Sermon Tone Analysis

*JOEL CH.1.*

*Intro:*

- Joel ch.1 - minor prophet, after major - not less important, but shorter.

Easier to cover whole book and contain message for the time near the end.

- What if your whole income for a year was taken from you - how would you respond?

This is the situation in Joel.

- Economy based on agriculture - hit by locust plague.

- Advantages of living on a farm, on the land - realize your dependence upon God more - closer to Him because you see His hand more clearly and directly.

- Judah, with its agricultural economy, had just lost a whole harvest to an enormous plague of locusts.

There was absolutely nothing left ‑ nothing to eat, nothing to store, nothing for cattle food, nothing to offer God.

A catastrophe like this would be remembered for generations.

- People ask where is God?

Why does He allow it?

Such disasters did not confuse Joel.

He understood both the love and the demands of a holy God.

The people had drifted away from him and now he had sent this to recall them to their senses and to himself.

It was not the farmers who had sinned but the whole community.

Today it is the same the whole world community has sinned, ourselves included.

Joel's call to his times should be a call to ours also ‑ repent.

- This is the situation in Joel - God was speaking to them through, so called, “natural events” - locust plague.

one of the instruments of Divine judgment mentioned by Moses (*Deuteronomy 28:38,39* /You shall bring out much seed to the field but you will gather in little, for the locust will consume it.

You shall plant and cultivate vineyards, but you will neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worm will devour them./)

Like the stars and sands of the sea, locusts are a type of that which cannot be numbered The locust was almost synonymous with “destroyer” and a plague of locust was often regarded as God’s judgment

*Read Joel ch.1*

*Prophecy* *[OHP1]*

- Before looking at the passage in detail, explain a bit how prophecy works:

- There are often layers of meaning

*(1)* the surface level - the present situation: locust plague.

*(2) *that surface level was a picture - held a message, a deeper meaning, a lesson and sometimes a foretelling of a future event: invading army.

*(3)* but often there is more than one level of fulfilment - there is a near fulfilment, but also a complete fulfilment later on - the prophecy is itself a prophecy of another event: locust plague prefigured invading army which prefigures the Day of the LORD - Jesus return and final judgment.

*(4) *that is yet future and we need to be informed and prepared for it but prophecy also has a message for us today, an application - the principle of the lesson it contains is valid for us: repentance and seeking the LORD.

*Exposition** [OHP2]*

*HEAR! - what is God saying to us? (2-4)*

*v.1** *Joel means “YHWH is God”, he received a message from YHWH probably around the reign of Joash about 800BC.

- The word of the LORD - message from YHWH Himself!

It is to be heeded.

How should we respond?

(*Isaiah 66:2* /“For My hand made all these things, Thus all these things came into being,” declares the Lord.

“But to this one I will look, To him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word./).

The message came from heaven from God to His servant, to His prophet.

So the words which follow are not from human origin, some outstanding preaching, but this is what God Himself is saying!

Let us tremble!

*v.2*

There is no "easing into it gently", it is immediate, direct, shocking them to pay attention to what is going on around (God’s actions through the circumstances of life).

They were to consider its significance, think about it, lay it to heart - has anything like this ever happened before?

- in their memory or even that passed down in history from their ancestors?

What was happening was /unprecedented/ - therefore they should consider its significance - its spiritual message - what is God seeking to say through this unprecedented occurrence?

- We are to hear.

Call to attention.

Speaks to those in leadership (the elders) but also to all the inhabitants of the land.

Leaders have the foremost responsibility to listen, but we all must heed the word of YHWH.

He called them to take a look at what was happening around them.

- God speaks through circumstances - we put things down to natural causes but God is in control.

He determines what goes on.

Nothing like this had ever happened before.

Insurance companies are right - the locust plague was an "act of God."

When extraordinary things take place we should take note - and ask what is God saying to us through this?

*v.3* -Still he does not tell us what “it” is, keeps us in suspense.

- Not only was the significance for their own generation but for ones to come - God's deeds in history have a lesson for the future.

Often significant events in the past are a picture of future ones (e.g.

passover, crossing of Red Sea, plagues, Abraham offering Isaac etc.).

So we must pay attention to history - not only does it teach us lessons but can also contain a prophetic message.

God's deeds in the past must be passed on.

We are a generation concerned with the now - but it is essential to pass on the record of God's deeds in history.

They equip us for the future.

*v.4* ?

identity of different locusts (RSMT missionary deferred giving an opinion) but indicates wave after wave (Egypt only one wave) - twice, terrible coincidence; three times, someone's got it in for me.

But four times!

- unprecedented! Nothing left.

Blow after blow.

May not know identity but names are descriptive of their action.

The locusts cut off, mow (גָּזָם), they multiply and devastate (אַרְבֶּה), they devour (יֶלֶק) and they consume(חָסִיל) - the final wave, the consuming locust leaves nothing - חסל means not only "to consume" but "to come to an end" - A little may be expected to remain after the first devastating swarm, and may be possibly something somewhere after the second.

But after the third?

Certainly not after the fourth!

The consuming of the fruitfulness of the land, the product of the peoples toil will be totally destroyed - nothing left for all their efforts.

All they have done will prove to be utterly futile in the end.

- יהוה is unsparing, thorough, relentless in the judgment, nothing will escape the successive waves (cf.

Revelations: 7 seals, 7 trumpets, 7 bowls of wrath) wave after wave of judgment until it is complete - nothing will escape.

God’s judgment is relentless on those on whom it falls (cf.

*Hebrews 12:29* /our God is a consuming fire/).

- It was from the LORD’s hand - How readily we attribute all calamity to the enemy - by doing so we are prevented from hearing God speak to us.

*WAKE UP! - something is going on (5-7) *

.*V.5* - But are the people concerned?

No, they are getting drunk!

Anaesthetized, not facing up to the calamity that has come upon them.

Picture of end times - people pursuing indulgence with no conception of the peril they are facing.

It is time to wake up! (Eph 5:11-18).

But they will not be able to continue their drunken indulgence - so great is the calamity that no vines are left to produce the grapes to make their wine.

One day men will face to face up to the reality of judgment.

- The LORD urgently calls the leaders and people to take heed there is a terrible calamity!

- But they haven’t woken up to the reality of it, to the implications of it.

They are continuing their self indulgent, escapist, existentialist life-style, oblivious of the disaster that is bringing that way of life to an end.Here their world was falling down around their ears and they had not taken it seriously, done anything about it, sought the LORD earnestly in prayer.

- You cannot avoid the issue of sin, righteousness and judgment of יהוה forever.

One day it is going to catch up on you and your escapism will no longer keep the reality from you.

All you do is delay the realization until the situation is too desperate to be remedied.

*v.6 *- But it is not just the present calamity, terrible as it is, it is just a picture of a more terrible judgment, not insects but men - an invading army.

A nation has invaded, innumerable like the locusts - ferocious and vicious.

The locust plague was devastating indeed but it was just a shadow, a warning of what was to come.

- "/My land/" - Israel belongs to יהוה!"/My/ vine" (v.7).

A nation (גּוֹי) would invade - i.e. the Gentiles - God uses them as His instrument to judge His people.