This file is a collection of posts that I made to Christia on the subject of the book of Joel. The full set of posts is split across three separate files, this being the first.
The content of these posts is supposed to be of practical value as opposed to just more essays on the teachings of Joel. I hope that I have succeeded in demonstrating how relevent this small book is to the life of the Christian Church today. All comments and critiscisms on what I write are welcomed.
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" The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel."
-- Joel 1:1
Joel was one of the so called minor prophets. Minor due to the size of his book, not due to the message he carried. The message of Joel is timeless. In fact, we are not sure when Joel was written. Was he one of the first or one of the last prophets? Who knows. His message was relevant to any time of declension within Israel, and in the same way it is relevant to a time of decline within the church.
Yet Joel did not wake up one morning with a sudden passion to be a prophet. He was not arrested one day with the sudden conviction that Israel was in decline, and promptly walk out and start preaching repentance. Scripture tells us that the word of the LORD came to Joel.
Joel was a man who knew what it was to wait upon God. He must have spent hours of each day in prayer and weeks in fasting. Joel would have been no stranger to intercession, pouring out his soul to the Lord in prayer.
Joel must have enjoyed a remarkabley close relationship with God to know his voice. How do I know? Because the office of prophet was not an office that Joel could put on as he would a cloak. The office was given by God, imparted to him from the lips of God.
In the church today we have many "prophets". Look more closely at these men though. How many of these self proclaimed prophets were given their office by God? What is the mark of a true prophet?
A prophet does not "strut his stuff" at conferences. He does not stand on national television and proclaim he is a prophet used by God. He does not seek reward upon earth. No, a true prophet is one who is rejected by men. He is ridiculed or beaten down. Rejected and despised.
Name one biblical prophet that was not.
A true prophet is also an intercessor whose walk with God is so close that when God speaks to him he will be able to stand up and say "The word of the LORD came to me." He will not say "I think God says this", and most importantly of all, he will never be wrong.
Joel was never wrong. His prophecies were the words of God spoken through him. If Joel had prophesied without God having spoken to him then he would have been in error, and he would have been killed, for such was the lawful penalty of all false prophets.
A woman in the Hebrides prophesied during the 1950's revival on those islands. She said that Duncan Campbell would preach on her island and there would be revival. Mr Campbell disagreed but the woman merely said:
"If you were as close to God as you should be, you would hear His voice too."
Mr Campbell accepted the rebuke and preached on the island and revival erupted that very night.
What of us? Are we close enough to God to know his voice? Are we patient enough to await his word? Are we courageous enough to enter the battle? are we adults in Christ who are willing to wrestle with God in prayer until he blesses us? Are we willing to be made vulnerable by Him?
Jacob wrestled with God until God would bless him (and in the process God made him vulnerable). So can we wrestle with Him in prayer. So *must* we.
This world knows only a sick church which is more interested in profits then prophets. We have spiritual mentors who adulterate the word with an "airy fairy" gospel which Paul would have disowned at once. The church is ill from its own ease, being lukewarm in its affection for the risen Saviour, paying him lip-service but never prayer service.
Before you throw up hands in horror and flame me for these words, I beg you to read accounts of past blessing. Read of revivals in the church and the way God was with us at those times. Compare the spirituality of those people with our own spirituality. Think about your church prayer meeting and answer me this: When was the last time your whole church gathered together for prayer?
I do not say what I say with venom. I feel no bitterness towards the church, for I am a part of the depravity of the current time. Nevertheless, we can surely never be complacent with our dead formalism or our over- emotionalism. There is an undeniable lack of depth in the church. I repeat, it is undeniable.
Joel must have wrestled with God over feeble and fallen Israel. We must now wrestle with God over the feeble and fallen church.
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"Hear this, you old men, 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?"
--Joel 1:2
What is Joel saying now? He is referring to a plague of locusts that had overrun crops with devastating consequences. Look at verse four - there were four waves of locusts, and by the time all four waves had passed there was absolutely nothing left. The locusts had eaten everything.
Joel saw with a clarity that which had been lost to his contemporaries. He could say without a doubt that this destruction was brought about by the judgement of God. The iniquity of God's people had reached such mammoth proportions that God had poured out his wrath in a manner that had never been seen before.
Joel knew that God was a God of Justice who could not turn a blind eye to the sin of a debased generation, and while he was long suffering, and for many years allowed this situation to continue, there came a point when God shouted from on high *enough is enough* and hurled the plague of locusts upon his people.
Yet God is also a God of love and great mercy. In the midst of the chaos he raised up Joel to declare to the people the means by which they could turn away God's anger; through repentance.
The question we need to ask ourselves is this: Is God happy with the church today? Is God pleased with what we are doing? Or is he angry?
I believe that God looks at today's church with long-suffering patience and gracious mercy. He looks upon an adulterated gospel and ministers many of whom have been caught in sinful acts, even adultery. He looks at Christians (including our leaders) who do not pray.
A recent (1983) survey of ministers in an evangelical Bible College revealed that 95 percent of them admitted to having *no* devotional life.
Another survey of all Christians revealed that a similar proportion of these considered themselves to be "babes in Christ".
Imagine if your country went to war and a survey of soldiers revealed that they were all children, that the Generals wore baby-grow suits.
What a wonderful church we must be to God when he looks at us but never hears from us. He sees us preferring our sins of pride and lust, theft and deceit, materialism and injustice, to our ministries of prayer and worship; truth, justice and mercy.
We love to talk of our beliefs, but what we say in public does not match up with our secret devotional life (and here I am speaking personally too. Oftentimes I have expounded my beliefs happily and been oh so ready to debate and argue my faith, but when all is done and I turn to private devotion to God I have proved myself dry and barren. I have discovered the truth of the saying that "failing here, we fail everywhere.")
We claim God is all sufficient for us but we still look to our money for our support. We claim God is love and that we love him, but we never talk to this number one love in our lives! We claim that we have a heart for this lost and dying world, and point to our occasional arguments of theology as support, but we never once did spend a night in prayer for these people.
Imagine that someone you claim to love is gravely ill. This person will not last the night without your help. Would you help them? Of course. If it were necessary you would have your blood sucked from your body and pumped into theirs. If you truly loved them you would give them not only your time but your very life energy to assist them.
Why, oh why then do we rest easy in our beds when this world is waltzing its way through the twilight hours on the gem encrusted, oh so sweet road to an eternity of damnation in hell? How can we be dry eyed about just one soul who falls into a lost eternity? Why have we *no* concern for these people? (or is a thirty second prayer counted as concern now?)
Jesus asked his disciples to wait up with him one night to pray in Gethsemene, but they fell asleep. Our Lord's most traumatic moments but the disciples preferred their bedside to our master's side. How sad.
But if we were in Gethsemene, from the evidence of our lives I would say that we would be sleeping too. Will we be roused now? Will we watch and pray with our Lord and Saviour? Or are we too comfortable. To needy of our warm and soft beds?
We are pitifully far from God at this time. God is holding back his anger, but how much longer? How can we forestall God's anger? I know only one way:
Repentance.
We need to repent of our failings and turn to God with sincerity. We need to do those things we have neglected so long. Don't look at other Christians to find God's minimum standard for your life. Turn to God fully and do *everything* within your power to please him, and then maybe we can pray:
Lord, I've heard of your fame, and I stand in awe of your deeds. O Lord, renew these deeds in our time, and in your anger, Lord, remember mercy.
In your anger, Lord, remember mercy.
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"Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation."
--Joel 1:3
I have said before that the message of Joel is timeless, and now we see that Joel knew this too. Joel knew that we humans forget easily and we quickly lose sight of all that God has done for us. We also quickly forget his judgements on us when we go astray. That is why Joel says "tell your children." He knows that very soon we will forget the judgement of the locusts and return to our evil ways.
If you do not believe this to be so, then look at the Christian church. We see a continual process of revival followed by decline, revival and then decline. God pours out his Spirit upon us and we see great and mighty things but we quickly forget that this revival came about only because we were sick and tired of a lifeless church that had lost the power of God's Spirit because we had lost touch with God. We quickly lose touch with him again and fall into a new state of decline.
America, Britain, Australia and most of the western world have not seen a true revival of religion for many years. Not within my lifetime certainly. It is hardly surprising that we no longer know what is meant by a revived church.
We are slipping into a terminal decay. Our society is falling apart and our churches are blindly following. We need a revival or we will die.
What then is a revived church?
The answer may be found if we look at Church history. If we took seriously the onus that is upon us to pass on the stories of God's blessing from generation to generation, then maybe we would not need ask the question, but we have come to a stage in Christian life where we have forgotten what blessing is, and have forgotten why it came about. We have also forgotten why the blessing was needed - because the churches before revival were dead and formal, and many members (especially younger ones) were worldly and demonstarted a shallowness of faith. Preaching was "popular" in the worst sense. In many ways it sounds exactly the same as the church today.
So again, what is a revived church?
A revived church is a church which is experiencing revival. A revival is a fresh outpouring of God, the Holy Spirit, in Pentecostal power.
One writer described revival as "a people saturated with God." If we were experiencing revival, we would know the Joy of God that we see in the Bible. We would experience God in our lives in a powerful and experiential way. We would know the true meaning of Pentecost.
In times of revival the church has been powerful and effective. Evangelism has met with astounding success, and the power of God has been evident within the church to an extent that even unbelievers have had to step back in awe (and often flee away).
Newspaper headlines for 1904/5 in Wales report that national festivals had to be abandoned, football matches were scrapped, public houses were closed due to lack of support and convictions for offenses were reduced by two thirds.
The police were inundated with returned stolen goods. They were over-run by people confessing past crimes.
In New England in one revival 15% of the population were turned to Christ in three months. In 1904 in Wales 100,000 people turned to Christ in a similar amount of time and similar figures are true for the 1859 revival as well as the ten other revivals of 19th century Wales.
Observers of revivals speak of the overwelming atmosphere of peace which pervades whole towns. Unbelievers fall down in the streets under the convicting presence of God. One man fled the town of Rhos, only to be converted to Christ in the surrounding mountains.
We are talking about much more then emotional people being overcome in a wave of hysteria. Such views could not be further from the truth. We are talking about the powerful sense of God's Spirit pervading our lives.
These days we see a few people on fire for God, but when revival comes those people will no longer be the exception, but the norm.
I urge everyone of you who loves God to read at least *one* book on revival. Just one book will not take long, but it could save the life of your nation.
Choose a revival local to your area, or a general overview of several revivals. Read the accounts, searching for lessons that could be taught to our generation. All works of God are distinctive and different, but they all have some common themes and lessons for us now.
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"Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth."
--Joel 1:5
Many plentiful harvests had caused the people of Judah to become content. They had become drinkers of wine, and were used to having plenty of it. Thus, when the wine was cut off from them by the devastation of the locusts, they would have been forced to wake up to the cold reality that they had hidden from in their alcoholic haze - that they had departed far from God.
Are we in a haze within the church? Not an alcoholic one but an emotional one. Are we encouraged to seek emotional experiences of God? Are we told that as Christians we should be happy? Are we told that Christ will pour out material blessings on those who follow him?
How much of our church life is trying to capture this subjective emotional experience? How much more is trying to get God to bless us?
The truth of the matter is that we have lost our sense of awe at the majesty of God. We have substituted God's image with a poor reflection of what we want Him to be. We have turned away from the living God and put in his place such a feeble and paltry image as to be totally unworthy of any man's worship.
There is a teaching that I have heard which suggests that when we do things which please God then he will bless us in various ways. An example is tithing. We are encouraged to tithe, because if we do then God will repay all that we give him and more. Scripture is used to support this (such as "he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully"), but such a gospel (commonly called the prosperity gospel) is completely contrary to the gospel of Christ.
We are encouraged to believe that our good fortune is God's divine seal of approval. We forget that some of the greatest men of God had no money whatsoever.
God does reward the faithful, but not necessarily in material things. He does promise to supply our every need, but not our every whim and want.
And what of the emotional excess of the charismatic movement? Why is it that there is so little depth in the movement? Is it because we are encouraged to run after experience rather then God?
Are we encouraged to seek the gifts whilst ignoring the giver?
I wonder.
Where are God's giants? Where are the prophets of God who would denounce this heresy? Where are the preachers who will preach the gospel of Christ? The gospel that Paul would have recognized as true?
Where are the men who can say "Be a follower of me, as I am of Christ?"
There are a few such men, but it is a pitiful few, and they are largely ignored whilst the manipulators who preach their gospel of wealth, ease and glorious emotional experience continue to see the gullible masses following them like a flock of sheep on the road to hell.
I was glad to hear of a television program exposing the fraud of so many of these false preachers, and I was encouraged to hear calls for the church to denounce such men, but the calls are not yet loud enough.
Away with these evildoers, men of wealth and greed, false miraclers and false prophets. Let us have more men of God who will stand against such heresy.
I can agree with Leonard Ravenhill when he says:
Do you wonder that I am embarrassed to be part of the present church which I am sure is an embarrassment to God?
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"There is a conspiracy of her prophets in the midst thereof, like a roaring lion ravening the prey; they have devoured souls; they have taken the treasure and precious things; they have made her many widows in the midst thereof."
--Ezekiel 22:25
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"Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. The meat offering and the drink offering is cut off from the house of the LORD; the priests, the LORD's ministers, mourn. The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth.
"Be ye 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, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men.
"Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God."
--Joel 1:7-13
The plague of locusts would surely be the signal for a time of great mourning. God's people had been at ease, being rich and content with their vats of wine and their abundant crops. When God sent the locusts all this was taken away from them and they were left with nothing.
The people had everything but they left God out. Maybe they did not realize they had done it but God had been ignored until the day of his wrath. When God sent the locusts the people were stripped of all their possesions and forced to realize their spiritual poverty as well as their material poverty.
When they realized how far they were from God, and how great was his wrath then obviously there came a time of mourning. The people looked at their depravity and were ashamed. They looked at the possesions they thought they owned, but which were taken from them, and they wept.
Again, Joel's message is timeless, for we live in a time that knows so little of God's riches in glory. We live in a time which is not blessed. We live in a world divorced from God and a church that is like a spoiled child, always seeking to claim its inheritance, but never willing to give its love in the form of allegiance.
This is not a time for celebration. When we have a Holy Spirit led revival, that will be a time for celebration, but now we live rather in a time of mourning. We should be mourning for the lifeless church, so in need of God's regenerating power. We should mourn for the millions of souls who are heading for a lost eternity without God because the church is too impotent to be able to affect their lives. We should mourn at our own prayerlessness and our own lack of holiness which is acting as such a blockage to the movement of the power of God.
When we emerge from prayer - true intercessory prayer - our eyes should be red-rimmed from tears for the moral depravity in the world and the open fraud, as well as the lifelessnes, within our churches. We should be shedding tears for the lost. Our souls should be heavy within us, weighed down with grief for those who do not know Christ. If the thought of people suffering an eternity in hell when they could spend eternity with our blessed and loving Saviour - and all because of our failure as the body of Christ - does not move us to tears then we should pray first for tears.
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"Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the LORD your God, and cry unto the LORD."
--Joel 1:14
Joel has declared the judgement of the Lord is upon the people. He has called the people to repent of their sins. Now, as a part of that call to repentance he gives practical advice explaining how they must seek the Lord once more.
He has four points here. Firstly he declares, "Sanctify a fast". Fasting has never been a popular subject. It is one of those areas of our spiritual life that we would like to declare an "optional extra". We may have fasted once or twice when the church called a specific day of fasting for an outreach meeting, but for the most part we neglect this important area.
Jesus ranked fasting as equally important as prayer. We can also see from church history that all the great men and women of God had grasped this truth. In today's church we see few people willing to fast, and few great people of God. I wonder sometimes if there might be a connection there.
Of course, the fast in Joel was in response to the aspect of repentance. The people found themselves far from God and thus they needed to repent, and they needed to fast. When Christ was with his disciples we read (in Matthew 9) that Jesus said to those who asked why his disciples were not fasting "Can the children of the bride- chamber mourn when the bridegroom is with them?"
But the bridegroom is not amongst us. Nor is His Spirit present in His Church in power. If He were then we would not need to fast, but we must fast because everywhere there is the travesty of the lifeless church on the one hand and the soul-less church on the other.
Joel's second point was the need to call a solemn assembly. This, I think, would translate to a prayer meeting today. Not a happy-clappy and exuberant praise "party", but a solemn assembly calling God in His infinite grace to have mercy upon His people. Praise, of course, is never absent from prayer. What I am trying to say is that we can often get lost in an exuberant excitement which obscures our real purpose which is to wrestle with God over the state of the church, and to ask Him in His mercy to send forth His Spirit once more.
But is prayer alone enough? This brings us to Joel's third point: "gather ... all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the LORD".
You see, the people of Judah had neglected their attendance at the temple, and in so doing they had neither prayed, nor had they heard the word of God. Because they had not heard the word of God they knew not the law, and thus they sinned.
God has given us the Bible that we might know the right way to go. He has given us a light to our path. Shall we do less then follow it?
One man was asked why he constantly read his Bible. "To know all God's commandments to me, that I may follow them." He replied.
Christ set us free from the bondage of the law, but the royal law of scripture is still there for all of us to follow, only out of love for our Lord, and not in order to earn our salvation. Scripture tells us how God wants us to live our lives.
Before Joshua and the people of Israel could cross the Jordan they had to consecrate themselves. When they were consecrated, and they had made real effort to change and to conform to God's will for them, then they were able to cross into the promised land.
Lastly Joel calls us to weep. I sincerely believe that weeping should be an integral part of our prayer lives. We should weep over the injustice in the church. We should cry over the lack of God's presence amongst us and we should mourn for those people who are lost and dying without Christ.
Our Christianity needs to get beyond our heads and our lips and touch our hearts. Our souls should be zealous for God and our hearts should be broken over the fact that we know so little of Him.
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"Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come. ... O LORD, to thee will I cry: for the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath burned all the trees of the field."
--Joel 1:15-19
Do we fear the Day of the Lord?
The day of the Lord will be a great and terrible day, when justice is poured forth and God will vindicate his name amongst the nations.
He will also draw his elect unto himself, and we shall know his love and his great mercy.
For this reason, you would expect all Christians to long for the day of his coming. Nevertheless, more often then not (when we are honest with ourselves) the Day fills us with great fear. We fear for relatives who do not know God. We fear the great distress of the last days, but most of all we fear that God will find us unprepared.
Jesus tells the story of the returning bridegroom, recorded in Luke. We are told that those who are prepared for his return when he comes will be blessed, but those who are not prepared will be cursed. Often this parable is used to stir us up to excessive guilt, leading us to be unsure of whether we really have merited salvation, but that was not Christ's intent. We are all saved by grace and not by deeds done by ourselves in righteousness. However, Jesus did tell this story with a serious point in view.
We are called to do deeds worthy of repentance. We are called to bear fruit within our lives. Those Christians who fall short will still be saved, but as through the flames. How sad it will be for those people when they stand before the Lord, and he says "what did you do with the resources that I gave you." And they turn to him and say "Lord, I knew your way was difficult, so I hid the resources and rested in my salvation, knowing that you would take me anyway".
What will be their reward for their service I wonder?
I don't know what rewards there will be in heaven, but I know that I would not want to be in that position before my Creator, Saviour and Judge on that day. I would rather follow his commandments as I find them in his word. I would rather seek his kingdom on earth, and know what it is to take up my cross and follow him.
When revival comes it too will be a time when we cannot rest easy in our churches, comfortable in our salvation. We will be stirred up in such a way that we will have to either follow Christ, or else turn from him.
Revival times are not easy times. Revival times are times when Christians are required to live their beliefs. They are required to follow Christ in every way. They are also times when we will know God's presence amongst us, and that one factor should make us hope for those times more then anything else. If we do not covet the presence of God amongst us then we need him all the more.
What then, shall we still fear the Day of the Lord? If so then you will probably fear revival too. If you are afraid that you would be unready on that Day then you are probably also afraid of the commitment to Christ that is required in times of revival.
Shall we not pray for revival then? If it is such a great and terrible day then why seek it?
Tell me, if you were in the Garden with Adam and Eve, would you still be hiding from God?
Through Christ's sacrifice on the Cross we have the privelege to walk once more with God. Shall we allow the fear of personal holiness keep us from Him? Shall we hide in the bushes of complacency, or shall we seek God where he may be found?
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