And what a privilege we have to carry our burdens to Him, let Him take our burdens from us. And we'll dismiss the kids to go to class. All right, they can head out. Well done, all right. Joel chapter two is where we're at. As you're turning there, a thank you for those who were able to provide some things for our meal today and for those that are here to help consume the meal today. There's plenty for all. And I hope if you can, you'll stay afterwards and enjoy the fellowship and look forward to that. And we wanted to take advantage of the one last time that we have this location, although I do think we'll be able to do something like this or similar things like this in our new location as well. And it is precious as a church just to sit around the table and eat and fellowship a bit. And so we'll look forward to that after our morning service. And so Joel chapter two in verses 15 through 17, The prophet Joel is speaking to the tribe of Judah. That's the southern tribe. And the book of Joel does not specify an exact time period of the writing. It doesn't mention a king that was there that was present or things like that to kind of give you a point in time where you can kind of really figure out exactly who Joel was writing to in that time period. And the short book is full of prophecy. And what prophecy is, it's not like a curse. A curse makes something happen. A prophecy says this is what's gonna happen ahead of time, good or bad, and lets it be known. And that is what takes place because God knows ahead of time what's gonna happen. And so prophecy often has application to different time periods. So if you read a prophecy in the scripture, it may apply to then, in the future, and then even further. into the future, and we certainly see that in this writing of Juul. And so this had application at this time. He writes in here about a physical famine that was taking place because of a plague of locusts that had come into the land. And it's obvious that it's happening. And so there's a immediate application to the people with that. But the writing also applies to the end times. There's a lot about the end times. And by the way, in Revelation, the Bible speaks about the locusts and the plague of locusts that takes place. And so even prophetically, that locusts would be foreshadowing of that specific part of the future judgments of God. But it says in Joel chapter three, verses 13, it says, put you in the sickle for the harvest is ripe. Okay, it's talking about the end of time and God's judgment coming. Come get you down for the press is full, the fats overflow. for their wickedness is great. And so this is the harvest of God's judgment. And that's in the future when God's gonna bring his wrath. It's that period of time called the tribulation in the Bible. And it says there are multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision for the day of the Lord, the day of his coming and judgment is near in the valley of decision. The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, Jerusalem, and utter his voice from Jerusalem. And the heavens and the earth shall shake, but the Lord will be the hope of his people and the strength of the children of Israel. So shall you know that I am the Lord your God, dwelling in Zion, my holy mountains. He's gonna be physically there. Then shall Jerusalem be holy. There shall no strangers pass through her anymore. Certainly speaking about the millennial reign of Christ and that coming of Christ as king. All right, so it has application at Joel's time, it has application in the future time, but it also has application and this is my point, in our time. Our time is called the Church Age. Ever since the time of Christ until now, it's the last week of Daniel, it's that time period where in God's mercy he has extended it, it's that time period called the last days, and we say today is the last days of the last days, right? Is the way we speak about that. But Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, applied Joel's writings to the Church Age at the coming of the Spirit of God at Pentecost. And so Acts 2.16, Peter is recorded as saying, but this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel, where he speaks about his Joel chapter three, verses 28 through 32. And this is what he says, it shall come to pass in the last days, Seth God, I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh. And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire, and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood. before that great and notable day of the Lord come, and it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." Now, when you hear me say that scripture, and that's Peter preaching, and he's preaching from Joel saying, this is what Joel said, it's happening right now. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. When you hear me say that, you might say, but wait a second, I thought that was a New Testament. Verse because Peter here quotes it but as well the Apostle Paul quotes it Romans 10 verse 13 for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved point being Although we aren't suffering a physical famine of judgment back in the day in Judah Which Joel was speaking about and although? We aren't in the end times in the day of the Lord's okay, so we're not quite there We're getting close to that time period Yet we can know for certain that this truth that Joel is speaking about in this passage has application, very specific application to our day as it had to that day, as it had to a future day. And so we can look at and understand that it speaks to us in the situations that we're in as well. And so Joel prescribes a course of action in this text that we're looking at to make God jealous to do great things for his people. He's going to say, this is what you do to get God jealously affected for his glory with his people. Because verse 18 in our text, if you want to look at it, Joel chapter two, it says, then will the Lord be jealous for his land and pity his people. And in verse 21, it says, fear not, O land, be glad and rejoice for the Lord will do great things. Okay, and so he has said to them something and then come and said, then God is gonna be jealous, he's gonna do something and it's gonna be great what God does. Now a fatalist that was living at the time could look at that and go, you know, I know it's bad, you know, but this was bound to happen. We're in a day of God's judgment. We just kind of accept it. That's the way it is. Or they would say this is bad, but there's nothing I can do about it, right? They're fatalists because they don't believe they can impact anything and do anything to change the circumstances. But a Biblicist looks at this and says, God doesn't say that this is inevitable right now, that this judgment's gonna come right now, or if we're in this judgment, that it's gonna be forever. And so, what does God's word prescribe as a course of action that's gonna stop the judgment and obtain blessing? So a Biblicist looks at it and goes, I can do something about this. I can get involved in this and that God can favor us once again. And so again, I wanna challenge us this morning, how to make God jealous to do great things for his people. And to consider, are we gonna be a fatalist or a biblicist? Look at it and say, well, I can't do anything or say, I will do what I can that God's word prescribes to try to make a difference in what's taking place even in our day. So submit to that course of action to see God do great things. for his people. So let's pray and come to the word of God here this morning. Father, we thank you for your word. Thank you for the truth that Joel gives. Father, I love these Old Testament prophets and I'm reading in my Bible reading right now, I'm reading through these minor prophets and I just praise God for men that in ungodly days would stand up and preach the word of God with authority. Father for the books that are written because in your love for your people you would try to intervene in a day of judgment and day of Distress because of disobedience you try to get in there and say listen This is the way to get out of this situation that they're in this is the path to blessing And Father, we certainly see that in our text, even as we've already considered it this morning. And Father, we need the blessing of God. As Free Baptist Church, as a body of believers, a called out assembly that desires to walk in obedience to God, wants to have the favor of God, I pray, Father, that we could learn some and glean some truth here this morning. Father, I pray that whatever whatever we need would be given, I would ask that the Spirit of God would walk the aisles of this room as well as in our heart and just speak to us about areas that we could better impact our generation. for Christ, have more access to the blessing of God. And so Father, I pray that the Spirit of God would guide us in this time. Bless the kids in their class, may the Spirit of God give them wonderful grace to just focus on your word, guide Mrs. Shura, she guides that class. And then Father, in this room again, may we just have ears to hear and feet to respond to the word of God. Father, I cannot declare the Word of God as I need to without the enablement of the Holy Spirit. Father, I ask, please, that you would guide me as I preach. I just pray that my mind would be focused on that which you'd have me to focus on and that you'd give me the words to say that would convey the truth of this text in a way that would help us in our walk with you. We're so unworthy of your grace and love, but thank you for it. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. All right, so this morning, if you want to make God jealous to do great things for his people, what can we do? How can we impact that idea of God getting in there and getting involved in what we're desiring to see God do for his glory? The first thing is, alert the people. Alert the people. It says in verse 15, it says, blow the trumpet. And so to sound that horn, I play a brass instrument. A brass instrument is very authoritative. You know, I'm not sure that my wife likes it yet playing in the house. I mean, it's got that brassy sound to it. It gets out there. People can hear it from a long ways away. And that trumpet or that horn. In Joel's day, that was the alert system for the city of Zion, for Jerusalem. It was to, if an invading army was coming or something like that, that person would sound the trumpet, that would give the alert. If they needed to assemble quickly or something like that, there was an assembly, they had to call to assembly, they probably had a sound that would go out of that trumpet that would alert the people and bring them to that place. You know, in the United States, we have more natural disasters than in Scotland. And so, I lived out west, we had earthquakes out west. I lived in the Midwest. In the Midwest, we have tornadoes. And so, as you're driving through some of our areas, you might see a telephone pole. And up there, you'll see a big, yellow, looks like a huge bullhorn type thing. And if there was a tornado warning that would go out, that thing would start to rotate around the top of that platform with a very loud alarm. And so as it came past you, it'd be loud and then it gets softer and be loud when it came back around again. And it would reach up to a distance of two miles. And so a four mile area could be alerted to the fact that there was a tornado or something like that in the area. We also had weather radios. Ours was called a NOAA weather radio. and appropriately named, I guess, because of the flood. But if there's a need, that thing would go off middle of the night, and you'd hear that, like, okay, I gotta take shelter, go down to the basement, get in a safe place, as safe as I can find in my house. Why? Because a tornado can come in and just flatten a house, and so you need to be in a place of safety. And so you hear that and you think, for my life's sake, I need to respond. For my family's sake, I need to respond, get down to that place of safety. You know, Cayley's College is by a fire station, and Benson's gonna be there as well soon in January. But Ambassador Baptist College there in North Carolina, it's got a fire station that's there. And when we were in Lattimore, and my sister lives just down the road from the fire station, we walked down there with the kids, and the firemen took us in there, showed us all around, all the equipment. The kids got to sit in the fire truck and things like that. It's a volunteer fire station, so they alert the guys, maybe their mobiles or something, they hit the alert, the phone goes off, the buzzer goes off, they respond. Or in a man's station, they've got that bell that's there and it starts to ring and they know that, okay, get the gear on and get out. Why? Because somebody's life depends on it. And so whether it's for your own life or whether it's for somebody else's life, it's a matter of life and death and so you need to respond. Romans 10, 13, that verse that we already quoted, that's also in Joel, says, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Okay, if somebody needs to get saved, what's the reality? The reality is there's a life that's in danger. There's somebody that's gonna perish, and so there needs to be an urgency about that. Men are in danger of the wrath of God. Joel 3.13 says, put you in the sickle for the harvest is ripe. Come get you down for the press is full. The fats overflow for their wickedness is great. And so there's all these people that need Christ. There's all these people that need to be warned and need to come to salvation. That verse again in verse 14 of Joel 3, multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision. for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. And so we wanna sound that trumpet, we wanna get that sound out, that alert out, that there is danger and that there's danger to life. And if you saw somebody that ignored the weather radio, that ignored the siren that's going off, you'd say to them, look, you need to respond, it's for your life. And we would rightly just say to somebody that's not saved yet, having never received Jesus Christ as their personal savior, not been born again, they're still in their sin. If they die in their sin, they go to hell. We'd say to them, listen to the trumpet. We are blowing the trumpet trying to alert you to this. And to those that are already saved, it's kind of like the firemen that we have a responsibility. And so let's sound that trumpet and let's be reminded that we got to respond because people's lives are at stake. And that's really what you see in this text is that, that sounding the trumpet, it's that alert to say, hey, there is something that is really important, really vital. Everybody needs to heed this. And so if you want to make God jealous to do great things for his people, alert the people. And then stop the people. Stop the people. It says sanctify a fast. Now, no doubt life was busy in Joel's day. I mean, there's a lot of things going on back then as there is, we understand in our day as well. So things are busy, but they were to stop and set aside a time period for fasting. to set aside food and just to focus on God. Our life can be incredibly busy. There's so many things that can just take our time. We've got work schedules. A lot of times you're trying to evangelize, share the gospel with somebody, you're trying to invite them to church and ask them to come. And a lot of times they'll say, I work seven days a week. I'm just too busy. You hear that all the time. And certainly we can be like that. I know of a believer that 20 years ago was on fire for God and very faithful to the house of God, but took on all this extra overtime and things. And it's just like came to the point really in his life where he wasn't even in church. because you're just too busy. Education can take a lot of time. Our daughter Kaylee is in college, we were talking with her last night, and she's like, I don't even want to think about what I've got coming up, because I almost just panic, and there's just so much, they're coming up to the finals, and everything, and I well remember those days, and Katie and I were, we were married, we were full-time students, I was working on my master's degree, Katie was working on her undergrad degree or senior year. And I mean, it was just an incredibly busy time. And I had a teacher that said, you know, someday you're gonna be out, you're gonna be married, you're gonna have kids and life's gonna be so busy. And I'll tell you this, I actually look back on my college years and I think those were the most stressful, crazy times of my life because it was that intense. But as newly married and as full-time students, every weekend, we would go and get in the car. We'd drive two hours to get to a church that we helped and that we'd be there all day. And we'd come back two hours that night to get back on a Sunday. And that was just the thing that we did. But education can just pull people away. from God and time for God. Other amusements take time. We've got sports and hobbies, entertainment. I mean, our day entertainment is through the roof, isn't it? I walked into Costco and I mean, the telly size, every time you go, it's like a foot bigger. This time I think it was three feet bigger. I mean, this monster telly is almost as big as the sign that's up here. I mean, there's just so much entertainment that people can just be entertained. We've got vehicles that can get us places, you know, and so the world is our oyster. We can just go here, go there, and go everywhere, right, and just be so busy. And these things, maybe of themselves, are not necessarily sinful things, and so in their place they'd be fine, but sometimes it's good, just like eating. Eating is a very necessary thing, but God was saying, stop the people and get them to fast. Set aside those things. Even those things that are important, just so they can stop and think about the main thing, and make the main thing the main thing, and that is God. The Bible says in Matthew 6.33, but seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. It's saying put God at the top, make him the very most important thing. Put God first. Deuteronomy 6.5, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might. And so food is vital, but God doesn't say love food with all thy heart and thy soul and thy might. It's good, you gotta have food, but understand this, you are to feast upon God, desire God above all else. Bible says in Matthew 10.37, he that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me. And he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And obviously a family is very important and God's not saying to disregard our families certainly, but he is saying that that person that you love in your family, they're not the main thing. God's the main thing. Hebrews 12 verse one says, wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which does so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. And so we're to examine our life and think about like, I'm in a race for God. And so I'm gonna make the main thing, the main thing is set aside. Certainly sin is to be set aside, but sin that easily besets us to fight against sin and to stand against sin, but then to take those other things that are burden slowing me down and to set those aside. And so as God is working through his prophet Joel, he's just saying to the people, look, food is important, but it's not the main thing. Set that aside, call for a fast and begin to seek after God. You know, again, entertainment, work, education, hobbies, relationships, they're not the most important thing. God is. And so when is the last time that as a believer you just thought, you know, the main thing is not the main thing and I just need to seek God? And set aside food and said, you know, I'm just gonna fast today. I'm just going to take that mealtime and rather than eating, I'm just going to get on my knees. I'm going to spend a little bit of time with God. Think about what you'll say. I mean, he's saying to people, stop, set aside food. This is so important. Sound that trumpet, call a fast, set that aside. Why? To make the main thing, the main thing. And again, we're talking this morning, we want to impact God, make God jealous to do something great for his people. Well, part of that is us looking at it and say, I'm just going to stop. and make the main thing the main thing and focus on God. And so alert the people, stop the people, and then sober the people. Sober the people. It says call a solemn assembly, all right? A solemn assembly. He wasn't calling them to a party. He wasn't calling them to a play. He was calling them to a sober time of reflection. You know, Job has already sobered the people with his writing as they've read this book. All he had to do was point out the truth to them as he examined what was taking place there in Judah. There was a famine. Joel 1 verse 4 says, that which the palmer worm hath left hath the locust eaten. That which the locust hath left hath the canker worm eaten. And that which the canker worm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten. And all those different types of the locusts and the different stages of the locusts, they had literally just basically consumed everything that was there. There was famine. So God said, stop, let's call it fast. Well, I mean, God was in a sense making them fast. They had to set it aside in many ways, though they still had some. There was drought. Joel 1, verse 12 says, the vine is dried up. and the fig tree languisheth, the pomegranate tree, the palm tree, also in the apple tree, even all the trees in the field are withered because joy is withered away from the sons of men. And in chapter one, verse five, it says the drunkards were sad because they couldn't drink because they couldn't, the fruit of the vine was dried up. They didn't have a harvest. And so they were sad, but the people that wanted to worship God were sad also because they didn't have a drink offering to pour out to God because the harvest had crashed. There was a famine, there was a drought, and it was God's judgment. Joel 1 15-16, it says, And so as Joel's writing this, he's declaring this to the people, The people are being sobered by these realities, but I imagine there were some people that just thought life was like that, natural disaster. You know, maybe a kid saying to dad, well, dad, it's been a bad year, hasn't it? No rain. We don't have any food to put on the table because our crops have failed. Dad, it's pretty bad, isn't it? You know, and dad's like, if he's secular, he's just kind of like, yeah, it's just bad luck this year, right? But Joel's helping him understand it's not just bad luck that took place that year, it's not natural disaster, it's supernatural judgment that God's involved in that. And so again, it's that time of sober reflection, looking at it and saying, you know what, I see it as from the hand of God, the pressure that's there, the difficulties that's there, that's because of God and what God is doing. Now that they heard that, you kind of expect them to be a solemn assembly, right? So there'd be a bit of soberness coming into that place. They sounded the trumpet, they called it fast, and there's that soberness. This past week, I read on the BBC headline that's a sobering headline. It's the English and the Welsh census. Scotland actually was delayed further in their census than England and Wales, and so their census is already out. But the BBC story was this. Less than half of England and Wales population Christian, census 2021 shows. For the first time, fewer than half of people in England and Wales describe themselves as Christian. The proportion of people who said they were Christian was 46.2% down from 59.3% 10 years earlier, a decade earlier, and from 71% in 2001. Wow. I mean, that is incredible. In 20 years, it went from 71% of people that said they were Christian, identified as Christian, to just 46.2%. In contrast, the number who said they had no religion increased to 37.2% of the population. Up from a quarter in 2011, it was at 15% in 2001. So it went from 15% to 37% people that say no religion whatsoever. Islam's increasing from 5% or something like that to 6%. You know, those statistics are sobering. It's not that somebody that calls himself a Christian is a Christian, but we understand that that impacts the reality of what the church is doing, what the church is accomplishing, and those standards that are so vital to a Christian nation, which Britain has been, you know, as far as standing upon the word of God and standing up for the truth of God. that this is a day where it's just like, you look at the graph and it's just like, wow. I mean, it is going down so quickly. I spoke with a local man this past week and he said about their local Church of Scotland, they don't have a minister, they kind of have a circuit that a woman minister comes and she comes to three churches or something, but that's stopping soon. And they're not gonna even have that. And he said the average age of the people in our congregation is 80, is what he said. and they don't have young people. And I understand that's Church of Scotland. I would argue that it's not an evangelical Church of Scotland, probably. But it's sad in this sense. I mean, that church that stood for God, that church that has had in the past probably some ministers that rightly declared the truth of the word of God, that the churches are in a drastic decline. We know firsthand how difficult it is to see people saved and to see them baptized. For 60 years, there's been a movement back into Scotland of independent Baptist missionaries seeking to establish churches. And these are people that pray, these are people that are godly, these are people that know how to preach the word of God, know how to do evangelism, are faithfully doing evangelism, faithfully praying. And we know how hard it is as we look at that. Again, I don't want to this morning, you know, make us overly solemn, but I think it is right for us as a church to say, you know what? I'm jealous to see God do something. I'm jealous to see God do great things. What can we do about this pastor? Well, you know, we can sound the trumpet a little bit in our hearts, say, you know, there's an alert. We could say, let's fast. and let's be sobered by this. You don't go, it's all right to be a little solemn about this and really think about this. And that God would know that we understand that the church is suffering in Scotland. I'm talking about the body of Christ. And so alert the people, stop the people, sober the people, and then congregate the people. It says in verse 16, it says, gather the people. All right, so the people are to mass together there to assemble. I've said in our church over the years, different times, a church that ceases to congregate ceases to exist. And if you just think about it, the body, if the body just kind of goes its own way and each member does its own thing and they never come together, basically what happens is what we see happening with the Church of Scotland or other churches like that, they begin canceling services and then they get to the point where their main service, they've still got one is dwindling and there's nothing they can do if that exodus continues. There has to be a coming together of the body of Christ and we were looking at it this past Wednesday night in our study of 1 Peter. But the Bible there, we talked about the ecclesia, the church, that's the Greek word for church, it means called out assembly. Called out assembly, it is to be coming together, it's to be spending time together as a unit. And again, I think you can measure, and I think it's right to say this, you can measure the health of a church based upon its attendance at its services. Because that's the assembly. That's when the church is coming together to spend time together. And so as a body, it needs all members present at its meetings, okay? And when I say members, let me say this, I don't mean somebody on the rolls, and I don't mean attendees, but I mean born again believers that have accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior, that the Spirit of God has reached down into that person's life and has attached them to the church. The Lord added to the church daily. such as we're saved. And again, that's an assembly. That's not something mystical. That's a local body of believers that the Spirit of God took that person and put them into that assembly. And so if members are missing at gathering times, the body is handicapped, okay? And I'll share scripture about this, but let me illustrate it first. Somebody that has a physical handicap has what? A member of their body that's not working. And so if they're paralyzed, it might be their arms don't work. Might be their legs don't work. If they're dumb, their mouth doesn't work. If they're deaf, their ears don't work, right? And so we understand that blind, their eyes don't work, that if that member's not present in that body, then it's a handicapped body. Does that make sense, right? And so when God takes us by a spirit, puts us in the body, he puts us in as members of that body, and that's a very biblical picture that God's word gives, that each person has a role to play within that local church body. Romans 12 verse five says, so we being many are one body in Christ, and every one member's one of another. And so what's neat about a church, it's a family, but it's also a body, and that means every person is important. Now, I don't know about you, but I like my thumbnail. I'd like to keep it. That's important to me. You name it, our body is important to us no matter how small it is. If that thumbnail gets hit by a hammer, you're gonna know it, right? I'm gonna let you know it because my body is hurting because my thumbnail's hurting. And so the point is this, if a member of the body is suffering, all the members suffer with it. We're all burdened about that. We wanna see God meet the need of that part of the body because that part of the body is important and we need that part of the body to be present. 1 Corinthians 12, 18, but now hath God set the members, every one of them in the body as it hath pleased him. And speaking about the local church and the members that are there. Now, as he's commanding them to assemble, all right, he's saying, gather together. As he's doing that, I wanna point out, he's not attracting them to a great play. He's not saying, come on, you gotta come out to church. We're gonna have a great play, and I'm putting it in a modern context, in our context. There's gonna be a lot of amusement. This is gonna be great. You gotta be here, right? He's not saying there's gonna be a great concert. You know, sound the trumpet, let's fast, come together, and there's gonna be a great concert that we're gonna watch. He's not saying there's gonna be a great party where they can feed their flesh. Now, praise God, we're gonna eat today, but that's not why we're here, right? We're here to feast on the word of God. It's not a great program. It's not about what's there for my kids, Joel. If I come to this assembly, what's this kid gonna do? What's this kid gonna do? What's my wife gonna do? What am I gonna do? And a lot of people think like that when it comes to church. All right, I wanna go to church if there's got this, this, this, But it's just like, let's get serious and let's seek God. It's a solemn assembly. Come on and come, right? Gather the people. As a pastor, I'm not ashamed to encourage us as a church to come as often as we can to the house of God. If there's not a providential hindrance, in other words, there's times, yes, where we can't go to church because there are things that we can't overcome, there's nothing we can do about it, but if we can sacrifice a little bit and make it possible for us to be there, that's gonna be better for us, our family, that's gonna be better for our church. And for us, when we're crying out like Joel here in this passage, what can I do to impact God? Well, part of that is to say, hey, let's gather together, let's be there. And so alert the people, stop the people, sober the people, congregate the people, and then sanctify the people. It says, sanctify the congregation. All right, to sanctify is to set apart, it's to make holy. Joel 2 verse 12, therefore also now saith the Lord, turn ye even to me with all your heart, turn away from your sin. And with fasting and with weeping and with mourning, and rend your heart and not your garments. Turn unto the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful. Slow to anger of great kindness and repent to them of the evil." And I would just want to say, if somebody wants to get right with God, praise God. There are some precious scripture that says God is so willing. All we gotta do is turn, right? Get that right with God, set it before God. God is willing to deal with us about that. And verse 14, who knoweth if he will return and repent and leave a blessing behind him, even a meat offering and a drink offering unto the Lord your God. And he says, get right with God so that what? So that we can see God just restored to us and have the blessing of God. You know, the Jews were good at tearing their clothes as a sign of mourning. And so he says to them, rend your hearts and not your garments. I don't want you to put on an outward sign in the morning, all right? We're gonna fast and put ashes on our heads and we're gonna rend the outside. He says this, rend the inside. Get a broken heart there before God. Get right with God. You know, this morning, how can we be sanctified? Well, we could turn to God, right? And in that, we ought to look at it and say, what does God say about sin? There's two ways that we can sin. We can sin by not doing something God says that we should do. Those are sins of omission. I'm gonna get them wrong. And then there's sins of commission, violating what God says not to do, right? So you got omission, not doing what God says to do, commission, doing something that God says not to do. So on the omission side, it could be what I've spoken about, assembling together as the body of Christ. Giving to God tithes and offerings. Getting involved in evangelism. Going into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Tell people about Christ, right? Anything else that we know from the word of God, this is what God says to do, that as a dad, I'm to be a godly dad, I'm to lead my wife. I'm the spiritual head of my home. As a wife, I've got responsibilities to my husband, to my family, right? So sins of omission could be me not being what God intends me to be. Sins of commission are things that I violate what God says not to do, and I do them. And again, people could have a very low view of that and think, well, it's not that big a deal. take God's name in vain or something like that. Everybody does it, and yet the word of God says, thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for he will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. And so I gotta look at my life and say, you know what? There's things in my life that need to change. Let me say this first. Until somebody gets saved, they can't deal with the sin. And when somebody gets saved, God deals with all the sin. If any man be in Christ, he's a new creature. Old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new. The Spirit of God begins a transformative work in the life of that person. Nobody has to get saved thinking this. I gotta change my life, I gotta be a right Christian before God will accept me. Somebody just has to think, I've got to be a repentant sinner and ask God to forgive me and God will change me, right? And so God's willing to deal, if we're willing to deal, but we can harbor sin in our life. The Bible says, Psalm 66, verse 18, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. Regarding iniquity is this, when I know what God says in his word and I know what's in my life, And I say to God, God, I know that's wrong, but I am not willing to change that. And so what that is, that's me holding onto my sin. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will what? Not hear me. And so I effectively push God away. Now think about this in the context of what we're talking about. We're saying we want God's ear, we want him to be jealous, to do great things for his people. We cannot go to him with sin in our life, unrepentant sin, and expect God to get involved. because we're out of fellowship with God. And so if I'll deal with that, though, I can go to God and listen, the earnest, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. See, we wanna see God do great things, and we gotta look at it and say, you know what, I don't wanna be like Achan, you know, Achan thought, nobody knows about it, it's hidden in my tent, it's okay, I'm getting away with it, but the children of Israel lost the blessing of God because one man had sin in his tent. And if in our hearts as a church, we just say, you know what, I don't want to hurt my family, I don't want to hurt our church, and so I just want to live right with God. So I'm going to ask God, God, if there's anything in my heart, in my life that displeases you, God, I just want to be right. Joel's generation, that's, had to get right from their heart. Why? Because man doesn't look on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. And so the best thing we could do today is say, you know what, pastor, spirit of God is speaking to me about some things that I've got in my life. I know they're wrong. I've held onto them, but I see in this text, it says, sanctify yourself, turn from that. And so you don't have to tell me this, but in your heart, you may just be thinking, all right, I want to respond to God. I want to deal with that because I want to be right with God because I want to have God's blessing. And so alert the people, stop the people, sober the people, congregate the people, sanctify the people, and then prioritize the people. Prioritize. A priority we talked about recently is that main thing, that first thing. It says, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts. Let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet. And this is an interesting verse, you're like, what is it first talking about? It's calling to assembly, gather the people, and then it names these people. Why these people? Because these people had an excuse for not coming. And there was no excuse. It's saying gather all the people, prioritize it so that they cannot say, hey, look, I've got something more important than this. No, look at the list here. They weren't too old, the elders were to come. Gather the elders. They weren't too young. The children were to come. They weren't too occupied. Mothers with nursing children were to be there. There was not anything more important. You got the groom and the bride, and their big day's coming up, and maybe it's very close, and they're just about ready to be married. They say, hey, come out of the closet and get to the house of God to seek God. Nothing was more important. Yeah, as a student at Bob Jones University, Dr. Bob III had us learn a statement. He would say this, the most sobering reality in the world today is, and then the 5,000 or so students that were there said this, that people are dying and going to hell today. See, that's the main thing. The main thing is that there is work for God's people to do and that as a church, we're the body of Christ, we're the ones that are the light, we're the ones that are the salt, we're the ones that have the mission that's been given to us by God. So the main thing has to be the main thing to the point that nobody can say, I've got an excuse, I can't assemble because I've got this, this is more important. He says, prioritize the people. If God's work is our priority, we don't say, well, I've got to do this. We make the main thing the main thing and say, man, I just want to see God jealous again to do great things for his people. And so alert the people, stop the people, sober the people, congregate the people, sanctify the people, prioritize the people, and then plead for the people. As he's calling them, if I could put it like this, this is a morning worship service, we got a Sunday night, 6 p.m. morning worship service, Sunday school, we study the Bible. But Wednesday night, what do we call Wednesday night? We call it prayer meeting. Why, because that's the main part of what we do on a Wednesday night, is as a body, we pray together. And if I could say this, Joel wasn't calling them to morning worship, he wasn't calling them to evening worship, he was calling them to a prayer meeting. He's calling them to come and to seek God and to plead for the people. They were to weep for God's people, verse 17. It says, let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar. All right? It wasn't to be a liturgy type service. It wasn't to be cold, you know, we've got these cold prayers, liturgical prayers, formal prayers, bedtime. Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep. You know, we got the liturgical prayer at mealtime for what we are about to receive, make us truly thankful. Look, we should be thankful of ourselves. That's not God's responsibility. That's our responsibility. But it wasn't to get there to this place of prayer and to begin to give a liturgy. It was to get on their face before God and to weep. It says in Joel 1.13, gird yourselves and lament, ye priests. Howl, ye ministers of the altar. Come, lie all night and sackcloth ye ministers of my God. It was to be an all-night prayer meeting there just to seek God and to plead for God's people. Verse 17. It says, It's an amazing statement, isn't it? To think that the heathen today, and I'll tell you, this is what they're saying, God's in the past, the Bible's outdated, It's old fashioned. It doesn't have any relevance in our society. It has no place in our society to the point that we will look down at you, we will condemn you, we will mock you, we will laugh at you, and we are absolutely, I could say without making us just have a pity party for ourselves this morning, but that we are the reproach of the heathen. And as a church, we all just pray and say, Lord, I'm so sick of your name being put into the rubbish bin. God, glorify yourself. As a church, we desire to see an edifice, a building. But not just a building, we don't want, we've said this, we don't want a church people without a building, we don't want a building without a church people. And so what we're burdened about is God, build up the church, and God raised up a building so that people could look at it and say, well, I used to make fun of them and thought they're not gonna ever get there, but look at what God's done. And they begin to have that discussion where that, he didn't even have to kind of stop and look and see it and say, you know what, God has done something there. Are you pleading? Are you praying? Assembling together and just imagine and pray about this with me. Imagine an all night prayer meeting. Not just a Wednesday night prayer meeting. Not just our normal time, but a church that would actually say, you know, pastor, I really think let's try that. That's what God's word says to get God jealous. Maybe we should try that. Let's really pray. Well, maybe not all night, but pastor, what about an hour? What about two hours? I'll be a part of it if someone else wants to be a part of it. Let's seek God. And so he's addressing the people. God's people are in a bad place. They got famine, drought, war, because God was judging them. And obeying Joel's message is gonna make God involved in this. It's gonna impact God. Notice verse 18. Okay, if you do these things, Then will the Lord be jealous for his land and pity his people. Yea, yes, the Lord will answer and say unto his people, behold, I will send you corn and wine and oil and ye shall be satisfied therewith. And I will no more make you a reproach among the heathen, but I will remove far off from you the northern army and will drive him into the land barren and desolate with his face toward the east sea and his hinder part toward the utmost sea and his stink shall come up and his ill savor shall come up because he hath done great things. Fear not, O land, be glad and rejoice, for the Lord will do great things. Okay, it says God's going to do it, but I want to point this out. Not if they didn't do their part. The fatalist goes, oh, it's just the way it is. But a biblicist looks at what Joel says and says, I'm going to do something about this. And notice what it says, then, then will the Lord do this. And so this morning, as we consider our text, do you care to make God jealous to do great things in our generation? You know, again, we can all walk away and just go back to our own life and say, ah, that's too sobering, too serious to really think about, you know, or we could look at it and say, let's do something. As a church, let's get burdened about it. Am I gonna heed the alert? Or sound the alert? Think, yeah, this is critical, we gotta do something. Will we stop? and fast and say, okay, pastor, I'm not even gonna tell you, because the word of God says not to, but I'm gonna fast. I'm gonna take some time, stop food and get in prayer, seeking God. Are you gonna be sobered? I know it's not awesome to come to church and think about heavy thoughts about the fact that there's a lot of people that are gonna die and go to hell, and that the churches are struggling. I get that, but you know what? Church isn't about just coming and having a party. It's about being sober, realizing our responsibility. Are you gonna congregate? Make the main thing the main thing and get to the house of God to seek God. We'd be sanctified. Let God deal with your heart. If there's any sin in your life, the Spirit of God put his finger on it. Say, God, I'm gonna deal with that. Make God's priorities your priorities, no excuse. I can't say, well, I got this, this, this. I'm gonna get rid of those excuses. where you plead for the people, really get on your knees in the power of God in prayer. You know, I can say this morning, what's sad to me as a preacher, and to all that really, I think, have a heart for God, it would be the same things, and so the same for our congregation, is that God is able to do this But I wonder how many would rise up and say, that's what God says and so I'm gonna do my part. I'm not gonna be a fatalist. I'm not gonna say, well, that's the way it is. I'm gonna get there and I'm gonna get involved because I wanna see God do these great things. Why? Because then will the Lord be jealous for his land and pity his people. But not until then. And so the sobering part is for us to look at it and go, wow, you know what, I see it in Joel. That's exactly what Joel said. The people responded, and so by God's grace, may God help us respond and say, let's make a difference. Let's make God jealous to do great things for his land. Let's pray. Father, I pray that the Spirit of God would just work in our hearts. It might be the Spirit of God put his finger on some sin that's in our lives. Father, is it worth sinning? and somebody going to hell because we're not the witness we need to be? Or because as a church we don't have the power of God as we could? Is the thing that keeps me from gathering, is that so important that it's worth people going to hell? And our church not having the blessing of God like we could? Father, I pray that the Spirit of God just give us grace to evaluate. Is food so important that we can't do without it to seek God and to understand that the need is urgent? When we see a graph that the world has put together of Christianity going down the tubes here in Britain, Father, can we just look at it and think, well, that's just the way it is? Or Father, can we look at this text and say, you know, there's a lot I can work on here. There's a lot I can do. A lot as a church that we could do. And Father, I just pray that this body, that you just grow us as a local assembly of born-again believers. Now, it might be somebody's not saved this morning, and they're not a member of our church. And Father, I pray that they get saved, that the Spirit of God would then put them into the local New Testament body, and that they could be a part of this ministry. And so Father, however you're working in somebody's heart, please don't let anyone, myself included, go away without dealing with something the Spirit of God has revealed this morning. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen.