The Impending Day Of The Lord, part 1
Notes
Transcript
We continue our look at the book of Joel. This book was probably the earliest of the Old Testament’s writing prophets.
The people of Joel’s day had just experiences a devastating locust plague, followed by a severe drought and maybe even a fire after that. These attackes would have crippled the nation and causes severe pain and suffering throughout; not just for the people but also for the land and animals.
God called Joel to use these events as the backdrop for his message to the people. In the first chapter of Joel, he urged the people to pay attention to what God was saying to them through their contemporary circumstances. Joel identified the locust plague as the “day of the Lord.” The “day of the Lord” in Scripture was a day of judgment and blessing. It could refer to either a contemporary day, an impending day, or the future, great day of the Lord.
Even though no specific sin was mentioned by Joel in his book, his point was that God was bringing judgment on his people, and that should cause them to repent and return to the Lord their God in total dependence upon him.
In Joel 2:1-17, Joel continued to refer to the locust plague, and urged the people to be aware of the impending day of the Lord.
Let’s read about the impending day of the Lord in Joel 2:1-17
1 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; Indeed, it is near,
2 A day of darkness and gloom, A day of clouds and thick darkness. As dawn is spread over the mountains, So there is a great and mighty people; There has never been anything like it, Nor will there be again after it To the years of many generations.
3 A fire consumes before them, And behind them a flame devours. The land is like the Garden of Eden before them, But a desolate wilderness behind them, And nothing at all escapes them.
4 Their appearance is like the appearance of horses; And like war horses, so they run.
5 With a noise as of chariots They leap about on the tops of the mountains, Like the crackling of a flame of fire consuming the stubble, Like a mighty people drawn up for battle.
6 Before them the people are in anguish; All faces turn pale.
7 They run like warriors, They climb the wall like soldiers; And each of them marches in line, Nor do they lose their way.
8 They do not crowd each other, Every warrior of them marches in his path; When they burst through the defenses, They do not break ranks.
9 They storm the city, They run on the wall; They climb into the houses, They enter through the windows like a thief.
10 Before them the earth quakes, The heavens tremble, The sun and the moon become dark, And the stars lose their brightness.
11 The Lord utters His voice before His army; His camp is indeed very great, For mighty is one who carries out His word. The day of the Lord is indeed great and very awesome, And who can endure it?
In his commentary on Joel, James Montgomery Boice tells about one of the great earthquakes of modern times that struck Lisbon, Portugal on November 1, 1755. The epicenter was located several miles off the Portuguese coast, in the Atlantic, so tremendous tidal waves struck the city and contributed to the damage. The earthquake came at 9:40 a.m. and lasted for six minutes. In those six minutes all public buildings and 12,000 dwellings were demolished. Sixty thousand people died, including those who were killed as a result of the tidal waves and a fire, which raged for six days. Heavy damage occurred in Fez, Morocco, to the south, and in Algiers, 700 miles to the east. On the coast the tidal waves were sixty feet high. At the island of Martinique, 3,740 miles away, which the waves passed ten hours later, the crest was twelve feet above normal.
There had been earthquakes before, of course, and there have been many since—in Europe, the Pacific, and in North and South America. But there were facets to this earthquake that have not been present to the same degree either before or since.
For one thing, the first half of the eighteenth century had been a time of relative peace and prosperity in Europe, a condition particularly welcome following the religious wars of the seventeenth century. Moreover, the era had been marked by a philosophy of optimism associated with the name of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646–1716), who had died less than forty years before. Leibnitz argued that this is “the best of all possible worlds.” He viewed evil as mere imperfection and argued that the best of all worlds proves the existence of a wise and benevolent Creator. His view had been popular among so-called “Christian” thinkers. But suddenly optimism was shaken. How could a good God allow such an evil as the Lisbon earthquake? If God is good, he must have lacked power to prevent it; if he had power, he must not be good.
The people in Joel’s day believed that because they were the people of God nothing bad could happen to them. So, the plague of locusts that devasted their land, their economy, and their livelihood was incomprehensible to them. God used Joel to explain the meaning of the locusts to the people, and also to warn them of the impending day of the Lord.
The impending day of the Lord in Joel, teaches us that we need a whole hearted repentence. Not simply being sorry for our sins but that we must turn away from our sin and turn back to God. And Joel sounds the alarm for all of God’s people.
I. The Alarm Sounds (2:1)
First, let’s notice that the alarm sounds.
Over the centuries, the people of God believed that they were special and that nothing bad could happen to them. Moreover, nothing bad could ever happen to Jerusalem, which was situated on Zion, God’s holy mountain. After all, God’s temple was there, and that is where God’s presence resided on earth. God, speaking through Joel, said in verse 1, “Blow a trumpet in Zion; sound an alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming; it is near.” God was warning his people that he was threatening judgment against his own city and his own people. The day of the Lord is coming. Indeed, it is near!
Commentator O. Palmer Robertson writes, “It is an established principle of God’s working in the world that God’s judgments begin with his own people, and these judgments are always imminent. No man ever has the right to presume that judgement for him will be delayed beyond the present day. Especially God’s own people must realize that judgment begins now with them.”
Robertson gets his “established principle” from 1 Peter 4.
17 For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?
18 And if it is with difficulty that the righteous is saved, what will become of the godless man and the sinner?
Warning signs.
They are both visual and audible. We can see them all over the place. We only typically hear the warnings when it is something major getting ready to happen. Since we live close to ETSU, every alert they put through their warning system, we can hear. Usually by that time, we have been alerted with our Alexa devices, TV and often on our phones as well. Warning signs are all over the place.
When I was in Afghanistan and Iraq, we had audio warnings for incoming artillery and mortars. Some places were so big, they were able to alert just the area they predicted the shell to hit. Even at night, we would have alerts. One place I was in Iraq, we had somewhere over 300 alerts in a 365 day period. I, like many others, just got a bit complacent with them.
At first, I would jump, grab my stuff and run out to one of the bunkers and wait. Later I would wake up and grab my stuff but sit and wait to see if I could just go back to sleep. Finally, especially during my third trip, I would hear a siren, make some comment to myself, roll over and go back to sleep. By that time, I just didn’t worry about it. To be honest, I would normally know if they were going to conduct a test just to make sure everyone knew the drill, especially if we had a bunch of new people. Those times I would grab my stuff, go the my bunker and wait for the all clear. But those were few and far between.
However, that was not what I should have done. On one such rocket attack, one of my chaplain assistants had a late night. He went to bed and it wasn’t too long before he was to get up. He set his alarm like normal and it went off. He was about to just stay in bed and skip going to PT but decided he should do the right thing. His roommate on the other hand decided he would stay in bed a bit longer. Not very long after the chaplain assistant left for PT, an alarm went off and on this instance, a rocket did hit. As a matter of fact it hit in the very unit his bunk was in and even worse, it hit his bunk and exploded. His roommate got a few small pieces of shrapnel, just enough to put some bandaids on. But if the assistant had stayed in bed, it would have killed him. His alarm was his warning system and it was a good thing he paid attention to it.
I will tattle on myself a bit more. When I see a warning sign about a curve ahead with a suggested speed. I take that as a suggestion. if it says 35 mph, I think that means at least 45 in a car, maybe 55 on my bike.
Do you remember seeing some signs on the road while driving that are red, in the shape of an octagon and have these big white letters that spell out the word STOP? What does that mean?
For most it seems like it means to slow down, check to see if anyone is in your way and get back on the gas. If you see a cop then maybe you stop or at least get to a really slooowww speed.
Then there are those crosswalk signs. Speed limit signs. Road work signs. It is impossible to drive from N JC to S JC, especially going through downtown, without seeing a whole bunch of signs that warn you and let you know there could be danger in that area.
This is what Joel is doing in verse 1. It is a warning sound that everyone will hear. Joel wanted everyone to be aware that the day of the Lord was impending. It is close, closer than many think. And people, we had better be ready for that day of judgment.
Not just the people outside of the church but the ones who are in church. That day of judgment will start with us.
However, before he tells the people how to respond properly to the day of the Lord, he tells them about the invading army.
II. The Army Invades (2:2-11)
Second, let’s look at the invading army.
We learn two things about the invading army.
A. A Description of the Army (2:2-10)
Let’s look at the description of the army.
In verse 2, Joel writes, “A day of darkness and gloom, A day of clouds and thick darkness.” This discription is a metaphor for the day of the Lord. You can read Isaiah, Jeremiah and Amos and these prophets use the same of very similar metaphor. The coming day of the Lord is not a beautiful day as we often picture it. It will be a terrible day. It will bring judgment. It will be a day in which we should shudder at its coming. And more importantly, a day for which we must be ready.
In the second half of verse 2 through verse 10, Joel descibes the coming army. Commentators are divided over this being an actual army or another way of describing the plague of locusts.
It is ok to spend time looking debating this description as either the locust or an army. It can be either but I believe it is a matter of combining both together. It looks back at the plague of locust but also looks forward to an actual human army.
Using the imagery of the locust plague would help those who experienced the locust grasp the invasion of a human army. It can also help us who haven’t experienced the locust first hand understand both. We can read about people’s experience with locust, we can have that imagery in our minds and apply it to an actual invasion of an army and have a better expectation of what will happen. But at the same time, no matter what we have experienced, or what we can imagine, still doesn’t completely compare to the reality of this future day of the Lord. As Joel writes, it is a day which has never been seen, nor will there be one again.
What must be understood is that that day, that terrible day in the future, is a day which is coming. It will happen and we, the church, must be ready for it at any time. And is also a reason that we as a church should be concerned about witnessing to others so they may hear the truth.
One of our primary duties as Christians and as the church, is to make disciples, to go and share the Gospel.
B. An Affirmation of the Lord’s Control (2:11)
But, more significant than a description of the army is an affirmation of the Lord’s control.
Something that we haven’t looked at yet is the where. Verse 1 says to “Blow a trumpet in Zion, And sound the alrarm on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,”
This is happening in Israel, specifically in the city of Jerusalem. My holy mountain tells us that the army will penetrate through Jerusalem and actually make it into God’s home.
Robertson writes, “The completeness of the penetration of this enemy into the city of the Lord might give birth to great doubt. How could this city truly be the Lord’s if its defenses can be overwhelmed by an invading army? Joel now makes it explicit that the Lord is by no means separated from these happenings. As a matter of fact, he is in complete control of the events of this day.”
Joel writes in verse 11:
11 The Lord utters His voice before His army; His camp is indeed very great, For mighty is one who carries out His word. The day of the Lord is indeed great and very awesome, And who can endure it?
I think there are a couple of points we should take away from this.
To me, it seems that God no longer resides with Israel in the temple on God’s mountain. I say this because God attacks the land, the city and the temple with His army. It seems to me this suggests that God has left the temple which means He has left His people.
I think we can get the idea in America that because we are American, because we are Christians in America that we have the right to tell others how to worship and how not to worship, tell them what is truth and what is not truth; and we do that thinking that God is on our side and not their side.
This is not very biblical. It is really anti-biblical because God doesn’t call us to join our own team so He can come down and guide us. God calls us to His team. It is His team, it is His family that we are called to be members.
And the next point is that God is sovereign. Look at all the times “His” is used in this one verse:
His voice; His army; His camp, His word. And it is God who leads this army into Jerusalem and into His former Home to take control of it. As soon as we start to think that God is on our side, we have crossed over into wrong thinking.
God calls us to His team, for His purpose, for His glory. And in order to do this, God is sovereign. Nothing happens that God does not allow. Look at Job, Satan had to ask permission to test Job and still God placed limits in how Job could be tested. Thoughout the Bible, from the first five books of Moses to the last verse of Revelation, we see that God is sovereign.
And this also means that God is sovereign of the day of the Lord.
As Robertson writes, “It is his command that stirs his army, which then arises out of his camp to execute his word on his day.”
We will finish this up next Sunday by answering the question of how should the people of God respond to the impending day of the Lord.
Let’s pray.
