Minor Prophets 2: Joel
You Can Read and Understand...the Minor Prophets • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 19:45
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Joel’s Prophecy Is a Call to Repentance in the Midst of a Crisis.
I. In dramatic poetry, Joel describes devastation calling for repentance, followed by promise after promise God gives to his people.
II. All of this is associated with the Day of the Lord, calling us also to turn to Christ for forgiveness and life and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Sermon
“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. (Joel 2:12)
Whew! The last couple of years have been a disaster of biblical proportions. We had unending forest fires, drought, hurricanes, and floods. We were involved in wars that never seemed to stop. There was constant political turmoil that had some of us wishing the queen would take us back. And pestilence! Millions died from COVID-19, and then the Delta and Omicron variants spread faster than the original. Could things possibly get any worse?
Well, yes, actually. Things were worse in the time of Joel the prophet. He lived during the time of the divided kingdom, probably in the ninth century BC. He may have lived in Judah, but his traditional grave is in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. As a prophet, Joel was different from the others in that he didn’t spend his time scolding the people for their sins. He does mention the sins of Israel’s enemies, but he says little about Israel’s. Even so,
Joel’s Prophecy Is a Call to Repentance in the Midst of a Crisis.
I.
What’s going on in Joel’s little book? By the way, “little” is why he’s called a minor prophet. It’s not that he’s less important. It’s just that his book is short, only three chapters. Even at that, it’s full of verses that are quoted or alluded to in the New Testament. His prophecy concerning the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in chapter 2 forms the basis for the very first sermon preached by St. Peter on the Day of Pentecost, the birthday of the Church. Some of St. John’s visions in the Book of Revelation seem to reflect images from Joel. And you and I are familiar with a number of his verses because we sing or recite them in the liturgy.
Like Hosea, Joel bases his book around a very explicit situation from real life. Hosea’s picture sermon compares his marriage to Gomer the prostitute to God’s marriage to Israel; both brides were unfaithful. Joel’s picture sermon depicts a dreaded terror of the ancient Near East, one that still terrifies in parts of the world today: a catastrophic invasion of locusts that destroys all the vegetation in Judah. The locusts are like an army. They sound like a crackling fire as they move along; they leap mountains; they scale walls; they march in lines, never breaking ranks; they crawl through windows and fill houses. There are so many of them they darken the sky.
In their wake, the locusts leave nothing. All the crops in the fields, the grass in the pastures, the leaves on the trees—everything is stripped bare. The grape harvest, the olives, figs, grain—they’re all gone. Sheep, cattle, wild animals have nothing left to eat. To make matters worse, all this happens in a time of drought; there’s no water.
What are the people to do? Joel calls the people of God to repent and return to him with their whole hearts. They’re to pray:
Spare your people, O Lord. Do not make your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, “Where is their God?” (Joel 2:17)
So, while Joel doesn’t rebuke God’s people for any particular sin or unfaithfulness, he does see this as an opportunity for soul-searching, for repentance and prayer. And not just individually but as a sacred assembly, a consecrated gathering of the people. Everybody is to gather for this assembly—the elders, the children, the bridegroom and the bride, the priests. Together they are to join in a great service of fasting, weeping, and rending of their hearts, not their garments. In other words, this is not to be just a show of repentance; it’s to be the real thing.
And while it’s assumed they confess their sins, they’re also to argue with God that his name and reputation are at stake. This suffering congregation, this assembly of destitute, starving people are God’s covenant children. They are the offspring of Abraham whom God promised to bless and make a great nation. Their king is the descendant of David, who was never to lack a descendant on his throne. If they all starve to death, or if they end up being destroyed by their enemies in their weakened condition, Yahweh is going to be mocked. So, in effect, the people are to say, “Save your good name, O Lord, by saving us.”
Yahweh, the Lord, answers. Everything from chapter 2, verse 18 to the end of chapter 3 is Yahweh’s answer through Joel the prophet. Not only will the drought end and destruction by the locusts be undone, but Israel’s neighbors and enemies will also be punished. An epic battle will take place in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. There, enemy nations will be cut down and trampled, but “the Lord is a refuge to his people” (Joel 3:16). Why that valley? Because that’s where a coalition of Judah’s enemy neighbors had miraculously slaughtered one another when they had come together to defeat God’s people years earlier.
From there on in Joel, promise after promise is given to God’s people. Jerusalem will be safe forever. The mountains will flow with milk and new wine. The temple will be a fountain of water. Judah’s guilt will be pardoned.
II.
All of this is associated with the Day of the Lord, which figures prominently in Joel. It seems that the Day of the Lord isn’t just one event, but several. It’s a time of great catastrophe, like a locust plague. It’s a time of destruction of the enemies of God. It’s a time of the outpouring of God’s Spirit, an event evidenced by great miracles: the sun being darkened and the moon turned blood red. God’s people—young men and old, sons and daughters—all will see visions and prophesy in the Day of the Lord.
When do these marvelous events happen? Well, to some extent they happened in the time of the locust plague and the deliverance of God’s people, in answer to their prayers. And they happened eight hundred years later when Jesus was crucified and the sky was darkened as he hung dying on the cross. And these events also happened on the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came on the Church and the Gospel that was preached by the apostles was heard in many languages.
You and I today experience these wonderful prophesies of Joel as members of Christ’s Church. In the Church, we partake of Jesus, the water of life, who is himself the temple of God. In Christ’s Church, we are safe from all our enemies: sin, death, and the devil. In fact, the Church is for us the New Jerusalem; it is the gateway to the Promised Land, lush with all the spiritual food we need for eternal life. And that’s because Jesus won the battle in the Valley of Jehoshaphat for us. He took on all the enemies of God’s people at the cross where he died for us, and he overcame them at the tomb when he rose from the dead.
How do we benefit from all these promises of Joel, all these blessings won for us by Christ? We consider seriously the Day of the Lord, a day of destruction for the enemies of God—whom we don’t want to be—but a day of salvation for his people, and we repent. We turn from our sins—from our sins as individuals, as families, as a congregation—and we turn to God in prayer for deliverance. We appeal to his name and the promises he makes to his people. We remind him—as he wants us to remind him—that Jesus has died for us and now is at his right hand interceding for us. We beg him to listen to his Son. And he does. He hears. He answers. And he saves us.
Every catastrophe is a foretaste of the Day of the Lord. COVID-19 is a catastrophe. So are the droughts, the forest fires, the hurricanes, and the floods. So are the shambles and turmoil of our national politics, our international conflicts, and our never-ending war with terrorists.
All of these are reminders that we are sinners who deserve the wrath of God. But they are also loud-and-clear calls for us to repent, to turn from our sins, and to take God seriously. When we do, when we cry out to him and cling to his Son, Jesus Christ, in faith, God hears. And this is his answer: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Joel 2:32).
We pray together: Almighty God, pour out your Holy Spirit on me, my family, my church, and my countrymen. Give all of us repentant hearts that turn from our sin to your Christ so that we bring forth the fruits of repentance. In Jesus’ name. Amen.