Joel (June 10)

Joel
God’s Process of Discipline

June 10

Ref: Joel 2:1 (NIV)
“Blow the trumpet in Zion;
Sound the alarm on My holy hill.
Let all who live in the land tremble,
for the day of the LORD is coming.
It is close at hand…”

Ref: Psalm 94:12 (NIV)
“Blessed is the man You discipline, O LORD,
the man You teach from Your Law…”

Ref: Proverbs 3:11-12 (NASB)
“My son, do not reject the discipline of the LORD or loathe His reproof,
for whom the LORD loves He reproves,
even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights.”

Joel is prophesying to Judah (the Southern Kingdom, with Jerusalem as its capital city) with the date or time period being uncertain (could have been at anytime between Joash’s ascension to the throne in 835 B.C. until around 500 B.C., contemporary with Zechariah).

Whatever the time period Joel wrote in, the warnings are applicable to the Jews throughout many periods and they are particularly applicable to us today in America.

They highlight God’s process of discipline:

• Judgment
• Repentance
• Promise

He has taken His disciples through this process throughout history and will continue to do so until “the day of the LORD” (more about that phrase in a minute).

We hear God’s heart cry out to his rebellious children (including us).

Ref: Joel 2:12-13 (CEV)
“The LORD said:

‘It isn't too late.
You can still return to Me with all your heart.
Start crying and mourning!
Go without eating.
Don't rip your clothes to show your sorrow.
Instead, turn back to Me with broken hearts.
I am merciful, kind, and caring.
I don't easily lose My temper, and I don't like to punish.’”

So, let’s walk through the process with Joel to see how God brings us back to Himself when we have chosen to go the other way.

I. Judgment (Joel 1:1-12)-

Ref: Joel 1:2-3 (ESV)
“Hear this, you elders; give ear, all inhabitants of the land!
Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers?
Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children,
and their children to another generation.”

Are their circumstances around us today that fit this description?

For Judah, it was a plague of locusts that was evidently unlike anything ever seen.

To the Hebrew culture, a plague of locusts signaled judgment, and this was certainly a thorough example of that.

It also clearly foreshadows the coming exile of God’s Chosen People (the Babylonian Exile in 586 B.C.).

Note the methodical nature of God’s judgment outlined here:

A. Striking at comfort

Ref: Joel 1:5 (NIV)
“Wake up, you drunkards, and weep!
Wail, all you drinkers of wine;
Wail because of the new vine, for it has been snatched from your lips.”

God will strike at our places of comfort (self-reliance) first.

This is to both get our attention and to point us to repentance.

B. Striking at religiosity

Ref: Joel 1:9 (NASB)
“The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the LORD.
The priests mourn, the ministers of the LORD.”

Why would God cut off our ability to worship Him?

Is that what He’s doing here?

Is He, instead, helping us to “re-establish” our relationship with Him.

Obviously, the religious practices we were observing were not effectively pointing us to Him
if we’re at this point.

It’s time to be refreshed in our encounter with Him.

Amazingly, we should find that it wasn’t God that had moved or changed in this old practice, it was us!

C. Striking at sustenance

Ref: Joel 1:11 (NIV)
“Despair, you farmers, wail, you vine growers;
grieve for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field is destroyed.”

God will complete His judgment by removing our very means of survival.

We will, of course, become desperate and be tempted by hopelessness.

What is God’s purpose in removing EVERYTHING like this?

II. Repentance (Joel 1:13-20)

Once God has made His judgment clear, what should be our reaction (what is He wanting from us)?

Repentance.

In the Old Testament, there are two verbs which represent what we would call “repentance”.

They’re both found in this passage:

· Shub [shoob]- to turn back (or away), often occurring with an adverbial “again”

· Nacham [naw-kham’]- to sigh (breathe strongly); to be sorry

Ref: Joel 1:13-15 (NIV)
“Put on sackcloth, O priests, and mourn; wail, you who minister before the altar.
Come, spend the night in sackcloth, you who minister before my God;
for the grain offerings and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God.
Declare a holy fast; call a sacred assembly.
Summon the elders and all who live in the land to the house of the LORD your God,
and cry out to the LORD.
Alas for that day!
For the day of the LORD is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty.”

This last phrase includes the term “the day of the LORD”.

What does that mean?

When is “the day of the LORD”?

To the Hebrew ear, “the day of the LORD” referred to any intervention of Yahweh (the personal name for Israel’s covenant God) into the history of His people.

For us, isn’t “the day of the LORD” the day we repent?

It can certainly also be those times in our lives when we recognize God’s judgment in our lives and respond (they are memorable experiences).

III.Promise

After Joel reiterates God’s judgment and call to repentance in Joel 2:1-17, we are shown “the light at the end of the tunnel”.

Ref: Joel 2:25-27 (NIV)
“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten –
the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm –
my great army that I sent among you.
You will have plenty to eat, until you are full,
and you will praise the name of the LORD your God,
Who has worked wonders for you;
never again will my people be shamed.
Then you will know that I am in Israel,
that I am the LORD your God,
and that there is no other;
never again will my people be shamed.”

God will not just leave us destitute and ruined from this process, left alone to recover from His strong hand.

He will restore plenty to us (just like we do with our children after going through this restoration process),
but to an even more powerful and profound degree.

And more than restoration of earthly trappings, God promises everlasting deliverance to something more than we can even remotely imagine.

Ref: Joel 2:32 (NIV)
“And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved;
for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance,
as the LORD has said, among the survivors whom the LORD calls.”

Conclusion-

Joel concludes in ch.3 with an overview of this restoration process from God’s perspective (not ours).

We see God’s heart. Why would He take us through such a painful, almost violent, process?

Ref: Joel 3:17-21 (NIV)
“’Then you will know that I, the LORD your God, dwell in Zion, My holy hill.
Jerusalem will be holy; never again will foreigners invade her.
In that day the mountains will drip new wine, and the hills will flow with milk;
all the ravines of Judah will run with water.
A fountain will flow out of the LORD’s house and will water the valley of acacias.
But Egypt will be desolate, Edom a desert waste,
because of violence done to the people of Judah, in whose land they shed innocent blood.
Judah will be inhabited forever and Jerusalem through all generations.
Their bloodguilt, which I have not pardoned, I will pardon.’
The LORD dwells in Zion!”

It’s so easy to be distracted by the “soap opera” we find ourselves in, with all of our melodramatic feelings of revenge and rage.

If we could only see God’s viewpoint. That He calls us all to this process of restoration with Him.
That He wants to pardon all of our sin.

He cannot, however, pardon without our response to His judgment (repentance), and He cannot allow us to share in the Promise without us having gone through this process.