Joel 1:1
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-You ever heard about the school of hard knocks, it is not an academic institution where you go to learn, it is the every day life lessons of living life, of learning from your mistakes, learning from your mistakes is crucial, but there are times where it seems we do not learn from our mistakes, that we continue to make the same mistakes over and over again - the book of Joel, Joel gives a warning in which he recalls former judgment over sin and declares that it was nothing compared to what is coming - He pleas with God’s people to repent and turn back to God
-Joel is one of twelve books, we know as minor prophets, that were considered one book called The twelve
-Joel is the second book
-We do not know much about Joel, a prophet from Judah, maybe Jerusalem
-Central theme of the book is that Joel calls for the people to repent and turn to the Lord in the midst of a national disaster (locusts have destroyed wine in grain chap 1)
-We don’t know the exact time in which the book was written, more than likely it is after the exile, during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, and we will refer to those events throughout our study
-586 BC
-Joel also quotes other Biblical books: Isaiah, Amos, Zephaniah, Nahum, Obadiah, Ezekiel, and Malachi, as well as the book of Exodus
-Joel does not confront any specific sin, and primarily because Joel assumes you know what has already happened and the grave sin in which Israel must repent from
-Three themes that we will examine in the book of Joel:
God Judges Sin (1-2)
God Judges Sin (1-2)
-The Day of the Lord
-two reasons the phrase is mentioned:
past events in which God showed up to confront evil or to rescue His people
Chap 1 - locust, the exodus in Egypt Ex 10 -
future event
disaster coming for Jerusalem, different type of locusts - soldiers, military
11 The Lord utters his voice before his army, for his camp is exceedingly great; he who executes his word is powerful. For the day of the Lord is great and very awesome; who can endure it?
-We need to understand the context to understand the sin problem amongst the Israelites
-They had been in exile, Babylon - Persia, through King Darius God had made a way for the Israelites to return to Israel, Ezra-Nehemiah
-What had them in exile? their sin, particularly their idol worship
-a theme we can find throughout the OT, is that Israelites would question why God allowed the pagans to attack them, but what they failed to see was their own sin and that God allowed the invasions, He sent the disasters because they had failed to repent
Mortification they explain as sorrow of soul and dread conceived from the recognition of sin and the awareness of divine judgment.
John Calvin
-In what ways do we today acknowledge that God hates the sins of others but fail to acknowledge the ways we have sinned against God?
-Joel calls on the people to lament, to acknowledge they have sinned against God
- weep (1:5, 8, 13; 2:13, 17)
-ashamed (11)
The Call to Repent
The Call to Repent
-Joel calls the elders and leaders to lead the people in repentance and he joins in the plea
19 To you, O Lord, I call. For fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and flame has burned all the trees of the field.
-Joel does not just tell the leaders and the people to repent but tells them how to
13 and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.
-Joel explained that repentance is not just something you say, it is not a performance, but it is genuine change
-What are the typical responses that people have when confronted with their sin?
-denial, deflection, fake you out, genuine repentance
Man is born with his back toward God. When he truly repents, he turns right around and faces God. Repentance is a change of mind…. Repentance is the tear in the eye of faith.
Dwight L. Moody
-Joel also explained why they should repent, a quote from Exodus 34:6
6 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
-when God forgave Israel after worshipping the golden calf
-Joel calls for the priests to repent
17 Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep and say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’ ”
God is Merciful in His Salvation
God is Merciful in His Salvation
-The end is not the repentance but God’s mercy
18 Then the Lord became jealous for his land and had pity on his people.
-Joel sees that all the past events in which God showed mercy pointed to a future event in which God would show mercy
-The vital truth that God does not change, that He has been the merciful God and will continue to be the merciful God
-In chap 2-3 Joel wrote three poems that revealed God’s response to repentance, a vision of hope for all creation, Joel reflects on the promises already known:
15 until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is deemed a forest.
31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah,
32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.
33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
23 And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.
24 I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land.
25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
28 You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.
God will confront evil among the nations and turn their violence back on themselves and bring forth his justice to right all wrongs.
Joel picks up on the images of the land’s restoration, and he sees hope for the renewal of all creation.
-Declares a future restoration, a future hope
18 “And in that day the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the streambeds of Judah shall flow with water; and a fountain shall come forth from the house of the Lord and water the Valley of Shittim.
God’s mercy is so great that you may sooner drain the sea of its water, or deprive the sun of his light, or make space too narrow, than diminish the great mercy of God.
Charles Spurgeon
-As we navigate through this book together it is my prayer that we see the seriousness of sin, that we would mourn over our sin, that we would repent and not put up a makeshift smile and think everything is hunky dorey, but that we would rend our garments and genuinely turn back to God, and that we would rejoice in the hope of the gospel - Christ came to die so that our sins are forgiven - He is the fountain that came forth from the house of the Lord - He is the fountain that washed our sins away
There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains: