#41 On the Nature of God: Learning from the prophets: JOEL

Did you ever do something bad as a child and then thought of the punishment to come? Like breaking a cookie jar when your mother wasn’t around to hear the crash? That likely resulted in a terrible feeling of guilt and fear of the punishment to come.

The prophetic book of Joel reflects a situation something like that. The nation of Judah had wandered into idol worship. God sent a plague of locust to devastate the country as a warning of a terrible judgment to come, Joel 1:4, 10:

“What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten…

…The fields are destroyed, the ground mourns, because the grain is destroyed,

the wine dries up, the oil languishes.”

This was truly an agricultural disaster.

The prophet calls the people to repent, Joel 1:13; 2:1:

“Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Go in, pass the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God! Because grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God…

…Blow a trumpet in Zion; sound an alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming; it is near,”

Apparently, repentance occurred, because the Lord again blessed His people, Joel 2:18-19:

“Then the LORD became jealous for his land and had pity on his people. The LORD answered and said to his people, “Behold, I am sending to you grain, wine, and oil, and you will be satisfied; and I will no more make you a reproach among the nations.”

One important lesson about the nature of God is that He hears His people when they repent.

Then, the Lord talked about the distant future, Joel 2:28-29:

“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit.”

Peter quotes this verse in Acts 2 to link this prophecy with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the apostles when the church was established. The conclusion is that this outpouring was the beginning of the complete fulfillment of what Joel prophesied.

God designates this outpouring as a restoration of spiritual Judah in the form of the church and pronounces a judgment on the wickedness of the nations of the world, Joel 3:1-2:

 “For behold, in those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. And I will enter into judgment with them there, on behalf of my people and my heritage Israel, because they have scattered them among the nations and have divided up my land,”

This is a spiritual freeing of captives that Jesus described, Luke 4:18:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to a proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed,”

Thus, it is the nature of God to know about the sins of his people, to hear them and answer when they repent, and to establish the church for those who want to serve him.

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