Minor prophets, major impact!
Joel 2v18-32 - God will bring restoration, blessing and salvation to those who call on him
We have been looking at Joel for a few weeks now, and I hope you don’t mind if I recap some of the main features of this book – He warns his listeners about “the Day of the Lord” – it is coming and it will be truly, truly dreadful. In the light of this he calls people to turn around in their thinking and the way they act right now, and return to the Lord God.
It’s also worth remembering that many of the Old Testament prophecies had three levels of fulfilment. I regret that we have lost some wonderful Shakespearean words, otherwise I could describe it as “here, there and yonder”. The prophecy normally had an immediate meaning, a meaning that was many years in the future, fulfilled in Jesus and the cross, and a meaning for the end times. Joel is a particularly good example of this for us, as his words are taken up in the Acts of the apostles and in the Revelation - we’ll come to that later.
The fundamental thing that Joel talks about is “The Day of the LORD” . We learn in this passage that God will restore damaged lives, God will pour out his Spirit and God will save those who call on him.
God will restore damaged lives (v18-27)
In 2v18-27 Joel says that the Lord will satisfy them (v19), he will remove their enemies(v20), restore the land(v21-22) and give them abundance (v23-24). He will repay them for the years the locust has eaten.
I want to tell you tonight that God is still in the business of restoring damaged lives, repaying people for the years that have been wasted, the years that have been destroyed. In 1985 I met a man named Joey, down in a small Cornwall fishing village. He was in his mid eighties, yet every evening he was out on the sea front playing his accordion. He had been saved by Jesus only two years previously and worried that he had wasted the majority of his life... yet now God had given him a fruitful avenue of service..
It is natural for us to worry about the ones whom we love – parents, brothers or sisters, husbands or wives, perhaps especially children – when we see them living lives without Christ. Some of us here have seen those that they love turn away from Jesus, turn away from beliefs they once held dear. We may worry about their future in Christ, we may feel disappointed about “years that the locusts have eaten”, years which have gone past which don’t seem to amount to anything in spiritual terms.
When this is the case, we have to carry on praying for them, and trusting God for them. Whatever else happens, we know that God can “restore the years the locust has eaten” and give them wonderful opportunities for fruitfulness in Gods service that we haven’t guessed yet.
And if I may be so bold as to speak directly to you - If you are worried about having wasted time, if you think you have wasted some of your life, then can I reassure you - God hasn’t finished with you yet!
God will pour out his Spirit (v28-29)
In the chapters seen so far there has been a dismal and terrible vision of disaster as Joel goes on and on about the Day of the Lord. But that is not his whole message, as In the midst of this there will be fabulous blessing. See 2v28-29. God is going to “pour his Spirit on all people”. Not just on the prophets, not just on the kings (like in OT days), but on young and old, men and women alike. There will be visions and dreams and everyone will prophesy.
Can I tell you something really amazing? Astonishingly, we are actually living in the Day of the LORD right now!
We know that we are living in the “Day of the LORD” because the Bible tells us so. Specifically, Peter does when he starts preaching his first Sermon. Take a look at Acts 2v14-24
The day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Church, is identified as being a direct fulfilment of Joel 2v28-32. There was an unprecedented pouring out of Gods Spirit, and that same Holy Spirit dwells within the church, within every disciple of Jesus today! This is a time of fabulous blessing!
It is the Holy Spirit dwelling within believers that makes it possible for all sort of spiritual gifts to be exercised within the church today – whether prophecy, knowledge, healing, faith or any of the other gifts identified in the NT. This is in evidence more in some churches than in others… for many centuries the church “forgot” about this teaching in the Bible and so didn’t expect to see God working this way. Today some churches deny that anything like this happens at all, and some other churches act as if this was the only thing that God expected us to be doing.
Here at Crabtree we try to steer between the two extremes of behaviour, and we hope that we will gradually be able to allow the Holy Spirit more freedom in exercising these gifts amongst us.
God will save all those who call on him (v30-32)
So the day has started! But it is not finished yet… The darker side of Joel’s prophecies still have to be seen. They are still “yonder” - in our future – too. The Revelation picks up and reinforces many of these images. The locusts of 2v1-11 are reprised in Rev 9v-19. The effect on the sun and moon of 2v30-31 is reflected in Rev 6v12. The harvest of judgement on the nations in 3v13 is seen in Rev14v14-20.
Joel’s original hearers were shocked by the warning of a forthcoming threat and also encouraged by a wonderful promise that would carry them through it. We can hear his words with equal force today… we are living in the Day of the Lord, the blessing of Gods spirit is freely available to all who call on the name of the Lord, but there are still terrible things waiting in the wings for the final act. Now, as then, we have all this detail in Joel’s prophecy in order to persuade us to change. We are told the future to change us today.
Furthermore, everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved! They will not have to face this final judgement and wrath of God. Just think, a free gift of salvation offered to all who call on the name of the Lord! How amazing!
God will save all those who call on him. You might ask me what does this actually mean – to “call on the name of the Lord”? On this side of the cross the answer is a simple one. As Romans 10v9 says, “if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your hearts that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved”.
Why Jesus?
Because Jesus died on the cross, because he endured the beating, the taunting, the crown of thorns, the cruel nails; because, worst of all, he faced all of Gods wrath against our wrongdoing, our sin… in our place…
Jesus is the means that God has appointed for all people to attain salvation. Not by our goodness, not by our behaviour, not by our birth or nationality. But simply by calling on the name of Jesus.
The Bible doesn’t promise us perfect happiness here on earth though. That’s not what we are made for. Although many people try to find or make their own “heaven on earth”, The final fulfilment of all these things will be in the real heaven, an eternity of happiness with God. Look at Rev 21v4, God will wipe away every tear, there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, or hear Jesus’ words in (Matt 19v29) “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life”
From our position in history, somewhere between “there” and “yonder”, we can see that these are the issues which Joel raises for us tonight. God will restore damaged lives, God will pour out his Spirit and God will save those who call on him.
So lets call on him today!
Alex White
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