Sermon Tone Analysis

What is a prophet?

Simply, a prophet is someone chosen by God to speak for God.

That sounds like a weighty task, doesn’t it?

Their job, whatever the time period or tidings, and whatever the message and regardless of the potential danger for the prophet, was to accurately impart God’s message.

Men and women (yes, there are also female prophets in Scripture) called to this task came from differing backgrounds, personalities and levels of social status.

But what they all had in common was a heart for God, an anointing to hear from Him, and the faithfulness to impart his message to others.

There is no one job description that covers all the prophets.

But their ministries included one or more duties such as teaching, writing and preaching - to a local crowd, or a larger audience.

Many times God directed prophets to act out their messages as visual reminders.

Isaiah walked barefoot and stripped down for three years to signify Jerusalem's coming captivity.

Jeremiah made and wore a yoke of wood to represent the way the Babylonian King would oppress the Israelites.

The work of prophets often brought difficulties and dangers such as verbal abuse, beatings and imprisonment, if not worse.

But each remained devoted to the Lord’s cause and received His strength to persevere.

https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/what-is-a-prophet.html

However, Scripture also warns us about false prophets.

God warns us throughout Scripture that there will be people who claim to speak for God that may actually be trying to lead people astray.

Their visions or instructions may not be divinely inspired.

According to God, these false prophets practice divination, sorcery, and fortune-telling by relying on their own imaginations or even the enemy’s lies, rather than God’s truth.

The good news is that we can stand against this type of deception by being firmly rooted in the Truth.

This is something that we must be ever vigilant for in today’s world.

There are many who claim to be a prophet, yet their message doesn’t line up with Scripture in the appropriate context.

Many take a small piece of Scripture and twist it to fit their narrative.

We see this prevalent right now in the US in ways we’ve never seen before.

We would do well as followers of Jesus, to better understand the Biblical prophets and understand them to be better able to identify false prophets in our current context.

Understanding the prophetic writings help us to see a fuller picture of God’s ministry through the prophets and biblical prophecy takes on a much deeper meaning when we understand the context in which it is written.

Turn with me to:

This morning, and for the next several weeks, we are going to dig in to the Prophet Joel.

Joel is a relatively short book, just three chapters, however, there are several important messages for us to consider even today and how these lessons might apply to our lives.

We do not know much about Joel other than he was the son of someone named Pethuel as we see in verse 1, who is also someone we know nothing about.

Unlike many of the other prophets, we also do not see any specific reference to any type of king or ruler.

If we look at the language and theme, they seem to indicate that Joel was a contemporary of Amos and Micah.

Joel then is most likely written during the 8th Century B.C. after the fall of Israel to Assyria.

However, we do know there are three main purposes for the writing of the prophet Joel.

To warn Judah of the coming Day of the Lord when judgment will get worse for Judah and the nations of the world.

To urge Judah to repent of their sins.

To proclaim a future time when complete restoration will come to the nation.

As we get to verse 2 and 3, we see that something big has happened.

Something that maybe was never equaled before, that no one had ever seen.

There are two key words in verse two that are critical for us to understand.

Hear and listen.

In addition to this, however, there is also the audience for these words.

Did you notice that it is for the elders to hear and all who live in the land to listen?

In other words, the message was for everyone.

This catastrophe was unique, like nothing ever seen before.

But apparently, the people were ready to forget and move on, and the prophet is calling on them to remember the event and to understand God’s message because everyone was affected by it.

It was something that was to be remembered and passed down from generation to generation.

The prophet commands the people to recount or rehearse it, in other words make sure it is committed to memory and handed down.

It was to help future generations to remember how the people had been shaped by this event.

It was to be remembered so that future generations would see it as the anchor that will hold them steady when they will engage in the horror, pain, and loss brought by future events like this one or maybe even worse events.

That anchor is God himself and how he brought the people out of this event and how they can rely on him in the future.

I wonder as we think about this, if we are really any different today?

Are we in tune to what God does when he is trying to tell us something and we are not listening?

We need to learn to communicate with God, not just talk to God.

Communicating includes the listening piece.

When we get to verse 4, we get some insight into the “this” that is being referred to as the unprecedented calamity.

Locusts.

They had invaded, eaten, and stripped the land bare.

They had left nothing behind but utter devastation.

Joel uses four terms to describe these locusts.

The first is the locust swarm which indicates the biting or devouring activity of these insects.

The second is great locusts, referring likely to the idea that there were a great many of them.

Third is young locusts which may depict the hopping activity of these insects.

And lastly, the other locusts which refers to the devastating nature of these insects.

Utter devastation, but the emphasis is on telling the generations to come what God has done for his people.

For just a moment, let’s think about the impacts of such a locust event.

It would have disrupted the economy, this was an agrarian society.

It would have thus impacted everyone at all levels of society.

It also would have impacted teh abiblity for sacrifical offerings, thus even having an impact on the religious ceremony.

And in verse 5-7 we get the wake-up call for the people of God.

Verse 5 is a call to repentance since they had broken God’s covenant, to which God had said there would be consequences.

In these last three verses of today’s passage, Joel is telling the people that he sees God’s judgement on Judah.

Even though Judah had been blessed during Uzziah’s day, the people had taken advantage of these blessings.

Joel warns that this locust swarm is a warning of a greater judgement, which is imminent unless they repent and return to fellowship with God.

Joel tells them to wake up, calling attention not only to the debased nature of the society in that day, but also to the insensitivity to their own spiritual condition.

It seems as if during times of ease and things going the way we think they should, our defenses come down and it is much easier to let things lax a bit, to not be as stringent about our disciplines or our relationship with the God of the universe.

However, Joel also reminds the people that if they do repent and turn back to God, God will pardon them, restore the health of the land, and give them again the elements needed for the sacrifices.

The ceremonial system was designed to be a heartfelt expression of their relationship with God, but they had turned from that.

They had become apathetic.

Have you ever been to a small, rural community where there are lots of farms or ranches?

Every once in a while, a cow wanders off and gets lost . . .

Ask a rancher how a cow gets lost, and chances are he will reply, 'Well, the cow starts nibbling on a tuft of green grass, and when it finishes, it looks ahead to the next tuft of green grass and starts nibbling on that one, and then it nibbles on a tuft of grass right next to a hole in the fence.

It then sees another tuft of green grass on the other side of the fence, so it nibbles on that one and then goes on to the next tuft.

The next thing you know, the cow has nibbled itself into being lost."

I think as Christians, and in particular American Christians, are all too often in the process of nibbling their way to being lost. . .

We keep moving from one tuft of activity to another, never noticing how far we have gone from home or how far away from the truth we have managed to end up.

Mike Yaconelli, "The Wittenburg Door." (adapted)

As we close, here are some things that I think are important for us to take away from these verses this morning:

Apathetic, comfortable in our sin, lax when times are good, lax in caring for and serving others.

Empty religion - going through the motions - don’t get concerned until something is no longer there, like for the sacrificial rituals from our text this morning or when something goes wrong, like the locust plague.

God will go to great lengths to bring us to repentance and a right relationship with him.

Remember that God is our anchor when we face troubling times.

Time of reflection and invitation