Joel 1-3
Thursday Evening Bible Study
Introduction
The book was written around 835 BC, during the days of young King Jehoash (835-796), who became king when he was seven years old (2 Kings 11:21). This was very close to the time of the ministry of Elisha.
The prophecy came when the land was hit by an invasion of locusts, followed by a drought. Joel saw this as a punishment for the sins of the people.
He also saw this invasion as a picture of a bigger invasion, one that would come during a time known as “the day of the LORD”.
As we’ve been seeing in many of the Old Testament prophets, there will be times in this book when prophecies will be flipping back and forth through time. There will be aspects of this book that will related to Joel’s day. There will be aspects that will be fulfilled in the times of the New Testament. There are aspects that are still around the corner for us.
Prophetic telescoping – where a prophecy skips through time at the drop of a comma.
Double fulfillment – where a prophecy may have more than one fulfillment.
Joel 1
1:1 – 2:27 The Current Situation
:1 The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.
Joel = “Yahweh is God”
:2 Hear this, you elders, And give ear, all you inhabitants of the land! Has anything like this happened in your days, Or even in the days of your fathers?
:3 Tell your children about it, Let your children tell their children, And their children another generation.
:4 What the chewing locust left, the swarming locust has eaten; What the swarming locust left, the crawling locust has eaten; And what the crawling locust left, the consuming locust has eaten.
Joel mentions just four types of locust, but there are actually LOTS of types of locusts (also called grasshoppers).
The idea is that there are successive clouds of locusts that come and each one eats what it left over from the previous group until everything has been eaten.
The true locust is one of over 5000 species of grasshopper. Locusts travel in huge numbers capable of feeding on and destroying entire fields of cultivated plants and any nearby vegetation. Approaching swarms create an ominous hum and sometimes are large enough to block out sunlight.
A farmer in Madagascar
Locust swarms can destroy crops worth millions of dollars, and—more seriously—trigger famines among subsistence farmers. Working with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, NASA scientists harnessed remote sensing satellites to help predict locust outbreaks. (Photograph Copyright Patrick Bollen)
Locusts can consume roughly their own weight of vegetation each day—swarms of millions will strip crops bare in hours. (Photograph courtesy Compton Tucker, NASA GSFC)
Normally, desert locusts live relatively solitary lives in the arid central
Sahara , Arabia , and Persian
Gulf regions (green). When conditions are right, however, they
form swarms that migrate for thousands of kilometers (yellow). It is these
migrating swarms that form plagues. (Map adapted from The Desert Locust in
Africa and Western Asia: Complexities of War, Politics, Perilous
Terrain, and Development, by Allan Showler)
It’s after the normally arid Sahara receives rain
and the vegetation increases, that the conditions exist for the locusts to
explode in their population and swarm. Today these kinds of conditions are
monitored by satellites.
When the population begins to increase, the normally “solitary” grasshoppers bump up against each other, and their bodies go through a transformation to the “gregarious”. Normally these grasshoppers like to be alone, but when they go through this transformation, they group together in swarms, even giving off a perfume of hormones that attracts other grasshoppers. Their color changes from green to yellow and green.
Sources: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Locusts/locusts.html, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Encyclopedia 2005 © 1993-2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
:5 Awake, you drunkards, and weep; And wail, all you drinkers of wine, Because of the new wine, For it has been cut off from your mouth.
No grapes. No wine. Enough to make a drunk cry.
:6 For a nation has come up against My land, Strong, and without number; His teeth are the teeth of a lion, And he has the fangs of a fierce lion.
What nation? The locusts.
Illustration
A man is sitting at home one evening when the doorbell rings. When he
answers the door, a 6 foot tall cockroach is standing there. The cockroach
immediately punches him between the eyes and scampers off. The next evening,
the man is sitting at home when the doorbell rings. When he answers the door,
the cockroach is there again. This time, it punches him, kicks him and karate
chops him before running away. The third evening, the man is sitting at home
when the doorbell rings. When he answers the door, the cockroach is there yet
again. It leaps at him and stabs him several times before making off. The
gravely injured man manages to crawl to the telephone and summon an ambulance.
He is rushed to intensive care and they save his life. The next morning, the
doctor is doing his rounds. He asks our hero what happened, so the man explains
about the 6 foot cockroach’s attacks, culminating in the near fatal stabbing.
The doctor thinks for a moment and says, “Yes, there is a nasty bug going
around.”
Israel
:7 He has laid waste My vine, And ruined My fig tree; He has stripped it bare and thrown it away; Its branches are made white.
The branches are “white” because they’ve been stripped of all their bark.
:8 Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth For the husband of her youth.
The virgin might have even been engaged, but she never made it to the wedding chapel because her fiancé is dead.
:9 The grain offering and the drink offering Have been cut off from the house of the LORD; The priests mourn, who minister to the LORD.
:10 The field is wasted, The land mourns; For the grain is ruined, The new wine is dried up, The oil fails.
:11 Be ashamed, you farmers, Wail, you vinedressers, For the wheat and the barley; Because the harvest of the field has perished.
:12 The vine has dried up, And the fig tree has withered; The pomegranate tree, The palm tree also, And the apple tree; All the trees of the field are withered; Surely joy has withered away from the sons of men.
:13 Gird yourselves and lament, you priests; Wail, you who minister before the altar; Come, lie all night in sackcloth, You who minister to my God; For the grain offering and the drink offering Are withheld from the house of your God.
Without any crops, there would be no more grain offerings and drink offerings.
:14 Consecrate a fast, Call a sacred assembly; Gather the elders And all the inhabitants of the land Into the house of the LORD your God, And cry out to the LORD.
The priests are to call the people to prayer and fasting. They need to cry out to God for mercy.
:15 Alas for the day! For the day of the LORD is at hand; It shall come as destruction from the Almighty.
the day of the LORD –
This is a special term in the Bible that is used to describe different times when God steps into human history. I found the specific phrase 17 times in the Old Testament (Is. 2:12; 23:6; 13:9; Eze. 13:5; 30:3; Joel 1:15; 2:1; 2:11; 2:31; 3:14; Amos 5:18; 5:20; Oba. 1:15; Zeph 1:7; 1:14; Zech. 14:1; Mal. 4:5). There are at least three ways that the term is used:
1) Historical – to describe when God got involved in the affairs of Israel
2) Double Fulfillment – when an incident in history doubles as a
partial fulfillment of the final “Day of the Lord”, such as the invasion
described in Joel 2:1-11.
3) The Final Day of the Lord – not limited to a single “day”, it covers the period in the future that occurs after the Rapture, the times we refer to as the Great Tribulation, the Second Coming of Christ, and the Millennial reign of Christ on the earth (Isa. 2:12-19; 4:1; Joel 2:30-32; Isa. 4:2; 12; 19:23-25; Jer. 30:7-9).
destruction … Almighty – a play on words in the Hebrew. Destruction (shod) is similar to Almighty (shaddai).
:16 Is not the food cut off before our eyes, Joy and gladness from the house of our God?
:17 The seed shrivels under the clods, Storehouses are in shambles; Barns are broken down, For the grain has withered.
Speaking of a drought.
:18 How the animals groan! The herds of cattle are restless, Because they have no pasture; Even the flocks of sheep suffer punishment.
:19 O LORD, to You I cry out; For fire has devoured the open pastures, And a flame has burned all the trees of the field.
:20 The beasts of the field also cry out to You, For the water brooks are dried up, And fire has devoured the open pastures.
Even the animals suffer from this, even though it came as a result of man’s sin.
Joel 2
:1-11 Future Invasion
:1 Blow the trumpet in Zion
:2 A day of darkness and gloominess, A day of clouds and thick darkness, Like the morning clouds spread over the mountains. A people come, great and strong, The like of whom has never been; Nor will there ever be any such after them, Even for many successive generations.
The plague of locusts in Joel’s day is going to be a picture of another army that will one day invade the land, in the latter days.
:3 A fire devours before them, And behind them a flame burns; The land is like the Garden of Eden before them, And behind them a desolate wilderness; Surely nothing shall escape them.
As this army marches through Israel Eden
:4 Their appearance is like the appearance of horses; And like swift steeds, so they run.
Some have noted that the grasshopper’s head is similar in shape to the head of a horse.
:5 With a noise like chariots Over mountaintops they leap, Like the noise of a flaming fire that devours the stubble, Like a strong people set in battle array.
:6 Before them the people writhe in pain; All faces are drained of color.
:7 They run like mighty men, They climb the wall like men of war; Every one marches in formation, And they do not break ranks.
This is a quality of the locusts:
(Prov 30:27 NKJV) The locusts have no king, Yet they all advance in
ranks;
:8 They do not push one another; Every one marches in his own column. Though they lunge between the weapons, They are not cut down.
:9 They run to and fro in the city, They run on the wall; They climb into the houses, They enter at the windows like a thief.
:10 The earth quakes before them, The heavens tremble; The sun and moon grow dark, And the stars diminish their brightness.
It’s possible that Joel is describing how a locust swarm can even cover up the sun.
What future invasion is Joel referring to?
There are several possibilities. One if the army of “demon-locusts” mentioned in Revelation:
(Rev 9:2-7 NKJV) And he
opened the bottomless pit, and smoke arose out of the pit like the smoke of a
great furnace. So the sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke of the
pit. {3} Then out of the smoke locusts came upon the earth. And to them was
given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. {4} They were commanded
not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green thing, or any tree, but only
those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. {5} And they were
not given authority to kill them, but to torment them for five months. Their
torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man. {6} In those
days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and
death will flee from them. {7} The shape of the locusts was like horses
prepared for battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and
their faces were like the faces of men…
There are certainly a lot of parallels between these demon creatures and the locusts of Joel. Pain, mention of horses, sun darkened …
:11 The LORD gives voice before His army, For His camp is very great; For strong is the One who executes His word. For the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; Who can endure it?
Does this mean that this locust-army is being led by God?
Or is this a separate reference to God’s army, in contrast with this locust-army?
:12-17 Call for Repentance
:12 "Now, therefore," says the LORD, "Turn to Me with all your heart, With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning."
:13 So rend your heart, and not your garments;
Often the Jews would do certain things to show their sorrow – sackcloth, ashes, tearing the clothes …
Lesson
Change of heart
It’s not that the outside is unimportant. John the Baptist had a message for people who never showed any outward change:
(Luke 3:8-14 NKJV)
"Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to
say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I say to you that God
is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. {9} "And even
now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does
not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." {10} So the
people asked him, saying, "What shall we do then?" {11} He answered
and said to them, "He who has two tunics, let him give to him who has
none; and he who has food, let him do likewise." {12} Then tax collectors
also came to be baptized, and said to him, "Teacher, what shall we
do?" {13} And he said to them, "Collect no more than what is
appointed for you." {14} Likewise the soldiers asked him, saying,
"And what shall we do?" So he said to them, "Do not intimidate anyone
or accuse falsely, and be content with your wages."
It’s interesting to think about John – do you remember
what his diet was made of? Locusts and
wild honey.
Some people would be “devastated” by locusts. John ate them for breakfast.
Outward change in important.
But what Joel is saying is that repentance starts on the inside.
The change has to start in the heart.
If you don’t really want to stop looking at pornography, then no matter what you do to stop it, you aren’t going to change.
:13 Return to the LORD your God, For He is gracious and merciful, Slow to anger, and of great kindness; And He relents from doing harm.
This is how God has described Himself (Ex. 34:6)
:14 Who knows if He will turn and relent, And leave a blessing behind Him; A grain offering and a drink offering For the LORD your God?
It’s not an automatic thing that when we repent God will bless. But, “who knows?” God is not obligated. We turn from our sin because it’s the right thing to do, not because we want God to bless us.
:15 Blow the trumpet in Zion
:16 Gather the people, Sanctify the congregation, Assemble the elders, Gather the children and nursing babes; Let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, And the bride from her dressing room.
Everybody must show up for this meeting …
:17 Let the priests, who minister to the LORD, Weep between the porch and the altar; Let them say, "Spare Your people, O LORD, And do not give Your heritage to reproach, That the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'"
Picture the future invasion. I believe Israel
:18-27 God’s response
:18 Then the LORD will be zealous for His land, And pity His people.
:19 The LORD will answer and say to His people, "Behold, I will send you grain and new wine and oil, And you will be satisfied by them; I will no longer make you a reproach among the nations.
:20 "But I will remove far from you the northern army, And will drive him away into a barren and desolate land, With his face toward the eastern sea And his back toward the western sea; His stench will come up, And his foul odor will rise, Because he has done monstrous things."
One of the other possibilities of this invading army is that it could be a description of the invasion mentioned in Ezek. 38-39, where the army comes from the north (like Russia).
(Ezek 38:9 NKJV) "You will ascend, coming like a storm,
covering the land like a cloud, you and all your troops and many peoples with
you."
In that future battle, only 1/6 of the enemy army will survive.
:21 Fear not, O land; Be glad and rejoice, For the LORD has done marvelous things!
:22 Do not be afraid, you beasts of the field; For the open pastures are springing up, And the tree bears its fruit; The fig tree and the vine yield their strength.
:23 Be glad then, you children of Zion
former rain – came in Sept.-Oct.
latter rain – came in March-April.
:24 The threshing floors shall be full of wheat, And the vats shall overflow with new wine and oil.
:25 "So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, The crawling locust, The consuming locust, And the chewing locust, My great army which I sent among you.
It’s not too fun to “lose” things …
A 747 was halfway across the Atlantic when the
captain got on the loudspeaker: “Attention, passengers. We have lost one of our
engines, but we can certainly reach London London
Lesson
Restoration
Illustration
There are years in South Africa South
Africa
-- Ron Hembree in,
Fruits of the Spirit, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1969).
I’m not sure this is something that is promised for every situation we face. If you lose your car in an accident, I’m not sure that God is necessarily obligated to replace the car. But perhaps He will replace it with something more important.
(2 Cor 4:16 -18 NKJV) Therefore we do not lose heart.
Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed
day by day. {17} For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is
working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, {18} while we
do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.
For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen
are eternal.
Illustration
An evangelist told the following story in one of his campaigns. He said, “I
have a friend who during the depression lost a job, a fortune, a wife, and a
home, but tenaciously held to his faith—the only thing he had left. One day he
stopped to watch some men building a stone church. One of them was chiseling a
triangular piece of rock. ‘What are you going to do with that?’ asked my
friend. The workman said, ‘Do you see that little opening way up there near the
spire? Well, I’m shaping this down here so that it will fit up there.’
:26 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 be put to shame.
:27 Then you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel
After the battle of Gog and Magog,
(Ezek 39:28-29 NKJV) 'then they shall know that I am the LORD their
God, who sent them into captivity among the nations, but also brought them back
to their land, and left none of them captive any longer. {29} 'And I will not
hide My face from them anymore; for I shall have poured out My Spirit on the
house of Israel
:2:28 – 3:21 The Future Situation
:28-32 Israel
: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, Your young men shall see visions.
:29 And also on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days.
In Moses’ day, the Holy Spirit was not poured out on too many people.
Moses was having trouble because he was the only one who could make
decisions for the people. To help him with guiding the huge nation, he set up
seventy men to be elders. But even that wasn’t enough. These men needed the
Spirit (Num. 11:24 -29)
So God put His Spirit on these seventy elders. They helped spread the load out.
But Moses prayed for a day when all of God’s people had the Holy Spirit.
That day is now. That day would come with the “New Testament”, the “New Covenant” described in Ezekiel:
(Ezek 36:27 KJV) And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my
statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.
On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was poured out on the apostles in the upper room. When a crowd developed and wondered what was going on, Peter got up to explain:
(Acts 2:14-17 NKJV) But
Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice and said to them,
"Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem
Peter told the crowd that Joel’s prophecy was coming to pass in their day.
Lesson
The Holy Spirit
We are living in these days.
The power of the Holy Spirit is available to all of us.
Have you been filled with the Holy Spirit?
There is too much work to be done by just one or two leaders.
God wants to put His Spirit on all the people.