The Sleeping Watchman

The Sleeping Watchmen
Joel 2:1-2

INTRODUCTION:
Do you realize that it has been 2,000 years since Jesus first came to earth? It has been nearly 2,000 years since the angels told the disciples that Jesus was coming again (Acts 1:11). It is easy to see why many people simply don’t believe that Jesus is coming again. In fact, I guess that most of us don’t live our lives on a day-to-day basis as if Jesus could come any minute. We live our lives day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, believing that we’ve got all the time in the world, at least 80-90 years, to live our lives here on earth, practically any way we wish.

The apostle Peter had to deal with people who argued the same way. They believed that all things had been going on normal, with no change, for years so they simply did not believe that Jesus would come again. Unfortunately, their moral lives were reflecting that belief too. Peter warns them in 2 Peter 3 that Noah’s flood proves that all things have not been “the same” from the beginning of the world.

I’m not sure if this is the right word to use but it seems that God delights in making a promise and then delaying the fulfillment of that promise. If this is the right way of looking at things, then it’s because God is testing our willingness to trust Him. Speaking of Noah, he trusted God that there was going to be a flood and a universal catastrophe. So, Noah built the ark. But, and it seems like Noah preached for 120 years, the whole rest of the world could not trust such a message - for 120 years. But, God had promised and, eventually, God fulfilled that promise.

To give one more example, think about Abraham. God first promised Abraham that he would be the father of nations when Abraham was 75 years old. At that point, Sarah was 65 years old. But that promise was not fulfilled for another 25 years. Twenty-five years of waiting! You and I have a hard time waiting 25 months or even 25 days.

Mike Johnson is the MC for the Lads to Leaders convention in Louisville and he’s a friend of ours from our days in KY. I heard Mike preach one time and he made the comment, “Faithfulness is what you do when you are being patient.” I know what he said because I wrote it down in the margin of my Bible at the top of the page of Galatians 5 & 6! “Faithfulness is what you do when you are being patient.”

God calls us to be faithful up to the point of death or up to the point of Jesus returning. Jesus, Himself, asked the question in Luke 18:8, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”

Each year, I pick a minor prophet to have a few sermons from. This year, it will be the minor prophet Joel. Turn in your copy of God’s word to the prophet Joel. We will have three lessons from Joel. There are three chapters to Joel so it is one of the shortest of the minor prophets.

We do not know when Joel preached. Unlike most other prophets, Joel does not tell us in whose reign he lived and preached. There are also no indications throughout the book as to the time frame so he could have been before the Babylonian exile or afterwards. We just don’t know. But that doesn’t minimize the importance of his message. One other point I would like to make is that Joel’s name literally means “Jehovah is God.” While Joel does not criticize Israel for idolatry, it would be easy to guess that that was one of their problems since it was a serious issue for Israel for a long time. Be that as it may, Joel’s mom named him “Jehovah is God” perhaps to illustrate that their family was going to worship the one true God regardless of what everyone else did. Joel does tell us his daddy’s name, Pethuel. There are other men named “Joel” mentioned in the OT but no one else is named “Pethuel” so we can’t learn anything about Joel from elsewhere in the Bible.

Let’s spend our time this evening largely on chapter 1:

A CALL TO WAIL (1:2-14):
A catastrophe, a locust plague, has struck Joel’s people which served as the impetus behind his message (1:4). Locust plagues were not unusual in Palestine but this one apparently was worse than typical. The four terms for the locust might indicate four stages in its lifecycle, or they might be for rhetorical effect in the fashion of typical Hebrew poetry, or perhaps different species of locusts. Regardless, the message surely is one of complete and utter destruction (cf. Exo 10:5 - In the plague of locusts, the insects ate everything that was left from the hail storm. The destruction was nearly complete.).

Notice the three references to the “‘leftovers’” being “‘devoured,’” which points toward a catastrophic end. Nothing like this had happened in their days or the days of their fathers (1:2; cf. Deut 4:32-34; God told Israel to think about whether any other god has ever delivered his people out of slavery as God did Israel from Egypt!), so Joel calls on Israel to share his message with future generations (1:3). Joel’s purpose is to call on his people to see a meaning in this catastrophe, relate it to themselves and God’s purposes.

Among the Deuteronomic curses was: “The cricket shall possess all your trees and the produce of your ground” (28:42). In that same context, Moses warns: “The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, …it shall eat the offspring of your herd and the produce of your ground until you are destroyed, who also leaves you no grain, new wine, or oil, nor the increase of your herd or the young of your flock until they have caused you to perish” (28:49-51). Joel warned Israel that Moses’ warning has come to fulfillment.

Joel used the plague as a metaphor for an invading army, “mighty and without number” (1:6). This verse alerts us to the poetic and metaphorical nature of Joel’s message. Locusts do not have teeth and invading armies do not normally fight with their teeth. The imagery suggests ferocity, danger, and destruction. Just as the locust plague had “stolen” the wine from the mouth of the drunkards (1:5), so the invading army stripped trees bare, leaving branches white (1:7). Israel is compared to a vineyard in other prophetic texts (Isa 5:1-7; Jer 2:21; Ezek 15:1-8; cf. Matt 21:33-46); the metaphors might look to the destruction of Jerusalem.

Joel calls on his compatriots to “wail like a virgin” (there are other imperatives in this section: vv. 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 11 13, 13) who has been or will be separated from the “bridegroom of her youth” (1:8). This suggests the unique nature of this calamity. It doesn't happen every day. Why should they lament? Because the locust plague, or the invading army, has impeded grain offerings and drink offerings coming into the house of the Lord (1:9). Stopping these offerings puts Israel into a “spiritual crisis.” Verse 10 shows the comprehensiveness of this devastation for Israel: it affects the field, the land, the grain, the new wine, and the fresh oil.

Continuing the image of a total devastation, in verse 11, Joel calls on the farmers and vinedressers to “be ashamed” and “wail.” The harvest is destroyed. The vine is dried up. The fig tree, pomegranate, palm, and apple trees (maybe apricot trees) are all dried up. In fact, returning to the human predicament, “rejoicing dries up from the sons of men” (v. 12). “Rejoicing drying up” is another figure of speech; it does not happen literally. Destruction of fruit trees was a part of the curses in the Law of Moses (Lev 26:20; Deut 28:40). If the Israelites could not worship God, it was worth mourning.

Consequently, in verse 13, Joel called on Judah to mourn, putting on sackcloth (cf. 1:9). In addition to the external appearance of mourning, in verse 14, Joel calls on Judah to “fast” and to “proclaim a solemn assembly.” The “lamenting” was to include striking one’s chest, so as to add physical pain to the discomfort of being clothed in sackcloth.

JOEL’S LAMENT (1:15-20):
Judah was to see in the locust plague the day of the Lord (also mentioned in 2:1, 11, 31; 3:14). The day of the Lord is: “any occasion when Jehovah acts decisively to implement the divine purpose by punishing wrong-doers and / or delivering the needy.” Joel says the day of the Lord is near and it will “come as destruction from the Almighty.” Designating Jehovah as “Almighty” occurred during the patriarchal period and psalms, bringing comfort to the ancient Israelites. Joel turns it into a negative expression for dread and alarm, the ‘destroyer,’ which in its original context spells disaster for a foreign nation, but here for Israel itself.

Elaborating on the idea that this locust plague / the day of the Lord is destructive, in 1:16, Joel says food has been “cut off.” “Gladness and joy” have been cut off, eradicated from the temple worship and the harvest, times of traditional celebration. Not only has the vine been laid waste (1:7) but even the “seeds shrivel under their clods; the storehouses are desolate, the barns are torn down for the grain is dried up” (1:17). So complete is this destruction that there is nothing in the barns for storage, for future use. Subsequently, the animals are suffering (1:18).

Joel turned his heart to Jehovah God and cries to Him in 1:19. Joel was explicit and exclusionary in his appeal to Jehovah God. In this verse, Joel speaks of the locust plague metaphorically as a fire that has “devoured the pastures of the wilderness and the flame has burned up all the trees of the field.” Fire is a metaphor for God’s righteous wrath (Deut 28:22; 32:22). Again, the animals are suffering (1:20) because the water brooks are dried up and fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness. It’s almost as if, through the locust plague, that God has undone the creation itself.

A locust plague does not normally dry up water. However, I was talking with a friend from New Mexico and he said he was living in TX and they had a locust problem years ago and that plague dried up bodies of water, lakes, and so forth. The locusts just drank that much water! Joel, in portraying the destruction of the locust plague / army invasion in as complete terms as possible, used fire to suggest the utter destruction on the land. Fire, if its intensity is enough, could evaporate bodies of water. A drought might have followed the invasion which would have exacerbated the destruction, or the reference could be to the diverting of water supplies commonly practiced by ancient armies.

THE ALARM: AN ARMY COMES (2:1-2):
I’m going to stop our study this evening at 2:1-2. Chapter two begins with another imperative with an allusion to the assembly theme from 1:14 (imperatives in this section include 2:1, 12, 13, 13, 16, 16, 17, 21, 21, 21, 22, 23, 23). This call to alarm is sounded on “Zion,” the “holy mountain,” the city of Jerusalem (cf. Psa 48; Isa. 11:9) The call from Jerusalem anticipates that this invasion or day of the Lord has religious significance. The day of the Lord is coming; “surely it is near.” In verse 2, Joel described the day as “darkness, gloom, clouds, thick darkness” and portrayed it as involving “a great and mighty people” (cf. 1:6), which is as overwhelming as the dawn that spreads over the mountains. We should note that when times get stressful, God does not call His people to prepare in a military manner. Rather, He calls on His people to get their hearts right and go to worship.

For the second time (2:2), Joel pictured this event as something never seen before (cf. 1:2). We might see this invasion as distinct from the locust plague of chapter one. This invasion seems to be humans and their target is Jerusalem. References to clouds (cf. Exo 14:19-20 - God protected Israel from the Egypt army by clouds, at the Red Sea) and darkness are typical metaphors used for the day of the Lord.

FAITHFULNESS WHILE WE ARE PATIENT:
I am going to put off giving my interpretation of Joel’s day of the Lord. But, suffice it to say that Joel tells Israel that this locust plague is a harbinger of the day of the Lord. Next time, we’ll see that Joel will call on Israel to repent of their sins so they’ll be spiritually right with God when that day of the Lord comes. Israel, as a nation, was to be faithful while they were being patient.

You and I await a “day of the Lord” as well. But the “day of the Lord” we anticipate is the last day of the Lord. There will not be another after that one. Let’s turn and read from 2 Peter 3:7-14:

“But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless…”

Yes, it has been 2,000 years since mankind was promised that Jesus was coming back. But, time means nothing to God. When He decides to send Jesus back, eternity will begin at that very moment. We need to help our family and friends understand that and we all need to be faithful while we are being patient.

Take home message: Let us be faithful daily while we are patiently waiting for Jesus to return.