Sermon Tone Analysis

Joel 2:12-17

*Calling a Solemn Assembly*

 

“Yet even now,” declares the Lord,

“return to me with all your heart,

with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;

and rend your hearts and not your garments.”

Return to the Lord, your God,

for he is gracious and merciful,

slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;

and he relents over disaster.

Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,

and leave a blessing behind him,

a grain offering and a drink offering

for the Lord your God?

 

Blow the trumpet in Zion;

consecrate a fast;

call a solemn assembly;

gather the people.

Consecrate the congregation;

assemble the elders;

gather the children,

even nursing infants.

Let the bridegroom leave his room,

and the bride her chamber.

Between the vestibule and the altar

let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep

and say, “Spare your people, O Lord,

and make not your heritage a reproach,

a byword among the nations.

Why should they say among the peoples,

‘Where is their God?’”[1]

 

Whilst pastoring in the Lower Mainland of our fair province, I formed a warm friendship with an Anglican rector who held to a high-church view of worship.

Our friendship was based on our common love for the Saviour, and not our views of the church.

Raised in Vancouver and educated at Cambridge, Robert was well versed both in recent church history and in the history of our province.

On one occasion, discussing the state of religion in Canada, the priest spoke of the impact of and the dynamics of shifting popular sentiment toward the various religious communions.

“It is a time when you evangelicals are in ascendancy,” he opined.

“However, it was not so many years ago that should the Bishop of New Westminster declare a day of solemn prayer, the legislature would close and the cities would cease their work to pray.”

It seems strange to us that a churchman should have such moral authority as to receive deference when calling for solemn introspection and prayer.

Today, it seems strange to us that a church leader should even issue a call for prayer.

The strangeness arises more from our moral deadness than from a lack of familiarity with the event.

Calling the people of God to consecrate themselves is indeed foreign to us today.

Even calling for a solemn assembly among the people of God sounds strange.

Perhaps it seems strange because we feel no particular need to formally seek the face of the Lord our God.

Perhaps we have grown accustomed to the darkness in which we grope.

Perhaps we actually believe that we are in no grave danger of being set aside as useless.

Of course, no one calls for a solemn assembly unless there is a clear and present danger.

The Living God, speaking through the prophet Joel, called for a solemn assembly.

God had just warned the people that they were facing extreme danger; the land was in danger of invasion by a foreign army.

Though the nation was imperilled, God was gracious.

In the twelfth verse, we read a gracious call preceded by the phrase, “Yet even now.”

Though the peril was real, though the danger was imminent, it was not too late for God to hold back the sentence that had been pronounced.

At issue was not God’s character, but the willingness of His people to honour Him.

Just so, we face extreme danger as a nation, as a congregation, as a people.

Studying the message of the Lord to Joel, we can see the gracious character of our God.

Seeing His gracious and merciful call to return to Him, we find ourselves drawn to consider His kindness.

Join me in study of this text that forms the heart of Joel’s prophetic message to a people in need of grace.

*Danger* — Joel likely wrote the prophecy that bears his name in the days immediately preceding the destruction of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was destroyed in 587~/586 B.C., and Joel probably wrote his prophecy around 600 B.C.[2]  The king that ruled Judah, if this date is correct, would have possibly been Jehoiakim, one of the last kings of Judah.

The nation was in grave peril, and the people were willingly ignorant of the danger they faced.

Life went on as though nothing would happen.

However, a storm was gathering.

Religion in Judah had become mere formality, with the people placing trust in formal expressions of faith instead of Him that alone merits our faith.

Throughout the prophetic writings, the messengers call the people to examine their lives in order to see themselves as the Lord saw them.

How the calls of the prophets must have angered the people.

However, the mark of a prophet is not that he says smooth things to make the people feel good about themselves, but rather than he speaks the truth in love.

So, Joel, speaking the words of the Lord calls the people to repentance.

“‘Yet even now,’ declares the Lord,

‘return to me with all your heart,

with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;

and rend your hearts and not your garments.’”

[*Joel 2:12*]

 

Then, having related the words of God Himself, Joel urges the people to repent.

“Return to the Lord, your God,

for he is gracious and merciful,

slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;

and he relents over disaster.

Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,

and leave a blessing behind him,

a grain offering and a drink offering

for the Lord your God?”

[*Joel 2:13, 14*]

 

The spokesmen of God have often used common words to communicate theological concepts.

The word “return” is such a word.

The Hebrew word means exactly what is stated—“to return.”

It conveys the thought of movement in a linear path to the place one was previously.

Modern Christians would say that the prophets were calling the people to repentance.

“The Bible is rich in idioms describing man’s responsibility in the process of repentance.

Such phrases would include the following: ‘incline your heart to the Lord, the God of Israel’ [*Joshua 24:23*]: ‘circumcise yourselves to the Lord’ [*Jeremiah 4:4*]; ‘wash your heart from evil’ [*Jeremiah 4:4*]; ‘break up your fallow ground’ [*Hosea 10:12*]; and so forth.

All these expressions of man’s penitential activity, however, are subsumed and summarized by this one verb /šûb/.

For better than any other verb it combines in itself the two requisites of repentance: to turn from evil and to turn to the good.”[3]

As was also true of the message of Joel’s fellow prophet Jeremiah, who served simultaneously in Judah, the call to repent occupies a central position in Joel’s proclamation.

God called the people to a genuine repentance, to a turning with all the heart.

The peril Joel warned of was an invasion.

He speaks of the invaders as locusts, but the danger is far greater than a mere locust plague.

Locust plagues are natural phenomena; such an invasion could happen at any time.

However, Joel saw the locust plague as a portent.

Whenever a cataclysmic event occurs, thoughtful, believing people will ask questions, and Joel was guiding the thoughts of the people.

Israel was facing invasion and desolation, and Joel would not leave to chance that the people would either ask the right questions or that they would draw the correct conclusion.

He would direct their attention to what God was doing.

Dr. James Montgomery Boice, in a sermon preached from the second chapter of Joel, points out that Palestine and Syria experienced an infestation of locusts in 1915.