GOING THROUGH TOUGH TIMES (JOEL 1:1–2:17)

MESSAGE 1 OF

JOEL

A Sermon by Dr. Jeremy Roberts

GOING THROUGH TOUGH TIMES

PUBLISHED BY DR. JEREMY ROBERTS

Copyright © 2020 Dr. Jeremy Roberts

Preached at Thomasville Road Baptist Church, Tallahassee, FL

1 March 2020

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of

Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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GOING THROUGH TOUGH TIMES JOEL 1:1–2:17

Tucked away toward the end of the Old Testament is the book of

Joel. Although it is referred to as minor prophecy, there is nothing minor

about the prophet Joel as he describes coming back to God. The

theme of his prophecy is that you can come back to God, even

though it seems too late. Joel gives hope, but avoids presumption,

because he does not say you can always come back. The door is open

now; it will shut later.

No book in the Bible has a more unified, simple theme. Joel said that

judgment, in the form of a locust plague, was already moving toward

God's people who had gone away from Him.1 The people had two

1 Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland, General Eds., The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 8 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 313.

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choices. Even at the last moment they could return to God. If they

chose not to return, they would face God Himself in the form of the

locust plague.

It's hard to imagine the reality of a locust plague in the biblical

world.2 I remember a plague of crickets that came and went in Texas

when my wife and I first married. We were awakened one morning

by crickets falling on our face. Our ceiling, that was painted white,

was completely black with crickets. They were everywhere. On the

outside of our apartment, crickets covered the building.

They made a mess, but they left. A biblical locust plague, on the

other hand, created permanent devastation. There were such plagues

in Palestine in 1845, 1865, 1892, 1899, 1904, and in 1915, the worst

of all.

2 Joel C. Gregory, Homesick for God: Fulfilling Our Deepest Longing for Spiritual Reunion (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1990), 70–71.

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That was the year a loud noise was heard before the locusts were

seen. The sun was suddenly darkened. Showers of their excrement

fell from the air. The government issued a proclamation in April of

that year, requiring every man sixteen to sixty years old to gather

eleven pounds of locust eggs daily and deliver them to the officials.

Every leaf was gone from every plant and the bark was pealed from

every tree. The fields were stripped. Arab babies left beneath a tree

were devoured before their screams were heard. In Palestine, a locust

plague means disaster.”3

3 Gregory, 70–71.

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Joel determined his community needed to gather in Jerusalem to hold

a service of lamentation in the temple since there was a plague of

locusts. He addresses the five different groups of people who were

present. Each group is drawn to the way the locust plague hurt them.4

Israelites had a tradition of gathering for special worship services of

national lament as a response to misfortunes they’ve experienced.

Judges 20:26 says, Then all the people of Israel, the whole army, went up and

came to Bethel and wept. They sat there before the LORD and fasted that day

until evening, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the LORD.

4 J. E. Smith, The Minor Prophets. Old Testament Survey Series: Joel 1:2–13 (Joplin, MO: College Press, 1994).

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The awful locust plague preceded Joel’s prophecy.

Joel eventually leads to the point that God is always with His

followers, and they will eventually see His grace and judgment for

God’s enemies. The first chapter, however, is all about the disaster of

the plague of locusts and the need to get on their knees before God.

Joel is a book full of hope and restoration.

Joel 2:25 says, 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.

The heart of this story is that God promises to restore what has been

lost. This book is unfamiliar to most Christians. It is tucked away in a

far corner of the Old Testament where many people rarely spend

time.

I. The Day of the Locusts and the Call to Lament (1:1–18)

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Joel 1:1 says, The word of the LORD that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel:

We don’t know much at all about Joel. We know his father, but we

don’t know when he lived. We don’t know his specific location. What

does matter is that the word of the Lord came to him and that God’s

Word speaks to every time and every place. God spoke to Joel

because of an unprecedented disaster that had come to the promised

land.

Joel 1:2 says, Hear this, you elders; give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has

such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers?

Something had happened that had never been seen before amongst

the people of God. In fact, Joel points out that what happened was

so rare that people would end up telling the story of it to their

children, their children’s children, and even to their great

grandchildren. Nothing like it had ever happened before.

Joel 1:4 teaches what exactly transpired: What the cutting locust left, the

swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has

eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.

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A locust is an insect, 2”–3” long, like a grasshopper.5 When they

come in swarms, they can be devastating. Chemicals make some

difference today, but they’re still a problem, particularly in

Madagascar.6

What Joel describes here is a locust epidemic on an extraordinary

scale.

National Geographic described a locust invasion.7 They said, “At the

end of February, great clouds of locusts began flying into the land

from a northeasterly direction, so that ‘attention was drawn to them

by the sudden darkening of the bright sunshine.’ They came in

enormous numbers, settling on the fields and hillsides. There they

laid eggs in vast numbers (it was calculated that some 600,000 could

come from the eggs planted in thirty-nine square inches of soil, and

that figure involved a 30% loss rate!) Once hatched, the new broods

started crawling across the ground, at a rate of 400 to 600 feet per

day, devouring every scrap of vegetation in their path.”

5 David Noel Freedman and Allen C. Myers, Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 720. 6 Peter Tyson, Madagascar: The Eighth Continent—Life, Death and Discovery in a Lost World (Guilford, CT: The Globe Pequot Press, Inc., 2013), 54. 7 John Whiting, National Geographic Magazine, December 1915.

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Picture a field of corn with its broad green leaves and swelling cobs.

Then, picture a vast army of insects moving line by line through these

plants. All that is left is a whitened, dead stalk that looks like a stump

protruding from the ground.

They move at a rate of 200 yards a day. You could just sit there and

watch the vegetation disappear. You could see everything turn from

green to brown.

When the earth is exposed, they dig a little hole, about six square

inches, and they lay 60,000 eggs in every hole. Then, six weeks later,

another army of these insects begin moving forward.

Picture in your mind what this is like on an epidemic scale. Think of

all of the agrarian communities through Florida. Imagine what it

would be like to see devastation on such a grand scale as vegetation is

traced line by line in the heart of the deep south.

That’s what Joel describes in this passage, and in of all places, the

Promised Land. Joel 1:2–4 says, 2 Hear this, you elders; give ear, all

inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of

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your fathers? 3 Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and

their children to another generation. 4 What the cutting locust left, the swarming

locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and

what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.

The four physical stages of locusts used in verse four represent the

four physical stages of locusts’ lives.8 The words probably convey the

idea of successive swarms of locusts, one after another. A swarm of

locusts can completely ruin the vegetation of a countryside, and

nothing can stop them (cf. Exodus 10:1–20).

I interpret verse four to mean that there were four years of locust

plagues. I think this because Joel 2:25a says, I will restore to you the years

that the swarming locust has eaten. He pluralizes the word “years.” So, this

devastation occurred for a period of years, perhaps four years.

Harvest after harvest after harvest after harvest fails until the entire

land is devastated.

Look at what happens after all of the devastation throughout four

8 Duane A. Garrett, Hosea, Joel: The New American Commentary, Vol. 19a (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1997), 312.

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years:

THE LAND

Joel 1:10

THE ANIMALS

Joel 1:18

THE PEOPLE

Joel 1:12

There isn’t a happy person to be found. After a fourth year of locust

invasions, trying to eek out an existence following this kind of

devastation is absolutely miserable.

THE LORD

Joel 1:7

Notice the personal possessions from God. The Promised Land is

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very clearly God’s land. It belongs to Him. That’s why it was always

on a lease to His people instead of freely given to them.

Because the land was brought to the Lord, the firstfruits were to

always be brought to Him as an offering. However, there can be no

grain offering if there is no grain.

Joel 1:9 says, The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house

of the LORD. The priests mourn, the ministers of the LORD.

Joel is describing a real historical event despite us not having the date

or precise location within the Promised Land. He brings to us the

word of disaster on an astonishing scale.

I’m so grateful this book is in the Bible. Around the world, the

people of God need to know how to respond to disaster. How do

you respond to disasters in your life? Not just the one documented in

Joel 1, but any disaster.

When you, as a Christian, see war and violence, how do you respond?

When you see war and violence sweeping across the Middle East just

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as locusts once swept across that land, how do you respond?

What are we to do when an invasion of drugs sweeps across our

country? Picture it moving across the land of America . . . devastating

people instead of plants.

What are we to do when waves of shallowness and unfaithfulness

sweep across the land of the church like a plague of locusts?

Stripping faith of its vibrancy and removing Christian life from any

costly obedience.

Joel 1:13 gives the answer to this. It gives a call to lament, when it

says, Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Go

in, pass the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God! Because grain offering and

drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.

In the book of Psalms, there is a large portion called “The Psalms of

Lament.” Knowing this portion of the Psalms exists, keep in mind

the shift happening in the American culture. Godlessness is sweeping

across our land just as the plague of locusts swept across the land in

Joel’s day.

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Christians want to do something about this, but they don’t know

what to do. Here is the problem: Christian people today do not know

how to lament. It’s not part of our world. God’s people need to learn

how to lament.

Verse 13a teaches that this time of lamenting needs to begin with

pastors, when it says, Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O

ministers of the altar. Go in, pass the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God!

Then, in verse 14, it says, Consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly.

Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of

the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD. So, it starts with pastors,

then moves to spiritually mature people, then moves to all of God’s

people.

What do you know about lamenting? In a culture filled with “feel

good” experiences, it is very difficult for churches to lament. What

happens is that we want to feel good about our corporate worship

services at churches for an hour on Sunday mornings. Public prayer

gets reduced to thanking God for all of the blessings we have in life,

and then people walk out the doors with the profound sense that the

realities of the world in which we live have been completely and

utterly missed.

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When do God’s people cry out to Him for mercy on our land? When

do you cry out to God for mercy on our land? Jesus wept over

Jerusalem, and if we want to be like Him, we must learn to lament,

too.

The first chapter of Joel is about the day of the locusts and the call to

lament. Then, Joel moves from one picture to another.

II. The Day of the Lord and the Call to Repent (Joel 1:19–2:17)

Joel 1:19 says, To you, O LORD, I call. For fire has devoured the pastures of

the wilderness, and flame has burned all the trees of the field.

The locusts ate the vegetation. They consumed it. They obviously

didn’t burn it. So, when Joel brings up fire in verse 19, he has moved

to another picture.

Joel 2:1 says, Blow a trumpet in Zion; sound an alarm on my holy mountain!

Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming; it

is near,

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Having described this vast army of insects that has completely

devastated the land, Joel now describes a vast army moving into the

land, speaking of something that has yet to come. This army is like

the plague of locusts in that it sweeps across the land, only this army

is burning everything in its path.

Now, the earth is scorched. You may recall that Isaiah said that God

will make the wilderness like the Garden of Eden (cf. Isaiah 51:3).

Joel 2:3 says, Fire devours before them, and behind them a flame burns. The

land is like the garden of Eden before them, but behind them a desolate

wilderness, and nothing escapes them.

Picture a beautiful garden of earthly paradise with vegetation in the

foreground and hills rolling in the background. Then, this army

comes, and all is scorched. Nothing escapes the wrath of this army.

Joel 2:6, 10 says, 6 Before them peoples are in anguish; all faces grow pale. 10 The earth quakes before them; the heavens tremble. The sun and the moon are

darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining.

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This is a prophetic description of what the Bible calls “The Day of

the Lord.” This is the day when the army of God comes to bring

about the final judgment in which God deals with humanity’s sin.

Having brought the earth through the cataclysm that Peter describes

as melting with fervent heat (cf. 2 Peter 3:10). Then, the new heaven

and new earth will be created. It will be the new hope of

righteousness.

In Joel 2:11, he makes it clear that he is talking about the army of the

Lord, when he says, 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?

The obvious answer is no one. You know Joel is saying to people

that they are so helpless with insects no more than 3” long. How

helpless will you be when you stand before the judgment of almighty

God?

Joel 2:12 says, “Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your

heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;

Every disaster brings with it a call to repent. Return to God.

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Luke 13 records an occasion when some people who were listening

to Jesus told him about an unspeakable atrocity that had happened at

some time in their area. Herod, who was a wicked king, had launched

an attack on his own people while they were in the act of worship.

They were offering sacrifices.

Luke 13:1 says, There were some present at that very time who told him about

the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.

It was an unspeakable atrocity. How could a ruler do such a thing to

his own people?

Of course, I think the same thing today. For example, how can

leaders of America inflict the pain of murdering children in the

womb by allowing abortion to continue? Christians, it is time to pray

for those in office and on the bench to be given Holy-Spirit-sent

wisdom.

When these people brought this unspeakable atrocity to Jesus, do you

know what Jesus said? Keep in mind Herod mingled the blood of his

people with their own sacrifices.

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Jesus said in Luke 13:3, No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all

likewise perish.

Can you imagine the stunned silence when He said that? Your heart

is rightfully moved as you lament. Have you thought about the reality

of a day of judgment that has yet to come? Every disaster brings with

it a call to lament and a call to repent for God’s people.

A. Who should repent?

All of God’s people. Joel 2:15 says, Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a

fast; call a solemn assembly;

It is easy for Christians to become complacent in hearing that the

nation needs to repent. Repentance begins in the house of God with

the people of God. We will not see a repentant nation until we see a

repentant church.

Repentance and faith are like two sides of the same coin. Those who

believe repent and those who repent believe.

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B. How can we repent?

Joel makes it really clear in 2:13, 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.

People don’t repent because someone tells them what

they are doing is wrong. People repent because they

begin to see that God is holy.

Joel asks, “Who can endure the day of the Lord?” The Old

Testament never answers that question. However, in the New

Testament, we can see one person who did endure it. He endured all

of the judgment of the world on behalf of all who would come to

Him in faith and in repentance. His name is Jesus.

C. When should you repent and turn to Jesus?

Joel 1:12 says, The vine dries up; the fig tree languishes. Pomegranate, palm,

and apple, all the trees of the field are dried up, and gladness dries up from the

children of man.

Turn to Jesus NOW with all of your heart.

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ABOUT THE PREACHER | DR. JEREMY ROBERTS

Dr. Jeremy Roberts is Senior Pastor at Thomasville Road Baptist Church, Tallahassee, FL. With over 2,600 members, Thomasville

Road is a thriving inter-generational church in the heart of Florida’s capital city. Additionally, he serves as an Adjunct Professor at Liberty

University and Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Roberts has a D.Min. from Liberty University. He and his wife, Charity, and their two daughters, Autumn and Lily, live in the Tallahassee area.

Connect with Dr. Roberts online:

Instagram: @JeremyPRoberts

Facebook.com/DrJeremyRoberts Thomasville Road Baptist Church: ThomasvilleRoad.org