[Listen to an audio version here]
In 2016, fires from Chimney Tops sped down through the mountains into Gatlinburg, TN. All around the Parkway, the fire blazed and threatened to consume the town. The fire moved quickly toward Pigeon Forge. The result was thousands displaced, more than a dozen killed, and countless structures destroyed. People here had never experienced anything like it. By the morning of November 29, people were in shock and uncertain of what or who had survived.
In such times, we need comfort as we feel the loss of the normal things that support us. But these tragedies are the sorts of events that can transform us and shape our lives. These sorts of events can help us see beyond our ordinary daily lives and look to the end of life and eternity. They can help us think more seriously about who we are and what we are doing and should be doing.
That’s just what happened with the prophet Joel and with other prophets. They considered the tragedies of life deeply, and as they looked, they got a vision. They saw beyond the ordinary. They saw the big issues of life. We want to look at one particular vision today, that of the prophet Joel. I want you to see three things in this book: the God of wrath, the call to repent, and the God of Hope.
The God of Wrath
We do not know much about the prophet Joel at all. What we do know is that something terrible happened in his lifetime, an event like they had never seen. “Hear this, you elders; listen, all who live in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your ancestors?” (Joel 1:2). And what had occurred? Locusts or grasshoppers had come into the land and were eating everything. They were leaving nothing behind. “What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten; what the young locusts have left other locusts have eaten” (Joel 1:4). These people depended on the yearly crops just to survive, and now the locusts were eating everything. “Despair, you farmers, wail, you vine growers; grieve for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field is destroyed” (Joel 1:11). This is a disaster on a scale that is difficult for us to imagine.
I always had a hard time visualizing what this sort of thing would look like until I lived in South Dakota. One year, the grasshoppers just kept multiplying. They covered everything. There were literally dozens of them per square foot in our backyard. Our kids didn’t want to go outside because they would be wading through grasshoppers. The spiders also multiplied greatly because they could eat the grasshoppers. I had never seen so many in my life. This was a small taste of what it was like to experience this terrible plague of locusts that the people of Israel experienced in the time of Joel.
So, what did they do with such an experience? The prophet Joel reflected on this event, and it enabled him to see the wrath of God coming on this world. He saw it as a vision of the final judgment where God would come back and settle all accounts and deal with every wrong in every human heart.
Listen to how he described it. “Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy hill. Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming. It is close at hand—a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness. Like dawn spreading across the mountains a large and mighty army comes, such as never was in ancient times nor ever will be in ages to come” (Joel 2:1–2). He goes on to speak of the great day of the Lord: “The Lord thunders at the head of his army; his forces are beyond number, and mighty is the army that obeys his command. The day of the Lord is great; it is dreadful. Who can endure it?” (Joel 2:11). Joel sees all the nations gathered together before the Lord God whom they have offended. They face the God who is all powerful and almighty and glorious, and they will have no defense, nothing to say. “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and moon will be darkened, and the stars no longer shine. The Lord will roar from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem; the earth and the heavens will tremble” (Joel 3:14–16a). It will be a terrible day and an awesome day when God reveals His glory to the world.
Many people in our day neglect this aspect of the God of the prophets. They want to see Him as a laid-back God who doesn’t really care about much and who is not concerned about the wrong that we do. There are three reasons why we should reject this modern vision of God.
First, nature does not teach it. Where do we get the idea that God is not a God of wrath? Not from the Bible, but also not from nature! The theologian J. Gresham Machen said well, “How do you know that God is all love and kindness? Surely not through nature, for it is full of horrors. Human suffering may be unpleasant, but is real, and God must have something to do with it.” It’s sort of a given that God is a God of love, but the state of the world could more easily make us think of Him as a God of wrath. People just do not reflect on this very clearly.
Second, no one really wants that sort of God. Do we really want a God who doesn’t care about justice? Of course not! We want God to be opposed to it! Would a God who wasn’t really concerned about evil be worth worshipping? We do want a God concerned about evil. The trouble is that we want is a God who has the same standard as we do, which mostly involves the faults and wrongs of other people rather than our own. This is our own excessive valuation of ourselves, which is also wrong. No, a God of justice means that we will also have to examine our own unjust behavior.
Third, the Bible doesn’t teach it. People may appeal to the Bible and say, “God is love.” But the Bible also says that God is a God of wrath, justice, and holiness. He is opposed to sin. If the Bible is an authoritative witness to God, then you have to take all that it says, both the love and justice parts. If you only take the parts you like, then you are the authority and not the Bible. And why should we believe you?
No, God is concerned with evil. He is concerned about His creation. He is coming to bring judgment on the world for our misuses of it. He is deeply interested in right and truth being done.
So, what should we do with this fact? As Joel noted, tragic events point us to the great reckoning that we will have with the God of truth. What are we to do?
The Call to Repentance
Joel made very clear how his hearers should respond to the wrath of God. They should repent.
“Even now,” declares the Lord,
“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning.”Rend your heart
and not your garments.
Return to the Lord your God . . . (Joel 2:12–13a)
They needed to humble themselves before the awesome and mighty God, seek Him earnestly, and turn from their evil ways.
Joel said that they should not just do this on their own. They should do it together. “Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly. Gather the people, consecrate the assembly . . .” (Joel 2:15–16a). They needed to let their sin affect their hearts, grieve over it, and desire to be rid of it. Then, they needed to seek the Lord and plead with Him for mercy.
Let the priests, who minister before the Lord,
weep between the portico and the altar.
Let them say, “Spare your people, Lord.
Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn,
a byword among the nations.
Why should they say among the peoples,
‘Where is their God?’” (Joel 2:17)
Joel saw this terrible event as an opportunity to look seriously at the shortness of their life, the future judgment, their own sin, and the God above it all.
And that’s what can happen to us when events like this occur. When a great tragedy occurs, it is an opportunity for growth. We need comfort, but we also need self-examination.
The psychologist Irvin Yalom found that tragic events gave people an opportunity to grow that “normal” life did not provide. For example, he found much more progress in people who had lost a spouse than in those who did not. Many of those who came to him were able to see ways they could grow (or repent) in light of the difficult experience.
This is also what Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, “It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart” (7:2). We need to consider the shortness of our lives, our death, and eternity.
Often, in difficult events, people focus on comfort. This is completely understandable. We should, by our words and presence, seek to bring comfort to the downhearted. However, we should not forget that tragedies are times to examine ourselves. This does not mean that our particular sin caused the tragedy. Rather, human sinfulness is the great tragedy that brought misery into the world. That is why we should humble ourselves.
Tragedies call not only for comfort. They call for repentance. When we are dealing with problem situations and people, our own sin is often mixed up in them. For example, a spouse may feel that his wife is not making him happy. Well, sometimes the wife may have an issue. However, that person is sometimes looking for more in his wife than he should, as if she were the ultimate source of his value. Behind that is also something of an ego. My wife should give her all to make me happy. In both cases, we need to repent, of idolatry and pride. My wife belongs to God, and my wife is just a human who can be a blessing but a limited one. The source of my value and support is found in God, and my wife is just an evidence of it. She also does not exist for me. She exists for God and His service and only for me as a distant second.
So, there is a need for repentance as well as comfort in most of our issues. That’s what Joel is highlighting. These tragedies need to lead us to look more carefully at our lives and see the idols and pride that exists in our lives that we need to repent of.
The God of Hope
Anxiety and pride are two aspects of our sin. Anxiety is not sinful, but it is the occasion of sin. Pride is the human being’s attempt to deal with the anxieties of life apart from trust in God, whether it’s by trying to control everything, drowning ourselves in pleasure, or finding our meaning and purpose in something other than God. It’s all a pride solution. Our pride calls for repentance. Our anxiety calls for hope in God rather than ourselves and circumstances, and that’s what God offers through the prophet Joel. Remember. Hope is a firm expectation that all things will turn out well not just a wish that they will. Hope is certain. That’s what God offers us. I want you to see this in three ways.
First, We see hope in the description of who God is. He is the lion. He is the warrior. He is holy. But He is also gracious and merciful and compassionate. Listen to what Joel says:
Rend your heart
and not your garments.
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity (Joel 2:13).
This description of God is taken from Exodus 34 where God revealed Himself to Moses on the mountain. There, Moses asked to see God’s glory, and there God taught Moses who God is. This phrase, “the gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love” is one we will find all over the prophets.
The prophets have this tension: how can the justice and mercy of God be reconciled? Or, how can we see mercy and truth kiss one another, as the Psalmist has it. The answer is in the cross of Jesus. There, justice is poured out on Jesus so that God may have mercy on us. Now, what is left is for us to accept the free gift of mercy.
Second, we see hope in that God not only forgives but also restores. Listen to what He says in Joel 2:25, “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten . . .” Remember the story I told you a while ago of the doctor I knew who was really struggling with his relationship with one of his children. This went on for years. Finally, He began to see other possibilities through the grace of God and His unconditional acceptance rather than simply trying to control the relationship. The new patterns began to change the relationship. Then, he started to grieve. He said, “I had wasted all these years doing the wrong thing. What can I do to make up for it?” Then, he read this passage in the prophet Joel that taught Him something about God. God said, “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten” (Joel 2:25). God is a God who restores.
Third, we see hope in God’s desire to work through us. He not only forgives and restores but also wants to use us to do amazing things through us.
And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days (Joel 2:28–29).
What God is talking about is enabling people by the power of the Spirit of God to do amazing things in service to the world. Notice how there is hope here that God will do this all over the world. We should not think of the world as beyond hope. God is pouring out His Spirit on all people. Second, notice that there is hope for the future generations: your sons and daughters will prophesy. This assured the hears that God would be a God to them and to their children!
I want you to see something really interesting here. On the Day of Pentecost, God gave a sign of a new era. Jesus had risen, and the world was being changed and renewed and restored. The sign that God gave that Jesus was now in heaven and that a new era had come was that the apostles spoke and everyone understood them in his own language. Those who heard them asked, what’s going on? Peter said, this is what Joel was talking about, “I will pour out my Spirit on all people . . .” When God poured out the Spirit, he looked back to the prophet Joel.
Now, if you look at Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 carefully, you will see that it reflects what Joel said. They saw that the day of the Lord was coming. They understood God’s judgment was going to come on them because they had killed Jesus, the Messiah. So, they were filled with grief. They mourned, and they asked, what are we to do? Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). Notice, he said that they should take God as a God of judgment seriously and repent for what they had done, but He also held out hope. He said, “you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” In essence, God is a just God, a God of wrath, but He is also a God who forgives and restores and uses people like you and me to do amazing things.
Then, Peter gave them further hope which is exactly in line with what Joel says. God would not only bring hope for them. He would work through their children and in people all over the world. “The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2:39). God is a God of hope, and that’s one reason we are baptizing little T.J. today.
God is a God of hope. I talked to a man who moved up here from Naples, FL. When I told him I was a Pastor, he said, “I worked in ministry, too.” He told me he had worked in Christian drug rehab center. He said it was amazing to see person after person come in and hostile at God. Then, their hearts would be softened, and they would cry out for deliverance. They would start to understand who God is, and, eventually, they would start doing ministry and leading at the rehab center. They would help others comes to Christ. This was a great confirmation to me that what Joel said is true. God is still the God of the prophets, the God of Joel. God is a God of wrath who is not to be trifled with, and God is a God of hope who forgives, restores, and uses people like you and me by His Spirit to do amazing things. Amen.