Joel's prophecy was the result of a problem in Israel. or perhaps a problem in Judah depending on as we saw early in this series whether Joel ministered at an early time in the history of the nation of Israel or much later in its history. Either way the children of Abraham had once more departed from the Lord their God and incurred his displeasure. They had, as we saw, become worldly in their attitudes and in their lifestyle, depicted for us in the opening chapter in the lives of the drunkards who are called upon to weep and to wail because the wine is cut off from their mouths. The nation had become self-dependent, confident in their own abilities, forgetful of their dependence upon the living God, no longer acknowledging that he is the Lord of the harvest. And this is set forth for us in the mourning of the farmers whose crops have languished in the field, consumed by the locust, dried up in the drought. The nation had emptied religion of its true meaning. They had become rhythmic in their habits, but their hearts were not engaged. They went through the motions of worship, but it was an empty worship, a vain worship, a false worship indeed, for they did not humble themselves before the living God and seek his mercy, they relied upon their rituals rather upon the grace of their God. and it is set before us in the priests who are called to mourn because there is no longer a sacrifice to be brought, a grain offering to be held aloft. The worship of God was truncated by the famine that they experienced in the land. And so God in this way by sending a plague of locusts against his people shook them to their senses. He reminded them of the emptiness and the meaninglessness of this world if God is not present, if he is not acknowledged. He called upon them. to see their actual dependence upon God. For while they might sow their seed, they could not guarantee the harvest. They were not in control of the rain, nor of the locusts. He confronted them in their self-confidence as they brought their sacrifices to God. and demonstrated to them the necessity of true worship, heartfelt worship. And under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit as Job proclaims these words from God to the people He interprets this plague of locusts as a rebuke and a warning to the people. It's a warning of a future judgment that lay before them if they did not answer the call to repent, if they did not turn from their wicked ways, if they did not humble themselves under the mighty hand of God The locusts would seem as a small thing in comparison to the judgment that God would bring upon them as he describes it in the second chapter, a foreshadowing of the eternal judgment that will come upon all people who reject the God who is their creator and who has provided a way of salvation through his grace. repeats again the call heard by generations of their forefathers, a call to repent, a call to turn from their sins and turn from their self-confidence and turn from their complacency and plead for the mercy of God, for the forgiveness of God, for the blessing of God upon them. And here in our text this evening in Joel chapter 2 and verses 18 through 27, Joel begins to describe God's response to the repentant. It's a section that parallels the first chapter. For we saw in the first chapter how God had brought a present judgment upon his people, a physical judgment that ravaged the land and caused them great distress in their loss. These verses speak of a reversal of those circumstances. It's a temporal, a present blessing upon the nation. Their fields will flourish, their flocks will be fattened, and their worship will be resumed under the blessing of God. And this like the first chapter and its judgment is a foreshadowing of the blessing of God upon those who will turn to him in repentance and seek his forgiveness for their sins. And so as we consider these verses we see the blessing described, the Lord who hears the cries of his people, who listens to the voice of the humble, who hears the prayers of the priests, responds. He has himself what he sometimes describes as a repentant heart towards them. He becomes jealous for his land and has pity on his people. He once again desires that they will flourish among the nations and be exemplary of his grace to the world. The Lord said to his people, Behold, I am sending to you grain and wine and oil, and you will be satisfied. Those who are hungering and thirsting in a parched and weary land will have all of their appetites satisfied by the grace of God. and the shame that has come upon them as the nations cry out, where is their God? That shame, that reproach will be taken away as God shows them mercy. The desolate place will become fruitful once again. It will be a land flowing with milk and honey under the blessing of their God. The enemy, the enemy that he had brought against them in the first instance, that of the locusts, that enemy would be destroyed. He would drive them out of the land and they would be no more. They would be annihilated and the stench of their judgment would arise. that which had caused such great devastation in the land would itself be utterly destroyed. There would be reason then for rejoicing in the land Indeed, the land itself is called to rejoice and to be glad for the great things that God was about to do. Or if it seemed that this living army of locusts had been a great thing in the land to devour and to destroy every living and green thing throughout its borders, The reversal of that situation would be an even more amazing thing and show the greatness of God and his power to reverse evil in this world. Yes, the land would rejoice because it would flourish once again. And of course the beasts of the field, they too will rejoice, for the pastures will no longer be a wilderness, but they will flourish with fodder for them. And the people the children of Zion, the people of God who had rebelled against him and turned their backs upon him and not acknowledged him or shown their dependence upon him or brought right sacrifices to him and conducted their worship of him in a proper way. These people would be restored to fellowship with God and the abundance of the land would give them reason to respond with praises to their God for his kindness to them in restoring the seasons in their proper time, in filling the land with an abundance from his hand. In place of famine there would be fruitfulness once again And not only would it produce the fruit, fruit that they had been accustomed to in previous years and previous generations, that the cycle of the seasons with seed time and harvest, but God would cause the fields to flourish with such an abundance that their hearts and souls would be fully satisfied. It would be as though there had never been a plague of locusts. That great thing that had been done in the judgment of God upon them would be so erased that every mark of it would disappear from the land. The years that those locusts have eaten will be restored. and they would flourish once again. And so these people would learn most assuredly that God's hand was for them and no longer against them. They would know most assuredly that the Lord was their God. It was He who brought the judgment against them in the days of their rebellion. And it is He who reverses the judgment and is reconciled to them in the days of their repentance. There is no power greater than this God. There is no one in whom they could hope, no one else to whom they could call to bring about this great change. to transform their circumstances. You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel and that I am the Lord your God and there is none else. And those who trust in him will never again be put to shame. He is the Lord God. There is no one like him. in glory and majesty. There is no one like him in holiness and justice. There is no one like him in righteousness. And he must respond to this world in an appropriate way. His justice must come when sin prevails. but through his grace and mercy he is ready to visit the repentant with blessing. And this is the picture then that we have before us in these verses of Joel. How good and kind and compassionate and merciful God can be even to sinners who deserve his fierce wrath and his holy judgment. And the God, the God who spoke to Joel through the people, to the people of his day is the same today as he was then. He is the same in his majesty and glory. He is the same in his holiness and judgment. He is the same in his grace and mercy. And so those who feel the emptiness of life without God and lived in rebellion against God, they too are offered hope, hope in this day, hope in this world. It is not a hope of healthy bank accounts and healthy bodies, the health and wealth gospel that so abuses the Word of God and misapplies the typological Old Testament texts like this in John? and would suggest to people that if only they believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, all their problems in life would be removed. All the suffering would come to an end, all of the physical pain that they may be experiencing will be eliminated. Every issue, every problem will suddenly be erased and all would be peace and all will be plenty. This is not what the scriptures teach us. This is not the God that has revealed himself in his word through the prophets of the Old Testament and the apostles of the New Testament. We must not take a literal application of these prophecies to our situation. They were intended for Israel under the covenant that God had made with them through Moses to promise, a promise to bless them in the land that he had given as an inheritance to the descendants of Abraham for as long as they would be faithful to him. a land flowing with milk and honey, a land rich with pastures and with flocks, a land that would be secure from all of their enemies if they would obey God's law, if they would be exemplary as a nation under God among the nations of the world. If they would testify in their hearts and in their lives to the goodness of God and his law by obedience to it, then there would never be an issue to cause them concern in all the land. It was to be a picture of God's great love and God's peace towards his people who trusted in him. But by the same token, it was to be a picture of God's judgement against the people who rebel against him. And this is what we see over and over again through the Old Testament. These are pictures of God's goodness and grace. These are pictures of God's power and justice. So what are we to learn from this for ourselves? Well as we saw when we considered the first chapter and the plague of locusts and its effects upon the nation of Israel, that there was a physical picture of a spiritual reality. It was a real life parable. The Lord God brings a famine of vanity and emptiness to the souls of those who live worldly lives without dependence upon God and ignore their duty to serve and worship Him. These were the sins of the people of Israel, repeated over and over again, generation by generation. and God visited them in their iniquity and he confronted them in their sins and he gave them a taste of his power, a visitation of his judgment in small degree that they might learn to turn to him in repentance and trust in him for mercy. And today God works still. With all of the abundance that people may have in this world, there's a dissatisfaction in their lives. The more people have, the less satisfied they feel. They pursue this, that and the other and it never gives them that satisfaction that they crave for. Because there can be no satisfaction apart from God. To live before him, to walk with him through this world. And the Lord, as it were, shakes people in the futility of lives, of their lives, the meaninglessness of it all. But sadly, there are many who do not feel that. They do not acknowledge or recognize their spiritual poverty. They're so taken up with the things of this world and its fleeting pleasures that they never pause to think. They fill their lives with busyness so that their consciences do not prick them and their thoughts do not confront them. They chase after dreams. but they do not look for God. But in his mercy, God comes. In his mercy, God provokes. He stirs people up. He makes them sensitive to spiritual reality, to the feeling of hopelessness and desolation in this life. that it is all meaningless apart from something that must give it meaning and what is that thing? It is God and God alone who gives meaning to us and purpose for our lives. Else we live the daily routine of waking and eating and activity and sleeping and waking and eating and activity and sleeping over and over and over and over and over and over again. For what? The rich in their luxurious houses die. The poor in their shacks, die. Those who labour all their lives, working hard to provide for their families, they die. Those who lounge around, sponging off others, die. What is the difference, in the end, to this life? The writer of Ecclesiastes says it's all the same in the end. It's all meaningless. It's all vanity. Except for one thing. God is here. God is here. And if our lives are turned to him, if we seek him with all our heart, he may be found by us. And in him there is meaning. In him there is purpose. In him there is a goal. And he gives our lives meaning. He gives our lives purpose. He gives us a reason for waking in the morning and eating and activity and sleeping again and again and again. That each day we may know more of him. That each day we may grow into him. that each day we may serve him and acknowledge him, and in doing so, each day we are glorifying him. It may seem so mundane, but with him at the forefront of our lives, acknowledging that everything that we have and all that we are is from him and for him, he is glorified, and our lives have meaning. When God stirs within us by his spirit to make us aware of the vanity of life without him. When he brings to our consciousness the reality of his being and he turns us towards himself, then he stirs us to repentance and through repentance he brings hope. The emptiness and the hopelessness gives way to meaning and purposefulness, a fullness of life in this world. And in place of those empty years, those wasted years, those purposeless years, God gives years of plenty. years of purpose, years of service, years of fruitfulness for him, in which he is acknowledged, in which he is witnessed. And so there is reason for rejoicing, for thanksgiving, for worship, as life in its emptiness is given fullness, as life in its hopelessness is given as life in its vanity is given purpose from famine to fruitfulness, from years that the locust has eaten to an abundance in which we are satisfied in God. Where are you in this story? Where do you stand? What sort of life are you living? Perhaps you've wandered away, wandered away from a path of purpose, of meaning, of hopefulness. Perhaps the temptations of this world have overwhelmed you. Do you feel it? Is God stirring in you? Don't quench it. Don't seek to silence The annoying accusation of conscience, that God in his mercy is stirring in you to draw you back as he stirred the people in Joel's day to repentance and humbling themselves before him so that he could bring this abundant blessing into their lives. Return to the Lord and he will abundantly pardon He will have mercy. Come back to the Christ whom you confessed before. Return to him. Refocus upon him. Follow him. None of us may dare to say that we are okay. None of us may dare to say that we have no need to repent. no need for regret, no need for turning. Who of us can say that we have lived as we should, that our attitudes have been what they ought to have been, that our thoughts as well as our words and actions have been perfect in God's sight? The Bible has much to say about empty words. empty actions. We must humble ourselves. He is the Lord. Is he our God? That we may know his blessing, that we may know his power working for us and for our good, that we may experience the fullness of his grace. Only he can restore the years the locust has eaten. Only he can bring in place of the barrenness of sin, the fruitfulness of his salvation. Only he can turn our lives into an abundance of fruitfulness for him. Only He can satisfy our souls. So let us cry to Him and confidently expect from Him every good thing that come from His Father's heart, that our cries may turn to songs. that our mourning may turn to rejoicing, that our emptiness may be filled with Christ. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you that you are a God who loves and a God who acts, that you are a God who is working in this world even now to convict and to convert, to restore to forgive. And Lord, we pray that you would have mercy upon us, and that you would make us fruitful in your service, and that from our lips would come praises that flow out of our hearts, filled with your love and your goodness. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.