed unrepentant sin in your life, that's a hard

truth to hold onto and believe.

Unconfessed un repentance.

Sin also grows insecurity in your life.

You're gonna struggle to feel close to Jesus.

You're gonna struggle to feel secure in your relationship with him.

You're gonna have doubts about your eternity.

You're gonna have questions about whether or not you're really saved.

Because the weight of the unconfessed unrepentant sin,

it also quenches the spirit.

You'll be less sensitive to the spirit's leading in your life, less sensitive

to the spirit's prompting in your life.

And perhaps the most dangerous is unconfessed.

Unrepentant sin can harden the heart.

These are the reasons why we should feel the godly grief that Paul talks about

in Second Corinthians chapter seven, and connects it with true repentance.

And y'all, I want you to see this morning that all of this can be undone by coming

to Jesus in confession, repentance.

And that's the beauty of the gospel.

That's the beauty of the gospel.

Don't come to me and say, pastor, what do I have to do to earn forgiveness?

You don't,

I, I, I mentioned going to the priest in confession.

Lemme just pile on while I'm at it.

The, the concept of penance is completely antigo.

To say you have to go and pray.

So many Hail Marys, you have to go and, and do these things, denies

the sufficiency of Jesus Christ and the fullness of Jesus Christ.

Death on the cross, on your behalf.

Yo, that's why purgatory doesn't exist either.

Either your sins all paid for by Jesus, or it's not paid for at all.

And if you come in faith and repentance and put your trust in Jesus Christ

as your Lord and Savior, that's why I tell you this morning that all of

this stuff can go away like that.

If you'll just confess your sin, bring it to the light, and repentance

say, God, I, I wanna be done with it.

I'm sorry.

You say That's so easy.

Exactly.

And yet it's so insanely hard because our flesh keeps us back

and says, but he doesn't want you.

Your flesh keeps you back and says, but you've re, you've confessed this

so many times before your flesh keeps you back and says, yeah, but, but

you're just gonna go back to it again.

Those are lies from the enemy.

Your flesh keeps you back and says, you gotta clean yourself up before

you come back before Jesus, y'all, if you didn't have to clean yourself

up before he came after you to begin with, you don't have to clean yourself

up before you go back before him.

And so repent from your sin because you love him.

Because of that,

you're not gonna find that offered anywhere else.

That kind of love, that kind of grace, that kind of mercy.

It's not gonna be found anywhere else.

And if you're an unbeliever here and you've never come to him

this morning, look, the offer is the same for you this morning.

Come to Jesus this morning.

Confess everything, bring it to the light.

Repent from your sin and say, I'm, I'm, I'm here to surrender my life

to the one that died on the cross from my sin and rose from the dead

so that I'll live with him forever.

I want Jesus this morning.

Isaiah 55 verses six and seven.

Seek the Lord while he may be found.

Call upon him while he is near.

Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts.

Let him return to the Lord that he may have compassion on him and to our

God for he will abundantly pardon.

That is the call on every single one of us this morning.

Christian, you've got sin in your life because you've been resisting, you've

been drifting, you've been neglecting your walk with Christ for a little while.

Isaiah 55, Jesus is saying.

Seek me 'cause I can be found by you.

Come to me, confess.

'cause I will abundantly pardon?

Church repentance is an expression of our love for God and it's fueled

by our love for God, our desire for closeness and intimacy with him.

For those who are repent, God will show himself to be a

God who arelen over disaster.

But for those who refuse to repent.

There's a different future in view, and that's our final section.

Look down at Joel chapter three, verses nine through 14, chapter three, verse

nine through 14 is the judgment of God.

And here's the day of the Lord.

Proclaim this among the nations.

Joel says in verse nine, consecrate yourself for war.

Stir up the mighty men.

Let all the men of war drawn near, let them come up.

Beat your plow shares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears.

Let the weak say, I am a warrior.

Look at verse 12.

Let the nation stir themselves up and come to the Valley of Jehoshaphat.

For there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations.

The seam to, for us is, is one of judgment and it's the one of the, the

culmination of the day of the Lord.

And, and, and this is the invitation of the nations, all of the enemies of

God to come against God with everything they've got in our modern vernacular.

Rather than beating the, the, the pruning hooks into to spears,

he might say, bring your nukes.

Bring your drones, bring all you've got against me, and let's

meet in the value of Jehoshaphat because we've got business to do.

You look in the back of your Bible at your maps for the value of

Jehoshaphat, you're not gonna find it.

Um, we don't know exactly where this is gonna be.

Some have said this is when Jesus returns to the Mount of Olives, Zechariah

talks about that mountain is gonna be split with the return of Christ.

Some have said that's going to create this valley.

We're not sure exactly where it's gonna be.

The point is not that, the point is what Jehoshaphat means, and

jehoshaphat means the Lord.

Judges.

This final battle, this final conflict between God and his enemies is, is not

gonna be a, a very exciting battle.

It's, it's one sided, not a single shot will be fired from the enemies of God.

The book of Revelation makes that abundantly clear.

I.

This is the end.

This is when there is no more chance for repentance.

This is the description that is picked up there in verse 13.

Put in the sickle for the harvest is ripe.

Go in and tread the wine.

Press is full.

The VATS overflow for their evil is great.

In the book of Revelation, John sees a similar scene.

It says in verse 18 of chapter 14 in Revelation, and another angel came

out from the altar, and angel has authority over the fire, and he called

with a loud voice to the one who had the sharp sickle put in your sickle

and gather the clusters from the vine of the earth for its grapes are ripe.

So the angel swung his sickle across the earth and gathered the grape harvest

of the earth and threw it into the great wine press of the wrath of God.

And the wine press was trodden outside the city and blood flowed from the

wine press as high as a horse's bridle.

In Revelation 19, Jesus has depicted the returning Jesus, the second

coming Jesus with the, the name King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

And it says His robe was dipped in blood and it's the blood of the nations.

This is the day of the Lord.

You say that's terrifying.

It is.

But if you're in Christ, not for you.

If you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, this should

terrify you, in fact, out of love.

I pray that it does, because I want you to do everything that you possibly can do to

be reconciled to God, and what that means is putting your trust in Jesus Christ as

your Lord and Savior, that he died on the cross for the forgiveness of your sins.

Then he rose from the dead so that you can live with him forever.

If you'll have that transaction with God, then you don't have to fear the

day of the Lord either Christian.

This isn't a day of fear because you're not gonna be in the Valley of Jehoshaphat,

you're not here, you're somewhere else.

And, and that should make us exceedingly joyful, exceedingly grateful because

the wrath of God poured out in the valley of Jehoshaphat, as I was talking

about a minute ago, was poured out for you and me on Jesus on the cross.

So that means there's none left for us.

Which means eternity is not something that we dread, but something that we long

for Finally this morning turned from sin by cultivating a hunger for eternity.

A hunger for eternity.

There's another day coming when we will appear before a judgment seat church,

but that judgment seat is the point that we will receive the eternal reward.

God will reward you for your faithfulness.

And, and that's why what we do today, that's why battling

sin matters to us today.

There's something to the line from Gladiator.

What you do echoes in eternity.

It does.

It does.

And a big part of that boils down to how you fight and battle sin.

Be motivated to repent from sin because the more we put sin off,

the more eternal reward we're gonna find in the presence of the Lord.

And you say, is it okay to to, to, to be motivated by rewards?

Paul was first Timothy four, second Timothy four.

Second Timothy four.

Yes.

Yes.

One of the Timothy's, chapter four.

I know that much.

When he said, I'm being poured out as a drink.

Second Timothy four, I'm being poured out as a drink offering.

He said, and I, and now I'm, I'm, I'm longing for, for death.

Why?

Because I know that the, the crown of righteousness awaits me.

And the, the, the Lord himself is gonna award it to me, and not only to me,

but all, all who love his coming are going to receive the crown from him.

Church, if you love the coming of Jesus, Jesus is gonna crown you on that day.

I, I want you to close your eyes and just picture for a minute.

Hearing that moment when Jesus says, well done, good and faithful servants.

And he steps aside and says, enter into the joy.

And, and you step into eternity and the realization of, I'm here.

I'm here.

No more fear of not making it.

No more anxiety.

No more questions.

No more shame.

No more guilt.

No more carrying the weight.

No more sin.

Think about that moment.

That should be further motivation for us to say to sin, get outta my life.

That moment, hearing well done good and hateful, faithful servant is

only going to be possible because what we're about to celebrate now

is we conclude our time together.

It's only possible because again, that wrath of the day of the Lord.

Was poured out for us on Jesus, Jesus' death for you and for me.

Satisfied that route.

And it's this lord's table, communion that commemorates that act and reminds us

that now we look forward to an eternity where we don't have to fear, but we can

rejoice in the presence of the Lord.

So take these elements, meditate, think about.

Your relationship with Christ and then I'll come back up and we'll

take them together in a moment.