We don't know much about Joel. We don't know much about when the book exactly was written. But we do know that Joel is an important book because the message is timeless. It's a message of salvation. It's a message of God calling his people to repent. And if you remember in the first chapter into the second chapter, God sends a plague of locusts. Not an ordinary invasion of locusts that still happens today on occasion, depending on the climate and the weather. As in verse two, he says, I'm gonna send something you've never seen before. Your fathers haven't seen. It's an extraordinary invasion of locusts. And as we went through the first chapter and a half, Basically everything was destroyed, the crops, the trees, the cattle, they were all suffering. It was such a devastation that the ground was so dry, even fire dried up the brooks, the brooks of water. And the last time that I went through Joel, and we talked about why God would do this, to the people of Joel. There wasn't really, there's not an apparent sin, nothing really jumps out at you. If you read the first chapter, it says they were marrying, they were eating, they were drinking, they were living good life. But there was something that was amiss. And that something was they were not paying attention to the giver. They were focused on the gifts. And because God loves his people, because his people are so precious to him, which we heard this morning, God used everything and will use everything at his disposal to get the attention of his people. And that's what he does with this plague of locusts. And as I read through this section in chapter two, just listen for the possessive words. when God claims possession of something. I'm gonna try to get through this first section a little quickly. Ironically enough, when I wrote out this message, it was very similar to Aaron's message this morning. And that happens frequently, I don't know. Maybe you're an influence on me. I doubt that I'm that much of an influence on you. But I'm sure what it is, is the message of Joel is the gospel. And it doesn't matter if we're preaching and reading from Joel or we're preaching and reading from Exodus, the gospel is the gospel. Aaron may preach the gospel much better than I do, but Aaron can't preach a better gospel. The gospel's in there, and that's why sometimes it just seems like there's such an overlap in sermons and preparation and studying a passage. But God sends this plague of locusts to call his people to repentance because they were ignoring him. They were ignoring the giver and paying attention to the gift. Let me read through chapter two, 11 through 27. Hear the very word of God. The Lord utters his voice before his army, for his camp is exceedingly great. He who executes his word is powerful, for the day of the Lord is great and very awesome. Who can endure it? Yet even now declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and with mourning, and rend your hearts, not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and he relents over disaster. Who knows whether or not he will turn and relent and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God. Blow the trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the people, consecrate the congregation, Assemble the elders, gather the children, even the nursing infants. Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber. Between the vestibule and the altar, let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep and say or pray, spare your people, O Lord, and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, where is their God? The Lord became jealous for his land and had pity on his people. The Lord answered and said to his people, behold, I'm sending you grain, wine, and oil, and you will be satisfied. And I will no more make you a reproach among the nations. I will remove the northerner far from you and drive him into a parched and desolate land. His vanguard into the Eastern Sea, his rear guard into the Western Sea, the stench and foul smell of him will rise. for he has done great things. Fear not, O land, be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things. Fear not, you beasts in the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green. The tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and the vine give their full yield. Be glad, O children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God. for he has given the early rain for your vindication. He has poured down for you abundant rain, the early rain and the latter rain as before. The threshing floors shall be full of grain. The vats shall overflow with wine and oil. I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame. 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 my people shall never again be put to shame. Let's end the reading of God's word. I actually preached from this same text this afternoon at a nursing home in Washington. So if my voice starts to fade, you'll have to excuse me. I've changed it a little bit because like I said, a lot of what Aaron covered this morning was what I intended to cover in the first half of this. God sees his people as precious. He owns all things. He owns all of creation and he will use all of creation to call his people to true repentance so that they might know him, that they might commune again with him as he desires. Nothing is more precious to God than his people. That's the message we saw in Exodus this morning. God calls his people to a true repentance, a repentance of their hearts, and not to rend their garments. I think we talked about that before, that tearing of the garment was a symbol of sorrow and mourning, and actually is still practiced today by our Jewish friends when they have a funeral or a shiva, They will often take small pieces of cloth and tear them and pin them to their coat or to their dress to symbolize a rending of their garment. God tells his people here in Joel, I don't want a rending of the garment, I want true repentance. I want repentance of the heart. And when they do that, God promises restoration. He promises that the fields will be green again, and that the wine vats will be full, and there will be oil, and they will get back to living the way they did, to being able to worship God, to make sacrifice, to marrying. And it involved all the people, if you remember, infants, children. There was a special call to the leaders of the church, to call for a day of mourning, to consecrate a fast, but it was for all people to repent. And God promised restoration so that they may know that He is in the midst of Israel. Now, what we can see on this side of Christ's death and resurrection and ascension is the promises that were made to this group of people, this specific people, were more of a limited promise than what he makes to us. He promised to be in their midst. He promised to restore the goodness of his blessings with food, with cattle, back to the good life, but remember why he took those things away. He took them away because they forgot about the giver. And he took the gifts away. I'm not gonna say too much more. There's one debate in Joel about whether or not, the calamity that was brought on the people was just locusts, or was it locusts and an army? I'm briefly gonna make an argument that I think it was just locusts. And let me point to verse number 20. It says, I will remove the northerner far from you. And many people will use this statement to say that this couldn't have been locusts because locusts never come from the north. But as we said from the beginning, God said, I'm gonna do something extraordinary, something you've never seen before, something that normally doesn't happen. And the next verses is what is described as how this plague of locusts is dealt with, and it's dealt with quickly. You can go on YouTube or you can Google it, plagues of locusts, and usually how that's resolved If you remember how locusts move, they will ride the wind during the day. Whichever way the wind is blowing, they will fly and let the wind carry them as far as they can, and then they land, and then at night, they eat everything in sight. Normally how plagues or invasions, even today, end is the wind changes. So God changes the wind, he blows some to the north into a desolate land, or it's a desert, Some into the Eastern Sea, some into the Western Sea, and that's common. They're blown out miles into the sea. They have to land, and they drowned. And what does it say at the end of verse 20? The stench and foul smell of him will rise, for he has done great things. When you look that up, you will find when that's happened, when plagues of locusts have come in and they've been driven out to sea and they drowned, eventually they wash into the shore. And you can see piles of dead locusts, two, three feet high for miles along the beach. And you can imagine the stench. Verse 25, when he says, I will restore to you the years the swarming locusts has eaten the hopper, the destroyer, the cutter, my great army which I sent among you. I think that also speaks for the argument that this is just locus. We're gonna move on from there though. Part of the benefit and part of the challenge of trying to preach through a text every verse is you always come across something that challenges you or you don't wanna preach on. A few times in Joel, he mentions fasting. Now coming from a Roman Catholic background, my idea of fasting is works-based, right? It's foreign to us. We don't think about Christian fasting. As I encounter different people, I always end up in good discussions. Recently I had an African-American patient who was a believer. She belonged to a church, I think, she lived in Wilkinsburg, but she belonged to a church somewhere in White Oak, some kind of a holiness church. But she showed me her bulletin, and every Friday they call for a day of fasting until 3 o'clock. There's a lot of information out there about fasting. There's a lot of bad information about fasting. I'm not gonna have time to cover it, but I do wanna mention a few things, because I think it fits with the theme of what we're talking about. There's an excellent book by John Piper, A Hunger for God, and that's what this book is about, Christian fasting. There's a lot of bad ideas about fasting. You can easily get into a lot of legalism. So as I'm coming across that in the text, I have to deal with it. What I wanna give you a little bit is about some of what Piper has to say about that. I'm gonna turn to Luke chapter 18. Verses 10 through 13. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus. God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all I get. But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God be merciful to me, a sinner." Obviously, that's an example of incorrect fasting. He was fasting for all the wrong reasons. works-based. In Matthew chapter nine, Jesus declares a new kind of fasting. Let me read verse 14 through 17. Matthew 9, 14. Then the disciples of John came to him saying, why do we and the Pharisees fast? But your disciples do not fast, and Jesus said to them, can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one puts a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins and so both are preserved. And what Piper says is that Jesus is proclaiming a different kind of fast than the fast that was present in the Old Testament. Fasting in the Old Testament was a sign of mourning. It was a sign of penance. Fasting in the New Testament, he gives a whole new definition to. I want you to listen to what he says. Fasting is an act of faith. Christian fasting is an expression of dissatisfied contentment in the all-sufficiency of Christ. Dissatisfied contentment in the all-sufficiency of Christ. It is a longing for the giver as opposed to the gift. Later he says this, not because we haven't tasted the new wine of Christ's presence, but because we have tasted it and long with deep and joyful aching of the soul to know more of his presence and power in our midst. He puts forth the idea that Christian fasting is a longing for Christ. An extreme example might be the story of Abraham and Isaac. We all know the story very well. Abraham is way up in age. God promises him a blessing. Your descendants will be as numerous as the stars. He has no children. God grants Abraham and Sarah the birth of Isaac. He gives them a gift. What a temptation that would be for Abraham to focus on that gift and not the giver. Everything God promised him came through that son. It would be very tempting, very easy for him to treat that son so differently But what does God ask him to do? God says, take him and sacrifice him. I'm gonna take that blessing away from you. And we know that he doesn't, that God provides a ram. But that blessing he gave him was threatened to be taken away so Abraham could focus on the giver and not the gift. It's an extreme example of what you could call fasting. This is why we should fast as Christians. Let me give you one example. As a father, if one of my sons, let's say they were 10 years old, their desire was for the newest Xbox, whatever that would be. And I took joy in my son, and I worked extra hours, and I saved money to buy him this Xbox, And I brought it home and I gave it to him and he was joyful and hugged me and thanked me, plugged it in and began to play it. And not too long after, when I come home from work, there he is sitting at the television playing the Xbox and doesn't even acknowledge I'm in the room. He's focused on the gift and not the giver. That's what the people of Joel did. They were focusing on the gifts. He took that gift away and reminded them of the giver. That's what fasting is. It's not twisting God's arm. We're requesting something in prayer and I'm gonna fast on top of that so I can turn up the heat and God's gonna do what I want him to do. It's a recognition of the gifts that we are given and doing without that gift for a time to focus on the giver. It helps us to enjoy that gift all the much more. That's what Christian fasting should be. So we go back to Joel. God wanted his people to repent. He wanted them to do that by rending their hearts, not their garments. And he restored them. He restored communion with them. He promised to be their God. He will be within their midst. And we see that fulfilled. As happens often in prophets, now Joel has a vision of something he doesn't know what it is. He doesn't understand. But he's speaking about us. We're gonna read a little further in chapter two. Verse 28, and it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my spirit and I will show wonders in the heaven and the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes and it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, there shall be those who escape as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls. Can we see the gospel in the Trinity? God calls his people to himself. He sends his spirit, he pours out his spirit in a way that Joel had no idea. This is the passage Peter proclaims on the day of Pentecost. Acts chapter two. God pours out his spirit into his people in a way that Joel had no idea about. As we heard this morning, God just does not promise to be in their midst. God promises when he pours out his spirit, he is in our hearts. We have union with Christ. We have a greater communion than they ever could have expected in the Old Testament. When we repent, that relationship is restored. Not only does he live in our hearts, but we can approach the Holy of Holies. What happened to crucifixion? The temple curtain was torn in two. We have access to God through prayer, through petition, through repentance. The blessings that he bestows on us is far greater than those that we saw in the book of Joel. And so is the price. In the book of Joel, God shows us that his people were precious. There wasn't anything in creation he would not use for the benefit of his people. For us, what's the price? How precious are we to God? Because he gave his son for us. There is no more gift, more precious than that. If he would give the life of his son for our salvation, there is nothing in this world he would not give, he would not do. what a great gift salvation is. Next to that gift is the idea of Christian repentance. God calls His people to repentance, to know Him, to commune with Him. Because what does sin do? to God's people. Sin, there is no sin we can commit that God's gonna say, you're out. It puts distance between us. It puts objects between us and God. When we focus on the gifts more than we should, it's not wrong to be pleased with the things God gives us, but it is wrong to forget the giver. True repentance. We know that God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. It is a gift that we are offered that any fallen angel would give anything, would give the universe to have one opportunity to repent of sin and be forgiven. And in my own mind, I don't know, maybe that's the wrath of Satan and fallen angels. They look at us. And what do they think? You fools. You're lazy. You have such a gift, a gift of repentance, and you ignore it. You have holy God, creator of the universe, calling you into communion with him, asking for repentance to remove those obstacles between you so you can commune with him, and we ignore it. True repentance is not easy. True repentance at times is painful. Let's go back to Luke chapter 14, the Pharisee and the tax collector. Which one of those men showed true repentance? Luke 14, verse 16 through 24, if you wanna look. True repentance looks like this. True repentance sees sin in our own lives as much greater than the sins in the lives of other people. That is certainly not reflected by the Pharisee, because what does he do? He points his finger. Thank God I am not like that man. Look at what I do. That is not true repentance. We could add to that. That sense of legalism is so dangerous and so subtle and can be so devastating. to our spiritual well-being, to the well-being of others around us, to the well-being of a church. We could add a lot of things to that list. Lord, I thank you that I am not like that woman who never helps at a fellowship meal. I thank you that I am not like that man who claims to be a Christian and prays once a day. Lord, I thank you that I attend a church that doesn't have drums, doesn't have tambourines, and doesn't have a preacher who preaches in jeans. We can take that as far as we wanna take it. And let's look at the tax collector. What was his attitude? Jesus says in the story that he struck his breast. and cried out, be merciful to me, a sinner. That's still a custom today in Judaism. On their high holidays, when they pray and they say that I am a sinner or I trespass, they just lightly take their hand. They're not beating themselves, they're reminding themselves that sin comes from within, comes from my heart. And with some of them that I talk to, it's almost a habit. I mean, we use expressions. You see it in sports all the time. It's my fault, right? Or if I'm talking to somebody and I say, I love you. Just an expression that we do. And often when I have conversations with them and they're talking about sin, almost unconsciously, they just, they raise their hand to their breast. That's what the tax collector was doing. That's what true repentance looks like. True repentance, I want you to hear what I'm saying. True repentance is not more anxious about confessing sin than it is about ever doing it again. If we are more anxious and bothered about confessing our sin than ever committing that sin again, that is not repentance from the Spirit. We should be a confessing people. If we truly are repentant of our sin, we will acknowledge our sinfulness. When someone confronts us with our sinfulness, if our first response is defensiveness and anger, what would it be like to confront the Pharisee? What do you think he would say? Conversation may go something like this. Brother, you don't know what you're talking about. I fast twice a week. I tithe. I, I, I. You, you do this. That is not true repentance. What would the conversation be like with the tax collector? You're confronting him about his sin. It may start out the same way. Brother, you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know the half of it. The tax collector would probably say, you don't know the half of my sin. Let me sit down and talk to you about it. That's true repentance. What kind of counsel do you think you would get from the Pharisee if you approached him with sin in your heart? That's easy. All you gotta do is do this and do this and do more of that. That's the counsel we would get. And what about from the tax collector? Brother, I only know the grace of God. I can do nothing on my own. I only know God is gracious and merciful. That would be the counsel we would get from the tax collector. We need to examine ourselves. We need to ask ourselves, Are we more like the Pharisee or the tax collector? Which one of the two would you want to approach and confess your sin? Hopefully we are people who project grace. If we understand conviction of sin and the desire to confess our sin to others. As we're told, I believe it's in Peter, that we are to confess our sin to one another. If that desire comes from the Spirit, and we are a person that exhibits anything other than grace, they're not gonna wanna come to us and confess. We're standing in the way of the work of the Spirit. Part of that is we need to be a confessing people, and that's hard to do. We need to confess our sins. The other half of it is we need to be one another. We need to be people that can be confessed to, and not have people afraid to confess to us, and not take a stance that puts fear in their heart. it's good, it's healthy for us to confess to one another. We don't have to confess all of our sin, but there are sins that we deal with, and if we're dealing with them on an ongoing basis, it is good that we confess to one another. I can tell you that when you confess your sins to another believer, there is a communion that happens between two believers. There is a depth that you can't understand. I think there is an intimacy that's only surpassed by the intimacy of a husband and a wife. When you find somebody that you can trust enough to confess your sins to, that will hear your sins, and that will give you the grace of God back, that's a priceless relationship. And confessing our sins and repentance is a priceless gift we receive from God. I pray that each one of us will seriously consider those things. Are we a kind of people that others find approachable? Are we a kind of people that see our sin greater than the sin in other people? Do we exhibit grace in our life? Is that projected from us in everything that we do? because that fosters Christian relationship and Christian repentance and the working of the Spirit in people's lives. That gift was paid for at a great price. And as we look this morning at how precious we are to a loving God, As we've seen in Joel, how precious the people of Joel were to God and how precious we are that he would give his son so that we might have communion with him, that we might know him, we might have fellowship with him. There's a contrast to that. This will be our last message in Joel in a few months. but I just wanna whet your appetite a bit. In this next passage, there are five words that I find the most fearful words anything in creation could ever hear. And if I heard them, I think I would just implode and vaporize because there's nowhere to go, there's nowhere to hide. Verse four of chapter three. God is about to judge the nations. And here are those five words. What are you to me? Those are frightening words to hear. God says he will have mercy on whom he will have mercy. and it is for his glory. And we will see next time how judgment glorifies God and how people are known. God makes himself known through judgment. And those are harsh words of judgment. If you read through Ezekiel, I believe 70 or 72 times in that book, there's a reference to God doing something so you might know me. And not all of that is blessing. Many of it is judgment. The next time we will see how God makes himself known and is glorified through judgment. Please pray with me. Father, we are your people and we know that we are precious to you, precious beyond belief. And your church is precious in our ability to come before a holy God with sin in our hearts, sin in our minds, sin in our eyes, and confess that sin and repent of that sin from our heart, that you are a God who loves us. You love us so much that no price was too great, not even the price of your son. Help us to see that gift. Help us to take advantage of that gift on a regular basis. Help us to praise you for the good things in our life. And never forget the giver. Father, help us to be instruments of repentance. Help your spirit to work in our lives that we might project grace, that we might project forgiveness, that others might be willing to confess their sin and to experience your forgiveness. We thank you for the lessons of Joel. We thank you for the great gift of salvation and great gift of repentance. Father, we ask all these things in your son's name. Amen.