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Day of Deliverance – Joel Ch2v18–32
Manage episode 463463772 series 1916669
Let’s take a moment of prayer as we open God’s Word together. Father, as we come to your Word now, we ask that by the power of that same Spirit, you will open the Word to us and open us to your Word. We ask these things for the glory of the Lord Jesus and the extension of his kingdom.
Amen. Now, it won’t be long until the lone piper stands again on the roof of Murrayfield Stadium as 70,000 passionate rugby fans belt out Flower of Scotland. But I wonder, and I’ve often wondered this as I’ve heard that sung with passion from the youngest to the oldest there in the six nations, how many of those singing it actually know what they’re singing about? Who or what is the Flower of Scotland? Who exactly was proud Edward? Why and how was he sent homeward, and what second thoughts was he being encouraged to have? Well, of course, it’s a reference to Robert the Bruce’s victory over the English at Bannockburn in 1314.
But it strikes me that that’s not on the mind of many people as they sing that song at the beginning of a rugby match or a football match, because the events long past in history seem much less important than who we are now. In fact, the second verse of that anthem acknowledges that and says, we can still rise now. And so the original historic details, in a sense, are not the most important thing in the singing of the anthem.
And that’s probably true of the American anthem and various others. And I think we’ve been discovering the same thing with the book of Joel. As Joel worked on the Word of the Lord that came to him in chapter 1, verse 1, we get that sense, don’t we, as we move through that he was conscious that he wasn’t simply writing for his time, but that he was writing for all time.
And in that sense, Joel’s very similar to much of Scripture, especially the prophets and indeed many of David’s psalms, which don’t outline the actual event that prompted the prayer or the psalm and caused him to cry out to God in a particular way. And there seems to me that there’s a reason for that pattern. The reason is that others in all ages might not think, well, that was fine for him in that specific situation, but it’s not relevant to me.
The context and the specific situation is often not disclosed so that others in all ages, including us, might enter into the truth about what God is saying here and the truth about God that is being discovered. So, in chapter 1, we remember that God had sent a warning message to his people, this terrible judgement plague of locusts calling them to repent. And then at the beginning of chapter 2, we found out that not only was that an actual plague of locusts that destroyed the land, but that actual plague of locusts was also a picture of something else.
(3:48 – 6:06)
It was a teaser trailer, if you like, of God’s final day of judgement that hasn’t happened yet against not just their sin in Judah at that time, but all sin forever for all time. And so, we saw at the end of last week in verse 17, Joel calls the leaders of the people, those elders, those priests, he calls upon them to repent. But as we come to our passage tonight, starting at verse 18, it strikes me that there is a gap between verse 17 and 18.
I think there has to be. The word then is important. We don’t know how long this pause might have been.
It might have been days. It might have been weeks. It may even have been years.
Who knows? But there’s obviously been a meeting of the people for prayer. The people have got together as a result of the catastrophe that’s happened to them, and they’ve gotten together following Joel’s lead, and they’ve prayed, they’ve cried out to God. We know that from verse 19, because the Lord will reply to them, do you see? The Lord replies to them.
So, here are people who are experiencing this dreadful consequence of rebellion against God. They cry out to God, and then, then the Lord replies. And in the passage that we have before us tonight, God speaks to His people after they respond to Him.
And so, our third study this evening is about a day of deliverance, as God comes in the most wonderful, incredible grace to give His sinful people a second chance. But the first thing we need to notice about this second chance and this grace is where it comes from. What is the source of this grace? And it’s clearly stated by Joel in verse 18, then the Lord became jealous for His land and had pity on His people.
(6:08 – 6:57)
Understanding this verse is the great key to what is going to happen next, because, you see, the really sinful thing about the sin of the people of Judah, and the really sinful thing about any sin that we happen to embrace and practise is not the impact that sin has on them or indeed on us, but the impact that that sin has on God Himself. Your sin and mine, as theirs, has an impact on God Himself. What does that look like? It robs God of His glory.
(6:58 – 7:20)
It robs God of His glory. When we sin, we rob God of His glory. That’s Paul’s definition of sin in Romans 3, isn’t it? All have sinned and done what? How is that sin described? It’s described in terms of a falling short or a marring or a distortion of God’s glory, and so it is here.
(7:21 – 10:27)
They’ve robbed God of the demonstration of His glory. What does that mean? His distinctiveness, His uniqueness, His godness amongst His people and amongst the nations, all of whom had their own gods, remember. And God was jealous—do you notice in verse 18?—He was jealous to have His glory back.
Now, remember the meaning of Joel’s name. God is God. God is God.
And God wanted to be seen as God, not only in the lives of His people but through them among the nations. Now, I wonder, as I was preparing this, I was caused to think about this when people see us. Do they see that distinctiveness of God’s glory in us? Grace and I are just back from a trip to Egypt, and I was struck on that holiday standing in a ferry queue at five in the morning, waiting to get on a ship to cross the Persian Gulf there, to be kept waiting for twenty minutes at five in the morning.
We were all there, all ready to go. The ship was ready, but we were kept waiting at five in the morning, whilst all the men operating the ferry terminal obeyed the Mullah’s call to prayer in an open shelter, in front of everyone—men, young men, older men, all of them, completely unashamed to hold the whole thing up while they demonstrated their distinctiveness and their devotion to Allah. And I said to Grace, are you having the same thought I am? We hardly dare mention the name of the Lord Jesus in public, far less hold up a queue of people for twenty minutes en masse.
Is it possible that as Christian people in Western culture, we have lost our distinctiveness? We’re ashamed of who we are. Well, if we have, it’s God’s glory that’s being compromised. We’re saying something about God right there, because the more sinful our lives become, the less distinctive they become.
(10:28 – 12:40)
We rob God of His glory by living lives that are not distinctively Christian. So God was jealous for what their sin was saying to the world about Him, and at the same time, He saw them in their repentance and their misery and their shame and their need, and He took pity on them. It’s the second half of the verse.
He was jealous for His land and for His name and His reputation, and He took pity on His people. Do you notice that? Now, it’s vital for us to understand the nature and character of God, that we must see these two characteristics of God as not being opposites of one another. They’re not mutually exclusive.
We mustn’t think that if God has taken pity upon these people in their need and in their sinful rebellion, then He must be laying aside His passion for His jealousy and His own glory. He must be compromising His own standards in some way if He’s taking pity on His people. We mustn’t think like that, because the wonderful thing about the gospel right through the Bible is this.
God’s passion for His own glory involves God’s pity for His own people. He wants His people back. Now, if you have children, the biggest fear you have is losing them somewhere when they’re young.
I remember we were in Legoland once, and we lost our son for about ten minutes. Ten minutes in Legoland without your four-year-old is a long time. And all that matters, all that matters right then as a parent is that your child is safe and you want them back.
(12:40 – 14:37)
It doesn’t matter who finds them, where they’re found, what they’ve been doing, how they ended up where they were. All that matters is you want them back, right? You want them back. You don’t even care who’s at the lost children office.
You don’t care who took them there, although you’ll thank them. All that matters is you’ve got them back, and they’re safe, right? That is the emotion of verse 18, part 2. God’s passion to have His children back, His people back for His glory emerges in these verses as we move through. Look at the way their deliverance is described and the way the locusts are chased into the sea in verse 20.
The eastern ranks, they’re going to end up in the Dead Sea. The western ranks, they’re going to end up in the Mediterranean Sea. God divides and conquers His enemies.
He divides and conquers the plague of locusts, and they die. And that deliverance from the plague of locusts tells Joel two things. Firstly, it’s a taste of God’s salvation in the present because it is actually a deliverance from a real plague of locusts.
But it is also a foretaste of God’s salvation that is to come in the future in the power and the gift and in the blessing that God will one day give to His people through the death and resurrection of Jesus, and even more amazingly, the coming and outpouring of the Holy Spirit. So notice with me what Joel says about the salvation that God’s people experience. There are always three dimensions to God’s salvation.
(14:38 – 19:11)
I want you to notice this in the passage. It was true for them, and it’s true for us. When God saves, there are always three elements to it.
Firstly, their enemy is destroyed. Do you notice that in verses 18 to 20? The Lord has pity on them, and in verse 20, He is going to remove the northern army far from them. The northerner, your version might say.
He’s going to remove the northerner far from them. Their enemy is going to be destroyed. The picture is like some still frame from a post-apocalyptic movie like The Day After Tomorrow or 28 Days Later or whatever zombie apocalypse thing you may want to watch.
The locust army is lying on the shores of the sea in piles of dead, rotting insects. You can smell them for miles around. It’s a shocking picture, but it’s a picture of God’s powerful destruction of His enemy.
And you see, God’s salvation always starts that way, doesn’t it? It always starts with the destruction of the enemy. Where have we seen this before? Well, remember the Israelites when they came through the Red Sea? There in Exodus 14, 13, Moses stands on the banks of the Red Sea, and he says to the people, stand firm. Do you remember what comes next? Stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will work for you today.
Then he says, and the Egyptians, your enemy, whom you see today, you will never see again. Your enemy will be destroyed, and that is where your salvation begins. And Exodus 15 is basically a celebration of the details of the destruction of the enemy who would control them no longer.
And you see similar language in Revelation when Babylon is thrown into the sea, and God’s judgement falls on the city of man, and it’s destroyed, and then there’s a great cry of joy goes up from heaven as Babylon’s destroyed, the enemy of God is destroyed. Salvation always begins with the destruction of the enemy. Think about that New Testament passage, the event when Jesus cast out the demons in the demoniac man and sent them into the pig herd.
Do you remember what happened to the pigs? They flew headlong off a cliff, and they were destroyed. Why would Jesus do that? Why would He do that? Well, the cost of a herd of pigs was a small price to pay for Jesus to bring reassurance to one of His broken children that those demons that had tormented Him and destroyed all of His life till that point now no longer were a problem. They’d been destroyed.
The power of the enemy is destroyed, and that is true spiritually for us. Can you grasp that? We need to be reassured tonight that our enemy has been destroyed. That’s where our salvation begins.
The bonds need to be snapped. Wesley knew that, didn’t he, when he wrote that great hymn, And Can It Be? I always thought it was strange that you’d begin a hymn with the word and. You’re not meant to begin a sentence with the word and, never mind one of the greatest hymns in Christian hymnology.
Anyhow, the words are great, aren’t they? My chains fell off. My heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
My enemy has been destroyed. So that’s the first element of salvation that we see in these verses. But look secondly at verses 21 to 25.
Not only was their enemy destroyed, their joy was restored. I wonder if, like me, over the last three weeks you’ve been feeling that the locusts are actually coming in through the back door of the church, as we’ve been reading this. They’re everywhere.
(19:11 – 19:35)
They’re everywhere. There’s so many of them. A terrible army.
Destruction in their wake, like those wildfires in California, sweeping through the land, destroying everything in their path. But now God says in these verses, don’t be afraid anymore. Don’t worry.
(19:35 – 22:02)
Don’t worry about your animals. In last week’s passage, the animals were dying for lack of food and water and pasture. They were crying out too.
They were suffering as a result of the people’s sin. Don’t worry about your animals. The land will recover.
And then in verse 25, some of the most famous words in this prophecy. I will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten. Because the song of deliverance is also a song of joy.
And do you sense echoes in that verse? I will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten. Do you sense an echo there of Psalm 51? David’s great Psalm of repentance, where he cries out to God, oh Lord. Do you remember he cries out and he says, Lord, restore to me the joy of your salvation.
And then he says, may the bones that you have broken, because I’m in this mess because you’ve judged me because of my sin. I’m experiencing the weight of that. You’ve broken my bones.
I’m broken. May the bones you have broken, just as the people here had been broken by the locusts, may the bones you have broken rejoice. Make me glad that I’ve been delivered from my enemy and that you are now putting back in place the things that my own sin has destroyed in my life.
You’re putting them back in place, Lord. Please do that. And we each have our locust stories, don’t we? We each have our locust years.
As we look back, we have all kinds of regrets, most of them unexpressed to anyone. Maybe regrets of sin that we’ve actively embraced and committed and felt the consequences of. Maybe sin that’s ongoing, unconfessed, and we’re empty shells inside, although we’re going through the motions.
(22:06 – 24:35)
Maybe regret that we feel we’ve done so little with the life God has given us. As we look back, some of us are getting on in age and everything seems to be in the past now. The delights in life that we once had, well, they’re long gone.
What’s it all been for? And the locusts in different ways have eaten up the years of our lives. Where is it all gone? What’s it all been worth? You see, there are always consequences that come with our sin, and there are always consequences that come with our complacency. We’ve learned that already from Joel.
The scars that we bear may never fully heal. Procrastination, regret. I’ve always meant to get around to doing that.
Things we never got around to dealing with that we always meant to. So there’s a word from God as you turn to him and turn away from your sin and turn to him in his mercy and pray that he will be jealous for his glory in your life. And he says to you, as he said to the people here, he says, he comes to us this evening and he says, he says, don’t be afraid.
Don’t be scared. Don’t be frightened. Rejoice.
Be glad. I’ll restore to you what your sin has destroyed. Now, what is that restoration? Well, in the context of the passage, as we have already seen, the restoration is that the land becomes fruitful again.
It becomes fruitful again. It starts to produce fruit. It starts to produce grass and greenery and produce.
It can sustain the lives of the individuals and the lives of the nation. And it doesn’t really matter what age or stage we are in our Christian life or how much we think we may have wasted. God can make you fruitful again.
(24:38 – 27:14)
God can make you fruitful again. That’s my testimony. And it’s the testimony of many others here.
And that joy and usefulness and humble service can be restored no matter what your age or no matter what your regrets. And if you don’t have any regrets yet, do your best to make sure you don’t have any. Live life this way in submission to God’s Word.
Make your priority to know God and His purpose and His will and live distinctively for Him. So, their enemy is destroyed and their joy is restored. But look thirdly in verses 26 and 27.
This leads to their satisfaction being complete. Do you notice that? You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied. Now, this is the complete opposite of what we experience in our consumer culture.
And it’s important for us to understand that only the people of God can experience this kind of satisfaction. Only the people of God can experience this kind of satisfaction. Do you remember Jesus’ words again in the Sermon on the Mount? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, because they, and as we saw last time, the real impact of that word, they, is they and they alone, because they and they alone will be filled.
Only they will be filled. In 1779, John Newton wrote a magisterial hymn, Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken. And there’s a phrase in it that sounds odd to our 21st century jargon.
In that hymn, he says, Fading are the worldling’s pleasures. It’s a great wee phrase, isn’t it? Fading are the worldling’s pleasures. He wrote that in 1779.
(27:15 – 27:56)
What did he know about worldling’s pleasures in 1779? There was no internet then. There was no multimedia. There was no wall-to-wall football on the telly.
There was no entertainment at the hydro every night. There was no pubs open 24-7. Well, he knew in his culture that the worldling’s pleasure was fading.
And one thing, nothing much has changed in the 246 years since he wrote it. Have they? One thing we can say with confidence to every single person in our world is this, whatever pleasure you’re experiencing right now, it’s fading. It’s fading.
(27:57 – 29:50)
You’re always going to be looking for something else. You’re always going to be moving on to something more. You’re always going to be wanting something different to find pleasure in.
You’re going to get fed up with that. It’s not going to scratch the itch for long. You’re going to need some new form of excitement or entertainment.
You’re going to need something to take your mind off the drudgery. Let me ask you this. If you’ve been fortunate enough to support a sporting team that’s actually won something worth winning, like the Champions League or the URC rugby championship or whatever it happens to be, if you’ve actually been in that place, how long does the joy last? So if they win the cup in May, by the time August comes, you’re having to start all over again anyway.
It’s worthless. What about the happiness of your graduation day? Did it last? Your work promotion, did it last? Your dream holiday, did it last? Your new home, did it last? It’s the law of diminishing returns. You see, they’re all fading, all of them.
Fading is the worldling’s pleasure. Another hymn puts it this way, change and decay in all around I see. That’s the dentist’s hymn.
If there’s any dentists here tonight, change and decay and all around I see. And in Newton’s hymn, he closes it off by saying these great words, only Zion’s children know anything about solid joys and lasting treasure. Only Zion’s children, only the children of God, eat in plenty and become satisfied.
(29:50 – 30:39)
You see, when you devour God’s grace, when you devour God’s grace, you become more and more satisfied with who he is and the amazing and wonderful things that he does and the incredible way he speaks to us in his Word. Look, for example, at verse 26, the end of verse 26 there, my people shall never again be put to shame because he’s dealt wondrously with us. He’s worked wonders.
You will know that I am in the midst of Israel. You will never experience shame again. We all know what it’s like to experience shame.
(30:40 – 37:17)
When I went to school as a five-year-old in Lesmahago in the mid-60s, my dad was a miner, and we didn’t have much money. Mum made all my clothes apart from the stuff she couldn’t make, which was basically underwear and a school tie. Everything else she made, my shirt, my jumper, my short trousers, and she knitted my socks.
None of the other boys at school had knitted socks and knitted jumpers. They all had bought stuff. And there’s me.
Man, oh man, the amount of hassle and bullying and name-calling I got all through primary school, by the way, because I had to wear shorts all the way through. The other boys got to wear long trousers after primary five. So, we all know what shame feels like.
We all know what shame feels like. And here, God says to His people—I’m sure if my mum and dad had thought that that had caused shame for me, they’d have been upset by that, because no parent wants their child to feel shame, right? And here God says, come to me, you’ll never be put to shame again. You’ll never be ashamed.
You’ll never be put to shame. You’ll never be ashamed to have me as your God. And Peter says the same thing in the New Testament, doesn’t he? Whoever believes in him, in Jesus, the cornerstone, that great passage in 1 Peter 2, whoever believes in me will never be put to shame.
Now, we may feel that we’re put to shame here, and we’re not treated well here by the world, but on the final day, as you’ll see in a minute, on the final day, you’re going to be vindicated, and you’re not going to be ashamed that you lined up behind Jesus. Not on that day. Not on that day.
And you see, when we come together like this, we experience something that those who never come among a fellowship like ours will never, ever, ever know. We experience the presence of God among his people in blessing. That’s why we shouldn’t want to miss an opportunity ever to meet with God’s people.
I remember hearing Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones once saying, I never want to miss a prayer meeting, because it might be the one when revival breaks out, and I want to be there. That experience of God among his people in blessing, that’s why we shouldn’t want to miss an opportunity like that, because this is where we feed on God’s grace. This is what our lives broken by sin need.
We need this nourishment. Here’s another Charles Wesley hymn that captures this need perfectly. Oh Jesus, full of pardoning grace, more full of grace than I of sin, yet once again I seek your face.
Open your arms and take me in, and freely my backslidings heal, and love this faithless sinner still. Away home and find that on the internet and pray it tonight. Oh Jesus, full of pardoning grace.
So this passage describes the present blessings of salvation in those three ways, but you notice that for Joel, it’s also a marvellous trailer of the deliverance that is coming in the future, and this is where we’ll end, because the verses that follow are much more familiar to us, because they’re the words that Peter quotes on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2 verse 16. When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, Peter says, this is that which was prophesied by the prophet Joel. Here is the fulfilment of the promise of worldwide salvation, not just local salvation, not just present salvation, but ultimate salvation.
But you know, even for Joel, the promise here that he puts in his prophecy has a much deeper and richer history than we often think, because this isn’t the first time this desire has been seen before in Scripture. Where have we seen this before? Well, we can go further back into the mists of Israel’s history. Let’s go back to an obscure incident in Numbers 11.
Who thought we would end up in Numbers 11 from Joel 2? Well, in Numbers 11, Moses has asked God for some help. So God, in response to that, sends the Spirit to fall on seventy elders who prophesied in the camp, but the Spirit also rested on Eldad and Medad, two outsiders who weren’t with the people, and they started prophesying, and the people were outraged. And they came to Moses and said, this is ridiculous.
We know it’s okay for these seventy people, these seventy elders and the people, these seventy to be prophesying, but they don’t even belong to us. They’re not part of our community. You’ve got to stop this, Moses.
And in verse 29 of Numbers 11, Moses says these incredible words, I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and the Lord would put His Spirit on them. I wish that everyone was a prophet. I wish that everyone had the Spirit poured out on them, not just seventy, everyone.
Even Moses was frustrated that the times in which he lived didn’t provide the fullness of the blessings that he knew were needed and that he knew God one day would provide. There was something deep inside him that knew there was something bigger than all of that. That pouring out of the Spirit on those seventy people back in Numbers 11 and the prophecy here in Joel were all little tasters for what happened at Pentecost.
(37:19 – 41:57)
Because although these Old Testament examples were amazing for those who experienced them, they just encapsulated that longing that every member of the believing community would one day be empowered by the Spirit of God to hear the Word of God and speak the Word of God. Because although people knew God in the Old Testament, there were some aspects of their faith that, shall we say, were secondhand. Let’s pop to a verse in Amos 3, 7, where God says, “‘Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing His secrets.'” To whom? To His servants, the prophets.
So, if you wanted to know the secret of the Lord, if you wanted to know the mystery of the Lord, if you wanted to know what the Lord was saying, you needed to find a prophet to whom God had revealed that secret. Right? But now, wait for this, you’ll love this, now the message of the gospel, the mystery, the secret, which Moses, Joel, and his fellow Old Testament believers only saw in shadows, now that mystery, that secret has been made fully known. This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel.
The mystery hidden for ages and generations is now revealed to whom? To whom? A few selected prophets? A few elite new apostles? No, no, no. The mystery long hidden through the ages is now revealed to His saints, all of them, all of us. Paul tells us that in Colossians 1. This mystery, which, by the way, is Christ in you by His Spirit, the hope of glory is now for all of God’s people, Aye, even you, with all your locust years of mess.
So, when those disciples in Acts 2 experienced the coming of the Holy Spirit and those flames of fire appeared above their heads, what was actually happening there was that the shekinah glory, the living presence of the living God that we sang about in that wonderful hymn, that shekinah glory of the presence of God that up until that point had lived between the wings of the cherubim on the ark of the covenant, that holy flame now lived in them, the very presence of the living God, not in a temple or an artefact, but in His people. That intimacy of the presence of God that in the Old Testament was only known by prophets and priests and kings is now the privilege of all God’s children, intimacy, communion. So, we’re going to share it this evening, fellowship, joy in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Oh, how can they be for me? How can they be mine? Well, Joel tells us at the end of this passage in verse 32, he says, They’re yours if you call on the name of the Lord. Call on the name of the Lord, because everyone, verse 32, who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. So at Calvary God showed wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke.
The sun was turned to darkness. The moon turned to blood. The earth shook.
The rocks were split. And it came to pass that everyone who called on the name of the Lord would be saved. And it’s time for you to call on Him now.
Amen.
The post Day of Deliverance – Joel Ch2v18–32 appeared first on Greenview Church.
31 epizódok
Manage episode 463463772 series 1916669
Let’s take a moment of prayer as we open God’s Word together. Father, as we come to your Word now, we ask that by the power of that same Spirit, you will open the Word to us and open us to your Word. We ask these things for the glory of the Lord Jesus and the extension of his kingdom.
Amen. Now, it won’t be long until the lone piper stands again on the roof of Murrayfield Stadium as 70,000 passionate rugby fans belt out Flower of Scotland. But I wonder, and I’ve often wondered this as I’ve heard that sung with passion from the youngest to the oldest there in the six nations, how many of those singing it actually know what they’re singing about? Who or what is the Flower of Scotland? Who exactly was proud Edward? Why and how was he sent homeward, and what second thoughts was he being encouraged to have? Well, of course, it’s a reference to Robert the Bruce’s victory over the English at Bannockburn in 1314.
But it strikes me that that’s not on the mind of many people as they sing that song at the beginning of a rugby match or a football match, because the events long past in history seem much less important than who we are now. In fact, the second verse of that anthem acknowledges that and says, we can still rise now. And so the original historic details, in a sense, are not the most important thing in the singing of the anthem.
And that’s probably true of the American anthem and various others. And I think we’ve been discovering the same thing with the book of Joel. As Joel worked on the Word of the Lord that came to him in chapter 1, verse 1, we get that sense, don’t we, as we move through that he was conscious that he wasn’t simply writing for his time, but that he was writing for all time.
And in that sense, Joel’s very similar to much of Scripture, especially the prophets and indeed many of David’s psalms, which don’t outline the actual event that prompted the prayer or the psalm and caused him to cry out to God in a particular way. And there seems to me that there’s a reason for that pattern. The reason is that others in all ages might not think, well, that was fine for him in that specific situation, but it’s not relevant to me.
The context and the specific situation is often not disclosed so that others in all ages, including us, might enter into the truth about what God is saying here and the truth about God that is being discovered. So, in chapter 1, we remember that God had sent a warning message to his people, this terrible judgement plague of locusts calling them to repent. And then at the beginning of chapter 2, we found out that not only was that an actual plague of locusts that destroyed the land, but that actual plague of locusts was also a picture of something else.
(3:48 – 6:06)
It was a teaser trailer, if you like, of God’s final day of judgement that hasn’t happened yet against not just their sin in Judah at that time, but all sin forever for all time. And so, we saw at the end of last week in verse 17, Joel calls the leaders of the people, those elders, those priests, he calls upon them to repent. But as we come to our passage tonight, starting at verse 18, it strikes me that there is a gap between verse 17 and 18.
I think there has to be. The word then is important. We don’t know how long this pause might have been.
It might have been days. It might have been weeks. It may even have been years.
Who knows? But there’s obviously been a meeting of the people for prayer. The people have got together as a result of the catastrophe that’s happened to them, and they’ve gotten together following Joel’s lead, and they’ve prayed, they’ve cried out to God. We know that from verse 19, because the Lord will reply to them, do you see? The Lord replies to them.
So, here are people who are experiencing this dreadful consequence of rebellion against God. They cry out to God, and then, then the Lord replies. And in the passage that we have before us tonight, God speaks to His people after they respond to Him.
And so, our third study this evening is about a day of deliverance, as God comes in the most wonderful, incredible grace to give His sinful people a second chance. But the first thing we need to notice about this second chance and this grace is where it comes from. What is the source of this grace? And it’s clearly stated by Joel in verse 18, then the Lord became jealous for His land and had pity on His people.
(6:08 – 6:57)
Understanding this verse is the great key to what is going to happen next, because, you see, the really sinful thing about the sin of the people of Judah, and the really sinful thing about any sin that we happen to embrace and practise is not the impact that sin has on them or indeed on us, but the impact that that sin has on God Himself. Your sin and mine, as theirs, has an impact on God Himself. What does that look like? It robs God of His glory.
(6:58 – 7:20)
It robs God of His glory. When we sin, we rob God of His glory. That’s Paul’s definition of sin in Romans 3, isn’t it? All have sinned and done what? How is that sin described? It’s described in terms of a falling short or a marring or a distortion of God’s glory, and so it is here.
(7:21 – 10:27)
They’ve robbed God of the demonstration of His glory. What does that mean? His distinctiveness, His uniqueness, His godness amongst His people and amongst the nations, all of whom had their own gods, remember. And God was jealous—do you notice in verse 18?—He was jealous to have His glory back.
Now, remember the meaning of Joel’s name. God is God. God is God.
And God wanted to be seen as God, not only in the lives of His people but through them among the nations. Now, I wonder, as I was preparing this, I was caused to think about this when people see us. Do they see that distinctiveness of God’s glory in us? Grace and I are just back from a trip to Egypt, and I was struck on that holiday standing in a ferry queue at five in the morning, waiting to get on a ship to cross the Persian Gulf there, to be kept waiting for twenty minutes at five in the morning.
We were all there, all ready to go. The ship was ready, but we were kept waiting at five in the morning, whilst all the men operating the ferry terminal obeyed the Mullah’s call to prayer in an open shelter, in front of everyone—men, young men, older men, all of them, completely unashamed to hold the whole thing up while they demonstrated their distinctiveness and their devotion to Allah. And I said to Grace, are you having the same thought I am? We hardly dare mention the name of the Lord Jesus in public, far less hold up a queue of people for twenty minutes en masse.
Is it possible that as Christian people in Western culture, we have lost our distinctiveness? We’re ashamed of who we are. Well, if we have, it’s God’s glory that’s being compromised. We’re saying something about God right there, because the more sinful our lives become, the less distinctive they become.
(10:28 – 12:40)
We rob God of His glory by living lives that are not distinctively Christian. So God was jealous for what their sin was saying to the world about Him, and at the same time, He saw them in their repentance and their misery and their shame and their need, and He took pity on them. It’s the second half of the verse.
He was jealous for His land and for His name and His reputation, and He took pity on His people. Do you notice that? Now, it’s vital for us to understand the nature and character of God, that we must see these two characteristics of God as not being opposites of one another. They’re not mutually exclusive.
We mustn’t think that if God has taken pity upon these people in their need and in their sinful rebellion, then He must be laying aside His passion for His jealousy and His own glory. He must be compromising His own standards in some way if He’s taking pity on His people. We mustn’t think like that, because the wonderful thing about the gospel right through the Bible is this.
God’s passion for His own glory involves God’s pity for His own people. He wants His people back. Now, if you have children, the biggest fear you have is losing them somewhere when they’re young.
I remember we were in Legoland once, and we lost our son for about ten minutes. Ten minutes in Legoland without your four-year-old is a long time. And all that matters, all that matters right then as a parent is that your child is safe and you want them back.
(12:40 – 14:37)
It doesn’t matter who finds them, where they’re found, what they’ve been doing, how they ended up where they were. All that matters is you want them back, right? You want them back. You don’t even care who’s at the lost children office.
You don’t care who took them there, although you’ll thank them. All that matters is you’ve got them back, and they’re safe, right? That is the emotion of verse 18, part 2. God’s passion to have His children back, His people back for His glory emerges in these verses as we move through. Look at the way their deliverance is described and the way the locusts are chased into the sea in verse 20.
The eastern ranks, they’re going to end up in the Dead Sea. The western ranks, they’re going to end up in the Mediterranean Sea. God divides and conquers His enemies.
He divides and conquers the plague of locusts, and they die. And that deliverance from the plague of locusts tells Joel two things. Firstly, it’s a taste of God’s salvation in the present because it is actually a deliverance from a real plague of locusts.
But it is also a foretaste of God’s salvation that is to come in the future in the power and the gift and in the blessing that God will one day give to His people through the death and resurrection of Jesus, and even more amazingly, the coming and outpouring of the Holy Spirit. So notice with me what Joel says about the salvation that God’s people experience. There are always three dimensions to God’s salvation.
(14:38 – 19:11)
I want you to notice this in the passage. It was true for them, and it’s true for us. When God saves, there are always three elements to it.
Firstly, their enemy is destroyed. Do you notice that in verses 18 to 20? The Lord has pity on them, and in verse 20, He is going to remove the northern army far from them. The northerner, your version might say.
He’s going to remove the northerner far from them. Their enemy is going to be destroyed. The picture is like some still frame from a post-apocalyptic movie like The Day After Tomorrow or 28 Days Later or whatever zombie apocalypse thing you may want to watch.
The locust army is lying on the shores of the sea in piles of dead, rotting insects. You can smell them for miles around. It’s a shocking picture, but it’s a picture of God’s powerful destruction of His enemy.
And you see, God’s salvation always starts that way, doesn’t it? It always starts with the destruction of the enemy. Where have we seen this before? Well, remember the Israelites when they came through the Red Sea? There in Exodus 14, 13, Moses stands on the banks of the Red Sea, and he says to the people, stand firm. Do you remember what comes next? Stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will work for you today.
Then he says, and the Egyptians, your enemy, whom you see today, you will never see again. Your enemy will be destroyed, and that is where your salvation begins. And Exodus 15 is basically a celebration of the details of the destruction of the enemy who would control them no longer.
And you see similar language in Revelation when Babylon is thrown into the sea, and God’s judgement falls on the city of man, and it’s destroyed, and then there’s a great cry of joy goes up from heaven as Babylon’s destroyed, the enemy of God is destroyed. Salvation always begins with the destruction of the enemy. Think about that New Testament passage, the event when Jesus cast out the demons in the demoniac man and sent them into the pig herd.
Do you remember what happened to the pigs? They flew headlong off a cliff, and they were destroyed. Why would Jesus do that? Why would He do that? Well, the cost of a herd of pigs was a small price to pay for Jesus to bring reassurance to one of His broken children that those demons that had tormented Him and destroyed all of His life till that point now no longer were a problem. They’d been destroyed.
The power of the enemy is destroyed, and that is true spiritually for us. Can you grasp that? We need to be reassured tonight that our enemy has been destroyed. That’s where our salvation begins.
The bonds need to be snapped. Wesley knew that, didn’t he, when he wrote that great hymn, And Can It Be? I always thought it was strange that you’d begin a hymn with the word and. You’re not meant to begin a sentence with the word and, never mind one of the greatest hymns in Christian hymnology.
Anyhow, the words are great, aren’t they? My chains fell off. My heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
My enemy has been destroyed. So that’s the first element of salvation that we see in these verses. But look secondly at verses 21 to 25.
Not only was their enemy destroyed, their joy was restored. I wonder if, like me, over the last three weeks you’ve been feeling that the locusts are actually coming in through the back door of the church, as we’ve been reading this. They’re everywhere.
(19:11 – 19:35)
They’re everywhere. There’s so many of them. A terrible army.
Destruction in their wake, like those wildfires in California, sweeping through the land, destroying everything in their path. But now God says in these verses, don’t be afraid anymore. Don’t worry.
(19:35 – 22:02)
Don’t worry about your animals. In last week’s passage, the animals were dying for lack of food and water and pasture. They were crying out too.
They were suffering as a result of the people’s sin. Don’t worry about your animals. The land will recover.
And then in verse 25, some of the most famous words in this prophecy. I will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten. Because the song of deliverance is also a song of joy.
And do you sense echoes in that verse? I will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten. Do you sense an echo there of Psalm 51? David’s great Psalm of repentance, where he cries out to God, oh Lord. Do you remember he cries out and he says, Lord, restore to me the joy of your salvation.
And then he says, may the bones that you have broken, because I’m in this mess because you’ve judged me because of my sin. I’m experiencing the weight of that. You’ve broken my bones.
I’m broken. May the bones you have broken, just as the people here had been broken by the locusts, may the bones you have broken rejoice. Make me glad that I’ve been delivered from my enemy and that you are now putting back in place the things that my own sin has destroyed in my life.
You’re putting them back in place, Lord. Please do that. And we each have our locust stories, don’t we? We each have our locust years.
As we look back, we have all kinds of regrets, most of them unexpressed to anyone. Maybe regrets of sin that we’ve actively embraced and committed and felt the consequences of. Maybe sin that’s ongoing, unconfessed, and we’re empty shells inside, although we’re going through the motions.
(22:06 – 24:35)
Maybe regret that we feel we’ve done so little with the life God has given us. As we look back, some of us are getting on in age and everything seems to be in the past now. The delights in life that we once had, well, they’re long gone.
What’s it all been for? And the locusts in different ways have eaten up the years of our lives. Where is it all gone? What’s it all been worth? You see, there are always consequences that come with our sin, and there are always consequences that come with our complacency. We’ve learned that already from Joel.
The scars that we bear may never fully heal. Procrastination, regret. I’ve always meant to get around to doing that.
Things we never got around to dealing with that we always meant to. So there’s a word from God as you turn to him and turn away from your sin and turn to him in his mercy and pray that he will be jealous for his glory in your life. And he says to you, as he said to the people here, he says, he comes to us this evening and he says, he says, don’t be afraid.
Don’t be scared. Don’t be frightened. Rejoice.
Be glad. I’ll restore to you what your sin has destroyed. Now, what is that restoration? Well, in the context of the passage, as we have already seen, the restoration is that the land becomes fruitful again.
It becomes fruitful again. It starts to produce fruit. It starts to produce grass and greenery and produce.
It can sustain the lives of the individuals and the lives of the nation. And it doesn’t really matter what age or stage we are in our Christian life or how much we think we may have wasted. God can make you fruitful again.
(24:38 – 27:14)
God can make you fruitful again. That’s my testimony. And it’s the testimony of many others here.
And that joy and usefulness and humble service can be restored no matter what your age or no matter what your regrets. And if you don’t have any regrets yet, do your best to make sure you don’t have any. Live life this way in submission to God’s Word.
Make your priority to know God and His purpose and His will and live distinctively for Him. So, their enemy is destroyed and their joy is restored. But look thirdly in verses 26 and 27.
This leads to their satisfaction being complete. Do you notice that? You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied. Now, this is the complete opposite of what we experience in our consumer culture.
And it’s important for us to understand that only the people of God can experience this kind of satisfaction. Only the people of God can experience this kind of satisfaction. Do you remember Jesus’ words again in the Sermon on the Mount? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, because they, and as we saw last time, the real impact of that word, they, is they and they alone, because they and they alone will be filled.
Only they will be filled. In 1779, John Newton wrote a magisterial hymn, Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken. And there’s a phrase in it that sounds odd to our 21st century jargon.
In that hymn, he says, Fading are the worldling’s pleasures. It’s a great wee phrase, isn’t it? Fading are the worldling’s pleasures. He wrote that in 1779.
(27:15 – 27:56)
What did he know about worldling’s pleasures in 1779? There was no internet then. There was no multimedia. There was no wall-to-wall football on the telly.
There was no entertainment at the hydro every night. There was no pubs open 24-7. Well, he knew in his culture that the worldling’s pleasure was fading.
And one thing, nothing much has changed in the 246 years since he wrote it. Have they? One thing we can say with confidence to every single person in our world is this, whatever pleasure you’re experiencing right now, it’s fading. It’s fading.
(27:57 – 29:50)
You’re always going to be looking for something else. You’re always going to be moving on to something more. You’re always going to be wanting something different to find pleasure in.
You’re going to get fed up with that. It’s not going to scratch the itch for long. You’re going to need some new form of excitement or entertainment.
You’re going to need something to take your mind off the drudgery. Let me ask you this. If you’ve been fortunate enough to support a sporting team that’s actually won something worth winning, like the Champions League or the URC rugby championship or whatever it happens to be, if you’ve actually been in that place, how long does the joy last? So if they win the cup in May, by the time August comes, you’re having to start all over again anyway.
It’s worthless. What about the happiness of your graduation day? Did it last? Your work promotion, did it last? Your dream holiday, did it last? Your new home, did it last? It’s the law of diminishing returns. You see, they’re all fading, all of them.
Fading is the worldling’s pleasure. Another hymn puts it this way, change and decay in all around I see. That’s the dentist’s hymn.
If there’s any dentists here tonight, change and decay and all around I see. And in Newton’s hymn, he closes it off by saying these great words, only Zion’s children know anything about solid joys and lasting treasure. Only Zion’s children, only the children of God, eat in plenty and become satisfied.
(29:50 – 30:39)
You see, when you devour God’s grace, when you devour God’s grace, you become more and more satisfied with who he is and the amazing and wonderful things that he does and the incredible way he speaks to us in his Word. Look, for example, at verse 26, the end of verse 26 there, my people shall never again be put to shame because he’s dealt wondrously with us. He’s worked wonders.
You will know that I am in the midst of Israel. You will never experience shame again. We all know what it’s like to experience shame.
(30:40 – 37:17)
When I went to school as a five-year-old in Lesmahago in the mid-60s, my dad was a miner, and we didn’t have much money. Mum made all my clothes apart from the stuff she couldn’t make, which was basically underwear and a school tie. Everything else she made, my shirt, my jumper, my short trousers, and she knitted my socks.
None of the other boys at school had knitted socks and knitted jumpers. They all had bought stuff. And there’s me.
Man, oh man, the amount of hassle and bullying and name-calling I got all through primary school, by the way, because I had to wear shorts all the way through. The other boys got to wear long trousers after primary five. So, we all know what shame feels like.
We all know what shame feels like. And here, God says to His people—I’m sure if my mum and dad had thought that that had caused shame for me, they’d have been upset by that, because no parent wants their child to feel shame, right? And here God says, come to me, you’ll never be put to shame again. You’ll never be ashamed.
You’ll never be put to shame. You’ll never be ashamed to have me as your God. And Peter says the same thing in the New Testament, doesn’t he? Whoever believes in him, in Jesus, the cornerstone, that great passage in 1 Peter 2, whoever believes in me will never be put to shame.
Now, we may feel that we’re put to shame here, and we’re not treated well here by the world, but on the final day, as you’ll see in a minute, on the final day, you’re going to be vindicated, and you’re not going to be ashamed that you lined up behind Jesus. Not on that day. Not on that day.
And you see, when we come together like this, we experience something that those who never come among a fellowship like ours will never, ever, ever know. We experience the presence of God among his people in blessing. That’s why we shouldn’t want to miss an opportunity ever to meet with God’s people.
I remember hearing Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones once saying, I never want to miss a prayer meeting, because it might be the one when revival breaks out, and I want to be there. That experience of God among his people in blessing, that’s why we shouldn’t want to miss an opportunity like that, because this is where we feed on God’s grace. This is what our lives broken by sin need.
We need this nourishment. Here’s another Charles Wesley hymn that captures this need perfectly. Oh Jesus, full of pardoning grace, more full of grace than I of sin, yet once again I seek your face.
Open your arms and take me in, and freely my backslidings heal, and love this faithless sinner still. Away home and find that on the internet and pray it tonight. Oh Jesus, full of pardoning grace.
So this passage describes the present blessings of salvation in those three ways, but you notice that for Joel, it’s also a marvellous trailer of the deliverance that is coming in the future, and this is where we’ll end, because the verses that follow are much more familiar to us, because they’re the words that Peter quotes on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2 verse 16. When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, Peter says, this is that which was prophesied by the prophet Joel. Here is the fulfilment of the promise of worldwide salvation, not just local salvation, not just present salvation, but ultimate salvation.
But you know, even for Joel, the promise here that he puts in his prophecy has a much deeper and richer history than we often think, because this isn’t the first time this desire has been seen before in Scripture. Where have we seen this before? Well, we can go further back into the mists of Israel’s history. Let’s go back to an obscure incident in Numbers 11.
Who thought we would end up in Numbers 11 from Joel 2? Well, in Numbers 11, Moses has asked God for some help. So God, in response to that, sends the Spirit to fall on seventy elders who prophesied in the camp, but the Spirit also rested on Eldad and Medad, two outsiders who weren’t with the people, and they started prophesying, and the people were outraged. And they came to Moses and said, this is ridiculous.
We know it’s okay for these seventy people, these seventy elders and the people, these seventy to be prophesying, but they don’t even belong to us. They’re not part of our community. You’ve got to stop this, Moses.
And in verse 29 of Numbers 11, Moses says these incredible words, I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and the Lord would put His Spirit on them. I wish that everyone was a prophet. I wish that everyone had the Spirit poured out on them, not just seventy, everyone.
Even Moses was frustrated that the times in which he lived didn’t provide the fullness of the blessings that he knew were needed and that he knew God one day would provide. There was something deep inside him that knew there was something bigger than all of that. That pouring out of the Spirit on those seventy people back in Numbers 11 and the prophecy here in Joel were all little tasters for what happened at Pentecost.
(37:19 – 41:57)
Because although these Old Testament examples were amazing for those who experienced them, they just encapsulated that longing that every member of the believing community would one day be empowered by the Spirit of God to hear the Word of God and speak the Word of God. Because although people knew God in the Old Testament, there were some aspects of their faith that, shall we say, were secondhand. Let’s pop to a verse in Amos 3, 7, where God says, “‘Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing His secrets.'” To whom? To His servants, the prophets.
So, if you wanted to know the secret of the Lord, if you wanted to know the mystery of the Lord, if you wanted to know what the Lord was saying, you needed to find a prophet to whom God had revealed that secret. Right? But now, wait for this, you’ll love this, now the message of the gospel, the mystery, the secret, which Moses, Joel, and his fellow Old Testament believers only saw in shadows, now that mystery, that secret has been made fully known. This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel.
The mystery hidden for ages and generations is now revealed to whom? To whom? A few selected prophets? A few elite new apostles? No, no, no. The mystery long hidden through the ages is now revealed to His saints, all of them, all of us. Paul tells us that in Colossians 1. This mystery, which, by the way, is Christ in you by His Spirit, the hope of glory is now for all of God’s people, Aye, even you, with all your locust years of mess.
So, when those disciples in Acts 2 experienced the coming of the Holy Spirit and those flames of fire appeared above their heads, what was actually happening there was that the shekinah glory, the living presence of the living God that we sang about in that wonderful hymn, that shekinah glory of the presence of God that up until that point had lived between the wings of the cherubim on the ark of the covenant, that holy flame now lived in them, the very presence of the living God, not in a temple or an artefact, but in His people. That intimacy of the presence of God that in the Old Testament was only known by prophets and priests and kings is now the privilege of all God’s children, intimacy, communion. So, we’re going to share it this evening, fellowship, joy in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Oh, how can they be for me? How can they be mine? Well, Joel tells us at the end of this passage in verse 32, he says, They’re yours if you call on the name of the Lord. Call on the name of the Lord, because everyone, verse 32, who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. So at Calvary God showed wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke.
The sun was turned to darkness. The moon turned to blood. The earth shook.
The rocks were split. And it came to pass that everyone who called on the name of the Lord would be saved. And it’s time for you to call on Him now.
Amen.
The post Day of Deliverance – Joel Ch2v18–32 appeared first on Greenview Church.
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