Joel - A Prophet of Hope - Part 2

Introduction:

Last week we saw in the first part of Joel, the Plague of locusts, mourning over the land, and the heme of the day of the Lord.

Joel being a prophet to Judah at the time prior to the great Assyrian Empire, is sent to convince the Jews of their departure from the Lord, and to call them back in repentance.

Repentance is a tricky thing to us as Christians, and needs to be viewed in its proper place.

For the record, repentance is properly a change of mind.

We understand repentance in our everyday life as we change our mind regarding many things, however, in a purely theological perspective, repentance is what turns a lost soul from himself and sin, to God.

For Christians, that means we turn to God in Christ through faith, and are placed in a new relationship that is neither dependent on us or our actions.

I. Repentance required for Blessings. (2:12-27)

In the next section of Joel, we find a call to repentance, and a promise to Israel.

Although there are principles we can take from the passage, it really does not pertain to the modern believer.

We don’t need to act a certain way to receive God’s forgiveness and blessings, because they are ours already in Christ.

The passage we are concerned with in Joel shows God bringing hardship, a plague, distress, to Israel His people, and if they repent, will bless them.

Are they not still under the law?

Are they not required by the law to do these things?

Did not God warn them in the law of the consequences for failing to keep the law?

How then do these scriptures pertain to those of us who have found redemption and justification in Christ?

Simply, they don’t!

There is much talk in Christian circles today about repentance, but did you know that all the general epistles between Acts and Revelation, do not contain the verb repent, not once!

And, of the usage of the word repentance that can be found in Romans, 2 Corinthians, 2 Timothy, Hebrews, and 1 Peter; the argument can be made that each instance is speaking about repentance that leads one to salvation, not believers repenting to be forgiven by God.

The last part of this passage in Joel deals with the restoration of the land.

This one is particularly difficult for the modern American evangelical who believes that God will restore the country and bless the land.

2 Chronicles 7:14 NKJV

if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

The modern church has hijacked another verse and taken it completely out of context.

This promise is not a general promise as some take it to be, but a specific promise to Solomon when he was dedicating the Temple that he had built.

2 Chronicles 7:12–22 NKJV

Then the Lord appeared to Solomon by night, and said to him: “I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to prayer made in this place. For now I have chosen and sanctified this house, that My name may be there forever; and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually. As for you, if you walk before Me as your father David walked, and do according to all that I have commanded you, and if you keep My statutes and My judgments, then I will establish the throne of your kingdom, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, ‘You shall not fail to have a man as ruler in Israel.’ “But if you turn away and forsake My statutes and My commandments which I have set before you, and go and serve other gods, and worship them, then I will uproot them from My land which I have given them; and this house which I have sanctified for My name I will cast out of My sight, and will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. “And as for this house, which is exalted, everyone who passes by it will be astonished and say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and this house?’ Then they will answer, ‘Because they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and embraced other gods, and worshiped them and served them; therefore He has brought all this calamity on them.’ ”

II. An outpouring of His Spirit and blessings. (2:28-32)

Joel 2:28–32 NKJV

“And it shall come to pass afterward That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your old men shall dream dreams, Your young men shall see visions. And also on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days. “And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth: Blood and fire and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, And the moon into blood, Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord. And it shall come to pass That whoever calls on the name of the Lord Shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be deliverance, As the Lord has said, Among the remnant whom the Lord calls.

These very verses so familiar to us, have also caused a lot of confusion in the more recent times of the church.

Many claiming that without such gifts there can be no legitimate claim to Christ, while still others argue about their existence at all in these times.

But, what we really need to know is why they are even mentioned at all.

When we view the scriptures and any such prophetic passage such as this one, from a New Testament Christian viewpoint, we come up short in our understanding of why they were there in the first place.

This passage like the others we are examining this morning, are not in and of themselves a prophetic utterance for the church, but a fulfillment of the overall timing of God’s prophetic calendar.

Example:

Evangelicals view the gifts on the day of Pentecost as the equipping of the saints for the ministry.

And although God has given them for the equipping of the saints as is expressed in Ephesians chapter four, they were prophetically given as a sign to the Jews as to the timing of last day events.

If we neglect the prophetic passage as a fulfilled prophecy to the Jews, then we leave the exegesis open to pseudo interpretations and beliefs that clearly violate the whole of prophecy.

Peter’s warning stands as a testimony to this belief.

2 Peter 1:20 NKJV

knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation,

We must therefore, rightly divide the Word of truth!

The church present, must stop thinking the Bible is all about them, and realize that it is only because of God’s mercy that we have been grafted into the vine, not have become the vine.

III. Judgment upon the nations. (3:1-8)

Joel 3:1–8 NKJV

“For behold, in those days and at that time, When I bring back the captives of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations, And bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; And I will enter into judgment with them there On account of My people, My heritage Israel, Whom they have scattered among the nations; They have also divided up My land. They have cast lots for My people, Have given a boy as payment for a harlot, And sold a girl for wine, that they may drink. “Indeed, what have you to do with Me, O Tyre and Sidon, and all the coasts of Philistia? Will you retaliate against Me? But if you retaliate against Me, Swiftly and speedily I will return your retaliation upon your own head; Because you have taken My silver and My gold, And have carried into your temples My prized possessions. Also the people of Judah and the people of Jerusalem You have sold to the Greeks, That you may remove them far from their borders. “Behold, I will raise them Out of the place to which you have sold them, And will return your retaliation upon your own head. I will sell your sons and your daughters Into the hand of the people of Judah, And they will sell them to the Sabeans, To a people far off; For the Lord has spoken.”

Joel (Chapter 3)

I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat. More than eight centuries before the Christian era King Jehoshaphat had gained a splendid victory over the allied army of the neighbouring peoples—Moabites, Ammonites, and Elomites—who had united their forces against Jerusalem. The king had been assured of this victory by the prophecy of Jahaziel. Songs of praise had preceded the battle, and songs of thanksgiving had succeeded the victory; hence the place was called the valley of Berachah, or blessing. The remembrance of such a remarkable deliverance, not more than half a century before the prophet’s time, would make a vivid impression on the mind of the prophet and his people. - Pulpit Commentary By H.D. Spence

Verse one says “in those days”. Probably a reference to the future time that was realized in part, on Pentecost as is referenced in Acts 2:17.

Acts 2:17–21 NKJV

‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams. And on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days; And they shall prophesy. I will show wonders in heaven above And signs in the earth beneath: Blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, And the moon into blood, Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord. And it shall come to pass That whoever calls on the name of the Lord Shall be saved.’

Peter says clearly that the phenomenon that was occurring on the day of Pentecost, was what Joel prophesied in chapter three.

Yet, not all of which Peter quoted from Joel was fulfilled.

We therefore take it to be that the rest of the prophecy was to be fulfilled in some future time.

The preoccupation with the nation of Israel and the constant battles going on in the mid-east is very important.

Again, replacement theology leaves no room for these very literal future prophecies to be fulfilled.

We look then to what is going on in the Gaza strip as an important precursor of the final battle where God will judge the nations and bring Israel back into the fold of the covenant with and through Christ.

IV. God’s blessings upon His people. (3:18-21)

Joel 3:18–21 NKJV

And it will come to pass in that day That the mountains shall drip with new wine, The hills shall flow with milk, And all the brooks of Judah shall be flooded with water; A fountain shall flow from the house of the Lord And water the Valley of Acacias. “Egypt shall be a desolation, And Edom a desolate wilderness, Because of violence against the people of Judah, For they have shed innocent blood in their land. But Judah shall abide forever, And Jerusalem from generation to generation. For I will acquit them of the guilt of bloodshed, whom I had not acquitted; For the Lord dwells in Zion.

When we see such verses as these, it seems difficult to understand how any Christian could not support Israel.

And yet, so any have turned their backs on God’s people.

Why?

Because they have misinterpreted and misapplied scripture.

We have today, in our hands, the complete revelation of God’s Word.

From the beginning of creation to end of time as we know it, God has revealed all that we need to know of His eternal and wonderful plan.

If we take it as a whole revelation it seems clear and logical that a literal understanding best represents God’s plan for the ages.

We find then, the creation of a perfect world, corrupted by the disobedience of mankind, needing redemption.

God therefore chooses a people that He would entrust with His oracles (Rom 3:2), and through whom He would eventually bring forth the redeemer, who will save the world.

Throughout His complete revelation (the Bible), God makes very specific promises to His people, punishes them for disobedience, preserves them for posterity, blinds them for the redemption of the gentiles, and then opens a door for their entering.

Not once during the entire Biblical revelation does God ever entertain any other people group to be a replacement for the tribes of Israel.

Rather, He allows proselytes to come into the commonwealth of Israel as is evidenced in the Genealogy of Christ, Rahab and Ruth the most prominent.

The picture that we find in the New Testament is not the church replacing Israel, but the church being welcomed into the blessings of Israel through Messiah Jesus.

Such places like Ephesians chapter two clearly represent this.

Unlike many today who believe that Israel does not need redemption, we understand through the scriptures that we all, Jew and gentile alike must come into the fold by faith in Christ who is Messiah.