We are, of course, working our way through the minor profits, just a one-week survey of each of the 12 of them. And they are, and of course there's a lot of possibility about the dates of each and every one of them. Some of them are easy to place within a broad time frame and, you know, because the specific king is mentioned or the specific event is mentioned. Others like the one we have before us this evening, is of virtually unknown date and therefore there's much controversy or not, I don't want to say, I don't mean controversy, but much conversation and speculation about what those dates are. And where I was really going with all of that is that they, you know, obviously I'm not dealing with them in their sequence in the Old Testament, but their sequence in the Old Testament is approximately chronological, and of course you know depending on where you would place them there might be some variation. So in any event, let's pray, and we're going to just dive right in this evening. God, we thank you that we have your word, and we're confident Lord that what we have is your word to us. breathed out by your spirit, superintended, divinely preserved, significant not just for us in the 21st century but for all of your people from the moment of its writing. We thank you that we have that as an anchor. What we also have, Lord, are many uncertainties about the specific meanings that we read. And we pray, Lord, that your spirit would guide us into the truth of that word, that you would help me to not misrepresent you in any way of what you say or mean. I put your blessing on this time in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, as we've been doing, we'll work our way through the little outline sheet that you have. I will just mention to you right at the outset that it is, for the most part, pretty slim pickings. If you look at chapter 1 and verse number 1, the word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel. And as you have probably noticed, at least I hope you've noticed by now, the first verse, or perhaps the first two verses, give us that important information. Who the prophet is, and where he is, and what he's doing, and what is going on, and we have none of that. I think that some of the ambiguity of this book is deliberate. Some of it no doubt is the result of our own humanity and our lack of knowledge about exactly what's going on in the time frame, but I think that there is some deliberate ambiguity to this book that the kind of details that might satisfy our curiosity about exactly when it was written and everything are absent because we tend to get bogged down in those kind of things and we tend to lose our focus. I would propose to you that the overarching theme of the Jola book is that God is sovereign and is bringing about his day, and that Joel functions in kind of a big picture sense more than in a minutia kind of sense. So let's begin working through our little outline. Chronologically, Joel is perhaps the most difficult Joel and Obadiah are the two of the minor prophets who are the most difficult books to date. And in fact there are, if you were to do, you know, if you were to give yourself to reading those kinds of things, you would discover that there are four different time periods argued for the dating of Joel. And obviously it cannot be all four. Joel cannot have preached in all four of these times. Some people argue that the book of Joel is actually one of the earliest of the prophets, that his ministry predates the Babylonian invasion and it even predates the Assyrian invasion, and the reason for that is that neither of these nations are mentioned. That's one of the arguments. There's no mention of Israel's historic enemies, the catastrophic enemies, the Assyrians and the Babylonians. But again, I would argue that this kind of detail, while important in many ways, is not important to convey the meaning of Joel. Then, okay, so that would place it, if you recall, that would put us somewhere around 800 BC, give or take. Okay, and I really would encourage you just to kind of have tucked away in your mind, you know, some important centuries. The 800s, the 700s, the 500s. Those are important. I mean, The northern tribes of Israel go out of existence in the 700s, so you've got the 800-700 period of time, one critical time period. The Babylonians come in 600, take the nation captive 586, there's another important time. Then we have 70 years of captivity, so you get into the 500, early 500, and the 400. So some folks advocate a very early position for Joel prior to the Babylonian or the Assyrian invasion, maybe 800 BC. Others take it all the way to the exile, after the exile. So they pass over not a few years, but a few centuries, and they argue that Joel didn't come along till after the Assyrians, and after the Babylonians, and after the exile, and after the restoration, and within that framework You have people who argue early and late, and we're not going to get into all that. You can imagine, folks, you could give a great deal of time to chasing this down. Some people argue for early in the captivity, others for a later time in the exile. One point I'm going to make that I'm going to argue adamantly is that some temple is standing. So you can't take Joel away from the existence of a temple. And then there is finally, fourthly, those who argue that it came after the Assyrian invasion, but prior to the Babylonian captivity. And I guess if you squeezed me on it, that would be where I would be the most comfortable that it is a very close to the Babylonian assault that will end in the destruction of the temple. But there are statements made throughout the book that people used to defend all four positions. And one of the major problems that we have in dating and really explaining the Book of Joel is that it revolves around what we would call a natural disaster, a plague of locusts, that we are hard-pressed to find in any other Israeli literature. It's not found any other place, it's not found in the Kings, it's not found in the Chronicles, and that would be to me one of the reasons why I would place it very close to the Babylonian captivity because there are 70 years there in which the nation of Israel is virtually silent. with reference to its writing and its literature, but again that's just me. We do know that the temple is in existence, which means that it is before 586 BC, because it was in 586 that Nebuchadnezzar came in and dismantled the temple, or it's somewhere around 520 to 515 BC because that was when Ezra built his temple. and what is known historically as Second Temple period, Second Temple period. Not Solomon's but Ezra's. So there's the time frame, all right? Good and settled, got it anchored there. There'll be a quiz at the end of the service tonight. And you will, we will vote on when Joel wrote. If you have a Schofield Bible, and I don't know how many of you do, but Schofield dates it very early. As I look at it, it says 800 BC. So I mean he's going to put him back there prior even to Jonah on the prophets. So there's the chronology. From there we move on of course number two to the biography. Who is Joel? We don't know. Who's his dad? We don't know. The only thing we know for sure is that the word Joel means Jehovah is God. That's his name, Jehovah is God. Who he was, where he came from, the significance of his father, we have no biblical idea. So we deal with that pretty quickly. Geographically it most certainly deals with the southern tribe of Judah. It is talking about the temple and the temple was in Jerusalem. If you look at chapter 3 and verse number 1 very quickly, for behold in those days and in that time when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem." Its focus is on the southern tribe by the point of time of Joel and this, you know, I guess to me this would be one of the possibilities why it would not be dealing with the north of the Assyrians in any way because that has come and gone. So chronologically We are uncertain biographically, we are uncertain geographically, most definitely to the southern of the two nations, the divided nation. And that brings us to number four, the national situation. One of the other interesting features of the book of Joel is the absence of sin lists. Sin lists are relatively common in the prophets. You're doing A and you're doing B and you're doing C and you're doing D and you're doing E and you're doing F and therefore the judgment of the Lord is involved. There are clearly a couple of references to sinfulness in the nation. For instance if you look at chapter 1 and verse number 5. This is a condemnation. not any kind of a celebration. Awake, ye drunkards, and weep and howl, all you drinkers of wine, because of the new wine, for it is cut off from your mouth." So Joel certainly makes reference to the existence of drunkenness, and certainly everything that goes with it within the nation. If you look down at chapter 2 and verse number 13, as always the people are characterized by a spiritual indifference, which by the way should never be construed as the absence of external practices. They did most of the things that God told them to do, they just didn't give a rip about God. And so you have this kind of command, verse number 13 chapter 2, rend your heart, tear your heart not your garment. Right? They were big on wearing uncomfortable clothing, inflicting misery on their bodies. They were big on these ostentatious displays of grief by tearing their clothes and covering themselves in dust and ashes. And God says, you know that's really kind of stupid if your heart is hard and obstinate. rend your heart, not your garments, turn unto the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil. We'll come back to that verse, it's a critical dimension in the book. But again, and I would argue that this is deliberate on the part of God, that he is occupied with a larger picture than the list of sins going on in Judaea at the time. Again, not that they're unimportant, but he has men he has used to highlight those. Joel is simply not that man. Joel is writing. I mean here's maybe a little bit of the difference, and I want to be careful because it's really a, it's a really really really fine line. Every prophet writes about God. Some prophets write about God and the nation extensively. Joel writes about God almost exclusively, as if everything else is simply the canvas upon which God is going to paint, and all of our attention is upon God and his painting, and not about any of those other things. That would be my take with that. Joel is, as I think I mentioned, very much a big picture kind of prophet. Three chapters, large picture with God. So there's the national situation. The nation is in some kind of a distress, and we're going to get to that, we're going to come to that now as we begin to talk about the Old Testament content. The nation is in some kind of a distress, and so let's transition into that. But we can't place the time, you know, it is not unless you turn this natural disaster into a metaphor for the Babylonians, which most conservative commentators are unwilling to do. It is dealing with a literal, natural phenomenon, a plague of locusts, and not with, again, a nation. And, you know, you might conclude, well, I think that the locusts are a metaphor for Babylon. and they may very well be, but you would be clearly in the minority in holding to that position. So let's deal with the book in its Old Testament context. If you wanted to outline the book it falls into two sections, two messages, or what are sometimes called oracles. The first one is chapter 1 verse number 2 all the way through chapter 2 and verse number 27. That is one theme, if you will, that Joel is dealing with. If you look at verse number 28 it's obvious that there is a shift in the dimension of Joel's message and it shall come to pass afterward. And chapter 2 verse 28 through the end of the book is its own section. Now, I'm just going to mention this for those of you who would like to do a little more in-depth study on your own. Within each of those two sections, As you, if you work your way through the first part, chapter 1 verse 2 through chapter 2 verse 27, you would find that Joel works his way through and then he reaches a point and then he kind of mirrors himself in that. And as you work your way through Joel chapter 2, the second section, 28 through the end of the book, you would discover that he does the same kind of thing. So there's a repetition, and it's not just a repetition, it's almost a literal kind of a redoing, a mirroring of it. We're not going to get into that. Joel is also a very poetic prophet. and he uses a lot of Hebrew parallelism poetry, and you know our poetry of course passed a rhyme. But Hebrew poetry doesn't have to rhyme. It employs a variety of what's called parallelism, where it matches ideas or plays words against each other. It's a completely different form of poetry. I would point out, however, that just because it's poetry doesn't mean it's fiction. So we are going to treat the locusts as real locusts in the acknowledging that that presents to us certain historical dilemmas. But we're just going to have to leave them as historical dilemmas. So the first section, chapter 1 verse number 2 through chapter 2 verse number 27. I'm going to give it this title, God's War Against His Own People Because of Their Sins. God's War Against His Own People Because of Their Sins. In chapter 1 verses 2 through 4 we have a plague of epic proportions, and this is part of the dilemma, is that God says I'm bringing a plague there's never been anything like it, and you'll never forget it, and yet we can't find anybody else who apparently knew about it. Which is one of the reasons that a very minority group of people turn it into a metaphor for the Babylonians. But I don't know that I'm totally comfortable there, and I would point out to you that we're still passing it along as factual information, so it hasn't entirely reached the dustbin of history. Verse number two, hear this ye old men, Give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land, hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers? Has there ever been anything like this, is God's question. Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation. Don't forget, there's never been anything like it. That which the palmer worm hath left hath the locust eaten, and that which the locust hath left hath the canker worm eaten. and that which the canker worm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten." We're again in a little bit of a dilemma here over the exact meaning of these words. The palmer worm is sometimes called the devouring locust. I think the best way to understand this, folks, is to think of these insects in all of their stages. that they are taking the full brunt of a natural disaster. The palmer worm and the locusts and the canker worm and the caterpillar. So, I mean, you've got them breeding and you've got larva and, I mean, you've just got everything imaginable passing through the land. And to us we go, you've got to be kidding, but you can find, I actually have some pictures, but I'm sure you can find them on Google, of plagues of locusts in modern-day Africa where the sky is virtually black as they swarm. The consequence of these locusts is that the entire land is devastated. Verse number seven, he hath laid my vine, I want to deal with verse number six, For a nation has come up upon my land, strong and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion. And obviously you have the poetry there. And this would be one of the reasons that some folks might argue because of the word nation that this is a metaphor for Babylon. But again, I don't think so. I think it's a reference to the swarm and most even, you know, conservative scholars, you know, guys who write on this thing, that would be their conclusion. Verse number seven, he hath laid my vine waste and barked my fig tree, just peeled the bark off of the trees. He hath made it clean bare and cast it away, the branches thereof are made white. Verse number nine, the meat offering, which is the meal, the grain, and the drink offering is cut off from the house of the Lord. Why is that? Because there's nothing to offer. There is no food. They have consumed everything. And so the priests, the Lord's ministers, mourn. Verse 10, the field is wasted, the land mourneth, for the corn is wasted, the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth. Be ashamed, O ye husbandmen, howl, O ye vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley, because the harvest of the field is perished, the vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth, the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, the apple tree, even all the trees of the field are withered, because joy is withered away from the sons of men. God just brought this plague upon plague, and when you think through folks, this is obviously a plague of some extensive duration that it has covered a variety of growing seasons, and historically God has brought some kind of devastation, but it's been relatively localized. It has destroyed one crop, but in a few months there will be another crop. But this is a national disaster the likes of which no one has ever seen. humiliated the farmers. It has devastated the religious entity. And when you get down to verse number 15, alas for the day, for the day of the Lord is at hand. And this is part of the gist of the message, that the day of the Lord is coming. And what God does folks, What God does is He brings these kinds of things, we're going to come back to this in a moment, He brings these kind of massive events that are localized and He records them and then He calls subsequent generations of people to observe that so that they get some idea of the total destruction that is coming. So what I'm getting at here is that the day of the Lord in verse number 15 is not a reference to the coming day of the Lord. It is a localized Day of the Lord. It is Day of the Lord in abbreviated form. Verse 15, Alas for the day, for the day of the Lord is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come. So this devastation that they're discussing is the result of God, and that's why I said we'll call this section God's War Against His Own People. This is God impoverishing his own Jewish people. And even the animals are afflicted. Verse 18, how do the beasts groan? The herds of cattle are perplexed because they have no pasture. Yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate. And that's an important verse folks because I think it helps to establish the idea that we're talking here about a literal plague of locusts. not a metaphorical invasion of Babylonians. This is, in the parlance we would use, a natural disaster that is the hand of God upon his own people. In chapter 2 you have the same event described again, this time in more heavily poetic language. And I would just remind you that one of the ways that the Hebrew language, which is, by the way, the oldest known language, one of the ways that it emphasizes something is by its repetition. It says things over and over again. In fact, oftentimes it will use the same verb twice in a row, as God literally said to Adam about eating the fruit in the Garden of Eden. We read, you shall surely die. There's nothing wrong with translating that into English. What God said to Adam was, death you will die. He's emphasizing, and this is being emphasized here. So chapter 2 and verse number 1, blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain. Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble. For the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at his hand, a day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains. great people and strong there hath not been ever the like neither shall be any more after it even to the years of many generations." Which I pointed out to you folks, this parallels, this mirrors chapter 1 verses 2, 3, 4. It is God's war this plague of locusts come in like a fire, verse 3, a fire devoureth before them and behind them a flame burneth. The land is as the Garden of Eden before them and behind them a desolate wilderness. Right? I told you this before, we had friends in our home church, right, and we hadn't been saved very long. He took a job with Ford Motor Company. They moved from Atlanta, Georgia, their home, to Detroit, Michigan area, and we became friends, and I was at their house one evening and talking with his wife, and she was a dear, sweet, southern lady. Leafy was gone somewhere, because I was over there, and she had cooked supper, and I said to her, Marcia, tell me about General William Sherman. And she just said, he's an arsonist. Because if you're from the South, and he burned his way to the Atlantic Ocean, that's what you would call him. As the Garden of Eden in front, and when the plague passes through, it is a desert. as cleanly as if it had been burned by fire." Again, I think not a new event, but a re-description. They look like an invading army in verse number four down through verse number ten. They are disciplined. They are loud. They are unstoppable. They are God's army of locusts. It is the day of the Lord. It is a day of horrific judgment. waged on God's own people. And by the way folks, we never want to lose sight of that because all of that is a preview of the judgment that is going to come on Christ. There is no deliverance for us unless God executes fierce judgment. Christ took it. He's our substitute. That's the point. And now we see in verse number 11 chapter 2, and the Lord shall utter his voice before his army, for his camp is very great, for he is strong that executeth his word. For the day of the Lord is great and very terrible, and who can abide it? So once again this is God's war, these plague of locusts are God's army, and they're being wielded upon God's people. And so in chapter 2 verses 12 down through 17 now, God has a word for Judah. And this is one of the reasons that some people date the book relatively early. What does God say now to these people? Well, he speaks to them in language that he doesn't use. when it comes to the invasion of Babylonians. I mean you read about Josiah who was the last king before the Babylonians came, and God says in essence Josiah was a great king and a godly man, but it was to no avail. I had already made up my mind by the time Josiah came. He wasn't going to change anything. But here there is a change. Chapter 2 verse 12, Therefore also now saith the Lord, Turn ye even to me with your heart, with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning. Rend your heart, not your garment. Turn unto the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil. 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, blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, those that suck the breasts, let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber and the bride out of her closet, Let the priests, the minister of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar. Let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them. Wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God? Then will the Lord be jealous for his land and pity his people. yea the Lord will answer and say unto his people behold I will send you corn and wine and oil and you shall be satisfied therewith and I will no more make you a reproach among the heathen. So did that happen or is that a future promise and we go round and round and we speculate and we question and we debate I don't mean in an ugly sense but we don't know. That is the promise. We do know what God's ultimate goal is. Verse number 25 through verse number 27, the end of the first section, God's war against his people. What is the point of the war? Why will God do this to his people? He is trying to accomplish something. I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the canker worm and the caterpillar and the palmer worm, my great army which I sent among you and ye shall eat in plenty and be satisfied and praise the name of the Lord your God. that hath dealt wondrously with you, and my people shall never be ashamed. And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God, and none else, and my people shall never be ashamed." That's the goal. And God is willing to do whatever it takes to get his people to that point. And I would propose, folks, that he is still willing to do that. That he is still willing to do whatever it takes to get his people to admit from their hearts that he is the Lord, and they will submit themselves to him. From there we move on to chapter 2 and verse number 28 through the end of the book, the second section which I would title, God's War Against His Enemies. God wages war against his people and God wages war against his enemies. Something comes before that, verse 28, it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions, and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit. There is folks a long gap. Your Bible doesn't say that. But you're living in it. You are living in between Joel 2.29 and Joel 2.30. Joel 2.28-29 obviously was Pentecost. Joel 2.30 is the Tribulation. Billions of people have lived and died in between those two verses. And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke. You know folks, God is always on time, he's never late, but God is not time obsessed like we are, he's eternal. To him it literally is all the same. So to squeeze together a couple of verses that have at least 2,000 years in between them just poses no problems at all to him. To us it's a great moral quandary. How could you do that? To God it's no quandary at all. How could I do what? One is as fulfilled as the other to me. So what is coming before? There is coming a period of time of blessing and unusual spiritual phenomena and all who call upon the name of the Lord will be delivered. There will be prior to the great day of the Lord that is coming this wonderful period of time in which God's graciousness, not his judgment, will be the focus. Then in chapter 3, the judgment comes. For behold, in those days and in that time when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah, I will also gather all nations, will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations and parted my land. And they have cast lots for my people and have given a boy for an harlot and sold a girl for wine that they might drink. Yea, and what have ye to do with me, O Tyre and Zida, and all the coast of Palestine? Will ye render me a recompense? And if ye recompense me swiftly and speedily, will I return your recompense upon your own head? Because ye have taken my silver and my gold, and have carried into your temples my goodly pleasant things. The children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians, that ye might remove them far from their border. Behold, I will raise them out of the place where you have sold them, and will return your recompense upon your own head. And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of Judah, the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off, for the Lord hath spoken it." God will gather the nations who will give an account to God. for the way they have treated his people." And this passage, folks, is just laden with observances of the sovereignty of God. Verse 1 of chapter 3, I will bring them again. Verse 2, I will gather. Verse 2, my heritage, my heritage. Verse 3, my people. Verse 5, my silver. Folks, no matter how dark it gets politically, economically, in the world, it is still God's. and he still rules it absolutely. And in chapter 3 verse 9 on down through 15 God will gather everybody to war. Verse 9, proclaiming this among the Gentiles, that's us, the nations, prepare war. Wake up the mighty men. Let all the men of war draw near. Let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords, your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weak say, I am strong. Assemble yourselves and come, all ye heathen. Gather yourselves together round about. Thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. Let the heathen be awakened and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat. For there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. We are looking down folks now, we're looking towards Armageddon, that great day when all the nations of the world will march together to make war on Israel and Israel's king. It is called, verse number 14, the Valley of Decision. Multitudes, multitudes in the Valley of Decision. And I just got to tell you folks we have done a horrific injustice to that verse to preach it as an evangelistic call. Not that people, not that there's not a time for evangelism, because there is at the end of chapter 2. I just want you to understand, folks, that the Valley of Decision is not a great sermon title and a plea for the multitudes of kids at camp. You're in the Valley of Decision. The Valley of Decision is, think of it this way, it is the Valley of Verdict. Go read the account of Armageddon, folks. Nobody gets saved in Armageddon. Armageddon is a bloodbath. Armageddon is a slaughter. Armageddon turns the rivers red with human blood. Armageddon is described in Isaiah 63 of Jesus. Who are you in the blood-spattered garment? You are covered in blood. Who are you? I am the Lord and I have just avenged me of mine enemies. The valley of decision, folks, is the valley of God's decision. The verdict is read, the sentence is executed. That's the meaning. Verse 16, the Lord also shall roar out of Zion 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. What's going to happen, folks, what's going to happen at that very end? That's when Jesus physically returns to earth, and he doesn't come to Omaha, Nebraska, and he doesn't come to New York City. He goes to Jerusalem, and he plants his feet on the mountains, and the mountains split, and the earthquakes, and the Lord opens his mouth, and the nations are destroyed. and he will be the hope. And at that moment, in that day according to Zechariah, at that specific moment the entire remnant of Jewish people will get saved at one time. That is the prophetic picture. So then finally, quickly, what is the New Testament use and application? Well obviously chapter 2 verse 28 through 32 are quoted by Peter in Acts chapter 2 verse 16 through 21. Joel said afterwards this is going to happen. Peter said here we are. This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel. Romans 10.13 is a quote from Joel 2.32. I mean it is one of the great evangelistic verses in all the Bible. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. It's predicted right there Joel chapter 2 verse 32. The events described in chapter 3 are just like those described in Armageddon, Revelation 16, 16. And again folks, whether it's an Old Testament setting or a New Testament setting, the gist is that God is in control of the earth, and he brings judgment upon his people to get their attention, and he does, and we contend with that, and we should take heed to that and not be obtuse about it.