Joel: Hope and Restoration

 

Last week we started a new series called Return - the minor prophets.  Peter started with a great introduction looking at the minor prophets, before then looking at Hosea – and the boundless love of God, this week we turn to Joel. 

 Almighty God may my spoken words be faithful to your written word and lead us to the living word Jesus Christ our Lord and King.  Amen.

Joel: Hope and Restoration

The opening phrases of Joel’s book, make clear that God is speaking to his people.  In fact, Joel means ‘God is Yahweh’. 

Joel most likely lived in Jerusalem and was intimately acquainted with the temple there.  It is hard to date or trace to a particular person in a particular setting.  The events described in it are unprecedented and timeless.  The message of Joel is, therefore, relevant to any situation in any generation.

 In the first thirteen verses, which we’ve just heard, Joel is nothing, if not straightforward as he describes the appalling situation in the nation and what must be done about it.

Joel addresses the people, elder, leaders, farmers, families, to do what they would not, in normal circumstances, by any stretch expect to do.

 Joel’s current disaster is so unprecedented that he tells the older men to include it in what they will, from now on, pass to the future generations. 

 So, what is this unprecedented disaster?

 Joel describes it succinctly and memorably:

 ‘What the cutting locust has left, the swarming locusts have eaten.  What the swarming locusts left, the hopping locust has eaten.  What the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.’

 The land had been invaded by a swarm of locusts on a cataclysmic scale.  Joel does not exaggerate the situation one bit – he observes and sees that locusts cut, swarm, destroy.  The impact would have been utter devastation, and it continued years after the locusts had gone.  It was root-and-crop destruction, and it took years to recover.

As a poet, he uses language evocatively and emotionally.  We can catch the force of the description by pondering the verbs used in this chapter: cut off, laid waste, dried up, torn down, stripped, destroyed, withheld, ruined, devoured, burned, fails, languishes, withers and shrivels.

Everything is affected – fields, food, fruit, barley, barns, beasts, grounds, grain and gladness.  Choice items like pomegranates and fig, are eradicated.  Important crops like wheat and barley are gone.

 

1. So, life basics necessities have failed. Grain, wine and oil were necessary staples of the Mediterranean diet - the grain to make bread, the fruit of the vine as daily drink, olive oil for cooking, cleansing, soothing, lighting and much else besides.  So, their whole way of life was destroyed.

 

We can cope with most things until our basic lifestyle is affected.  Then we sit up and take notice.  In today’s western and modernized world, we tend to be protected from the impact of such disasters.  Even in the unprecedented events as Covid 19 struck, we still managed, even with the rationing of some  essentials – including the hunt for loo rolls!  We forget, that in many countries today, a failed harvest brings wholesale destruction.

 

2. We also learn that the cows and sheep are affected. Their good pasture is gone.  Joel describes their behaviour in terms of human feelings: they groan and are perplexed and dismayed.  They wander aimlessly, for ever on the move in a vain search for better pasture.

 

This locust disaster is the reality of suffering in a world which is dominated by sin and death.  Here there is an extricable link between human beings and the rest of God’s creation, together under the overarching control and purposes of God himself. 

 At this fundamental level, therefore, we are bound to be ecologically alert, sensitive and committed.  What affects us as human beings affects everything created, and vice versa. 

 No Christian can opt out of the environmental debate, or shy away from our actions – reduce, reuse, recycle matters– thinking hard about how and when we spend our money matters – do we really need another dress, or the latest phone?  To ignore the pressing environmental needs speaks of a deliberate deafness on our part to the word of God. 

 So this locust disaster impacts creation… and in our world today we see the earth sending up a long, passionate, unbroken and unending wail to its Creator.  At times of special suffering, this groaning is almost tangible.  In nations besieged by war and violence, appalling atrocities, natural disasters, we see groans arising.  There is a futility in our tired, polluted and creaking universe in which we live.  But this isn’t the end of the story – hope and restoration will come.    Heaven and earth together, have always been the mind of the creator, this world is damaged – but a time will come when there is a new heaven and a new earth, in which righteousness is at home. But more of this later…

 

3. Joel then describes the overwhelming sense of doom and gloom that prevails.

Nobody smiles.  Nobody has joy. Everybody hurts.  ‘Surely joy withers away among the peoples.  Rejoicing has dried up.’

 Gladness, joy and rejoicing are painfully absent, emphasizing the way happiness can be entirely dependent on material circumstances where people are out of touch with the living God.

 There is where the drunkards come in again.  They depend entirely on their drink for happiness.  It is artificially stimulated by what they consume.  Now their wines have run out.  They will have to face up to life’s harsh realities without the stimulus, or the escape route, provided by their wine.  For many, this will mean a descent into the abyss of withdrawal.  Gladness gone.

 But of course, the search for happiness or glad ness is not just through drug or alcohol  use – it can be seen in other areas of life too – the stress of working long hours, under heavy pressure, with an electric atmosphere charged with greater expectations for productivity and commitment.   

 We see it with increased cases of depression and anxiety – in which life has become a chore and a grind.

 Joel is concerned with happiness, with gladness.  Joel refers to three specific times of rejoicing in the community - a wedding, a harvest, and at temple services.  At all these occasions joy and gladness were normal and expected.  Much of the joy was sheer anticipation of all the good things in store.  All these high points in life were rooted in celebrating the lavish generosity of a bountiful Creator who has called us, who he has created in his own image, into a personal relationship of faith and obedience.  Apart from such a relationship there may be a degree of happiness, but there will be none of the true gladness and joy to which Joel is referring. 

 

4. Finally, as this plague has hit, gladness has not only been destroyed at every level – in daily life and special occasions, but regular worship at the temple has been impacted too.

 Cereal, grain and drink offerings were made twice daily by the priests to accompany the morning and evening sacrifice of a lamb.  This regular, daily offering, called the ‘tamid’ was an expression of the covenant people the Lord and his people.  This daily act brought reassurance to the people that their relationship with God was sound and secure.

 This locust plague meant no dwelling, no meeting, no speaking: the apparent absence and the eloquent silence of God.

 For a people brought up upon the presence and provision of God, this was the ultimate disaster.  And so, the priests mourn and weep – everything had disintegrated.

The strange thing is that, unlike virtually every other prophet in Israel, Joel does not mention any particular sins in the nation which might have led to this disaster.

 Chances are Joel doesn’t need to name them… naming specific sin was superfluous.  The nation was pluralistic – the people had forgotten God, hence why seven times Joel commands them to return to ‘your’ God – they were either worshipping other Gods, or perhaps had become complacent and lazy.  Joel’s impassioned plea is to return to the one true God; as his own name signifies, ‘Yahweh is God.’

 I want us to notice - Joel does not wade in with judgment or assuming the moral high ground.  In the same breath as talking to the people about ‘your’ God, he is speaking about ‘our’ God and indeed ‘my’ God.  Joel is at one with both the pain and the sinfulness of the people.  He speaks for God within the catastrophe.  He himself knows the desolation of being the deprived of ‘the gladness of sitting at the same table with the Lord.’

 

This then was the unprecedented problem facing Joel– I’ve spent quite a time considering it, particularly because there are so many areas that resonate for us as we think about our own lives and circumstances.  Many areas where we can see parallels. Feelings and situations we can relate to.

For many of us today there will be aspects of our lives where we have seen the locusts invade - where we feel cut off, laid waste, dried up, torn down, stripped, destroyed, withheld, ruined, devoured, burned, failure, withered and shrivelled.

 

So, what is the solution – for the people Joel spoke to and indeed for us today?

 

Well, first we must cry out to the Lord. 

Joel tells the people, in effect, to jettison any vestige of pride, self-sufficiency, anger or rebelliousness and to cry out to God.   

 Joel instructs the priests to gather everyone together and to observe a fast.  The situation is urgent, it is crucial people must look to God once more.

 Joel urges his contemporaries to cry to the Lord.  Cry from your helplessness. Cry with all your agony and desolation.  Cry to the Lord who is the only God. Cry to the one who formed all things, including the locusts, who formed you out of the dust, who formed you for himself. Cry with a heart ready to listen rather than to argue of justify.  Cry in humble admission that you have nowhere else to turn and hat you are utterly dependent on the mercy of God.

 

But more than crying to God, Joel calls the people to return to God.  It’s urgent, Joel shouts.

The second chapter continues with the narrative of events in the land but is now also flanked by descriptions of ‘the day of the Lord’. Joel can see dark and difficult days ahead.

 The ‘day of the Lord’ is mentioned throughout scripture old and new.  Through the Old Testament the ‘Day of the Lord’, is a day of both recompense, warning and judgment, a day or reckoning for all sin, coupled with mercy, love, forgiveness and glory.  Many of the prophets envisage it in different ways, and the book of Daniel adds vivid apocalyptic insights. 

 The Old Testament is eloquent and vivid in its description of this great assize, but the New Testament takes it much further still, in particular by seeing it as revolving around the Lord Jesus Christ. There will still be judgment and a reckoning of all that is seen and unseen, but for all who have trusted in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, God’s love will abound – his mercy will win.

For Joel, pre-Jesus, the ‘day of the Lord’ felt evil, profound, powerful and prolonged. 

 And for us too, there is, and will be indescribable misery and agony and pain… we catch glimpses of it all round our world, in our own nation, and dare I say it in our own lives.

 Behind all evil is a presiding genius, the devil, who is orchestrating his forces for maximum destruction.  There is, notwithstanding, both a greater authority and an ultimate terminus, when God himself will demonstrate that he has said ‘So far, and no further’.  Evil is having its day, but the day of the Lord is the last and great and glorious day.

 And so, Joel calls out, from the darkness and hopelessness, again and again – alas – watch out – wake up – be alert.  God is looking for a people who will not only cry out to him, but who will return with all their heart.

 ‘Yet even now, say the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, and weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.’ (2: 12-13)

This returning is decisive action.  It means utter surrender – rending your heart. It means fasting, weeping, mourning.  It means deep and sincere confession.  It involves a commitment to prayer and a desire to walk in God’s ways.  To engage in worship and fellowship. 

 Return says Joel - God wants his people back with Him, at his side, enjoying his presence, basking in his favour.

 ‘Return to the Lord, your God, for his is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil.’

 

This is the story, in New Testament terms, of the prodigal son, or better perhaps, the prodigal father.  This is the father-heart of God.  As Hosea says, ‘in thee every orphan finds mercy.’ (4:13)

You see the Lord has never changed: from the evening in the garden of Eden (Gn 3:19) right through to the closing invitation of the book of revelation, ‘the Spirit and the Bride say ‘come.’ (Rev 22:17)

 The invitation is the same: return to me.

 

If, and as we return to the Lord, there are two promises.  

The first is HOPE – deep abiding hope.  Hope in the here and now, and HOPE for the future. 

Joel speaks of blessings, blessings in contrast to the curses plaguing the land.  There will be blessing of a cereal and drink offering – which in essence all the people have longed for – the resources to restore a daily expression in the temple of their relationship with God – Communion – true gladness.  To be deprived of the ability to know God and to enjoy him is to be as good as dead. 

Joel’s hope of blessing is, therefore, a masterly understatement; but it forces us to question what counts as true blessing for us?  Are we obsessed with material blessings, to the neglect or devaluation of true spiritual blessing?

 

The second promise is RESTORATION.  As we lean, first and foremost on the mercy of God, the language in chapter 3 changes. 

 Now comes lots of ‘I will’, or ‘You shall’.  God speaks to the people about what lies ahead; what he will do and what they will experience.  There will be restoration:

 ‘I will restore to you the years which the swarming locusts have eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, may great army which I sent among you.’

God never does anything my half measures.  The atmosphere here is of fullness and abundance and overflow.  God is always lavish and generous in his work of restoration.

 When we look at the world he created, we can see variety, abundance, intricacy, imagination and fantasy.  It is true, if not more so, in restoration and recreation. 

 And the word used for restore, means ‘repay’, ‘payback’, ‘make up for’.  It has legal connotations meaning compensation. 

There will be unrestrained blessing.  Now the people will realize that he has dealt wondrously with them.  Such acts of grace will cause them to break out in hallelujahs.  ‘You will know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the Lord, am your God and there is no one else.’  

 

And with this promise of RESTORATION comes a very significant promise that stands for us today.  It’s a promise we’re familiar with, as we hear it when we celebrate Pentecost each year – Peter proclaims these words from Joel.

 ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.’

 In the OT the Spirit of God empowered certain individuals at specific times for particular tasks. 

As we know, from Pentecost onwards, the Spirit falls on all flesh.  There is no discrimination in terms of age, sex or status.

 The gifts of the Spirit was not to be for personal satisfaction, or even for national recovery and stability.  It was to strengthen the people of God to take up a position of prophetic leadership among the nations of the world heading for an apocalyptic day of final reckoning.   

 If individual prophets had the task of taking God’s word to a nation at risk of God’s judgement, a prophetically inspired people would have the task of taking God’s word to a world on the brink of ultimate judgement.

 

There is so much more that could be said about the book of Joel, if you’ve not yet read it through from start to end can I encourage you to do so.  If you have a bible like ours, it starts on page 860 – and only take about ten minutes to read.

 This morning let’s hear Joel’s prophetic words, words of HOPE and RESTORATION if we will but return to the lord our God.

 

Let’s pray as I close:

Lord, we cry out to you,

we return to you with all our hearts. 

Bring your hope and restoration to our lives.

Renew and make public for all to see the work of your Spirit.

Lord, in the day of your righteous judgment, remember mercy.

Amen