Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro:

Today we continue on in Joel.

I want to emphasize this morning as we start that this is not an easy book to parse out, especially without any historical anchors to allow us to take these prophecies and connect them nicely to events that we read about in scripture.

Because of this I have had to seek to make some educated guesses, for lack of a better term but I am hopeful that today, even as we review what I believe is happening over the course of these verses we will see the flip side of how, maybe, the lack of a certain historical ground elevates this text and makes it easier for us to hone in on what is the central theme of the text.

We read that in verse 27:

27  You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel,

and that I am the LORD your God and there is none else.

And my people shall never again be put to shame.

Lets actually start there and then hop back to the beginning of the chapter and see how it is that we arrive at the central theme of verse 27, the theme of the book: YOU SHALL KNOW THAT I AM THE LORD!

But first lets take a moment to open in prayer.

PRAY

What we see here in verse 27 is God’s ultimate purpose for His people, it is actually His ultimate purpose in creating this whole universe in the first place.

That His own people would know that He is God.

There is a lot wrapped up in that statement when we examine it as not just an isolated verse in the book of Joel but rather as a theme that spreads throughout the entirety of God’s word.

When God created the world in Genesis we read that He created man in His own image.

Theologically speaking we understand that He did this for the purpose of creating a creature with the capacity to know Him and not just to know Him in a general type of knowledge sense, like you might know the answer to a math problem, but that He created mankind that way so that we might know Him in a personal relational kind of way.

This is why God created marriage, we read in Ephesians that marriage has always been intended, through the close intimate relationship of a husband loving His wife and vise-versa, to show the love and care that Christ has for the church and in turn the love that the church has for Christ.

The Bible over and over again hammers home this reality that God desires that His people know, truly know Him.

We see there that this people are to know that God is in the mist of them.

This speaks of the closeness of God to them.

God throughout the old testament had given the people picture after picture so that they could understand the glorious privilege that was there’s to be a people with whom He dwelt.

The tabernacle and them the temple served as the highest of these pictures!

Wrapped in concentric layers of cautioned and God ordained approach so that they might not be utterly burned away because of their sin, therein the midst of Israel was the holiest of holies, a place where God in all of His magnificent glory dwelt.

Picture that!

The God of all eternity, the Creator of all things, lets just take a moment and pause and turn with me to Ezekiel (I have ben working on studying this book to get a better understanding of it and this vision that opens Ezekiel has really been on my mind a lot lately.)

Lets turn and read in Ezekiel 1 starting in verse 22, here after describing this majestic chariot that God rides on as he moves on any direction He desires over the face of the earth the prophets eyes are draw even farther up to the view on top of the chariot, (strikingly similar to the way one might look up from the priests who carried the ark of the covenant to view the ark itself) there on top of the shoulders of these magnificent creatures the prophet sees a sight that knocks him literally off his feet: TREAD 22-28

Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD.

And when I saw it, I fell on my face,

This great and awesome God of glory is the one who dwelt in the midst of His people.

The New Testament takes this imagery even farther, Consider the words of Jesus in John 17 at the end of His prayer for His disciples and those who would believe on Him because of their testimony:

20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me.

26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

This follows the vine and branches imagery from John 15.

There is almost too much content to point out that shows that the telos, the end for which we were made was that we might abide with God because when we abide with Him and know Him, when He is in our midst and the reality of Joel 2:27 is made real amongst God’s people it is then that we fulfill the ultimate purpose for which we were made, we then can not help but overflow in exuberant glory to God, that we might glorify God, this is the answer to the Westminster catechism and may other faithful catechisms as to what the purpose of man is, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

This is the reality toward which Joel 2:27 directs us!

This is why the verse ends with:

And my people shall never again be put to shame.

Honestly this is one of the verses in this text that threw me, just until my studies yesterday.

It seems to point to a moment in time, a reality in which these people have been restored on the other side of this great Day of the Lord judgement and that this will never happen again.

I kept reading it as the people of Israel, ethnic Israel and when you read it that way then you wind up wondering when did this happen?

When were these people restored to the land to never again be put to shame?

I am not sure but a dispensation minded individual might even take this verse and project it forward in time to a point at which ethnic Israel is restored and a Kingdom made manifest here on earth, (I know I know, Jake has covered that!) but here it is imperative to realize that this promise is a promise to the believing remnant, the people within the people, the true Israel, those who we red in Romans 4 walk in the footsteps of the faith of their father Abraham!

This is the same lack of shame spoken of in Romans 5 where we read:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

For these people, the “My people” of Joel 2:27 who have been so united to God that they know Him and experience His presence in their midst there remains no source of shame!

How can there be a putting to shame when they have recieved the greatest inheritance imaginable, God Himself in their midst.

Now it will take many more years and a lot more ink to fully flesh this out in Paul and His New Testament counterparts in light of the amazing revelation of fullness of God’s plan of redemption of His people through the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ, but I firmly believe that this is the reality toward which these verses point us, the reality of the experience of God’s faithful people of God himself, this frees us from the need to take this verse and pin it to any particular restoration in Israels’ History weather a restoration from a locust horde or an invading army or of any of the other curses from Deuteronomy 28 that God was pouring and preparing to pour out on His people.

So that is where we are headed, this is the finish line, the goal of our great God in all of His workings with His people and certainly to goal of his workings with them here in the time of Joel, whenever that might be, and so with that peg firmly set in the board lets back up and work our way to int through the rest of the chapter.

2:1-11

If you remember from our last time together I said that I believe that it is likely that in chapter 1 Joel uses the actuality of a plague of locusts to call his people to repentance in the midst of that horrific plague.

In this chapter I believe, though I would not be at all dogmatic about it, that Joel uses now the peoples experience of that plague to drive their minds forward to a yet to come judgement by Babylon, or some other impending army which could be Assyria but we don’t have a lot of historical precedent to tag this to any particular invasion.

In fact this chapter reads as though the people repent for a time and it could be that this invasion didn't happen because of the people’s repentance.

At any rate that in the view I will propose, that Joel now uses the current experience of a locust horde to drive their view forward, however, the main points that we will see, including the final point we just spent time fleshing out are not ultimately dependent on this view.

Lets read these first verses about the impending judgement: READ

As the first prophecy began with a call to hear so this also begins with a call to hear but it is couched in the language of an impending battle:

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,

The command is to sound the alarm, this disaster is near, remember we have talked about near, it doesn't necessarily mean near in time but rather that the situation is ripe for judgement, covenant judgement to fall.

In this context though it could also mean that the even is near to happening, right on the edge, though as we will see there is yet time for repentance.

Joel then begins to describe the day, he used imagery specifically derived from Israel’s history with God.

When God had appeard to the people as they came out of Egypt in the Exodus he appeared in clouds and darkness.

English Standard Version (Deuteronomy Chapter 5:22)

These words the LORD spoke to all your assembly at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice; and he added no more.

Earlier in Exodus 19 we read about this event:

 And the LORD said to Moses, “Behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe you forever.”

On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled.

17 Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain.

18 Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the LORD had descended on it in fire.

The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly.

19 And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder.

20 The LORD came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain.

And the LORD called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up.

When God had delivered the covenant to Israel he had done so from the cloud and darkness, this highlights the holy otherness of God, when he appears to sinful humanity he must be shrouded with dark cloud or they would have been consumed, how much more now that these people were due to receive the covenant curses ought God to have shown up in this same manner ready to burn hot against them in His just wrath.

God then describes this coming army, a vast people, likely hyperbole in the language of this vast army being unlike anything before or after but possibly not if it represents Babylon, Babylon if you remember from Daniels dream interpretation to Nebuchadnezzar was to be the head of gold, the greatest of nations.

We see the destructive force that will be unleashed by this army as before them the land is like Eden and after it is left a desolate wilderness (3).

This again is hyperbolic language that uses two things that are as opposite from each other as they can be to highlight the nature of the event.

This will be devastating.

(Note that all of these things are spoken of, based on verses 1&2, as future possibilities not actualities like the locust devastation in chapter 1)

In verse 5 we see what may be a brilliant literary device by Joel.

If indeed these people were currently experiencing a vast devastation due to locust one of the crazy things is that with that many bugs eating and crunching their way through everything green there is a clear sound of crackling, like a fire.

It is possible that talking about the coming destruction in this way would have viscerally connected what was coming to what was being experienced.

In verses 6-9 we see yet more of the description of this army likely in terms similar to the current horde of locusts.

The in verse 10 we see apocalyptic language again.

The earth quakes before them;

the heavens tremble.

The sun and the moon are darkened,

and the stars withdraw their shining.

Joel uses this phrase to lead into the next.

When judgments come directly from God, as Day of the Lord judgments did they are spoken of in these ways, armies, locusts, nothing that man can generate can shake the fabric of the heavens, however that glorious chariot and its divine rider that Ezekiel describes, that can indeed and does do these things.

We see, indeed that this is the Lord!

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?