Today our reading comes from the prophet Joel. The Old Testament, you'll find it in your Bible here at the church, Bible at page 649 in the Old Testament. The prophet Joel. We'll be reading from chapter two, verse 28. through the early part of chapter three and then verse nine through 17 in chapter three as well. Let's pray since this is God's word and ask for his blessing on the reading and the preaching and the hearing and the doing of it. Let's pray. Father, we come in the name of Christ and ask for the blessing of the Holy Spirit that he has sent forth to convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and the judgment, and he will make his word to have good effect in the hearts of those who believe for salvation, for instruction, for training in righteousness, for encouragement and comfort in the scripture. We pray that his blessing would be here today, and that you would instruct us, that you would help us, that you would make us grow in our faith. And Lord, if there are things that we must learn and truly settle on, perhaps for the first time in our lives, that whether young or older, Lord, your word would be of much help, indeed saving help to us today. And Lord, even those things that we may know of and have learned and known from younger ages, Lord, make us to be sure about them, to be confirmed in not only believing the truth as it is in Jesus Christ, but to go in his ways by faith, to serve him with our lives. Lord, teach us your ways and instruct us out of your word, we pray, and give your blessing on the reading and the preaching of your word today to our hearts as well as our ears. For in Christ's name we ask and for His sake. Amen. So Joel chapter 2 verse 28. Joel has been speaking several things to the people of God, both about their immediate circumstance and also distant into the future. So chapter 2 verse 28, it will come about after this. that I will pour out my spirit on all mankind. And your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams. Your young men will see visions. And even on the male and female servants, I will pour out my spirit in those days. And I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth, blood, fire, and columns of smoke. The sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And it will come about that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered. For on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, there will be those who escape, as the Lord has said, even among the survivors whom the Lord calls. 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, or we could translate that the valley of judgment. And then I will enter into judgment with them there on behalf of my people and my inheritance Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and they have divided up my land. They have also cast lots for My people, traded a boy for a harlot, and sold a girl for wine that they may drink." And then down to verse 9, "'Proclaim this among the nations. Prepare a war. Rouse the mighty men. Let all the soldiers draw near, let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weak say, I am a mighty man. Hasten and come, all you surrounding nations, and gather yourselves there. Bring down, O Lord, your mighty ones. Let the nations be aroused and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat, for there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations. Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, tread, for the wine press is full. The vats overflow, for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision or judgment. For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and moon grow dark and the stars lose their brightness. And the Lord roars from Zion and utters his voice from Jerusalem and the heavens and the earth tremble. But the Lord is a refuge for his people and a stronghold to the sons of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain. So Jerusalem will be holy and strangers will pass through it no more. And this is God's word that's read to us today. The fable goes like this. A lion entered a farmer's animal shed. The farmer, wishing to capture him, shut the door behind him. When the lion found that he was trapped, he killed all the sheep inside and ate them. And then he attacked all the cattle. The farmer, being so alarmed for his own safety, he opened the door and the lion left. After the lion had left, the farmer's wife, finding him weeping, came up to him and said, it serves you right. How could you want to shut up the lion, a beast who ought to make you tremble even at a distance? Now, when Asep spoke that fable over 2000 years ago, he was not telling the unknown. He was not telling us anything new. He was merely saying what we already know, you don't mess with a lion. The moral is if you seek to tame the powers of brute force, then you must be ready to bear the consequences. That's the moral. Now we know the lion. We know the killer instincts, his brute force, his dreadful ferocity. Perhaps we've heard the lion's balrock-like roar. Maybe we've been stilled by his confident walk, frozen by his intense glare, or maybe even enamored by his velvety mane. Just its look or its roar communicates all that a lion is about. It's for good reason that he's called the king of the jungle. If a lioness could talk, she would say, as Aesop had her respond to a vixen in yet another fable, yes, I have birthed only one lion, but a lion. Lions are dreadful. You don't mess with a lion in your own wisdom. When we read the Bible, we discover that references to the lion abound. Perhaps we expect to read about lions only in Africa. Maybe we think we'd hear of them only in eastern parts of Asia or the Orient, but in Palestine, Well indeed, lions commonly occupied the regions of Palestine, the land, the preeminent land of the Bible, until the end of the 12th century AD. And when the Bible refers to the lion, in many places it refers to the lion for many reasons. False prophets are compared to lions. Ungodly leaders are compared to roaring lions. Those who persecute God's people are compared to lions. They are called lions. The psalmist said that they tear at the soul. They lurk in hiding places to catch the afflicted. They are eager to tear the flesh of God's people. They open the mouth and roaring, they are ravenous. The apostle Paul said he was rescued out of the lion's mouth from his persecutors. Don't the martyrs of church history literally testify to both persecution and lions? Behind all of this, however, whether it's false teachers, whether it's ungodly leaders, whether it's persecutors, Satan himself is depicted in Scripture as a lion. Maybe you remember that verse of the Apostle Peter, that he prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. He is your adversary, an adversary to all God's people in every age. And what evil you may face with men is coerced by Satan. He is behind it. We might ask, could it get any deeper? Indeed it could, and in fact it does. Like these, yet not in league with these, in fact far above these, the Lord is a lion. The Lord is a lion. Hosea said from God, I will be like a lion to them, like a leopard, I will lie in wait by the wayside. I will encounter them like a bear robbed of her cubs and I will tear open their chests. There I will also devour them like a lioness as a wild beast would tear them. That's what God says to the wicked. To the righteous, God says, they will walk after the Lord, he will roar like a lion, indeed he will roar, and his sons will come trembling from the west. Our persecutors might terrorize us. They might terrify us. We would probably be stricken with fear if Satan were allowed today to present himself before us, not in the form of an angel of light, but in the form of a roaring lion. But what if God were to manifest himself in our midst as a roaring lion? How large would this lion be? How loud would his roar be? How piercing would be his gaze? Where would our safety be? The Lord is a lion, so the lions speak of the evil and the persecuting forces against God's people, but they also remind us, God himself reminds us, as he reveals himself as a lion, that by his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, he both roars at the lions persecuting wicked people, and he roars for the defense of his own people. And so it is that when the apostle John then wept, when he saw this book of life opened in heaven, which distinguishes the wicked from the righteous, he wept. And yet an angel said to him, stop weeping. Stop weeping. Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David has overcome. so as to open the book. The Lord Jesus Christ is a lion, the Lord of lords, the lion of lions. So we see him as such then in relation to these two sorts of people today. There is Christ roaring at the wicked. That's our first point. And the second point, we see him a refuge for his people. He roars at the wicked. He's a refuge for his people. Now, Joel says, for the first point, at verse 16 of chapter three, the Lord roars from Zion. Here at other places in the Bible, the Lord compares himself to a lion, and that is fitting, as we've seen, because he possesses not only great, but all power, all authority. The lion has his great strength, ferocity, destructive power. He is virtually an unstoppable killer. When it is time to come, his tactic is overcoming his prey in surprise and stealth to work brute force and overwhelming strength. But what is especially noted in Joel's words at verse 16 is the voice. of the lion. The Lord roars. He roars. Have you ever heard a lion roar? I found that you rarely do at the zoo, at least not as often as you would want. They don't do this on schedule. They're kings of their own jungle. But I once heard a lion roar at a zoo and I stopped dead in my tracks when I heard it. I was paralyzed with fear. I was close and didn't know it. And when he roared, others screamed. And I didn't scream and I tried to run, but I just stood still. I didn't know what to do or how to think about it. I thought this lion might've gotten loose. The lion roars. It's terrifying. If you've never heard a lion's roar, maybe the closest comparison, I think, and I've mentioned it, would be the bell rock in the film version of Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring. Deep, almost like heavy cement blocks scraping, rumbling, penetrating, reverberating, terrifying sound. The Lord roars. He roars. But for what purpose? Why does the Lord roar like a lion? It is to terrify the wicked in His judgment. When God spoke as a roaring lion, it sometimes was for the scaring of His enemies in justice. Hezekiah referred to God's chastening as a lion breaking all His bones. In Hosea's prophecy, God was likened to a lion who would tear to pieces in his judgment, who wait by the wayside to be torn in pieces. The day of the Lord would be to sinning Israel is when a man flees from a lion. The message of God's judgment is so strong, the voice, the roar of the prophet that Amos said, a lion has roared, who will not fear? The Lord has spoken. Or as you notice, the beginning of Amos prophecy, maybe across the page in your Bibles, the Lord roars from Zion and from Jerusalem, he utters his voice. That God is here as a roaring lion is a depiction of divine judgment. It is a signal that God is not only able, but he is ready to be involved in that judgment. That's the context of Joel chapter 3. God is to judge sinners. He's already presented the locust plague in the prophecy of Joel that came upon the Jews for their disobedience. That carried from chapter 1 through chapter 2, verse 17. And here at the passage that we started to read, chapter two, verse 28, he prophesied of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to the church. the day of Pentecost, which assumes that Jesus Christ is set in heaven as the King and the Judge. This is all recorded in the New Testament in Acts chapter 2, where these words of Joel are quoted. And then Joel goes on in the prophecy, and isolating that very time as the peg on which he will hang the gavel of divine judgment He sets forth at chapter three, for behold, in those days, and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather the nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. God would enter into judgment with people there on behalf of his own people, his inheritance. And so the theme is God judging the nations. The parties are God, His people that are oppressed, and all the nations, all the unbelieving, all the wicked who oppress and harass God's people. You notice from the text at verse 28, in those days and at that time, In other words, what we know from the New Testament from the day of Pentecost all the way down to that last great day of judgment. That is the time. Without going into detail, you can find this fulfilled at Matthew 25 in its fullest course. When the king sits on his throne and he has all the nations gathered before him, then he enters into judgment and separates the sheep from the goats. And the sheep will be rewarded for their works done in faith, and the wicked will be condemned for their unbelief. and their disobedience. This is the language that follows Joel chapter 3, especially verse 2 and verse 12. So this being the case, Job heralds that the nations will be rallied to the valley of judgment, the valley of decision, And it's here that he reverses Isaiah the prophet's imagery, because here at verse 10, they beat their plowshares into swords and their pruning hooks into spears. They're called to make war. They're equipped for battle. There they found the judge of all the nations, verse 12, and in their hands is the incriminating evidence of their own history of violence against God's people. At verse 13, they show up thinking that there's going to be this battle, but on arrival, they find out that they in fact are the grain that's going to be harvested. And so God shakes the heavens and the earth. Everything trembles because the lion has come onto the scene and he roars for his judgment. This is an amazing scene. We hear about it often in the scripture, but we cannot put any analogy to it because nothing in history has happened like this. The heavens have not been shaken. The earth has not become undone. There has not been a day of fire like this. There's been the flood. The next are reserved for fire. God is one who roars in judgment in his intensity. God is not a chained, barking dog. He is a lion. When the day of judgment comes, He is loose. He is a loose, roaring lion. God on this day is not a cuddly lion that you might put in your hands and say, oh, how soft, and put Him in with all these other soft and cuddly and comforting lions. No, on this day God roars and there is no hiding. God is going to judge the wicked. As he says, I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the valley of judgment. And I will enter into judgment with them on behalf of my people. As I said at the outset, you don't mess with a lion. You do not mess with a lion. God takes personally the mistreatment done against His people. He takes it personally. If He is the God who punishes those who oppress the fatherless, then how much those who oppress His own people? This is going to be a day when the Lord will roar. Was that not something that Saul of Tarsus learned? There he was persecuting all the people of God, putting them in jail, martyring and putting to death Stephen, the Lord's prophet. And the Lord blinded Saul on his road to Damascus with bright light. And as he were roared from heaven and said, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It's not why are you persecuting my people, them. God takes it personally. Jesus took the persecution of his church personally. He takes everything personally about our own lives as believers. That's why Zechariah said to the post-exiled Jews, he who touches you touches the apple of my eye." That's what God said through Zechariah. How would you like it if someone poked you in the eye? We reactively resist it. We get disturbed or offended when somebody pokes us in the eye. God says, my people are the apple. They're the pupil, that round circle in my eye. God is offended. In grace, God warns, but in wrath, God roars. He will not allow his enemies to have victory over his own people. He died for them. The blood of Christ was shed for them. He will not allow others to shed their blood without consequence. This calls you to consider then your relation to Jesus Christ. This is the valley of decision, the valley of judgment that God's talking about. It is today then for everyone gathered here and everyone in the course of hearing this message to say, what will I do then with Jesus Christ? How relevant is this for me? Jesus said, he who is not with me is against me. And so on which side are you? Would you side with Christ and his people? Or do you align yourself with the world and with the nations that oppose God and his people? Do you believe the gospel or do you reject it? It's a terror of terrors to deem Jesus Christ as irrelevant. It is the worst thing that you could do is to have preached to you that there's a valley of judgment to come, a valley of decision on God's part, that you do not decide this day today, as Joshua would say, whom will you serve? Whom will you serve? Will you serve Christ and believe on Him today? But it is a comfort of comforts. that Jesus, being a lion with whom you do not mess, Christ roaring at the wicked would be one who, according to our second point, is a refuge for his people. who is a refuge by that very roar. You notice the remainder of Joel chapter three, verse 16, that word but there. The word but is a great contrast word. It changes the course of everything that was just said. And so verse 16 of chapter three, but the Lord is a refuge for his people and a stronghold to the sons of Israel. We should probably put this with all the other 316s of the Bible. You know John 316. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Here's Joel 316. The Lord roars from Zion, but the Lord is a stronghold, a refuge. for his people. And so it is, secondly, the Lord, this lion, is a refuge for his people. God is intent on saving his people in the threat of judgment. He's a roaring lion to the wicked, but he is a safe, he is a strong refuge for his people, for sinners who, when they hear that their sin has them under God's judgment, that they repent of that sin, They trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation from their sin that God judges all because His Son died at the cross and is risen alive in His resurrection to everlasting life. That is the message that is roared from Zion. That's the message that Christ Himself speaks through the preaching of the gospel. Whenever a gospel minister preaches the word of God, Christ is roaring. He's hunting and haunting the wicked, but he is calling in his people for refuge in his presence. Which is interesting because when a lion roars, people may stand still, but they would tend to go away from that voice. Something that's scary, you move away from it. That's the natural response. And people may naturally, in their sinful condition, when they hear Jesus roar from Zion, they turn away. They flee because a lion is roaring. But it's only in God's grace. It's only in God's mercy that in the spiritual working of things, when such sinners hear Christ roar, they turn to the lion. Only a miracle of grace that changes the nature on the inside can put fear in a person where there was no fear, but it's the kind of fear that doesn't run from God. but in fact turns to God. The Lord roars from Zion, but the Lord is a refuge for His people. You consider a person who stops dead in his tracks in the vicinity of a roaring lion. The lion roars and the man is instantly put in fear. Instant humiliation before the lion's power and his whereabouts. He's stopped dead, could we say, in his tracks. And so the lion makes its way slowly to his stunned object. The man simply stands still in fear. One can do no other. Because if you run, what happens? The chase is on. And where will you hide from the lion? What will that yield but a greater demise? Convicted of sin, paralyzed by imminent judgment, a sinner is stopped in his tracks by the roaring word of Jesus Christ. He's arrested by Jesus' sudden presence on the scene of his life, that he must yield the obedience of faith and repentance. He will go no further in his own way. If he does, He is a sure and fair game to pursue. So he will stop and a sinner stops and then subdued by the awesome presence of the lion, the lion draws near him and as that lion stands behind that stopped, repentant, fearing man who now hopes and prays to live instead If the lion will let him live, the lion sniffs, and he knows him, and he has him, and he sits down beside him, and the war is over. That's the way it is when Jesus roars. And sinners don't flee further They repent and they believe on Jesus Christ. Jesus ends his wrath. He ends it. There is an exchange made where that fleeing, unrepentant person, now repentant and believing and submissive with a new fear and humiliation, is spared and he lives. Christ sets him free, but he's still king of the jungle. And that person that lives has a rightful and newfound respect for this lion. As Joel preached, the Lord roars from Zion, but the Lord is a refuge to his people. As Solomon counseled, the name of the Lord is a strong tower, and the righteous runs into it. and is safe. Is it safe to run into a lion? Naturally, it would be the worst thing. Spiritually, it is the best thing. Run to Jesus Christ. Run today. Don't run away. You are safe with Jesus Christ when it comes to the matter of your sin. God's judgment and repentance and faith. The question is, are you safe? Are you safe? The idea is not that Christ is a refuge, that God is a place of stronghold and safety for his people, such that you can just get out of the rain. And then when the storm stops, you go back your own way. No, God is not a convenient God. He's not a God with whom we have things to do on our own terms. People use God like that. They use him. He's a temporary God. He's not a total God. God is not an abandoned shelter that you just happen to find when the need arises for the moment from which you can turn and go back your old way. The idea behind the Hebrew is that the word translated refuge is a place of safety, protection from opposition or adversity. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble. The Lord is the defense of my life, and so this is a complete and constant submission to Jesus Christ. The Lord roars from Zion, but the Lord is a refuge for His people. That's a captivating image. These are comforting images, and there we are, surrounded by all sorts of foes, spiritually, Eternally. Here we are safe behind the lion and his mane. The lion of the tribe of Judah he has overcome. And when he roars, as he does, it may send chills down our spine. But we remember that this lion is one that he submitted to himself. Our protection is His roaring. He's speaking over us. According to Hebrews 11 verse 33, God rescues faithful men from lions. And Jesus continues to be this for us. You remember Samson, by the Spirit of the Lord, he tore an approaching roaring lion, though he had nothing in his hand. You remember David keeping his father's sheep. He went out after the lion that stole the sheep, seized him by his mane, struck him, and killed him. That's what David did to Satan at the cross. There's Benaiah, who is known in Scripture as a man who killed a lion in the middle of a pit on a snowy day. This is all who Jesus is to us. against all our enemies, spiritual, sin, persecution, death, even hell itself. This is who Jesus is to false prophets, corrupt leaders, anyone who comes against his people. This is our comfort that Jesus is a Lion of Lions to us. Children like to play the game of tag. You children play the game of tag? You know, somebody is it. And so they have to try and get other people and tag them. And so then they will be it instead. And in the game of tag, there is a safe place. And when you reach that safe place, you are not tagged. And that's the way it is with the Lord Jesus Christ. He is that safe place, that stronghold, that voice that's calling us in to where there is rescue from God's judgment. But I've seen some children that they play that game in a sort of make-believe mindset, and they just suddenly call this safe, and they say, nope, this is safe, I tagged it. And there are people that treat the Lord Jesus Christ that way. And they say, no, this is safe, I'm safe. They may do it with some substance. They may do it with money. They might do it with the approval of people. They might do it with some form of religion. All sorts of ways they think they can do it. But there's only one safe space and it's Jesus Christ. Everything else is an illusion. Jesus is the safe place for sinners. You should be comforted that the Lord is and will remain to be a refuge to you in the midst of his judgment. That's the way it is going forward for the people of God. God will rule and defend us because as the king of the jungle, he has subdued us to himself. rules, he defends us, he restrains and conquers all of his and our enemies. Question 26 in the shorter catechism. So here we are then today with the valley of decision. What will you do with Jesus Christ? What will you do with your future? What will you do now in the presence so that tomorrow goes with the fellowship of the lion who is also the lamb of God? It was God's grace, God's mercy displayed in his son. You don't mess with a lion. With Jesus Christ, the Lord is a lion who will spare his people as he will one day crush all the wicked. Don't mess with this lion. Believe on him to the saving and for the keeping of your soul. The Lord is a lion. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we hear such awesome words that stir fear into our hearts of the important matter that's before us. But Lord, with this, you also give us hope and the comfort to have our lives spared because of the blood of Jesus Christ shed for sinners at the cross. And we ask, O Lord, that you would be merciful to some, even on this very day, that the word preached would go forth as a roaring voice to the drawing and the instilling fear where there is no fear, such that there may be the fear of God and the settling of the soul, that judgment has been taken at the cross and will not then be dealt out for the destruction of a person at the end. And Lord, we pray that Christ would be that comfort for all gathered here this day and all who hear the words spoken and that we might go today with the comfort and with the hope in the help of your word promising us life in Jesus Christ. Lord, make us to then be a trusting people, a people who in all of our troubles and problems look to Jesus Christ, pray to him, rely on him, hope that he will show himself over against those who mean harm against us in whatever way to keep us everlastingly. Lord Jesus, show yourself as this lion of the tribe of Judah. May all glory be brought to you and all good for us. Lord, hear us as we pray and ask these things in your holy name. Amen.